If you would really correct the proof, I need not trouble
Peacock, who I suppose, has enough.

Can you take it as

a compliment that I prefer to trouble you?

I do not particularly wish this poem to be known as mine;
but, at all events, I would not put my name to it. I leave
you to judge whether it is best to throw it into the fire,
or to publish it.

LIST OF STOPS NOT IN THE MANUSCRIPT

BUT PRINTED IN THIS EDITION.

Commas at the end of lines 40, 85, 94, 107, 116, 120, 134, 144, 145, 154,
157, 167, 179, 191, 196, 202, 203, 204, 215, 217, 221, 224, 225, 238, 253,
262, 305, 307, 331, 338, 360, 375, 384, 385, 396, 436, 447, 450, 451, 473,
475, 476, 511, 520, 526, 541, 591, 592, 593, and 612.

Semicolons at the end of lines 101, 103, 158, 181, 279, and 496.
Colons at the end of lines 164, 178, 606, and 610.

Full-stops at the end of lines 95, 201, 299, 319, 407, 481, 599, 601, and

617.

Notes of exclamation at the end of lines 392 and 492.

Commas after companion in line 86, meant in line 94, maker in line 113,
past in line 114, churches in line 136, rainy in line 141, blithe in line 167,
Maddalo in line 192, others in line 205, this in line 232, month and cried
in line 300, misery in line 314, mad in line 394, Nay in line 398, he and
seemed in line 529, Unseen in line 554, and parted in line 610.

Full-stops after transparent in line 85, trials in line 472, and Venice in
line 583.

Note of interrogation after end in line 607.

Inverted commas before A in line 87, See in line 166, You in line 408, and
that in line 597.

PECULIARITIES IN THE MANUSCRIPT, NOT
FOLLOWED IN THIS EDITION.

In line 45, achieve is spelt atchieve.

In lines 90, 112, 113, 282, their is spelt thier.

In line 192, judgment is spelt with a central e.

In line 240, deceits is spelt deciets.

In lines 308, 311, and 530, falschood is spelt falshood.

In line 314 disappointment is spelt dissappointment.

In lines 331, 364, 603, and 612, the apostrophe is omitted from hope's,
moment's, father's, and youth's.

In line 433, scaredst is spelt cearedst, and in line 614, cered is spelt ceared.
In line 600, mien is spelt mein.

JULIAN AND MADDALO:

A CONVERSATION.

I RODE one evening with Count Maddalo1
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,

Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,

Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,

Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,

Abandons; and no other object breaks

The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes

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10

Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes

A narrow space of level sand thereon,

Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste

And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see

15

of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me. He said, that if he had been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision. We talked of literary matters, his Fourth Canto, which, he says, is very good, and indeed repeated some stanzas of great energy to me."

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love
To ride as then I rode ;-for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air

Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent

Into our hearts aërial merriment.

So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain,-such glee was ours,
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness: till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
Talk interrupted with such raillery

As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn

The thoughts it would extinguish:-'twas forlorn,
Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,
The devils held within the dales1 of Hell
Concerning God, freewill and destiny:
Of all that earth has been or yet may be,
All that vain men imagine or believe,
Or hope can paint or suffering may2 achieve,

1 Miss Blind (Westminster Review, July, 1870, p. 82) makes the following emendation: "For dales read vales, the word employed by Milton in the passage referred to.' The word in the Leigh Hunt MS., which is of course the best authority, is clearly dales; and the passage reads better

so it does not profess to be a quotation from Milton; and I should think it quite probable that, in writing the poem finally for the press, Shelley consciously put dales for vales as an improvement.

So in the MS., but can in Mrs. Shelley's editions from 1824 onward.

We descanted, and I (for ever still
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
Argued against despondency, but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck,1 methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,
Over the horizon of the mountains ;-Oh
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow

Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

Thy mountains, seas and vineyards and the towers
Of cities they encircle—it was ours

To stand on thee, beholding it; and then

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60

Just where we had dismounted the Count's men
Were waiting for us with the gondola.—
As those who pause on some delightful way
Tho' bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
Looking upon the evening and the flood
Which lay between the city and the shore
Paved with the image of the sky... the hoar
And aëry Alps2 towards the North appeared
Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
Between the East and West; and half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
Among the many folded hills: they were

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70

75

1 In the MS. made was originally written here; but the pen is drawn through it, and struck is written above.

2 In the MS. and in the Posthumous Poems the word is aery; but in the collected editions airy.

Those famous Euganean hills, which bear
As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-
And then-as if the Earth and Sea had been
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen

Those mountains towering as from waves of flame.
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade,"
Said my companion, "I will show you soon
"A better station "-so, o'er the lagune
We glided, and from that funereal bark
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles in evening's gleam
Its temples and its palaces did seem.
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.
I was about to speak, when-“We are even
"Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo,
And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
"Look Julian on the west, and listen well
"If you hear not a deep and heavy bell."
I looked, and saw between us and the sun
A building on an island; such a1 one
As age to age might add, for uses vile,
A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;2

And on the top an open tower, where hung

100

A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;
We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue :

1 We read an one in Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1824 and 1839, but a one in some of the later editions. Mr. Rossetti reverts to an one, which is wrong, as the MS. gives a.

" According to Mr. Rossetti, the building described in the text is stated by Mr. Browning not to be a madhouse, but a "penitentiary for rebel

lious priests, to the west between Venice and the Lido, on the islet of San Clemente. San Servolo, with its madhouse... is as full of windows as a barrack." Medwin, on the other hand, professes (Life of Shelley, Vol. I, p. 318) to know well the madhouse as described by Shelley; but in matters of accuracy, he is not to be relied on.

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