In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his most genial poems:  the “Letter to Maria Gisborne”, which might be mentioned as a pendent to “Julian and Maddalo” for its treatment of familiar things; the “Ode to a Skylark”, that most popular of all his lyrics; the “Witch of Atlas”, unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the “Ode to Naples”, which, together with the “Ode to Liberty”, added a new lyric form to English literature.  In the winter he wrote the “Sensitive Plant”, prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. Shelley’s drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate Italian sunlight.  Whether we consider the number of these poems or their diverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely subtle line from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence and the most ethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished.  Every chord of the poet’s lyre is touched, from the deep bass string that echoes the diurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was, to the fine vibrations of a treble merging its rarity of tone in accents super-sensible to ordinary ears.  One passage from the “Letter to Maria Gisborne” may here be quoted, not for its poetry, but for the light it casts upon the circle of his English friends.

    You are now
    In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
    At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
    Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. 
    Yet in its depth what treasures!  You will see
    That which was Godwin,—­greater none than he
    Though fallen—­and fallen on evil times—­to stand
    Among the spirits of our age and land,
    Before the dread tribunal of “To come”
    The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. 
    You will see Coleridge—­he who sits obscure
    In the exceeding lustre and the pure
    Intense irradiation of a mind,
    Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
    Flags wearily through darkness and despair—­
    A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
    A hooded eagle among blinking owls. 
    You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls
    Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
    This world would smell like what it is—­a tomb;
    Who is, what others seem.  His room no doubt
    Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,
    With graceful flowers tastefully placed about,
    And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
    And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
    The gifts of the most learn’d among some dozens
    Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. 
    And there is he with his eternal puns,
    Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
    Thundering for money at a poet’s door;
    Alas! it is no use to say, “I’m poor!”—­
    Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
    Things wiser than were ever read in book,
    Except in Shakespere’s