It simply dwells so continually on the Infinity of God as to overlook, or slightly regard His Personality: it is Spiritualism and Theism, but of the Greeks rather than the Hebrews. The fact is that Shelley, like every other brave Recusant, is credited with much more infidelity than he really had. Finding a vast State Church, based upon politico-theology, everywhere in the ascendant, he was naturally more occupied in negativing dominant assumptions than in affirming his own positive convictions. If a man asserts his right to crush me under his feet, it is not probable that my reply will contain an exact recognition of whatever wisdom and goodness he may really have.

So much for formulas: but, of course, we are agreed that Shelley's real religious character consisted in his unquenchable love and reverence for all holiness, truth, and beauty. He believed so much more than the generality of us, he strove with so unusual an ardour to realise his belief in his life, that he is necessarily accounted an infidel and semi-maniac by the great majority.

"I never knew that time in England, when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries. . . . Certainly, if ignorance and perverseness will needs be national and universal, then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth are not therefore to be blamed for being so few as to seem a sect or faction." Which are two sentences of (John Milton's) "Eikonoklastes.” -Your sincere Friend,

B. V.

NOTICE OF "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY"

BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

("English Men of Letters" Series)

We have departed from the order in which we at first intended to notice these books,* having held back Scott that he might follow Burns, and Shelley that he might follow Spenser. The author of the "Prometheus Unbound," like the author of the "Faërie Queene," has been acclaimed the poet of poets. Spenser was immediately accepted and rated at his true worth by all the noblest of his time, whose memories live amongst the noblest of all time. Shelley was despised and rejected by his own generation and even by that which followed it, but his cyclic day was bound to come, and rapid and splendid has been its development since the first faint flush of its dawning. Men and women who in their youth, thirty, or perhaps even twenty years past, cherished a lonely enthusiasm for him-lonely so far as converse and reading could make them aware, though, doubtless, there are always seven thousand in Israel who have never bowed the knee to the dominant Baal-discover not without astonish

*This review formed one of a number of notices of the various works included in the " English Men of Letters" Series.

ment that he whom they worshipped in secret is no longer execrated or contemned by their people, but is actually advanced to a lofty place in the national Pantheon, that it is no longer a distinction good or bad to burn incense at his shrine.

The simple facts that he has been chosen as one of the earliest subjects in a series whose avowed chief end is popularity, and that already, as we write, the Monograph on him is advertised as in its sixth thousand, prove how enormously he has risen in public interest and estimation during this second half of our century. We have ample corroboration of this in the two critical editions of his poems, with elaborate memoir, by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in that of Mr. H. B. Forman, in the cheap reprint of "Poems and Prose Works" by Mr. R. H. Shepherd, in the various recent popular editions and selections of his poems; in the numerous articles on him, biographical and critical, among which we may specify those by Mr. R. Garnett, the late T. L. Peacock (to whom so many of Shelley's best letters from Italy were addressed), Miss Mathilde Blind, Prof. T. Spencer Bayne, and Mr. Swinburne; and in such works as Trelawny's "Records" (the new enlarged edition of the "Recollections"), Robert Browning's introduction to the Pseudo-Letters (and his superb Memorabilia, in "Men and Women"), Mr. Garnett's "Relics, Lady Shelley's "Memorials," and the late Mr. D. F. M'Carthy's "Early Life."

Yet, notwithstanding all the Shelley literature thus glanced at, a clear place was left, and a distinct need existed, for such a popular booklet as the present, treating comprehensively, though succinctly, the life

and work of the poet. Rossetti's "Memoir," as yet the richest collection of biographical materials from all sources, is bound up with his critical edition of the poems; Hogg's "Life" is but a fragment, and, unfortunately, far less trustworthy than brilliant, if not in the general impression, at any rate in many of the details it gives of Shelley at Oxford, and after his expulsion; Medwin's "Life" (1847) is sketchy and inaccurate, and not easily accessible; Lady Shelley's "Memorials" are distinctly ancillary; M'Carthy's "Early Life" is mainly concerned with the Dublin episode; the articles by Peacock and Garnett only discuss particular points of interest; and brave Trelawny's graphic "Recollections" relate to no more than the last half-year of Shelley's life; while the poems are rarely accompanied by the prose works, including the magnificent "Defence of Poetry," the translations, and the letters from Italy to Peacock, of which last Mr. Symonds says: "Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of descriptive prose in the English language; " with which verdict. we shall scarcely disagree, remembering that they are real letters, and not elaborate compositions like those whereby Ruskin has added glory to our glorious mother-tongue.

Matters being in this state, it is evident that a cheap and handy volume, drawing from all these dispersed and fragmentary and comparatively dear contributions a clear and truthful outline of the whole life and work of Shelley, was really much wanted; and we, therefore, give hearty welcome to the present work, which undertakes, and, in our opinion, very successfully, to satisfy this want. Mr. Symonds is well

known as an accomplished scholar and writer, of liberal sympathies with all that is beautiful in nature and art; and he reveals himself as an old lover of Shelley in noting that when he was a Harrow boy he picked up two uncut copies of "Laon and Cythna" (unperverted original of the "Revolt of Islam") at a Bristol book-shop. As for the spirit in which Mr. Symonds writes of Shelley, we can scarcely better praise it than by saying that it is as nearly as possible directly opposed to the spirit in which Professor Shairp writes of Burns.

In the limits of our space we could not, even were it desirable, accompany Mr. S. through his narrative and criticisms. We may, however, say a very few words on a very few of the still-vexed questions concerning Shelley. And here it must be remarked that while, in discussing such questions, Mr. S. usually starts with a deferential, though by no means very ardent, support of authority or the world's opinion, his natural clear-sightedness and rectitude and love of liberty generally constrain him before he is done into a virtual though unavowed vindication of Shelley.

1. The expulsion from Oxford for the (then unproved) authorship of the two-paged tract, "The Necessity of Atheism;" Shelley then in his nineteenth year. Mr. S. begins by defending the authorities against the charges of unfair dealing in this matter. But what does he say for and of them in the course of his palliation ?-he himself being not only an unexpelled University man, like many others who have argued this business against Shelley, but an Oxford man and the author of a prize poem.