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 After many vicissitudes, opinion seems to be agreeing to recognise Shelley as the supreme lyrist, all of whose poems, whatever their outward form, should be viewed from the lyrical standpoint. This is a just judgment, for even the apparently austere and methodical ‘Cenci’ is as truly born of a passionate lyrical impulse as any of his songs. Despite his limitations, no modern poet, unless it be Wordsworth, has so deeply influenced English poetry.

The splendour of his prose style, while exalting his character for imagination, has seemed incompatible with homely wisdom. In reality his essays and correspondence are not more distinguished by fine insight into high matters than by sound common-sense in ordinary things. No contemporary, perhaps, so habitually conveys the impression of a man in advance of his time. His capacity for calm discussion appears to advantage under the most provoking circumstances, as in his correspondence with Godwin, Booth, and Southey. As a critic, Shelley does not possess Coleridge's subtlety and penetration, but has a gift for the intuitive recognition of excellence which occasionally carries him too far in enthusiasm, but at all events insures him against the petty and self-interested jealousies from which none of his contemporaries, except Scott and Keats, can be considered exempt. This delight in the work of others, even more than his own poetical power, renders him matchless as a translator. Of his lyrics, those which have been most frequently set to music are: ‘I arise from dreams of thee,’ ‘The Cloud,’ ‘The fountains mingle with the river,’ ‘One word is too often profaned,’ and ‘Music when soft voices die.’

Only two genuine portraits of Shelley are extant, and neither is satisfactory. The earlier, a miniature, was taken when he was only thirteen or fourteen, and is authenticated by its strong and undesigned resemblance to miniatures of the Pilfold family. The later portrait, painted by Miss Curran at Rome in 1819, was left in a flat and unfinished state. ‘I was on the point of burning it before I left Italy,’ the artist told Mrs. Shelley; ‘I luckily saved it just as the fire was scorching.’ There is a general agreement among the descriptions of personal acquaintance; all agree as to the slight but tall and sinewy frame, the abundant brown hair, the fair but somewhat tanned and freckled complexion, the dark blue eyes, with their habitual expression of rapt wonder, and the general appearance of extreme youth. Resemblances, by no means merely fanciful, have been found with the portraits of Novalis, of Sir, styled duke of Northumberland and earl of Warwick [q. v.], and of Antonio Leisman in the Florentine Ritratti de' Pittori. The preternatural keenness of his senses is well attested, and contributed to the illusions which play so large a part in his history. Of late years two splendid monuments have been erected to Shelley by the piety of his son and daughter-in-law; one is in Christchurch minster, Hampshire; the other, designed by Mr. Onslow Ford, R.A., is at University College, Oxford.

[The principal authorities for Shelley's life are, before all, his own writings, specially his correspondence, and in the second place the biographies grounded upon personal intimacy. Of these five may be named: 1. The life by Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1858), left unfinished or at least not wholly published, but coming down to the eve of the separation from Harriet in 1814; see art. . 2. Peacock's papers in Fraser's Magazine, 1855–60; disappointing from their coldness, and in some points much mistaken, but supplying many valuable facts, and enriched with an appendix of even more valuable letters. 3. Medwin's Shelley Papers (1833) and Life (1847), as full of mistakes as of misprints, but not to be wholly overlooked. 4. Trelawny's Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858, and reprinted with additions), relating to only the last six months of Shelley's life, but unrivalled for vivacity of portraiture. 5. Mrs. Shelley's notes to her edition of her husband's poems (1839); very imperfect, but very precious. Among later works the only ones entitled to authority are those based upon documents, and of these there are only two, Lady Shelley's Shelley Memorials (1859), and Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley (1886; abridged edition, 1896). The latter will long remain the standard biography. (See also Biagi's Last Days of Shelley, 1898.) Three of Shelley's editors, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Miss Mathilde Blind, and Mr. G. E. Woodberry, have prefixed memoirs to their editions, useful as charts of the subject. The biographies unassociated with the works, by Middleton (1858), Jeaffreson (The Real Shelley, 1885), Symonds (1878), Barnett Smith (1877), William Sharp (1887), Denis F. MacCarthy (Shelley's Early Life, 1872), H. S. Salt (Shelley Primer, 1887), Rabbe (French, 1887), Druskowitz (German, 1884), and others, are interesting as showing the varying opinions entertained about Shelley by persons of very different degrees of intelligence and fairness. Much valuable information may be derived from the lives of contemporaries acquainted with Shelley, especially Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin, and Moore's Life of Byron. Among the many essays upon Shelley those by Walter Bagehot in his Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen, by Thornton Hunt (Atlantic Monthly, 1863), by Professor Spencer Baynes (Edinburgh Review,