In his case we have perhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have equalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess.

Shelley's early death is more to be regretted.

Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by a mere accident.

His faculties were far more complex, and his aims were more ambitious than theirs.

He therefore needed length of years for their co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have the certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wrought a clear and lucid harmony.
These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography.