Some Soldier Poets by Edmund Gosse

The two years which preceded the outbreak of the war were marked in this country by a revival of public interest in the art of poetry. To this movement coherence was given and organisation introduced by Mr. Edward Marsh's now-famous volume entitled _Georgian Poetry_. The effect of this collection -- for it is hardly correct to call it an anthology -- of the best poems written by the youngest poets since 1911 was two-fold; it acquainted readers with work few had "the leisure or the zeal to investigate," and it brought the writers themselves together in a corporate and selected relation. I do not recollect that this had been done -- except prematurely and partially by _The Germ_ of 1850 -- since the _England's Parnassus_ and _England's Helicon_ of 1600. In point of fact the only real precursor of Mr. Marsh's venture in our whole literature is the _Songs and Sonnettes_ of 1557, commonly known as _Tottel's Miscellany_.

Tottel brought together, for the first time, the lyrics of Wyatt, Surrey, Churchyard, Vaux, and Bryan, exactly as Mr. Marsh called public attention to Rupert Brooke, James Elroy Flecker and the rest of the Georgians, and he thereby fixed the names of those poets, as Mr. Marsh has fixed those of our youngest fledglings, on the roll of English literature.