ABSTRACT
Date. Mary placed this sonnet amongst ‘Poems written in 1821’ in 1839 iv 147. However Webb (1995), Rognoni, Reiman (2002) and Major Works, suggest it was drafted between July and September 1820 on account of the reference to the events of that summer in the title of the intermediate fair copy in Harvard Nbk 1: Sonnet To the Republic of Benevento. While the poem was very likely drafted and fair-copied in August 1820, it was copied for the press in February 1821, when a distinct set of historical circumstances lent weight to the finally assigned title, Sonnet: Political Greatness, the last of several S. had given it at various stages in its evolution. It was published as the second in a sequence of four sonnets in 1824 223 under the heading Sonnet II. Political Greatness (the rest are identified by number alone).
