P. 363.
The sky

Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery."

This phrase may be fully accounted for by understanding that the season when the flowers fade is the winter, and that then the glinting of the light comes through the tracery of the denuded branches or tendrils. Yet it might be suspected that Shelley wrote " inter-woof," "Inter-woof of tracery" would be a very natural variation upon the equally natural term "interwoven tracery and words compounded with inter" are continual in Shelley.

P. 366.

"Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest."

It is not for me to surmise with any confidence whether or not these names designate particular individuals. The name Marina is continually applied to Mrs. Shelley in the letters of Leigh Hunt and his wife. Vanna is the short of Giovanna, the Italian synonym of Jane, the christian name of Mrs. Williamsa lady whom Shelley was introduced to shortly before the time when he despatched Epipsychidion to London. If Vanna means Jane Williams, perhaps "Primus" is her husband.

P. 367.

Adonais; an Elegy on the death of John Keats.

These words of the title are followed, in the original edition, by the words "Author of Endymion, Hyperion, &c.,"-which have hitherto been reproduced in subsequent issues. I think the time has come to drop them. Keats is as indelibly recorded among the poets as Spenser or Marlow; and we should not deem it necessary to certify the reader that the one was the author of The Faëry Queen, and the other of Doctor Faustus.

It has been stated before now (as for instance by Captain Medwin in the Shelley Papers) that Adonais is modelled on Moschus and Bion. Shelley himself, as if to court the remark, gives the poem a motto from Moschus; and it seems to me a plausible suggestion that the name Adonais (which may stand for a Doric form of "Adonis," but is not, I believe, to be found in any classic author) was adopted by the poet to recall to mind the Idyll of Bion on Adonis. I am not aware, however, that any one has yet pointed out the parallel passages. Mr. G. S. D. Murray, of Christ Church College, Oxford, has noted those from Bion, and very obligingly placed them at my disposal. The principal instances are as follows:

Stanza i. "I weep for Adonais-he is dead!"

Αἴαζω τὸν "Αδωνιν· ἀπώλετο καλός Αδωνις.

(I lament for Adonis ; beautiful Adonis is dead.)

Stanza vii.

"While still

He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay."

Καὶ νέκυς ὢν καλός ἐστι, καλὸς νέκυς οἷα καθεύδων.

(Even as a corpse he is beautiful, a corpse beautiful as though in sleep.) Stanzas x., xi. "And fans him with her moonlight wings.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another clipped her profuse locks."

̓Αμφὶ δέ μιν κλαίοντες ἐπιστενάχουσιν ἔρωτες
κειράμενοι χαίτας ἐπ' 'Αδώνιδι, ὃς δὲ λέβησι
χρυσείοις φορέησιν ὕδωρ, ὃ δὲ μήρια λούει,
ὃς δ ̓ ἔπιθεν πτερύγεσσιν ἀναψέγει τὸν ̓Αδωνιν.

(And round about him the Loves mourn for him weeping, having clipped their locks for Adonis ; and one brings water in golden urns, and another washes his limbs, and another from behind fans Adonis with her wings.)

Stanza xxvi.

"Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live!

And in my heartless breast and burning brain

That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive ;
I would give

All that I am to be as thou now art :

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart."
τοσσοῦτόν με φίλασον ὅσον ζώει τὸ φίλαμα.

(Kiss me so far as a kiss lives and I will guard this kiss as 'twere Adonis' self. . . But I unhappy live, and am a goddess, and cannot follow thee.)

See also (vol. iii. p. 294) the translation from Bion's Elegy on the Death of Adonis, unknown until printed in Mr. Forman's edition of Shelley, 1877.

P. 367.

̓Αστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες κ. τ. λ.

The distich by Plato which Shelley here applies to Keats will be found translated by him in vol. iii. p. 292, under the title To Stella.

P. 367.

"It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism &c.

"

This intention was not fulfilled-owing (as stated in a letter of 25th September 1821 from Shelley to Mr. Ollier) to his having mislaid the volume containing Hyperion and in fact there never was a separate London edition. Another generous idea of Shelley's, hardly to be called an intention, was to collect the remnants of Keats's writings, and publish them with a Life and criticism. This he mentions in a letter to Mr. Severn dated 29th November 1821; adding at the same time that the idea would not be carried out, as he doubted whether the criticism" would find a single reader." At such a discount in the market were those two glorious poets, Keats and Shelley, about half a year following the death of the former, and preceding that of the latter.

P. 367.

"the

on the [23rd] of [February] 1821."
of

"John Keats died Shelley gave the date thus, 1821." In later editions "the 27th of December 1820" was erroneously substituted. Adonais was written about May 1821.

P. 367.

"The savage criticism on his Endymion which appeared in the Quarterly Review produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind," &c.

Shelley was not alone at the time in supposing this, and it is still a popular tradition among poetic readers: but the evidence supplied by the Life and Letters of Keats published by Lord Houghton shows distinctly that the notion was exaggerated--not to say, baseless.

P. 367.

"A most base and unprincipled calumniator."

No doubt Shelley here refers to the writer of the Quarterly Review notice of Laon and Cythna, whom he (after he became convinced it was not by Southey) --and not he alone-believed to be the Rev. Mr. (late Dean) Milman. It appears elsewhere that he ascribed to the same hand the harsh critique on Endymion. I am enabled to state positively that the review of Shelley was not by Milman: according to Medwin, it was affirmed by Hobhouse (Lord Broughton) to be the handiwork of a nephew of Coleridge, i.e. the late Judge-and this, I learn, is correct. Most literary enquirers, at the present day, attribute to Gifford the review of Keats.

