Book IV

. a good deal shorter: some third-rate pieces are included in it, and Wordsworth is over-represented. And the Elizabethan poems are mostly quite short, while the Nineteenth Century poets shine equally in the longer kinds of lyric. And Mr. Palgrave excluded the old ballads, but admitted poems like Coleridge's _Love_ and Wordsworth's _Ruth_ (seven whole pages). And in any case we cannot judge by mere quantity.' No; but still quantity must count for something, and the _Golden Treasury_ is a volume excellent in selection, arrangement, and taste. It does, I think, leave the impression that the age of Wordsworth was our greatest period in lyrical poetry. And if Book I . were swelled to the dimensions of