Hamlet we are naturally interested; they are creatures like ourselves. But it is only by an effort that we can overcome our initial distaste for the personified abstractions of the Prometheus.

As to his expression in a narrower sense, add to what we have already noted in Shelley's mental constitution, an extraordinarily lavish endowment of specifically poetic gifts, -skill in language, imagery, and versification,—we have the main factors in his style. We do not expect in him the qualities which arise from untiring self-criticism, from respect to the accepted canons of poetic art, such as we find in a workman like Tennyson. Shelley writes under the influence of the poetic afflatus. He is content if he gives expression

to his feelings and ideas, without being careful to note occasional defects in logical structure, in grammatical concord, in congruity of images, in the regularity of his prosody. Here, as in more practical matters, he sometimes lacks selfrestraint. He does not sufficiently condense; he is carried on by the flow of language and imagery until thought is obscured or lost in musical words. But amends are made for occasional faults of this character by a spontaneous felicity, an unsought and unconventional grace to which a more conscious and less ardent artist could not have attained. This happiness is perhaps most easily noted in versification. As the unimaginative spirit will fail to appreciate Shelley's poetry in general, so will the pedantic student of metre who depends upon his fingers and his rules, fail to appreciate the subtle and varied music of Shelley's lines.

As to this and other matters in regard to his style, we cannot do better than quote the words of Professor Baynes:1 "This uncritical negligence, the want of minute accuracy in the details of his verse, seems to us intimately connected

1

Edinburgh Review, April, 1871; quoted in Mr. Forman's Preface to his edition of Shelley.

with the whole character of Shelley's mind, and especially with the lyrical sweep and intensity of his poetical genius. He had an intellect of the rarest delicacy and analytical strength, that intuitively perceived the most remote analogies and discriminated with spontaneous precision the finest shades of sensibility, the subtilest differences of perception and emotion. He possessed a swift, soaring, and prolific imagination, that clothed every thought and feeling with imagery in the moment of its birth and instinctively read the spiritual meanings of material symbols. His fineness of sense was so exquisite that eye and ear and touch became, as it were, organs and inlets, not merely of sensitive apprehension, but of intellectual beauty and ideal truth. Every nerve in his slight but vigorous frame seemed to vibrate in unison with the deeper life of nature in the world around him, and, like the wandering harp, he was swept to music by every breath of material beauty, every gust of poetic emotion. Above all, he had a strength of intellectual passion and a depth of ideal sympathy that in moments of excitement fused all the powers of his mind into a continuous stream of creative energy, and gave the stamp of something like inspiration to all the higher productions of his muse. His very method of composition reflects these characteristics of his mind. He seems to have been urged by a sort of irresistible impulse to write, and displayed a vehement and passionate absorption in the work that recalls the old traditions of poetical frenzy and divine possession. His conceptions crowded so thickly upon him, were embodied in such exquisite verbal forms, and so enriched by illustrations flashed from remote and multiplied centres of association that while the fever lasted his whole nature was carried impetuously forward on a full tide of mingled music and imagery. From this exuberance of poetical power some of his critics have reproached him with accumulating image upon image, without pausing

to select, discriminate, or contrast them. And it is no doubt true that there are passages in which metaphors and similes are heaped upon each other in almost dazzling profusion. But even in his most opulent and ornate descriptions there is hardly a trace of conscious labor or deliberate effort. . . His finest passages have a witchery of aerial music, an exquisiteness of ideal beauty, and a white intensity of spiritual passion. . . But the very qualities of mind and heart out of which these perfections spring carry with them the conditions of relative imperfections in the minor details of his work. The lyrical depth and impetuosity of feeling which carries Shelley on and gives such freedom and grace to the poetical movements of his kindled thought is unfavorable to perfect smoothness and accuracy in the mechanical details of his verse. He was often, in fact, too completely absorbed in the glorious substance of his poetry to give any minute attention to subordinate points of form. Thus, although from native fineness of ear his lines are never unrhythmical, the rhyme is often defective, and sometimes the metre as well. And, while his thought, even in its most subtle requirements, is always lucid, the expression, from haste or extreme condensation, is sometimes far from being clear."

SELECTED POEMS.

ALASTOR;

OR,

THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE.

PREFACE.

THE poem entitled "ALASTOR " may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and 5 majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long 10 as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and selfpossessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images 15 to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the 20