Let the red wine within the goblet boil, 9. Melody-Felicity of Expression.-" Keats had an instinct for fine words, which are in themselves pictures and ideas, and had more of the power of poetic expression than any [other] modern English poet. . . . . Thought emancipated itself from expression without becoming its tyrant; and music and meaning floated together, accordant as swan and shadow, on the smooth element of his verse." -Lowell. "No one else in poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveliness."-Matthew Arnold. "His work [Endymion '] lives not by reason of its perfect structure, but by reason of its overflowing beauty of poetic thought and diction. . It is enough that, except Shakespeare, no English poet has found such color in our speech, has made it linger in the ear in phrase so rich and full."-H. W. Mabie. "The faultless force and the profound subtlety of his deep and cunning instinct for absolute natural beauty can hardly be questioned or overlooked; and this is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or power which denotes him as a poet among all his equals, and gives right to rank forever beside Coleridge and Shelley."-A. C. Swinburne. "A casual survey will discover felicitous touches of description, enough to indicate to any candid mind how full of poetry was the soul of Keats. He speaks of the patient brilliance of the moon' and 'the quaint mossiness of aged roots.' Whoso feels not the force of such words will look in vain for the poetic either in life or literature."—H. T. Tuck erman. "He brooded over fine phrases like a lover, and often when he met a quaint or delicious word he would take pains to make it his own by using it as speedily as possible in some poem he was writing."-David Masson. Perhaps there is no poet, living or dead, except Shakespeare, who can pretend to anything like the felicity of epithet which characterizes Keats. One word or phrase is the essence of a whole description or sentiment. It is like the dull substance of the earth struck through by electric fires and converted into veins of gold and diamonds."-William Howitt. "Keats came gradually to perceive the analogy between painting and poetry latent in the picturesque associations of individual words."—W. J. Courthope. ILLUSTRATIONS. "Shed no tears! Oh shed no tears! Weep no more! Oh weep no more! Young buds sleep in the root's white core. Dry your eyes! Oh dry your eyes! For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies. Shed no tears!"-Faery Song. "To Sorrow I bade good morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly ; She is so constant to me, and so kind : And so leave her, But ah! she is so constant and so kind." -Endymion. "Tis the witching hour of night, For a song and for a charm, See they glisten in alarm, And the moon is waxing warm To hear what I shall say. Moon! keep wide thy golden ears Hearken stars! and hearken, spheres ! I sing an infant's lullaby, Listen, listen, listen, listen, Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, And hear my lullaby!"-A Prophecy. SHELLEY, 1792-1822 Biographical Outline.-Percy Bysshe Shelley, born at Field Place, Warnham, near Horsham, August 4, 1792; father a man of means and gentle birth, afterward a baronet; Shelley is first instructed by a clergyman tutor, and at the age of ten is placed in Sion House Academy, near Brentford; being a sensitive child, the persecutions endured from his schoolfellows inspire him with that hatred of oppression and that spirit of resistance which marked all his after-life, while the smattering of scientific knowledge that he obtains at Brentford awakens in him a passionate thirst to know the secrets of nature; at twelve he enters Eton, where he repeats the experiences of persecution at Brentford, only in an aggravated form, and where he again seeks relief from the torture of his fellows in scientific research; he is known at Eton as "Shelley, the Atheist," and is accused of "cursing his father and the King;" while at Eton he makes good progress in the classics, and imbibes from a reading of the first two books of Pliny's “Natural History" that pantheism which marked his religious theories ever afterward; in his sixteenth year he writes and publishes his romance "Zastrozzi," being an imitation of the style of Mrs. Radcliffe; in 1810 he publishes another romance, entitled "St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," and soon afterward collaborates with his cousin, Thomas Medwin, in writing a poem, which they call "The Wandering Jew; "this poem was eventually published in Fraser's Magazine; in 1810 Shelley publishes also a volume entitled "Poems by Victor and Cazire," a part of which was written either by his sister Elizabeth or by his cousin, Harriet Grove, to whom he thought himself attached; Shelley soon withdrew this volume, on learning that his coadjutor had cribbed wholesale from Matthew Gregory Lewis. He enters University College, Oxford, April 10th, and soon afterward forms a friendship with Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a youth of sarcastic humor, who had great influence over Shelley all the rest of his life, and who encouraged him in his natural aggressiveness against established authority; in 1810 Shelley and Hogg circulate a pamphlet of burlesque verses, purporting to have been written by Margaret Nicholson, an insane woman who had tried to kill the King; soon afterward Shelley submits to the bishops and heads of colleges a syllabus of the arguments supposed to demonstrate "the necessity of atheism;" on March 25, 1811, he is summoned before the college authorities, and, on his refusal to answer their questions, is handed a sentence of expulsion, which had been previously signed and sealed; Hogg protests against the injustice to his friend, and is himself expelled in consequence. Being excluded, also, from his own home, Shelley takes lodgings in London at 15 Poland Street, and frequents the hospitals with the idea of eventually becoming a physician; while in London he renews a slight acquaintance already formed with Harriet Westbrook, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a retired hotel-keeper, and also a school-friend of Shelley's sister; Miss Westbrook fancies herself persecuted at home, and Shelley sympathizes and tries to interfere in her behalf; before his expulsion from Oxford he had been refused by his cousin, Harriet Grove, and when he is recalled to London from his summer vacation of 1811 by letters from Harriet Westbrook, imploring his assistance, influenced by compassion and pique, he elopes with her to Edinburgh, where they are married August 28, 1811; during the winter of 1811-12 Shelley resides at Keswick, where Southey receives him kindly, and here he opens his correspondence with Godwin, whose work on "Political Justice" had influenced the poet profoundly; inspired by Godwin's principles, Shelley leaves Keswick in |