can be persuaded to
read with some particularity and attention the writings of the
illustrious dead, not entirely as partisans, or with the view to
dethroning other "Monarchs of Parnassus," they will divine the secret of
their fame, and will understand, perhaps recover, the "first rapture" of
contemporaries.

Byron sneered and carped at Southey as a "scribbler of all works." He
was himself a reader of all works, and without some measure of
book-learning and not a little research the force and significance of
his various numbers are weakened or obliterated.

It is with the hope of supplying this modicum of book-learning that the
Introductions and notes in this and other volumes have been compiled.

I desire to acknowledge, with thanks, the courteous response of Mons. J.
Capre, Commandant of the Castle of Chillon, to a letter of inquiry with
regard to the "Souterrains de Chillon."

I have to express my gratitude to Sir Henry Irving, to Mr. Joseph
Knight, and to Mr. F. E. Taylor, for valuable information concerning the
stage representation of _Manfred_ and _Marino Faliero_.

I am deeply indebted to Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., and to my friend, Mr.
Thomas Hutchinson, for assistance in many important particulars during
the construction of the volume.

I must also record my thanks to Mr. Oscar Browning, Mr. Josceline
Courtenay, and other correspondents, for information and assistance in
points of difficulty.

I have consulted and derived valuable information from the following
works: _The Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., by the late Professor Koelbing;
_Mazeppa_, by Dr. Englaender; _Marino Faliero avanti il Dogado_ and _La
Congiura_ (published in the _Nuovo Archivio Veneto_), by Signor Vittorio
Lazzarino; and _Selections from the Poetry of Lord Byron_, by Dr. F. I.
Carpenter of Chicago, U.S.A.

I take the opportunity of expressing my acknowledgments to Miss K.
Schlesinger, Miss De Alberti, and to Signor F. Bianco, for their able
and zealous services in the preparation of portions of the volume.

On behalf of the publisher I beg to acknowledge the kindness of Captain
the Hon. F. L. King Noel, in sanctioning the examination and collation
of the MS. of _Beppo_, now in his possession; and of Mrs. Horace Pym of
Foxwold Chace, for permitting the portrait of Sheridan by Sir Joshua
Reynolds to be reproduced for this volume.

ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
_May_ 5, 1901.

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