# Shelley, a poem, with other writings relating to Shelley, to which is added an essay on the poems of William Blake/Moxon's Cheap Edition of Shelley's Poems

MOXON'S CHEAP EDITION OF SHELLEY'S POEMS.
IN this gilt-edged and prettily bound octavo volume, comprising xxiv. and 616 pages of small but very clear print on a slightly toned paper, and published at 3s. 6d. we have, so far as I am aware, the first really good and fairly complete cheap edition of the original poems of Shelley. It contains a few short pieces and fragments not in the edition of Mrs. Shelley, including additional fragments of "Charles I.," and portions of a prologue to "Hellas;" and on the other hand, it omits a few of the shortest fragments which Mrs. Shelley gave; but both the additions and omissions are of very slight importance in relation to the main body of Shelley's works. The names of several persons, some mentioned in poems, and some to whom poems were addressed, which were left out in the previous editions, are in this one restored. The memoir is good as to the facts, but rather too off-hand in tone and style, as if written when the editor was outwearied with his task, or done hurriedly for an ephemeral periodical instead of gravely ​and slowly for a book which will endure. I think so highly of Mr. Rossetti's powers as a writer and critic, and believe that his sympathy with the noblest spirit of Shelley is so genuine and profound, that I cannot feel satisfied with less than his well-considered and well-wrought treatment of this subject, even when he is limited to a dozen pages.
When so much of the very best quality is offered at so low a price, one feels somewhat ashamed of asking for more, yet I cannot but express my wish that the "Defence of Poetry" (which, although in prose, should always accompany the other poems in verse), and the translation of the "Hymn to Mercury" had been included. This latter, indeed, may have been omitted through some misunderstanding, for the subject of the first of the full-page illustrations is taken from it. Having seen that this edition is complete (as regards the original poems, and with the exception of the minute fragments above mentioned, and some quite boyish pieces without value to the general reader), the important point remaining to consider is the quality of its text. About a year since Messrs. Moxon published in two volumes the poetical works of Shelley, the text carefully revised, with notes and a memoir by W. M. Rossetti; and in the present popular edition the text, I presume, is a reprint from that larger work. In previous editions both copyright and pirated, expensive and cheap, the text was very faulty. Mrs. Shelley, in her note written in 1839, on the poems of 1822, says, "I at one time feared that the correction of the press might be less exact through my illness; but I believe it is nearly free from error." In fact, however, the errors were very numerous, and what she states further on in the same ​note may help to explain why: "Did any one see the papers from which I drew that volume [the Posthumous Poems], the wonder would be how any eyes or patience were capable of extracting it from so confused a mass, interlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense could only be deciphered and joined by guesses, which might seem rather intuitive than founded on reasoning. Yet I believe no mistake was made." Mr. Garnett, in the "Relics of Shelley," writes: "Numerous errors have crept into the text of Shelley's poems, especially such as were published when, from his absence on the Continent, he was unable to attend to the correction of the press, and those posthumous pieces which were prepared for publication from almost illegible MSS." And as to this last point, Shelley's friend, Captain Trelawny, says somewhere, if I remember rightly, that the original MS. of the lovely poem, "To a Lady, with a Guitar," resembled a rude sketch of a reedy marsh, with blots and smears for the wild ducks. Mr. Garnett gave a chapter to the suggestion of emendations, and the suggestions were usually good; but they were very few in proportion to the number of errors, and they scarcely touched any of the countless cases of bad punctuation which were as apt to cause misunderstanding as were the verbal errors themselves.
Having looked up in this cheap edition numerous passages which I had marked in my own copy of Shelley as manifestly erroneous, I can bear witness that Mr. Rossetti has done his editing with great care and skill. A large number of mistakes he has definitely corrected, in other instances he has improved if he has not certainly rectified; and he seems to have paid particular attention to the punctuation, to the great benefit of the text. ​There are still faults, but most of these may be incorrigible without taking liberties which no reverent editor would take with the text of a classical writer. As for the cases in which correction seems still necessary and allowable, and those in which the new reading seems not better or even less good than the old, their enumeration and discussion are not suited to these columns. I will here note but one instance, in which Mr. Rossetti may have been misled. His version of the graceful and charming "Good-night" is very different from that to which we have been accustomed; and I cannot but think that he has followed an earlier and inferior draft instead of a later and superior one. The last stanza which differs most seems to me the most inferior. On the whole, and in so far as I have hitherto had the opportunity of judging, I am clearly of opinion that Mr. Rossetti has done his Editorial work so thoroughly and well, that no other editions than his should now be recommended to those who wish really to study and understand the poems of Shelley.
1871.
[Mr. Rossetti afterwards explained, 1. That the limitation of size necessary in the cheap edition prevented the addition to it, both of the "Defence of Poetry," and of the "Hymn to Mercury." 2. That the text of the cheap edition, while substantially the same as that of the 2 vol. edition, published in 1870, is in some cases superior to it. 3. That in the text of the song "Good Night," he has implicitly followed Shelley's own MS.—a copy of the song carefully written by him in a pocket-book which he presented to a lady. This may or may not be the better version [Mr. Rossetti thinks it is] but at all events it is the most authentic.]