Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/50

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MOXON'S CHEAP EDITION OF SHELLEY'S POEMS.[1]


IN this gilt-edged and prettily bound octavo volume, comprising xxiv. and 616 pages of small but very clear print on a slightly toned paper, and published at 3s. 6d. we have, so far as I am aware, the first really good and fairly complete cheap edition of the original poems of Shelley. It contains a few short pieces and fragments not in the edition of Mrs. Shelley, including additional fragments of "Charles I.," and portions of a prologue to "Hellas;" and on the other hand, it omits a few of the shortest fragments which Mrs. Shelley gave; but both the additions and omissions are of very slight importance in relation to the main body of Shelley's works. The names of several persons, some mentioned in poems, and some to whom poems were addressed, which were left out in the previous editions, are in this one restored. The memoir is good as to the facts, but rather too off-hand in tone and style, as if written when the editor was outwearied with his task, or done hurriedly for an ephemeral periodical instead of gravely

  1. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Unannotated Edition.) Edited with a Critical Memoir by William Michael Rossetti. Illustrated by the Society of Decorative Art. (London: E. Moxon, Son, and Co., Dover Street.)