‘What think you the dead are?’

The involved textual history of this fragment begins with S.’s ink draft which occupies all of f. 13^r of Nbk 12. Mary transcribed the draft into both Mary Copybk 1 and 2. In the latter she appears at first to have edited her previous transcription by excluding l. 1, the first part of l. 2 and l. 12; the resulting lyric, its dramatic character altered, she entitled ‘Evening’. Then, after restoring the first one and a half lines, she supplied the date 1821 (see Massey 84–9). She never published any version of the text, however. It first appeared in Relics (78–9), in a text apparently based on the Mary Copybk 1 transcription, together with Perhaps the only comfort that remains (no. 214). Both are dated 1818; a note conjectures that they ‘originally formed a part of ’ J&M (no. 198)—the first of what was to become a series of formulations on the relation between the two fragments and the longer poem. Forman 1876–77 (iii 130) reprints the Relics text of each under the heading ‘Cancelled Passages of Julian and Maddalo’, though without a date. After he had examined Nbk 12 in the course of preparing Huntington Nbks, Forman grouped the two texts with Perhaps the only comfort (no. 214) and I love. What me? (no. 215) as ‘Jottings: Probably for “Julian and Maddalo”’ (i 139), also without date. Dowden 1891, Locock 1911 and Julian all include both fragments as rejected drafts for J&M, while Hutchinson describes them as ‘Fragments Assigned to Julian and Maddalo’.