meated with his spirit. In proportion as we understand his work, do we attain knowledge of his humanity. Mr. Browning, in defining what he regards as Shelley's highest and most predominating characteristic, calls it "his simultaneous perception of power and love in the absolute; and of beauty and good in the concrete; while he throws from his poet's station, between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous films, for the connection of each with each, than have been thrown by any modern artificer' of whom I have knowledge." The justness and accuracy of these distinctions may be tested by a consideration of such fascinating and noble poems as The Triumph of Life, the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and the Ode to the West Wind. Shelley is here at his best, when his crude philosophy no longer obtrudes itself, and he is content with the simple exercise of the imagination. His pure imaginative gifts were superior to those of either Byron or Wordsworth; and, like the latter, he had comparative command of his genius-though he could not, with the author of the Excursion, subdue the personal to the universal. It has been well said of Shelley that in poems with a political vein "he had the use of the left hand only." As I have before intimated, he was a destroyer and not a builder, politically

and socially. Shelley's refined intellect mistook its office in giving his political opinions through a poetic medium; and the harmony of his work was destroyed by convulsions of anger at what he deemed the violation of the eternal principles of right. It is in his perception of the beautiful, his sympathy, his grand enthusiasm, his eloquence, and his imagination, that his strength lies. He lacked the philosophic calm of Plato and the towering invention of the great Elizabethan poets. His life and his poetry are a record of ecstatic passion and spiritual unrest. Yet after all deductions, he will exercise a more durable influence upon the poetry of England than any of his contemporaries and successors save Wordsworth. His bays cannot wither with the lapse of time. Other poets may have their seasons of spasmodic popularity, but he can never be superseded. With twenty years added to his career, his hand might have touched that of Shakspeare.

And now to gather up the threads of this criticism. In addition to those aspects in which we have regarded him, Shelley stands confessed a consummate master of lyrical verse-the greatest lyric poet of the nineteenth century. And lyric poetry, it should ever be remembered, bears a serious import and purpose, besides that of ministering to the

delight of men.
could we legitimately assign to this writer that
position which is now universally conceded to
him? The poet is greater as a teacher than the
man of science, because of his capacity to speak
to all men, and his one organ of speech is effec-
tive in reaching all. He discovers that which
is of interest to humanity, and unfolds it. It
is the faculty of discovering hidden analogies,
combined with the power of expressing them
artistically and musically, which makes the poet.
Nations have in every epoch throbbed with the de-
sire for liberty; all men have observed the clouds
which veil the midnight sky; sunset and sunrise
are every-day occurrences; the daisy has bloomed
for centuries; the bird has carolled in the sky for
unnumbered ages-yet to ordinary men all these
things bear no second meaning behind their
palpable existence as facts and things. But the
poet, the immortal singer, fills other men with
that enthusiastic love for freedom which consumes
himself; he deduces lessons from the passage of
the midnight clouds across the heavens, and finds
new links between nature, man, and the Deity, in
the song of the bird, the upturned face of the
daisy, and the crimson robes in which the sun is
arrayed as he goes forth upon his triumphant

Were such not the case how

career. In this view of the bard, who is a worthier votary in the great temple of poesy than Shelley, whose soul overflowed with love and sympathy, whose mind was ever open to the endless forms of beauty in the universe, and whose heart yearned for the emancipation of humanity from vice and error? His hopes and his inextinguishable desires find expression in the lines which he addresses to the West Wind

"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is ;
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

"Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

"Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

"Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

"The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Who shall say that Shelley has not been "the trumpet of a prophecy?" What matters it, though some of his poems should be disfigured by affectation, and others by a quixotic assault upon

windmills of his own creation ?-there is yet a glamour over all his song, which proclaims him the great poet. Even in his translations-an important branch of his art-the same glamour shines. We understand the old aphorism, poeta nascitur, non fit, when it is applied to him. The value and extent of his work, when placed in juxtaposition with the brevity of his life, leave us but astonishment and wonder. He was inspired, and has since been the source of inspiration in others. It is little to say that his melody is superior to that of any other modern poet. He divides the lyric crown with Burns. The latter is a poet of universal sympathies, and in that respect takes precedence of Shelley, but the author of The Cloud transcends even the poet-king of the north in simple music. His lyrical endowment was also accompanied by passion and earnestness. His sincerity cannot be denied, nor his rigid adherence to what, in his seer's vision, he deemed to be the truth. He sang of things old and new, and justified his title to the appellation of bard by the new fire which he struck out of the expiring ashes of the past. Nothing in nature appeared ugly or discordant to him; and had his faith in humanity equalled his reverence for the Spirit that breathes through all things, he would, by an extension of his brief