PREFACE. TWENTY-FOUR years have elapsed since Shelley was withdrawn from the world, and no "record " of him "remains," save a few fugitive notices scattered about in periodicals. The Notes, it is true, appended to the last edition of his works, are highly valuable, and full of eloquence and feeling, but they relate rather to the “origin and history" of those works, than of the poet, and date only from 1814; leaving his life up to that period a blank, that imperatively requires to be filled up. Mrs. Shelley, in January, 1839, says, "this is not the time to tell the truth, and I should |