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First Aldine Edition, November, 1892.

Reprinted, 1901.

PR 5402

1832

V.5

PREFACE.

THE lyric value of the work which Shelley threw aside uncompleted, or finished and left unpublished, in the period between the end of 1818 and his death in 1822, and the wide range of alien literature to which he applied his high gifts as a translator, will be found to compensate, in this final volume of poems mostly posthumous, for the lack of beauty in the concluding section of Juvenilia. That section must of course be regarded as of mere biographical or critical interest,—of such interest, for example, as may be found in comparing three poems which happen to be printed in this same volume v, to wit the Verses on a Cat, the ballad from St. Irvyne, and Arethusa. It is a far cry

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But this poor little cat

Only wanted a rat,

To stuff out its own little maw;

And they sing of the hour

When the stern fates had power
To resolve Rosa's form to its clay-

The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,

And divided at her prayer;

but there is a curious persistency of bent in the matter of metrical form.

The printed sources of the volume include, of course, the book called Posthumous Poems, published by Mrs. Shelley in 1824, and her editions of 1839 and later, Dr. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, Mr. Rossetti's editions of Shelley's Poetry, and my own editions. But beside these works should be mentioned three books published by Medwin, namely, The Shelley Papers (1833), The Angler in Wales (1834), and The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847),also Hogg's book of 1858 similarly entitled, and a considerable number of periodical works. Of these last, the principal are The Indicator, The Liberal, Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, and the early volumes of The Athenæum, The Keepsake, and Fraser's Magazine. For details the reader should consult my library edition, by preference the issue of 1882, in which much additional information was given. In a few instances I have adopted the readings of Professor Dowden's Globe edition of Shelley's Poetry, published in 1890.

The Harvard manuscript book mentioned in the Prefaces to volumes iii and iv contains several poems which appear in this fifth volume, namely, the Lines written during the Castlereagh Administration, The Indian Serenade, To William Shelley ("My lost William"), Love's Philosophy, The Question, the song "Rarely, rarely, comest thou," Good Night, the two sonnets "Ye hasten to the grave!" and Political Greatness, the two songs To Night and Remembrance, and the translation of the Hymn to Mercury. The book authorizes some good readings which will be found in the present text of these poems.

Of the Juvenilia given in the Appendix, the

only piece belonging to Shelley's childhood is that on a cat, mentioned above, written when he was seven or eight years old. He was probably about twice that age when he wrote the Chattertonian fragment standing next and the Epitaphium; and the rest of the Appendix ranges from 1809 to 1812. In this section we get back to printed sources of Shelley's own time, namely, his St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, and the Broadside Ballad entitled The Devil's Walk. Mention of these will be found in the Memoir prefixed to the first volume of this edition, pages xxi, xxii, and xxvii.

The Index of first lines includes those of the various scenes and cantos of the longer poems, and also of several lyrics in the text of those poems. In the examples of lyric drama which Shelley's works comprise there are numerous choruses and lyric movements, not following any express break, and yet opening fresh subjects in such a way that the first lines of them form landmarks quite as distinct as the first lines of the shorter poems. It has been thought useful to index these, and also to insert the first lines of various fragments which have stood independently in other editions, but are now connected with other fragments. The lines which are on these grounds not strictly first lines are distinguished by asterisks.

H. B. F.

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