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 against this the most unhappy and perverse example on record of a pernicious exactitude in the collection and preservation of all that an author would desire to efface from his own and all men's memory. The first such protest, if I mistake not, was expressed in earnest and weighty words by Miss Mathilde Blind, whose admirable essay on Shelley was one of the earliest and most notable signs of the impulse given to the critical study of the poet by the appearance of this edition. That essay, full as it was of eloquent commentary and fervent thought, is yet more precious for its many contributions to the pure and perfect text of Shelley which we hope before long to see; no pedagogic emendations or professorial conjectures, but restorations supplied from the poet's own manuscript; and, more than all, for the completion of that faultless poem called "The Question" by one long-lost line of final loveliness.

It would be a pleasanter task than that of fault-finding or protesting, to pass once more through the glorious gallery of Shelley's works in the company of his first critical editor, and note down what points of consent or dissent might occur to us in the process of comparing opinions as to this poem or that. But time and space forbid me to do more than register my own opinion as to the respective value of two among the latest, and to express the surprise which I share with Miss Blind at the station assigned by Mr. Rossetti to the "Witch of Atlas," which he deliberately ranks above the "Epipsychidion." It is indeed an exquisite exercise of sunny and flowery fancy, which probably was designed to cover or convey no such elaborate allegoric significance as the