Prosepine and Midas

The editor c editor came across the unpublished texts included in this volume as early as 1905. Perhaps he ought to apologize for delaying their appearan­ce in print. The fact is he has long been afraid of overrating their intrinsic value. But as the great Shelley centenary year has come, perhaps this litt­le monument of his wife's collaboration may take its modest place among the tributes which will be paid to his memory. For Mary Shelley's mythological dra­mas can at least claim to be the proper setting for some of the most beautiful lyrics of the poet, which so far have been read in undue isolation. And even as a literary sign of those times, as an example of that classical renaissance which the romantic peri­od fostered, they may not be alto-gether negligible.