Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/28

xiv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

TO

ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.

MS. (MS. M.) of the first draft of Byron's "Satire" (see Letter to Pigot, October 26, 1807) is now in Mr. Murray's possession. It is written on folio sheets paged 6-25, 28-41, and numbers 360 lines. Mutilations on pages 12, 13, 34, 35 account for the absence of ten additional lines.

After the publication of the January number of The Edinburgh Review for 1808 (containing the critique on Hours of Idleness), which was delayed till the end of February, Byron added a beginning and an ending to the original draft. The MSS. of these additions, which number ninety lines, are written on quarto sheets, and have been bound up with the folios. (Lines 1-16 are missing.) The poem, which with these and other additions had run up to 520 lines, was printed in book form (probably by Ridge of Newark), under the title of British Bards, A Satire. "This Poem," writes Byron [''MSS. M.''], "was begun in October, 1807, in London, and at different intervals composed from that period till September, 1808, when it was completed at Newstead Abbey.—B., 1808." A date, 1808, is affixed to the last line. Only one copy is extant, that which was purchased, in 1867, from the executors of R. C. Dallas, by the Trustees of the British Museum. Even this copy has been mutilated. Pages 17, 18, which must have contained the first version of the attack on Jeffrey (see English Bards, p. 332, line 439, note 2), have been torn out, and quarto proof-sheets in smaller type of lines 438-527, "Hail to immortal Jeffrey," etc., together with a quarto proof-sheet, in the same type as British Bards, containing lines 540-559, "Illustrious Holland," etc., have been inserted. Hobhouse's lines (first edition, lines 247-262), which are not in the original draft, are included in British Bards. The insertion of the proofs increased the printed matter to 584 lines. After