For it is abominable to correlate the life and work 
of any man, whenever that work approaches the 
standard of genius.  Work of that sort is perfectly 
independent of life.  The purest poems spring 
alike from the foulest soil and from the cleanest 
kept.  Any 
stimulus 
may 
stimulate.  Knowing 
Shelley almost by heart, the present writer is still 
ignorant of his domestic affairs—and thanks God 
for it. 
Here, however, we have no work of genius to 
save from soilure.  The poem is less than the 
man, as the editor has pointed out in his 
sufficiently able introduction.  Nevertheless, in our 
opinion, the poem is sufficiently remarkable to 
merit consideration per se, and the poet must be 
considered as having entered the lists. 
To break a lance or two with him, then. 
We are very sorry that he should have selected the 
sonnet as the expression of his thoughts.  A good 
deal of this story would be better told in prose (or 
not told at all !)—but the sonnet !  He himself 
knows perfectly well what a sonnet should be :  the 
 
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