ABSTRACT
Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820); [Gold’s] London Magazine, II (Sept. 1820), 306–307; (Oct. 1820), 382–391. This laudatory two-part review shows the triumph of Romantic critical theory. The allusion on page 382 to “Light which never was by sea or land,” referring to Wordsworth’s “Stanzas . . . on Peele Castle,” and the reference to “the shadow of things unseen” (part of the definition of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews) praise poetic qualities that would have been considered blemishes by most of the Augustan critics of twenty years earlier. The reviewer does not pretend to be able to explicate Shelley’s poetry or even to understand it fully, but he praises it for its great, though indistinct, aspirations. One clear sign of the reviewer’s values is his commendation of “A Vision of the Sea” (p. 390), the one poem by Shelley that no critic to this day has explained satisfactorily.
been considerable, and wore daily augmented in spite of the multiplying toils which almost engrossed his later years.—Besides his reply to Dr. Madan’s ’Thoughts on Executive Justice,’ and an article which appeared in the 57th number of the Edinburgh Review, he was the author of some unpublished works,—of a Translation of Sallust,—of a Journal of some part of his own life,—and of an unfinished work on the Criminal Law. Of the latter he says in one of his testamentary papers, that it is not in a state fit for publication, but that if, in the opinion of his friends, it should contain any hints or observations calculated to be of service to others treating of the same subject, they may publish such extracts or detached parts. That such a publication’ (he adds) ’ may be injurious to my reputation as an author or a lawyer, I am indifferent about; if it can be in any way useful, it is all I desire.’
