y, and history as he
could get hold of. For instance, he does not preach abstinence from
flesh on pure a priori grounds, but because "the orang-outang perfectly
resembles man both in the order and number of his teeth." We catch
here what is perhaps the fundamental paradox of his character--the
combination of a curious rational hardness with the wildest and most
romantic idealism. For all its airiness, his verse was thrown off by a
mind no stranger to thought and research.

We are now on the threshold of Shelley's poetic achievement, and it will
be well before going further to underline the connection, which persists
all through his work and is already so striking in 'Queen Mab', between
his poetry and his philosophical and religious ideas.

Like Coleridge, he was a philosophical poet. But his philosophy was much
more definite than Coleridge's; it gave substance to his character and
edge to his intellect, and, in the end, can scarcely be distinguished
from the emotion generating his verse. There is, however, no trace of
originality in his speculative writing, and we need not regret that,
after hesitating whether to be a metaphysician or a poet, he decided
against philosophy. Before finally settling to poetry, he at one time
projected a complete and systematic account of the operations of the
human mind. It was to be divided into sections--childhood, youth, and so
on. One of the first things to be done was to ascertain the real nature
of dreams, and accordingly, with characteristic passion for a foundation
of fact, he turned to the only facts accessible to him, and tried to
describe exactly his own experiences in dreaming. The result showed
that, along with the scientific impulse, there was working in him a more
powerful antagonistic force. He got no further than telling how once,
when walking with Hogg near Oxford, he suddenly turned the corner of a
lane, and a scene presented itself which, though commonplace, was yet
mysteriously connected with the obscurer parts of his nature. A windmill
stood in a plashy meadow; behind it was a long low hill, and "a grey
covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It was the
season of the year when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and
stunted ash." The manuscript concludes: "I suddenly remembered to have
seen that exact scene in some dream of long--Here I was obliged to leave
off, overcome with thrilling horror." And, apart from such overwhelming
surges of emot