vain. We may trace in it all kinds of 'arrieres pensees',
philosophical and sociological, that an artist ought not to
have, and we may even dislike its dominating conception of a
vague spirit that pervades the universe; but we must admit that
when he wrote it was as if seized and swept away by some
"unseen power" that fell upon him unpremeditated. His emotions
were of that fatal violence which distinguishes so many
illustrious but unhappy souls from the mass of peaceable
mankind. In the early part of last century a set of
illustrations to Faust by Retzch used to be greatly admired;
about one of them, a picture of Faust and Margaret in the
arbour, Shelley says in a letter to a friend: "The artist makes
one envy his happiness that he can sketch such things with
calmness, which I only dared look upon once, and which made my
brain swim round only to touch the leaf on the opposite side of
which I knew that it was figured." So slight were the
occasions that could affect him even to vertigo. When, from
whatever cause, the frenzy took him, he would write hastily,
leaving gaps, not caring about the sense. Afterwards he would
work conscientiously over what he had written, but there was
nothing left for him to do but to correct in cold blood, make
plain the meaning, and reduce all to such order as he could.
One result of this method was that his verse preserved an
unparallelled rush and spontaneity, which is perhaps as great a
quality as anything attained by the more bee-like toil of
better artists.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE