Than lies upon that truth we live to learn.

Few of my contemporaries can erase--or would wish to erase--the
dye their minds took from the late Mr. Palgrave's Golden Treasury:
and he who has returned to it again and again with an affection
born of companionship on many journeys must remember not only what
the Golden Treasury includes, but the moment when this or that
poem appealed to him, and even how it lies on the page. To Mr.
Bullen's Lyrics from the Elizabethan Song Books and his other
treasuries I own a more advised debt. Nor am I free of obligation
to anthologies even more recent--to Archbishop Trench's Household
Book of Poetry, Mr. Locker-Lampson's Lyra Elegantiarum, Mr. Miles'
Poets and Poetry of the Century, Mr. Beeching's Paradise of
English Poetry, Mr. Henley's English Lyrics, Mrs. Sharp's Lyra
Celtica, Mr. Yeats' Book of Irish Verse, and Mr. Churton Collins'
Treasury of Minor British Poetry: though my rule has been to
consult these after making my own choice. Yet I can claim that the
help derived from them--though gratefully owned--bears but a
trifling proportion to the labour, special and desultory, which
has gone to the making of my book.

For the anthologist's is not quite the dilettante business for
which it is too often and ignorantly derided. I say this, and
immediately repent; since my wish is that the reader should in his
own pleasure quite forget the editor's labour, which too has been
pleasant: that, standing aside, I may believe this book has made
the Muses' access easier when, in the right hour, they come to him
to uplift or to console--
[Greek]