[Composed at Rome and near Leghorn (Villa Valsovano), May-August 5, 1819; published 1820 (spring) by C. & J. Ollier, London.  This edition of two hundred and fifty copies was printed in Italy ‘because,’ writes Shelley to Peacock, September 21, 1819, ’it costs, with all duties and freightage, about half what it would cost in London.’  A Table of Errata in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting is printed by Forman in “The Shelley Library”, page 91.  A second edition, published by Ollier in 1821 (C.H.  Reynell, printer), embodies the corrections indicated in this Table.  No manuscript of “The Cenci” is known to exist.  Our text follows that of the second edition (1821); variations of the first (Italian) edition, the title-page of which bears date 1819, are given in the footnotes.  The text of the “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st and 2nd editions (Mrs. Shelley), follows for the most part that of the editio princeps of 1819.]

DEDICATION, TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.

Mv dear friend—­

I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts.

Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just.  I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be, or may be.  The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality.  I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has been.

Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name.  One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners I never knew:  and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list.

In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die.

All happiness attend you!  Your affectionate friend,

PERCY B. SHELLEY.

Rome, May 29, 1819.

THE CENCI.

PREFACE.