thoughts will share the same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he has written, was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached. There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent to dismiss these huntings after the obscure, which, entwined with his nature as they were, he did with difficulty, no poet ever expressed in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or more forcible emotions of the soul. So." A wise friend once wrote to Shelley, "You are still very young, and in certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you are It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, had gone through more experience of sensation, than many whose existence is protracted. "If I die to-morrow," he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, “I have lived to be older than my father." The weight of thought and feeling burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes. He died, and the world showed no outward sign; but his influence over mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting, and in the ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles. His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the liberty he so fondly loved. He died, and his place among those who knew him intimately, has never been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort and benefit-to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once attached to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and now exists where we hope one day to join him ;-although the intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can judge the heart, never rejected him. In the notes appended to the poems, I have endeavoured to narrate the origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers which refer to his early life, renders the execution more imperfect than it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go. In other respects, I am, indeed, incompetent; but I feel the importance of the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavour to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve; and hope in this publication to lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley's genius, his sufferings, and his virtues : S'al seguir son tarda, Forse avverrà che 'l bel nome gentile POSTSCRIPT. IN revising this new edition, and carefully consulting Shelley's scattered and confused papers, I found a few fragments which had hitherto escaped me, and was enabled to complete a few poems hitherto left unfinished. What at one time escapes the searching eye, dimmed by its own earnestness, becomes clear at a future period. By the aid of a friend I also present some poems complete and correct, which hitherto have been defaced by various mistakes and omissions. It was suggested that the Poem "To the Queen of my Heart," was falsely attributed to Shelley. I certainly find no trace of it among his papers, and as those of his intimate friends whom I have consulted never heard of it, I omit it. Two Poems are added of some length, "Swellfoot the Tyrant," and "Peter Bell the Third." I have mentioned the circumstances under which they were written in the notes; and need only add, that they are conceived in a very different spirit from Shelley's usual compositions. They are specimens of the burlesque and fanciful; but although they adopt a familiar style and homely imagery, there shine through the radiance of the poet's imagination the earnest views and opinions of the politician and the moralist. PUTNEY, November 6, 1839. MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. THE notes of Mrs. Shelley, in the present edition of the poems, contain so much biographical matter, that it will only be necessary to put the reader in possession of such facts as she has omitted, either from a natural reserve or a very pardonable delicacy. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August, 1792, at Field Place, in Sussex. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Baronet, of Castle Goring. His family was an ancient one, and, while one branch of it represented the blood of Sir Philip Sidney, he himself was descended from the Sackvilles, a name inseparably associated with the dawn of the Elizabethan literature. There was also blood of the New World in Shelley's veins. His paternal great-grandfather, Timothy, had emigrated to America, settling at Newark in New Jersey, where he married an American wife, and where Shelley's grandfather, Bysshe, was born. Bysshe carried the family fortunes back to England, succeeded, by means of a handsome person and fine manners, in marrying successively two heiresses, became a baronet, and lived to a great age, an eccentric and miser. Having built Castle Goring at a cost of eighty thousand pounds, he spent the last twenty years of his life in a small cottage, meanly furnished, |