The lonely silence of the unfathomed main,
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust
With spirit, thought, and love; on man alone,
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
Heap'd ruin, vice, and slavery: his soul
Blasted with withering curses; placed afar,
The meteor happiness that shuns his grasp.
* Nature! no!

*

Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts

Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society."

On this beautiful earth that he formed into a paradise,

Spirit of nature! no.

The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs
Alike in every human heart;

Thou aye erectest there

Thy throne of power unappealable;

Thou art the judge beneath whose nod

Man's brief and frail authority

Is powerless as the wind

That passeth idly by:

Thine the tribunal which surpasseth

The show of human justice,

As God surpasses man.

Spirit of nature! thou

Life of interminable multitudes:

Soul of those mighty spheres

Whose changeless paths through heaven's deep

In silence lie;

Soul of that smallest thing

The dwelling of whose life

Is one faint April sun-gleam;

Man, like these passive things,

Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth:

Like theirs, his age of endless peace,

Which time is fast maturing,

Will swiftly, surely come:

And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest

Will be without a flaw

Marring its perfect symmetry."

In these extracts from Queen Mab, we see the warmth and benevolence of his feelings, his love for nature and his species, and the tendency naturally flowing from such a disposition, to that most generous and rational, must we too call it improbable of all'anticipations as the world is constituted, the perfectibility of man; yet, however hopeless and chimerical it may appear to those who think contemptuously of their kind, to one like Shelley it was an immediate consequence of his admiration of all that was great, and virtuous, and pure, and beautiful-whether in the works of genius, in man's moral character, or in the mighty structure of the universe. He saw it in the constant improvement of the human mind--in the rapid advance of all science-in the increase of all knowledge--in the progress of all institutions and perhaps above all, in the quickening of half perished hope, by the struggles of the human soul, and the revolutions it has achieved.

There are parts of Queen Mab that violate the common respect men bear to the most important interests of life, but it should be remembered, that this was the first blush of indignation, the first outpourings of the fierce feelings of an enthusiastic and imaginative youth, who had neither witnessed the strife of men's passions in the world at large, or felt the struggle in his own bosom, to which all must submit who mingle with them. He had not yet learned to chain his spirit to the barren rock of existence, or to concede to the feelings of others, or to look calmly on the union of power and wrong--to regard with indifference the warring woes of his fellow creatures, the blight of their hopes, the ruin of their interests, from the crushing influence and cruel tyranny of custom; nor had he gathered the cold experience that chills the life blood of young virtue, or reached that bitter condition when all feeling is mere habit, and time creates a philosophy of its own from the desolation of the soul. But he was yet governed by all the heated impulses of youth, and felt deeply the state that he portrays in these lines-

"Ah! to the stranger soul, when first it peeps
From its new tenement, and looks abroad
For happiness and sympathy, how stern
And desolate a track is this wide world!

How withered all the buds of natural good!"

But we will now endeavour to find in his works the origin of his sentiments, for a poet's feelings form, in general, the history of his life; they are his daily and hourly record, the good and bad influences that control him, the powers that insure his distinction or his ruin, as a man and a writer. They are the impulses that hurry him on, through time and fortune, into action, that deep set energy of the spirit; and bear him on the current of his passions to that he seeks, fame, and towards that he hopes for, its immortality.

It is a subject of interesting speculation, how much of the poetic character depends on nature, how much on accident. At first it seems a matter of easy decision; but, like most subjects of thought, as it enlarges before the mind, new views and new difficulties are presented. We are inclined, however, to think that the original disposition is the main agent in its formation, for it must be remembered that all who possess the gift of genius are above the common level, and of course under all or any circumstances, would be conspicuous and extraordinary. It therefore does not depend on accident to determine the station they are to hold, but only whether that can create a bias towards some pursuit to which they are not by nature disposed. We believe that "the genial current of the soul" may be frozen, that "full many a gem of purest ray serene" may be trampled on and neglected by the cold selfishness of the world, that

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

And waste its sweetness on the desert air;"

that many a Hampden and many a Cromwell may die unknown, but we do not believe that any Milton ever passed from the earth, mute, inglorious and unhonoured. The first were men of the occasion, called forth and created by it, and might have lived within the quiet and obscure circle of their duties, without achieving a name; but the last was a stupendous intellect, that under all or any circumstances would have found its proper sphere, and moved in the orbit of its own peculiar glory.

Fortunately it does not appear that the original disposition of men of genius can be easily altered or subdued. There is not only a resistless inclination to the thing they were designed for, but an intense gratification, an intellectual luxury in the fruition of the taste, and what is still more decisive with poets, the practice of their art and the deep enjoyment it gives becomes a necessity, and this produces a tenacity of purpose, that conquers and triumphs over every obstacle. For this reason, that which seems to the world impulse is not so, but instinct. It is the will of nature, bearing down the will of man. It is his destiny, conquering all opposition.

