Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/84

68 the poet of the lower classes, though probably rather valuable to them as an interpreter than agreeable as a household friend. They like something more stimulating, they would prefer gin or rum to lemonade. Indeed, that class of readers rarely like to find themselves in print; they want something romantic, something which takes them out of their sphere; and high sounding words, such as they are not in the habit of using, have peculiar charms for them. That is a high stage of culture in which simplicity is appreciated.

The same cold tints pervade Crabbe’s descriptions of natural scenery. We can conceive that his eye was educated, at the sea-side. An east-wind blows, his colours are sharp and decided, and the glitter which falls upon land and wave has no warmth.

It is difficult to do Crabbe justice, both because the subject is so large a one, and because tempted to discuss it rather in admiration than in love.

I turn to one whom I love still more than I admire; the gentle, the gifted, the ill-fated Shelley.

Let not prejudice deny him a place among the great ones of the day. The youth of Shelley was unfortunate. He committed many errors; what else could be expected from one so precocious? No one begins life so early who is not at some period forced to retrace his steps, and those precepts which are learned so happily from a mother’s lips, must be paid for by the heart’s best blood when bought from the stern teacher, Experience. Poor Shelley! Thou wert the warmest of philanthropists, yet doomed to live at variance with thy country and thy time. Full of the spirit of genuine Christianity, yet ranking thyself among unbelievers, because in early life thou hadst been bewildered by seeing it perverted, sinking beneath those precious gifts which should have made a world thine own, intoxicated with thy lyric enthusiasm and thick-coming fancies, adoring Nature