a rasping quality in his humour, even though it is always on
the side of right. He wrote one good satire though. This is
'Peter Bell the Third' (1819), an attack on Wordsworth, partly
literary for the dulness of his writing since he had been sunk
in clerical respectability, partly political for his renegade
flunkyism.

In 1820 the pall which still hung over northern Europe began to
lift in the south. After Napoleon's downfall the Congress of
Vienna (1814-16) had parcelled Europe out on the principle of
disregarding national aspirations and restoring the legitimate
rulers. This system, which could not last, was first shaken by
revolutions that set up constitutional governments in Spain and
Naples. Shelley hailed these streaks of dawn with joy, and
uttered his enthusiasm in two odes--the 'Ode to Liberty' and
the 'Ode to Naples'--the most splendid of those cries of hope
and prophecy with which a long line of English poets has
encouraged the insurrection of the nations. Such cries,
however, have no visible effect on the course of events.
Byron's jingles could change the face of the world, while all
Shelley's pure and lofty aspirations left no mark on history.
And so it was, not with his republican ardours alone, but with
all he undertook. Nothing he did influenced his contemporaries
outside his immediate circle; the public only noticed him to
execrate the atheist, the fiend, and the monster. He felt that
"his name was writ on water," and languished for want of
recognition. His life, a lightning-flash across the
storm-cloud of the age, was a brief but crowded record of
mistakes and disasters, the classical example of the rule that
genius is an infinite capacity for getting into trouble.