his death immediately, but, having learned it, he wrote Adonais in or about May as "the image of his regret and honour for poor Keats," and considered it "perhaps better, in point of execution, than anything he had written." The beauty and energy of its treatment are assuredly very great; and it will always possess an exceptional interest, as the tribute of love and admiration which one great poet eagerly paid to another, and as the record of his scorn against the literary bats who, by instinct and preference combined, had been flying for years past with leathern wings in the face of the light. If we distinguish between the execution and interest of the work on one side, and its poetical invention on the other, it may be doubted whether Adonais will eventually take, in the latter respect, a first-class position among Shelley's poems: to conceive such a subject from a truly original point of view is supremely difficult, and I question whether even Shelley can be said to have entirely attained to that. But, while one is reading Adonais, all such demur is waived in delight at the wonderful flow of poetry.

Any argument to prove the genuineness of Shelley's enthusiasm for Keats would be an impertinence; and still more impertinent any attempt to show that his enthusiasm was so beset with qualifications as not to be genuine at all. But it will be perfectly legitimate to exhibit, from Shelley's own writings, what was the precise balance of his mind on this subject. The first thing to be observed is that he admired Hyperion incomparably more than any other composition of its author; and the next, that, in the residue, he found much more to indicate genius than to justify the particular shapes in which that had developed itself. I shall here set down the principal observations; after which Adonais (with its preface) will have to speak for itself, as embodying what Shelley found it really essential to tell the world about Keats, when the work of the latter was accomplished, and its total value roughly ascertainable. “I have read Keats's poem [Endymion]: much praise is due to me for having read it, the author's intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of poetry; indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet which is described in it. I think, if he had printed about fifty pages of fragments from it, I should have been led to admire Keats as a poet more than I ought, of which there is now no danger.”

(6th September 1819). "I have lately read your Endymion again, and even with a new sense of the treasures of poetry it contains, though treasures poured forth with indistinct profusion. This people in general will not endure; and that is the cause of the comparatively few copies which have been sold. I feel persuaded that you are capable of the greatest things, so you but will." (To Keats, 27th July 1820).* "Keats's new volume has arrived to us, and the fragment called Hyperion promises for him that he is destined to become one of the first writers of the age. His other things are imperfect enough, and, what is worse, written in the bad sort of style which is becoming fashionable among those who fancy that they are imitating Hunt and Wordsworth.t. . . . Where is Keats now? I am anxiously expecting him in Italy, when I shall take care to bestow every possible attention on him. I consider his a most valuable life, and I am deeply interested in his safety. I intend to be the physician both of his body and his soul; and to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish. I am aware, indeed, in part, that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me: and this is an additional motive, and will be an added pleasure." (11th November 1820). Among the modern things which have reached me is a volume of poems by Keats; in other respects insignificant enough, but containing the fragment of a poem called Hyperion. . . . . It is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had not before." (15th November 1820). "Among your anathemas of the modern attempts in poetry do you include Keats's Hyperion? I think it very fine. His other poems are worth little : but, if the Hyperion be not grand poetry, none has been produced by our contemporaries." (To Peacock, 15th February 1821). "I am willing to confess that the Endymion is a poem considerably defective, and that perhaps it deserved as much censure as the pages of your Review record against it: but, not to mention that there is a certain

*This very interesting letter, then in the possession of Mr. Lewes, was published in an article by that gentleman on Shelley in the Westminster Review for April 1841: it is not printed elsewhere, I think. Shelley hereby conveys to Keats the invitation (mentioned in our next extract) to stay with him in Pisa.

Here follow some very severe observations on some poem or other, represented only by a in print. The poem indicated is not one of Keats's.

Such a strong expression as this must not be taken too literally or thoroughly. Medwin says, and one can fully believe it is correct, that Shelley "often spoke with great admiration not only of Hyperion, but also of Isabella and the Eve of St. Agnes.

contemptuousness of phraseology (from which it is difficult for a critic to abstain) in the review of Endymion, I do not think that the writer has given it its due praise. Surely the poem, with all its faults, is a very remarkable production for a man of Keats's age; and the promise of ultimate excellence is such as has rarely been afforded even by such as have afterwards attained high literary eminence. Look at book ii., line 833, &c., and book iii., line 113 to 120; read down that page, and then again from line 193. I could cite many other passages to convince you that it deserved milder usage. . . . . There was no danger that it should become a model to the age of that false taste with which I confess that it is replenished. . . . . Allow me to solicit your especial attention to the fragment of a poem entitled Hyperion, the composition of which was checked by the review in question. The great proportion of this piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry. I speak impartially, for the canons of taste to which Keats has conformed in his other compositions are the very reverse of my own." (To the Editor of the Quarterly Review, 1820, but not eventually sent).

