ness the printer's reader, who goes over the whole of the proofs with the manuscript, should see that the proofs are 'according to copy," the fact is that this is seldom if ever scrupulously done when the instructions are to "follow copy" and let the author revise,-it being assumed that he will find out all the deviations from his manuscript.

Now the original edition of Laon and Cythna has to me all the appearance of a book printed under strict injunctions to "follow copy," and then revised by an author without an accurate eye for trivial detail. Such an author we know Shelley was; and when we come to consider the painful circumstances under which he worked at that time, we should be surprised at finding the book anything but inaccurate and inconsistent. If my hypothesis be correct, he would never discover half the mistakes of his own making which had been put into type by the compositor who would "follow copy," and which he would have wished to correct, or half the instances in which the compositor who would not "follow copy" had altered something which seemed to the compositor a mistake, but which was really the author's deliberate intention.

Had I known this as a fact, I could have altered, securely, much that will be found annoying in the minutely reproduced text which I have given; but as it is a mere hypothesis I could not act upon it, though I feel tolerably confident that it is the real explanation of the infamously printed book in question.

On the following page is cancel-leaves, which gave so

printed a summary of the much pain to Shelley, and

have caused so much trouble to all who have had anything to do with the book.

H. B. F.

"

LIST of leaves removed from Laon and Cythna and reprinted with alterations in order to convert that book into The Revolt of Islam.

Title-page.

Pages XXI and XXII (the end of the Preface).1

XXXIII and XXXIV (the fly-title Laon and Cythna, with quotation

to XXI
XXV

of Canto II,

III

XXXI

...

XLVII

XXV

XXXIII

...

179

XVI

XIX

XXII

XXV

XXVI

XXIX

1 Mr. Rossetti (p. cr of his Memoir) says the changes affected of the preface" in case of misconception, I may add that nothing in the preface is cancelled or altered except the final paragraph, which simply disappears with its footnote. See pp. 97 & 98.

II.

SHELLEY'S REVISED COPY OF "LAON AND CYTHNA."

In the foregoing Appendix on Laon and Cythna and The Revolt of Islam, it has been stated that the copy from which the text has been edited in the present edition was presumably the one referred to by Peacock as having been marked by Mr. Ollier at the places considered by him objectionable; and, as it is certainly the copy worked upon by Shelley to meet the publisher's views, I do not see that there can be any reasonable doubt on the other point. The foot-notes, throughout the poem, furnish pretty full particulars of this most interesting relic, which it has been my good fortune to bring to light; but I think it well to give in the form of an appendix a less disjointed account of a volume which is really an important historical document, if it be true that our greatest poets are our greatest and most influential men, or, as Shelley himself puts it, that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

preach with a view to sufferings of humanity, most earnestly to leave

I know of few incidents in the history of literature more closely bordering on the tragic, without being actually tragical, than this dead-set made upon a great poet, who conceived that he had a gospel to the alleviation of the wrongs and and who, as a dying man, desired some substantial record of what, as he deemed, it was not to be permitted him to go on delivering in person. That Shelley was not really a dying man, but only thought so by himself and certain others whose opinion ought to have been worth something, does not affect the extreme painfulness of the situation: according to the letter of

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VI.

"What thenie God? Some moon-struck sophist stood

Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown

Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood
The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,
His likeness in the world's vast mirror shewn ;
And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith

Nursed by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon, that Power has

And that men say, Godhasappointed Death A

On all who scorn i

it's laws

#Men

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VII.

ave seen Gedynndykaard-from-Great

things,

Orknown from others
these who have known such this

Lakat his will is all our lawye

Tascourge-veinte slaves that Priests and Kings,
Custom, domestic sway, aye, all that brings
Man's free-born soul beneath the oppressor's heel,

Are his strong ministers, and that the stings

Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,

Tho' truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.

say

chosen

that they themselves have head,

Or known from other who have know such.
A Strade a

Worlds an invisible rod

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Jeen,

earth & Hearn Settoren