SOME BOOKS OF Til K WEEK.
[Under this heading ice notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other formal In the series of " The Golden Poets," Edited by Oliphant Smeaton (T C. and E. C. Jack, 2s. 6d. net), we have Poems of Shelley, Selected and with Introduction by Professor J. Churton Collins. Professor Collins's introduction is as full of interest and suggestion as we expected to find it, and where he deals with the literary qualities of the poems we have no adverse criticism to offer. On the contrary, we get a quite remarkable insight and power of appreciation. But his estimate of Shelley as a moralist we do not understand. He begins with a most unsparing denunciation of William Godwin's ethical theories. "Monstrous hypotheses" lead to "equally monstrous conclusions " ; the man was "entirely destitute of what Coleridge calls the illumination of the heart." "Such," goes on Professor Collins, " was Shelley's master, and such the work which furnished him with every tenet of his social and political gospel." How, then, can we accept what follows a few pages later on : "To say indeed that as an idealist and a prophet he has and must always have a foremost place among the hierophants of the religion of humanity, and that he was the pioneer of almost all those movements which have during the last sixty or seventy years changed the face of social life, would be to say no more than is strictly his due "P The selection includes " Alastor" ; "The Revolt of Islam" (Dedica- tion, 1-14; Canto II., 2-14; VI., 29-38, 46-53; XII., 34-41) ; "Prince Athanase "; "Rosalind and Helen" (230 lines); "Julian and Maddalo" ; extracts from " Prometheus Unbound," " The Cenci," and "Hellas"; "The Mask of Anarchy " ; " Epipsychi- dion " ; " Adonais"; and seventy-six pages of " Lyrics and Minor Poems." "The Witch of Atlas" is given, and seine of the "Early Poems." Professor Churton Collins has added a few notes.
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