Page:Essays and Studies

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

234

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF SHELLEY.

verdict of all competent critics has been unanimous. That this wretched rubbish should exist at all in print is vexation enough for those to whom the honour of the greatest poets is dear; but Mr. Hogg's book is a monument likely to prove something less durable than brass, and in its mouldering pages the evidence of Shelley's boyish absurdities and atrocities in the way of rhyme might have been trusted to rot unobserved save of some rare collector of strange and worthless things. But to have them bound up with the ripest work of the first lyric poet of England, tied on as it were to the tail or pinned to the back of a volume which undertakes to give us for the first time a critical text of Shelley, is a thing not to be endured or extenuated.^[1] The argument or apology of the editor on behalf of this lamentable act of caprice has not I believe made a single convert, and is I should hope not likely to make one. Those who did most justice to the zealous labour and the strenuous devotion of Mr. Rossetti, those who were the first to recognise with all gratitude what thanks were due to his ardour and ability, were the first to utter their protest

↑ An edition of Shelley which should give us a final standard of the text would naturally relegate "Queen Mab" to its proper place in an appendix. The strong and sincere protest of Shelley against the piratical reissue of this poem, backed by the frank and reasonable avowal that he was ashamed of the bad poetry contained in it, should have sufficed to exclude it from the station at the head of his works which it has so long been permitted to retain. Full of intellectual power and promise as it is, a poem repudiated by its author as unworthy of his maturer fame should never have been thrust into the place which obviously belongs to "Alastor;" for it is only with this later work that the real career of Shelley as a poet may be properly said to begin.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] An edition of Shelley which should give us a final standard of the text would naturally relegate "Queen Mab" to its proper place in an appendix. The strong and sincere protest of Shelley against the piratical reissue of this poem, backed by the frank and reasonable avowal that he was ashamed of the bad poetry contained in it, should have sufficed to exclude it from the station at the head of his works which it has so long been permitted to retain. Full of intellectual power and promise as it is, a poem repudiated by its author as unworthy of his maturer fame should never have been thrust into the place which obviously belongs to "Alastor;" for it is only with this later work that the real career of Shelley as a poet may be properly said to begin.

[1]