wers and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of the cause
whether or not I am a poet is removed from the present time to the hour
when our posterity shall assemble: but the court is a very severe one,
and I fear that the verdict will be "Guilty--death."'

A letter to Mr. Ollier was probably a little later. It says: 'I send you
a sketch for a frontispiece to the poem _Adonais_. Pray let it be put
into the engraver's hands immediately, as the poem is already on its way
to you, and I should wish it to be ready for its arrival. The poem is
beautifully printed, and--what is of more consequence--correctly:
indeed, it was to obtain this last point that I sent it to the press at
Pisa. In a few days you will receive the bill of lading.' Nothing is
known as to the sketch which Shelley thus sent. It cannot, I presume,
have been his own production, nor yet Severn's: possibly it was supplied
by Lieutenant Williams, who had some aptitude as an amateur artist.

I add some of the poet's other expressions regarding _Adonais_, which he
evidently regarded with more complacency than any of his previous
works--at any rate, as a piece of execution. Hitherto his favourite had
been _Prometheus Unbound_: I am fain to suppose that that great effort
did not now hold a second place in his affections, though he may have
considered that the _Adonais_, as being a less arduous feat, came nearer
to reaching its goal. (To Peacock, August, 1821.) 'I have sent you by
the Gisbornes a copy of the Elegy on Keats. The subject, I know, will
not please you; but the composition of the poetry, and the taste in
which it is written, I do not think bad.' (To Hunt, 26 August.) 'Before
this you will have seen _Adonais_. Lord Byron--I suppose from modesty on
account of his being mentioned in it--did not say a word of
_Adonais_[13], though he was loud in his praise of _Prometheus_, and
(what you will not agree with him in) censure of _The Cenci_.' (To
Horace Smith, 14 September,) 'I am glad you like _Adonais_, and
particularly that you do not think it metaphysical, which I was afraid
it was. I was resolved to pay some tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured
dead; but I wrote, as usual, with a total ignorance of the effect that I
should produce.' (To Ollier, 25 September.) 'The _Adonais_, in spite of
its mysticism, is the least imperfect of my compositions; and, as the
image of my regret and honour for poor Keats, I wish it to be so. I
shall write to you probably by