y, among a population little
removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures
of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the
element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well
mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in
solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows
in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to
bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to
Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets
aloud to the assembled party.

In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this
uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms and
inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if
we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been
one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his
masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of
compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits,
and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and
inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in
chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous
march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their
tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty
with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe
of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to
abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this
solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a
Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer
heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves,
which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante
plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the
Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide.
The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is
brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a
moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how
Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime
philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more
soul-shattering than Daniel's "Me