Of Shelley’s debts to Greece one can hardly estimate the amount. Says he himself: “The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome and modern Italy and our own country has been to me like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment.” During his travels in Italy “the Greek tragedies,” says Mrs. Shelley, “were his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aeschylus filled him with wonder and delight.” We find him reading Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Plutarch, Plato; he even translates portions of these; he steeps himself to the lips in the literature of Greece. His own soul and genius were by nature akin to those of Plato, and his training lent to his genius clear capacity. Among those of his works which most manifestly bear the Greek impress are the lyrical drama of _Hellas_—which, he says, was suggested by the _Persae_ of Aeschylus—and the drama of _Prometheus Unbound_, which is meant for a sequel to the _Prometheus Bound_ of Aeschylus. Not that his drama of Prometheus is fashioned wholly like the Greek; its architecture is less simple, its character is more rhetorical, more ornamented, more metaphysical. But it owes its whole existence to the fact that Shelley lived so long in a world of Greek literature, a world very remote from that in which he moved and had his being. His _Adonais_— I weep for Adonais—he is dead! O weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost that binds so dear a head! is an echo of Theocritus, his _Ode to Liberty_ an echo of Pindar, his _Epipsychidion_ an outcome of Plato. His enthusiasm for Greece may be gathered from his _Hellas_: The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return; The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn.... A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls its fountains Against the morning star; Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. Keats never learned the Greek language. But he was read, as perhaps never Englishman was read before, in Greek legend and mythology. He devoured Lemprière’s _Dictionary_. His greatest poetry—his chief odes, as well as his _Hyperion_ and _Endymion_—is based on subjects thence acquired. The manners and characters of Greek divinities pervade his writings. In heart and soul, in sensuous enjoyment of life, he was himself a pagan Greek. The life of the ancient world, idealized, was the world of his choice. Above all he loves the sounds uttered In Grecian isles By bards who died content on pleasant sward, Leaving great verse unto a little clan. O give me their old vigour! “Therefore,” says he, ’Tis with full happiness that I Will trace the story of Endymion. The very music of the name has gone Into my being.