most capable, or most elaborate, in unfolding or appreciating the materials the ancients have left us, I shall then begin to know what Greece was. I need not, of course, mention how superior is the information and representation of contemporaries to those who come afterwards and write their stories over again. The compilers are a sort of middle class between the real authors and the makers of dictionaries. True reading is investigation—not a passive reception of what our author gives us, but an active inquiry, appreciation, and digestion of his subject. Yet there is a certain difficulty in this. We ought first to take a comprehensive survey of every subject, and a private view of every author who, for his own merits, is worth our studying. Hence it follows that there are various processes to be successively performed by him who would master the history of any one country or memorable period; and hence it appears (what has been observed in various forms by many writers) that it is almost impossible for any man to get fully to the end of any subject. There is another rule, that, both from experience and reason, I should strongly recommend to any one desirous of becoming a student, and that is, to have three or four different studies for different parts of the day, or, if you will, to be taken up in a sort of rotation in each day. Such a plan adds wonderfully to the stimulus moving us, and to the progress actually made. I have for the greater part of my life read at least for one hour a day in some Greek, and for one hour in some Latin, author; and I am sure I have done twice as much as I should have done in any other way of proceeding. You ask me concerning some of our elder writers, and I will therefore very briefly mention a few. I observed to you that Shakspeare had many contemporary dramatists, any one of which would have done for almost the best man of any other age. Such were Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ford, Dekker, Heywood, and Massinger. Then what illustrious poets had those times in Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel! not to mention the minor poets (I mean in quantity), such as Davies and Donne. Chapman's Homer has infinitely more fire than any other translation I have ever read. He was thoroughly invested and penetrated with the sacredness of the poetic character. To proceed from poetry to prose. Shakspeare, Bacon, and Milton are the three greatest contemplative characters that this island has produced. Therefore, as I put Shakspeare and Milton at the head of our poetry, I put Bacon and Milton at the head of our prose. Yet what astonishing prose writers had we in Sir Thomas Browne and Jeremy Taylor! not to mention two others, only inferior to them, Robert Burton and Isaac Walton. Hobbes and Shelton, also, as prose translators, may almost rank with Chapman in verse. Those were the times when authors thought. Every line is pregnant with sense, and the reader is inevitably put to the expense of thinking likewise. The writers were richly furnished with conception, imagination, and feeling; and out of the abundance of their hearts flowed the lucubrations they committed to paper. You have what appears to me a false taste in poetry. You love a perpetual sparkle and glittering, such as are to be found in Darwin, and Southey, and Scott, and Campbell. Some light is thrown on the peculiar literary tastes and antipathies of Shelley by a letter which he wrote about this time to Mr. Hookham, commissioning that gentleman to purchase certain books for him. The disgust of history here confessed has probably been shared by all minds which have longed for a state of ideal perfection; but the young student resolved to follow the advice of his self-chosen guide, whose words the reader has just perused. MY DEAR SIR, Tanyralt, Dec. 17th, 1812. You will receive the Biblical Extracts* in a day or two by the twopenny post. I confide them to the care of a person going to London. Would not Daniel J. Eaton publish them? Could the question be asked him in any manner? I am also preparing a volume of minor poems, respecting whose publication I shall request your judgment, both as publisher and *This work has never been published.-ED. friend. A very obvious question would be-Will they sell or not? Subjoined is a list of books which I wish you to send me very soon. I am determined to apply myself to a study that is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but which is, above all studies, necessary for him who would be listened to as a mender of antiquated abuses. I mean that record of crimes and miseries, History. You see that the metaphysical works to which my heart hankers are not numerous in this list. One thing will you take care of for me? that those standard and respectable works on history, &c., be of the cheapest possible editions. With respect to metaphysical works, I am less scrupulous. Kant is trans Spinoza you may or may not be able to obtain. lated into Latin by some Englishman. I would prefer that the Greek classics should have Latin or English versions printed opposite. If not to be obtained thus, they must be sent otherwise. Mrs. Shelley is attacking Latin with considerable resolution, and can already read many odes in Horace. She unites with her sister and myself in best wishes to yourself and brother. Your very sincere friend, T. Hookham, Esq., P. B. SHELLEY. E CHAPTER VI. POETICAL LABOURS AND DOMESTIC SORROWS. THE poetical element in Shelley's nature-that faculty by which we mainly know him, though he himself conceived it to be secondary to his love of logic and metaphysics-was now beginning to develop itself more fully and systematically than it had yet done. That he must have felt an intense pleasure in the gradual unfolding of that gorgeous imagination which afterwards produced so many images of almost supernatural loveliness, cannot be doubted; but, at the same time, his keen, critical perceptions detected with remarkable accuracy the faults of his early productions. In writing to Mr. Hookham, during the January of 1813, he says: "My poems will, I fear, little stand the criticism even of friendship. Some of the later ones" (it should be recollected that these "later ones" must now be regarded as among the early fruit) "have the merit of conveying a meaning in every word, and all are faithful pictures of my feelings at the time of writing them; but they are in a great measure obscure. One fault they are indisputably exempt from—that of being a volume of fashionable literature. I doubt not but your 1 friendly hand will clip the wings of my Pegasus considerably." The early poems of Shelley, however, showed nothing more than the faults incidental to all young writers; and from the midst of their greatest obscurities issued a golden dawn of promise. But the pursuits of art were always cheerfully abandoned by the poet when any occasion arose for the exercise of his philanthropy, or whenever he conceived himself called upon to vindicate and support an oppressed fellow-struggler for liberty and justice. In the year 1813, one of a series of Government prosecutions of the Examiner newspaper, for speaking with more freedom on political topics than rulers at that time would tolerate, ended in the conviction of Messrs. John and Leigh Hunt, who were sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and condemned to pay a fine of 1,000l. Hereupon, Shelley wrote from Tanyralt, as follows, to Mr. Hookham :— MY DEAR SIR, February, 1813. I am boiling with indignation at the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence pronounced on Hunt and his brother; and it is on this subject that I write to you. Surely the seal of abjectness and slavery is indelibly stamped upon the character of England. Although I do not retract in the slightest degree my wish for a subscription for the widows and children of those poor men hung at York, yet this 1,000l. which the Hunts are sentenced to pay is an affair of more consequence. Hunt is a brave, a good, and an enlightened man. Surely the public, for whom Hunt has done so much, will repay in part the great debt of obligation which they owe the champion of their liberties and virtues; or are they dead, cold, stone-hearted, and insensible-brutalized by centuries of unremitting bondage? However that may be, they surely may be excited into some slight acknowledgment of his |