At this period Captain Medwin, who knew her formerly, was again brought into her presence at Florence, through the medium of the Professor. He was conducted to an unfrequented part of the city, till he arrived at a villa that bore every appearance of former prosperity, but that now was in a dilapidated condition. "The court leading to it," says Medwin, overgrown with weeds, proved that it had been for some years untenanted. An old woman led us through a number of long passages and rooms, many of the windows in which were broken, and let in the cold blasts from the wind-swept Apennines;' and opening at length a door, ushered us into a chamber, where a small bed and a couple of chairs formed the whole furniture. "The couch was covered with gauze curtains to exclude the gnats; behind them was lying a female form. She immediately recognised me, and extended her thin white hand in greeting. So changed was that recumbent figure, that I could scarce recognise a trace of Emilia. "I might fill pages," continues Medwin, " by speaking of the tears she shed over the memory Shelley-but enough, she did not long enjoy her freedom. Shortly after this interview she was confined to her bed; the seeds of malaria, which had been sown in the Maremma, combined with that all-irremediable malady, broken-heartedness, brought on a rapid consumption— "And so she pined, and so she died forlorn.'' VOL. II. N CHAPTER XX. The Epipsychidion-Its spiritualisms-Invitation from Lord Byron-Shelley departs for Ravenna-Meeting with Byron-La Guiccioli-Byron domesticated-His generosity-His interest in Italian politics-Suspected by the Government-Flight of La Guiccioli from Ravenna-Shelley again scandalised. THE Epipsychidion belongs to the highest class of poetic composition; it is the expression of the imagination in its absolute sense, in its most inspired moods as in some of its loftiest abstractions; every image it contains, every thought it expresses lifts us far above the real world into the purer regions of the ideal; and its readers must needs be Platonists, to enter fully into the spirit of beauty that pervades it, or often to comprehend the poet's meaning. To transmute everything into spirit is the peculiar characteristic of Shelley's genius; for ever grasping after ideal purity and perfection, his habit of thought led him to consider every object in the material universe only as so many manifestations of the spiritual; the bias of his mind was strengthened by study and contemplation, the flowers of his fancy gave place to the fruit, and the speculations of his earlier years gradually ripened into a system. But the contemplation he most delighted in was that of an all-pure and perfect love; with Plato, his High Priest, with the Symposium constantly in his hand, it was an image ever present to his mind, and may be pronounced the day-dream of his existence. The unquenchable desire it produced in him tended more than anything else to spiritualize his nature. It became the frequent subject of his verse, and always occupied a prominent position in his writings. In Alastor he pourtrayed a youth of noble and ardent nature, seeking in vain for the fulfilment of his splendid vision of the perfection of maidenhood. In this poem he exalts a beautiful reality into the perfection of his ideal, painting her in such ethereal colours that she becomes transfigured in our presence, and gifting her with such qualities as belong rather to a seraph than to mortal maiden. To him she is all that he can conceive of lovely or divine, and his rapt fancy often lifts him into regions of empyrean light where we can scarcely follow him, and the dazzling robe of verse in which he dresses his gorgeous images serves rather to darken with excess of light than to assist our ordinary comprehensions. "The harmony of nature's art. The mirror An antelope In the suspended impulse of its lightness And from her lips as from a hyacinth full She is |