ABSTRACT

This ballad is inscribed to the Right Honourable Lord Byron, with that deep conviction of the high value of his praise and of the fatal import of his censure, which must necessarily be impressed by the profound judgement with which his opinions are conceived, the calm deliberation with which they are promulgated, the Protean consistency with which they are maintained, and the total absence of all undue bias on their formation from private partiality or personal resentment. With that admiration of his poetical talents, which must be universally and inevitably felt for versification undecorated with the meretricious fascinations of harmony, for sentiments unsophisticated by the delusive ardour of philanthropy, and for narrative enveloped in all the Cimmerian sublimity of the impenetrable obscure.