The elegy on Keats, Adonais, followed in 1821. The transla tions—chiefly from Homer, Euripides, Calderon and Goethe date from 1819 to 1822, and testify to the poetic endowment of Shelley not less absolutely than his own original compositions; there are also prose translations from Plato.
Shelley, it will be seen, was not only a prolific but also a versatile poet. Works so various in faculty and in form as The Revolt of Islam, Julian and Maddalo, The Cenci, Prometheus Unbound, Epipsychidion, and the grotesque effusions of which Peter Bell the Third is the prime example, added to the consummate array of lyrics, have seldom to be credited to a single writer—one, more over, who died before he was thirty years of age. In prose Shelley could be as admirable as in poetry. His letters to Thomas Love Peacock and others, and his uncompleted Defence of Poetry, are the chief monuments of his mastery in prose; and certainly no more beautiful prose—having much of the spirit and the aroma of poetry, yet without being distorted out of its proper essence— is to be found in the English language.
The chief original authorities for the life of Shelley (apart from his own writings, which contain a good deal of autobiography, if heed fully sifted and collated) are—(i) the notices by Mrs. Shelley inter spersed in her edition of the Poems; (2) Hogg's amusing, discerning and authentic, although in some respects exaggerated, book ; (3) Trelawny's Records; (4) the Life by Medwin ; and (5) the articles written by Peacock. Some other writers, especially Leigh Hunt, might be mentioned, but they come less close to the facts. Among biographical books produced since Shelley's death, by authors who did not know him personally, the leading work is the Life by Pro fessor Dowden (2 vols., 1886), which embodies important materials imparted by the Shelley family. The Real Shelley, by J. C. Jeaffreson (1885), is controversial in method and decidedly hostile in tendency, and tries a man of genius by tests far from well adapted (in our opinion) to bring out a right result; it contains, however, an ample share of solid information and sharp disquisition. The memoir by
W. M. Rossetti, prefixed to an edition of Shelley's Poems in two forms of publication (187o and 1878), was an endeavour to formulate in brief space, out of the then confused and conflicting records, an accurate account of Shelley—admiring, but not uncandidly one-sided. There is valuable material in Lady Shelley's Shelley Memorials, and in Dr. Garnett's Relics of Shelley; and the memoir by J. Addington Symonds, in the English Men of Letters series, is characteristic of the writer. Shelley in England by Roger Ingpen contains new facts respecting Shelley's relations with his family, his expulsion from Oxford and some unpublished facts about Harriet's death. One of the handiest editions of Shelley's poems was edited by Thomas Hutch inson (Clarendon Press, 1905) , which includes the emendations, &c., published by Mr. C. D. Locock (19o3) from examination of the MSS. in the Bodleian Library. Mr. Locock edited in 191I an ex cellent and fully annotated edition of the Poems, with some new material. A full edition of Shelley's letters was edited by Roger Ingpen in 1909, reprinted with additions in 1911 and 1916. The most complete collection of Shelley's Poems, Prose works and Correspondence is the Julian Edition edited by Roger Ingpen and W. E. Peck (1927-1929). France has by no means neglected Shelley. A. Koszul's "La Jeunesse de Shelley" (Iwo), is a valuable study of the subject, while Andre Maurois has written a popular romance in his "Ariel ou la vie de Shelley" Mr. Buxton Forman's earlier and excellent edition includes the writings in prose as well as in verse. (W. M. R.; R. I.)