which these lines were composed. It is too long to quote save in a very abridged form. "Shelley never flourished far from water. . . . .. At Pisa he had a river under his window, and a pine-forest in the neighbourhood. I accompanied Mrs. Shelley to this wood in search of the poet on one of those brilliant Spring mornings we on the wrong side of the Alps are so rarely blessed with... One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat the poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie that he did not hear my approach. He was writing verses on a guitar. I picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two lines

'Ariel to Miranda :-Take

This slave of music.'

It was a frightful scrawl: words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together 'in most admired disorder.' It might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered: 'When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of the rough sketch (as you justly call it) I shall attempt a drawing.'" To receive a guitar from Shelley, accompanied by such charming verses comparing her to Miranda, was something for Mrs. Williams to remember, and to make her a beautiful memory to many generations : but still higher honour is done to the exquisite loveableness of this lady (who survives her second husband, Mr. Jefferson Hogg) in the following words of a letter from Shelley to Leigh Hunt, 19th June 1822 (Relics of Shelley, p. 111):-"Williams is one of the best fellows in the world; and Jane his wife a most delightful person, who, we all agree, is the exact antitype of the Lady I described in the Sensitive Plant,-though this must have been a pure anticipated cognition,' as it was written a year before I knew her."

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P. 114.

"For our beloved Jane alone."

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This is the reading in the MS. In the collected editions it stood "for our beloved friend."

P. 115.

"Bare woods whose branches stain."

My belief is that the word here ought to be "strain" : but "stain" is not meaningless, as it may refer to the tints which come off on hands that touch soppy sprays of foliage. The words, "When sullen cloud knells" &c., do not convey a clear sense.

P. 115.
To Jane.

The name in the title, and in the third line, has hitherto been left blank in the collected editions; but appears in the MS. copy, which concludes with this message. "I sat down to write some words for an ariette which might be profane; but it was in vain to struggle with the ruling spirit, who compelled me to speak of things sacred to yours and to Wilhelm Meister's indulgence. I commit them to your secresy and your mercy, and will try to do better another time."

P. 116.

Lines written in the Bay of Lerici.

This composition comes from the Relics of Shelley edited by Mr. Garnett, and had not hitherto (1870) been included in any collection of the poet's writings.

Without the word "They," this sentence, as printed in the Relics of Shelley, appears to be manifestly imperfect. No doubt the poem had not received any high amount of polish; and a chance omission of this sort is readily conceivable.

P. 117.

Epitaph.

This has hitherto been printed as a Fragment. I can discern nothing fragmentary in it, and therefore put it here (though without any certainty as to its real date). It has a sorrowful appropriateness to the fate of Shelley himself and his friend Williams.

P. 118.

"This morn thy gallant bark" &c.

These lines (of which no one need be eager to claim the authorship, so far as poetic merit goes) are Mrs. Shelley's own: a copy of them, in her handwriting, was disposed of in the Dillon sale in 1869.

P. 118.

"I at one time feared that the correction of the press might be less exact through my illness; but I believe that it is nearly free from error."

A happy conviction on Mrs. Shelley's part, which my own labours on the present edition prevent my sharing. The ensuing reference to "asterisks" has wellnigh, in our text, lost its applicability, save in the case of confessed fragments.

To the perpetual regret of all Shelleyites, this house-so it is stated by Mr. J. L. Walker-no longer exists. He writes to me: "Of the Casa Magni in which the Shelleys lived, nothing remained, when I was there in 1875, but some mouldering remains of the foundation."

P. 119.

"Our near neighbours of San Terenzo."

This is the correct name: Mrs. Shelley wrote "Sant 'Arenzo," and all other writers had followed her up to the date of Mr. Mac Carthy's book. He gives the name as "Terenzio": Mr. Walker, however, modifies this into "Terenzo," on the faith of the Government map of the locality.

