P. 52. "As thus I spoke." The line which terminates with these words is left rhymeless. P. 52. "The clap of tortured hands, Fierce yells, and howlings, and lamentings keen.” This is a probably conscious reminiscence from the famous lines of Dante : You and thou are mixed up in this poem, so far as the madman's speech is concerned. It was probably mere carelessness on Shelley's part: but there might be some greater plausibility in the mixture here than elsewhere, considering the bewilderment of the speaker's mind, his sudden changes of mood, and the greater or less degree of familiarity indicated by a foreigner's use of "thou" and "you." P. 59. "The air Closes upon my accents, as despair Upon my heart-let death upon despair!" Such is the reading in the Posthumous Poems, and in the MS. fortunately brought to light by Mr. Forman, which sets many things right that were wrong heretofore. Later editions give "let death upon my care!" This has a make rhyme sound. P. 6r. "His dog was dead: his child had now become A woman. It would seem that Shelley wrote the opening words under the impression that Maddalo's dog had already been mentioned in the earlier part of the poem. No such mention, however, occurs. The reader will not need to be reminded that this alleged return of Shelley (Julian) to Venice, after an interval of years in which a daughter of Byron (Maddalo) has developed from a small child into a woman, is altogether imaginary. Byron's daughter Allegra, the child here referred to, preceded even Shelley to the tomb, dying when scarcely past infancy. P. 63. "From the Baths of Lucca, in 1818." I have added these introductory words. Mrs. Shelley's note on Julian and Maddalo (in the collected editions) has hitherto followed on along with her note on Rosalind and Helen; both being mixed up in one consecutive "Note on Poems of 1818." I have adhered to this date, 1818, given in the collected editions: but, in its first form of publication (the volume of Posthumous Poems, 1824), Julian and Maddalo is dated "Rome, May 1819." Probably the poem was not finished until this later date. Internal evidence favours, I think, the surmise that the termination of the poem, beginning with the last paragraph of p. 60, or thereabouts, was written after some interval of time from the preceding portion; written rather with a view to concluding the poem somehow than with the same degree of impulse and interest which had prompted the earlier verses, or with the same amplitude of treatment. P. 64. "Audisne hæc, Amphiarae, sub terram abdite?" This grand line is quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. ii. 60) from the Epigoni of an unknown author. P. 64. "This poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla." The few words which Shelley here gives to this matter are divinely beautiful : but the reader will not object to see them supplemented by some others, taken from a letter which the poet wrote to Mr. Peacock on the 23rd March 1819.1 "I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impression on me, on my first visit to this city. The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermæ of Caracalla. These consist of six enormous chambers, above .200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stones. At every step, the aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect to one travelling rapidly along the plain. These walls surround green and level spaces of lawn, on which some elms have grown, and which are interspersed towards their skirts by masses of the fallen ruin, overtwined with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls.—But the most interesting effect remains. In one of the buttresses that supports an immense and lofty arch which bridges the very winds of heaven,' are the crumbling remains of an antique winding staircase, whose sides are open in many places to the precipice. This you ascend, and arrive on the summit of these piles. There grow on every side thick entangled wildernesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the flowering laurestinus (whose white blossoms are just developed), the white fig, and a thousand nameless plants sown by the wandering winds. These woods are intersected on every side by paths, like sheep-tracks through the copsewood of steep mountains, which wind to every part of the immense labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses, themselves like mountains, which have been seen from below. In one place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown ruin. On one side is the immensity of earth and sky; on the other, a narrow chasm which is bounded by an arch of enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured foliage and blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid, overgrown, like itself, with the all-prevailing vegetation. Around rise other crags and other peaks; all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying investiture of Nature. Still further, winding up one half of the shattered pyramids, by the path through the blooming copsewood, you come to a little mossy lawn surrounded by the wild shrubs. It is overgrown by anemones, wallflowers, and violets, whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers whose names I know not, and which scatter through the air the divinest odour-which, as you recline under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous faintness, like the combinations of sweet music. The paths still wind on, threading the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, other lawns, and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and that the paths above penetrate at least half their extent, your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to express of this astonishing scene.' Prometheus and Adonais were viewed by Shelley with more complacency than his other poems. It will be interesting to collect here some of his expres 1 Essays, Letters from Abroad, &c., vol. ii. pp. 58-60. sions concerning the former, in addition to the phrases cited by Mrs. Shelley from a letter dated 6th April 1819.-6th Sept. 1819. My Prometheus is, in my judgment, of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted, and is perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it."-15th Oct. 1819. "The Prometheus, a poem in my best style, whatever that may amount to, will arrive with it: it is the most perfect of my productions."15th Dec. 1819. 'My Prometheus is the best thing I ever wrote."--6th March 1820 (to Mr. Ollier). "Prometheus Unbound, I must tell you, is my favourite poem : I charge you therefore specially to pet him, and feed him with fine ink and good paper. Cenci is written for the multitude, and ought to sell well: I think, if I may judge by its merits, the Prometheus cannot sell beyond twenty copies."8th June 1821. "You may announce for publication a poem entitled Adonais. I shall send it you either printed at Pisa, or transcribed in such a manner as it shall be difficult for the reviser to leave such errors as assist the obscurity of the Prometheus" [which the Gisbornes had been requested to revise, with the co-operation of Mr. Ollier himself: Mr. Peacock, however, seems to have taken the principal part].