In the article entitled 'A Newspaper Editor's Reminiscences,' to be found in the June, 1841, number of _Fraser's Magazine_, the curious may find some rather strong, but inconclusive, evidence that at some time between October[3], 1811, and March, 1812, Shelley tried to sell to three or four different London publishers, for a sum of 10_l._, certain tales in manuscript, out of which he composed _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. If Shelley, after publishing the two 'failures' in prose fiction, tried to wheedle money out of booksellers for the materials out of which those failures were made, he did what he should not have done, and received less than his proper punishment in getting nothing by his pains. But the evidence is so unsatisfactory that the young man did thus endeavour to get money for stuff, whose worthlessness he had ascertained, I cannot hold him guilty of the curious piece of sharp practice. The same newspaper editor's evidence that one of these tales was either a translation from the German, or alleged by Shelley to have been a translation from the German, being still more unsatisfactory, there is no need to trouble the reader of these volumes to consider the particulars of it. As he delights in the dreary labour of collating the texts of worthless books, it is strange that Mr. Buxton Forman (who has wasted a great deal of time in collating the different editions of Shelley's writings) should have failed to discover that _St. Irvyne_ consists, in a considerable degree, of the characters, and positions, and incidents of _Zastrozzi_, so changed by being turned inside out and differently coloured, as to be likely to be mistaken, by hasty and unsuspicious readers of both books, for new actors and positions and incidents. Towards the close of his career, Thackeray said to a friend, 'I am no prolific creator of characters. In that respect I have fairly worked myself out. It remains for me now to redress my old puppets with new bits of riband and tinsel.' The puppets of the Etonian romance are thus redressed in the Oxford story. By change of costume, the puppet, who figures as a man in _Zastrozzi_, is qualified for a woman's part in _St. Irvyne_. By being pulled inside out, the position that was meant to rouse admiration in the one story, becomes a position that (in the hands of an abler artist) would stir to pity in the other. To escape from an humiliating position, Olympia poniards herself in _St. Irvyne_; even as Verezzi, to escape a melodramatic embarrassment, poniards himself in _Zastrozzi_. The slumbering Eloise in the later fiction declares her passion for Fitzeustace to the listening Irishman, even as the slumbering Verezzi in the earlier romance declares his passion for Julia to the listening Matilda. THE DAGGER SCENE IN 'ZASTROZZI.'