transparency of human form and activity; but as the verse flows on, with the familiar imagery of the boat and its voyage through subterranean caverns and among mountains, and develops the wanderings of the Witch among cities and in the solitudes of far-off nature, it appears to me that Shelley interprets half-consciously the functions of genius, imagination, and poetry conceived almost as interdependent existences with only a remote and dreamy relation to human life. The Witch, who cannot die, is in the world of Prometheus and Urania, a semidivine world separated from the miserable fate of men, though not detached from the knowledge of their life. I associate the Hermaphrodite of the poem with the undefined figure of the LINES CONNECTED WITH EPIPSYCHIDION. Shelley uses the word 'Witch' in a similar connection twice: 'In the still cave of the witch Poesy,' MONT BLANC, ii. 33, and the quaint witch, Memory,' LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE, 132. The poem most analogous with THE WITCH OF ATLAS is THE SENSITIVE PLANT; the figure of the Witch, while not less touched with mystery than the Lady of he garden, is more definite; and the ideality of the landscape, nowhere in Shelley's verse so great as here, is superior in the same proportion as the expanse of the globe exceeds the limits of the garden.

Page 272 To Mary, his wife.

Stanza iii. 1 winged Vision, THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.

Stanza iv. 2. Cf. PETER BELL, IV. ix. note. Page 273, stanza ii. Cf. Homer's Hymn to Memory, i. and Spenser's Faerie Queene, III. vi. 7.

vi. Here, and in the following stanzas, there appear to be reminiscences of Spenser's Una. ix. 5. A variant of the idea of Demogorgon in PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.

xi. 2 pastoral Garamant, Fezzan. xi. bosom-eyed, a suggestion associated with Coleridge's Witch in Christabel.

xviii. 2. Archimage, Spenser's magician in the Faerie Queene, I. i.

XXV. 7. Cf. stanza i.; the reference is to the belief that the old divinities passed away at the birth of Christ. Cf. HELLAS, 225-238; Milton, Ode on the Nativity, xix.-xxi.

xxxii., xxxiii. Cf. THE ZUCCA and FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA, 127. xlvii. 8 Thamandocana, Timbuctoo. lvii. 4 Axumé, Abyssinia.

lix. 1-4. A favorite and oft-repeated image of Shelley's. Cf. ODE TO LIBERTY, vi. 1 note. lxiii. The contrast between the lot of men and that of the immortals is the same as in PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.

lxvii. 8 The Heliad, the lady-witch.

Page 283. EDIPUS TYRANNUS. Salt refers, for the historical basis of this grotesque drama, to Martineau's History of the Peace, II. ch. ii. He suggests, besides the identifications mentioned in the Head-note, that the Leech is taxes, the Gadfly, slander; the Rat, espionage. The Minotaur is, of course, John Bull; Adiposa (I.

290), Rossetti says, was an easily identified titled lady of the time, whose name he allows' to sleep.' The example is rare enough to merit imitation.

SHELLEY'S NOTES on the drama are as follows:

I. 8. See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants.

I. 153. And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Ethiopia, and for the bee of Egypt, etc. Ezekiel. [The proper reference is to Isaiah vii. 18: And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

I. 204. If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone. Cymbeline.

II. 173. Rich and rare were the gems she wore. - See Moore's Irish Melodies.

Page 286, I. 77 arch-priest, perhaps Malthus is meant.

I. 101. Rossetti notes that this line was a de facto utterance of Lord Castlereagh.'

I. 196 Chrysaor. Rossetti notes the allusion to paper-money discussions.' Cf. THE MASK OF ANARCHY, xlv.

I. 334. Cf. THE MASK OF ANARCHY, iv. note. II. 60-66. Shelley writes to Peacock, November 8, 1818: 'Every here and there one sees people employed in agricultural labors, and the plough, the harrow, or the cart, drawn by long teams of milk-white or dove-colored oxen of immense size and exquisite beauty. This, indeed, might be the country of Pasiphaes." Cf. LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS, 220

