But of all Shelley's works, the _Prometheus Unbound_ is that which
combines the greatest amount of individual power and peculiarity. There
is an airy grandeur about it, reminding one of the vast masses of cloud
scattered about in broken, yet magnificently suggestive forms, all over
the summer sky, after a thunderstorm. The fundamental ideas are grand;
the superstructure, in many parts, so ethereal, that one hardly knows
whether he is gazing on towers of solid masonry rendered dim and
unsubstantial by intervening vapour, or upon the golden turrets of
cloudland, themselves born of the mist which surrounds them with a halo
of glory. The beings of Greek, mythology are idealized and etherealized
by the new souls which he puts into them, making them think his thoughts
and say his words. In reading this, as in reading most of his poetry, we
feel that, unable to cope with the evils and wrongs of the world as it
and they are, he constructs a new universe, wherein he may rule
according to his will; and a good will in the main it is--good always in
intent, good generally in form and utterance. Of the wrongs which
Shelley endured from the collision and resulting conflict between his
lawless goodness and the lawful wickedness of those in authority, this
is one of the greatest,--that during the right period of pupillage, he
was driven from the place of learning, cast on his own mental resources
long before those resources were sufficient for his support, and
irritated against the purest embodiment of good by the harsh treatment
he received under its name.
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