SOURCE: "Percy Bysshe Shelley," in Poets: The Interpreters of Their Age, George Bell & Sons, 1892, pp. 300–11.

In the following excerpt, Swanick discusses Shelley's concern with social reform as reflected in his verse.

Possessed by a spirit of implacable hostility to oppression and intolerance, under all their manifestations, Shelley, like Byron, may be regarded, under one aspect of his genius, as representing the destructive temper of the Revolution. Both believed in the ultimate triumph of [French] Democracy. Byron has recorded his conviction that "There will be bloodshed like water, and tears like mist, but that the people will conquer in the end"; nevertheless, while holding this opinion theoretically, he does not appear to have been cheered by any vision of a brighter future;—with him the spirit of revolt is predominant.

Shelley, on the contrary, having adopted, with passionate earnestness, the underlying principles of the Revolution, especially that of universal...