EDITOR'S NOTE BEFORE MISCELLANEOUS POSTHUMOUS POEMS PREFACE. BY THE EDITOR. THE two former volumes of this edition consist of mature works published by Shelley during his life-time; and the series of such works is completed in the present volume by the reproduction of his editions of Adonais and Hellas with the Poem Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon. The rest of the volume, or nearly all of it, consists of work published after the poet's death. In dealing with Shelley's posthumous poems, change of method has naturally followed change of materials and circumstances. The text of many of these grew gradually under the disentangling hand of the poet's ever devoted widow; but I have not always thought it needful to indicate what additions and changes were made subsequently to 1824, in poems imperfectly issued in the volume of that year, called Posthumous Poems. It has seemed sufficient to adopt the most complete version and the best readings, though where there are minute variations of any interest I have recorded them also. Verbal variations in the text, I have aimed at recording invariably; and to that end all the poems, from whatever source they are printed in the main, |