in general, but the private sentiments of the writer.  This is Shelley; a sentimentalist pure and simple; incapable of anything like inductive reasoning; unable to take cognisance of any facts but those which please his taste, or to draw any conclusion from them but such as also pleases his taste; as, for example, in that eighth stanza of the “Ode to Liberty,” which, had it been written by any other man but Shelley, possessing the same knowledge as he, one would have called a wicked and deliberate lie—­but in his case, is to be simply passed over with a sigh, like a young lady’s proofs of table-turning and rapping spirits.  She wished to see it so—­and therefore so she saw it.

For Shelley’s nature is utterly womanish.  Not merely his weak points, but his strong ones, are those of a woman.  Tender and pitiful as a woman; and yet, when angry, shrieking, railing, hysterical as a woman.  The physical distaste for meat and fermented liquors, coupled with the hankering after physical horrors, are especially feminine.  The nature of a woman looks out of that wild, beautiful, girlish face—­the nature:  but not the spirit; not

The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill.

The lawlessness of the man, with the sensibility of the woman. . . .  Alas for him!  He, too, might have discovered what Byron did; for were not his errors avenged upon him within, more terribly even than without?  His cries are like the wails of a child, inarticulate, peevish, irrational; and yet his pain fills his whole being, blackens the very face of nature to him:  but he will not confess himself in the wrong.  Once only, if we recollect rightly, the truth flashes across him for a moment, and the clouds of selfish sorrow: 

Alas, I have nor hope nor health,
   Nor peace within, nor calm around;
Nor that content surpassing wealth
   The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned.

“Nor”—­alas for the spiritual bathos, which follows that short gleam of healthy feeling, and coming to himself—­

   —­fame nor power, nor love, nor leisure,
   Others I see whom these surround,
   Smiling they live and call life pleasure,
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure!

Poor Shelley!  As if the peace within, and the calm around, and the content surpassing wealth, were things which were to be put in the same category with fame, and power, and love, and leisure.  As if they were things which could be “dealt” to any man; instead of depending (as Byron, who, amid all his fearful sins, was a man, knew well enough) upon a man’s self, a man’s own will, and that will exerted to do a will exterior to itself, to know and to obey a law.  But no, the cloud of sentiment must close over again, and

Yet now despair itself is mild
   Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
   And weep away this life of care,
Which I have borne, and still must bear,
   Till death like sleep might seize on me,
And I might feel in the warm air,
   My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony!