l topics, and this although Shelley is the most purely lyrical of English poets. The fact is that in nearly all

politics and philosophy, is only an extreme instance of a national trait, which was unusually prominent in the early part of the nineteenth century owing to the state of our insular politics at

and the causes of all evil; that inequalities of rank and power can be abolished by reasoning, and that then, since men are naturally good, the golden age will return-these are positions which the English mind, with its dislike of the 'a priori', will not readily accept. The English Utilitarians, who exerted a great influence on the course of affairs, and the classical school of economists that derived from them, did indeed hold that men were naturally good, in a sense. Their theory was that, if people were left to themselves, and if the restraints imposed by authority on thought and commerce were removed, the operation of ordinary human motives would produce the most beneficent results. But their theory was quite empirical; worked out in v

utes for the rich variety of human emotions which the real world, with all its admixture of evil, actually admits. Hence Shelley's tone irritates when he shrilly summons us to adore his New Jerusalem. Reflecting on the narrowness of his ideals we are apt to see him as an ignorant and fanatical sectary, and to detect an unpleasant flavour in his verse. And we perceive that, as with all honest fanatics, his narrowness comes from ignorance of himself. The story of Mrs. Southey's buns is typical. When he visited Southey there were hot buttered buns for tea, and he so much offended Mrs. Southey by calling them coarse, disgusting food that she determined to make him try them. He

the cause is as striking as the immensity of the effect. Those who ridicule the young do not, perhaps, always see that this is perfectly true, though of course they are right in denouncing the inference so often drawn-and here lay Shelley's fundamental fallacy-that the required tiny change depends on an effort of the will, and that the will only does not make the effort because feeling is perverted and intelligence dimmed by convention traditions, prejudices, and superstitions. It is certain, for one thing, that will only plays a small part in our nature, and that by themselves acts of will cannot make the world perfect. Most men are helped to this lesson by observation of themselves; the

dome of many-c

ite radiance

kness: it degenerates too easily into rhetoric. To avoid being a didactic treatise it has to deal in high-flown abstractions, and in Shelley fear, famine, tyranny, and the rest, sometimes have all the emptiness of the classical manner. They appear now as brothers, now as parents, now as sisters of one another; the task of unravelling their genealogy would be as difficult as it is pointless. If Shelley had been merely the singer of r

r, the splendours of mountain, sky, and sea may enlarge our feelings with wonder and delight, so a corresponding change may occur in our emotions towards one another; in this setting of a universe with which we feel ourselves now rapturously, now calmly, united, we love with less artifice, with greater impetuosity and self-abandonment. "Thomson and Cowper," says Peacock, "looked at the trees and hills which so many ingenious gentlemen had rhymed about so long without looking at them, and the effect of the operation on poetry was like the discover

true poetry: they sometimes have the power, which makes poetry akin to music, of suggesting by means of words something which cannot possibly be expressed in words. Obviousl

ut a ploughed field or a street-corner-may call up emotions which "lie too deep for tears" and cannot be

ed lonely

n high o'er v

t once I s

golden d

has many pictures which are both detailed and emotional. Consider, for instance, these lines from

lawns and p

ndhills of

elting hoar

star that

lowers, an

join not s

ale year we

night is

p east, du

lue moon

multit

urmur at

earth and

hings see

univers

ce. And here is a passage of careful desc

et; the swall

litting fast i

oads out of dam

reath, wanderin

ering surface

ripple from i

w on the dry g

in the shadow

ntermitting,

onstant motion

traws are driv

out the paveme

guage. Yet we get the impression that he neither saw nor felt anything beyond exactly what he has expressed; there is no suggestion, as there should be in great poetry, of something beyond all expression. And, curiously enough, this seems to be t

sunrise, with

ning plumes

back of my

rning star

jag of a m

thquake rock

lit one mo

t of its go

ay breathe, from t

s of rest

son pall of

epths of h

ded I rest, on

as a broo

miraculous; but he never falters, so vehement is the impulse of his delight. It is only afterwards that we ask ourselves whether there is anything beyond the mere deligh

noticed. He invokes the wild West Wind, not so much to exult impersonally in the force that chariots the decaying leaves, spreads the seed

s a wave, a l

he thorns of

of hours has ch

: tameless, and s

y morning through blue noon to twilight, brings, as he lo

een isle n

p wide sea

riner, wo

s could v

iness of nature and his own misery is a

warm, the

e dancing fa

and snowy m

oon's transp

u

ve nor hope

ithin nor c

ntent surpa

in medita

ith inward g

power, nor lov

e whom thes

ive, and call

as been dealt in

t

down like a

way the li

wn moments of bliss when it has been absorbed in the sea of beauty that surrounds it, only the moments pass, and the reunion, ever so

