of Berkeley, of Plato, of Spinoza. What is real and unchanging
is the one spirit which interpenetrates and upholds the world
with "love and beauty and delight," and this spirit--the vision
which Alastor pursued in vain, the "Unseen Power" of the 'Ode
to Intellectual Beauty'--is what is always suggested by his
poetry at its highest moments. The suggestion, in its fulness,
is of course ineffable; only in the case of Shelley some
approach can be made to naming it, because he happened to be
steeped in philosophical ways of thinking. The forms in which
he gave it expression are predominantly melancholy, because
this kind of idealism, with its insistence on the unreality of
evil, is the recoil from life of an unsatisfied and
disappointed soul.

His philosophy of love is but a special case of this
all-embracing doctrine. We saw how in 'Epipsychidion' he
rejected monogamic principles on the ground that true love is
increased, not diminished, by division, and we can now
understand why he calls this theory an "eternal law." For, in
this life of illusion, it is in passionate love that we most
nearly attain to communion with the eternal reality. Hence the
more of it the better. The more we divide and spread our love,
the more nearly will the fragments of goodness and beauty that
are in each of us find their true fruition. This doctrine may
be inconvenient in practice, but it is far removed from vulgar
sensualism, of which Shelley had not a trace. Hogg says that
he was "pre-eminently a ladies' man," meaning that he had that
childlike helplessness and sincerity which go straight to the
hearts of women. To this youth, preaching sublime mysteries,
and needing to be mothered into the bargain, they were as iron