The original of this portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley has, to gether with a portrait of Shelley, just been bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery,

London, by Lady

Shelley. It was painted by Richard Rothwell when Mrs. Shelley was forty-four years of age, twenty years after the death of

the poet. 28

QUEEN MAB

A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM

WITH NOTES

ECRASEZ L'INFAME!

Correspondance de Voltaire.

Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante

Trita solo, juvat integros accedere fonteis;

Atque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores.

Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musa. Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.

LUCRETIUS, lib. iv.

Δὸς ποῦ στῶ, καὶ κόσμον κινήσω.

ARCHIMEDES.

Queen Mab was issued at London during the summer of 1813, in an edition of two hundred and fifty copies, under Shelley's name as author and printer. The text was probably composed within the year preceding, but earlier materials seem to have been embodied in it. The volume was privately circulated, apparently to the number of not more than seventy copies. The poem was afterwards revised by Shelley, the first two and last two sections being recast and some changes made in the intervening part; of this revised text the first two sections were published by Shelley with Alastor in 1816, as a fragment, under the title, The Daemon of the World, and the rest, which remained in MS., was published by Forman in 1876; the whole is printed in the present edition under FRAGMENTS, The Daemon of the World. The usual text of Queen Mab is that of Shelley, 1813. Mrs. Shelley's, 18391, omits several passages; but these, with an immaterial and probably accidental exception, were restored in her next edition, 18392. Rossetti, 1870, constructed a new text by dovetailing, according to his own judgment, the original and revised texts published by Shelley, Forman's additions not being then available. The history of the poem, together with Shelley's Notes, will be found in the NOTES at the end of this volume.