with Muellerus and mathematicalcertainty, for "the Morning-Red:"

but they say that Athene is the "black thunder-cloud, and the
lightning that leapeth therefrom"! I make no doubt that other

Alemanni are of other minds: quot Alemanni tot sententiae.
Yea, as thou saidst of the learnedheathen, [Greek text]. Yet these

disputes of theirs they call "Science"! But if any man says to the
learned: "Best of men, you are erudite, and laborious and witty;

but, till you are more of the same mind, your opinions cannot be
styled knowledge. Nay, they are at present of no avail whereon to

found any doctrineconcerning the Gods"--that man is railed at for
his "mean" and "weak" arguments.

Was it thus, Father, that the heathen railed against thee? But I
must still believe, with thee, that these evil tales of the Gods

were invented "when man's life was yet brutish and wandering" (as is
the life of many tribes that even now tell like tales), and were

maintained in honour by the later Greeks "because none dared alter
the ancient beliefs of his ancestors." Farewell, Father; and all

good be with thee, wishes thy well-wisher and thy disciple.
LETTER--To Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sir,--In your lifetime on earth you were not more than commonly
curious as to what was said by "the herd of mankind," if I may quote

your own phrase. It was that of one who loved his fellow-men, but
did not in his less enthusiastic moments overestimate their virtues

and their discretion. Removed so far away from our hubbub, and that
world where, as you say, we "pursue our serious folly as of old,"

you are, one may guess, but moderatelyconcerned about the fate of
your writings and your reputation. As to the first, you have

somewhere said, in one of your letters, that the final judgment on
your merits as a poet is in the hands of posterity, and that you

fear the verdict will be "Guilty," and the sentence "Death." Such
apprehensions cannot have been fixed or frequent in the mind of one

whose genius burned always with a clearer and steadier flame to the
last. The jury of which you spoke has met: a mixed jury and a

merciful. The verdict is "Well done," and the sentence Immortality
of Fame. There have been, there are, dissenters; yet probably they

will be less and less heard as the years go on.
One judge, or juryman, has made up his mind that prose was your true

province, and that your letters will out-live your lays. I know not
whether it was the same or an equally well-inspired critic, who

spoke of your most perfect lyrics (so Beau Brummell spoke of his
ill-tied cravats) as "a gallery of your failures." But the general

voice does not echo these utterances of a too subtle intellect. At
a famous University (not your own) once existed a band of men known

as "The Trinity Sniffers." Perhaps the spirit of the sniffer may
still inspire some of the jurors who from time to time make

themselves heard in your case. The "Quarterly Review," I fear, is
still unreconciled. It regards your attempts as tainted by the

spirit of "The Liberal Movement in English Literature;" and it is
impossible, alas! to maintain with any success that you were a

Throne and Altar Tory. At Oxford you are forgiven; and the old
rooms where you let the oysters burn (was not your founder, King

Alfred, once guilty of similar negligence?) are now shown to pious
pilgrims.

But Conservatives, 'tis rumoured, are still averse to your opinions,
and are believed to prefer to yours the works of the Reverend Mr.

Keble, and, indeed, of the clergy in general. But, in spite of all
this, your poems, like the affections of the true lovers in

Theocritus, are yet "in the mouths of all, and chiefly on the lips
of the young." It is in your lyrics that you live, and I do not

mean that every one could pass an examination in the plot of
"Prometheus Unbound." Talking of this piece, by the way, a

Cambridge critic finds that it reveals in you a hankering after life
in a cave--doubtless an unconsciously inherited memory from cave-

man. Speaking of cave-man reminds me that you once spoke of
deserting song for prose, and of producing a history of the moral,

intellectual, and political elements in human society, which, we now
agree, began, as Asia would fain have ended, in a cave.

Fortunately you gave us "Adonais" and "Hellas" instead of this
treatise, and we have now successfully written the natural history

of Man for ourselves. Science tells us that before becoming a cave-
dweller he was a Brute; Experience daily proclaims that he

constantly reverts to his original condition. L'homme est un
mechant animal, in spite of your boyish efforts to add pretty girls

"to the list of the good, the disinterested, and the free."
Ah, not in the wastes of Speculation, nor the sterile din of

Politics, were "the haunts meet for thee." Watching the yellow bees
in the ivy bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools,

watching the sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and
weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and

music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! "To ask you for
anything human," you said, "was like asking for a leg of mutton at a

gin-shop." Nay, rather, like asking Apollo and Hebe, in the
Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar.

Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; you spread
before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn away,

with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes of singers, one is
spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One, like

Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he
looks on the common world of common men, are, like the eyes of

Anchises, blind with excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he
saw, what none saw but Shelley!

Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of
things didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew.

This will disappoint you, who had "a passion for reforming it."
Kings and priests are very much where you left them. True, we have

a poet who assails them, at large, frequently and fearlessly; yet
Mr. Swinburne has never, like "kind Hunt," been in prison, nor do we

fear for him a charge of treason. Moreover, chemical science has
discovered new and ingenious ways of destroying principalities and

powers. You would be interested in the methods, but your peaceful
Revolutionism, which disdained physical force, would regret their

application.
Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider

satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of
Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you

recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods
and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and

Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers;
and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a

peaceful millennium in twining buds and beams.
In domestic affairs most of the Reforms you desired to see have been

carried. Ireland has received Emancipation, and almost everything
else she can ask for. I regret to say that she is still unhappy;

her wounds unstanched, her wrongs unforgiven. At home we have
enfranchised the paupers, and expect the most happy results.

Paupers (as Mr. Gladstone says) are "our own flesh and blood," and,
as we compel them to be vaccinated, so we should permit them to

vote. Is it a dream that Mr. Jesse Collings (how you would have
loved that man!) has a Bill for extending the priceless boon of the

vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic Asylums? This may prove that last
element in the Elixir of political happiness which we have long

sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret to hear, are still
unpopular; but the new Parliament has done something for Mr.

Bradlaugh. You should have known our Charles while you were in the
"Queen Mab" stage. I fear you wandered, later, from his robust

condition of intellectual development.
As to your private life, many biographers contrive to make public as

much of it as possible. Your name, even in life, was, alas! a kind
of ducdame to bring people of no very great sense into your circle.

This curious fascination has attracted round your memory a feeble
folk of commentators, biographers, anecdotists, and others of the

tribe. They swarm round you like carrion-flies round a sensitive
plant, like night-birds bewildered by the sun. Men of sense and

taste have written on you, indeed; but your weaker admirers are now
disputing as to whether it was your heart, or a less dignified and

most troublesome organ, which escaped the flames of the funeral
pyre. These biographers fight terribly among themselves, and vainly

prolong the memory of "old unhappyfar-off things, and sorrows long
ago." Let us leave them and their squabbles over what is

unessential, their raking up of old letters and old stories.
The town has lately yawned a weary laugh over an enemy of yours, who

has produced two heavy volumes, styled by him "The Real Shelley."
The real Shelley, it appears, was Shelley as conceived of by a

worthy gentleman so prejudiced and so skilled in taking up things by
the wrong handle that I wonder he has not made a name in the exact