P. 104.
Stanza xliii.

Shelley termed Adonais "the least imperfect of my compositions." Its rhyming however, is scarcely more accordant to rigid rule than that of the Revolt of Islam. In this stanza, for instance, "bear" is made to rhyme with "bear." Other expressions used by Shelley regarding Adonais are—“a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written":-"I know what to think of Adonais, but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems of the day I know not":"It is absurd in any Review to criticize Adonais, and still more absurd to pretend that the verses are bad" :-"I am especially curious to hear the fate of Adonais; I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion."

P. 106.

"Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet

To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned

Its charge to each" &c.

No doubt Shelley is here thinking in especial of his own bitterly mourned infant son William, buried in this ground not two years before.

P. 107.
Hellas-Motto.

In a letter to Mr. Peacock dated 21st March 1821 Shelley requested that two seals might be procured for him inscribed with this same motto, and having as device a dove with outspread wings.

P. 108.

"The only goat-song which I have yet attempted."

This will be recognized as an allusion to the tragedy of The Cenci.

P. 115.

"Kings are like stars: they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose."

An evident paraphrase from Bacon-one of the authors who excited Shelley's highest enthusiasm :-"Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest." (Essay Of Empire). (This passage was recalled to my recollection by Mr. G. S. D. Murray).

P. 116.

"Of the great Prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings."

"Overshadowing," as in previous editions, seems a clear case of misprint.

This I have ventured to condense from the line, as it stands in previous texts

'Another-'God, and man, and hope, abandon me.'

I regard it as a clear and indisputable case of oversight; like the "alexandrine in the middle of a stanza" pointed out by Shelley himself as an erratum in the Revolt of Islam.

P. 121.

"Thy heart is Greek, Hassan."

The drama of Hellas is, for all practical purposes, consistent in using the pronoun

*Shelley Memorials, p. 159.

"thou and its congeners throughout, instead of "you;" save in this instance, which, in previous texts, stands "Your heart." I think this small change, for the sake of uniformity of diction, not other than legitimate-especially as "thou" and "thy" appear in this very same speech of three and a half lines.

P. 121.

"Death is awake! Repulsèd on the waters!

They own no more the thunder-bearing banner

Of Mahmud."

I have introduced the note of admiration after "waters"-thus making the phrase follow on along with the exclamatory sentences which precede it. In previous editions there is merely a comma after "waters." With this punctuation, the only sense which can be attached to the clause is-"We being repulsed on the waters, they [the waters] own no more the thunder-bearing banner of Mahmud." But this sense, if intended, is expressed with a total defiance of syntax: and it seems to me a good deal safer to understand the meaning as I have given it. I should add that I regard "Repulsed on the waters" as most probably a misprint for "Repulsed HÅN the waters."

P. 122.

"The caves of the Icarian isles" &c.

This short speech of Mahmud appears to be much misprinted in previous editions: nor can I affirm that it is really correct now. "Told each to the other" [query, "each to other"?] has hitherto stood "Hold each to the other." This makes no sense. One may indeed choose to think that the complete phrase would be “hold speech each to the other;" and that the supplementing word "speech" is held over till a later stage of the sentence, which later stage never comes after all, as an ellipsis takes place at the ensuing words "and then." But I think this a much less plausible supposition than that which I have adopted-viz., that "Hold" is a misprint for "Told." Then comes the line

"Thou darest to speak-senseless are the mountains ;"

which limps piteously in metre, and seems maimed even in meaning. To read "senseless as are the mountains" would set the metre right, and (to my thinking at least) would yield a fuller and more admissible sense.

P. 126.

"He stood, he says, upon Chelonites'

Promontory."

Chelonites must be the correct word: there is a promontory so named nearly opposite Cephallenia. Of "Clelonit's promontory" (as hitherto printed) no one ever heard that I know of, nor will the metre tolerate it.

P. 129.

"Fear,

Revenge, and Wrong, bring forth their kind."

The old texts give "For," instead of "Fear." To "For" there is no proper rhyme at all: but, in default of any such, one is reduced to supposing that it is meant to rhyme with "are" and "despair" (!) Considering how exceedingly faulty "For" is in this respect of rhyme, and moreover what a weak word it is in its place at the end of a line and opening of a speech, I very greatly doubt whether Shelley ever wrote it. "Fear" seems to me a likely substitute. True, it is still a faulty rhyme to "are" and "despair"; but whether Shelley was capable of thus rhyming it is not a matter of conjecture. In the Revolt of Islam (C. vii., st. 31) he rhymes "fear" and "are"; and (C. v., st. 49) "fear" and "there." Moreover (though I do

not myself lay stress on this) "Fear" might even be held to rhyme with the preceding "hear," rather than with "are" and "despair." Again, in point of meaning, it seems to me that Shelley was extremely likely to link, in the present passage, "Fear" with " Revenge and Wrong." See, among other analogous passages, the line in Rosalind and Helen

or,

"But is revenge and fear and pride;"

in Prometheus Unbound

"Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing."

On the whole, I think that "For" produces scarcely the least claim to be retained; "Fear," a very feasible claim to be admitted. Another tolerable substitute might be "War"; but I regard this word as hardly consistent with the final line of the stanza.

(Since writing this note, I find that Mr. Fleay had anticipated me in suggesting "Fear"-an encouraging confirmation).

