Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/95

Rh present year (1878) Mr. Rossetti issued in three volumes a great and decided improvement upon his previous edition, cancelling erroneous and rash conjectures and variations, confirming others by authority, opening up new questions of importance; and, it may be added, correcting and enriching the Memoir by the light of the most recent information. And here one is constrained to interject that now that Shelley's eldest child is dead, his family, in justice to his memory and to those who revere it, should surely publish without further delay the facts known only by themselves "and a few private friends," concerning his separation from his first wife and the causes that impelled her suicide.

While it is pretty certain that no single student with valid claims to sit in judgment will sanction all that either Mr. Rossetti or Mr. Forman has done or suggested, or even all that they agree upon amidst their differences, it is, I think, almost certain that any such student, whose intellectual claims are not impaired by prejudice, will gladly admit that together, and perhaps in about equal measure, each supplementing and checking the other, they have succeeded in gathering nearly all the data, documentary, critical, and conjectural, required for working out an approximately perfect text of the Poems. I do not propose to attempt here any comparative appraisal of these two editions, or to discuss the numerous details wherein they differ from previous editions and from each other; I would merely note a few interesting points on which neither of them has touched, and say a word on a very few only of the points which they have touched. If I venture on suggestion, it will assuredly not be for unauthorized alteration of the text, but simply for discussion and, if possible, further scrutiny.