Shelley is another instance of the fact that a great master of verse is always a good writer of prose. Whatever may be thought of the crudity of his juvenile romances--and the greatest Shelleyan enthusiasts, Browning, Swinburne, and Rossetti, have successively laughed at them--they contain at least vivid descriptions of natural appearances; while his political pamphlets, as a recent writer has pointed out, are weighty and sententious to a wonderful degree, considering the age at which they were written. That he was a delightful letter-writer, full of grace and easy fluency, the letters to Peacock and to Leigh Hunt abundantly prove; while of his critical powers, especially in regard to sculpture and painting, both these and the posthumous papers published by Medwin give us no mean idea, though we may not be prepared to go quite so far as Mr. Matthew Arnold does when he says that he doubts whether Shelley’s “delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than his poetry.” RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD Kingston Vale, _Lent, 1888_. [Decoration] CONTENTS. PAGE ZASTROZZI 1 ST. IRVYNE; OR, THE ROSICRUCIAN 113 AN ADDRESS TO THE IRISH PEOPLE 221 PROPOSALS FOR AN ASSOCIATION 263 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 284 A REFUTATION OF DEISM 289 HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS’ TOUR 331 A PROPOSAL FOR PUTTING REFORM TO THE VOTE 357 “WE PITY THE PLUMAGE, BUT FORGET THE DYING BIRD” 367 LETTERS TO LEIGH HUNT 381 THE SHELLEY PAPERS:-- _The Coliseum: A Fragment_ 393 _Critical Notices of the Sculpture in the Florence Gallery_:-- _On the Niobe_ 402 _The Minerva_ 405 _On the Venus called Anadyomine_ 407 _A Bas-relief_ 408 _Michael Angelo’s Bacchus_ 409 _A Juno_ 410 _An Apollo_ 410 _Arch of Titus_ 411 _Remarks on “Mandeville” and Mr. Godwin_ 412 _On “Frankenstein”_ 417 _On the Revival of Literature_ 420 _A System of Government by Juries_ 422