ROUTLEDGE'S POCKET LIBRARY COMPLETE IN SIXTY VOLUMES. "A series of beautiful little books, tastefully bound."-Times. "Routledge's PERFECT Pocket Library."-Punch. POETRY AND THE DRAMA. Bret Harte's Poems. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Hood's Serious Poems. Moore's Irish Melodies and Fifty Bab' Ballads. Poems by E. B. Browning. Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. Milton's Paradise Lost. Scott's Lady of the Lake. Campbell's Poetical Works. Lord Byron's Werner. Gray's Poetical Works. Willis's Poetical Works. Rejected Addresses. Lord Byron's Childe Harold. Clement Scott's Lays and Lyrics. Shelley's Early Poems. The Ingoldsby Legends-- Do. Do. Second Series. Do. Do. Third Series. Talfourd's Tragedies. Scott's Lord of the Isles. Coleridge's Poetical Works. Cowper's Task. Selections from Keats. Carleton's Farm Ballads. Lockhart's Spanish Ballads Rogers's Poems. Longfellow's Latest Poems Do. Do. Purgatorio. Do. Do. Paradiso. PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND CANTOS. THE which it attempts to describe. HE following poem was written, for the most part, It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece. There, for the present, the poem stops; its reception will determine whether the author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the East, through Ionia and Phrygia : these two cantos are merely experimental. A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece; which, however, makes no pretension to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, "Childe Harold," I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim-Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever. It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation |