vague form of belief, the answer is that the belief of Shelley was
indeed a vague one. In the poem of _Adonais_ it remains, to my
apprehension, as vague as in his other writings: but it assumes a shape
of greater definition, because the poem is, by its scheme and intent, a
personating poem, in which the soul of Keats has to be greeted by the
soul of Chatterton, just as the body of Adonais has to be caressed and
bewailed by Urania. Using language of a semi-emblematic kind, we might
perhaps express something of Shelley's belief thus:--Mankind is the
microcosm, as distinguished from the rest of the universe, which forms
the macrocosm; and, as long as a man's body and soul remain in
combination, his soul pertains to the microcosm: when this combination
ceases with the death of the body, his soul, in whatever sense it may be
held to exist, lapses into the macrocosm, but there is neither knowledge
as to the mode of its existence, nor speech capable of recording this.

As illustrating our poet's conceptions on these mysterious subjects, I
append extracts from three of his prose writings. The first extract
comes from his fragment _On Life_, which may have been written (but this
is quite uncertain) towards 1815; the second from his fragment _On a
Future State_, for which some similar date is suggested; the third from
the notes to his drama of _Hellas_, written in 1821, later than
_Adonais_.

(1) 'The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of Life
which, though startling to the apprehension, is in fact that which the
habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It
strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I
confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent[17] to
the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but
as it is perceived. It is a decision against which all our persuasions