iterary Chronicle and Weekly
Review_, published by Limbird in the Strand--1 December, 1821: a rather
singular, not to say piratical, proceeding. An editorial note was worded
thus: 'Through the kindness of a friend, we have been favoured with the
latest production of a gentleman of no ordinary genius, Mr. Bysshe
Shelley. It is an elegy on the death of a youthful poet of considerable
promise, Mr. Keats, and was printed at Pisa. As the copy now before us
is perhaps [surely not] the only one that has reached England, and the
subject is one that will excite much interest, we shall print the whole
of it.' This promise was not literally fulfilled, for stanzas 19 to 24
were omitted, not apparently with any special object.

After the publication in London of the Pisan edition of _Adonais_, the
poem remained unreprinted until 1829. It was then issued at Cambridge,
at the instance of Lord Houghton (Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes) and Mr.
Arthur Hallam, the latter having brought from Italy a copy of the
original pamphlet. The Cambridge edition, an octavo in paper wrappers,
is now still scarcer than the Pisan one. The only other separate edition
of _Adonais_ was that of Mr. Buxton Forman, 1876, corresponding
substantially with the form which the poem assumes in the _Complete
Works of Shelley_, as produced by the same editor. It need hardly be
said that _Adonais_ was included in Mrs. Shelley's editions of her
husband's Poems, and in all other editions of any fulness: it has also
appeared in most of the volumes of Selections.

As early as 1830 there was an Italian translation of this Elegy. It is
named _Adone, nella morte di Giovanni Keats, Elegia di Percy Bishe
Shelley, tradotta da L. A. Damaso Pareto_. _Genova, dalla Tifografia
Pellas_, 1830. In this small quarto thirty pages are occupied by a
notice of the life and poetry of Shelley.

I shall not here enter upon a consideration of the cancelled passages of
_Adonais_: they will appear more appositely further on (see pp. 92-94,
&c.). I therefore conclude the present section by quoting the _Quarterly
Review_ article upon _Endymion_--omitting only a few sentences which do
not refer directly to Keats, but mostly to Leigh Hunt:--

'Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty;