The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 3 | Page 2

few know thoroughly,
and "very few" are found to admire or to love. _Ubi lapsus, quid feci?_
might the questioning spirit of the author exclaim with regard to his
"Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates," who once held the field, and
now seem to have gone under in the struggle for poetical existence!
To what, then, may we attribute the passing away of interest and
enthusiasm? To the caprice of fashion, to an insistence on a more
faultless _technique_, to a nicer taste in ethical sentiment, to a
preference for a subtler treatment of loftier themes? More certainly, and
more particularly, I think, to the blurring of outline and the blotting out
of detail due to lapse of time and the shifting of the intellectual
standpoint.
However much the charm of novelty and the contagion of enthusiasm
may have contributed to the success of the Turkish and other Tales, it is
in the last degree improbable that our grandfathers and
great-grandfathers were enamoured, not of a reality, but of an illusion
born of ignorance or of vulgar bewilderment. They were carried away
because they breathed the same atmosphere as the singer; and being
undistracted by ethical, or grammatical, or metrical offences, they not
only read these poems with avidity, but understood enough of what
they read to be touched by their vitality, to realize their verisimilitude.
_Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner._ Nay, more, the knowledge,
the comprehension of essential greatness in art, in nature, or in man is
not to know that there is aught to forgive. But that sufficing knowledge
which the reader of average intelligence brings with him for the
comprehension and appreciation of contemporary literature has to be
bought at the price of close attention and patient study when the
subject-matter of a poem and the modes and movements of the poet's
consciousness are alike unfamiliar.
Criticism, however subtle, however suggestive, however luminous, will
not bridge over the gap between the past and the present, will not
supply the sufficing knowledge. It is delightful and interesting and, in a

measure, instructive to know what great poets of his own time and of
ours have thought of Byron, how he "strikes" them; but unless we are
ourselves saturated with his thought and style, unless we learn to
breathe his atmosphere by reading the books which he read, picturing
to ourselves the scenes which he saw,--unless we aspire to his ideals
and suffer his limitations, we are in no way entitled to judge his poems,
whether they be good or bad.
Byron's metrical "Tales" come before us in the guise of light reading,
and may be "easily criticized" as melo-dramatic--the heroines
conventional puppets, the heroes reduplicated reflections of the author's
personality, the Oriental "properties" loosely arranged, and somewhat
stage-worn. A thorough and sympathetic study of these once
extravagantly lauded and now belittled poems will not, perhaps, reverse
the deliberate judgment of later generations, but it will display them for
what they are, bold and rapid and yet exact presentations of the
"gorgeous East," vivid and fresh from the hand of the great artist who
conceived them out of the abundance of memory and observation, and
wrought them into shape with the "pen of a ready writer." They will be
once more recognized as works of genius, an integral portion of our
literary inheritance, which has its proper value, and will repay a more
assiduous and a finer husbandry.
I have once more to acknowledge the generous assistance of the
officials of the British Museum, and, more especially, of Mr. A. G.
Ellis, of the Oriental Printed Books and MSS. Department, who has
afforded me invaluable instruction in the compilation of the notes to the
_Giaour_ and _Bride of Abydos_.
I have also to thank Mr. R. L. Binyon, of the Department of Prints and
Drawings, for advice and assistance in the selection of illustrations.
I desire to express my cordial thanks to the Registrar of the Copyright
Office, Stationers' Hall; to Professor Jannaris, of the University of St.
Andrews; to Miss E. Dawes, M.A., D.L., of Heathfield Lodge,
Weybridge; to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, of Goodrest, Torquay;
and to my friend, Mr. Frank E. Taylor, of Chertsey, for information
kindly supplied during the progress of the work.

For many of the "parallel passages" from the works of other poets,
which are to be found in the notes, I am indebted to a series of articles
by A. A. Watts, in the _Literary Gazette,_ February and March, 1821;
and to the notes to the late Professor E. Kolbing's _Siege of Corinth._
On behalf of the publisher, I beg to acknowledge the kindness of Lord
Glenesk, and of Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., who have permitted the
examination and collation of MSS. of the _Siege of Corinth_ and of the
"Thyrza" poems, in