indent that romantic coast. It is unhappily a fragment, and, in its present arrangement, very obscure. He has proved that, in his hands at 6 least, Terza Rima' is well adapted to our language. I made a singular discovery some time ago in reading a favourite author of mine, Cardanthat this vision of Shelley's, by a strange coincidence (for I am convinced he never saw the work), should have been nearly the same as Cardan's, as will be seen by the following extracts:— Methinks I sate beside a public way, And a great stream Of people there were hurrying to and fro, All hastening onward, but none seemed to know Whither: Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, With steps towards the tomb. Cardan, in his chaste Latinity, says― "Illuscente Aurora, visus sum toto humano genere, maximaque turba mulierum, non solum ac virorum sed puerorum atque infantium, juxta radicem montis qui mihi à dextera erat, currere. Cum, admiratione captus, unum à turbâ interrogarem, quonam omnes tam præcipiti cursu tenderemus; Ad mortem, respondit." It is to be lamented that no bust or portrait exists of Shelley, though the infinite versatility and play of his features would have baffled either sculpture or painting. His frame was a mere tenement for spirit, and in every gesture and lineament showed that intellectual beauty which animated him. There was in him a spirit which seemed to defy time, and suffering, and misfortune. He was twenty-nine when he died, but he might have been taken for nineteen. His features were small; the upper part not strictly regular. The lower had a Grecian contour. He did not look so tall as he was, his shoulders being a little bent by study and ill health. Like Socrates, he united the gentleness of the lamb with the wisdom of the serpent—the playfulness of the boy with the pro foundness of the philosopher. In argument he was irresistible, always calm and unruffled; and in eloquence surpassed all men I have ever conversed with. Byron was so sensible of his inability to cope with him, that he always avoided coming to any trial of their strength; for Shelley was what Byron could not be, a close, logical and subtle reasoner, much of which he owed to Plato, whose writings he used to call the model of a prose style. He was not likely to have lived long. His health had been impaired by what he had undergone, and by the immoderate use he at one time made of laudanum. He was, besides, narrowchested, and subject to a complaint which, from day to day, might have cut him off. Its tortures were excruciating, but, during his worst spasms, I never saw him peevish or out of humourindeed, as an Italian said to me, he was veramente un angelo. But thou art fled, Like some fair exhalation, The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius: Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee These affecting lines would have furnished his most appropriate epitaph. I have never been able to read them without applying them to Shelley, or his tribute to the memory of Keats, without, under the name of Adonais, impersonating the companion of my youth. There was, unhappily, too much similarity in the destinies of Keats and Shelley both were victims to persecution—both were marked out for the envenomed shafts of invidious critics-and both now sleep together in a foreign land. Peace to their manes! |