Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/305

 {{c|{{larger|NOTICE OF "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY"}}

{{sc|By}} JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

{"English Men of Letters" Series)}}

have departed from the order in which we at first intended to notice these books, having held back Scott that he might follow Burns, and Shelley that he might follow Spenser. The author of the "Prometheus Unbound," like the author of the "Faerie Queene," has been acclaimed the poet of poets. Spenser was immediately accepted and rated at his true worth by all the noblest of his time, whose memories live amongst the noblest of all time. Shelley was despised and rejected by his own generation and even by that which followed it, but his cyclic day was bound to come, and rapid and splendid has been its development since the first faint flush of its dawning. Men and women who in their youth, thirty, or perhaps even twenty years past, cherished a lonely enthusiasm for him—lonely so far as converse and reading could make them aware, though, doubtless, there are always seven thousand in Israel who have never bowed the knee to the dominant Baal—discover not without astonish-