P. 210.

The Indian Serenade.

Such is the title of these delicious verses, as given in a copy found along with the volume of Keats which was on Shelley's person at the moment of his death. It appears (Relics of Shelley, p. 99) that the "Indian Air" which has hitherto supplied a title to the lines had been brought from India by Mrs. Williams, but was in fact Persian, not Indian. What remains to be said about the text of the Indian Serenade shall appear in the words of Mr. Browning (letter of 6th October 1857, in the Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, vol ii. pp. 266-7). "Is it not strange that I should have transcribed for the first time, last night, the Indian Serenade that, together with some verses of Metastasio, accompanied that book [the volume of Keats]? --that I should have been reserved to tell the present possessor of them, to whom they were given by Captain Roberts,* what the poem was, and that it had been published? It is preserved religiously; but the characters are all but illegible, and I needed a good magnifying glass to be quite sure of such of them as remain. The end is that I have rescued three or four variations in the reading of that divine little poem-as one reads it, at least, in the Posthumous Poems. It is headed The Indian Serenade (not Lines to an Indian Air). In the 1st stanza, the 7th line is "Hath led me. In the 2nd, the 3d line is "And the champak's odours fail ;" an the 8th, "O! beloved as thou art!" In the last stanza, the 7th line was 'Oh press it to thine own again.' Are not all these better readings-even to the 'hath' for 'has?""-So far Mr. Browning. I must plead guilty of the presumption of disagreeing from that illustrious poet as to the superiority of these variations-save only the "hath:" and, as there seems to be no ground for affirming that the copy in which they occur is of higher authority than the one used for the Posthumous Poems, I have adhered to the latter. I have myself seen what purports to be a verbatim copy of the Indian Serenade, as recovered from Shelley's corpse; and find in it two further variations

"From the first sweet sleep of night"-
"Where it must break at last."

Mr. Allingham (in Nightingale Valley) proposes "The champak odours pine" as an emendation avoiding a defect of rhyme: this is plausible, but I have not ventured to adopt it in the text-especially as it does not appear in a copy of the poem communicated to me by Mr. Catty. The verses were given to Miss Sophia Stacey in 1819, and perhaps written in 1818. They have hitherto been referred to the year 1821, and supposed to have had their origin in the oriental air to which Mrs. Williams (whom Shelley did not know in 1819) sang them.

P. 210.

Lines written for Miss Sophia Stacey.

These elegant verses had remained hitherto unpublished: our edition owes them to Lieutenant-Colonel and Mr. Catty. I take this opportunity of expressing my particular thanks, and the thanks of all Shelleyites, to these gentlemen and Mrs. Catty; and of intimating that Colonel Catty and his brother accompany their courtteous presentation of the hitherto unpublished verses (the present Lines and Time Long Past) with the sole reservation to themselves of the exclusive right of setting them to music-the latter gentleman having already thus arranged these and some other lyrics by Shelley.

P. 212.

"Such is the scope of the Ode to the Asserters of Liberty."

The context in which Mrs. Shelley puts this indicates clearly enough that the Ode in question applies to England, and, in its opening, to the Manchester Massacre : * The gentleman who built the fatal boat, the Don Juan.

Captain Medwin, indeed, says as much in his Shelley Papers. In its first form of publication, however (in the same volume with Prometheus Unbound, 1820), it is entitled An Ode written October 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty. Perhaps this was a publisher's dodge.

P. 212.
Love's Philosophy.

Mr. J. H. Dixon (in Notes and Queries, January 1868) points out that this little poem is traceable to a French original (in eight lines only),

"Les vents baisent les nuages."

Shelley wrote Love's Philosophy, and also Good-Night and Time Long Past, in a copy of Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-book for 1819, presented by him to Miss Sophia Stacey on the 29th December 1820.

P. 213.

"My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,

And in the rapid plumes of song

Clothed itself, sublime and strong:

(As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among)

Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey."

I suppose the construction of this passage runs :-"My spirit clothed itself in the plumes of song, hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey, as a young eagle soars among the morning clouds." To bring out this construction (connecting "hovering in verse" rather with the soul than with the eagle), I have put the penultimate line in a parenthesis. I suspect, however, that "hovering in verse" is intended to apply subordinately to the eagle, as well as primarily to the soul. As applied to the eagle, the phrase "in verse" sounds strange: but Shelley may have intended thus to indicate the wheeling flight of the eagle, and may have had present to his mind those lines of Dante wherein a like motion is described:

"Ricominciar, come noi ristemmo, ei
L'antico verso.'

