Poems and plays are given, so far as possible, in chronological order. Childe Harold and Don Juan, which were written and published in parts, are printed continuously; and minor poems, including the first four satires, have been arranged in groups according to the date of composition.

Epigrams and jeux d'esprit have been placed together, in chronological order, towards the end of the sixth volume.

A Bibliography of the poems will immediately precede the Index at the close of the sixth volume.

 

 The edition contains at least thirty hitherto 

unpublished poems

, including fifteen stanzas of the unfinished seventeenth canto of 

Don Juan

, and a considerable fragment of the third part of 

The Deformed Transformed

. The eleven unpublished poems from MSS. preserved at Newstead, which appear in the first volume, are of slight if any literary value, but they reflect with singular clearness and sincerity the temper and aspirations of the tumultuous and moody stripling to whom "the numbers came," but who wisely abstained from printing them himself.

 

 Byron's 

notes

, of which many are published for the first time, and editorial notes, [are included as numerical footnotes to each poem—html Ed.] The editorial notes are designed solely to supply the reader with references to passages in other works illustrative of the text, or to interpret expressions and allusions which lapse of time may have rendered obscure.

 

 Much of the knowledge requisite for this purpose is to be found in the articles of the 

Dictionary of National Biography

, to which the fullest 

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