inconsistencies in this regard.

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,'