The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume I (2 of 682)

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PREFACE (CONT'D)

To have reproduced the spelling of the manuscripts would only have
served to divert attention from Shelley's poetry to my own ingenuity
in disgusting the reader according to the rules of editorial
punctilio. (I adapt a phrase or two from the preface to "The Revolt of
Islam".) Shelley was neither very accurate, nor always consistent, in
his spelling. He was, to say the truth, indifferent about all such
matters: indeed, to one absorbed in the spectacle of a world
travailing for lack of the gospel of "Political Justice", the study of
orthographical niceties must have seemed an occupation for Bedlamites.
Again--as a distinguished critic and editor of Shelley, Professor
Dowden, aptly observes in this connexion--'a great poet is not of an
age, but for all time.' Irregular or antiquated forms such as
'recieve,' 'sacrifize,' 'tyger,' 'gulph,' 'desart,' 'falshood,' and
the like, can only serve to distract the reader's attention, and mar
his enjoyment of the verse. Accordingly Shelley's eccentricities in
this kind have been discarded, and his spelling reversed in accordance
with modern usage. All weak preterite-forms, whether indicatives or
participles, have been printed with "ed" rather than "t", participial
adjectives and substantives, such as 'past,' alone excepted. In the
case of 'leap,' which has two preterite-forms, both employed by
Shelley (See for an example of the longer form, the "Hymn to Mercury",
18 5, where 'leaped' rhymes with 'heaped' (line 1). The shorter form,
rhyming to 'wept,' 'adapt,' etc., occurs more frequently.)--one with
the long vowel of the present-form, the other with a vowel-change (Of
course, wherever this vowel-shortening takes place, whether indicated
by a corresponding change in the spelling or not, "t", not "ed" is
properly used--'cleave,' 'cleft,'; 'deal,' 'dealt'; etc. The forms
discarded under the general rule laid down above are such as 'wrackt,'
'prankt,' 'snatcht,' 'kist,' 'opprest,' etc.) like that of 'crept'
from 'creep'--I have not hesitated to print the longer form 'leaped,'
and the shorter (after Mr. Henry Sweet's example) 'lept,' in order
clearly to indicate the pronunciation intended by Shelley. In the
editions the two vowel-sounds are confounded under the one spelling,
'leapt.' In a few cases Shelley's spelling, though unusual or
obsolete, has been retained. Thus in 'aethereal,' 'paean,' and one or
two more words the "ae" will be found, and 'airy' still appears as
'aery'. Shelley seems to have uniformly written 'lightening': here the
word is so printed whenever it is employed as a trisyllable; elsewhere
the ordinary spelling has been adopted. (Not a little has been written
about 'uprest' ("Revolt of Islam", 3 21 5), which has been described
as a nonce-word deliberately coined by Shelley 'on no better warrant
than the exigency of the rhyme.' There can be little doubt that
'uprest' is simply an overlooked misprint for 'uprist'--not by any
means a nonce-word, but a genuine English verbal substantive of
regular formation, familiar to many from its employment by Chaucer.
True, the corresponding rhyme-words in the passage above referred to
are 'nest,' 'possessed,' 'breast'; but a laxity such as
'nest'--'uprist' is quite in Shelley's manner. Thus in this very poem
we find 'midst'--'shed'st' (6 16), 'mist'--'rest'--'blest' (5 58),
'loveliest'--'mist'--kissed'--'dressed' (5 53). Shelley may have first
seen the word in "The Ancient Mariner"; but he employs it more
correctly than Coleridge, who seems to have mistaken it for a
preterite-form (='uprose') whereas in truth it serves either as the
third person singular of the present (='upriseth'), or, as here, for
the verbal substantive (='uprising').

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