yearnings of the human mind for something | tions, good taste is violated by the introbeyond itself, which it is unable to supply duction of sacred names, for the purpose --and which it seeks to create for itself by of increasing the effect of some of the one fiction or another. Shelley was a child, scenes in his poems. Prometheus is made, with a child's simplicity and goodness; but in one passage, to witness in vision the a child's entire inexperience ;-of the world stupendous mystery of our Lord's cruciwithin his own bosom none could be more fixion, and to sympathize with the sufferer. entirely conscious. There he saw clearly We feel this sort of patronage more offen-as clearly as natural reason-"The light sive--absolutely more offensive than the that lighteneth every man that comes into passages in Queen Mab, in which the lanthe world," enabled him. It seems strange guage is of unmitigated scorn; yet it how a boy educated in a Christian country would be unfair not to acknowledge that it should have been left so entirely to himself shows an improved state of feeling on the on subjects of religion; for his education subject in Shelley's mind. In the Revolt in which, no adequate provision seems to of Islam, too, we are glad to state our enhave been made by his parents or his mas- tire belief in Shelley's statement, that "the ters. He seems to have been left to himself erroneous and degrading idea, which men almost entirely, and to have judged by the have conceived of a Supreme Being, is spoevils which he everywhere saw in the insti- ken against, but not the Supreme Being tutions of society, many of which seemed himself." This is different-essentially to exist in direct counteraction of their different-from the temper in which Queen original purposes. The astonishing thing Mab is written, and in which he himself in Shelley is, that in spite of great neglect indulges in the violent passions which he in his instructors-in spite of a sort of self-imputes to others. The "Revolt of Islam," education conducted on the principle, that everything his masters thought to teach him was worthless-in spite of his early studies of all circulating library nonsense -in spite of his own additions to its store -in spite of his extreme disputatiousness -in spite of boyish vanity; there can be no doubt that there are, through his whole short life, decided improvement-an increasing disposition towards a juster appreciation of the views of other men-a benevolence that led him, not alone in his writings to inculcate, but in his practice to realize the lesson of never returning evil for evil. We do not think that there is reason to say, as has been sometimes said, that his views had changed with respect to Christianity; on this subject and not on this subject alone-we really think there was in his mind a taint of insanity. The hatred, the malignity of feeling with which Christianity is treated by this preacher of unlimited toleration, is we think to be accounted for by nothing else. His infidelity is something not unlike Newman's, and arising very much in the same way. He excludes the books in which the doctrines of Christianity are contained, as any part of the evidence which is to show what Christianity is, and assumes the history of a world, warring with every one of its doctrines, to be the history of Christianity. Nothing can be more offensive than the tone in which, to speak of no higher considera though written a few years after "Alaster," was written in the same feeling of approaching death, and in the hope-nay rather with the determination-of leaving a record of himself. It contains many passages of great beauty, but is deformed-we speak of it as a poem--by much political disquisition, which has neither the calmness of philosophy, nor the less sober charm of poetry. It was written in the summer months of 1817, when he lived at Marlow; "in his boat as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighboring country, which is distinguished for peculiar beauty." Marlow was then inhabited by a very poor populationthe women lacemakers. The poor laws," says Mrs. Shelley, "ground to the dust, not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates." Shelley was generous, and did what he could to relieve the distress. Howitt went a year or two ago to Marlow, to look after such recollections or traditions as might remain of the poet. One man remembered his boat, on the stern of which was painted its name"The Vaga," and that some Marlow wag had added the letters bond. This he told exultingly-and this seemed to end the record. At last an obscure whisper ran among the circle that gathered round the inquisitorial quaker, of one man who did remember him. He was sent for, and he came. Howitt sat silent, listening till the squire--for so the man in black seemed to be-might deign to speak. "Art thou the squire? Or parson of the parish? Or the attorney?" was the thought of the wondering quaker, as he gazed on the tall gaunt figure. Can he be the executor? was the thought of the man in black, who at last revealed the secret of his recollection, and said he had good cause to remember Mr. Shelley. He was a very good man. When they left Marlow they directed all their bills to be sent in all that were sent in were paid. His--he was a chandler-was neglected to be sent and was not paid. Howitt rusbed to his carriage, indignant at the baseness of mankind, indignant too at the sad fact that the house once occupied by Shelley is now a pot-house! Beatrice. tower? Lucretia. The sun will scarce be set. Lucretia. What sound is that? Hark !