1. 9. _'They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.'_ In the Pisan edition we read 'that spurn them as they go.' No doubt the change (introduced as in other instances named on pp. 105 and 113) must be Shelley's own. The picture presented to the mind is more consistent, according to the altered reading. The critics, as we are told in this stanza, had at first 'fled' from Byron's arrow; afterwards they 'fawned on his proud feet.' In order to do this, they must have paused in their flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they must have crouched down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman, in his edition of Shelley, pointed this out.) With the words 'as they go' the image was not self-consistent: for the critics could not be 'going,' or walking away, at the same time when they were fawning on the poet's feet. This last remark assumes that the words 'as they go' mean 'as the critics go ': but perhaps (and indeed I think this is more than probable) the real meaning was 'as the feet of Byron go'--as Byron proceeds disdainfully on his way. If this was Shelley's original meaning, he probably observed after a while that the words 'as _they_ go' seem to follow on with '_they_ fawn,' and not with 'the proud feet'; and, in order to remove the ambiguity, he substituted the expression 'lying low.' +Stanza 29,+ 11. 1-3. _'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death.'_ The spawning of a reptile (say a lizard or toad), and the death of an insect (say a beetle or gnat), are two things totally unconnected. Shelley however seems to link them together, as if this spawning were the origin of the life, the brief life, of the insect. He appears therefore to use 'reptile,' not in the defined sense which we commonly attach to the word, but in the general sense of 'a creeping creature,' such for instance as a grub or caterpillar, the first form of an insect, leading on to its final metamorphosis or development. Even so his natural history is curiously at fault: for no grub or caterpillar can spawn--which is the function of the fully-developed insect itself, whether 'ephemeral' or otherwise. Can Shelley have been ignorant of this?