Shelley's derelict manuscript. _Midas_ has the
privilege, if it be one, of not challenging any obvious comparison.
The subject, since Lyly's and Dryden's days, has hardly attracted the
attention of the poets. It was so eminently fit for the lighter kinds
of presentation that the agile bibliographer who aimed at completeness
would have to go through a fairly long list of masques, [Footnote:
There is one by poor Christopher Smart.] comic operas, or 'burlettas',
all dealing with the ludicrous misfortunes of the Phrygian king. But
an examination of these would be sheer pedantry in this place. Here
again Mrs. Shelley has stuck to her Latin source as closely as she
could. [Footnote: Perhaps her somewhat wearying second act, on the
effects of the gold-transmuting gift, would have been shorter, if Ovid
(_Metam._ xi. 108-30) had not himself gone into such details on the
subject.] She has made a gallant attempt to connect the two stories
with which Midas has ever since Ovid's days been associated, and a
distinct--indeed a too perceptible--effort to press out a moral
meaning in this, as she had easily extricated a cosmological meaning
in the other tale.
Perhaps we have said too much to introduce these two little
unpretending poetical dramas. They might indeed have been allowed to
speak for themselves.
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