-No, it cannot be a servant's step, * It must be Cenci. In this passage, the description of the rock overhanging the precipice, and the simile forced as it were on the imagination of the speaker, by the circumstances in which she is compelled to think of her father's guilt, is absolutely the finest thing we It is impossible for us, within the limits to which we must confine ourselves, to speak as we could wish of Shelley's mastery over language-which was gradually becoming perfect. The exceeding subtlety of his thoughts was such as to demand every aid that words could give, and the result was a power of language such as no English poet has before attained. This, had Shelley lived, would probably have made him our greatest poet, for there is no one of his poems that gives in any degree an adequate measure of his intellectual power. We have ever read. In the Prometheus there feel of him as if he had created a language, in which he did not live long enough to is a passage of great power, which in the have written anything. He died while his same manner is justified by the way in which it is put into the mouth of Asia, the devotbest powers were yet immature. The effet of such poems as he did write was died lover of Prometheus: inished by his lavish expenditure of this "Hark! the rushing snow! rich and overflowing language, which goes The sun-awaken'd avalanche-whose mass, beyond the thought, and instead of express-Thrice sifted by the storm, had gather'd there, ing conceals it or magnifies it into undue Flake after flake,-in heaven-defying minds, pomp. Each successive work exhibited As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth increased power of condensation-and Is loosen'd, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now!" language, by doing no more than its a thousandfold proper business, had more power. Of this the Cenci is a re Whatever the merit of the passage may be, considered as descriptive, its true value is of another kind. That every object in is of another kind. That every object in nature should suggest Prometheus to his bride that his defiance of Jupiter should be above all things, and by all things pre markable instance. It is Shelley's greatest poem. The others are, in comparison with it, scarcely more than the exercises of a boy, disciplining himself for the tasks of an after period of life. In modern poetry there is nothing equal to the passage de-sented to her imagination, in a journey scribing the scene of the proposed murder which is taken for the very purpose of apshall we not say execution of the father. "Lucretia. To-morrow before dawn, Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, pealing against the tyranny of the despotic ruler of the skies to some higher power, is, we think, a proof of the highest dramatic genius in the poet. We are reminded of a When the curse is repeated, Prometheus addresses the Spirit of the Earth : triumph of the same kind, in which, how-| equalled by anything in Eschylus or ever, fancy predominates rather than imagi- Goethe. nation; but in which the description of natural scenery is rendered subservient to dramatic purposes, and thus gains tenfold beauty and propriety, in De Vere's noble poem of the "Waldenses." A dignified ecclesiastic finds himself ascending a glen in the valley of Rosa: "Cardinal. This cloud-heap'd tempest raw. "Were these my words, oh Parent? We wish greatly that we had room for the scene in which Asia and Panthea are represented as on their journey to the cave of Demogorgon, a mighty spirit superior to Jupiter, but himself bound by the Fates. In the description of the dreams that suggest the journey, in the songs of Spirits accompanying or welcoming Asia and Panthea as they advance, in the change of external nature and all its objects, animate and inanimate, when breathed on by the spirit of love; every word of Shelley's has its own peculiar beauty. This may be, and no doubt often is, as the author of Philip Van Artevelde has told us, a fault, and poetry should be, in the words of Milton, simple rather than subtle and fine; yet here the language is spiritual as that of