CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE ODE TO LIBERTY. WITHIN a cavern of man's trackless spirit Is throned an Image, so intensely fair Till they become charged with the strength of flame. (GARNETT'S Relics of Shelley, p. 84.) The imprint of Prometheus Unbound &c. is not at the bottom of the last page of poetry, but at the foot of the second of the two pages of advertisements, which are printed on the last leaf of the final sheet of the book. This imprint is as follows: Marchant, Printer, Ingram-Court, Fenchurch-Street, London." [Mrs. Shelley records that Edipus Tyrannus was begun in August 1820, at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa; Shelley in reading his Ode to Liberty, was "riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair" in the square underneath the windows of his residence there; and the struggle of George IV. to get rid of the claims of Queen Caroline being the current topic of conversation, that domestic episode seems to have combined in his mind with the porcine chorus, and to have borne fruit in this extraordinary piece of intellectual grotesque, with its clear undercurrent of the same serious spirit that inspired the Ode to Liberty itself. "When finished," says Mrs. Shelley, "it [Edipus Tyrannus] was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice,' who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside." It was not revived in Mrs. Shelley's first edition of 1839; but in her second it was. The original edition is an octavo pamphlet, stitched, without wrapper, consisting of title-page, a page of preface called "advertisement," with Dramatis Persona on back, and text pp. 5 to 39. There is an imprint at the back of the title-page, “PRINTED by C. F. SEYFANG, 57, FLEET-MARKET." It is a very rough, common piece of printing; and has a general air of haste. The names of the speakers are usually at the beginning of the first line of each speech, abbreviated; but sometimes they are unabbreviated; and, as in Prometheus, they sometimes appear over the centre of the speech. I have followed Mrs. Shelley in putting all the names over the centre of the speeches, in full. The headlines are, on the left-hand pages, Edipus Tyrannus; on the right-hand pages, A Tragedy. I am not aware of the existence of any MS. of this work.-H.B.F.] 1 OR, SWELLFOOT the TYRANT. A Tragedy. IN TWO ACTS. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC. Choose Reform or civil-war, When thro' thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY J. JOHNSTON, 98, CHEAPSIDE, AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 1820. |