Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David Cortesi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES This etext is a Unicode (UTF-8) file. The main use of non-ASCII characters is in a few phrases or lines of Greek text. Each of these is followed by a transliteration in Beta-code, for example τραγος [tragos]. The remaining Unicode symbols are a few uses of letters a, e, s and z with breve (curved line) above, and letters a and u with a macron (straight line) above. In a few places, a single superscript is shown by a caret, and two superscript letters by carets, as in J^n 10^th^. An important feature of this edition is its copious footnotes. Footnotes indexed with arabic numbers (as [17], [221]) are informational. Note text in square brackets is the work of editor E. H. Coleridge. Unbracketed note text is from earlier editions and is by a preceding editor or Byron himself. Footnotes indexed with letters (as [c], [bf]) document variant forms of the text from manuscripts and other sources. In the original, footnotes are printed at the foot of the page on which they are referenced, and their indices start over on each page. Here, footnotes are collected at the ends of each play or poem, and are numbered consecutively throughout. Within the blocks of footnotes are numbers in braces: {321}. These represent the page number on which following notes originally appeared. To find a note that was originally printed on page 27, search for {27}. The Works OF LORD BYRON. A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. Poetry. Vol. V. EDITED BY ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A., HON. F.R.S.L. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 1901. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME. The plays and poems contained in this volume were written within the space of two years--the last two years of Byron's career as a poet. But that was not all. Cantos VI.-XV. of _Don Juan_, _The Vision of Judgment_, _The Blues_, _The Irish Avatar_, and other minor poems, belong to the same period. The end was near, and, as though he had received a warning, he hastened to make the roll complete.