Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net 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.