Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/355

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CANTO THE FIRST.[decimal 1]

I.
The Serfs[decimal 2] are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain;

  1. Lara the sequel of "the Corsair."—[MS. erased.]
  1. [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."]
  2. 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