(1) PAGE 14. ALASTOR; OR

THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

Preface. For the concluding paragraph see editor's note (1) on The Daemon of the World: Part I. (2) PAGE 20. Conducts, O Sleep, to thy, etc. (1. 219.) The Shelley texts, 1816, 1824, 1839, have Conduct here, which Forman and Dowden retain. The suggestion that Shelley may have written 'death's blue vaults' (1. 216) need not, in the face of 'the dark gate of death' (1. 211), be seriously considered; Conduct must, therefore, be regarded as a fault in grammar. That Shelley actually wrote Conduct is not impossible, for his grammar is not seldom faulty (see, for instance, Revolt of Islam, Dedication, 1. 60); but it is most improbable that he would have committed a solecism so striking both to eye and ear. Rossetti and Woodberry print Conducts, etc. The final s is often a vanishing quantity in Shelley's MSS. Or perhaps the compositor's hand was misled by his eye, which may have dropped on the words, Conduct to thy, etc., seven lines above.

(3) PAGE 22.

Of wave ruining on ware, etc. (1. 327.) For ruining the text of P.W., 1839, both edd., has runningan overlooked misprint, surely, rather than a conjectural emendation. For an example of ruining as an intransitive (='falling in ruins,' or, simply, falling in streams') see Paradise Lost, vi. 867-869:

Hell heard th' insufferable noise,
Hell saw

Heav'n ruining from Heav'n, and would have fled Affrighted, etc.

Ruining, in the sense of 'streaming,' 'trailing,' occurs in Coleridge's Melancholy: a Fragment (Sibylline Leaves, 1817, p. 262):Where ruining ivies propped the ruins steep

Melancholy first appeared in The Morning Post, Dec. 7, 1797, where, through an error identical with that here assumed in the text of 1839, running appears in place of ruining-the word intended, and doubtless written, by Coleridge.

(4) PAGE 22.

Line 349. With Mr. Stopford Brooke, the editor substitutes here a colon for the full stop which, in edd. 1816, 1824, and 1839, follows ocean. Forman and Dowden retain the full stop; Rossetti and Woodberry substitute a semicolon. (5) PAGE 26.

And nought but gnarled roots of
ancient pines

Branchless and blasted, clenched
with grasping roots
The unwilling soil.

(11. 530-532.)

Edd. 1816, 1824, and 1839 have roots (1. 530)-a palpable misprint, the probable origin of which may be seen in the line which follows. Rossetti conjectures trunks, but stumps or stems may have been Shelley's word.

(6) PAGE 26.

Lines 543-548. This somewhat involved passage is here reprinted exactly as it stands in the ed. prin., save for the comma after and, 1. 546, first introduced by Dowden, 1890. The construction and meaning are fully discussed by Forman (P. W. of Shelley, ed. 1876, vol. i. pp. 39, 40), Stopford

Brooke (Poems of Shelley, G. T.S., 1880, p. 323), Dobell (Alastor, &c., Facsimile Reprint, 2nd ed. 1887, pp. xxii-xxvii), and Woodberry (Complete P. W. of Shelley, 1893, vol. i. p. 413).

(1) PAGE 31.

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM The revised text (1818) of this poem is given here, as being that which Shelley actually published. In order to reconvert the text of The Revolt of Islam into that of Laon and Cythna, the reader must make the following alterations in the text. At the end of the Preface add :

'In the personal conduct of my Hero and Heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavoured to strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent, are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote1. Nothing indeed can be more mis

1 The sentiments connected with and characteristic of this circumstance have no personal reference to the Writer.-[Shelley's Note.]

chievous than many actions, innocent in themselves, which might bring down upon individuals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude.'

P. 58, II. xxi. 1:

I had a little sister whose fair eyes P. 59, II. xxv. 2:

To love in human life, this sister sweet,

P. 64, III. i. 1: What thoughts had sway over my sister's slumber

P. 64, III. i. 3:

As if they did ten thousand years outnumber

P. 78, IV. xxx. 6: And left it vacant-'twas her brother's face

P. 89, V. xlvii. 5:

I had a brother once, but he is dead!-

P. 99, VI. xxiv. 8: My own sweet sister looked), with joy did quail,

P. 100, VI. xxxi. 6: The common blood which ran within our frames,

P. 102, VI. xxxix. 6–9: With such close sympathies, for to each other

Had high and solemn hopes, the gentle might

Of earliest love, and all the

thoughts which smother

Cold Evil's power, now linked a sister and a brother.

