These words must not be taken as implying that he followed the Virgilian precedent of polishing and reducing the volume of his verses by an anxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he observed the Horatian maxim of deferring their publication till the ninth year.  The contrary was notoriously the case with him.  Yet it is none the less proved by the state of his manuscripts that his compositions, even as we now possess them, were no mere improvisations.  The passage already quoted from his “Defence of Poetry” shows the high ideal he had conceived of the poet’s duty toward his art; and it may be confidently asserted that his whole literary career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence of his earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision of form that are the index of mastery over style.  At the same time it was inconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to attempt composition except under an impulse approaching to inspiration.  To imperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, moral, intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline exacted by his own fastidious taste, with no other object in view than the frigid compliments of a few friends, was more than even Shelley’s enthusiasm could endure.  He, therefore, at this period required the powerful stimulus of some highly exciting cause from without to determine his activity.

Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters early in the year 1821.  Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa was a clever but disreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a very piquant portrait.  This man one day related the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had been confined by her father in a dismal convent of the suburbs, to await her marriage with a distasteful husband.  Shelley, fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visit the fair captive.  The Professor accompanied him and Medwin to the convent-parlour, where they found her more lovely than even the most glowing descriptions had led them to expect.  Nor was she only beautiful.  Shelley soon discovered that she had “cultivated her mind beyond what I have ever met in Italian women;” and a rhapsody composed by her upon the subject of Uranian Love—­Il Vero Amore—­justifies the belief that she possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation.  He took Mrs. Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and by presents of flowers and books.  It was not long before Shelley’s sympathy for this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, however spiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate.  The result was the composition of “Epipsychidion,” the most unintelligible of all his poems to those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato’s “Symposium” and Dante’s “Vita Nuova”.  In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as the incarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in mortal flesh:—­