The Revolt of Islam, is that you have only to remove the new title-page and insert a fac-simile of the original titlepage, to produce an apparently genuine copy of Laon and Cythna. I have such a copy in my possession; but of course such copies do not have the fly-title Laon and Cythna with the quotation from Pindar, which would not have fitted in with Mr. Brooks's new title-page of 1829. The existence of these made-up copies may perhaps account for Mr. MacCarthy's statement that that fly-title does not occur in Laon and Cythna, which means, I presume, that it is not in either of the copies he consulted. It is, however, in my genuine copy, though of course not in the made-up one with fac-simile title. But this fly-title is likely enough to be missing from even genuine copies of a book so carelessly printed and put together; for it is printed on a separate leaf, with a separate signature d, and comes in between two complete sheets,-unfortunately at that point where the Roman numerals of the preliminary matter end, so that its absence does not make an obvious hiatus.

The daring idea of altering this book by means of a few cancel-leaves probably arose from the mechanical facilities which accident seems to have presented, in the mode of setting the book up; and these same facilities have since told in favour of all sorts of bibliographical mystifications. The book being uniformly set throughout, without foot-notes or head-lines, and with two stanzas on every page, except the pages at the beginning of cantos, which have but one stanza, the process of removing certain stanzas was quite simple, and the change of title only involved cancelling two leaves instead of reprinting the book, as it would have been necessary to do had the title been printed, according to custom, at the head of every page. Here, the pages were simply numbered at the centre of the top, and did as well for one title as another; and had it not been for that fatal circumstance, it is doubtful whether there would have

been any alteration whatever: it was the ease with which the book was convertible that probably weighed with Shelley to induce him to give way; and I cannot conceive that he would have consented to waste the whole issue of a book into which he had poured so much of his heart. The publisher's requirements must have seemed much more formidable had they not been rounded off with the specious consideration, "all can be managed by printing twenty-eight fresh leaves "; and but for this it seems to me Shelley would have been more likely to adopt the alternative of the withdrawal of Mr. Ollier's name from the publication,-damaging as that would have been. It should be borne in mind that it was at Shelley's expense, and not at Mr. Ollier's, that the book was printed; and it is doubtful whether Shelley at that time could have commanded funds for printing two such volumes one after the other; and the earnestness of his letters to Godwin and Mr. Ollier on the subject of this poem leave no room for the supposition that he would on any account have let it perish. To Godwin he says, "I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume. contains was written with the same feeling, as real, though not so prophetic, as the communications of a dying man"; and further on he speaks of the poem as having grown "as it were from the agony and bloody sweat' of intellectual travail."

A poem with such a genesis was not one to be readily given up by its author, or compromised by a withdrawal from publication, of which the consequences are thus described by Shelley in his letter to the publisher (Shelley Memorials, p. 81): "You do your best to condemn my book before it is given forth, because you publish it, and then withdraw; so that no other bookseller will publish it, because one has already rejected it. You must be aware

of the great injury which you prepare for me. If I had never consulted your advantage, my book would have had a fair hearing. But now it is first published, and then the publisher, as if the author had deceived him as to the contents of the work-and as if the inevitable consequence of its publication would be ignominy and punishment—and as if none should dare to touch it or look at it-retracts, at a period when nothing but the most extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances can justify his retraction."

It may perhaps be fanciful, but in the very painful earnestness of Shelley's utterances concerning this poem, I seem to discern a key to the extreme corruption of the text and its striking inconsistency in those minor details. into which I have gone so fully in my notes to the text. The state of Shelley's mind as described by himself was such as would correspond with a very rapid and inaccurate manuscript,1 and at the same time with a feverish desire to see the book printed accurately, which he could only, he would think, secure by revising it for the press himself. Anyone who has had much to do with printers will realize at once the result of handing over Shelley's manuscript to a printer with strict instructions to "follow copy," that is to print it verbatim, literatim, and point for point, and to leave the revision to the author. For those who have not had much to do with printers, let it be stated that the manuscript would in such a case (as in any other) be divided among several compositors, that some of them would "follow copy" strictly, and that others would persistently disregard any such instruction, and correct the author wherever they thought him wrong: here I speak from positive experience, having never yet known a staff of compositors without its due proportion of men who would not "follow copy." Then again, although in strict

1 Indeed the manuscript fragments of Laon and Cythna which I have

already mentioned are certainly anything but careful or consistent.

ness the printer's reader, who goes over the whole of the proofs with the manuscript, should see that the proofs are "according to copy," the fact is that this is seldom if ever scrupulously done when the instructions are to "follow copy" and let the author revise, it being assumed that he will find out all the deviations from his manuscript.

Now the original edition of Laon and Cythna has to me all the appearance of a book printed under strict injunctions to "follow copy," and then revised by an author without an accurate eye for trivial detail. Such an author we know Shelley was; and when we come to consider the painful circumstances under which he worked at that time, we should be surprised at finding the book anything but inaccurate and inconsistent. If my hypothesis be correct, he would never discover half the mistakes of his own making which had been put into type by the compositor who would "follow copy," and which he would have wished to correct, or half the instances in which the compositor who would not "follow copy" had altered something which seemed to the compositor a mistake, but which was really the author's deliberate intention.

Had I known this as a fact, I could have altered, securely, much that will be found annoying in the minutely reproduced text which I have given; but as it is a mere hypothesis I could not act upon it, though I feel tolerably confident that it is the real explanation of the infamously printed book in question.

On the following page is printed a summary of the cancel-leaves, which gave so much pain to Shelley, and have caused so much trouble to all who have had anything to do with the book.

H. B. F.

LIST OF LEAVES REPRINTED.

391

LIST of leaves removed from Laon and Cythna and reprinted with alterations in order to convert that book into The Revolt of Islam.

Title-page.

Pages XXI and XXII (the end of the Preface).1

XXXIII and XXXIV (the fly-title Laon and Cythna, with quotation

from Pindar).

Printed in this edition at pages 137-138

138-139

149-150

41 and 42, being stanzas XVIII

43

44,

57

58,

XXII
I

to XXI
XXV

of Canto II,

II,

III

89

90,

171-172

V,

188-190

VI,

210-211

...

وو

X

265-266

225

226,

227 228,

229 230,

XXXIV XXXVII

دو

X,

... 272-274

XLVI

XLVIII

XI,

XI,

XII,

265 266,

XXVI
XXX

XXIX

XII,

...

XXXIII

XII,

288-289

294-295 295-297

some passages

1 Mr. Rossetti (p. cI of his Memoir) says the changes affected " of the preface" in case of misconception, I may add that nothing in the preface is cancelled or altered except the final paragraph, which simply disappears with its footnote.

See pp. 97 & 98.