f the dan

the daed

en-and the

and Death,

changed m

down the val

maiden and c

, we are all

our bosom and

I think both

e had not fro

ow of my sw

reatest poem-which may suggest the answer. In the 'Sensitive Plant' (1820) a garden is first described on which are lavished all his powers of wea

ive Plant has n

odour are n

ike Love, its de

t it has not,

ing, through the summer, "and, ere the first leaf looked brown, she died!" The last part of the poem, a pendant to the first, is full of

n whirlwind, w

at had smelt a

thus laden, and

em off with hi

ad gone and s

Plant was a

and toadstools, and

ead from their

quite baldly that perhaps we may

f error, ignora

g is, but al

shadows o

odest cre

if one co

death itse

the rest,

sweet, tha

t shapes and

ave never

ours, are chan

nd beauty,

eath nor chan

r organs w

ing themselv

his spirit-the vision which Alastor pursued in vain, the "Unseen Power" of the 'Ode to Intellectual Beauty'-is what is always suggested by his poetry at its highest moments. The suggestion, in its fulness, is of course ineffable; only in the case of Shelley some approach can be made to na

ly a ladies' man," meaning that he had that childlike helplessness and sincerity which go straight to the hearts of women. To this youth, preaching sublime mysteries, and needing to be mothered into the bargain, they were as iron to the magnet. There was always an Eve in his Eden, and each was the "wonder of her kind"; but whoever she was-Harriet Grove, Harriet Westbrook, Elizabeth Hitchener, Cornelia Turner, Mary Godwin, Emilia Viviani, or Jane Williams-she was never a Don Juan's mistress; she was an incarnation of the soul of the world, a momentary mirror of the eternal. Such an attitude towards the least controllable of passions has several drawbacks: it involves a certain inhumanity, and it is only possible for long to one who rem

me from t

faint!

e exhales pu

untains kis

ves clasp

lower would

dained it

light clasp

onbeams ki

this sweet

kiss n

ws she will not kiss him. Sometimes

kisses, ge

est not f

is too d

burthe

lows with the fulne

not what m

thou ac

the heart

eavens re

f the moth f

ght for t

on to some

phere of o

r

lamp is

in the dus

cloud is

ow's glor

lute is

s are reme

lips ha

nts are so

kylark opens, as he liste

before

for wha

cerest

e pain i

are those that tell

t songs are the sweetest, and the reason is that in them, rather than in those verses where he merely utters ecstatic

ed in those matters which are covered by the clumsy name of "technique." It is characteristic of him that, while most great poets have been fertile coiners of new words, his only addition to the language is the ugly "idealism" in the sense of "ideal object." He seems to have strayed from the current vocabulary only in two other cases, both infelicitous-"glode" for "glided," and "blosmy" for "blossomy." He did not, like Keats, look on fine phrases with the eye of a lover. His taste was the conventional taste of the time. Thus he said of Byron's 'Cain', "It is apocalyptic, it is a revelation not before communicated to man"; and he thought Byron and Tom Moore better poets than himself. As regards art, he cheapened Mich

f peaceable mankind. In the early part of last century a set of illustrations to Faust by Retzch used to be greatly admired; about one of them, a picture of Faust and Margaret in the arbour, Shelley says in a letter to a friend: "The artist makes one envy his happiness that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured." So slight were the occasions that could affect him even

GRAPHI

rs. Macmillan (1896); it includes Mary Shelley's valuable notes. There is a good selection of the poems in the "Golden Treasury Series," compiled by A. Stopford Brooke. The Prose Works have been collected and edite

ley, and 'Lodore' contains an account of his estrangement from Harriet. His cousin Tom Medwin's 'Life' (1847) is a bad book, full of inaccuracies. But Shelley had one unique piece of good fortune: two friends wrote books about him that are masterpieces. T. J. Hogg's 'Life' is especially valuable for the earlier period, and E. J. Trelawny's 'Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author', describes him in the last year before his death. Hogg's 'Life' has been republished in a chea

sm', and Francis Thompson's 'Shelley' (1909). Vol. iv. "Naturalism in England," of Dr. George Brandes' 'Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature' (1905)

e Clairmont, and the rest, should read, besides Trelawny's 'Records' already mentioned, 'The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonec