NOTES ON THE TEXT OF SHELLEY.
223
than Guido's subtle crossings and windings of soul through backstairs and byways of brute craft and baser pride, of barren anger and greed and pain. This is evidence enough that if Shelley had lived the "Cenci" would not now be the one great play written in the great manner of Shakespeare's men that our literature has seen since the time of these. The proof of power is here as sure and as clear as in Shelley's lyric work; he has shown himself, what the dramatist must needs be, as able to face the light of hell as of heaven, to handle the fires of evil as to brighten the beauties of things. This latter work indeed he preferred, and wrought at it with all the grace and force of thought and word which give to all his lyrics the light of a divine life; but his tragic truth and excellence are as certain and absolute as the sweetness and the glory of his songs. The mark of his hand, the trick of his voice, we can always recognise in their clear character and individual charm; but the range is various from the starry and heavenly heights to the tender and flowering fields of the world wherein he is god and lord: with here such a flower to gather as the spinners' song of Beatrice, and there such a heaven to ascend as the Prologue to Hellas, which the zealous love of Mr. Garnett for Shelley has opened for us to enter and possess for ever; where the pleadings of Christ and Satan alternate as the rising and setting of stars in the abyss of luminous sound and sonorous light. We have now but to await the final gift of a perfect and critical edition of the whole works, the supreme tribute of love and worship yet owing to the master singer of our modern race and age; to the poet beloved above all