If, therefore, we admit at all that Shelley was a careless writer, we must guard such admission round about with saving clauses, and clearly understand in what sense the intrinsically damaging word careless is used. That he would have done himself no credit before a Chinese board of examiners in pen-craft and orthography and the punctilio of smart composition, may be safely admitted; and those who would fain fit his compositions for presentation before such a board are not qualified by natural proclivity for the labour of editing the works of a great poet. But that he was careless as an artist in any sense in which it behoved such an one to be careful, is amply refuted by the fact for which Mr. Garnett vouches in the following striking paragraph from the Relics of Shelley, pages XI and XII:

They [the pieces in the Relics] appear to have been hitherto overlooked, for the reason that must also serve as an excuse for the imperfect manner in which they are even now presented to the public-the extremely confused state of these books [Shelley's manuscript note-books], and the equal difficulty of deciphering and connecting their contents. Being written in great haste, and frequently with pencil, the hand-writing is often indistinct of itself; and rendered far more so by erasures and interlineations ad infinitum. Shelley appears to have composed with his pen in his hand, and to have corrected as fast as he wrote; hence a page full of writing frequently yields only two or three available lines, which must be painfully disentangled from a chaos of obliterations. Much that at first sight

wears the appearance of novelty, proves on inspection to be merely a variation of something already published; and sometimes the case is reversed, as in the Prologue to Hellas, so buried in the MS. of that drama (which has in itself on the average ten lines effaced for one retained), as to be only discoverable or separable upon very close scrutiny." Mr. Garnett adds a note to the effect that, when Shelley wrote for the printer, his handwriting was "singularly neat and beautiful;" and it seems to me that the proportion of lines rejected and lines retained in his rough drafts, taken in connection with the quality of his "printer's copy," is the best possible proof of due care. As regards the statement that his drafts for the printer were beautifully written, I can confirm that from the evidence of the copy of Julian and Maddalo which he sent from Italy to Hunt, to have published: not only is the writing most careful and beautiful; but the punctuation is at once eminently characteristic and peculiar, and generally adequate and accurate from the poet's own point of view. This is still more noteworthy, inasmuch as Shelley wrote the poem out with his own hand twice at least, in ink. One copy is in a book among those in Sir Percy Shelley's possession; the other, on what seem to be the gilt-edged leaves of a pocket-book, is that already referred to, and of which a specimen will be given in fac-simile in the volume containing the poem. I may say in the mean time that this manuscript supplies the missing line in one instance of rhymelessness which has been hitherto among the items of

the count against Shelley for small sins of omission and commission.

That the confused note-books described by Mr. Garnett imply care, not the reverse, must be evident to any one who thinks for a moment: these were Shelley's means of putting his thoughts on record at once as they came burning upon him; and they were never meant for any one's guidance but his own. It was a need inherent in the fiery exaltation of his lyric mood that the result should be set down at once; and, for mere temporary memoranda, it mattered not how intricately one poem might be blended with another. He knew how to disentangle and write them fairly, or dictate them to Mrs. Shelley; and, had he lived to have the slightest suspicion how we should venerate every scrap of paper bearing the impress of his hand and pen, he would have taken ample care to place these note-books beyond our reach.

The subject of Shelley's method of composition, a right understanding of which is the first requisite for any one aspiring to edit his works, would be a very fruitful theme for prolonged discussion. In one of the keenest and at the same time most enthusiastic of recent contributions to Shelley literature this theme is very happily touched upon, I refer to an article in The Edinburgh Review for April 1871, written à propos of Mr. Rossetti's edition of Shelley; an article which I am authorized to connect with the name of Professor Thomas S. Baynes of St. Andrew's University, and which I cannot do better than quote.

"It is," says Professor Baynes, "a curious psychological problem how it is that amongst modern poets Shelley should be distinguished by his comparative neglect of minute verbal accuracy; how it comes to pass that the text even of poems which he himself carefully revised should be so extremely imperfect." Negligence, care, imperfection! This is a strange association of words; but in that association Professor Baynes seems to me to go right home to the facts of the case. The problem, he says, is, how it happens that in the poems which Shelley himself revised "there are grammatical laxities and metrical oversights, which are not only stumbling-blocks to readers of ordinary cultivation, but the despair of acute and accomplished verbal critics.

"This uncritical negligence, the want of minute accuracy in the details of his verse, seems to us intimately connected with the whole character of Shelley's mind, and especially with the lyrical sweep and intensity of his poetical genius. He had an intellect of the rarest delicacy and analytical strength, that intuitively perceived the most remote analogies, and discriminated with spontaneous precision the finest shades of sensibility, the subtilest differences of perception and emotion. He possessed a swift soaring and prolific imagination that clothed every thought and feeling with imagery in the moment of its birth, and instinctively read the spiritual meanings of material symbols. His fineness of sense was so exquisite that eye and ear and touch became, as it were, organs and inlets not

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merely of sensitive apprehension, but of intellectual beauty and ideal truth. Every nerve in his slight but vigorous frame seemed to vibrate in unison with the deeper life of nature in the world around him, and, like the wandering harp, he was swept to music by every breath of material beauty, every gust of poetic emotion. Above all, he had a strength of intellectual passion and a depth of ideal sympathy that in moments of excitement fused all the powers of his mind into a continuous stream of creative energy, and gave the stamp of something like inspiration. to all the higher productions of his muse. His very method of composition reflects these characteristics of his mind. He seems to have been urged by a sort of irresistible impulse to write, and displayed a vehement and passionate absorption in the work that recalls the old traditions of poetical frenzy and divine possession. His conceptions crowded so thickly upon him, were embodied in such exquisite verbal forms, and so enriched by illustrations flashed from remote and multiplied centres of association, that while the fever lasted his whole nature was carried impetuously forward on a full tide of mingled music and imagery. From this exuberance of poetical power some of his critics have reproached him with accumulating image upon image without pausing to select, discriminate, or contrast them. And it is no doubt true that there are passages in which metaphors and similies are heaped on each other in almost dazzling profusion. But even in his most opulent and ornate descriptions