Even while at work upon Hesperus,' he had formed the resolution of placing a pure man, great and noble,by the side of a reprobate, and of sur rounding them both with a multitude of beings cor responding to them. He wished to concentrate in a single work all the ideas of high philosophy which he had disseminated in his other creations, and to show them followed by their natural consequences. So strong a mind could not stop there he resolved to show the absurdity of exaggeration, whether in good or in evil, in virtue or in vice.