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.
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