hant of friars; nor that
the first scene of "Manfred" passes in a "Gothic gallery," and includes
an incantation of spirits upon the model of "Faust"; nor that "Marino
Faliero" and "The Two Foscari" are founded on incidents of Venetian
history which happened in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
respectively; nor yet that Byron translated the Spanish ballad "Woe is me
Alhama" and a passage from Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore." [3] Similarly
Shelley's experimental versions of the "Prolog im Himmel," and
"Walpurgisnacht" in "Faust," and of scenes from Calderon's "Magico
Prodigioso" are felt to be without special significance in comparison
with the body of his writings. "Faust" impressed him, as it did Byron,
and he urged Coleridge to translate it, speaking of the current English
versions as wretched misrepresentations of the original. But in all of
Shelley's poetry the scenery, architecture, and imagery in general are
sometimes Italian, sometimes Asiatic, often wholly fantastic, but never
mediaeval. Their splendour is a classic splendour, and not what Milton
contemptuously calls "a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness." His
favourite names are Greek: Cythna, Ianthe, and the like. The ruined
cathedral in "Queen Mab"--a poem only in its title romantic--is coupled
with the ruined dungeon, in whose courts the children play; both alike
"works of faith and slavery," symbols of the priestcraft and kingcraft
which Shelley hated, now made harmless by the reign of Reason and Love in
a regenerated universe. How different is the feeling which the empty
cathedral inspires in Lowell; once thronged with worshippers, now
pathetically lonely--a cliff, far inland, from which the sea of faith has
forever withdrawn! At the time when "Queen Mab" was written, Coleridge,
Southey, and Landor's "Gebir" were Shelley's favourite reading. "He was
a lover of the wonderful and wild in literature," says Mrs. Shelley, in
her notes on the poem; "but had not fostered these tastes at their
genuine sources--the romances and chivalry of the Middle Ages--but in the
perusal of such German works as were current in those days.[4] . . . Our
earlier English poetry was almost unknown to him."

"Queen Mab" begins with a close imitation of the opening lines of
Southey's "Thalaba the Destroyer." The third member of the Lake School
is a standing illustration of Mr. Colvin's contention that the
distinction between classic and romantic is less in subject than in
t