Mr. Barret was the author of the poem Woman.

These words are quoted, but not verbatim, from a letter addressed by Colonel Finch to Mr. Gisborne. See Shelley's Essays, Letters, &c., vol. ii. p. 238.

P. 370.

"The third among the Sons of Light."

It may be questioned whom, as the first and second "Sons of Light," Shelley intended to associate with Milton. If he refers to English poets exclusively, Chaucer probably and Shakespeare certainly may be proposed. But perhaps he referred more particularly to epic poets. In that case, the two are assuredly Homer and Dante. His admirable Defence of Poetry says: " Homer was the

first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it developing itself in correspondence with their development. Milton was the third epic poet."

P. 371.

"Till darkness and the law

Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."

In the original Adonais, printed in Pisa, this line is different-
"Of mortal change, shall fill the grave which is her maw."

So in the Pisa edition-and, I think, certainly correct. In subsequent editions, the word is "its."

P. 373.

"As if she Autumn were,

Or they dead leaves."

B. V. thinks, and so do I, that the image would be completer and more selfconsistent if we read And they dead leaves."

P. 373.

"Amid the faint companions of their youth."

In the original edition this stands "the drooping comrades." Such a substitution can only, I presume, have been introduced into the text on Shelley's own authority.

P. 374.

Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour

Is changed to fragrance."

"

It appears to me that the word where or "whose" might be preferred to when." Perhaps "whose" would be the better of the two.

P. 376.

"They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low."

I incline to prefer the original reading-" spurn them as they go" but, as it must be assumed that the alteration is Shelley's own, I have to leave it.

P. 376.

"Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent."

I feel rather sceptical about this word "magic" but it figures in all the editions, and has at least a poetic ring. I suspect it ought to be "tragic": the main idea being that the "shepherds" (poets) were habited in "mantles" corresponding to their respective poetic qualities, like the tragic performers in Grecian drama. See the phrase on p. 147, the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world."-The two poets mentioned in this stanza are (need it be said ?) Byron and Moore: though whether Moore ever showed the faintest interest in or grief for Keats I know The next stanza (xxxi.) introduces Shelley himself; and xxxv., Leigh

not. Hunt.

P. 379.
Stanza xliii.

Shelley termed Adonais "the least imperfect of my compositions. "I Its rhyming, however, is scarcely more accordant to rigid rule than that of the Revolt of Islam. In this stanza, for instance, "bear" is made to rhyme with "bear."-Other expressions used by Shelley regarding Adonais are "a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written :-"I know what to think of Adonais, but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems of the day I know not" :-"It is absurd in any Review to criticize Adonais, and still more absurd to pretend that the verses are bad":"I am especially curious to hear the fate of Adonais; I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion."

"

Here pause.

P. 381.

These graves are all too young as yet

To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned

Its charge to each," &c.

No doubt Shelley is here thinking in especial of his own bitterly mourned infant son William, buried in this ground not two years before.

P. 382.

"Rome's azure sky,

Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak

The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak."

I follow, with some uncertainty, the punctuation of the original edition. In some others, there is no comma after "words," and then the sense alters into saying that "words are weak to speak the glory transfused by Rome's azure sky,' &c.

1 Shelley Memorials, p. 159.

P. 383.
Hellas-Motto.

In a letter to Mr. Peacock dated 21st March 1821 Shelley requested that two seals might be procured for him inscribed with this same motto, and having as device a dove with outspread wings.

P. 383.

"The only goat-song which I have yet attempted."

This will be recognized as an allusion to the tragedy of The Cenci.

P. 386.

"The Phantom of Mahomet the Second."

I have inserted this name in the list.

P. 388.

"Florence, Albion, Switzerland."

Among the Shelley documents once the property of the publisher Mr. Charles Ollier sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson (see p. 423) was the MS. of Hellas (written by a friend, with corrections by Shelley himself), also a letter of Shelley's notifying errata in the printed Hellas. One of the items which the poet thus points out is that a new stanza begins after the present line, and continues to the words, From utmost Germany to Spain."

P. 391.

"Kings are like stars: they rise and set, they have

The worship of the world, but no repose.'

An evident paraphrase from Bacon-one of the authors who excited Shelley's highest enthusiasm: "Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.' (Essay Of Empire.) (This passage was recalled to my recollection by Mr. G. S. D. Murray.)

The drama of Hellas is, for all practical purposes, consistent in using the pronoun "thou" and its congeners throughout, instead of "you"; save in this instance, which, in previous texts, stands" Your heart." I think this small change, for the sake of uniformity of diction, not other than legitimateespecially as "thou" and "thy" appear in this very same speech of three and a half lines.

"Death is awake! In his list of errata, Shelley gives as a correction of special moment.

P. 398.

Repulse is on the waters!

"Repulse is" (instead of "Repulsed on ")

P. 398.

"The caves of the Icarian isles

Told each to the other."

"Told" (not "hold" as printed prior to my edition of 1870) is in the MS. of Hellas, and in Shelley's list of errata.

Chelonites is the correct word; there is a promontory so named nearly opposite Cephallenia. Of "Clelonite's (or Clelonit's) promontory" (as hitherto printed) no one ever heard.