21. 4. 72.
Dear Sir,
I have had two or three glances into your Shelley before, but this dull Sunday have made Alastor my even-song, and venture to send you a few notes thereanent while it is fresh in my mind. I think you have definitely settled text and punctuation save in two or three slight instances.
p. 97. I incline for the Herself a poet; his poetical character having been so emphasised from the beginning of the poem.
pp. 106-7. Here are gnarled roots clenching the soil with grasping roots. Should it not be gnarled trunks in the first instance?
p. 107. The precipice &c. still remain somewhat obscure to me, but your pencilled version seems the least dark of all.
p. 107. I think you may safely adopt the tracts for tracks, tho' the latter is just possible as you remark in your note. Shelley is rapidly enumerating vast objects, islanded seas, &c., &c., and would hardly pause to give a descriptive line to the streams.
p. 109. "Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended"—Should not this be horns? Just below we have the divided frame; and then with peculiar insistance (p. 110) the two lessening points of light, as if in reminiscence of the "two eyes, Two starry eyes " bottom of p. 105.
p. 109. "With whose dun beams" Should not this be dim, which seems quite lustreless enough?
p. 110 and note on p. 476. Here I prefer the old reading. The adjectives of the last line, it seems to me,
