ADVERTISEMENT.

IN offering to the public the "Select Works of Lord Byron," the publishers would remark, that it is an enterprise they have long had under consideration, - cherishing the belief that the class was very large, who would gladly own, for purposes of reference, that portion which has given such immortality to the name of the great author, if they could do so without paying for a mass of matter which they would prefer their libraries should not contain. These selections have been made in view, to some extent, of these prejudices. At the same time they would say, that the selection has been sufficiently liberal, as not to rob the illustrious bard of one of his laurels. The work will be found to contain "Hours of Idleness," "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and "Hebrew Melodies," complete, together with copious extracts from his other Poems, not excepting "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan."

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, had not only his own talents, but the pride of an illustrious ancestry, to boast. Even so early as the conquest, his family was distinguished, not only on account of possessing extensive manors in Lancashire and other parts, but for their prowess in arms.

The last Lord Byron but one had only one son, who held a commission in the army, and was killed in Corsica several years previous to the death of his father, which accelerated the succession of his present lordship, as the infant grandson of the celebrated Admiral Byron, who was the eldest brother of the late lord. This nobleman died on the 19th of May, 1791, by which means our author succeeded to the title and estates of his illustrious ancestry. His lordship's father married first the Baroness Conyers, daughter of Lord Holderness, by whom he had a daughter; and after her demise, Miss Gordon of Gight, the mother of the noble lord.

A considerable portion of the early life of Lord Byron was spent in Scotland, where the wild mountainous scenes which surrounded him, contributed materially to strengthen the mighty energies of his mind, and to imprint on his vivid imagination those powerful and beautiful images of natural grandeur which characterize his writings. His lordship would frequently leave his ordinary companions, and wander alone amid the majestic and sublime scenery of the Highlands, until his soul appeared tinged with those elements of real sublimity, and drank a species of inspiration from the mists of the mountains, the wild waves of the ocean, and the black adamant of its terrific boundaries.

The celebrated school at Harrow, and the University at Cambridge, had the honor of affording the polish of education to the innate powers of his mind; and many of his academic companions can relate various instances of his precocious talents and strange eccentricities. At this early period of his life he made many voluntary excursions to the Aonian Hill, and partook largely of the Castalian stream, which the work he published under the title of "Hours of Idleness, a Series of Poems, Original and Translated," sufficiently demonstrates. Premature as these poetic attempts might be considered, and severely as they were handled by the editor of the Edinburgh Review, there are numerous original beauties in several of the pieces, which proved the harbingers of the splendid galaxy that succeeded them.

These poems were published at Newark, in the year 1805, when his lordship was only nineteen years of age; and from the dates prefixed, it appears that a great number were written between his sixteenth and nineteenth year.

This critique elicited from his lordship one of the bitterest and most powerful satires that was ever published. Lord Byron avows, towards the close of the poem, that it was his intention to close, from that period, his connexion with the Muses, and that should he return in safety from the "Minarets" of Constantinople, the "Maidens" of Georgia, and the "sublimer snows of Mount Caucasus, nothing on earth should induce him to resume his pen.

Happily, however, for the republic of letters, this resolution was not persevered in; and the noble bard, with that generosity which generally accompanies true genius, has not only forgiven the editor of the Edinburgh Review, but alluded to him, in a flattering manner, in one of his poems.

Swimming and managing a boat were among the early amusements of his lordship, in both of which he is said to have acquired great dexterity, even in his childhood. In his aquatic excursions near Newstead Abbey, he had rarely any other companion than a large Newfoundland dog, to try whose fidelity and sagacity, he would sometimes fall out of the boat, as though by accident, when the dog would seize him, and drag him on shore. In 1808 his lordship lost his