poet of the day, and even now not a few critics hold the same opinion. But poets cannot be ranked in definite order like schoolboys in a class; and no good result comes of the discussion of such subjects as whether Byron was a greater poet than the profound and lofty-minded Wordsworth or the ethereal Shelley. It is sufficient to say that in his own line of poetical expression he was superior to them; whether that line was higher or lower than theirs is a subject on which opinions will differ to the end of time. It should not be forgotten that, with the exception of Scott, Byron was the only author of his tiine who attained Continental celebrity—a good omen for the permanence of his fame, if it be true (which may be doubted) that the judgment of foreigners generally anticipates the judgment of posterity. Mr. Matthew Arnold has done his best to minimise Goethe's praises of Byron; but it nevertheless remains clear that Goethe thought Byron the greatest poet of the day. "When he will create,” he said to Eckermann, "he always succeeds; and we may truly say that with him inspiration supplies the place of reflection. He was always obliged to go on poetising, and then everything that came from the man, especially from his heart, was excellent. He produced his best things, as women do pretty children, without thinking about it or knowing how it was done. He is a great talent, a born talent, and I never saw the true poetical power greater in any man than in him.”1

Resembling Byron in his defiance of control and his con-tempt for social restrictions, like him also in that during his lifetime the wildest and falsest stories of his private life were circulated and credited, Percy Bysshe Shelley differed from his noble friend in having a sweet, lovable disposition; a heart full of charity, full of hope and eager aspiration, constantly longing for the dawn of a better day to humanity. "He was," said Byron, "without exception, the best and least selfish man I ever knew." His friend Trelawny pronounced him "a man absolutely without selfishness." Leigh Hunt, 1 Eckermann's "Conversations of Goethe" (Oxenford's translation),

P. 116.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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who knew him well, declared that "he was pious towards nature, towards his friends, towards the whole human race, towards the meanest insect of the forest." Bearing these testimonies in mind, it is strange to reflect that by many of his contemporaries Shelley should have been spoken of as if he had been a monster of iniquity, a poisonous reptile, whom every good man should do his best to crush underfoot. But there were circumstances in his life and character which tend to explain such utterances, extravagantly erroneous though they were. Shelley was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart, and was born at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, in 1792. Sent to Eton about the age of thirteen, he early showed his habitual abhorrence of tyranny by his refusal to fag. Leaving Eton in 1808, he passed some months at home, employing himself in the composition of worthless tales. He then in 1810 entered University College, Oxford, where he studied. hard by fits and starts, and spent much time in chemical experiments, for which he had always a fondness. The circulation of a two-page pamphlet, "A Defence of Atheism," led to the expulsion of the youthful freethinker from Oxford in March 1811; and his father's natural irritation on this account was deepened by Shelley's rash marriage, in August of the same year, to Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a retired innkeeper. Henceforth Sir Timothy refused to have any intercourse with his son, to whom, however, he granted a liberal annual allowance. Shelley's hasty marriage was tragical in its issue: he soon became tired of his young wife, who could have no intellectual sympathy with him. 1814 they were separated, and about two years later Mrs. Shelley committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. With sorrow it must be said that in his relations with her Shelley behaved badly; after making all allowances. for his strange and erratic disposition, his conduct in this matter must be condemned as selfish and cruel. Before his separation from her he became acquainted with a woman of much more congenial disposition, Mary Godwin, daughter of William Godwin, the author of "Caleb Williams." With her,

in 1814, he travelled through France, Switzerland, and Germany, and in 1816, on the death of Harriet Westbrook, she became his second wife. In 1813 Shelley printed (for private circulation only) his first important poem, "Queen Mab," expressing his aspirations after a future golden age for humanity, and giving violent expression to his atheistic opinions. When, in 1816, after the death of his first wife, he laid claim to the custody of his children, the claim was successfully resisted at law by their grandfather, on the ground of his atheism, as exhibited in "Queen Mab," despite the fact that the poem had not been published, only privately printed. In 1816 appeared "Alastor," one of his most finished productions, describing the life of a solitary poet. Then came, in 1817, the "Revolt of Islam," composed during his residence at Marlow. In 1818 he left England-never to return, as it proved and went to Italy, where in the following year he produced his magnifi cent lyrical drama "Prometheus Unbound" and the tragedy of "The Cenci," undoubtedly the most powerful drama written since the Elizabethan era. His other chief works are "Julian and Maddalo" (1818), the "Witch of Atlas" (1820), “Epipsychidion" (1821), "Adonais" (1821)-a lament for the death of Keats, fit to be ranked with the Lycidas of Milton, and "Hellas" (1821), in which he celebrated the outbreak of the Greek war of liberty. On July 8, 1822, while he was out boating (a sport which he always loved) in the Bay of Spezzia with a friend, a sudden squall arose; the boat was upset, and all on board perished. Some days later Shelley's body was cast ashore. It was burnt, as the quarantine law of the country required, and the ashes were deposited in the Protestant burial-ground at Rome, near the grave of Keats.

