[17.] His best-known work is Childe Harold, which is written in the Spenserian stanza. His plays, the best of which are Manfred and Sardanapālus, are written in blank verse.—His style is remarkable for its strength and elasticity, for its immensely powerful sweep, tireless energy, and brilliant illustrations.
[18.] Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),—who has, like Spenser, been called “the poet’s poet,”—was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, in the year 1792. He was educated at Eton, and then at University College, Oxford. A shy, diffident, retiring boy, with sweet, gentle looks and manners—like those of a girl—but with a spirit of the greatest fearlessness and the noblest independence, he took little share in the sports and pursuits of his schoolfellows. Obliged to leave Oxford, in consequence of having written a tract of which the authorities did not approve, he married at the very early age of nineteen. The young lady whom he married died in 1816; and he soon after married Mary, daughter of William Godwin, the eminent author of ‘Political Justice.’ In 1818 he left England for Italy,—like his friend, Lord Byron, for ever. It was at Naples, Leghorn, and Pisa that he chiefly resided. In 1822 he bought a little boat—“a perfect plaything for the summer,” he calls it; and he used often to make short voyages in it, and wrote many of his poems on these occasions. When Leigh Hunt was lying ill at Leghorn, Shelley and his friend Williams resolved on a coasting trip to that city. They reached Leghorn in safety; but, on the return journey, the boat sank in a sudden squall. Captain Roberts was watching the vessel with his glass from the top of the Leghorn lighthouse, as it crossed the Bay of Spezzia: a black cloud arose; a storm came down; the vessels sailing with Shelley’s boat were wrapped in darkness; the cloud passed; the sun shone out, and all was clear again; the larger vessels rode on; but Shelley’s boat had disappeared. The poet’s body was cast on
shore, but the quarantine laws of Italy required that everything thrown up on the coast should be burned: no representations could alter the law; and Shelley’s ashes were placed in a box and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome.
[19.] Shelley’s best long poem is the Adonaïs, an elegy on the death of John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as The Cloud, Ode to a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, Stanzas written in Dejection, and others.—Shelley has been called “the poet’s poet,” because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He has also been called “the master-singer of our modern race and age; for his thoughts, his words, and his deeds all sang together.” He is probably the greatest lyric poet of this century.
[20.] John Keats (1795-1821), one of our truest poets, was born in Moorfields, London, in the year 1795. He was educated at a private school at Enfield. His desire for the pleasures of the intellect and the imagination showed itself very early at school; and he spent many a half-holiday in writing translations from the Roman and the French poets. On leaving school, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton—the scene of one of John Gilpin’s adventures; but, in 1817, he gave up the practice of surgery, devoted himself entirely to poetry, and brought out his first volume. In 1818 appeared his Endymion. The ‘Quarterly Review’ handled it without mercy. Keats’s health gave way; the seeds of consumption were in his frame; and he was ordered to Italy in 1820, as the last chance of saving his life. But it was too late. The air of Italy could not restore him. He settled at Rome with his friend Severn; but, in spite of all the care, thought, devotion, and watching of his friend, he died in 1821, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome; and the inscription on his tomb, composed by himself, is, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
[21.] His greatest poem is Hyperion, written, in blank verse, on the overthrow of the “early gods” of Greece. But he will most probably be best remembered by his marvellous odes, such as the Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, and others. His style is clear, sensuous, and beautiful; and he has added to our literature lines that will always live. Such are the following:—
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”
“Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.”