side.  Had not a wall of prejudice been raised at this time between him and his countrymen, how many would have sought the acquaintance of one whom to know was to love and to revere!  How many of the more enlightened of his contemporaries have since regretted that they did not seek him! how very few knew his worth while he lived! and, of those few, several were withheld by timidity or envy from declaring their sense of it.  But no man was ever more enthusiastically loved—­more looked up to, as one superior to his fellows in intellectual endowments and moral worth, by the few who knew him well, and had sufficient nobleness of soul to appreciate his superiority.  His excellence is now acknowledged; but, even while admitted, not duly appreciated.  For who, except those who were acquainted with him, can imagine his unwearied benevolence, his generosity, his systematic forbearance?  And still less is his vast superiority in intellectual attainments sufficiently understood—­his sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory.  All these as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he lived, and are now silent in the tomb: 

    ’Ahi orbo mondo ingrato! 
    Gran cagion hai di dever pianger meco;
    Che quel ben ch’ era in te, perdut’ hai seco.’

Note on poems of 1819, by Mrs. Shelley.

Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than the great.  He believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side.  He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs.  He wrote a few; but, in those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed.  They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home to the direct point of injury—­that oppression is detestable as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance.  Besides these outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph:  such is the scope of the “Ode to the Assertors of Liberty”.  He sketched also a new version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.

Note on poems of 1820, by Mrs. Shelley.

We spent the latter part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed several hours daily in the Gallery, and made various notes on its ancient works of art.  His thoughts were a good deal taken up also by the project of a steamboat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, to ply between Leghorn and Marseilles, for which he supplied a sum of money.  This was a sort of plan to delight Shelley, and he was greatly disappointed when it was thrown aside.