In the earlier version, the final lines are For thou art good and dear and kind, The forest ever green, But less of peace in S -'s mind, Than calm in waters seen. Mrs. Shelley never filled in the blank with Shelley's name; and Mr. Trelawny's MS. shews simply a blank; but Mr. Rossetti was certainly right in deeming that it was time "to supply the right and only possible name.' In the last line but two Mr. Rossetti substitutes And for The, and in the last line water for waters, quoting the MS. as authority for the second change only. I leave the passage as in the collected editions. 2 This poem was subjected to a curious inversion. The second part of it (lines 43 to 90) first appeared in The Athenæum, in 1832, in Medwin's series of Shelley Papers; but the first part (lines 1 to 42) was not published till the next year,-and then not in the collected volume called The Shelley Papers, wherein it has no place, but in Fraser's Magazine for January. The second part, Medwin gave with the simple heading With a Guitar: the first part appeared in Fraser under the title To A. B., with a Guitar: Mrs. Shelley connected the two portions in 1839, under the name To a Lady with a Guitar; and Mr. Rossetti, with Mr. Trelawny's autograph MS. of the poem before him, renamed it With a Guitar, to Jane. In an editorial note adverting to the interruption of The Shelley Papers, "by the death of Scott, and the honours due to his memory," The Athenæum gave utterance to the following expressions: "It is not, perhaps, for us to speak of their value; but we cannot in the pride of our hearts, but claim for the following Lines, and the Invocation to Misery, which appeared in a preceding number, the honour of a place-the one among the most sublime, and the other, the most beautiful of his poems." The editorial note to the first part, in Fraser's Magazine, was "A. B., the lady to whom these agreeable and melodious verses are addressed, is still alive. We therefore withhold her name." More than fortyfour years have passed; and "A. B." is still alive; and now everyone knows her as the immortalized widow of Edward Williams,-the Magnetic lady," and the "Jane" so often referred to in verse and in prose. As to the means by which this part of the poem got into Fraser, we have not far to seek for a clue, as Medwin was a contributor to the Magazine at the time, a translation of The Seven before Thebes, by him, being in the April number of the same year. I do not think it likely that Mrs. Shelley contributed it, because, in making her Of him who is the slave of thee, In which thou canst, and only thou, And, too intense, is turned to pain; Is not sadder in her cell first collection (1839) of Shelley's poems she seems to have had no knowledge of it, giving only the second part. In the second edition she gave the whole, having, I presume, had her attention called to this outlying half poem. 1 So in all editions known to me; but in the Magazine we read the line thus Of love, that never can be spoken. This seems to me quite likely to be a reading of Shelley's own, though Mr. Rossetti gives no account of such a variation as shewn by Mr. Trelawny's MS. For an extended account of the circumstances under which the poem 5 10 15 20 25 was composed, and of the style of the first draft, see Mr. Trelawny's Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (London, 1858), pp. 67 to 75. 2 In the Magazine, there is quoted, as a note to this passage, a parallel passage from Milton's Samson Agonistes: And silent as the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Whether this is Shelley's confession of indebtedness, or a note by the Magazine editor, I have no certain knowledge; but I presume the latter, especially as Mrs. Shelley gives no such note. 40 35 30 When you live again on earth, Your course of love, and Ariel still Has tracked your steps, and served your will; This is all remembered not; And now, alas! the poor sprite is From you he only dares to crave, The artist who this idol wrought, The woods were in their winter sleep, From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 1 In The Shelley Papers and in the but woods in the second edition. first edition of 1839 we read winds; The artist wrought this1 loved Guitar, In language gentle as thine own;2 The murmuring of summer seas, And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 1 In The Shelley Papers and first edition of 1839, that; but this in the second edition. 2 So in the second edition of 1839, and onwards; but its own in the first, and in The Shelley Papers. 75 80 85 3 In The Shelley Papers and the first edition of 1839, in; but on in the second edition. It keeps its highest, holiest tone TO JANE.2 00 90 I. THE keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them, The guitar was tinkling, But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again. II. As the moon's soft splendour O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given In The Shelley Papers and the collected editions from 1839 onwards the final line is For our beloved friend alone. Mr. Palgrave, in The Golden Treasury, altered our to one, an ingenious but wholly fallacious change, as the MS. shews the line given in the text. This poem, wanting the first stanza, first appeared in The Athenæum among The Shelley Papers, under the title An Ariette for Music. To a Lady Singing to her Accompaniment on the Guitar. In reprinting the Papers in book form, Medwin added a note to the effect that this Ariette had been "very beautifully set to Music by Mr. Henry Lincoln." In the first edition of 1839 Mrs. Shelley reproduced Med win's imperfect version, under his title. In the second she added the first stanza and gave the simple title To omitting the name in the third line. The name Jane, however, occurs both in title and in text, in the MS. in Shelley's writing which Mr. Trelawny placed at the disposal of Mr. Rossetti for the purposes of that gentleman's edition. 3 In Medwin's version and the first edition of 1839 we read So thy voice most tender Similarly in the next stanza we read thy for your in the 5th line; and in stanza IV thy sweet voice instead of your dear voice. |