PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
(1792-1822)
IX. A DEFENCE OF POETRY.
_The Defence of Poetry_ was written in the early months of 1821, the
year before Shelley's death. Its immediate occasion was an essay on
_The Four Ages of Poetry_ by T L Peacock. But all allusions to Peacock's
work were cut out by John Hunt when he prepared it--in vain, as things
proved--for publication in _The Liberal_, and it remains, as Peacock
said, "a defence without an attack". For all essential purposes, the
_Defence_ can only be said to have gained by shaking off its local and
temporary reference. It expresses Shelley's deepest thoughts about
poetry, and marks, as clearly as any writing of the last hundred years,
the width of the gulf that separates the ideals of recent poetry from
those of the century preceding the French Revolution. It may be compared
with Sidney's _Apologie_ on the one hand, and with Wordsworth's Preface
to the _Lyrical Ballads_, or the more abstract parts of Carlyle's
critical writings upon the other. The fundamental conceptions of Shelley
are the same as those of the Elizabethan critic and of his own great
contemporaries.
Pages:
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396