Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/166

156 III. HIS ITALIAN LETTERS.

The prose work of Shelley has remained in the obscurity which it once shared with his poetry. The formal essays, which concern the transitory affairs of the world or themes of thought remote through their generality, are valued, even by admirers of Shelley, mainly as media of his spirit; the familiar letters, scattered in old books, or collected only in a costly edition, and deprived of literary effectiveness because those of high and enduring interest have never been selected and massed until recently, have escaped any wide public attention; even the translations have been neglected. All this really large body of prose, however exalted by its informing enthusiasm, however exquisite in language, and melodious, lies outside the open pathways of literature. It is this fact which gave the element of surprise to what Mr. Arnold called his doubt "whether Shelley's delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than his poetry,"—a judgment which well deserved Dr. Garnett's quiet rejoinder that