. . . . .

Well but where did they find it?! And how to get to the poem and preface if the thing is uncut? Dental mirror. Rhyming couplets, 172 of them, on war oppression religion government and colonial India which he wrote when he was about eighteen. Yeesh.

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During his lifetime, because of his revolutionary politics, he had the utmost difficulty in getting anything published - Queen Mab did not sell any copies at all. During all his life, this "greatest of English lyrical poets" made precisely £40 from his writing, and most of that was from a novel he wrote while still at school. Some of his reviews give a fair indication of what the literary and political establishment thought of him at the time: "Mr Shelley ... would overthrow the constitution ... would pull down our churches and burn our bibles ... marriage he cannot endure."

The reviewers hated him because of his political opinions - just as many academics came to adore him in later years despite, or more rarely because of, his politics.

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Arnold on Shelley--"a beautiful but ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain"-- referencing Joubert on Plato:

Plato shows us nothing; but he brings us brightness with him; he puts light into our eyes, and fills us with a clearness by which all objects afterward become illuminated. He teaches us nothing; but he prepares us, fashions us, and makes us ready to know all. Somehow or other, the habit of reading him augments in us the capacity for discerning and entertaining whatever fine truths may afterward present themselves. Like mountain air, it sharpens our organs, and gives us an appetite for wholesome food. ... Plato loses himself in the void; but one sees the play of his wings, one hears their rustle. ... It is good to breathe the air of Plato; but not to live upon him.

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