P. 214.

"The Sister-pest, congregator of slaves
Into the shadow of her pinions wide.
Anarchs and priests" &c.

This is substantially the punctuation of the original edition. In subsequent texts the line, "Into the shadow" &c., is made to belong to what succeeds, instead of what precedes. Either form of punctuation yields a good sense: in the uncertainty, I have thought it safer to abide by the original.

P. 215.

"Or piny promontory of the Arctic main."

The metre of this wondrous ode is equally elaborate and captivating; and (although there are certain latitudes of rhyming which Shelley always took) is uniform throughout-save in the present instance. Here we have (strictly considered) an alexandrine for the 2nd line of a stanza, as well as for the 8th and 15th, but the line reads rapidly -almost as if it were of five feet; and I think it was intended by Shelley to be thus read and accepted.

All ye

P. 218.

"Impress us from a seal,

have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal."

This is one of the passages of which, in writing to Notes and Queries in April 1868, I suggested an emendation. That emendation I now think untenable, though not

I construe it to mean:devoid of some plausibility. The passage, unamended, remains to be accounted for: that its verbal form is slurred appears to me undeniable. "Do thou impress us living Spaniards and Englishmen, as if from a seal, O thou all that Spain and England have thought and done worthily in time past! Time canno dare to conceal that."

P. 218.

"Oh that the free would stamp the impious name

Of 'King' into the dust!"

Mr. Garnett enables me, from his personal knowledge of the MS., to fill-in here the word "king," which has hitherto been represented merely by four asterisks; a suppression'equally pusillanimous and stupid on the part of Shelley's publishers or editors, suggesting to the horrescent reader (from the context, and the general tone of Shelley's speculation on questions of religion) other words which would be read in this with far greater repugnance. passage

P. 220.
Arethusa.

In her Rambles in Germany and Italy, Mrs. Shelley refers to the poems of Shelley which have been set to music-Characteristic Songs of Shelley, by Hugh Pearson, published by Alfred Novello; and says the Arethusa, and the invocation To Night (p. 264), are perhaps the more successful of all.

P. 224.

"To my song

Victory and praise in its own right belong."

This is clearly the correct wording and meaning of the sentence: not "their own right," as in former editions.

P. 225.

"That tall flower that wets

Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears

When the low wind its playmate's voice it hears.

Some question having arisen in Notes and Queries as to the flower here indicated, and one correspondent having suggested the foxglove, F. C. H. wrote (December 1867):-"I think the foxglove is not the flower alluded to: it blossoms in Summer, and he enumerates only Spring flowers. I should rather suppose him to mean the daffodil or its congeners, the jonquil and narcissus. The daffodil is remarkable for holding wet, and scattering it when agitated by the wind." This very pertinent suggestion appears conclusive. -It will be observed that a line is wanting in the present stanza: there are only seven lines, instead of the normal eight. I see no particular reason to doubt that the stanza (a beautiful one enough in all conscience) has come down to us as Shelley left it. Dr. Dobbin (Ballivor, Ireland) suggests to me, however, that the reason why the first line in this stanza, and in some others, is deficient, may probably be "that the top of the MS. book has been shaved off by the binder, or pared, for economical reasons, before passing through the continental Post-office." The two poems to which this observation mostly applies-The Question and Hymn to Mercury-were, however, only published among the Posthumous Poems, and therefore without the author's final revision, and probably without passing through any Post-office.

P. 226.

"Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere."

This is the reading of the original edition (1820): the collected editions give
"And the Spirit of Love fell everywhere."

P. 228.

"Received more than all; it loved more than ever,

Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver.

This stanza of the Sensitive Plant is by no means unambiguous to me in structure and meaning: the only change I have ventured to introduce into it is the above semicolon, in lieu of a comma. Leaving the reader to follow out for himself the general drift of the context, I will limit myself to suggesting that the words italicized may mean "Of that [viz.: beauty] wherein none was wanting save itself, the Sensitive Plant had a love greater than any flower possessing beauty could impart or gratify: it loved more [beauty] than ever could belong to the giver." Or the best paraphrase may be that given by Mr Swinburne: The Sensitive Plant "felt more love than the flower which gave it gifts of light and odour could feel, having nothing to give back, as the others had, in return; all the more thankful and loving for the very barrenness and impotence of requital which made the gift a charity instead of an exchange."

