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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4555-8.txt b/4555-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f9b693 --- /dev/null +++ b/4555-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5927 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Percy Bysshe Shelley, by John Addington Symonds + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley + +Author: John Addington Symonds + +Posting Date: August 14, 2009 [EBook #4555] +Release Date: October, 2003 +First Posted: February 10, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Rebecca Trump and Sue Asscher. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. + + + +PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY + +BY + +JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER 1. BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. + +CHAPTER 2. ETON AND OXFORD. + +CHAPTER 3. LIFE IN LONDON, AND FIRST MARRIAGE. + +CHAPTER 4. SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. + +CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. + +CHAPTER 6. RESIDENCE AT PISA. + +CHAPTER 7. LAST DAYS. + +CHAPTER 8. EPILOGUE. + + + + +LIST OF AUTHORITIES. + +1. The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. + Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. 1 volume. + +2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves and Turner, + 1876-7. 4 volumes. + +3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W.M. Rossetti. Moxon, + 1870. 2 volumes. + +4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 volumes. + +5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering, + 1878. 2 volumes. + +6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 1 volume. + +7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 volumes. + +8. Shelley's Early Life, by D.F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 1 volume. + +9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder. + +10. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above + cited, Number 3. + +11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G.B. Smith. David Douglas, 1877. + +12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862. + +13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in "Fraser's Magazine," 1858 and 1860. + +14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in "Macmillan's Magazine," + June, 1860. + +15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the "Fortnightly Review," + June, 1878. + +16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W.M. Rossetti, in the "University + Magazine," February and March, 1878. + + + + +SHELLEY. + + + +CHAPTER 1. + +BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. + +It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, +probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning +gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet +the light that shone in them was crescent. That the world should know +Marlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and Mozart, only by the products of their +early manhood, is indeed a cause for lamentation, when we remember what +the long lives of a Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held in +reserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade +ourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of men +untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the +composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his +forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been +known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility +have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow +would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. +There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by +fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has +bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law of +waste that rules inscrutably in nature. + +Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great English +poets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when he +was twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the point of completing his +thirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed the briefest space for the +development of his extraordinary powers. His achievement, perfect as it +is in some poetic qualities, remains so immature and incomplete that no +conjecture can be hazarded about his future. Byron lived longer, and +produced more than his brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when his +genius was still ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations" were +issuing like worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we have +perhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have +equalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's +early death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by +a mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, and his aims were +more ambitious than theirs. He therefore needed length of years for +their co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have +the certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wrought +a clear and lucid harmony. + +These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet the +student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost +forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned +with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but +with one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of which +his powers were capable had been accomplished. + +August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history of +English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field +Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy, +was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the +same county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity and +considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary +honours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder +branch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the younger +dating from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather received +this honour through the influence of his friend the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. +Timothy Shelley was born in the year 1753, and in 1791 he married +Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilford, Esquire, a lady of great beauty, +and endowed with fair intellectual ability, though not of a literary +temperament. The first child of this marriage was the poet, named Bysshe +in compliment to his grandfather, the then living head of the family, +and Percy because of some remote connexion with the ducal house of +Northumberland. Four daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret, +and one son, John, who died in the year 1866, were the subsequent issue +of Mr. Timothy Shelley's marriage. In the year 1815, upon the death of +his father, he succeeded to the baronetcy, which passed, after his own +death, to his grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, as the +poet's only surviving son. + +Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region of genealogy, it may +be worth mentioning that Sir Bysshe Shelley by his second marriage with +Miss Elizabeth Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Penshurst, became the +father of five children, the eldest son of whom assumed the name of +Shelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy, and left a son, Philip Charles +Sidney, who was created Lord De l'Isle and Dudley. Such details are not +without a certain value, inasmuch as they prove that the poet, who won +for his ancient and honourable house a fame far more illustrious than +titles can confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal force and +worldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, the +wealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two families, +wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already +distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make +his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in +North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is +also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of +obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the +beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his +will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two English +heiresses; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left it at the +age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000 pounds in the English Funds, +together with estates worth 20,000 pounds a year to his descendents. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the English +squirearchy; but never assuredly did the old tale of the swan hatched +with the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustration +than in this case. Gifted with the untameable individuality of genius, +and bent on piercing to the very truth beneath all shams and fictions +woven by society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstances +of his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated warfare with the +world's opinion. His too frequent tirades against:-- + + The Queen of Slaves, + The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, + Custom,-- + +owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear upon +him by relatives who prized their position in society, their wealth, and +the observance of conventional decencies, above all other things. + +Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man; but he was +everything which the poet's father ought not to have been. As member for +the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his party; and that party +looked to nothing beyond the interests of the gentry and the pleasure of +the Duke of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficial +imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect in +his familiar correspondence, though his letters show that he lacked the +rudiments alike of logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might be +summed up in Clough's epigram:-- + + At church on Sunday to attend + Will serve to keep the world your friend. + +His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be gathered +from his telling his eldest son that he would never pardon a +mesalliance, but would provide for as many illegitimate children as he +chose to have. For the rest, he appears to have been a fairly good +landlord, and a not unkind father, sociable and hospitable, somewhat +vain and occasionally odd in manner, but qualified for passing muster +with the country gentlemen around him. In the capacity to understand a +nature which deviated from the ordinary type so remarkably as Shelley's, +he was utterly deficient; and perhaps we ought to regard it as his +misfortune that fate made him the father of a man who was among the +greatest portents of originality and unconventionality that this century +has seen. Toward an ordinary English youth, ready to sow his wild oats +at college, and willing to settle at the proper age and take his place +upon the bench of magistrates, Sir Timothy Shelley would have shown +himself an indulgent father; and it must be conceded by the poet's +biographer that if Percy Bysshe had but displayed tact and consideration +on his side, many of the misfortunes which signalized his relations to +his father would have been avoided. + +Shelley passed his childhood at Field Place, and when he was about six +years old began to be taught, together with his sisters, by Mr. Edwards, +a clergyman who lived at Warnham. What is recorded of these early years +we owe to the invaluable communications of his sister Hellen. The +difference of age between her and her brother Bysshe obliges us to refer +her recollections to a somewhat later period--probably to the holidays +he spent away from Sion House and Eton. Still, since they introduce us +to the domestic life of his then loved home, it may be proper to make +quotations from them in this place. Miss Shelley tells us her brother +"would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kind +of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was rebuked, was running +a stick through the ceiling of a low passage to find some new chamber, +which could be made effective for some flights of his vivid +imagination." He was very much attached to his sisters, and used to +entertain them with stories, in which "an alchemist, old and grey, with +a long beard," who was supposed to abide mysteriously in the garret of +Field Place, played a prominent part. "Another favourite theme was the +'Great Tortoise,' that lived in Warnham Pond; and any unwonted noise was +accounted for by the presence of this great beast, which was made into +the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his +friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, +no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited +the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable +serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived +long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that +Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection +of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please +his sisters were grotesque, and some both perilous and terrifying. "We +dressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, +and Bysshe would take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable +liquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." +Shelley often took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge and +fence, carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or their +fatigue required it. At this time "his figure was slight and +beautiful,--his hands were models, and his feet are treading the earth +again in one of his race; his eyes too have descended in their wild +fixed beauty to the same person. As a child, I have heard that his skin +was like snow, and bright ringlets covered his head." Here is a little +picture which brings the boy vividly before our eyes: "Bysshe ordered +clothes according to his own fancy at Eton, and the beautifully fitting +silk pantaloons, as he stood as almost all men and boys do, with their +coat-tails near the fire, excited my silent though excessive +admiration." + +When he was ten years of age, Shelley went to school at Sion house, +Brentford, an academy kept by Dr. Greenlaw, and frequented by the sons +of London tradesmen, who proved but uncongenial companions to his gentle +spirit. It is fortunate for posterity that one of his biographers, his +second cousin Captain Medwin, was his schoolfellow at Sion House; for to +his recollections we owe some details of great value. Medwin tells us +that Shelley learned the classic languages almost by intuition, while he +seemed to be spending his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds as +they sailed across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketches +of fir-trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he was +subject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, he +often lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. His +favourite amusement was novel-reading; and to the many "blue books" from +the Minerva press devoured by him in his boyhood, we may ascribe the +style and tone of his first compositions. For physical sports he showed +no inclination. "He passed among his school-fellows as a strange and +unsocial being; for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and the +other boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of our +prison-court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pace +backwards and forwards--I think I see him now--along the southern wall, +indulging in various vague and undefined ideas, the chaotic elements, if +I may say so, of what afterwards produced so beautiful a world." + +Two of Shelley's most important biographical compositions undoubtedly +refer to this period of his boyhood. The first is the passage in the +Prelude to "Laon and Cythna" which describes his suffering among the +unsympathetic inmates of a school:-- + + Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first + The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. + I do remember well the hour which burst + My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, + When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, + And wept, I knew not why; until there rose + From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! + Were but one echo from a world of woes-- + The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. + + And then I clasped my hands and looked around-- + --But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, + Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground-- + So without shame I spake:--"I will be wise, + And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies + Such power, for I grow weary to behold + The selfish and the strong still tyrannize + Without reproach or check." I then controlled + My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. + + And from that hour did I with earnest thought + Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, + Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught + I cared to learn, but from that secret store + Wrought linked armour for my soul, before + It might walk forth to war among mankind. + Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more + Within me, till there came upon my mind + A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. + +The second is a fragment on friendship preserved by Hogg. After defining +that kind of passionate attachment which often precedes love in fervent +natures, he proceeds: "I remember forming an attachment of this kind at +school. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this +took pace; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or +twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a +character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of +human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded +within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, +inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him +since my school-boy days; but either I confound my present recollections +with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and +utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and +winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so +deep, that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from +my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred +sentiments of friendship." How profound was the impression made on his +imagination and his feelings by this early friendship, may again be +gathered from a passage in his note upon the antique group of Bacchus +and Ampelus at Florence. "Look, the figures are walking with a +sauntering and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, as you +may have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, walking in some +grassy spot of the play-ground with that tender friendship for each +other which the age inspires." + +These extracts prove beyond all question that the first contact with the +outer world called into activity two of Shelley's strongest moral +qualities--his hatred of tyranny and brutal force in any form, and his +profound sentiment of friendship. The admiring love of women, which +marked him no less strongly, and which made him second only to +Shakespere in the sympathetic delineation of a noble feminine ideal, had +been already developed by his deep affection for his mother and sisters. +It is said that he could not receive a letter from them without manifest +joy. + +"Shelley," says Medwin, "was at this time tall for his age, slightly and +delicately built, and rather narrow-chested, with a complexion fair and +ruddy, a face rather long than oval. His features, not regularly +handsome, were set off by a profusion of silky brown hair, that curled +naturally. The expression of his countenance was one of exceeding +sweetness and innocence. His blue eyes were very large and prominent. +They were at times, when he was abstracted, as he often was in +contemplation, dull, and as it were, insensible to external objects; at +others they flashed with the fire of intelligence. His voice was soft +and low, but broken in its tones,--when anything much interested him, +harsh and immodulated; and this peculiarity he never lost. He was +naturally calm, but when he heard of or read of some flagrant act of +injustice, oppression, or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks of +horror and indignation were visible in his countenance." + +Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained unaltered +through the short space of life allowed him. Loving, innocent, +sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his companions, strongly +moralized after a peculiar and inborn type of excellence, drawing his +inspirations from Nature and from his own soul in solitude, Shelley +passed across the stage of this world, attended by a splendid vision +which sustained him at a perilous height above the kindly race of men. +The penalty of this isolation he suffered in many painful episodes. The +reward he reaped in a measure of more authentic prophecy, and in a +nobler realization of his best self, than could be claimed by any of his +immediate contemporaries. + + + +CHAPTER 2. + +ETON AND OXFORD. + +In 1805 Shelley went from Sion House to Eton. At this time Dr. Keate was +headmaster and Shelley's tutor was a Mr. Bethel, "one of the dullest men +in the establishment." At Eton Shelley was not popular either with his +teachers or his elder school-fellows, although the boys of his own age +are said to have adored him. "He was all passion," writes Mrs. Shelley; +"passionate in his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love:" and +this vehemence of temperament he displayed by organizing a rebellion +against fagging, which no doubt won for him the applause of his juniors +and equals. It was not to be expected that a lad intolerant of rule and +disregardful of restriction, who neglected punctuality in the +performance of his exercises, while he spent his leisure in translating +half of Pliny's history, should win the approbation of pedagogues. At +the same time the inspired opponent of the fagging system, the scorner +of games and muscular amusements, could not hope to find much favour +with such martinets of juvenile convention as a public school is wont to +breed. At Eton, as elsewhere, Shelley's uncompromising spirit brought +him into inconvenient contact with a world of vulgar usage, while his +lively fancy invested the commonplaces of reality with dark hues +borrowed from his own imagination. Mrs. Shelley says of him, "Tamed by +affection, but unconquered by blows, what chance was there that Shelley +should be happy at a public school?" This sentence probably contains the +pith of what he afterwards remembered of his own school life, and there +is no doubt that a nature like his, at once loving and high-spirited, +had much to suffer. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that at Eton +there were any serious blows to bear, or to assume that laws of love +which might have led a spirit so gentle as Shelley's, were adapted to +the common stuff of which the English boy is formed. The latter mistake +Shelley made continually throughout his youth; and only the advance of +years tempered his passionate enthusiasm into a sober zeal for the +improvement of mankind by rational methods. We may also trace at this +early epoch of his life that untamed intellectual ambition--that neglect +of the immediate and detailed for the transcendental and +universal--which was a marked characteristic of his genius, leading him +to fly at the highest while he overleaped the facts of ordinary human +life. "From his earliest years," says Mrs. Shelley, "all his amusements +and occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the term, lawless +nature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a boy, but as a man; +and so with manly powers and childish wit, he dared and achieved +attempts that none of his comrades could even have conceived. His +understanding and the early development of imagination never permitted +him to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyranny +prevented him from paying due attention to his school duties. But he was +always actively employed; and although his endeavours were prosecuted +with puerile precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantly +directed to those great objects which have employed the thoughts of the +greatest among men; and though his studies were not followed up +according to school discipline, they were not the less diligently +applied to." This high-soaring ambition was the source both of his +weakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with the +world of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to extort her +secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the philanthropist +who dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence, and the poet who +invented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of grandeur too colossal to be +animated with dramatic life. + +A strong interest in experimental science had been already excited in +him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grew +into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of the +simpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure--the more so +perhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk of +an old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he was +amusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room and +received a severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During the +holidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. "His own +hands and clothes," says Miss Shelley, "were constantly stained and +corroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable that some day the +house would be burned down, or some serious mischief happen to himself +or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for science +Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first +conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost +wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be +wrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was +fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. +When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it gave +him the acutest pleasure: and this is highly characteristic of the +genius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the life of life +withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he seems to have +delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar microscope, and +mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without taking the trouble +to study any of its branches systematically. In his later years he +abandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence of them occurs in +that most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter to Maria +Gisborne." + +While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not +wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a +correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his +contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the +latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the +rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at a +glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was no +less astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae were +indeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we may +trace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also his +frequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artistic +execution. + +That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may be +gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his Oxford +rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was frequently +visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that he spend the +40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi," on a farewell supper +to eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be quoted from his +own poem, the "Boat on the Serchio," to prove that he did not entertain +a merely disagreeable memory of his school life. (Forman's edition, +volume 4 page 115.) Yet the general experience of Eton must have been +painful; and it is sad to read of this gentle and pure spirit being +goaded by his coarser comrades into fury, or coaxed to curse his father +and the king for their amusement. It may be worth mentioning that he was +called "the Atheist" at Eton; and though Hogg explains this by saying +that "the Atheist" was an official character among the boys, selected +from time to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is not +improbable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for him +a title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyish +incantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms would +scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tinged +his imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the +"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes the following reference to +circumstances which might otherwise be trivial:-- + + While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped + Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, + And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing + Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. + I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, + I was not heard, I saw them not-- + When, musing deeply on the lot + Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing + All vital things that wake to bring + News of birds and blossoming,-- + Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; + I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! + +Among the Eton tutors was one whose name will always be revered by +Shelley's worshippers; for he alone discerned the rare gifts of the +strange and solitary boy, and Shelley loved him. Dr. Lind was an old +man, a physician, and a student of chemistry. Shelley spent long hours +at his house, conversing with him, and receiving such instruction in +philosophy and science as the grey-haired scholar could impart. The +affection which united them must have been of no common strength or +quality; for when Shelley lay ill of a fever at Field Place, and had +conceived the probably ill-founded notion that his father intended to +place him in a mad-house, he managed to convey a message to his friend +at Eton, on the receipt of which Dr. Lind travelled to Horsham, and by +his sympathy and skill restored the sick boy's confidence. It may +incidentally be pointed out that this story, credited as true by Lady +Shelley in her Memorials, shows how early an estrangement had begun +between the poet and his father. We look, moreover, vainly for that +mother's influence which might have been so beneficial to the boy in +whom "love and life were twins, born at one birth." From Dr. Lind +Shelley not only received encouragement to pursue his chemical studies; +but he also acquired the habit of corresponding with persons unknown to +him, whose opinions he might be anxious to discover or dispute. This +habit, as we shall see in the sequel, determined Shelley's fate on two +important occasions of his life. In return for the help extended to him +at Eton, Shelley conferred undying fame on Dr. Lind; the characters of +Zonaras in "Prince Athanase," and of the hermit in "Laon and Cythna," +are portraits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend. + +The months which elapsed between Eton and Oxford were an important +period in Shelley's life. At this time a boyish liking for his cousin, +Harriet Grove, ripened into real attachment; and though there was +perhaps no formal engagement between them, the parents on both sides +looked with approval on their love. What it concerns us to know about +this early passion, is given in a letter from a brother of Miss Grove. +"Bysshe was at that time (just after leaving Eton) more attached to my +sister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlight +walks we four had at Strode and also at St. Irving's; that, I think, was +the name of the place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham." For some +time after the date mentioned in this letter, Shelley and Miss Grove +kept up an active correspondence; but the views he expressed on +speculative subjects soon began to alarm her. She consulted her mother +and her father, and the engagement was broken off. The final separation +does not seem to have taken place until the date of Shelley's expulsion +from Oxford; and not the least cruel of the pangs he had to suffer at +that period, was the loss of one to whom he had given his whole heart +unreservedly. The memory of Miss Grove long continued to haunt his +imagination, nor is there much doubt that his first unhappy marriage was +contracted while the wound remained unhealed. The name of Harriet +Westbrook and something in her face reminded him of Harriet Grove; it is +even still uncertain to which Harriet the dedication of Queen Mab is +addressed. (See Medwin, volume 1 page 68.) + +In his childhood Shelley scribbled verses with fluency by no means +unusual in the case of forward boys; and we have seen that at Sion House +he greedily devoured the sentimental novels of the day. His favourite +poets at the time of which I am now writing, were Monk Lewis and +Southey; his favourite books in prose were romances by Mrs. Radcliffe +and Godwin. He now began to yearn for fame and publicity. Miss Shelley +speaks of a play written by her brother and her sister Elizabeth, which +was sent to Matthews the comedian, and courteously returned as unfit for +acting. She also mentions a little volume of her own verses, which the +boy had printed with the tell-tale name of "H-ll-n Sh-ll-y" on the +title-page. Medwin gives a long account of a poem on the story of the +Wandering Jew, composed by him in concert with Shelley during the winter +of 1809-1810. They sent the manuscript to Thomas Campbell, who returned +it with the observation that it contained but two good lines:-- + + It seemed as if an angel's sigh + Had breathed the plaintive symphony. + +Undeterred by this adverse criticism, Shelley subsequently offered "The +Wandering Jew" to two publishers, Messrs. Ballantyne and Co. of +Edinburgh, and Mr. Stockdale of Pall Mall; but it remained in MS. at +Edinburgh till 1831, when a portion was printed in "Fraser's Magazine." + +Just before leaving Eton he finished a novel of "Zastrozzi", which some +critics trace to its source in "Zofloya the Moor," perused by him at +Sion House. The most astonishing fact about this incoherent medley of +mad sentiment is that it served to furnish forth the 40-pound Eton +supper already spoken of, that it was duly ushered into the world of +letters by Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson on the 5th of June, 1810, and +that it was seriously reviewed. The dates of Shelley's publications now +come fast and frequent. In the late summer of 1810 he introduced himself +to Mr. J.J. Stockdale, the then fashionable publisher of poems and +romances, at his house of business in Pall Mall. With characteristic +impetuosity the young author implored assistance in a difficulty. He had +commissioned a printer in Horsham to strike off the astounding number of +1480 copies of a volume of poems; and he had no money to pay the +printer's bill. Would Stockdale help him out of this dilemma, by taking +up the quires and duly ushering the book into the world? Throughout his +life Shelley exercised a wonderful fascination over the people with whom +he came in contact, and almost always won his way with them as much by +personal charm as by determined and impassioned will. Accordingly on +this occasion Stockdale proved accommodating. The Horsham printer was +somehow satisfied; and on the 17th of September, 1810, the little book +came out with the title of "Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire." This +volume has disappeared; and much fruitless conjecture has been expended +upon the question of Shelley's collaborator in his juvenile attempt. +Cazire stands for some one; probably it is meant to represent a woman's +name, and that woman may have been either Elizabeth Shelley or Harriet +Grove. The "Original Poetry" had only been launched a week, when +Stockdale discovered on a closer inspection of the book that it +contained some verses well known to the world as the production of M.G. +Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole edition +was suppressed--not, however, before about one hundred copies had passed +into circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty +larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied +Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to +break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issued +Shelley's second novel from his press, and entered into negotiations +with him for the publication of more poetry. The new romance was named +"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian." This tale, no less unreadable than +"Zastrozzi," and even more chaotic in its plan, contained a good deal of +poetry, which has been incorporated in the most recent editions of +Shelley's works. A certain interest attaches to it as the first known +link between Shelley and William Godwin, for it was composed under the +influence of the latter's novel, "St. Leon." The title, moreover, +carries us back to those moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded to +above. Shelley's earliest attempts in literature have but little value +for the student of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate the +psychology of genius and its wayward growth. Their intrinsic merit is +almost less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusal +the course which the future poet of "The Cenci" and "Epipsychidion" was +to take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great +qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want +of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But +while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious +critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering +how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a +germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley +discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the "Hours +of Idleness." + +In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner of +University College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made the +acquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in his +subsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, if +not in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellous +youth. Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament and +tastes. His feet were always planted on the earth, while Shelley flew +aloft to heaven with singing robes around him, or the mantel of the +prophet on his shoulders. (He told Trelawny that he had been attracted +to Shelley simply by his "rare talents as a scholar;" and Trelawny has +recorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend was faithful, +in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. This +testimony is extremely valuable.) Hogg had much of the cynic in his +nature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist. +Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to +eminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a +staunch Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine +poet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preserved +for us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable for +the vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate Shelley's +course of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. No novel +indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate and +satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of +the student life enjoyed together for a few short months by the +inseparable friends. To make extracts from a masterpiece of such +consummate workmanship is almost painful. Future biographers of Shelley, +writing on a scale adequate to the greatness of their subject, will be +content to lay their pens down for a season at this point, and let Hogg +tell the tale in his own wayward but inimitable fashion. I must confine +myself to a few quotations and a barren abstract, referring my readers +to the ever-memorable pages 48--286 of Hogg's first volume, for the life +that cannot be transferred to these. + +"At the commencement of Michaelmas term," says this biographer, "that +is, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened one day to sit +next to a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall. His +figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at our +table, where all were very young. He seemed thoughtful and absent. He +ate little, and had no acquaintance with any one." The two young men +began a conversation, which turned upon the respective merits of German +and Italian poetry, a subject they neither of them knew anything about. +After dinner it was continued in Hogg's rooms, where Shelley soon led +the talk to his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a +slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to +examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very +extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was +slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. +He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. +His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode +of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were +abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more +frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost +feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by +exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. +His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were, in fact, +unusually small; yet the last APPEARED of a remarkable bulk, for his +hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if +I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with +his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks +unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times when +it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in +costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our +soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not +symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the +whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an +enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met +with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less +beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a +gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of +profound religious veneration, that characterizes the best works, and +chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls), of +the great masters of Florence and of Rome. I recognized the very +peculiar expression in these wonderful productions long afterwards, and +with a satisfaction mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the +decease of him in whose countenance I had first observed it." + +In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the impression +of Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated by +Trelawny's recollections of a later date. "There were many striking +contrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the most +remarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness with +agility--of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in stepping +across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a +smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable +manner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase +of an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper +steps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally to disturb the +composure of a well-bred footman; on the contrary, he would often glide +without collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerring +dexterity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the most +arduous and uncertain ways." + +This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the descriptions +furnished by other biographers, who had the privilege of Shelley's +friendship. His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair +was brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled +face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted on +all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is +reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, +although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity +of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal +fascination. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley's +voice "was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh and +discordant." This is strongly stated; but, though the terms are +certainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first +impression made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable mass of +convergent testimony to the fact that Shelley's voice was high pitched, +and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream. The epithets +"shrill," "piercing," "penetrating," frequently recur in the +descriptions given of it. At the same time its quality seems to have +been less dissonant than thrilling; there is abundance of evidence to +prove that he could modulate it exquisitely in the reading of poetry, +and its tone proved no obstacle to the persuasive charms of his +eloquence in conversation. Like all finely tempered natures, he vibrated +in harmony with the subjects of his thought. Excitement made his +utterance shrill and sharp. Deep feeling of the sense of beauty lowered +its tone to richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy with +his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This +peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different +sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of +his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations +of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and +unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights +of human thought. + +The acquaintance begun that October evening soon ripened into close +friendship. Shelley and Hogg from this time forward spent a large part +of their days and nights together in common studies, walks and +conversations. It was their habit to pass the morning, each in his own +rooms, absorbed in private reading. At one o'clock they met and lunched, +and then started for long rambles in the country. Shelley frequently +carried pistols with him upon these occasions, and would stop to fix his +father's franks upon convenient trees and shoot at them. The practice of +pistol shooting, adopted so early in life, was afterwards one of his +favourite amusements in the company of Byron. Hogg says that in his use +of fire-arms he was extraordinarily careless. "How often have I lamented +that Nature, which so rarely bestows upon the world a creature endowed +with such marvellous talents, ungraciously rendered the gift less +precious by implanting a fatal taste for perilous recreations, and a +thoughtlessness in the pursuit of them, that often caused his existence +from one day to another to seem in itself miraculous." On their return +from these excursions the two friends, neither of whom cared for dining +in the College Hall, drank tea and supped together, Shelley's rooms +being generally chosen as the scene of their symposia. + +These rooms are described as a perfect palace of confusion--chaos on +chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, +unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It was +perilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less perchance a +seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at the +bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to cut the lids of wooden +boxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for in +his vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what he +found convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talked +and read until late in the night. Their chief studies at this time were +in Locke and Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias toward +metaphysical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read the +School Logic with avidity, and practised himself without intermission in +dialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed by other +testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of the essential +bearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended to personal or +captious arguments, and was Socratically bent on following the dialogue +wherever it might lead, without regard for consequences. Plato was +another of their favourite authors; but Hogg expressly tells us that +they only approached the divine philosopher through the medium of +translations. It was not until a later period that Shelley studied his +dialogues in the original: but the substance of them, seen through Mdme. +Dacier's version, acted powerfully on the poet's sympathetic intellect. +In fact, although at the time he had adopted the conclusions of +materialism, he was at heart all through his life an idealist. Therefore +the mixture of the poet and the sage in Plato fascinated him. The +doctrine of anamnesis, which offers so strange a vista to speculative +reverie, by its suggestion of an earlier existence in which our +knowledge was acquired, took a strong hold upon his imagination; he +would stop in the streets to gaze wistfully at babies, wondering whether +their newly imprisoned souls were not replete with the wisdom stored up +in a previous life. + +In the acquisition of knowledge he was then as ever unrelaxing. "No +student ever read more assiduously. He was to be found, book in hand, at +all hours; reading in season and out of season; at table, in bed, and +especially during a walk; not only in the quiet country, and in retired +paths; not only at Oxford, in the public walks, and High Street, but in +the most crowded thoroughfares of London. Nor was he less absorbed by +the volume that was open before him, in Cheapside, in Cranbourne Alley, +or in Bond Street, than in a lonely lane, or a secluded library. +Sometimes a vulgar fellow would attempt to insult or annoy the eccentric +student in passing. Shelley always avoided the malignant interruption by +stepping aside with his vast and quiet agility." And again:--"I never +beheld eyes that devoured the pages more voraciously than his; I am +convinced that two-thirds of the period of the day and night were often +employed in reading. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that out of +twenty-four hours, he frequently read sixteen. At Oxford, his diligence +in this respect was exemplary, but it greatly increased afterwards, and +I sometimes thought that he carried it to a pernicious excess: I am +sure, at least, that I was unable to keep pace with him." With Shelley +study was a passion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entrance +into a thrice-hallowed sanctuary. "The irreverent many cannot comprehend +the awe--the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine the +enthusiasm--nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of things +visible to the bodily eye, express the mighty emotion that inwardly +agitated him, when he approached, for the first time, a volume which he +believed to be replete with the recondite and mystic philosophy of +antiquity: his cheeks glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frame +trembled, and his entire attention was immediately swallowed up in the +depths of contemplation. The rapid and vigorous conversion of his soul +to intellect can only be compared with the instantaneous ignition and +combustion, which dazzle the sight, when a bundle of dry reeds, or other +light inflammable substance, is thrown upon a fire already rich with +accumulated heat." + +As at Eton, so at Oxford, Shelley refused to keep the beaten track of +prescribed studies, or to run in ordinary grooves of thought. The mere +fact that Aristotle was a duty, seems to have disgusted him with the +author of the Organon, from whom, had his works been prohibited to +undergraduates, he would probably have been eager to learn much. For +mathematics and jurisprudence he evinced a marked distaste. The common +business of the English Parliament had no attraction for him, and he +read few newspapers. While his mind was keenly interested in great +political questions, he could not endure the trivial treatment of them +in the daily press, and cared far more for principles than for the +incidents of party warfare. Here again he showed that impatience of +detail, and that audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the source +of both his weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion of +a Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had been +suggested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, he +could never bring himself to mix with the rabble of the House. It is +none the less true, however, that he entertained some vague notion of +eventually succeeding to his father's seat. + +Combined with his eager intellectual activity, there was something +intermittent and fitful in the working of his mental faculties. Hogg, in +particular, mentions one of his habits in a famous passage, which, since +it brings the two friends vividly before us, may here be quoted. "I was +enable to continue my studies afterwards in the evening, in consequence +of a very remarkable peculiarity. My young and energetic friend was then +overcome by extreme drowsiness, which speedily and completely vanquished +him; he would sleep from two to four hours, often so soundly that his +slumbers resembled a deep lethargy; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, +but more commonly stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like a +cat; and his little round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that I +used to wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposed +some shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect; for the sleeper +usually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot where +the fire glowed the brightest. His torpor was generally profound, but he +would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At +six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of a most +animated narrative, or of earnest discussion; and he would lie buried in +entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he +would suddenly start up, and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, and +passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once +into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own +composition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energy +that were often quite painful." + +Shelley's moral qualities are described with no less enthusiasm than his +intellectual and physical beauty by the friend from whom I have already +drawn so largely. Love was the root and basis of his nature: this love, +first developed as domestic affection, next as friendship, then as a +youth's passion, now began to shine with steady lustre as an +all-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is something inevitably +chilling in the words "benevolence" and "philanthropy." A disillusioned +world is inclined to look with languid approbation on the former, and to +disbelieve in the latter. Therefore I will not use them to describe that +intense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which throughout his life +led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of +his fellow-creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions of +humanity made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds of +unnumbered charities. I will rather collect from the page of his +friend's biography a few passages recording the first impression of his +character, the memory of which may be carried by the reader through the +following brief record of his singular career:-- + +"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years has +shown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation of +knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that +marked them, and beamed forth in the whole deportment of that +extraordinary boy, are not less astonishing than they would have been if +the whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for these +high qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel." + +"In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more completely +developed than in Shelley; in no being was the perception of right and +of wrong more acute. + +"As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of +his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life +most conspicuous." + +"I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the +principle of veneration was so strong." + +"I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens +of gentlemen; but with all due deference for those admirable persons +(may my candour and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm that +Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never +wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various +observances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility." + +"Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant than would +appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at a +coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest, or uncleanly; +in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness +pre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted by +exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, and +perhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness--possibly the more because he +was himself utterly incapable of pleasantry." + +"I could never discern in him any more than two fixed principles. The +first was a strong irrepressible love of liberty; of liberty in the +abstract, and somewhat after the pattern of the ancient republics, +without reference to the English constitution, respecting which he knew +little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was an +equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more especially +of religious opinions; of toleration, complete, entire, universal, +unlimited; and, as a deduction and corollary from which latter +principle, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, +public or private." + +The testimony in the foregoing extracts as to Shelley's purity and +elevation of moral character is all the stronger, because it is given by +a man not over-inclined to praise, and of a temperament as unlike the +poet's as possible. If we were to look only upon this side of his +portrait, we should indeed be almost forced to use the language of his +most enthusiastic worshippers, and call him an archangel. But it must be +admitted that, though so pure and gentle and exalted, Shelley's virtues +were marred by his eccentricity, by something at times approaching +madness, which paralyzed his efficiency by placing him in a glaringly +false relation to some of the best men in the world around him. He +possessed certain good qualities in excess; for, though it sounds +paradoxical, it is none the less true that a man may be too tolerant, +too fond of liberty: and it was precisely the extravagance of these +virtues in Shelley which drove him into acts and utterances so +antagonistic to society as to be intolerable. + +Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. His +genius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those double +stars which dart blue and red rays of light: for it was governed by two +luminaries, poetry and metaphysics; and at this time the latter seems to +have been in the ascendant. It is, however, interesting to learn that he +read and re-read Landor's "Gebir"--stronger meat than either Southey's +epics or the ghost-lyrics of Monk Lewis. Hogg found him one day busily +engaged in correcting proofs of some original poems. Shelley asked his +friend what he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might be +possible by a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. +The idea took the young poet's fancy; and the friends between them soon +effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they +became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now +bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the +poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered? +Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George the +Third's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could be +found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited +by an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke no less than the +authors of it. He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; and +before long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. It +sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly +credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It was +indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of +nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the +best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous +Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The name +of the supposititious nephew reminds us of "Original Poems" by Victor +and Cazire, and raises the question whether the poems in that lost +volume may not have partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty. + +Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither so +innocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After leaving +Eton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of corresponding +with distinguished persons whom he did not personally know. Thus we find +him about this time addressing Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. +Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He plied his correspondents with all kinds of +questions; and as the dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, he +now endeavoured to engage them in discussions on philosophical and +religious topics. We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke, +Hume, and the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to +his nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow +nominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard +all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, as +still open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to be +the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, he +passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regard +to Christianity, into an attitude of vehement antagonism. With a view to +securing answers to his missives, he printed a short abstract of Hume's +and other arguments against the existence of a Deity, presented in a +series of propositions, and signed with a mathematically important +"Q.E.D." This document he forwarded to his proposed antagonists, +expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politely +requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious +correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless +severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little +pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its +proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already +described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the +"Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, however, actually +offered for sale. + +A copy of this syllabus reached a Fellow of another college, who made +the Master of the University acquainted with the fact. On the morning of +March 25, 1811, Shelley was sent for to the Senior Common Room, and +asked whether he acknowledged himself to be the author of the obnoxious +pamphlet. On his refusal to answer this question, he was served with a +formal sentence of expulsion duly drawn up and sealed. The college +authorities have been blamed for unfair dealing in this matter. It is +urged that they ought to have proceeded by the legal method of calling +witnesses; and that the sentence was not only out of all proportion to +the offence, but that it ought not to have been executed till persuasion +had been tried. With regard to the former indictment, I do not think +that a young man still in statu pupillari, who refused to purge himself +of what he must have known to be a serious charge, had any reason to +expect from his tutors the formalities of an English court of law. There +is no doubt that the Fellows were satisfied of his being the real +author; else they could not have ventured on so summary a measure as +expulsion. Their question was probably intended to give the culprit an +occasion for apology, of which they foresaw he would not avail himself. +With regard to the second, it is true that Shelley was amenable to +kindness, and that gentle and wise treatment from men whom he respected +might possibly have brought him to retract his syllabus. But it must be +remembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart; and they +were probably aware of this. He was a dexterous, impassioned reasoner, +whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. During +his short period of residence, moreover, he had not shown himself so +tractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, who prefer +conformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely that they were not +averse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous to the peace of their +society; and now they had a good occasion. Nor was it to be expected +that the champion and apostle of Atheism--and Shelley was certainly +both, in spite of Hogg's attempts to tone down the purpose of his +document--should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat +livings and ecclesiastical dignities. Real blame, however, attaches to +these men: first, for their dulness to discern Shelley's amiable +qualities; and, secondly, for the prejudgment of the case implied in the +immediate delivery of their sentence. Both Hogg and Shelley accused +them, besides, of a gross brutality, which was, to say the least, +unseemly on so serious an occasion. At the beginning of this century the +learning and the manners of Oxford dons were at a low ebb; and the +Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, +ignorantly but after their own kind, in this matter of Shelley's +expulsion. $Non ragionem di lor, ma guarda e passa. Hogg, who stood by +his friend manfully at this crisis, and dared the authorities to deal +with him as they had dealt with Shelley, adding that they had just as +much real proof to act upon in his case, and intimating his intention of +returning the same answer as to the authorship of the pamphlet, was +likewise expelled. The two friends left Oxford together by coach on the +morning of the 26th of March. + +Shelley felt his expulsion acutely. At Oxford he had enjoyed the +opportunities of private reading which the University afforded in those +days of sleepy studies and innocuous examinations. He delighted in the +security of his "oak," and above all things he found pleasure in the +society of his one chosen friend. He was now obliged to exchange these +good things for the tumult and discomfort of London. His father, after +clumsily attempting compromises, had forbidden his return to Field +Place. The whole fabric of his former life was broken up. The last hope +of renewing his engagement with his cousin had to be abandoned. His +pecuniary position was precarious, and in a short time he was destined +to lose the one friend who had so generously shared his fate. Yet the +notion of recovering his position as a student in one of our great +Universities, of softening his father's indignation, or of ameliorating +his present circumstances by the least concession, never seems to have +occurred to him. He had suffered in the cause of truth and liberty, and +he willingly accepted his martyrdom for conscience' sake. + + + +CHAPTER 3. + +LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE. + +It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and analyse +the substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardinal +characteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams and +conventions, which passed too easily into impatient rejection of +established forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold of +squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that then +passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the opposite +pole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsiderate +negation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance, +his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logical +sincerity, combined to make him the Quixotic champion of extreme +opinions. He was too fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend his +judgment, too convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, to +mature his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, he +hoped to take the fortresses of "Anarch Custom" by storm at the first +assault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, Laon or Lionel, +whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of despotism, as the sun +thaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl the +glove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face--to sow the "Necessity of +Atheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his +poetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society must +learn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted with +a touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, +he strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crust +of dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to have +occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches that +conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away the +weft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imagination +there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, that +behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal City +of the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures were +certain to be equally fortunate. + +Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the blended +truths and falsehoods through which the mind of man must gradually win +its way from the obscurity of myths into the clearness of positive +knowledge, for ever toiling and for ever foiled, and forced to content +itself with the increasing consciousness of limitations. Brimming over +with love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with the conditions +under which they actually think and feel. Could he but dethrone the +Anarch Custom, the millennium, he argued, would immediately arrive; nor +did he stop to think how different was the fibre of his own soul from +that of the unnumbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of what +he recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified +experience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a +saving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no place +in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising, +shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuries +of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survived +the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, and +who have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehend +the vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley +in his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital +faith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible--faith +in the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel +of liberty, fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature; +faith in a love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibility of +man; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms; faith +in affection as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. The +man who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word an +Atheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced his hatred +of a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of kings and priests +for the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. As he told his friend +Trelawny, he used the word Atheism "to express his abhorrence of +superstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defiance +of injustice." But Shelley believed too much to be consistently +agnostic. He believed so firmly and intensely in his own religion--a +kind of passionate positivism, a creed which seemed to have no God +because it was all God--that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy +accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break +through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an +Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received +conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of +cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was +an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving +the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless +utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual +heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too +religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied. + +The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which attaches +to all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of convention, and +enthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was marred, however, +by extravagance, crudity, and presumption. Much that he would fain have +destroyed because he found it customary, was solid, true, and +beneficial. Much that he thought it desirable to substitute, was +visionary, hollow, and pernicious. He lacked the touchstone of mature +philosophy, whereby to separate the pinchbeck from the gold of social +usage; and in his intense enthusiasm he lost his hold on common sense, +which might have saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. +The positive side of his creed remains precious, not because it was +logical, or scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal, +fervently felt, and penetrated with the whole life-force of an +incomparable nature. Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon his +path amid the glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. The form the +seal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was not +born to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort. + + Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, + Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza. + +These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, +when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his +confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was +overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without +damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent +speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, +there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might have +shone that light of aspiration which during his turbid youth burned +somewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the smoke of mere +rebelliousness and contradiction. + +Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, soon +after their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: "it reminded +him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom." He was further fascinated by +a gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and grapes, which adorned the +parlour; and vowed that he would stay there for ever. "For ever," was a +word often upon Shelley's lips in the course of his chequered life; and +yet few men have been subject to so many sudden changes through the +buffetings of fortune from without and the inconstancy of their own +purpose, than he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace and +note with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of his +innumerable temporary residences. A month had not elapsed before Hogg +left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelley +abode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, a +bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poetic +imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer." + +The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but not +unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy +Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from +the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his +intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him +by his father. For Paley's, or as Mr. Shelley called him "Palley's," +Evidences he expressed unbounded contempt. The breach between them +gradually widened. Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect of +cutting off supplies; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustained +himself by a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley's +last and best biographer, Mr. W.M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of the +poet's behaviour as a son. Shelley did not treat his father with the +common consideration due from youth to age; and the only instances of +unpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes of +his conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was really +more unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling from +the realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of his +father amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicions +with regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so +just and gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation, +whether by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by a +gradually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insoluble +problem. We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his father +so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on one +occasion, but that, while at Eton he had already become possessed by a +dark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr. +Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expected +monstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman was +nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than once +occurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in his +history, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed +itself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process of +recovery. But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof to +be more than passingly alluded to. + +At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buy +food. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to support +him: and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school on +Clapham Common. It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyranny +displayed itself on two occasions. "One day," writes Miss Hellen +Shelley, "his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one of +our throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour. He expressed +great disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sisters +should be so punished. Another time he found me, I think, in an iron +collar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my +opinion. It was not worn as a punishment, but because I POKED; but +Bysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be +discontinued immediately." The acquaintance which he now made with one +of his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most important +results. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, +1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably +good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful +brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the +daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named +"Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, +called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant +hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. +Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a +mother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father, +welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless +for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family's +displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a +baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should +look upon him with disfavour. + +Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning's school and +at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he +expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his +theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the +disinterested and the free." At first she seems to have been horrified +at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not +overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an +evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had +the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not +seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the +absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society. +Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious +accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to +rouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the +seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has been +able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was +so irksome that she contemplated suicide. + +During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more than usually +erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. In +the month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father. +He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made +him of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was +instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent +some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, +Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one +flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North +Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw +the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much +preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between his +old affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest in +Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriage +between his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written to +Hogg at this period (volume 1 pages 387-418) are exceedingly important +and interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings +and the almost morbid excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily so +badly edited, whether designedly or by accident, that it would be +dangerous to draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, they +raise injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a proper +assignment of dates and explanation. + +Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plunged +him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest +moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer +with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate +juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of +Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet +Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in +their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT in +love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." +He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before +you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly come +to York, but HARRIET WESTBROOK will decide whether now or in three +weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by +endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice: +resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify +Mr. W. in vain! And in consequence of my advice SHE has thrown herself +upon MY protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a +distinction!--I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have I +said? I declare, quite LUDICROUS. I advised her to resist. She wrote to +say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and +threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200 pounds a year; when +we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Gratitude and +admiration, all demand that I should love her FOR EVER. We shall see you +at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am +now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to +me at Graham's, 18 Sackville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently +published by Mr. W.M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, February 1878), +we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her +preceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms. + +It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not deeply in +love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was not +prepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced him to take it; and +fourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having been +ill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful passion, the hatred +of tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions at +defiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidence +called forth his gratitude. Her choice of him for a protector flattered +him: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance a +outrance. There are many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope with +Harriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and +unsophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love. + +In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together by +Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once expresses the +utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge of +contracting marriage with a woman whom he did not passionately love, and +who had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing to +observe that even Shelley, fearless and uncompromising as he was in +conduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he so +eloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness was +honourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and in his +tender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon his +generosity. (See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hogg 2 page 63) for +another defence of his conduct. "We agreed," etc.) + +"My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date August 15, 1811, +from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his +elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself. +How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. In my leisure moments for +thought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered the +important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of +love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial +souls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of +power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of +impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice +which the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you have +urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that +I suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon to +evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to +matrimony, not from temporizing, but from YOUR arguments; nor, much as I +wish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret the +prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or assertion. No. +The ONE argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the +sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can +give--this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring +submission to your superior intellect." + +Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was morally +justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often +haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with +regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to +argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square +with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, +having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, he +should have gone on denouncing an institution which he recognized in his +own practice. The conclusion seems to be that, though he despised +accepted usage, and would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suit +his heart's desire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practical +good sense were stronger than his theories. + +A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C.H. Grove, gives the details of +Harriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with +Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his +companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one +morning--I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been +September--in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch +Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches +start, when they departed in the northern mail for York." From York the +young couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were +married according to the formalities of the Scotch law. + +Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father's +eyes--a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were at once cut off +from the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainly +dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. Even +Jew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughter +wedded to the heir of several thousands a year, buttoned up his pockets, +either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent, +or because he was not certain about Shelley's expectations. He +afterwards made the Shelleys an allowance of 200 pounds a year, and +early in 1812 Shelley says that he is in receipt of twice that income. +Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to the +extent of the sum above mentioned. + +In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happily +enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined them +early in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity. +Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a fine +voice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed to +read and comment on her favourite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleep +during the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed with +slumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical +paradoxes with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach +Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story by +Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one of +Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one of +Shelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless of +their volume or their cost. These he was wont to leave behind, when the +moment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that, +as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifs +and strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This +quiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in the +neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's +caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind +is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and +that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much +given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in +sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet. + +They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obliged +to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, and +Shelley's programme of life at this period imperatively required the +society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the three +friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's +company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud +novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the +tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune +felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of +lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an +expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some +terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was +anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, +which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. He +suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of +Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediate +allowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail the +land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley +recognized the truth that property is a trust far more than a +possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, +such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn +being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among many +instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the bare +necessities of life, for principle. + +On his return to York, Shelley found a new inmate established in their +lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his +destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet +believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and +propriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned +her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and +her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the +friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an +elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,--dark, bright eyes; +jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it +merited,--almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so +good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of +this woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley had +afterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. "She was older than I +had expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely face +was seamed with the smallpox, and of a dead white, as faces so much +marked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a mass of boiled +rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes were +dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but +coarse; and there was the admired crop--a long crop, much like the tail +of a horse--a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and +constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, +in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial +young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew +Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters +of Judah." + +This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, in +Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with +merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is +necessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet to +fancy that she was a victim of her nerves, how she checked her favourite +studies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to a +Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" was +as often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb were +in her hands. + +The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; but it +is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure +which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. +One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelley +had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, and +refers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation of +Goethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. McCarthy to have been a letter +from the poet to his friend, in confirmation of his opinion. (McCarthy's +Shelley's Early Life, page 117.) However this may be, the precipitation +with which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving Hogg notice of +their resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his biography. + +The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged +lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. Probably +Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men +who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of +its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's +poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if +he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he +was disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making his +acquaintance--a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he +could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than +Southey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does +not seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; and +though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley's +early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. It was not +likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and +the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, +should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain +"Queen Mab" was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to be +monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of +Norfolk's seat, Greystoke. Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip; +but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days +passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results. +The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring +about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, +and his rebellious son. + +Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letter +to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with +unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in +after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention +from romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter dated +to Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, +and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreats +Godwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "if +desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference," if +persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and +truth may commend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is not +unworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity +of Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big +generalities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long +contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelley +but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet Godwin may be +pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to +cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about +philanthropy and universal happiness. Shelley's second letter contains +an extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curious +romance, illustrating his tendency to colour facts with the +hallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think, +no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason to +believe the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton for +disseminating the doctrines of "Political Justice", or that his father +wished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant +regiment, in order that he might prosecute the "Necessity of Atheism" in +his absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family +estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with a +tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind; and this +letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange +occurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his want of +love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposed +upon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only from +teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his own +deliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To Godwin he resigns +himself with the implicit confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatly +struck with this letter. Indeed, he must have been "or God or beast," +like the insensible man in Aristotle's "Ethics", if he could have +resisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured +forth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He +accepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor; and thus began a +connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and +intellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in a +closer personal tie between the two illustrious men. + +In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then engaged in +writing "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French +Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, "My plan is that of resolving to +lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness." Godwin sensibly +replied that Shelley was too young to set himself up as a teacher and +apostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (January +16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we set +off to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed to +Keswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We go +principally TO FORWARD AS MUCH AS WE CAN the Catholic Emancipation." In +a fourth letter (January 28, 1812) he informs Godwin that he has already +prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the +dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that his +contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of great +good. + +It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his attention to +Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irish +journalist and editor of "The Press" newspaper, who had been sentenced +to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between February 7, +1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, +roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, +for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to +nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast, +who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose +heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to +disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting +field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with +the manuscript of his "Address to the Irish People" (It was published in +Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, page 179.), he set sail with Harriet +and Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle +of Man; and after a very stormy passage, which drove them to the north +coast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, the +party reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. +Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife," +wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings." +Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about this +period, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime, +ruled the household; "Eliza keeps our common stock of money for safety +in some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, +although she gives it out as we want it." This master-touch of +unconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domestic +party now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street. Before a week had +passed, the "Address to the Irish People" had been printed. Shelley and +Harriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task of +distribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemed +insufficient. On the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend in +England: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, +and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundred +yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty public +houses.... Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day to +distribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. His +account corresponds with the multitudes of people who possess them. I +stand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man WHO LOOKS +LIKELY. I throw a book to him." + +A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's +point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the +pamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we +pass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it +is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's +hood of a cloak." + +The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of +their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal +of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to +teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the +last point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the +inculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute, +rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles +which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the +document is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a +population of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and +overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet +himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of +intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy +of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound +reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully +vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks +it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A +few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in +this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they +throw upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make men +good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of +worshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all other +men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do +not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a +heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if +he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much +a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a +rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime +to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete +charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ +principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient.... +Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise +and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he +condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be +terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT +must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts, +which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of +private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses +whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of +animated filth." + +The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory +demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he +based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden +ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in +them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays +the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without +appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided +Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy", +he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the +truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to +force. + +While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin, +Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of +Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association", +and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast +society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the +recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it +must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been +brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions +he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used +these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be +mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the +Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to +be even more so. + +With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a +practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and +compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the +title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the +Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the +country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of +the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the +nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective +opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was +that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their +means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same +method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How +moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved +by the following sentence:--"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I +confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of +public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that +none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in +DIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the +case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown +that Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated. + +While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was +announced for the evening of February 28. It was held in Fishamble +Street Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spoke +for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, +though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman +Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in +conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting +accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the +impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The +dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable +interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an +Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His +youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong +words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to +aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient +agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was +fifteen--four years less than his real age. + +In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty +stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a +history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We +also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at +another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself +by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the +room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two +months' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to the +conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of +Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he +hoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarked +with his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the +police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave +Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly +visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he +quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining +copies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recently +printed edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights", +to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead +custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the +Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through +the proper official channels to the government. After some +correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against +Shelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination. + +The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, +who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourable +notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does not +seem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his most +interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly he +entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned +to know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you in +Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with +Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and +join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the +Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a +wife and such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it +is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss +Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into +it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both +obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the +Shelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon." +Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and +Shelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in +close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to +leave. + +The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace +the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they +settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales. +Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. Here +Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the +"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was, +as Mr. W.M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends +of government and the rights of man,--framed in imitation of two similar +French Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly in +August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy, +page 324.) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it +afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would +traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also +employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the +Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in +the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for +uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the +"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with the +puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to Lord +Ellenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple. +(Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29.) A printer, named D.J. +Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for +publishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistle +is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the +intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny +which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if +impassioned seriousness. + +An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of +handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I +have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:-- + +"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To +attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is +capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to +this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible +definition of his nature. + +"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the +perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities +of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of +corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot +possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable +old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various +passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and +uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are +qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he +disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution +for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers +of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their +fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those +which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors +who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone +act consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in +his name." + +Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The +sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. +Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he +found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving +any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously +described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following +year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established +at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to +Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a +considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with +an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was +always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at +Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his +enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a +heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the +list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he +endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and +even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same +purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal +acquaintance of the Godwin family. + +Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion +caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her +Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that +language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him. +There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and +Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears +that at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted to +conquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to apply +myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but +which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as +a mender of antiquated abuses,--I mean, that record of crimes and +miseries--history." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself +to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him +to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated +with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and +when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy +upon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance, +continued with effort, and finally abandoned. + +In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which +he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears, +from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on +Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early +age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring +of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first +impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which +Shelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was +pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the +public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication +Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to +"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production +which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it +is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all +that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler +discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more +crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political and +domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from +literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to +serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe; +but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's +criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include +"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, +in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its +first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of +art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality. + +The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious +occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. +According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the +event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice +attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he +struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, +and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his +escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his +personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair +was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible +by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a +perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or +whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an +unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of +this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of +no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the +relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne +in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the +parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on +the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the +villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and +confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are +too circumstantial to be lightly set aside. + +On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the +subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at +Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape +from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But +no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the +circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks, +concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion. + +There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment. +In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher, +who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a +short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to +Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as +unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was +left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the +first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London +marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and +decisive of his future. + + + +CHAPTER 4. + +SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. + +Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joined +by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet had +recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while in +hotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had a +projecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, and +catch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a +chary English summer. "He wanted," said one of his female admirers, +"only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young +lady's lark, hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this +period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley's +troubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of German +metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeply +studied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintance +with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. + +The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular; for +Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was an +indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less by +forethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there was +no meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, the table was +supplied with buns, procured by Shelley from the nearest pastry-cook. He +had already abjured animal food and alcohol; and his favourite diet +consisted of pulse or bread, which he ate dry with water, or made into +panada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felt +hungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked +under his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading at +the same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of +movement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any man +should want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint," says Hogg, +"about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice." +This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. During +the last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequent +attacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend, +Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure, +to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat +into the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequently +remained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day +he might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no less +simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat, +and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on his +throat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fields +and gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long, +wild, ragged locks." Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkably +small and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water, +and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs. +Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on their +house-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated +ardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a +blazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the +hour. + +These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a man +as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subject +to the laws of custom in his habits as in his modes of thought, living +literally as the spirit moved him, with a natural nonchalance that has +perhaps been never surpassed. To time and place he was equally +indifferent, and could not be got to remember his engagements. "He took +strange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and +panic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred +engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons +and seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he +quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly +promised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and +importance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain +pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up in +custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be +caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancy +would too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved and +almost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fair +subjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company." If he had been +fairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time pass +unheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by the +spell of his unrivalled eloquence; for wonderful as was his poetry, +those who enjoyed the privilege of converse with him, judged it even +more attractive. "He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, and +eloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were inclining to +yield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when they would +have been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the bewitching charms +of his discourse." + +From Half Moon Street the Shelleys moved into a house in Pimlico; and it +was here, according to Hogg, or at Cooke's Hotel in Dover Street +according to other accounts, that Shelley's first child, Ianthe Eliza, +was born about the end of June, 1813. Harriet did not take much to her +little girl, and gave her over to a wet-nurse, for whom Shelley +conceived a great dislike. That a mother should not nurse her own baby +was no doubt contrary to his principles; and the double presence of the +servant and Eliza, whom he now most cordially detested, made his home +uncomfortable. We have it on excellent authority, that of Mr. Peacock, +that he "was extremely fond of it (the child), and would walk up and +down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it +a song of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his +own coining. His song was Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani." To the +want of sympathy between the father and the mother in this matter of +Ianthe, Mr. Peacock is inclined to attribute the beginning of troubles +in the Shelley household. There is, indeed, no doubt that the revelation +of Harriet's maternal coldness must have been extremely painful to her +husband; and how far she carried her insensibility, may be gathered from +a story told by Hogg about her conduct during an operation performed +upon the child. + +During this period of his sojourn in London, Shelley was again in some +pecuniary difficulties. Yet he indulged Harriet's vanity by setting up a +carriage, in which they afterwards took a hurried journey to Edinburgh +and back. He narrowly escaped a debtor's prison through this act of +extravagance, and by a somewhat ludicrous mistake Hogg was arrested for +the debt due to the coach-maker. His acquaintances were few and +scattered, and he saw nothing of his family. Gradually, however, he +seems to have become a kind of prophet in a coterie of learned ladies. +The views he had propounded in "Queen Mab", his passionate belief in the +perfectibility of man, his vegetarian doctrines, and his readiness to +adopt any new nostrum for the amelioration of his race, endeared him to +all manners of strange people; nor was he deterred by aristocratic +prejudices from frequenting society which proved extremely uncongenial +to Hogg, and of which we have accordingly some caustic sketches from his +pen. His chief friends were a Mrs. Boinville, for whom he conceived an +enthusiastic admiration, and her daughter Cornelia, married to a +vegetarian, Mr. Newton. In order to be near them he had moved to +Pimlico; and his next move, from London to a cottage named High Elms, at +Bracknell, in Berkshire, had the same object. With Godwin and his family +he was also on terms of familiar intercourse. Under the philosopher's +roof in Skinner Street there was now gathered a group of miscellaneous +inmates--Fanny Imlay, the daughter of his first wife, Mary +Wollstonecraft; Mary, his own daughter by the same marriage; his second +wife, and her two children, Claire and Charles Clairmont, the offspring +of a previous union. From this connexion with the Godwin household +events of the gravest importance in the future were destined to arise, +and already it appears that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilous +approval on the fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-known +novelist, described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, has +neither taste nor feeling," were his only intimates. + +Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord between the +two chief elements of Shelley's present society; and indeed it will +appear to a careful student of his biography that Hogg, Peacock, and +Harriet, now stood somewhat by themselves and aloof from the inner +circle of his associates. If we regard the Shelleys as the centre of an +extended line, we shall find the Westbrook family at one end, the +Boinville family at the other, with Hogg and Peacock somewhere in the +middle. Harriet was naturally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, and +Shelley to the Boinville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but a +sincere regard for Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was in +much the same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs. +Newton. The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercised +their influence at a distance from the rest. Frequent change from +Bracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying journey to +Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother and +sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in +the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, +and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces. +We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes and +Theosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief. + +Since we are now approaching the gravest crisis in Shelley's life, it +behoves us to be more than usually careful in considering his +circumstances at this epoch. His home had become cold and dull. Harriet +did not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure with her +Mount Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and +the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to +refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he found +among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, +sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extracts +from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more +eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the +antagonism which had sprung up in Shelley's mind between his own home +and the circle of his new friends:--"I have been staying with Mrs. B-- +for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that +philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of +myself. They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have +felt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but +its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, +which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this +happy home,--for it has become my home. The trees, the bridge, the +minutest objects, have already a place in my affections." + +"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when the +infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but little +inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart +and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of +disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I +may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint +with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence +for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome +worm, that cannot see to sting." + +While divided in this way between a home which had become distasteful to +him, and a house where he found scope for his most romantic outpourings +of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and passionately in love with +Godwin's daughter, Mary. Peacock, who lived in close intimacy with him +at this period, must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming nature +of the new attachment:--"Nothing that I ever read in tale or history +could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, +uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouring +when, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him in +London. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, FROM WHOM HE WAS NOT +THEN SEPARATED, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in +his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind 'suffering, like a +little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection.' His eyes were bloodshot, +his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and +said, 'I never part from this.'" + +We may therefore affirm, I think, with confidence that in the winter and +spring of 1814, Shelley had been becoming gradually more and more +estranged from Harriet, whose commonplace nature was no mate for his, +and whom he had never loved with all the depth of his affection; that +his intimacy with the Boinville family had brought into painful +prominence whatever was jarring and repugnant to him in his home; and +that in this crisis of his fate he had fallen in love for the first time +seriously with Mary Godwin. (The date at which he first made Mary's +acquaintance is uncertain. Peacock says that it was between April 18 and +June 8.) She was then a girl of sixteen, "fair and fair-haired, pale +indeed, and with a piercing look," to quote Hogg's description of her, +as she first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. With +her freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, her +acute intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, Mary +Godwin was naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than the good +Harriet, however beautiful. + +That Shelley early in 1814 had no intention of leaving his wife, is +probable; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, eight days +after his impassioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, Hanover Square. +Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the Scotch marriage was +no doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a possible heir beyond all +question. Yet it seems, if we may found conjecture on "Stanzas, April, +1814," that in the very month after this new ceremony Shelley found the +difficulties of his wedded life insuperable, and that he was already +making up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June the +separation actually occurred--not by mutual consent, so far as any +published documents throw light on the matter, but rather by Shelley's +sudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiography +page 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutual +consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, +Relics of Shelly, page 147.) For a short while Harriet was left in +ignorance of his abode, and with a very insufficient sum of money at her +disposal. She placed herself under the protection of her father, retired +to Bath, and about the beginning of July received a letter from Shelley, +who was thenceforth solicitous for her welfare, keeping up a +correspondence with her, supplying her with funds, and by no means +shrinking from personal communications. + +That Shelley must bear the responsibility of this separation seems to me +quite clear. His justification is to be found in his avowed opinions on +the subject of love and marriage--opinions which Harriet knew well and +professed to share, and of which he had recently made ample confession +in the notes to "Queen Mab". The world will still agree with Lord Eldon +in regarding those opinions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon the +poet's character; but it would be unfair, while condemning them as +frankly as he professed them, to blame him also because he did not +conform to the opposite code of morals, for which he frequently +expressed extreme abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, +as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the +Shelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, +Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, +that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's +conduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await their +publication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile there +remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after leaving Harriet, +Shelley departed from London with Mary Godwin, who had consented to +share his fortunes. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand of +her who was destined to be his companion for life, may best be told in +Lady Shelley's words:-- + +"His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of +genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's +daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear +Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one +eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, +in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past--how he had +suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he +hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had +done battle for the fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms +to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, +and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the +remaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both +redeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of +"Political Justice", and of the "Rights of Woman", had been educated, +spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she +was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to +prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era +in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom +she loved--by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to +venerate--these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was +therefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own +heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her +love." + +Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley's +second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formed +another connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, +1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. The +distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new +ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no +immediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and her +suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as +Hogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and it +may be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time +unhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and +cut the knot of life and all its troubles. + +So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painful +period in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and without +condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady +Shelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that +the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy +in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief +in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must +do, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, that +I for my own part am willing to suspend my judgment till the time +arrives for his vindication. The language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. +Garnett justify us in expecting that that vindication will be as +startling as complete. If it is not, they, as pleading for him, will +have overshot the mark of prudence. + +On the 28th of July Shelley left London with Mary Godwin, who up to this +date had remained beneath her father's roof. There was some secrecy in +their departure, because they were accompanied by Miss Clairmont, whose +mother disapproved of her forming a third in the party. Having made +their way to Dover, they crossed the Channel in an open boat, and went +at once to Paris. Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intending +to perform the journey across France on foot. Shelley, however, sprained +his ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In this +conveyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neufchatel. +Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their residence; and +here Shelley began his romantic tale of "The Assassins", a portion of +which is printed in his prose works. Want of money compelled them soon +to think of turning their steps homeward; and the back journey was +performed upon the Reuss and Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a bad +passage, on the 13th of September. Mrs. Shelley's "History of a Six +Week's Tour" relates the details of this trip, which was of great +importance in forming Shelley's taste, and in supplying him with the +scenery of river, rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilized in +"Alastor". + +The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty; but on the +6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became the next heir to the +baronetcy and the family estates, and an arrangement was made with his +father by right of which he received an allowance of 1000 pounds a year. +A portion of his income was immediately set apart for Harriet. The +winter was passed in London, where Shelley walked a hospital, in order, +it is said, to acquire some medical knowledge that might be of service +to the poor he visited. His own health at this period was very bad. A +physician whom he consulted pronounced that he was rapidly sinking under +pulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. The +consumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for the next three +years he had no doubt that he was destined to an early death. In 1818, +however, all danger of phthisis passed away; and during the rest of his +short life he only suffered from spasms and violent pains in the side, +which baffled the physicians, but, though they caused him extreme +anguish, did not menace any vital organ. To the subject of his health it +will be necessary to return at a later period of this biography. For the +present it is enough to remember that his physical condition was such as +to justify his own expectation of death at no distant time. (See Letter +to Godwin in Shelley's Memorials, page 78.) + +Fond as ever of wandering, Shelley set out in the early summer for a +tour with Mary. They visited Devonshire and Clifton, and then settled in +a house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. The summer was +further broken by a water excursion up the Thames to its source, in the +company of Mr. Peacock and Charles Clairmont. Peacock traces the poet's +taste for boating, which afterwards became a passion with him, to this +excursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us +that Shelley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he +enjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W.S. Halliday, a far +better authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never saw +Shelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that he +practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fond +of boats and every kind of water--river, sea, lake, or canal--he never +learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, +and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on +occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float +a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once +constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake +in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion. + +On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem of +"Alastor", haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor +Forest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration. It was +printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year. Not only was +"Alastor" the first serious poem published by Shelley; but it was also +the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his +genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; +and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in +certain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, +is such as only Shelley could have produced. + +"Alastor" is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim +into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the +title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart +from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great +autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under +the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, +consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the +somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its +sublime descriptions. All that Shelley had observed of natural +beauty--in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the +Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest--is presented to us in a +series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion. But the deeper +meaning of "Alastor" is to be found, not in the thought of death nor in +the poet's recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St. +Augustine placed upon its title page, and in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty", composed about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the +poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage +the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing +for some mortal realization of his love. "Alastor", like +"Epipsychidion," reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that +the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form: +while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that such +realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written by +Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one is +always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is +not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in +seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +But this Shelley discovered only with "the years that bring the +philosophic mind," and when he was upon the very verge of his untimely +death. + +The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of +"Alastor". It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideal +love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet's +heart:-- + + At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore + He paused, a wide and melancholy waste + Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged + His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, + Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. + It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings + Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course + High over the immeasurable main. + His eyes pursued its flight:--"Thou hast a home, + Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, + Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck + With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes + Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. + And what am I that I should linger here, + With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, + Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned + To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers + In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven + That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile + Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. + For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly + Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed, + Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, + With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. + +William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24th +of January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together, +accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. They +reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord +Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yet +made Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab", +with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into +daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no +great distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a +boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. Miss +Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened +into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This fact +has to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, because Allegra afterwards +became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of +what was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from +the mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelley +during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were +to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become one +of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influence +of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his +wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron's +genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible +opinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame +with Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he +erroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive. +Shelley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to +nobler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtle +intellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much +as he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley was not +blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has left +us of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice and +Ravenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to +Italy, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet been +passed upon his brother poet's character. It is clear that he never +found in Byron a perfect friend, and that he had not accepted him as one +with whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling and +conduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Shelley the purest nature he +had ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least +worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond +all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity as +rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all +that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even +to the very letter." + +Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva in +their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie. On +this occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of death from drowning. His +one anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peacock, was lest Byron should +attempt to save him at the risk of his own life. Byron described him as +"bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, that +Shelley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness. +He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly +be said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursion +was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in +his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont +Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression +had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the +element of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words which +record the experiences of his two journeys in Switzerland and +France:--"I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and +the sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the +brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers +of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a +wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and +seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have +sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen +populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, +and sink and change amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the +theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and +villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and +the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds." + +On their return to the lake, the Shelleys found M.G. Lewis established +with Byron. This addition to the circle introduced much conversation +about apparitions, and each member of the party undertook to produce a +ghost story. Polidori's "Vampyre" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" were +the only durable results of their determination. But an incident +occurred which is of some importance in the history of Shelley's +psychological condition. Toward midnight on the 18th of July, Byron +recited the lines in "Christabel" about the lady's breast; when Shelley +suddenly started up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen a +vision of a woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he was +writing notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his +"Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mere +effort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed +his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period of +his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. +Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful +vividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of +his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the +projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were +abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the +border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature as +Shelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even +when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung +emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; +and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to +estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain +episodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told by +Peacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this +year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the +hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both +ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a +subjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98.) + +On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage at Great +Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peacock. While it +was being prepared for the reception of his family, he stayed at Bath, +and there heard of Harriet's suicide. The life that once was dearest to +him, had ended thus in misery, desertion, want. The mother of his two +children, abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven from +her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with +circumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free +from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled +with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most +acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the +conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and +feeling for which she was not qualified, and that had it not been for +him and his opinions, she might have lived a happy woman in some common +walk of life. One of his biographers asserts that "he continued to be +haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, +which pursued him like an Orestes," and even Trelawny, who knew him only +in the last months of his life, said that the impression of that +dreadful moment was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelings +in some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817 (Forman, 3 148.); and +though he did not often speak of Harriet, Peacock has recorded one +memorable occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to a +friend. (Fraser, January, 1860, page 102.) + +Shelley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation in the +society of Leigh Hunt. The friendship extended to him by that excellent +man at this season of his trouble may perhaps count for something with +those who are inclined to judge him harshly. Two important events +followed immediately upon the tragedy. The first was Shelley's marriage +with Mary Godwin on the 30th of December, 1816. Whether Shelley would +have taken this step except under strong pressure from without, appears +to me very doubtful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the most +resolutely bent on confirming his theories by his practice; and in this +instance there was no valid reason why he should not act up to +principles professed in common by himself and the partner of his +fortunes, no less than by her father and mother. It is, therefore, +reasonable to suppose that he yielded to arguments; and these arguments +must have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him with +cordiality since he left England in 1816. Godwin, though overrated in +his generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Shelley, was a man +whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. His +conduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of a +self-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed when +Shelley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradiction +with his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified in +concluding that he worried Shelley, the one enthusiastic and +thorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite of +his disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmise +that Godwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bear +the name of a future baronet. + +The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the +custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was instituted; at the +conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Shelley of his +son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in +"Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children were +placed in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance with +principles diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Shelley's +income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thus +sternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim, +to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own +impulsiveness, his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities, +his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the +world's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pass--to the suicide of +the woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspring +whom he loved. + +Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we may +learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic story. His life was +a tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of +erring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of +justice as established in the daily sanctities of human life; and now he +had to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated like +the dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be a +rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of his +moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had been +granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle +of one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter +fruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking +to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of +Shelley's over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinary +existence, which makes his history so tragic; and we may justly wonder +whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did not +apply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own fortunes. + + + +CHAPTER 5. + +LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. + +Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his children, +and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and with the cloud +of what he thought swift-coming death above his head, Shelley worked +steadily, during the summer of 1817, upon his poem of "Laon and Cythna". +Six months were spent in this task. "The poem," to borrow Mrs. Shelley's +words, "was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of +Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is +distinguished for peculiar beauty." Whenever Shelley could, he composed +in the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and the +Baths of Caracalla were the birthplace of "Prometheus". "The Cenci" was +written on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The Cascine of +Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, and +the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of his +loveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", was +transferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia. + +If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devotion to +Ideal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder sense +representative of its author. All his previous experiences and all his +aspirations--his passionate belief in friendship, his principle of the +equality of women with men, his demand for bloodless revolution, his +confidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, his doctrine of free +love, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious intolerance and +tyranny--are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos of +this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self +which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, +Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely +feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of +grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In +the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and +sister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, but +because he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack the +intolerance of custom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells us +that it was his purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers "a +virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that +faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor +misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among +mankind;" to illustrate "the growth and progress of individual mind +aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and to +celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world." +The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem +highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian +stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that are +Shelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom at +the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the good +cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of the +hero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing victim. It is full +of thrilling incidents and lovely pictures; yet the tale is the least +part of the poem; and few readers have probably been able either to +sympathize with its visionary characters, or to follow the narrative +without weariness. As in the case of other poems by Shelley--especially +those in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art his +genius was not well suited--the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" is +surrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it +is difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of +splendour. Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the +lovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here +tried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was +by no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before the +public. Hooted down, derided, stigmatized, and howled at, it only served +to intensify the prejudice with which the author of "Queen Mab" had come +to be regarded. + +I have spoken of this poem under its first name of "Laon and Cythna". A +certain number of copies were issued with this title (How many copies +were put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have been +many more than the traditional three; for when I was a boy at Harrow, I +picked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for the +price of 2 shillings and 6 pence a piece.); but the publisher, Ollier, +not without reason dreaded the effect the book would make; he therefore +induced Shelley to alter the relationship between the hero and his +bride, and issued the old sheets with certain cancelled pages under the +title of "Revolt of Islam". It was published in January, 1818. While +still resident at Marlow, Shelley began two autobiographical poems--the +one "Prince Athanase," which he abandoned as too introspective and +morbidly self-analytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which he +finished afterwards in Italy. Of the second of these compositions he +entertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his best +work. To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of +Lionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the +man he would have wished to be. The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the +"Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, +are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone and +scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. Later on in life, +Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directed +his genius to more objective themes. Yet the autobiographic tendency, as +befitted a poet of the highest lyric type, remained to the end a +powerful characteristic. + +Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may be +well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetry +which characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a single +passage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosen +the lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel: + + To Lionel, + Though of great wealth and lineage high, + Yet through those dungeon walls there came + Thy thrilling light, O Liberty! + And as the meteor's midnight flame + Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth + Flashed on his visionary youth, + And filled him, not with love, but faith. + And hope, and courage mute in death; + For love and life in him were twins, + Born at one birth: in every other + First life, then love its course begins, + Though they be children of one mother; + And so through this dark world they fleet + Divided, till in death they meet: + But he loved all things ever. Then + He past amid the strife of men, + And stood at the throne of armed power + Pleading for a world of woe: + Secure as one on a rock-built tower + O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, + 'Mid the passions wild of human kind + He stood, like a spirit calming them; + For, it was said, his words could find + Like music the lulled crowd, and stem + That torrent of unquiet dream, + Which mortals truth and reason deem, + But IS revenge and fear and pride. + Joyous he was; and hope and peace + On all who heard him did abide, + Raining like dew from his sweet talk, + As where the evening star may walk + Along the brink of the gloomy seas, + Liquid mists of splendour quiver. + His very gestures touch'd to tears + The unpersuaded tyrant, never + So moved before: his presence stung + The torturers with their victim's pain, + And none knew how; and through their ears, + The subtle witchcraft of his tongue + Unlocked the hearts of those who keep + Gold, the world's bond of slavery. + Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see + One sow what he could never reap: + For he is rich, they said, and young, + And might drink from the depths of luxury. + If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd + The champion of a trampled creed: + If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned + 'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed + Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, + Those who would sit near Power must toil; + And such, there sitting, all may see. + +During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor at +Leigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and +the brothers Smith, authors of "Rejected Addresses". Hunt's +recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and +Peacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing the +manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: "He rose early in +the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, +wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read +again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), +conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again +walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten +o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was +generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, +in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring +interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job." Mrs. Shelley, +in her note on the "Revolt of Islam", confirms this account of his Bible +studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style +may be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from which +I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to +Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the +Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the +Gospels. "His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in +the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very +formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes +on that point." We have only to read Shelley's "Essay on Christianity", +in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how +profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, +brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to a +sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed +by many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on the +subject. It is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaeval +phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more +approximate to Shelley's exposition. Here and here only is a vital +faith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructible +because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of +divers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all men +a clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but it +was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to +discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to its +Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is +permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable +conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His +fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed +against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and +superstition, which in his opinion had retarded the growth of free +institutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, he +distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his +blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their +Lord if he returned to earth. + +That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To help +the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he +cheerfully discharged. "His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He +inquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visited +the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, +whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts." At Marlow, +the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his +energies; and Mrs. Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which +he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story +told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and +carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man +as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with +his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's +parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called +poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to +his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 +pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and he +discharged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds. +In his pamphlet on "Putting Reform to the Vote", he offered to subscribe +100 pounds for the purpose of founding an association; and we have +already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500 +pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied; +and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out of +which 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will be +understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that he +was in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raising +funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters of +expenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, this +heir of the richest baronet in Sussex illustrated by his own conduct +those principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity which +formed his political and social creed. + +A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless +sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, +as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy +Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, +correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the +Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by +Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother +and Allegra, lived as Shelley's guests; and here Clara Shelley was born +on the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered from +a severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the +apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor might lay +his vulture's talons on the children of his second marriage, were the +motives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of +1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric "The billows on +the beach.") He never returned. Four years only of life were left to +him--years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts. + +It was on the 11th of March that the Shelleys took their departure with +Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, and +after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and +Rome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Shelley's +letters to Peacock form the invaluable record of this period of his +existence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of +descriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged with +colour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of +Italy, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate in +observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, +combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a +style at once familiar and elevated. That Shelley's sensibility to art +was not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enough +in many passages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in his +comments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works of +antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the +opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the +people made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, the +spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his +studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present +day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous +critic's verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were space for a +long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of +Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, +1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently +characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:-- + +"The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, +expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy +of mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is +a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters +into a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. +It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its +own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of +oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek in +what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and +tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not +agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to +attempt to inspire others with them." + +In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, +and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in a +thunderstorm. "Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of this +excursion--a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti +as the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatment +of ordinary things." The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to +sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, +ranks among Shelley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of +Byron's life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of the +sunset and the island of San Lazzaro:-- + + Oh! + How beautiful is sunset, when the glow + Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, + Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, + Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers + Of cities they encircle!--it was ours + To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, + Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men + Were waiting for us with the gondola. + As those who pause on some delightful way, + Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood + Looking upon the evening, and the flood + Which lay between the city and the shore, + Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar + And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, + Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared + Between the east and west; and half the sky + Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, + Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew + Down the steep west into a wondrous hue + Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent + Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent + Among the many-folded hills. They were + Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, + As seem from Lido through the harbour piles, + The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-- + And then, as if the earth and sea had been + Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen + Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, + Around the vaporous sun, from which there came + The inmost purple spirit of light, and made + Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade," + Said my companion, "I will show you soon + A better station." So o'er the lagune + We glided; and from that funereal bark + I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark + How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, + Its temples and its palaces did seem + Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. + I was about to speak, when--"We are even + Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, + And bade the gondolieri cease to row. + "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well + If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." + I looked, and saw between us and the sun + A building on an island, such a one + As age to age might add, for uses vile,-- + A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile; + And on the top an open tower, where hung + A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,-- + We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: + The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled + In strong and black relief--"What we behold + Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"-- + Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour, + Those who may cross the water hear that bell, + Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, + To vespers." + +It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar +quotations from Shelley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":-- + + Most wretched men + Are cradled into poetry by wrong: + They learn in suffering what they teach in song. + +Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where +they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here "Prometheus Unbound" was +begun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed; +and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to +rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their +passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, +and they entered Venice--only in time, however, for the child to die. + +Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley +suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. Mrs. Shelley +attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a +strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account +for the poet's melancholy. He says that so far back as the year 1816, on +the night before his departure from London, "a married lady, young, +handsome, and of noble connexions," came to him, avowed the passionate +love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly +together. (Medwin's Life of Shelley, volume 1 324. His date, 1814, +appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his +hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after +the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they +parted. She followed him, however, from place to place; and without +intruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remaining +near him. Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died. The web of +Shelley's life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own. +Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny +Imlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet has +already been told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in +Medwin's story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorously +tells us about Shelley's attraction for women in London. At any rate, +the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly be +accounted for by the "constant and poignant physical sufferings" of which +Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him. She was +herself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing something +from her, and we know from her own words in another place that his "fear +to wound the feelings of others" often impelled him to keep his deepest +sorrows to himself. (Note on the Revolt of Islam.) + +All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace of +consumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks of +pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem to +have been ascertained. At Naples he was under treatment for disease of +the liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and it +is certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied with +the quality of the water he drank. He was, for instance, forced to +eschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated his +symptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitable +residence. The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have +been determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed with +him. That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely +serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived with +him at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was obtained by +mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of the +torment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, that even during the +last months of his life we find him begging Trelawny to procure him +prussic acid as a final and effectual remedy for all the ills that flesh +is heir to. It may be added that mental application increased the +mischief, for he told Leigh Hunt that the composition of "The Cenci" had +cost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitably +real, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease; +and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley's +spasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continual +over-taxing of his nervous system. + +Mrs. Shelley states that the change from England to Italy was in all +respects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to refer the +depression from which he occasionally suffered, to his solitary habits; +and there are several passages in his own letters which connect his +melancholy with solitude. It is obvious that when he found himself in +the congenial company of Trelawny, Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, +he was simply happy; and nothing could be further from the truth than to +paint him as habitually sunk in gloom. On the contrary, we hear quite as +much about his high spirits, his "Homeric laughter," his playfulness +with children, his readiness to join in the amusements of his chosen +circle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his solitary +broodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories over-cast his +heaven. Byron, who had some right to express a judgment in such a +matter, described him as the most companionable man under the age of +thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shooting +with his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, +and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. +All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, +remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romantic +persons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The +voice of a stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar with +Shelley's almost inconceivable quickness of perception, was enough to +make him leave the house; and one of his prettiest poems is written on +his mistaking his wife's mention of the Aziola, a little owl common +enough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dislike +for intercourse with commonplace people was a source of some +disagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further apart +from Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable letter +recently published by Mr. Garnett, he writes:--"I detest all +society--almost all, at least--and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that +is hateful and tiresome in it." And again, speaking about his wife to +Trelawny, he said:--"She can't bear solitude, nor I society--the quick +coupled with the dead." + +In the year 1818-19 the Shelleys had no friends at all in Italy, except +Lord Byron at Venice, and Mr. and Mrs. John Gisborne at Leghorn. Mrs. +Gisborne had been a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin. She was a +woman of much cultivation, devoid of prejudice, and, though less +enthusiastic than Shelley liked, quite capable of appreciating the +inestimable privilege of his acquaintance. Her husband, to use a now +almost obsolete phrase, was a scholar and a gentleman. He shared his +wife's enlightened opinions, and remained staunch through good and ill +report to his new friends. At Rome and Naples they knew absolutely no +one. Shelley's time was therefore passed in study and composition. In +the previous summer he had translated the "Symposium" of Plato, and +begun an essay on the Ethics of the Greeks, which remains unluckily a +fragment. Together with Mary he read much Italian literature, and his +observations on the chief Italian poets form a valuable contribution to +their criticism. While he admired the splendour and invention of +Ariosto, he could not tolerate his moral tone. Tasso struck him as cold +and artificial, in spite of his "delicate moral sensibility." Boccaccio +he preferred to both; and his remarks on this prose-poet are extremely +characteristic. "How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of +nature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is the +morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it +obscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of +the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. His +more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He often +expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very +beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, +stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one +little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the +common, narrow-minded conceptions of love,--'Bocca baciata non perde +ventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch remained +the objects of his lasting admiration, though the cruel Christianity of +the "Inferno" seemed to him an ineradicable blot upon the greatest of +Italian poems. Of Petrarch's "tender and solemn enthusiasm," he speaks +with the sympathy of one who understood the inner mysteries of +idealizing love. + +It will be gathered from the foregoing quotations that Shelley, +notwithstanding is profound study of style and his exquisite perception +of beauty in form and rhythm, required more than merely artistic +excellences in poetry. He judged poems by their content and spirit; and +while he plainly expressed his abhorrence of the didactic manner, he +held that art must be moralized in order to be truly great. The +distinction he drew between Theocritus and the earlier Greek singers in +the "Defence of Poetry", his severe strictures on "The Two Noble +Kinsmen" in a letter to Mary (August 20, 1818) and his phrase about +Ariosto, "who is entertaining and graceful, and SOMETIMES a poet," +illustrate the application of critical canons wholly at variance with +the "art for art" doctrine. + +While studying Italian, he continued faithful to Greek. Plato was often +in his hands, and the dramatists formed his almost inseparable +companions. How deeply he felt the art of the Homeric poems, may be +gathered from the following extract:--"I congratulate you on your +conquest of the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the perpetually +increasing magnificence of the last seven books. Homer there truly +begins to be himself. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of +Patroclus, and the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale in +tenderness and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable +with anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there is +nothing like this." About this time, prompted by Mrs. Gisborne, he began +the study of Spanish, and conceived an ardent admiration for Calderon, +whose splendid and supernatural fancy tallied with his own. "I am +bathing myself in the light and odour of the starry Autos," he writes to +Mr. Gisborne in the autumn of 1820. "Faust", too, was a favourite. "I +have been reading over and over again "Faust", and always with +sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom and +augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit +study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory, and the +delusions of an imagination not to be restrained." The profound +impression made upon him by Margaret's story is expressed in two letters +about Retzsch's illustrations:--"The artist makes one envy his happiness +that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look +upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on +the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured." + +The fruits of this occupation with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German +were Shelley's translations from Homer and Euripides, from Dante, from +Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso", and from "Faust", translations which +have never been surpassed for beauty of form and complete transfusion of +the spirit of one literature into the language of another. On +translation, however, he set but little store, asserting that he only +undertook it when he "could do absolutely nothing else," and writing +earnestly to dissuade Leigh Hunt from devoting time which might be +better spent, to work of subordinate importance. (Letter from Florence, +November 1819.) The following version of a Greek epigram on Plato's +spirit will illustrate his own method of translation:-- + + Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? + To what sublime and star-y-paven home + Floatest thou? + I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, + Ascending heaven:--Athens does inherit + His corpse below. + +Some time in the year 1820-21, he composed the "Defence of Poetry", +stimulated to this undertaking by his friend Peacock's article on +poetry, published in the Literary Miscellany. (See Letter to Ollier, +January 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, page 135.) This essay not only sets +forth his theory of his own art, but it also contains some of his finest +prose writing, of which the following passage, valuable alike for matter +and style, may be cited as a specimen:-- + +"The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates +new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it +engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according +to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the +good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at +periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, +the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity +of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. +The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it. + +"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and +circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, +and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time +the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from +which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if +blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren +world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of +life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; +it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the +elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty +to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, +patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful universe +which we inhabit--what were our consolations on this side of the +grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend +to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged +faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, +a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man +cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say +it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible +influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; +this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades +and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our +natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could +this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is +impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition +begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious +poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble +shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest +poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the +finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and +the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no +more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an +artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the +intermixture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by +the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the +"Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have +his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the +"unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who would +allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando +Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to +painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still +more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or +picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's +womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is +incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the +media of the process. + +"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest +and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and +feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding +our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing +unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that +even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be +pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as +it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but +its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming +calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which +paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced +principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most +enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war +with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and +friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they +last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not +only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined +organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the +evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the +representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, +and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the +sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes +immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests +the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and +veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, +bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters +abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns +of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry +redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." + +In the midst of these aesthetic studies, and while producing his own +greatest works, Shelley was not satisfied that his genius ought to be +devoted to poetry. "I consider poetry," he wrote to Peacock, January +26th, 1819, "very subordinate to moral and political science, and if I +were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter; for I can conceive a +great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the +contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me is such +an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse +myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into the +scale of that balance which the Giant of Arthegall holds." Whether he +was right in the conviction that his genius was no less fitted for +metaphysical speculation or for political science than for poetry, is a +question that admits of much debate. (See Mrs. Shelley's note on the +Revolt of Islam, and the whole Preface to the Prose Works.) We have +nothing but fragments whereby to form a definite opinion--the unfinished +"Defence of Poetry", the unfinished "Essay on a Future State", the +unfinished "Essay on Christianity", the unfinished "Essay on the +Punishment of Death", and the scattered "Speculations on Metaphysics". +None of these compositions justify the belief so confidently expressed +by Mrs. Shelley in her Preface to the prose works, that "had not Shelley +deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lost +to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in +the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of +mind; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant would have +contributed; but more simple, and unimpugnable, and entire than the +systems of these writers." Their incompleteness rather tends to confirm +what she proceeds to state, that the strain of philosophical composition +was too great for his susceptible nerves; while her further observation +that "thought kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him +dizzy from too great keenness of emotion," seems to indicate that his +nature was primarily that of a poet deeply tinctured with philosophical +speculation, rather than that of a metaphysician warmed at intervals to +an imaginative fervour. Another of her remarks confirms us in this +opinion. "He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to +be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry." (Note on Prometheus.) +This is the position of the poet rather than the analyst; and on the +whole, we are probably justified in concluding with Mrs. Shelley, that +he followed a true instinct when he dedicated himself to poetry, and +trained his powers in that direction. (Note on Revolt of Islam.) To +dogmatize upon the topic would be worse than foolish. There was +something incalculable, incommensurable, and daemonic in Shelley's +genius; and what he might have achieved, had his life been spared and +had his health progressively improved, it is of course impossible to +say. + +In the spring of 1819 the Shelleys settled in Rome, where the poet +proceeded with the composition of "Prometheus Unbound". He used to write +among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, not then, as now, despoiled +of all their natural beauty, but waving with the Paradise of flowers and +shrubs described in his incomparable letter of March the 23rd to +Peacock. Rome, however, was not destined to retain them long. On the 7th +of June they lost their son William after a short illness. Shelley loved +this child intensely, and sat by his bedside for sixty hours without +taking rest. He was now practically childless; and his grief found +expression in many of his poems, especially in the fragment headed +"Roma, Roma, Roma! non e piu com' era prima." William was buried in the +Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description to +Peacock in the previous December. "The English burying-place is a green +slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I +think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the +sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with +the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves +of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil +which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly +of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were +to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and +so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion." + +Escaping from the scene of so much sorrow, they established themselves +at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn. Here Shelley began and finished +"The Cenci" at the instance of his wife, who rightly thought that he +undervalued his own powers as a dramatic poet. The supposed portrait of +Beatrice in the Barberini Palace had powerfully affected his +imagination, and he fancied that her story would form the fitting +subject for a tragedy. It is fortunate for English literature that the +real facts of that domestic drama, as recently published by Signor +Bertolotti, were then involved in a tissue of romance and legend. During +this summer he saw a great deal of the Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne's +son by a previous marriage, Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelley +conceived a project of helping him build a steamer which should ply +between Leghorn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and the +pecuniary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family. The scheme +eventually fell through, though Shelley spent a good deal of money upon +it; and its only importance is the additional light it throws upon his +public and private benevolence. From Leghorn the Shelleys removed in the +autumn to Florence, where, on the 12th of November, the present Sir +Percy Florence Shelley was born. Here Shelley wrote the last act of +"Prometheus Unbound", which, though the finest portion of that unique +drama, seems to have been an afterthought. In the Cascine outside +Florence he also composed the "Ode to the West Wind", the most +symmetrically perfect as well as the most impassioned of his minor +lyrics. He spent much time in the galleries, made notes upon the +principal antique statues, and formed a plan of systematic art-study. +The climate, however, disagreed with him, and in the month of January, +1820, they took up their abode at Pisa. + +1819 was the most important year in Shelley's life, so far as literary +production is concerned. Besides "The Cenci" and "Prometheus Unbound", +of which it yet remains to speak, this year saw the production of +several political and satirical poems--the "Masque of Anarchy", +suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the most +important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs +which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be +their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make +such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of +England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his +achievement in this style:-- + + Men of England, Heirs of Glory, + Heroes of unwritten story, + Nurslings of one mighty mother, + Hopes of her, and one another! + + Rise, like lions after slumber, + In unvanquishable number, + Shake your chains to earth like dew, + Which in sleep had fall'n on you. + Ye are many, they are few. + +"Peter Bell the Third", written in this year, and "Swellfoot the +Tyrant", composed in the following autumn, are remarkable as showing +with what keen interest Shelley watched public affairs in England from +his exile home; but, for my own part, I cannot agree with those critics +who esteem their humour at a high rate. The political poems may +profitably be compared with his contemporary correspondence; with the +letters, for instance, to Leigh Hunt, November 23rd, 1819; and to Mr. +John Gisborne, April 10th, 1822; and with an undated fragment published +by Mr. Garnett in the "Relics of Shelley", page 84. No student of +English political history before the Reform Bill can regard his +apprehensions of a great catastrophe as ill-founded. His insight into +the real danger to the nation was as penetrating as his suggestion of a +remedy was moderate. Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as a +visionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the sober lines +in which he warns his friend to be cautious about the security offered +by the English Funds. Another letter, dated Lerici, June 29, 1822, +illustrates the same practical temper of mind, the same logical +application of political principles to questions of public economy. + +That "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" should have been composed in +one and the same year must be reckoned among the greatest wonders of +literature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but also +because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had +written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final +reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the +champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, +because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting +any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of +compromise. He could not conceive of the Titan "unsaying his high +language, and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary." +He therefore, approached the theme of liberation from a wholly different +point of view. Prometheus in his drama is the human vindicator of love, +justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical oppressor, and +creator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is the mind of man +idealized, the spirit of our race, as Shelley thought it made to be. +Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts its free development. Thus +counterposed, the two chief actors represent the fundamental antitheses +of good and evil, liberty and despotism, love and hate. They give the +form of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism already +expressed in the first canto of "Laon and Cythna"; but, instead of being +represented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into +the reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resists +Jove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, that +the tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and calmly +expectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, and leave the +spirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives; Jove disappears; the +burdens of the world and men are suddenly removed; a new age of peace +and freedom and illimitable energy begins; the whole universe partakes +in the emancipation; the spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain, +but sings alternate love-songs with his sister orb, the moon; Prometheus +is re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, +withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in +her exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. She +is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises in +the Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time of +tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beauty +incarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world and +enkindles it with love, the reality of Alastor's vision, the breathing +image of the awful loveliness apostrophized in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty," the reflex of the splendour of which Adonais was a part. At the +moment of her triumph she grows so beautiful that Ione her sister cannot +see her, only feels her influence. The essential thought of Shelley's +creed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalized, made real by a +spirit, which he sometimes called the spirit of Nature, but which is +always conceived as more than Life, as that which gives its actuality to +Life, and lastly as Love and Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp it +with affection, and to blend with it, is, he thought the true object of +man. Therefore the final union of Prometheus with Asia is the +consummation of human destinies. Love was the only law Shelley +recognized. Unterrified by the grim realities of pain and crime revealed +in nature and society, he held fast to the belief that, if we could but +pierce to the core of things, if we could but be what we might be, the +world and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. +What resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected by +Shelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the universe, we +hardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form: and his new +science of love remains a luminous poetic vision--nowhere more +brilliantly set forth than in the "sevenfold hallelujahs and harping +symphonies" of this, the final triumph of his lyrical poetry. + +In "Prometheus", Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, and sketched +out the main figures on a scale of surpassing magnificence. While +painting in these figures, he seems to reduce their proportions too much +to the level of earthly life. He quits his god-creating, +heaven-compelling throne of mythopoeic inspiration, and descends to a +love-story of Asia and Prometheus. In other words, he does not sustain +the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; +nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail +as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore +something vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinate +passages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty--the faculty of +finding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion with +personality--shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. We +feel ourselves in the grasp of a primitive myth-maker while we read the +description of Oceanus, and the raptures of the Earth and Moon. + +A genuine liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned the +touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. The +world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices; +and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross than +any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart's +song, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in "Prometheus", +which seem to realize the miracle of making words, detached from +meaning, the substance of a new ethereal music; and yet, although their +verbal harmony is such, they are never devoid of definite significance +for those who understand. Shelley scorned the aesthetics of a school +which finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic is +so dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or to +whom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a man +whose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A +voice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of her +apotheosis:-- + + Life of Life! thy lips enkindle + With their love the breath between them; + And thy smiles before they dwindle + Make the cold air fire; then screen them + In those looks where whoso gazes + Faints, entangled in their mazes. + + Child of Light! thy limbs are burning + Through the vest which seems to hide them, + As the radiant lines of morning + Through the clouds, ere they divide them; + And this atmosphere divinest + Shrouds thee whereso'er thou shinest. + + Fair are others; none beholds thee. + But thy voice sounds low and tender, + Like the fairest, for it folds thee + From the sight, that liquid splendour, + And all feel, yet see thee never, + As I feel now, lost for ever! + + Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest + Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, + And the souls of whom thou lovest + Walk upon the winds with lightness, + Till they fail, as I am failing, + Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing! + +It has been said that Shelley, as a landscape painter, is decidedly +Turneresque; and there is much in "Prometheus Unbound" to justify this +opinion. The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker shadows +are omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be continually radiated +from the objects at which he looks; and in this radiation of +many-coloured lights, the outline itself is apt to be a little misty. +Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their spiritual essence. +The actual world was less for him than that which lies within it and +beyond it. "I seek," he says himself, "in what I see, the manifestation +of something beyond the present and tangible object." For him, as for +the poet described by one of the spirit voices in "Prometheus", the bees +in the ivy-bloom are scarcely heeded; they become in his mind,-- + + Forms more real than living man, + Nurslings of immortality. + +And yet who could have brought the bees, the lake, the sun, the bloom, +more perfectly before us than that picture does? (Forman, volume 2 page +181.) What vignette is more exquisitely coloured and finished than the +little study of a pair of halcyons in the third act? (Forman, volume 2 +page 231.) Blake is perhaps the only artist who could have illustrated +this drama. He might have shadowed forth the choirs of spirits, the +trailing voices and their thrilling songs, phantasmal Demorgorgon, and +the charioted Hour. Prometheus, too, with his "flowing limbs," has just +Blake's fault of impersonation--the touch of unreality in that painter's +Adam. + +Passing to "The Cenci", we change at once the moral and artistic +atmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely dirge, is +absent. Imagery and description are alike sternly excluded. Instead of +soaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly planted on the earth. In +exchange for radiant visions of future perfection, we are brought into +the sphere of dreadful passions--all the agony, endurance, and +half-maddened action, of which luckless human innocence is capable. To +tell the legend of Beatrice Cenci here, is hardly needed. Her father, a +monster of vice and cruelty, was bent upon breaking her spirit by +imprisonment, torture, and nameless outrage. At last her patience ended; +and finding no redress in human justice, no champion of her helplessness +in living man, she wrought his death. For this she died upon the +scaffold, together with her step-mother and her brothers, who had aided +in the execution of the murder. The interest of "The Cenci", and it is +overwhelmingly great, centres in Beatrice and her father; from these two +chief actors in the drama, all the other characters fall away into +greater or less degrees of unsubstantiality. Perhaps Shelley intended +this--as the maker of a bas-relief contrives two or three planes of +figures for the presentation of his ruling group. Yet there appears to +my mind a defect of accomplishment, rather than a deliberate intention, +in the delineation of Orsino. He seems meant to be the wily, crafty, +Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form a +contrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of old +Francesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love for +Beatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down with +an infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand the +uneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminine +weakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm will of +Beatrice into prominent relief; while her innocence, sustained through +extraordinary suffering in circumstances of exceptional horror--the +innocence of a noble nature thrust by no act of its own but by its +wrongs beyond the pale of ordinary womankind--is contrasted with the +merely childish guiltlessness of Bernardo. Beatrice rises to her full +height in the fifth act, dilates and grows with the approach of danger, +and fills the whole scene with her spirit on the point of death. Her +sublime confidence in the justice and essential rightness of her action, +the glance of self-assured purity with which she annihilates the +cut-throat brought to testify against her, her song in prison, and her +tender solicitude for the frailer Lucrezia, are used with wonderful +dramatic skill for the fulfilment of a feminine ideal at once delicate +and powerful. Once and once only does she yield to ordinary weakness; it +is when the thought crosses her mind that she may meet her father in the +other world, as once he came to her on earth. + +Shelley dedicated "The Cenci" to Leigh Hunt, saying that he had striven +in this tragedy to cast aside the subjective manner of his earlier work, +and to produce something at once more popular and more concrete, more +sober in style, and with a firmer grasp on the realities of life. He was +very desirous of getting it acted, and wrote to Peacock requesting him +to offer it at Covent Garden. Miss O'Neil, he thought, would play the +part of Beatrice admirably. The manager, however, did not take this +view; averring that the subject rendered it incapable of being even +submitted to an actress like Miss O'Neil. Shelley's self-criticism is +always so valuable, that it may be well here to collect what he said +about the two great dramas of 1819. Concerning "The Cenci" he wrote to +Peacock:--"It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and +opinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attended +simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable +the persons represented really were, together with the greatest degree +of popular effect to be produced by such a development." "'Cenci' is +written for the multitude, and ought to sell well." "I believe it +singularly fitted for the stage." "'The Cenci' is a work of art; it is +not coloured by my feelings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't +think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written +of the same length." "Prometheus", on the other hand, he tells Ollier, +"is my favourite poem; I charge you, therefore, specially to pet him and +feed him with fine ink and good paper"--which was duly done. +Again:--"For 'Prometheus', I expect and desire no great sale; Prometheus +was never intended for more than five or six persons; it is in my +judgment of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted, and +is perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it; it is +original, and cost me severe mental labour." Shelley was right in +judging that "The Cenci" would be comparatively popular; this was proved +by the fact that it went through two editions in his lifetime. The value +he set upon "Prometheus" as the higher work, will hardly be disputed. +Unique in the history of literature, and displaying the specific +qualities of its author at their height, the world could less easily +afford to lose this drama than "The Cenci", even though that be the +greatest tragedy composed in English since the death of Shakespeare. For +reasons which will be appreciated by lovers of dramatic poetry, I +refrain from detaching portions of these two plays. Those who desire to +make themselves acquainted with the author's genius, must devote long +and patient study to the originals in their entirety. + +"Prometheus Unbound", like the majority of Shelley's works, fell +still-born from the press. It furnished punsters with a joke, however, +which went the round of several papers; this poem, they cried, is well +named, for who would bind it? Of criticism that deserves the name, +Shelley got absolutely nothing in his lifetime. The stupid but venomous +reviews which gave him occasional pain, but which he mostly laughed at, +need not now be mentioned. It is not much to any purpose to abuse the +authors of mere rubbish. The real lesson to be learned from such of them +as may possibly have been sincere, as well as from the failure of his +contemporaries to appreciate his genius--the sneers of Moore, the +stupidity of Campbell, the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness of +Southey, or the condescending tone of Keats--is that nothing is more +difficult than for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to the +greatest in their lifetime. Those who may be interested in studying +Shelley's attitude toward his critics, should read a letter addressed to +Ollier from Florence, October 15, 1819, soon after he had seen the vile +attack upon him in the "Quarterly", comparing this with the fragments of +an expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the preface to "Adonais". +(Shelley Memorials, page 121. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pages 49, +190. Collected Letters, page 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in one +volume 1840.) It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse with +patience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On the 11th +of June, 1821, he wrote to Ollier:--"As yet I have laughed; but woe to +those scoundrels if they should once make me lose my temper!" The +stanzas on the "Quarterly" in "Adonais", and the invective against Lord +Eldon, show what Shelley could have done if he had chosen to castigate +the curs. Meanwhile the critics achieved what they intended. Shelley, as +Trelawny emphatically tells us, was universally shunned, coldly treated +by Byron's friends at Pisa, and regarded as a monster by such of the +English in Italy as had not made his personal acquaintance. On one +occasion he is even said to have been knocked down in a post-office by +some big bully, who escaped before he could obtain his name and address; +but this is one of the stories rendered doubtful by the lack of precise +details. + + + +CHAPTER 6. + +RESIDENCE AT PISA. + +On the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelley's established themselves at +Pisa. From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, Shelley's life +divides itself into two periods of unequal length; the first spent at +Pisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn; the second at Lerici, on +the Bay of Spezia. Without entering into minute particulars of dates or +recording minor changes of residence, it is possible to treat of the +first and longer period in general. The house he inhabited at Pisa was +on the south side of the Arno. After a few months he became the +neighbour of Lord Byron, who engaged the Palazzo Lanfranchi it order to +be near him; and here many English and Italian friends gathered round +them. Among these must be mentioned in the first place Captain Medwin, +whose recollections of the Pisan residence are of considerable value, +and next Captain Trelawny, who has left a record of Shelley's last days +only equalled in vividness by Hogg's account of the Oxford period, and +marked by signs of more unmistakable accuracy. Not less important +members of this private circle were Mr. and Mrs. Edward Elleker +Williams, with whom Shelley and his wife lived on terms of the closest +friendship. Among Italians, the physician Vacca, the improvisatore +Sgricci, and Rosini, the author of "La Monaca di Monza", have to be +recorded. It will be seen from this enumeration that Shelley was no +longer solitary; and indeed it would appear that now, upon the eve of +his accidental death, he had begun to enjoy an immunity from many of his +previous sufferings. Life expanded before him: his letters show that he +was concentrating his powers and preparing for a fresh flight; and the +months, though ever productive of poetic masterpieces, promised a still +more magnificent birth in the future. + +In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his most +genial poems: the "Letter to Maria Gisborne", which might be mentioned +as a pendent to "Julian and Maddalo" for its treatment of familiar +things; the "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the +"Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the +"Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a new +lyric form to English literature. In the winter he wrote the "Sensitive +Plant", prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. +Shelley's drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate +Italian sunlight. Whether we consider the number of these poems or their +diverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely subtle +line from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence and the most +ethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished. Every chord of the +poet's lyre is touched, from the deep bass string that echoes the +diurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was, to the fine vibrations of a +treble merging its rarity of tone in accents super-sensible to ordinary +ears. One passage from the "Letter to Maria Gisborne" may here be +quoted, not for its poetry, but for the light it casts upon the circle +of his English friends. + + You are now + In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow + At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore + Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. + Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see + That which was Godwin,--greater none than he + Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand + Among the spirits of our age and land, + Before the dread tribunal of "To come" + The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. + You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure + In the exceeding lustre and the pure + Intense irradiation of a mind, + Which, with its own internal lightning blind, + Flags wearily through darkness and despair-- + A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, + A hooded eagle among blinking owls. + You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls + Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom + This world would smell like what it is--a tomb; + Who is, what others seem. His room no doubt + Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, + With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, + And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, + And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung; + The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens + Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. + And there is he with his eternal puns, + Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns + Thundering for money at a poet's door; + Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"-- + Or oft in graver mood, when he will look + Things wiser than were ever read in book, + Except in Shakespere's wisest tenderness. + You will see Hogg; and I cannot express + His virtues, though I know that they are great, + Because he locks, then barricades the gate + Within which they inhabit. Of his wit + And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. + He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, + One of the richest of the deep. And there + Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair,-- + Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird + That gleams in the Indian air. Have you not heard + When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, + His best friends hear no more of him. But you + Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, + With the milk-white Snowdownian antelope + Match'd with this camelopard. His fine wit + Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it; + A strain too learned for a shallow age, + Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page + Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, + Fold itself up for the serener clime + Of years to come, and find its recompense + In that just expectation. Wit and sense, + Virtue and human knowledge, all that might + Make this dull world a business of delight, + Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these, + With some exceptions, which I need not tease + Your patience by descanting on, are all + You and I know in London. + +Captain Medwin, who came late in the autumn of 1820, at his cousin's +invitation, to stay with the Shelleys, has recorded many interesting +details of their Pisan life, as well as valuable notes of Shelley's +conversation. "It was nearly seven years since we had parted, but I +should have immediately recognized him in a crowd. His figure was +emaciated, and somewhat bent, owing to near-sightedness, and his being +forced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them; his +hair, still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed +with grey; but his appearance was youthful. There was also a freshness +and purity in his complexion that he never lost." Not long after his +arrival, Medwin suffered from a severe and tedious illness. "Shelley +tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered my +medicines, and during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was +assiduous and unintermitting in his affectionate care of me." The poet's +solitude and melancholy at this time impressed his cousin very +painfully. Though he was producing a long series of imperishable poems, +he did not take much interest in his work. "I am disgusted with +writing," he once said, "and were it not for an irresistible impulse, +that predominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing." The +brutal treatment he had lately received from the "Quarterly Review", the +calumnies which pursued him, and the coldness of all but a very few +friends, checked his enthusiasm for composition. Of this there is +abundant proof in his correspondence. In a letter to Leigh Hunt, dated +January 25, 1822, he says: "My faculties are shaken to atoms and torpid. +I can write nothing; and if "Adonais" had no success, and excited no +interest, what incentive can I have to write?" Again: "I write little +now. It is impossible to compose except under the strong excitement of +an assurance of finding sympathy in what you write." Lord Byron's +company proved now, as before, a check rather than an incentive to +production: "I do not write; I have lived too long near Lord Byron, and +the sun has extinguished the glow-worm; for I cannot hope, with St. +John, that THE LIGHT CAME INTO THE WORLD AND THE WORLD KNEW IT NOT." "I +despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other +with whom it is worth contending." To Ollier, in 1820, he wrote: "I +doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with the +hell or the paradise of poetry; but the torments of its purgatory vex +me, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to the +vexation." It was not that his spirit was cowed by the Reviews, or that +he mistook the sort of audience he had to address. He more than once +acknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the many, his poems were +intended for the understanding few. Yet the sunetoi, as he called them, +gave him but scanty encouragement. The cold phrases of kindly Horace +Smith show that he had not comprehended "Prometheus Unbound"; and +Shelley whimsically complains that even intelligent and sympathetic +critics confounded the ideal passion described in "Epipsychidion" with +the love affairs of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart." This almost +incomprehensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have known +better, combined with the coarse abuse of vulgar scribblers, was enough +to make a man so sincerely modest as Shelley doubt his powers, or shrink +from the severe labour of developing them. (See Medwin, volume 2 page +172, for Shelley's comment on the difficulty of the poet's art.) "The +decision of the cause," he wrote to Mr. Gisborne, "whether or no _I_ am +a poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterity +shall assemble; but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the +verdict will be, guilty--death." Deep down in his own heart he had, +however, less doubt: "This I know," he said to Medwin, "that whether in +prosing or in versing, there is something in my writings that shall live +for ever." And again, he writes to Hunt: "I am full of thoughts and +plans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which +encloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should +do great things." It seems almost certain that the incompleteness of +many longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandonment of the +tragedy on Tasso's story, the unfinished state of "Charles I", and the +failure to execute the cherished plan of a drama suggested by the Book +of Job, were due to the depressing effects of ill-health and external +discouragement. Poetry with Shelley was no light matter. He composed +under the pressure of intense excitement, and he elaborated his first +draughts with minute care and severe self-criticism. + +These words must not be taken as implying that he followed the Virgilian +precedent of polishing and reducing the volume of his verses by an +anxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he observed the Horatian +maxim of deferring their publication till the ninth year. The contrary +was notoriously the case with him. Yet it is none the less proved by the +state of his manuscripts that his compositions, even as we now possess +them, were no mere improvisations. The passage already quoted from his +"Defence of Poetry" shows the high ideal he had conceived of the poet's +duty toward his art; and it may be confidently asserted that his whole +literary career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence of +his earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision of +form that are the index of mastery over style. At the same time it was +inconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to attempt +composition except under an impulse approaching to inspiration. To +imperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, moral, +intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline exacted by his +own fastidious taste, with no other object in view than the frigid +compliments of a few friends, was more than even Shelley's enthusiasm +could endure. He, therefore, at this period required the powerful +stimulus of some highly exciting cause from without to determine his +activity. + +Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters early in the +year 1821. Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa was a clever but +disreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a very piquant portrait. +This man one day related the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, +the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had been confined by her father in a +dismal convent of the suburbs, to await her marriage with a distasteful +husband. Shelley, fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visit +the fair captive. The Professor accompanied him and Medwin to the +convent-parlour, where they found her more lovely than even the most +glowing descriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. +Shelley soon discovered that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I +have ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon the +subject of Uranian Love--Il Vero Amore--justifies the belief that she +possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. +Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her +convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and by +presents of flowers and books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathy +for this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, however +spiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate. The result was the +composition of "Epipsychidion," the most unintelligible of all his poems +to those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's "Symposium" and +Dante's "Vita Nuova". In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as the +incarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in +mortal flesh:-- + + Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, + Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman + All that is insupportable in thee + Of light, and love, and immortality! + +He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and +deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicate +obscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for his +soul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of ideal +beauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he ever +been deluded. At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truth +of the vision veiled from him so many years. She and Mary shall +henceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him. Then +he calls on her to fly. They three will escape and live together, far +away from men, in an Aegean island. The description of this visionary +isle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and +undiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this +century in the rhymed heroic metre. + + It is an isle under Ionian skies, + Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise; + And, for the harbours are not safe and good, + This land would have remained a solitude + But for some pastoral people native there, + Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air + Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, + Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. + The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, + With ever-changing sound and light and foam + Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar; + And all the winds wandering along the shore, + Undulate with the undulating tide. + There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; + And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, + As clear as elemental diamond, + Or serene morning air. And far beyond, + The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer, + (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,) + Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls + Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls + Illumining, with sound that never fails + Accompany the noonday nightingales; + And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. + The light clear element which the isle wears + Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, + Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, + And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; + And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, + And dart the arrowy odour through the brain, + Till you might faint with that delicious pain. + And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, + With that deep music is in unison: + Which is a soul within a soul--they seem + Like echoes of an antenatal dream. + It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea, + Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; + Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, + Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air. + It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, + Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light + Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they + Sail onward far upon their fatal way. + The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm + To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm + Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, + From which its fields and woods ever renew + Their green and golden immortality. + And from the sea there rise, and from the sky + There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, + Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, + Which sun or moon or zephyr draws aside, + Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride + Glowing at once with love and loveliness, + Blushes and trembles at its own excess: + Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less + Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, + An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile + Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen + O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, + Filling their bare and void interstices. + +Shelley did not publish "Epipsychidion" with his own name. He gave it to +the world as a composition of a man who had "died at Florence, as he was +preparing for a voyage to one of the Sporades," and he requested Ollier +not to circulate it, except among a few intelligent readers. It may +almost be said to have been never published, in such profound silence +did it issue from the press. Very shortly after its appearance he +described it to Leigh Hunt as "a portion of me already dead," and added +this significant allusion to its subject matter:--"Some of us have in a +prior existence been in love with Antigone, and that makes us find no +full content in any mortal tie." In the letter of June 18, 1822, again +he says:--"The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom it +celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the +Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious, +however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something +thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one +is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it +is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists +in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant as +the poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in the +author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of the +emotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetorical +exaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but because +Shelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really been +its subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publication +of "Epipsychidion," confirms the impression made by it, and justifies +the conclusion that he had utilized his feeling for Emilia to express a +favourite doctrine in impassioned verse. + +To students of Shelley's inner life "Epipsychidion" will always have +high value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing his +doctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principle +presented to us in "Alastor", the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and +"Prince Athanase." But the words just quoted, which may be compared with +Mrs. Shelley's note to "Prince Athanase," authorize our pointing out +what he himself recognized as the defect of his theory. Instead of +remaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn," +Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love." Thus, while +his doctrine in "Epipsychidion" seems Platonic, it will not square with +the "Symposium." Plato treats the love of a beautiful person as a mere +initiation into divine mysteries, the first step in the ladder that +ascends to heaven. When a man has formed a just conception of the +universal beauty, he looks back with a smile upon those who find their +soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by this +standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many +daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is a spurious +Platonism. Plato would have said that to seek the Idea of Beauty in +Emilia Viviani was a retrogressive step. All that she could do, would be +to quicken the soul's sense of beauty, to stir it from its lethargy, and +to make it divine the eternal reality of beauty in the supersensual +world of thought. This Shelley had already acknowledged in the "Hymn;" +and this he emphasizes in these words:--"The error consists in seeking +in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." + +The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman's edition do +not throw much light upon "Epipsychidion." The longest, entitled "To his +Genius" by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads like the induction to a +poem conceived and written in a different key, and at a lower level of +inspiration. It has, however, this extraordinary interest, that it deals +with a love which is both love and friendship, above sex, spiritual, +unintelligible to the world at large. Thus the fragment enables the +student better to realize the kind of worship so passionately expressed +in "Epipsychidion." + +The news of Keats's death at Rome on the 27th of December, 1820, and the +erroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not caused, by a +contemptible review of "Endymion" in the "Quarterly", stirred Shelley to +the composition of "Adonais". He had it printed at Pisa, and sent copies +to Ollier for circulation in London. This poem was a favourite with its +author, who hoped not only that it might find acceptance with the +public, but also that it would confer lustre upon the memory of a poet +whom he sincerely admired. No criticisms upon Shelley's works are half +so good as his own. It is, therefore, interesting to collect the +passages in which he speaks of an elegy only equalled in our language by +"Lycidas", and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior to +Milton's youthful lament for his friend. "The 'Adonais', in spite of its +mysticism," he writes to Ollier, "is the least imperfect of my +compositions." "I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born +to an immortality of oblivion." "It is a highly wrought PIECE OF ART, +and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have +written." "It is absurd in any review to criticize 'Adonais', and still +more to pretend that the verses are bad." "I know what to think of +'Adonais', but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad +poems of the day, I know not." Again, alluding to the stanzas hurled +against the infamous "Quarterly" reviewer, he says:--"I have dipped my +pen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm +and solemn." + +With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. Although +"Adonais" is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets as +"Prometheus" or "Epipsychidion," it presents Shelley's qualities in a +form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the +dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART of +the poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the +student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of +Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic +products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their +material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, +reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby +the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the +sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; +the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substituted +for Bion's cupids; and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bards +of England are summoned to lament around the poet's bier. Yet it is only +when Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that he +soars aloft on mighty wing. This point, too, is the point of transition +from death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture of +the things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions of the +poem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the passage from +the one to the other is natural. Two quotations from "Adonais" will +suffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse. + +The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron and +Moore--the "Pilgrim of Eternity," and Ierne's "sweetest lyrist of her +saddest wrong"--to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathos +and unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, +when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats in "Don Juan", and what +Moore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how +far both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron +his supreme place in the heaven of poetry. + + Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, + A phantom among men, companionless + As the last cloud of an expiring storm, + Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, + Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, + Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray + With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, + And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, + Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. + + A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift-- + A love in desolation masked--a Power + Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift + The weight of the superincumbent hour; + Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower, + A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak + Is it not broken? On the withering flower + The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek + The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. + + His head was bound with pansies over-blown, + And faded violets, white and pied and blue; + And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, + Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew + Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, + Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart + Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew + He came the last, neglected and apart; + A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart. + +The second passage is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere has Shelley +expressed his philosophy of man's relation to the universe with more +sublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in these +stanzas. If it were possible to identify that philosophy with any +recognized system of thought, it might be called pantheism. But it is +difficult to affix a name, stereotyped by the usage of the schools, to +the aerial spiritualism of its ardent and impassioned poet's creed. + +The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just been interrupted +by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He now +bursts forth afresh into the music of consolation:-- + + Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! + He hath awakened from the dream of life. + 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep + With phantoms an unprofitable strife, + And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife + Invulnerable nothings. WE decay + Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief + Convulse us and consume us day by day, + And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. + + He has outsoared the shadow of our night; + Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, + And that unrest which men miscall delight, + Can touch him not and torture not again; + From the contagion of the world's slow stain + He is secure, and now can never mourn + A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; + Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, + With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. + + He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he; + Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn, + Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee + The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; + Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! + Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air + Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown + O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare + Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! + + He is made one with Nature: there is heard + His voice in all her music, from the moan + Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird; + He is a presence to be felt and known + In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, + Spreading itself where'er that Power may move + Which has withdrawn his being to its own; + Which wields the world with never wearied love, + Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. + + He is a portion of the loveliness + Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear + His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress + Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there + All new successions to the forms they wear; + Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight + To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; + And bursting in its beauty and its might + From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. + +But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, the +blending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit of +beauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after immortality. +Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of the +personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into the +company of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:-- + + The splendours of the firmament of time + May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: + Like stars to their appointed height they climb, + And death is a low mist which cannot blot + The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought + Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, + And love and life contend in it, for what + Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, + And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. + + The inheritors of unfulfilled renown + Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, + Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton + Rose pale, his solemn agony had not + Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought + And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, + Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, + Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:-- + Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. + + And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, + But whose transmitted effluence cannot die + So long as fire outlives the parent spark, + Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. + "Thou art become as one of us," they cry; + "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long + Swung blind in unascended majesty, + Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. + Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" + +From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet +once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonais +lies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave. He has escaped: +to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death +unterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keat's +resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to +be Shelley's own, is introduced:-- + + Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth, + Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright. + Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; + As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light + Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might + Satiate the void circumference: then shrink + Even to a point within our day and night; + And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sink + When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. + + Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, + Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought + That ages, empires, and religions there + Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; + For such as he can lend,--they borrow not + Glory from those who made the world their prey; + And he is gathered to the kings of thought + Who waged contention with their time's decay, + And of the past are all that cannot pass away. + + Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise, + The grave, the city, and the wilderness; + And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, + And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses dress + The bones of Desolation's nakedness, + Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead + Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, + Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead + A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; + + And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time + Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; + And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, + Pavilioning the dust of him who planned + This refuge for his memory, doth stand + Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, + A field is spread, on which a newer band + Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, + Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. + + Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet + To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned + Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, + Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, + Break if not thou! too surely shalt thou find + Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, + Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind + Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. + What Adonais is, why fear we to become? + +Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the +mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of +the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The +symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the +eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of +one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the +somewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of all +Shelley's qualities--the liberation of incalculable energies, the +emancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious over +circumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes as +make a feebler spirit tremble: + + The One remains, the many change and pass; + Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; + Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, + Stains the white radiance of Eternity, + Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, + If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! + Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, + Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak + The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. + + Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? + Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here + They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! + A light is past from the revolving year, + And man and woman; and what still is dear + Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. + The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: + 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither! + No more let Life divide what Death can join together. + + That light whose smile kindles the Universe, + That beauty in which all things work and move, + That benediction which the eclipsing curse + Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love + Which through the web of being blindly wove + By man and beast and earth and air and sea, + Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of + The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, + Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. + + The breath whose might I have invoked in song + Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven + Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng + Whose sails were never to the tempest given. + The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! + I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; + Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, + The soul of Adonais, like a star, + Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. + +It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have said +about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no +believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he was +too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of +no solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but my hopes are not +unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we +appear to die." On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content to +see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; +I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our +faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the +mystery will be solved." How constantly the thought of death as the +revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident +related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who +could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the +bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to +save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he +said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies +there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have +found an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life; +they sleep, and it is lifted." Yet being pressed by his friend, he +refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the +imperishability of the human soul. "We know nothing; we have no +evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are +incomprehensible even to ourselves." The clear insight into the +conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very +characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of his +essay on a "Future Life", which would certainly have stated the problem +with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of +doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination +with wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities +was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as +perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the +personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of +the "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence of +his hope upon this most intangible of riddles. + + Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that + Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, + Ere its outward form had known decay, + Now felt this change, I cannot say. + + I dare not guess; but in this life + Of error, ignorance, and strife, + Where nothing is, but all things seem, + And we the shadows of the dream: + + It is a modest creed, and yet + Pleasant, if one considers it, + To own that death itself must be, + Like all the rest, a mockery. + + That garden sweet, that lady fair, + And all sweet shapes and odours there, + In truth have never passed away: + 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. + + For love, and beauty, and delight, + There is no death nor change; their might + Exceeds our organs, which endure + No light, being themselves obscure. + +But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem which +suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its +author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines +of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. +The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the +least, singular. In "Alastor" we read:-- + + A restless impulse urged him to embark + And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; + For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves + The slimy caverns of the populous deep. + +The "Ode to Liberty" closes on the same note:-- + + As a far taper fades with fading night; + As a brief insect dies with dying day, + My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, + Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away + Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, + As waves which lately paved his watery way + Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. + +The "Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples", echo the thought with +a slight variation:-- + + Yet now despair itself is mild, + Even as the winds and waters are; + I could lie down like a tired child, + And weep away the life of care + Which I have borne, and yet must bear,-- + Till death like sleep might steal on me, + And I might feel in the warm air + My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea + Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. + +Trelawny tells a story of his friend's life at Lerici, which further +illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. He took +Mrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat one +afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he had +fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, "Now let us together +solve the great mystery!" Too much value must not be attached to what +might have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal not +unreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley's friends were +accustomed to expect the realisation of his wildest fancies. It may +incidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed its +victim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatal +element--during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channel +with Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at +least with Williams. + +A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of Prince +Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copy +of Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and announced that Greece was +determined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley's +enthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama of "Hellas", which he has +described as "a sort of imitation of the 'Persae' of Aeschylus." We find +him at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by the +end of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, +1821. Shelley did not set great store by it. "It was written," he says, +"without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which +now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits." The +preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his sound +and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions of +this century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancient +Hellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the part +played by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the +poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at +times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic +cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." +Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, +equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called +Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I +think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a +different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some +unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but +also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind. + +The lyric movement of the Chorus from "Hellas", which I propose to +quote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical invention. As for +the matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas are +written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does not +prevent their feeling a regret for the "mightier forms of an older, +austerer worship." Shelley's note reminds the reader, with +characteristic caution and frankness, that "the popular notions of +Christianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation to +the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will +supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more +universal." + + Worlds on worlds are rolling over + From creation to decay, + Like the bubbles on a river + Sparkling, bursting, borne away. + But they are still immortal + Who, through birth's orient portal, + And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, + Clothe their unceasing flight + In the brief dust and light + Gathered around their chariots as they go; + New shapes they still may weave, + New gods, new laws receive; + Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last + On Death's bare ribs had cast. + + A power from the unknown God, + A Promethan conqueror came; + Like a triumphal path he trod + The thorns of death and shame. + A mortal shape to him + Was like the vapour dim + Which the orient planet animates with light. + Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, + Like bloodhounds mild and tame, + Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight. + The moon of Mahomet + Arose, and it shall set: + While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon + The cross leads generations on. + + Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep + From one whose dreams are paradise, + Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, + And day peers forth with her blank eyes; + So fleet, so faint, so fair, + The Powers of earth and air + Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem: + Apollo, Pan, and Love + And even Olympian Jove, + Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. + Our hills, and seas, and streams, + Dispeopled of their dreams, + Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, + Wailed for the golden years. + +In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna, +where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccoli. It was then +settled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal to +be called "The Liberal" in concert with Leigh Hunt, should himself +settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the same +place. