With the exception of 'The Cenci', everything Shelley published was almost entirely unnoticed at the time. This play, being more intelligible than the rest, attracted both notice and praise, though it was also much blamed for what would now be called its unpleasantness. Many people, among them his wife, regretted that, having proved his ability to handle the concrete, he still should devote himself to ideal and unpopular abstractions, such as 'The Witch of Atlas' (1821), a fantastical piece in rime royal, which seems particularly to have provoked Mrs. Shelley. A "lady Witch" lived in a cave on Mount Atlas, and her games in a magic boat, her dances in the upper regions of space, and the pranks which she played among men, are described in verse of a richness that bewilders because it leads to nothing. The poet juggles with flowers and gems, stars and spirits, lovers and meteors; we are constantly expecting him to break into some design, and are as constantly disappointed. Our bewilderment is of a peculiar kind; it is not the same, for instance, as that produced by Blake's prophetic books, where we are conscious of a great spirit fumbling after the inexpressible. Shelley is not a true mystic. He is seldom puzzled, and he never seems to have any difficulty in expressing exactly what he feels; his images are perfectly definite. Our uneasiness arises from the fact that, with so much clear definition, such great activity in reproducing the subtlest impressions which Nature makes upon him, his work should have so little artistic purpose or form. Stroke is accumulated on stroke, each a triumph of imaginative beauty; but as they do not cohere to any discoverable end, the total impression is apt to be one of effort running to waste.