The Enchiridion

William Tidd Matson: Poetical Works, 1894

William Tidd Matson: Poetical Works, 1894; Transcription of Title page, Contents and Author's Preface, from a copy in the Elias Library, Westminster College, Cambridge.

[ Title page ] 

THE POETICAL WORKS

OF

WILLIAM TIDD MATSON

(Born 1833)

Now first collected

and including a large number of pieces

not before published

1894

------

[ Contents ]

[ The Section "Hymns and Sacred Lyrics" (pp.606-624): Author's footnote ]

The Author's Hymns and Sacred Lyrics in MSS amount in number to 460. Only a few of these could possibly be included in this Collection. Readers who may wish to make further acquaintance with the Author as a Hymnodist are referred to his volume Lays of Laud, Life and Litany.

[ Preface ] 

PREFACE 

On the 17th of October, 1893, I passed the limit of my sixtieth year. At such an age a writer may regard himself as having accomplished all his chief work. It is time that he should collect the fruits of his fancy if the Public are to possess them in an enduring form. Hence this volume. Of its contents more than half of the poems have hitherto remained unpublished, as I have been in no hurry to rush them into print. Still other pieces are here for the first time brought together from the pages of long extinct and forgotten periodicals in which they lay scattered and where they originally saw the light. I had intended to include a few unfinished pieces which it is hardly likely I shall now complete, but I find that I cannot do this without swelling out the book to an inconvenient bulk and size. Of these are the First Book in blank verse of the Pleasures of Religion, the Prologue and First Act of a Lyrical Drama on the Story of Job, Seven Cantos of a Poem in Spenserian Stanza, entitled The Shadowland, interrupted by certain trying experiences that befell me at Sleaford and of which I have never been able to recover the thread, the Introduction and First Canto of a Satirical Poem on Britannia, modelled after the style of Heine's Germany, and some fragments of an ode entitled Christos Pantheos. I have also omitted a blank verse Idyll on the old classical story of Pomona which needs a little revision before I publish it, as I hope one day to do. I had also intended at first, to arrange my poems in chronological order, but on second thought it seemed best for the interest of the General Reader that they should be classified according to form and subject, but I have appended to each the date and year of composition for the sake of those readers, though fewer in number, who take a psychological interest in tracing the growth and varied developments of the poetic mind. Should the sale of this volume cover the expense of its publication, I purpose to follow it up with one of like size containing a Selection from my Prose Writings. It was hardly possible but that in a book of this dimension, some errors of typography should creep in. I think, however, that all of these, or at least all of any importance, have been noted and corrected in the subjoined Table of Errata.

Sarisbury Green, Hants, 1894.

WM. TIDD MATSON.

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(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 3/8/02)