'
+Stanza 46,+ 11. 3, 4. _And where its wrecks like shattered mountains
rise, And flowering weeds_, &c. These expressions point more especially,
but not exclusively, to the Coliseum and the Baths of Caracalla. In
Shelley's time (and something alike was the case in 1862, the year when
the present writer saw them first) both these vast monuments were in a
state wholly different from that which they now, under the hands of
learned archaeologists and skilled restorers, present to the eye.
Shelley began, probably in 1819, a romantic or ideal tale named _The
Coliseum_; and, ensconced amid the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, he
composed, in the same year, a large part of _Promethens Unbound_. A few
extracts from his letters may here be given appropriately. (To T.L.
Peacock, 22 December, 18i8). 'The Coliseum is unlike any work of human
hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the
arches, built of massy stones, are piled, on one another, and jut into
the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks. It has been
changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills
overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle, and the figtree, and threaded
by little paths which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable
galleries: the copsewood overshadows you as you wander through its
labyrinths.
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