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reputable and unquestionable quarters, and saved from thewreck of matter." In the society and friendship of his Lordship we have been long happy, as well in England, as in Italy and Greece, alike witnesses of his zeal and magnanimity, sharers of his toils, and fellow-mourners with the citizens of Missolonghi over his cherished remains; and having followed him to his native and dearly beloved England, at once the fount and the grave of his happiness and his misery, and beheld him laid in the lowly vault of the picturesque little village church of Hucknell, we took our last look, and were able to leave his grave only through the resolution of justifying him to posterity, by giving to his country, and to the world at large, the Biography of his valuable life. Here then we present it, the fruit of our labours, to the liberal British public, little doubting that it will prove a very acceptable bon-bouche; for if the life of any man is capable of affording entertainment, of yielding instruction, of provoking inquiry, of exciting curiosity, of creating interest and attention, and of deserving both, it is the life of one whose writings the world has admired, whose actions it has looked up to, and whose simplest movements, even, it has watched with Argus' eyes for the last dozen years. We have industriously traced every source of information that lay open to us, and hope that we shall be found not to have been unsuccessful in our endeavours towards rendering the public a desirable service, viz. the filling up the

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chasm in the literary world which the destruction of the Memoirs had made. It will, indeed, be found a most extensive Biography, as it involves Anecdotes and Me- ̧ moirs of the Lives of the most Eminent and Eccentric-Public and Noble-Characters and Courtiers of the present polished and enlightened AGE and Court of his Most Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth. Kings, Queens, Princes, Dukes, Peers and Peeresses, Lords, Ladies, and Commoners, Poets and Poetasters, Clowns and Pantaloons, Britons, Franks, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Greeks and Turks, are all in turn brought into play, to perform their parts upon the stage of the life of the Noble and Eccentric Bard; and we may venture to add with confidence, that it will afford much interest, and excite in particular much pleasure, in the minds of those who have performed whole acts of their life with him, living, by perusing his Memoirs, as it were to perform over again such of their parts as are connected with the Noble Bard with whose name their's is linked, and rapidly rolling down the stream of Time. Scarcely any thing can be more interesting, or indeed more useful and instructive, than to study and possess a knowledge of the traits of the characters of our contemporaries→ our comrades through life,-to know with whom we live -with what spirits we are mingling-who adorn the theatre of our existence. It is thus we gain a knowledge how to live; it is thus we study human nature from life

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itself; it is thus we fortify ourselves for combat with the world; it is thus one generation improves another, and pays its debt to posterity by thus publishing its knowledge-the whole world indeed is ever anxious after this knowledge, ever desirous of knowing what is passing within it. These volumes, which unfold such ample information on this head, will be found a key to such studies-a gradus ad Parnassum, a guide to the Parnassus of the literature, the fashion, and the manners of our day; and will, we anticipate, blend instruction with amusement: for the sphere of life in which the noble bard moved involved all that was important; from the close observance of which we gain experience and grow wise, The recital of such a life, therefore, will be found a picture of the present century -a mirror of the times-a looking-glass, wherein most of the public and noble characters of this age will see their faces reflected, and may peruse at leisure the features both of their persons and their minds. It will, however, be some satisfaction and consolation to know that, as Lord Byron's Memoirs of his own life were perused by several of his friends, an inquiry has been instituted and persevered in, and we have procured, and separately given in the course of our Biography, in order to make it as complete and as interesting as possible, Copious Recollections of the Memoirs themselves; so that we trust we shall be found, in the end, to have healed the wound of the public, and left it little more to expect, or indeed to wish for,

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As the greatest poet of the age, Lord Byron was (as we before have had occasion to remark) public property

his was, moreover, an eccentric path through life; and though his family considered it proper, from particular motives, that his self-written memoirs should he suppressed, yet in all such cases the family gains little or nothing, while the public loses much. What is matter of history is matter of instruction; and the public cannot part with Lord Byron so; the principles and conduct of so great a genius must provoke inquiry, and receive the judgment of a tribunal, which no author can elude.

Lord Byron had no occasion to dread; he was well aware that he could not escape the public judgment; and he wished to lay himself open before them. He concealed only his numerous benefactions; but, in spite of him, a few of them became known through the bursting hearts of those who experienced his bounty, and could not restrain their gratitude. The truth will out, "vox veritatis testis extingui nequit." And it shall come out. Nothing is here related that pains have not been taken to substantiate; or, if doubtful, the reader has been apprized that it is so, that he may attach what degree of credit to it he pleases. This is not the work of a professed Eulogist: but an honest effort to detect misrepresentation,-to wipe away calumny, and to pay a just tribute to the memory of one

the greatest

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of the greatest men of the age-the BARD of BRITAIN, and the GoOD GENIUS of GREECE!

While this was in the press, and since the death of his Lordship, several disjointed, desultory, and unconnected publications have appeared, containing misrepresentations, with prejudicial and calumnious accounts of Lord Byron; which impressions, we trust, the following volumes will correct and cancel. Every one who was able to twirl a quill, hath exercised it in scribbling about the late Lord Byron, both his enemies and his friends; and, indeed, to their eternal shame, the former have been most clamorous in attacking the dead lion but it is well known and clearly seen, that the accounts hitherto published have been infinitely more prejudicial than impartial,— so much and so blindly so, that it has been amusing to observe their endless variety of contradictions, rejoinders, sur-rejoinders, bickerings, and cavils;-but it could not for a moment be supposed that the world would rest satisfied with party statements, false representations, and disjointed passages from such a life, and not possess what is really its own property,—the whole carcer of so eccentric and transcendant a genius-to judge for itself both of his merits and his demerits: the former might perhaps just ease its thirst, but the latter was indispensable to quench it; and it cannot escape notice that among the strange medley of works which have hitherto been given to the world, no compact, comprehensive, and standard