LIST OF LEAVES REMOVED FROM LAON AND CYTHNA TO CONVERT IT INTO THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. PREFACE. BY THE EDITOR. THE main object of this edition of the Poetical Works of Shelley is to put within the reach of students and the public generally as near an approximation as may be to the text that the poet intended to issue. This is a more than ordinarily difficult task,—and not from any lack of materials, for there is a mass of material extant, astonishing when we consider the vicissitudes to which Shelley's works were subjected while he was alive and for some time after his death. The difficulty is in deciding what shall be the authority for the text in each particular poem. In respect of books seen through the press by himself, there ought to be no difficulty whatever, except as regards isolated words and stops; but unfortunately he did not revise while at press one half of the entire bulk of his poetry, several of the volumes having been printed in England while he was abroad, and read through the press by friends. As regards the proportion of his mature works, from Alastor onwards, which had the advantage of his personal revision when in type, we should, I think, be making a liberal allowance if we assumed that he saw proofs of one third; and the largest of |