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Probably, the subsequent articles will prove as entertaining as any poems could be; and they will serve a double purpose in this volume-though otherwise out of place-for the prose style of a poet will thereby be exemplified, and the intended number of pages, which a rapid edition and ill-health have prevented my accomplishing in poetry, will be completed in the description of poets.

THE YOUNG POETS OF BRITAIN.

SHELLEY, the eldest son of a British baronet, began his fatal career by espousing the most dreadful doctrines in morals, politics, and religion. While yet a youthful member of the university, with a daring temerity not more reprehensible for its impiety than its folly, he compiled from the works of the French and German atheists, and printed and published a pamphlet, every line of which was equally odious to the rational unbeliever and the true-hearted Christian. Though yet in his boyhood, when Shelley was summoned before the magnates of his college to answer to the general accusation, far from seeking escape under a denial of the act, or penitence for its accomplishment, he openly defied the gray-haired theologians, and attempted to vindicate the creed of Voltaire. The immediate consequence of his foolhardiness may be easily imagined; he was expelled the uni

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nor the world's law;' his

versity, shunned by former friends, deserted by his father, and driven forth upon the world, without wisdom to direct or funds to support him. 'The world was not his friend unreserved opinions were directly opposed to the established religious and political canons of his native land, and, in the recklessness of unrelieved distress, he was fain to adopt the society and profligate career of associates, who were unrestrained in their excesses by any present or future fear. Thus the natural but impolitic indignation of his father only ratified the evil which he intended to correct, and haughty impenitence sprung up beneath the burden of his misery.

One would suppose that mankind, however they scorn precept, might be instructed by example; but age follows age, and generation after generation disappears, and the same follies are still predominant. Punishment, to be salutary, should be tempered by mercy, especially when inflicted by a paternal hand; for ten thousand instances illustrate the unremembered truth, that the fiery spirit of youth can never be redeemed from the peril of disobedience by the stern commands or even the curses of a father. Forgetful of this, the offended baronet offered his outcast son no refuge from his miseries, sought no knowledge of his pursuits, and appeared regardless of the fate that might attend him. From the deep humiliation of a spirit, waiting to be again received into favour, to the dark haughtiness of a banished heart, there is a quick and fearful transition. Day after day followed each other not more regularly than Shelley listened for the knock of the postman; but no tidings came. He inquired; his father had been in London, but had gone again. He wrote, but no answer followed. His humble

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spirit was exasperated; he earned money by advocating atheism and opposing government in the radical prints; he felt himself abandoned, and in turn he abandoned all who had ceased to care for him. In a twelvemonth, he ran away from London with a boarding-school beauty, and spent many months in Scotland with as much pleasure as unwedded lovers, who live in defiance of the laws of God, can expect to receive from his hand.

He had now put the seal upon his father's ban; but he little cared what he or the world thought, so long as he was blessed by the smiles of his beloved. These were doomed to vanish soon. During his temporary absence, the partner of his guilt, actuated by the horror of her situation, threw herself into a deep river, and was brought out a corpse. On such a mind as Shelley's, this awful consummation was calculated to produce the most disastrous effects. Trouble and affliction, however accumulated, never melted his nature nor rendered it pliable to the touches of reason and loving-kindness. He gazed upon each successive stroke of the thunderbolt, upon each molehill added to the mountain of his curses, as a newer and more exciting impulse to revenge; and the most charitable construction we can extend to his writings is the belief that his manifold disasters, vicissitudes and trials thoroughly deranged his mind, led him to look upon the world as his sworn enemy, and, like Rousseau, to desire to grapple with the Being whose existence he denied, but whose omnipotence he felt. He plunged into the darkness of his creed; he revelled in unintelligible mysteries; he recited his woes in most touching strains; and the bitterness of his spirit pervaded every stanza of his poetry. His mind was restless, and sought relief from any thing that

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could engage its powers; his fine energies were, therefore, wasted in bewildered gropings through the darkness of future destiny, and moaning discontent over everything on earth. He rushed from England to Italy, and from Italy to England, like an unblest spirit. Neither the charms of By-` ron's friendship, nor the kind-heartedness of Leigh Hunt, could compose his troubled mind, or relieve his bursting heart. Like Savage, he wandered beyond the knowledge of his friends, and more than once the heir of a baronetcy and £3000 a year, was doomed to make the streets of London his only shelter, while cold and hungry, weary and

alone.

In the midst of these distresses his "Queen Mab" appeared; and the withering severity of all orthodox reviewers attended his poem with the same immitigable reiteration as persecution pursued the ill-fated but gifted author. The metaphysical mysteriousness, the sceptical sentiments, the vague terrors and churchyard horrors of that poem were all obvious to the dimmest perception, while its hidden beauty, its delicate refinement of thought and imagery, and its admirable idiomatic style were as little perceptible to superficial readers, as the clear water of the river is to the clown who hobbles over the ice. Shelley was disgusted with society in all its forms; he was dissatisfied with the existence of everything natural, moral, and political; he confounded the reformer with the poet, and, in the latter capacity, imagined an Arcadian Utopia, which, in the former, he proposed to people with every grace and charity. His deviations from the canons of criticism and the social laws were soon deterred by the giants who guarded them; and the friendless poet was thrown back upon himself with a mighty arm which might have crushed him but dared not.