LETTERS AND JOURNALS, AND EDITED AND WITH AN INTRO. DUCTION BY RICHARD HENRY VOLUME TWO BOSTON FRANCIS A. NICCOLLS & CO. MDCCCC Edition De Lure This Edition is Limited to One Thousand Copies, No. 1.93 Copyright, 1900 Colonial Press Boston, Mass., U.S.A. HARVARD LIBRARY Preface The rule of arranging chronologically the poetical productions of Lord Byron is, of necessity, in so far violated in this volume, since it comprises the whole romance of “Childe Harold,” the composition of which was begun in 1809, and ended in 1818. The propriety of the course we have on this occasion adopted must, however, be quite obvious. Commenced before, perhaps, the author's powers had reached their utmost development, the work was always, at whatever intervals, — some of them considerable, - taken up by him as one which he desired and designed to render complete in itself; the realisation of a plan and conception entirely novel and peculiar, - that of presenting, in a continuous stream of verse, the essence of the thoughts and feelings elicited from his individual mind, during a succession of years, and at different stages, consequently, of his intellectual and moral being, by the contemplation of those chosen scenes of external nature whether in themselves extraordinarily beautiful or sublime, or raised to immortal interest by the transactions which they had witnessed, and the personages with whose names they had come to be inextricably interwoven — which it had been his own fortune to traverse in the course of his earthly pilgrimage. Taken as a whole, this poem is, undoubtedly, the most original and felicitous of all Lord Byron's serious efforts. It opens the first specimen of an absolutely new species of composition ; — perhaps the only |