ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Percy Bysshe Shelley's legacy to Walter Pater with respect to both writing and playing things. The poem so much admired by Pater was written in the autumn of 1819 when Shelley was exploring the treasures of the Uffizi. Cosmopolitan Victorian readers would inevitably want to see Leonardo's celebrated "Medusa" and view it through the lens of Shelley's poem. Shelley's sense of how poetry "subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things" pervades his art criticism. Although less developed and polished than Gautier's art criticism, usually thought to be the major influence on Swinburne and Pater's writings on art, Shelley's notes on artworks seen during his residence in Italy are arguably important precursor texts. Shelley's influence on Pater is thus complex because it works not only in its own right but is also diffused through Swinburne, Pater's nearest precursor.
