[jb] {323} Lara the sequel of "the Corsair."—[MS. erased.]
[265] [A revised version of the following "Advertisement" was prefixed to the First Edition (Printed for J. Murray, Albemarle Street, By T. Davison, Whitefriars, 1814), which was accompanied by Jacqueline:—
"The Reader—if the tale of Lara has the fortune to meet with one—may probably regard it as a sequel to the Corsair;—the colouring is of a similar cast, and although the situations of the characters are changed, the stories are in some measure connected. The countenance is nearly the same—but with a different expression. To the readers' conjecture are left the name of the writer and the failure or success of his attempt—the latter are the only points upon which the author or his judges can feel interested.
"The Poem of Jaqueline is the production of a different author and is added at the request of the writer of the former tale, whose wish and entreaty it was that it should occupy the first pages of the following volume, and he regrets that the tenacious courtesy of his friend would not permit him to place it where the judgement of the reader concurring with his own will suggest its more appropriate station.">[
[266] The reader is apprised, that the name of Lara being Spanish, and no circumstance of local and natural description fixing the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age, the word "Serf," which could not be correctly applied to the lower classes in Spain, who were never vassals of the soil, has nevertheless been employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain.
[Byron, writing to Murray, July 14, 1814, says, "The name only is Spanish; the country is not Spain, but the Moon" (not "Morea," as hitherto printed).—Letters, 1899, iii. 110. The MS. is dated May 15, 1814.]
[267] {324} [For the opening lines to Lara, see Murray's Magazine, January, 1887, vol. i. p. 3.]
[268] [Compare Childish Recollections, lines 221-224—
"Can Rank, or e'en a Guardian's name supply
The love, which glistens in a Father's eye?
For this, can Wealth, or Title's sound atone,
Made, by a Parent's early loss, my own?"
Compare, too, English Bards, etc., lines 689-694, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 95, 352.]
[jc] First in each folly—nor the last in vice.—[MS. erased]