Page:Essays and Studies

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188

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF SHELLEY.

name on record, in the very work which taxes him with the infection of a ferocity caught from contact with the plague-sores of religion. It is now hoped and suggested that a spirit and a sense wholly unlike their outer habit may underlie the written words of Dante and of Milton.^[1] That may be; but the outer habit remains, the most hateful creed in all history; uglier than the faith of Moloch or of Kali, by the hideous mansuetude, the devilish loving-kindness of its elections and damnations. Herein perhaps only do these two great poets fall below the greater, below Homer and Æschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare; the very skirts of whose thought, the very hems of whose garments, are clean from the pollution of this pestilence. Their words as well as their meanings, their sound not less than their sense, we can accept as wise and sweet, fruitful and fresh to all time; but the others have assumed the accent with the raiment of Dominic and Calvin—mighty men too, it may be, after their kind, but surely rather sons of fire than sons of light. At the same time it may be plausibly if not reasonably alleged that Shelley and Landor were both in some measure disqualified by their exquisite Hellenism of spirit to relish duly the tone and savour of Dante's imagination.

There are at least two passages in the "Ode to Liberty"

↑ Of the poet of the English commonwealth Shelley has elsewhere said, "The sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion;" a passage which may serve as comment on this of the "Adonais." On the other hand, Shelley in the "Defence of Poetry" does certainly place Dante, "the second epic poet," between Homer and Milton; and so far he would seem to be referred to here also as second "among the sons of light." But where then is Shakespeare, who surely had the most "light" in him of all?

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[1] Of the poet of the English commonwealth Shelley has elsewhere said, "The sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion;" a passage which may serve as comment on this of the "Adonais." On the other hand, Shelley in the "Defence of Poetry" does certainly place Dante, "the second epic poet," between Homer and Milton; and so far he would seem to be referred to here also as second "among the sons of light." But where then is Shakespeare, who surely had the most "light" in him of all?

[1]