he
strictest sense or propagandist, is in the nature of a Book of Revelation.

It is impossible to say whether he might not have been a greater poet if
he had not been in such haste to rebuild the world. He would, one fancies,
have been a better artist if he had had a finer patience of phrase. On the
other hand, his achievement even in the sphere of phrase and music is
surpassed by no poet since Shakespeare. He may hurry along at intervals in
a cloud of second-best words, but out of the cloud suddenly comes a song
like Ariel's and a radiance like the radiance of a new day. With him a
poem is a melody rather than a manuscript. Not since Prospero commanded
songs from his attendant spirits has there been singing heard like the
_Hymn of Pan_ and _The Indian Serenade_. _The Cloud_ is the most magical
transmutation of things seen into things heard in the English language.
Not that Shelley misses the wonder of things seen. But he sees things,
as it were, musically.

My soul is an enchanted boat
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.

There is more of music than painting in this kind of writing.

There is no other music but Shelley's which seems to me likely to bring
healing to the madness of the modern Saul. For this reason I hope that
Professor Herford's fine edition of the shorter poems (arranged for the
first time in chronological order) will encourage men and women to turn to
Shelley again. Professor Herford promises us a companion volume on the
same lines, containing the dramas and longer poems, if sufficient interest
is shown in his book. The average reader will probably be content with Mr.
Hutchinson's cheap and perfect "Oxford Edition" of Shelley. But the
scholar, as well as the lover of a beautiful page, will find in Professor
Herford's edition a new pleasure in old verse.

XII.--THE WISDOM OF COLERIDGE

(1) COLERIDGE AS CRITIC

Coleridge was the thirteenth child of a rather queer clergyman. The Rev.
John Coleridge was queer enough in having thirteen children: he was
queerer still in being the author of a Latin grammar in which he renamed
the "ablative" the "quale-quare-quidditive case." Coleridge was thus born
not only with an unlucky number, but trailing clouds of definitions. He
was in some respects the unluckiest of all Englishmen of literary genius.
He leaves on us an impression of failure as no other writer of the same
stature does. The impre