PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.
The favourable reception which I ventured to anticipate for the First
Volume of this work has been, to the full extent of my expectations,
realised; and I may without scruple thus advert to the success it has
met with, being well aware that to the interest of the subject and the
materials, not to any merit of the editor, such a result is to be
attributed. Among the less agreeable, though not least valid, proofs
of this success may be counted the attacks which, from more than one
quarter, the Volume has provoked;--attacks angry enough, it must be
confessed, but, from their very anger, impotent, and, as containing
nothing whatever in the shape either of argument or fact, not
entitled, I may be pardoned for saying, to the slightest notice.
Of a very different description, both as regards the respectability of
the source from whence it comes, and the mysterious interest involved
in its contents, is a document which made its appearance soon after
the former Volume,[2] and which I have annexed, without a single line
of comment, to the present;--contenting myself, on this painful
subject, with entreating the reader's attention to some extracts, as
beautiful as they are, to my mind, convincing, from an unpublished
pamphlet of Lord Byron, which will be found in the following pages.[3]
Sanguinely as I was led to augur of the reception of our First Volume,
of the success of that which we now present to the public, I am
disposed to feel even still more confident.
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