These two forms of abstract personification exhaust all which can be considered characters among Shelley’s poems—one poem excepted. Of course, all his works contain ‘Spirits,’ ‘Phantasms,’ ‘Dream No. 1,’ and ‘Fairy No. 3;’ but these do not belong to this world. The higher air seems never to have been favourable to the production of marked character; with almost all poets the inhabitants of it are prone to a shadowy thinness: in Shelley, the habit of frequenting mountain-tops has reduced them to evanescent mists of lyrical energy. One poem of Shelley’s, however, has two beings of another order; creations which, if not absolutely dramatic characters of the first class—not beings whom we know better than we know ourselves—are nevertheless very high specimens of the second; persons who seem like vivid recollections from our intimate experience. In this case the dramatic execution is so good, that it is difficult to say why the results are not quite of the first rank. One reason of this is, perhaps, their extreme simplicity. Our imaginations, warned by consciousness and outward experience of the wonderful complexity of human nature, refuse to credit the existence of beings, all whose actions are unmodified consequences of a single principle. These two characters are Beatrice Cenci and her father Count Cenci. In most of Shelley’s poems—he died under thirty—there is an extreme suspicion of aged persons. In actual life he had plainly encountered many old gentlemen who had no belief in the complete and philosophical reformation of mankind. There is, indeed, an old hermit in the ‘Revolt of Islam’ who is praised (Captain Medwin identifies him with a Dr. Some-one who was kind to Shelley at Eton); but in general the old persons in his poems are persons whose authority it is desirable to disprove:— ‘Old age, with its gray hair And wrinkled legends of unworthy things And icy sneers, is naught.’ The less its influence, he evidently believes, the better. Not unnaturally, therefore, he selected for a tragedy a horrible subject from Italian story, in which an old man, accomplished in this world’s learning, renowned for the ‘cynic sneer of o’er experienced sin,’ is the principal evil agent. The character of Count Cenci is that of a man who of set principle does evil for evil’s sake. He loves ‘the sight of agony:’ ‘All men delight in sensual luxury; All men enjoy revenge; and most exult Over the tortures they can never feel, Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain: But I delight in nothing else.’ If he regrets his age, it is from the failing ability to do evil: ‘True, I was happier than I am while yet Manhood remained to act the thing I thought; While lust was sweeter than revenge: and now Invention palls.’ It is this that makes him contemplate the violation of his daughter: ‘There yet remains a deed to act, Whose horror might make sharp an appetite More dull than mine.’