There is a distinction to be made between men of great minds and men of great genius. The first possess a general power and a general aptitude, that can be as easily applied to small as great affairs, while the last seem impelled by an inward passion that will have vent, or else feed on its own life. Thus there have been many distinguished commanders, many statesmen, who, but for fortune, might have driven the team a-field, and in ignorance of their real energies, have confined themselves to the narrow bounds of their humble conceptions.

So that it is opportunity makes the man, the want of it the fellow. But the peculiar genius of an individual is an express creation, that rises over circumstances and follows the star of its fate, and thus it appears that with all who are to be illustrious by the possession of some one talent, there has ever been a very early manifestation of its existence. Poets have generally begun their career almost as children. Nature works more strongly in them than in the rest of mankind, and their passions and their powers require a readier and more immediate vent than with those whose sensibility is less acute, and feelings feebler and less active. They seem more a part of all around them than other men-their sympathies are more extended and more easily acted on-there is a deep and strong response within their bosoms to all that flows over their souls from without. Sense is not with them, as with others, a mere torpid agent, that unfolds and brings forth nothing; nor is sensation a barren, unyielding principle, but like music, every external impression melts into the heart and becomes there a lasting affection, and to the mind a recollection and a power. Thought is with them an emblem of feeling, not of experience. Their meditations are not those cold reflections with which most go over the track of time. But they enter the past with all the eagerness of hope, with all admiration for the names it has recorded, with all veneration for the genius it has produced; they bring from it, to irradiate the present, all that is elevated in human character, all that can adorn and illustrate, or add, to the idea of human destinies. From feeling thus deeply there can be no doubt that all things and circumstances produce some effect, but the links of association are so indistinct, that it is impossible to tell what or how great the effect may be. The attachments and incidents of childhood and youth, our early home, our native place, our school days and its friends, that are forgotten in manhood, become the sole consolation of the old, the only tie connecting their frail tenure of existence with young hope and its pleasures, and the imagined joys, the importance that was attached to life, and figured in its distance. For age, like grief, lingers only with satisfaction on that which it has lost, and. memory, that is dead to all about it, holds true only to the withered emblems of the past. But in what way does the mind receive an influence from impressions it cannot recall, or but faintly remembers; how is it that every faculty becomes coloured with hues that deepen with time, and how is it that the whole character is modified, or even transformed, by events or situations whose sole trace is in their consequences? All these sources of reflection increase the strangeness of our being, but go but a little way towards its metaphysical elucidation. The mountains, their torrents and their VOL. XIX. No. 38.

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rocks, do they create energy and elevation of character-is it possible for external objects to act on our nature, so as to make it partake of their essence; and is there in truth more originality and power with one who is born on the hill's side, and nurtured amid its wildness and grandeur, than with one who has shared the luxuries of wealth, is placed beyond the caprice of fortune, who has known no other life and witnessed no other scenes than the vice, poverty, misery and misfortune that spring and exist all around us within the walls of a city?

The history of the poetic character will not bear us out in the supposition that such things alter its nature or determine its inclination. The genius of the poet seems the only one that circumstances can neither subdue nor obliterate. It holds a life of its own, is its own quickening spirit; and its adamantine vitality gives way to none of the events that control and overwhelm others. This is more or less the case with all who possess some prevailing taste, for this becomes and continues the mind's governing element. Mathematics, natural philosophy, or natural history, do not require separate faculties, but the combined energy of many, and a particular mental bias and affection for the study. There may be with all these some strength of imagination, though the reason predominates. But with the poet there must be, to gather the fame he seeks, not only habits of meditation, and all the various evidences of a strong reason, but imagination too, in its deepest and fullest intensity, for there is a constant and intimate relation between all the different powers of the mind; and there is no such thing as a truly great mind, where there is any extraordinary deficiency in any one of its elements. Imagination is justly considered as the poet's essential and foremost quality, but the philosopher may possess it in all its strength, for who would deny it to Plato. Indeed, a great poet must of necessity be a great philosopher; and the last, in the very magnitude of his intellect, contains all or nearly all that belongs to the other, for the imaginative faculty, in the active sensitiveness of its nature, impels and urges all its intellectual companions through the vast circle of the realms of thought, and gleans and gathers amid the worlds where it soars, the ideas and the conceptions that they shape in the creation it has attempted.

With Shelley it was not only the power to which he was entirely submissive, but the faculty itself was of a nature the most extraordinary, and in a degree the most inordinate, that any poet ever possessed. Yet at the same time his reason, or whatever the faculty may be called that induces the logical disposition, was strong and clear, though both his conduct in life and the character of his works indicate that imagination had overwhelmed every other intellectual element. But we