"
But of his poetical powers we must speak in a different manner. What he
has left, gives token that, had he lived, he would have been one of the
greatest modern poets. Thoroughly imbued with the Greek poetry, his
verse-power was wonderful, his language stately and learned without
pedantry, his inspiration was that of nature in her grandest moods, his
fancy always exalted; and he presents the air of one who produces what is
within him from an intense love of his art, without regard to the opinion
of the world around him,--which, indeed, he seems to have despised more
thoroughly than any other poet has ever done. Byron affected to despise
it; Shelley really did.
We cannot help thinking that, had he lived after passing through the fiery
trial of youthful passions and disordered imagination, he might have
astonished the world with the grand spectacle of a convert to the good and
true, and an apostle in the cause of both. Of him an honest thinker has
said,--and there is much truth in the apparent paradox,--"No man who was
not a fanatic, had ever more natural piety than he; and his supposed
atheism is a mere metaphysical crotchet in which he was kept by the
affected scorn and malignity of dunces.
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