" Wordsworth, being
asked his opinion of the same poem, called it, scoffingly, "a pretty piece
of paganism;" yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote--and
beautiful ones they are--reverts to the powerful influence of the "pagan
creed."'
Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. Now, nine tailors are
ranked, by great masters of algebra, as = one man; such is the received
equation; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an old English
drama, by a man who meets and quarrels with eighteen tailors--'Come, hang
it! I'll fight you _both_.' But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of
tailors to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not always equal
to the delivery of one accurate truth, or to a successful conflict with
three or four signal errors. Firstly--Shelley's reason, if it ever was
assigned, is irrelevant as regards any question that must have been
intended. It could not have been meant to ask--Why was the 'Hyperion' so
Grecian in its spirit? for it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it
falsely to call it so; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology of Greece
was incapable of breeding anything so deep as the mysterious portents
that, in the 'Hyperion,' run before and accompany the passing away of
divine immemorial dynasties. Nothing can be more impressive than the
picture of Saturn in his palsy of affliction, and of the mighty goddess
his grand-daughter, or than the secret signs of coming woe in the palace
of Hyperion.
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