Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/248

 thought was a thing to thrill the veins and draw tears to the eyes of all men whose ears were not closed against all harmony by some denser and less removable obstruction than shut out the song of the Sirens from the hearing of the crew of Ulysses. Yet in this edition (vol. ii. p. 274) the word "autumn" is actually foisted in after the word "summer." Upon this incredible outrage I really dare not trust myself to comment. The only parallel I know to it within the memory of man is the repainting of Giotto's portrait of Dante by an Italian hireling at the bidding of his Austrian masters, who desired to efface from the poet's berretta the sacred national colours of hope and faith and love. That is irreparable; but the outrage offered to the text of Shelley happily is not. For the conception of this atrocity the editor is not responsible; for its adoption he is. A thousand years of purgatorial fire would be insufficient expiation for the criminal on whose deaf and desperate head must rest the original guilt of defacing the text of Shelley with this most damnable corruption. To such earless and soulless commentators, strong only in finger-counting and figure-casting, the ghost of their divine victim, whether Shakespeare or Shelley, might say with Paulina—

Do not repent these things.*** Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,
 * A thousand knees