The Works of Lord Byron

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Title: The Works of Lord Byron
Poetry, Volume V.
Author: Lord Byron
Editor: Ernest Hartley Coleridge
Release Date: November 14, 2007 [EBook #23475]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
This etext is a Latin-1 file. The original work contained a few phrases or lines of Greek text. These are represented here as Beta-code transliterations, for example [Greek: tragos]. The original text used a few other characters not found in the Latin-1 character set. These have been represented using bracket notation, as follows: [)a], [)e], [)s] and [)z] represent letters with a breve (curved line) above; [=a] and [=u] represent letters with a macron (straight line) above. In a few places, a single superscript is shown by a caret, and two superscript letters by carets, as in J^n 10^th^.
An important feature of this edition is its copious footnotes. Footnotes indexed with arabic numbers (as [17], [221]) are informational. Note text in square brackets is the work of editor E. H. Coleridge. Unbracketed note text is from earlier editions and is by a preceding editor or Byron himself. Footnotes indexed with letters (as [c], [bf]) document variant forms of the text from manuscripts and other sources.
In the original, footnotes are printed at the foot of the page on which they are referenced, and their indices start over on each page. Here, footnotes are collected at the ends of each play or poem, and are numbered consecutively throughout. Within the blocks of footnotes are numbers in braces: {321}. These represent the page number on which following notes originally appeared. To find a note that was originally printed on page 27, search for {27}.
The Works
OF
LORD BYRON.
A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
Poetry. Vol. V.
EDITED BY
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A.,
HON. F.R.S.L.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1901.
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME.
The plays and poems contained in this volume were written within the space of two years--the last two years of Byron's career as a poet. But that was not all. Cantos VI.-XV. of _Don Juan_, _The Vision of Judgment_, _The Blues_, _The Irish Avatar_, and other minor poems, belong to the same period. The end was near, and, as though he had received a warning, he hastened to make the roll complete.
Proof is impossible, but the impression remains that the greater part of this volume has been passed over and left unread by at least two generations of readers. Old play-goers recall Macready as "Werner," and many persons have read _Cain_; but apart from students of literature, readers of _Sardanapalus_ and of _The Two Foscari_ are rare; of _The Age of Bronze_ and _The Island_ rarer still. A few of Byron's later poems have shared the fate of Southey's epics; and, yet, with something of Southey's persistence, Byron believed that posterity would weigh his "regular dramas" in a fresh balance, and that his heedless critics would kick the beam. But "can these bones live"? Can dramas which excited