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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The dating of Shelley's prose essays and fragments is at present very uncertain. Mary Shelley's dates in the preface to Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments, 1840, are, for the most part, conjectures. W. M. Rossetti in A Memoir of Shelley gives briefly, without systematic evidence, the dates of some of the fragments. Forman and the Julian editors follow, with some exceptions, Rossetti's dating in their editions of Shelley's prose. Koszul laid a more secure foundation for the dating of some of Shelley's prose. His study of the external evidence of the MSS in the Bodleian notebook has resulted in considerable progress. The present writer has approached the problem of dating Shelley's prose from a study of the internal evidence which consists, in a large measure, of the study of the relation of Shelley's prose to his reading as found in the Journal of Shelley and Mary, Shelley's letters, and other biographical sources. Shelley's quotations, references, and allusions to his reading supply valuable information for dating. Some of the prose fragments, hitherto undated, are assigned a date, while the date of others is changed, confirmed, or given more precise limits. It should be acknowledged, however, that Shelley's wide variety of reading, and the extraordinary tenacity of his memory make for caution in dating works too confidently on the basis of internal evidence. Until such time as Shelley's prose MSS are studied as minutely, thoroughly, and systematically as the MSS of the Bodleian notebook, the dates of the fragments given in the following notes may serve as tentative points d'appui for a study of the development of Shflley's thought.
1 The essays and fragments dealt with in this paper are those which are undated or whose date is uncertain. The date of Shelley's notes and translations from Plato has been dealt with by the present writer in MLR, xxxiv (1939), 245–248; xxxvi (1941), 98–105, 116.
2 W. M. Rossetti, A Memoir of Shelley (London: The Shelley Society's Publications, 1886), pp. 148–151.
3 H. B. Forman, Shelley's Prose Works (London: Reeves and Turner, 1880); The Julian Edition of The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, newly edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (London and New York: E. Benn Ltd. and C. Scribner's Sons, 1928–30), Prose, v–vii.
4 Shelley's Prose in the Bodleian Manuscripts, edited by A. H. Koszul (London: Oxford University Press, 1910).
5 The Journal is found in Shelley and Mary (privately printed, 1882). The writer is indebted to Prof. Newman I. White for a loan of the typescript of this work. For Shelley's reading list, contained in the yearly summary kept by Mary in the Journal, see N. I. White, Shelley (New York: Knopf, 1940), ii, Appendix vi, 539–545, and for a fuller list, with more accurate titles, see his index, under Shelley's reading, ii, cviii–cxii.
6 Koszul, op. cit., p. 11.
7 This information comes from Shelley and Mary, p. 642.
8 Julian Edition, vii, 311.
9 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Roger Ingpen (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1914), ii, 847.
10 Koszul, op. cit, p. 88: “The sacred links … sustains the life of all,” which is a transcription of Ion, 533, D, E.
11 Ibid., pp. 121–122, Appendix, Fragments i-ii, which do not turn out to be fragments, as Koszul thinks (cf. p. 88), but quotations from Shelley's translation of Ion, 533 D–534 B. Cf. J. A. Notopoulos, “Shelley's Translation of the ‘Ion’ of Plato,” MLR, xxxvi (1941), 116.
12 Cf. J. A. Notopoulos, “The Dating of Shelley's The Moral Teachings of Jesus Christ,” MLR, xxxv (1940), 215–216.
13 The source oí this statement can only be Suetonius, and not Plutarch's Life of Caesar, as the words 
show.
14 This quotation, which Koszul left unidentified, comes from Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes, 73. The translation of this quotation in the Julian Edition (vi, 368, note on p. 246, lines 33–34) is inaccurate. The translation in the Loeb Classical Library edition reads: “He would ridicule good birth and fame and all such distinctions calling them showy ornaments of vice. The only true commonwealth was, he said, that which is as wide as the universe.” Shelley translates part of the quotation in the Essay (Koszul, p. 42) as: “The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being.” Leigh Hunt, who possessed Shelley's copy of Diogenes Laertius, says in the preface to the Masque of Anarchy: “I was looking the other day into a Diogenes Laertius that belonged to him, and almost the first passage I met with thus marked, was a saying of the biographer's namesake in which birth and honours are treated with contempt.” Shelley's copy of Diogenes Laertius passed along with that of Plato's Republic into Leigh Hunt's library. Cf. Correspondence of Leigh Hunt (London: Smith, Elder, 1862), i, 222.
