The punctuation has been revised. Shelley did not—either in composing, where the points often represent merely the pauses of his mind and not of the sense, or in preparing for the press, where he relied much on Mrs. Shelley's copying though he revised it give such attention to punctuation as to make it possible or desirable to follow his own hand; and, in such poems as were most carefully written in this respect, he practised a usage of his time that is perplexing or misleading to the ordinary reader accustomed to the habits of the press to-day. The colon and the dash were favorite points then, but are now less employed; and though the change of fashion is most marked in these examples, it is pervasive. Shelley's points, however, have been retained, as a rule, in cases where a rhetorical effect was plainly aimed at and is still secured by the points he used, and also where the melodic time or flow of the line is perceptibly affected by points that serve no other purpose. In all other cases such punctuation is employed as best discloses the structure or clarifies the sense, according to present usage. I have endeavored, nevertheless, not to depart unnecessarily from the custom of the early editions. Similarly, the spelling has been modernized. Shelley often misspelled; and, though at times he used by choice the archaic form of some particular words, his practice in regard to these is variable and in

many cases not to be determined beyond doubt. Such archaisms seem to me to have no poetic value in his poems. The simplest decision, therefore, was to employ modern forms throughout. In the matter of the use of capitals, inasmuch as they color the line perceptibly and were a means of exclamation and emphasis to Shelley, I have followed his habit, endeavoring only to make it consistent within its own limits.

The verbal text offers less difficulty. I have not corrected grammatical errors except in rare and obvious cases, where the jar of disagreement of subject and verb, for example, is in its effect like a gross misprint, and may have been so; neither have I made or adopted metrical corrections. In the choice of readings, those which seem best established have been incorporated in the text; but where variations occur in the manuscripts, the manuscript has not in all cases been given precedence of a printed text, nor a later manuscript of an earlier one, and this course has been taken on the ground that the mere existence of a manuscript reading or correction does not carry with it the conclusion that the poet had finally adopted the alteration. In fact it is common enough in the works of the poets to find the later revision rejected and the original reading maintained when true decision had to be made, on publication. In several instances, therefore, the first forms of well

known lyrics have been retained in place of inferior versions coming from other manuscripts than those used by Shelley or Mrs. Shelley.

All material verbal variations of texts, manuscripts and transcripts are given in the footnotes, the first appearance of the variation being there cited; and, together with these, such conjectural readings as are at all to be considered. The state of all standard editions in respect to these readings is given in the additional textual notes under NOTES, where also every verbal variation, material or immaterial (except misprints, which are noted only incidentally), is recorded there also. Variations in punctuation are noted whenever material to the sense, and additional conjectural readings, not important enough to be seriously regarded; but conjectures that aim merely to correct the rhyming of Shelley are wholly omitted. I have intended thus to include every variation in word or pointing and every conjectural emendation, except in rhyming, that could be accounted, even by an exacting student, as of the slightest real interest. My own notes in criticism of these variations are as few and brief as possible, because mere inspection is in most cases sufficient to decide the better reading.

The NOTES, including the brief introduction to the longer poems and the matter at the end of each volume, are meant to give the history of each poem

so far as it is known. The method followed consists in quoting from the sources of information, which are in the main Mrs. Shelley's Notes and Shelley's correspondence. The value and interest of Mrs. Shelley's Notes are so great that they cannot be spared; and though some of the purely biographical portions have been omitted, all that is material in them, in information or illustration, has been included. Shelley's correspondence, so far as it bears on the poems, is also given with practical completeness, though here and there a passage may have been overlooked; and, read in sequence, these extracts afford the best history of Shelley's purely literary activity, set off by itself, and exhibit the state of his mind with regard to his successive poems with a fulness unusual in literary history. So plainly is this the case that the literary side of his career is passed over in the accompanying MEMOIR as lightly as possible, and the narrative is confined to the external events of his life and the impressions of his personality upon others. Notes upon the sources of the poems, or in illustration or criticism of them, have been excluded; at some future time they may be furnished in a separate publication. The prose prefaces and notes are revised, obvious errors being silently corrected, and no account of variations of their text is given, except upon important points. Here nothing is attempted beyond the personal biogra

phy of Shelley, a complete account of the text of his poems, and the documentary history of each of them.

An editor of Shelley is under great obligations to his predecessors, which, however, it is not easy always to distribute among them. The labors of Mrs. Shelley in her editions are worthy of more recognition than she has received, and her texts of more consideration; these, with Shelley's original editions, are the foundation and mass of the whole. The labors of Dr. Garnett upon the chaotic manuscripts at Boscombe stand in the next place because of the invaluable additions thus made to the poems. Mr. Rossetti first submitted the text to careful editing, and brought to light much information in regard to it, and much new matter, and greatly stimulated its study; but he printed the text with a liberty of revision from which he receded in his later edition, to which all textual references here are made. Mr. Forman, embodying the reaction against Mr. Rossetti's liberal revision, stood for literal adherence to the originals, and was especially of service in maintaining the integrity of the text, which by the Hunt and other manuscripts he restored in important instances, while his longcontinued researches cleared up many details of bibliography. Dr. Dowden's service was mainly in correcting the text of the juvenile poems in some details and increasing their number by the