P. 129.

"But the unborn hour,

Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,
Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any
Mighty or wise. I apprehend not

What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive

That thou art no interpreter of dreams.'

"

The italicized line makes no metre, and may be safely pronounced misprinted. Possibly we ought to read "I apprehend not well:" but, feeling some doubt as to the precise meaning which Shelley meant to convey, I cannot, venture to supply a word which might perchance distort his intention.

P. 133.
"Thou,

Like us, shalt rule" &c.

In my preface and notes to vol. i. I have cited this "shalt" (instead of “shall") as an indispensable emendation of my own. I now find that "shalt" is in the original edition of Hellas.

P. 135.
Semichorus II.

The sequence of idea embodied in this Semichorus is not wholly evident: and, finding as we do that it rhymes "abode" with "destroyed" (or else leaves each of these words without anything rhyming to it), we may well suspect a misprint somewhere. I cannot suggest anything that comes near to convincing myself.

P. 140.

"A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant."

His name (as notified in Moore's Life of Byron) was Demetrius Zografso.

P. 140.

"The taking of Constantinople in 1453."

Hitherto printed 1445: one of the unnumbered loosenesses so characteristic of Shelley. Another may be noticed on p. 139-the term "the Austrian tyrant" applied to Frederick Barbarossa and the emperors of his line.

P. 143

"With mountain winds, and babbling springs,

And moonlight seas."

I get the word "moonlight" from the original edition (Alastor and other Poems, 1816) a very rare little volume, for which I am indebted to Mr. Swinburne. In subsequent editions, "moonlight" had disappeared altogether; and " mountain" had got repeated in this line from the preceding one.

P. 144.
Stanzas.-April 1814.

The purport of these Stanzas has never, so far as I know, been cleared up to the reader by any of the persons who could speak with authority. They appear to me to be addressed by way of apostrophe to Shelley himself, on his then impending separation from his first wife Harriett. If so, they are important in point of date, as the separation did not actually take place till about 17th June.

P. 148.

"To think that a most unambitious slave,

Like thou, should dance" &c.

All editions hitherto have given "shouldst" instead of “should." This emendation ought perhaps to be companioned by another-a change of "thou” into “* thee.”

P. 149.

"The greater part were published with Alastor."

All were so published, except the Lines dated November 1815.

P. 149.

"Coleridge, whom he never knew."

This appears to be a correct statement: though the contrary would certainly be inferred from Shelley's Letter to Mrs Gisborne (pp. 249, 250), in which Godwin, Coleridge, Hunt, Horace Smith, and some others, are named, with the concluding re

mark

"And these

(With some exceptions, which I need not teaze

Your patience by descanting on) are all

You and I know in London."

Previous editions say "in the autumn of 1815:" an "Irish bull" which may very reasonably be suppressed by this time.

P. 150.

"Genius and death contended."

The original volume of Posthumous Poems gives "youth" instead of "death.* I presume it to be a misprint.

P. 154.

"The strange sleep

Which, when the voices of the desert fail,

Wraps all in its own deep eternity."

This clause seems to have no defined syntactical position. I leave its punctuation much as I find it.

*

P. 155.

"Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between."

One would expect here "round" rather than "around."

P. 156.
"Faith so mild,

So solemn, so serene, that Man may be,

But for such faith, with Nature reconciled."

The meaning first suggested by the words "but for such faith" is "were it not for such faith." That, however, seems hardly consistent with the general context: perhaps we should understand "only by means of such faith."

The poem of Mont Blanc was first published in the History of a Six Weeks' Tour &c., 1817, and again in the Posthumous Poems. Both these editions give the word "slow." In later texts, the word is "slowly "-which might almost claim a preference for descriptive force of sound, but it is, I suppose, a mere misprint. - Mrs. Shelley (p. 158) speaks of the Six Weeks' Tour as if it was Shelley's own writing:

but in fact it is hers.

P. 156.

"Is there, that from the boundary of the skies."

Hitherto this has stood printed "the boundaries of the sky." There is no rhyme to "sky"; whereas "skies" rhymes fairly enough with "precipice" and "ice." I think this may be regarded as sufficient justification of the change. Not that this "sky" would be the only instance of rhymelessness in Mont Blanc; the verses ending with "there," "forms," and "spread" on p. 155, with "world" on p. 156, and with "sun" on p. 157, have no rhymes.

P. 158.
Marianne's Dream.

The Marianne of this poem must be Mrs. Leigh Hunt. A letter from her husband to Shelley and his wife, 12th November 1818 (Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, vol. p. 125), says: "I have been writing a Pocket-book . . . It is entitled The Literary Pocket-book, or Companion for the Lover of Art and Nature, and contains.. original poetry; among which I have taken the liberty ('Hunt is too ceremonious sometimes') of publishing Marianne's Dream, to the great delight of said Marianne, not to mention its various MS. readers."

P. 160.

"Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent."

I strongly suspect this ought to stand

"Shot o'er the vales a lustre lent."

None of the editions, however, countenances such an alteration.

P. 161.

"The flames were fiercely vomited

From every tower and every dome,

And dreary light did widely shed

O'er that vast flood's suspended foam."

Nothing, I conceive, can well be clearer than that we should here read "the flames"-not, as in previous editions, "the waves." Even if the general context did not dictate this emendation, the necessity of finding some adequate nominative for the clause “did shed light" would demand it.