...radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings io vain.' " — Matthew Arnold, Eamys in Criticism, second series. "The enthusiastic and ideal fervour...

...the field of pure abstractions. Shelley too was in the void (the figure is borrowed from Jouberfs), ' a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.' Or again, Marcus Aurelius, had he known the Christian writings, would have ' found in the Gospel of...

...an essay rightly termed by Saintsbury " the most crotchety of all his essays," has called Shelley " a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." In the early part of the century Southey considered himself a benefactor of society in denouncing him....

...poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium ; or Shelley, beautiful 204 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM YI and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to...

...truth had been eliminated. Matthew Arnold, adopting the felicitous phrase of Joubert, called Shelley "a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." This beautiful metaphor, while it may describe the ideal Shelley that we like to picture to ourselves,...

...radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, 40 no less than in life, he is 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.' " Here is a sentence for us as neatly turned as Mr. Rossetti's, as positive in its expression of individual...

...and to discover whether also for us, as for Matthew Arnold, he is ' in poetry, no less than in life, a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain ' (Essays in Criticism). For the gist of following argument, such as it is, and comments, see on p....

...and enduring and salutary. Shelley is a febrile creature, insecure in his sense of worldly values, "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain."1 The essay on Heine helps us only mediately to an appreciation of the volatile beauty of Heine's...

...mathematics or geology. If we regard his philosophy, he is certainly what Matthew Arnold calls him, " a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." But as an asserter of the ideal, Shelley is not ineffectual, nor is his work vain. He accomplished...

...idealistisch und edel angelegten dichterseele zu vereinigen? Für Arnold ist der dichter doch nur der ''beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain" (zweimal, p. l üb und p. 2ol, derselbe ausdrwk); "man and poetry is not entirely sane". "The end and...