196
NOTES ON THE TEXT OF SHELLEY.
"Therefore ye shall behold
How Atheists and Republicans can die."[1]
Such throughout was the process by which the more outspoken verses of a poem outspoken enough throughout were weakened and disfigured. Remembering by what forcible extortion of assent a reluctant admission of these changes was wrung from the poet, we must hope now to have back his own fresher and clearer words in their first fullness and freedom.
The passage cited from "Alastor" is, I believe, corrupt, but I cannot accept the critic's proposed change of punctuation. Here are the words disputed:-—
"On every side now rose
Rocks which in unimaginable forms
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
In the light of evening, and its precipice
Obscuring the ravine disclosed above
'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs, and yawning streams," &c.
Mr. Rossetti in evident desperation would rearrange the last lines thus:—
And—its precipice
Obscuring—the ravine disclosed above," &c.
"i.e." (he adds), "the rocks, obscuring the precipice (the precipitous descent) of the ravine, disclosed said ravine overhead."
This I must say is intolerable, and impossible. If the words could be wrenched and racked into such a meaning,
- ↑ This reading among others has been restored by Mr. Rossetti in the only critical edition of Shelley which has yet been given to the world; and the gain in every such instance is so manifest that we are more than ever impelled to demand a full and final restoration, of the complete and uncorrupted text as it came from the hands of the author.