Well, it may be that the official mind (which is created out of the conventional mind, and to that appeals for sanction) will resent the counter-attack of a gospel of mutual help as fiercely as it did a hundred years ago and nineteen hundred years ago, and by similar devices. For that sort of mind learns nothing and forgets nothing. But on two points let us clear our minds of cant.

For the first-let us not pretend, of anybody persecuted in our time as Shelley was persecuted in his, that he is truly persecuted for any private infirmities of will or of conduct. To such infirmities within its own circle the official mind has always been generous, even to a fault. A balance sheet of illegitimacy, for instance, drawn between descendants of the court and ministers of George IV and those of the men whom these courtiers and ministers publicly hounded on pleas of morality would, I think, repay persual. These victims were punished, not for their frailties, but through their frailties for their opinions.

On the other hand, and for the second point, let us be equally clear with ourselves that the true miseries of Shelley's life, as of Byron's, came not of external contrivance; that their real tortures were not of the sort that any bullying or persecution can inflict on a brave man (and Byron and Shelley were brave men), but ensued upon the passionate error or errors in their own breasts: for, as I have hinted, when once the path of obedience is felt to be false, the ways of error in pursuit of something better may ramify endlessly. I ask you to imagine for a moment that Byron and Shelley had succeeded in persuading men, and to proceed to imagine a happy middle-age, or a mellow sunset of life, for either of them. The late Professor Dowden (if I read him

rightly) prognosticated such an autumnal close for Shelley, if only the gods had not loved him too well and killed him young. For my part, my imagination refuses any such picture-let be the idleness of the speculation. In a previous lecture I read you a lyric, written in 1814, of which the key-line, perhaps, is this

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

and that most haunting lyric is classed among his Early Poems. But let me read you now three stanzas on almost the same theme, written a bare year before his death:

The serpent is shut out from Paradise.

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more

In which its heart-cure lies:

The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
Fled in the April hour.

I too must seldom seek again

Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

Of hatred I am proud,-with scorn content;
Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
Itself indifferent;

But, not to speak of love, pity alone
Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one

Turns the mind's poison into food,—
Its medicine is tears,-its evil good.

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer.

Dear friends, dear friend! know that I only fly

Your looks, because they stir

Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die: The very comfort that they minister

I scarce can bear, yet I,
So deeply is the arrow gone,

Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.

Did I say "almost the same theme?" It is the very same as the fruit in the flower, as the bough in the shoot, fatally implicit in Shelley's own organic growth toward sorrow. Nay, it is the end of all men insatiate for joy.

IX

But he loved much. When all is said and done, he loved so much that to speak of sin in such a man and (God help us) of our forgiving it, were perilously nigh blasphemy. It is observable of many great men—of Coleridge, for example among Shelley's own contemporaries that as receding time veils much, it more and more lifts this prominent; that, though circumstance put them on the wrong on a temporary quarrel-nay even so wrong as to be for the while beyond defence by very casuistry-they were right, after all, and right in a degree beyond their own guessing, because before trusting to others' charity they themselves used it towards the world. I think that over the grave of Shelley, any one who feels all the strain-the Topy, as the Greeks called it-of such human compassion, must stand with a divided heart, desiring to strew lilies for a career cut short, timorous upon a second thought that

He hates him much

That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.

Yes: as Shelley wrote the last word on Keats, let us quote from Keats the words for our epitaph on Shelley:

"High Prophetess," said I, "purge off,

Benign, if so it please thee, my mind's film."— "None can usurp this height," return'd that shade, "But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest."

IN

MILTON (I)

I

'N this and three following lectures, Gentlemen, I shall speak of John Milton, and especially of Paradise Lost. But although we shall be drawn on and delayed to linger upon many rarities in that most noble poem, my main purpose will not be to expound these; as neither shall I vex you with more dates and details of the poet's life than seem necessary, or at least relevant, to an argument which, with your leave, shall take its time and then only be summarised when we have done.

II

What is the word that comes uppermost when we think of Milton, the man and his work together? Suppose that for a start, I passed around a number of slips of paper, inviting each of you to write down the one epithet which seemed to him most characteristic, most compendious, and at the same time most nearly expressive. How would the votes go?

Well, I daresay "sublime" would carry the day: either that or "harmonious" (or some other word expressive of majestic verbal music). A few might hit on "prophetic." All these are good, and I shall recur to them. But I hope that one or two papers, being