Page 29%, EPIPSYCHIDION. This poem has been edited, with a careful study of it, by Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, in the Shelley Society's Publications (Second Series, No. 7), 1887, and its sources have been examined by Dr. Richard Ackermann in his Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley's Poetischen Werken, 1890. It represents the final outcome of conceptions which had been present, in a half-formed state, in Shelley's mind from the beginning of his true Poetic career in 1816. They constituted, as it were, the elements of an unwritten poem in a fluid state, and were suddenly precipitated by the accident of his meeting with Emilia Viviani under circumstances that made a romantic appeal to his genius. It is easy to enumerate these elements. The conception of a Spiritual Power which is felt in the loveliness of nature and in the thought of man is set forth in the HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY (cf. THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, VI. xxxviii. 1), and to it Shelley dedicates his powers; the pursuit of this spirit, typified under the form of woman and seen only in vision, is the substance of ALASTOR, and the end is represented as the

lonely death of the poet. The conception of a youth in whom genius and death contended' -a variant of the youth in ALASTOR

occurs

A

in THE SUNSET, 4, and in the Dedication to THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, X. 9, and it is noticeable that the figure is repeated as late as ADONAIS, xliv., in nearly identical terms. In THE SUNSET, as in ALASTOR, the youth dies. new poem, PRINCE ATHANASE, was partly written, in which apparently the same pursuit of the ideal was to be represented; but the conduct of the poem was to be complicated by the error of Athanase in mistaking the earthly love for the heavenly love, in consequence of which Shelley first named the poem PANDEMOS AND URANIA. The figure of Urania would have appeared at the deathbed of Athanase. The pursuit of the ideal was given a metaphysical form in the prose fragment ON LOVE. He there describes the ideal self as 6 a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise; the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man.' He calls it a soul within our soul;' and he adds, the discovery of its antitype [the responding being] is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends.' In the absence of this beloved one, nature solaces us (cf. THE ZUCCA). Shelley had thus conceived of the ideal, both in its universal and in a particular form, the latter under the form of woman. In the PROMETHEUS UNBOUND he blended the two in Asia, but not so as to humanize her; she remains elemental, Titanic, and divine. He returned to the conception of PRINCE ATHANASE in UNA FAVOLA, in which he presents the same subject much Italianized in imagery and tone, and essentially as an autobiography. The ideas of the pursuit, of the contest for the youth, of his error and recovery, are all present. In the LINES CONNECTED WITH EPIPSYCHIDION, beside rejected passages of that poem, there is a dedication (possibly meant for FIORDISPINA) in which Shelley addresses an imaginary and uncertain figure, aptly named his Genius,' by Dr. Garnett, and in this he develops a statement of free love after Plato's Symposium, in which all objects of beauty are to be loved in an ascending series as varying and incomplete embodiments of the infinite and eternal beauty.

The

EPIPSYCHIDION resumes these elements and combines them into one poem. The 'soul within the soul' of the prose fragment ON LOVE is figured to have left the poet, and he pursues it and finds it, as if it were the antitype' of the same fragment, in Emily. Spirit of Beauty and Love, also, the eternal soul of the world, is represented as veiling itself in this form of woman, one of its incarnations; and communion with it is sought in her. Thus under the form of Emily, Shelley unites these cognate and separable conceptions. The pursuit of the ideal after the manner of both ALASTOR and PRINCE ATHANASE is easily recognizable, and the part of Pandemos in the forest

of error of UNA FAVOLA is plain. The autobiographical element of the latter is much more defined and more violently stated, with novel imagery of winter and of the planetary system; but it remains essentially the conflict, variously stated by Shelley as between genius and death," 'love and death,' and 'life and love,' over the lost youth. The passage relating to free love is an episode, and stands by itself. The description of the paradise is a late rendering of that bower of bliss which is a constant element in Shelley's verse. A poem made up of such various thoughts and subjects, not naturally consistent, could not fail to present much difficulty to the reader, as they are incapable of be ing reduced to intellectual unity, though, as has been said, they are cognate and intimately related matters.

