a moral meaning in this, as she had easily extricated a cosmological meaning in the other tale. Perhaps we have said too much to introduce these two little unpretending poetical dramas. They might indeed have been allowed to speak for themselves. A new frame often makes a new face; and some of the best known and most exquisite of Shelley’s lyrics, when restored to the surroundings for which the poet intended them, needed no other set-off to appeal to the reader with a fresh charm of quiet classical grace and beauty. But the charm will operate all the more unfailingly, if we remember that this clear classical mood was by no means such a common element in the literary atmosphere of the times—not even a permanent element in the authors’ lives. We have here none of the feverish ecstasy that lifts _Prometheus_ and _Hellas_ far above the ordinary range of philosophical or political poetry. But Shelley’s encouragement, probably his guidance and supervision, have raised his wife’s inspiration to a place considerably higher than that of _Frankenstein_ or _Valperga_. With all their faults these pages reflect some of that irradiation which Shelley cast around his own life—the irradiation of a dream beauteous and generous, beauteous in its theology (or its substitute for theology) and generous even in its satire of human weaknesses. Footnotes [1] Essay on the Study of Literature, § 56. [2] Blake, _Poetical Sketches_, 1783. [3] _Modern Painters_, iii. 317 [4] _Sonnet_ ‘The world is too much with us’; cf. _The Excursion_, iv. 851-57. [5] _The Piccolomini_, II, iv. [6] At least as far as England is concerned. For France, cf. Canat, _a renaissance de la Grèce antique_, Hachette, Paris, 1911. [7] J. A, Symonds, _Studies of the Greek Poets_, ii, p. 258. [8] As pointed out by Brunetière, _Évolution de la Poésie lyrique_, ii, p. 147. [9] _Edinb. Rev._, July 1808. [10] Cf. our _Shelley’s Prose in the Bodleian MSS_., 1910, p. 124. [11] From the ‘Boscombe’ MSS. Unpublished. [12] Josh. iv. 8.—These notes are _not_ Shelley’s. [13] _Theogn_. 5 foll.; Homer’s _Hymn to Apollo_, i. 25. [14] Probably Xenophon, _Cyrop_. VIII. vii. 2. [15] Gen. vi. [16] _Iliad_, xxiv. [17] Shelley may refer to the proverbial phrase ‘to kick against the pricks’ (Acts xxvi. 14), which, however, is found in Pindar and Euripides as well as in Aeschylus (_Prom._ 323). [18] Trelawny’s letter, 3 April 1870; in Mr. H. Buxton Forman’s edition, 1910, p. 229. [19] I. e. ed. H. Buxton Forman, p. 253. [20] _Demeter and Persephone_, 1889; _The Garden of Proserpine_, 1866; _The Appeasement of Demeter_, 1888. [21] To adduce an example—in what is probably not an easily accessible book to-day: Proserpine, distributing her flowers, thus addresses one of her nymphs: For this lily, Where can it hang but at Cyane’s breast! And yet ’twill wither on so white a bed, If flowers have sense for envy.