description of the youthful enthusiast—"He has a fire in his eye,

a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a flutter in his speech, which mark the philosophic fanatic." The poems most characteristic of this attitude, are "Queen Mab" and the "Revolt of Islam." The former of these, which was never published with the consent of the author, is a wonderful production for a youth of nineteen. It is a fantastic protest against the restraints of custom and common beliefs, rhetorical in the main, but inspired by a marvellous energy and adorned with the imagery of a world-ranging fancy. The "Revolt of Islam," published in 1817, is alike in conception and execution an effort of a higher order; but it is still written in a spirit of revolt. The "golden city" is the world oppressed by the follies and crimes against which the hero Laon—like Lionel in Rosamund and Helen, a type of Shelley's reformer—rebels, and in battle with which he falls a martyr. This poem is lit up with a sort of lurid splendour, and glows with exuberant imagination; but there is a vagueness about it which, along with its great length, will continue to restrict its popularity. The drama of "Prometheus Unbound," 1819, is the first of the works suggested by the author's study of Greek literature. He was a student of the classics as none of our poets had been since Milton, and he was influenced by them both in thought and manner; but he added to everything he wrote conceptions and treatment essentially modern. Prometheus is again the representative of the spirit of liberty; the moral of the whole is the triumph of his resistance to the oppressive power of Jove. The tone of the composition of this poem is on the whole calm, and always elevated. The opening invocation has caught and reflected the stern sublimity of Æschylus. "Hellas," though dealing to some extent with actual events, is not so much a drama as a poetic prophecy, suggested by hopes of the Greek revolution. It owes all its merit to the exceeding beauty of its lyrics. "Alastor," the first of his published poems (written in 1815), is the expression of the more peculiarly metaphysical attitude of Shelley's mind. The "Spirit of Solitude" is an image of himself driven forth in a mood of contemplation, "by rippling rivulets and lonely shores," to find the solution of the mystery of life. The picture of a mind taken captive by its own fantasies, it is steeped in the pantheism which had succeeded to the materialism with which the poet started, and in the light of which he was beginning to read Wordsworth and nature herself. Some of the scenery in this poem is painted with a magical touch; but the concluding lines of his address to Mont Blanc, illustrate in a more tangible form Shelley's manner of interweaving the ideas of the mind with the impressions of sense. In the "Epipsychidion," of a later date, we have the same painfully minute psychological analysis; in richness of imagery it is a mine for poets, and there are passages whose tender grace appeals to all hearts. Of his other longer poems the most interesting are "Julian and Maddalo" and the "Adonais"—the former from its conveying his impressions of Lord Byron, who was during the latter years of his life his constant associate; the latter from its connection with Keats, and the indignation, no less noble because stimulated by a misconception, which burns through its glowing stanzas. Shelley had no humour. "Peter Bell the third" is as dismal as its namesake, and the "New Œdipus" is even a more complete failure. When we have laid aside those which aim at amusement and some fierce political invectives, it is almost impossible to select from among his minor poems. When Shelley trod upon earth it became a musical instrument, sending forth notes of ravishing sweetness—now a dirge, now a goodnight, now a bridal song. Revelling with the skylark at the gates of heaven, piercing to the soul of the mountain and the cloud, or watching the footsteps of his infant son on a remote and lonely shore, he is the same simple intense being, of imagination all compact. His inspiration, says Macaulay, seemed more than that of any other modern poet to recall the "possession" of the ancient bards, while his artistic power justified the praise of Wordsworth, "In workmanship Shelley was one of the best of us, and most like the old masters." If his poetry has a fault it is that it is too poetical; we grow weary of passing from image to image and from fancy to fancy: his lines are often dark with excess of light. He is the most gorgeous, as Wordsworth is the simplest—the most impulsive, as Wordsworth is the most resolute—of the poets of nature. Both differed from Keats in the prominence they gave to thought over sensation; they agreed in desiring not only to paint but to interpret nature, but they interpreted her in opposite ways. The one sets himself deliberately to make the most of common things, moving among daisies and celandines, herdsmen and dalesmen. The other pours forth profuse strains of unpremeditated art; he floats in a thin air, off to stars and mountain-tops, and holds communion with the personifications of ideal greatness and goodness. Shelley's best poems are crystals "beautiful exceedingly," but with a sort of unearthly beauty; the writer's thought is with the scenery of an imaginary world, with Panthea's transparent spheres, or the mazy bowers of the Witch of Atlas. We read them "in seasons of calm weather," and are touched by their spell to thoughts too deep for tears; we come back to the same poems in the light of common day, and they vanish into air like ghosts. "Tho Cenci," one of his later efforts, is an exception to this, and the best example of the maturity of his powers. Like Titus Andronicus, it is in a sense unfortunate in its theme; but the very horror of the conception gives occasion for the consummate art which the author has shown in its management. There is nothing spasmodic in "The Cenci," every luxuriance is pruned to suit the stern purpose of the play. The verse is clear and strong and masculine. The images are comparatively rare, but those which occur are all memorable. The characters of this drama are no mere personifications. Cenci himself is a consistent though a monstrous reality. Lucretia is a wavering, weak, and worthy woman, distracted by the play of forces too terrible for her to grapple with. Beatrice is a creation which we can only compare with Shakspeare's masterpieces. Half Imogen, half Lady Macbeth, she stands by herself in modern literature. The only comment on Shelley's play is Guido's picture as it hangs on the wall at Florence with that look of mingled innocenco and guilt, and the eternity of unearthly sadness in the eyes.

Shelley's life is a record of antagonism, but it is also a record of progress. The sympathies of the man enlarged, along with the powers of the artist. From "years that bring the philosophic mind," he was gathering by degrees a riper wisdom. Without relaxing in his opposition to all that was mean and false, he learned to look for a soul of goodness in things evil, and to appreciate the truths that are bound up with the errors of established institutions and beliefs. Nothing better illustrates this growth of mental perception, than the widely different attitudes which, at different periods of his life he assumed towards Christianity. The want of a religious education combined with a defective sense of reverence to set him, at the outset of his career, in opposition to this greatest instrument for regenerating mankind. Enlarged experience of the world, and his own best inspirations, were gradually correcting his fatal misconception. From the materialism of "Queen Mab" and the nihilism which denied mind and matter, he had passed into a stage of idealism; from the study of Epicurus and Hume to the study of Plato. During the last years of his life he was beginning to look for instruction to a still higher source, and the Bible was his companion more frequently than any other book. There is a chorus in the "Hellas" which indicates that his mind was being opened to a wisdom unknown to Athens, ere the tragedy of the bay of Spezzia cut short in its prime the promise of a great career. From an early period the element of water seemed to claim the poet as its own. He loved it "with that love which was his doom." Half his poems were planned on the water; he is ever talking about it, writing about it. His "Laon and Cythna" are wafted to the blessed isles in a charmed bark. Aria in the "Prometheus" sings, "My soul is an enchanted boat." Alastor wanders by the side of wild babbling rivulets. The music of many waters runs murmuring through his verse. Tossed in storms on Lake Leman, asleep on Serchio's stream, or walking over the western wave, he was, like his own cloud, ever

That apparition of the child that he saw rise from the sands and clap its infant hands at him a few weeks before his death, reminds us of Heine's Lurlei or Göthe's fable of the fisher:—

In the spring of 1822, Mrs. Shelley writes—"We have a perfect plaything for the summer." This was the Don Juan, which Shelley had planned and procured for his amusement along the coast of Italy. Much of "The Triumph of Life," we learn, "was