Hellas was written in the autumn of 1821, finished about the end of October, and published early in the following spring. It must no doubt have been very rapid work, for Shelley himself terms it "a mere improvise." Based as it is in general scheme on the Perse of Æschylus, and inartificially constructed out of the veering news of the day, this poem is still a solid and beautiful piece of work; and contains, especially in its lyrical choruses, many passages than which neither Shelley nor the English language has anything much better to show. It was fitting that the last complete work of some considerable length written by the glorious poet should be the expression of his deep-seated love for Greece, at a moment when to worship the land of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato, was also to hail the downfall of a crushing despotism, and the reawakening of a self-devoted people. The poet, the scholar, and the zealot of liberty, speak with one trumpet-tone in Hellas.

XXVII.-CRITIQUES AND SELF-CRITIQUES.

Here, unfortunately for ourselves and posterity, we have come to very nearly the close of Shelley's literary career. It may therefore now be not inappropriate to collect some of his utterances regarding his own position as a poet, and his attitude to

wards criticism from without, very generally abusive. Some of his most important expressions on these subjects are to be found in the prefaces &c. to his poems, to which the reader should refer. I will here extract only one of these, too important to be passed over. It occurs in a letter to Godwin, consequent upon that friend's strictures upon the Revolt of Islam, and is given in Mrs. Shelley's note to the poem (p. 254). "In this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my own mind. . . . . I cannot but be conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the attribute and accompaniment of power."

66

*

Other important observations are as follows: (I give the first merely as being the earliest definite expression that we have from Shelley on the point).—"You must know that I either am or fancy myself something of a poet." (To Godwin, 24th February 1812). My poems will, I fear, little stand the criticism, even of friendship. Some of the later ones have the merit of conveying a meaning in every word, and all are faithful pictures of my feelings at the time of writing them; but they are in a great measure abrupt and obscure. One fault they are indisputably exempt from-that of being a volume of fashionable literature." (January 1813). "In poetry I have sought to avoid system and mannerism: I wish those who excel me in genius would pursue the same plan." (To Keats, 27th July 1820). "My thoughts aspire to a production of a far higher character [than Charles the First]; but the execution of it will require some years. I write what I write chiefly to enquire, by the

*The poems here referred to, spoken of as "a volume of Minor Poems," have never been published: unless we suppose some of those relegated to our Appendix to have been included among them. The letter from which our extract comes was written, it will be observed, about the time when Queen Mab was finished.

Is this the Triumph of Life? One might suppose so, because, in a previous letter (16th February 1821) Shelley had said: "I am employed in high and new designs in verse; but they are the labours of years perhaps." Was it intended that the Triumph of Life should be quite a long poem, on something of the scale of Dante's Commedia?

reception which my writings meet with, how far I am fit for so great a task or not." (22nd February 1821). "If I understand myself, I have written neither for profit nor for fame. I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire." (1821.) "The poet and the man are two different natures: though they exist together, they may be unconscious of each other, and incapable of deciding on each other's powers and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of the cause, whether or no I am a poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterity shall assemble: but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the verdict will be, Guilty-Death." (19th July 1821). "I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no other with whom it is worth contending." (9th August 1821). "How do I stand with regard to these two great objects of human pursuit [fame and money]? I once sought something nobler and better than either; but I might as well have reached at the moon, and now, finding that I have grasped the air, I should not be sorry to know what substantial sum, especially of the former,* is in your hands on my account. The gods have made the reviewers the almoners of this worldly dross; and I think I must write an ode to flatter them to give me some, if I would not that they put · me off with a bill on posterity, which when my ghost shall present, the answer will be 'no effects.'" (To Mr. Ollier, 25th September 1821). "Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I cannot but feel flattered by the approbation of a man my inferiority to whom (!!) I am proud to acknowledge." (11th April 1822). "I do not write: I have lived too long near Lord Byron, and the sun has extinguished the glow-worm-for I cannot hope (with St. John) that ‘the_light came into the world, and the world knew it not.'" (May 1822).

The preceding extracts relate mainly to the poet's own estimate of his works: those which succeed have to do with his critics. "As to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but abuse; and this is not hearty or sincere enough to amuse me.” (6th April 1819). "Of course it gives me a certain degree of

.

According to the placing of the words "fame" and "money" in Shelley's letter, "the former" would mean fame: but I apprehend he really means money.