[It would seem that a considerable portion of Prometheus Unbound was written in 1818. In an undated letter to Mrs. Shelley written from Padua to her at Este, apparently in September of that year, Shelley asks her to 'bring the sheets of that poem, which she "will find numbered from one to twenty-six on the table of the pavilion "; and in a letter to Peacock dated "Este, October 8, 1818," he says, "I have been writing-and indeed have just finished the first act of a lyric and classical drama, to be called Prometheus Unbound." According to Mrs. Shelley he had meditated upon the subject, and written portions during his Italian travels between the final departure from England in the Spring of 1818 and the settlement at Rome in March, 1819, and only in the Spring of 1819 began to give his undivided attention to it. Then, at all events, in the Baths of Caracalla, the first three acts were completed, before The Cenci was composed he mentions Prometheus ад "just finished "-in a letter to Peacock dated 6 April, 1819,-wherein he says, "I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts." This letter, of course, refers to the three acts only; for, as Mrs. Shelley says in her note on Prometheus, "it was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived a fourth act... ought to be added"; and this was not finished till near the end of December, 1819. In a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, dated "Pisa, May 26th, 1820," in accepting an offer made by them to correct the proof-sheets, he adds, “I enclose you two little papers of corrections and additions,-I do not think you will find any difficulty in interpolating them into their proper places." But on July 12th, 1820, he writes to Peacock (Fraser's Magazine, March, 1860, p. 313), "I make bold to write to you on the news that you are correcting my Prometheus, for which I return thanks." The Poem was published, with nine smaller poems (see title-page and contents, reproduced opposite), about August, 1820, in an octavo volume, consisting of fly-title Prometheus Unbound &c &c, title, contents, preface pp. VII to XV, fly-title Prometheus Unbound with dramatis persone, and text pp. 19 to 222, including the fly-title Miscellaneous Poems. The first fly-title has on the back advertisements of The Cenci, The Revolt of Islam, Rosalind and Helen &c. and Alastor, and an imprint, "Marchant, Printer, Ingram-Court, FenchurchStreet, London." The contents is a "cancel-leaf": what was originally printed there, I know not; but it may be that Julian and Maddalo was mentioned in it, as Mr. Ollier did propose to print that poem in the volume; but Shelley objected. There are two pages of Ollier's miscellaneous advertisements at the end of the book, including one of the Six Weeks' Tour, and ending with three announcements of forthcoming works, the last of which, anonymous, is "JULIAN and MADDALO, and other Poems." In a letter to Mr. Ollier dated "Pisa, November 10th, 1820," Shelley says of Prometheus &c.: "It is to be regretted that the errors of the press are so numerous, and in many respects so destructive of the sense of a species of poetry which, I fear, even without this disadvantage, few will understand or like. I shall send you the list of errata in a day or two." He does not seem to have sent it till the 20th of January 1821,-in a letter printed in the Shelley Memorials, but there misplaced and dated 1820 he refers to it as a formidable list." Mrs. Shelley seems to have recovered it from Mr. Ollier, as she says in the note on Prometheus, in her first collected edition, “the verbal alterations in this edition of Prometheus are made from a list of errata, written by Shelley himself." This we must understand with a reservation to allow for errors of the press in her own edition. In Shelley's edition the names of the speakers are sometimes given in full, at others abbreviated, sometimes placed over the centre of the speech, at others at the beginning of the first line here, as in The Cenci, I have followed Mrs. Shelley in giving every name in full over the centre of the speech. A great part of the MS. of Prometheus, carefully written, is in the possession of Sir Percy Shelley; and an account of some of the variations shewn by it was given in The Westminster Review for July, 1870.-H.B.F.] 66 PREFACE. [BY SHELLEY.] THE Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas. I have presumed to employ a similar licence. The "Prometheus Unbound" of Eschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore. the lost drama of Eschylus; an ambition, which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement, which, in the Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends. This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous |