Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson
Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of That Noted Female Who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786 (Classic Reprint)
Description:... Excerpt from Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson: Being Poems Found Amongst the Papers of That Noted Female Who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786 a full account of this Volume is to be found in Hogg's Life of Shelley, Vol. I, pp. '260 et seq. But it had already been inaccurately referred to by Medwin, both in The Shelley Papers and in his Life of Shelley. Too much reliance must not be placed on Hogg's account, because, writing from memory, he is certainly inaccurate in some points that can be checked by reference to the book itself; and this shews that his memory was not to be trusted implicitly. His talent for the picturesque, combined with this want of exactness, may easily have led him far from the facts, without any intention on his part to depart from them. Hogg's account is that the poems were originally written by Shelley bond fide, with the exception of the first, of which the ms. Was confided to Shelley by some rhymester of the day, -that Shelley shewed them to his future biographer in proof, and that the two friends eventually worked upon them to make them into burlesques. Ten this was efiectually done, the printer who was to have published the volume at Shelley's cost, offered to do so at his own, and it was issued under the name of the poor washerwoman who had attempted the life of George III., and who was still alive, confined as a lunatic. So success ful was the hoax, says Hogg, that we used to meet gownsmen in High street reading the goodly volume as they walked - pensive with a grave and sage delight. It was indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of a nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the very criterion of a choice spirit. Nobody suspected, or could suspect, who was the author the thing passed off as the genuine production of the would-be regicide.' I agree with Mr. Rossetti in thinking that the traces of this process of burlesquing are not at all obvious. The poems, with one exception, do not strike me as more extravagant than others written by Shelley as a youth. If the account is correct; the first poem should stand in its place for the sake of Shelley's share in burlesquing it: if incorrect, it is as likely to be his own as the rest; and I must say that I think it more likely Shelley produced the whole volume substantially, sub mitting to the process of burlesquing only to_ a very small extent, and probably in the Epithalamium of Ravaillac and Charlotte Corday alone. The volume, of which the title-page is reproduced in the present re print, is a quarto, consisting of fiy-title, title, a third leaf bearing the Advertisement, and text pp. 7 to 29. I suspect it was issued as a stabbed pamphlet, - as the copies I have seen bear the usual traces of such issue. I have not thought it worth while to make, notice, or suggest any revisions of text, but have given that of the quarto ?fcrbatim ct literatim, except in one case of a letter accidentally ch'opped. - h.b. F.
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