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A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays contains Shelley's famous claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". Shelley's argument for poetry is written within the context of Romanticism. The book showcases Shelley's aesthetic philosophy accentuating his opinion that poetry brings about moral good. It exercises and expands the imagination, and the imagination is the source of sympathy, compassion, and love, which rest on the ability to project oneself into the position of another person. Poetry, according to Shelley, enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight. It strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man. The book which has been read with interest and enthusiasm ever since its first publication in 1891, contains Shelley's views on love, on a future state, on punishment of death, besides speculations on metaphysics and morals, and the nature of virtue. There is also an essay on the literature, the arts, and the manners of the Athenians, and an essay on "The Symposium" of Plato.