Sensitive Plant, with its enchanted Garden and its Elf-like Lady Attendant, and anon is the question suggested, Can anything possibly be more precious than that? Most certainly there is nothing more original, and in honied sweetness, ethereal beauty, and in delicacy of workmanship and fairy-like melody united, I know of nothing to be compared with it out of Coleridge. That life-giving power of imagination which can only be possessed by the true poet, and which enabled him to create out of the most abstract terms the most life-like forms, as already spoken of, is exemplified in almost every verse in this glorious creation. Take as a specimen the opening stanza :—

"A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew;
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night."

And again in another way :—

"For Winter came; the wind was his whip;
One choppy finger was on his lip;

He had torn the cataracts from the hills,

And they clanked at his girdle like manacles."

That, at least, is a personification of great power, and full of life, and yet it is perhaps excelled by his

personification of Time in the "Mask of Anarchy." This other picture is painted in the words of a "maniac maid," the last survivor of the champions of Liberty which had been born to Time, and “whose name was Hope, though she looked more like Despair." Flying before the hideous revellers in the "Mask," she cries

A fine subject for an artist that! but how is an artist to paint this?—

"Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind,

The foul cubs as their parent are;

Their den is in the guilty mind,

And conscience feeds them with despair."

This is from "Hellas," a lyrical drama, and a sublime song on behalf of Liberty. Shelley was always inspired and sublime when he sang of Liberty, and in his great odes, those to Naples and to Liberty in particular His "Ode to the West

Wind" is also among his greatest things, and yet he is, perhaps, nowhere so fascinating as in those brief lyrics which come now like wild wails from the forest on the wings of the blast, and now like sighs on the fitful breeze from the reeds on the river brim. Not even "The Question," with its rich bouquet of "pied wind-flowers, and violets," of "faint oxlips," and "tender blue-bells, at whose birth the earth scarce heaved"-of "wild roses" and the rest of Flora's sweetest children-not "Ariel to Miranda," in which some of the sweetest operations of the Soul of the Universe are conjured up in the imagination in a strain as purely spiritual, and to deep-souled sage, or to deep-hearted maiden and youth, as delicious as ever flowed from the lips of that "quaint spirit," the "delicate Ariel" of the still-vexed Bermoothes" himself-not in "The Cloud," that "gossamer-spun web" of the most brilliant, airy, fantastic, and most delightful fancies -nay, not in "The Skylark," that strain which wells up from the depths of the poet's heart like a pellucid fount whose waters bubble, and flash, and sparkle in the light of the noonday sun, is there a spell so subtle or powerful as that which lurks in the feeling, the sentiment, and the melody of some of his briefest and tiniest lyrics. Read the pieces beginning with the lines, "That time is

dead for ever, child," "When passion's trance is overpast,” “The keen stars were twinkling,” “I arise from dreams of thee," "He came like a dream in the dawn of life," "The warm sun is failing," "My faint spirit was sitting in the light," "From the rivers and highlands," "Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon "-read any of the songs beginning with these lines-and many others nearly as fine could be added to the list—and you read what goes direct to the heart and remains there. I have repeatedly alluded to the rarity of Shelley's music. Each of the above-named pieces has a melody of its own, and that melody in each case is a perfect reflex in sound of the feeling and sentiment which lies at the root of the lyric. Not so much as a metrical harmonist, however, as a metrical melodist, as Mr. Devey finely suggests, doth Shelley's rare excellence as a singer rest. In metrical harmonies he has been equalled and surpassed, but in pure melody-when we consider the number, the originality, the vast variety and utter perfection of his word-tunes, we are forced to place him at the head of all the versemelodists who have left any specimens of their gift on record. Shelley is, in verity, the king of verse melodists. That title at least must be conceded to him, though in sheer quality of melody and other

essentials of lyric song he has been at least equalled, if not excelled, by Shakespeare. Shelley, to whom the lyric was a channel through which he would pour out his own richest and most precious personal feelings, has indeed left a number of pieces characterised by a beauty of sentiment which is only equalled by two or three of the tiny songlets of Shakespeare, to whom, on the other hand, the lyric was merely the medium through which he would utter the supposed feeling or fancy of the moment of others—but against this must be set an airiness and spontaneity of utterance in all cases unmatched even by Shelley-while the wonderful dramatic propriety of expression displayed in those utterances is in itself a quality of the highest and most supreme value in song-and one too, by the way, to which Shelley can lay little or no claim. Indeed, in this latter quality I know of no poet who has made the least approach to Shakespeare, except Burns, and that poet too is also notable for his spontaneity, airiness, and melody; though in the second and last respect he is far below Shelley, as in spontaniety and all other songessentials he is below Shakespeare; and so on the score of sheer quality alone must be put aside in a consideration as to whom shall be assigned the highest honour in lyric song. But if, on the other