In Shelley's particular case we should probably be disposed to ascribe his moral deficiencies to the effect of crude but specious theory upon a singularly philanthropic but abnormally impulsive mind. No one would accuse him of any want of purity or generosity; but we might regard him as wanting in depth and intensity of sentiment. Allied to this moral weakness is his incapacity for either feeling in himself or appreciating in others the force of ordinary human passions directed to a concrete object. The only apology that can be made for his selection of the singularly loathsome motive for his drama is in the fact that in his hands the chief character becomes simply an incarnation of purely intellectual wickedness; he is a new avatar of the mysterious principle of evil which generally appears as a priest or king; he represents the hatred to good in the abstract rather than subservience to the lower passions. It is easy to understand how Shelley's temperament should lead him to undervalue the importance of the restraints which are rightly regarded as essential to social welfare, and fall in with Godwin's tranquil abolition of marriage as an uncomfortable fetter upon the perfect liberty of choice. But it is also undeniable that the defect not only makes his poetry rather unsatisfying to those coarser natures which cannot support themselves on the chameleon's diet, but occasionally leads to unpleasant discords. Thus, for example, the worshippers of Shelley generally regard the 'Epipsychidion' as one of his finest poems, and are inclined to warn off the profane vulgar as unfitted to appreciate its beauties. It is, perhaps, less difficult to understand than to sympathise very heartily with the sentiment by which it is inspired. There are abundant precedents, both in religious and purely imaginative literature, for regarding a human passion as in some sense typifying, or identical with, the passion for ideal perfection. So far a want of sympathy may imply a deficiency in poetic sensibility. But I cannot believe that the 'Vita Nuova' (to which we are referred) would have been the better if Dante had been careful to explain that there was another lady besides Beatrice for whom he had an almost equal devotion; nor do I think that it is the prosaic part of us which protests when Shelley thinks it necessary to expound his anti-matrimonial theory in the 'Epipsychidion.' Why should he tell us that— I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,