long since passed away. How strangely obscured was Hazlitt's vision by the clouds of his own day! For he gives only a passing reference to Keats; of Shelley there is no mention. The omission seems inconceivable at first, in view of the fact that this glorious star of English poetry had its rise and its setting before The Spirit of the Age was published. It is not to be wondered at, however, when one realizes how far in advance Shelley was of his day. For all practical purposes of literature this matchless singer of a golden age, without whom the great poets of the last half century could scarcely have found their own worlds of song, first came into existence on that memorable morning in London when a youth, Robert Browning by name, picked up a priceless volume of his poetry from an old bookstall, and was himself kindled to immortal utterance by the divine fire that flashed upon him from its pages. After that the world was ready; Shelley's poetry was really published—just as the world is at last ready for the books of W. H. Hudson.
Few names in literature come together more appropriately than Shelley's and Hudson's, and this appropriateness is emphasized in the case of a book like A Crystal Age. The kinship is not due
