PREFACE. BY THE EDITOR. THE two former volumes of this edition consist of mature works published by Shelley during his life-time; and the series of such works is completed in the present volume by the reproduction of his editions of Adonais and Hellas with the Poem Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon. The rest of the volume, or nearly all of it, consists of work published after the poet's death. In dealing with Shelley's posthumous poems, change of method has naturally followed change of materials and circumstances. The text of many of these grew gradually under the disentangling hand of the poet's ever devoted widow; but I have not always thought it needful to indicate what additions and changes were made subsequently to 1824, in poems imperfectly issued in the volume of that year, called Posthumous Poems. It has seemed sufficient to adopt the most complete version and the best readings, though where there are minute variations of any interest I have recorded them also. Verbal variations in the text, I have aimed at recording invariably; and to that end all the poems, from whatever source they are printed in the main, have been collated, as in the other two volumes, with both Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1839. Indeed, in every case (and many such have presented themselves) where further collation seemed desirable, several later editions also have been consulted; and wherever a manuscript has been available to me, I have collated the text with it word by word and point by point. In regard to whatever slight variation from the current texts may be found in my edition, whether in orthography, punctuation, capitalling, or other minute particulars, it is to be understood that I have adopted the reading, either of the manuscript, or of one of Mrs. Shelley's editions. Every change introduced on the authority of my own senses is specified, however obvious the necessity, or however minute the change,-and unless, as I said in the Preface to the first volume, the printer has stolen a march on me in any case. This rule refers, absolutely, only to such poems as were published by Mrs. Shelley; and, though it has had considerable observance in the case of poems first given by Mr. Garnett and Mr. Rossetti, it has not been applied with quite the same rigour. There is a good reason for this slight relaxation: Mr. Garnett assures me that the manuscripts from which he has made transcripts have been very deficient in punctuation,— an assurance amply confirmed by my own experience; and as both Mr. Garnett and Mr. Rossetti, who have given these transcripts to the public, disagree with me as to the utility of preserving Shelley's punctuation, I have not felt called upon to follow the pointing of the Relics, or of Mr. Rossetti's edition, as the case may be, but have punctuated the pieces as I should imagine Shelley punctuating them in a more advanced stage than that in which he left them. This has been to treat them as I must have done had the manuscripts been deciphered by myself instead of Mr. Garnett. The erroneous variations shewn by manuscripts, whether in Shelley's writing or that of his wife, have a value in teaching us to apprehend the process of corruption undergone by his poems; and for this reason I have recorded a great number of no individual importance or interest, but valuable to such students as may please to take them collectively. But besides erroneous minutiae of merely constructive value, the manuscripts often shew apparently unimportant details that should, according to my theory, be followed implicitly, as being intentional. Thus, in the two careful manuscripts from which Julian and Maddalo and The Mask of Anarchy are given, it would be, if accidental, a very curious coincidence that the system of inverted commas is precisely the same. In each poem, in the earlier part, where the speeches are short, the marks of quotation are repeated at the beginning of every line; but when in Julian and Maddalo we are carried into the monologue of the maniac, a single inverted comma before each paragraph is made to suffice: similarly, when we come in The Mask of Anarchy to the invocation forming stanzas XXXVII to XCI, the inverted commas are at the beginning of each stanza only, and not of each line. The more we have the opportunity of studying the |