Then follows the plot to throw the contents upon the Queen.
The handling of the heroic couplet, employed in the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_ and in _Epipsychidon_, as well as in _Julian and Maddalo_,[303] has been already discussed in its relationship to Hunt's use of the same. Shelley, in a letter to Hunt, explains his position in regard to the language of _Julian and Maddalo_:
"You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language to express the actual way in which people talk to each other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. I use the word _vulgar_ in its most extensive sense. The vulgarity of rank and fashion is as gross, in its way, as that of poverty, and its cant terms equally expressive of base conceptions, and therefore, equally unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is to be admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly ideal, or in that part of any subject which relates to common life, where the passion, exceeding a certain limit, touches the boundary of that which is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in metaphor, borrowed alike from subjects remote or near, and casts over all the shadow of its own greatness."[304]
_Rosalind and Helen_, the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_, _Swellfoot the Tyrant_, and _Peter Bell the Third_[305] show a similar influence. _The Letter to Maria Gisborne_ bears a resemblance to Hunt's epistolary style, and was written, Mr. Forman thinks, for circulation in the Hunt circle only.[306] It was through Hunt, so Shelley states in the dedication, that he knew the _Peter Bells_ of Wordsworth and of John Hamilton Reynolds. Shelley's qualified adoption in these poems of Hunt's theory of poetic language is seen in the choice of a vocabulary in dialogue nearer everyday usage than the more remote one of his other poems. Yet the result does not bear any great resemblance to Hunt. Shelley's unvarying refinement and sensibility kept him from committing the same errors of taste, but his work suffered rather than gained by an innovation which was probably a concession to his friendship for Hunt and not a strong conviction. With the exception of the descriptive passages, the keynote of these poems is on a lower poetic pitch.