Page:Rosalind and Helen (Shelley, Forman).djvu/4

 [Rosalind and Helen, &c., of which the original title-page is given opposite, is a thin octavo volume, printed in the spring of 1819, and consisting of fly-title Rosalind and Helen, title-page, 2 pages of preface (called "advertisement"), contents, fly-title Rosalind and Helen, a Modern Eclogue, and text pp. 3 to 92. On the back of the first fly-title are advertisements of The Revolt of Islam and Alastor, and also an imprint, "C. H. REYNELL, Broad-street, Golden-square, London." At the end of the book are four pages of Ollier's advertisements,—of works by Lamb, Hunt, Shelley, Barry Cornwall, and Oilier. The fly-titles and contents, I insert in their places. In a letter to his publisher, dated "Leghorn, September 6th, 1819," Shelley says—"In the Rosalind and Helen, I see there are some few errors, which are so much the worse because they are errors in the sense. If there should be any danger of a second edition, I will correct them."—(Shelley Memorials, p. 119.) Whether he revised a copy, and, if so, whether Mrs. Shelley subsequently made use of it for her edition, I have no positive knowledge; but I do not discover in the variations between her text and his any trace of such a copy, and therefore think she left these "errors in the sense " uncorrected. As far as I am aware no entire MS. of Rosalind and Helen exists; but Mr. Garnett tells me of a fragment, written in pencil in a note-book, among Sir Percy Shelley's MSS.,—the conclusion of the poem,—presenting no variation from the printed text. Of the other three poems in the Rosalind and Helen volume, the only MSS. I know of are Sir Percy Shelley's pencil draft of the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, the variations shewn by which, communicated to me by Mr. Garnett, belong to an early stage of the composition,—and Mr. Locker's MS. of the interpolated passage relating to Byron in the Lines written among the Euganean Hills. — H. B. F.]