The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once
to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of
love; others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments
inspired by natural objects. Shelley's conception of love was exalted,
absorbing, allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and
warmed by earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in
verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except
when highly idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had
cast aside unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had
lost him. Others, as for instance "Rosalind and Helen" and "Lines
written among the Euganean Hills", I found among his papers by chance;
and with some difficulty urged him to complete them. There are others,
such as the "Ode to the Skylark and The Cloud", which, in the opinion
of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his
productions. They were written as his mind prompted: listening to the
carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the
cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on
the Thames.

No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration.
His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his
intellectual pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every
perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations.
Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the
disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and
errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such, he delivered up his
soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself, from the
influence of human sympathies, in the wildest regions of fancy. His
imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He