66 again.") . . Along with his astounding power and passion," says Mr. Arnold, "he had a strong and deep sense for what is beautiful in nature, and for what is beautiful in human action and suffering. When he warms to his work, when he is inspired, Nature herself seems to take the pen from him as she took it from Wordsworth, and to write for him as she wrote for Wordsworth, though in a different fashion, with her own penetrating simplicity. But these two, Wordsworth and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and foremost in actual performance, a glorious pair among the English poets of this century. Keats had probably, indeed, a more consummate poetic gift than either of these, but he died having produced too little and being as yet too immature to rival them.” R. H. Stoddard thinks "the glory of Scott was the last red tints of a setting sun, and the glory of Wordsworth the mild radiance of a rising moon, when Byron came like a comet and paled their ineffectual fires." his Swinburne writes: "One native and incurable defect grew up and strengthened side by side with his noblest qualities: a feeble and faulty sense of metre. No poet of equal or inferior rank ever had so bad an ear. His smoother cadences are often vulgar and facile fresher notes are often incomplete and inharmonious. . . . His work and Shelley's, beyond that of all our other poets, recall or suggest the wide and high things of nature, the large likeness of the elements, the immeasurable liberty and the stormy strength of waters and winds. They are strongest when they touch upon these; and it is worth remark how few are the poets of whom this can be said. Here, as elsewhere, Shakespeare is supreme when it pleased him; but it pleased him rarely." Mr. Swinburne adds that the "splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all Byron's offences and outweighs all his defects" is "the excellence of sincerity and strength. "Few can ever have gone wearier to the grave; none with less fear. He had done enough to earn his rest. Forgetful now and set free forever from all faults and foes, he passed through the doorway of no ignoble death, out of the reach of time, out of sight of love, out of hearing of hatred, beyond the blows of England and the praise of Greece. In the full strength of spirit and of body, his destiny overtook him and made an end of all his labors. He had seen and borne and achieved more than most men on record." PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Ο N August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex county, was born Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest of poets, who lived one of the saddest of lives. His grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart., was a handsome, wealthy man, who, writes Professor Dowden, in his Life of the poet, "invited no friendships and lived apart from persons of his own station, fearing not God nor regarding man, but enlarging his rent-roll, and adding to his thousands in the funds." His father, Timothy Shelley, failed to understand his sensitive, brilliant son, and embittered his life, producing hatred as a natural result. He was a member of the House of Commons; "a kindly, capricious, well-meaning, ill-doing, wrong-headed man," "everything," as John Addington Symonds says, "which the poet's father ought not to have been." The mother, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold, was a woman of rare beauty, "mild and tolerant," her son called her, "yet narrow-minded." Young Bysshe passed a happy childhood with his four sisters and brother John. He was an affectionate and courageous child, never concealing his faults; with "figure slight and beautiful, skin like snow, and bright ringlets covering his head. . . . The luminous, large blue eyes had at one time a dreamy softness, at another |