capabilities of the novel, and Ruskin for the true philosophy of art, and Emerson for quintessential philosophy, so must we study, and so will future men more and more study Shelley for quintessential poetry. It was a good nomenclator who first called him the poet of poets. He was not thirty when he died. Had he but lived for another thirty years?—In the purity of our fervent youth, I think we all consecrate ourselves to an early death; but the gods cannot love us all with a partial love, and most of us must dwindle down through age and decrepitude into the grave. But Shelley, while singing of the millennial future, and chanting beatitudes of our free and pure and love-united posterity, knew with undeceiving prescience that he could not live to see even the first straight steps taken towards the glorious goal. The tomb which he selected and described with almost passionate tenderness in 1821, received his ashes in 1822. And so may we trust that the prophecy of 1821 was fulfilled in 1822 : "The breath whose might I have invoked in song I am borne darkly, fearfully afar : Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, Beacons from the abodes where the eternal are." If this meagre essay attracts any worthy student to Shelley, it will fulfil the purpose of its publication, miserably as it fails to fulfil my desire to render honourable tribute of love and gratitude to this poet of poets and purest of men, whose works and life have been to me, from my youth up, a perennial source of delight and inspiration. SHELLEY'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS * MY DEAR EIKONOKLASTES,—In the National Reformer of August the 4th, you quote a few words from one G. T., in support of your own opinion that Shelley was an Atheist. Can you spare me space for a few remarks on the subject? I have none of Shelley's letters by me, save those which are included in Mrs. Shelley's edition of his prose writings. But a man's letters do not always afford the best evidence concerning his opinions upon the most important questions put to us by life. In friendly letters one permits himself to give the reins to his mood, to throw off rough and ready sketches with little care as to the accurate shading, to be capricious and paradoxical-in short, to speak not as one who is delivering testimony on oath. Of course I do not speak of serious and solemn epistles, but of the general run of correspondence. On the other hand, you may be sure that the public works of a man so brave, so honest, so enthusiastic as Shelley record his profoundest convictions on the most momentous subjects. wish, therefore, to bring to your notice some passages I * This letter appeared in the National Reformer, which was then edited by Charles Bradlaugh, who at that time called himself "Iconoclast," in his public capacity as editor and lecturer, of these works which tend to elucidate the question as to his creed. Let us begin by putting the "Queen Mab" out of court. It was written when he was a mere youth, and its doctrines are shortly condemned in a couple of sentences by himself, written in some after year. "This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking." These words are from his fragment "On Life," and allude to his own early materialism. "Alastor," written in 1815, is pervaded with an indefinite Nature-worship, which you would probably call Cosmism. This reappears, much modified or developed, sometimes seemingly contradicted, in all the more important of his subsequent poems. Such physiolatry is not uncommon in young minds, being the result, not of comprehensive analytical thought, but of enthusiastic love for nature, and vague yearning awe in the contemplation of the mystery of her processes and the immutability of her laws. Nor is it wholly without moral palliation. For though nature is no saint, but systematically sets most of her children to live by devouring one another massacres good and bad, wise and foolish indiscriminately with storms and earthquakes, plagues and murrains; is fond of implanting incipient scoundrels in royal wombs, and excellent brains in crazy bodies, &c.; yet the good lady has some barbaric virtues of her own is thoroughly just and independent in her own way; and never yet, in the course of her long existence, cheated the sower of wheat seed by paying him with a rye harvest. Poor man, on the contrary, with soul, and reason, and virtue, and all sorts of fine pretences, is very weak and much given to roguery; with all the cardinal virtues to help him, he is quite overruled in the conclave by the more numerous and strong-willed and cardinal vices. Our palace is so grand and we are such pigmies: let us fall down and worship this brave palace, though merely built for us to dwell in as kings! We are like the parvenu leading Aristippus through his sumptuous mansion, on whom the philosopher spat, finding no other object in the place mean enough to be fouled with expectoration. In the preface to the "Revolt of Islam," written in 1817, Shelley speaks of Supreme Being and Deity, not, as heretofore, of Power. He declares that he does not speak against the Supreme Being itself, but against the erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being. In the first half of the first canto he distinctly and magnificently develops a sort of Manicheism. Two spirits, the good and the evil, are struggling for the supreme sway. The evil spirit is still predominant; but each successive combat finds him weaker and the good stronger than heretofore. The final issue shall be the perfect triumph of the good and destruction of the evil. This philosophy is yet further expounded in the "Prometheus Unbound," written in 1819. Herein Jupiter, the representative of the Evil spirit, is cast down, and "the tyranny of heaven shall never be reassumed." Herein also Shelley (like Plato, among others, before him) declares that "Almighty God," "Merciful God," made the living world and all that it contains of good; and the Evil spirit, now |