‘If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair The ministration of the thoughts that fill The mind which, like a worm whose life may share A portion of the unapproachable, Marks your creations rise as fast and fair As perfect worlds at the Creator’s will. But such is my regard that nor your power To soar above the heights where others climb, Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour Cast from the envious future on the time, Move one regret for his unhonoured name Who dares these words;--the worm beneath the sod May lift itself in homage of the God.’ Can passionate idolatry of a fellow-creature go further in the direction of abject servility without being lost in it? It is appalling to reflect that Shelley, a man of high intellect and culture, of gentle breeding and imperishable achievement in art, thought of Byron in a way to render it possible for him to utter forth such slavish song. It is asserted by Medwin (no sure authority on such a point), that this outpouring of adulation was never actually offered to the hand and eye of the poet, who could not have contemplated such a tribute of adorative homage without turning in cordial (though undeclared) scorn from its producer. The sonnet is said never to have been seen by Byron. But it remains that Shelley wrote it in Byron’s honour; that he wrote it out (with amendments) on several slips of paper, and, at least, thought of offering it to the man, whose contempt of his kind needed no such stimulant. (6)--Written in June, 1821, _Adonais_ calls on the world to honour Byron as ‘the Pythian of the age,’ and ‘the Pilgrim of Eternity:’-- ‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; The vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true, Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion;--how they fled, When, like Apollo, from his golden bow, The Pythian of the age one arrow sped And smiled!--The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. * * * * * Thus ceased she; and the mountain shepherds came, Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.’ (7)--In August, 1821, Shelley was so delighted at Byron’s way of living with another man’s wife, and his consequent progress to moral excellence, that he wrote to his own wife (the faultless, stainless, high-souled Mary) from Ravenna, where he was resting as Byron’s guest in the Palazzo Guiccioli:--