We should not then be yielding to
any private bias, but simply noting the conditions under which art may
exist and may be appreciated, if we accepted the classical principle
of criticism and asserted that substance, sanity, and even a sort of
pervasive wisdom are requisite for supreme works of art. On the other
hand--who can honestly doubt it?--the rebels and individualists are
the men of direct insight and vital hope. The poetry of Shelley in
particular is typically poetical. It is poetry divinely inspired; and
Shelley himself is perhaps no more ineffectual or more lacking in
humour than an angel properly should be. Nor is his greatness all a
matter of aesthetic abstraction and wild music. It is a fact of
capital importance in the development of human genius that the great
revolution in Christendom against Christianity, a revolution that
began with the Renaissance and is not yet completed, should have found
angels to herald it, no less than that other revolution did which
began at Bethlehem; and that among these new angels there should have
been one so winsome, pure, and rapturous as Shelley. How shall we
reconcile these conflicting impressions? Shall we force ourselves to
call the genius of Shelley second rate because it was revolutionary,
and shall we attribute all enthusiasm for him to literary affectation
or political prejudice? Or shall we rather abandon the orthodox
principle that an important subject-matter and a sane spirit are
essential to great works? Or shall we look for a different issue out
of our perplexity, by asking if the analysis and comprehension are not
perhaps at fault which declare that these things are not present in
Shelley's poetry? This last is the direction in which I conceive the
truth to lie.
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