P. 229.

"And delight, though less bright, was far more deep."

Mr J. H. Dixon has represented in Notes and Queries (3rd Ser., vol. ii., and 4th Ser., vol. i.) that "delight" is a misreading for "the light." He adds: "A literary gentleman who was an intimate friend of the poet assured me that Shelley, in

his MS., often used the small Greek 9 for th. Let any one write the words 'the light' after such a fashion, and it will be seen how easily an unlearned printer might mistake a for a d, and so print 'delight' instead of 'the light.'" This is exceedingly reasonable, and I for one must (if the premises as to the are admitted) confess to a belief that Shelley wrote "the light." But, having read the line scores of times with the word "delight," and always with a sense of its inner beauty and fascination, I grudge altering it: the more so as Mr Garnett (the best living authority as to Shelley's MSS.) assures me that he never observed in them any such use of the 9; Mr Trelawny says the like; and my own limited experience is wholly to the same effect.

P. 230.

"Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes."

In the original edition, the word is "moon;" but the reference to "daylight" in the succeeding stanza seems to prove that "morn" is the right reading.

P. 232.

"Which at first was lovely as if in sleep."

Here again "lovely"-instead of "lively," as in the original edition-appears to be correct.

P. 233-4

Stanzas xiii., xiv., and xvii.

I have introduced some change into the punctuation of stanzas xiii. and xiv. Hitherto there has been a full stop at the end of xiii.; and then all the substantives in the first two lines of stanza xiv. were made to serve as nominatives to the verb,

"Stretched out its long and hollow shank."

"Its" cannot be allowed to do duty for "thistles, nettles, darnels," &c. &c.though possibly the solecism is Shelley's own.-Stanza xvii, has been omitted in the collected editions. It is certainly somewhat repulsive; but was good enough for Shelley, and must remain so for his appreciative readers.

P. 236.
The Cloud.

This poem was first published in the Prometheus volume (1820), and is included, in Mrs. Shelley's collected editions, among the Poems written in 1820. Yet her Preface (p. xxi.) clearly intimates that it was written in England, on the Thames; if so, in 1818 at latest. I rather suspect that this latter is the surer guide as to the date, and the style of the poem would suggest a like induction. However, it is possible that Shelley completed the lyric in 1820; I therefore do not disturb Mrs Shelley's arrangement.

P. 239.

"Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun."

"Embodied," instead of "unbodied," was proposed by Professor Craik; also the pause in stanza ii. at the end of the 2nd instead of the 3rd line.

P. 241.

"Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety."

"Knew" is of course a grammatical laxity; but the sound of the lovely line would be so spoiled by changing the word into "knew'st" that no rectification of grammar is permissible.

P. 242.

"And among the winds and beams."

This line, left rhymeless, ought to rhyme with "desire" and "fire." therefore suggests to read "higher" instead of "beams."

P. 244.

"Which in those hearts which must remember me."

Mr. Fleay

Mr. Garnett (Relics of Shelley) gives, on MS. authority, this "must" instead of "most." He also supplies three other important emendations in this same Letter to Maria Gisborne:

P. 246.-"With lead [least] in the middle."

P. 249.-"While Rebuke cowers [stands] pale and dumb.”

P. 249.-"Which, with its own internal lightning [lustre] blind."

There is another line (p. 247) which in our edition, following the original Posthumous Poems, stands

"One chasm of heaven smiles, like the Age of Love." In the collected editions " age gives place to "eye." I feel very great doubt which of the two is correct; but incline to prefer the image of the " Age of Love," or "Golden Age," smiling on the unquiet world,"-and so abide by the Posthumous Poems.

P. 245.

"With thumbscrews, wheels with tooth and spike and jag,
Which fishes found under the utmost crag

Of Cornwall" &c.

The above printed "which" has been "with" in all editions since the first. Besides this, in all the editions the punctuation brings to a pause the sentence before "with thumbscrews." Any reader who has heretofore understood the whole psssage beginning

"Or those in philosophic councils met,"

and ending "as panthers sleep," can only have done so by wholly disregarding the punctuation. Properly printed, the passage is seen to refer to the torture-engines sent over with the Spanish Armada, and wrecked off the Cornish coast. The epithet "philosophic" does not appear specially apposite: should it be "theosophic," or "philanthropic?"