Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/181

 says something for, at least, the vitality of Shelley that he is the only personage of his time over whom intelligent and candid men still see fit to lose their tempers. He was born a hundred years ago this 4th of August 1892, and he has been dead just seventy years this 8th of July, and Shelleyans and Anti-Shelleyans are standing at this hour with hostile faces over against one another, both prepared to talk vehement nonsense on the slightest provocation. No such phenomenon is to be seen with regard to his contemporaries—to Wordsworth or Coleridge, to Keats or even Byron. They are accepted now or denied, intelligently or stupidly; but the denial and the acceptance are both more or less moderate: they arouse no passions. In the case of Shelley, it is true, the claims advanced are irreconcilable with the accusations levelled. The one asks all; the others not only will give nothing, but even go so far as to allege an aching minus quantity. Shelley is a great man; Shelley is an inspired imbecile. Shelley is a modern Christ; Shelley is a wretch. 169