" QUEEN MAB '! AND " THE CENCI " [To
the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] think that many others besides myself will have read with astonishment the statement that the SPectator regards Queen Mab as a much greater work than The Cenci. It is easy to understand the attraction which the poem. has forMr. Bernard Shaw and other Socialists and ComMunists, inasmuch as it is chiefly a protest against British customs and beliefs— social, political, and religious, as they obtained in 1813. Professor Dowden describes it as " a pamphlet in. verse, but with some of the beauty of poetry underlying its declamatory prophesying." It was written when Shelley was nineteen, and is indeed a wonderful production for one so young. But it is well to remember that it was not published with the consent of the author, and that When the pirated edition appeared in 1821, Shelley himself referred to Queen Mab as " Villainous trash."
The Cenci, which was completed in 1819, Shelley'S annul ndrabilis, is generally held to be one of the finest examples of the poet's mature work. The story is ,horrible, but the treatment of it is masterly. One critic says " The verse is clear and strong and masculine. 'the images- are compara- tiyely rare, but those which occur are all memorable The
. . characters of this drama are no mere personifications. . . . Beatrice is a creation we can only compare with Shakespeare's
masterpieces She stands by herself in modern literature." Many other witnesses could be cited in support of these views : on the one side we should have, I believe, the names of all literary critics of admitted authority, and on the other in their splendid isolation, the Spectator and ironic Mr. Bernard
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