[The greater part of this fragment was published by Mrs. Shelley in the Essays, Letters &c., 1840; but I have been enabled to add considerably to it from a MS. placed at my disposal by Mr. Townshend Mayer, the philosophical fragment referred to in the foot-note at page 248, Vol. IV, of the Poetical Works, as being written on the same paper with the Sonnet of Guido Cavalcanti to Dante Alighieri there printed. The MS., which unfortunately begins in the middle of a sentence, is apparently continuous. It is written generally aboiit half-way down the page to admit of annotation; but Shelley has only inserted one note, the Latin quotation at page 290. In the paragraphs which Mrs. Shelley printed with the heading "I.—what metaphysics are. errors in the usual methods of considering them," occurs a different version of some of the sentences in this MS.: indeed the MS. seems to me to be, mainly, a more complete version of that particular section than Mrs. Shelley printed from, though it is possible that the MS. used in 1840 consisted of fragments of a later version. I have given the whole of both versions, either as text or as notes. Mrs. Shelley assigns the fragment printed by her to the year 1815.—H. B. F.]
