+Stanza 45,+ 1. 2. _The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their
thrones._ There is a grand abruptness in this phrase, which makes it--as
a point of poetical or literary structure--one of the finest things in
the Elegy. We are to understand (but Shelley is too great a master to
formulate it in words) that Keats, as an 'inheritor of unfulfilled
renown'--i.e. a great intellect cut off by death before its maturest
fruits could be produced--has now arrived among his compeers: they rise
from their thrones to welcome him. In this connexion Shelley chooses to
regard Keats as still a living spiritual personality--not simply as
'made one with Nature.' He is one of those 'splendours of the firmament
of time' who 'may be eclipsed, but are extinguished not.'
11. 3-5. _Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from
him._ For precocity and exceptional turn of genius Chatterton was
certainly one of the most extraordinary of 'the inheritors of
unfulfilled renown'; indeed, the most extraordinary: he committed
suicide by poison in 1770, before completing the eighteenth year of his
age.
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