The Complete Poetical Works, vol 1 | Page 7

imagination has been termed too
brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and this is
a taste shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims
exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity; but few of us
understand or sympathize with the endeavour to ally the love of
abstract beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the to agathon kai to
kalon of the Socratic
philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind.
In this, Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the
abstract and the ideal than in the special and tangible. This did not
result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he
made Plato his study. He then translated his "Symposium" and his
"Ion"; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition
than Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own
poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself
(as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use beyond
the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his verses:

they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to his
own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the
same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he
has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from
those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he
considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached.
There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would
consent to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined
with his nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever
expressed in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse,
the gentler or more forcible emotions of the soul.
A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: 'You are still very young, and in
certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you
are so.' It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have
got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this
knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such
inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his

nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not
add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by
the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to
ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of
susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a
man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and
forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal
irritability,
or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the
stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more
experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I
die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, 'I have
lived to be older than my father.' The weight of thought and feeling
burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame,
while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated
countenance and brilliant eyes.
He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over
mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the
ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his country,

we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles. His spirit
gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though late, his
exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the liberty he so
fondly loved.
He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has
never been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to
comfort and benefit--to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations
of genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once
attached to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and
fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation
to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us,
and now exists where we hope one day to join him;--although the
intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of
Good, who can judge the heart, never rejected him.
In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the
origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers
which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect than
it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest recollection
of all that was done