tself, 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 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.

PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.

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,[2] 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beautiful as they are, to my mind, convincing, from an unpublished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, whi