sound of -sion, preceded by a vowel, such as the following: : "The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population" (27 26). "He omits the observation of conditions still more important, and more is lost than gained by the substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the loving impersonations of the truth of human passion" (17 25-30); cf. Sidney, Defense 53 31, note. Another form of repetition is that of identical words, such as alleged' (31 4,7), 'practice' (17 3,4). Not to be confounded with these are such as selectest: selectest (23 28), and partial: partially (24 1,2), which illustrate a rhetorical device. 6 Alliteration in prose is due to the same retention and unconscious reverberation of a sound, this time fragmentary and initial, a single phonetic element instead of a group of such. Shelley does not escape this fault, or rather he indulges a common and pardonable propensity beyond the limits which are imposed by the severe taste of certain critics. "The mask and the mantle" (30 5) would almost pass unnoticed, and "the fragrance of all the flowers of the field" (21 20) can be readily condoned. But the following will not so easily escape remark : — "It overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness (21 17). "A monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice," etc. (17 1). 66 "The jury which sits in judgment upon a poet must be composed of his peers; it must be impanelled by Time. . . . A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved," etc. (11 27-12 2). Perhaps the misquotation in 35 27-8 owes its form to the instinct for alliteration, and 'feasting' becomes mirth,' because 'mourning' had preceded. One feature of a poetical style Shelley avoids, the introduction of compound words, such as Sidney loved and abounded in (cf. Sidney, Defense 55 25, note, and the Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv). A half-dozen practically exhaust the list: 'all-penetrating' (46 22), 'ever-changing' (26), ' ever-repeated' (17 28), 'low-thoughted' (45 31), 'manysided' (196), and 'owl-eyed' (394). Of these, 'lowthoughted' is a quotation, and 'owl-winged' is the only other that has a decidedly poetic air. Before leaving the subject of Shelley's style, a single defect and a compensating merit must be noticed. The defect is that the poet as prosaist is sometimes ungrammatical. The congruence of a verb with its subject, for example, is not always observed. Examples are : — “With which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected" (19 22). "The chosen delicacy of expressions etc. (245). are as a mist," "His apotheosis of Beatrice, and the gradations . . . is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry" (29 3-8). "After one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to share," etc. (33 10-12). "The accumulation of the materials of external life exceed," etc. (38 11). The verbal noun uniformly takes an object: "The establishing a relation," etc. (17 23; cf. 17 24, 34 12-15). A peculiar confusion is illustrated by the following: "Each division in the art was made perfect and was disci plined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards the other" (16 17-20). The connective as here does duty in a construction to which it is not perfectly adapted: "Never was blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined or that will less re ... " pugnant, . . . as during the century," etc. (15 17-21). In the following the second member of the compound sentence is left without a verb: "Tragedy becomes a cold imitation ; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines," etc. (19 14 ff.). 'Form' and 'attempt' simulate noun-subjects, but the close of the sentence leaves them suspended, as it were, in midair. These offences, it will be said, are venial, and so indeed they are in relation to the splendid qualities by which they are offset, but the reference to them may perhaps serve as an excuse for occasional lapses in our elder writers, as where Sidney says (Defense 47 28): "Our tragedies and comedies not without cause cried out against," etc., in which the finite verb is lacking. The counterbalancing, and more than counterbalancing, merit, is the apothegmatic character of many of Shelley's statements. Perhaps no English essay so flowing and easy in its style, and so brief in its compass, ever contained an equally large number of pregnant sayings, so excellently true and so adequately expressed. Two, at least, have become proverbial: "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." "The rich have become richer, and the poor poorer." But there is a large number scarcely less deserving of popular currency. A few of these may be instanced: — "A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth." "It is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imperfection consists." "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively." "Man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave." "For the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and therefore it is corruption." "Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in pain." "All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contains all oaks potentially." But to continue to quote would be to repeat the Essay in the Introduction. 2. SHELLEY'S VIEWS IN COMPARISON WITH SIDNEY'S. In essentials Shelley and Sidney agree. Both being poets, and acquainted with the same early literatures and authorities, it might be expected that their views would not be widely divergent. Among the opinions which they hold in common, only the principal need be mentioned. According to both, then, poetry is the first of didactic agencies, in time as well as in order of importance, and, to descend to particulars, outranks both history and philosophy, each of which, in its infancy, embodies something of its great predecessor. It is true that the philosophy which Sidney has in mind is ethics, while Shelley is thinking rather of political science, but this difference is merely indicative of the period; that which was academic and general in the sixteenth century had become democratic and specifically sociological by the beginning of the nineteenth. Again, while they pronounce poetry to be the first of didactic agencies, neither writer will allow that the poetry which studiously and incessantly reminds us of its moral aim has a right to a place among the highest. They agree that there is something prophetic about poetry; the poet has the "vision and the faculty divine." Accordingly there is much poetry in the Bible. Moreover, the insight of the true seer cannot be acquired through scholastic discipline; there is a sense in which the poet must be born to his lofty mission. It is not necessary that poetry take the form of verse, although, since harmony is the soul of poetry, numbers constitute the usual and fitting body to this soul. Plato is instanced by both as a prose-poet, or, if the phrase be preferred, as a prosaist whose substance is poetical. Again, poetic art improves upon nature; the world of the poet is a fairer one than was ever seen by mortal eye, and hence his imagined world may well become the foundation of the actual one, the type which men seek to realize. Not only is such endeavor at realization possible, but, as an historical fact, men have taken the figments of the poets for models, Homer being an instance in point. The truth revealed by poetry is infinitely attractive, but can only be seen by ordinary men in the creations of the bard; the latter are therefore true in the deepest sense, and fictitious only in the superficial one. Finally, the test of poetry is its delightfulness in combination with its didactic efficacy and elevation; let it fail of either, and it must at once be consigned to a lower rank as poetry, or be denied that name altogether ; Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci - Notwithstanding a concurrence of view extending to so many particulars, it must not be inferred that Shelley's essay is a mere reproduction of Sidney's. Even in poetic endowment they were unlike, and no less in education and temperament. Sidney was trained in a severer school than Shelley, issuing from it more cautious, more sober, one is tempted to say, more prosaic. By disposition and training, Shelley was rather Hellenic, Sidney rather Roman. Sidney followed of preference the matter-of-fact Aristotle, while Shelley was more admiringly attached to the ardent and soaring Plato, |