While still resident at Marlow, Shelley began two autobiographical poems--the one "Prince Athanase," which he abandoned as too introspective and morbidly self-analytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which he finished afterwards in Italy.

Of the second of these compositions he entertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his best work.

To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of Lionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the man he would have wished to be.

The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the "Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone and scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them.

Later on in life, Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directed his genius to more objective themes.