15 Koszul, op. cit., pp. 11–12.
16 Julian Edition, vii, 267–270.
17 Ibid., vi, 358.
18 Cf. E. Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886), i, 454.
19 Koszul, op. cit., p. 20.
20 Ibid., p. 57.
21 Ibid., p. 56.
22 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, with an English Translation by R. D. Hicks (London: William Heinemann, 1925), ii, 75.
23 Koszul, op. cit., p. 45, note 3.
24 Ibid., pp. 50–51.
25 Julian Edition, vii, 103. The probable source of this statement is Lord Monboddo's Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh: J. Balfour, 1809), which Shelley ordered from his bookseller on December 24, 1812 (cf. Letters, i, 372). In discussing Egyptian hieroglyphics Monboddo writes, “Thus far Diodorus Siculus. There are many other symbols of the same kind with those he mentions, which we find in ancient authors, such as a serpent in a circle to denote eternity” (ii, 249).
26 Koszul, op. cit., p. 122.
27 Julian Edition, vii, 346.
28 Koszul, op. cit., p. 123.
29 Letters, i, 415.
30 Ibid., i, 446.
31 Koszul, op. cit., p. 124.
32 White, op. cit., ii, 543, Index xv.
33 Julian Edition, vii, 341.
34 Koszul, op. cit., p. 135.
35 Letters, ii, 722.
36 Julian Edition, vii, 137.
37 Koszul, op. cit., p. 137, note 2.
38 Cf. ibid., p. 25, lines 23–26. The first four lines of the outline of the Essay in Favour of Polytheism (ibid., p. 124) deal with the relation of language to Metaphysics, a subject discussed in Julian Edition, vii, 62–63. For the date of the Essay in Favour of Polytheism, cf. infra, p. 489.
39 Cf. Julian Edition, vii, 63, lines 1–3, and Locke's Human Understanding (Pringle-Pattison edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 133; Julian Edition, vii, 63, lines 12–33, and The Works of Francis Bacon, Popular Edition based upon the Complete Edition of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1877), i, Novum Organum, 41, 69, 92. Cf. also Shelley's notes on pp. 54, 78 of vol. i of his copy of Bacon's Works given in W. E. Peck, Shelley, His Life and Work (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927), ii, 347.
40 D. L. Clark, “Shelley and Bacon,” PMLA, xlviii (1933), 534, note 23. Evidence that Shelley read The Advancement of Learning in 1815–16 is found in his reference to it in a note to Essay on Christianity, cf. Koszul, op. cit., p. 36.
41 The Latin quotation in Shelley's note (Julian Edition, vii, 63) comes from the “Antitheta” of Bacon's Essay on Superstition. Cf. Bacon's Works, edited by Ellis and Spedding (1857–59 edition), i, 694. The quotation should read citius rather than alius, which is an error of transcription from Shelley's MS. Cf. Shelley's marginal note no. 25 listed in Clark's article.
42 Cf. Clark, op. cit., for a list.
43 Cf. Koszul, op. cit., p. 36.
44 Clark, op. cit., no. 32–33.
45 Locke, op. cit., pp. 49–51, 133–134.
46 Koszul, op. cit., p. 135.
47 Ibid., p. 137, note 2.
48 Cf. Forman, op. cit, ii, 282, and Julian Edition, vii, 341.
49 The Julian editor says “the water-marks of the paper upon which two pieces of the MS. of the Speculation on Morals were written are 1814 and 1815.” He assigns the latter, Julian Edition, vii, 81–83, to the MS belonging to Sir John C. E. Shelley-Rolls' collection. He does not specify the other but it probably is Julian Edition, vii, 73–76, to line 31, which also belongs to Sir John C. E. Shelley-Rolls' collection. If so, we have the terminus post quem date of the MS, but its terminus ante quem is that based upon the date of Shelley's reading of the authors mentioned in the fragment.
