P. 163.

"For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door

Watch the calm sunset with them."

I suspect this ought to be "their (or possibly my) dwelling's door."

P. 163.

To Constantia, Singing.

I have not been able to ascertain who was the lady designated as Constantia. The name is most probably a fancy name given to the lady in question by Shelley in consequence of his enthusiasm for the heroine, Constantia Dudley, of a novel by Brockden Brown entitled Ormond. Mr. Peacock says that this heroine "held one of the highest places, if not the very highest place, in Shelley's idealities of female character."

P. 164.
Ozymandias.

This very grand sonnet is said (Middleton's Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 71) to have been written by Shelley in friendly emulation with Keats and Leigh Hunt, both of whom were composing sonnets on the Nile.

P. 165.

"Masked resurrection of a buried form."

Mrs. Shelley explains in a note that the "buried form" is the Star Chamber.This poem to the Lord Chancellor, and the succeeding one, have not hitherto been admitted into the consecutive text of Shelley's works, but only inserted amid Mrs. Shelley's commentaries. There seems to be no reason why they should not be treated like his other productions. Some piecing-together of Mrs. Shelley's Note on Poems of 1817 is the consequence. Both these two compositions may be assigned to August (in which month, I believe, Lord Chancellor Eldon's decree was pronounced) or September of that year.

P. 167.

To William Shelley.

I have taken it upon me to supply this title the poem having as yet appeared without any. Though Mrs. Shelley (see her Note, p. 171) says that the lines were consequent upon something which Lord Eldon had said while the question of bereaving Shelley of his two eldest children "was still pending," the words in the second stanza, "They have taken thy brother and sister dear," seem to show that the poem was not actually written until after the decree had been pronounced.

P. 169.

On Fanny Godwin.

These lines are barely more than a fragment, but may pass muster among the complete poems. It has been said that the title (hitherto printed On F. G.) should run On H. G.-i.e., Harriet Grove, the cousin with whom Shelley was in love in very early youth; and that the date must be prior to 1817. This, however, is a delusion. Mr. Peacock (Fraser's Magazine, June 1858) affirms that F. G., and 1817, are correct. The verses "relate to a far more interesting person [than Miss Grove), and a deeply tragic event." The "person," I am informed, was Miss Fanny Godwin, half-sister of Mrs. Shelley; and the "event" was her voluntary death by drowning. Thus Shelley's sister-in-law came to the same end as his first wife: a harrowing reiteration of family catastrophes, preluding that other catastrophe, of far different interest to the world at large-Shelley's own watery death.

P. 169.

"At the spectres, wailing, pale, and ghast."

Mr. Fleay suggests "wild" instead of "ghast"-thus avoiding a repetition, and supplying a needful rhyme. I certainly think he is right, but have not ventured to introduce the alteration into the text. In the following stanza “fade and fly" [not flee"] is also his emendation, and I have adopted it.

P. 170.

"Desire to trace its workings."

At this point of her note, Mrs. Shelley introduces, with a few interspersed observations of no essential importance, eight fragmentary poems, of which it has appeared to me more convenient to include seven among Shelley's Fragments (pp. 308 &c.), and one in the Appendix, p. 531. Contrariwise, the above-mentioned poem To William Shelley, which Mrs. Shelley characterizes as "unfinished stanzas," has not any such manifest quality of unfinish, I conceive, as to exclude it from the body of the poems. There is indeed one rhymeless line, in the final stanza; but, as we have had many opportunities of seeing, that was no odds to Shelley.

P. 171.

Passage of the Apennines.

Perhaps this impressive snatch of verse should be classed among the Fragments. It ends with a line to which no rhyme is supplied; and there is a very ragged edge in the verb "lay" where "lie" ought to be given. I incline to think, however, that it is not a Fragment, properly speaking. Mr. Fleay proposes to read "form" instead of "lay."

P. 172.

"The odour from the flower is gone."