Shelley never has been, and never will be, a popular poet. A few of his shorter pieces, such as "The Cloud" and "To the Skylark" (both written in 1820), are, it is true, universally known; but to the multitude most of his poems are a sealed book. For this several reasons might be given. For one thing, he is a difficult poet; to follow his meaning with ease and security requires a nimble and poetic intelligence, which

comparatively few readers are possessed of. But the main reason why his poems are not popular is because they want human interest: when we look for something real and tangible which may awaken our sympathies, we are often put off with cloudy metaphysics, clothed, indeed, in magnificent words, but vague and impalpable. A good deal of Shelley's poetry might almost have been written by a denizen of another world, so remote it seems from all earthly interests. To many, as to Carlyle, "poor Shelley always was, and is, a kind of ghastly object, colourless, pallid, without health, or warmth, or vigour; the sound of him shrieky, frosty, as if a ghost were trying to 'sing to us."" It must not be supposed from this that Shelley is always deficient in human interest or feeling. Frequently he is not so: he was filled with the enthusiasm of humanity, and often employed his verse to give utterance to his hopes of that golden age which always lies in the future. But even where he does so, his conceptions are not, to quote the words of an admirer, "embodied in personages derived from history or his own observation of life," and hence, to readers in general, have a misty and far-away aspect. It ought to be mentioned that Shelley wrote excellent prose: indeed, Mr. Matthew Arnold considers that his letters and essays bid fair to have a more enduring life than his poems. Few will agree with this judgment; but all who care to read the thoughts of a great poet upon many points of high literary and philosophical interest will find a rich treat in the alas! too scanty prose remains of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Near the grave of Shelley in the Protestant cemetery at Rome lies another great poet, cut off in the pride of his youth and genius, but not before, in spite of the deplorable brevity of his career, he had done such work as to place him in the first rank of English poets, far above other "inheritors of unfulfilled renown," who have died at an early age. The few events in the life of John Keats may be very briefly related. He was born in London in 1795, and leaving school in 1810, was apprenticed for five years to a surgeon at Edmonston.

The reading of Spenser in 1812 fired his

poetical genius, and he began to write verses. After his apprenticeship was over, he came to London to walk the hospitals; but he soon found that surgery was unsuited to one of his sensitive nature, and gave up the study. In 1817 was published his first volume of poems, miscellaneous products of his youth, not sufficiently noticeable to excite either much praise or much censure. In 1818 appeared "Endymion." Nothing could better show how worthless contemporary criticism often is than the fact that this poem was received with a well-nigh universal shout of derision. Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, in a coarse and virulent article denounced Keats as the "copyist of Leigh Hunt," "more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times as tiresome." Blackwood followed suit; and even more lenient critics showed their want of discernment by "damning with faint praise." Yet it would be difficult to give an example of a poem written at so early an age as "Endymion" so rich in the loftier attributes of poetry; its faults are those of an undisciplined but luxurious imagination, from which great things might have been looked for in the future. The extraordinary rapidity of Keats's poetical growth is shown by the finish and maturity of the poems composed within the two years after "Endymion" was written the noble fragment of "Hyperion," "Lamia," the "Eve of St. Agnes," and the immortal odes, one or two of which are of almost peerless beauty. Meanwhile it was becoming only too evident to all his friends that the poet's life was to be a brief one. Consumption had laid its fatal hand upon him, and he was gradually wasting away. In 1820 he embarked for Naples, accompanied by his artist friend Severn. From Naples they proceeded to Rome, and in the Eternal City, in February 1821, Keats breathed his last. To him, indeed, as his biographer, Lord Houghton, himself a poet of no mean talent, remarks, the gods were kind, and granted great genius and early death. Whether the verse he left behind him was but as a prelude to the music never played; whether he would have gone on increasing in poetic stature as the years went