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SONNET.1

OZYMANDIAS.

I MET a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

1 In Mr. Middleton's Shelley and His Writings (Vol. II, p. 71) we are told that Shelley, Keats, and Leigh Hunt "tried to excel each other in writing a sonnet on the Nile;" and he adds that Shelley's Ozymandias was one of these." He gives no authority for this latter statement; and I presume it rests upon the fact that Lord Houghton, in his Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, appends the Ozymandias Sonnet, with those of Keats and Hunt, to the letter in which Keats recounts the

friendly strife. Lord Houghton (Vol. 1, p. 99) merely introduces the three Sonnets with the words, "These are the three sonnets on the Nile here alluded to, and very characteristic they are." At all events it is to be remarked that this is not a sonnet on the Nile, and that, among the Leigh Hunt MSS. placed at my disposal by Mr. Townshend Mayer, there is a sonnet in Shelley's handwriting addressed "To the Nile," which will duly appear in this edition of his

works.

APPENDIX TO VOL. I.

CONTENTS OF THE APPENDIX.

I. Further Particulars as to Laon and Cythna, usually known as The Revolt of Islam.

II. The Copy of Laon and Cythna worked upon by Shelley to change it

into The Revolt of Islam.

III. Extract from Advertisements at end of Rosalind and Helen, &c.

IV. On certain Words used by Shelley.

APPENDIX.

I.

FURTHER PARTICULARS AS TO "LAON AND CYTHNA," USUALLY KNOWN AS "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM."

IN the note forming page 80 of the present volume I have set down the outline of what is known to me concerning the bibliography of Shelley's longest work, Laon and Cythna, or, as it is usually called, The Revolt of Islam; but the whole history of the transaction whereby Laon and Cythna became The Revolt of Islam is so remarkable that I have thought it desirable to give in an appendix fuller details of a transformation which is, as far as I am aware, without parallel in the history of literature.

The late Thomas Love Peacock's version of this affair (valuable in virtue of his known intimacy with the poet, and also on account of the character which he has generally borne for unswerving veracity1), first appeared in Fraser's Magazine for January, 1860, in one of a series of papers

1 I am of course not unaware of the bearing which my friend Mr. Garnett's masterly examination of some of Peacock's statements may be held to have on this word; but I can imagine that those statements may seem suspicious, and yet have been made in

perfect good faith. They form no part of the present subject; but whoever wishes to go into the question of Peacock's veracity should consult the 3rd vol. of his Works, and Mr. Garnett's Relics of Shelley.

on Shelley which have since been reprinted in the author's collected works, and which are full of valuable and interesting details. According to Peacock, Shelley wrote Laon and Cythna "chiefly on a seat on a high prominence in Bisham Wood, where he passed whole mornings with a blank book and a pencil;" and this statement does not diverge materially from that of Mrs. Shelley, in her note on The Revolt of Islam, that "the poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country." Peacock's account goes on thus:

"This work when completed was printed under the title of Laon and Cythna. In this poem he had carried the expression of his opinions, moral, political, and theological, beyond the bounds of discretion. The terror which, in those days of persecution of the press, the perusal of the book inspired in Mr. Ollier, the publisher, induced him to solicit the alteration of many passages which he had marked. Shelley was for some time inflexible; but Mr. Ollier's refusal to publish the poem as it was, backed by the advice of all his friends, induced him to submit to the required changes. Many leaves were cancelled, and it was finally published as The Revolt of Islam. Of Laon and Cythna only three copies had gone forth. One of these had found its way to The Quarterly Review, and the opportunity was readily seized of pouring out on it one of the most malignant effusions1 of the odium theologicum that ever appeared even in those days, and in that periodical."

On this paragraph I have to observe (1) that altered passages of the poem are marked in pencil in the copy from which the text has been edited in the present volume, so

1 The article in The Quarterly Review is of no intrinsic value or importance whatever; but for those who are curi

2

ous in such matters it may be stated that it is in No. 42 (September, 1819). 2 See appendix II, on that copy.

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