tted to
minister to a certain age. Again, much of Byron's verse is rhetorical,
and that kind of poetry does not wear well. On the other hand, we
might reread Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, Milton's _Lycidas_, and
Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_ every month for a lifetime,
and discover some new beauty and truth at every reading.

II. Why does the continent of Europe class Byron among the very
greatest English poets, next even to Shakespeare? It is because Europe
was yearning for more liberty, and Byron's words and blows for freedom
aroused her at an opportune moment. Historians of continental
literature find his powerful impress on the thought of that time.
Georg Brandes, a noted European critic, says:--

"In the intellectual life of Russia and Poland, of Spain and Italy,
of France and Germany, the seeds which he had sown, fructified...
The Slavonic nations ...seized on his poetry with avidity... The
Spanish and Italian exile poets took his war cry... Heine's best
poetry is a continuation of Byron's work. French Romanticism and
German Liberalism are both direct descendants of Byron's
Naturalism."

Swinburne gives as another reason for Byron's European popularity the
fact that he actually gains by translation into a foreign tongue. His
faulty meters and careless expressions are improved, while his
vigorous way of stating things and his rolling rhetoric are easily
comprehended. On the other hand, the delicate shades of thought in
Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ cannot be translated into some European tongues
without distinct loss.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 1792-1822

[Illustration: PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _From the portrait by Amelia
Curran, National Portrait Gallery_.]

Life.--Another fiery spirit of the Revolution was Shelley, born in
1792, in a home of wealth, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He
was one of the most ardent, independent, and reckless English poets
inspired by the French Revolution. He was a man who could face infamy
and defy the conventionalities of the world, and, at the same moment,
extend a helpful hand of sympathy to a friend or sit for sixty hours
beside the sick bed of his dying child. Tender, pitying, fearless,
full of a desire to reform the world, and of hatred for any form of
tyranny, Shelley failed to adjust himself to the customs and laws of
his actual surroundings. He was calumniated and despised by the public
at large, and almost idolized by his intimate friends.

At Eton he