unique distinction of his work. It was not merely that there was little of joy and much of positive evil in the life of the homeless wanderer; a nature so visionary, so ardent, so blind to practical considerations was inevitably doomed to disappointment. Even his hopeful and unpractical spirit must have often become conscious that the millennium whose speedy approach he had in his early days anticipated was far remote; sometimes the chilling thought may have come home to him that it could never be realized. In the narrower sphere of his own personal concerns his faith in human nature had received many a shock; the anticipations of youthful love and friendship had been repeatedly disappointed. Miss Hitchener, Harriet, Mary, Emilia, Hogg, Southey, Godwin, had all fallen short of the poet's ideal. His own life and work must have seemed a failure. Not merely had he been wholly unsuccessful in reforming the world he had not even caught the public ear. His poetic gifts were almost unrecognized. He was a mark for scorn, and was avoided as a social leper. And so his sensitive nature gave utterance to that wonderful lyric note of loneliness, sadness, and yearning which pervades his work, and even to that strange cry for annihilation, for the dissolution of the finite in the infinite, which closes the Adonais and the last chorus of Hellas.

In the autumn of 1821 Byron moved to Pisa, where Shelley was residing. The two poets determined to establish a periodical for the dissemination of advanced views, to be named The Liberal, and to be edited by Leigh Hunt. The desire of assisting Hunt was Shelley's chief motive for embarking in the enterprise. The circle at Pisa was increased in the beginning of 1822 by the addition of Edward John Trelawny, whose Records give by far the most vivid and satisfying impression of Shelley in his last days. Trelawny became acquainted with the poet through the Williamses,

and thus narrates his first meeting: "The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the direction of mine, and, going to the doorway, she laughingly said, Come in, Shelley; it's only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out his hands; and, although I could hardly believe as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and artless face that it could be the Poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment. Was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable monster at war with all the world, excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; it must be a hoax. . . . He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and trousers which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had in his hand. His face brightened and he answered briskly, 'Calderon's Magico Prodigioso; I am translating some passages in it.' 'Oh, read it to us!' Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which he analyzed the genius of the author, his lucid inter

pretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish poet were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity. A dead silence ensued. Looking up, I asked, 'Where is he?' Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.'

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Another anecdote of Trelawny's may be quoted: "I called on him one morning at ten; he was in his study with a German folio open, resting on the broad marble mantelpiece over an old-fashioned fireplace, and with a dictionary in his hand. He always read standing if possible. He had promised over night to go with me, but now begged me to let him off. I then rode to Leghorn, eleven or twelve miles distant, and passed the day there; on returning at six in the evening to dine with Mrs. Shelley and the Williamses as I had engaged to do, I went into the Poet's room and found him exactly in the position in which I had left him in the morning, but looking pale and exhausted. 'Well,' I said, 'have you found it?' Shutting the book and going to the window, he replied, 'No, I have lost it,' with a deep sigh: 'I have lost a day.' 'Cheer up, my lad, and come to dinner.' Putting his long fingers through his masses of wild, tangled hair, he answered faintly, 'You go; I have dined late eating don't do for me.' 'What is this?' I asked as I was going out of the room, pointing to one of his bookshelves with a plate containing bread and cold meat upon it. 'That?' colouring, why, that must be my dinner. It's very foolish; I thought I had eaten it.'"

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Again Trelawny writes: 'Shelley's mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action. Its effect on his comrade was very striking. Williams gave up all his accustomed sports for books and the bettering of his mind."

"His mental faculties," Trelawny says in another place, "completely mastered his material nature, and hence he unhesitatingly acted up to his own theories if they only demanded sacrifices on his part; it was where they implicated others that he forbore."

For the summer of 1822, the Shelleys and Williamses took a house in common, close to the sea, in a cove of the Bay of Spezzia. Here the chief amusement was sailing, and the two friends had a boat built, twenty-eight feet long and eight feet broad, which they managed themselves with the assistance of a young lad. The incessant boating improved Shelley's health; he was unusually well and happy. Yet on June 18 he wrote to Trelawny to procure him some prussic acid. "I need not tell you," he adds, "that I have no intention of suicide at present; but I confess it would be a comfort to me to hold in my possession that golden key to the chamber of perpetual rest." On June 29 he wrote: "I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish dramas and sailing and listening to the most enchanting music [Mrs. Williams's singing and playing]. If the past and future could be obliterated, the present would content me so well that I could say with Faust to the passing moment, 'Remain thou, thou art so beautiful.'"

In order to welcome Leigh Hunt on his arrival in Italy to take charge of The Liberal, Shelley and Williams sailed on their own boat as far as Pisa. Having seen Hunt, Byron, and other friends, they left Pisa, July 8, on their return voyage. The weather was threatening. Trelawny had intended to accompany them some distance in another boat; he was, however, detained, and watched them from his anchorage; but they were soon hidden by a rising mist; presently the storm burst. Neither Shelley, Williams, nor the sailor boy was ever seen alive again. The bodies were subsequently found. On account of the quarantine laws

Shelley's body was burned on the shore, the ashes conveyed to Rome and buried in the beautiful Protestant cemetery described by himself in the closing stanzas of the Adonais.

II.

The sphere of poetry is wide; the particular province which any writer occupies is determined by his personal character, the circumstances of his life, and the tendencies of his time. Of the character of Shelley the foregoing pages are intended to give some impression. It was not a character of the normal type; Shelley did not act like other people, and he had a very inadequate idea of the relative strength of the various forces which influence the ordinary individual and have shaped the history of the race. Add to these peculiarities a nature of unusual intensity, swayed and mastered by its own emotion, and we can easily understand, not merely that his views were eccentric, but also that he was incapacitated for attaining to the point of view of others, for understanding persons unlike himself, and for seeing things as they really are. In actual life he constantly misrepresented and distorted what he saw; he was often incapable of discriminating between the facts and his emotional and imaginative additions to them; he condemned and eulogized extravagantly; and with regard to one and the same object would pass from one extreme to the other under the influence of feeling. From such a man we cannot expect poetry which will successfully represent the world as it is, which will bring before us the varied types of men and women so that they shall seem real to us, and so that we may involuntarily enter into their feelings. The real external world is feebly outlined, or becomes disproportioned, grotesque, gigantic in its passage through Shelley's mind. This is illustrated by his view of history as reflected,