The poem is dedicated to the cause of
freedom, and records the efforts, successes, defeats, and final
triumphant death of two inspired champions of liberty--a youth and
maiden. The adventures are marvellous, not intended to be within the
bounds of probability, scarcely of possibility. There are very noble
sentiments and fine passages throughout the poem. Now and then there is
grandeur. But the absence of art is too evident in the fact that the
meaning is often obscure; an obscurity not unfrequently occasioned by
the difficulty of the stanza, which is the most difficult mode of
composition in English, except the rigid sonnet. The words and forms he
employs to express thought seem sometimes mechanical devices for that
purpose, rather than an utterance which suggested itself naturally to a
mind where the thought was vitally present. The words are more a
_clothing_ for the thought than an _embodiment_ of it. They do not lie
near enough to the thing which is intended to be represented by them. It
is, however, but just to remark, that some of the obscurity is owing to
the fact, that, even with Mrs. Shelley's superintendence, the works have
not yet been satisfactorily edited, or at least not conducted through
the press with sufficient care.
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