If Shelley had in mind the Vita Nuova of Dante (cf. also Shelley's translation of THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE CONVITO) and would have placed Emily in a relation to his doctrine of love and beauty in a way similar to that which Dante attempted, his intention was infelici tous; for the lack of reality is felt too strongly. Emily is, at best, a fiction of thought, and her human personality, where felt, detracts from the power of the poem. It appears to me that a similar unreality, as to fact, belongs to the autobiographical passages. The spiritual his tory of Shelley's pursuit of the ideal (the 'idealized history of my life and feelings') is clearly set forth in the poem, and can be verified by the succession of his previous works as above. On the other hand, the personal history of Shelley is obscurely told, at best, and except for the representation of Mary and Emily as the moon and the sun, is incapable of verification. How little essential truth there was in the part ascribed to Emily is well known. The other passages, which have been interpreted as personal, may be similarly touched with tenuity as matters of fact, though correctly representing in allegory the moods of Shelley's inner life as he remembered them. The memory of a poet, especially if it be touched with pain and remorse, when he allows his eloquence to work in images of sorrow and despair to express what would otherwise remain forever unutterable by his lips, is an entirely untrustworthy witness of fact. Shelley's self-description has the truth of his poetic consciousness at the time, and its moods are sadly sustained by many passages of his verse; but to seek precise fact and named individuals as meant by his words is, I believe, futile, and may be misleading. It is only as a poem of the inner life that EPIPSYCHIDION has its high imaginative interest. In the last movement of the poem, the voyage, the isle, and the passion are a mystical symbol of the soul communing with the ideal object of its pursuit under images of mortal beauty and love; the possession of the ideal, so far as living man can in any way attain to such consciousness of it, is pictured. The suggestion of Prospero's isle is very strongly felt, 457, and the mysticism of the intention is plain, as in 410 and 477-479.

appears to me that the realm of poetry may be the specific underlying thought in the allegory, poetry being to Shelley what the isle of the Tempest was to Prospero, his kingdom of enchantment and also the medium through which he had communion with the Eternal Spirit. I associate the imagery, so far as it is descriptive of nature and contains veiled meanings, with the similar passages of THE WITCH OF ATLAS, where to my mind the ways and delights of Genius, Imagination, and Poetry, are the subject of the verse. At all events, the poem, in this section, is entirely disengaged from the personality of Emily, and of the others, and belongs with such delineations of supersensual being as THE WITCH OF ATLAS and THE SENSITIVE PLANT.

SHELLEY'S FRAGMENT, ON LOVE.

Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother; this propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise; the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed; 1 a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our soul that describes a circle around its proper paradise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret ; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of

1 These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so. No help!

two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he

was.

SHELLEY'S FRAGMENT, UNA FAVOLA (Garnett's trans.).

There was a youth who travelled through distant lands, seeking throughout the world a lady of whom he was enamoured. And who this lady was, and how this youth became enamoured of her, and how and why the great love he bore her forsook him, are things worthy to be known by every gentle heart.

At the dawn of the fifteenth spring of his life, a certain one calling himself Love awoke him, saying that one whom he had ofttimes beheld in his dreams abode awaiting him. This Love was accompanied by a great troop of female forms, all veiled in white, and crowned with laurel, ivy, and myrtle, garlanded and interwreathed with violets, roses, and lilies. They sang with such sweetness that perhaps the harmony of the spheres, to which the stars dance, is not so sweet. And their manners and words were so alluring that the youth was enticed, and, arising from his couch, made himself ready to do all the pleasure of him who called himself Love; at whose behest he followed him by lonely ways and deserts and caverns, until the whole troop arrived at a solitary wood, in a gloomy valley between two most lofty mountains, which valley was planted in the manner of a labyrinth, with pines, cypresses, cedars, and yews, whose shadows begot a mixture of delight and sadness. And in this wood the youth for a whole year followed the uncertain footsteps of this his companion and guide, as the moon follows the earth, save that there was no change in him, and nourished by the fruit of a certain tree which grew in the midst of the

labyrinth -a food sweet and bitter at once, which being cold as ice to the lips, appeared fire in the veins. The veiled figures were continually around him, ministers and attendants obedient to his least gesture, and messengers between him and Love, when Love might leave him for a little on his other errands. But these figures, albeit executing his every other command with swiftness, never would unveil themselves to him, although he anxiously besought them; one only excepted, whose name was Life, and who had the fame of a potent enchantress. She was tall of person and beautiful, cheerful and easy in her manners, and richly adorned, and, as it seemed from her ready unveiling of herself, she wished well to this youth. But he soon perceived that she was more false than any Siren, for by her counsel Love abandoned him in this savage place, with only the company of these shrouded figures, who, by their obstinately remaining veiled, had always wrought him dread. And none can expound whether these figures were the spectres of his own dead thoughts, or the shadows of the living thoughts of Love. Then Life, haply ashamed of her deceit, concealed herself within the cavern of a certain sister of hers dwelling there; and Love, sighing, returned to his third heaven.

