During these last years it was that Shelley's real genius began first to develop. Before his residence in Italy, Queen Mab, Alastor, and the Revolt of Islam were his only long poems, and though they may contain many passages of great beauty, they contain much that is unreadable. Strangely enough, too, the most beautiful of his early poems, Mont Blanc and the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, were also inspired by foreign influences and written when abroad. Had he remained in England the uncongenial life, the continual irritation of politics, and a climate which did not harmonize with his strange habits of life would have always checked his poetical powers. Bright, sunny skies, a free open-air life, a nature with which he could continually live in sympathy, responded to and developed all his peculiar tendencies. In one of the most beautiful of his prose passages, in the Introduction to Prometheus, he writes:

'This poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extending in ever-winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication were the inspiration of this drama.'

The character of Shelley is one of strange contrasts, and a thoughtful reader of his life will be continually swayed in his judgment. At one time all his admiration and love are aroused by an act of enthusiastic benevolence, and then we feel suddenly compelled to ask, Is this the same person-is this preacher of a lofty guiding rule of love the same man who deserted his wife; or is it some maniac who is not accountable for what he does? How is it that the poet who shuddered at the mention of anything indecent, whose poems are free from any touch of suggestiveness, could yet make himself the champion of incest, could feel attracted by the story of the Cenci, and allow his imagination to be filled with such monstrous images? In smaller things, too, there is the same contrast. His voice was shrill and piercing, but his reading was beautiful. He would often trip up and tumble about awkwardly, but there was no one whose movements could be more graceful. Sometimes he was pleasant in society, and had all the attractiveness of sincerity and naturalness, and yet again he is shy, nervous, even harsh and disagreeable. Gentle, mild, quiet, he yet in language could rise to heights of fierce and often unjust invective. Always preaching justice and

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tolerance, there are few who have formed more unjust opinions and indulged in more intolerant outbursts. So gentle that he could not injure the lowest animal, he yet never shrank from wounding the feelings of any he disagreed with. His imagination was filled with beautiful ideals of a world ruled by love and full of the influence of love only, and yet he saw in the Gospel of Love only a religion of hatred.

'Swiftly gliding in,' writes Trelawny, 'blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both 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?'

'He came in,' says Hogg, 'like a spirit that had just descended from the sky, like a demon risen from the ground.'

A divine emanation from heaven, says one; the head of the Satanic school, says another. But all are alike certain there was something not natural in him. Good or bad, he was hardly a denizen of this world.

It is easy for a critic to understand how either of these opinions could be held; it is difficult to strike a balance between them. That a supporter of religion and morality, knowing only certain facts of the poet's life and certain doctrines that he preached, should not be able to restrain his indignation, is natural. It is equally natural that some one, starting from different premisses, allowing himself only to see those characteristics which are, and always will be, full of moral beauty, whose imagination has been attracted by the lofty aspirations of some of his poetry, should be unable to restrain his enthusiasm and should refuse to look on the other side. But we feel that neither of these alternatives will satisfy our readers. We feel that their sincere convictions will prevent them from canonizing or deifying an assailant of Christian morality and teaching; we feel that they will not refuse to admit the Christianlike beauty of much that he did, and his genuinely lofty aspirations, and will equally refrain from abusive anathemas. It is our business to assist them in forming a clearer idea and a juster estimate of his character. And, first, let us once more insist upon his youth. He was but thirty when he died. He was nineteen when he ran away with Harriet; he was one-and-twenty when he deserted her. He had been an author (if a bad one) for years before many men in the present day have learnt to do an examination paper, or to satisfy the army examiners in spelling. It is not

reasonable to expect maturity of character or opinion from a boy, even though he cares for the future of Ireland more than for the success of the University Eight, and is more interested in the progress of mankind than in the winner of the Derby. For the last ten years of his life he was progressing in mind and character. He was still young when he died, and there is many a man who has attained the fame of a saint and become a champion of religion, whose early years would yield a more disastrous record. What if Cyprian had died as a heathen; or St. Augustine while an obscure rhetorician, a Manichæan and a sensualist; or Ignatius Loyola while still a dissolute soldier; or Francis of Assisi as a ruffling gallant? Not that we for one moment imagine Shelley would have ever been a champion of religion; we only plead for leniency of judgment. Even that orthodox champion of conservatism, Southey, had once been praised by the reviews for his revolutionary sentiments; and Wordsworth and Coleridge had had foolish dreams about improving the condition of their fellow-men. There is almost less difference between Joan of Arc and the Vision of Judgment than there is between Queen Mab and Hellas, or between the wild boy who deserted Harriet and the pale-faced dreamer in the woods of Lucca.

