[Prefatory Note.—This, like the following essay, was prefixed to a small volume of selections from the poems of the author whose genius is the subject of discussion. To the work of Coleridge this process of selection, if adequately carried out, must have been, as Leigh Hunt long since suggested, a real and great service; for his work is distinctly divisible into good and bad, durable and perishable; and it would be a clear gain to have the priceless parts of that work detached from the worthless; but to Byron, who rarely wrote anything either worthless or faultless, it could not be otherwise than injurious. He can only be judged or appreciated in the mass; the greatest of his works was his whole work taken altogether; and to know or to honour him aright he must be considered with all his imperfections and with all his glories on his head.]

The most delicate and thoughtful of English critics has charged the present generation of Englishmen with forgetfulness of Byron. It is not a light charge: and it is not ungrounded. Men born when this century was getting into its forties were baptized into another church