name, an interest that has not diminished appreciably in the twenty years that have now passed since his death; and since every person, who ever had occasion to converse with him or to overhear his remarks, has eagerly rushed his remembrance into print, no matter how slight the acquaintance, or trivial the matter, it may seem wonderful that a large number of pages from his hand could have survived until now without notice—and, in consequence, doubts as to their authenticity, or at the very least, a justifiable curiosity as to their provenance, may arise. Therefore I deem it my duty to give a brief account of how the following tale came into my hands, and why it only now comes before the reader—and if such a reader does indeed one day come to exist, and his eyes do indeed now fall upon my words, and upon his, he may trust that, whatever my interest in this matter has been, it is not pecuniary, or to seek celebrity for myself; for if ever his words and mine see the light of day, I shall be dead.
It may indeed be questioned, whether such a Work as this one is, containing passages—nay, entire ranges of subject—which can neither redound to the Author’s credit, nor without offence be put into the hands of a general readership, be worth preserving. In the present instance there is the additional question of the Work’s bearing upon the Author’s own history, therefore upon the vexed and much-bruited questions of his culpability at a certain crossroads of his life, one to which I was myself a blissfully ignorant witness. It should be remembered that certain parties deeply concerned in that history, including Lady Byron his wife, assembled together upon the Author’s death, and jointly agreed to put into the fire the Memoirs he had written, containing his own version of events as well as stories of his foreign adventures, which, though he had willingly committed them to paper, cannot but have harmed his memory, as well as injuring those others intimately concerned. Ought not the partial and unpolished Work now in my hands meet a similar fate? I can only answer that perhaps it ought, but that I myself cannot so consign it, as I could not myself have given his Memoirs to the flames; those of stronger fibre than myself have done, and must in future do, that service for Lord Byron, if service it be.
To my story:
In the years before and after the upheavals of 1848 I was privileged to know, through the good offices of my honoured friend Charles Babbage, several of the men in the circle around the sacred figure of Mazzini. Mr Babbage was always a friend of Liberty and the advancement of Man, and he delighted in the company of these men of Italy, who, exiled from their native land only for having its best interests at heart, were at times suspected and annoyed by the government of this land as well. Signor Silvio Pellico, Count Carlo Pepoli, and a man who became my special friend, Signor Fortunato Prandi: in the company of such men I heard of the regard in which my father was and still is held in their native land, and what he undertook in behalf of Italy, when he was residing in that country. It was from one of this number—I will not name him even posthumously, not because he requires a cloak of anonymity for any dishonourable action, but simply because from the beginning a secrecy was enjoined upon me in this endeavour that I will not now break—that I first learned of the existence of a manuscript, purported to be the work of Lord Byron, though in prose not verse, of which no other copy exists. According to the tale I was told—the truth or falsity of which I cannot now adequately examine—an Italian occasionally in the company of Lord Byron in the period of his residence in Ravenna acquired this manuscript, either by gift or other means; at some later time he consigned it to another, and this second possessor had recently revealed its existence to the gentleman who now told me of it. I asked if his acquaintance
It may indeed be questioned, whether such a Work as this one is, containing passages—nay, entire ranges of subject—which can neither redound to the Author’s credit, nor without offence be put into the hands of a general readership, be worth preserving. In the present instance there is the additional question of the Work’s bearing upon the Author’s own history, therefore upon the vexed and much-bruited questions of his culpability at a certain crossroads of his life, one to which I was myself a blissfully ignorant witness. It should be remembered that certain parties deeply concerned in that history, including Lady Byron his wife, assembled together upon the Author’s death, and jointly agreed to put into the fire the Memoirs he had written, containing his own version of events as well as stories of his foreign adventures, which, though he had willingly committed them to paper, cannot but have harmed his memory, as well as injuring those others intimately concerned. Ought not the partial and unpolished Work now in my hands meet a similar fate? I can only answer that perhaps it ought, but that I myself cannot so consign it, as I could not myself have given his Memoirs to the flames; those of stronger fibre than myself have done, and must in future do, that service for Lord Byron, if service it be.
To my story:
In the years before and after the upheavals of 1848 I was privileged to know, through the good offices of my honoured friend Charles Babbage, several of the men in the circle around the sacred figure of Mazzini. Mr Babbage was always a friend of Liberty and the advancement of Man, and he delighted in the company of these men of Italy, who, exiled from their native land only for having its best interests at heart, were at times suspected and annoyed by the government of this land as well. Signor Silvio Pellico, Count Carlo Pepoli, and a man who became my special friend, Signor Fortunato Prandi: in the company of such men I heard of the regard in which my father was and still is held in their native land, and what he undertook in behalf of Italy, when he was residing in that country. It was from one of this number—I will not name him even posthumously, not because he requires a cloak of anonymity for any dishonourable action, but simply because from the beginning a secrecy was enjoined upon me in this endeavour that I will not now break—that I first learned of the existence of a manuscript, purported to be the work of Lord Byron, though in prose not verse, of which no other copy exists. According to the tale I was told—the truth or falsity of which I cannot now adequately examine—an Italian occasionally in the company of Lord Byron in the period of his residence in Ravenna acquired this manuscript, either by gift or other means; at some later time he consigned it to another, and this second possessor had recently revealed its existence to the gentleman who now told me of it. I asked if his acquaintance
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