Of his lesser productions, the _Ode to the Skylark_ is of an inspiration seldom equalled in its kind. With the “blythe spirit,” whom he apostrophises, the poet rises in rapt ecstasy “higher still and higher.” For the rest of his productions (the _Letters from Italy_ and criticisms or rather eulogies on Greek art have an especial interest) and for the other events in his brief remaining existence we must refer our readers to the complete edition of his works.[241] The last work upon which he was engaged was his _Triumph of Life_, a poem in the _terza rima_ of the _Divine Comedy_. It breaks off abruptly--it is peculiarly interesting to note--with the significant words, “Then what is Life, I cried?” The manner of his death is well known. While engaged in his usual recreation of boating he was drowned in the bay of Spezia. His body was washed on to the shore and, according to regulations then in force by the Italian governments of the day, in guarding against possible infection from the plague, it was burned where it lay, in presence of his friends Byron and Trelawney, and the ashes were entombed in the Protestant cemetery in Rome--a not unfitting disposal of the remains of one the most spiritualised of human beings. The following just estimate of the character of his genius and writings, by a thoughtful critic, is worth reproduction here:--“No man was more essentially a poet--‘glancing from earth to heaven.’ He was, indeed, ‘of imagination all compact.’ ... In all his poems he uniformly denounces vice and immorality in every form; and his descriptions of love, which are numerous, are always refined and delicate, with even less of sensuousness than in many of our most admired writers. It is true that he decried marriage, but not in favour of libertinism; and the evils he depicts, or laments, are those arising from the indissolubility of the bond, or from the opinions of society as to its necessity--opinions to which he himself submitted by marrying the woman to whom he was attached.... His reputation as a poet has gradually widened since his death, and has not yet reached its culminating point. He was the poet of the future--of an ideal futurity--and hence it was that his own age could not entirely sympathise with him. He has been called the ‘poet of poets,’ a proud title, and, in some respects, deserved.”[242]