so far as it is known. The method followed consists in quoting from the sources of information, which are in the main Mrs. Shelley's Notes and Shelley's correspondence. The value and interest of Mrs. Shelley's Notes are so great that they cannot be spared; and though some of the purely biographical portions have been omitted, all that is material in them, in information or illustration, has been included. Shelley's correspondence, so far as it bears on the poems, is also given with practical completeness, though here and there a passage may have been overlooked; and, read in sequence, these extracts afford the best history of Shelley's purely literary activity, set off by itself, and exhibit the state of his mind with regard to his successive poems with a fulness unusual in literary history. So plainly is this the case that the literary side of his career is passed over in the accompanying MEMOIR as lightly as possible, and the narrative is confined to the external events of his life and the impressions of his personality upon others. Notes upon the sources of the poems, or in illustration or criticism of them, have been excluded; at some future time they may be furnished in a separate publication. The prose prefaces and notes are revised, obvious errors being silently corrected, and no account of variations of their text is given, except upon important points. Here nothing is attempted beyond the personal biogra

phy of Shelley, a complete account of the text of his poems, and the documentary history of each of them.

An editor of Shelley is under great obligations to his predecessors, which, however, it is not easy always to distribute among them. The labors of Mrs. Shelley in her editions are worthy of more recognition than she has received, and her texts of more consideration; these, with Shelley's original editions, are the foundation and mass of the whole. The labors of Dr. Garnett upon the chaotic manuscripts at Boscombe stand in the next place because of the invaluable additions thus made to the poems. Mr. Rossetti first submitted the text to careful editing, and brought to light much information in regard to it, and much new matter, and greatly stimulated its study; but he printed the text with a liberty of revision from which he receded in his later edition, to which all textual references here are made. Mr. Forman, embodying the reaction against Mr. Rossetti's liberal revision, stood for literal adherence to the originals, and was especially of service in maintaining the integrity of the text, which by the Hunt and other manuscripts he restored in important instances, while his longcontinued researches cleared up many details of bibliography. Dr. Dowden's service was mainly in correcting the text of the juvenile poems in some details and increasing their number by the

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recovery of several pieces which are of great value in the study of Shelley's development in his formative period. To all these editors, and also to the group of biographers and writers of reminiscences who have contributed information of their own or the result of researches, the debt of the present edition is very great, for it attempts to summarize the labors of more than half a century on Shelley's text, and on his biography so far as the biography is bound up with the text. In dealing with this whole body of Shelley literature I have treated it precisely as I should do in the case of Shakspere, thinking that what concerns Shelley belongs now to the world, and that contributions made to our knowledge of him are made for the world's sake. I have endeavored to give specific credit in all particular cases of direct obligation, and I trust that I have omitted no acknowledgment which may be thought due. It is nevertheless due to myself to say that where original sources were open to me, I have used them, and this may account for less frequent mention of preceding editions than might be thought natural.

I have the pleasure of acknowledging in particular the kindness of Mr. C. W. Frederickson of Brooklyn, who placed his very complete Shelley library entirely at my disposal. From the printed books in this collection I derived the only addition to Shelley's text here made, the interesting par

agraph restored to the preface of "Hellas ;" and from the manuscripts the extracts from unpublished letters of Shelley in the NOTES and several variorum readings of the text. The variorum readings of the Harvard College manuscripts now first find a place in an edition of Shelley, though they were edited by me in a separate publication for the College some time ago, and from that source partly utilized by Dowden. To Forman, in addition to what has been already acknowledged, I owe the variorum readings of the text of a few poems published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Books," of which no copies are known in this country; and, in connection with this, it may be said that imperfections in the references to the criticisms in Hunt's "Examiner" are due to the incompleteness of the files open to me. To Mr. Frederickson I am also indebted for information and advice in points of detail. The portrait which accompanies this edition is after a chalk-drawing from the original portrait at Boscombe, for which I have the pleasure of expressing my thanks to Lady Shelley.

GEORGE E. WOODBERRY.

BEVERLY, MASS., November 7, 1892.