The seventh volume of Lord Byron's collected poetical works gathers epigrams, jeux d'esprit, and occasional verse, including the complete version of 'The Devil's Drive.' Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge in 1904, it reveals Byron's satirical and lyrical range. It is worth hearing for its variety of forms and sharp wit.
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Opening of the book
The Works OF LORD BYRON A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. Poetry. Vol. VII. EDITED BY ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A., HON. F.R.S.L. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1904.
PREFACE TO
THE SEVENTH VOLUME.
typographical flourish
Of the seventy-three "Epigrams and Jeux d'Esprit," which are printed at the commencement of this volume, forty-five were included in Murray's one-volume edition of
1837,
eighteen
have
been
collected
from
various
publications, and ten are printed and published for the first time.
The "Devil's Drive," which appears in Moore's Letters and Journals, and in the sixth volume of the Collected
Edition of 1831 as an "Unfinished Fragment" of ninetyseven lines, is now printed and published for the first time in its entirety (248 lines), from a MS. in the possession of the Earl of Ilchester. "A Farewell Petition to J. C. H. Esq.;" "My Boy Hobbie O;" "[Love and Death];" and "Last Words on Greece," are reprinted from the first volume of Murray's Magazine (1887).
A few imperfect and worthless poems remain in MS.; but with these and one or two other unimportant exceptions, the present edition of the Poetical Works may be regarded as complete.
In compiling a "Bibliography of the successive Editions and Translations of Lord Byron's Poetical Works," I have endeavoured, in the first instance, to give a full and particular account of the collected editions and separate issues of the poems and dramas which were open to my inspection; and, secondly, to extract from general bibliographies, catalogues of public and private libraries, and other sources bibliographical records of editions which I have been unable to examine, and were
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