next in order the small posthumous poems of the same period, grouped under separate years, as Mrs. Shelley grouped them; and to keep the translations apart, at the end of the mature works, and arrange them according to the chronology of the original authors.

In carrying out this arrangement I have innovated somewhat in the matter of fragments. The fact that a poem was unfinished did not with Shelley form per se an obstacle to its publication; for we have A Vision of the Sea, ending abruptly in the middle of a sentence, put forth by him in his life-time, as were also The Damon of the World and Superstition; and the fragment of Prince Athanase was also sent for publication. Thus I have been obliged to introduce fragments into the chronological series of reprinted volumes; and it certainly seems to me better to follow the same principle in regard to the posthumous fragments, and group them with the poems of each year. I think they have a stronger interest so grouped than when separated and arranged in an independent chronology. They thus shew more readily what Shelley was doing, as far as we can ascertain, in the way of original poetry, in each year. For these reasons I have imported the Fragments of an Unfinished Drama, Charles the First, and The Triumph of Life into the series of principal posthumous poems; and for similar reasons I have placed cancelled passages, belonging obviously to given poems, immediately after such, instead of in a separate section.

The Letter to Maria Gisborne has been brought into the series of principal or more important posthumous poems, because, though comparatively short, it is among the most perfect and to my mind important of Shelley's smaller compositions, and is in some respects unlike all else.

It ought perhaps to be explained that the poems which are arranged between Julian and Maddalo and The Mask of Anarchy, namely Prince Athanase and a few lyrics, are so placed to carry out an intention expressed by Shelley: he told his publisher that Prince Athanase was to accompany Julian and Maddalo, and he afterwards sent for the same purpose some poems which he described as all his "saddest verses raked up into one heap." Both the specified works appeared for the first time in Posthumous Poems; and the rest here arranged in connexion with those

two are chosen from the same volume as answering to the description given above.

The question why there should be any need to do more than simply reprint those poems which were printed in the first instance under Shelley's own supervision, invites further consideration. We have heard enough and too much about Shelley's being "a careless writer,"-enough because such truth as there is in this current assertion has been long ago laid to heart by those who are discerning in such matters, and too much because very few are discerning, and the text that cost the greatest lyric poet of England infinite pains to elaborate has been held fair ground whereon every clumsy or thoughtless emendator (or rather innovator) might do just what suited his fancy.

If, therefore, we admit at all that Shelley was a careless writer, we must guard such admission round about with saving clauses, and clearly understand in what sense the intrinsically damaging word careless is used. That he would have done himself no credit before a Chinese board of examiners in pen-craft and orthography and the punctilio of smart composition, may be safely admitted; and those who would fain fit his compositions for presentation before such a board are not qualified by natural proclivity for the labour of editing the works of a great poet. But that he was careless as an artist in any sense in which it behoved such an one to be careful, is amply refuted by the fact for which Mr. Garnett vouches in the following striking paragraph from the Relics of Shelley, pages xi and xii:

"They [the pieces in the Relics] appear to have been hitherto overlooked, for the reason that must also serve as an excuse for the imperfect manner in which they are even now presented to the public-the extremely confused state of these books [Shelley's manuscript note-books], and the equal difficulty of deciphering and connecting their contents. Being written in great haste, and frequently with pencil, the hand-writing is often indistinct of itself; and rendered far more so by erasures and interlineations ad infinitum. Shelley appears to have composed with his pen in his hand, and to have corrected as fast as he wrote; hence a page full of writing frequently yields only two or three available lines, which must be painfully disentangled from a chaos of

obliterations. Much that at first sight wears the appearance of novelty, proves on inspection to be merely a variation of something already published; and sometimes the case is reversed, as in the Prologue to Hellas, so buried in the MS. of that drama (which has in itself on the average ten lines effaced for one retained), as to be only discoverable or separable upon very close scrutiny." Mr. Garnett adds a note to the effect that, when Shelley wrote for the printer, his handwriting was "singularly neat and beautiful"; and it seems to me that the proportion of lines rejected and lines retained in his rough drafts, taken in connexion with the quality of his "printer's copy," is the best possible proof of due care. As regards the statement that his drafts for the printer were beautifully written, I can confirm that from the evidence of the copy of Julian and Maddalo which he sent from Italy to Hunt, to have published: not only is the writing most careful and beautiful; but the punctuation is at once eminently characteristic and peculiar, and generally adequate and accurate from the poet's own point of view. This is still more noteworthy, inasmuch as Shelley wrote the poem out with his own hand twice at least, in ink. One copy is in a book among those in Sir Percy Shelley's possession; the other, on what seem to be the gilt-edged leaves of a pocket-book, is that already referred to, of which a specimen is given in fac-simile in the Library Edition.

