of one whom to know was to love and to revere!
How many of the more enlightened of his contemporaries have since
regretted that they did not seek him! how very few knew his worth while
he lived! and, of those few, several were withheld by timidity or envy
from declaring their sense of it. But no man was ever more
enthusiastically loved--more looked up to, as one superior to his
fellows in intellectual endowments and moral worth, by the few who knew
him well, and had sufficient nobleness of soul to appreciate his
superiority. His excellence is now acknowledged; but, even while
admitted, not duly appreciated. For who, except those who were
acquainted with him, can imagine his unwearied benevolence, his
generosity, his systematic forbearance? And still less is his vast
superiority in intellectual attainments sufficiently understood--his
sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory.
All these as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he
lived, and are now silent in the tomb:

'Ahi orbo mondo ingrato!
Gran cagion hai di dever pianger meco;
Che quel ben ch' era in te, perdut' hai seco.'

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1819, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as
always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than
the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society
was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He
had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to
commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in
those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They are
not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled
when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could
not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his
earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home to the
direct point of injury--that oppression is detestable as being the
parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these
outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the
cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph: such is the
scope of the "Ode to the Assertors of Liberty". He sketched also a new
version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1820, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

We spent the latter part of the year 1819 in F