spirit of youth.  Through life also he was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations.  Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted.  ’If I die to-morrow,’ he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, ’I have lived to be older than my father.’  The weight of thought and feeling burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes.

He died, and the world showed no outward sign.  But his influence over mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles.  His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the liberty he so fondly loved.

He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never been filled up.  He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort and benefit—­to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love.  Any one, once attached to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison.  It is our best consolation to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and now exists where we hope one day to join him; —­ although the intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can judge the heart, never rejected him.

In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the origin and history of each.  The loss of nearly all letters and papers which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect than it would otherwise have been.  I have, however, the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my knowing him.  Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go.  In other respects I am indeed incompetent:  but I feel the importance of the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty.  I endeavour to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve; and hope, in this publication, to lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley’s genius, his sufferings, and his virtues:—­

    Se al seguir son tarda,
    Forse avverra che ’l bel nome gentile
    Consacrero con questa stanca penna.

Postscript in second edition of 1839.