nce, as he was
preparing for a voyage to one of the Sporades," and he requested Ollier
not to circulate it, except among a few intelligent readers. It may
almost be said to have been never published, in such profound silence
did it issue from the press. Very shortly after its appearance he
described it to Leigh Hunt as "a portion of me already dead," and added
this significant allusion to its subject matter:--"Some of us have in a
prior existence been in love with Antigone, and that makes us find no
full content in any mortal tie." In the letter of June 18, 1822, again
he says:--"The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom it
celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the
Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious,
however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something
thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one
is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it
is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists
in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal."
This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant as
the poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in the
author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of the
emotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetorical
exaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but because
Shelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really been
its subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publication
of "Epipsychidion," confirms the impression made by it, and justifies
the conclusion that he had utilized his feeling for Emilia to express a
favourite doctrine in impassioned verse.

To students of Shelley's inner life "Epipsychidion" will always have
high value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing his
doctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principle
presented to us in "Alastor", the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and
"Prince Athanase." But the words just quoted, which may be compared with
Mrs. Shelley's note to "Prince Athanase," authorize our pointing out
what he himself recognized as the defect of his theory. Instead of
remaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn,"
Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love." Thus, while
his doctrine in "E