We do not hesitate to assert that the author of this volume is a man of ability. His great though indisciplinable energies and fervid rapidity of conception embody scenes and situations, and passions affording inexhaustible food for wonder and delight. The interest is deep and irresistible. A moral enchanter seems to have conjured up the shapes of all that is beautiful and strange to suspend the faculties in fascination and astonishment.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] From The Critical Review, December 1814, vol. vi. pp. 566-574.
[46] This pseudonymous romance, as wild in its conception and execution as Shelley’s own romances of Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, was the work of Shelley’s college-friend and biographer, Thomas Jefferson Hogg. To Professor Dowden of Dublin, Shelley’s latest biographer, is due the credit of disinterring and drawing public attention to Shelley’s curious critical notice of it.—Ed.
[47] From Edinburgh, Nov. 26, 1813. Shelley had written to Hogg:—“Your novel is now printed. Write more like this. Delight us again with a character so natural and energetic as Alexy: but do not persevere in writing after you grow weary of your toil. Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus; and the swans and the Eleutherarchs are proofs that you were a little sleepy.” (See Hogg’s Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 481.)—Ed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
OF THE PUBLISHED WRITINGS IN VERSE AND PROSE
OF
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SHELLEY.
1810.
Zastrozzi. A Romance. By P. B. S. London: Printed for G. Wilkie and J. Robinson, 57 Paternoster Row. 1810. 12mo, pp. 252.
——That their God