[iii]

PREFACE [1830].

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   After the experience of several years, during which this work has maintained its high station in the public favour, our readers will not expect us, whenever we present ourselves to their notice, to repeat professions which might come with propriety from the projectors of untried speculations. They know that whatever promises we have held out have been realized; and from the efforts that we have made to gain so distinguished a place in their esteem, they may infer those which we shall always be ready to make in order to preserve it.

  Such being the understanding that subsists between the public and ourselves, the humble caterers of this their annual banquet, we shall not run the risk of tiring their appetite by detaining them, in a long preliminary address on worn-out topics, from the entertainment here provided, but merely subjoin a few remarks suggested by the contents of the volume now before them.

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  It has been very justly observed, in regard to the contributions of persons of the highest literary repute to works of this class, that merit of such contributions has generally been in an inverse ration to the fame of the writers.  This observation is more particularly applicable to poetical compositions.  From this consideration, reinforced by the opinion of friends of indisputable taste and judgment, we have this year been induced to abridge considerably the space allotted to poetry; and the consequence has been that, in this department especially, we have been deluged with contributions that could not possibly be admitted, while others, to which we should gladly have allowed a place, have been necessarily excluded, from the lateness of the period at which they were received.

  Among the poems introduced in the following pages will be found one which can scarcely fail to excite a very lively interest. It is the first attempt of the late Lord Byron's that is known to be extant; and we consider this piece as being the more curious, inasmuch as it displays no dawning of that genius which soon afterwards burst forth with such overpowering splendour.  It was inspired by the tender passion, and appears in the shape of verses addressed to the object of his earliest, and perhaps his only real attachment, the "Mary" whom he has

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celebrated in many of his poems. We regret much that the diminutive size of our pages prevented us from indulging the reader with a fac-simile of the autograph of the youthful lover, certified by the lady to whom it was addressed, and now in the possession of Miss Cursham, of Sutton, Nottinghamshire, to whom we are indebted for the communication.

  Another poem from the pen of the distinguished writer who lately resigned the critical sceptre, which he has wielded upwards of twenty years in the northern metropolis, and whose severity to the first published essays of the noble poet just mentioned, drew from him a satire that afforded a presage of his future powers, will also be deemed no small literary curiosity.  But it would lead us to a length incompatible with our circumscribed limits were we here to enter into an enumeration of all the eminent names which, in the course of this volume, appear for the first time in our pages.

  A glance at the embellishments, fourteen in number, will render any commendations of ours wholly superfluous, and bespeak the determination of the Publisher to support the high character which this department of the work has acquired.  For the subjects of some of these we owe our best acknowledgments to the proprietors of the paintings, by

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whom they were liberally lent for the purpose of being engraved: to that munificent patron of the arts, his Serene Highness Prince Esterhazy, for the picture of Undine, by the celebrated German artists Retzsch, whose outline illustrations of the most eminent poets of his country, as well as of our own Shakespeare, are well known here; to Sir George Leeds, Bart. for The Tempting Moment, by Collins; to the Rev. J.H. Caunter, for The Death of the Dove, by Stewardson; to Nathaniel Ogle, Esq. for The Flower Girl, by Gaugain; and to John Forster, Esq. for the Land-storm, by the unfortunate Clennell.

  We rejoice to see that the selfish satisfaction of locking up master-pieces of art for the exclusive gratification of the possessors, is giving way to a more liberal feeling, which induces proprietors of such productions to communicate to others some portion of the pleasure which they afford, in permitting the multiplication of copies of them by means of the graver.  Such examples are not less honourable to the enlightened amateur and collector, than beneficial to the meritorious artists and the public.