P. 123.
Fragments.

The reader will find transferred to this section of our edition many of the poems which, in previous editions, appear among the completed works. I have acted on the rule of treating as a fragment everything, whether of major or minor importance, that is visibly truncated. Several of the Fragments are obtained from the Relics of Shelley, and occasionally I shall add in these notes the very pertinent observations made by Mr. Garnett upon such productions, with

his initial G." attached. In this section, as in the others, a chronological arrangement, so far as traceable, is adopted: modified only by the placing of all the more important or quasi-completed Fragments first, and of all the residue afterwards. Of the examples which he has rescued from oblivion, Mr. Garnett observes: "The dates appended to these Fragments are usually conjectural, but no important error will have been committed."

P. 123.

To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

This lyric had hitherto (1870) been printed as belonging to 1821, and with the title To But Mr. Garnett has ascertained that it "was in fact written m June 1814 [i.e., almost simultaneously with Shelley's separation from his first wife Harriet] and addressed to Mary. This poem has hitherto been wholly unintelligible: no one could conjecture either the occasion of its composition, or the person to whom it was addressed. The mystery is now elucidated, and the state of Shelley's feelings placed beyond dispute. While it is evident that he had conceived an ardent affection for Mary, and found his best refuge from his own domestic sorrows in her compassion, it is equally manifest that, under a sense of obligation to another, he is doing his best to control the vehemence of his emotions. A moment' of sympathy has consoled him for prolonged suffering; yet he dreads censure as much as 'reserve,' and deprecates imprudence no less than indifference. Something must have occurred to alter his views between the date of this poem and July 28th [when Shelley and Mary united, and quitted England together]; and the amicable character of his subsequent relations with Harriet indicates this to have been the discovery that she, equally with himself, had ceased to expect happiness from a continuance of their connexion.”—(G.)— For my own remarks on this matter, see the Memoir, note p. 51.

P. 123.

"My baffled looks did fear yet dread
To meet thy looks."

This can hardly be right.

Perhaps "yearn" should replace "fear."

P. 124.
Prince Athanase.

Mrs. Shelley has given the following note on the course which this poem was intended to pursue. "The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. In the first sketch of the poem, he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks through the world the one whom he may love. He meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady who appears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus; who, after disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. 'On his deathbed, the lady who can really reply to his soul comes and kisses his lips. (The Deathbed of Athanase.) The poet describes her [in the words of the final fragment, p. 131]. This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author imagined." -The character of Zonoras was intended as an idealization of Dr. Lind, referred to in vol. i. p. 420.

P. 124.

"Not his the thirst for glory or command

Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame."

B. V. points out to me that "blast" hardly appears to be the apposite word. Should it be "blush"?

"Pending more explicit revelations, it may be hinted that circumstances existed to render Mary almost as much an object of sympathy to Shelley as he himself was to her."-(G.)

P. 128.

"With brief

And blighting hope."

"Blighting" does not seem to be the right word here, but accidentally repeated from "blight" in the succeeding line. Perhaps "flitting" or "fleeting" would be correct.

P. 129.

"How many a spasm" &c.

I find this passage printed with a ! after "nightingale," and a comma after "wind." With that punctuation it would appear that a new sentence begins with the words "And these soft waves,"-purporting that "We feel not here these waves, and the sighings of yon piny dell." Guided by a suggestion from B. V., I am confident that the whole passage forms only one sentence, with a meaning considerably different, which the reader, aided by the present punctuation, will readily follow out for himself.

P. 131.

" Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
Investeth it."

"Investest," as in previous editions, is clearly ungrammatical.

P. 132.

"Into her mother's bosom, sweet and soft."

The antecedent of "her" is "the soul"-i.e. "a Wood-nymph." Clearly therefore we ought to read "her," and not (as in previous texts) "their."

P. 133.

Scene from Tasso.

