Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conception in naked truth and splendor, and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears. The harmony in Shelley's nature which made it possible for his contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning, who says: His noblest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface to the letters of Shelley (afterward found spurious).] Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic nature in his poetry than in his prose. The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they are introspective and analytical of their gift, are not in the highest poetic mood. But when we are on the quest of criticism, instead of poetry, we are frankly grateful for such verse. It is analytical enough to be intelligible to us, and still intuitive enough to convince us of its truthfulness. Wordsworth's _Prelude_ has been condemned in certain quarters as "a talking about poetry, not poetry itself," but in part, at least, the _Prelude_ is truly poetry. For this reason it gives us more valuable ideas about the nature of poetry than does the _Preface to the Lyrical Ballads_. If it is worth while to analyze the poetic character at all, then poetry on the poet is invaluable to us. Perhaps it is too much for us to decide whether the picture of the poet at which we have been gazing is worthy to be placed above Plato's picture of the philosopher. The poet does not contradict Plato's charge against him. His self-portrait bears out the accusation that he is unable to see "the divine beauty--pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and varieties of human life." [Footnote: _Symposium_, 212.] Plato would agree with the analysis of the poetic character that Keats once struggled with, when he exclaimed,