, be not
necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears.
The harmony in Shelley's nature which made it possible for his
contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding
generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning,
who says:
His noblest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception
of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in
the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between
them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the
connection of each with each than have been thrown by any
modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface
to the letters of Shelley (afterward found spurious).]
Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic
nature in his poetry than in his prose.
The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable
supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such
poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they
are introspective and analytical of their gift, are not in the highest
poetic mood.
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