ADVERTISEMENT. AT the distance of eight years from Lord Byron's death, in arranging his poetical works for this the first complete and uniform edition of them, it has been resolved, after much consideration, to follow, as closely as possible, the order of chronology. With a writer whose pieces do not prominently connect themselves with the actual sequence of his private history, another course might have seemed more advisable; but, in the case of one whose compositions reflect constantly the incidents of his own career, the developement of his sentiments, and the growth of his character in the case of a Petrarch, a Burns, a Schiller, or a Byron, the advantages of the plan here adopted appear unquestionable. The poetical works of Lord Byron, thus arranged, and illustrated from his own diaries and letters-(to many of which, as yet in MS., the Editor has had access), and from the information of his surviving friends, who have in general answered every enquiry with prompt kindness, will now present the clearest picture of the history of the man, as they must ever form the noblest monument of his genius. Besides the juvenile miscellany of 1807, entitled "Hours of Idleness," and the satire of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," first published in 1809, the present volume embraces a variety of Occasional Pieces, many of them now first printed, written between 1807 and the summer of 1810. Its contents bring down, therefore, the poetical autobiography of Lord Byron, from the early days of Southwell and Harrow, to the time when he had seriously entered on the great work which fixed his place in the highest rank of English literature. Here the reader is enabled to take "the river of his life" at its sources, and trace it gradually from the boyish regions of passionately tender friendships, innocent half-fanciful loves, and that vague melancholy which hangs over the first stirrings of ambition, until, widening and strengthening as it flows, it begins to appear discoloured with the bitter waters of thwarted affection and outraged pride. No person, it is hoped, will hesitate to confess that new light is thrown on such of these pieces as had been published previously, by the arrangement and annotation which they have at length received-any more than that, among the minor poems now for the first time printed, there are several which claim a higher place, as productions of Lord Byron's genius, than any of those with which, in justice to him and to his reader, they are thus interwoven. Composed entirely of verses written between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three, this volume, even considered in a mere literary point of view, -must be allowed to stand alone in the history of Juvenile Poetry. But every page of it is in fact, when rightly understood, a chapter of the author's "confessions;" and it is by contemplating these faithful records of the progress of his mind and feelings, in conjunction with those already presented in the prose notices of his life,-which mutually illustrate and confirm each other throughout, that the reader can alone prepare himself for entering with full advantage on the first canto of Childe Harold. London, June, 1832 |