That the confused note-books described by Mr. Garnett imply care, not the reverse, must be evident to any one who thinks for a moment these were Shelley's means of putting his thoughts on record at once as they came burning upon him; and they were never meant for any one's guidance but his own. It was a need inherent in the fiery exaltation of his lyric mood that the result should be set down at once; and, for mere temporary memorandu, it mattered not how intricately one poem might be blended with another. He knew how to disentangle and write them fairly, or dictate them to Mrs. Shelley; and, had he lived to have the slightest suspicion how we should venerate every scrap of paper bearing the impress of his hand and pen, he would, we may be sure, have taken ample care to place these note-books beyond our reach. The subject of Shelley's method of composition, a right under

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standing of which is the first requisite for any one aspiring to edit his works, would be a very fruitful theme for prolonged discussion. In one of the keenest and at the same time most enthusiastic of recent contributions to Shelley literature this theme is very happily touched upon. I refer to an article in The Edinburgh Review for April 1871, written à propos of Mr. Rossetti's edition of Shelley, -an article which I am authorized to connect with the name of Professor Thomas S. Baynes of St. Andrew's University, and which I cannot do better than quote.

"It is," says Professor Baynes, "a curious psychological problem how it is that amongst modern poets Shelley should be distinguished by his comparative neglect of minute verbal accuracy; how it comes to pass that the text even of poems which he himself carefully revised should be so extremely imperfect." Negligence, care, imperfection! This is a strange association of words; but in that association Professor Baynes seems to me to go right home to the facts of the case. The problem, he says, is, how it happens that in the poems which Shelley himself revised "there are grammatical laxities and metrical oversights, which are not only stumbling-blocks to readers of ordinary cultivation, but the despair of acute and accomplished verbal critics.

"This uncritical negligence, the want of minute accuracy in the details of his verse, seems to us intimately connected with the whole character of Shelley's mind, and especially with the lyrical sweep and intensity of his poetical genius. He had an intellect of the rarest delicacy and analytical strength, that intuitively perceived the most remote analogies, and discriminated with spontaneous precision the finest shades of sensibility, the subtilest differences of perception and emotion. He possessed a swift soaring and prolific imagination that clothed every thought and feeling with imagery in the moment of its birth, and instinctively read the spiritual meanings of material symbols. His fineness of sense was so exquisite that eye and ear and touch became, as it were, organs and inlets not merely of sensitive apprehension, but of intellectual beauty and ideal truth. Every nerve in his slight but vigorous frame seemed to vibrate in unison with the deeper life of nature in the world around him, and, like the wandering harp, he was swept to music by every breath of material beauty,

every gust of poetic emotion. Above all, he had a strength of intellectual passion and a depth of ideal sympathy that in moments of excitement fused all the powers of his mind into a continuous stream of creative energy, and gave the stamp of something like inspiration to all the higher productions of his muse. His very method of composition reflects these characteristics of his mind. He seems to have been urged by a sort of irresistible impulse to write, and displayed a vehement and passionate absorption in the work that recalls the old traditions of poetical frenzy and divine possession. His conceptions crowded so thickly upon him, were embodied in such exquisite verbal forms, and so enriched by illustrations flashed from remote and multiplied centres of association, that while the fever lasted his whole nature was carried impetuously forward on a full tide of mingled music and imagery. From this exuberance of poetical power some of his critics have reproached him with accumulating image upon image without pausing to select, discriminate, or contrast them. And it is no doubt true that there are passages in which metaphors and similes are heaped on each other in almost dazzling profusion. But even

in his most opulent and ornate descriptions there is hardly a trace of conscious labour or deliberate effort. In his higher work the brilliant diction and splendid imagery glow with kindled emotion, and are wrought into the very substance of the poem by the sustained vehemence and rapture of his impassioned verse. Many of his most exquisite pieces were in this way produced almost at a sitting at a single heat, as it were-and some of his longest poems, such as The Revolt of Islam and The Cenci, were completed in a few months. Once engrossed with a great poetical conception, all his powers were kindled to a pitch of the highest intensity, and amidst the crowding realities of imagination the whole world of sense grew pale and dim, and everything around became for the time unsubstantial as a dream.

"This power of complete and passionate absorption in an ideal world of his own had marked Shelley from his earliest years. The stories told of his boyhood and youth strikingly illustrate this feature of his character... Shelley himself, however, gives the most vivid picture of this abstracted mood in the description of the poet by one of the spirits in Prometheus :