But if there are many men whose characters and careers cannot be judged at thirty, Shelley was essentially one who required time in which to mature. We presume that there is no poet who has not been at some time in his life at variance with the world. Excess of imagination makes it impossible for him to realize and reconcile himself to his surroundings. Errors in judgment, errors in comprehension he is constantly liable to. And probably there never was any one who more truly than Shelley 'moved about in worlds not realized.' It was the lesson of his life to learn something about human beings, and to discipline himself to the restraints necessary for humanity.

His extraordinary power of idealizing and misunderstanding life often led to ludicrous instances, especially in his treatment of persons. Miss Hitchener was a schoolmistress in Sussex, of romantic disposition and advanced opinions. Shelley met her once, talked of virtue, poetry and truth, and proceeded to educate her by correspondence out of the few prejudices she still retained. When away from her he constructed on this basis an ideal of great beauty, of brilliant intellectual powers, of charming disposition. She became his confidante and the recipient of letters characterized by somewhat exaggerated Platonism. Of her he dreamed while he wandered on the

Cumberland hills. She was the true sister of his soul, to whom half his property was to be left when he died. From her he asked forgiveness for the unfaithfulness he had shown in marrying: Blame me if thou wilt, dearest friend, for still thou art dearest to me; yet pity even this error if thou blamest me.' But after this correspondence had gone on for some time, she came and stayed with him, and the illusion was broken. If we may quote Prof. Dowden :—

'The Elizabeth Hitchener of Shelley's dream world, the Roman Portia of the correspondence, had disappeared for ever, and in her place stood a mere mortal woman—tall, lean, brown-visaged, thirty years of age, glorified by no peculiar nimbus, and having parts and passions as obnoxious to comment and criticism as those of any ordinary human creature. Her opinions, theological and political, were sadly tainted by the spirit of compromise. Her temper was variable.' (Vol. i. 311.)

We soon find Shelley writing, 'She is a woman of desperate views and dreadful passions, but of cool and undeviating revenge.' And again, She is an artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste were never so great as after living four months with her as an inmate. What would Hell be were such a woman in Heaven?' And again, 'The Brown Demon, as we will call our late tormentor, and schoolmistress, must receive her stipend.' Nor was this the only instance. To the end of his life Shelley formed Platonic attachments of the most ardent and devoted character with abstractions which had sufficient unreality to satisfy the highest form of Platonic pws, which were the creations of his own mind, but which he called by the names of real persons. Suddenly he discovers that the material object of his affections does not possess all the virtues of the spiritual, and enthusiastic admiration changes with great rapidity into violent and unrestrained dislike. So it was with Elizabeth Hitchener; so, too, with Emilia Viviani, the goddess of the Epipsychidion; so, too, with Harriet; so, in a less degree, even with Mary. Of Emilia he writes:

'The Epipsychidion I cannot look at; the person whom it celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace.

The error

I think one is always in love with something or other. and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it-consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal.' (Vol. ii. 381.)

We would only ask our readers to note the great change between the disillusioned Shelley of 1812 and of 1821. He now confesses his own errors, and does not blame the object of his mistaken adoration. Justice is the one quality which Shelley was unable to exercise in his judgment of other persons, and justice is the one quality least often found in the estimations which have been formed of his character.

The same imperfect realization of the world in which he lived will partly explain and may help to justify his constant tendency to misstatement of fact. Miss Clairmont tells us that he was not able to distinguish truth from falsehood. He very often certainly made statements which were not true. He told Godwin that he had written his two novels before he was seventeen. He stated before the Court of Chancery that Queen Mab was published two years before it ever appeared. He imagined or invented the statement that Harriet had been unfaithful to him, and that they had been parted by incurable dissensions. Many other instances have been quoted, and many of them are undoubted; they serve to show a continuous habit (from whatever cause) of misstatement. It is useless in the face of these facts to quote statements that Shelley was always truthful, or long passages in his poems of great beauty in praise of truth. After all, was it not 'grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence!' We must accept the contradiction and explain it. And, in the first place, Shelley is absolutely free from any touch of untruthfulness in his opinions. No idea of selfrestraint would ever make him hide his views. It is only as far as regards actual facts in the world in which we live that he shows any tendency to deception. And here he never saw things as they were; he could not see the distinction between fact and fiction, between reality and unreality. He could always believe what he wished to believe, and bring himself to see facts, not as they were, but as they ought to be. So gradually he came to believe there had been incurable dissensions between himself and Harriet. So he constantly imagined events that had never happened. Dishonesty is not the fault we can accuse him of; it is the incapacity to see things as they are a fault quite as dangerous, and perhaps almost as culpable.

The fact is, Shelley was a poet-and a poet in whom the imagination was disproportionately developed. And to this were due all the merits and all the defects alike of his character and his poetry. He was a creature, not of reason,