’Mid the passions wild of human kind
    He stood, like a spirit calming them;
    For, it was said, his words could find
    Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
    That torrent of unquiet dream,
    Which mortals truth and reason deem,
    But is revenge and fear and pride. 
    Joyous he was; and hope and peace
    On all who heard him did abide,
    Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
    As where the evening star may walk
    Along the brink of the gloomy seas,
    Liquid mists of splendour quiver. 
    His very gestures touch’d to tears
    The unpersuaded tyrant, never
    So moved before:  his presence stung
    The torturers with their victim’s pain,
    And none knew how; and through their ears,
    The subtle witchcraft of his tongue
    Unlocked the hearts of those who keep
    Gold, the world’s bond of slavery. 
    Men wondered, and some sneer’d to see
    One sow what he could never reap: 
    For he is rich, they said, and young,
    And might drink from the depths of luxury. 
    If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown’d
    The champion of a trampled creed: 
    If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned
    ’Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed
    Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,
    Those who would sit near Power must toil;
    And such, there sitting, all may see.

During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor at Leigh Hunt’s Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and the brothers Smith, authors of “Rejected Addresses”.  Hunt’s recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and Peacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used.  Describing the manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows:  “He rose early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o’clock, when he went to bed.  This was his daily existence.  His book was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring interest.  One of his favourite parts was the book of Job.”  Mrs. Shelley, in her note on the “Revolt of Islam”, confirms this account of his Bible studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style may be traced in several of his poems.  In the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the Gospels.  “His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment,