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 confounding the good and bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy;" the one he had painted in "Laon and Cythna," the other in the "Cenci." And in that absurd abortion of a book which would discredit any man's boyhood, not to speak of Shelley's—"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian "—the unfledged and half-hatched bird of paradise had uttered a weak note to the same tune. The only thing our memory carries away after that rubbish has been handled and sifted is the proof given in one passage that Shelley felt thus early some attraction to this subject; which is indeed suggestive and fruitful enough of possible tragic effect. It is noticeable that he has never cited or referred to the magnificent masterpiece of Ford's genius. Those who please may deplore or may applaud this proclivity; but the student must at any rate accept and take account of it, for the influence permeates much of Shelley's verse with a thin but clear undercurrent of feeling and allusion. The rarity of the cancelled edition of "Laon and Cythna" has been exaggerated by fraudulent or ignorant assertions. Besides my own copy, I have known of others enough at least to refute the fiction that there are but three in the world. I give but one proof among many of the injury done to the poem by minor changes of reading. In the thirtieth stanza of the twelfth canto we now read,

where the languid tautology of this verse impairs the force of a noble passage; the genuine reading is this: