( His life seems to have been passed in wooing Nature under all
her forms. In calm moon-light, in storm and tempest, at the
uprising of the dawn, or during the fleeting draperies of twi-
light, Shelley, with the eagerness of a painter, watched every
changing streak of colour, every purple gleam of light, every
flickering attenuation of shadow, as if he were inhaling not breath
from the atmosphere, but inspiration. Shelley, indeed, studied
natural phenomena so intensely, as if he thought that some
deeper glimpse into the mysteries.of nature, some further solution
of the problem of existence, and of the enigma of life and death,
was to be obtained by this zealous scrutiny of her features.