50 The quotations from Livy and the pages therein noted in the Journal show that Shelley's copy of Livy was that of the Elzevir edition, Amsterdam, 1765.
51 A. Droop, Die Belesenheit Percy Bysshe Shelleys (Weimar: R. Wagner Sohn, 1906), p. 34.
52 The MS given by Sir Percy Shelley to Dr. Garnett; cf. Julian Edition, vii, 341.
53 Koszul, op. cit., p. 135.
54 Ibid., p. 145, note 2.
55 Cf. supra, note 1.
56 Koszul, op. cit., p. 124.
57 Koszul does not give the quotation but it must come from the speech of Cleon in Thucydides, iii, 37–40. Perhaps a reference to this section of Thucydides in Bacon (Works, Cambridge, 1877, i, Adv. of Learning, p. 298) may have attracted Shelley to its appropriate use in the Essay.
58 Koszul, op. cit., p. 14. Cf. J. A. Notopoulos, “Shelley and Thomas Taylor,” PMLA, li (1936), 508–512. For polytheism as one of the roots of English Romanticism, cf. H. N. Fairchild, “Romanticism: A Symposium, England,” PMLA, lv (1940), 20–22.
59 For the influence of Bacon and Locke on Shelley's Speculation on Metaphysics, cf. supra, note 39.
60 Cf. Bacon, Works (Cambridge, 1877), i, 87; cf. Shelley's marginalia to Bacon, Peck, op. cit., ii, 347, notes on pp. 82, 83.
61 Locke, op. cit., 88, 225.
62 John Home Tooke, Diversions of Purley (London: G. Bell, 1840), 7–9, 15, 17; for reference to him, cf. Julian Edition, vii, 63.
63 Lord Monboddo, Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh: J. Balfour, 1733–92). Cf. vol. i, Chapter x. Among the topics discussed in this chapter is “The Progress of Abstraction and Generalization deduced from the Progress of Language.” Shelley sent for this work on December 24, 1812 (Letters, i, 372). Peacock's novel Melincourt, written in 1817, mentions Lord Monboddo along with Mr. Forester, who is generally assumed to be a portrait of Shelley. Cf. Halliford Edition of the Works of Thomas Love Peacock, edited by H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones (London: Constable & Co., 1924), ii, 68–71, 154.
64 Cf. Julian Edition, vii, 62–63, 65.
65 Cf. Koszul, op. cit., p. 124.
66 The date of Polytheism, The Beginning of An Essay, So Called, Julian Edition, vii, 151, is probably 1820 or 1821, for it follows the essay On the Devil and Devils (1820 or 1821) in the notebook belonging to Sir John Shelley-Rolls. This fragment seems to take up the first topic of the design of the Essay in Favour of Polytheism.
67 Dowden, op. cit., i, 534 n. It is not known what has become of the notebook. Cf. Koszul, op. cit., pp. 134–135, note 1.
68 After assigning the date of this fragment, the writer came upon A. B. Ballman's similar conclusion as to the date of On Lije. Cf. “The Dating of Shelley's Prose Fragments on Life, On Love, On the Punishment of Death,” Journal of English Literary History, ii (1935), 332–335. Though some of the evidence is the same, additional evidence is presented here for the date of the fragments On Life, On Love, and On the Punishment of Death.
69 Letters, iii, 615; Julian Edition, x, 130; vii, 138; cf. Shelley's repetition of “I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus,” Preface to Prometheus Unbound, Dowden, op. cit., ii, 357, and Letters, ii, 847.
70 Letters, ii, 596, 600, 629, 633, 721.
71 Koszul, op. cit., pp. 10, 148; cf. Letters, ii, 596, 600.
72 Cf. Shelley's reading list for 1816 in White, op. cit., ii, 541–542, Shelley's Preface to Frankenstein, Julian Edition, vi, 259, and Dowden, op. cit., ii, 198, 312.