Ariel, and the fancy of the hearer already awakened and alive, conjures up images as rapidly as the successive words can suggest them. To Shelley's Prometheus, though inferior to the Cenci in the concentration of power, is a poem of wonderful beauty. These mythical legends easily mould themselves to any shape the poet pleases. When Shelley wrote Queen Mab he recommended abstinence from animal food, and even doubted the fitness of eating any vegetables except The story of Prometheus then typified to his fancy the cruel man who first killed the ox, and used fire for culinary purposes. In the Prometheus of 1819, he gives the legend another color. Evil is an usurpation and an accident, and is finally to pass away through the effects of diffused knowledge and the predominance of good do anything like justice to this passage, will, to the triumph of man acting in the we should print several pages of the poem. spirit of love. The language of many of The scene in which Jupiter himself is prethe old mythologists represents Jupiter as a sented, is we think altogether a failure. disobedient son dethroning Saturn, and the The change which earth is supposed to unrestoration of Saturnian times is anticipat- dergo in consequence of his actual fall, is ed. On this view is Shelley's drama found-represented in a number of choral hymns, ed. "Prometheus is the type of the highest and this part of the poem is unequal to the perfection of moral and intellectual nature, two first acts. impelled by the purest and truest motives The Prometheus and the Cenci were both to the best and noblest ends." With the written in Italy. "The Prometheus," says exception of a passage which we have before Shelley, was written upon the mountainadverted to as deforming the drama, it is ous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among a work of the very highest power. The the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous opening is in the spirit of Eschylus, and blossoming trees, which are extended in we think equal. În Eschylus the gifts ever-winding labyrinths upon its immense which Prometheus is supposed to have given platforms, and dizzy arches suspended in to man, are somewhat inartificially made the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, the subject of boasting by Prometheus him- and the effect of the vigorous awakening of self; in Shelley they are more naturally spring in that divinest climate, and the new and more gracefully related by Asia. The life with which it drenches the spirits even scene in which Prometheus desires to bear to intoxication, were the inspiration of this the curse which he had imprecated against drama." Jupiter, and the calling up the phantasm of Jupiter himself to pronounce it, because he will not expose any living thing to the suffering consequent on uttering it, is un KEATS died at Rome in February, 1821, and Shelley's poem on his death is perhaps the poem of all others of his, which, carefully studied, gives the truest notion of his mind. It is scarce possible that it should ever be At no period of Shelley's life did he enpopular in the ordinary meaning of the word, joy good health; and when he and Byron or should excite admiration in the same lived in the same neighborhood, "he was way as the "Cenci," or some scenes of the too much broken in upon and distracted by "Prometheus.” As in the case of Mil- society to concentrate his mind on any one ton's "Lycidas," the reader has to trans- subject." To him the society of Byron pose himself into an imagined position, must have been in every way injurious. without the aid which dramatic forms give Indeed, Moore's "Life of Byron," and to produce that effect. "Lycidas" was not Medwin's "Conversations," give abundant only not understood when it was first pub-proof that it was so in every higher point of lished, but the reader has only to look at view; and even intellectually its effect was any of the editions of Milton, with illus- to prevent his writing. Byron did not read trative notes, to see that it is still misunder- Shelley's poems; at least so one of his stood, even by his best commentators-so letters says; and Shelley describes himself gradually and so slowly is it that the class of poetry which would overfly common sympathies, and address itself to any peculiar state of feelings, is appreciated. In the Adonais among the mountain shepherds -the imagined mourners for the deadShelley describes himself; and it is some evidence how little the poem is understood, that we have repeatedly seen the lines quoted as Shelley's description of Chatter--which were the consequence of his early as the glowworm which ceased to emit its light in sunshine. Whenever Shelley, then, was not supported by dramatic forms, which compelled him to assume the language and the passions of men, and thus to appeal to our common sympathies, he