Victor and Cazire_, and we are informed that an
advertisement of the same appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_,
September 18, 1810.

Shelley had previously published a romance called _Zastrozzi_, and his
first kitten-love, Harriet Grove, is said to have helped both in
this performance and the poems. But Harriet was not mindful of the
commandment against stealing, and when Stockdale came to examine the
poems he found that she had taken one entire poem by Monk Lewis and
put it in among the "original" poetry. Shelley ordered the edition to
be "squelched," but nearly a hundred copies had already been issued;
and this fact, so maddening to the poet, may yet rejoice the collector
of rare books.

These poems, the _Wandering Jew_, an epic, the joint production of
himself and Captain Medwin, a school-boy production, _St. Irvyne,
or the Rosicrucian_, and his first story, _Zastrozzi_, are the first
books of the poet; and their history is detailed with more or less
interest in the letters which passed between Shelley and Stockdale
respecting them. The poet tells Stockdale, in offering him the
manuscript of the _Jew_ for publication, that he had previously to
knowing him sent it to John Ballantyne & Co., and encloses their
letter setting forth the reason that they did not publish it--namely,
that it contained "atheistical opinions." The canny Scots are sorry to
return it, and do so only "after the most mature deliberation." They
think that it is better suited, "perhaps," to the "character and
liberal feelings of the English than the bigoted spirit which yet
pervades many cultivated minds in this country;" adding, "Even Walter
Scott is assailed on all hands at present by our Scotch spiritual
and evangelical magazines and instructors for having promulgated
atheistical doctrines in the _Lady of the Lake_."

Shelley assures Stockdale he is unconscious of atheism in the _Few_,
and asks him "upon his honor as a gentleman to pay a fair price for
the copy-right."

Stockdale never received the manuscript of the _Jew_, and Shelley,
having submitted a copy in manuscript to Campbell and received an
adverse judgment, does not seem to have troubled himself further about
it. So it remained in must and dust until 1831, when somebody of the
Stockdale ilk discovered it, and printed parts of it in _Frazer's
Magazine_. Judging from these excerpts, the book was entirely
worthless, and as for the stories, they were neither better nor worse
than othe