Excerpt from The Prisoner of Chillon, and Selections From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: With Life of Byron, Critical Introduction, and Notes

In this edition of selections from Byron the editor has closely followed the mode of treatment pursued in his edition of Scott's Lay, issued last year under the supervision of the Education Department. The aids furnished to the teacher and the pupil are three-fold, as we cannot enjoy the full effects of a literary work without considering, (i) What the author has to say, (2) How he says it, and (3) Why he says it. The author's message is, of course, the main thing for consideration, but, if we would gain a full appreciation of that message, we must attend to the striking features and devices of the artistic medium that conveys it to us, and we must not neglect the remote and the immediate causes that developed or influenced the author's literary genius, thus affecting the cast and coloring of his message.

The biographical chapter should be carefully read by the pupil before he reads the poems themselves. He will thus gain a general notion of the conditions under which these works of art were produced. It will be necessary thereafter to make frequent use of the biographical chapter, whenever an examination of the poet's environment will throw light on the text.

The explanatory notes are intended for the use of the pupil in his first reading of the poem.

The Critical Introduction is intended mainly for the use of the teacher. In the detailed analysis of the finer passages of the poems, the various topics considered in the thirty-two sections of this Intro duction will need to be discussed. When the pupil has been brought to see the poet's art in the poems themselves, a reference to the Critical Introduction will serve to fix his knowledge and to familiarize him with the rhetorical nomenclature. When the study of the poem has been completed, the pupil's critical knowledge may then be systematized by reading the Introduction in course.

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