At least we may be assured that no such penance, though multiplied beyond the calculation of all arithmeticians who ever made use of their science as a lead-line to sound the depths of song, as a key to unlock the secrets of harmony, could ever move the righteous judge of Marsyas to look with pity on the son of Midas who had thus abused the text of one so dear to him as Shelley. The race of his old enemy, we perceive, has degenerated since the date of the Phrygian king; the regal and paternal ears are indeed hereditary, but as surely as the touch of the father turned all things to gold, so surely the touch of his children turns all things to lead.

I shall merely notice the single remaining instance of perversion which I feel bound not to pass over in silence; the false pointing of one of the noblest passages in the "Prometheus Unbound"—

I should really have thought it impossible to mistake the simple and obvious meaning of these and the glorious verses which follow; namely, that the curse invoked on the almighty tyrant was to do evil and behold good. The idea is of course not original; few lines have been oftener quoted, and few have better deserved their fame, than the majestic verse in which Persius has invoked upon tyrants a deeper damnation than ever priest conceived—