No More Learning

[Of the fragments of verse that follow, lines 1-37, 62-92 were printed
by Mrs. Shelley in "Posthumous Works", 1839, 2nd edition; lines 1-174
were printed or reprinted by Dr. Garnett in "Relics of Shelley", 1862;
and lines 175-186 were printed by Mr. C. D. Locock from the first draft
of "Epipsychidion" amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian
Library. See "Examination, etc. ", 1903, pages 12, 13. The three early
drafts of the "Preface (Advertisement)" were printed by Mr. Locock in
the same volume, pages 4, 5. ]


THREE EARLY DRAFTS OF THE PREFACE.

(ADVERTISEMENT. )

PREFACE 1.

The following Poem was found amongst other papers in the Portfolio of
a young Englishman with whom the Editor had contracted an intimacy at
Florence, brief indeed, but sufficiently long to render the
Catastrophe by which it terminated one of the most painful events of
his life. --

The literary merit of the Poem in question may not be considerable;
but worse verses are printed every day, &

He was an accomplished & amiable person but his error was, thuntos on
un thunta phronein,--his fate is an additional proof that 'The tree of
Knowledge is not that of Life.
'--He had framed to himself certain
opinions, founded no doubt upon the truth of things, but built up to a
Babel height; they fell by their own weight, & the thoughts that were
his architects, became unintelligible one to the other, as men upon
whom confusion of tongues has fallen.

[These] verses seem to have been written as a sort of dedication of
some work to have been presented to the person whom they address: but
his papers afford no trace of such a work--The circumstances to which
[they] the poem allude, may easily be understood by those to whom
[the] spirit of the poem itself is [un]intelligible: a detail of
facts, sufficiently romantic in [themselves but] their combinations

The melancholy [task] charge of consigning the body of my poor friend
to the grave, was committed to me by his desolated family. I caused
him to be buried in a spot selected by himself, & on the h


PREFACE 2.

[Epips] T. E. V. Epipsych
Lines addressed to
the Noble Lady
[Emilia] [E. V. ]
Emilia

[The following Poem was found in the PF. of a young Englishman, who
died on his passage from Leghorn to the Levant. He had bought one of
the Sporades] He was accompanied by a lady [who might have been]
supposed to be his wife, & an effeminate looking youth, to whom he
shewed an [attachment] so [singular] excessive an attachment as to
give rise to the suspicion, that she was a woman--At his death this
suspicion was confirmed;. . . object speedily found a refuge both from
the taunts of the brute multitude, and from the. . .