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In presenting these Volumes to the public I should have felt, I own, considerable diffidence, from a sincere distrust in my own powers of doing justice to such a task, were I not well convinced that there is in the subject itself, and in the rich variety of materials here brought to illustrate it, a degree of attraction and interest which it would be difficult, even for hands the most unskilful, to extinguish. However lamentable were the circumstances under which Lord Byron became estranged from his country, to his long absence from England, during the most brilliant period of his powers, we are indebted for all those interesting Letters which compose the greater part of the Second Volume

1 [The original edition was in two volumes, 4to.]

[" These Letters are among the best in our language. They are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole; they have more matter in them than those of Cowper. Knowing that many of them were not written merely for the gentleman to whom they were directed, but were general epistles meant to be read by a large circle, we expected to find them clever and spirited, but deficient in ease. We have been agreeably disappointed; and we must confess, that if the epistolary style of Lord Byron was artificial, it was a rare and admirable instance of that highest art, which cannot be distinguished from nature." -Edinburgh Rev. 1831.

[January, 1830.]

of this work, and which will be found equal, if not superior, in point of vigour, variety, and liveliness, to any that have yet adorned this branch of our literature.

What has been said of Petrarch, that “his correspondence and verses together afford the progressive interest of a narrative in which the poet is always identified with the man," will be found applicable, in a far greater degree, to Lord Byron, in whom the literary and the personal character were so closely interwoven, that to have left his works without the instructive commentary which his Life and Correspondence afford, would have been equally an injustice both to himself and to the world. 2

"These letters cannot be perused without producing an enlarged estimation of the deceased poet's talents and accomplishments. They render it hardly doubtful that had his life been prolonged, he would have taken his place in the very first rank of our prose literature also. Here are numberless brief and rapid specimens of narrative, serious and comic, distinguished by a masterly combination of simplicity, energy, and grace,-of critical disquisition, at once ingenious and profound,—of satire both stern and playful, not surpassed in modern days; and, above all, here are transcripts of mental emotion in all possible varieties, worthy of him who was equally at home in the darkest passion of Harold, and the airiest levity of Beppo.” — Quart. Rev. 1830.]

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THE favourable reception which I ventured to anticipate for the First Volume of this Work has been, to the full extent of my expectations, realised; and I may without scruple thus advert to the success it has met with, being well aware that to the interest of the subject and the materials, not to any merit of the editor, such a result is to be attributed. Among the less agreeable, though not least valid, proofs of this success may be counted the attacks which, from more than one quarter, the Volume has provoked; — attacks angry enough, it must be confessed, but, from their very anger, impotent, and, as containing nothing whatever in the shape either of argument or fact, not entitled, I may be pardoned for saying, to the slightest notice.

Of a very different description, both as regards the respectability of the source from whence it comes, and the mysterious interest involved in its contents, is a document which made its appearance soon after the former Volume', and which I have annexed, without a single line of comment, to the present; - contenting myself, on this painful subject, with entreating the reader's attention to some extracts, as beautiful as they are, to my mind, convincing, from an unpublished pamphlet of Lord Byron, which will be found in the following pages. 2

[December, 1830.]

Sanguinely as I was led to augur of the reception of our First Volume, of the success of that which we now present to the public I am disposed to feel even still more confident. Though self-banished from England, it was plain that to England alone Lord Byron continued to look, throughout the remainder of his days, not only as the natural theatre of his literary fame, but as the tribunal to which all his thoughts, feelings, virtues, and frailties were to be referred; and the exclamation of Alexander, "Oh, Athenians, how much it costs me to obtain your praises!" might have been, with equal truth, addressed by the noble exile to his countrymen. To keep the minds of the English public for ever occupied about him, — if not with his merits, with his faults; if not in applauding, in blaming him, — was, day and night, the constant ambition of his soul; and in the correspondence he so regularly maintained with his publisher, one of the chief mediums through which this object was to be effected lay. Mr. Murray's house being then, as now, the resort of most of those literary men who are, at the same time, men of the world, his Lordship knew that whatever particulars he might wish to make public concerning himself would, if transmitted to that quarter, be sure to circulate from thence throughout society. It was on this presumption that he but rarely, as we shall find him more than once stating, corresponded with any others of his friends at home; and to the mere accident of my having been, myself, away from England, at the time, was I indebted for the numerous and no less inte

resting letters with which, during the same period, he honoured me, and which now enrich this volume.

In these two sets of correspondence (given as they are here, with as little suppression as a regard to private feelings and to certain other considerations warrants) will be found a complete history, from the pen of the poet himself, of the course of his life and thoughts, during this most energetic period of his whole career; - presenting altogether so wide a canvass of animated and, often, unconscious self-portraiture, as even the communicative spirit of genius has seldom, if ever, before bestowed on the world.

