is did not result from
imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made
Plato his study. He then translated his "Symposium" and his "Ion"; and
the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than
Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own
poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself
(as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use
beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his
verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to
his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the
same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he
has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from
those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he
considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached.
There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent
to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined with his
nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever expressed in
sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or
more forcible emotions of the soul.

A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: 'You are still very young, and in
certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you
are so.' It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have
got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this
knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such
inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his
nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not
add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by
the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to
ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of
susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a
man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and
forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability,
or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the
stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more
experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I
die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, 'I have
lived to be older than my father.' The weight of thought