CURRENT LITERAT HIRE.
Original Poetry. By Victor and Cazire (Percy Bysshe Shelley and Elizabeth Shelley). Edited by Richard Garnett, C.B., LL.D. (John Lane.)—We suppose that on the whole Dr. Garnett, Mr. Lane, and the other persons concerned in this publication may plead exemption from the curse invoked by Tennyson upon those who would not let a poet's ashes rest. Everybody knows that Shelley's early work was irretrievably bad, and consequently no one will be surprised to find in this volume poems which range from the merely commonplace to the simply ludicrous,—from this sort of thing— "The world with its keenness and woe Has DO charms or attraction for me, Its unkindness with grief has laid low The heart which is faithful to thee; "
to this-
" Oh did you observe the black Canon pass, And did you observe his frown "
Dr. Garnett, we may add, is inclined to credit Cazire with this latter production, but it is not really much worse than the rest. But allowing them to be as bad as any one pleases, it may fairly be said that their publication, while it cannot detract from Shelley's renown, gratifies a legitimate curiosity, aroused in the first instance by Dr. Garnett's discovery in Stockdale's Budget of the story connected with the poems. Shelley induced Stockdale to issue them, and it was only after one thousand five hundred copies had been printed that the publisher identified one of the poems as being the work of M. G. Lewis. Shelley withdrew the whole issue from circulation and paid the bill, expressing, says Stockdale, "the warmest resentment at the imposition practised on him by his coadjutor." A copy, however, came into the hands of Charles Henry Grove, brother of Harriet Grove, Shelley's cousin and early love, to whom many of the poems are addressed, and it survived in the possession of his descendants, to be unearthed eighty-eight years after its first appearance in 1810. Dr. Garnett has not been able to discover among the writings of Lewis any poem which occurs in the collection. Seekers after Shelleyana have still something to live for; but we are haunted by a suspicion that Stockdale, gauging the impetuous character of this youth of eighteen, invented the story of the Lewis poem as a ready means of disposing of the entire edition. He appears to have been more resourceful than scrupulous, and his story of the transaction was only published after Shelley's death.
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