Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue (1876)
ROSALIND AND HELEN.
Edited, with notes, by H. Buxton Forman, and printed for private distribution.
MDCCCLXXVI.
[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.]
ROSALIND AND HELEN,
A MODERN ECLOGUE;
WITH
OTHER POEMS
BY
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR C. AND J. OLLIER,
VERE STREET, BOND STREET.
1819.
ADVERTISEMENT.
[By Shelley.]
The story of "Rosalind and Helen" is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry.[1] It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it.
I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller, to add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.
- Naples, Dec. 20, 1818.
- ↑ Mrs. Shelley tells us that Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside till she found it, when, at her request, Shelley finished it at the Baths of Lucca in the Summer of 1818; and Lady Shelley (Memorials, p. 87) says that a large part of it was written in 1817 (when the Shelley’s lived at Marlow); but it is not stated whether this was in the Spring or “’inter,—before or after the composition of Laon and Cythna, which occupied the summer and autumn. The lapse of many eventful months may account for some of the inconsistencies in detail; and the fact that Shelley had to be urged to finish it at all shews how little he prized it, and how little, therefore, he would have been likely to bring it up to any high degree of finish. In a letter to Peacock, written from Rome on the 6th of April 1819, while this Eclogue was being printed, the poet, after enquiring with some anxiety after the safety of his Lines written among the Euganean Hills, says of Rosalind and Helen, “ I lay no stress on it one way or the other.” On the whole, therefore, I should imagine that it was hastily written with the full knowledge that such was the case, and that Shelley deliberately declined to reduce it to perfection of detail, however willing to correct“ errors in the sense”. If so, to attempt to make good the omission of rhymes and so on is simply to invade the poem with rash assistance, and forget the fate of Uzza. The very inlperfections have a value; and the great beauty of passages in every page becomes the more wonderful.
CONTENTS.
ROSALIND AND HELEN,
A
MODERN ECLOGUE.