The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman’s edition do not throw much light upon _Epipsychidion_. The longest, entitled _To his Genius_ by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads like the induction to a poem conceived and written in a different key, and at a lower level of inspiration. It has, however, this extraordinary interest that it deals with a love which is both love and friendship, above sex, spiritual, unintelligible to the world at large. Thus the fragment enables the student better to realize the kind of worship so passionately expressed in _Epipsychidion_.
The news of Keats’s death at Rome on the 27th of December, 1820, and the erroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not caused, by a contemptible review of _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly_, stirred Shelley to the composition of _Adonais_. He had it printed at Pisa, and sent copies to Ollier for circulation in London. This poem was a favourite with its author, who hoped not only that it might find acceptance with the public, but also that it would confer lustre upon the memory of a poet whom he sincerely admired. No criticisms upon Shelley’s works are half so good as his own. It is, therefore, interesting to collect the passages in which he speaks of an elegy only equalled in our language by _Lycidas_, and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior to Milton’s youthful lament for his friend. “The _Adonais_, in spite of its mysticism,” he writes to Ollier, “is the least imperfect of my compositions.” “I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion.” “It is a highly wrought _piece of art_, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written.” “It is absurd in any review to criticize _Adonais_, and still more to pretend that the verses are bad.” “I know what to think of _Adonais_, but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems of the day, I know not.” Again, alluding to the stanzas hurled against the infamous _Quarterly_ reviewer, he says:--“I have dipped my pen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm and solemn.”
With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. Although _Adonais_ is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets as _Prometheus_ or _Epipsychidion_, it presents Shelley’s qualities in a form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the _art_ of the poem; and this, perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, reveals the potency of a Prospero’s wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substituted for Bion’s cupids; and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bards of England are summoned to lament around the poet’s bier. Yet it is only when Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that he soars aloft on mighty wing. This point too, is the point of transition from death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture of the things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions of the poem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the passage from the one to the other is natural. Two quotations from _Adonais_ will suffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse.