CHAPTER 8.
EPILOGUE.
After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelley the narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by one commanding reason.

Shelley's life and his poetry are indissolubly connected.

He acted what he thought and felt, with a directness rare among his brethren of the poet's craft; while his verse, with the exception of "The Cenci", expressed little but the animating thoughts and aspirations of his life.

That life, moreover, was "a miracle of thirty years," so crowded with striking incident and varied experience that, as he said himself, he had already lived longer than his father, and ought to be reckoned with the men of ninety.

Through all vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and died, like one whom the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story, young, despite grey hairs and suffering.