faced with shame more intolerable than death, preferred
parricide. Here was a subject made to Shelley's hand--a
naturally pure and gentle soul soiled, driven to violence, and
finally extinguished, by unnameable wrong, while all authority,
both human and divine, is on the side of the persecutor.
Haunted by the grave, sad eyes of Guido Reni's picture of
Beatrice, so that the very streets of Rome seemed to echo her
name--though it was only old women calling out "rags"
('cenci')--he was tempted from his airy flights to throw
himself for once into the portrayal of reality. There was no
need now to dip "his pen in earthquake and eclipse"; clothed in
plain and natural language, the action unfolded itself in a
crescendo of horror; but from the ease with which he wrote--it
cost him relatively the least time and pains of all his
works--it would be rash to infer that he could have constructed
an equally good tragedy on any other subject than the injured
Beatrice and the combination, which Count Francesco Cenci is,
of paternal power with the extreme limit of human iniquity.

With the exception of 'The Cenci', everything Shelley published
was almost entirely unnoticed at the time. This play, being
more intelligible than the rest, attracted both notice and
praise, though it was also much blamed for what would now be
called its unpleasantness. Many people, among them his wife,
regretted that, having proved his ability to handle the
concrete, he still should devote himself to ideal and unpopular
abstractions, such as 'The Witch of Atlas' (1821), a
fantastical piece in rime royal, which seems particularly to
have provoked Mrs. Shelley. A "lady Witch" lived in a cave on
Mount Atlas, and her games in a magic boat, her dances in the