He is
sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced." It was, perhaps, with some
recollection of this last-mentioned trait of Shelley the man, that
Carlyle wrote of Shelley the poet, that "the sound of him was shrieky,"
and that he had "filled the earth with an inarticulate wailing."
His career as a poet began, characteristically enough, with the
publication, while at Oxford, of a volume of political rimes, entitled
_Margaret Nicholson's Remains_, Margaret Nicholson being the crazy woman
who tried to stab George III. His boyish poem, _Queen Mab_, was
published in 1813; _Alastor_ in 1816, and the _Revolt of Islam_--his
longest--in 1818, all before he was twenty-one. These were filled with
splendid, though unsubstantial, imagery, but they were abstract in
subject, and had the faults of incoherence and formlessness which make
Shelley's longer poems wearisome and confusing. They sought to embody
his social creed of perfectionism, as well as a certain vague
pantheistic system of belief in a spirit of love in nature and man,
whose presence is a constant source of obscurity in Shelley's verse. In
1818 he went to Italy, where the last four years of his life were
passed, and where, under the influences of Italian art and poetry, his
writing became deeper and stronger.
Pages:
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280