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerely +attached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to the +journal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partly +because he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of +Byron's, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to +his friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poet +of the age. (See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, August 26, 1821.) That +he was not without doubts as to Byron's working easily in harness with +Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully these +doubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known. + +At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usually +infamous calumny. What it was, we do not know; but that it made profound +impression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed to +his wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeats +his growing weariness, and his wish to escape from society to solitude; +the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the +world, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is +noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of +residence:--"our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the +transplanted tree flourishes not." At Pisa he had found real rest and +refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some of +his saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed to +Jane--for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students may +perceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtle +transitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible in +its intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the supposition +that Shelley was quite happy in his home. ("The Serpent is shut out from +Paradise.") These words must be taken as implying no reflection either +upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter +troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak +egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never +finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he +had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could +probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more +from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. +Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression has +bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory; +nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, like +all poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art, +converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. This +was almost certainly the case with "Epipsychidion." + +So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for careful +readers of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction that +during the last year of his life he often found relief from a +wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the +sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane was +beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to her +passed through her husband's hands without the slightest interruption to +their intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous of +her Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage from +Shelley's letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his +relation to the Williamses:--"They are people who are very pleasing to +me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane +more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She +has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that +compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement." + +Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake of +their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundity +of Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil industry which he +passed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:-- + + Swiftly walk over the western wave, + Spirit of Night! + Out of the misty eastern cave, + Where all the long and lone daylight, + Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, + Which make thee terrible and dear,-- + Swift be thy flight! + + Wrap thy form in a mantle grey + Star-inwrought! + Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, + Kiss her until she be wearied out. + Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, + Touching all with thin opiate wand-- + Come, long-sought! + + When I arose and saw the dawn, + I sighed for thee; + When light rode high, and the dew was gone, + And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, + And the weary Day turned to his rest, + Lingering like an unloved guest, + I sighed for thee. + + Thy brother Death came, and cried, + "Wouldst thou me?" + Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, + Murmured like a noon-tide bee, + "Shall I nestle near thy side? + Wouldst thou me?"--and I replied, + "No, not thee!" + + Death will come when thou art dead, + Soon, too soon-- + Sleep will come when thou art fled; + Of neither would I ask the boon + I ask of thee, beloved Night-- + Swift be thine approaching flight, + Come soon, soon! + +The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend +Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not +uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given +by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that Shelley was no +careless writer. + + The golden gates of sleep unbar + Where strength and beauty, met together, + Kindle their image like a star + In a sea of glassy weather! + + Night, with all thy stars look down-- + Darkness, weep thy holiest dew! + Never smiled the inconstant moon + On a pair so true. + Let eyes not see their own delight; + Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight + Oft renew. + + Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! + Holy stars, permit no wrong! + And return to wake the sleeper, + Dawn, ere it be long. + O joy! O fear! what will be done + In the absence of the sun! + Come along! + +Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form, +were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of his +happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave's +"Golden Treasury" shows how large a place they occupy among the +permanent jewels of our literature. + +The month of January added a new and most important member to the little +Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more than +to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet's +life are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic. +Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far away +from literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with the +sternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-reliance +and his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore, +made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who still +incline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. This +true child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byron +the stuff of a real man. "To form a just idea of his poetry, you should +have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated +his writings." "The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best and +ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everything +better than himself." "I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and the +contrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking of +himself, was as much at ease in his own home, omitting no occasion of +obliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with all +or any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or +address." "All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest +manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, +coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship." "Shelley's +mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action." +"He was always in earnest." "He never laid aside his book and magic +mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, +stood mute.... Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held him +captive." These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself +somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting +affectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities +this "dreamy bard,"--"uncommonly awkward," as he also called him--bad +rider and poor seaman as he was--"over-sensitive," and "eternally +brooding on his own thoughts," who "had seen no more of the waking-day +than a girl at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with +the courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned +boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid +of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced +companion of his last few months that very rare product for which +Diogenes searched in vain--a man. + +Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no less +certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The +Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great +deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated +conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near +the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes +steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged +to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the +direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come +in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, +blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; +and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, +feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his +warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down +and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this +mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with +all the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of +his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by +every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our +literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; +it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and +trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the +custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams +saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had +in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,-- + +"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"--I am translating some passages in it.' + +"'Oh, read it to us.' + +"Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not +interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly +became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly +manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid +interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into +our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish +poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After +this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a dead +silence ensued; looking up, I asked,-- + +"'Where is he?' + +"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, +no one knows when or where.'" + +Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to +be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man +who had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Shelley +proposed that the English--himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. +Taafe--should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme +took Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before +they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing +that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other +affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police. +The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted +dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr. +Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man +struck Shelley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English then +pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron's +servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded +the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was +necessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter "a +trifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by the +authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, +Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the +exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron's +final departure from Pisa. + +The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by such +adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his +days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, +with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams +in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from +thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When +the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until +midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his +favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, +and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to +Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his +finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run +together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a +sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild +ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a +manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When +my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images +and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled +down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a +drawing." + +A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly +with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began +to gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go +pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend's +firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing +was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in +fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the +circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and +the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding +movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by +Byron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line of +Mephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange," and translated +it, "My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, "Then you are her +nephew." Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to +it in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above. + +Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to +nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with +Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly +lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined +to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking +the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his +mind to have one too. Shelley's was to be an open boat carrying sail, +Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted +to a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain +Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost the +lives of Shelley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carried +Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain +Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelley +and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, +which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams +overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his +cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two +tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was +very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, +strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, +not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, +Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. +"It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching the +poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had +a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one +was mental, the other mechanical." "The boy was quick and handy, and +used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, but +over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in +emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing +sea and sky; he heeded not the boat." + + + +CHAPTER 7. + +LAST DAYS. + +The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and +early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging +for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon +a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which +"looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. It +consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing +boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided +into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been +white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought +the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about +it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to +be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room +of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other; +the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another. +Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon; +and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when +Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris +naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever +Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the +dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected +apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. +Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no +easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's +laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin. + +They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course of +life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8. +These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley's life. We +seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr. +Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from +which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably +have risen to a loftier altitude, by a calmer and more equable exercise +of powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life in +Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is +calm for the passing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with +none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the +calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world +he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little +removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures +of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the +element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well +mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in +solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows +in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to +bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to +Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets +aloud to the assembled party. + +In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this +uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms and +inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if +we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been +one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his +masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of +compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, +and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and +inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in +chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous +march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their +tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty +with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe +of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to +abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this +solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a +Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer +heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, +which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante +plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the +Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide. +The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is +brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a +moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how +Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime +philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more +soul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, as +we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? I +cried"--a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that the +questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death. + +To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of its +splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary +images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley is +the only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficult +of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot +be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in +treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature, +and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To +select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict +less violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach one +of its episodes. + + Swift as a spirit hastening to his task + Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth + Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask + + Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. + The smokeless altars of the mountain snows + Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth + + Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, + To which the birds tempered their matin lay. + All flowers in field or forest which unclose + + Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, + Swinging their censers in the element, + With orient incense lit by the new ray, + + Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent + Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; + And, in succession due, did continent, + + Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear + The form and character of mortal mould, + Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear + + Their portion of the toil, which he of old + Took as his own, and then imposed on them. + But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold + + Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem + The cone of night, now they were laid asleep, + Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem + + Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep + Of a green Apennine. Before me fled + The night; behind me rose the day; the deep + + Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,-- + When a strange trance over my fancy grew + Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread + + Was so transparent that the scene came through + As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn + O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew + + That I had felt the freshness of that dawn + Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, + And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn + + Under the self-same bough, and heard as there + The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold + Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. + And then a vision on my brain was rolled. + +Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point +one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph of +Life" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision +for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not +without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza +rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the +labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming +in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with +clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: +yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement. + + As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, + This was the tenour of my waking dream:-- + Methought I sate beside a public way + + Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream + Of people there was hurrying to and fro, + Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, + + All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know + Whither he went, or whence he came, or why + He made one of the multitude, and so + + Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky + One of the million leaves of summer's bier; + Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, + + Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: + Some flying from the thing they feared, and some + Seeking the object of another's fear; + + And others, as with steps towards the tomb, + Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, + And others mournfully within the gloom + + Of their own shadow walked and called it death; + And some fled from it as it were a ghost, + Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath. + + But more, with motions which each other crossed, + Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, + Or birds within the noon-day ether lost, + + Upon that path where flowers never grew-- + And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, + Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew + + Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; + Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told + Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed, + + With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, + And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they + Pursued their serious folly as of old. + +Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to +notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in +one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the passing of a +multitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by +accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding +genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to +note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the +definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and +mystic. + + And as I gazed, methought that in the way + The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June + When the south wind shakes the extinguished day; + + And a cold glare, intenser than the noon + But icy cold, obscured with blinding light + The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon-- + + When on the sunlit limits of the night + Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, + And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,-- + + Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear + The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form + Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair; + + So came a chariot on the silent storm + Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape + So sate within, as one whom years deform, + + Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, + Crouching within the shadow of a tomb. + And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape + + Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom + Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam + A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume + + The guidance of that wonder-winged team; + The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings + Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream + + The music of their ever-moving wings. + All the four faces of that charioteer + Had their eyes banded; little profit brings + + Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, + Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, + Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere + + Of all that is, has been, or will be done. + So ill was the car guided--but it past + With solemn speed majestically on. + +The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic +effort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of +Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make +Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw +visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the +sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another +he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained +terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood +he communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what +she afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed +that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable that +the last words written to him by Jane were these:--"Are you going to +join your friend Plato?" + +The Leigh Hunts arrived at last in Genoa, whence they again sailed for +Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediately +prepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams in +the "Don Juan" for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his old +friend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon +the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and +established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as +comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The +negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised +forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from +Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how +irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven +disorderly children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was +positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, +who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly +cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough +to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and +the tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, +harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two +together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa to +his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he used +to be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touch +relating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:--"He +assented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, +while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet be +established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of +faith." + +On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise for +Leghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, with +Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, Charles +Vivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on board +the "Bolivar", in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weather +for some time had been unusually hot and dry. "Processions of priests +and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;" so runs +the last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or +nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "Don +Juan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a.m. +instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief." +Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was an +oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, and +slept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in the +harbour making all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest was +upon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more than +twenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously for +Shelley's boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard +of her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of +the catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of +a felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running her +down is still uncertain. + +On the morning of the third day after the storm, Trelawny rode to Pisa, +and communicated his fears to Hunt. "I then went upstairs to Byron. When +I told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned +me." Couriers were despatched to search the sea-coast, and to bring the +"Bolivar" from Leghorn. Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, and +there found a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been in +Shelley's boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with the +coast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last two +bodies were cast upon the sand. One found near the Via Reggio, on the +18th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the volume of +Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the other, doubled back, +as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away." +The other, found near the tower of Migliarino, at about four miles' +distance, was that of Williams. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, though +cast up on the same day, the 18th of July, near Massa, was not heard of +by Trelawny till the 29th. + +Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to the two +widowed women, who had spent the last days in an agony of alternate +despair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny discharged +faithfully and firmly. "The next day I prevailed on them," he says, "to +return with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of the +next day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neither +describe nor forget." It was decided that Shelley should be buried at +Rome, near his friend Keats and his son William, and that Williams's +remains should be taken to England. But first the bodies had to be +burned; and for permission to do this Trelawny, who all through had +taken the lead, applied to the English Embassy at Florence. After some +difficulty it was granted. + +What remains to be said concerning the cremation of Shelley's body on +the 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own words. Williams, it +may be stated, had been burned on the preceding day. + +"Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the poet's grave, +but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut a +trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertain +the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave. + +"In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended +by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand +scenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, +that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the +islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented +watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested +Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified +outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight. + +"As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness +and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of +wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked +body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him +back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to +check the sacrilege--the work went on silently in the deep and +unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch +of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron +was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a +dull, hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had +struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered.... After the fire was +well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine +was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his +life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and +quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the +atmosphere was tremulous and wavy.... The fire was so fierce as to +produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey +ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of +bones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all was that the +heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, +my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act, I should +have been put into quarantine." + +Shelley's heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not without +reluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. It is now +at Boscombe. His ashes were carried by Trelawny to Rome and buried in +the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter to +Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely in "Adonais". The epitaph, composed +by Hunt, ran thus: "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. August +MDCCXCII. Obiit VIII Jul. MDCCCXXII." To the Latin words Trelawny, +faithfullest and most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel's +song, much loved in life by Shelley: + + Nothing of him that doth fade, + But doth suffer a sea-change + Into something rich and strange. + +"And so," writes Lady Shelley, "the sea and the earth closed over one +who was great as a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist; and of +whom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to have +prepared him for being thus snatched from life under circumstances of +mingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in their spring +freshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal body decrepit, or +to wither the heart which could not be consumed by fire." + + + +CHAPTER 8. + +EPILOGUE. + +After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelley +the narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by one +commanding reason. Shelley's life and his poetry are indissolubly +connected. He acted what he thought and felt, with a directness rare +among his brethren of the poet's craft; while his verse, with the +exception of "The Cenci", expressed little but the animating thoughts +and aspirations of his life. That life, moreover, was "a miracle of +thirty years," so crowded with striking incident and varied experience +that, as he said himself, he had already lived longer than his father, +and ought to be reckoned with the men of ninety. Through all +vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and died, like one whom +the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story, young, despite grey +hairs and suffering. His life has, therefore, to be told, in order that +his life-work may be rightly valued: for, great as that was, he, the +man, was somehow greater; and noble as it truly is, the memory of him is +nobler. + +To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate for +truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. The +anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. The +right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: in +his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot the +mark of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest purpose with +moral and social theories that could not but have proved pernicious to +mankind at large, produced at times an almost grotesque mixture in his +actions no less than in his verse. We cannot, therefore, wonder that +society, while he lived, felt the necessity of asserting itself against +him. But now that he has passed into the company of the great dead, and +time has softened down the asperities of popular judgment, we are able +to learn the real lesson of his life and writings. That is not to be +sought in any of his doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his +resolute loyalty to an unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolent +ideal. It is this which constitutes his supreme importance for us +English at the present time. Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, +and we belong to a race in which men who follow them so single-heartedly +are not common. + +As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature--a +quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which severe +critics of other nations think we lack. Byron's daring is in a different +region: his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate our +energies, or cheer us with new hopes and splendid vistas. Wordsworth, +the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, +suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, and +braces us by healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But in +Wordsworth there is none of Shelley's magnetism. $What remains of +permanent value in Coleridge's poetry--such work as "Christabel", the +"Ancient Mariner", or "Kubla Khan"--is a product of pure artistic fancy, +tempered by the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he +was, loved Nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for him a +mistress rather than a Diotima; nor did he share the prophetic fire +which burns in Shelley's verse, quite apart from the direct enunciation +of his favourite tenets. In none of Shelley's greatest contemporaries +was the lyrical faculty so paramount; and whether we consider his minor +songs, his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowledge +that he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of our +language. In range of power he was also conspicuous above the rest. Not +only did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best +translations, and the best familiar poems of his century. As a satirist +and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do; +and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts +forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its +myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor rhetoric. + +While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached in +swiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, had +faults from which the men with whom I have compared him were more free. +The most prominent of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness, +incompleteness, a want of narrative force, and a weak hold on objective +realities. Even his warmest admirers, if they are sincere critics, will +concede that his verse, taken altogether, is marked by inequality. In +his eager self-abandonment to inspiration, he produced much that is +unsatisfying simply because it is not ripe. There was no defect of power +in him, but a defect of patience; and the final word to be pronounced in +estimating the larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not only +was the poet young; but the fruit of his young mind had been plucked +before it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not care +enough for common things to present them with artistic fulness. He was +intolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with the roundness that +we find in Goethe's work. He flew at the grand, the spacious, the +sublime; and did not always succeed in realizing for his readers what he +had imagined. A certain want of faith in his own powers, fostered by the +extraordinary discouragement under which he had to write, prevented him +from finishing what he began, or from giving that ultimate form of +perfection to his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces like +the "Ode to the West Wind". When a poem was ready, he had it hastily +printed, and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurred +to interrupt his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of these +defects, if we may use this word at all to indicate our sense that +Shelley might by care have been made equal to his highest self, were in +a great measure the correlative of his chief quality--the ideality, of +which I have already spoken. He composed with all his faculties, mental, +emotional, and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of +intense fervour, striving to attain one object, the truest and most +passionate investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed his +ever-quick imagination. The result is that his finest work has more the +stamp of something natural and elemental--the wind, the sea, the depth +of air--than of a mere artistic product. Plato would have said: the +Muses filled this man with sacred madness, and, when he wrote, he was no +longer in his own control. There was, moreover, ever-present in his +nature an effort, an aspiration after a better than the best this world +can show, which prompted him to blend the choicest products of his +thought and fancy with the fairest images borrowed from the earth on +which he lived. He never willingly composed except under the impulse to +body forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the spirit +of the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, this +earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of +inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. But it +cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art should +always be found in them. They have something of the waywardness and +negligence of nature, something of the asymmetreia we admire in the +earlier creations of Greek architecture. That Shelley, acute critic and +profound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and show +himself an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly proved +by "The Cenci" and by "Adonais". The reason why he did not always +observe this method will be understood by those who have studied his +"Defence of Poetry", and learned to sympathize with his impassioned +theory of art. + +Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice to +Shelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are almost +overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meet +in love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him, +and baffling the most eager seeker for the truth. (See Lady Shelley v. +Hogg; Trelawny v. the Shelley family; Peacock v. Lady Shelley; Garnett +v. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, etc., etc.) Through +the turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible to +discern the whole personality of the man. By careful comparison and +refined manipulation of the biographical treasures at our disposal, a +fair portrait of Shelley might still be set before the reader with the +accuracy of a finished picture. That labour of exquisite art and of +devoted love still remains to be accomplished, though in the meantime +Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Memoir is a most valuable instalment. Shelley in his +lifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, +impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, +Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he was +the gentlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had ever +met. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his four +last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, +wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youth +were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, his +character mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Without +losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experience +into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, +he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready to +unfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when life at +last seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, +death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product of +his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them into +something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end. + +If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of waste +excited in us by Shelley's premature absorption into the mystery of the +unknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own "Alastor":-- + + Art and eloquence, + And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain + To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. + It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all + Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit, + Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves + Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, + The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; + But pale despair and cold tranquillity, + Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, + Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. + + + + +THE END. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Percy Bysshe Shelley, by John Addington Symonds + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 4555-8.txt or 4555-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/5/4555/ + +Produced by Rebecca Trump and Sue Asscher. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley + +Author: John Addington Symonds + +Posting Date: August 14, 2009 [EBook #4555] +Release Date: October, 2003 +First Posted: February 10, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Rebecca Trump and Sue Asscher. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. +</H4> + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BY +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS. +</H2> + +<H4> +CHAPTER 1. <A HREF="#chap01">BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 2. <A HREF="#chap02">ETON AND OXFORD.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 3. <A HREF="#chap03">LIFE IN LONDON, AND FIRST MARRIAGE.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 4. <A HREF="#chap04">SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 5. <A HREF="#chap05">LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 6. <A HREF="#chap06">RESIDENCE AT PISA.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 7. <A HREF="#chap07">LAST DAYS.</A> +<BR> +CHAPTER 8. <A HREF="#chap08">EPILOGUE.</A> +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LIST OF AUTHORITIES. +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1. The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. + Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. 1 volume.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves and Turner, + 1876-7. 4 volumes.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W.M. Rossetti. Moxon, + 1870. 2 volumes.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 volumes. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering, + 1878. 2 volumes.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 1 volume. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 volumes. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +8. Shelley's Early Life, by D.F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 1 volume. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +10. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above + cited, Number 3.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G.B. Smith. David Douglas, 1877. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in "Fraser's Magazine," 1858 and 1860. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in "Macmillan's Magazine," + June, 1860.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the "Fortnightly Review," + June, 1878.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W.M. Rossetti, in the "University + Magazine," February and March, 1878.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +SHELLEY. +</H1> + +<BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 1. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. +</H3> + +<P> +It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, +probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning +gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet +the light that shone in them was crescent. That the world should know +Marlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and Mozart, only by the products of their +early manhood, is indeed a cause for lamentation, when we remember what +the long lives of a Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held in +reserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade +ourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of men +untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the +composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his +forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been +known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility +have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow +would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. +There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by +fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has +bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law of +waste that rules inscrutably in nature. +</P> + +<P> +Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great English +poets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when he +was twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the point of completing his +thirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed the briefest space for the +development of his extraordinary powers. His achievement, perfect as it +is in some poetic qualities, remains so immature and incomplete that no +conjecture can be hazarded about his future. Byron lived longer, and +produced more than his brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when his +genius was still ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations" were +issuing like worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we have +perhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have +equalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's +early death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by +a mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, and his aims were +more ambitious than theirs. He therefore needed length of years for +their co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have +the certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wrought +a clear and lucid harmony. +</P> + +<P> +These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet the +student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost +forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned +with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but +with one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of which +his powers were capable had been accomplished. +</P> + +<P> +August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history of +English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field +Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy, +was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the +same county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity and +considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary +honours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder +branch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the younger +dating from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather received +this honour through the influence of his friend the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. +Timothy Shelley was born in the year 1753, and in 1791 he married +Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilford, Esquire, a lady of great beauty, +and endowed with fair intellectual ability, though not of a literary +temperament. The first child of this marriage was the poet, named Bysshe +in compliment to his grandfather, the then living head of the family, +and Percy because of some remote connexion with the ducal house of +Northumberland. Four daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret, +and one son, John, who died in the year 1866, were the subsequent issue +of Mr. Timothy Shelley's marriage. In the year 1815, upon the death of +his father, he succeeded to the baronetcy, which passed, after his own +death, to his grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, as the +poet's only surviving son. +</P> + +<P> +Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region of genealogy, it may +be worth mentioning that Sir Bysshe Shelley by his second marriage with +Miss Elizabeth Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Penshurst, became the +father of five children, the eldest son of whom assumed the name of +Shelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy, and left a son, Philip Charles +Sidney, who was created Lord De l'Isle and Dudley. Such details are not +without a certain value, inasmuch as they prove that the poet, who won +for his ancient and honourable house a fame far more illustrious than +titles can confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal force and +worldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, the +wealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two families, +wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already +distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make +his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in +North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is +also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of +obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the +beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his +will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two English +heiresses; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left it at the +age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000 pounds in the English Funds, +together with estates worth 20,000 pounds a year to his descendents. +</P> + +<P> +Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the English +squirearchy; but never assuredly did the old tale of the swan hatched +with the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustration +than in this case. Gifted with the untameable individuality of genius, +and bent on piercing to the very truth beneath all shams and fictions +woven by society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstances +of his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated warfare with the +world's opinion. His too frequent tirades against:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The Queen of Slaves,<BR> + The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead,<BR> + Custom,—<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear upon +him by relatives who prized their position in society, their wealth, and +the observance of conventional decencies, above all other things. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man; but he was +everything which the poet's father ought not to have been. As member for +the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his party; and that party +looked to nothing beyond the interests of the gentry and the pleasure of +the Duke of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficial +imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect in +his familiar correspondence, though his letters show that he lacked the +rudiments alike of logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might be +summed up in Clough's epigram:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + At church on Sunday to attend<BR> + Will serve to keep the world your friend.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be gathered +from his telling his eldest son that he would never pardon a +mesalliance, but would provide for as many illegitimate children as he +chose to have. For the rest, he appears to have been a fairly good +landlord, and a not unkind father, sociable and hospitable, somewhat +vain and occasionally odd in manner, but qualified for passing muster +with the country gentlemen around him. In the capacity to understand a +nature which deviated from the ordinary type so remarkably as Shelley's, +he was utterly deficient; and perhaps we ought to regard it as his +misfortune that fate made him the father of a man who was among the +greatest portents of originality and unconventionality that this century +has seen. Toward an ordinary English youth, ready to sow his wild oats +at college, and willing to settle at the proper age and take his place +upon the bench of magistrates, Sir Timothy Shelley would have shown +himself an indulgent father; and it must be conceded by the poet's +biographer that if Percy Bysshe had but displayed tact and consideration +on his side, many of the misfortunes which signalized his relations to +his father would have been avoided. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley passed his childhood at Field Place, and when he was about six +years old began to be taught, together with his sisters, by Mr. Edwards, +a clergyman who lived at Warnham. What is recorded of these early years +we owe to the invaluable communications of his sister Hellen. The +difference of age between her and her brother Bysshe obliges us to refer +her recollections to a somewhat later period—probably to the holidays +he spent away from Sion House and Eton. Still, since they introduce us +to the domestic life of his then loved home, it may be proper to make +quotations from them in this place. Miss Shelley tells us her brother +"would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kind +of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was rebuked, was running +a stick through the ceiling of a low passage to find some new chamber, +which could be made effective for some flights of his vivid +imagination." He was very much attached to his sisters, and used to +entertain them with stories, in which "an alchemist, old and grey, with +a long beard," who was supposed to abide mysteriously in the garret of +Field Place, played a prominent part. "Another favourite theme was the +'Great Tortoise,' that lived in Warnham Pond; and any unwonted noise was +accounted for by the presence of this great beast, which was made into +the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his +friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, +no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited +the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable +serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived +long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that +Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection +of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please +his sisters were grotesque, and some both perilous and terrifying. "We +dressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, +and Bysshe would take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable +liquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." +Shelley often took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge and +fence, carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or their +fatigue required it. At this time "his figure was slight and +beautiful,—his hands were models, and his feet are treading the earth +again in one of his race; his eyes too have descended in their wild +fixed beauty to the same person. As a child, I have heard that his skin +was like snow, and bright ringlets covered his head." Here is a little +picture which brings the boy vividly before our eyes: "Bysshe ordered +clothes according to his own fancy at Eton, and the beautifully fitting +silk pantaloons, as he stood as almost all men and boys do, with their +coat-tails near the fire, excited my silent though excessive +admiration." +</P> + +<P> +When he was ten years of age, Shelley went to school at Sion house, +Brentford, an academy kept by Dr. Greenlaw, and frequented by the sons +of London tradesmen, who proved but uncongenial companions to his gentle +spirit. It is fortunate for posterity that one of his biographers, his +second cousin Captain Medwin, was his schoolfellow at Sion House; for to +his recollections we owe some details of great value. Medwin tells us +that Shelley learned the classic languages almost by intuition, while he +seemed to be spending his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds as +they sailed across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketches +of fir-trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he was +subject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, he +often lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. His +favourite amusement was novel-reading; and to the many "blue books" from +the Minerva press devoured by him in his boyhood, we may ascribe the +style and tone of his first compositions. For physical sports he showed +no inclination. "He passed among his school-fellows as a strange and +unsocial being; for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and the +other boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of our +prison-court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pace +backwards and forwards—I think I see him now—along the southern wall, +indulging in various vague and undefined ideas, the chaotic elements, if +I may say so, of what afterwards produced so beautiful a world." +</P> + +<P> +Two of Shelley's most important biographical compositions undoubtedly +refer to this period of his boyhood. The first is the passage in the +Prelude to "Laon and Cythna" which describes his suffering among the +unsympathetic inmates of a school:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first<BR> + The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.<BR> + I do remember well the hour which burst<BR> + My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was,<BR> + When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,<BR> + And wept, I knew not why; until there rose<BR> + From the near school-room, voices, that, alas!<BR> + Were but one echo from a world of woes—<BR> + The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And then I clasped my hands and looked around—<BR> + —But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,<BR> + Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground—<BR> + So without shame I spake:—"I will be wise,<BR> + And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies<BR> + Such power, for I grow weary to behold<BR> + The selfish and the strong still tyrannize<BR> + Without reproach or check." I then controlled<BR> + My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And from that hour did I with earnest thought<BR> + Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore,<BR> + Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught<BR> + I cared to learn, but from that secret store<BR> + Wrought linked armour for my soul, before<BR> + It might walk forth to war among mankind.<BR> + Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more<BR> + Within me, till there came upon my mind<BR> + A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The second is a fragment on friendship preserved by Hogg. After defining +that kind of passionate attachment which often precedes love in fervent +natures, he proceeds: "I remember forming an attachment of this kind at +school. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this +took pace; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or +twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a +character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of +human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded +within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, +inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him +since my school-boy days; but either I confound my present recollections +with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and +utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and +winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so +deep, that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from +my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred +sentiments of friendship." How profound was the impression made on his +imagination and his feelings by this early friendship, may again be +gathered from a passage in his note upon the antique group of Bacchus +and Ampelus at Florence. "Look, the figures are walking with a +sauntering and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, as you +may have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, walking in some +grassy spot of the play-ground with that tender friendship for each +other which the age inspires." +</P> + +<P> +These extracts prove beyond all question that the first contact with the +outer world called into activity two of Shelley's strongest moral +qualities—his hatred of tyranny and brutal force in any form, and his +profound sentiment of friendship. The admiring love of women, which +marked him no less strongly, and which made him second only to +Shakespere in the sympathetic delineation of a noble feminine ideal, had +been already developed by his deep affection for his mother and sisters. +It is said that he could not receive a letter from them without manifest +joy. +</P> + +<P> +"Shelley," says Medwin, "was at this time tall for his age, slightly and +delicately built, and rather narrow-chested, with a complexion fair and +ruddy, a face rather long than oval. His features, not regularly +handsome, were set off by a profusion of silky brown hair, that curled +naturally. The expression of his countenance was one of exceeding +sweetness and innocence. His blue eyes were very large and prominent. +They were at times, when he was abstracted, as he often was in +contemplation, dull, and as it were, insensible to external objects; at +others they flashed with the fire of intelligence. His voice was soft +and low, but broken in its tones,—when anything much interested him, +harsh and immodulated; and this peculiarity he never lost. He was +naturally calm, but when he heard of or read of some flagrant act of +injustice, oppression, or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks of +horror and indignation were visible in his countenance." +</P> + +<P> +Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained unaltered +through the short space of life allowed him. Loving, innocent, +sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his companions, strongly +moralized after a peculiar and inborn type of excellence, drawing his +inspirations from Nature and from his own soul in solitude, Shelley +passed across the stage of this world, attended by a splendid vision +which sustained him at a perilous height above the kindly race of men. +The penalty of this isolation he suffered in many painful episodes. The +reward he reaped in a measure of more authentic prophecy, and in a +nobler realization of his best self, than could be claimed by any of his +immediate contemporaries. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 2. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ETON AND OXFORD. +</H3> + +<P> +In 1805 Shelley went from Sion House to Eton. At this time Dr. Keate was +headmaster and Shelley's tutor was a Mr. Bethel, "one of the dullest men +in the establishment." At Eton Shelley was not popular either with his +teachers or his elder school-fellows, although the boys of his own age +are said to have adored him. "He was all passion," writes Mrs. Shelley; +"passionate in his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love:" and +this vehemence of temperament he displayed by organizing a rebellion +against fagging, which no doubt won for him the applause of his juniors +and equals. It was not to be expected that a lad intolerant of rule and +disregardful of restriction, who neglected punctuality in the +performance of his exercises, while he spent his leisure in translating +half of Pliny's history, should win the approbation of pedagogues. At +the same time the inspired opponent of the fagging system, the scorner +of games and muscular amusements, could not hope to find much favour +with such martinets of juvenile convention as a public school is wont to +breed. At Eton, as elsewhere, Shelley's uncompromising spirit brought +him into inconvenient contact with a world of vulgar usage, while his +lively fancy invested the commonplaces of reality with dark hues +borrowed from his own imagination. Mrs. Shelley says of him, "Tamed by +affection, but unconquered by blows, what chance was there that Shelley +should be happy at a public school?" This sentence probably contains the +pith of what he afterwards remembered of his own school life, and there +is no doubt that a nature like his, at once loving and high-spirited, +had much to suffer. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that at Eton +there were any serious blows to bear, or to assume that laws of love +which might have led a spirit so gentle as Shelley's, were adapted to +the common stuff of which the English boy is formed. The latter mistake +Shelley made continually throughout his youth; and only the advance of +years tempered his passionate enthusiasm into a sober zeal for the +improvement of mankind by rational methods. We may also trace at this +early epoch of his life that untamed intellectual ambition—that neglect +of the immediate and detailed for the transcendental and +universal—which was a marked characteristic of his genius, leading him +to fly at the highest while he overleaped the facts of ordinary human +life. "From his earliest years," says Mrs. Shelley, "all his amusements +and occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the term, lawless +nature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a boy, but as a man; +and so with manly powers and childish wit, he dared and achieved +attempts that none of his comrades could even have conceived. His +understanding and the early development of imagination never permitted +him to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyranny +prevented him from paying due attention to his school duties. But he was +always actively employed; and although his endeavours were prosecuted +with puerile precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantly +directed to those great objects which have employed the thoughts of the +greatest among men; and though his studies were not followed up +according to school discipline, they were not the less diligently +applied to." This high-soaring ambition was the source both of his +weakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with the +world of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to extort her +secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the philanthropist +who dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence, and the poet who +invented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of grandeur too colossal to be +animated with dramatic life. +</P> + +<P> +A strong interest in experimental science had been already excited in +him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grew +into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of the +simpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure—the more so +perhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk of +an old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he was +amusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room and +received a severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During the +holidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. "His own +hands and clothes," says Miss Shelley, "were constantly stained and +corroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable that some day the +house would be burned down, or some serious mischief happen to himself +or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for science +Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first +conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost +wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be +wrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was +fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. +When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it gave +him the acutest pleasure: and this is highly characteristic of the +genius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the life of life +withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he seems to have +delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar microscope, and +mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without taking the trouble +to study any of its branches systematically. In his later years he +abandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence of them occurs in +that most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter to Maria +Gisborne." +</P> + +<P> +While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not +wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a +correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his +contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the +latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the +rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at a +glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was no +less astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae were +indeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we may +trace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also his +frequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artistic +execution. +</P> + +<P> +That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may be +gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his Oxford +rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was frequently +visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that he spend the +40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi," on a farewell supper +to eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be quoted from his +own poem, the "Boat on the Serchio," to prove that he did not entertain +a merely disagreeable memory of his school life. (Forman's edition, +volume 4 page 115.) Yet the general experience of Eton must have been +painful; and it is sad to read of this gentle and pure spirit being +goaded by his coarser comrades into fury, or coaxed to curse his father +and the king for their amusement. It may be worth mentioning that he was +called "the Atheist" at Eton; and though Hogg explains this by saying +that "the Atheist" was an official character among the boys, selected +from time to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is not +improbable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for him +a title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyish +incantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms would +scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tinged +his imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the +"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes the following reference to +circumstances which might otherwise be trivial:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped<BR> + Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,<BR> + And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing<BR> + Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.<BR> + I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed,<BR> + I was not heard, I saw them not—<BR> + When, musing deeply on the lot<BR> + Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing<BR> + All vital things that wake to bring<BR> + News of birds and blossoming,—<BR> + Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;<BR> + I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Among the Eton tutors was one whose name will always be revered by +Shelley's worshippers; for he alone discerned the rare gifts of the +strange and solitary boy, and Shelley loved him. Dr. Lind was an old +man, a physician, and a student of chemistry. Shelley spent long hours +at his house, conversing with him, and receiving such instruction in +philosophy and science as the grey-haired scholar could impart. The +affection which united them must have been of no common strength or +quality; for when Shelley lay ill of a fever at Field Place, and had +conceived the probably ill-founded notion that his father intended to +place him in a mad-house, he managed to convey a message to his friend +at Eton, on the receipt of which Dr. Lind travelled to Horsham, and by +his sympathy and skill restored the sick boy's confidence. It may +incidentally be pointed out that this story, credited as true by Lady +Shelley in her Memorials, shows how early an estrangement had begun +between the poet and his father. We look, moreover, vainly for that +mother's influence which might have been so beneficial to the boy in +whom "love and life were twins, born at one birth." From Dr. Lind +Shelley not only received encouragement to pursue his chemical studies; +but he also acquired the habit of corresponding with persons unknown to +him, whose opinions he might be anxious to discover or dispute. This +habit, as we shall see in the sequel, determined Shelley's fate on two +important occasions of his life. In return for the help extended to him +at Eton, Shelley conferred undying fame on Dr. Lind; the characters of +Zonaras in "Prince Athanase," and of the hermit in "Laon and Cythna," +are portraits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend. +</P> + +<P> +The months which elapsed between Eton and Oxford were an important +period in Shelley's life. At this time a boyish liking for his cousin, +Harriet Grove, ripened into real attachment; and though there was +perhaps no formal engagement between them, the parents on both sides +looked with approval on their love. What it concerns us to know about +this early passion, is given in a letter from a brother of Miss Grove. +"Bysshe was at that time (just after leaving Eton) more attached to my +sister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlight +walks we four had at Strode and also at St. Irving's; that, I think, was +the name of the place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham." For some +time after the date mentioned in this letter, Shelley and Miss Grove +kept up an active correspondence; but the views he expressed on +speculative subjects soon began to alarm her. She consulted her mother +and her father, and the engagement was broken off. The final separation +does not seem to have taken place until the date of Shelley's expulsion +from Oxford; and not the least cruel of the pangs he had to suffer at +that period, was the loss of one to whom he had given his whole heart +unreservedly. The memory of Miss Grove long continued to haunt his +imagination, nor is there much doubt that his first unhappy marriage was +contracted while the wound remained unhealed. The name of Harriet +Westbrook and something in her face reminded him of Harriet Grove; it is +even still uncertain to which Harriet the dedication of Queen Mab is +addressed. (See Medwin, volume 1 page 68.) +</P> + +<P> +In his childhood Shelley scribbled verses with fluency by no means +unusual in the case of forward boys; and we have seen that at Sion House +he greedily devoured the sentimental novels of the day. His favourite +poets at the time of which I am now writing, were Monk Lewis and +Southey; his favourite books in prose were romances by Mrs. Radcliffe +and Godwin. He now began to yearn for fame and publicity. Miss Shelley +speaks of a play written by her brother and her sister Elizabeth, which +was sent to Matthews the comedian, and courteously returned as unfit for +acting. She also mentions a little volume of her own verses, which the +boy had printed with the tell-tale name of "H-ll-n Sh-ll-y" on the +title-page. Medwin gives a long account of a poem on the story of the +Wandering Jew, composed by him in concert with Shelley during the winter +of 1809-1810. They sent the manuscript to Thomas Campbell, who returned +it with the observation that it contained but two good lines:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + It seemed as if an angel's sigh<BR> + Had breathed the plaintive symphony.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Undeterred by this adverse criticism, Shelley subsequently offered "The +Wandering Jew" to two publishers, Messrs. Ballantyne and Co. of +Edinburgh, and Mr. Stockdale of Pall Mall; but it remained in MS. at +Edinburgh till 1831, when a portion was printed in "Fraser's Magazine." +</P> + +<P> +Just before leaving Eton he finished a novel of "Zastrozzi", which some +critics trace to its source in "Zofloya the Moor," perused by him at +Sion House. The most astonishing fact about this incoherent medley of +mad sentiment is that it served to furnish forth the 40-pound Eton +supper already spoken of, that it was duly ushered into the world of +letters by Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson on the 5th of June, 1810, and +that it was seriously reviewed. The dates of Shelley's publications now +come fast and frequent. In the late summer of 1810 he introduced himself +to Mr. J.J. Stockdale, the then fashionable publisher of poems and +romances, at his house of business in Pall Mall. With characteristic +impetuosity the young author implored assistance in a difficulty. He had +commissioned a printer in Horsham to strike off the astounding number of +1480 copies of a volume of poems; and he had no money to pay the +printer's bill. Would Stockdale help him out of this dilemma, by taking +up the quires and duly ushering the book into the world? Throughout his +life Shelley exercised a wonderful fascination over the people with whom +he came in contact, and almost always won his way with them as much by +personal charm as by determined and impassioned will. Accordingly on +this occasion Stockdale proved accommodating. The Horsham printer was +somehow satisfied; and on the 17th of September, 1810, the little book +came out with the title of "Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire." This +volume has disappeared; and much fruitless conjecture has been expended +upon the question of Shelley's collaborator in his juvenile attempt. +Cazire stands for some one; probably it is meant to represent a woman's +name, and that woman may have been either Elizabeth Shelley or Harriet +Grove. The "Original Poetry" had only been launched a week, when +Stockdale discovered on a closer inspection of the book that it +contained some verses well known to the world as the production of M.G. +Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole edition +was suppressed—not, however, before about one hundred copies had passed +into circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty +larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied +Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to +break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issued +Shelley's second novel from his press, and entered into negotiations +with him for the publication of more poetry. The new romance was named +"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian." This tale, no less unreadable than +"Zastrozzi," and even more chaotic in its plan, contained a good deal of +poetry, which has been incorporated in the most recent editions of +Shelley's works. A certain interest attaches to it as the first known +link between Shelley and William Godwin, for it was composed under the +influence of the latter's novel, "St. Leon." The title, moreover, +carries us back to those moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded to +above. Shelley's earliest attempts in literature have but little value +for the student of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate the +psychology of genius and its wayward growth. Their intrinsic merit is +almost less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusal +the course which the future poet of "The Cenci" and "Epipsychidion" was +to take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great +qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want +of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But +while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious +critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering +how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a +germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley +discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the "Hours +of Idleness." +</P> + +<P> +In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner of +University College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made the +acquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in his +subsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, if +not in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellous +youth. Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament and +tastes. His feet were always planted on the earth, while Shelley flew +aloft to heaven with singing robes around him, or the mantel of the +prophet on his shoulders. (He told Trelawny that he had been attracted +to Shelley simply by his "rare talents as a scholar;" and Trelawny has +recorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend was faithful, +in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. This +testimony is extremely valuable.) Hogg had much of the cynic in his +nature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist. +Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to +eminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a +staunch Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine +poet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preserved +for us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable for +the vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate Shelley's +course of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. No novel +indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate and +satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of +the student life enjoyed together for a few short months by the +inseparable friends. To make extracts from a masterpiece of such +consummate workmanship is almost painful. Future biographers of Shelley, +writing on a scale adequate to the greatness of their subject, will be +content to lay their pens down for a season at this point, and let Hogg +tell the tale in his own wayward but inimitable fashion. I must confine +myself to a few quotations and a barren abstract, referring my readers +to the ever-memorable pages 48—286 of Hogg's first volume, for the life +that cannot be transferred to these. +</P> + +<P> +"At the commencement of Michaelmas term," says this biographer, "that +is, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened one day to sit +next to a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall. His +figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at our +table, where all were very young. He seemed thoughtful and absent. He +ate little, and had no acquaintance with any one." The two young men +began a conversation, which turned upon the respective merits of German +and Italian poetry, a subject they neither of them knew anything about. +After dinner it was continued in Hogg's rooms, where Shelley soon led +the talk to his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a +slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to +examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very +extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was +slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. +He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. +His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode +of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were +abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more +frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost +feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by +exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. +His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were, in fact, +unusually small; yet the last APPEARED of a remarkable bulk, for his +hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if +I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with +his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks +unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times when +it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in +costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our +soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not +symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the +whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an +enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met +with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less +beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a +gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of +profound religious veneration, that characterizes the best works, and +chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls), of +the great masters of Florence and of Rome. I recognized the very +peculiar expression in these wonderful productions long afterwards, and +with a satisfaction mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the +decease of him in whose countenance I had first observed it." +</P> + +<P> +In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the impression +of Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated by +Trelawny's recollections of a later date. "There were many striking +contrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the most +remarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness with +agility—of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in stepping +across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a +smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable +manner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase +of an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper +steps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally to disturb the +composure of a well-bred footman; on the contrary, he would often glide +without collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerring +dexterity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the most +arduous and uncertain ways." +</P> + +<P> +This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the descriptions +furnished by other biographers, who had the privilege of Shelley's +friendship. His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair +was brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled +face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted on +all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is +reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, +although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity +of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal +fascination. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley's +voice "was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh and +discordant." This is strongly stated; but, though the terms are +certainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first +impression made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable mass of +convergent testimony to the fact that Shelley's voice was high pitched, +and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream. The epithets +"shrill," "piercing," "penetrating," frequently recur in the +descriptions given of it. At the same time its quality seems to have +been less dissonant than thrilling; there is abundance of evidence to +prove that he could modulate it exquisitely in the reading of poetry, +and its tone proved no obstacle to the persuasive charms of his +eloquence in conversation. Like all finely tempered natures, he vibrated +in harmony with the subjects of his thought. Excitement made his +utterance shrill and sharp. Deep feeling of the sense of beauty lowered +its tone to richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy with +his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This +peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different +sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of +his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations +of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and +unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights +of human thought. +</P> + +<P> +The acquaintance begun that October evening soon ripened into close +friendship. Shelley and Hogg from this time forward spent a large part +of their days and nights together in common studies, walks and +conversations. It was their habit to pass the morning, each in his own +rooms, absorbed in private reading. At one o'clock they met and lunched, +and then started for long rambles in the country. Shelley frequently +carried pistols with him upon these occasions, and would stop to fix his +father's franks upon convenient trees and shoot at them. The practice of +pistol shooting, adopted so early in life, was afterwards one of his +favourite amusements in the company of Byron. Hogg says that in his use +of fire-arms he was extraordinarily careless. "How often have I lamented +that Nature, which so rarely bestows upon the world a creature endowed +with such marvellous talents, ungraciously rendered the gift less +precious by implanting a fatal taste for perilous recreations, and a +thoughtlessness in the pursuit of them, that often caused his existence +from one day to another to seem in itself miraculous." On their return +from these excursions the two friends, neither of whom cared for dining +in the College Hall, drank tea and supped together, Shelley's rooms +being generally chosen as the scene of their symposia. +</P> + +<P> +These rooms are described as a perfect palace of confusion—chaos on +chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, +unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It was +perilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less perchance a +seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at the +bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to cut the lids of wooden +boxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for in +his vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what he +found convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talked +and read until late in the night. Their chief studies at this time were +in Locke and Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias toward +metaphysical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read the +School Logic with avidity, and practised himself without intermission in +dialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed by other +testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of the essential +bearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended to personal or +captious arguments, and was Socratically bent on following the dialogue +wherever it might lead, without regard for consequences. Plato was +another of their favourite authors; but Hogg expressly tells us that +they only approached the divine philosopher through the medium of +translations. It was not until a later period that Shelley studied his +dialogues in the original: but the substance of them, seen through Mdme. +Dacier's version, acted powerfully on the poet's sympathetic intellect. +In fact, although at the time he had adopted the conclusions of +materialism, he was at heart all through his life an idealist. Therefore +the mixture of the poet and the sage in Plato fascinated him. The +doctrine of anamnesis, which offers so strange a vista to speculative +reverie, by its suggestion of an earlier existence in which our +knowledge was acquired, took a strong hold upon his imagination; he +would stop in the streets to gaze wistfully at babies, wondering whether +their newly imprisoned souls were not replete with the wisdom stored up +in a previous life. +</P> + +<P> +In the acquisition of knowledge he was then as ever unrelaxing. "No +student ever read more assiduously. He was to be found, book in hand, at +all hours; reading in season and out of season; at table, in bed, and +especially during a walk; not only in the quiet country, and in retired +paths; not only at Oxford, in the public walks, and High Street, but in +the most crowded thoroughfares of London. Nor was he less absorbed by +the volume that was open before him, in Cheapside, in Cranbourne Alley, +or in Bond Street, than in a lonely lane, or a secluded library. +Sometimes a vulgar fellow would attempt to insult or annoy the eccentric +student in passing. Shelley always avoided the malignant interruption by +stepping aside with his vast and quiet agility." And again:—"I never +beheld eyes that devoured the pages more voraciously than his; I am +convinced that two-thirds of the period of the day and night were often +employed in reading. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that out of +twenty-four hours, he frequently read sixteen. At Oxford, his diligence +in this respect was exemplary, but it greatly increased afterwards, and +I sometimes thought that he carried it to a pernicious excess: I am +sure, at least, that I was unable to keep pace with him." With Shelley +study was a passion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entrance +into a thrice-hallowed sanctuary. "The irreverent many cannot comprehend +the awe—the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine the +enthusiasm—nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of things +visible to the bodily eye, express the mighty emotion that inwardly +agitated him, when he approached, for the first time, a volume which he +believed to be replete with the recondite and mystic philosophy of +antiquity: his cheeks glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frame +trembled, and his entire attention was immediately swallowed up in the +depths of contemplation. The rapid and vigorous conversion of his soul +to intellect can only be compared with the instantaneous ignition and +combustion, which dazzle the sight, when a bundle of dry reeds, or other +light inflammable substance, is thrown upon a fire already rich with +accumulated heat." +</P> + +<P> +As at Eton, so at Oxford, Shelley refused to keep the beaten track of +prescribed studies, or to run in ordinary grooves of thought. The mere +fact that Aristotle was a duty, seems to have disgusted him with the +author of the Organon, from whom, had his works been prohibited to +undergraduates, he would probably have been eager to learn much. For +mathematics and jurisprudence he evinced a marked distaste. The common +business of the English Parliament had no attraction for him, and he +read few newspapers. While his mind was keenly interested in great +political questions, he could not endure the trivial treatment of them +in the daily press, and cared far more for principles than for the +incidents of party warfare. Here again he showed that impatience of +detail, and that audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the source +of both his weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion of +a Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had been +suggested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, he +could never bring himself to mix with the rabble of the House. It is +none the less true, however, that he entertained some vague notion of +eventually succeeding to his father's seat. +</P> + +<P> +Combined with his eager intellectual activity, there was something +intermittent and fitful in the working of his mental faculties. Hogg, in +particular, mentions one of his habits in a famous passage, which, since +it brings the two friends vividly before us, may here be quoted. "I was +enable to continue my studies afterwards in the evening, in consequence +of a very remarkable peculiarity. My young and energetic friend was then +overcome by extreme drowsiness, which speedily and completely vanquished +him; he would sleep from two to four hours, often so soundly that his +slumbers resembled a deep lethargy; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, +but more commonly stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like a +cat; and his little round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that I +used to wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposed +some shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect; for the sleeper +usually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot where +the fire glowed the brightest. His torpor was generally profound, but he +would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At +six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of a most +animated narrative, or of earnest discussion; and he would lie buried in +entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he +would suddenly start up, and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, and +passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once +into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own +composition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energy +that were often quite painful." +</P> + +<P> +Shelley's moral qualities are described with no less enthusiasm than his +intellectual and physical beauty by the friend from whom I have already +drawn so largely. Love was the root and basis of his nature: this love, +first developed as domestic affection, next as friendship, then as a +youth's passion, now began to shine with steady lustre as an +all-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is something inevitably +chilling in the words "benevolence" and "philanthropy." A disillusioned +world is inclined to look with languid approbation on the former, and to +disbelieve in the latter. Therefore I will not use them to describe that +intense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which throughout his life +led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of +his fellow-creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions of +humanity made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds of +unnumbered charities. I will rather collect from the page of his +friend's biography a few passages recording the first impression of his +character, the memory of which may be carried by the reader through the +following brief record of his singular career:— +</P> + +<P> +"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years has +shown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation of +knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that +marked them, and beamed forth in the whole deportment of that +extraordinary boy, are not less astonishing than they would have been if +the whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for these +high qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel." +</P> + +<P> +"In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more completely +developed than in Shelley; in no being was the perception of right and +of wrong more acute. +</P> + +<P> +"As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of +his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life +most conspicuous." +</P> + +<P> +"I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the +principle of veneration was so strong." +</P> + +<P> +"I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens +of gentlemen; but with all due deference for those admirable persons +(may my candour and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm that +Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never +wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various +observances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility." +</P> + +<P> +"Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant than would +appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at a +coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest, or uncleanly; +in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness +pre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted by +exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, and +perhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness—possibly the more because he +was himself utterly incapable of pleasantry." +</P> + +<P> +"I could never discern in him any more than two fixed principles. The +first was a strong irrepressible love of liberty; of liberty in the +abstract, and somewhat after the pattern of the ancient republics, +without reference to the English constitution, respecting which he knew +little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was an +equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more especially +of religious opinions; of toleration, complete, entire, universal, +unlimited; and, as a deduction and corollary from which latter +principle, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, +public or private." +</P> + +<P> +The testimony in the foregoing extracts as to Shelley's purity and +elevation of moral character is all the stronger, because it is given by +a man not over-inclined to praise, and of a temperament as unlike the +poet's as possible. If we were to look only upon this side of his +portrait, we should indeed be almost forced to use the language of his +most enthusiastic worshippers, and call him an archangel. But it must be +admitted that, though so pure and gentle and exalted, Shelley's virtues +were marred by his eccentricity, by something at times approaching +madness, which paralyzed his efficiency by placing him in a glaringly +false relation to some of the best men in the world around him. He +possessed certain good qualities in excess; for, though it sounds +paradoxical, it is none the less true that a man may be too tolerant, +too fond of liberty: and it was precisely the extravagance of these +virtues in Shelley which drove him into acts and utterances so +antagonistic to society as to be intolerable. +</P> + +<P> +Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. His +genius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those double +stars which dart blue and red rays of light: for it was governed by two +luminaries, poetry and metaphysics; and at this time the latter seems to +have been in the ascendant. It is, however, interesting to learn that he +read and re-read Landor's "Gebir"—stronger meat than either Southey's +epics or the ghost-lyrics of Monk Lewis. Hogg found him one day busily +engaged in correcting proofs of some original poems. Shelley asked his +friend what he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might be +possible by a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. +The idea took the young poet's fancy; and the friends between them soon +effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they +became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now +bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the +poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered? +Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George the +Third's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could be +found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited +by an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke no less than the +authors of it. He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; and +before long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. It +sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly +credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It was +indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of +nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the +best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous +Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The name +of the supposititious nephew reminds us of "Original Poems" by Victor +and Cazire, and raises the question whether the poems in that lost +volume may not have partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither so +innocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After leaving +Eton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of corresponding +with distinguished persons whom he did not personally know. Thus we find +him about this time addressing Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. +Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He plied his correspondents with all kinds of +questions; and as the dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, he +now endeavoured to engage them in discussions on philosophical and +religious topics. We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke, +Hume, and the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to +his nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow +nominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard +all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, as +still open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to be +the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, he +passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regard +to Christianity, into an attitude of vehement antagonism. With a view to +securing answers to his missives, he printed a short abstract of Hume's +and other arguments against the existence of a Deity, presented in a +series of propositions, and signed with a mathematically important +"Q.E.D." This document he forwarded to his proposed antagonists, +expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politely +requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious +correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless +severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little +pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its +proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already +described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the +"Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, however, actually +offered for sale. +</P> + +<P> +A copy of this syllabus reached a Fellow of another college, who made +the Master of the University acquainted with the fact. On the morning of +March 25, 1811, Shelley was sent for to the Senior Common Room, and +asked whether he acknowledged himself to be the author of the obnoxious +pamphlet. On his refusal to answer this question, he was served with a +formal sentence of expulsion duly drawn up and sealed. The college +authorities have been blamed for unfair dealing in this matter. It is +urged that they ought to have proceeded by the legal method of calling +witnesses; and that the sentence was not only out of all proportion to +the offence, but that it ought not to have been executed till persuasion +had been tried. With regard to the former indictment, I do not think +that a young man still in statu pupillari, who refused to purge himself +of what he must have known to be a serious charge, had any reason to +expect from his tutors the formalities of an English court of law. There +is no doubt that the Fellows were satisfied of his being the real +author; else they could not have ventured on so summary a measure as +expulsion. Their question was probably intended to give the culprit an +occasion for apology, of which they foresaw he would not avail himself. +With regard to the second, it is true that Shelley was amenable to +kindness, and that gentle and wise treatment from men whom he respected +might possibly have brought him to retract his syllabus. But it must be +remembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart; and they +were probably aware of this. He was a dexterous, impassioned reasoner, +whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. During +his short period of residence, moreover, he had not shown himself so +tractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, who prefer +conformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely that they were not +averse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous to the peace of their +society; and now they had a good occasion. Nor was it to be expected +that the champion and apostle of Atheism—and Shelley was certainly +both, in spite of Hogg's attempts to tone down the purpose of his +document—should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat +livings and ecclesiastical dignities. Real blame, however, attaches to +these men: first, for their dulness to discern Shelley's amiable +qualities; and, secondly, for the prejudgment of the case implied in the +immediate delivery of their sentence. Both Hogg and Shelley accused +them, besides, of a gross brutality, which was, to say the least, +unseemly on so serious an occasion. At the beginning of this century the +learning and the manners of Oxford dons were at a low ebb; and the +Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, +ignorantly but after their own kind, in this matter of Shelley's +expulsion. $Non ragionem di lor, ma guarda e passa. Hogg, who stood by +his friend manfully at this crisis, and dared the authorities to deal +with him as they had dealt with Shelley, adding that they had just as +much real proof to act upon in his case, and intimating his intention of +returning the same answer as to the authorship of the pamphlet, was +likewise expelled. The two friends left Oxford together by coach on the +morning of the 26th of March. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley felt his expulsion acutely. At Oxford he had enjoyed the +opportunities of private reading which the University afforded in those +days of sleepy studies and innocuous examinations. He delighted in the +security of his "oak," and above all things he found pleasure in the +society of his one chosen friend. He was now obliged to exchange these +good things for the tumult and discomfort of London. His father, after +clumsily attempting compromises, had forbidden his return to Field +Place. The whole fabric of his former life was broken up. The last hope +of renewing his engagement with his cousin had to be abandoned. His +pecuniary position was precarious, and in a short time he was destined +to lose the one friend who had so generously shared his fate. Yet the +notion of recovering his position as a student in one of our great +Universities, of softening his father's indignation, or of ameliorating +his present circumstances by the least concession, never seems to have +occurred to him. He had suffered in the cause of truth and liberty, and +he willingly accepted his martyrdom for conscience' sake. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 3. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE. +</H3> + +<P> +It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and analyse +the substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardinal +characteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams and +conventions, which passed too easily into impatient rejection of +established forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold of +squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that then +passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the opposite +pole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsiderate +negation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance, +his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logical +sincerity, combined to make him the Quixotic champion of extreme +opinions. He was too fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend his +judgment, too convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, to +mature his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, he +hoped to take the fortresses of "Anarch Custom" by storm at the first +assault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, Laon or Lionel, +whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of despotism, as the sun +thaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl the +glove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face—to sow the "Necessity of +Atheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his +poetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society must +learn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted with +a touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, +he strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crust +of dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to have +occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches that +conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away the +weft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imagination +there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, that +behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal City +of the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures were +certain to be equally fortunate. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the blended +truths and falsehoods through which the mind of man must gradually win +its way from the obscurity of myths into the clearness of positive +knowledge, for ever toiling and for ever foiled, and forced to content +itself with the increasing consciousness of limitations. Brimming over +with love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with the conditions +under which they actually think and feel. Could he but dethrone the +Anarch Custom, the millennium, he argued, would immediately arrive; nor +did he stop to think how different was the fibre of his own soul from +that of the unnumbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of what +he recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified +experience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a +saving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no place +in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising, +shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuries +of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survived +the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, and +who have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehend +the vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley +in his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital +faith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible—faith +in the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel +of liberty, fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature; +faith in a love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibility of +man; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms; faith +in affection as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. The +man who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word an +Atheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced his hatred +of a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of kings and priests +for the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. As he told his friend +Trelawny, he used the word Atheism "to express his abhorrence of +superstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defiance +of injustice." But Shelley believed too much to be consistently +agnostic. He believed so firmly and intensely in his own religion—a +kind of passionate positivism, a creed which seemed to have no God +because it was all God—that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy +accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break +through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an +Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received +conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of +cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was +an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving +the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless +utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual +heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too +religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied. +</P> + +<P> +The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which attaches +to all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of convention, and +enthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was marred, however, +by extravagance, crudity, and presumption. Much that he would fain have +destroyed because he found it customary, was solid, true, and +beneficial. Much that he thought it desirable to substitute, was +visionary, hollow, and pernicious. He lacked the touchstone of mature +philosophy, whereby to separate the pinchbeck from the gold of social +usage; and in his intense enthusiasm he lost his hold on common sense, +which might have saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. +The positive side of his creed remains precious, not because it was +logical, or scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal, +fervently felt, and penetrated with the whole life-force of an +incomparable nature. Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon his +path amid the glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. The form the +seal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was not +born to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,<BR> + Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, +when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his +confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was +overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without +damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent +speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, +there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might have +shone that light of aspiration which during his turbid youth burned +somewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the smoke of mere +rebelliousness and contradiction. +</P> + +<P> +Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, soon +after their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: "it reminded +him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom." He was further fascinated by +a gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and grapes, which adorned the +parlour; and vowed that he would stay there for ever. "For ever," was a +word often upon Shelley's lips in the course of his chequered life; and +yet few men have been subject to so many sudden changes through the +buffetings of fortune from without and the inconstancy of their own +purpose, than he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace and +note with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of his +innumerable temporary residences. A month had not elapsed before Hogg +left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelley +abode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, a +bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poetic +imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer." +</P> + +<P> +The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but not +unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy +Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from +the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his +intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him +by his father. For Paley's, or as Mr. Shelley called him "Palley's," +Evidences he expressed unbounded contempt. The breach between them +gradually widened. Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect of +cutting off supplies; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustained +himself by a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley's +last and best biographer, Mr. W.M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of the +poet's behaviour as a son. Shelley did not treat his father with the +common consideration due from youth to age; and the only instances of +unpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes of +his conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was really +more unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling from +the realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of his +father amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicions +with regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so +just and gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation, +whether by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by a +gradually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insoluble +problem. We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his father +so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on one +occasion, but that, while at Eton he had already become possessed by a +dark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr. +Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expected +monstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman was +nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than once +occurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in his +history, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed +itself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process of +recovery. But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof to +be more than passingly alluded to. +</P> + +<P> +At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buy +food. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to support +him: and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school on +Clapham Common. It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyranny +displayed itself on two occasions. "One day," writes Miss Hellen +Shelley, "his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one of +our throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour. He expressed +great disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sisters +should be so punished. Another time he found me, I think, in an iron +collar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my +opinion. It was not worn as a punishment, but because I POKED; but +Bysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be +discontinued immediately." The acquaintance which he now made with one +of his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most important +results. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, +1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably +good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful +brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the +daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named +"Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, +called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant +hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. +Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a +mother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father, +welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless +for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family's +displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a +baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should +look upon him with disfavour. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning's school and +at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he +expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his +theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the +disinterested and the free." At first she seems to have been horrified +at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not +overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an +evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had +the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not +seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the +absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society. +Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious +accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to +rouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the +seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has been +able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was +so irksome that she contemplated suicide. +</P> + +<P> +During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more than usually +erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. In +the month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father. +He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made +him of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was +instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent +some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, +Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one +flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North +Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw +the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much +preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between his +old affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest in +Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriage +between his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written to +Hogg at this period (volume 1 pages 387-418) are exceedingly important +and interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings +and the almost morbid excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily so +badly edited, whether designedly or by accident, that it would be +dangerous to draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, they +raise injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a proper +assignment of dates and explanation. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plunged +him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest +moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer +with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate +juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of +Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet +Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in +their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT in +love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." +He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before +you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly come +to York, but HARRIET WESTBROOK will decide whether now or in three +weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by +endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice: +resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify +Mr. W. in vain! And in consequence of my advice SHE has thrown herself +upon MY protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a +distinction!—I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have I +said? I declare, quite LUDICROUS. I advised her to resist. She wrote to +say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and +threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200 pounds a year; when +we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Gratitude and +admiration, all demand that I should love her FOR EVER. We shall see you +at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am +now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to +me at Graham's, 18 Sackville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently +published by Mr. W.M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, February 1878), +we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her +preceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms. +</P> + +<P> +It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not deeply in +love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was not +prepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced him to take it; and +fourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having been +ill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful passion, the hatred +of tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions at +defiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidence +called forth his gratitude. Her choice of him for a protector flattered +him: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance a +outrance. There are many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope with +Harriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and +unsophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love. +</P> + +<P> +In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together by +Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once expresses the +utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge of +contracting marriage with a woman whom he did not passionately love, and +who had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing to +observe that even Shelley, fearless and uncompromising as he was in +conduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he so +eloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness was +honourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and in his +tender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon his +generosity. (See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hogg 2 page 63) for +another defence of his conduct. "We agreed," etc.) +</P> + +<P> +"My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date August 15, 1811, +from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his +elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself. +How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. In my leisure moments for +thought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered the +important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of +love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial +souls—they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of +power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of +impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice +which the female is called upon to make—these arguments, which you have +urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that +I suppose it to be likely that <I>I</I> shall directly be called upon to +evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to +matrimony, not from temporizing, but from YOUR arguments; nor, much as I +wish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret the +prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or assertion. No. +The ONE argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the +sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can +give—this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring +submission to your superior intellect." +</P> + +<P> +Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was morally +justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often +haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with +regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to +argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square +with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, +having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, he +should have gone on denouncing an institution which he recognized in his +own practice. The conclusion seems to be that, though he despised +accepted usage, and would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suit +his heart's desire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practical +good sense were stronger than his theories. +</P> + +<P> +A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C.H. Grove, gives the details of +Harriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with +Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his +companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one +morning—I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been +September—in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch +Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches +start, when they departed in the northern mail for York." From York the +young couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were +married according to the formalities of the Scotch law. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father's +eyes—a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were at once cut off +from the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainly +dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. Even +Jew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughter +wedded to the heir of several thousands a year, buttoned up his pockets, +either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent, +or because he was not certain about Shelley's expectations. He +afterwards made the Shelleys an allowance of 200 pounds a year, and +early in 1812 Shelley says that he is in receipt of twice that income. +Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to the +extent of the sum above mentioned. +</P> + +<P> +In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happily +enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined them +early in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity. +Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a fine +voice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed to +read and comment on her favourite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleep +during the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed with +slumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical +paradoxes with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach +Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story by +Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one of +Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one of +Shelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless of +their volume or their cost. These he was wont to leave behind, when the +moment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that, +as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifs +and strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This +quiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in the +neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's +caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind +is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and +that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much +given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in +sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet. +</P> + +<P> +They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obliged +to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, and +Shelley's programme of life at this period imperatively required the +society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the three +friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's +company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud +novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the +tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune +felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of +lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an +expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some +terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was +anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, +which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. He +suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of +Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediate +allowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail the +land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley +recognized the truth that property is a trust far more than a +possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, +such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn +being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among many +instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the bare +necessities of life, for principle. +</P> + +<P> +On his return to York, Shelley found a new inmate established in their +lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his +destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet +believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and +propriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned +her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and +her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the +friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an +elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,—dark, bright eyes; +jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it +merited,—almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so +good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of +this woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley had +afterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. "She was older than I +had expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely face +was seamed with the smallpox, and of a dead white, as faces so much +marked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a mass of boiled +rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes were +dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but +coarse; and there was the admired crop—a long crop, much like the tail +of a horse—a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and +constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, +in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial +young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew +Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters +of Judah." +</P> + +<P> +This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, in +Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with +merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is +necessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet to +fancy that she was a victim of her nerves, how she checked her favourite +studies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to a +Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" was +as often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb were +in her hands. +</P> + +<P> +The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; but it +is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure +which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. +One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelley +had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, and +refers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation of +Goethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. McCarthy to have been a letter +from the poet to his friend, in confirmation of his opinion. (McCarthy's +Shelley's Early Life, page 117.) However this may be, the precipitation +with which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving Hogg notice of +their resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his biography. +</P> + +<P> +The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged +lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. Probably +Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men +who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of +its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's +poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if +he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he +was disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making his +acquaintance—a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he +could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than +Southey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does +not seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; and +though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley's +early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. It was not +likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and +the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, +should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain +"Queen Mab" was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to be +monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of +Norfolk's seat, Greystoke. Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip; +but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days +passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results. +The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring +about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, +and his rebellious son. +</P> + +<P> +Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letter +to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with +unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in +after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention +from romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter dated +to Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, +and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreats +Godwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "if +desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference," if +persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and +truth may commend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is not +unworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity +of Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big +generalities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long +contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelley +but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet Godwin may be +pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to +cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about +philanthropy and universal happiness. Shelley's second letter contains +an extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curious +romance, illustrating his tendency to colour facts with the +hallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think, +no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason to +believe the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton for +disseminating the doctrines of "Political Justice", or that his father +wished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant +regiment, in order that he might prosecute the "Necessity of Atheism" in +his absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family +estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with a +tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind; and this +letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange +occurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his want of +love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposed +upon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only from +teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his own +deliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To Godwin he resigns +himself with the implicit confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatly +struck with this letter. Indeed, he must have been "or God or beast," +like the insensible man in Aristotle's "Ethics", if he could have +resisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured +forth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He +accepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor; and thus began a +connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and +intellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in a +closer personal tie between the two illustrious men. +</P> + +<P> +In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then engaged in +writing "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French +Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, "My plan is that of resolving to +lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness." Godwin sensibly +replied that Shelley was too young to set himself up as a teacher and +apostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (January +16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we set +off to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed to +Keswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We go +principally TO FORWARD AS MUCH AS WE CAN the Catholic Emancipation." In +a fourth letter (January 28, 1812) he informs Godwin that he has already +prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the +dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that his +contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of great +good. +</P> + +<P> +It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his attention to +Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irish +journalist and editor of "The Press" newspaper, who had been sentenced +to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between February 7, +1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, +roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, +for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to +nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast, +who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose +heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to +disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting +field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with +the manuscript of his "Address to the Irish People" (It was published in +Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, page 179.), he set sail with Harriet +and Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle +of Man; and after a very stormy passage, which drove them to the north +coast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, the +party reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. +Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife," +wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings." +Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about this +period, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime, +ruled the household; "Eliza keeps our common stock of money for safety +in some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, +although she gives it out as we want it." This master-touch of +unconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domestic +party now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street. Before a week had +passed, the "Address to the Irish People" had been printed. Shelley and +Harriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task of +distribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemed +insufficient. On the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend in +England: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, +and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundred +yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty public +houses.... Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day to +distribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. His +account corresponds with the multitudes of people who possess them. I +stand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man WHO LOOKS +LIKELY. I throw a book to him." +</P> + +<P> +A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's +point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the +pamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we +pass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it +is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's +hood of a cloak." +</P> + +<P> +The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of +their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal +of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to +teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the +last point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the +inculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute, +rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles +which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the +document is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a +population of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and +overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet +himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of +intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy +of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound +reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully +vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks +it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A +few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in +this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they +throw upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make men +good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of +worshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all other +men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do +not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a +heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if +he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much +a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a +rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime +to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete +charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ +principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient.... +Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise +and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he +condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be +terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT +must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts, +which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of +private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses +whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of +animated filth." +</P> + +<P> +The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory +demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he +based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden +ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in +them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays +the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without +appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided +Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy", +he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the +truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to +force. +</P> + +<P> +While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin, +Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of +Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association", +and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast +society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the +recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it +must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been +brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions +he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used +these simple phrases:—"It wants altering and mending. It will be +mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the +Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to +be even more so. +</P> + +<P> +With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a +practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and +compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the +title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the +Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the +country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of +the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the +nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective +opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was +that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their +means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same +method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How +moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved +by the following sentence:—"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I +confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of +public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that +none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in +DIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the +case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown +that Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated. +</P> + +<P> +While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was +announced for the evening of February 28. It was held in Fishamble +Street Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spoke +for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, +though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman +Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in +conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting +accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the +impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The +dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable +interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an +Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His +youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong +words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to +aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient +agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was +fifteen—four years less than his real age. +</P> + +<P> +In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty +stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a +history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We +also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at +another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself +by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the +room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two +months' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to the +conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of +Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he +hoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarked +with his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the +police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave +Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly +visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he +quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining +copies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recently +printed edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights", +to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead +custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the +Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through +the proper official channels to the government. After some +correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against +Shelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination. +</P> + +<P> +The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, +who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourable +notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does not +seem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his most +interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly he +entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned +to know, may be gathered from these extracts:—"We will meet you in +Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with +Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and +join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the +Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a +wife and such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it +is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss +Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into +it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both +obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the +Shelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon." +Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and +Shelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in +close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to +leave. +</P> + +<P> +The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace +the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they +settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales. +Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. Here +Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the +"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was, +as Mr. W.M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends +of government and the rights of man,—framed in imitation of two similar +French Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly in +August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy, +page 324.) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it +afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would +traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also +employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the +Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in +the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for +uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the +"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with the +puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to Lord +Ellenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple. +(Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29.) A printer, named D.J. +Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for +publishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistle +is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the +intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny +which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if +impassioned seriousness. +</P> + +<P> +An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of +handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I +have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:— +</P> + +<P> +"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To +attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is +capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to +this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible +definition of his nature. +</P> + +<P> +"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the +perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities +of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of +corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot +possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable +old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various +passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and +uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are +qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he +disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution +for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers +of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their +fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those +which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors +who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone +act consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in +his name." +</P> + +<P> +Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The +sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. +Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he +found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving +any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously +described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following +year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established +at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to +Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a +considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with +an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was +always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at +Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his +enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a +heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the +list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he +endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and +even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same +purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal +acquaintance of the Godwin family. +</P> + +<P> +Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion +caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her +Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that +language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him. +There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and +Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears +that at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted to +conquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to apply +myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but +which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as +a mender of antiquated abuses,—I mean, that record of crimes and +miseries—history." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself +to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him +to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated +with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and +when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy +upon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance, +continued with effort, and finally abandoned. +</P> + +<P> +In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which +he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears, +from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on +Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early +age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring +of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first +impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which +Shelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was +pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the +public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication +Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to +"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production +which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it +is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all +that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler +discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more +crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political and +domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from +literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to +serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe; +but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's +criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include +"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, +in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its +first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of +art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality. +</P> + +<P> +The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious +occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. +According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the +event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice +attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he +struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, +and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his +escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his +personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair +was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible +by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a +perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or +whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an +unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of +this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of +no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the +relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne +in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the +parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on +the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the +villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and +confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are +too circumstantial to be lightly set aside. +</P> + +<P> +On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the +subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at +Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape +from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But +no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the +circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks, +concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion. +</P> + +<P> +There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment. +In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher, +who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a +short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to +Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as +unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was +left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the +first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London +marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and +decisive of his future. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 4. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. +</H3> + +<P> +Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joined +by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet had +recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while in +hotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had a +projecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, and +catch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a +chary English summer. "He wanted," said one of his female admirers, +"only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young +lady's lark, hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this +period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley's +troubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of German +metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeply +studied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintance +with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. +</P> + +<P> +The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular; for +Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was an +indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less by +forethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there was +no meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, the table was +supplied with buns, procured by Shelley from the nearest pastry-cook. He +had already abjured animal food and alcohol; and his favourite diet +consisted of pulse or bread, which he ate dry with water, or made into +panada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felt +hungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked +under his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading at +the same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of +movement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any man +should want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint," says Hogg, +"about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice." +This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. During +the last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequent +attacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend, +Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure, +to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat +into the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequently +remained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day +he might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no less +simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat, +and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on his +throat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fields +and gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long, +wild, ragged locks." Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkably +small and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water, +and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs. +Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on their +house-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated +ardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a +blazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the +hour. +</P> + +<P> +These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a man +as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subject +to the laws of custom in his habits as in his modes of thought, living +literally as the spirit moved him, with a natural nonchalance that has +perhaps been never surpassed. To time and place he was equally +indifferent, and could not be got to remember his engagements. "He took +strange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and +panic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred +engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons +and seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he +quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly +promised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and +importance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain +pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up in +custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be +caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancy +would too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved and +almost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fair +subjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company." If he had been +fairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time pass +unheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by the +spell of his unrivalled eloquence; for wonderful as was his poetry, +those who enjoyed the privilege of converse with him, judged it even +more attractive. "He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, and +eloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were inclining to +yield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when they would +have been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the bewitching charms +of his discourse." +</P> + +<P> +From Half Moon Street the Shelleys moved into a house in Pimlico; and it +was here, according to Hogg, or at Cooke's Hotel in Dover Street +according to other accounts, that Shelley's first child, Ianthe Eliza, +was born about the end of June, 1813. Harriet did not take much to her +little girl, and gave her over to a wet-nurse, for whom Shelley +conceived a great dislike. That a mother should not nurse her own baby +was no doubt contrary to his principles; and the double presence of the +servant and Eliza, whom he now most cordially detested, made his home +uncomfortable. We have it on excellent authority, that of Mr. Peacock, +that he "was extremely fond of it (the child), and would walk up and +down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it +a song of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his +own coining. His song was Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani." To the +want of sympathy between the father and the mother in this matter of +Ianthe, Mr. Peacock is inclined to attribute the beginning of troubles +in the Shelley household. There is, indeed, no doubt that the revelation +of Harriet's maternal coldness must have been extremely painful to her +husband; and how far she carried her insensibility, may be gathered from +a story told by Hogg about her conduct during an operation performed +upon the child. +</P> + +<P> +During this period of his sojourn in London, Shelley was again in some +pecuniary difficulties. Yet he indulged Harriet's vanity by setting up a +carriage, in which they afterwards took a hurried journey to Edinburgh +and back. He narrowly escaped a debtor's prison through this act of +extravagance, and by a somewhat ludicrous mistake Hogg was arrested for +the debt due to the coach-maker. His acquaintances were few and +scattered, and he saw nothing of his family. Gradually, however, he +seems to have become a kind of prophet in a coterie of learned ladies. +The views he had propounded in "Queen Mab", his passionate belief in the +perfectibility of man, his vegetarian doctrines, and his readiness to +adopt any new nostrum for the amelioration of his race, endeared him to +all manners of strange people; nor was he deterred by aristocratic +prejudices from frequenting society which proved extremely uncongenial +to Hogg, and of which we have accordingly some caustic sketches from his +pen. His chief friends were a Mrs. Boinville, for whom he conceived an +enthusiastic admiration, and her daughter Cornelia, married to a +vegetarian, Mr. Newton. In order to be near them he had moved to +Pimlico; and his next move, from London to a cottage named High Elms, at +Bracknell, in Berkshire, had the same object. With Godwin and his family +he was also on terms of familiar intercourse. Under the philosopher's +roof in Skinner Street there was now gathered a group of miscellaneous +inmates—Fanny Imlay, the daughter of his first wife, Mary +Wollstonecraft; Mary, his own daughter by the same marriage; his second +wife, and her two children, Claire and Charles Clairmont, the offspring +of a previous union. From this connexion with the Godwin household +events of the gravest importance in the future were destined to arise, +and already it appears that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilous +approval on the fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-known +novelist, described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, has +neither taste nor feeling," were his only intimates. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord between the +two chief elements of Shelley's present society; and indeed it will +appear to a careful student of his biography that Hogg, Peacock, and +Harriet, now stood somewhat by themselves and aloof from the inner +circle of his associates. If we regard the Shelleys as the centre of an +extended line, we shall find the Westbrook family at one end, the +Boinville family at the other, with Hogg and Peacock somewhere in the +middle. Harriet was naturally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, and +Shelley to the Boinville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but a +sincere regard for Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was in +much the same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs. +Newton. The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercised +their influence at a distance from the rest. Frequent change from +Bracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying journey to +Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother and +sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in +the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, +and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces. +We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes and +Theosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief. +</P> + +<P> +Since we are now approaching the gravest crisis in Shelley's life, it +behoves us to be more than usually careful in considering his +circumstances at this epoch. His home had become cold and dull. Harriet +did not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure with her +Mount Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and +the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to +refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he found +among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, +sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extracts +from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more +eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the +antagonism which had sprung up in Shelley's mind between his own home +and the circle of his new friends:—"I have been staying with Mrs. B— +for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that +philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of +myself. They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have +felt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but +its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, +which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this +happy home,—for it has become my home. The trees, the bridge, the +minutest objects, have already a place in my affections." +</P> + +<P> +"Eliza is still with us—not here!—but will be with me when the +infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but little +inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart +and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of +disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I +may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint +with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence +for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome +worm, that cannot see to sting." +</P> + +<P> +While divided in this way between a home which had become distasteful to +him, and a house where he found scope for his most romantic outpourings +of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and passionately in love with +Godwin's daughter, Mary. Peacock, who lived in close intimacy with him +at this period, must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming nature +of the new attachment:—"Nothing that I ever read in tale or history +could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, +uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouring +when, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him in +London. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, FROM WHOM HE WAS NOT +THEN SEPARATED, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in +his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind 'suffering, like a +little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection.' His eyes were bloodshot, +his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and +said, 'I never part from this.'" +</P> + +<P> +We may therefore affirm, I think, with confidence that in the winter and +spring of 1814, Shelley had been becoming gradually more and more +estranged from Harriet, whose commonplace nature was no mate for his, +and whom he had never loved with all the depth of his affection; that +his intimacy with the Boinville family had brought into painful +prominence whatever was jarring and repugnant to him in his home; and +that in this crisis of his fate he had fallen in love for the first time +seriously with Mary Godwin. (The date at which he first made Mary's +acquaintance is uncertain. Peacock says that it was between April 18 and +June 8.) She was then a girl of sixteen, "fair and fair-haired, pale +indeed, and with a piercing look," to quote Hogg's description of her, +as she first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. With +her freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, her +acute intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, Mary +Godwin was naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than the good +Harriet, however beautiful. +</P> + +<P> +That Shelley early in 1814 had no intention of leaving his wife, is +probable; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, eight days +after his impassioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, Hanover Square. +Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the Scotch marriage was +no doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a possible heir beyond all +question. Yet it seems, if we may found conjecture on "Stanzas, April, +1814," that in the very month after this new ceremony Shelley found the +difficulties of his wedded life insuperable, and that he was already +making up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June the +separation actually occurred—not by mutual consent, so far as any +published documents throw light on the matter, but rather by Shelley's +sudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiography +page 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutual +consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, +Relics of Shelly, page 147.) For a short while Harriet was left in +ignorance of his abode, and with a very insufficient sum of money at her +disposal. She placed herself under the protection of her father, retired +to Bath, and about the beginning of July received a letter from Shelley, +who was thenceforth solicitous for her welfare, keeping up a +correspondence with her, supplying her with funds, and by no means +shrinking from personal communications. +</P> + +<P> +That Shelley must bear the responsibility of this separation seems to me +quite clear. His justification is to be found in his avowed opinions on +the subject of love and marriage—opinions which Harriet knew well and +professed to share, and of which he had recently made ample confession +in the notes to "Queen Mab". The world will still agree with Lord Eldon +in regarding those opinions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon the +poet's character; but it would be unfair, while condemning them as +frankly as he professed them, to blame him also because he did not +conform to the opposite code of morals, for which he frequently +expressed extreme abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, +as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the +Shelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, +Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, +that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's +conduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await their +publication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile there +remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after leaving Harriet, +Shelley departed from London with Mary Godwin, who had consented to +share his fortunes. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand of +her who was destined to be his companion for life, may best be told in +Lady Shelley's words:— +</P> + +<P> +"His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of +genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's +daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear +Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one +eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, +in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past—how he had +suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he +hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had +done battle for the fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms +to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, +and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the +remaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both +redeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of +"Political Justice", and of the "Rights of Woman", had been educated, +spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she +was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to +prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era +in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom +she loved—by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to +venerate—these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was +therefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own +heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her +love." +</P> + +<P> +Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley's +second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formed +another connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, +1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. The +distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new +ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no +immediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and her +suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as +Hogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and it +may be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time +unhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and +cut the knot of life and all its troubles. +</P> + +<P> +So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painful +period in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and without +condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady +Shelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that +the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy +in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief +in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must +do, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, that +I for my own part am willing to suspend my judgment till the time +arrives for his vindication. The language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. +Garnett justify us in expecting that that vindication will be as +startling as complete. If it is not, they, as pleading for him, will +have overshot the mark of prudence. +</P> + +<P> +On the 28th of July Shelley left London with Mary Godwin, who up to this +date had remained beneath her father's roof. There was some secrecy in +their departure, because they were accompanied by Miss Clairmont, whose +mother disapproved of her forming a third in the party. Having made +their way to Dover, they crossed the Channel in an open boat, and went +at once to Paris. Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intending +to perform the journey across France on foot. Shelley, however, sprained +his ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In this +conveyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neufchatel. +Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their residence; and +here Shelley began his romantic tale of "The Assassins", a portion of +which is printed in his prose works. Want of money compelled them soon +to think of turning their steps homeward; and the back journey was +performed upon the Reuss and Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a bad +passage, on the 13th of September. Mrs. Shelley's "History of a Six +Week's Tour" relates the details of this trip, which was of great +importance in forming Shelley's taste, and in supplying him with the +scenery of river, rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilized in +"Alastor". +</P> + +<P> +The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty; but on the +6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became the next heir to the +baronetcy and the family estates, and an arrangement was made with his +father by right of which he received an allowance of 1000 pounds a year. +A portion of his income was immediately set apart for Harriet. The +winter was passed in London, where Shelley walked a hospital, in order, +it is said, to acquire some medical knowledge that might be of service +to the poor he visited. His own health at this period was very bad. A +physician whom he consulted pronounced that he was rapidly sinking under +pulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. The +consumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for the next three +years he had no doubt that he was destined to an early death. In 1818, +however, all danger of phthisis passed away; and during the rest of his +short life he only suffered from spasms and violent pains in the side, +which baffled the physicians, but, though they caused him extreme +anguish, did not menace any vital organ. To the subject of his health it +will be necessary to return at a later period of this biography. For the +present it is enough to remember that his physical condition was such as +to justify his own expectation of death at no distant time. (See Letter +to Godwin in Shelley's Memorials, page 78.) +</P> + +<P> +Fond as ever of wandering, Shelley set out in the early summer for a +tour with Mary. They visited Devonshire and Clifton, and then settled in +a house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. The summer was +further broken by a water excursion up the Thames to its source, in the +company of Mr. Peacock and Charles Clairmont. Peacock traces the poet's +taste for boating, which afterwards became a passion with him, to this +excursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us +that Shelley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he +enjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W.S. Halliday, a far +better authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never saw +Shelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that he +practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fond +of boats and every kind of water—river, sea, lake, or canal—he never +learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, +and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on +occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float +a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once +constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake +in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion. +</P> + +<P> +On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem of +"Alastor", haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor +Forest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration. It was +printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year. Not only was +"Alastor" the first serious poem published by Shelley; but it was also +the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his +genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; +and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in +certain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, +is such as only Shelley could have produced. +</P> + +<P> +"Alastor" is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim +into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the +title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart +from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great +autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under +the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, +consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the +somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its +sublime descriptions. All that Shelley had observed of natural +beauty—in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the +Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest—is presented to us in a +series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion. But the deeper +meaning of "Alastor" is to be found, not in the thought of death nor in +the poet's recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St. +Augustine placed upon its title page, and in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty", composed about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the +poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage +the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing +for some mortal realization of his love. "Alastor", like +"Epipsychidion," reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that +the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form: +while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that such +realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written by +Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one is +always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is +not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in +seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +But this Shelley discovered only with "the years that bring the +philosophic mind," and when he was upon the very verge of his untimely +death. +</P> + +<P> +The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of +"Alastor". It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideal +love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet's +heart:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore<BR> + He paused, a wide and melancholy waste<BR> + Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged<BR> + His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,<BR> + Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.<BR> + It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings<BR> + Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course<BR> + High over the immeasurable main.<BR> + His eyes pursued its flight:—"Thou hast a home,<BR> + Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,<BR> + Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck<BR> + With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes<BR> + Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.<BR> + And what am I that I should linger here,<BR> + With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,<BR> + Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned<BR> + To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers<BR> + In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven<BR> + That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile<BR> + Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.<BR> + For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly<BR> + Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed,<BR> + Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure,<BR> + With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24th +of January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together, +accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. They +reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord +Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yet +made Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab", +with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into +daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no +great distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a +boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. Miss +Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened +into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This fact +has to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, because Allegra afterwards +became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of +what was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from +the mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelley +during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were +to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become one +of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influence +of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his +wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron's +genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible +opinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame +with Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he +erroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive. +Shelley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to +nobler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtle +intellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much +as he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley was not +blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has left +us of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice and +Ravenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to +Italy, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet been +passed upon his brother poet's character. It is clear that he never +found in Byron a perfect friend, and that he had not accepted him as one +with whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling and +conduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Shelley the purest nature he +had ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least +worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond +all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity as +rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all +that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even +to the very letter." +</P> + +<P> +Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva in +their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie. On +this occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of death from drowning. His +one anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peacock, was lest Byron should +attempt to save him at the risk of his own life. Byron described him as +"bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, that +Shelley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness. +He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly +be said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursion +was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in +his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont +Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression +had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the +element of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words which +record the experiences of his two journeys in Switzerland and +France:—"I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and +the sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the +brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers +of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a +wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and +seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have +sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen +populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, +and sink and change amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the +theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and +villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and +the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds." +</P> + +<P> +On their return to the lake, the Shelleys found M.G. Lewis established +with Byron. This addition to the circle introduced much conversation +about apparitions, and each member of the party undertook to produce a +ghost story. Polidori's "Vampyre" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" were +the only durable results of their determination. But an incident +occurred which is of some importance in the history of Shelley's +psychological condition. Toward midnight on the 18th of July, Byron +recited the lines in "Christabel" about the lady's breast; when Shelley +suddenly started up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen a +vision of a woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he was +writing notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his +"Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mere +effort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed +his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period of +his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. +Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful +vividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of +his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the +projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were +abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the +border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature as +Shelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even +when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung +emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; +and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to +estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain +episodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told by +Peacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this +year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the +hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both +ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a +subjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98.) +</P> + +<P> +On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage at Great +Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peacock. While it +was being prepared for the reception of his family, he stayed at Bath, +and there heard of Harriet's suicide. The life that once was dearest to +him, had ended thus in misery, desertion, want. The mother of his two +children, abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven from +her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with +circumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free +from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled +with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most +acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the +conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and +feeling for which she was not qualified, and that had it not been for +him and his opinions, she might have lived a happy woman in some common +walk of life. One of his biographers asserts that "he continued to be +haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, +which pursued him like an Orestes," and even Trelawny, who knew him only +in the last months of his life, said that the impression of that +dreadful moment was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelings +in some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817 (Forman, 3 148.); and +though he did not often speak of Harriet, Peacock has recorded one +memorable occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to a +friend. (Fraser, January, 1860, page 102.) +</P> + +<P> +Shelley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation in the +society of Leigh Hunt. The friendship extended to him by that excellent +man at this season of his trouble may perhaps count for something with +those who are inclined to judge him harshly. Two important events +followed immediately upon the tragedy. The first was Shelley's marriage +with Mary Godwin on the 30th of December, 1816. Whether Shelley would +have taken this step except under strong pressure from without, appears +to me very doubtful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the most +resolutely bent on confirming his theories by his practice; and in this +instance there was no valid reason why he should not act up to +principles professed in common by himself and the partner of his +fortunes, no less than by her father and mother. It is, therefore, +reasonable to suppose that he yielded to arguments; and these arguments +must have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him with +cordiality since he left England in 1816. Godwin, though overrated in +his generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Shelley, was a man +whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. His +conduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of a +self-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed when +Shelley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradiction +with his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified in +concluding that he worried Shelley, the one enthusiastic and +thorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite of +his disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmise +that Godwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bear +the name of a future baronet. +</P> + +<P> +The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the +custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was instituted; at the +conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Shelley of his +son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in +"Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children were +placed in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance with +principles diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Shelley's +income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thus +sternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim, +to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own +impulsiveness, his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities, +his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the +world's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pass—to the suicide of +the woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspring +whom he loved. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we may +learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic story. His life was +a tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of +erring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of +justice as established in the daily sanctities of human life; and now he +had to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated like +the dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be a +rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of his +moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had been +granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle +of one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter +fruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking +to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of +Shelley's over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinary +existence, which makes his history so tragic; and we may justly wonder +whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did not +apply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own fortunes. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 5. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. +</H3> + +<P> +Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his children, +and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and with the cloud +of what he thought swift-coming death above his head, Shelley worked +steadily, during the summer of 1817, upon his poem of "Laon and Cythna". +Six months were spent in this task. "The poem," to borrow Mrs. Shelley's +words, "was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of +Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is +distinguished for peculiar beauty." Whenever Shelley could, he composed +in the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and the +Baths of Caracalla were the birthplace of "Prometheus". "The Cenci" was +written on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The Cascine of +Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, and +the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of his +loveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", was +transferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia. +</P> + +<P> +If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devotion to +Ideal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder sense +representative of its author. All his previous experiences and all his +aspirations—his passionate belief in friendship, his principle of the +equality of women with men, his demand for bloodless revolution, his +confidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, his doctrine of free +love, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious intolerance and +tyranny—are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos of +this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self +which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, +Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely +feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of +grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In +the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and +sister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, but +because he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack the +intolerance of custom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells us +that it was his purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers "a +virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that +faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor +misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among +mankind;" to illustrate "the growth and progress of individual mind +aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and to +celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world." +The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem +highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian +stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that are +Shelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom at +the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the good +cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of the +hero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing victim. It is full +of thrilling incidents and lovely pictures; yet the tale is the least +part of the poem; and few readers have probably been able either to +sympathize with its visionary characters, or to follow the narrative +without weariness. As in the case of other poems by Shelley—especially +those in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art his +genius was not well suited—the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" is +surrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it +is difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of +splendour. Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the +lovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here +tried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was +by no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before the +public. Hooted down, derided, stigmatized, and howled at, it only served +to intensify the prejudice with which the author of "Queen Mab" had come +to be regarded. +</P> + +<P> +I have spoken of this poem under its first name of "Laon and Cythna". A +certain number of copies were issued with this title (How many copies +were put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have been +many more than the traditional three; for when I was a boy at Harrow, I +picked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for the +price of 2 shillings and 6 pence a piece.); but the publisher, Ollier, +not without reason dreaded the effect the book would make; he therefore +induced Shelley to alter the relationship between the hero and his +bride, and issued the old sheets with certain cancelled pages under the +title of "Revolt of Islam". It was published in January, 1818. While +still resident at Marlow, Shelley began two autobiographical poems—the +one "Prince Athanase," which he abandoned as too introspective and +morbidly self-analytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which he +finished afterwards in Italy. Of the second of these compositions he +entertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his best +work. To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of +Lionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the +man he would have wished to be. The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the +"Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, +are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone and +scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. Later on in life, +Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directed +his genius to more objective themes. Yet the autobiographic tendency, as +befitted a poet of the highest lyric type, remained to the end a +powerful characteristic. +</P> + +<P> +Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may be +well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetry +which characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a single +passage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosen +the lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + To Lionel,<BR> + Though of great wealth and lineage high,<BR> + Yet through those dungeon walls there came<BR> + Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!<BR> + And as the meteor's midnight flame<BR> + Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth<BR> + Flashed on his visionary youth,<BR> + And filled him, not with love, but faith.<BR> + And hope, and courage mute in death;<BR> + For love and life in him were twins,<BR> + Born at one birth: in every other<BR> + First life, then love its course begins,<BR> + Though they be children of one mother;<BR> + And so through this dark world they fleet<BR> + Divided, till in death they meet:<BR> + But he loved all things ever. Then<BR> + He past amid the strife of men,<BR> + And stood at the throne of armed power<BR> + Pleading for a world of woe:<BR> + Secure as one on a rock-built tower<BR> + O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,<BR> + 'Mid the passions wild of human kind<BR> + He stood, like a spirit calming them;<BR> + For, it was said, his words could find<BR> + Like music the lulled crowd, and stem<BR> + That torrent of unquiet dream,<BR> + Which mortals truth and reason deem,<BR> + But IS revenge and fear and pride.<BR> + Joyous he was; and hope and peace<BR> + On all who heard him did abide,<BR> + Raining like dew from his sweet talk,<BR> + As where the evening star may walk<BR> + Along the brink of the gloomy seas,<BR> + Liquid mists of splendour quiver.<BR> + His very gestures touch'd to tears<BR> + The unpersuaded tyrant, never<BR> + So moved before: his presence stung<BR> + The torturers with their victim's pain,<BR> + And none knew how; and through their ears,<BR> + The subtle witchcraft of his tongue<BR> + Unlocked the hearts of those who keep<BR> + Gold, the world's bond of slavery.<BR> + Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see<BR> + One sow what he could never reap:<BR> + For he is rich, they said, and young,<BR> + And might drink from the depths of luxury.<BR> + If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd<BR> + The champion of a trampled creed:<BR> + If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned<BR> + 'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed<BR> + Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,<BR> + Those who would sit near Power must toil;<BR> + And such, there sitting, all may see.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor at +Leigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and +the brothers Smith, authors of "Rejected Addresses". Hunt's +recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and +Peacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing the +manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: "He rose early in +the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, +wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read +again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), +conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again +walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten +o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was +generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, +in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring +interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job." Mrs. Shelley, +in her note on the "Revolt of Islam", confirms this account of his Bible +studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style +may be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from which +I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to +Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the +Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the +Gospels. "His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in +the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very +formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes +on that point." We have only to read Shelley's "Essay on Christianity", +in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how +profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, +brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to a +sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed +by many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on the +subject. It is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaeval +phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more +approximate to Shelley's exposition. Here and here only is a vital +faith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructible +because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of +divers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all men +a clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but it +was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to +discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to its +Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is +permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable +conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His +fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed +against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and +superstition, which in his opinion had retarded the growth of free +institutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, he +distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his +blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their +Lord if he returned to earth. +</P> + +<P> +That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To help +the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he +cheerfully discharged. "His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He +inquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visited +the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, +whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts." At Marlow, +the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his +energies; and Mrs. Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which +he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story +told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and +carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man +as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with +his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's +parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called +poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to +his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 +pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and he +discharged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds. +In his pamphlet on "Putting Reform to the Vote", he offered to subscribe +100 pounds for the purpose of founding an association; and we have +already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500 +pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied; +and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out of +which 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will be +understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that he +was in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raising +funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters of +expenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, this +heir of the richest baronet in Sussex illustrated by his own conduct +those principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity which +formed his political and social creed. +</P> + +<P> +A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless +sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, +as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy +Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, +correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the +Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by +Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother +and Allegra, lived as Shelley's guests; and here Clara Shelley was born +on the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered from +a severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the +apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor might lay +his vulture's talons on the children of his second marriage, were the +motives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of +1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric "The billows on +the beach.") He never returned. Four years only of life were left to +him—years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts. +</P> + +<P> +It was on the 11th of March that the Shelleys took their departure with +Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, and +after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and +Rome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Shelley's +letters to Peacock form the invaluable record of this period of his +existence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of +descriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged with +colour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of +Italy, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate in +observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, +combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a +style at once familiar and elevated. That Shelley's sensibility to art +was not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enough +in many passages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in his +comments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works of +antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the +opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the +people made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, the +spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his +studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present +day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous +critic's verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were space for a +long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of +Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, +1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently +characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:— +</P> + +<P> +"The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, +expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy +of mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is +a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters +into a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. +It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its +own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of +oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek in +what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and +tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not +agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to +attempt to inspire others with them." +</P> + +<P> +In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, +and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in a +thunderstorm. "Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of this +excursion—a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti +as the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatment +of ordinary things." The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to +sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, +ranks among Shelley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of +Byron's life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of the +sunset and the island of San Lazzaro:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Oh!<BR> + How beautiful is sunset, when the glow<BR> + Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,<BR> + Thou paradise of exiles, Italy,<BR> + Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers<BR> + Of cities they encircle!—it was ours<BR> + To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,<BR> + Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men<BR> + Were waiting for us with the gondola.<BR> + As those who pause on some delightful way,<BR> + Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood<BR> + Looking upon the evening, and the flood<BR> + Which lay between the city and the shore,<BR> + Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar<BR> + And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared,<BR> + Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared<BR> + Between the east and west; and half the sky<BR> + Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,<BR> + Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew<BR> + Down the steep west into a wondrous hue<BR> + Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent<BR> + Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent<BR> + Among the many-folded hills. They were<BR> + Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,<BR> + As seem from Lido through the harbour piles,<BR> + The likeness of a clump of peaked isles—<BR> + And then, as if the earth and sea had been<BR> + Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen<BR> + Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,<BR> + Around the vaporous sun, from which there came<BR> + The inmost purple spirit of light, and made<BR> + Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade,"<BR> + Said my companion, "I will show you soon<BR> + A better station." So o'er the lagune<BR> + We glided; and from that funereal bark<BR> + I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark<BR> + How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,<BR> + Its temples and its palaces did seem<BR> + Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.<BR> + I was about to speak, when—"We are even<BR> + Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo,<BR> + And bade the gondolieri cease to row.<BR> + "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well<BR> + If you hear not a deep and heavy bell."<BR> + I looked, and saw between us and the sun<BR> + A building on an island, such a one<BR> + As age to age might add, for uses vile,—<BR> + A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile;<BR> + And on the top an open tower, where hung<BR> + A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,—<BR> + We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue:<BR> + The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled<BR> + In strong and black relief—"What we behold<BR> + Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"—<BR> + Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour,<BR> + Those who may cross the water hear that bell,<BR> + Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,<BR> + To vespers."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar +quotations from Shelley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Most wretched men<BR> + Are cradled into poetry by wrong:<BR> + They learn in suffering what they teach in song.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where +they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here "Prometheus Unbound" was +begun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed; +and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to +rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their +passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, +and they entered Venice—only in time, however, for the child to die. +</P> + +<P> +Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley +suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. Mrs. Shelley +attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a +strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account +for the poet's melancholy. He says that so far back as the year 1816, on +the night before his departure from London, "a married lady, young, +handsome, and of noble connexions," came to him, avowed the passionate +love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly +together. (Medwin's Life of Shelley, volume 1 324. His date, 1814, +appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his +hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after +the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they +parted. She followed him, however, from place to place; and without +intruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remaining +near him. Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died. The web of +Shelley's life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own. +Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny +Imlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet has +already been told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in +Medwin's story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorously +tells us about Shelley's attraction for women in London. At any rate, +the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly be +accounted for by the "constant and poignant physical sufferings" of which +Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him. She was +herself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing something +from her, and we know from her own words in another place that his "fear +to wound the feelings of others" often impelled him to keep his deepest +sorrows to himself. (Note on the Revolt of Islam.) +</P> + +<P> +All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace of +consumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks of +pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem to +have been ascertained. At Naples he was under treatment for disease of +the liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and it +is certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied with +the quality of the water he drank. He was, for instance, forced to +eschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated his +symptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitable +residence. The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have +been determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed with +him. That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely +serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived with +him at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was obtained by +mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of the +torment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, that even during the +last months of his life we find him begging Trelawny to procure him +prussic acid as a final and effectual remedy for all the ills that flesh +is heir to. It may be added that mental application increased the +mischief, for he told Leigh Hunt that the composition of "The Cenci" had +cost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitably +real, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease; +and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley's +spasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continual +over-taxing of his nervous system. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Shelley states that the change from England to Italy was in all +respects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to refer the +depression from which he occasionally suffered, to his solitary habits; +and there are several passages in his own letters which connect his +melancholy with solitude. It is obvious that when he found himself in +the congenial company of Trelawny, Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, +he was simply happy; and nothing could be further from the truth than to +paint him as habitually sunk in gloom. On the contrary, we hear quite as +much about his high spirits, his "Homeric laughter," his playfulness +with children, his readiness to join in the amusements of his chosen +circle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his solitary +broodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories over-cast his +heaven. Byron, who had some right to express a judgment in such a +matter, described him as the most companionable man under the age of +thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shooting +with his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, +and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. +All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, +remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romantic +persons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The +voice of a stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar with +Shelley's almost inconceivable quickness of perception, was enough to +make him leave the house; and one of his prettiest poems is written on +his mistaking his wife's mention of the Aziola, a little owl common +enough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dislike +for intercourse with commonplace people was a source of some +disagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further apart +from Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable letter +recently published by Mr. Garnett, he writes:—"I detest all +society—almost all, at least—and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that +is hateful and tiresome in it." And again, speaking about his wife to +Trelawny, he said:—"She can't bear solitude, nor I society—the quick +coupled with the dead." +</P> + +<P> +In the year 1818-19 the Shelleys had no friends at all in Italy, except +Lord Byron at Venice, and Mr. and Mrs. John Gisborne at Leghorn. Mrs. +Gisborne had been a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin. She was a +woman of much cultivation, devoid of prejudice, and, though less +enthusiastic than Shelley liked, quite capable of appreciating the +inestimable privilege of his acquaintance. Her husband, to use a now +almost obsolete phrase, was a scholar and a gentleman. He shared his +wife's enlightened opinions, and remained staunch through good and ill +report to his new friends. At Rome and Naples they knew absolutely no +one. Shelley's time was therefore passed in study and composition. In +the previous summer he had translated the "Symposium" of Plato, and +begun an essay on the Ethics of the Greeks, which remains unluckily a +fragment. Together with Mary he read much Italian literature, and his +observations on the chief Italian poets form a valuable contribution to +their criticism. While he admired the splendour and invention of +Ariosto, he could not tolerate his moral tone. Tasso struck him as cold +and artificial, in spite of his "delicate moral sensibility." Boccaccio +he preferred to both; and his remarks on this prose-poet are extremely +characteristic. "How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of +nature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is the +morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it +obscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of +the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. His +more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He often +expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very +beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, +stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one +little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the +common, narrow-minded conceptions of love,—'Bocca baciata non perde +ventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch remained +the objects of his lasting admiration, though the cruel Christianity of +the "Inferno" seemed to him an ineradicable blot upon the greatest of +Italian poems. Of Petrarch's "tender and solemn enthusiasm," he speaks +with the sympathy of one who understood the inner mysteries of +idealizing love. +</P> + +<P> +It will be gathered from the foregoing quotations that Shelley, +notwithstanding is profound study of style and his exquisite perception +of beauty in form and rhythm, required more than merely artistic +excellences in poetry. He judged poems by their content and spirit; and +while he plainly expressed his abhorrence of the didactic manner, he +held that art must be moralized in order to be truly great. The +distinction he drew between Theocritus and the earlier Greek singers in +the "Defence of Poetry", his severe strictures on "The Two Noble +Kinsmen" in a letter to Mary (August 20, 1818) and his phrase about +Ariosto, "who is entertaining and graceful, and SOMETIMES a poet," +illustrate the application of critical canons wholly at variance with +the "art for art" doctrine. +</P> + +<P> +While studying Italian, he continued faithful to Greek. Plato was often +in his hands, and the dramatists formed his almost inseparable +companions. How deeply he felt the art of the Homeric poems, may be +gathered from the following extract:—"I congratulate you on your +conquest of the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the perpetually +increasing magnificence of the last seven books. Homer there truly +begins to be himself. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of +Patroclus, and the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale in +tenderness and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable +with anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there is +nothing like this." About this time, prompted by Mrs. Gisborne, he began +the study of Spanish, and conceived an ardent admiration for Calderon, +whose splendid and supernatural fancy tallied with his own. "I am +bathing myself in the light and odour of the starry Autos," he writes to +Mr. Gisborne in the autumn of 1820. "Faust", too, was a favourite. "I +have been reading over and over again "Faust", and always with +sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom and +augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit +study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory, and the +delusions of an imagination not to be restrained." The profound +impression made upon him by Margaret's story is expressed in two letters +about Retzsch's illustrations:—"The artist makes one envy his happiness +that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look +upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on +the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured." +</P> + +<P> +The fruits of this occupation with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German +were Shelley's translations from Homer and Euripides, from Dante, from +Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso", and from "Faust", translations which +have never been surpassed for beauty of form and complete transfusion of +the spirit of one literature into the language of another. On +translation, however, he set but little store, asserting that he only +undertook it when he "could do absolutely nothing else," and writing +earnestly to dissuade Leigh Hunt from devoting time which might be +better spent, to work of subordinate importance. (Letter from Florence, +November 1819.) The following version of a Greek epigram on Plato's +spirit will illustrate his own method of translation:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?