Slow to begin and never ending,

the "serious faith and inward glee."

But if Shelley, instead of culling Nature, crossed with its pollen the
blossoms of his own soul, that Babylonian garden is his marvellous and
best apology. For astounding figurative opulence he yields only to
Shakespeare, and even to Shakespeare not in absolute fecundity but in
images. The sources of his figurative wealth are specialised, sources of
Shakespeare's are universal. It would have been as conscious an effort
for him to speak without figure as it is for most men to speak with
figure. Suspended in the dripping well of his imagination the commonest
object becomes encrusted with imagery. Herein again he deviates from the
true Nature poet, the normal Wordsworth type of Nature poet: imagery was
to him not a mere means of expression, not even a mere means of
adornment; it was a delight for its own sake.

And herein we find the trail by which we would classify him. He belongs
to a school of which not impossibly he may hardly have read a line--the
Metaphysical School. To a large extent he _is_ what the Metaphysical
School should have been. That school was a certain kind of poetry trying
for a range. Shelley is the range found. Crashaw and Shelley sprang
from the same seed; but in the one case the seed was choked with thorns,
in the other case it fell on good ground. The Metaphysical School was in
its direct results an abortive movement, though indirectly much came of
it--for Dryden came of it. Dryden, to a greater extent than is (we
imagine) generally perceived, was Cowley systematised; and Cowley, who
sank into the arms of Dryden, rose from the lap of Donne.

But the movement was so abortive that few will thank us for connecting