17. Pantheism. “Shelley,” says Stopford A. Brooke, “was not an atheist or a materialist. If he may be said to have occupied any theoretical position, it was that of an Ideal Pantheist. Wordsworth, a plain Christian at home, wrote about Nature as a pantheist. The artist loves to conceive of the universe, not as dead but as alive. Into that belief Shelley in the hour of inspiration continually rose and his work is seldom more impassioned and beautiful than in the passages where he feels and believes in this manner. The finest example is towards the close of the Adonais. In his mind, however, the living spirit which in its living, made the Universe, was not conceived of as Thought, as Wordsworth conceived it, but as Love operating into Beauty.”
