For his nature was not merely predetermined and obdurate, it
was also sensitive, vehement, and fertile. With the soul of a bird, he
had the senses of a man-child; the instinct of the butterfly was
united in him with the instinct of the brooding fowl and of the
pelican. This winged spirit had a heart. It darted swiftly on its
appointed course, neither expecting nor understanding opposition; but
when it met opposition it did not merely flutter and collapse; it was
inwardly outraged, it protested proudly against fate, it cried aloud
for liberty and justice.
The consequence was that Shelley, having a nature preformed but at the
same time tender, passionate, and moral, was exposed to early and
continual suffering. When the world violated the ideal which lay so
clear before his eyes, that violation filled him with horror. If to
the irrepressible gushing of life from within we add the suffering and
horror that continually checked it, we shall have in hand, I think,
the chief elements of his genius.
Love of the ideal, passionate apprehension of what ought to be, has
for its necessary counterpart condemnation of the actual, wherever the
actual does not conform to that ideal. The spontaneous soul, the soul
of the child, is naturally revolutionary; and when the revolution
fails, the soul of the youth becomes naturally pessimistic.
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