I give this stanza as I find it in the Posthumous Poems. Most readers appreciative of true poetic aroma will, I fancy, agree with me in saying that the stanza was very much spoiled in the collected editions by being altered thus:

"The colour from the flower is gone

Which like thy sweet eyes smiled on me;

The odour from the flower is flown

Which breathed of thee and only thee!"

In the next stanza, from the same original, I have restored "shrivelled" instead of "withered."

Since writing the foregoing, I have had the pleasure of seeing the poem in Shelley's own MS., giving the same reading which appears in our text. This MS. has been kindly communicated to me by Lieutenant-Colonel C. Parker Catty, of the 46th Regiment, and his brother Mr. C. S. Catty; the verses being contained in a short note added by Shelley to a letter (7th March 1820) addressed by his wife to Miss Sophia Stacey, then in Florence. This lady was a ward of Mr. Parker, an uncle by marriage of Shelley, living in Bath. She saw a good deal of the poet and his wife in Italy from time to time, having lived three months in the same house with them in Florence-Madame Du Plantis', Via Val Fonda. She eventually married Captain J. P. Catty, R. E.-Shelley speaks of the verses as "a few old stanzas:" I follow Mrs. Shelley's arrangement in placing them among the poems of 1818. The heading "To Miss -" is in Shelley's MS. It must mean "To Miss Stacey;" but, as the verses appear to have been written some time before they were sent to that lady, I have abstained from inserting her name.-I shall have again to express my obligations to Colonel and Mr. Catty in the course of these notes.

VOL. II.

2 N

P. 173.

"Their shadows o'er the chasm sightless and drear."

In the Posthumous Poems this line is quite different:

"The shadows which the world calls substance there."

1 follow the collected editions.

P. 174

"Every little living nerve

Is like a sapless leaflet now."

I have rescued these lines (with some consciousness of audacity) from the annoying grammatical solecism of the original

It is strange to observe how insular even such an Englishman as Shelley can be on occasion. Venice, unless renovated by freedom, is to go to the dogs-leaving one only memory, that Lord Byron lived there for a while after quitting England! Oh! shades of Dandolo, of Marco Polo, of Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese, and how many another immortal!--There happens to be evidence that this whole passage about Byron was an interpolated afterthought; for Mr. Frederick Locker possesses the original MS. of the passage, headed by Shelley with a note to say where it is to be inserted.

P. 182-3.

"The purple moon's transparent might:
The breath of the moist earth is light."

Mr Garnett (Relics of Shelley) says he has MS. authority for here substituting "might" for "light,” and “ 'earth" for "air,"-as the words appear in the collected editions. But for such authority, I would have been minded to sustain both "light" and "air" against their impugners (for the passage has been a good deal debated": but must, as the case stands, submit. Medwin (Life of Shelley, vol. i. pp. 332-3) gives the following variations, and implies that he has Shelley's own authority for at least the last of them :

"The breath of the west wind is light;"

"Arises from its mingled motion;"

"How sweet, if any heart could share in my emotion;"
"Breathe o'er my outworn brain its last monotony."

P. 184.
Misery.

This poem was first printed by Captain Medwin in his Shelley Papers as Invocation to Misery: see the Memoir in our edition, p. cxv, as to the meaning he assigns to it. In subsequent reprints it has always been entitled Misery, a Fragment,-which may be correct; but, as it is not obviously fragmentary, I leave it among the complete poems. Medwin's version is evidently more imperfect than the one in the collected editions, which latter therefore I have followed implicitly. Yet there is one point where I prefer Medwin's version, as more uncommon and poetical-stanza x : "Clasp me, till our hearts be grown

Like two lovers into one."

In the final stanza also the variation is such as to deserve notice:

"All the wide world beside us

Are like multitudinous

Shadows shifting from a scene :-
What but mockery may they mean?

Where am I?-Where thou hast been."

P. 186.

"The transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy."

Here follow, in the texts hitherto published, a few words as to the Letters of Shelley, only forthcoming when Mrs. Shelley wrote, but now long since issued and disseminated. The announcement of these writings (which contains nothing of permanent importance) may now be dropped.

P. 188.

"Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy."

This name has hitherto been a mere initial, "S***." If there could be the least doubt that the person intended was Lord Sidmouth, I would on no account identify him with " Hypocrisy" but doubt there is absolutely none-Lord Sidmouth having been Home Secretary in 1819, and main author of the "Manchester Massacre" in August of that year. His lordship was besides a man "of genuine piety."

P. 188.

"He was pale even to the lips
Like Death in the Apocalypse."

"Death in the Apocalypse" is not pale, but Death's horse is pale. This might lead us to surmise that the line here should run

"Like Death's in the Apocalypse."

My impression, however, is that there is no fault of print, but a haziness of memory or of phrase on Shelley's part.

P. 189.

"Hearing the tempestuous cry."

So in the original edition, published by Leigh Hunt in 1832: not "tremendous," as in subsequent texts. Some other variations occur-as for instance at stanza ix., where I have preferred the later reading, and stanza 1. was wholly omitted by Hunt. What may be the authority for any verbal alterations I know not.

P. 191.

"And those plumes its light rained through."

I think, almost for certain, that Shelley must have written "its light": thus avoiding a meaningless and cacophonous inversion, hitherto printed

"And those plumes it light rained through."

P. 200.

Song-To the Men of England.

The arrangement of the later stanzas of this song (only published in the collected editions) strikes me as ineffective, and barely logical in sequence. I suspect they should run-3, 8, 4, 7, 5, 6.

P. 202.

"An army which liberticide and prey

Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield."

I have here substituted "make" for "makes," which is both ungrammatical and misleading.

P. 202.

"Time's worst statute unrepealed."

Shelley, it would appear, here terms the "senate" itself-the unreformed Parliament-the "worst statute," or worst legalized institution, of Time.-This sonnet, England in 1819, must be the one which the poet sent to Leigh Hunt on 23rd November of that year, saying: "I don't expect you to publish it, but you may show it to whom you please."

P. 202.

"Two Political Characters of 1819."

Medwin tells us (and we might have divined for ourselves) that this lyric, like these among which it is inserted, relates to English politics; and that the "two Political Characters are Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth,—the same whom we have just seen denounced in the Masque of Anarchy.

P. 202.

"When the moon is in a fit."

There cannot, I suppose, be the least doubt that the moon-and not the "mon,” as in previous editions-is here in question.

P. 203.

God Save the Queen.

:

Here is another poem to which I have affixed a title one may almost say, however, that only one title can be the right one. The poem, in previous editions, is merely inserted in Mrs. Shelley's Note on Poems of 1819.

P. 205.

Ode to Heaven.

Some observations in Mrs. Shelley's Preface to the Essays &c. may be appropri ately introduced here. "Shelley was a disciple of the immaterial philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The Creation, such as it was perceived by his mind-a unit in immensity-was slight and narrow compared with the interminable forms of thought that might exist beyond; to be perceived perhaps hereafter by his own mind, or which are perceptible to other minds that fill the universe, not of space in the material sense, but of infinity in the immaterial one. Such ideas are, in some degree, developed in his poem entitled Heaven. And, when he makes one of the interiocutors exclaim,

"Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!"

he expresses his despair of being able to conceive, far less express, all of variety, majesty, and beauty, which is veiled from our imperfect senses in the unknown realm the mystery of which his poetic vision sought in vain to penetrate."

P. 208.

"As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed."

This correction-"thy" instead of "the"-is given by Mr. Garnett, as on MS. authority, in the Relics of Shelley.

P. 209.

An Exhortation.

This must, I presume, be the poem which Shelley sent to Mrs. Gisborne on 8th May 1820, with the following remark: "As an excuse for mine and Mary's incurable stupidity, I send a little thing about poets, which is itself a kind of excuse for Wordsworth."