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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 21
colour and spiritual transparency,—the whole
being moved by and suffused with a music at
once of the soul and the sense, expressive
both of an external might of sincere passion
and an internal fitness and consonancy,—
than can be attributed to any other writer
whose record is among us.
Such was the
spheric poetical faculty of Shelley, as its own
self-sufficing central light, radiating equally
through immaturity and accomphshment,
through many fragments and occasional
completion, reveals it to a competent
judgment.
But the acceptance of this truth by the
public, has been retarded by certain objections
which cast us back on the evidence of biography,
even with Shelley's poetry in our
hands.
of these
Except for the particular character
objections, indeed, the non-appreciation
of his contemporaries would simply
class, now that it is over, with a series of