Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I

Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I

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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
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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