<BR> + To what sublime and star-y-paven home<BR> + Floatest thou?<BR> + I am the image of swift Plato's spirit,<BR> + Ascending heaven:—Athens does inherit<BR> + His corpse below.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Some time in the year 1820-21, he composed the "Defence of Poetry", +stimulated to this undertaking by his friend Peacock's article on +poetry, published in the Literary Miscellany. (See Letter to Ollier, +January 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, page 135.) This essay not only sets +forth his theory of his own art, but it also contains some of his finest +prose writing, of which the following passage, valuable alike for matter +and style, may be cited as a specimen:— +</P> + +<P> +"The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates +new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it +engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according +to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the +good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at +periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, +the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity +of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. +The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it. +</P> + +<P> +"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and +circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, +and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time +the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from +which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if +blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren +world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of +life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; +it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the +elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty +to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, +patriotism, friendship—what were the scenery of this beautiful universe +which we inhabit—what were our consolations on this side of the +grave—and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend +to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged +faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, +a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man +cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say +it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible +influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; +this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades +and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our +natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could +this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is +impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition +begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious +poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble +shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest +poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the +finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and +the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no +more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an +artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the +intermixture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by +the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the +"Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have +his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the +"unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who would +allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando +Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to +painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still +more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or +picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's +womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is +incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the +media of the process. +</P> + +<P> +"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest +and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and +feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding +our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing +unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that +even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be +pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as +it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but +its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming +calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which +paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced +principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most +enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war +with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and +friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they +last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not +only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined +organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the +evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the +representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, +and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the +sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes +immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests +the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and +veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, +bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters +abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns +of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry +redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." +</P> + +<P> +In the midst of these aesthetic studies, and while producing his own +greatest works, Shelley was not satisfied that his genius ought to be +devoted to poetry. "I consider poetry," he wrote to Peacock, January +26th, 1819, "very subordinate to moral and political science, and if I +were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter; for I can conceive a +great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the +contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me is such +an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse +myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into the +scale of that balance which the Giant of Arthegall holds." Whether he +was right in the conviction that his genius was no less fitted for +metaphysical speculation or for political science than for poetry, is a +question that admits of much debate. (See Mrs. Shelley's note on the +Revolt of Islam, and the whole Preface to the Prose Works.) We have +nothing but fragments whereby to form a definite opinion—the unfinished +"Defence of Poetry", the unfinished "Essay on a Future State", the +unfinished "Essay on Christianity", the unfinished "Essay on the +Punishment of Death", and the scattered "Speculations on Metaphysics". +None of these compositions justify the belief so confidently expressed +by Mrs. Shelley in her Preface to the prose works, that "had not Shelley +deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lost +to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in +the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of +mind; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant would have +contributed; but more simple, and unimpugnable, and entire than the +systems of these writers." Their incompleteness rather tends to confirm +what she proceeds to state, that the strain of philosophical composition +was too great for his susceptible nerves; while her further observation +that "thought kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him +dizzy from too great keenness of emotion," seems to indicate that his +nature was primarily that of a poet deeply tinctured with philosophical +speculation, rather than that of a metaphysician warmed at intervals to +an imaginative fervour. Another of her remarks confirms us in this +opinion. "He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to +be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry." (Note on Prometheus.) +This is the position of the poet rather than the analyst; and on the +whole, we are probably justified in concluding with Mrs. Shelley, that +he followed a true instinct when he dedicated himself to poetry, and +trained his powers in that direction. (Note on Revolt of Islam.) To +dogmatize upon the topic would be worse than foolish. There was +something incalculable, incommensurable, and daemonic in Shelley's +genius; and what he might have achieved, had his life been spared and +had his health progressively improved, it is of course impossible to +say. +</P> + +<P> +In the spring of 1819 the Shelleys settled in Rome, where the poet +proceeded with the composition of "Prometheus Unbound". He used to write +among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, not then, as now, despoiled +of all their natural beauty, but waving with the Paradise of flowers and +shrubs described in his incomparable letter of March the 23rd to +Peacock. Rome, however, was not destined to retain them long. On the 7th +of June they lost their son William after a short illness. Shelley loved +this child intensely, and sat by his bedside for sixty hours without +taking rest. He was now practically childless; and his grief found +expression in many of his poems, especially in the fragment headed +"Roma, Roma, Roma! non e piu com' era prima." William was buried in the +Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description to +Peacock in the previous December. "The English burying-place is a green +slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I +think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the +sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with +the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves +of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil +which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly +of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were +to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and +so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion." +</P> + +<P> +Escaping from the scene of so much sorrow, they established themselves +at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn. Here Shelley began and finished +"The Cenci" at the instance of his wife, who rightly thought that he +undervalued his own powers as a dramatic poet. The supposed portrait of +Beatrice in the Barberini Palace had powerfully affected his +imagination, and he fancied that her story would form the fitting +subject for a tragedy. It is fortunate for English literature that the +real facts of that domestic drama, as recently published by Signor +Bertolotti, were then involved in a tissue of romance and legend. During +this summer he saw a great deal of the Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne's +son by a previous marriage, Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelley +conceived a project of helping him build a steamer which should ply +between Leghorn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and the +pecuniary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family. The scheme +eventually fell through, though Shelley spent a good deal of money upon +it; and its only importance is the additional light it throws upon his +public and private benevolence. From Leghorn the Shelleys removed in the +autumn to Florence, where, on the 12th of November, the present Sir +Percy Florence Shelley was born. Here Shelley wrote the last act of +"Prometheus Unbound", which, though the finest portion of that unique +drama, seems to have been an afterthought. In the Cascine outside +Florence he also composed the "Ode to the West Wind", the most +symmetrically perfect as well as the most impassioned of his minor +lyrics. He spent much time in the galleries, made notes upon the +principal antique statues, and formed a plan of systematic art-study. +The climate, however, disagreed with him, and in the month of January, +1820, they took up their abode at Pisa. +</P> + +<P> +1819 was the most important year in Shelley's life, so far as literary +production is concerned. Besides "The Cenci" and "Prometheus Unbound", +of which it yet remains to speak, this year saw the production of +several political and satirical poems—the "Masque of Anarchy", +suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the most +important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs +which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be +their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make +such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of +England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his +achievement in this style:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Men of England, Heirs of Glory,<BR> + Heroes of unwritten story,<BR> + Nurslings of one mighty mother,<BR> + Hopes of her, and one another!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Rise, like lions after slumber,<BR> + In unvanquishable number,<BR> + Shake your chains to earth like dew,<BR> + Which in sleep had fall'n on you.<BR> + Ye are many, they are few.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +"Peter Bell the Third", written in this year, and "Swellfoot the +Tyrant", composed in the following autumn, are remarkable as showing +with what keen interest Shelley watched public affairs in England from +his exile home; but, for my own part, I cannot agree with those critics +who esteem their humour at a high rate. The political poems may +profitably be compared with his contemporary correspondence; with the +letters, for instance, to Leigh Hunt, November 23rd, 1819; and to Mr. +John Gisborne, April 10th, 1822; and with an undated fragment published +by Mr. Garnett in the "Relics of Shelley", page 84. No student of +English political history before the Reform Bill can regard his +apprehensions of a great catastrophe as ill-founded. His insight into +the real danger to the nation was as penetrating as his suggestion of a +remedy was moderate. Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as a +visionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the sober lines +in which he warns his friend to be cautious about the security offered +by the English Funds. Another letter, dated Lerici, June 29, 1822, +illustrates the same practical temper of mind, the same logical +application of political principles to questions of public economy. +</P> + +<P> +That "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" should have been composed in +one and the same year must be reckoned among the greatest wonders of +literature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but also +because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had +written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final +reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the +champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, +because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting +any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of +compromise. He could not conceive of the Titan "unsaying his high +language, and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary." +He therefore, approached the theme of liberation from a wholly different +point of view. Prometheus in his drama is the human vindicator of love, +justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical oppressor, and +creator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is the mind of man +idealized, the spirit of our race, as Shelley thought it made to be. +Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts its free development. Thus +counterposed, the two chief actors represent the fundamental antitheses +of good and evil, liberty and despotism, love and hate. They give the +form of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism already +expressed in the first canto of "Laon and Cythna"; but, instead of being +represented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into +the reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resists +Jove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, that +the tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and calmly +expectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, and leave the +spirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives; Jove disappears; the +burdens of the world and men are suddenly removed; a new age of peace +and freedom and illimitable energy begins; the whole universe partakes +in the emancipation; the spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain, +but sings alternate love-songs with his sister orb, the moon; Prometheus +is re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, +withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in +her exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. She +is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises in +the Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time of +tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beauty +incarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world and +enkindles it with love, the reality of Alastor's vision, the breathing +image of the awful loveliness apostrophized in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty," the reflex of the splendour of which Adonais was a part. At the +moment of her triumph she grows so beautiful that Ione her sister cannot +see her, only feels her influence. The essential thought of Shelley's +creed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalized, made real by a +spirit, which he sometimes called the spirit of Nature, but which is +always conceived as more than Life, as that which gives its actuality to +Life, and lastly as Love and Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp it +with affection, and to blend with it, is, he thought the true object of +man. Therefore the final union of Prometheus with Asia is the +consummation of human destinies. Love was the only law Shelley +recognized. Unterrified by the grim realities of pain and crime revealed +in nature and society, he held fast to the belief that, if we could but +pierce to the core of things, if we could but be what we might be, the +world and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. +What resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected by +Shelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the universe, we +hardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form: and his new +science of love remains a luminous poetic vision—nowhere more +brilliantly set forth than in the "sevenfold hallelujahs and harping +symphonies" of this, the final triumph of his lyrical poetry. +</P> + +<P> +In "Prometheus", Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, and sketched +out the main figures on a scale of surpassing magnificence. While +painting in these figures, he seems to reduce their proportions too much +to the level of earthly life. He quits his god-creating, +heaven-compelling throne of mythopoeic inspiration, and descends to a +love-story of Asia and Prometheus. In other words, he does not sustain +the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; +nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail +as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore +something vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinate +passages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty—the faculty of +finding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion with +personality—shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. We +feel ourselves in the grasp of a primitive myth-maker while we read the +description of Oceanus, and the raptures of the Earth and Moon. +</P> + +<P> +A genuine liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned the +touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. The +world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices; +and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross than +any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart's +song, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in "Prometheus", +which seem to realize the miracle of making words, detached from +meaning, the substance of a new ethereal music; and yet, although their +verbal harmony is such, they are never devoid of definite significance +for those who understand. Shelley scorned the aesthetics of a school +which finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic is +so dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or to +whom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a man +whose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A +voice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of her +apotheosis:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Life of Life! thy lips enkindle<BR> + With their love the breath between them;<BR> + And thy smiles before they dwindle<BR> + Make the cold air fire; then screen them<BR> + In those looks where whoso gazes<BR> + Faints, entangled in their mazes.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Child of Light! thy limbs are burning<BR> + Through the vest which seems to hide them,<BR> + As the radiant lines of morning<BR> + Through the clouds, ere they divide them;<BR> + And this atmosphere divinest<BR> + Shrouds thee whereso'er thou shinest.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Fair are others; none beholds thee.<BR> + But thy voice sounds low and tender,<BR> + Like the fairest, for it folds thee<BR> + From the sight, that liquid splendour,<BR> + And all feel, yet see thee never,<BR> + As I feel now, lost for ever!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest<BR> + Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,<BR> + And the souls of whom thou lovest<BR> + Walk upon the winds with lightness,<BR> + Till they fail, as I am failing,<BR> + Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!<BR> +</P> + +<P> +It has been said that Shelley, as a landscape painter, is decidedly +Turneresque; and there is much in "Prometheus Unbound" to justify this +opinion. The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker shadows +are omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be continually radiated +from the objects at which he looks; and in this radiation of +many-coloured lights, the outline itself is apt to be a little misty. +Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their spiritual essence. +The actual world was less for him than that which lies within it and +beyond it. "I seek," he says himself, "in what I see, the manifestation +of something beyond the present and tangible object." For him, as for +the poet described by one of the spirit voices in "Prometheus", the bees +in the ivy-bloom are scarcely heeded; they become in his mind,— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Forms more real than living man,<BR> + Nurslings of immortality.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +And yet who could have brought the bees, the lake, the sun, the bloom, +more perfectly before us than that picture does? (Forman, volume 2 page +181.) What vignette is more exquisitely coloured and finished than the +little study of a pair of halcyons in the third act? (Forman, volume 2 +page 231.) Blake is perhaps the only artist who could have illustrated +this drama. He might have shadowed forth the choirs of spirits, the +trailing voices and their thrilling songs, phantasmal Demorgorgon, and +the charioted Hour. Prometheus, too, with his "flowing limbs," has just +Blake's fault of impersonation—the touch of unreality in that painter's +Adam. +</P> + +<P> +Passing to "The Cenci", we change at once the moral and artistic +atmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely dirge, is +absent. Imagery and description are alike sternly excluded. Instead of +soaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly planted on the earth. In +exchange for radiant visions of future perfection, we are brought into +the sphere of dreadful passions—all the agony, endurance, and +half-maddened action, of which luckless human innocence is capable. To +tell the legend of Beatrice Cenci here, is hardly needed. Her father, a +monster of vice and cruelty, was bent upon breaking her spirit by +imprisonment, torture, and nameless outrage. At last her patience ended; +and finding no redress in human justice, no champion of her helplessness +in living man, she wrought his death. For this she died upon the +scaffold, together with her step-mother and her brothers, who had aided +in the execution of the murder. The interest of "The Cenci", and it is +overwhelmingly great, centres in Beatrice and her father; from these two +chief actors in the drama, all the other characters fall away into +greater or less degrees of unsubstantiality. Perhaps Shelley intended +this—as the maker of a bas-relief contrives two or three planes of +figures for the presentation of his ruling group. Yet there appears to +my mind a defect of accomplishment, rather than a deliberate intention, +in the delineation of Orsino. He seems meant to be the wily, crafty, +Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form a +contrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of old +Francesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love for +Beatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down with +an infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand the +uneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminine +weakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm will of +Beatrice into prominent relief; while her innocence, sustained through +extraordinary suffering in circumstances of exceptional horror—the +innocence of a noble nature thrust by no act of its own but by its +wrongs beyond the pale of ordinary womankind—is contrasted with the +merely childish guiltlessness of Bernardo. Beatrice rises to her full +height in the fifth act, dilates and grows with the approach of danger, +and fills the whole scene with her spirit on the point of death. Her +sublime confidence in the justice and essential rightness of her action, +the glance of self-assured purity with which she annihilates the +cut-throat brought to testify against her, her song in prison, and her +tender solicitude for the frailer Lucrezia, are used with wonderful +dramatic skill for the fulfilment of a feminine ideal at once delicate +and powerful. Once and once only does she yield to ordinary weakness; it +is when the thought crosses her mind that she may meet her father in the +other world, as once he came to her on earth. +</P> + +<P> +Shelley dedicated "The Cenci" to Leigh Hunt, saying that he had striven +in this tragedy to cast aside the subjective manner of his earlier work, +and to produce something at once more popular and more concrete, more +sober in style, and with a firmer grasp on the realities of life. He was +very desirous of getting it acted, and wrote to Peacock requesting him +to offer it at Covent Garden. Miss O'Neil, he thought, would play the +part of Beatrice admirably. The manager, however, did not take this +view; averring that the subject rendered it incapable of being even +submitted to an actress like Miss O'Neil. Shelley's self-criticism is +always so valuable, that it may be well here to collect what he said +about the two great dramas of 1819. Concerning "The Cenci" he wrote to +Peacock:—"It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and +opinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attended +simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable +the persons represented really were, together with the greatest degree +of popular effect to be produced by such a development." "'Cenci' is +written for the multitude, and ought to sell well." "I believe it +singularly fitted for the stage." "'The Cenci' is a work of art; it is +not coloured by my feelings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't +think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written +of the same length." "Prometheus", on the other hand, he tells Ollier, +"is my favourite poem; I charge you, therefore, specially to pet him and +feed him with fine ink and good paper"—which was duly done. +Again:—"For 'Prometheus', I expect and desire no great sale; Prometheus +was never intended for more than five or six persons; it is in my +judgment of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted, and +is perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it; it is +original, and cost me severe mental labour." Shelley was right in +judging that "The Cenci" would be comparatively popular; this was proved +by the fact that it went through two editions in his lifetime. The value +he set upon "Prometheus" as the higher work, will hardly be disputed. +Unique in the history of literature, and displaying the specific +qualities of its author at their height, the world could less easily +afford to lose this drama than "The Cenci", even though that be the +greatest tragedy composed in English since the death of Shakespeare. For +reasons which will be appreciated by lovers of dramatic poetry, I +refrain from detaching portions of these two plays. Those who desire to +make themselves acquainted with the author's genius, must devote long +and patient study to the originals in their entirety. +</P> + +<P> +"Prometheus Unbound", like the majority of Shelley's works, fell +still-born from the press. It furnished punsters with a joke, however, +which went the round of several papers; this poem, they cried, is well +named, for who would bind it? Of criticism that deserves the name, +Shelley got absolutely nothing in his lifetime. The stupid but venomous +reviews which gave him occasional pain, but which he mostly laughed at, +need not now be mentioned. It is not much to any purpose to abuse the +authors of mere rubbish. The real lesson to be learned from such of them +as may possibly have been sincere, as well as from the failure of his +contemporaries to appreciate his genius—the sneers of Moore, the +stupidity of Campbell, the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness of +Southey, or the condescending tone of Keats—is that nothing is more +difficult than for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to the +greatest in their lifetime. Those who may be interested in studying +Shelley's attitude toward his critics, should read a letter addressed to +Ollier from Florence, October 15, 1819, soon after he had seen the vile +attack upon him in the "Quarterly", comparing this with the fragments of +an expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the preface to "Adonais". +(Shelley Memorials, page 121. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pages 49, +190. Collected Letters, page 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in one +volume 1840.) It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse with +patience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On the 11th +of June, 1821, he wrote to Ollier:—"As yet I have laughed; but woe to +those scoundrels if they should once make me lose my temper!" The +stanzas on the "Quarterly" in "Adonais", and the invective against Lord +Eldon, show what Shelley could have done if he had chosen to castigate +the curs. Meanwhile the critics achieved what they intended. Shelley, as +Trelawny emphatically tells us, was universally shunned, coldly treated +by Byron's friends at Pisa, and regarded as a monster by such of the +English in Italy as had not made his personal acquaintance. On one +occasion he is even said to have been knocked down in a post-office by +some big bully, who escaped before he could obtain his name and address; +but this is one of the stories rendered doubtful by the lack of precise +details. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 6. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +RESIDENCE AT PISA. +</H3> + +<P> +On the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelley's established themselves at +Pisa. From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, Shelley's life +divides itself into two periods of unequal length; the first spent at +Pisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn; the second at Lerici, on +the Bay of Spezia. Without entering into minute particulars of dates or +recording minor changes of residence, it is possible to treat of the +first and longer period in general. The house he inhabited at Pisa was +on the south side of the Arno. After a few months he became the +neighbour of Lord Byron, who engaged the Palazzo Lanfranchi it order to +be near him; and here many English and Italian friends gathered round +them. Among these must be mentioned in the first place Captain Medwin, +whose recollections of the Pisan residence are of considerable value, +and next Captain Trelawny, who has left a record of Shelley's last days +only equalled in vividness by Hogg's account of the Oxford period, and +marked by signs of more unmistakable accuracy. Not less important +members of this private circle were Mr. and Mrs. Edward Elleker +Williams, with whom Shelley and his wife lived on terms of the closest +friendship. Among Italians, the physician Vacca, the improvisatore +Sgricci, and Rosini, the author of "La Monaca di Monza", have to be +recorded. It will be seen from this enumeration that Shelley was no +longer solitary; and indeed it would appear that now, upon the eve of +his accidental death, he had begun to enjoy an immunity from many of his +previous sufferings. Life expanded before him: his letters show that he +was concentrating his powers and preparing for a fresh flight; and the +months, though ever productive of poetic masterpieces, promised a still +more magnificent birth in the future. +</P> + +<P> +In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his most +genial poems: the "Letter to Maria Gisborne", which might be mentioned +as a pendent to "Julian and Maddalo" for its treatment of familiar +things; the "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the +"Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the +"Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a new +lyric form to English literature. In the winter he wrote the "Sensitive +Plant", prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. +Shelley's drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate +Italian sunlight. Whether we consider the number of these poems or their +diverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely subtle +line from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence and the most +ethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished. Every chord of the +poet's lyre is touched, from the deep bass string that echoes the +diurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was, to the fine vibrations of a +treble merging its rarity of tone in accents super-sensible to ordinary +ears. One passage from the "Letter to Maria Gisborne" may here be +quoted, not for its poetry, but for the light it casts upon the circle +of his English friends. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + You are now<BR> + In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow<BR> + At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore<BR> + Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.<BR> + Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see<BR> + That which was Godwin,—greater none than he<BR> + Though fallen—and fallen on evil times—to stand<BR> + Among the spirits of our age and land,<BR> + Before the dread tribunal of "To come"<BR> + The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.<BR> + You will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure<BR> + In the exceeding lustre and the pure<BR> + Intense irradiation of a mind,<BR> + Which, with its own internal lightning blind,<BR> + Flags wearily through darkness and despair—<BR> + A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,<BR> + A hooded eagle among blinking owls.<BR> + You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls<BR> + Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom<BR> + This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;<BR> + Who is, what others seem. His room no doubt<BR> + Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,<BR> + With graceful flowers tastefully placed about,<BR> + And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,<BR> + And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;<BR> + The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens<BR> + Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.<BR> + And there is he with his eternal puns,<BR> + Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns<BR> + Thundering for money at a poet's door;<BR> + Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"—<BR> + Or oft in graver mood, when he will look<BR> + Things wiser than were ever read in book,<BR> + Except in Shakespere's wisest tenderness.<BR> + You will see Hogg; and I cannot express<BR> + His virtues, though I know that they are great,<BR> + Because he locks, then barricades the gate<BR> + Within which they inhabit. Of his wit<BR> + And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit.<BR> + He is a pearl within an oyster-shell,<BR> + One of the richest of the deep. And there<BR> + Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair,—<BR> + Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird<BR> + That gleams in the Indian air. Have you not heard<BR> + When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,<BR> + His best friends hear no more of him. But you<BR> + Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,<BR> + With the milk-white Snowdownian antelope<BR> + Match'd with this camelopard. His fine wit<BR> + Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;<BR> + A strain too learned for a shallow age,<BR> + Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page<BR> + Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,<BR> + Fold itself up for the serener clime<BR> + Of years to come, and find its recompense<BR> + In that just expectation. Wit and sense,<BR> + Virtue and human knowledge, all that might<BR> + Make this dull world a business of delight,<BR> + Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these,<BR> + With some exceptions, which I need not tease<BR> + Your patience by descanting on, are all<BR> + You and I know in London.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Captain Medwin, who came late in the autumn of 1820, at his cousin's +invitation, to stay with the Shelleys, has recorded many interesting +details of their Pisan life, as well as valuable notes of Shelley's +conversation. "It was nearly seven years since we had parted, but I +should have immediately recognized him in a crowd. His figure was +emaciated, and somewhat bent, owing to near-sightedness, and his being +forced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them; his +hair, still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed +with grey; but his appearance was youthful. There was also a freshness +and purity in his complexion that he never lost." Not long after his +arrival, Medwin suffered from a severe and tedious illness. "Shelley +tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered my +medicines, and during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was +assiduous and unintermitting in his affectionate care of me." The poet's +solitude and melancholy at this time impressed his cousin very +painfully. Though he was producing a long series of imperishable poems, +he did not take much interest in his work. "I am disgusted with +writing," he once said, "and were it not for an irresistible impulse, +that predominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing." The +brutal treatment he had lately received from the "Quarterly Review", the +calumnies which pursued him, and the coldness of all but a very few +friends, checked his enthusiasm for composition. Of this there is +abundant proof in his correspondence. In a letter to Leigh Hunt, dated +January 25, 1822, he says: "My faculties are shaken to atoms and torpid. +I can write nothing; and if "Adonais" had no success, and excited no +interest, what incentive can I have to write?" Again: "I write little +now. It is impossible to compose except under the strong excitement of +an assurance of finding sympathy in what you write." Lord Byron's +company proved now, as before, a check rather than an incentive to +production: "I do not write; I have lived too long near Lord Byron, and +the sun has extinguished the glow-worm; for I cannot hope, with St. +John, that THE LIGHT CAME INTO THE WORLD AND THE WORLD KNEW IT NOT." "I +despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other +with whom it is worth contending." To Ollier, in 1820, he wrote: "I +doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with the +hell or the paradise of poetry; but the torments of its purgatory vex +me, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to the +vexation." It was not that his spirit was cowed by the Reviews, or that +he mistook the sort of audience he had to address. He more than once +acknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the many, his poems were +intended for the understanding few. Yet the sunetoi, as he called them, +gave him but scanty encouragement. The cold phrases of kindly Horace +Smith show that he had not comprehended "Prometheus Unbound"; and +Shelley whimsically complains that even intelligent and sympathetic +critics confounded the ideal passion described in "Epipsychidion" with +the love affairs of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart." This almost +incomprehensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have known +better, combined with the coarse abuse of vulgar scribblers, was enough +to make a man so sincerely modest as Shelley doubt his powers, or shrink +from the severe labour of developing them. (See Medwin, volume 2 page +172, for Shelley's comment on the difficulty of the poet's art.) "The +decision of the cause," he wrote to Mr. Gisborne, "whether or no <I>I</I> am +a poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterity +shall assemble; but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the +verdict will be, guilty—death." Deep down in his own heart he had, +however, less doubt: "This I know," he said to Medwin, "that whether in +prosing or in versing, there is something in my writings that shall live +for ever." And again, he writes to Hunt: "I am full of thoughts and +plans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which +encloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should +do great things." It seems almost certain that the incompleteness of +many longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandonment of the +tragedy on Tasso's story, the unfinished state of "Charles I", and the +failure to execute the cherished plan of a drama suggested by the Book +of Job, were due to the depressing effects of ill-health and external +discouragement. Poetry with Shelley was no light matter. He composed +under the pressure of intense excitement, and he elaborated his first +draughts with minute care and severe self-criticism. +</P> + +<P> +These words must not be taken as implying that he followed the Virgilian +precedent of polishing and reducing the volume of his verses by an +anxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he observed the Horatian +maxim of deferring their publication till the ninth year. The contrary +was notoriously the case with him. Yet it is none the less proved by the +state of his manuscripts that his compositions, even as we now possess +them, were no mere improvisations. The passage already quoted from his +"Defence of Poetry" shows the high ideal he had conceived of the poet's +duty toward his art; and it may be confidently asserted that his whole +literary career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence of +his earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision of +form that are the index of mastery over style. At the same time it was +inconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to attempt +composition except under an impulse approaching to inspiration. To +imperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, moral, +intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline exacted by his +own fastidious taste, with no other object in view than the frigid +compliments of a few friends, was more than even Shelley's enthusiasm +could endure. He, therefore, at this period required the powerful +stimulus of some highly exciting cause from without to determine his +activity. +</P> + +<P> +Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters early in the +year 1821. Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa was a clever but +disreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a very piquant portrait. +This man one day related the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, +the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had been confined by her father in a +dismal convent of the suburbs, to await her marriage with a distasteful +husband. Shelley, fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visit +the fair captive. The Professor accompanied him and Medwin to the +convent-parlour, where they found her more lovely than even the most +glowing descriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. +Shelley soon discovered that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I +have ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon the +subject of Uranian Love—Il Vero Amore—justifies the belief that she +possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. +Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her +convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and by +presents of flowers and books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathy +for this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, however +spiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate. The result was the +composition of "Epipsychidion," the most unintelligible of all his poems +to those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's "Symposium" and +Dante's "Vita Nuova". In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as the +incarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in +mortal flesh:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,<BR> + Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman<BR> + All that is insupportable in thee<BR> + Of light, and love, and immortality!<BR> +</P> + +<P> +He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and +deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicate +obscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for his +soul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of ideal +beauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he ever +been deluded. At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truth +of the vision veiled from him so many years. She and Mary shall +henceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him. Then +he calls on her to fly. They three will escape and live together, far +away from men, in an Aegean island. The description of this visionary +isle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and +undiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this +century in the rhymed heroic metre. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + It is an isle under Ionian skies,<BR> + Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise;<BR> + And, for the harbours are not safe and good,<BR> + This land would have remained a solitude<BR> + But for some pastoral people native there,<BR> + Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air<BR> + Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,<BR> + Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.<BR> + The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,<BR> + With ever-changing sound and light and foam<BR> + Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar;<BR> + And all the winds wandering along the shore,<BR> + Undulate with the undulating tide.<BR> + There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;<BR> + And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,<BR> + As clear as elemental diamond,<BR> + Or serene morning air. And far beyond,<BR> + The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer,<BR> + (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,)<BR> + Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls<BR> + Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls<BR> + Illumining, with sound that never fails<BR> + Accompany the noonday nightingales;<BR> + And all the place is peopled with sweet airs.<BR> + The light clear element which the isle wears<BR> + Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,<BR> + Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,<BR> + And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;<BR> + And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,<BR> + And dart the arrowy odour through the brain,<BR> + Till you might faint with that delicious pain.<BR> + And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,<BR> + With that deep music is in unison:<BR> + Which is a soul within a soul—they seem<BR> + Like echoes of an antenatal dream.<BR> + It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea,<BR> + Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;<BR> + Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer,<BR> + Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air.<BR> + It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,<BR> + Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light<BR> + Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they<BR> + Sail onward far upon their fatal way.<BR> + The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm<BR> + To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm<BR> + Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,<BR> + From which its fields and woods ever renew<BR> + Their green and golden immortality.<BR> + And from the sea there rise, and from the sky<BR> + There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,<BR> + Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,<BR> + Which sun or moon or zephyr draws aside,<BR> + Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride<BR> + Glowing at once with love and loveliness,<BR> + Blushes and trembles at its own excess:<BR> + Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less<BR> + Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,<BR> + An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile<BR> + Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen<BR> + O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green,<BR> + Filling their bare and void interstices.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Shelley did not publish "Epipsychidion" with his own name. He gave it to +the world as a composition of a man who had "died at Florence, as he was +preparing for a voyage to one of the Sporades," and he requested Ollier +not to circulate it, except among a few intelligent readers. It may +almost be said to have been never published, in such profound silence +did it issue from the press. Very shortly after its appearance he +described it to Leigh Hunt as "a portion of me already dead," and added +this significant allusion to its subject matter:—"Some of us have in a +prior existence been in love with Antigone, and that makes us find no +full content in any mortal tie." In the letter of June 18, 1822, again +he says:—"The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom it +celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the +Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious, +however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something +thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one +is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it +is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists +in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant as +the poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in the +author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of the +emotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetorical +exaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but because +Shelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really been +its subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publication +of "Epipsychidion," confirms the impression made by it, and justifies +the conclusion that he had utilized his feeling for Emilia to express a +favourite doctrine in impassioned verse. +</P> + +<P> +To students of Shelley's inner life "Epipsychidion" will always have +high value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing his +doctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principle +presented to us in "Alastor", the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and +"Prince Athanase." But the words just quoted, which may be compared with +Mrs. Shelley's note to "Prince Athanase," authorize our pointing out +what he himself recognized as the defect of his theory. Instead of +remaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn," +Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love." Thus, while +his doctrine in "Epipsychidion" seems Platonic, it will not square with +the "Symposium." Plato treats the love of a beautiful person as a mere +initiation into divine mysteries, the first step in the ladder that +ascends to heaven. When a man has formed a just conception of the +universal beauty, he looks back with a smile upon those who find their +soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by this +standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many +daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is a spurious +Platonism. Plato would have said that to seek the Idea of Beauty in +Emilia Viviani was a retrogressive step. All that she could do, would be +to quicken the soul's sense of beauty, to stir it from its lethargy, and +to make it divine the eternal reality of beauty in the supersensual +world of thought. This Shelley had already acknowledged in the "Hymn;" +and this he emphasizes in these words:—"The error consists in seeking +in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +</P> + +<P> +The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman's edition do +not throw much light upon "Epipsychidion." The longest, entitled "To his +Genius" by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads like the induction to a +poem conceived and written in a different key, and at a lower level of +inspiration. It has, however, this extraordinary interest, that it deals +with a love which is both love and friendship, above sex, spiritual, +unintelligible to the world at large. Thus the fragment enables the +student better to realize the kind of worship so passionately expressed +in "Epipsychidion." +</P> + +<P> +The news of Keats's death at Rome on the 27th of December, 1820, and the +erroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not caused, by a +contemptible review of "Endymion" in the "Quarterly", stirred Shelley to +the composition of "Adonais". He had it printed at Pisa, and sent copies +to Ollier for circulation in London. This poem was a favourite with its +author, who hoped not only that it might find acceptance with the +public, but also that it would confer lustre upon the memory of a poet +whom he sincerely admired. No criticisms upon Shelley's works are half +so good as his own. It is, therefore, interesting to collect the +passages in which he speaks of an elegy only equalled in our language by +"Lycidas", and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior to +Milton's youthful lament for his friend. "The 'Adonais', in spite of its +mysticism," he writes to Ollier, "is the least imperfect of my +compositions." "I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born +to an immortality of oblivion." "It is a highly wrought PIECE OF ART, +and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have +written." "It is absurd in any review to criticize 'Adonais', and still +more to pretend that the verses are bad." "I know what to think of +'Adonais', but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad +poems of the day, I know not." Again, alluding to the stanzas hurled +against the infamous "Quarterly" reviewer, he says:—"I have dipped my +pen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm +and solemn." +</P> + +<P> +With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. Although +"Adonais" is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets as +"Prometheus" or "Epipsychidion," it presents Shelley's qualities in a +form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the +dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART of +the poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the +student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of +Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic +products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their +material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, +reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby +the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the +sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; +the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substituted +for Bion's cupids; and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bards +of England are summoned to lament around the poet's bier. Yet it is only +when Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that he +soars aloft on mighty wing. This point, too, is the point of transition +from death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture of +the things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions of the +poem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the passage from +the one to the other is natural. Two quotations from "Adonais" will +suffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse. +</P> + +<P> +The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron and +Moore—the "Pilgrim of Eternity," and Ierne's "sweetest lyrist of her +saddest wrong"—to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathos +and unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, +when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats in "Don Juan", and what +Moore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how +far both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron +his supreme place in the heaven of poetry. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,<BR> + A phantom among men, companionless<BR> + As the last cloud of an expiring storm,<BR> + Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess,<BR> + Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,<BR> + Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray<BR> + With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,<BR> + And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,<BR> + Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift—<BR> + A love in desolation masked—a Power<BR> + Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift<BR> + The weight of the superincumbent hour;<BR> + Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower,<BR> + A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak<BR> + Is it not broken? On the withering flower<BR> + The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek<BR> + The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + His head was bound with pansies over-blown,<BR> + And faded violets, white and pied and blue;<BR> + And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,<BR> + Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew<BR> + Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew,<BR> + Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart<BR> + Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew<BR> + He came the last, neglected and apart;<BR> + A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The second passage is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere has Shelley +expressed his philosophy of man's relation to the universe with more +sublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in these +stanzas. If it were possible to identify that philosophy with any +recognized system of thought, it might be called pantheism. But it is +difficult to affix a name, stereotyped by the usage of the schools, to +the aerial spiritualism of its ardent and impassioned poet's creed. +</P> + +<P> +The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just been interrupted +by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He now +bursts forth afresh into the music of consolation:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!<BR> + He hath awakened from the dream of life.<BR> + 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep<BR> + With phantoms an unprofitable strife,<BR> + And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife<BR> + Invulnerable nothings. WE decay<BR> + Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief<BR> + Convulse us and consume us day by day,<BR> + And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + He has outsoared the shadow of our night;<BR> + Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,<BR> + And that unrest which men miscall delight,<BR> + Can touch him not and torture not again;<BR> + From the contagion of the world's slow stain<BR> + He is secure, and now can never mourn<BR> + A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;<BR> + Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,<BR> + With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + He lives, he wakes—'tis Death is dead, not he;<BR> + Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,<BR> + Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee<BR> + The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;<BR> + Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!<BR> + Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air<BR> + Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown<BR> + O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare<BR> + Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + He is made one with Nature: there is heard<BR> + His voice in all her music, from the moan<BR> + Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;<BR> + He is a presence to be felt and known<BR> + In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,<BR> + Spreading itself where'er that Power may move<BR> + Which has withdrawn his being to its own;<BR> + Which wields the world with never wearied love,<BR> + Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + He is a portion of the loveliness<BR> + Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear<BR> + His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress<BR> + Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there<BR> + All new successions to the forms they wear;<BR> + Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight<BR> + To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;<BR> + And bursting in its beauty and its might<BR> + From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, the +blending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit of +beauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after immortality. +Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of the +personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into the +company of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The splendours of the firmament of time<BR> + May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not:<BR> + Like stars to their appointed height they climb,<BR> + And death is a low mist which cannot blot<BR> + The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought<BR> + Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,<BR> + And love and life contend in it, for what<BR> + Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,<BR> + And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The inheritors of unfulfilled renown<BR> + Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,<BR> + Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton<BR> + Rose pale, his solemn agony had not<BR> + Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought<BR> + And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,<BR> + Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,<BR> + Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:—<BR> + Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,<BR> + But whose transmitted effluence cannot die<BR> + So long as fire outlives the parent spark,<BR> + Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.<BR> + "Thou art become as one of us," they cry;<BR> + "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long<BR> + Swung blind in unascended majesty,<BR> + Silent alone amid an Heaven of song.<BR> + Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"<BR> +</P> + +<P> +From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet +once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonais +lies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave. He has escaped: +to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death +unterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keat's +resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to +be Shelley's own, is introduced:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth,<BR> + Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright.<BR> + Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;<BR> + As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light<BR> + Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might<BR> + Satiate the void circumference: then shrink<BR> + Even to a point within our day and night;<BR> + And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sink<BR> + When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,<BR> + Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought<BR> + That ages, empires, and religions there<BR> + Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;<BR> + For such as he can lend,—they borrow not<BR> + Glory from those who made the world their prey;<BR> + And he is gathered to the kings of thought<BR> + Who waged contention with their time's decay,<BR> + And of the past are all that cannot pass away.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,<BR> + The grave, the city, and the wilderness;<BR> + And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,<BR> + And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses dress<BR> + The bones of Desolation's nakedness,<BR> + Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead<BR> + Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,<BR> + Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead<BR> + A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time<BR> + Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;<BR> + And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,<BR> + Pavilioning the dust of him who planned<BR> + This refuge for his memory, doth stand<BR> + Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,<BR> + A field is spread, on which a newer band<BR> + Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,<BR> + Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet<BR> + To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned<BR> + Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,<BR> + Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,<BR> + Break if not thou! too surely shalt thou find<BR> + Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,<BR> + Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind<BR> + Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.<BR> + What Adonais is, why fear we to become?<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the +mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of +the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The +symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the +eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of +one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the +somewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of all +Shelley's qualities—the liberation of incalculable energies, the +emancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious over +circumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes as +make a feebler spirit tremble: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The One remains, the many change and pass;<BR> + Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly;<BR> + Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,<BR> + Stains the white radiance of Eternity,<BR> + Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,<BR> + If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!<BR> + Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,<BR> + Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak<BR> + The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?<BR> + Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here<BR> + They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!<BR> + A light is past from the revolving year,<BR> + And man and woman; and what still is dear<BR> + Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.<BR> + The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near:<BR> + 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither!<BR> + No more let Life divide what Death can join together.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + That light whose smile kindles the Universe,<BR> + That beauty in which all things work and move,<BR> + That benediction which the eclipsing curse<BR> + Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love<BR> + Which through the web of being blindly wove<BR> + By man and beast and earth and air and sea,<BR> + Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of<BR> + The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,<BR> + Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The breath whose might I have invoked in song<BR> + Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven<BR> + Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng<BR> + Whose sails were never to the tempest given.<BR> + The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!<BR> + I am borne darkly, fearfully afar;<BR> + Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,<BR> + The soul of Adonais, like a star,<BR> + Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have said +about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no +believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he was +too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of +no solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but my hopes are not +unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we +appear to die." On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content to +see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; +I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our +faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the +mystery will be solved." How constantly the thought of death as the +revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident +related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who +could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the +bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to +save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he +said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies +there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have +found an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life; +they sleep, and it is lifted." Yet being pressed by his friend, he +refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the +imperishability of the human soul. "We know nothing; we have no +evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are +incomprehensible even to ourselves." The clear insight into the +conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very +characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of his +essay on a "Future Life", which would certainly have stated the problem +with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of +doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination +with wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities +was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as +perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the +personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of +the "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence of +his hope upon this most intangible of riddles. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that<BR> + Which within its boughs like a spirit sat,<BR> + Ere its outward form had known decay,<BR> + Now felt this change, I cannot say.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + I dare not guess; but in this life<BR> + Of error, ignorance, and strife,<BR> + Where nothing is, but all things seem,<BR> + And we the shadows of the dream:<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + It is a modest creed, and yet<BR> + Pleasant, if one considers it,<BR> + To own that death itself must be,<BR> + Like all the rest, a mockery.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + That garden sweet, that lady fair,<BR> + And all sweet shapes and odours there,<BR> + In truth have never passed away:<BR> + 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + For love, and beauty, and delight,<BR> + There is no death nor change; their might<BR> + Exceeds our organs, which endure<BR> + No light, being themselves obscure.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem which +suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its +author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines +of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. +The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the +least, singular. In "Alastor" we read:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + A restless impulse urged him to embark<BR> + And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;<BR> + For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves<BR> + The slimy caverns of the populous deep.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The "Ode to Liberty" closes on the same note:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + As a far taper fades with fading night;<BR> + As a brief insect dies with dying day,<BR> + My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,<BR> + Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away<BR> + Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,<BR> + As waves which lately paved his watery way<BR> + Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The "Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples", echo the thought with +a slight variation:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Yet now despair itself is mild,<BR> + Even as the winds and waters are;<BR> + I could lie down like a tired child,<BR> + And weep away the life of care<BR> + Which I have borne, and yet must bear,—<BR> + Till death like sleep might steal on me,<BR> + And I might feel in the warm air<BR> + My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea<BR> + Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Trelawny tells a story of his friend's life at Lerici, which further +illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. He took +Mrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat one +afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he had +fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, "Now let us together +solve the great mystery!" Too much value must not be attached to what +might have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal not +unreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley's friends were +accustomed to expect the realisation of his wildest fancies. It may +incidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed its +victim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatal +element—during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channel +with Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at +least with Williams. +</P> + +<P> +A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of Prince +Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copy +of Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and announced that Greece was +determined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley's +enthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama of "Hellas", which he has +described as "a sort of imitation of the 'Persae' of Aeschylus." We find +him at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by the +end of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, +1821. Shelley did not set great store by it. "It was written," he says, +"without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which +now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits." The +preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his sound +and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions of +this century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancient +Hellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the part +played by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the +poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at +times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic +cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." +Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, +equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called +Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I +think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a +different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some +unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but +also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind. +</P> + +<P> +The lyric movement of the Chorus from "Hellas", which I propose to +quote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical invention. As for +the matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas are +written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does not +prevent their feeling a regret for the "mightier forms of an older, +austerer worship." Shelley's note reminds the reader, with +characteristic caution and frankness, that "the popular notions of +Christianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation to +the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will +supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more +universal." +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Worlds on worlds are rolling over<BR> + From creation to decay,<BR> + Like the bubbles on a river<BR> + Sparkling, bursting, borne away.<BR> + But they are still immortal<BR> + Who, through birth's orient portal,<BR> + And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,<BR> + Clothe their unceasing flight<BR> + In the brief dust and light<BR> + Gathered around their chariots as they go;<BR> + New shapes they still may weave,<BR> + New gods, new laws receive;<BR> + Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last<BR> + On Death's bare ribs had cast.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + A power from the unknown God,<BR> + A Promethan conqueror came;<BR> + Like a triumphal path he trod<BR> + The thorns of death and shame.<BR> + A mortal shape to him<BR> + Was like the vapour dim<BR> + Which the orient planet animates with light.<BR> + Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,<BR> + Like bloodhounds mild and tame,<BR> + Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight.<BR> + The moon of Mahomet<BR> + Arose, and it shall set:<BR> + While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon<BR> + The cross leads generations on.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep<BR> + From one whose dreams are paradise,<BR> + Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,<BR> + And day peers forth with her blank eyes;<BR> + So fleet, so faint, so fair,<BR> + The Powers of earth and air<BR> + Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem:<BR> + Apollo, Pan, and Love<BR> + And even Olympian Jove,<BR> + Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.<BR> + Our hills, and seas, and streams,<BR> + Dispeopled of their dreams,<BR> + Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,<BR> + Wailed for the golden years.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna, +where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccoli. It was then +settled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal to +be called "The Liberal" in concert with Leigh Hunt, should himself +settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the same +place. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerely +attached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to the +journal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partly +because he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of +Byron's, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to +his friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poet +of the age. (See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, August 26, 1821.) That +he was not without doubts as to Byron's working easily in harness with +Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully these +doubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known. +</P> + +<P> +At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usually +infamous calumny. What it was, we do not know; but that it made profound +impression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed to +his wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeats +his growing weariness, and his wish to escape from society to solitude; +the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the +world, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is +noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of +residence:—"our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the +transplanted tree flourishes not." At Pisa he had found real rest and +refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some of +his saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed to +Jane—for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students may +perceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtle +transitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible in +its intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the supposition +that Shelley was quite happy in his home. ("The Serpent is shut out from +Paradise.") These words must be taken as implying no reflection either +upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter +troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak +egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never +finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he +had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could +probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more +from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. +Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression has +bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory; +nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, like +all poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art, +converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. This +was almost certainly the case with "Epipsychidion." +</P> + +<P> +So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for careful +readers of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction that +during the last year of his life he often found relief from a +wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the +sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane was +beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to her +passed through her husband's hands without the slightest interruption to +their intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous of +her Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage from +Shelley's letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his +relation to the Williamses:—"They are people who are very pleasing to +me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane +more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She +has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that +compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement." +</P> + +<P> +Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake of +their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundity +of Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil industry which he +passed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Swiftly walk over the western wave,<BR> + Spirit of Night!<BR> + Out of the misty eastern cave,<BR> + Where all the long and lone daylight,<BR> + Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,<BR> + Which make thee terrible and dear,—<BR> + Swift be thy flight!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Wrap thy form in a mantle grey<BR> + Star-inwrought!<BR> + Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,<BR> + Kiss her until she be wearied out.<BR> + Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,<BR> + Touching all with thin opiate wand—<BR> + Come, long-sought!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + When I arose and saw the dawn,<BR> + I sighed for thee;<BR> + When light rode high, and the dew was gone,<BR> + And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,<BR> + And the weary Day turned to his rest,<BR> + Lingering like an unloved guest,<BR> + I sighed for thee.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Thy brother Death came, and cried,<BR> + "Wouldst thou me?"<BR> + Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,<BR> + Murmured like a noon-tide bee,<BR> + "Shall I nestle near thy side?<BR> + Wouldst thou me?"—and I replied,<BR> + "No, not thee!"<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Death will come when thou art dead,<BR> + Soon, too soon—<BR> + Sleep will come when thou art fled;<BR> + Of neither would I ask the boon<BR> + I ask of thee, beloved Night—<BR> + Swift be thine approaching flight,<BR> + Come soon, soon!<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend +Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not +uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given +by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that Shelley was no +careless writer. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The golden gates of sleep unbar<BR> + Where strength and beauty, met together,<BR> + Kindle their image like a star<BR> + In a sea of glassy weather!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Night, with all thy stars look down—<BR> + Darkness, weep thy holiest dew!<BR> + Never smiled the inconstant moon<BR> + On a pair so true.<BR> + Let eyes not see their own delight;<BR> + Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight<BR> + Oft renew.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!<BR> + Holy stars, permit no wrong!<BR> + And return to wake the sleeper,<BR> + Dawn, ere it be long.<BR> + O joy! O fear! what will be done<BR> + In the absence of the sun!<BR> + Come along!<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form, +were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of his +happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave's +"Golden Treasury" shows how large a place they occupy among the +permanent jewels of our literature. +</P> + +<P> +The month of January added a new and most important member to the little +Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more than +to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet's +life are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic. +Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far away +from literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with the +sternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-reliance +and his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore, +made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who still +incline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. This +true child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byron +the stuff of a real man. "To form a just idea of his poetry, you should +have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated +his writings." "The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best and +ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everything +better than himself." "I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and the +contrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking of +himself, was as much at ease in his own home, omitting no occasion of +obliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with all +or any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or +address." "All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest +manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, +coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship." "Shelley's +mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action." +"He was always in earnest." "He never laid aside his book and magic +mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, +stood mute.... Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held him +captive." These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself +somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting +affectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities +this "dreamy bard,"—"uncommonly awkward," as he also called him—bad +rider and poor seaman as he was—"over-sensitive," and "eternally +brooding on his own thoughts," who "had seen no more of the waking-day +than a girl at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with +the courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned +boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid +of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced +companion of his last few months that very rare product for which +Diogenes searched in vain—a man. +</P> + +<P> +Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words—words no less +certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The +Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great +deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated +conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near +the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes +steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged +to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the +direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come +in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, +blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; +and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, +feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his +warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down +and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this +mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with +all the world?—excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of +his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by +every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our +literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; +it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and +trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the +custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams +saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had +in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,— +</P> + +<P> +"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"—I am translating some passages in it.' +</P> + +<P> +"'Oh, read it to us.' +</P> + +<P> +"Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not +interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly +became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly +manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid +interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into +our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish +poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After +this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a dead +silence ensued; looking up, I asked,— +</P> + +<P> +"'Where is he?' +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, +no one knows when or where.'" +</P> + +<P> +Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to +be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man +who had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Shelley +proposed that the English—himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. +Taafe—should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme +took Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before +they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing +that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other +affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police. +The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted +dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr. +Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man +struck Shelley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English then +pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron's +servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded +the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was +necessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter "a +trifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by the +authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, +Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the +exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron's +final departure from Pisa. +</P> + +<P> +The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by such +adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his +days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, +with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams +in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from +thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When +the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until +midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his +favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, +and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to +Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his +finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run +together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a +sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild +ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a +manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When +my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images +and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled +down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a +drawing." +</P> + +<P> +A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly +with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began +to gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go +pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend's +firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing +was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in +fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the +circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and +the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding +movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by +Byron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line of +Mephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange," and translated +it, "My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, "Then you are her +nephew." Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to +it in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above. +</P> + +<P> +Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to +nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with +Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly +lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined +to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking +the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his +mind to have one too. Shelley's was to be an open boat carrying sail, +Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted +to a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain +Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost the +lives of Shelley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carried +Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain +Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelley +and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, +which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams +overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his +cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two +tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was +very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, +strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, +not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, +Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. +"It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching the +poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had +a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one +was mental, the other mechanical." "The boy was quick and handy, and +used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, but +over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in +emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing +sea and sky; he heeded not the boat." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 7. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LAST DAYS. +</H3> + +<P> +The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and +early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging +for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon +a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which +"looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. It +consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing +boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided +into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been +white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought +the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about +it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to +be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room +of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other; +the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another. +Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon; +and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when +Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris +naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever +Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the +dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected +apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. +Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no +easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's +laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin. +</P> + +<P> +They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course of +life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8. +These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley's life. We +seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr. +Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from +which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably +have risen to a loftier altitude, by a calmer and more equable exercise +of powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life in +Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is +calm for the passing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with +none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the +calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world +he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little +removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures +of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the +element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well +mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in +solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows +in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to +bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to +Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets +aloud to the assembled party. +</P> + +<P> +In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this +uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms and +inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if +we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been +one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his +masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of +compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, +and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and +inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in +chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous +march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their +tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty +with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe +of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to +abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this +solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a +Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer +heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, +which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante +plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the +Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide. +The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is +brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a +moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how +Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime +philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more +soul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, as +we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? I +cried"—a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that the +questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death. +</P> + +<P> +To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of its +splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary +images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley is +the only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficult +of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot +be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in +treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature, +and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To +select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict +less violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach one +of its episodes. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Swift as a spirit hastening to his task<BR> + Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth<BR> + Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.<BR> + The smokeless altars of the mountain snows<BR> + Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,<BR> + To which the birds tempered their matin lay.<BR> + All flowers in field or forest which unclose<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,<BR> + Swinging their censers in the element,<BR> + With orient incense lit by the new ray,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent<BR> + Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;<BR> + And, in succession due, did continent,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear<BR> + The form and character of mortal mould,<BR> + Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Their portion of the toil, which he of old<BR> + Took as his own, and then imposed on them.<BR> + But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem<BR> + The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,<BR> + Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep<BR> + Of a green Apennine. Before me fled<BR> + The night; behind me rose the day; the deep<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,—<BR> + When a strange trance over my fancy grew<BR> + Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Was so transparent that the scene came through<BR> + As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn<BR> + O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + That I had felt the freshness of that dawn<BR> + Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,<BR> + And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Under the self-same bough, and heard as there<BR> + The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold<BR> + Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.<BR> + And then a vision on my brain was rolled.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point +one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph of +Life" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision +for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not +without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza +rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the +labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming +in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with +clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: +yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,<BR> + This was the tenour of my waking dream:—<BR> + Methought I sate beside a public way<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream<BR> + Of people there was hurrying to and fro,<BR> + Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know<BR> + Whither he went, or whence he came, or why<BR> + He made one of the multitude, and so<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky<BR> + One of the million leaves of summer's bier;<BR> + Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:<BR> + Some flying from the thing they feared, and some<BR> + Seeking the object of another's fear;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And others, as with steps towards the tomb,<BR> + Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,<BR> + And others mournfully within the gloom<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Of their own shadow walked and called it death;<BR> + And some fled from it as it were a ghost,<BR> + Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + But more, with motions which each other crossed,<BR> + Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw,<BR> + Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Upon that path where flowers never grew—<BR> + And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,<BR> + Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;<BR> + Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told<BR> + Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + With over-arching elms, and caverns cold,<BR> + And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;—but they<BR> + Pursued their serious folly as of old.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to +notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in +one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the passing of a +multitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by +accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding +genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to +note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the +definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and +mystic. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And as I gazed, methought that in the way<BR> + The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June<BR> + When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + And a cold glare, intenser than the noon<BR> + But icy cold, obscured with blinding light<BR> + The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon—<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + When on the sunlit limits of the night<BR> + Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,<BR> + And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,—<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear<BR> + The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form<BR> + Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + So came a chariot on the silent storm<BR> + Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape<BR> + So sate within, as one whom years deform,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,<BR> + Crouching within the shadow of a tomb.<BR> + And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom<BR> + Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam<BR> + A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The guidance of that wonder-winged team;<BR> + The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings<BR> + Were lost:—I heard alone on the air's soft stream<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The music of their ever-moving wings.<BR> + All the four faces of that charioteer<BR> + Had their eyes banded; little profit brings<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,<BR> + Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,<BR> + Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Of all that is, has been, or will be done.<BR> + So ill was the car guided—but it past<BR> + With solemn speed majestically on.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic +effort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of +Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make +Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw +visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the +sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another +he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained +terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood +he communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what +she afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed +that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable that +the last words written to him by Jane were these:—"Are you going to +join your friend Plato?" +</P> + +<P> +The Leigh Hunts arrived at last in Genoa, whence they again sailed for +Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediately +prepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams in +the "Don Juan" for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his old +friend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon +the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and +established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as +comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The +negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised +forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from +Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how +irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven +disorderly children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was +positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, +who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly +cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough +to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and +the tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, +harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two +together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa to +his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he used +to be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touch +relating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:—"He +assented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, +while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet be +established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of +faith." +</P> + +<P> +On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise for +Leghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, with +Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, Charles +Vivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on board +the "Bolivar", in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weather +for some time had been unusually hot and dry. "Processions of priests +and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;" so runs +the last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or +nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "Don +Juan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a.m. +instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief." +Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was an +oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, and +slept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in the +harbour making all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest was +upon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more than +twenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously for +Shelley's boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard +of her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of +the catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of +a felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running her +down is still uncertain. +</P> + +<P> +On the morning of the third day after the storm, Trelawny rode to Pisa, +and communicated his fears to Hunt. "I then went upstairs to Byron. When +I told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned +me." Couriers were despatched to search the sea-coast, and to bring the +"Bolivar" from Leghorn. Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, and +there found a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been in +Shelley's boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with the +coast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last two +bodies were cast upon the sand. One found near the Via Reggio, on the +18th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the volume of +Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the other, doubled back, +as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away." +The other, found near the tower of Migliarino, at about four miles' +distance, was that of Williams. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, though +cast up on the same day, the 18th of July, near Massa, was not heard of +by Trelawny till the 29th. +</P> + +<P> +Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to the two +widowed women, who had spent the last days in an agony of alternate +despair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny discharged +faithfully and firmly. "The next day I prevailed on them," he says, "to +return with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of the +next day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neither +describe nor forget." It was decided that Shelley should be buried at +Rome, near his friend Keats and his son William, and that Williams's +remains should be taken to England. But first the bodies had to be +burned; and for permission to do this Trelawny, who all through had +taken the lead, applied to the English Embassy at Florence. After some +difficulty it was granted. +</P> + +<P> +What remains to be said concerning the cremation of Shelley's body on +the 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own words. Williams, it +may be stated, had been burned on the preceding day. +</P> + +<P> +"Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the poet's grave, +but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut a +trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertain +the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave. +</P> + +<P> +"In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended +by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand +scenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, +that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the +islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented +watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested +Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified +outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight. +</P> + +<P> +"As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness +and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of +wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked +body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him +back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to +check the sacrilege—the work went on silently in the deep and +unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch +of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron +was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a +dull, hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had +struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered.... After the fire was +well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine +was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his +life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and +quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the +atmosphere was tremulous and wavy.... The fire was so fierce as to +produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey +ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of +bones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all was that the +heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, +my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act, I should +have been put into quarantine." +</P> + +<P> +Shelley's heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not without +reluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. It is now +at Boscombe. His ashes were carried by Trelawny to Rome and buried in +the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter to +Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely in "Adonais". The epitaph, composed +by Hunt, ran thus: "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. August +MDCCXCII. Obiit VIII Jul. MDCCCXXII." To the Latin words Trelawny, +faithfullest and most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel's +song, much loved in life by Shelley: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Nothing of him that doth fade,<BR> + But doth suffer a sea-change<BR> + Into something rich and strange.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +"And so," writes Lady Shelley, "the sea and the earth closed over one +who was great as a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist; and of +whom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to have +prepared him for being thus snatched from life under circumstances of +mingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in their spring +freshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal body decrepit, or +to wither the heart which could not be consumed by fire." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER 8. +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +EPILOGUE. +</H3> + +<P> +After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelley +the narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by one +commanding reason. Shelley's life and his poetry are indissolubly +connected. He acted what he thought and felt, with a directness rare +among his brethren of the poet's craft; while his verse, with the +exception of "The Cenci", expressed little but the animating thoughts +and aspirations of his life. That life, moreover, was "a miracle of +thirty years," so crowded with striking incident and varied experience +that, as he said himself, he had already lived longer than his father, +and ought to be reckoned with the men of ninety. Through all +vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and died, like one whom +the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story, young, despite grey +hairs and suffering. His life has, therefore, to be told, in order that +his life-work may be rightly valued: for, great as that was, he, the +man, was somehow greater; and noble as it truly is, the memory of him is +nobler. +</P> + +<P> +To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate for +truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. The +anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. The +right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: in +his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot the +mark of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest purpose with +moral and social theories that could not but have proved pernicious to +mankind at large, produced at times an almost grotesque mixture in his +actions no less than in his verse. We cannot, therefore, wonder that +society, while he lived, felt the necessity of asserting itself against +him. But now that he has passed into the company of the great dead, and +time has softened down the asperities of popular judgment, we are able +to learn the real lesson of his life and writings. That is not to be +sought in any of his doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his +resolute loyalty to an unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolent +ideal. It is this which constitutes his supreme importance for us +English at the present time. Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, +and we belong to a race in which men who follow them so single-heartedly +are not common. +</P> + +<P> +As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature—a +quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which severe +critics of other nations think we lack. Byron's daring is in a different +region: his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate our +energies, or cheer us with new hopes and splendid vistas. Wordsworth, +the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, +suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, and +braces us by healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But in +Wordsworth there is none of Shelley's magnetism. $What remains of +permanent value in Coleridge's poetry—such work as "Christabel", the +"Ancient Mariner", or "Kubla Khan"—is a product of pure artistic fancy, +tempered by the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he +was, loved Nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for him a +mistress rather than a Diotima; nor did he share the prophetic fire +which burns in Shelley's verse, quite apart from the direct enunciation +of his favourite tenets. In none of Shelley's greatest contemporaries +was the lyrical faculty so paramount; and whether we consider his minor +songs, his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowledge +that he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of our +language. In range of power he was also conspicuous above the rest. Not +only did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best +translations, and the best familiar poems of his century. As a satirist +and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do; +and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts +forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its +myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor rhetoric. +</P> + +<P> +While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached in +swiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, had +faults from which the men with whom I have compared him were more free. +The most prominent of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness, +incompleteness, a want of narrative force, and a weak hold on objective +realities. Even his warmest admirers, if they are sincere critics, will +concede that his verse, taken altogether, is marked by inequality. In +his eager self-abandonment to inspiration, he produced much that is +unsatisfying simply because it is not ripe. There was no defect of power +in him, but a defect of patience; and the final word to be pronounced in +estimating the larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not only +was the poet young; but the fruit of his young mind had been plucked +before it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not care +enough for common things to present them with artistic fulness. He was +intolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with the roundness that +we find in Goethe's work. He flew at the grand, the spacious, the +sublime; and did not always succeed in realizing for his readers what he +had imagined. A certain want of faith in his own powers, fostered by the +extraordinary discouragement under which he had to write, prevented him +from finishing what he began, or from giving that ultimate form of +perfection to his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces like +the "Ode to the West Wind". When a poem was ready, he had it hastily +printed, and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurred +to interrupt his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of these +defects, if we may use this word at all to indicate our sense that +Shelley might by care have been made equal to his highest self, were in +a great measure the correlative of his chief quality—the ideality, of +which I have already spoken. He composed with all his faculties, mental, +emotional, and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of +intense fervour, striving to attain one object, the truest and most +passionate investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed his +ever-quick imagination. The result is that his finest work has more the +stamp of something natural and elemental—the wind, the sea, the depth +of air—than of a mere artistic product. Plato would have said: the +Muses filled this man with sacred madness, and, when he wrote, he was no +longer in his own control. There was, moreover, ever-present in his +nature an effort, an aspiration after a better than the best this world +can show, which prompted him to blend the choicest products of his +thought and fancy with the fairest images borrowed from the earth on +which he lived. He never willingly composed except under the impulse to +body forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the spirit +of the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, this +earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of +inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. But it +cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art should +always be found in them. They have something of the waywardness and +negligence of nature, something of the asymmetreia we admire in the +earlier creations of Greek architecture. That Shelley, acute critic and +profound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and show +himself an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly proved +by "The Cenci" and by "Adonais". The reason why he did not always +observe this method will be understood by those who have studied his +"Defence of Poetry", and learned to sympathize with his impassioned +theory of art. +</P> + +<P> +Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice to +Shelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are almost +overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meet +in love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him, +and baffling the most eager seeker for the truth. (See Lady Shelley v. +Hogg; Trelawny v. the Shelley family; Peacock v. Lady Shelley; Garnett +v. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, etc., etc.) Through +the turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible to +discern the whole personality of the man. By careful comparison and +refined manipulation of the biographical treasures at our disposal, a +fair portrait of Shelley might still be set before the reader with the +accuracy of a finished picture. That labour of exquisite art and of +devoted love still remains to be accomplished, though in the meantime +Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Memoir is a most valuable instalment. Shelley in his +lifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, +impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, +Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he was +the gentlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had ever +met. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his four +last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, +wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youth +were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, his +character mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Without +losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experience +into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, +he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready to +unfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when life at +last seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, +death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product of +his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them into +something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end. +</P> + +<P> +If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of waste +excited in us by Shelley's premature absorption into the mystery of the +unknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own "Alastor":— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Art and eloquence,<BR> + And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain<BR> + To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.