-10th April 1822. "Prometheus was never intended for more than five or six persons."[Conversation reported by Trelawny.] "My friends say my Prometheus is too wild, ideal, and perplexed with imagery: it may It has no resemblance to the Greek drama: it is original, and cost me severe labour. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most trouble." be so. P. 66. "What a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms 'a passion for reforming the world.'" This phrase is in Forsyth's Principles of Moral Science. P. 70. "Speak, Spirit! From thine inorganic voice, I only know that thou art moving near, And love. How cursed I him? Taking this passage exactly as it stands, I understand it to mean: "I only know that thou [the Spirit of the Earth] art moving near me, and that Love is also moving near me.' This seems to be the direct sense: but how far is it significant in, and consistent with, its context? The idea that "Love" is near Prometheus in his agony seems to be very abruptly and startlingly introduced. Driven to seek for some reason why Love should thus be near, the reader may be fain to think he has found it in the fact that Panthea and Ione are there, to comfort Prometheus, as far as the conditions of the case allow. But this does not seem admissible; for the statement made by Prometheus is that he knows the presence of the Earth-Spirit and of Love from the "inorganic voice" of the former. If we attempt a verbal alteration, the first that suggests itself is to read "I only know that thou art moving near, i.e., "that thou are present with, and lovingly disposed towards, me." But neither does this look consistent with what Prometheus had said in his last preceding speech to the Earth "Mother, thy sons and thou Scorn him without whose all-enduring will Another emendation occurs to me: but I confess that it is an audacious onemuch too audacious to be intruded into the text : 64 'Speak, Spirit! From thine inorganic voice, I only know that thou art moving near P. 72. "The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child." This is the reading of the original edition-not "dear," as in some subse quent issues. I think "dead" the better epithet of the two, according to its place in the context. P. 80. "Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one," &c. It seems pretty clear (as B. V. pointed out to me) that the whole of this speech forms a taunting interrogation-like the two preceding specches begin. ning "Thou thinkest," and "Dost imagine." The interrogative sign is not however given in previous editions. P. 80. "And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track One is strongly inclined (with B. V.) to set the rhyme right by reading "wrack." P. 81. Fourth Fury, Fifth Fury, &c. In other editions these are called "First Fury, Second Fury," &c. But this confounds them with the Furies (First, Second, and Third) who have already been speaking; whereas it is quite certain that these new speakers are new arrivals, come to the summons contained in the preceding "Chorus of Furies." For the sake of clearness, I have therefore felt warranted in making this small change. P. 86. "A rainbow's arch stood on the sea This has hitherto been punctuated "And the triumphant storm did flee, It seems very desirable to mark, by definite punctuation, the only sense of which "between" appears capable-i.e., "the storm did flee between-or through the arch of-the rainbow.' P. 86. "I sate beside a sage's bed, And the lamp was burning red "The book where he had fed" is surely a most slovenly expression. It can only mean "the book in or from which he had fed his mind"; which sense would be rather less badly expressed by "whence he had fed." I should strongly surmise that Shelley had, in the first instance, written "where he had read"; and then, observing the preceding rhyme "red," altered "read" into "fed," without reflecting that he ought to conciliate this "fed" with "where" by some modification of the latter word also. P. 88. "Till thou, O King of Sadness, Turn'st by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness." In previous editions, the word is "turned" : Grammar protests against that. The uppermost substitute would be "Turn'dst." This, however, is so uneuphonious that I think "Turn'st" may fairly claim a preference. P. 88. "Desolation is a delicate thing." This (as B. V. observes to me) is related to the speech of Agathon, in Plato's Symposium, beginning "For Homer says that the Goddess of Calamity is delicate." P. 91. "But not as now,-since I am made the wind" &c. This passage, to the end of the speech, is by no means perspicuous to me. I suppose, however, that it is printed much as Shelley intended it to stand, and that its general meaning is as follows: "Erewhile I used to sleep locked, as now, in Ione's arms. Yet not exactly as now: for now I find myself, in dream, conversing with thee; and being thus in converse with thee, I had a sleep troubled and yet sweet, whereas my waking hours are too full of care and pain." B. V. suggests to me (and I agree with him) that "Is troubled and yet sweet (instead of "Was troubled" &c.) would simplify the flow of the passage. P. 94. "It is some being Around the crags." I suspect "around" of being a misprint for either "among" or 'amid." P. 97. "The storm of sound is driven along, Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet This is substantially the punctuation of the later editions: the first edition gives no stop after "hurrying."-B. V. has called my attention to the great uncertainties which beset the whole punctuation of the passage. The main question of course is-What do the lines mean exactly? The most consistent sense seems to me to be this: "And so they [the destined spirits] float upon their way, until, still sweet but loud and strong, the storm of sound is driven along. As they [the spirits] fleet onward, sucked up and hurrying, its gathering billows [i.e., the billows, either of the sound, or else of the plume-uplifting wind from the breathing earth behind, as mentioned shortly before] meet behind, and bear [the spirits] to the fatal mountain." If this is correct, our punctuation is the contrary: we should read "The storm of sound is driven along. Sucked up and hurrying as they fleet, P. 97. "Ay, many more which we may well divine." Should this be "more than" &c.? P. 100. "Resist not the weakness!" The chief raison d'être of this line manifestly is that it should rhyme to "meekness." It must, however, have some meaning beyond this; which meaning I should apprehend to be-"Attempt not to overcome thine own weakness, which makes thee passive in our hands." If so, Resist not thy weakness" would express the sense more distinctly, and would perhaps be the true reading. |