shakes with astonishment my most superficial faculties. Compare for this effect the countenance as seen in front and as seen from under the left arm, moving to the right and towards the statue, until the line of the forehead shall coincide with that of the wrist.

78

NOTE

ON

THE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH SONNET

OF SHAKESPEARE.1

THAT famous passage in that pathetic sonnet in which, addressing a dear friend, he complains of his own situation as an actor, and says that his nature is (I quote from memory)

"Subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."

Observe these images, how simple they are, and yet animated with what intense poetry and passion.

This note from the Relics of Shelley has already been reprinted in a foot-note in Vol. II of the Poetical Works, as Mr. Garnett informs us that it is written upon the original MS. of the Preface to The Cenci. It is not certain that it is a cancelled passage of that Preface, and it may suitably be set among the prose fragments of Shelley, with the sonnet to which it refers :

O for my sake do you with fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means which public manners

breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a
brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the Dyer's hand:
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink
Potions of Eysel 'gainst my strong infec-
tion,

No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction.
Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

"TRUE KNOWLEDGE LEADS TO LOVE."1

TRUE knowledge leads to love, The meanest of our fellow beings containes qualities which, if developed, we must admire and adore. The selfish, the hollow and the base, alone despise and much.

This characteristic jotting is from the Note-book containing the Notes on Sculpture. Shelley seems to have blended into one text the words from Wordsworth's Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, which stand at the head of this note, and

hate.

To them I have erred

the expression "the meanest thing
that feels" in that beautiful qua-
train which he extracted from
Hart-Leap Well, and commended
to the author's notice in Peter Bell
the Third. See Poetical Works,
Vol. III, p. 215.

FRAGMENT

OF A

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW."

SIR, I observe in the Sept. No. of the Review, which

the author of that article, after depreciating the merits of a poem written by me, asserts that what "he now knows to the disadvantage of my personal character affords an unanswerable comment on the text either of

his review or my poem." I hereby call upon the author of that article, or you as the responsible agent, publicly to produce your proofs, or, as you have thrust yourself forward to deserve the character of a slanderer, to acquiesce also in .

1 This fragment of a draft letter (for I have no ground for supposing such a letter to have been actually finished and sent) is from Mr. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, where it is assigned to the year 1819. Leigh Hunt appears to have taken up the matter referred to in this fragment,

and to have noticed in The Examiner (October 10, 1819) the attack of the Quarterly. Shelley's letter to Hunt adverting to this subject will be found in its place in Vol. IV of this edition. Its date is the 2nd of November, 1819.

こ

UNA FAVOLA.

PROSE. VOL. III.

G