Scarcely had Love departed, when the masked forms, released from his government, unveiled themselves before the astonished youth. And for many days these figures danced around him whithersoever he went, alternately mocking and threatening him; and in the night while he reposed they defiled in long and slow procession before his couch, each more hideous and terrible than the other. Their horrible aspect and loathsome figure so overcame his heart with sadness that the fair heaven, covered with that shadow, clothed itself in clouds before his eyes; and he wept so much that the herbs upon his path, fed with tears instead of dew, became pale and bowed like himself. Weary at length of this suffering, he came to the grot of the Sister of Life, herself also an enchantress, and found her sitting before a pale fire of perfumed wood, singing laments sweet in their melancholy, and weaving a white shroud, upon which his name was half wrought, with the obscure and imperfect beginning of a certain other name; and he besought her to tell him her own, and she said, with a faint but sweet voice, Death.' And the youth said, 'O lovely Death, I pray thee to aid me against these hateful phantoms, companions of thy sister, which cease not to torment me.' And Death comforted him, and took his hand with a smile, and kissed his brow and cheek, so that every vein thrilled with joy and fear, and made him abide with her in a chamber of her cavern, whither, she said, it was against Destiny that the wicked companions of Life should ever come. The youth continually conversing with Death, and she, like-minded to a sister, caressing him and showing him every courtesy both in deed and word, he quickly became enamoured of her, and Life herself, far less any of her troop,

seemed fair to him no longer; and his passion so overcame him that upon his knees he prayed Death to love him as he loved her, and consent to do his pleasure. But Death said, 'Audacious that thou art, with whose desire has Death ever complied? If thou lovedst me not, perchance I might love thee-beloved by thee, I hate thee and I fly thee.' Thus saying, she went forth from the cavern, and her dusky and ethereal form was soon lost amid the interwoven boughs of the forest.

From that moment the youth pursued the track of Death; and so mighty was the love that led him that he had encircled the world and searched through all its regions, and many years were already spent, but sorrows rather than years had blanched his locks and withered the flower of his beauty, when he found himself upon the confines of the very forest from which his wretched wanderings had begun. He cast himself upon the grass and wept for many hours, so blinded by his tears that for much time he did not perceive that not all that bathed his face and his bosom were his own, but that a lady bowed behind him wept for pity of his weeping. And lifting up his eyes he saw her, and it seemed to him never to have beheld so glorious a vision, and he doubted much whether she were a human creature. And his love of Death was suddenly changed into hate and suspicion, for this new love was so potent that it overcame every other thought. This compassionate lady at first loved him for mere pity; but love grew up swiftly with compassion, and she loved for Love's own sake, no one beloved by her having need of pity any more. This was the lady in whose quest Love had led the youth through that gloomy labyrinth of error and suffering, haply for that he esteemed him unworthy of so much glory, and perceived him too weak to support such exceeding joy. After having somewhat dried their tears, the twain walked together in that same forest, until Death stood before them, and said, 'Whilst, O youth, thou didst love me, I hated thee, and now that thou hatest me, I love thee, and wish so well to thee and thy bride that in my kingdom, which thou mayest call Paradise, I have set apart a chosen spot, where ye may securely fulfil your happy loves.' And the lady, offended, and perchance somewhat jealous by reason of the past love of her spouse, turned her back upon Death, saying within herself, 'What would this lover of my husband who comes here to trouble us?' and cried, 'Life! Life!' and Life came, with a gay visage. crowned with a rainbow, and clad in a variou mantle of chameleon skin; and Death went away weeping, and departing said with a sweet voice, Ye mistrust me, but I forgive ye, and await ye where ye needs must come, for I dwell with Love and Eternity, with whom the souls whose love is everlasting must hold communion; then will ye perceive whether I have deserved your distrust. Meanwhile I commend ye to Life; and, sister mine, I beseech thee, by the love of that Death with whom thou wert twin

born, not to employ thy customary arts against these lovers, but content thee with the tribute thou hast already received of sighs and tears, which are thy wealth.' The youth, mindful of how great evil she had wrought him in that wood, mistrusted Life; but the lady, although she doubted, yet being jealous of Death,

Page 297. EPIPSYCHIDION. L'anima, the soul that loves, projects itself beyond creation, and creates for itself in the infinite a world all its own, very different from this obscure and fearful gulf.

