So valiant, so renowned. Sirs, pass we on,
And let the bodies follow us on biers.
Wolf of the weald and yellow-footed kite,
Enough is spread for you of meaner prey.
Other interment than your maws afford
Is due to these. At Courtray we shall sleep,
And there I'll see them buried side by side.

THE END.

NOTES.

PREFACE, PAGE XV.

"Lord Byron's conception of a hero is an evidence, not only of scanty materials of knowledge from which to construct the ideal of a human being, but also of a want of perception of what is great or noble in our nature."

I WILL beg to extract here, as an appendix to my Preface, three or four stanzas from the conclusion of a poem written above six years ago, which will support the assertion that some of the opinions I have expressed, obnoxious as I am afraid they may at first sight appear to the charge of presumption, are not hastily hazarded, or now first adopted. The poem from which the extracts are taken, was written in anticipation of the accomplishment of the work now published, and was intended as a proem, or poetical introduction to it. But writing then with no more than a distant and indistinct prospect of publication, I was betrayed into a sort of domestic egoism, which, now that the time comes to print, I do not venture to present to public notice. The stanzas which follow, are, I trust, unobjectionable on this score; and they contain (besides the expression of opinion to which I have adverted) an acknowledgment of intellectual obligations which I am unwilling to omit, and a tribute of respect and admiration, which I confess that it is a pleasure to me to pay in public; and which is not improperly so paid, because the person spoken of is one with whom it cannot be said that the Public have no concern.

Then learned I to despise that far-famed school
Who place in wickedness their pride, and deem

Power chiefly to be shown where passions rule,
And not where they are ruled: in whose new scheme
Of heroism, self-government should seem

A thing left out, or something to contemn,—

Whose notions, incoherent as a dream,

Make strength go with the torrent, and not stem,
For wicked and thence weak' is not a creed for them.

I left these passionate weaklings: I perceived
What took away all nobleness from pride,
All dignity from sorrow; what bereaved

Even genius of respect; they seemed allied
To mendicants that by the highway side
Expose their self-inflicted wounds, to gain

The alms of sympathy-far best denied. I heard the sorrowful sensualist complain, If with compassion, not without disdain.

Lent me a further light, whose equal hate

On all unwholesome sentiment attends,

Nor whom may genius charm where heart infirm offends.

In all things else contrarious were these two:
The one, a man upon whose laurelled brow
Grey hairs were growing! glory ever new
Shall circle him in after years as now,
For spent detraction may not disavow

The world of knowledge with the wit combined,
The elastic force no burthen e'er could bow,

The various talents and the single mind,

Which give him moral power and mastery o'er mankind.

His sixty summers-what are they in truth?
By Providence peculiarly blest,

With him the strong hilarity of youth

Abides, despite grey hairs, a constant guest. His sun has veered a point toward the west, But light as dawn his heart is glowing yet;

That heart the simplest, gentlest, kindliest, best, Where truth and manly tenderness are met

With faith and heavenward hope, the suns that never set.

Thus nurtured, and thus disciplined in thought
By kindred and associates, strange it were
If work of mine, though faint, should not have caught
Some colour of transmitted light, some stir

Of congruous emotion. If I err

In deeming that some portion of my tale
Impersonates the virtues I aver

To hold in admiration,-if I fail

In this, then what is writ will be of no avail.

But if, from time to time, upon the page
Some token of these higher aims be traced,
Some fair ideal, borrowed from an age

Of ruder, but of less emasculate taste,

Some nook whence Nature hath not been displaced
For Fashion's sake; if mine it be to feed

To a robust complexion, not to waste
With idle stimulation them that read,

Then forth upon my way I go with God to speed!

PREFACE, PAGE Xii.

"Poetry of which sense is not the basis, though it may be excellent of its kind, will not long be reputed to be poetry of the highest order."

Till this moment, when recurring for another purpose to Mr. Wordsworth's preface to his poems, and to Mr. Coleridge's remarks upon them in his "Biographia Literaria," I was not aware for how many of my tenets I was indebted to those admirable specimens of philosophical criticism. The root of the matter is to be found in them.

In the first and second Editions this note ended here. I have since been informed by a friend, who was once a visitor at Rydal Mount at the same time with myself, that some parts of my preface have been borrowed from Mr. Wordsworth's conversation. I dare say this is the case. I can only wish that my mind and writings were as much enriched as they ought to be, by the abundant opportunities I have enjoyed, of drawing from

the same source.

PREFACE, PAGE Xiii.

"He (Lord Byron) was in knowledge merely a man of belles lettres."

I am aware that Lord Byron made out a long catalogue of books read in his early youth. I cannot help feeling persuaded that there must be mistakes in the enumeration. I have too high an opinion of Lord Byron's natural capacity, to allow myself to believe that he could have read some of the profound and philosophical works mentioned in his catalogue without deriving benefit from them as a writer.

PART I., ACT I., SCENE I., PAGE 4.

"For truly there are here a sort of crafts,
So factious still and obstinate," &c.

It is curious to observe in these trade unions of the fourteenth century, compared with those of the present day*, the tendency of society, from time to time, in conjunctures when the influences of physical force, commercial wealth, and prescriptive polity, reach certain approximations to an equipoise, to throw itself into something like the same forms and divisions. Our own political unions, and the effects which they are calculated to produce, have never been described in a more philosophic spirit and temper, or more forcibly, than in the speech from which the following extract is taken :

"That Political Unions are an evil, no one is readier to declare than I. I do not hesitate to say that such institutions are fraught with destruction more than can be calculated, destruction to all government, destruction to all property, destruction to all freedom, destruction to the very nature and characters of Englishmen. I should hate to live in a country in which such institutions predominated, (and predominate they must if they exist at all,) as I should hate to live in a country in which great measures were concerted silently and executed speedily; in which men should meet together in multitudes, to agree upon secret schemes and spread them abroad secretly and put them in operation secretly; in which all individual liberty, and all individual responsibility, without which no man can be good or wise, or strong or happy, should be bowed into uniformity with the general will, (if through fear, bad enough-if willingly, still worse,) should be merged and melted down and mingled up into that great mass of *The year 1834.