other. The feelings apprehended are, indeed, remote enough; in
many descriptions where land, sea, and mountain shimmer through
a gorgeous mist that never was of this earth, the "material
universe" may perhaps be admitted to be grasped as a whole; and
he has embodied his conception of the "moral universe" in a
picture of all the good impulses of the human heart, that
should be so fruitful, poisoned by the pressure of religious
and political authority. It was natural that the method which
he chose should be that of the romantic narrative--we have
noticed how he began by trying to write novels--nor is that
method essentially unfitted to represent the conflict between
good and evil, with the whole universe for a stage; instances
of great novels that are epics in this sense will occur to
every one. But realism is required, and Shelley was
constitutionally incapable of realism The personages of the
story, Laon and the Hermit, the Tyrant and Cythna, are pale
projections of Shelley himself; of Dr. Lind, an enlightened old
gentleman with whom he made friends at Eton; of His Majesty's
Government; and of Mary Wollstonecraft, his wife's illustrious
mother. They are neither of the world nor out of it, and
consequently, in so far as they are localised and incarnate and
their actions woven into a tale, 'The Revolt of Islam' is a
failure. In his next great poem he was to pursue precisely the
same aims, but with more success, because he had now hit upon a
figure of more appropriate vagueness and sublimity. The scheme
of 'Prometheus Unbound' (1819) is drawn from the immortal
creations of Greek tragedy.

He had experimented with Tasso and had thought of Job; but the
rebellious Titan, Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind whom