73 Cf. references to Peter Bell The Third (1819), Oedipus Tyrannus (1819), Notes on Sculptures (1819), Charles I (1819, 1822) in Droop, op. cit., pp. 49–53.
74 Ibid., pp. 113–114.
75 Cf. White, op. cit., ii, 89; for Shelley and Drummond, cf. H. N. Fairchild, The Romantic Quest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), pp. 379–385.
76 Letters, ii, 722; cf. also the similarity of the phrase “mist of familiarity which makes it obscure to us” (ibid., 721) and “the mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being” (Julian Edition, vi, 193).
77 Forman, op. cit, ii, 266.
78 Cf. Symposium 210–211 with “the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely”; cf. “the discovery of its antitype” with “his substantial antitype” (Peter Bell, [1819], Prol. 16); cf. Symposium 208 with “to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules.”
79 Cf. Julian Edition, vi, 361, notes on p. 202, lines 6, 25.
80 First published in its entirety in Plato's Banquet Translated from the Greek. A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancient Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love. Also a Preface to the Banquet Revised and Enlarged by Roger Ingpen (London, 1931). Printed for Private circulation.
81 Letters, ii, 708.
82 Cf. Peck. op. cit., ii, 345, and Julian Edition, vii, 226.
83 Cf. Koszul, op. cit., p. 36.
84 Cf. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), 203; Julian Edition, vii, 224; Letters, ii, 642, 721.
85 Letters, ii, 604; White, op. cit., ii, 630–631. The only reference to Shelley's reading of Petrarch earlier than 1818 is 1813 (cf. Dowden, op. cit., i, 386), but this cannot be used for the dating of the fragment because Shelley did not read Dante before 1818.
86 Shelley's attack on monasticism is apparently inspired by Gibbon's satire on monasticism in chapter 37.
87 Letters, ii, 846.
88 White, op. cit., ii, 542.
89 Julian Edition, vii, 273; ix, 254; R. Glynn Grylls, Mary Shelley (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 278.
90 References to “Elysian” in Shelley occur only in poems written after 1816; cf. F. S. Ellis, A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1892), p. 198. The phrase “those fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit” in Discourse on Manners of the Ancients is another allusion to the Elysian fields.
91 Julian Edition, vi, 371.
92 Ibid., pp. 354–355
93 For the date of this fragment, cf. supra, note 66.
94 Rossetti, op. cit., 144–145.
95 Letters, ii, 833.
96 Julian Edition, vii, 311.
97 Cf. supra, note 1.
98 Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron by Edward John Trelawny in The Life of Shelley (London: J. M. Dent and Sons Limited, 1933), ii, 199: “I am content to see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; … In our present gross material state our faculties are clouded—when Death removes our clay coverings the mystery will be solved.”
99 Cf. Julian Edition, vi, 361.
100 Trelawny, op. cit., 190.
101 Hutchinson's edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), 473.
102 Julian Edition, vi, 360.
103 Clark, op. cit., no. 54.
104 Cf. supra, note 40.
105 Cf. Koszul, op. cit., pp. 28–33.
106 Ballman (cf. supra, note 68) is inclined to assign this fragment to 1819. The evidence presented, however, does not eliminate 1816 but only offers an alternative possibility.
107 Julian Edition, vii, 147–148.
108 Bacon's Works (Cambridge, 1877), i, 212.
109 Clark, op. cit., 539, no. 25.
110 Bacon's Works (Cambridge, 1877), i, 125, 256.
111 Cf. Julian Edition, vi, 372.
112 Ibid., vii, 152.
113 Cf. supra, note 80.
114 Cf. Fragments Connected with Epipsychidion, 97–100.
115 For a similar case, cf. Shelley's “Note on the Banquet of Plato,” written pari passu with the reading of the Symposium.
116 The writer is indebted to Prof. N. I. White for permission to examine the typescript of a photostatic copy of the Clairmont Diary in his possession.
117 Peck, op. cit., ii, 433–434.
