Of his creed, the article which he most firmly held, and which, perhaps, most distinguishes him from ordinary thinkers, was the _Perfectibility_ of his species, and his firm faith in the ultimate triumph of Good. “He believed,” says the one authority who had the best means of knowing his thought and feeling, “that mankind had only to _will_ that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these notes to criticise the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was, indeed, attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionised as to be able to expel Evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the world, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he liked best to dwell upon was the image of One warring with an evil principle, oppressed not only by it but by all, even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a _necessary_ portion of humanity--a victim full of gratitude and of hope and of the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good.” Such was the conviction which inspired his greatest poem _The Prometheus Unbound_. A principal charm of his poetry is that which repels the common class of readers: “He loved to _idealise_ reality, and this is a task shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity. But few of us understand or sympathise with the endeavour to ally the love of abstract beauty and adoration of abstract Good with sympathies with our own kind.”[243] Of so rare a spirit it is peculiarly interesting to know something of the outward form:-- “His features [describes one of his biographers] were not symmetrical--the mouth, perhaps, excepted. Yet the effect of the whole was extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual: for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound religious veneration that characterises the best works, and chiefly the frescoes, of the great Masters of Florence and of Rome. “His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair was brown: but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted on all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity of feature, or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal fascination.” As to his voice, impressions varied:--