The Works
OF
LORD BYRON
A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
Poetry. Vol. VII.
EDITED BY
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A.,
HON. F.R.S.L.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1904.
PREFACE TO
THE SEVENTH VOLUME.
Of the seventy-three "Epigrams and Jeux d'Esprit," which are printed atthe commencement of this volume, forty-five were included in Murray'sone-volume edition of 1837, eighteen have been collected from variouspublications, and ten are printed and published for the first time.
The "Devil's Drive," which appears in Moore'sLetters and Journals, and in the sixth volume of the CollectedEdition of 1831 as an "Unfinished Fragment"of ninety-seven lines, is now printed and published forthe first time in its entirety (248 lines), from a MS. inthe possession of the Earl of Ilchester. "A FarewellPetition to J. C. H. Esq.;" "My Boy Hobbie O;""[Love and Death];" and "Last Words on Greece,"are reprinted from the first volume of Murray's Magazine(1887).
[vi]A few imperfect and worthless poems remain in MS.;but with these and one or two other unimportant exceptions,the present edition of the Poetical Works maybe regarded as complete.
In compiling a "Bibliography of the successive Editionsand Translations of Lord Byron's Poetical Works," I haveendeavoured, in the first instance, to give a full andparticular account of the collected editions and separateissues of the poems and dramas which were open tomy inspection; and, secondly, to extract from generalbibliographies, catalogues of public and private libraries,and other sources bibliographical records of editionswhich I have been unable to examine, and were knownto me only at second-hand. It will be observed thatthe title-pages of editions which have passed through myhands are aligned; the titles of all other editions areitalicized.
I cannot pretend that this assortment of bibliographicalentries is even approximately exhaustive; butas "a sample" of a bibliography it will, I trust, withall its imperfections, be of service to the student ofliterature, if not to the amateur or bibliophile. Withregard to nomenclature and other technicalities, my aimhas been to put the necessary information as clearlyand as concisely as possible, rather than to complywith the requirements of this or that formula. Butthe path of the bibliographer is beset with difficulties."Al Sirat's arch"—"the bridge of breadth narrower[vii]than the thread of a famished spider, and sharper thanthe edge of a sword" (see The Giaour, line 483, note 1)—affords an easier and a safer foothold.
To the general reader a bibliography says little ornothing; but, in one respect, a bibliography of Byronis of popular import. It affords scientific proof of analmost unexampled fame, of a far-reac