PREFACE. My thanks are due to Mr. Slark, the present publisher and proprietor of the edition of Shelley's Poems to which the ensuing Memoir forms an introduction, for allowing the Memoir to be issued as one of the publications of the Shelley Society. He handsomely and readily acceded to a request made by Dr. Furnivall to that effect. For me as the author it remains to hope that my fellow-members in the Society will not consider that Dr. Furnivall's zeal and Mr. Slark's liberality were ill bestowed. The ensuing Memoir was written in 1869, a date when the materials for constructing a Life of Shelley were sparse, slender, and confused, in no small degree: it was first published in 1870. When the edition of Shelley's Poems was about to be reissued, which was done at the beginning of 1878, I revised the Memoir, taking into account any additional materials then accessible. I believe that, both in 1870 and in 1878, the Memoir was not behind the then level of knowledge on the subject. Since 1878 however many further particulars, and not a little controversy more or less warm, have accrued. I could not therefore feel satisfied without once again doing something to make the Memoir presentable to serious and well-grounded students of Shelley's life and writings-persons of the class in whose interest the Shelley Society is founded, and who may be expected to abound in its ranks. I have thus once again gone carefully through my little narrative. As it is printed in stereotype, and the stereotype plates are used for the present reissue, it has not been practicable to alter the actual words of the text; and the only expedient open to me has been to give a list of those passages or details which need rectification or extension. This is done in the items of reference which immediately ensue. I have written them with the utmost brevity consistent with clearness; and shall trust to the reader's candour to distinguish between instances in which actual errors (most of them not avoidable at the time) are corrected, and instances in which the information supplied belongs to a date subsequent to 1877. It is of course true that various other details relating to Shelley have come to light within the same interval of time, some of which might properly figure even in a Memoir so condensed and limited as this. But these I advisedly leave untouched; restricting myself to the actual contents of the Memoir, and the particulars needed for setting it right. P. 2. Percy Bysshe Shelley's descent traced up to Thomas Shelle, in the time of Edward I. Mr. Forman has published the pedigree which was attested in 1816 by the father and the half-uncle of the poet. It only extends up to Henry Shelley of Worminghurst, who died in 1623. Mr. Jeaffreson has commented with much fulness upon this pedigree; and has pointed out that it contains no names of more than moderate social standing, and that it does not connect that branch of the Shelley family from which the poet sprang with the older and more aristocratic line. At the same time Mr. Jeaffreson allows that most probably there really was a connexion between the two branches. His observations on these questions of fact appear to be perfectly sound and convincing. P. 3. Rev. Theobald Mitchell should be Michell. P. 3. Shelley's grandfather said to have practised as a quack doctor, and owned a mill. It has been so said, but not correctly. The allegation is really apposite to Shelley's greatgrandfather. P. 4. Two of Shelley's sisters still survive. One of these two is now dead: the other still, I believe, survives. P. 7. Shelley passed to Eton in his fourteenth year-should be "his twelfth year "-July 1804. P. 9. Dr. Keate flogged Shelley liberally. Dr. Keate was in |