growth of Shelley's poems, the more, I am convinced, will it become apparent that the word careless will not do to apply to the peculiarities and laxities of his punctuation &c. I have been very strongly impressed with this fact in re-editing from the manuscripts the two poems just mentioned. It seems to me, and I think my notes will shew conclusively to all thoughtful persons,-that Shelley took somewhat elaborate pains to redact and punctuate his poetry; and I have no doubt whatever that, having sat down determinedly to go through the punctuation and minor detail of a fairly written poem, about to go to press, he was only prevented from consistently revising it throughout, by getting once more implicated in the ardour of realization,—an ardour only differing in degree from that of composition and recomposition. A curious instance of minute care has presented itself to me in the manuscript of The Mask of Anarchy since the sheets of that poem were printed off: in stanza XXIX (page 163), the second line seems on close examination, to have been originally written by Mrs. Shelley thus:

A planet like the morning lay;

which laxity (very likely to have been Shelley's in the ardour of composition) is carefully altered to the line in the text,

A planet, like the morning's, lay;

and that this minute change was actually made with Shelley's hand it needs no expert to decide. Mrs. Shelley's commas are very different from Shelley's; and curiously

TO NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

mimetic as her hand is of his, s is a letter in the formation of which she never completely assimilated his style. I may say, none the less, that to make quite certain, I have submitted this line to an expert,-who decides with me that there is no doubt whatever as to the hand that made the revision. Traces of moments when minute care gave out (displaced according to my view by renewed ardour) will be found recorded in the foot-notes to the two poems specially mentioned above, and, for that matter, in numerous other instances throughout the posthumous works of which I have consulted manuscripts.

Another small matter of detail may be recorded here once for all, before passing to other subjects. Finding good reason to think that words ending in ize were duly spelt by Shelley with a 2, I have, whenever I have observed an s in that termination, in the posthumous poems, substituted a z. Mrs. Shelley seems either not to have followed any rule in this respect, or to have omitted to exercise any great watchfulness over the printers, who in this particular require special supervision, on account of the much greater ease with which, when "at case," the compositor can pick up an s than a z.

It remains to speak of certain details of arrangement followed in the series of Shelley's works after that which closes with Hellas and the Poem Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon. It has seemed to me that the best plan is to follow up the chronological series of mature works published in his life-time, with the principal

posthumous poems produced contemporaneously with the series from Alastor to Hellas;-this second chronology to be followed by a third, of smaller posthumous poems still occupying the same period, and grouped under separate years, as Mrs. Shelley grouped them; and the translations to be kept apart, and placed at the end of the mature works, before the appendix of Juvenilia.

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 lifetime, 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.