A NOTE ON SHELLEY.[1]
FORTUNATELY it is no longer needful to introduce the name of our noblest lyrical poet—perhaps in life and song the very noblest of all lands and ages—with some apology, meek or daring, for the enormous altitude of his flight, and the dauntless sincerity of his faith and its expressions. Although he has been dead little more than fifty years, his loving mother country, forced as she was to chasten him somewhat severely alive, already pities and almost condones his startling aberrations—a rare generosity which we cannot sufficiently admire. Yea, she is already, despite his outrageous refulgence, beginning to recognise that he is no will-o'-the-wisp or passing meteor; that he was not even a baleful irregular comet; that he is in truth a burning sphere of heaven, at least as stable and during as her own rock-ribbed, dense-clodded earth. She is perhaps ready
- ↑ When the preceding article, "Notes on the Structure of 'Prometheus Unbound,'" was first written it was entitled "A Note on Shelley." Under this title it was sent to the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine, who declined it on the ground that it presumed too intimate a knowledge of Shelley's writings on the part of the general reader. Before sending the essay to the Editor of the Athenæum, Thomson revised it, and amongst other alterations omitted the introductory portion. This introduction, however, seems to me well worth preserving, and I have accordingly printed it.—Editor.
