TEXT: 355 pond omit Boscombe MS. 372 sang 18391,, Rossetti, Dowden. JUVENILIA 267 Verses on a Cat. Miss Helen Shelley to Mrs. Jefferson Hogg (no date): “I have just found the lines which I mentioned; a child's effusion about some cat, which evidently had a story, but it must have been before I can remember. It is in Elizabeth's handwriting, copied probably later than the composition of the lines, though the handwriting is unformed. It seems to be a tabby cat, for it has an indistinct brownishgray coat [there was a painting of a cat on the copy]. That last expression is, I imagine, still classical at boys' schools, and it was a favorite one of Bysshe's, which I remember from a painful fact, that one of my sisters ventured to make use of it, and was punished in some old-fashioned way, which impressed the sentence on my memory." Hogg, Life, i. 21, 22. 268 Omens. Medwin, Shelley Papers, p. 7: "I remember well the first of his effusions, a very German-like fragment, beginning with . . . I think he was then about fifteen." Medwin, Life, i. 62: "Chatterton was then one of his great favorites; he enjoyed very much the literary forgery and successful mystification of Horace Walpole and his contemporaries; and the Immortal Child's melancholy and early fate often suggested his own. One of his earliest effusions was a fragment beginning it was indeed almost taken from the pseudo Rowley" [Here follow the lines]. Epitaphium. Medwin, Life, i. 48, 49: "That he had certainly arrived at great skill in the art of versification, I think I shall be able to prove by the following specimens I kept among my treasures, which he gave me in 1808 or 9. The first is the Epitaph on Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard, probably a school task." Medwin's text reads in iv. 1 maestis and v. 1 Longivus. The corrections were made by Rossetti. 270 In Horologium. Medwin, Life, i. 49: "The second specimen of his versification is of a totally different character, and shows a considerable precocity." MacCarthy, Shelley's Early Life, p. 27: "Something of the precocity is explained, however, and all of the originality removed, by a reference to The Oxford Herald of Saturday, September 16, 1809, where the following English Epigram appears : ON SEEING A FRENCH WATCH ROUND THE Where others dare not lay a finger." It is plain that Shelley's Latin lines are simply a translation of this epigram, which he most probably saw in The Oxford Herald, but may have read in some other paper of the time as I distinctly recollect having met with it elsewhere when making my researches among the journals of the period." A Dialogue. Hogg to Dawson Turner, May 30, 1834 : "I now send you a poem, or rather a rough draft of part of a poem by his hand, and from his head and heart. The papers amongst which it was found, and other circumstances, lead me to believe that it was written in 1810." Hogg, Life, i. 196. TEXT: A later and revised text exists among the Esdaile MSS., but is not described except that Dowden corrects one word, as noted, from it, and gives its date, 1809. All other editions follow Hogg. Shelley (from Field Place) to Hogg, "[The poem is first given.] There is rhapsody! Now, I think, after this, you ought to send me some poetry." Hogg, Life, i. 378. 272 To the Moonbeam. May 17, 1811: TEXT: A later and revised text exists among the Esdaile MSS., but is not described except, as before, Dow den corrects one word, as noted, from it, and gives the date September 23, 1809. All other editions follow Hogg. 273 The Solitary. From the Boscombe MSS., through Gar nett. TEXT: ii. 2 brothers', Rossetti. As Dowden does not sustain the reading, it may be presumed to be an emenda tion of Rossetti's. 274 To Death. Hogg, Life, i. 198, 199: "The following unfinished verses were written at Oxford." TEXT: A later and revised text, containing twenty additional lines, exists among the Esdaile MSS., but has not been described except that, as before, Dowden corrects one word, as noted, from it. Other editions follow Hogg except that Rossetti reads ii. 7 fade; 20 buds. 276 Love's Rose. Shelley to Hogg, no date [June, 1811 ? ]: “I transcribe for you a strange medley of maddened stuff, which I wrote by the midnight moon last night. [Here follow To a Star and Love's Rose.] Ohe! jam satis dementia! I hear you exclaim." Hogg, i. 397, 398. TEXT: A later and revised text, with the date 1810, is mentioned, but not described, by Dowden, except that, as before, he corrects one line, as noted. Other editions follow Hogg except that Rossetti reads in ii. 2 while and encloses 4 in parentheses. 277 Eyes. From the Boscombe MS., through Garnett. TEXT: A later and revised MS. exists among the Esdaile MSS., but has not been described except that, as before, Dowden corrects one word from it, and says that it is a complete poem in five eight-line stanzas. Poems from St. Irvyne; or The Rosicrucian. St. Irvyne ; /or,/ the Rosicrucian. / A Romance. / By / A Gentleman / of the University of Oxford. / London : / Printed for J. J. Stockdale, / 41, Pall Mall. / 1811. The romance was in MS. by April 1, 1810 (Shelley to Graham, Forman, Shelley Library, p. 5), was sent to Stockdale, corrected or "fitted for the press " by him, TEXT: Sister Rosa viii. 4 And a voice; Rossetti. Bereavement. 5 cheeks Rossetti. Other editions follow Shelley, 1811. 288 Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. Posthumous Fragments/of / Margaret Nicholson; / Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of that / Noted Female who attempted the Life / of the King in 1786. / Edited by John Fitz-Victor. / Oxford: / Printed and sold by J. Munday / 1810. Collation Quarto. Fly-title (with blank verso) pp. 1, 2 Title (with blank verso) pp. 3, 4; Advertisement, pp. 5, 6; Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, pp. 7-29 (with imprint, Munday, Printer, Oxford, at foot of page). Issued probably as a pamphlet. No MS. is known. The volume was advertised as "just published, price 2s.” in The Oxford University and City Herald, November 17, 1810, and a week later at the price of 2s. 6d. in the same paper. Hogg (i. 260–269) narrates the origin and history of this volume at length. The material points of his account are that he found Shelley reading the proofs of some poems which were meant to be published, and advised him to burlesque them and issue them as a joke; that this plan was adopted, and the poems, revised by the two friends and ascribed on Hogg's suggestion to Peg Nicholson, a mad woman, then still living, who had attempted the life of George III., were printed at the publishers' expense and eagerly taken up by the Oxford collegians. He adds that the first poem was not Shelley's, but was the production of a "rhymester of the day" and had been confided to him. This account is discredited by Dowden and others; the intentionally burlesque portion is thought to be confined to the Epithalamium in the lines referred to by Shelley below; "the rhymester" is presumed to be Hogg, and his work not the first poem but the aforesaid passage of the Epithalamium. Shelley (from Oxford) to Graham, November 30, 1810: "The part of the Epithalamium which you mention (i. e. from the end of Satan's triumph) is the production of a friend's mistress; it had been concluded there, but she thought it abrupt and added this; it is omitted in numbers of the copies — that which I sent to my Mother of course did not contain it. I shall possibly send you the abuse to-day, but I am afraid that they will not insert it. But you mistake; the Epithalamium will make it sell like wildfire, and as the Nephew is kept a profound secret, there can arise no danger from the indelicacy of the Aunt. It sells wonderfully here, and is become the fashionable subject of discussion. . . . Of course to my Father Peg is a profound secret." Forman, Shelley Library, p. 12. Montgomery, Oxford: A Biographical Summary of Eminent Characters connected with the University: "The ease with which Shelley composed many of the stanzas therein contained is truly astonishing. When surprised with a proof from the printers on the morning he would frequently start off his sofa exclaiming that that had been his only bed; and on being informed that the men were waiting for more copy, he would sit down and write off a few stanzas, and send them to the press without even revising or reading them. This I [Slatter] have myself witnessed." Dowden, i. 92. |