The following study of the development of the religious and political views of Shelley is made with the view to help one in forming a true estimate of his work and character. That there is a real difficulty in estimating correctly the life and works of Shelley no one acquainted with the varied judgments passed upon him will deny. By some our poet is regarded as an angel, a model of perfection; by others he is looked upon as "a rare prodigy of crime and pollution whose look even might infect." Mr. Swinburne calls him "the master singer of our modern poets," but neither Wordsworth nor Keats could appreciate his poetry. W. M. Rossetti, in an article on Shelley in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, writes as follows: "In his own day an alien in the world of mind and invention, and in our day scarcely yet a denizen of it, he appears destined to become in the long vista of years an informing presence in the innermost shrine of human thought." Matthew Arnold, on the other hand, in one of his last essays, writes: "But let no one suppose that a want of humor and a self-delusion such as Shelley's have no effect upon a man's poetry. The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane either." Views so entirely different, coming as they do from such eminent critics are surely perplexing. Nevertheless, there seems to be a light which can illuminate this difficulty, render intelligible his life and works, and help us to form a just estimate of them. This light is a comprehension of the influence which inspired him in all he did and all he wrote—in a word, a comprehension of his radicalism.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Excerpt from The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources The following study of the development of the religious and political views of Shelley is made with the view to help one in forming a true estimate of his work and character. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Moreover, institutions are never an adequate expression of the ideal. "Men are never as good as the goodness they know. Institutions reveal the same truth. The margin between what society knows and what it is" makes radicalism possible. In his introduction to The Revolt of Islam, Shelley expresses the same thought: "The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilized mankind produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions." The greater that this defect of correspondence becomes, the more intense will be the radicalism that inevitably ensues. Radicals want a change. The extent of this change differentiates them fairly well among themselves. Some would completely sweep away every existing institution. Thus Shelley thought the great victory would be won if he could exterminate kings and priests at a blow. Let the axe strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall.

the other clings too much to the past. There is constant warfare between the two for the mastery. In a progressive community neither of them is in the ascendant for any length of time. A period of radicalism is inevitably followed by one of conservatism and vice versa. The pendulum swings to one extreme and then back again to the other. As long as human nature will be what it is, our institutions will be defective, and change will be the order of the day. This no doubt results in progress, which Goethe has compared to a movement in a spiral direction.

This study oilers a new definition of Shelley s place in English radical culture. Treating the poet's literary career as an active intervention in the social world, Professor Scrivener shows how Shelley designed each text to provoke different audiences in a Utopian direction, despite the political repression and other cultural limitations of which he was acutely aware. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.