Page 298 ADVERTISEMENT, gran vergogna the passage, not quite accurately quoted, is from Dante's Vita Nuova, xxv.: It would be a great disgrace to him who should rhyme anything under the garb of a figure or of rhetorical coloring, if afterward, being asked, he should not be able to denude his words of this garb, in such wise that they should have a true meaning.' (Norton's trans.)

DEDICATION. Cf. LINES CONNECTED WITH EPIPSYCHIDION, p. 436, line 1.

Voi, Dante, Convito, Trattato Secondo (cf. Shelley's trans., p. 522). 'Ye who intelligent the third heaven move,' i. e., the angelic beings who guide the sphere of Venus, or love. The lines translated below, My Song, are lines 53-61 of the Canzone.

Page 298, line 1 spirit, Emilia; orphan one, Mary.

Line 2 name, Shelley.

Line 4 withered memory. The reference is to the autobiographical character of the poem. Line 5 captive bird. The suggestion is given by the confinement of Emilia in the convent; but the poem, wherever it touches the fact of life and the person of Emilia, tends immediately to escape into the free world of poetry, as here the idea of the captive bird leads at once to Shelley's imaging his relation as that of the rose to the nightingale, but a rose without mortal life or passion, a dead and thornless rose; and, directly, in lines 13-18, the image of the bird and the cage loses touch with Emilia and becomes the metaphor for the spirit in the body.

Line 21 Seraph. In this invocation, through its succession of characteristic images that Shelley uses to symbolize the eternal Loveliness, nothing is present in the verse except the general symbolization of the Ideal under the form of woman, as in Dante's Beatrice. Emilia's personality does not color the conceptions, but rather the conceptions give life to her. Shelley's source is his lifelong idea of the Eternal Loveliness, not now new-found in Plato or Dante, though possibly quickened by his recent reading of the latter, and touched in some details by reminiscences of it. Ackermann compares with lines 21-24 Vita Nuova, xix. 43-44 (Norton's trans.):

'Love saith concerning her: "How can it be

That mortal thing be thus adorned and pure?" " xlii. 7, 8:

'Who so doth shine that through her splendid light The pilgrim spirit upon her doth gaze,'

TOR.

Line 44 its unvalued shame. The contempt that Shelley is indifferent to.

Line 46 name, spouse, cf. 130.

Line 49 one, the second; other, the wish expressed in line 45.

Line 50 names, sister and spouse.

Line 57. The second series of images deals rather with human aspects of ideal love as the first dealt rather with the visible aspects of ideal beauty,

Line 68, wingless, i. e., without the power to fly away, and hence lasting.

Line 71. The infirmity lies in the fact that Shelley has a double subject, mortal and eternal, Emily and the ideal vision, and nowhere in the poem does he really fuse them into one as Dante did in Beatrice.

Line 72 She, the figure here ideally described is the type given in lines 25-32, more particularized in vision. At the beginning of the passage, there is a similar absence of personality, and the imagery and idea are reminiscent of the vision of ALASTOR and the description of Asia; and only in line 112 does the verse suggest the living figure of Emily, and then only momentarily, the imagery immediately soaring away from her.

Line 75 light, life, peace, refer severally to Day, Spring, Sorrow, by a usage common to English verse.

Lines 78, 79. Cf. for the gradual development and illustration of the image, constant in Shelley, ALASTOR, 161-177, THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, I. lvii., PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, II. i. 70-79, II. v. 26.

Lines 83-85. Ackermann compares Vita Nuova, xxi. 9, 10; xxvi. 12-14; Convito, iii. 5-8, 41-43. The parallelism is slight, that of the second passage being nighest:

'And from her countenance there seems to move A spirit sweet and in Love's very guise, Who to the soul, in going, sayeth: Sigh!' (Norton's trans.)

It is true that the word translated countenance is labbia, used (says the comment) for faccia, volto.

Lines 87-90. Cf. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, IL v. 53, note.