Excerpt from Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry, Shelley's Defence of Poetry, Browning's Essay on Shelley Yet Shelley's Defence of Poetry was a direct and detailed reply to his friend's attack, and if we allow the Defence to rank with the great pronouncements on poetry of such critics as Sir Philip Sidney, Dryden, Matthew Arnold and Wordsworth, this neglect of its immediate source is remark able. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.