of Keats. My concluding notes are, I suppose, ample in scale: if they
are excessive, that is an involuntary error on my part. My aim in them
has been to illustrate and elucidate the poem in its details, yet
without travelling far afield in search of remote analogies or
discursive comment--my wish being rather to 'stick to my text': wherever
a difficulty presents itself, I have essayed to define it, and clear it
up--but not always to my own satisfaction. I have seldom had to discuss
the opinions of previous writers on the same points, for the simple
reason that of detailed criticism of _Adonais_, apart from merely
textual memoranda, there is next to none.

It has appeared to me to be part of my duty to point out here and there,
but by no means frequently, some special beauty in the poem;
occasionally also something which seems to me defective or faulty. I am
aware that this latter is an invidious office, which naturally exposes
one to an imputation, from some quarters, of obtuseness, and, from
others, of presumption; none the less I have expressed myself with the
frankness which, according to my own view, belongs to the essence of
such a task as is here undertaken. _Adonais_ is a composition which has
retorted beforehand upon its actual or possible detractors. In the poem
itself, and in the prefatory matter adjoined to it, Shelley takes
critics very severely to task: but criticism has its discerning and
temperate, as well as its 'stupid and malignant' phases.

W.M. ROSSETTI.

_July, 1890._