building, &c., happens to be present to it. Man is in his wildest state a social being'; a certain degree of civilization and refinement ever produces the want of sympathies still more intimate and complete; and the gratification of the senses is no longer all that is sought in sexual connexion.2 It soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment which we call love, which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not only of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative and sensitive, and which, when individualized becomes an imperious necessity, only to be satisfied by the complete or partial, actual or supposed fulfilment of its claims. This want grows more powerful in proportion to the developement which our nature receives from civilization, for man never ceases to be a social being. The sexual impulse, which is only one, and often a small part of those claims, serves, from its obvious and external nature, as a kind of type or expression of the rest, a common basis, an acknowledged and visible link. Still it is a claim which even derives a strength not its own from the accessory circumstances which surround it, and one which our nature thirsts to satisfy. To estimate this, observe the degree of intensity and durability of the love of the male towards the female in animals and savages; and acknowledge all the duration and intensity observable in the love of civilized beings beyond that of savages to be produced from other causes. In the Medwin reads animal for being; and the expression seems much too good for him to have invented,indeed more characteristic and profound than the expression of the text. 2 Here Medwin has doubtless toned Shelley down; for he reads instead of all that is sought in sexual connexion simply all that is desired, a phrase which does not explain itself. 3 The word actual is omitted by Medwin. 4 The Reflection on Love as given by Medwin ends here. susceptibility of the external senses there is probably no important difference. Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the human race, received the highest cultivation and refinement; whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the condition of savages. The gradations in the society of man present us with slow improvement in this respect. The Roman women held a higher consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of domestic economy and the education of their children. The practices and customs of modern Europe are essentially different from and incomparably less pernicious than either, however remote from what an enlightened mind cannot fail to desire as the future destiny of human beings. This [The translation of Ion, like that of The Banquet, was first given by Mrs. Shelley in the Essays &c. (1840); but, unlike the text of The Banquet, the text of Ion is not free from complications. Mrs. Shelley's remarks on this subject shew that she had to make good certain gaps in the translation as found among Shelley's papers; but her intention to indicate by means of brackets the portions not by Shelley was frustrated by what seems to be a printer's omission. Only two brackets appear in the printed texts of this dialogue; and these are both commencing brackets: the corresponding bracket, to shew where the interpolation ends, being in each case absent. Now I have in my possession a very careful transcript of this translation of Shelley's in the handwriting of the late Miss Claire Clairmont. Up to the point at which Mrs. Shelley's first bracket appears, or, strictly, up to the middle of the sentence preceding it, and within a few words of that point, the transcript and the printed text present no further variation than two transcribers of Shelley's rough MS. would be certain to produce by reason of alternative readings standing in the original. One word or phrase is often in Shelley's drafts placed above another without the rejected reading being struck through; and it is well known how large an option exists in making ready fair copies for the press from many of the poet's unfinished MSS. At the point where Mrs. Shelley indicates the beginning of the first gap, and for several pages, the transcript diverges so completely from the printed text, as to be clearly a different translation: then for half a dozen short speeches there is the same measure of correspondence as in the first portion; and then comes a gap in the version of the transcript and a note by Miss Clairmont that there is a gap. gap is represented by four pages of printed text without any indication that it was supplied by Mrs. Shelley. This again is followed by a dozen short speeches extending to Mrs. Shelley's second mark of the beginning of a supplied passage-a dozen speeches shewing, when compared with the transcript, a high average of variation, as if taken from very rough and difficult notes, but unquestionably the work of the same hand. Mrs. Shelley's second hiatus would seem to be one of three pages and a half; for, from the bracket indicating where it begins, to the end of the dialogue, where I presume it to close, the printed text and the transcript differ wholly. These facts seem to indicate very clearly that Miss Clairmont's transcript, which is old-looking enough to have been written during Shelley's life-time, was made when the rough MS. was less confused and imperfect than when Mrs. Shelley performed her labour of love; and I have no doubt that the transcript is wholly from Shelley's notes. If, as I also feel sure, Mrs. Shelley's text of that part where there is a gap in the transcript was not meant to be included within one of the missing brackets, it results that we have the whole dialogue from Shelley's hand, and that the imperfections found in 1839 were the result of the same fortuitous circumstances which left the text of Shelley's other works a matter of gradual growth. To avoid risk of loss on either hand I have carefully collated the two sources of the following revised text, and noted all variations of consequence. Not knowing positively how far the passages added by Mrs. Shelley extend, I have inserted as footnotes the whole of the two long passages which vary in toto from the transcript by Miss Clairmont. Throughout this, there are reference figures in the text evidently referring to notes on this dialogue; but whether Shelley wrote such notes, or only meant to write them, I know not. Miss Clairmont has left a space for the six verses quoted from the twenty-third book of the Iliad, -a space only just large enough for the original; and hence it may perhaps be fairly concluded that the extracts from Pope's translation, given in this and other cases in the printed editions, were inserted by Mrs. Shelley.-H. B. F.] ION, OR OF THE ILIAD; TRANSLATED FROM PLATO. PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE, SOCRATES and ION. SOCRATES. HAIL to thee O Ion! from whence returnest thou amongst us now ?-from thine own native Ephesus'? ION. No, Socrates; I come from Epidaurus and the feasts in honour of Esculapius. SOCRATES. Had the Epidaurians instituted a contest of rhapsody in honour of the God? The transcript starts with an inauspicious but not unnatural clerical error, happily obvious, spheres for Ephesus. To avoid repetition, it is to be understood that all phrases printed in italics in foot-notes to this dialogue, without remark, are variations found in Miss Clairmont's transcript. 2 Epidaurus of the Esculapians. Esculapians. 3 |