shrank from the contemplation of his own sufferings, and of the wrongs-as he supposed them to be, and as they perhaps were alienation from his family and natural friends and retired into a world of dream and mysticism. In this spirit, "The Witch of Altun," "The Triumph of Life," and the "The Epipsychidion," are written. In these we think he exhibits more thoughtful appreciation of the powers of language than is apparent in his greater works; but in all these there is an almost morbid life, as if each particle lived and were releasing itself from the vital action of imagination that ought to have animated all. From this fault, his strong good sense-the disin all his later letters-would have untinguishing attribute of his mind as proved doubtedly rescued him. From these poems of more subtle woof, of which the colors seem to exist only in particular dispositions of light and shade, it would be idle to give any extracts. They are often of consummate beauty. There is no great English poet who has. not at times exercised himself in translation. It is spoken lightly of only by those who know nothing whatever of the subject on which they are speaking; but none more than the poets who have best succeeded, know how "miserably inadequate" translation must always be. Yet there are circumstances in which this exertion of mind is possible when works properly original Cowper's Homer, perhaps Coleridge's Walare out of the questión. Carey's Dante, * See Shelley's Essays and Letters from Abroad, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." I vol. ii., p. 249. semblance of a meaning. Metaphors are dangerous things, and "looms" bring with them the thought of "weaving;" but "interwoven looms" defy all interpretation. This Mr. Medwin thinks very admirable. lenstein, are instances of this. Shelley, in one of his letters, says he will not allow himself to be seduced into translation; and there can be little doubt that powers of the same kind, that in moments of happiness would be better employed in original" The fragment leaves on the mind an inworks, are required for this task. What extinguishable regret"—such is his absurd Shelley, however, shrank from at first, was language-" that he had not completed it; at last assumed by him from the prompt- nay, more, that he did not employ himself ings of a generous spirit. He could not in rendering others of the finest passages." assist the periodical work which Byron and Can the "interwoven looms" have been Leigh Hunt projected, by original contribu- Shelley's? Is it not probable that there is tions; and it occurred to him that Hunt some mistake in the transcript? might be served by a few specimens from Calderon and Goethe. This originated his "Scenes from Faust," and "The Magico Prodigioso." Some inaccuracies have been pointed out in the translations from Goethe, which so far injure their effect. The translations from Calderon are, we think, in every way superior to his "Scenes from Faust, with the wild song chanted by Mephistopheles, Faust, and Ignis Fatuus, as they ascend the Hartz Mountains. Shelley, in sending his "Prometheus" to a friend, observed that poets are a cameleon race, and in their colors exhibit the ground over which they are travelling, and he expresses fears lest he may have unconsciously imitated Faust. It is more certain that in translating "Faust," he adopts his own former language of "Prometheus," and heightens the effect by a line or two scarcely altered from the songs of Asia and Panthea. Of his translations, the bestindeed we think the best translation in the language-is Homer's Hymn to Mercury. Its power, too, is of a kind which no other work of Shelley's would prepare us for. We cannot but think that his " Peter Bell the Third," and "Edipus Swellfoot," which Mrs. Shelley has given in her last edition of his works, and which we hope she may feel herself at liberty to omit from every future one, are exceedingly heavy. Were it not for his translation of this hymn, we should have thought that he had no appreciation of true humor. "And earnest to explore within, around, * * Already had I lost myself so far Bright lady! who, if looks had ever power In Mr. Medwin's book we find a passage from the Purgatory of Dante, translated by Shelley, which we have not before seen. It perhaps deserves preservation; but it is not, we think, equal to the corresponding passage in Carey. The fantastic image of With these lines we close our notice of the interwoven looms" in Shelley has no Shelley. There are some subjects connectwarrant from anything in the original. Weed with it, at which we have not had time can imagine the exigencies of rhyme sug- to glance. As far, however, as they congesting the word "looms" and the poet de- nect themselves with the philosophy of lanceiving himself with assigning to it the guage, which an examination of Shelley's |