Percy Bysoke SHELLEY'S PROSE IN THE BODLEIAN MANUSCRIPTS EDITED WITH CORRECTIONS, ADDITIONS, NOTES AND UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS By A. H. KOSZUL LONDON HENRY FROWDE 09-3-29 13 In proportion as the fame of Shelley becomes wider and more settled, the study of his life and writings more impartial and accurate, a desire to add, however so little, to the fullness and precision of his utterances may also be thought more pardonable. As early as 1824 Mrs. Shelley felt something of that insatiate spirit which sooner or later must worship his slightest relics, when she wrote, introducing the Posthumous Poems, 'I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader.' Though fastidious readers of Shelley have become less numerous, his editors may well repeat, with apologetic and melancholy humility, these most judicious words. For the time has come when the minutiae of the scholar are about the only fresh tribute which one can bring to a classical fane. This edition is intended as a sequel to Mr. C. D. Locock's valuable Examination of the verse included in the Bodleian MSS. at Oxford.1 But in this case, a full publication of the texts has been preferred to the less attractive form of a bare collation. No apology is needed for offering in such a book as this what might be called a genuine text as distinct from the correct text which an editor is often tempted to 'make up', rather than respect the accidental imperfections or the wilful singularities 1 Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1903. which variegate Shelley's grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Such peccadilloes and inconsistencies have their psychological value which the student would be reluctant to lose. And they are not so strange that the general reader might find the meaning of the author in any way obscured by the utmost editorial scrupulosity.1 Almost every one of these Essays and Fragments raises its own interesting questions of date, composition, manuscript authority, and biographical circumstances. For these, introductory notes have been prefixed. They can hardly claim to be always conclusive, but they may help to reach a more definite solution of the minor difficulties which still beset some of Shelley's prose. It is, no doubt, sufficient excuse for such discussions, that the slightest word spoken or written by that most spontaneous of poets is full of personal import, and that the smallest alteration of phrase, the most hurried little note, the mere feverishness of the writing, the very gaps of a first draft, betray something of the thrilling sensibility and the swiftness of response of the unearthly singer. I cannot do less-I wish I could do more-than here record my deep obligations to M. J. Chevalier, agrégé de l'Université, and Mr. R. W. Chapman, M.A. for help given in the revision of the proof sheets and in the improvement of various points of detail. Yet some additional punctuation, inserted within due brackets, has been thought indispensable, and the weird Shelleyan thier for their has been discarded all the more decisively as it was neither consistently used nor always clearly written by Shelley. |