neither Shelley's human experience nor his theory of life was quite extensive and catholic enough to enable him easily to see humour in folly, or love in hate. When he derides we do not feel that he is quite true to himself, and when he argues in verse we would rather hear him" tell." He would have produced less of this sort of work had he come more fully into the spirit of his follower Browning, as expressed in Paracelsus' dying words: "In my own heart love had not been made wise To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, To see a good in evil, and a hope In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud Their error, upward tending all though weak, Shelley's theory of evil, admirably hopeful though it is, seeks to abolish its reality rather than to impress that reality into the service of good. He caught foregleam visions of Paracelsus' final truth,1 but visions not long enough or intense enough to hearten his thought of life into a steadier and saner regard. Swellfoot the Tyrant is not a poem that adds to Shelley's fame, and even in the youthful and not ineffective Queen Mab the poet in him is uneasily constrained to precipitate the worser part of the man's human ire into footnotes. When he foregoes the ungrateful business of denunciation, and begins to sound the high and pure notes of the race and time to be, it is then that both he and his readers most surely find their way. Shelley stumbled sometimes in his physical gait, yet his habitual movement was a quick floating or gliding. It is 1 See Prometheus, I, 303-305; III, iv, 381-383. so in his life and his poetry. Where he stumbles and is checked, he recovers for a longer adventure. A man of penetrative intention and restless imagining, less anxious to lead than to love, he reveals himself in spirit-winged words as one of the most intimate and powerful among the stimulators of the soul, the builders of "that great poem," to use his own words, "which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world." BIBLIOGRAPHY THE most important Shelley bibliographies are those of H. Buxton Forman - An Essay in Bibliography-and John P. Anderson- the Bibliography appended to Sharp's Life of Shelley. Mention may also be made of Frederick S. Ellis's An Alphabetical Table of Contents to Shelley's Poetical Works, adapted to the editions of Forman and Rossetti; and of C. D. Locock's An Examination of the Shelley MSS. in the Bodleian Library. The Shelley Society's Papers and Publications are invaluable. Magazine articles on Shelley and his works will be found listed in Poole's Index to Periodical Literature and The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. The American Library Association's An Index to General Literature should also be consulted. The following list comprises a carefully selected number of Lives, Critical Essays, Editions, and Poems concerning Shelley. LIVES AND RECORDS EDWARD DOWDEN: The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Two vols. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. Same. Abridged. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS: Shelley. Macmillan. WILLIAM SHARP: Shelley. Walter Scott. EDWARD JOHN TRELAWNY: Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author. Pickering & Chatto. THOMAS JEFFERSON HOGG: Life of Shelley. THOMAS MEDWIN: Life of Shelley. W. M. ROSSETTI: Life of Shelley. Shelley Society. THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK: Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shel ley. H. S. SALT: Shelley, A Biographical Study. MRS. JULIAN MARSHALL: Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Two vols. Bentley. LEIGH HUNT: Autobiography. ALFRED WEBB: Harriet Shelley and Catherine Nugent. The Nation, vol. xlviii. CRITICAL ESSAYS ROBERT BROWNING: An Essay on Shelley. WALTER BAGEHOT: Literary Studies. ANDREW LANG: Letters to Dead Authors. EDITIONS Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose. Edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Eight vols. Reeves & Turner. Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited, with a Memoir, by Mrs. Shelley. Two vols. Houghton, Mifflin. Complete Poetical Works of Shelley. Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by George Edward Woodberry. Four vols. Houghton, Mifflin. Poetical Works of Shelley. Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by W. M. Rossetti. Three vols. Poems of Shelley. Edited by Edward Dowden. (Globe edition) Macmillan. Poems of Shelley. Edited by George E. Woodberry. (Cambridge edition) Houghton, Mifflin. Adonais. Edited by W. M. Rossetti. Clarendon Press. Adonais and Alastor. Edited by Charles G. D. Roberts. Silver, Burdett. Prometheus Unbound. Edited by Vida D. Scudder. Heath. Select Poems of Shelley. Edited by W. J. Alexander. Ginn. Essays and Letters by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Walter Scott. Poems of Shelley. Selected and Arranged by Stopford A. Brooke. Macmillan. With Shelley in Italy. Selected Poems and Letters. Edited by Anna D. McMahan. McClurg. POEMS CONCERNING SHELLEY ROBERT BROWNING: Memorabilia; Pauline (beginning, "I ne'er had ventured e'en to hope for this "). LEIGH HUNT: Sonnet to Shelley. WILLIAM WATSON: To Edward Dowden, on his Life of Shelley; Shelley's Centenary; Shelley and Harriet. ANDREW LANG: San Terenzo; Lines on the Inaugural Meeting of the Shelley Society. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN: Ariel. PAUL BOURGET: Sur un Volume de Shelley. D. G. ROSSETTI: Percy Bysshe Shelley. W. M. ROSSETTI: Shelley's Heart. J. B. TABB: Shelley, A Sonnet. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY: Shelley, A Sonnet; Shelley's House. |