"Of the poetry it is necessary to speak, in order thus publicly to acknowledge the kindness with which Lord Byron has condescended to furnish the most valuable part of the work. It has been our endeavour to select such melodies as would best suit the style and sentiment of the poetry." Moore, for whose benefit the Melodies had been rehearsed, was by no means impressed by their "wildness and pathos," and seems to have twitted Byron on the subject, or, as he puts it (_Life_, p. 276), to have taken the liberty of "laughing a little at the manner in which some of the Hebrew Melodies had been set to music." The author of _Sacred Songs_ (1814) set to airs by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, etc., was a critic not to be gainsaid, but from the half-comical petulance with which he "curses" and "sun-burns" (Letters to Moore, February 22, March 8, 1815, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 179, 183) Nathan, and his "vile Ebrew nasalities," it is evident that Byron winced under Moore's "chaff." Apart from the merits or demerits of the setting, the title _Hebrew Melodies_ is somewhat misleading. Three love-songs, "She walks in Beauty like the Night," "Oh! snatched away in Beauty's Bloom," and "I saw thee weep," still form part of the collection; and, in Nathan's folio (which does not contain "A spirit passed before me"), two fragments, "It is the hour when from the boughs" and "Francesca walks in the shadow of night," which were afterwards incorporated in _Parisina_, were included. The _Fugitive Pieces_, 1829, retain the fragments from _Parisina_, and add the following hitherto unpublished poems: "I speak not, I trace not," etc., "They say that Hope is Happiness," and the genuine but rejected Hebrew Melody "In the valley of waters we wept on the day." It is uncertain when Murray's first edition appeared. Byron wrote to Nathan with regard to the copyright in January, 1815 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 167), but it is unlikely that the volume was put on the market before Nathan's folio, which was advertised for the first time in the _Morning Chronicle_, April 6, 1815; and it is possible that the first public announcement of the _Hebrew Melodies_, as a separate issue, was made in the _Courier_, June 22, 1815. The _Hebrew Melodies_ were reviewed in the _Christian Observer_, August, 1815, vol. xiv. p. 542; in the _Analectic Magazine_, October, 1815, vol. vi. p. 292; and were noticed by Jeffrey [The _Hebrew Melodies_, though "obviously inferior" to Lord Byron's other works, "display a skill in versification and a mastery in diction which would have raised an inferior artist to the very summit of distinction"] in the _Edinburgh Review_, December, 1816, vol. xxvii. p. 291. ADVERTISEMENT The subsequent poems were written at the request of my friend, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, for a Selection of Hebrew Melodies, and have been published, with the music, arranged by Mr. Braham and Mr. Nathan. _January_, 1815.