timent, or at least desire to give him exceeding comfort and consolation, it would be such a poet as Mr. Shelley. The most physical part of the passion acquires, from his treatment of it, a grace and purity inexpressible. It is curious to see with what fearlessness, in the conscious dignity of this power, he ventures to speak of things that would defy all mention from a less ingenuous lip. The "Witch of Atlas," will be liked by none but poets, or very poetical readers. Spenser would have liked it: Sir Kenelm Digby would have written a comment upon it. Its meanings are too remote, and its imagery too wild, to be enjoyed by those who cannot put on wings of the most subtle conception, and remain in the uttermost parts of idealism. Even those who can, will think it something too dreamy and involved. They will discover the want of light and shade, which I have before noticed, and which leaves the picture without its due breadth and perspective. It is the fault of some of Mr. Shelley's poems, that they look rather like store-houses of imagery, than imagery put into proper action. We have the misty regions of wide air,

"The hills of snow, and lofts of piled thunder,-"

which Milton speaks of; but they are too much in their elementary state, as if just about to be used, and moving in their first chaos. To a friend, who pointed out to him this fault, Mr. Shelley said, that he would consider it attentively, and doubted not he should profit by the advice. He scorned advice as little as he did any other help to what was just and good. He could both give and take it with an exquisite mixture of frankness and delicacy, that formed one of the greatest evidences of his superiority to common virtue. I have mentioned before, that his temper was admirable. He was naturally irritable and violent; but had so mastered the infirmity, as to consider every body's inclinations before his own. Mr. Trelawney pronounced him to be a man absolutely without selfishness. In his intercourse with myself, nothing delighted him more than to confound the limits of our respective property, in money-matters, books, apparel, &c. He would help himself without scruple to whatever he wanted, whether a book or a waistcoat; and was never

better pleased, than at finding things of his own in his friend's possession.

The way in which Mr. Shelley's eye darted "from heaven to earth," and the sort of call at which his imagination was ever ready to descend, is well exemplified in the following passage of the Letter at p. 59. The unhappy mass of prostitution which exists in England, contrasted with something which seems to despise it, and which, in more opinions than his, is a main cause of it, was always one of the subjects that at a moment's notice would overshadow the liveliest of his moods. The picturesque line in italics is beautifully true. The poet is writing to a friend in London.

"Unpavilioned heaven is fair,

Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminish'd beams the azure steep;
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,

And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast.
All this is beautiful in every land.

But what see you beside? A shabby stand
Of hackney coaches-a brick house or wall,
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics; or worse.

A wretched woman, reeling by, whose curse
Mix'd with the watchman's, partner of her trade,
You must accept in place of serenade."

These miserable women, sometimes indeed owing to the worst and most insensible qualities on their own parts, but sometimes also to the best and most guileless, are at such a dreadful disadvantage compared with those who are sleeping at such an hour in their comfortable homes, that it is difficult to pitch our imaginations among the latter, for a refuge from the thought of them. Real love, however, even if it be unhappy, provided its sorrow be without contempt and sordidness, will furnish us with a transition less startling. The following Lines to an Indian Air, make an exquisite serenade.

"I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright;

I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet

Has led me who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, sweet!
"The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odours fall,
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must upon thine,
Beloved as thou art!

"O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh! press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last."

I know not that two main parts of Mr. Shelley's poetical genius, the descriptive and the pathetic, ever vented themselves to more touching purpose than in the lines Written in Dejection near Naples. The brilliant yet soft picture with which they commence, introduces the melancholy observer of it in a manner extremely affecting. He beholds what delights others, and is willing to behold it, though it delights him not. He even apologizes for "insulting" the bright day he has painted so beautifully, with his "untimely moan." The stanzas exhibit, at once, minute observation, the widest power to generalize, exquisite power to enjoy, and admirable patience at the want of enjoyment. This latter combination forms the height of the amiable, as the former does of the intellectual character. The fourth stanza will strongly move the reader of this memoir.

"The sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple moon's transparent light

*

*

Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,

The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's.

† A line is wanting in the Edition.

"I see the deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple sea-weeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.
I sit upon the sands alone;

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

"Alas! I have nor hope, nor health,

Nor peace within, nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned;

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround;

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ;-
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

"Yet now despair itself is mild,

Ev'n as the winds and waters are;

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,

And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

"Some might lament that I were cold,

As I when this sweet day is done,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan:

They might lament, for I am one

Whom men love not, and yet regret;

Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet."

The pieces, that call to mind Beaumont and Fletcher, are such as the following:

"Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

"Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on."

"Love's Philosophy" is another.

It has been often

printed; but for the same reason will bear repetition.

The sentiment must be understood with reference to the delicacy as well as freedom of Mr. Shelley's opinions, and not as supplying any excuse to that heartless libertinism which no man disdained more. The poem is here quoted for its grace and lyrical sweetness.

"The fountains mingle with the river,
And the river with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever,
With a sweet emotion:
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

"See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdain'd its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me ?"

Mr. Shelley ought to have written nothing but dramas, interspersed with such lyrics as these. Perhaps had he lived, he would have done so; for, after all, he was but young; and he had friends of that opinion, whom he was much inclined to agree with. The fragment of the tragedy of Charles the First, in this volume, makes us long for more of it. With all his republicanism, he would have done justice to Charles, as well as to Pym and Hampden. His completest production is unquestionably the tragedy of the "Cenci." The objections to the subject are, on the face of them, not altogether unfounded; but they ought not to weigh with those who have no scruple in grappling with any of the subjects of our old English drama; still less, if they are true readers of that drama, and know how to think of the great ends of poetry in a liberal and masculine manner. "Cenci" is the personification of a will, maddened, like a Roman emperor's, by the possession of impunity; deadened to all sense of right and wrong by degrading notions of a Supreme Being; and consequently subjected to the most frightful wants, and knowing no pleasure but in sensuality or malignity. The least of his actions becomes