We heartily welcome Mr. Stead's penny edition of the English
poets, which he leads off with Lord Macaulay's ballads and some of his other pieces, making up a very stirring pennyworth of patriotic verse. Call it what you will,—and to us Lord Macaulay's verse is rather first-rate rhetoric than true poetry,—it is at least verse of the kind which fires the imagination with the story of great purposes and high achieve- ment. Sir Walter Scott's "llifarmion " is to follow, another mighty pennyworth of lofty song ; and then Lord Byron's " Childe Harold," and then selections from James Russell Lowell will follow, containing, we hope, most of the humorous and unsurpassed satire of the " Biglow Papers." What a. treasure of poetry will thus be procurable for fourpence ; and indeed a child's imagination might be richly fed for all the early years of its life for something less than a shilling. We see that the poets are to form only one division of the "Masterpiece Library," though whether the prose divisions are all to be issued in penny instalments we are not told. Within a year the series of some fifty-two English poets will be completed. The " Lays of Ancient Rome" are preceded by photographs of a dozen distinguished persons, from Mr. Gladstone to our greatest living poet, Mr. William Watson, who write to Mr. Stead approving heartily, as every one must, his patriotic enterprise.
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