Pierius Valerianus tells us that Antonius Marosticus, when held in high esteem and loved of all men, enjoying the dainties of life at the court of some Cardinal, and dallying with existence which he had rooted hopes would henceforth be peaceful, was carried off within three days by a sudden epidemic. The doleful deed, Pierius says, was made more distressful by the fact that sanitary considerations required the cremation of all the dead man’s books with the dead man’s body. How far the sense of tragedy may lie in this melancholy incident, the death of Shelley helps one to appreciate. His corpse was washed ashore near the Via Reggio, four miles from that of his friend Williams, which lay close to the tower of Migliarino, at the Bocca Lericcio. The attitude was memorable. His right hand was clasped in his heart. Bent back and thrust away, as if in haste, was in a side pocket the last volume of the poet Keats. It had been lent by Leigh Hunt, who had told the borrower to keep it till he should return it by his own hands. This impossible, and Hunt refusing to receive it through others, it was burnt with the body amid frankincense and myrrh. It was fit that the pathetic in death should spring from a cause so troublous in life. Again and again was Shelley wounded by the forced suppression of his work. Doubtless merit is not extreme in the two-act tragedy of “Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant.” But its fate was as subtle and sure as that of Œdipus himself. Written abroad, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously, and stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” who threatened a prosecution upon it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the pains of bringing it out did not deem it worth the cost, to pocket and nerve, of a contest, and it was laid aside—only to be revived in Mrs. Shelley’s second edition. It is said, indeed, that but seven copies are extant, one of which Mr. Buxton Forman, the industrious and intelligent editor to whom the best students of Shelley feel themselves the most beholden, secured, by search through the vast stores of Mr. Lacy, the dramatic publisher of the Strand—one of the very last plays in the very last boxes—a mere paper pamphlet, devoid of a wrapper, carried away at the cost of a six-pence, proving to be the treasure. And far was the Œdipus from being the sole cause of trouble in respect of the works of its author. Posthumous Poems of Shelley were suppressed on the application of Sir Timothy, his father. The Posthumous Letters, which excellent forgers had contrived to manufacture from articles written after the decease of the poet, exercising an amount of ingenuity described as “most extraordinary,” and receiving the reward of the labor of their hands from Sir Percy Shelley, or from Mr. Moxon, were called in on the discovery of the fraud. “Laon and Cythna” was cancelled to make way for