The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. Poetry — A Reader’s Guide

Epigrams and Jeux d'Esprit: A Mixed Collection

The volume's first section gathers seventy-three short poems, many previously unpublished or hard to find. Coleridge notes that forty-five were in Murray's 1837 edition, eighteen were collected from various publications, and ten appear in print for the first time. The poems range from satirical squibs to personal verses, such as 'A Farewell Petition to J. C. H. Esq.' and 'My Boy Hobbie O.' Also included are 'Love and Death' and 'Last Words on Greece,' reprinted from Murray's Magazine (1887). The editor remarks that a few imperfect and worthless poems remain in manuscript, suggesting that this collection aims for completeness but omits some material.

The Devil's Drive: From Fragment to Full Text

Previously known only as an 'Unfinished Fragment' of ninety-seven lines in Moore's Letters and Journals and the 1831 collected edition, 'The Devil's Drive' is here printed in its entirety for the first time, comprising 248 lines. The source is a manuscript in the possession of the Earl of Ilchester. This poem, with its satirical and supernatural theme, expands significantly on the earlier fragment. The editor does not provide commentary on the poem's content or context, leaving readers to encounter the full text without interpretive framing.

A Bibliography of Byron's Global Reach

The bibliography occupies a substantial portion of the volume, listing editions and translations of Byron's major works. Coleridge describes it as 'a sample' and acknowledges it is not exhaustive, but it includes detailed collations of first and subsequent editions of poems like Manfred, Lara, and The Giaour. Translations are recorded in Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages. For instance, Manfred appears in Danish translations by P. F. Wulff (1820) and Edvard Lembcke (1843), and in Dutch by Johan Rudolph Steinmetz (1857). The editor notes that the bibliography provides 'scientific proof of an almost unexampled fame,' though the entries themselves are purely descriptive.

Readers approaching this volume should note that it is a scholarly edition, not a reading collection. The epigrams and jeux d'esprit offer glimpses of Byron's wit, while the complete 'Devil's Drive' fills a gap in his published work. The bibliography, though dense, is valuable for tracing the dissemination of Byron's poetry. The excerpts do not reveal the content of the poems themselves, so readers must turn to the full text to assess their literary merit.

Holding Byron’s scattered epigrams, I thought of my father’s old paperback, dog-eared at the pages about exile. Reading his marginal notes, I felt the same quiet ache I once found in Gloucestershire Friends: Poems From a German Prison Camp — Inside the Classic—that strange intimacy of voices speaking across a barbed wire of years, each trying to make a home in a line.