achieveth all ends whereon he thinketh-God who overtaketh the winged eagle, and outstrippeth the dolphin of the sea, and bringeth low many a man in his pride, while to others he giveth glory incorruptible." When we consider how often, as a boy, Shelley must have heard in Warnham Church the impressive words of the Magnificat (said or sung), we have not far to go for a parallel Biblical thought sufficiently close to this of Pindar to induce the poet to jot the Greek down while he thought of it. The words, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek" are near enough in all conscience; and, as we shall presently see, he was studying the Gospels about this time, and may have re-encountered St. Luke's own report of the Magnificat, with the conclusion of the Second Pythian Ode fresh in his mind. The verso of this leaf (II * 27 v.) shows us Shelley addressing three contemporary poets in terms indicating that his thoughts had wandered away to another of the great classics of antiquity. It is here that we have that scrap described in the Auction catalogue under the head of Unpublished Matter in Note Book II as item 4, "Lines against Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey; they begin: 'Proteus Wordsworth, who shall bind thee?'" Shelley was making free with the name of Proteus in no such commonplace sense as that to which it has sunk by usage is evident. The use of the words find, catch, and bind points to a living familiarity That with the wonderful story of the blue god told by Homer in one way and by Virgil in another. Shelley's verses read thus, as already stated in The Bibliophile Society's Year Book for 1910: Proteus Wordsworth who shall bind thee Who shall catch thee who shall know thee Are but feeble types of thee Thou polyhedric polyglot And polymorphic I know what Aristeus, Menelaus [. . . 3 It is with a glow of genuine satisfaction that one credits to Shelley the abandonment of this attempt to be funny, as a piece of mild sacrilege. Line 2 was originally addressed to Southey Proteus Southey who shall find thee, but, as the poet thought of more drastic treatment for that personage, he struck his name out and substituted Coleridge's, on which he had already begun in two cancelled fragments of a third line set out doubtingly-thus: Proteus Coleridge who can who can know thee [? Before Hyperprotean in the finally adopted line 3, Proteus once more stands cancelled. In line 4 can stands cancelled in favour of each shall; and in line 8 polymorphian appears to have been the original form of the word I read as polymorphic, in accordance with what seems to have been the final intention. The names of Aristæus and Menelaus were not written down as a mere memorandum for an extension of the answer to the questions of which the first four lines consist: they are themselves one more line of trochaic dimeter in which the poet was reverting to the acatalectic form of that metre, when seized with compunction. He could easily have found a rhyme. Page II* 27 V. will reappear presently; for there is a scrap of A Vision of the Sea written up the margin of it. Page II* 28 v. exhibits Shelley struggling with the last five lines of those thirteen which he addressed to a Reviewer-probably a Quarterly Reviewer-and which Leigh Hunt published in his Literary Pocket-Book, with the signature "Σ.' It is worth while to quote the text of the whole brief and graceful refusal to hate the man who had shown his hatred of the poet:— Alas, good friend, what profit can you see Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate. 8 12 It does not seem to me absolutely clear that the first line on this page in our Note Book does not represent some rejected clumsiness of allusion to the New Testament connected with this Reviewer: it probably belongs to something else; but here it is: What John, Christs forerunner, said [ . . . The next line, also rejected, is literally never yet was matron maid or boy [; which, if we stop at maid, might connect in sense as well as in metre with the John line and something on some lost page which may have preceded it; but it is more likely that, having jotted, as Shelley next did, the opening For never was maid [ and struck it out, what he really did was to write "never yet was matron maid or boy" above itthere was ample room-and read, as the first line of his fifth couplet, For never yet was matron maid or boy [, and bring in coy as the end of an unwritten line in his head. The next step was to begin a new line with Nar[cissus]; but that opening was at once abandoned for the established For to your passion I am far more coy [; and the five lines of which the page consists came out thus: For to your passion, I am far more coy Of thine antipathy Since I am the Narcissus, thou art free Even in getting thus far, nymph had been rejected in favour of maid, and that line had been followed by the curious jumble, mostly cancelled:— Narcuss If I ham If I am the N I the For th I thou Narc I will not and after all he struck out our indispensable word Since without supplying its place, and substituted you for thou but left thine and art standing, so that literally we read |