for example, in Queen Mab. "He conceived it in a series of visions visions which were thrown before him, as it were, by the phantasmagoria of his own imagination. Empires rose and fell as if by the power of earthquakes, and anarchs stalked huge across the scene, and priests were banded in dark conclaves, and patriot martyrs endured the agony; and then the series was exhausted and the same pictures were shown over again." 1 In The Revolt of Islam, the poet passes without notice and without sense of incongruity from the world of reality to the world of pure fancy; and incidents which are supposed to happen in nineteenth-century Europe seem as incredible and remote as those out of which he constructed his boyish romances, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. Rosalind and Helen, professedly a story of contemporary domestic life, though free from the extravagant incidents of The Revolt of Islam, has as little power of holding the reader's interest, because of the feebleness and ineffectiveness of plot and characterization. The only apparent exception to Shelley's limitations as a portrayer of incident and character is The Cenci,unquestionably one of the most powerful dramatic works produced in English since the close of the seventeenth century. It is significant, however, that, although he here treats a tradition concerning real men and women, it is a story of unnatural and almost incredible horror, representing human nature in abnormal conditions and events which would not be out of place in the most extravagant romance. The structure of the play is defective, close imitations of Shakespeare are frequent, and the minor characters are mere reproductions of regular dramatic types. The greatness of the play lies in its two leading personages, and these are of a simplicity that approximates them to abstractions Cenci is the incarnation of evil, Beatrice of suffering innocence. We have, indeed, in The Cenci, a treatment of

1 Dowden's Life of Shelley, I, p. 335.

Shelley's oft-repeated theme, goodness, weak and persecuted, struggling with evil, strengthened by authority and consecrated by custom. Beatrice is an impersonation of the spirit of good as it has hitherto been imperfectly realized among men — imperfectly, because it has not learned the lesson taught in the Prometheus, that good, if it is to triumph, must abjure hatred and violence. Beatrice's neglect of this truth brings about the tragic catastrophe.

From the sphere, then, of the great objective poets like Shakespeare-from the successful embodiment in his works of the world outside of us, Shelley was excluded. It was not in external but in internal experiences, that life of his own soul which he so intensely lived, that Shelley found the material for his best work. Notwithstanding his isolation, this inner life was not self-centered, as was, for example, the inner life of Keats. The world as it affected him personally, his own joys and sorrows, did not make up the sum of his existence. On the contrary, his keenest interest was concerned with the well-being of society at large. "The predominant impulse in Shelley," it has been said, “was a passion for reforming mankind." A great part of his inner life was made up of thoughts and feelings about his fellowmen,

their past history, their present condition, their future destiny. The constant friction between Shelley and his environment, his extreme sensitiveness, his peculiarly keen perception of the difference between desire and attainment, the misfortunes of his own life, - all these led him to emphasize the ills of the present state of things; whilst his inexperience and his ardent temperament made it natural that he should anticipate the speedy realization of a millennium whence evil and misery would be banished. This revolution would be accomplished if only men would lay to heart and put in practice certain truths. Of these truths Shelley considered himself to be in possession, and attempted to

disseminate them by his writings. Accordingly, one part of Shelley's inner life and one part of his poetic work is concerned with the world at large with social, political, and religious matters, and with views as to the constitution of the universe which are naturally connected with these. Another part of his poetic work reflects the thoughts and feelings which pertained to his own individual life.

To the first division belong some of Shelley's longest and most ambitious efforts: Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound. In so far as these poems embody the poet's ideas in concrete pictures of actual human life, we have already characterized them as comparatively unsuccessful. But Shelley had a strong innate tendency to turn from the concrete to the abstract, from men and things to man in the abstract and generalizations about the universe. He had, in short, as is shown by his favorite studies, the philosophic bent. He is early interested in Godwin, Locke, Hume, Condorcet, Plato, and other theoretical writers. His fondness for discussing abstract questions is emphasized by Hogg, and is manifest in his correspondence. To history, on the other hand, which deals with individual facts and actual life, he entertained a strong repugnance. When he attacked the Irish question he knew little of and cared little for the special circumstances of the case. His argument deals in broad generalities, and had no special cogency for the Irish and the crisis then existing. This preference for the general and abstract is unusual among poets; for poetry is essentially concrete, as science is abstract and general. It is a circumstance of capital import that Shelley was at once a poet and a student of philosophical generalizations rather than substantial facts, who thought much about man in general, and understood but little of men as individuals. So when Shelley takes the larger life of humanity as his theme, he tends to turn from the direct picturing of that life

to the unfolding of theories and generalizations concerning it. Other poets have done the same thing, but philosophical poetry has been cold. It is Shelley's unique distinction that he is able to infuse intense emotion into such themes, and to clothe them with all that passion and beauty which usually gather about more tangible objects. The philosophical poet, in his anxiety to give a complete exposition of his views, becomes purely intellectual and prosaic. Whereas Shelley's emotional nature so far predominates, that he subordinates exposition to the expression of feeling; and his poetry becomes a series of lyrical outbursts about abstract ideas which he only vaguely indicates. By far the best illustration of his philosophical poetry is the Prometheus Unbound. It is the most complete single embodiment of Shelley's views as to the constitution of the universe, the past history of mankind, the principles which should at present guide the wise and good, the future of the world if these principles are followed. The poem does not take the form of an exposition - a form so fatal to the poetic spirit; nor, though a drama, does it attempt the delineation of human life, an attempt which must, in the face of Shelley's limitations, have been unsatisfactory. The stage is occupied with personifications, and the great movements of human development presented through symbolic situations. These personifications win something of reality and life from Shelley's earnestness; and, in monologue and song, give utterance to the varying moods which agitate the poet's soul as he contemplates the condition and prospects of the race. If their significance is somewhat vague and the plot incoherent, this is the natural outcome of lack of clearness and connectedness in the poet's thinking. The particular philosophic ideas imbedded in Shelley's poetry bear markedly the impress of his time. He grew to maturity while society about him was under the influence of a revulsion of feeling produced by the excesses of the French

Revolution and whilst the national energies were concentrated in resisting the aggressions of Napoleon. The intense conservatism and the political narrowness of this era, the repressive measures, the encroachments on individual liberty, the wrongs perpetrated in political prosecutions under the name of justice aroused, in turn, a desire for change and the spirit of resistance in a growing minority. With this minority Shelley was led to sympathize by the predominating characteristics of his intellect and temperament. He had a disposition to quarrel with authority, sufficiently evident in his private life, a sensitiveness to evil which made him overlook the good in existing institutions, a youthful inexperience and impetuosity which undervalued slow developments, a tendency to depend upon abstract reasoning and individual thinking rather than on the gradually evolved results of the experience of the race. Every one of these peculiarities made congenial to him the radical and doctrinaire philosophy which is associated with the French Revolution. He became the disciple of Godwin and Condorcet; and, although, in time, the imaginative and mystic elements in his nature induced him to add to the teachings of such men, doctrines borrowed from philosophers as unlike them as Berkeley and Plato, certain fundamental principles of the French school were retained by him throughout life and continue to color his writings. These were especially such. as bore upon the political and social conditions of men, the belief in the natural goodness of human nature; the idea that evil is the result of defective social, national, and religious institutions; the dislike of accepted doctrines and of established organizations; the love of liberty for its own sake; unlimited confidence in democracy. For a more minute statement of Shelley's views on these matters the reader is referred to the Prometheus and to the notes on that poem in this volume.