to respectability from the start, and Coleridge was too cowardly and faithless to accept deeds of blood. Besides, their real cares lay elsewhere—Wordsworth in his 'pedlar poems' and the appalling edifice of his teleological orthodoxy; Coleridge in his criticism, in his golden lyrics, in the philosophic balloons, the sending off of which diverted his last years of collapse. Keats, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. Byron, on the other hand, knew thoroughly well how badly beaten was the cause of liberty and progress. He knew what the Tory Government of England meant; what the Holy Alliance Government of Europe meant. Circumstances drove him into the opposition, and the old berserker fury came upon him. He fought for the sake of fighting, to ease his heart and mind, and he felt vaguely that in the long-run the stupid and corrupt conquerors must be beaten; but that was all. It would never be in his time. Waterloo had settled all that. Shelley, in his complete ignorance of the conditions of the struggle, thought that things might recommence at any moment. Therefore he sang with a divine optimism of revolts in the clouds, utterly undisturbed in his conviction of the approaching triumph of the ideas which he found interesting and animating. 'The necessity of Atheism'—the necessity of incest—the necessity of a vegetable diet,—everything was a