Some insinuations, calling into question the disinterestedness of the lady whose fate was connected with that of Lord Byron during his latter years, having been brought forward, or rather revived, in a late work, entitled "Galt's Life of Byron,” - - a work wholly unworthy of the respectable name it bears, I may be allowed to adduce here a testimony on this subject, which has been omitted in its proper place 2, but which will be more than sufficient to set the idle calumny at rest. The circumstance here alluded to may be most clearly, perhaps, communicated to my readers through the medium of the following extract from a letter, which Mr. Barry (the friend and banker of Lord Byron)

1 ["On his departure for Greece, Lord Byron left her, as it is said, notwithstanding the rank and opulence she had forsaken on his account, without any provision: he had promised to settle two thousand pounds on her, but he forgot the intention, or died before it was carried into effect."-GALT, p. 228.]

2 In p. 419., however, the reader will find it alluded to, and in terms such as conduct so disinterested deserves.

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did me the favour of addressing to me soon after his Lordship's death3 : —“When Lord Byron went to Greece, he gave me orders to advance money to Madame Guiccioli; but that lady would never consent to receive any. His Lordship had also told me that he meant to leave his will in my hands, and that there would be a bequest in it of 10,000l. to Madame Guiccioli. He mentioned this circumstance also to Lord Blessington. When the melancholy news of his death reached me, I took for granted that this will would be found among the sealed papers he had left with me; but there was no such instrument. I immediately then wrote to Madame Guiccioli, enquiring if she knew any thing concerning it, and mentioning, at the same time, what his Lordship had said as to the legacy. To this the lady replied, that he had frequently spoken to her on the same subject, but that she had always cut the conversation short, as it was a topic she by no means liked to hear him speak upon. In addition, she expressed a wish that no such will as I had mentioned would be found; as her circumstances were already sufficiently independent, and the world might put a wrong construction on her attachment, should it appear that her fortunes were, in any degree, bettered by it." +

3 June 12. 1828.

4 [" I happen to know that Lord Byron offered to give the Guiccioli a sum of money outright, or to leave it to her by will. I also happen to know that the lady would not hear of any such present or provision; for I have a letter in which Lord Byron extols her disinterestedness." HOBHOUSE.]

It has been said of Lord Byron, that "he was prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of Childe Harold and Manfred." This remark is not altogether unfounded in truth. In the character of the noble Poet, the pride of ancestry was undoubtedly one of the most decided features; and, as far as antiquity alone gives lustre to descent, he had every reason to boast of the claims of his race. In Doomsday-book, the name of Ralph de Burun ranks high among the tenants of land in Nottinghamshire; and in the succeeding reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Castle', we find his descendants holding considerable possessions in Derbyshire; to which, afterwards, in the time of Edward I., were added the lands of Rochdale in Lancashire. So extensive, indeed, in those early times, was the landed wealth of the family, that the partition of their property, in Nottinghamshire alone, has been sufficient to establish some of the first families of the county.

Its antiquity, however, was not the only distinction by which the name of Byron came recommended to its inheritor; those personal merits and accomplishments, which form the best ornament of a genealogy, seem to have been displayed in no ordinary degree by some of his ancestors. In one of his own early poems, alluding to the achievements of his race, he commemorates, with much sa

"In the park of Horseley," says Thoroton, in his History of Nottinghamshire, "there was a castle, some of the ruins whereof are yet visible, called Horestan Castle, which was the chief mansion of his (Ralph de Burun's) successors."

tisfaction, those "mail-covered barons" among them,

'who proudly to battle Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain.' Adding,

'Near Askalon's towers John of Horiston slumbers; Unnerved is the hand of his minstrel by death.'

As there is no record, however, as far as I can discover, of any of his ancestors having been engaged in the Holy Wars, it is possible that he may have had no other authority for this notion than the tradition which he found connected with certain strange groups of heads, which are represented on the old panel-work, in some of the chambers at Newstead. In one of these groups, consisting of three heads, strongly carved and projecting from the panel, the centre figure evidently represents a Saracen or Moor, with an European female on one side of him, and a Christian soldier on the other. In a second group, which is in one of the bedrooms, the female occupies the centre, while on each side is the head of a Saracen, with the eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Of the exact meaning of these figures there is nothing certain known; but the tradition is, Ï understand, that they refer to some loveadventure, in which one of those crusaders, of whom the young poet speaks, was engaged. 2

Of the more certain, or, at least, better known exploits of the family, it is sufficient, perhaps, to say, that, at the siege of Calais

2["The first is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory, descriptive of the Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for the liberation of the church; the other may have been the old favourite ecclesiastical story of Susannah and the elders."- - GALT.]

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