(a) This advertisement in the 9th March, 1811, number of the Oxford Herald:—
‘Literature. Just published, Price Two Shillings, A Poetical Essay On The Existing State of Things.
“And Famine At Her Bidding Wasted Wide
The Wretched Land. Till In The Public Way,
Promiscuous Where The Dead And Dying Lay,
Dogs Fed On Human Bones In The Open Light Of Day.”
By A Gentleman Of The University Of Oxford. For assisting to Maintain In Prison Mr. Peter Finerty, Imprisoned For A Libel. London: Sold by B. Crosby and Co., And All Other Booksellers. 1811.’
(b) Four advertisements of the same poem in London newspapers; two of them being in the Morning Chronicle for 15th and 21st March, 1811, whilst the other two may be found in the Times for 10th and 11th April, 1811.
(c) These words by an anonymous writer in the Dublin Weekly Messenger of 7th March, 1812:—
‘We have but one more word to add. Mr. Shelley, commiserating the sufferings of our distinguished countryman, Mr. Finerty, whose exertions in the cause of political freedom he much admired, wrote a very beautiful poem, the profits of the sale of which, we understand, from undoubted authority, Mr. Shelley remitted to Mr. Finerty. We have heard they amounted to nearly an hundred pounds. This fact speaks a volume in favour of our new friend.’
(d) The fact that Shelley sent from Dublin a copy of the paper containing these words, and particularly called Godwin’s attention to the article in which they appeared.
(e) The fact that during his imprisonment Mr. Finerty had the sympathy of the Dublin Weekly Messenger.
These are all the facts Mr. MacCarthy produces in evidence that Shelley wrote a poem no living man ever saw, no single person of any time is known to have seen. Of course the gentleman, who is so severe on Hogg’s inaccuracies, blunders and contradicts himself in marshalling so slender an array of facts. For instance, after stating (p. 100) precisely and correctly that the earliest of the five advertisements of the poem appeared in the Oxford Herald of 9th March, 1811, he avers a few pages later (p. 105) that this same earliest advertisement appeared in the paper of 2nd March, 1811.