The Works of Lord Byron

literature has to be bought at the price of close attention
and patient study when the subject-matter of a poem
and the modes and movements of the poet's conscious-
ness are alike unfamiliar.

Criticism, however subtle, however suggestive, how-
ever luminous, will not bridge over the gap between the
past and the present, will not supply the sufficing know-
ledge. It is delightful and interesting and, in a measure,
instructive to know what great poets of his own time and
of ours have thought of Byron, how he“ strikes " them;
but unless we are ourselves saturated with his thought and
style, unless we learn to breathe his atmosphere by read-
ing the books which he read, picturing to ourselves the
scenes which he saw,-unless we aspire to his ideals and
suffer his limitations, we are in no way entitled to judge
his poems, whether they be good or bad.

Byron's metrical “Tales” come before us in the
guise of light reading, and may be "easily criticized”
as melo-dramatic--the heroines conventional puppets,
the heroes reduplicated reflections of the author's person-
ality, the Oriental “properties” loosely arranged, and
somewhat stage-worn. A thorough and sympathetic study
of these once extravagantly lauded and now belittled
poems will not, perhaps, reverse the deliberate judgment
of later generations, but it will display them for what
they are, bold and rapid and yet exact presentations of
the “gorgeous East,” vivid and fresh from the hand of
the great artist who conceived them out of the abundance

of memory and observation, and wrought them into shape
with the “pen of a ready writer.” They will be once
more recognized as works of genius, an integral portion
of our literary inheritance, which has its proper value,
and will repay a more assiduous and a finer husbandry.

I have once more to acknowledge the generous
assistance of the officials of the British Museum, and,
more especially, of Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the Oriental
Printed Books and MSS. Department, who has afforded
me invaluable instruction in the compilation of the notes
to the Giaour and Bride of Abydos.

I have also to thank Mr. R. L. Binyon, of the
Department of Prints and Drawings, for advice and
assistance in the selection of illustrations.

I desire to express my cordial thanks to the Registrar
of the Copyright Office, Stationers' Hall; to Professor
Jannaris, of the University of St. Andrews; to Miss
E. Dawes, M.A., D.L., of Heathfield Lodge, Weybridge;
to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, of Goodrest, Tor-
quay; and to my friend, Mr. Frank E. Taylor, of Chertsey,
for information kindly supplied during the progress of
the work.

For many of the "parallel passages " from the works
of other poets, which are to be found in the notes, I am
indebted to a series of articles by A. A. Watts, in the
Literary Gazette, February and March, 1821 ; and to the
notes to the late Professor E. Kölbing's Siege of Corinth.

On behalf of the publisher, I beg to acknowledge

the kindness of Lord Glenesk, and of Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., who have permitted the examination and collation of MSS. of the Siege of Corinth and of the " Thyrza" poems, in their possession.

The original of the miniature of H.R.H. the Princess Charlotte of Wales (see p. 44) is in the Library of Windsor Castle. It has been reproduced for this volume by the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen.

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