Mrs. Shelley's Note (18392, p. 229): "I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses; it was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here also, as he mentions in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo; a slight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines, while to the east the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode." Shelley (from Venice) to Mrs. Shelley, August 23, 1818: "He [Byron] took me in his gondola across the laguna to a long sandy island, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me. He said that if he had been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision. We talked of literary matters, his Fourth Canto [Childe Harold], which he says is very good, and indeed he repeated some stanzas of great energy to me." Mrs. Shelley, Essays and Letters, ii. 136. Shelley (from Leghorn) to Leigh Hunt, August 15, 1819: "I send you a little poem to give to Ollier for publication, but without my name. Peacock will correct the proofs. I wrote it with the idea of offering it to the Examiner, but I find it is too long. It was composed last year at Este ; two of the characters you will recognize; and the third is also in some degree a painting from nature, but, with respect to time and place, ideal. You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language to express the actual way in which people talk with each other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. I use the word vulgar in its most extensive sense. The vulgarity of rank and fashion is as gross in its way as that of poverty, and its cant terms equally expressive of base conceptions, and, therefore, equally unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is to be admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly ideal, or in that part of any subject which relates to common life, where the passion, exceeding a certain limit, touches the boundaries of that which is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in metaphor, borrowed from objects alike remote or near, and casts over all the shadow of its own greatness. But what am I about? If my grandmother sucks eggs, was it I who taught her? "If you would really correct the proof, I need not trouble Peacock, who, I suppose, has enough. Can you take it as a compliment that I prefer to trouble you ? I do not particularly wish this poem to be known as mine; but, at all events, I would not put my name to it. I leave you to judge whether it is best to throw it into the fire, or to publish it. So much for self self, that burr that will stick to one." Hunt, Correspondence, i. 137, 138. Shelley (from Florence) to Ollier, December 15, 1819: "Have you seen my poem Julian and Maddalo? Suppose you print that in the manner of Hunt's Hero and Leander; for I mean to write three other poems, the scenes of which will be laid at Rome, Florence and Naples, but the subjects of which will be all drawn from dreadful or beautiful realities, as that of this was." Shelley Memorials, p. 123. Shelley (from Pisa) to Ollier, May 14, 1820: “If I had even intended to publish Julian and Maddalo with my name, yet I would not print it with Prometheus. It would not harmonize. It is an attempt in a different style, in which I am not yet sure of myself. a sermo pedestris way of treating human nature, quite opposed to the idealisms of that drama. If you print Julian and Maddalo, I wish it to be printed in some unostentatious form, accompanied with the fragment of Athanase, and exactly in the manner in which I sent it; and I particularly desire that my name be not annexed to the first edition of it in any case." Shelley Memorials, pp. 138, 139. Shelley (from Pisa) to Ollier, November 10, 1820: “I send some poems to be added to the pamphlet of Julian and Maddalo. [Julian and Maddalo and Other Poems had been announced as in press at the end of the sheet of Ollier's advertisements in Prometheus Unbound, 1820.] I think you have some other smaller poems belonging to that collection, and I believe you know that I do not wish my name to be printed on the title-page, though I have no objection to my being known as the author. The Julian and Maddalo and the accompanying poems are all my saddest verses raked up into one heap. I mean to mingle more smiles with my tears in future." Shelley Memorials, pp. 139, 140. Shelley (from Pisa) to Miss Clairmont, January 2, 1821 : “All your wishes have been attended to respecting Julian and Maddalo, which never was intended for publication." [Dowden suggests that Miss Clairmont objected to the publication on account of the mention of Allegra.] Dowden, ii. 385. Shelley (from Pisa) to Ollier, February 22, 1821: I suppose Julian and Maddalo is published. If not, do not add the Witch of Atlas to that peculiar piece of writing." Shelley Memorials, p. 154. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND Prometheus Unbound / A Lyrical Drama / in Four Acts / with Other Poems / by / Percy Bysshe Shelley / Audisne haec, amphiarae, sub terram abdite? / London / C. and J. Ollier Vere Street Bond Street / 1820. Collation: Octavo. Half-title (with advertisements of Shelley's published poems, and imprint, Marchant, Printer, Ingram-Court, Fenchurch-Street, London, on verso) pp. i. ii.; Title (with blank verso) pp. iii. iv.; Contents (with blank verso) pp. v. vi.; Preface, pp. vii.-xv.; Fly-title to Prometheus Unbound (with Dramatis Persona on verso) pp. 17, 18; Prometheus Unbound, pp. 19-153; Fly-title to Miscellaneous Poems (with blank verso) pp. 155, 156; The Sensitive Plant, A Vision of the Sea, Ode to Heaven, An Exhortation, Ode to the West Wind, An Ode, written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty, The Cloud, To a Skylark, Ode to Liberty, pp. 157-222; advertisements of Ollier's publications, two pages, with imprint repeated at foot. Issued in boards, with white paper label on back, lettered Prometheus / Unbound/9s. An incomplete MS. is among the Boscombe MSS., and some corrections derived from it were published by Miss Blind in the Westminster Review, July, 1870. NOTES showing the state of other editions and including minor variations beyond what has been already noted. 18391 incorporates Shelley's list of errata, and Mrs. Shelley may have added other corrections of her own; the authority of Shelley for her text is, so far, open to doubt in any particular case. I. 73 me. Speak! Greenwood conj. 137 love, i. e. dost love (Swinburne), but Forman con strues, I love. 192 dear Mrs. Shelley, 1853. 414 pain? all editions. 491 agony. 66 526-531 Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Fury, Rossetti. I. 639 woe-illumined 18391,2, 687 those 1820, 18391,2. 712 Between. The meaning is between arch and sea. 774 silent 18391,2. II. Scene lonely 18391,2. III. 165 Amid or Among Rossetti conj. Around meaning in the neighborhood of is perfectly good English, and used by Shelley. See Concordance. 171 Spirits 18391,2. ii. 25 noonday, 1820, 18391,2. 50 destinied soft 1820. 53 streams 18392. 87 on 18391,2. iv. 4 sun. V. Rossetti conj. 12 line missing, Rossetti and Swinburne conj. The difficulty is caused by a rapid change of construction, the sense being entirely clear. 100 reigns Forman. 95 and on Forman, Dowden. The emendation corrects a faultless line merely to make it agree with stanzaic structure, and like all metrical emendations in a poet so accustomed to irregular and original melody as Shelley, is open to the gravest doubt. i. 13 might Forman. 20 distant 1820. 69 then omit 1820. ii. 22 many peopled 1820, 18391,2. 70 is omit 18392, Rossetti. The word is naturally slurred in the metre, and the movement of the line is not more roughened than was customary with Shelley. 102 unwitting 1820. |