P. 102, VI. xl. 1: And such is Nature's modesty, that those

P. 115, VIII. iv. 9: Dream ye that God thus builds for man in solitude?

P. 115, VIII. v. 1: What then is God? Ye mock your selves and give

P. 115, VIII. vi. 1: What then is God? Some moonstruck sophist stood

P. 115, VIII. vi. 8, 9: And that men say God has appointed Death

On all who scorn his will to wreak immortal wrath.

P. 115, VIII. vii. 1–4: Men say they have seen God, and heard from God,

Or known from others who have known such things,

And that his will is all our law, a rod

To scourge us into slaves-that
Priests and Kings

P. 116, VIII. viii. 1: And it is said, that God will punish wrong;

P. 116, VIII. viii. 3, 4: And his red hell's undying snakes among

Will bind the wretch on whom he fixed a stain

P. 117, VIII. xiii. 3, 4: For it is said God rules both high and low,

And man is made the captive of his brother;

P. 123, IX. xiii. 8:

To curse the rebels. To their God did they

P. 123, IX. xiv. 6

By God, and Nature, and Necessity.

P. 124, IX. xv. The stanza contains ten lines-ll. 4-7 as follows:

There was one teacher, and must ever be,

They said, even God, who, the necessity

Of rule and wrong had armed against mankind,

His slave and his avenger there to

be;

P. 134, X. xxviii. 1: O God Almighty! thou alone hast power.

P. 135, X. xxxi. 1: And Oromaze, and Christ, and Mahomet,

P. 135, X. xxxii. 1: He was a Christian Priest from whom it came

P. 135, X. xxxii. 4 :

To quell the rebel Atheists; a dire guest

P. 135, X. xxxii. 9: To wreak his fear of God in vengeance on mankind

P. 135, X. xxxiv. 5, 6: His cradled Idol, and the sacrifice Of God to God's own wrath-that Islam's creed

P. 138, X. xlv. 8: Men brought their atheist kindred to appease

P. 138, X. xlvii. 6:

The threshold of God's throne, and it was she!

P. 142, XI. xvi. 1:

Ye turn to God for aid in your distress;

P. 144, XI. xxv. 7: Swear by your dreadful God.''We swear, we swear!' P. 146, XII. x. 9: Truly for self, thus thought that Christian Priest indeed,

P. 146, XII. xi. 9:

A woman? God has sent his other victim here.

P. 146, XII. xii. 6-8: Will I stand up before God's golden throne,

And cry, O Lord, to thee did I betray

An Atheist; but for me she would have known

P. 150, XII. xxix. 4:

In torment and in fire have Atheists gone;

P. 150, XII. xxx. 4: How Atheists and Republicans can die;

(2) PAGE 39. Aught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee (Dedic. vi. 9).

So Rossetti; the Shelley edd., 1818 and 1839, read clog, which is retained by Forman, Dowden, and Woodberry. Rossetti's happy conjecture, clod, seems to Forman 'a doubtful emendation, as Shelley may have used clog in its [figurative]sense of weight, encumbrance.' -Hardly, as here, in a poetical figure that would be to use a metaphor within a metaphor. Shelley compares his heart to a concrete object: if clog is right, the word must be taken in one or other of its two recognized

:

literal senses- -'a wooden shoe,' or 'a block of wood tied round the neck or to the leg of a horse or a dog.' Again, it is of others' hearts, not of his own, that Shelley here deplores the icy coldness and weight; besides, how could he appropriately describe his heart as a weight or encumbrance upon the free play of impulse and emotion, seeing that for Shelley, above all men, the heart was itself the main source and spring of all feeling and action? That source, he complains, has been dried upits emotions desiccated-by the crushing impact of other hearts, heavy, hard and cold as stone. His heart has become withered and barren, like a lump of earth parched with frost-a lifeless clod.' Compare Summer and

Winter, lines 11-15:

'It was a winter such as when birds die

In the deep forests; and the fishes lie

Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes

Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes

A wrinkled clod as hard as brick;' etc., etc.

The word revived suits well with clod; but what is a revived clog? Finally, the first two lines of the following stanza (vii.) seem decisive in favour of Rossetti's word.

If any one wonders how a misprint overlooked in 1818 could, after twenty-one years, still remain undiscovered in 1839, let him consider the case of clog in Lamb's parody on Southey's and Coleridge's Dactyls (Lamb, Letter to Coleridge, July 1, 1796):—

Sorely your Dactyls do drag

along limp-footed; Sad is the measure that hangs a clog round 'em so, etc., etc.