Shelley, writing to Mr. Peacock from Milan, 20th April 1818, speaks thus of the drama he was then projecting. "I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso's madness; which, I find upon inspection, is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic and poetical. But you will say I have no dramatic talent. Very true, in a certain sense; but I have taken the resolution to see what kind of tragedy a person without dramatic talent could write. It shall be better morality than Fazio, and better poetry than Bertram, at least." Mr. Garnett remarks, with regard to the scene here preserved from the projected drama :-"It would appear that the envy of courtiers and Tasso's rivals would have been among the principal elements of the action: the piece would consequently have borne little resemblance to Göthe's Tasso, which it is doubtful whether Shelley ever read."

P. 135.
Marenghi.

Mrs. Shelley says:-"This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.' On referring to Sismondi's book (vol. viii., pp. 142, 143, of the Paris edition of 1826), I find that the hero of this incomplete poem has always been misnamed in the previous texts of Shelley: his name is not Mazenghi, but Marenghi-also the local name is not Vada, but Vado. The heroic exploit of Marenghi is narrated by Sismondi as follows:-"Les Florentins ne croyaient guère possible d'ouvrir une brêche aux murs de Pise; en sorte qu'ils se proposaient de réduire la ville par la famine, tandis que leur armée attaquait successivement les divers châteaux du territoire. Les Pisans, de leur côté, s'efforçaient de se pourvoir de vivres : ils envoyèrent quelques galères chercher des blés en Sicile. L'une d'elles, sur

prise à son retour par des vaisseaux que les Florentins avaient fait armer à Gènes, se réfugia sous la tour de Vado. Un Florentin nommé Pierre Marenghi, qui errait loin de sa patrie frappé d'une sentence capitale, saisit cette circonstance pour rendre à ses concitoyens un service signalé. Il s'élança du rivage, un flambeau à la main, et s'approcha de la galère à la nage malgré les traits qu'on lançait contre lui. Percé de trois blessures, il continua longtemps à se soutenir sous la proue en soulevant son flambeau, jusqu'à ce que le feu se fût communiqué à la galère ennemie de manière à ne plus s'éteindre. Elle brûla en face de la tour de Vado, tandis que Pierre Marenghi regagna le rivage. Il fut rappelé ensuite dans sa patrie avec honneur."-The greater part of Marenghi is now (1870) first printed from a transcript made by Mr. Garnett, and kindly placed by him at my disposal.

P. 136.

"Was this thy crime?"

I have italicized the word "thy." Otherwise one is liable to lay the emphasis on "this" instead of "thy," and to fancy that the whole query is an ironical reference to the fact that mediæval Florence was "heroic, just, sublime." On reflection, it is clear that the query really refers back to the previous indignant apostrophe

"Do they,

Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrant's prey?"

alluding to Florence as the destroyer of the Pisan Republic.

P. 142.

A Vision of the Sea.

This poem is not a fragment in the same sense as others. It was published by Shelley during his lifetime (in the Prometheus volume): and its breaking-oft abruptly at the end must therefore be matter of option, not of casualty.

P. 142.

"As if heaven was ruining in,

Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass.

As if ocean had sunk from beneath them, they pass
To their graves" &c.

The punctuation here is my own. Hitherto the pause has been at "beneath them." I cannot see the sense of saying that the waterspouts seemed to sustain heaven, as if ocean had sunk from beneath them :" but I do see the sense of saying that "the waterspouts collapse as if ocean had sunk from beneath them."

P. 144. "More fair

Than heaven when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea."

B. V. thinks heaven" ought to be "even" (evening) and I suspect he is right.

P. 148.
Orpheus.

"No trace of this poem appears in Shelley's note-books: it exists only in a transcript by Mrs. Shelley, who has written, in playful allusion to her toils as an amanuensis: Aspetto fin che il diluvio cala, ed allora cerco di posare argine alle sue parole.'-'I await the descent of the flood, and then I endeavour to embank his words.' From this circumstance, as well as from the internal evidence of the piece, I should conjecture that it was an attempt at improvisation. Shelley had several times heard Sgricci, the renowned improvvisatore, in the winter of 1820, and this may have inspired him with the idea of attempting a VOL. III. 27