according to a criterion of his own, which is thus expressed in his
_Defence of Poetry_ (written in the same year as _Adonais_, 1821):
'Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second
poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which
he lived, and of the ages which followed it--developing itself in
correspondence with their development....Milton was the third epic
poet.' The poets whom Shelley admired most were probably Homer,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespear, and Milton; he took
high delight in the _Book of Job_, and presumably in some other poetical
books of the Old Testament; Calderon also he prized greatly; and in his
own time Goethe, Byron, and (on some grounds) Wordsworth and Coleridge.

+Stanza 5,+ 1. 2. _Not all to that bright station dared to climb._ The
conception embodied in the diction of this stanza is not quite so clear
as might be wished. The first statement seems to amount to this--That
some poets, true poets though they were, did not aspire so high, nor
were capable of reaching so high, as Homer, Dante, and Milton, the
typical epic poets. A statement so obviously true that it hardly
extends, in itself, beyond a truism. But it must be read as introductory
to what follows.

1. 3. _And happier they their happiness who knew._ Clearly a recast
of the phrase of Vergil,

'O fortunati nimium sua si bona nôrint
Agricolae.'

But Vergil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their own
happiness; Shelley (apparently) of others who did so. He seems to