...psychological analysis, brutal as it may seem. Shelley, whom Matthew Arnold felicitously described as " a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain," is regarded by Mr. Salt as a Pioneer of Humanitarianism. 2 The chief merit in the latter's little pamphlet...

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...feeling about vainly in his speech, and touching nothing" (one thinks of Arnold's characterization of Shelley as "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain," which, in its turn, may call to mind Lowell's comparison of Shelley's genius to a St. Elmo's fire,...

...field of pure abstractions. Shelley too was in the void (the figure is borrowed from Joubert's), ' a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.' Or again, Marcus Aurelius, had he known the Christian writings, would have ' found in the Gospel of...

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...convictions, and presses them homo to good purpose. Equally true is the ring of his verdict on Shelly as a " beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. The final essays on names that are the latest vogue of culture, Tolstoi and Amiel, are admirahle, and...

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...contemporaries ; — either Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium ; or Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to...