Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I

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Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I

Project Gutenberg's Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.), by Thomas Moore This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) With his Letters and Journals.
Author: Thomas Moore
Release Date: February 6, 2006 [EBook #17684]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Transcriber's Note:
This is the first volume of the Six volume series
Life of Lord Byron with his Letters and Journals
by Thomas Moore.
Links to the other five volumes.
Volume Two. E-Text No.16570--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16570 Volume Three. E-Text No.16548--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16548 Volume Four. E-Text No.16549--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16549 Volume Five. E-Text No.16609--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16609 Volume Six. E-Text No.14841--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14841

LIFE OF LORD BYRON:
WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.
BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.
IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. I.
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1854.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, TO THE PERIOD OF HIS RETURN FROM THE CONTINENT, JULY, 1811.

TO
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARONET,
THESE VOLUMES
ARE INSCRIBED
BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,
THOMAS MOORE.
December, 1829.

PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.[1]
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 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, which will be found in the following pages.[3]
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