Ages, composed of the representatives of three great nations-Dante of Italy, Chaucer of England, and Villon of France.

Robert Louis Stevenson belonged to the group who were establishing these French forms in English. In 1876 his essay on Charles of Orleans appeared in the Cornhill Magazine and in the next year his brilliant study, François Villon, Student, Poet and House Breaker, in the same magazine. In 1875 he had written two rondels, which he forwarded to Mrs. Sitwell from France, writing to her, "I send you here two rondeaux; I don't suppose they will amuse anybody but me; but this measure, short and yet intricate, is just what I desire; and I have had some good times walking along the glaring roads or down the poplar alley of the great canal, fitting my own humor to this old verse."

When Stevenson was at Saranac Lake, in 1887, he wrote to Henley a criticism of Gleeson White's Ballades and Rondeaus which had just appeared. "I got your Gleeson White; your best work and either the best or second best in the book is the Ballade in Hot Weather; that is really a masterpiece of melody and fancy. Damn your Villanelles-and everybody's. G. Macdonald comes out strong in his two pious rondels; Fons Bandusia seems as exquisite as ever. . . . Lang cuts a poor figure except in the cricket one; your patter ballade is a great tour de force, but spoiled by similar cæsuras. On the whole, 'tis a ridiculous volume, and I had more pleasure out of it than I expected. I forgot to praise Grant Allen's excellent ballade, which is the one that runs with yours." Since this collection of Gleeson White's, which was dedicated to Stevenson himself, no similar anthology has appeared until the present one. It is not too much to say that Gleeson White, who died in 1916, produced a collection of poetry worthy of rank

with the best of our poetic anthologies. His introductory notes on the early use of the forms have a very real charm of their own.

The hold which the forms took on the minds of the younger poets is illustrated by a sentence from Oscar Wilde's review of Pater's Appreciations. He begins his review by describing his first meeting with Pater and then goes on to say, "It was during my undergraduate days at Oxford; days of lyrical ardours and of studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacy and musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with its linked long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when one solemnly sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet should be written; delightful days, in which I am glad to say, there was far more rhyme than reason.

It was Dobson's Proverbs in Porcelain that introduced the forms to America in the spring of 1878. Brander Matthews and H. C. Bunner immediately began to spread the gospel. Brander Matthews reviewed the volume for the Nation, of May 2, 1878, and published a paper called Varieties of Verse in Appleton's Journal for June, 1878, on the theory and practice of these metrical experiments. Both Bunner and Matthews contributed to Scribner's Monthly and Puck the earliest American examples of the rondeau, the ballade and the triolet. Bunner did not always write under his own name in Puck. In fact, his rondeaus, An April Fool, St. Valentine and That New Year's Call appeared over his pen name of Victor Hugo Dusenbury, P. P., these letters standing for the title Professional Poet.

That these lyric forms from France have held their own despite the interest of poetry lovers in freer verse patterns, may indicate that they have been taken over permanently by the English-speaking races. Certainly the anthology that follows contains in addition to those

writers of familiar verse whom we should expect to find, the names of many other writers habitually associated in our minds with poetry of an entirely different character. The list includes a reasonably large proportion of the poets of importance in England and America since 1875.

What Dobson, Swinburne, and Gosse intended has happened. The ballade and the rondeau, at least, are completely acclimated. They have their own moods and occasions, their own aptitudes and ideas. Their themes range all the way from vulgar buffoonery and violent burlesque to delicate humours and glancing satire; from idle compliment to glowing passion. The ballade and the rondeau seem to have established themselves as genuine poetic instrumentalities.

The triolet is dedicated particularly to the uses of English familiar verse. Only George Macdonald and Ernest Radford have turned it to more serious account. The sestina remains an exotic. The villanelle appears to be growing in favor. Aldous Huxley, commenting on Dowson's use of the villanelle, writes, "Well handled, the form is capable of very great beauty."

The forms are a perpetual invitation to the apprentice in metrics, and for that reason they tend to direct general attention to the mechanism of verse and hence to enhance the enjoyment of poetry. The Rule of Thumb for the Construction of the Forms in English Verse is included in this volume as a guide to the amateur spirit ranging the lower reaches of Parnassus.