<BR> + It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all<BR> + Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit,<BR> + Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves<BR> + Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans,<BR> + The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;<BR> + But pale despair and cold tranquillity,<BR> + Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,<BR> + Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="finis"> +THE END. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Percy Bysshe Shelley, by John Addington Symonds + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 4555-h.htm or 4555-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/5/4555/ + +Produced by Rebecca Trump and Sue Asscher. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley + +Author: John Addington Symonds + +Posting Date: August 14, 2009 [EBook #4555] +Release Date: October, 2003 +First Posted: February 10, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Rebecca Trump and Sue Asscher. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. + + + +PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY + +BY + +JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER 1. BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. + +CHAPTER 2. ETON AND OXFORD. + +CHAPTER 3. LIFE IN LONDON, AND FIRST MARRIAGE. + +CHAPTER 4. SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. + +CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. + +CHAPTER 6. RESIDENCE AT PISA. + +CHAPTER 7. LAST DAYS. + +CHAPTER 8. EPILOGUE. + + + + +LIST OF AUTHORITIES. + +1. The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. + Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. 1 volume. + +2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves and Turner, + 1876-7. 4 volumes. + +3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W.M. Rossetti. Moxon, + 1870. 2 volumes. + +4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 volumes. + +5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering, + 1878. 2 volumes. + +6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 1 volume. + +7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 volumes. + +8. Shelley's Early Life, by D.F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 1 volume. + +9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder. + +10. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above + cited, Number 3. + +11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G.B. Smith. David Douglas, 1877. + +12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862. + +13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in "Fraser's Magazine," 1858 and 1860. + +14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in "Macmillan's Magazine," + June, 1860. + +15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the "Fortnightly Review," + June, 1878. + +16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W.M. Rossetti, in the "University + Magazine," February and March, 1878. + + + + +SHELLEY. + + + +CHAPTER 1. + +BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. + +It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, +probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning +gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet +the light that shone in them was crescent. That the world should know +Marlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and Mozart, only by the products of their +early manhood, is indeed a cause for lamentation, when we remember what +the long lives of a Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held in +reserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade +ourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of men +untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the +composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his +forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been +known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility +have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow +would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. +There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by +fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has +bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law of +waste that rules inscrutably in nature. + +Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great English +poets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when he +was twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the point of completing his +thirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed the briefest space for the +development of his extraordinary powers. His achievement, perfect as it +is in some poetic qualities, remains so immature and incomplete that no +conjecture can be hazarded about his future. Byron lived longer, and +produced more than his brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when his +genius was still ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations" were +issuing like worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we have +perhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have +equalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's +early death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by +a mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, and his aims were +more ambitious than theirs. He therefore needed length of years for +their co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have +the certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wrought +a clear and lucid harmony. + +These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet the +student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost +forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned +with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but +with one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of which +his powers were capable had been accomplished. + +August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history of +English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field +Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy, +was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the +same county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity and +considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary +honours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder +branch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the younger +dating from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather received +this honour through the influence of his friend the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. +Timothy Shelley was born in the year 1753, and in 1791 he married +Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilford, Esquire, a lady of great beauty, +and endowed with fair intellectual ability, though not of a literary +temperament. The first child of this marriage was the poet, named Bysshe +in compliment to his grandfather, the then living head of the family, +and Percy because of some remote connexion with the ducal house of +Northumberland. Four daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret, +and one son, John, who died in the year 1866, were the subsequent issue +of Mr. Timothy Shelley's marriage. In the year 1815, upon the death of +his father, he succeeded to the baronetcy, which passed, after his own +death, to his grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, as the +poet's only surviving son. + +Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region of genealogy, it may +be worth mentioning that Sir Bysshe Shelley by his second marriage with +Miss Elizabeth Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Penshurst, became the +father of five children, the eldest son of whom assumed the name of +Shelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy, and left a son, Philip Charles +Sidney, who was created Lord De l'Isle and Dudley. Such details are not +without a certain value, inasmuch as they prove that the poet, who won +for his ancient and honourable house a fame far more illustrious than +titles can confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal force and +worldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, the +wealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two families, +wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already +distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make +his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in +North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is +also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of +obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the +beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his +will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two English +heiresses; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left it at the +age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000 pounds in the English Funds, +together with estates worth 20,000 pounds a year to his descendents. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the English +squirearchy; but never assuredly did the old tale of the swan hatched +with the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustration +than in this case. Gifted with the untameable individuality of genius, +and bent on piercing to the very truth beneath all shams and fictions +woven by society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstances +of his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated warfare with the +world's opinion. His too frequent tirades against:-- + + The Queen of Slaves, + The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, + Custom,-- + +owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear upon +him by relatives who prized their position in society, their wealth, and +the observance of conventional decencies, above all other things. + +Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man; but he was +everything which the poet's father ought not to have been. As member for +the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his party; and that party +looked to nothing beyond the interests of the gentry and the pleasure of +the Duke of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficial +imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect in +his familiar correspondence, though his letters show that he lacked the +rudiments alike of logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might be +summed up in Clough's epigram:-- + + At church on Sunday to attend + Will serve to keep the world your friend. + +His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be gathered +from his telling his eldest son that he would never pardon a +mesalliance, but would provide for as many illegitimate children as he +chose to have. For the rest, he appears to have been a fairly good +landlord, and a not unkind father, sociable and hospitable, somewhat +vain and occasionally odd in manner, but qualified for passing muster +with the country gentlemen around him. In the capacity to understand a +nature which deviated from the ordinary type so remarkably as Shelley's, +he was utterly deficient; and perhaps we ought to regard it as his +misfortune that fate made him the father of a man who was among the +greatest portents of originality and unconventionality that this century +has seen. Toward an ordinary English youth, ready to sow his wild oats +at college, and willing to settle at the proper age and take his place +upon the bench of magistrates, Sir Timothy Shelley would have shown +himself an indulgent father; and it must be conceded by the poet's +biographer that if Percy Bysshe had but displayed tact and consideration +on his side, many of the misfortunes which signalized his relations to +his father would have been avoided. + +Shelley passed his childhood at Field Place, and when he was about six +years old began to be taught, together with his sisters, by Mr. Edwards, +a clergyman who lived at Warnham. What is recorded of these early years +we owe to the invaluable communications of his sister Hellen. The +difference of age between her and her brother Bysshe obliges us to refer +her recollections to a somewhat later period--probably to the holidays +he spent away from Sion House and Eton. Still, since they introduce us +to the domestic life of his then loved home, it may be proper to make +quotations from them in this place. Miss Shelley tells us her brother +"would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kind +of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was rebuked, was running +a stick through the ceiling of a low passage to find some new chamber, +which could be made effective for some flights of his vivid +imagination." He was very much attached to his sisters, and used to +entertain them with stories, in which "an alchemist, old and grey, with +a long beard," who was supposed to abide mysteriously in the garret of +Field Place, played a prominent part. "Another favourite theme was the +'Great Tortoise,' that lived in Warnham Pond; and any unwonted noise was +accounted for by the presence of this great beast, which was made into +the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his +friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, +no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited +the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable +serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived +long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that +Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection +of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please +his sisters were grotesque, and some both perilous and terrifying. "We +dressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, +and Bysshe would take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable +liquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." +Shelley often took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge and +fence, carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or their +fatigue required it. At this time "his figure was slight and +beautiful,--his hands were models, and his feet are treading the earth +again in one of his race; his eyes too have descended in their wild +fixed beauty to the same person. As a child, I have heard that his skin +was like snow, and bright ringlets covered his head." Here is a little +picture which brings the boy vividly before our eyes: "Bysshe ordered +clothes according to his own fancy at Eton, and the beautifully fitting +silk pantaloons, as he stood as almost all men and boys do, with their +coat-tails near the fire, excited my silent though excessive +admiration." + +When he was ten years of age, Shelley went to school at Sion house, +Brentford, an academy kept by Dr. Greenlaw, and frequented by the sons +of London tradesmen, who proved but uncongenial companions to his gentle +spirit. It is fortunate for posterity that one of his biographers, his +second cousin Captain Medwin, was his schoolfellow at Sion House; for to +his recollections we owe some details of great value. Medwin tells us +that Shelley learned the classic languages almost by intuition, while he +seemed to be spending his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds as +they sailed across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketches +of fir-trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he was +subject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, he +often lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. His +favourite amusement was novel-reading; and to the many "blue books" from +the Minerva press devoured by him in his boyhood, we may ascribe the +style and tone of his first compositions. For physical sports he showed +no inclination. "He passed among his school-fellows as a strange and +unsocial being; for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and the +other boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of our +prison-court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pace +backwards and forwards--I think I see him now--along the southern wall, +indulging in various vague and undefined ideas, the chaotic elements, if +I may say so, of what afterwards produced so beautiful a world." + +Two of Shelley's most important biographical compositions undoubtedly +refer to this period of his boyhood. The first is the passage in the +Prelude to "Laon and Cythna" which describes his suffering among the +unsympathetic inmates of a school:-- + + Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first + The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. + I do remember well the hour which burst + My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, + When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, + And wept, I knew not why; until there rose + From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! + Were but one echo from a world of woes-- + The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. + + And then I clasped my hands and looked around-- + --But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, + Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground-- + So without shame I spake:--"I will be wise, + And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies + Such power, for I grow weary to behold + The selfish and the strong still tyrannize + Without reproach or check." I then controlled + My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. + + And from that hour did I with earnest thought + Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, + Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught + I cared to learn, but from that secret store + Wrought linked armour for my soul, before + It might walk forth to war among mankind. + Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more + Within me, till there came upon my mind + A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. + +The second is a fragment on friendship preserved by Hogg. After defining +that kind of passionate attachment which often precedes love in fervent +natures, he proceeds: "I remember forming an attachment of this kind at +school. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this +took pace; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or +twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a +character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of +human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded +within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, +inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him +since my school-boy days; but either I confound my present recollections +with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and +utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and +winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so +deep, that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from +my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred +sentiments of friendship." How profound was the impression made on his +imagination and his feelings by this early friendship, may again be +gathered from a passage in his note upon the antique group of Bacchus +and Ampelus at Florence. "Look, the figures are walking with a +sauntering and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, as you +may have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, walking in some +grassy spot of the play-ground with that tender friendship for each +other which the age inspires." + +These extracts prove beyond all question that the first contact with the +outer world called into activity two of Shelley's strongest moral +qualities--his hatred of tyranny and brutal force in any form, and his +profound sentiment of friendship. The admiring love of women, which +marked him no less strongly, and which made him second only to +Shakespere in the sympathetic delineation of a noble feminine ideal, had +been already developed by his deep affection for his mother and sisters. +It is said that he could not receive a letter from them without manifest +joy. + +"Shelley," says Medwin, "was at this time tall for his age, slightly and +delicately built, and rather narrow-chested, with a complexion fair and +ruddy, a face rather long than oval. His features, not regularly +handsome, were set off by a profusion of silky brown hair, that curled +naturally. The expression of his countenance was one of exceeding +sweetness and innocence. His blue eyes were very large and prominent. +They were at times, when he was abstracted, as he often was in +contemplation, dull, and as it were, insensible to external objects; at +others they flashed with the fire of intelligence. His voice was soft +and low, but broken in its tones,--when anything much interested him, +harsh and immodulated; and this peculiarity he never lost. He was +naturally calm, but when he heard of or read of some flagrant act of +injustice, oppression, or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks of +horror and indignation were visible in his countenance." + +Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained unaltered +through the short space of life allowed him. Loving, innocent, +sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his companions, strongly +moralized after a peculiar and inborn type of excellence, drawing his +inspirations from Nature and from his own soul in solitude, Shelley +passed across the stage of this world, attended by a splendid vision +which sustained him at a perilous height above the kindly race of men. +The penalty of this isolation he suffered in many painful episodes. The +reward he reaped in a measure of more authentic prophecy, and in a +nobler realization of his best self, than could be claimed by any of his +immediate contemporaries. + + + +CHAPTER 2. + +ETON AND OXFORD. + +In 1805 Shelley went from Sion House to Eton. At this time Dr. Keate was +headmaster and Shelley's tutor was a Mr. Bethel, "one of the dullest men +in the establishment." At Eton Shelley was not popular either with his +teachers or his elder school-fellows, although the boys of his own age +are said to have adored him. "He was all passion," writes Mrs. Shelley; +"passionate in his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love:" and +this vehemence of temperament he displayed by organizing a rebellion +against fagging, which no doubt won for him the applause of his juniors +and equals. It was not to be expected that a lad intolerant of rule and +disregardful of restriction, who neglected punctuality in the +performance of his exercises, while he spent his leisure in translating +half of Pliny's history, should win the approbation of pedagogues. At +the same time the inspired opponent of the fagging system, the scorner +of games and muscular amusements, could not hope to find much favour +with such martinets of juvenile convention as a public school is wont to +breed. At Eton, as elsewhere, Shelley's uncompromising spirit brought +him into inconvenient contact with a world of vulgar usage, while his +lively fancy invested the commonplaces of reality with dark hues +borrowed from his own imagination. Mrs. Shelley says of him, "Tamed by +affection, but unconquered by blows, what chance was there that Shelley +should be happy at a public school?" This sentence probably contains the +pith of what he afterwards remembered of his own school life, and there +is no doubt that a nature like his, at once loving and high-spirited, +had much to suffer. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that at Eton +there were any serious blows to bear, or to assume that laws of love +which might have led a spirit so gentle as Shelley's, were adapted to +the common stuff of which the English boy is formed. The latter mistake +Shelley made continually throughout his youth; and only the advance of +years tempered his passionate enthusiasm into a sober zeal for the +improvement of mankind by rational methods. We may also trace at this +early epoch of his life that untamed intellectual ambition--that neglect +of the immediate and detailed for the transcendental and +universal--which was a marked characteristic of his genius, leading him +to fly at the highest while he overleaped the facts of ordinary human +life. "From his earliest years," says Mrs. Shelley, "all his amusements +and occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the term, lawless +nature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a boy, but as a man; +and so with manly powers and childish wit, he dared and achieved +attempts that none of his comrades could even have conceived. His +understanding and the early development of imagination never permitted +him to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyranny +prevented him from paying due attention to his school duties. But he was +always actively employed; and although his endeavours were prosecuted +with puerile precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantly +directed to those great objects which have employed the thoughts of the +greatest among men; and though his studies were not followed up +according to school discipline, they were not the less diligently +applied to." This high-soaring ambition was the source both of his +weakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with the +world of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to extort her +secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the philanthropist +who dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence, and the poet who +invented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of grandeur too colossal to be +animated with dramatic life. + +A strong interest in experimental science had been already excited in +him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grew +into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of the +simpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure--the more so +perhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk of +an old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he was +amusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room and +received a severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During the +holidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. "His own +hands and clothes," says Miss Shelley, "were constantly stained and +corroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable that some day the +house would be burned down, or some serious mischief happen to himself +or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for science +Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first +conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost +wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be +wrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was +fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. +When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it gave +him the acutest pleasure: and this is highly characteristic of the +genius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the life of life +withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he seems to have +delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar microscope, and +mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without taking the trouble +to study any of its branches systematically. In his later years he +abandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence of them occurs in +that most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter to Maria +Gisborne." + +While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not +wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a +correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his +contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the +latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the +rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at a +glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was no +less astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae were +indeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we may +trace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also his +frequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artistic +execution. + +That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may be +gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his Oxford +rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was frequently +visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that he spend the +40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi," on a farewell supper +to eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be quoted from his +own poem, the "Boat on the Serchio," to prove that he did not entertain +a merely disagreeable memory of his school life. (Forman's edition, +volume 4 page 115.) Yet the general experience of Eton must have been +painful; and it is sad to read of this gentle and pure spirit being +goaded by his coarser comrades into fury, or coaxed to curse his father +and the king for their amusement. It may be worth mentioning that he was +called "the Atheist" at Eton; and though Hogg explains this by saying +that "the Atheist" was an official character among the boys, selected +from time to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is not +improbable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for him +a title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyish +incantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms would +scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tinged +his imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the +"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes the following reference to +circumstances which might otherwise be trivial:-- + + While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped + Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, + And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing + Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. + I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, + I was not heard, I saw them not-- + When, musing deeply on the lot + Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing + All vital things that wake to bring + News of birds and blossoming,-- + Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; + I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! + +Among the Eton tutors was one whose name will always be revered by +Shelley's worshippers; for he alone discerned the rare gifts of the +strange and solitary boy, and Shelley loved him. Dr. Lind was an old +man, a physician, and a student of chemistry. Shelley spent long hours +at his house, conversing with him, and receiving such instruction in +philosophy and science as the grey-haired scholar could impart. The +affection which united them must have been of no common strength or +quality; for when Shelley lay ill of a fever at Field Place, and had +conceived the probably ill-founded notion that his father intended to +place him in a mad-house, he managed to convey a message to his friend +at Eton, on the receipt of which Dr. Lind travelled to Horsham, and by +his sympathy and skill restored the sick boy's confidence. It may +incidentally be pointed out that this story, credited as true by Lady +Shelley in her Memorials, shows how early an estrangement had begun +between the poet and his father. We look, moreover, vainly for that +mother's influence which might have been so beneficial to the boy in +whom "love and life were twins, born at one birth." From Dr. Lind +Shelley not only received encouragement to pursue his chemical studies; +but he also acquired the habit of corresponding with persons unknown to +him, whose opinions he might be anxious to discover or dispute. This +habit, as we shall see in the sequel, determined Shelley's fate on two +important occasions of his life. In return for the help extended to him +at Eton, Shelley conferred undying fame on Dr. Lind; the characters of +Zonaras in "Prince Athanase," and of the hermit in "Laon and Cythna," +are portraits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend. + +The months which elapsed between Eton and Oxford were an important +period in Shelley's life. At this time a boyish liking for his cousin, +Harriet Grove, ripened into real attachment; and though there was +perhaps no formal engagement between them, the parents on both sides +looked with approval on their love. What it concerns us to know about +this early passion, is given in a letter from a brother of Miss Grove. +"Bysshe was at that time (just after leaving Eton) more attached to my +sister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlight +walks we four had at Strode and also at St. Irving's; that, I think, was +the name of the place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham." For some +time after the date mentioned in this letter, Shelley and Miss Grove +kept up an active correspondence; but the views he expressed on +speculative subjects soon began to alarm her. She consulted her mother +and her father, and the engagement was broken off. The final separation +does not seem to have taken place until the date of Shelley's expulsion +from Oxford; and not the least cruel of the pangs he had to suffer at +that period, was the loss of one to whom he had given his whole heart +unreservedly. The memory of Miss Grove long continued to haunt his +imagination, nor is there much doubt that his first unhappy marriage was +contracted while the wound remained unhealed. The name of Harriet +Westbrook and something in her face reminded him of Harriet Grove; it is +even still uncertain to which Harriet the dedication of Queen Mab is +addressed. (See Medwin, volume 1 page 68.) + +In his childhood Shelley scribbled verses with fluency by no means +unusual in the case of forward boys; and we have seen that at Sion House +he greedily devoured the sentimental novels of the day. His favourite +poets at the time of which I am now writing, were Monk Lewis and +Southey; his favourite books in prose were romances by Mrs. Radcliffe +and Godwin. He now began to yearn for fame and publicity. Miss Shelley +speaks of a play written by her brother and her sister Elizabeth, which +was sent to Matthews the comedian, and courteously returned as unfit for +acting. She also mentions a little volume of her own verses, which the +boy had printed with the tell-tale name of "H-ll-n Sh-ll-y" on the +title-page. Medwin gives a long account of a poem on the story of the +Wandering Jew, composed by him in concert with Shelley during the winter +of 1809-1810. They sent the manuscript to Thomas Campbell, who returned +it with the observation that it contained but two good lines:-- + + It seemed as if an angel's sigh + Had breathed the plaintive symphony. + +Undeterred by this adverse criticism, Shelley subsequently offered "The +Wandering Jew" to two publishers, Messrs. Ballantyne and Co. of +Edinburgh, and Mr. Stockdale of Pall Mall; but it remained in MS. at +Edinburgh till 1831, when a portion was printed in "Fraser's Magazine." + +Just before leaving Eton he finished a novel of "Zastrozzi", which some +critics trace to its source in "Zofloya the Moor," perused by him at +Sion House. The most astonishing fact about this incoherent medley of +mad sentiment is that it served to furnish forth the 40-pound Eton +supper already spoken of, that it was duly ushered into the world of +letters by Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson on the 5th of June, 1810, and +that it was seriously reviewed. The dates of Shelley's publications now +come fast and frequent. In the late summer of 1810 he introduced himself +to Mr. J.J. Stockdale, the then fashionable publisher of poems and +romances, at his house of business in Pall Mall. With characteristic +impetuosity the young author implored assistance in a difficulty. He had +commissioned a printer in Horsham to strike off the astounding number of +1480 copies of a volume of poems; and he had no money to pay the +printer's bill. Would Stockdale help him out of this dilemma, by taking +up the quires and duly ushering the book into the world? Throughout his +life Shelley exercised a wonderful fascination over the people with whom +he came in contact, and almost always won his way with them as much by +personal charm as by determined and impassioned will. Accordingly on +this occasion Stockdale proved accommodating. The Horsham printer was +somehow satisfied; and on the 17th of September, 1810, the little book +came out with the title of "Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire." This +volume has disappeared; and much fruitless conjecture has been expended +upon the question of Shelley's collaborator in his juvenile attempt. +Cazire stands for some one; probably it is meant to represent a woman's +name, and that woman may have been either Elizabeth Shelley or Harriet +Grove. The "Original Poetry" had only been launched a week, when +Stockdale discovered on a closer inspection of the book that it +contained some verses well known to the world as the production of M.G. +Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole edition +was suppressed--not, however, before about one hundred copies had passed +into circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty +larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied +Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to +break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issued +Shelley's second novel from his press, and entered into negotiations +with him for the publication of more poetry. The new romance was named +"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian." This tale, no less unreadable than +"Zastrozzi," and even more chaotic in its plan, contained a good deal of +poetry, which has been incorporated in the most recent editions of +Shelley's works. A certain interest attaches to it as the first known +link between Shelley and William Godwin, for it was composed under the +influence of the latter's novel, "St. Leon." The title, moreover, +carries us back to those moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded to +above. Shelley's earliest attempts in literature have but little value +for the student of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate the +psychology of genius and its wayward growth. Their intrinsic merit is +almost less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusal +the course which the future poet of "The Cenci" and "Epipsychidion" was +to take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great +qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want +of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But +while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious +critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering +how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a +germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley +discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the "Hours +of Idleness." + +In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner of +University College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made the +acquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in his +subsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, if +not in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellous +youth. Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament and +tastes. His feet were always planted on the earth, while Shelley flew +aloft to heaven with singing robes around him, or the mantel of the +prophet on his shoulders. (He told Trelawny that he had been attracted +to Shelley simply by his "rare talents as a scholar;" and Trelawny has +recorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend was faithful, +in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. This +testimony is extremely valuable.) Hogg had much of the cynic in his +nature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist. +Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to +eminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a +staunch Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine +poet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preserved +for us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable for +the vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate Shelley's +course of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. No novel +indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate and +satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of +the student life enjoyed together for a few short months by the +inseparable friends. To make extracts from a masterpiece of such +consummate workmanship is almost painful. Future biographers of Shelley, +writing on a scale adequate to the greatness of their subject, will be +content to lay their pens down for a season at this point, and let Hogg +tell the tale in his own wayward but inimitable fashion. I must confine +myself to a few quotations and a barren abstract, referring my readers +to the ever-memorable pages 48--286 of Hogg's first volume, for the life +that cannot be transferred to these. + +"At the commencement of Michaelmas term," says this biographer, "that +is, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened one day to sit +next to a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall. His +figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at our +table, where all were very young. He seemed thoughtful and absent. He +ate little, and had no acquaintance with any one." The two young men +began a conversation, which turned upon the respective merits of German +and Italian poetry, a subject they neither of them knew anything about. +After dinner it was continued in Hogg's rooms, where Shelley soon led +the talk to his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a +slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to +examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very +extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was +slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. +He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. +His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode +of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were +abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more +frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost +feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by +exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. +His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were, in fact, +unusually small; yet the last APPEARED of a remarkable bulk, for his +hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if +I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with +his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks +unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times when +it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in +costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our +soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not +symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the +whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an +enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met +with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less +beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a +gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of +profound religious veneration, that characterizes the best works, and +chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls), of +the great masters of Florence and of Rome. I recognized the very +peculiar expression in these wonderful productions long afterwards, and +with a satisfaction mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the +decease of him in whose countenance I had first observed it." + +In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the impression +of Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated by +Trelawny's recollections of a later date. "There were many striking +contrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the most +remarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness with +agility--of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in stepping +across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a +smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable +manner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase +of an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper +steps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally to disturb the +composure of a well-bred footman; on the contrary, he would often glide +without collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerring +dexterity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the most +arduous and uncertain ways." + +This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the descriptions +furnished by other biographers, who had the privilege of Shelley's +friendship. His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair +was brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled +face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted on +all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is +reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, +although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity +of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal +fascination. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley's +voice "was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh and +discordant." This is strongly stated; but, though the terms are +certainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first +impression made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable mass of +convergent testimony to the fact that Shelley's voice was high pitched, +and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream. The epithets +"shrill," "piercing," "penetrating," frequently recur in the +descriptions given of it. At the same time its quality seems to have +been less dissonant than thrilling; there is abundance of evidence to +prove that he could modulate it exquisitely in the reading of poetry, +and its tone proved no obstacle to the persuasive charms of his +eloquence in conversation. Like all finely tempered natures, he vibrated +in harmony with the subjects of his thought. Excitement made his +utterance shrill and sharp. Deep feeling of the sense of beauty lowered +its tone to richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy with +his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This +peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different +sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of +his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations +of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and +unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights +of human thought. + +The acquaintance begun that October evening soon ripened into close +friendship. Shelley and Hogg from this time forward spent a large part +of their days and nights together in common studies, walks and +conversations. It was their habit to pass the morning, each in his own +rooms, absorbed in private reading. At one o'clock they met and lunched, +and then started for long rambles in the country. Shelley frequently +carried pistols with him upon these occasions, and would stop to fix his +father's franks upon convenient trees and shoot at them. The practice of +pistol shooting, adopted so early in life, was afterwards one of his +favourite amusements in the company of Byron. Hogg says that in his use +of fire-arms he was extraordinarily careless. "How often have I lamented +that Nature, which so rarely bestows upon the world a creature endowed +with such marvellous talents, ungraciously rendered the gift less +precious by implanting a fatal taste for perilous recreations, and a +thoughtlessness in the pursuit of them, that often caused his existence +from one day to another to seem in itself miraculous." On their return +from these excursions the two friends, neither of whom cared for dining +in the College Hall, drank tea and supped together, Shelley's rooms +being generally chosen as the scene of their symposia. + +These rooms are described as a perfect palace of confusion--chaos on +chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, +unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It was +perilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less perchance a +seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at the +bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to cut the lids of wooden +boxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for in +his vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what he +found convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talked +and read until late in the night. Their chief studies at this time were +in Locke and Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias toward +metaphysical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read the +School Logic with avidity, and practised himself without intermission in +dialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed by other +testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of the essential +bearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended to personal or +captious arguments, and was Socratically bent on following the dialogue +wherever it might lead, without regard for consequences. Plato was +another of their favourite authors; but Hogg expressly tells us that +they only approached the divine philosopher through the medium of +translations. It was not until a later period that Shelley studied his +dialogues in the original: but the substance of them, seen through Mdme. +Dacier's version, acted powerfully on the poet's sympathetic intellect. +In fact, although at the time he had adopted the conclusions of +materialism, he was at heart all through his life an idealist. Therefore +the mixture of the poet and the sage in Plato fascinated him. The +doctrine of anamnesis, which offers so strange a vista to speculative +reverie, by its suggestion of an earlier existence in which our +knowledge was acquired, took a strong hold upon his imagination; he +would stop in the streets to gaze wistfully at babies, wondering whether +their newly imprisoned souls were not replete with the wisdom stored up +in a previous life. + +In the acquisition of knowledge he was then as ever unrelaxing. "No +student ever read more assiduously. He was to be found, book in hand, at +all hours; reading in season and out of season; at table, in bed, and +especially during a walk; not only in the quiet country, and in retired +paths; not only at Oxford, in the public walks, and High Street, but in +the most crowded thoroughfares of London. Nor was he less absorbed by +the volume that was open before him, in Cheapside, in Cranbourne Alley, +or in Bond Street, than in a lonely lane, or a secluded library. +Sometimes a vulgar fellow would attempt to insult or annoy the eccentric +student in passing. Shelley always avoided the malignant interruption by +stepping aside with his vast and quiet agility." And again:--"I never +beheld eyes that devoured the pages more voraciously than his; I am +convinced that two-thirds of the period of the day and night were often +employed in reading. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that out of +twenty-four hours, he frequently read sixteen. At Oxford, his diligence +in this respect was exemplary, but it greatly increased afterwards, and +I sometimes thought that he carried it to a pernicious excess: I am +sure, at least, that I was unable to keep pace with him." With Shelley +study was a passion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entrance +into a thrice-hallowed sanctuary. "The irreverent many cannot comprehend +the awe--the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine the +enthusiasm--nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of things +visible to the bodily eye, express the mighty emotion that inwardly +agitated him, when he approached, for the first time, a volume which he +believed to be replete with the recondite and mystic philosophy of +antiquity: his cheeks glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frame +trembled, and his entire attention was immediately swallowed up in the +depths of contemplation. The rapid and vigorous conversion of his soul +to intellect can only be compared with the instantaneous ignition and +combustion, which dazzle the sight, when a bundle of dry reeds, or other +light inflammable substance, is thrown upon a fire already rich with +accumulated heat." + +As at Eton, so at Oxford, Shelley refused to keep the beaten track of +prescribed studies, or to run in ordinary grooves of thought. The mere +fact that Aristotle was a duty, seems to have disgusted him with the +author of the Organon, from whom, had his works been prohibited to +undergraduates, he would probably have been eager to learn much. For +mathematics and jurisprudence he evinced a marked distaste. The common +business of the English Parliament had no attraction for him, and he +read few newspapers. While his mind was keenly interested in great +political questions, he could not endure the trivial treatment of them +in the daily press, and cared far more for principles than for the +incidents of party warfare. Here again he showed that impatience of +detail, and that audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the source +of both his weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion of +a Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had been +suggested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, he +could never bring himself to mix with the rabble of the House. It is +none the less true, however, that he entertained some vague notion of +eventually succeeding to his father's seat. + +Combined with his eager intellectual activity, there was something +intermittent and fitful in the working of his mental faculties. Hogg, in +particular, mentions one of his habits in a famous passage, which, since +it brings the two friends vividly before us, may here be quoted. "I was +enable to continue my studies afterwards in the evening, in consequence +of a very remarkable peculiarity. My young and energetic friend was then +overcome by extreme drowsiness, which speedily and completely vanquished +him; he would sleep from two to four hours, often so soundly that his +slumbers resembled a deep lethargy; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, +but more commonly stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like a +cat; and his little round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that I +used to wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposed +some shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect; for the sleeper +usually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot where +the fire glowed the brightest. His torpor was generally profound, but he +would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At +six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of a most +animated narrative, or of earnest discussion; and he would lie buried in +entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he +would suddenly start up, and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, and +passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once +into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own +composition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energy +that were often quite painful." + +Shelley's moral qualities are described with no less enthusiasm than his +intellectual and physical beauty by the friend from whom I have already +drawn so largely. Love was the root and basis of his nature: this love, +first developed as domestic affection, next as friendship, then as a +youth's passion, now began to shine with steady lustre as an +all-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is something inevitably +chilling in the words "benevolence" and "philanthropy." A disillusioned +world is inclined to look with languid approbation on the former, and to +disbelieve in the latter. Therefore I will not use them to describe that +intense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which throughout his life +led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of +his fellow-creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions of +humanity made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds of +unnumbered charities. I will rather collect from the page of his +friend's biography a few passages recording the first impression of his +character, the memory of which may be carried by the reader through the +following brief record of his singular career:-- + +"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years has +shown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation of +knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that +marked them, and beamed forth in the whole deportment of that +extraordinary boy, are not less astonishing than they would have been if +the whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for these +high qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel." + +"In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more completely +developed than in Shelley; in no being was the perception of right and +of wrong more acute. + +"As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of +his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life +most conspicuous." + +"I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the +principle of veneration was so strong." + +"I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens +of gentlemen; but with all due deference for those admirable persons +(may my candour and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm that +Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never +wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various +observances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility." + +"Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant than would +appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at a +coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest, or uncleanly; +in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness +pre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted by +exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, and +perhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness--possibly the more because he +was himself utterly incapable of pleasantry." + +"I could never discern in him any more than two fixed principles. The +first was a strong irrepressible love of liberty; of liberty in the +abstract, and somewhat after the pattern of the ancient republics, +without reference to the English constitution, respecting which he knew +little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was an +equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more especially +of religious opinions; of toleration, complete, entire, universal, +unlimited; and, as a deduction and corollary from which latter +principle, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, +public or private." + +The testimony in the foregoing extracts as to Shelley's purity and +elevation of moral character is all the stronger, because it is given by +a man not over-inclined to praise, and of a temperament as unlike the +poet's as possible. If we were to look only upon this side of his +portrait, we should indeed be almost forced to use the language of his +most enthusiastic worshippers, and call him an archangel. But it must be +admitted that, though so pure and gentle and exalted, Shelley's virtues +were marred by his eccentricity, by something at times approaching +madness, which paralyzed his efficiency by placing him in a glaringly +false relation to some of the best men in the world around him. He +possessed certain good qualities in excess; for, though it sounds +paradoxical, it is none the less true that a man may be too tolerant, +too fond of liberty: and it was precisely the extravagance of these +virtues in Shelley which drove him into acts and utterances so +antagonistic to society as to be intolerable. + +Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. His +genius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those double +stars which dart blue and red rays of light: for it was governed by two +luminaries, poetry and metaphysics; and at this time the latter seems to +have been in the ascendant. It is, however, interesting to learn that he +read and re-read Landor's "Gebir"--stronger meat than either Southey's +epics or the ghost-lyrics of Monk Lewis. Hogg found him one day busily +engaged in correcting proofs of some original poems. Shelley asked his +friend what he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might be +possible by a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. +The idea took the young poet's fancy; and the friends between them soon +effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they +became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now +bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the +poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered? +Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George the +Third's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could be +found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited +by an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke no less than the +authors of it. He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; and +before long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. It +sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly +credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It was +indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of +nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the +best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous +Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The name +of the supposititious nephew reminds us of "Original Poems" by Victor +and Cazire, and raises the question whether the poems in that lost +volume may not have partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty. + +Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither so +innocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After leaving +Eton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of corresponding +with distinguished persons whom he did not personally know. Thus we find +him about this time addressing Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. +Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He plied his correspondents with all kinds of +questions; and as the dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, he +now endeavoured to engage them in discussions on philosophical and +religious topics. We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke, +Hume, and the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to +his nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow +nominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard +all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, as +still open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to be +the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, he +passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regard +to Christianity, into an attitude of vehement antagonism. With a view to +securing answers to his missives, he printed a short abstract of Hume's +and other arguments against the existence of a Deity, presented in a +series of propositions, and signed with a mathematically important +"Q.E.D." This document he forwarded to his proposed antagonists, +expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politely +requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious +correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless +severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little +pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its +proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already +described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the +"Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, however, actually +offered for sale. + +A copy of this syllabus reached a Fellow of another college, who made +the Master of the University acquainted with the fact. On the morning of +March 25, 1811, Shelley was sent for to the Senior Common Room, and +asked whether he acknowledged himself to be the author of the obnoxious +pamphlet. On his refusal to answer this question, he was served with a +formal sentence of expulsion duly drawn up and sealed. The college +authorities have been blamed for unfair dealing in this matter. It is +urged that they ought to have proceeded by the legal method of calling +witnesses; and that the sentence was not only out of all proportion to +the offence, but that it ought not to have been executed till persuasion +had been tried. With regard to the former indictment, I do not think +that a young man still in statu pupillari, who refused to purge himself +of what he must have known to be a serious charge, had any reason to +expect from his tutors the formalities of an English court of law. There +is no doubt that the Fellows were satisfied of his being the real +author; else they could not have ventured on so summary a measure as +expulsion. Their question was probably intended to give the culprit an +occasion for apology, of which they foresaw he would not avail himself. +With regard to the second, it is true that Shelley was amenable to +kindness, and that gentle and wise treatment from men whom he respected +might possibly have brought him to retract his syllabus. But it must be +remembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart; and they +were probably aware of this. He was a dexterous, impassioned reasoner, +whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. During +his short period of residence, moreover, he had not shown himself so +tractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, who prefer +conformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely that they were not +averse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous to the peace of their +society; and now they had a good occasion. Nor was it to be expected +that the champion and apostle of Atheism--and Shelley was certainly +both, in spite of Hogg's attempts to tone down the purpose of his +document--should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat +livings and ecclesiastical dignities. Real blame, however, attaches to +these men: first, for their dulness to discern Shelley's amiable +qualities; and, secondly, for the prejudgment of the case implied in the +immediate delivery of their sentence. Both Hogg and Shelley accused +them, besides, of a gross brutality, which was, to say the least, +unseemly on so serious an occasion. At the beginning of this century the +learning and the manners of Oxford dons were at a low ebb; and the +Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, +ignorantly but after their own kind, in this matter of Shelley's +expulsion. $Non ragionem di lor, ma guarda e passa. Hogg, who stood by +his friend manfully at this crisis, and dared the authorities to deal +with him as they had dealt with Shelley, adding that they had just as +much real proof to act upon in his case, and intimating his intention of +returning the same answer as to the authorship of the pamphlet, was +likewise expelled. The two friends left Oxford together by coach on the +morning of the 26th of March. + +Shelley felt his expulsion acutely. At Oxford he had enjoyed the +opportunities of private reading which the University afforded in those +days of sleepy studies and innocuous examinations. He delighted in the +security of his "oak," and above all things he found pleasure in the +society of his one chosen friend. He was now obliged to exchange these +good things for the tumult and discomfort of London. His father, after +clumsily attempting compromises, had forbidden his return to Field +Place. The whole fabric of his former life was broken up. The last hope +of renewing his engagement with his cousin had to be abandoned. His +pecuniary position was precarious, and in a short time he was destined +to lose the one friend who had so generously shared his fate. Yet the +notion of recovering his position as a student in one of our great +Universities, of softening his father's indignation, or of ameliorating +his present circumstances by the least concession, never seems to have +occurred to him. He had suffered in the cause of truth and liberty, and +he willingly accepted his martyrdom for conscience' sake. + + + +CHAPTER 3. + +LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE. + +It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and analyse +the substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardinal +characteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams and +conventions, which passed too easily into impatient rejection of +established forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold of +squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that then +passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the opposite +pole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsiderate +negation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance, +his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logical +sincerity, combined to make him the Quixotic champion of extreme +opinions. He was too fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend his +judgment, too convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, to +mature his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, he +hoped to take the fortresses of "Anarch Custom" by storm at the first +assault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, Laon or Lionel, +whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of despotism, as the sun +thaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl the +glove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face--to sow the "Necessity of +Atheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his +poetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society must +learn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted with +a touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, +he strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crust +of dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to have +occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches that +conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away the +weft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imagination +there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, that +behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal City +of the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures were +certain to be equally fortunate. + +Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the blended +truths and falsehoods through which the mind of man must gradually win +its way from the obscurity of myths into the clearness of positive +knowledge, for ever toiling and for ever foiled, and forced to content +itself with the increasing consciousness of limitations. Brimming over +with love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with the conditions +under which they actually think and feel. Could he but dethrone the +Anarch Custom, the millennium, he argued, would immediately arrive; nor +did he stop to think how different was the fibre of his own soul from +that of the unnumbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of what +he recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified +experience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a +saving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no place +in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising, +shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuries +of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survived +the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, and +who have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehend +the vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley +in his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital +faith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible--faith +in the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel +of liberty, fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature; +faith in a love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibility of +man; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms; faith +in affection as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. The +man who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word an +Atheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced his hatred +of a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of kings and priests +for the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. As he told his friend +Trelawny, he used the word Atheism "to express his abhorrence of +superstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defiance +of injustice." But Shelley believed too much to be consistently +agnostic. He believed so firmly and intensely in his own religion--a +kind of passionate positivism, a creed which seemed to have no God +because it was all God--that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy +accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break +through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an +Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received +conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of +cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was +an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving +the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless +utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual +heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too +religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied. + +The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which attaches +to all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of convention, and +enthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was marred, however, +by extravagance, crudity, and presumption. Much that he would fain have +destroyed because he found it customary, was solid, true, and +beneficial. Much that he thought it desirable to substitute, was +visionary, hollow, and pernicious. He lacked the touchstone of mature +philosophy, whereby to separate the pinchbeck from the gold of social +usage; and in his intense enthusiasm he lost his hold on common sense, +which might have saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. +The positive side of his creed remains precious, not because it was +logical, or scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal, +fervently felt, and penetrated with the whole life-force of an +incomparable nature. Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon his +path amid the glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. The form the +seal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was not +born to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort. + + Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, + Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza. + +These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, +when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his +confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was +overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without +damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent +speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, +there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might have +shone that light of aspiration which during his turbid youth burned +somewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the smoke of mere +rebelliousness and contradiction. + +Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, soon +after their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: "it reminded +him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom." He was further fascinated by +a gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and grapes, which adorned the +parlour; and vowed that he would stay there for ever. "For ever," was a +word often upon Shelley's lips in the course of his chequered life; and +yet few men have been subject to so many sudden changes through the +buffetings of fortune from without and the inconstancy of their own +purpose, than he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace and +note with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of his +innumerable temporary residences. A month had not elapsed before Hogg +left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelley +abode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, a +bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poetic +imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer." + +The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but not +unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy +Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from +the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his +intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him +by his father. For Paley's, or as Mr. Shelley called him "Palley's," +Evidences he expressed unbounded contempt. The breach between them +gradually widened. Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect of +cutting off supplies; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustained +himself by a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley's +last and best biographer, Mr. W.M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of the +poet's behaviour as a son. Shelley did not treat his father with the +common consideration due from youth to age; and the only instances of +unpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes of +his conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was really +more unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling from +the realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of his +father amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicions +with regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so +just and gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation, +whether by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by a +gradually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insoluble +problem. We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his father +so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on one +occasion, but that, while at Eton he had already become possessed by a +dark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr. +Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expected +monstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman was +nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than once +occurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in his +history, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed +itself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process of +recovery. But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof to +be more than passingly alluded to. + +At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buy +food. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to support +him: and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school on +Clapham Common. It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyranny +displayed itself on two occasions. "One day," writes Miss Hellen +Shelley, "his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one of +our throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour. He expressed +great disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sisters +should be so punished. Another time he found me, I think, in an iron +collar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my +opinion. It was not worn as a punishment, but because I POKED; but +Bysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be +discontinued immediately." The acquaintance which he now made with one +of his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most important +results. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, +1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably +good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful +brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the +daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named +"Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, +called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant +hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. +Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a +mother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father, +welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless +for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family's +displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a +baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should +look upon him with disfavour. + +Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning's school and +at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he +expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his +theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the +disinterested and the free." At first she seems to have been horrified +at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not +overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an +evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had +the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not +seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the +absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society. +Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious +accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to +rouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the +seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has been +able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was +so irksome that she contemplated suicide. + +During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more than usually +erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. In +the month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father. +He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made +him of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was +instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent +some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, +Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one +flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North +Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw +the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much +preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between his +old affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest in +Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriage +between his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written to +Hogg at this period (volume 1 pages 387-418) are exceedingly important +and interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings +and the almost morbid excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily so +badly edited, whether designedly or by accident, that it would be +dangerous to draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, they +raise injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a proper +assignment of dates and explanation. + +Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plunged +him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest +moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer +with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate +juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of +Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet +Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in +their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT in +love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." +He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before +you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly come +to York, but HARRIET WESTBROOK will decide whether now or in three +weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by +endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice: +resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify +Mr. W. in vain! And in consequence of my advice SHE has thrown herself +upon MY protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a +distinction!--I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have I +said? I declare, quite LUDICROUS. I advised her to resist. She wrote to +say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and +threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200 pounds a year; when +we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Gratitude and +admiration, all demand that I should love her FOR EVER. We shall see you +at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am +now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to +me at Graham's, 18 Sackville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently +published by Mr. W.M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, February 1878), +we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her +preceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms. + +It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not deeply in +love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was not +prepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced him to take it; and +fourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having been +ill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful passion, the hatred +of tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions at +defiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidence +called forth his gratitude. Her choice of him for a protector flattered +him: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance a +outrance. There are many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope with +Harriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and +unsophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love. + +In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together by +Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once expresses the +utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge of +contracting marriage with a woman whom he did not passionately love, and +who had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing to +observe that even Shelley, fearless and uncompromising as he was in +conduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he so +eloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness was +honourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and in his +tender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon his +generosity. (See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hogg 2 page 63) for +another defence of his conduct. "We agreed," etc.) + +"My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date August 15, 1811, +from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his +elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself. +How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. In my leisure moments for +thought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered the +important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of +love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial +souls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of +power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of +impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice +which the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you have +urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that +I suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon to +evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to +matrimony, not from temporizing, but from YOUR arguments; nor, much as I +wish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret the +prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or assertion. No. +The ONE argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the +sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can +give--this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring +submission to your superior intellect." + +Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was morally +justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often +haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with +regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to +argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square +with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, +having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, he +should have gone on denouncing an institution which he recognized in his +own practice. The conclusion seems to be that, though he despised +accepted usage, and would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suit +his heart's desire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practical +good sense were stronger than his theories. + +A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C.H. Grove, gives the details of +Harriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with +Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his +companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one +morning--I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been +September--in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch +Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches +start, when they departed in the northern mail for York." From York the +young couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were +married according to the formalities of the Scotch law. + +Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father's +eyes--a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were at once cut off +from the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainly +dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. Even +Jew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughter +wedded to the heir of several thousands a year, buttoned up his pockets, +either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent, +or because he was not certain about Shelley's expectations. He +afterwards made the Shelleys an allowance of 200 pounds a year, and +early in 1812 Shelley says that he is in receipt of twice that income. +Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to the +extent of the sum above mentioned. + +In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happily +enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined them +early in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity. +Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a fine +voice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed to +read and comment on her favourite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleep +during the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed with +slumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical +paradoxes with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach +Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story by +Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one of +Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one of +Shelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless of +their volume or their cost. These he was wont to leave behind, when the +moment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that, +as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifs +and strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This +quiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in the +neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's +caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind +is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and +that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much +given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in +sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet. + +They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obliged +to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, and +Shelley's programme of life at this period imperatively required the +society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the three +friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's +company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud +novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the +tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune +felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of +lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an +expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some +terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was +anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, +which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. He +suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of +Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediate +allowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail the +land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley +recognized the truth that property is a trust far more than a +possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, +such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn +being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among many +instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the bare +necessities of life, for principle. + +On his return to York, Shelley found a new inmate established in their +lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his +destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet +believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and +propriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned +her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and +her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the +friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an +elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,--dark, bright eyes; +jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it +merited,--almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so +good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of +this woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley had +afterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. "She was older than I +had expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely face +was seamed with the smallpox, and of a dead white, as faces so much +marked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a mass of boiled +rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes were +dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but +coarse; and there was the admired crop--a long crop, much like the tail +of a horse--a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and +constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, +in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial +young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew +Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters +of Judah." + +This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, in +Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with +merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is +necessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet to +fancy that she was a victim of her nerves, how she checked her favourite +studies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to a +Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" was +as often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb were +in her hands. + +The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; but it +is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure +which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. +One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelley +had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, and +refers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation of +Goethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. McCarthy to have been a letter +from the poet to his friend, in confirmation of his opinion. (McCarthy's +Shelley's Early Life, page 117.) However this may be, the precipitation +with which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving Hogg notice of +their resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his biography. + +The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged +lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. Probably +Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men +who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of +its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's +poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if +he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he +was disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making his +acquaintance--a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he +could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than +Southey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does +not seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; and +though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley's +early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. It was not +likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and +the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, +should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain +"Queen Mab" was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to be +monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of +Norfolk's seat, Greystoke. Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip; +but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days +passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results. +The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring +about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, +and his rebellious son. + +Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letter +to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with +unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in +after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention +from romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter dated +to Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, +and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreats +Godwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "if +desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference," if +persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and +truth may commend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is not +unworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity +of Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big +generalities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long +contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelley +but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet Godwin may be +pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to +cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about +philanthropy and universal happiness. Shelley's second letter contains +an extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curious +romance, illustrating his tendency to colour facts with the +hallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think, +no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason to +believe the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton for +disseminating the doctrines of "Political Justice", or that his father +wished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant +regiment, in order that he might prosecute the "Necessity of Atheism" in +his absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family +estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with a +tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind; and this +letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange +occurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his want of +love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposed +upon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only from +teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his own +deliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To Godwin he resigns +himself with the implicit confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatly +struck with this letter. Indeed, he must have been "or God or beast," +like the insensible man in Aristotle's "Ethics", if he could have +resisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured +forth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He +accepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor; and thus began a +connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and +intellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in a +closer personal tie between the two illustrious men. + +In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then engaged in +writing "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French +Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, "My plan is that of resolving to +lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness." Godwin sensibly +replied that Shelley was too young to set himself up as a teacher and +apostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (January +16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we set +off to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed to +Keswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We go +principally TO FORWARD AS MUCH AS WE CAN the Catholic Emancipation." In +a fourth letter (January 28, 1812) he informs Godwin that he has already +prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the +dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that his +contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of great +good. + +It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his attention to +Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irish +journalist and editor of "The Press" newspaper, who had been sentenced +to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between February 7, +1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, +roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, +for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to +nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast, +who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose +heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to +disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting +field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with +the manuscript of his "Address to the Irish People" (It was published in +Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, page 179.), he set sail with Harriet +and Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle +of Man; and after a very stormy passage, which drove them to the north +coast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, the +party reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. +Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife," +wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings." +Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about this +period, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime, +ruled the household; "Eliza keeps our common stock of money for safety +in some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, +although she gives it out as we want it." This master-touch of +unconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domestic +party now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street. Before a week had +passed, the "Address to the Irish People" had been printed. Shelley and +Harriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task of +distribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemed +insufficient. On the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend in +England: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, +and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundred +yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty public +houses.... Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day to +distribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. His +account corresponds with the multitudes of people who possess them. I +stand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man WHO LOOKS +LIKELY. I throw a book to him." + +A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's +point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the +pamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we +pass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it +is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's +hood of a cloak." + +The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of +their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal +of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to +teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the +last point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the +inculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute, +rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles +which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the +document is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a +population of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and +overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet +himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of +intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy +of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound +reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully +vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks +it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A +few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in +this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they +throw upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make men +good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of +worshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all other +men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do +not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a +heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if +he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much +a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a +rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime +to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete +charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ +principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient.... +Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise +and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he +condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be +terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT +must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts, +which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of +private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses +whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of +animated filth." + +The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory +demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he +based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden +ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in +them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays +the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without +appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided +Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy", +he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the +truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to +force. + +While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin, +Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of +Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association", +and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast +society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the +recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it +must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been +brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions +he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used +these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be +mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the +Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to +be even more so. + +With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a +practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and +compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the +title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the +Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the +country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of +the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the +nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective +opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was +that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their +means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same +method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How +moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved +by the following sentence:--"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I +confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of +public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that +none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in +DIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the +case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown +that Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated. + +While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was +announced for the evening of February 28. It was held in Fishamble +Street Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spoke +for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, +though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman +Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in +conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting +accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the +impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The +dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable +interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an +Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His +youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong +words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to +aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient +agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was +fifteen--four years less than his real age. + +In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty +stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a +history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We +also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at +another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself +by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the +room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two +months' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to the +conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of +Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he +hoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarked +with his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the +police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave +Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly +visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he +quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining +copies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recently +printed edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights", +to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead +custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the +Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through +the proper official channels to the government. After some +correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against +Shelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination. + +The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, +who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourable +notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does not +seem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his most +interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly he +entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned +to know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you in +Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with +Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and +join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the +Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a +wife and such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it +is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss +Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into +it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both +obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the +Shelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon." +Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and +Shelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in +close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to +leave. + +The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace +the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they +settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales. +Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. Here +Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the +"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was, +as Mr. W.M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends +of government and the rights of man,--framed in imitation of two similar +French Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly in +August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy, +page 324.) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it +afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would +traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also +employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the +Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in +the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for +uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the +"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with the +puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to Lord +Ellenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple. +(Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29.) A printer, named D.J. +Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for +publishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistle +is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the +intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny +which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if +impassioned seriousness. + +An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of +handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I +have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:-- + +"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To +attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is +capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to +this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible +definition of his nature. + +"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the +perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities +of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of +corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot +possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable +old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various +passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and +uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are +qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he +disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution +for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers +of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their +fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those +which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors +who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone +act consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in +his name." + +Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The +sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. +Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he +found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving +any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously +described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following +year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established +at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to +Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a +considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with +an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was +always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at +Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his +enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a +heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the +list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he +endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and +even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same +purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal +acquaintance of the Godwin family. + +Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion +caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her +Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that +language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him. +There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and +Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears +that at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted to +conquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to apply +myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but +which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as +a mender of antiquated abuses,--I mean, that record of crimes and +miseries--history." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself +to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him +to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated +with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and +when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy +upon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance, +continued with effort, and finally abandoned. + +In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which +he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears, +from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on +Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early +age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring +of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first +impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which +Shelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was +pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the +public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication +Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to +"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production +which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it +is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all +that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler +discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more +crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political and +domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from +literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to +serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe; +but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's +criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include +"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, +in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its +first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of +art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality. + +The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious +occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. +According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the +event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice +attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he +struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, +and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his +escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his +personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair +was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible +by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a +perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or +whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an +unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of +this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of +no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the +relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne +in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the +parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on +the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the +villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and +confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are +too circumstantial to be lightly set aside. + +On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the +subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at +Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape +from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But +no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the +circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks, +concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion. + +There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment. +In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher, +who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a +short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to +Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as +unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was +left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the +first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London +marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and +decisive of his future. + + + +CHAPTER 4. + +SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. + +Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joined +by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet had +recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while in +hotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had a +projecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, and +catch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a +chary English summer. "He wanted," said one of his female admirers, +"only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young +lady's lark, hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this +period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley's +troubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of German +metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeply +studied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintance +with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. + +The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular; for +Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was an +indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less by +forethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there was +no meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, the table was +supplied with buns, procured by Shelley from the nearest pastry-cook. He +had already abjured animal food and alcohol; and his favourite diet +consisted of pulse or bread, which he ate dry with water, or made into +panada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felt +hungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked +under his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading at +the same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of +movement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any man +should want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint," says Hogg, +"about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice." +This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. During +the last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequent +attacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend, +Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure, +to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat +into the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequently +remained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day +he might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no less +simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat, +and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on his +throat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fields +and gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long, +wild, ragged locks." Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkably +small and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water, +and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs. +Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on their +house-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated +ardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a +blazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the +hour. + +These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a man +as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subject +to the laws of custom in his habits as in his modes of thought, living +literally as the spirit moved him, with a natural nonchalance that has +perhaps been never surpassed. To time and place he was equally +indifferent, and could not be got to remember his engagements. "He took +strange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and +panic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred +engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons +and seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he +quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly +promised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and +importance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain +pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up in +custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be +caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancy +would too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved and +almost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fair +subjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company." If he had been +fairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time pass +unheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by the +spell of his unrivalled eloquence; for wonderful as was his poetry, +those who enjoyed the privilege of converse with him, judged it even +more attractive. "He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, and +eloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were inclining to +yield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when they would +have been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the bewitching charms +of his discourse." + +From Half Moon Street the Shelleys moved into a house in Pimlico; and it +was here, according to Hogg, or at Cooke's Hotel in Dover Street +according to other accounts, that Shelley's first child, Ianthe Eliza, +was born about the end of June, 1813. Harriet did not take much to her +little girl, and gave her over to a wet-nurse, for whom Shelley +conceived a great dislike. That a mother should not nurse her own baby +was no doubt contrary to his principles; and the double presence of the +servant and Eliza, whom he now most cordially detested, made his home +uncomfortable. We have it on excellent authority, that of Mr. Peacock, +that he "was extremely fond of it (the child), and would walk up and +down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it +a song of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his +own coining. His song was Yahmani, Yahmani, Yahmani, Yahmani." To the +want of sympathy between the father and the mother in this matter of +Ianthe, Mr. Peacock is inclined to attribute the beginning of troubles +in the Shelley household. There is, indeed, no doubt that the revelation +of Harriet's maternal coldness must have been extremely painful to her +husband; and how far she carried her insensibility, may be gathered from +a story told by Hogg about her conduct during an operation performed +upon the child. + +During this period of his sojourn in London, Shelley was again in some +pecuniary difficulties. Yet he indulged Harriet's vanity by setting up a +carriage, in which they afterwards took a hurried journey to Edinburgh +and back. He narrowly escaped a debtor's prison through this act of +extravagance, and by a somewhat ludicrous mistake Hogg was arrested for +the debt due to the coach-maker. His acquaintances were few and +scattered, and he saw nothing of his family. Gradually, however, he +seems to have become a kind of prophet in a coterie of learned ladies. +The views he had propounded in "Queen Mab", his passionate belief in the +perfectibility of man, his vegetarian doctrines, and his readiness to +adopt any new nostrum for the amelioration of his race, endeared him to +all manners of strange people; nor was he deterred by aristocratic +prejudices from frequenting society which proved extremely uncongenial +to Hogg, and of which we have accordingly some caustic sketches from his +pen. His chief friends were a Mrs. Boinville, for whom he conceived an +enthusiastic admiration, and her daughter Cornelia, married to a +vegetarian, Mr. Newton. In order to be near them he had moved to +Pimlico; and his next move, from London to a cottage named High Elms, at +Bracknell, in Berkshire, had the same object. With Godwin and his family +he was also on terms of familiar intercourse. Under the philosopher's +roof in Skinner Street there was now gathered a group of miscellaneous +inmates--Fanny Imlay, the daughter of his first wife, Mary +Wollstonecraft; Mary, his own daughter by the same marriage; his second +wife, and her two children, Claire and Charles Clairmont, the offspring +of a previous union. From this connexion with the Godwin household +events of the gravest importance in the future were destined to arise, +and already it appears that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilous +approval on the fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-known +novelist, described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, has +neither taste nor feeling," were his only intimates. + +Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord between the +two chief elements of Shelley's present society; and indeed it will +appear to a careful student of his biography that Hogg, Peacock, and +Harriet, now stood somewhat by themselves and aloof from the inner +circle of his associates. If we regard the Shelleys as the centre of an +extended line, we shall find the Westbrook family at one end, the +Boinville family at the other, with Hogg and Peacock somewhere in the +middle. Harriet was naturally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, and +Shelley to the Boinville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but a +sincere regard for Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was in +much the same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs. +Newton. The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercised +their influence at a distance from the rest. Frequent change from +Bracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying journey to +Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother and +sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in +the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, +and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces. +We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes and +Theosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief. + +Since we are now approaching the gravest crisis in Shelley's life, it +behoves us to be more than usually careful in considering his +circumstances at this epoch. His home had become cold and dull. Harriet +did not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure with her +Mount Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and +the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to +refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he found +among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, +sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extracts +from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more +eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the +antagonism which had sprung up in Shelley's mind between his own home +and the circle of his new friends:--"I have been staying with Mrs. B-- +for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that +philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of +myself. They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have +felt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but +its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, +which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this +happy home,--for it has become my home. The trees, the bridge, the +minutest objects, have already a place in my affections." + +"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when the +infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but little +inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart +and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of +disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I +may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint +with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence +for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome +worm, that cannot see to sting." + +While divided in this way between a home which had become distasteful to +him, and a house where he found scope for his most romantic outpourings +of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and passionately in love with +Godwin's daughter, Mary. Peacock, who lived in close intimacy with him +at this period, must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming nature +of the new attachment:--"Nothing that I ever read in tale or history +could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, +uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouring +when, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him in +London. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, FROM WHOM HE WAS NOT +THEN SEPARATED, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in +his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind 'suffering, like a +little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection.' His eyes were bloodshot, +his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and +said, 'I never part from this.'" + +We may therefore affirm, I think, with confidence that in the winter and +spring of 1814, Shelley had been becoming gradually more and more +estranged from Harriet, whose commonplace nature was no mate for his, +and whom he had never loved with all the depth of his affection; that +his intimacy with the Boinville family had brought into painful +prominence whatever was jarring and repugnant to him in his home; and +that in this crisis of his fate he had fallen in love for the first time +seriously with Mary Godwin. (The date at which he first made Mary's +acquaintance is uncertain. Peacock says that it was between April 18 and +June 8.) She was then a girl of sixteen, "fair and fair-haired, pale +indeed, and with a piercing look," to quote Hogg's description of her, +as she first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. With +her freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, her +acute intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, Mary +Godwin was naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than the good +Harriet, however beautiful. + +That Shelley early in 1814 had no intention of leaving his wife, is +probable; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, eight days +after his impassioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, Hanover Square. +Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the Scotch marriage was +no doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a possible heir beyond all +question. Yet it seems, if we may found conjecture on "Stanzas, April, +1814," that in the very month after this new ceremony Shelley found the +difficulties of his wedded life insuperable, and that he was already +making up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June the +separation actually occurred--not by mutual consent, so far as any +published documents throw light on the matter, but rather by Shelley's +sudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiography +page 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutual +consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, +Relics of Shelly, page 147.) For a short while Harriet was left in +ignorance of his abode, and with a very insufficient sum of money at her +disposal. She placed herself under the protection of her father, retired +to Bath, and about the beginning of July received a letter from Shelley, +who was thenceforth solicitous for her welfare, keeping up a +correspondence with her, supplying her with funds, and by no means +shrinking from personal communications. + +That Shelley must bear the responsibility of this separation seems to me +quite clear. His justification is to be found in his avowed opinions on +the subject of love and marriage--opinions which Harriet knew well and +professed to share, and of which he had recently made ample confession +in the notes to "Queen Mab". The world will still agree with Lord Eldon +in regarding those opinions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon the +poet's character; but it would be unfair, while condemning them as +frankly as he professed them, to blame him also because he did not +conform to the opposite code of morals, for which he frequently +expressed extreme abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, +as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the +Shelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, +Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, +that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's +conduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await their +publication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile there +remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after leaving Harriet, +Shelley departed from London with Mary Godwin, who had consented to +share his fortunes. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand of +her who was destined to be his companion for life, may best be told in +Lady Shelley's words:-- + +"His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of +genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's +daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear +Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one +eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, +in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past--how he had +suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he +hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had +done battle for the fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms +to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, +and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the +remaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both +redeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of +"Political Justice", and of the "Rights of Woman", had been educated, +spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she +was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to +prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era +in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom +she loved--by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to +venerate--these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was +therefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own +heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her +love." + +Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley's +second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formed +another connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, +1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. The +distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new +ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no +immediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and her +suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as +Hogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and it +may be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time +unhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and +cut the knot of life and all its troubles. + +So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painful +period in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and without +condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady +Shelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that +the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy +in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief +in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must +do, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, that +I for my own part am willing to suspend my judgment till the time +arrives for his vindication. The language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. +Garnett justify us in expecting that that vindication will be as +startling as complete. If it is not, they, as pleading for him, will +have overshot the mark of prudence. + +On the 28th of July Shelley left London with Mary Godwin, who up to this +date had remained beneath her father's roof. There was some secrecy in +their departure, because they were accompanied by Miss Clairmont, whose +mother disapproved of her forming a third in the party. Having made +their way to Dover, they crossed the Channel in an open boat, and went +at once to Paris. Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intending +to perform the journey across France on foot. Shelley, however, sprained +his ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In this +conveyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neufchatel. +Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their residence; and +here Shelley began his romantic tale of "The Assassins", a portion of +which is printed in his prose works. Want of money compelled them soon +to think of turning their steps homeward; and the back journey was +performed upon the Reuss and Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a bad +passage, on the 13th of September. Mrs. Shelley's "History of a Six +Week's Tour" relates the details of this trip, which was of great +importance in forming Shelley's taste, and in supplying him with the +scenery of river, rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilized in +"Alastor". + +The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty; but on the +6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became the next heir to the +baronetcy and the family estates, and an arrangement was made with his +father by right of which he received an allowance of 1000 pounds a year. +A portion of his income was immediately set apart for Harriet. The +winter was passed in London, where Shelley walked a hospital, in order, +it is said, to acquire some medical knowledge that might be of service +to the poor he visited. His own health at this period was very bad. A +physician whom he consulted pronounced that he was rapidly sinking under +pulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. The +consumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for the next three +years he had no doubt that he was destined to an early death. In 1818, +however, all danger of phthisis passed away; and during the rest of his +short life he only suffered from spasms and violent pains in the side, +which baffled the physicians, but, though they caused him extreme +anguish, did not menace any vital organ. To the subject of his health it +will be necessary to return at a later period of this biography. For the +present it is enough to remember that his physical condition was such as +to justify his own expectation of death at no distant time. (See Letter +to Godwin in Shelley's Memorials, page 78.) + +Fond as ever of wandering, Shelley set out in the early summer for a +tour with Mary. They visited Devonshire and Clifton, and then settled in +a house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. The summer was +further broken by a water excursion up the Thames to its source, in the +company of Mr. Peacock and Charles Clairmont. Peacock traces the poet's +taste for boating, which afterwards became a passion with him, to this +excursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us +that Shelley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he +enjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W.S. Halliday, a far +better authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never saw +Shelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that he +practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fond +of boats and every kind of water--river, sea, lake, or canal--he never +learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, +and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on +occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float +a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once +constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake +in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion. + +On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem of +"Alastor", haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor +Forest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration. It was +printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year. Not only was +"Alastor" the first serious poem published by Shelley; but it was also +the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his +genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; +and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in +certain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, +is such as only Shelley could have produced. + +"Alastor" is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim +into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the +title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart +from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great +autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under +the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, +consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the +somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its +sublime descriptions. All that Shelley had observed of natural +beauty--in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the +Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest--is presented to us in a +series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion. But the deeper +meaning of "Alastor" is to be found, not in the thought of death nor in +the poet's recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St. +Augustine placed upon its title page, and in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty", composed about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the +poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage +the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing +for some mortal realization of his love. "Alastor", like +"Epipsychidion," reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that +the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form: +while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that such +realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written by +Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one is +always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is +not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in +seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +But this Shelley discovered only with "the years that bring the +philosophic mind," and when he was upon the very verge of his untimely +death. + +The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of +"Alastor". It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideal +love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet's +heart:-- + + At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore + He paused, a wide and melancholy waste + Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged + His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, + Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. + It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings + Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course + High over the immeasurable main. + His eyes pursued its flight:--"Thou hast a home, + Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, + Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck + With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes + Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. + And what am I that I should linger here, + With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, + Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned + To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers + In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven + That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile + Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. + For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly + Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed, + Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, + With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. + +William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24th +of January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together, +accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. They +reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord +Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yet +made Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab", +with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into +daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no +great distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a +boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. Miss +Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened +into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This fact +has to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, because Allegra afterwards +became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of +what was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from +the mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelley +during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were +to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become one +of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influence +of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his +wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron's +genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible +opinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame +with Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he +erroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive. +Shelley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to +nobler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtle +intellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much +as he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley was not +blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has left +us of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice and +Ravenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to +Italy, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet been +passed upon his brother poet's character. It is clear that he never +found in Byron a perfect friend, and that he had not accepted him as one +with whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling and +conduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Shelley the purest nature he +had ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least +worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond +all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity as +rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all +that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even +to the very letter." + +Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva in +their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie. On +this occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of death from drowning. His +one anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peacock, was lest Byron should +attempt to save him at the risk of his own life. Byron described him as +"bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, that +Shelley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness. +He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly +be said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursion +was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in +his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont +Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression +had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the +element of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words which +record the experiences of his two journeys in Switzerland and +France:--"I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and +the sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the +brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers +of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a +wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and +seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have +sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen +populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, +and sink and change amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the +theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and +villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and +the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds." + +On their return to the lake, the Shelleys found M.G. Lewis established +with Byron. This addition to the circle introduced much conversation +about apparitions, and each member of the party undertook to produce a +ghost story. Polidori's "Vampyre" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" were +the only durable results of their determination. But an incident +occurred which is of some importance in the history of Shelley's +psychological condition. Toward midnight on the 18th of July, Byron +recited the lines in "Christabel" about the lady's breast; when Shelley +suddenly started up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen a +vision of a woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he was +writing notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his +"Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mere +effort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed +his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period of +his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. +Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful +vividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of +his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the +projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were +abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the +border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature as +Shelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even +when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung +emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; +and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to +estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain +episodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told by +Peacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this +year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the +hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both +ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a +subjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98.) + +On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage at Great +Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peacock. While it +was being prepared for the reception of his family, he stayed at Bath, +and there heard of Harriet's suicide. The life that once was dearest to +him, had ended thus in misery, desertion, want. The mother of his two +children, abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven from +her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with +circumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free +from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled +with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most +acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the +conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and +feeling for which she was not qualified, and that had it not been for +him and his opinions, she might have lived a happy woman in some common +walk of life. One of his biographers asserts that "he continued to be +haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, +which pursued him like an Orestes," and even Trelawny, who knew him only +in the last months of his life, said that the impression of that +dreadful moment was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelings +in some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817 (Forman, 3 148.); and +though he did not often speak of Harriet, Peacock has recorded one +memorable occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to a +friend. (Fraser, January, 1860, page 102.) + +Shelley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation in the +society of Leigh Hunt. The friendship extended to him by that excellent +man at this season of his trouble may perhaps count for something with +those who are inclined to judge him harshly. Two important events +followed immediately upon the tragedy. The first was Shelley's marriage +with Mary Godwin on the 30th of December, 1816. Whether Shelley would +have taken this step except under strong pressure from without, appears +to me very doubtful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the most +resolutely bent on confirming his theories by his practice; and in this +instance there was no valid reason why he should not act up to +principles professed in common by himself and the partner of his +fortunes, no less than by her father and mother. It is, therefore, +reasonable to suppose that he yielded to arguments; and these arguments +must have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him with +cordiality since he left England in 1816. Godwin, though overrated in +his generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Shelley, was a man +whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. His +conduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of a +self-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed when +Shelley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradiction +with his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified in +concluding that he worried Shelley, the one enthusiastic and +thorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite of +his disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmise +that Godwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bear +the name of a future baronet. + +The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the +custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was instituted; at the +conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Shelley of his +son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in +"Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children were +placed in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance with +principles diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Shelley's +income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thus +sternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim, +to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own +impulsiveness, his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities, +his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the +world's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pass--to the suicide of +the woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspring +whom he loved. + +Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we may +learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic story. His life was +a tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of +erring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of +justice as established in the daily sanctities of human life; and now he +had to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated like +the dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be a +rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of his +moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had been +granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle +of one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter +fruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking +to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of +Shelley's over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinary +existence, which makes his history so tragic; and we may justly wonder +whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did not +apply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own fortunes. + + + +CHAPTER 5. + +LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. + +Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his children, +and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and with the cloud +of what he thought swift-coming death above his head, Shelley worked +steadily, during the summer of 1817, upon his poem of "Laon and Cythna". +Six months were spent in this task. "The poem," to borrow Mrs. Shelley's +words, "was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of +Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is +distinguished for peculiar beauty." Whenever Shelley could, he composed +in the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and the +Baths of Caracalla were the birthplace of "Prometheus". "The Cenci" was +written on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The Cascine of +Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, and +the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of his +loveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", was +transferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia. + +If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devotion to +Ideal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder sense +representative of its author. All his previous experiences and all his +aspirations--his passionate belief in friendship, his principle of the +equality of women with men, his demand for bloodless revolution, his +confidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, his doctrine of free +love, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious intolerance and +tyranny--are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos of +this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self +which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, +Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely +feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of +grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In +the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and +sister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, but +because he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack the +intolerance of custom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells us +that it was his purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers "a +virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that +faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor +misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among +mankind;" to illustrate "the growth and progress of individual mind +aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and to +celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world." +The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem +highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian +stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that are +Shelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom at +the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the good +cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of the +hero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing victim. It is full +of thrilling incidents and lovely pictures; yet the tale is the least +part of the poem; and few readers have probably been able either to +sympathize with its visionary characters, or to follow the narrative +without weariness. As in the case of other poems by Shelley--especially +those in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art his +genius was not well suited--the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" is +surrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it +is difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of +splendour. Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the +lovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here +tried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was +by no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before the +public. Hooted down, derided, stigmatized, and howled at, it only served +to intensify the prejudice with which the author of "Queen Mab" had come +to be regarded. + +I have spoken of this poem under its first name of "Laon and Cythna". A +certain number of copies were issued with this title (How many copies +were put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have been +many more than the traditional three; for when I was a boy at Harrow, I +picked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for the +price of 2 shillings and 6 pence a piece.); but the publisher, Ollier, +not without reason dreaded the effect the book would make; he therefore +induced Shelley to alter the relationship between the hero and his +bride, and issued the old sheets with certain cancelled pages under the +title of "Revolt of Islam". It was published in January, 1818. While +still resident at Marlow, Shelley began two autobiographical poems--the +one "Prince Athanase," which he abandoned as too introspective and +morbidly self-analytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which he +finished afterwards in Italy. Of the second of these compositions he +entertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his best +work. To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of +Lionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the +man he would have wished to be. The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the +"Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, +are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone and +scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. Later on in life, +Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directed +his genius to more objective themes. Yet the autobiographic tendency, as +befitted a poet of the highest lyric type, remained to the end a +powerful characteristic. + +Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may be +well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetry +which characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a single +passage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosen +the lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel: + + To Lionel, + Though of great wealth and lineage high, + Yet through those dungeon walls there came + Thy thrilling light, O Liberty! + And as the meteor's midnight flame + Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth + Flashed on his visionary youth, + And filled him, not with love, but faith. + And hope, and courage mute in death; + For love and life in him were twins, + Born at one birth: in every other + First life, then love its course begins, + Though they be children of one mother; + And so through this dark world they fleet + Divided, till in death they meet: + But he loved all things ever. Then + He past amid the strife of men, + And stood at the throne of armed power + Pleading for a world of woe: + Secure as one on a rock-built tower + O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, + 'Mid the passions wild of human kind + He stood, like a spirit calming them; + For, it was said, his words could find + Like music the lulled crowd, and stem + That torrent of unquiet dream, + Which mortals truth and reason deem, + But IS revenge and fear and pride. + Joyous he was; and hope and peace + On all who heard him did abide, + Raining like dew from his sweet talk, + As where the evening star may walk + Along the brink of the gloomy seas, + Liquid mists of splendour quiver. + His very gestures touch'd to tears + The unpersuaded tyrant, never + So moved before: his presence stung + The torturers with their victim's pain, + And none knew how; and through their ears, + The subtle witchcraft of his tongue + Unlocked the hearts of those who keep + Gold, the world's bond of slavery. + Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see + One sow what he could never reap: + For he is rich, they said, and young, + And might drink from the depths of luxury. + If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd + The champion of a trampled creed: + If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned + 'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed + Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, + Those who would sit near Power must toil; + And such, there sitting, all may see. + +During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor at +Leigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and +the brothers Smith, authors of "Rejected Addresses". Hunt's +recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and +Peacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing the +manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: "He rose early in +the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, +wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read +again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), +conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again +walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten +o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was +generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, +in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring +interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job." Mrs. Shelley, +in her note on the "Revolt of Islam", confirms this account of his Bible +studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style +may be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from which +I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to +Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the +Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the +Gospels. "His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in +the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very +formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes +on that point." We have only to read Shelley's "Essay on Christianity", +in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how +profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, +brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to a +sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed +by many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on the +subject. It is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaeval +phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more +approximate to Shelley's exposition. Here and here only is a vital +faith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructible +because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of +divers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all men +a clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but it +was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to +discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to its +Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is +permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable +conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His +fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed +against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and +superstition, which in his opinion had retarded the growth of free +institutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, he +distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his +blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their +Lord if he returned to earth. + +That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To help +the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he +cheerfully discharged. "His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He +inquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visited +the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, +whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts." At Marlow, +the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his +energies; and Mrs. Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which +he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story +told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and +carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man +as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with +his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's +parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called +poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to +his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 +pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and he +discharged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds. +In his pamphlet on "Putting Reform to the Vote", he offered to subscribe +100 pounds for the purpose of founding an association; and we have +already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500 +pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied; +and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out of +which 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will be +understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that he +was in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raising +funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters of +expenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, this +heir of the richest baronet in Sussex illustrated by his own conduct +those principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity which +formed his political and social creed. + +A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless +sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, +as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy +Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, +correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the +Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by +Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother +and Allegra, lived as Shelley's guests; and here Clara Shelley was born +on the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered from +a severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the +apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor might lay +his vulture's talons on the children of his second marriage, were the +motives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of +1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric "The billows on +the beach.") He never returned. Four years only of life were left to +him--years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts. + +It was on the 11th of March that the Shelleys took their departure with +Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, and +after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and +Rome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Shelley's +letters to Peacock form the invaluable record of this period of his +existence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of +descriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged with +colour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of +Italy, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate in +observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, +combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a +style at once familiar and elevated. That Shelley's sensibility to art +was not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enough +in many passages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in his +comments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works of +antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the +opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the +people made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, the +spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his +studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present +day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous +critic's verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were space for a +long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of +Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, +1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently +characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:-- + +"The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, +expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy +of mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is +a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters +into a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. +It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its +own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of +oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek in +what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and +tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not +agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to +attempt to inspire others with them." + +In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, +and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in a +thunderstorm. "Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of this +excursion--a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti +as the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatment +of ordinary things." The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to +sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, +ranks among Shelley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of +Byron's life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of the +sunset and the island of San Lazzaro:-- + + Oh! + How beautiful is sunset, when the glow + Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, + Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, + Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers + Of cities they encircle!--it was ours + To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, + Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men + Were waiting for us with the gondola. + As those who pause on some delightful way, + Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood + Looking upon the evening, and the flood + Which lay between the city and the shore, + Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar + And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, + Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared + Between the east and west; and half the sky + Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, + Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew + Down the steep west into a wondrous hue + Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent + Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent + Among the many-folded hills. They were + Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, + As seem from Lido through the harbour piles, + The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-- + And then, as if the earth and sea had been + Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen + Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, + Around the vaporous sun, from which there came + The inmost purple spirit of light, and made + Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade," + Said my companion, "I will show you soon + A better station." So o'er the lagune + We glided; and from that funereal bark + I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark + How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, + Its temples and its palaces did seem + Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. + I was about to speak, when--"We are even + Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, + And bade the gondolieri cease to row. + "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well + If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." + I looked, and saw between us and the sun + A building on an island, such a one + As age to age might add, for uses vile,-- + A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile; + And on the top an open tower, where hung + A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,-- + We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: + The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled + In strong and black relief--"What we behold + Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"-- + Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour, + Those who may cross the water hear that bell, + Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, + To vespers." + +It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar +quotations from Shelley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":-- + + Most wretched men + Are cradled into poetry by wrong: + They learn in suffering what they teach in song. + +Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where +they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here "Prometheus Unbound" was +begun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed; +and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to +rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their +passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, +and they entered Venice--only in time, however, for the child to die. + +Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley +suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. Mrs. Shelley +attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a +strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account +for the poet's melancholy. He says that so far back as the year 1816, on +the night before his departure from London, "a married lady, young, +handsome, and of noble connexions," came to him, avowed the passionate +love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly +together. (Medwin's Life of Shelley, volume 1 324. His date, 1814, +appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his +hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after +the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they +parted. She followed him, however, from place to place; and without +intruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remaining +near him. Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died. The web of +Shelley's life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own. +Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny +Imlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet has +already been told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in +Medwin's story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorously +tells us about Shelley's attraction for women in London. At any rate, +the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly be +accounted for by the "constant and poignant physical sufferings" of which +Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him. She was +herself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing something +from her, and we know from her own words in another place that his "fear +to wound the feelings of others" often impelled him to keep his deepest +sorrows to himself. (Note on the Revolt of Islam.) + +All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace of +consumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks of +pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem to +have been ascertained. At Naples he was under treatment for disease of +the liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and it +is certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied with +the quality of the water he drank. He was, for instance, forced to +eschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated his +symptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitable +residence. The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have +been determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed with +him. That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely +serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived with +him at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was obtained by +mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of the +torment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, that even during the +last months of his life we find him begging Trelawny to procure him +prussic acid as a final and effectual remedy for all the ills that flesh +is heir to. It may be added that mental application increased the +mischief, for he told Leigh Hunt that the composition of "The Cenci" had +cost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitably +real, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease; +and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley's +spasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continual +over-taxing of his nervous system. + +Mrs. Shelley states that the change from England to Italy was in all +respects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to refer the +depression from which he occasionally suffered, to his solitary habits; +and there are several passages in his own letters which connect his +melancholy with solitude. It is obvious that when he found himself in +the congenial company of Trelawny, Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, +he was simply happy; and nothing could be further from the truth than to +paint him as habitually sunk in gloom. On the contrary, we hear quite as +much about his high spirits, his "Homeric laughter," his playfulness +with children, his readiness to join in the amusements of his chosen +circle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his solitary +broodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories over-cast his +heaven. Byron, who had some right to express a judgment in such a +matter, described him as the most companionable man under the age of +thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shooting +with his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, +and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. +All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, +remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romantic +persons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The +voice of a stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar with +Shelley's almost inconceivable quickness of perception, was enough to +make him leave the house; and one of his prettiest poems is written on +his mistaking his wife's mention of the Aziola, a little owl common +enough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dislike +for intercourse with commonplace people was a source of some +disagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further apart +from Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable letter +recently published by Mr. Garnett, he writes:--"I detest all +society--almost all, at least--and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that +is hateful and tiresome in it." And again, speaking about his wife to +Trelawny, he said:--"She can't bear solitude, nor I society--the quick +coupled with the dead." + +In the year 1818-19 the Shelleys had no friends at all in Italy, except +Lord Byron at Venice, and Mr. and Mrs. John Gisborne at Leghorn. Mrs. +Gisborne had been a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin. She was a +woman of much cultivation, devoid of prejudice, and, though less +enthusiastic than Shelley liked, quite capable of appreciating the +inestimable privilege of his acquaintance. Her husband, to use a now +almost obsolete phrase, was a scholar and a gentleman. He shared his +wife's enlightened opinions, and remained staunch through good and ill +report to his new friends. At Rome and Naples they knew absolutely no +one. Shelley's time was therefore passed in study and composition. In +the previous summer he had translated the "Symposium" of Plato, and +begun an essay on the Ethics of the Greeks, which remains unluckily a +fragment. Together with Mary he read much Italian literature, and his +observations on the chief Italian poets form a valuable contribution to +their criticism. While he admired the splendour and invention of +Ariosto, he could not tolerate his moral tone. Tasso struck him as cold +and artificial, in spite of his "delicate moral sensibility." Boccaccio +he preferred to both; and his remarks on this prose-poet are extremely +characteristic. "How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of +nature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is the +morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it +obscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of +the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. His +more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He often +expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very +beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, +stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one +little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the +common, narrow-minded conceptions of love,--'Bocca baciata non perde +ventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch remained +the objects of his lasting admiration, though the cruel Christianity of +the "Inferno" seemed to him an ineradicable blot upon the greatest of +Italian poems. Of Petrarch's "tender and solemn enthusiasm," he speaks +with the sympathy of one who understood the inner mysteries of +idealizing love. + +It will be gathered from the foregoing quotations that Shelley, +notwithstanding is profound study of style and his exquisite perception +of beauty in form and rhythm, required more than merely artistic +excellences in poetry. He judged poems by their content and spirit; and +while he plainly expressed his abhorrence of the didactic manner, he +held that art must be moralized in order to be truly great. The +distinction he drew between Theocritus and the earlier Greek singers in +the "Defence of Poetry", his severe strictures on "The Two Noble +Kinsmen" in a letter to Mary (August 20, 1818) and his phrase about +Ariosto, "who is entertaining and graceful, and SOMETIMES a poet," +illustrate the application of critical canons wholly at variance with +the "art for art" doctrine. + +While studying Italian, he continued faithful to Greek. Plato was often +in his hands, and the dramatists formed his almost inseparable +companions. How deeply he felt the art of the Homeric poems, may be +gathered from the following extract:--"I congratulate you on your +conquest of the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the perpetually +increasing magnificence of the last seven books. Homer there truly +begins to be himself. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of +Patroclus, and the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale in +tenderness and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable +with anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there is +nothing like this." About this time, prompted by Mrs. Gisborne, he began +the study of Spanish, and conceived an ardent admiration for Calderon, +whose splendid and supernatural fancy tallied with his own. "I am +bathing myself in the light and odour of the starry Autos," he writes to +Mr. Gisborne in the autumn of 1820. "Faust", too, was a favourite. "I +have been reading over and over again "Faust", and always with +sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom and +augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit +study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory, and the +delusions of an imagination not to be restrained." The profound +impression made upon him by Margaret's story is expressed in two letters +about Retzsch's illustrations:--"The artist makes one envy his happiness +that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look +upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on +the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured." + +The fruits of this occupation with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German +were Shelley's translations from Homer and Euripides, from Dante, from +Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso", and from "Faust", translations which +have never been surpassed for beauty of form and complete transfusion of +the spirit of one literature into the language of another. On +translation, however, he set but little store, asserting that he only +undertook it when he "could do absolutely nothing else," and writing +earnestly to dissuade Leigh Hunt from devoting time which might be +better spent, to work of subordinate importance. (Letter from Florence, +November 1819.) The following version of a Greek epigram on Plato's +spirit will illustrate his own method of translation:-- + + Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? + To what sublime and star-y-paven home + Floatest thou? + I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, + Ascending heaven:--Athens does inherit + His corpse below. + +Some time in the year 1820-21, he composed the "Defence of Poetry", +stimulated to this undertaking by his friend Peacock's article on +poetry, published in the Literary Miscellany. (See Letter to Ollier, +January 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, page 135.) This essay not only sets +forth his theory of his own art, but it also contains some of his finest +prose writing, of which the following passage, valuable alike for matter +and style, may be cited as a specimen:-- + +"The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates +new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it +engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according +to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the +good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at +periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, +the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity +of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. +The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it. + +"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and +circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, +and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time +the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from +which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if +blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren +world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of +life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; +it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the +elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty +to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, +patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful universe +which we inhabit--what were our consolations on this side of the +grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend +to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged +faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, +a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man +cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say +it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible +influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; +this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades +and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our +natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could +this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is +impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition +begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious +poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble +shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest +poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the +finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and +the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no +more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an +artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the +intermixture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by +the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the +"Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have +his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the +"unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who would +allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando +Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to +painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still +more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or +picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's +womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is +incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the +media of the process. + +"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest +and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and +feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding +our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing +unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that +even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be +pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as +it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but +its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming +calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which +paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced +principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most +enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war +with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and +friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they +last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not +only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined +organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the +evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the +representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, +and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the +sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes +immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests +the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and +veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, +bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters +abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns +of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry +redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." + +In the midst of these aesthetic studies, and while producing his own +greatest works, Shelley was not satisfied that his genius ought to be +devoted to poetry. "I consider poetry," he wrote to Peacock, January +26th, 1819, "very subordinate to moral and political science, and if I +were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter; for I can conceive a +great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the +contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me is such +an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse +myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into the +scale of that balance which the Giant of Arthegall holds." Whether he +was right in the conviction that his genius was no less fitted for +metaphysical speculation or for political science than for poetry, is a +question that admits of much debate. (See Mrs. Shelley's note on the +Revolt of Islam, and the whole Preface to the Prose Works.) We have +nothing but fragments whereby to form a definite opinion--the unfinished +"Defence of Poetry", the unfinished "Essay on a Future State", the +unfinished "Essay on Christianity", the unfinished "Essay on the +Punishment of Death", and the scattered "Speculations on Metaphysics". +None of these compositions justify the belief so confidently expressed +by Mrs. Shelley in her Preface to the prose works, that "had not Shelley +deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lost +to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in +the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of +mind; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant would have +contributed; but more simple, and unimpugnable, and entire than the +systems of these writers." Their incompleteness rather tends to confirm +what she proceeds to state, that the strain of philosophical composition +was too great for his susceptible nerves; while her further observation +that "thought kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him +dizzy from too great keenness of emotion," seems to indicate that his +nature was primarily that of a poet deeply tinctured with philosophical +speculation, rather than that of a metaphysician warmed at intervals to +an imaginative fervour. Another of her remarks confirms us in this +opinion. "He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to +be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry." (Note on Prometheus.) +This is the position of the poet rather than the analyst; and on the +whole, we are probably justified in concluding with Mrs. Shelley, that +he followed a true instinct when he dedicated himself to poetry, and +trained his powers in that direction. (Note on Revolt of Islam.) To +dogmatize upon the topic would be worse than foolish. There was +something incalculable, incommensurable, and daemonic in Shelley's +genius; and what he might have achieved, had his life been spared and +had his health progressively improved, it is of course impossible to +say. + +In the spring of 1819 the Shelleys settled in Rome, where the poet +proceeded with the composition of "Prometheus Unbound". He used to write +among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, not then, as now, despoiled +of all their natural beauty, but waving with the Paradise of flowers and +shrubs described in his incomparable letter of March the 23rd to +Peacock. Rome, however, was not destined to retain them long. On the 7th +of June they lost their son William after a short illness. Shelley loved +this child intensely, and sat by his bedside for sixty hours without +taking rest. He was now practically childless; and his grief found +expression in many of his poems, especially in the fragment headed +"Roma, Roma, Roma! non e piu com' era prima." William was buried in the +Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description to +Peacock in the previous December. "The English burying-place is a green +slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I +think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the +sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with +the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves +of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil +which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly +of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were +to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and +so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion." + +Escaping from the scene of so much sorrow, they established themselves +at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn. Here Shelley began and finished +"The Cenci" at the instance of his wife, who rightly thought that he +undervalued his own powers as a dramatic poet. The supposed portrait of +Beatrice in the Barberini Palace had powerfully affected his +imagination, and he fancied that her story would form the fitting +subject for a tragedy. It is fortunate for English literature that the +real facts of that domestic drama, as recently published by Signor +Bertolotti, were then involved in a tissue of romance and legend. During +this summer he saw a great deal of the Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne's +son by a previous marriage, Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelley +conceived a project of helping him build a steamer which should ply +between Leghorn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and the +pecuniary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family. The scheme +eventually fell through, though Shelley spent a good deal of money upon +it; and its only importance is the additional light it throws upon his +public and private benevolence. From Leghorn the Shelleys removed in the +autumn to Florence, where, on the 12th of November, the present Sir +Percy Florence Shelley was born. Here Shelley wrote the last act of +"Prometheus Unbound", which, though the finest portion of that unique +drama, seems to have been an afterthought. In the Cascine outside +Florence he also composed the "Ode to the West Wind", the most +symmetrically perfect as well as the most impassioned of his minor +lyrics. He spent much time in the galleries, made notes upon the +principal antique statues, and formed a plan of systematic art-study. +The climate, however, disagreed with him, and in the month of January, +1820, they took up their abode at Pisa. + +1819 was the most important year in Shelley's life, so far as literary +production is concerned. Besides "The Cenci" and "Prometheus Unbound", +of which it yet remains to speak, this year saw the production of +several political and satirical poems--the "Masque of Anarchy", +suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the most +important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs +which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be +their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make +such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of +England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his +achievement in this style:-- + + Men of England, Heirs of Glory, + Heroes of unwritten story, + Nurslings of one mighty mother, + Hopes of her, and one another! + + Rise, like lions after slumber, + In unvanquishable number, + Shake your chains to earth like dew, + Which in sleep had fall'n on you. + Ye are many, they are few. + +"Peter Bell the Third", written in this year, and "Swellfoot the +Tyrant", composed in the following autumn, are remarkable as showing +with what keen interest Shelley watched public affairs in England from +his exile home; but, for my own part, I cannot agree with those critics +who esteem their humour at a high rate. The political poems may +profitably be compared with his contemporary correspondence; with the +letters, for instance, to Leigh Hunt, November 23rd, 1819; and to Mr. +John Gisborne, April 10th, 1822; and with an undated fragment published +by Mr. Garnett in the "Relics of Shelley", page 84. No student of +English political history before the Reform Bill can regard his +apprehensions of a great catastrophe as ill-founded. His insight into +the real danger to the nation was as penetrating as his suggestion of a +remedy was moderate. Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as a +visionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the sober lines +in which he warns his friend to be cautious about the security offered +by the English Funds. Another letter, dated Lerici, June 29, 1822, +illustrates the same practical temper of mind, the same logical +application of political principles to questions of public economy. + +That "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" should have been composed in +one and the same year must be reckoned among the greatest wonders of +literature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but also +because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had +written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final +reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the +champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, +because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting +any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of +compromise. He could not conceive of the Titan "unsaying his high +language, and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary." +He therefore, approached the theme of liberation from a wholly different +point of view. Prometheus in his drama is the human vindicator of love, +justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical oppressor, and +creator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is the mind of man +idealized, the spirit of our race, as Shelley thought it made to be. +Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts its free development. Thus +counterposed, the two chief actors represent the fundamental antitheses +of good and evil, liberty and despotism, love and hate. They give the +form of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism already +expressed in the first canto of "Laon and Cythna"; but, instead of being +represented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into +the reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resists +Jove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, that +the tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and calmly +expectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, and leave the +spirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives; Jove disappears; the +burdens of the world and men are suddenly removed; a new age of peace +and freedom and illimitable energy begins; the whole universe partakes +in the emancipation; the spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain, +but sings alternate love-songs with his sister orb, the moon; Prometheus +is re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, +withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in +her exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. She +is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises in +the Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time of +tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beauty +incarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world and +enkindles it with love, the reality of Alastor's vision, the breathing +image of the awful loveliness apostrophized in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty," the reflex of the splendour of which Adonais was a part. At the +moment of her triumph she grows so beautiful that Ione her sister cannot +see her, only feels her influence. The essential thought of Shelley's +creed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalized, made real by a +spirit, which he sometimes called the spirit of Nature, but which is +always conceived as more than Life, as that which gives its actuality to +Life, and lastly as Love and Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp it +with affection, and to blend with it, is, he thought the true object of +man. Therefore the final union of Prometheus with Asia is the +consummation of human destinies. Love was the only law Shelley +recognized. Unterrified by the grim realities of pain and crime revealed +in nature and society, he held fast to the belief that, if we could but +pierce to the core of things, if we could but be what we might be, the +world and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. +What resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected by +Shelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the universe, we +hardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form: and his new +science of love remains a luminous poetic vision--nowhere more +brilliantly set forth than in the "sevenfold hallelujahs and harping +symphonies" of this, the final triumph of his lyrical poetry. + +In "Prometheus", Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, and sketched +out the main figures on a scale of surpassing magnificence. While +painting in these figures, he seems to reduce their proportions too much +to the level of earthly life. He quits his god-creating, +heaven-compelling throne of mythopoeic inspiration, and descends to a +love-story of Asia and Prometheus. In other words, he does not sustain +the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; +nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail +as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore +something vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinate +passages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty--the faculty of +finding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion with +personality--shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. We +feel ourselves in the grasp of a primitive myth-maker while we read the +description of Oceanus, and the raptures of the Earth and Moon. + +A genuine liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned the +touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. The +world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices; +and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross than +any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart's +song, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in "Prometheus", +which seem to realize the miracle of making words, detached from +meaning, the substance of a new ethereal music; and yet, although their +verbal harmony is such, they are never devoid of definite significance +for those who understand. Shelley scorned the aesthetics of a school +which finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic is +so dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or to +whom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a man +whose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A +voice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of her +apotheosis:-- + + Life of Life! thy lips enkindle + With their love the breath between them; + And thy smiles before they dwindle + Make the cold air fire; then screen them + In those looks where whoso gazes + Faints, entangled in their mazes. + + Child of Light! thy limbs are burning + Through the vest which seems to hide them, + As the radiant lines of morning + Through the clouds, ere they divide them; + And this atmosphere divinest + Shrouds thee whereso'er thou shinest. + + Fair are others; none beholds thee. + But thy voice sounds low and tender, + Like the fairest, for it folds thee + From the sight, that liquid splendour, + And all feel, yet see thee never, + As I feel now, lost for ever! + + Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest + Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, + And the souls of whom thou lovest + Walk upon the winds with lightness, + Till they fail, as I am failing, + Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing! + +It has been said that Shelley, as a landscape painter, is decidedly +Turneresque; and there is much in "Prometheus Unbound" to justify this +opinion. The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker shadows +are omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be continually radiated +from the objects at which he looks; and in this radiation of +many-coloured lights, the outline itself is apt to be a little misty. +Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their spiritual essence. +The actual world was less for him than that which lies within it and +beyond it. "I seek," he says himself, "in what I see, the manifestation +of something beyond the present and tangible object." For him, as for +the poet described by one of the spirit voices in "Prometheus", the bees +in the ivy-bloom are scarcely heeded; they become in his mind,-- + + Forms more real than living man, + Nurslings of immortality. + +And yet who could have brought the bees, the lake, the sun, the bloom, +more perfectly before us than that picture does? (Forman, volume 2 page +181.) What vignette is more exquisitely coloured and finished than the +little study of a pair of halcyons in the third act? (Forman, volume 2 +page 231.) Blake is perhaps the only artist who could have illustrated +this drama. He might have shadowed forth the choirs of spirits, the +trailing voices and their thrilling songs, phantasmal Demorgorgon, and +the charioted Hour. Prometheus, too, with his "flowing limbs," has just +Blake's fault of impersonation--the touch of unreality in that painter's +Adam. + +Passing to "The Cenci", we change at once the moral and artistic +atmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely dirge, is +absent. Imagery and description are alike sternly excluded. Instead of +soaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly planted on the earth. In +exchange for radiant visions of future perfection, we are brought into +the sphere of dreadful passions--all the agony, endurance, and +half-maddened action, of which luckless human innocence is capable. To +tell the legend of Beatrice Cenci here, is hardly needed. Her father, a +monster of vice and cruelty, was bent upon breaking her spirit by +imprisonment, torture, and nameless outrage. At last her patience ended; +and finding no redress in human justice, no champion of her helplessness +in living man, she wrought his death. For this she died upon the +scaffold, together with her step-mother and her brothers, who had aided +in the execution of the murder. The interest of "The Cenci", and it is +overwhelmingly great, centres in Beatrice and her father; from these two +chief actors in the drama, all the other characters fall away into +greater or less degrees of unsubstantiality. Perhaps Shelley intended +this--as the maker of a bas-relief contrives two or three planes of +figures for the presentation of his ruling group. Yet there appears to +my mind a defect of accomplishment, rather than a deliberate intention, +in the delineation of Orsino. He seems meant to be the wily, crafty, +Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form a +contrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of old +Francesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love for +Beatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down with +an infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand the +uneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminine +weakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm will of +Beatrice into prominent relief; while her innocence, sustained through +extraordinary suffering in circumstances of exceptional horror--the +innocence of a noble nature thrust by no act of its own but by its +wrongs beyond the pale of ordinary womankind--is contrasted with the +merely childish guiltlessness of Bernardo. Beatrice rises to her full +height in the fifth act, dilates and grows with the approach of danger, +and fills the whole scene with her spirit on the point of death. Her +sublime confidence in the justice and essential rightness of her action, +the glance of self-assured purity with which she annihilates the +cut-throat brought to testify against her, her song in prison, and her +tender solicitude for the frailer Lucrezia, are used with wonderful +dramatic skill for the fulfilment of a feminine ideal at once delicate +and powerful. Once and once only does she yield to ordinary weakness; it +is when the thought crosses her mind that she may meet her father in the +other world, as once he came to her on earth. + +Shelley dedicated "The Cenci" to Leigh Hunt, saying that he had striven +in this tragedy to cast aside the subjective manner of his earlier work, +and to produce something at once more popular and more concrete, more +sober in style, and with a firmer grasp on the realities of life. He was +very desirous of getting it acted, and wrote to Peacock requesting him +to offer it at Covent Garden. Miss O'Neil, he thought, would play the +part of Beatrice admirably. The manager, however, did not take this +view; averring that the subject rendered it incapable of being even +submitted to an actress like Miss O'Neil. Shelley's self-criticism is +always so valuable, that it may be well here to collect what he said +about the two great dramas of 1819. Concerning "The Cenci" he wrote to +Peacock:--"It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and +opinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attended +simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable +the persons represented really were, together with the greatest degree +of popular effect to be produced by such a development." "'Cenci' is +written for the multitude, and ought to sell well." "I believe it +singularly fitted for the stage." "'The Cenci' is a work of art; it is +not coloured by my feelings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't +think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written +of the same length." "Prometheus", on the other hand, he tells Ollier, +"is my favourite poem; I charge you, therefore, specially to pet him and +feed him with fine ink and good paper"--which was duly done. +Again:--"For 'Prometheus', I expect and desire no great sale; Prometheus +was never intended for more than five or six persons; it is in my +judgment of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted, and +is perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it; it is +original, and cost me severe mental labour." Shelley was right in +judging that "The Cenci" would be comparatively popular; this was proved +by the fact that it went through two editions in his lifetime. The value +he set upon "Prometheus" as the higher work, will hardly be disputed. +Unique in the history of literature, and displaying the specific +qualities of its author at their height, the world could less easily +afford to lose this drama than "The Cenci", even though that be the +greatest tragedy composed in English since the death of Shakespeare. For +reasons which will be appreciated by lovers of dramatic poetry, I +refrain from detaching portions of these two plays. Those who desire to +make themselves acquainted with the author's genius, must devote long +and patient study to the originals in their entirety. + +"Prometheus Unbound", like the majority of Shelley's works, fell +still-born from the press. It furnished punsters with a joke, however, +which went the round of several papers; this poem, they cried, is well +named, for who would bind it? Of criticism that deserves the name, +Shelley got absolutely nothing in his lifetime. The stupid but venomous +reviews which gave him occasional pain, but which he mostly laughed at, +need not now be mentioned. It is not much to any purpose to abuse the +authors of mere rubbish. The real lesson to be learned from such of them +as may possibly have been sincere, as well as from the failure of his +contemporaries to appreciate his genius--the sneers of Moore, the +stupidity of Campbell, the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness of +Southey, or the condescending tone of Keats--is that nothing is more +difficult than for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to the +greatest in their lifetime. Those who may be interested in studying +Shelley's attitude toward his critics, should read a letter addressed to +Ollier from Florence, October 15, 1819, soon after he had seen the vile +attack upon him in the "Quarterly", comparing this with the fragments of +an expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the preface to "Adonais". +(Shelley Memorials, page 121. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pages 49, +190. Collected Letters, page 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in one +volume 1840.) It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse with +patience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On the 11th +of June, 1821, he wrote to Ollier:--"As yet I have laughed; but woe to +those scoundrels if they should once make me lose my temper!" The +stanzas on the "Quarterly" in "Adonais", and the invective against Lord +Eldon, show what Shelley could have done if he had chosen to castigate +the curs. Meanwhile the critics achieved what they intended. Shelley, as +Trelawny emphatically tells us, was universally shunned, coldly treated +by Byron's friends at Pisa, and regarded as a monster by such of the +English in Italy as had not made his personal acquaintance. On one +occasion he is even said to have been knocked down in a post-office by +some big bully, who escaped before he could obtain his name and address; +but this is one of the stories rendered doubtful by the lack of precise +details. + + + +CHAPTER 6. + +RESIDENCE AT PISA. + +On the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelley's established themselves at +Pisa. From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, Shelley's life +divides itself into two periods of unequal length; the first spent at +Pisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn; the second at Lerici, on +the Bay of Spezia. Without entering into minute particulars of dates or +recording minor changes of residence, it is possible to treat of the +first and longer period in general. The house he inhabited at Pisa was +on the south side of the Arno. After a few months he became the +neighbour of Lord Byron, who engaged the Palazzo Lanfranchi it order to +be near him; and here many English and Italian friends gathered round +them. Among these must be mentioned in the first place Captain Medwin, +whose recollections of the Pisan residence are of considerable value, +and next Captain Trelawny, who has left a record of Shelley's last days +only equalled in vividness by Hogg's account of the Oxford period, and +marked by signs of more unmistakable accuracy. Not less important +members of this private circle were Mr. and Mrs. Edward Elleker +Williams, with whom Shelley and his wife lived on terms of the closest +friendship. Among Italians, the physician Vacca, the improvisatore +Sgricci, and Rosini, the author of "La Monaca di Monza", have to be +recorded. It will be seen from this enumeration that Shelley was no +longer solitary; and indeed it would appear that now, upon the eve of +his accidental death, he had begun to enjoy an immunity from many of his +previous sufferings. Life expanded before him: his letters show that he +was concentrating his powers and preparing for a fresh flight; and the +months, though ever productive of poetic masterpieces, promised a still +more magnificent birth in the future. + +In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his most +genial poems: the "Letter to Maria Gisborne", which might be mentioned +as a pendent to "Julian and Maddalo" for its treatment of familiar +things; the "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the +"Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the +"Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a new +lyric form to English literature. In the winter he wrote the "Sensitive +Plant", prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. +Shelley's drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate +Italian sunlight. Whether we consider the number of these poems or their +diverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely subtle +line from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence and the most +ethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished. Every chord of the +poet's lyre is touched, from the deep bass string that echoes the +diurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was, to the fine vibrations of a +treble merging its rarity of tone in accents super-sensible to ordinary +ears. One passage from the "Letter to Maria Gisborne" may here be +quoted, not for its poetry, but for the light it casts upon the circle +of his English friends. + + You are now + In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow + At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore + Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. + Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see + That which was Godwin,--greater none than he + Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand + Among the spirits of our age and land, + Before the dread tribunal of "To come" + The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. + You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure + In the exceeding lustre and the pure + Intense irradiation of a mind, + Which, with its own internal lightning blind, + Flags wearily through darkness and despair-- + A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, + A hooded eagle among blinking owls. + You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls + Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom + This world would smell like what it is--a tomb; + Who is, what others seem. His room no doubt + Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, + With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, + And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, + And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung; + The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens + Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. + And there is he with his eternal puns, + Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns + Thundering for money at a poet's door; + Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"-- + Or oft in graver mood, when he will look + Things wiser than were ever read in book, + Except in Shakespere's wisest tenderness. + You will see Hogg; and I cannot express + His virtues, though I know that they are great, + Because he locks, then barricades the gate + Within which they inhabit. Of his wit + And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. + He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, + One of the richest of the deep. And there + Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair,-- + Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird + That gleams in the Indian air. Have you not heard + When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, + His best friends hear no more of him. But you + Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, + With the milk-white Snowdownian antelope + Match'd with this camelopard. His fine wit + Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it; + A strain too learned for a shallow age, + Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page + Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, + Fold itself up for the serener clime + Of years to come, and find its recompense + In that just expectation. Wit and sense, + Virtue and human knowledge, all that might + Make this dull world a business of delight, + Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these, + With some exceptions, which I need not tease + Your patience by descanting on, are all + You and I know in London. + +Captain Medwin, who came late in the autumn of 1820, at his cousin's +invitation, to stay with the Shelleys, has recorded many interesting +details of their Pisan life, as well as valuable notes of Shelley's +conversation. "It was nearly seven years since we had parted, but I +should have immediately recognized him in a crowd. His figure was +emaciated, and somewhat bent, owing to near-sightedness, and his being +forced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them; his +hair, still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed +with grey; but his appearance was youthful. There was also a freshness +and purity in his complexion that he never lost." Not long after his +arrival, Medwin suffered from a severe and tedious illness. "Shelley +tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered my +medicines, and during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was +assiduous and unintermitting in his affectionate care of me." The poet's +solitude and melancholy at this time impressed his cousin very +painfully. Though he was producing a long series of imperishable poems, +he did not take much interest in his work. "I am disgusted with +writing," he once said, "and were it not for an irresistible impulse, +that predominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing." The +brutal treatment he had lately received from the "Quarterly Review", the +calumnies which pursued him, and the coldness of all but a very few +friends, checked his enthusiasm for composition. Of this there is +abundant proof in his correspondence. In a letter to Leigh Hunt, dated +January 25, 1822, he says: "My faculties are shaken to atoms and torpid. +I can write nothing; and if "Adonais" had no success, and excited no +interest, what incentive can I have to write?" Again: "I write little +now. It is impossible to compose except under the strong excitement of +an assurance of finding sympathy in what you write." Lord Byron's +company proved now, as before, a check rather than an incentive to +production: "I do not write; I have lived too long near Lord Byron, and +the sun has extinguished the glow-worm; for I cannot hope, with St. +John, that THE LIGHT CAME INTO THE WORLD AND THE WORLD KNEW IT NOT." "I +despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other +with whom it is worth contending." To Ollier, in 1820, he wrote: "I +doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with the +hell or the paradise of poetry; but the torments of its purgatory vex +me, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to the +vexation." It was not that his spirit was cowed by the Reviews, or that +he mistook the sort of audience he had to address. He more than once +acknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the many, his poems were +intended for the understanding few. Yet the sunetoi, as he called them, +gave him but scanty encouragement. The cold phrases of kindly Horace +Smith show that he had not comprehended "Prometheus Unbound"; and +Shelley whimsically complains that even intelligent and sympathetic +critics confounded the ideal passion described in "Epipsychidion" with +the love affairs of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart." This almost +incomprehensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have known +better, combined with the coarse abuse of vulgar scribblers, was enough +to make a man so sincerely modest as Shelley doubt his powers, or shrink +from the severe labour of developing them. (See Medwin, volume 2 page +172, for Shelley's comment on the difficulty of the poet's art.) "The +decision of the cause," he wrote to Mr. Gisborne, "whether or no _I_ am +a poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterity +shall assemble; but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the +verdict will be, guilty--death." Deep down in his own heart he had, +however, less doubt: "This I know," he said to Medwin, "that whether in +prosing or in versing, there is something in my writings that shall live +for ever." And again, he writes to Hunt: "I am full of thoughts and +plans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which +encloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should +do great things." It seems almost certain that the incompleteness of +many longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandonment of the +tragedy on Tasso's story, the unfinished state of "Charles I", and the +failure to execute the cherished plan of a drama suggested by the Book +of Job, were due to the depressing effects of ill-health and external +discouragement. Poetry with Shelley was no light matter. He composed +under the pressure of intense excitement, and he elaborated his first +draughts with minute care and severe self-criticism. + +These words must not be taken as implying that he followed the Virgilian +precedent of polishing and reducing the volume of his verses by an +anxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he observed the Horatian +maxim of deferring their publication till the ninth year. The contrary +was notoriously the case with him. Yet it is none the less proved by the +state of his manuscripts that his compositions, even as we now possess +them, were no mere improvisations. The passage already quoted from his +"Defence of Poetry" shows the high ideal he had conceived of the poet's +duty toward his art; and it may be confidently asserted that his whole +literary career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence of +his earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision of +form that are the index of mastery over style. At the same time it was +inconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to attempt +composition except under an impulse approaching to inspiration. To +imperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, moral, +intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline exacted by his +own fastidious taste, with no other object in view than the frigid +compliments of a few friends, was more than even Shelley's enthusiasm +could endure. He, therefore, at this period required the powerful +stimulus of some highly exciting cause from without to determine his +activity. + +Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters early in the +year 1821. Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa was a clever but +disreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a very piquant portrait. +This man one day related the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, +the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had been confined by her father in a +dismal convent of the suburbs, to await her marriage with a distasteful +husband. Shelley, fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visit +the fair captive. The Professor accompanied him and Medwin to the +convent-parlour, where they found her more lovely than even the most +glowing descriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. +Shelley soon discovered that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I +have ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon the +subject of Uranian Love--Il Vero Amore--justifies the belief that she +possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. +Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her +convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and by +presents of flowers and books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathy +for this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, however +spiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate. The result was the +composition of "Epipsychidion," the most unintelligible of all his poems +to those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's "Symposium" and +Dante's "Vita Nuova". In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as the +incarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in +mortal flesh:-- + + Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, + Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman + All that is insupportable in thee + Of light, and love, and immortality! + +He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and +deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicate +obscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for his +soul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of ideal +beauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he ever +been deluded. At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truth +of the vision veiled from him so many years. She and Mary shall +henceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him. Then +he calls on her to fly. They three will escape and live together, far +away from men, in an Aegean island. The description of this visionary +isle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and +undiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this +century in the rhymed heroic metre. + + It is an isle under Ionian skies, + Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise; + And, for the harbours are not safe and good, + This land would have remained a solitude + But for some pastoral people native there, + Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air + Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, + Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. + The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, + With ever-changing sound and light and foam + Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar; + And all the winds wandering along the shore, + Undulate with the undulating tide. + There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; + And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, + As clear as elemental diamond, + Or serene morning air. And far beyond, + The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer, + (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,) + Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls + Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls + Illumining, with sound that never fails + Accompany the noonday nightingales; + And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. + The light clear element which the isle wears + Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, + Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, + And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; + And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, + And dart the arrowy odour through the brain, + Till you might faint with that delicious pain. + And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, + With that deep music is in unison: + Which is a soul within a soul--they seem + Like echoes of an antenatal dream. + It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea, + Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; + Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, + Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air. + It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, + Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light + Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they + Sail onward far upon their fatal way. + The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm + To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm + Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, + From which its fields and woods ever renew + Their green and golden immortality. + And from the sea there rise, and from the sky + There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, + Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, + Which sun or moon or zephyr draws aside, + Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride + Glowing at once with love and loveliness, + Blushes and trembles at its own excess: + Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less + Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, + An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile + Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen + O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, + Filling their bare and void interstices. + +Shelley did not publish "Epipsychidion" with his own name. He gave it to +the world as a composition of a man who had "died at Florence, as he was +preparing for a voyage to one of the Sporades," and he requested Ollier +not to circulate it, except among a few intelligent readers. It may +almost be said to have been never published, in such profound silence +did it issue from the press. Very shortly after its appearance he +described it to Leigh Hunt as "a portion of me already dead," and added +this significant allusion to its subject matter:--"Some of us have in a +prior existence been in love with Antigone, and that makes us find no +full content in any mortal tie." In the letter of June 18, 1822, again +he says:--"The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom it +celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the +Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious, +however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something +thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one +is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it +is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists +in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant as +the poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in the +author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of the +emotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetorical +exaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but because +Shelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really been +its subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publication +of "Epipsychidion," confirms the impression made by it, and justifies +the conclusion that he had utilized his feeling for Emilia to express a +favourite doctrine in impassioned verse. + +To students of Shelley's inner life "Epipsychidion" will always have +high value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing his +doctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principle +presented to us in "Alastor", the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and +"Prince Athanase." But the words just quoted, which may be compared with +Mrs. Shelley's note to "Prince Athanase," authorize our pointing out +what he himself recognized as the defect of his theory. Instead of +remaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn," +Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love." Thus, while +his doctrine in "Epipsychidion" seems Platonic, it will not square with +the "Symposium." Plato treats the love of a beautiful person as a mere +initiation into divine mysteries, the first step in the ladder that +ascends to heaven. When a man has formed a just conception of the +universal beauty, he looks back with a smile upon those who find their +soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by this +standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many +daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is a spurious +Platonism. Plato would have said that to seek the Idea of Beauty in +Emilia Viviani was a retrogressive step. All that she could do, would be +to quicken the soul's sense of beauty, to stir it from its lethargy, and +to make it divine the eternal reality of beauty in the supersensual +world of thought. This Shelley had already acknowledged in the "Hymn;" +and this he emphasizes in these words:--"The error consists in seeking +in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." + +The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman's edition do +not throw much light upon "Epipsychidion." The longest, entitled "To his +Genius" by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads like the induction to a +poem conceived and written in a different key, and at a lower level of +inspiration. It has, however, this extraordinary interest, that it deals +with a love which is both love and friendship, above sex, spiritual, +unintelligible to the world at large. Thus the fragment enables the +student better to realize the kind of worship so passionately expressed +in "Epipsychidion." + +The news of Keats's death at Rome on the 27th of December, 1820, and the +erroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not caused, by a +contemptible review of "Endymion" in the "Quarterly", stirred Shelley to +the composition of "Adonais". He had it printed at Pisa, and sent copies +to Ollier for circulation in London. This poem was a favourite with its +author, who hoped not only that it might find acceptance with the +public, but also that it would confer lustre upon the memory of a poet +whom he sincerely admired. No criticisms upon Shelley's works are half +so good as his own. It is, therefore, interesting to collect the +passages in which he speaks of an elegy only equalled in our language by +"Lycidas", and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior to +Milton's youthful lament for his friend. "The 'Adonais', in spite of its +mysticism," he writes to Ollier, "is the least imperfect of my +compositions." "I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born +to an immortality of oblivion." "It is a highly wrought PIECE OF ART, +and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have +written." "It is absurd in any review to criticize 'Adonais', and still +more to pretend that the verses are bad." "I know what to think of +'Adonais', but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad +poems of the day, I know not." Again, alluding to the stanzas hurled +against the infamous "Quarterly" reviewer, he says:--"I have dipped my +pen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm +and solemn." + +With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. Although +"Adonais" is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets as +"Prometheus" or "Epipsychidion," it presents Shelley's qualities in a +form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the +dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART of +the poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the +student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of +Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic +products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their +material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, +reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby +the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the +sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; +the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substituted +for Bion's cupids; and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bards +of England are summoned to lament around the poet's bier. Yet it is only +when Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that he +soars aloft on mighty wing. This point, too, is the point of transition +from death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture of +the things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions of the +poem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the passage from +the one to the other is natural. Two quotations from "Adonais" will +suffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse. + +The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron and +Moore--the "Pilgrim of Eternity," and Ierne's "sweetest lyrist of her +saddest wrong"--to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathos +and unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, +when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats in "Don Juan", and what +Moore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how +far both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron +his supreme place in the heaven of poetry. + + Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, + A phantom among men, companionless + As the last cloud of an expiring storm, + Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, + Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, + Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray + With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, + And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, + Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. + + A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift-- + A love in desolation masked--a Power + Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift + The weight of the superincumbent hour; + Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower, + A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak + Is it not broken? On the withering flower + The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek + The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. + + His head was bound with pansies over-blown, + And faded violets, white and pied and blue; + And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, + Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew + Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, + Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart + Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew + He came the last, neglected and apart; + A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart. + +The second passage is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere has Shelley +expressed his philosophy of man's relation to the universe with more +sublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in these +stanzas. If it were possible to identify that philosophy with any +recognized system of thought, it might be called pantheism. But it is +difficult to affix a name, stereotyped by the usage of the schools, to +the aerial spiritualism of its ardent and impassioned poet's creed. + +The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just been interrupted +by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He now +bursts forth afresh into the music of consolation:-- + + Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! + He hath awakened from the dream of life. + 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep + With phantoms an unprofitable strife, + And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife + Invulnerable nothings. WE decay + Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief + Convulse us and consume us day by day, + And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. + + He has outsoared the shadow of our night; + Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, + And that unrest which men miscall delight, + Can touch him not and torture not again; + From the contagion of the world's slow stain + He is secure, and now can never mourn + A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; + Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, + With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. + + He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he; + Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn, + Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee + The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; + Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! + Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air + Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown + O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare + Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! + + He is made one with Nature: there is heard + His voice in all her music, from the moan + Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird; + He is a presence to be felt and known + In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, + Spreading itself where'er that Power may move + Which has withdrawn his being to its own; + Which wields the world with never wearied love, + Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. + + He is a portion of the loveliness + Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear + His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress + Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there + All new successions to the forms they wear; + Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight + To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; + And bursting in its beauty and its might + From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. + +But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, the +blending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit of +beauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after immortality. +Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of the +personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into the +company of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:-- + + The splendours of the firmament of time + May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: + Like stars to their appointed height they climb, + And death is a low mist which cannot blot + The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought + Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, + And love and life contend in it, for what + Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, + And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. + + The inheritors of unfulfilled renown + Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, + Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton + Rose pale, his solemn agony had not + Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought + And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, + Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, + Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:-- + Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. + + And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, + But whose transmitted effluence cannot die + So long as fire outlives the parent spark, + Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. + "Thou art become as one of us," they cry; + "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long + Swung blind in unascended majesty, + Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. + Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" + +From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet +once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonais +lies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave. He has escaped: +to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death +unterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keat's +resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to +be Shelley's own, is introduced:-- + + Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth, + Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright. + Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; + As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light + Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might + Satiate the void circumference: then shrink + Even to a point within our day and night; + And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sink + When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. + + Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, + Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought + That ages, empires, and religions there + Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; + For such as he can lend,--they borrow not + Glory from those who made the world their prey; + And he is gathered to the kings of thought + Who waged contention with their time's decay, + And of the past are all that cannot pass away. + + Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise, + The grave, the city, and the wilderness; + And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, + And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses dress + The bones of Desolation's nakedness, + Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead + Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, + Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead + A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; + + And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time + Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; + And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, + Pavilioning the dust of him who planned + This refuge for his memory, doth stand + Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, + A field is spread, on which a newer band + Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, + Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. + + Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet + To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned + Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, + Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, + Break if not thou! too surely shalt thou find + Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, + Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind + Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. + What Adonais is, why fear we to become? + +Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the +mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of +the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The +symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the +eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of +one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the +somewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of all +Shelley's qualities--the liberation of incalculable energies, the +emancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious over +circumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes as +make a feebler spirit tremble: + + The One remains, the many change and pass; + Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; + Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, + Stains the white radiance of Eternity, + Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, + If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! + Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, + Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak + The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. + + Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? + Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here + They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! + A light is past from the revolving year, + And man and woman; and what still is dear + Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. + The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: + 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither! + No more let Life divide what Death can join together. + + That light whose smile kindles the Universe, + That beauty in which all things work and move, + That benediction which the eclipsing curse + Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love + Which through the web of being blindly wove + By man and beast and earth and air and sea, + Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of + The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, + Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. + + The breath whose might I have invoked in song + Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven + Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng + Whose sails were never to the tempest given. + The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! + I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; + Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, + The soul of Adonais, like a star, + Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. + +It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have said +about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no +believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he was +too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of +no solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but my hopes are not +unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we +appear to die." On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content to +see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; +I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our +faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the +mystery will be solved." How constantly the thought of death as the +revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident +related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who +could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the +bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to +save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he +said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies +there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have +found an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life; +they sleep, and it is lifted." Yet being pressed by his friend, he +refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the +imperishability of the human soul. "We know nothing; we have no +evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are +incomprehensible even to ourselves." The clear insight into the +conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very +characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of his +essay on a "Future Life", which would certainly have stated the problem +with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of +doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination +with wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities +was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as +perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the +personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of +the "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence of +his hope upon this most intangible of riddles. + + Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that + Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, + Ere its outward form had known decay, + Now felt this change, I cannot say. + + I dare not guess; but in this life + Of error, ignorance, and strife, + Where nothing is, but all things seem, + And we the shadows of the dream: + + It is a modest creed, and yet + Pleasant, if one considers it, + To own that death itself must be, + Like all the rest, a mockery. + + That garden sweet, that lady fair, + And all sweet shapes and odours there, + In truth have never passed away: + 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. + + For love, and beauty, and delight, + There is no death nor change; their might + Exceeds our organs, which endure + No light, being themselves obscure. + +But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem which +suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its +author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines +of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. +The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the +least, singular. In "Alastor" we read:-- + + A restless impulse urged him to embark + And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; + For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves + The slimy caverns of the populous deep. + +The "Ode to Liberty" closes on the same note:-- + + As a far taper fades with fading night; + As a brief insect dies with dying day, + My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, + Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away + Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, + As waves which lately paved his watery way + Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. + +The "Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples", echo the thought with +a slight variation:-- + + Yet now despair itself is mild, + Even as the winds and waters are; + I could lie down like a tired child, + And weep away the life of care + Which I have borne, and yet must bear,-- + Till death like sleep might steal on me, + And I might feel in the warm air + My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea + Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. + +Trelawny tells a story of his friend's life at Lerici, which further +illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. He took +Mrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat one +afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he had +fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, "Now let us together +solve the great mystery!" Too much value must not be attached to what +might have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal not +unreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley's friends were +accustomed to expect the realisation of his wildest fancies. It may +incidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed its +victim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatal +element--during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channel +with Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at +least with Williams. + +A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of Prince +Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copy +of Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and announced that Greece was +determined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley's +enthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama of "Hellas", which he has +described as "a sort of imitation of the 'Persae' of Aeschylus." We find +him at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by the +end of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, +1821. Shelley did not set great store by it. "It was written," he says, +"without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which +now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits." The +preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his sound +and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions of +this century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancient +Hellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the part +played by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the +poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at +times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic +cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." +Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, +equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called +Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I +think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a +different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some +unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but +also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind. + +The lyric movement of the Chorus from "Hellas", which I propose to +quote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical invention. As for +the matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas are +written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does not +prevent their feeling a regret for the "mightier forms of an older, +austerer worship." Shelley's note reminds the reader, with +characteristic caution and frankness, that "the popular notions of +Christianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation to +the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will +supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more +universal." + + Worlds on worlds are rolling over + From creation to decay, + Like the bubbles on a river + Sparkling, bursting, borne away. + But they are still immortal + Who, through birth's orient portal, + And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, + Clothe their unceasing flight + In the brief dust and light + Gathered around their chariots as they go; + New shapes they still may weave, + New gods, new laws receive; + Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last + On Death's bare ribs had cast. + + A power from the unknown God, + A Promethan conqueror came; + Like a triumphal path he trod + The thorns of death and shame. + A mortal shape to him + Was like the vapour dim + Which the orient planet animates with light. + Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, + Like bloodhounds mild and tame, + Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight. + The moon of Mahomet + Arose, and it shall set: + While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon + The cross leads generations on. + + Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep + From one whose dreams are paradise, + Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, + And day peers forth with her blank eyes; + So fleet, so faint, so fair, + The Powers of earth and air + Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem: + Apollo, Pan, and Love + And even Olympian Jove, + Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. + Our hills, and seas, and streams, + Dispeopled of their dreams, + Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, + Wailed for the golden years. + +In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna, +where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccoli. It was then +settled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal to +be called "The Liberal" in concert with Leigh Hunt, should himself +settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the same +place. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerely +attached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to the +journal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partly +because he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of +Byron's, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to +his friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poet +of the age. (See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, August 26, 1821.) That +he was not without doubts as to Byron's working easily in harness with +Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully these +doubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known. + +At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usually +infamous calumny. What it was, we do not know; but that it made profound +impression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed to +his wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeats +his growing weariness, and his wish to escape from society to solitude; +the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the +world, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is +noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of +residence:--"our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the +transplanted tree flourishes not." At Pisa he had found real rest and +refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some of +his saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed to +Jane--for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students may +perceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtle +transitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible in +its intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the supposition +that Shelley was quite happy in his home. ("The Serpent is shut out from +Paradise.") These words must be taken as implying no reflection either +upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter +troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak +egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never +finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he +had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could +probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more +from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. +Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression has +bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory; +nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, like +all poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art, +converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. This +was almost certainly the case with "Epipsychidion." + +So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for careful +readers of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction that +during the last year of his life he often found relief from a +wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the +sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane was +beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to her +passed through her husband's hands without the slightest interruption to +their intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous of +her Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage from +Shelley's letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his +relation to the Williamses:--"They are people who are very pleasing to +me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane +more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She +has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that +compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement." + +Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake of +their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundity +of Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil industry which he +passed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:-- + + Swiftly walk over the western wave, + Spirit of Night! + Out of the misty eastern cave, + Where all the long and lone daylight, + Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, + Which make thee terrible and dear,-- + Swift be thy flight! + + Wrap thy form in a mantle grey + Star-inwrought! + Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, + Kiss her until she be wearied out. + Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, + Touching all with thin opiate wand-- + Come, long-sought! + + When I arose and saw the dawn, + I sighed for thee; + When light rode high, and the dew was gone, + And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, + And the weary Day turned to his rest, + Lingering like an unloved guest, + I sighed for thee. + + Thy brother Death came, and cried, + "Wouldst thou me?" + Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, + Murmured like a noon-tide bee, + "Shall I nestle near thy side? + Wouldst thou me?"--and I replied, + "No, not thee!" + + Death will come when thou art dead, + Soon, too soon-- + Sleep will come when thou art fled; + Of neither would I ask the boon + I ask of thee, beloved Night-- + Swift be thine approaching flight, + Come soon, soon! + +The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend +Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not +uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given +by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that Shelley was no +careless writer. + + The golden gates of sleep unbar + Where strength and beauty, met together, + Kindle their image like a star + In a sea of glassy weather! + + Night, with all thy stars look down-- + Darkness, weep thy holiest dew! + Never smiled the inconstant moon + On a pair so true. + Let eyes not see their own delight; + Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight + Oft renew. + + Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! + Holy stars, permit no wrong! + And return to wake the sleeper, + Dawn, ere it be long. + O joy! O fear! what will be done + In the absence of the sun! + Come along! + +Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form, +were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of his +happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave's +"Golden Treasury" shows how large a place they occupy among the +permanent jewels of our literature. + +The month of January added a new and most important member to the little +Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more than +to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet's +life are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic. +Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far away +from literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with the +sternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-reliance +and his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore, +made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who still +incline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. This +true child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byron +the stuff of a real man. "To form a just idea of his poetry, you should +have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated +his writings." "The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best and +ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everything +better than himself." "I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and the +contrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking of +himself, was as much at ease in his own home, omitting no occasion of +obliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with all +or any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or +address." "All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest +manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, +coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship." "Shelley's +mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action." +"He was always in earnest." "He never laid aside his book and magic +mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, +stood mute.... Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held him +captive." These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself +somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting +affectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities +this "dreamy bard,"--"uncommonly awkward," as he also called him--bad +rider and poor seaman as he was--"over-sensitive," and "eternally +brooding on his own thoughts," who "had seen no more of the waking-day +than a girl at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with +the courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned +boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid +of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced +companion of his last few months that very rare product for which +Diogenes searched in vain--a man. + +Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no less +certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The +Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great +deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated +conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near +the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes +steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged +to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the +direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come +in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, +blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; +and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, +feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his +warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down +and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this +mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with +all the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of +his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by +every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our +literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; +it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and +trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the +custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams +saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had +in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,-- + +"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"--I am translating some passages in it.' + +"'Oh, read it to us.' + +"Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not +interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly +became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly +manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid +interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into +our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish +poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After +this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a dead +silence ensued; looking up, I asked,-- + +"'Where is he?' + +"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, +no one knows when or where.'" + +Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to +be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man +who had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Shelley +proposed that the English--himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. +Taafe--should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme +took Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before +they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing +that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other +affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police. +The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted +dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr. +Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man +struck Shelley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English then +pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron's +servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded +the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was +necessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter "a +trifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by the +authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, +Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the +exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron's +final departure from Pisa. + +The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by such +adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his +days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, +with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams +in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from +thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When +the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until +midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his +favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, +and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to +Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his +finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run +together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a +sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild +ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a +manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When +my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images +and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled +down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a +drawing." + +A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly +with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began +to gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go +pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend's +firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing +was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in +fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the +circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and +the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding +movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by +Byron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line of +Mephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange," and translated +it, "My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, "Then you are her +nephew." Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to +it in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above. + +Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to +nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with +Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly +lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined +to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking +the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his +mind to have one too. Shelley's was to be an open boat carrying sail, +Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted +to a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain +Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost the +lives of Shelley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carried +Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain +Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelley +and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, +which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams +overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his +cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two +tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was +very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, +strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, +not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, +Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. +"It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching the +poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had +a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one +was mental, the other mechanical." "The boy was quick and handy, and +used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, but +over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in +emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing +sea and sky; he heeded not the boat." + + + +CHAPTER 7. + +LAST DAYS. + +The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and +early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging +for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon +a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which +"looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. It +consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing +boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided +into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been +white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought +the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about +it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to +be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room +of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other; +the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another. +Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon; +and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when +Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris +naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever +Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the +dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected +apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. +Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no +easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's +laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin. + +They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course of +life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8. +These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley's life. We +seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr. +Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from +which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably +have risen to a loftier altitude, by a calmer and more equable exercise +of powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life in +Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is +calm for the passing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with +none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the +calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world +he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little +removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures +of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the +element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well +mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in +solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows +in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to +bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to +Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets +aloud to the assembled party. + +In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this +uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms and +inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if +we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been +one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his +masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of +compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, +and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and +inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in +chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous +march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their +tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty +with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe +of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to +abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this +solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a +Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer +heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, +which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante +plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the +Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide. +The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is +brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a +moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how +Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime +philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more +soul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, as +we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? I +cried"--a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that the +questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death. + +To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of its +splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary +images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley is +the only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficult +of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot +be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in +treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature, +and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To +select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict +less violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach one +of its episodes. + + Swift as a spirit hastening to his task + Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth + Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask + + Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. + The smokeless altars of the mountain snows + Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth + + Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, + To which the birds tempered their matin lay. + All flowers in field or forest which unclose + + Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, + Swinging their censers in the element, + With orient incense lit by the new ray, + + Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent + Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; + And, in succession due, did continent, + + Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear + The form and character of mortal mould, + Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear + + Their portion of the toil, which he of old + Took as his own, and then imposed on them. + But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold + + Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem + The cone of night, now they were laid asleep, + Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem + + Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep + Of a green Apennine. Before me fled + The night; behind me rose the day; the deep + + Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,-- + When a strange trance over my fancy grew + Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread + + Was so transparent that the scene came through + As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn + O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew + + That I had felt the freshness of that dawn + Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, + And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn + + Under the self-same bough, and heard as there + The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold + Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. + And then a vision on my brain was rolled. + +Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point +one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph of +Life" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision +for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not +without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza +rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the +labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming +in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with +clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: +yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement. + + As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, + This was the tenour of my waking dream:-- + Methought I sate beside a public way + + Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream + Of people there was hurrying to and fro, + Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, + + All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know + Whither he went, or whence he came, or why + He made one of the multitude, and so + + Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky + One of the million leaves of summer's bier; + Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, + + Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: + Some flying from the thing they feared, and some + Seeking the object of another's fear; + + And others, as with steps towards the tomb, + Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, + And others mournfully within the gloom + + Of their own shadow walked and called it death; + And some fled from it as it were a ghost, + Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath. + + But more, with motions which each other crossed, + Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, + Or birds within the noon-day ether lost, + + Upon that path where flowers never grew-- + And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, + Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew + + Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; + Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told + Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed, + + With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, + And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they + Pursued their serious folly as of old. + +Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to +notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in +one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the passing of a +multitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by +accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding +genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to +note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the +definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and +mystic. + + And as I gazed, methought that in the way + The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June + When the south wind shakes the extinguished day; + + And a cold glare, intenser than the noon + But icy cold, obscured with blinding light + The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon-- + + When on the sunlit limits of the night + Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, + And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,-- + + Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear + The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form + Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair; + + So came a chariot on the silent storm + Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape + So sate within, as one whom years deform, + + Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, + Crouching within the shadow of a tomb. + And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape + + Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom + Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam + A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume + + The guidance of that wonder-winged team; + The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings + Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream + + The music of their ever-moving wings. + All the four faces of that charioteer + Had their eyes banded; little profit brings + + Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, + Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, + Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere + + Of all that is, has been, or will be done. + So ill was the car guided--but it past + With solemn speed majestically on. + +The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic +effort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of +Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make +Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw +visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the +sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another +he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained +terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood +he communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what +she afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed +that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable that +the last words written to him by Jane were these:--"Are you going to +join your friend Plato?" + +The Leigh Hunts arrived at last in Genoa, whence they again sailed for +Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediately +prepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams in +the "Don Juan" for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his old +friend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon +the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and +established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as +comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The +negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised +forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from +Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how +irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven +disorderly children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was +positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, +who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly +cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough +to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and +the tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, +harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two +together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa to +his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he used +to be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touch +relating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:--"He +assented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, +while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet be +established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of +faith." + +On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise for +Leghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, with +Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, Charles +Vivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on board +the "Bolivar", in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weather +for some time had been unusually hot and dry. "Processions of priests +and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;" so runs +the last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or +nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "Don +Juan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a.m. +instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief." +Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was an +oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, and +slept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in the +harbour making all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest was +upon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more than +twenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously for +Shelley's boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard +of her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of +the catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of +a felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running her +down is still uncertain. + +On the morning of the third day after the storm, Trelawny rode to Pisa, +and communicated his fears to Hunt. "I then went upstairs to Byron. When +I told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned +me." Couriers were despatched to search the sea-coast, and to bring the +"Bolivar" from Leghorn. Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, and +there found a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been in +Shelley's boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with the +coast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last two +bodies were cast upon the sand. One found near the Via Reggio, on the +18th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the volume of +Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the other, doubled back, +as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away." +The other, found near the tower of Migliarino, at about four miles' +distance, was that of Williams. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, though +cast up on the same day, the 18th of July, near Massa, was not heard of +by Trelawny till the 29th. + +Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to the two +widowed women, who had spent the last days in an agony of alternate +despair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny discharged +faithfully and firmly. "The next day I prevailed on them," he says, "to +return with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of the +next day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neither +describe nor forget." It was decided that Shelley should be buried at +Rome, near his friend Keats and his son William, and that Williams's +remains should be taken to England. But first the bodies had to be +burned; and for permission to do this Trelawny, who all through had +taken the lead, applied to the English Embassy at Florence. After some +difficulty it was granted. + +What remains to be said concerning the cremation of Shelley's body on +the 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own words. Williams, it +may be stated, had been burned on the preceding day. + +"Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the poet's grave, +but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut a +trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertain +the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave. + +"In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended +by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand +scenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, +that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the +islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented +watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested +Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified +outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight. + +"As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness +and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of +wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked +body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him +back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to +check the sacrilege--the work went on silently in the deep and +unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch +of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron +was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a +dull, hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had +struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered.... After the fire was +well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine +was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his +life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and +quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the +atmosphere was tremulous and wavy.... The fire was so fierce as to +produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey +ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of +bones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all was that the +heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, +my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act, I should +have been put into quarantine." + +Shelley's heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not without +reluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. It is now +at Boscombe. His ashes were carried by Trelawny to Rome and buried in +the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter to +Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely in "Adonais". The epitaph, composed +by Hunt, ran thus: "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. August +MDCCXCII. Obiit VIII Jul. MDCCCXXII." To the Latin words Trelawny, +faithfullest and most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel's +song, much loved in life by Shelley: + + Nothing of him that doth fade, + But doth suffer a sea-change + Into something rich and strange. + +"And so," writes Lady Shelley, "the sea and the earth closed over one +who was great as a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist; and of +whom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to have +prepared him for being thus snatched from life under circumstances of +mingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in their spring +freshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal body decrepit, or +to wither the heart which could not be consumed by fire." + + + +CHAPTER 8. + +EPILOGUE. + +After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelley +the narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by one +commanding reason. Shelley's life and his poetry are indissolubly +connected. He acted what he thought and felt, with a directness rare +among his brethren of the poet's craft; while his verse, with the +exception of "The Cenci", expressed little but the animating thoughts +and aspirations of his life. That life, moreover, was "a miracle of +thirty years," so crowded with striking incident and varied experience +that, as he said himself, he had already lived longer than his father, +and ought to be reckoned with the men of ninety. Through all +vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and died, like one whom +the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story, young, despite grey +hairs and suffering. His life has, therefore, to be told, in order that +his life-work may be rightly valued: for, great as that was, he, the +man, was somehow greater; and noble as it truly is, the memory of him is +nobler. + +To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate for +truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. The +anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. The +right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: in +his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot the +mark of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest purpose with +moral and social theories that could not but have proved pernicious to +mankind at large, produced at times an almost grotesque mixture in his +actions no less than in his verse. We cannot, therefore, wonder that +society, while he lived, felt the necessity of asserting itself against +him. But now that he has passed into the company of the great dead, and +time has softened down the asperities of popular judgment, we are able +to learn the real lesson of his life and writings. That is not to be +sought in any of his doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his +resolute loyalty to an unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolent +ideal. It is this which constitutes his supreme importance for us +English at the present time. Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, +and we belong to a race in which men who follow them so single-heartedly +are not common. + +As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature--a +quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which severe +critics of other nations think we lack. Byron's daring is in a different +region: his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate our +energies, or cheer us with new hopes and splendid vistas. Wordsworth, +the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, +suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, and +braces us by healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But in +Wordsworth there is none of Shelley's magnetism. $What remains of +permanent value in Coleridge's poetry--such work as "Christabel", the +"Ancient Mariner", or "Kubla Khan"--is a product of pure artistic fancy, +tempered by the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he +was, loved Nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for him a +mistress rather than a Diotima; nor did he share the prophetic fire +which burns in Shelley's verse, quite apart from the direct enunciation +of his favourite tenets. In none of Shelley's greatest contemporaries +was the lyrical faculty so paramount; and whether we consider his minor +songs, his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowledge +that he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of our +language. In range of power he was also conspicuous above the rest. Not +only did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best +translations, and the best familiar poems of his century. As a satirist +and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do; +and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts +forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its +myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor rhetoric. + +While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached in +swiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, had +faults from which the men with whom I have compared him were more free. +The most prominent of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness, +incompleteness, a want of narrative force, and a weak hold on objective +realities. Even his warmest admirers, if they are sincere critics, will +concede that his verse, taken altogether, is marked by inequality. In +his eager self-abandonment to inspiration, he produced much that is +unsatisfying simply because it is not ripe. There was no defect of power +in him, but a defect of patience; and the final word to be pronounced in +estimating the larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not only +was the poet young; but the fruit of his young mind had been plucked +before it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not care +enough for common things to present them with artistic fulness. He was +intolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with the roundness that +we find in Goethe's work. He flew at the grand, the spacious, the +sublime; and did not always succeed in realizing for his readers what he +had imagined. A certain want of faith in his own powers, fostered by the +extraordinary discouragement under which he had to write, prevented him +from finishing what he began, or from giving that ultimate form of +perfection to his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces like +the "Ode to the West Wind". When a poem was ready, he had it hastily +printed, and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurred +to interrupt his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of these +defects, if we may use this word at all to indicate our sense that +Shelley might by care have been made equal to his highest self, were in +a great measure the correlative of his chief quality--the ideality, of +which I have already spoken. He composed with all his faculties, mental, +emotional, and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of +intense fervour, striving to attain one object, the truest and most +passionate investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed his +ever-quick imagination. The result is that his finest work has more the +stamp of something natural and elemental--the wind, the sea, the depth +of air--than of a mere artistic product. Plato would have said: the +Muses filled this man with sacred madness, and, when he wrote, he was no +longer in his own control. There was, moreover, ever-present in his +nature an effort, an aspiration after a better than the best this world +can show, which prompted him to blend the choicest products of his +thought and fancy with the fairest images borrowed from the earth on +which he lived. He never willingly composed except under the impulse to +body forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the spirit +of the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, this +earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of +inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. But it +cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art should +always be found in them. They have something of the waywardness and +negligence of nature, something of the asymmetreia we admire in the +earlier creations of Greek architecture. That Shelley, acute critic and +profound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and show +himself an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly proved +by "The Cenci" and by "Adonais". The reason why he did not always +observe this method will be understood by those who have studied his +"Defence of Poetry", and learned to sympathize with his impassioned +theory of art. + +Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice to +Shelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are almost +overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meet +in love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him, +and baffling the most eager seeker for the truth. (See Lady Shelley v. +Hogg; Trelawny v. the Shelley family; Peacock v. Lady Shelley; Garnett +v. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, etc., etc.) Through +the turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible to +discern the whole personality of the man. By careful comparison and +refined manipulation of the biographical treasures at our disposal, a +fair portrait of Shelley might still be set before the reader with the +accuracy of a finished picture. That labour of exquisite art and of +devoted love still remains to be accomplished, though in the meantime +Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Memoir is a most valuable instalment. Shelley in his +lifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, +impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, +Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he was +the gentlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had ever +met. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his four +last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, +wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youth +were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, his +character mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Without +losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experience +into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, +he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready to +unfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when life at +last seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, +death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product of +his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them into +something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end. + +If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of waste +excited in us by Shelley's premature absorption into the mystery of the +unknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own "Alastor":-- + + Art and eloquence, + And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain + To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. + It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all + Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit, + Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves + Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, + The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; + But pale despair and cold tranquillity, + Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, + Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. + + + + +THE END. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Percy Bysshe Shelley, by John Addington Symonds + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 4555.txt or 4555.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/5/4555/ + +Produced by Rebecca Trump and Sue Asscher. 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The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. + Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. 1 volume. + +2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves and Turner, + 1876-7. 4 volumes. + +3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W.M. Rossetti. Moxon, + 1870. 2 volumes. + +4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 volumes. + +5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering, + 1878. 2 volumes. + +6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 1 volume. + +7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 volumes. + +8. Shelley's Early Life, by D.F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 1 volume. + +9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder. + +10. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above + cited, Number 3. + +11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G.B. Smith. David Douglas, 1877. + +12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862. + +13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in "Fraser's Magazine," 1858 and 1860. + +14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in "Macmillan's Magazine," + June, 1860. + +15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the "Fortnightly Review," + June, 1878. + +16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W.M. Rossetti, in the "University + Magazine," February and March, 1878. + + + + +SHELLEY. + + + +CHAPTER 1. + +BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. + +It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, +probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning +gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet +the light that shone in them was crescent. That the world should know +Marlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and Mozart, only by the products of their +early manhood, is indeed a cause for lamentation, when we remember what +the long lives of a Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held in +reserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade +ourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of men +untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the +composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his +forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been +known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility +have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow +would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. +There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by +fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has +bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law of +waste that rules inscrutably in nature. + +Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great English +poets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when he +was twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the point of completing his +thirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed the briefest space for the +development of his extraordinary powers. His achievement, perfect as it +is in some poetic qualities, remains so immature and incomplete that no +conjecture can be hazarded about his future. Byron lived longer, and +produced more than his brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when his +genius was still ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations" were +issuing like worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we have +perhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have +equalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's +early death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by +a mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, and his aims were +more ambitious than theirs. He therefore needed length of years for +their co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have +the certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wrought +a clear and lucid harmony. + +These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet the +student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost +forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned +with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but +with one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of which +his powers were capable had been accomplished. + +August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history of +English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field +Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy, +was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the +same county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity and +considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary +honours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder +branch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the younger +dating from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather received +this honour through the influence of his friend the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. +Timothy Shelley was born in the year 1753, and in 1791 he married +Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilford, Esquire, a lady of great beauty, +and endowed with fair intellectual ability, though not of a literary +temperament. The first child of this marriage was the poet, named Bysshe +in compliment to his grandfather, the then living head of the family, +and Percy because of some remote connexion with the ducal house of +Northumberland. Four daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret, +and one son, John, who died in the year 1866, were the subsequent issue +of Mr. Timothy Shelley's marriage. In the year 1815, upon the death of +his father, he succeeded to the baronetcy, which passed, after his own +death, to his grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, as the +poet's only surviving son. + +Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region of genealogy, it may +be worth mentioning that Sir Bysshe Shelley by his second marriage with +Miss Elizabeth Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Penshurst, became the +father of five children, the eldest son of whom assumed the name of +Shelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy, and left a son, Philip Charles +Sidney, who was created Lord De l'Isle and Dudley. Such details are not +without a certain value, inasmuch as they prove that the poet, who won +for his ancient and honourable house a fame far more illustrious than +titles can confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal force and +worldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, the +wealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two families, +wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already +distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make +his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in +North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is +also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of +obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the +beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his +will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two English +heiresses; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left it at the +age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000 pounds in the English Funds, +together with estates worth 20,000 pounds a year to his descendents. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the English +squirearchy; but never assuredly did the old tale of the swan hatched +with the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustration +than in this case. Gifted with the untameable individuality of genius, +and bent on piercing to the very truth beneath all shams and fictions +woven by society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstances +of his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated warfare with the +world's opinion. His too frequent tirades against:-- + + The Queen of Slaves, + The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, + Custom,-- + +owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear upon +him by relatives who prized their position in society, their wealth, and +the observance of conventional decencies, above all other things. + +Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man; but he was +everything which the poet's father ought not to have been. As member for +the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his party; and that party +looked to nothing beyond the interests of the gentry and the pleasure of +the Duke of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficial +imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect in +his familiar correspondence, though his letters show that he lacked the +rudiments alike of logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might be +summed up in Clough's epigram:-- + + At church on Sunday to attend + Will serve to keep the world your friend. + +His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be gathered +from his telling his eldest son that he would never pardon a +mesalliance, but would provide for as many illegitimate children as he +chose to have. For the rest, he appears to have been a fairly good +landlord, and a not unkind father, sociable and hospitable, somewhat +vain and occasionally odd in manner, but qualified for passing muster +with the country gentlemen around him. In the capacity to understand a +nature which deviated from the ordinary type so remarkably as Shelley's, +he was utterly deficient; and perhaps we ought to regard it as his +misfortune that fate made him the father of a man who was among the +greatest portents of originality and unconventionality that this century +has seen. Toward an ordinary English youth, ready to sow his wild oats +at college, and willing to settle at the proper age and take his place +upon the bench of magistrates, Sir Timothy Shelley would have shown +himself an indulgent father; and it must be conceded by the poet's +biographer that if Percy Bysshe had but displayed tact and consideration +on his side, many of the misfortunes which signalized his relations to +his father would have been avoided. + +Shelley passed his childhood at Field Place, and when he was about six +years old began to be taught, together with his sisters, by Mr. Edwards, +a clergyman who lived at Warnham. What is recorded of these early years +we owe to the invaluable communications of his sister Hellen. The +difference of age between her and her brother Bysshe obliges us to refer +her recollections to a somewhat later period--probably to the holidays +he spent away from Sion House and Eton. Still, since they introduce us +to the domestic life of his then loved home, it may be proper to make +quotations from them in this place. Miss Shelley tells us her brother +"would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kind +of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was rebuked, was running +a stick through the ceiling of a low passage to find some new chamber, +which could be made effective for some flights of his vivid +imagination." He was very much attached to his sisters, and used to +entertain them with stories, in which "an alchemist, old and grey, with +a long beard," who was supposed to abide mysteriously in the garret of +Field Place, played a prominent part. "Another favourite theme was the +'Great Tortoise,' that lived in Warnham Pond; and any unwonted noise was +accounted for by the presence of this great beast, which was made into +the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his +friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, +no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited +the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable +serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived +long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that +Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection +of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please +his sisters were grotesque, and some both perilous and terrifying. "We +dressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, +and Bysshe would take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable +liquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." +Shelley often took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge and +fence, carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or their +fatigue required it. At this time "his figure was slight and +beautiful,--his hands were models, and his feet are treading the earth +again in one of his race; his eyes too have descended in their wild +fixed beauty to the same person. As a child, I have heard that his skin +was like snow, and bright ringlets covered his head." Here is a little +picture which brings the boy vividly before our eyes: "Bysshe ordered +clothes according to his own fancy at Eton, and the beautifully fitting +silk pantaloons, as he stood as almost all men and boys do, with their +coat-tails near the fire, excited my silent though excessive +admiration." + +When he was ten years of age, Shelley went to school at Sion house, +Brentford, an academy kept by Dr. Greenlaw, and frequented by the sons +of London tradesmen, who proved but uncongenial companions to his gentle +spirit. It is fortunate for posterity that one of his biographers, his +second cousin Captain Medwin, was his schoolfellow at Sion House; for to +his recollections we owe some details of great value. Medwin tells us +that Shelley learned the classic languages almost by intuition, while he +seemed to be spending his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds as +they sailed across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketches +of fir-trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he was +subject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, he +often lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. His +favourite amusement was novel-reading; and to the many "blue books" from +the Minerva press devoured by him in his boyhood, we may ascribe the +style and tone of his first compositions. For physical sports he showed +no inclination. "He passed among his school-fellows as a strange and +unsocial being; for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and the +other boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of our +prison-court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pace +backwards and forwards--I think I see him now--along the southern wall, +indulging in various vague and undefined ideas, the chaotic elements, if +I may say so, of what afterwards produced so beautiful a world." + +Two of Shelley's most important biographical compositions undoubtedly +refer to this period of his boyhood. The first is the passage in the +Prelude to "Laon and Cythna" which describes his suffering among the +unsympathetic inmates of a school:-- + + Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first + The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. + I do remember well the hour which burst + My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, + When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, + And wept, I knew not why; until there rose + From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! + Were but one echo from a world of woes-- + The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. + + And then I clasped my hands and looked around-- + --But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, + Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground-- + So without shame I spake:--"I will be wise, + And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies + Such power, for I grow weary to behold + The selfish and the strong still tyrannize + Without reproach or check." I then controlled + My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. + + And from that hour did I with earnest thought + Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, + Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught + I cared to learn, but from that secret store + Wrought linked armour for my soul, before + It might walk forth to war among mankind. + Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more + Within me, till there came upon my mind + A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. + +The second is a fragment on friendship preserved by Hogg. After defining +that kind of passionate attachment which often precedes love in fervent +natures, he proceeds: "I remember forming an attachment of this kind at +school. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this +took pace; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or +twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a +character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of +human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded +within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, +inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him +since my school-boy days; but either I confound my present recollections +with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and +utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and +winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so +deep, that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from +my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred +sentiments of friendship." How profound was the impression made on his +imagination and his feelings by this early friendship, may again be +gathered from a passage in his note upon the antique group of Bacchus +and Ampelus at Florence. "Look, the figures are walking with a +sauntering and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, as you +may have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, walking in some +grassy spot of the play-ground with that tender friendship for each +other which the age inspires." + +These extracts prove beyond all question that the first contact with the +outer world called into activity two of Shelley's strongest moral +qualities--his hatred of tyranny and brutal force in any form, and his +profound sentiment of friendship. The admiring love of women, which +marked him no less strongly, and which made him second only to +Shakespere in the sympathetic delineation of a noble feminine ideal, had +been already developed by his deep affection for his mother and sisters. +It is said that he could not receive a letter from them without manifest +joy. + +"Shelley," says Medwin, "was at this time tall for his age, slightly and +delicately built, and rather narrow-chested, with a complexion fair and +ruddy, a face rather long than oval. His features, not regularly +handsome, were set off by a profusion of silky brown hair, that curled +naturally. The expression of his countenance was one of exceeding +sweetness and innocence. His blue eyes were very large and prominent. +They were at times, when he was abstracted, as he often was in +contemplation, dull, and as it were, insensible to external objects; at +others they flashed with the fire of intelligence. His voice was soft +and low, but broken in its tones,--when anything much interested him, +harsh and immodulated; and this peculiarity he never lost. He was +naturally calm, but when he heard of or read of some flagrant act of +injustice, oppression, or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks of +horror and indignation were visible in his countenance." + +Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained unaltered +through the short space of life allowed him. Loving, innocent, +sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his companions, strongly +moralized after a peculiar and inborn type of excellence, drawing his +inspirations from Nature and from his own soul in solitude, Shelley +passed across the stage of this world, attended by a splendid vision +which sustained him at a perilous height above the kindly race of men. +The penalty of this isolation he suffered in many painful episodes. The +reward he reaped in a measure of more authentic prophecy, and in a +nobler realization of his best self, than could be claimed by any of his +immediate contemporaries. + + + +CHAPTER 2. + +ETON AND OXFORD. + +In 1805 Shelley went from Sion House to Eton. At this time Dr. Keate was +headmaster and Shelley's tutor was a Mr. Bethel, "one of the dullest men +in the establishment." At Eton Shelley was not popular either with his +teachers or his elder school-fellows, although the boys of his own age +are said to have adored him. "He was all passion," writes Mrs. Shelley; +"passionate in his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love:" and +this vehemence of temperament he displayed by organizing a rebellion +against fagging, which no doubt won for him the applause of his juniors +and equals. It was not to be expected that a lad intolerant of rule and +disregardful of restriction, who neglected punctuality in the +performance of his exercises, while he spent his leisure in translating +half of Pliny's history, should win the approbation of pedagogues. At +the same time the inspired opponent of the fagging system, the scorner +of games and muscular amusements, could not hope to find much favour +with such martinets of juvenile convention as a public school is wont to +breed. At Eton, as elsewhere, Shelley's uncompromising spirit brought +him into inconvenient contact with a world of vulgar usage, while his +lively fancy invested the commonplaces of reality with dark hues +borrowed from his own imagination. Mrs. Shelley says of him, "Tamed by +affection, but unconquered by blows, what chance was there that Shelley +should be happy at a public school?" This sentence probably contains the +pith of what he afterwards remembered of his own school life, and there +is no doubt that a nature like his, at once loving and high-spirited, +had much to suffer. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that at Eton +there were any serious blows to bear, or to assume that laws of love +which might have led a spirit so gentle as Shelley's, were adapted to +the common stuff of which the English boy is formed. The latter mistake +Shelley made continually throughout his youth; and only the advance of +years tempered his passionate enthusiasm into a sober zeal for the +improvement of mankind by rational methods. We may also trace at this +early epoch of his life that untamed intellectual ambition--that neglect +of the immediate and detailed for the transcendental and +universal--which was a marked characteristic of his genius, leading him +to fly at the highest while he overleaped the facts of ordinary human +life. "From his earliest years," says Mrs. Shelley, "all his amusements +and occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the term, lawless +nature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a boy, but as a man; +and so with manly powers and childish wit, he dared and achieved +attempts that none of his comrades could even have conceived. His +understanding and the early development of imagination never permitted +him to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyranny +prevented him from paying due attention to his school duties. But he was +always actively employed; and although his endeavours were prosecuted +with puerile precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantly +directed to those great objects which have employed the thoughts of the +greatest among men; and though his studies were not followed up +according to school discipline, they were not the less diligently +applied to." This high-soaring ambition was the source both of his +weakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with the +world of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to extort her +secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the philanthropist +who dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence, and the poet who +invented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of grandeur too colossal to be +animated with dramatic life. + +A strong interest in experimental science had been already excited in +him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grew +into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of the +simpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure--the more so +perhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk of +an old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he was +amusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room and +received a severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During the +holidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. "His own +hands and clothes," says Miss Shelley, "were constantly stained and +corroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable that some day the +house would be burned down, or some serious mischief happen to himself +or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for science +Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first +conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost +wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be +wrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was +fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. +When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it gave +him the acutest pleasure: and this is highly characteristic of the +genius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the life of life +withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he seems to have +delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar microscope, and +mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without taking the trouble +to study any of its branches systematically. In his later years he +abandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence of them occurs in +that most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter to Maria +Gisborne." + +While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not +wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a +correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his +contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the +latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the +rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at a +glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was no +less astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae were +indeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we may +trace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also his +frequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artistic +execution. + +That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may be +gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his Oxford +rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was frequently +visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that he spend the +40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi," on a farewell supper +to eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be quoted from his +own poem, the "Boat on the Serchio," to prove that he did not entertain +a merely disagreeable memory of his school life. (Forman's edition, +volume 4 page 115.) Yet the general experience of Eton must have been +painful; and it is sad to read of this gentle and pure spirit being +goaded by his coarser comrades into fury, or coaxed to curse his father +and the king for their amusement. It may be worth mentioning that he was +called "the Atheist" at Eton; and though Hogg explains this by saying +that "the Atheist" was an official character among the boys, selected +from time to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is not +improbable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for him +a title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyish +incantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms would +scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tinged +his imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the +"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes the following reference to +circumstances which might otherwise be trivial:-- + + While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped + Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, + And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing + Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. + I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, + I was not heard, I saw them not-- + When, musing deeply on the lot + Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing + All vital things that wake to bring + News of birds and blossoming,-- + Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; + I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! + +Among the Eton tutors was one whose name will always be revered by +Shelley's worshippers; for he alone discerned the rare gifts of the +strange and solitary boy, and Shelley loved him. Dr. Lind was an old +man, a physician, and a student of chemistry. Shelley spent long hours +at his house, conversing with him, and receiving such instruction in +philosophy and science as the grey-haired scholar could impart. The +affection which united them must have been of no common strength or +quality; for when Shelley lay ill of a fever at Field Place, and had +conceived the probably ill-founded notion that his father intended to +place him in a mad-house, he managed to convey a message to his friend +at Eton, on the receipt of which Dr. Lind travelled to Horsham, and by +his sympathy and skill restored the sick boy's confidence. It may +incidentally be pointed out that this story, credited as true by Lady +Shelley in her Memorials, shows how early an estrangement had begun +between the poet and his father. We look, moreover, vainly for that +mother's influence which might have been so beneficial to the boy in +whom "love and life were twins, born at one birth." From Dr. Lind +Shelley not only received encouragement to pursue his chemical studies; +but he also acquired the habit of corresponding with persons unknown to +him, whose opinions he might be anxious to discover or dispute. This +habit, as we shall see in the sequel, determined Shelley's fate on two +important occasions of his life. In return for the help extended to him +at Eton, Shelley conferred undying fame on Dr. Lind; the characters of +Zonaras in "Prince Athanase," and of the hermit in "Laon and Cythna," +are portraits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend. + +The months which elapsed between Eton and Oxford were an important +period in Shelley's life. At this time a boyish liking for his cousin, +Harriet Grove, ripened into real attachment; and though there was +perhaps no formal engagement between them, the parents on both sides +looked with approval on their love. What it concerns us to know about +this early passion, is given in a letter from a brother of Miss Grove. +"Bysshe was at that time (just after leaving Eton) more attached to my +sister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlight +walks we four had at Strode and also at St. Irving's; that, I think, was +the name of the place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham." For some +time after the date mentioned in this letter, Shelley and Miss Grove +kept up an active correspondence; but the views he expressed on +speculative subjects soon began to alarm her. She consulted her mother +and her father, and the engagement was broken off. The final separation +does not seem to have taken place until the date of Shelley's expulsion +from Oxford; and not the least cruel of the pangs he had to suffer at +that period, was the loss of one to whom he had given his whole heart +unreservedly. The memory of Miss Grove long continued to haunt his +imagination, nor is there much doubt that his first unhappy marriage was +contracted while the wound remained unhealed. The name of Harriet +Westbrook and something in her face reminded him of Harriet Grove; it is +even still uncertain to which Harriet the dedication of Queen Mab is +addressed. (See Medwin, volume 1 page 68.) + +In his childhood Shelley scribbled verses with fluency by no means +unusual in the case of forward boys; and we have seen that at Sion House +he greedily devoured the sentimental novels of the day. His favourite +poets at the time of which I am now writing, were Monk Lewis and +Southey; his favourite books in prose were romances by Mrs. Radcliffe +and Godwin. He now began to yearn for fame and publicity. Miss Shelley +speaks of a play written by her brother and her sister Elizabeth, which +was sent to Matthews the comedian, and courteously returned as unfit for +acting. She also mentions a little volume of her own verses, which the +boy had printed with the tell-tale name of "H-ll-n Sh-ll-y" on the +title-page. Medwin gives a long account of a poem on the story of the +Wandering Jew, composed by him in concert with Shelley during the winter +of 1809-1810. They sent the manuscript to Thomas Campbell, who returned +it with the observation that it contained but two good lines:-- + + It seemed as if an angel's sigh + Had breathed the plaintive symphony. + +Undeterred by this adverse criticism, Shelley subsequently offered "The +Wandering Jew" to two publishers, Messrs. Ballantyne and Co. of +Edinburgh, and Mr. Stockdale of Pall Mall; but it remained in MS. at +Edinburgh till 1831, when a portion was printed in "Fraser's Magazine." + +Just before leaving Eton he finished a novel of "Zastrozzi", which some +critics trace to its source in "Zofloya the Moor," perused by him at +Sion House. The most astonishing fact about this incoherent medley of +mad sentiment is that it served to furnish forth the 40-pound Eton +supper already spoken of, that it was duly ushered into the world of +letters by Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson on the 5th of June, 1810, and +that it was seriously reviewed. The dates of Shelley's publications now +come fast and frequent. In the late summer of 1810 he introduced himself +to Mr. J.J. Stockdale, the then fashionable publisher of poems and +romances, at his house of business in Pall Mall. With characteristic +impetuosity the young author implored assistance in a difficulty. He had +commissioned a printer in Horsham to strike off the astounding number of +1480 copies of a volume of poems; and he had no money to pay the +printer's bill. Would Stockdale help him out of this dilemma, by taking +up the quires and duly ushering the book into the world? Throughout his +life Shelley exercised a wonderful fascination over the people with whom +he came in contact, and almost always won his way with them as much by +personal charm as by determined and impassioned will. Accordingly on +this occasion Stockdale proved accommodating. The Horsham printer was +somehow satisfied; and on the 17th of September, 1810, the little book +came out with the title of "Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire." This +volume has disappeared; and much fruitless conjecture has been expended +upon the question of Shelley's collaborator in his juvenile attempt. +Cazire stands for some one; probably it is meant to represent a woman's +name, and that woman may have been either Elizabeth Shelley or Harriet +Grove. The "Original Poetry" had only been launched a week, when +Stockdale discovered on a closer inspection of the book that it +contained some verses well known to the world as the production of M.G. +Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole edition +was suppressed--not, however, before about one hundred copies had passed +into circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty +larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied +Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to +break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issued +Shelley's second novel from his press, and entered into negotiations +with him for the publication of more poetry. The new romance was named +"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian." This tale, no less unreadable than +"Zastrozzi," and even more chaotic in its plan, contained a good deal of +poetry, which has been incorporated in the most recent editions of +Shelley's works. A certain interest attaches to it as the first known +link between Shelley and William Godwin, for it was composed under the +influence of the latter's novel, "St. Leon." The title, moreover, +carries us back to those moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded to +above. Shelley's earliest attempts in literature have but little value +for the student of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate the +psychology of genius and its wayward growth. Their intrinsic merit is +almost less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusal +the course which the future poet of "The Cenci" and "Epipsychidion" was +to take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great +qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want +of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But +while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious +critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering +how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a +germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley +discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the "Hours +of Idleness." + +In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner of +University College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made the +acquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in his +subsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, if +not in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellous +youth. Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament and +tastes. His feet were always planted on the earth, while Shelley flew +aloft to heaven with singing robes around him, or the mantel of the +prophet on his shoulders. (He told Trelawny that he had been attracted +to Shelley simply by his "rare talents as a scholar;" and Trelawny has +recorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend was faithful, +in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. This +testimony is extremely valuable.) Hogg had much of the cynic in his +nature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist. +Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to +eminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a +staunch Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine +poet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preserved +for us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable for +the vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate Shelley's +course of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. No novel +indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate and +satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of +the student life enjoyed together for a few short months by the +inseparable friends. To make extracts from a masterpiece of such +consummate workmanship is almost painful. Future biographers of Shelley, +writing on a scale adequate to the greatness of their subject, will be +content to lay their pens down for a season at this point, and let Hogg +tell the tale in his own wayward but inimitable fashion. I must confine +myself to a few quotations and a barren abstract, referring my readers +to the ever-memorable pages 48--286 of Hogg's first volume, for the life +that cannot be transferred to these. + +"At the commencement of Michaelmas term," says this biographer, "that +is, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened one day to sit +next to a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall. His +figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at our +table, where all were very young. He seemed thoughtful and absent. He +ate little, and had no acquaintance with any one." The two young men +began a conversation, which turned upon the respective merits of German +and Italian poetry, a subject they neither of them knew anything about. +After dinner it was continued in Hogg's rooms, where Shelley soon led +the talk to his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but a +slight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to +examine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very +extraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was +slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. +He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. +His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode +of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were +abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more +frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost +feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by +exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. +His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were, in fact, +unusually small; yet the last APPEARED of a remarkable bulk, for his +hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if +I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with +his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks +unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times when +it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in +costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our +soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not +symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the +whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an +enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met +with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less +beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a +gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of +profound religious veneration, that characterizes the best works, and +chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls), of +the great masters of Florence and of Rome. I recognized the very +peculiar expression in these wonderful productions long afterwards, and +with a satisfaction mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the +decease of him in whose countenance I had first observed it." + +In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the impression +of Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated by +Trelawny's recollections of a later date. "There were many striking +contrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the most +remarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness with +agility--of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in stepping +across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a +smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable +manner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase +of an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper +steps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally to disturb the +composure of a well-bred footman; on the contrary, he would often glide +without collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerring +dexterity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the most +arduous and uncertain ways." + +This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the descriptions +furnished by other biographers, who had the privilege of Shelley's +friendship. His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair +was brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled +face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted on +all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is +reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, +although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity +of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal +fascination. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley's +voice "was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh and +discordant." This is strongly stated; but, though the terms are +certainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first +impression made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable mass of +convergent testimony to the fact that Shelley's voice was high pitched, +and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream. The epithets +"shrill," "piercing," "penetrating," frequently recur in the +descriptions given of it. At the same time its quality seems to have +been less dissonant than thrilling; there is abundance of evidence to +prove that he could modulate it exquisitely in the reading of poetry, +and its tone proved no obstacle to the persuasive charms of his +eloquence in conversation. Like all finely tempered natures, he vibrated +in harmony with the subjects of his thought. Excitement made his +utterance shrill and sharp. Deep feeling of the sense of beauty lowered +its tone to richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy with +his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This +peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different +sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of +his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations +of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and +unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights +of human thought. + +The acquaintance begun that October evening soon ripened into close +friendship. Shelley and Hogg from this time forward spent a large part +of their days and nights together in common studies, walks and +conversations. It was their habit to pass the morning, each in his own +rooms, absorbed in private reading. At one o'clock they met and lunched, +and then started for long rambles in the country. Shelley frequently +carried pistols with him upon these occasions, and would stop to fix his +father's franks upon convenient trees and shoot at them. The practice of +pistol shooting, adopted so early in life, was afterwards one of his +favourite amusements in the company of Byron. Hogg says that in his use +of fire-arms he was extraordinarily careless. "How often have I lamented +that Nature, which so rarely bestows upon the world a creature endowed +with such marvellous talents, ungraciously rendered the gift less +precious by implanting a fatal taste for perilous recreations, and a +thoughtlessness in the pursuit of them, that often caused his existence +from one day to another to seem in itself miraculous." On their return +from these excursions the two friends, neither of whom cared for dining +in the College Hall, drank tea and supped together, Shelley's rooms +being generally chosen as the scene of their symposia. + +These rooms are described as a perfect palace of confusion--chaos on +chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, +unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It was +perilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less perchance a +seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at the +bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to cut the lids of wooden +boxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for in +his vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what he +found convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talked +and read until late in the night. Their chief studies at this time were +in Locke and Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias toward +metaphysical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read the +School Logic with avidity, and practised himself without intermission in +dialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed by other +testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of the essential +bearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended to personal or +captious arguments, and was Socratically bent on following the dialogue +wherever it might lead, without regard for consequences. Plato was +another of their favourite authors; but Hogg expressly tells us that +they only approached the divine philosopher through the medium of +translations. It was not until a later period that Shelley studied his +dialogues in the original: but the substance of them, seen through Mdme. +Dacier's version, acted powerfully on the poet's sympathetic intellect. +In fact, although at the time he had adopted the conclusions of +materialism, he was at heart all through his life an idealist. Therefore +the mixture of the poet and the sage in Plato fascinated him. The +doctrine of anamnesis, which offers so strange a vista to speculative +reverie, by its suggestion of an earlier existence in which our +knowledge was acquired, took a strong hold upon his imagination; he +would stop in the streets to gaze wistfully at babies, wondering whether +their newly imprisoned souls were not replete with the wisdom stored up +in a previous life. + +In the acquisition of knowledge he was then as ever unrelaxing. "No +student ever read more assiduously. He was to be found, book in hand, at +all hours; reading in season and out of season; at table, in bed, and +especially during a walk; not only in the quiet country, and in retired +paths; not only at Oxford, in the public walks, and High Street, but in +the most crowded thoroughfares of London. Nor was he less absorbed by +the volume that was open before him, in Cheapside, in Cranbourne Alley, +or in Bond Street, than in a lonely lane, or a secluded library. +Sometimes a vulgar fellow would attempt to insult or annoy the eccentric +student in passing. Shelley always avoided the malignant interruption by +stepping aside with his vast and quiet agility." And again:--"I never +beheld eyes that devoured the pages more voraciously than his; I am +convinced that two-thirds of the period of the day and night were often +employed in reading. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that out of +twenty-four hours, he frequently read sixteen. At Oxford, his diligence +in this respect was exemplary, but it greatly increased afterwards, and +I sometimes thought that he carried it to a pernicious excess: I am +sure, at least, that I was unable to keep pace with him." With Shelley +study was a passion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entrance +into a thrice-hallowed sanctuary. "The irreverent many cannot comprehend +the awe--the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine the +enthusiasm--nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of things +visible to the bodily eye, express the mighty emotion that inwardly +agitated him, when he approached, for the first time, a volume which he +believed to be replete with the recondite and mystic philosophy of +antiquity: his cheeks glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frame +trembled, and his entire attention was immediately swallowed up in the +depths of contemplation. The rapid and vigorous conversion of his soul +to intellect can only be compared with the instantaneous ignition and +combustion, which dazzle the sight, when a bundle of dry reeds, or other +light inflammable substance, is thrown upon a fire already rich with +accumulated heat." + +As at Eton, so at Oxford, Shelley refused to keep the beaten track of +prescribed studies, or to run in ordinary grooves of thought. The mere +fact that Aristotle was a duty, seems to have disgusted him with the +author of the Organon, from whom, had his works been prohibited to +undergraduates, he would probably have been eager to learn much. For +mathematics and jurisprudence he evinced a marked distaste. The common +business of the English Parliament had no attraction for him, and he +read few newspapers. While his mind was keenly interested in great +political questions, he could not endure the trivial treatment of them +in the daily press, and cared far more for principles than for the +incidents of party warfare. Here again he showed that impatience of +detail, and that audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the source +of both his weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion of +a Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had been +suggested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, he +could never bring himself to mix with the rabble of the House. It is +none the less true, however, that he entertained some vague notion of +eventually succeeding to his father's seat. + +Combined with his eager intellectual activity, there was something +intermittent and fitful in the working of his mental faculties. Hogg, in +particular, mentions one of his habits in a famous passage, which, since +it brings the two friends vividly before us, may here be quoted. "I was +enable to continue my studies afterwards in the evening, in consequence +of a very remarkable peculiarity. My young and energetic friend was then +overcome by extreme drowsiness, which speedily and completely vanquished +him; he would sleep from two to four hours, often so soundly that his +slumbers resembled a deep lethargy; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, +but more commonly stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like a +cat; and his little round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that I +used to wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposed +some shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect; for the sleeper +usually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot where +the fire glowed the brightest. His torpor was generally profound, but he +would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At +six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of a most +animated narrative, or of earnest discussion; and he would lie buried in +entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he +would suddenly start up, and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, and +passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once +into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own +composition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energy +that were often quite painful." + +Shelley's moral qualities are described with no less enthusiasm than his +intellectual and physical beauty by the friend from whom I have already +drawn so largely. Love was the root and basis of his nature: this love, +first developed as domestic affection, next as friendship, then as a +youth's passion, now began to shine with steady lustre as an +all-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is something inevitably +chilling in the words "benevolence" and "philanthropy." A disillusioned +world is inclined to look with languid approbation on the former, and to +disbelieve in the latter. Therefore I will not use them to describe that +intense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which throughout his life +led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of +his fellow-creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions of +humanity made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds of +unnumbered charities. I will rather collect from the page of his +friend's biography a few passages recording the first impression of his +character, the memory of which may be carried by the reader through the +following brief record of his singular career:-- + +"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years has +shown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation of +knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that +marked them, and beamed forth in the whole deportment of that +extraordinary boy, are not less astonishing than they would have been if +the whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for these +high qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel." + +"In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more completely +developed than in Shelley; in no being was the perception of right and +of wrong more acute. + +"As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of +his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life +most conspicuous." + +"I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the +principle of veneration was so strong." + +"I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens +of gentlemen; but with all due deference for those admirable persons +(may my candour and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm that +Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never +wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various +observances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility." + +"Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant than would +appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at a +coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest, or uncleanly; +in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness +pre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted by +exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, and +perhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness--possibly the more because he +was himself utterly incapable of pleasantry." + +"I could never discern in him any more than two fixed principles. The +first was a strong irrepressible love of liberty; of liberty in the +abstract, and somewhat after the pattern of the ancient republics, +without reference to the English constitution, respecting which he knew +little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was an +equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more especially +of religious opinions; of toleration, complete, entire, universal, +unlimited; and, as a deduction and corollary from which latter +principle, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, +public or private." + +The testimony in the foregoing extracts as to Shelley's purity and +elevation of moral character is all the stronger, because it is given by +a man not over-inclined to praise, and of a temperament as unlike the +poet's as possible. If we were to look only upon this side of his +portrait, we should indeed be almost forced to use the language of his +most enthusiastic worshippers, and call him an archangel. But it must be +admitted that, though so pure and gentle and exalted, Shelley's virtues +were marred by his eccentricity, by something at times approaching +madness, which paralyzed his efficiency by placing him in a glaringly +false relation to some of the best men in the world around him. He +possessed certain good qualities in excess; for, though it sounds +paradoxical, it is none the less true that a man may be too tolerant, +too fond of liberty: and it was precisely the extravagance of these +virtues in Shelley which drove him into acts and utterances so +antagonistic to society as to be intolerable. + +Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. His +genius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those double +stars which dart blue and red rays of light: for it was governed by two +luminaries, poetry and metaphysics; and at this time the latter seems to +have been in the ascendant. It is, however, interesting to learn that he +read and re-read Landor's "Gebir"--stronger meat than either Southey's +epics or the ghost-lyrics of Monk Lewis. Hogg found him one day busily +engaged in correcting proofs of some original poems. Shelley asked his +friend what he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might be +possible by a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. +The idea took the young poet's fancy; and the friends between them soon +effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they +became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now +bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the +poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered? +Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George the +Third's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could be +found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited +by an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke no less than the +authors of it. He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; and +before long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. It +sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly +credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It was +indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of +nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the +best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous +Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The name +of the supposititious nephew reminds us of "Original Poems" by Victor +and Cazire, and raises the question whether the poems in that lost +volume may not have partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty. + +Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither so +innocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After leaving +Eton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of corresponding +with distinguished persons whom he did not personally know. Thus we find +him about this time addressing Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. +Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He plied his correspondents with all kinds of +questions; and as the dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, he +now endeavoured to engage them in discussions on philosophical and +religious topics. We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke, +Hume, and the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to +his nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow +nominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard +all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, as +still open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to be +the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, he +passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regard +to Christianity, into an attitude of vehement antagonism. With a view to +securing answers to his missives, he printed a short abstract of Hume's +and other arguments against the existence of a Deity, presented in a +series of propositions, and signed with a mathematically important +"Q.E.D." This document he forwarded to his proposed antagonists, +expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politely +requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious +correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless +severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little +pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its +proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already +described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the +"Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, however, actually +offered for sale. + +A copy of this syllabus reached a Fellow of another college, who made +the Master of the University acquainted with the fact. On the morning of +March 25, 1811, Shelley was sent for to the Senior Common Room, and +asked whether he acknowledged himself to be the author of the obnoxious +pamphlet. On his refusal to answer this question, he was served with a +formal sentence of expulsion duly drawn up and sealed. The college +authorities have been blamed for unfair dealing in this matter. It is +urged that they ought to have proceeded by the legal method of calling +witnesses; and that the sentence was not only out of all proportion to +the offence, but that it ought not to have been executed till persuasion +had been tried. With regard to the former indictment, I do not think +that a young man still in statu pupillari, who refused to purge himself +of what he must have known to be a serious charge, had any reason to +expect from his tutors the formalities of an English court of law. There +is no doubt that the Fellows were satisfied of his being the real +author; else they could not have ventured on so summary a measure as +expulsion. Their question was probably intended to give the culprit an +occasion for apology, of which they foresaw he would not avail himself. +With regard to the second, it is true that Shelley was amenable to +kindness, and that gentle and wise treatment from men whom he respected +might possibly have brought him to retract his syllabus. But it must be +remembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart; and they +were probably aware of this. He was a dexterous, impassioned reasoner, +whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. During +his short period of residence, moreover, he had not shown himself so +tractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, who prefer +conformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely that they were not +averse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous to the peace of their +society; and now they had a good occasion. Nor was it to be expected +that the champion and apostle of Atheism--and Shelley was certainly +both, in spite of Hogg's attempts to tone down the purpose of his +document--should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat +livings and ecclesiastical dignities. Real blame, however, attaches to +these men: first, for their dulness to discern Shelley's amiable +qualities; and, secondly, for the prejudgment of the case implied in the +immediate delivery of their sentence. Both Hogg and Shelley accused +them, besides, of a gross brutality, which was, to say the least, +unseemly on so serious an occasion. At the beginning of this century the +learning and the manners of Oxford dons were at a low ebb; and the +Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, +ignorantly but after their own kind, in this matter of Shelley's +expulsion. $Non ragionem di lor, ma guarda e passa. Hogg, who stood by +his friend manfully at this crisis, and dared the authorities to deal +with him as they had dealt with Shelley, adding that they had just as +much real proof to act upon in his case, and intimating his intention of +returning the same answer as to the authorship of the pamphlet, was +likewise expelled. The two friends left Oxford together by coach on the +morning of the 26th of March. + +Shelley felt his expulsion acutely. At Oxford he had enjoyed the +opportunities of private reading which the University afforded in those +days of sleepy studies and innocuous examinations. He delighted in the +security of his "oak," and above all things he found pleasure in the +society of his one chosen friend. He was now obliged to exchange these +good things for the tumult and discomfort of London. His father, after +clumsily attempting compromises, had forbidden his return to Field +Place. The whole fabric of his former life was broken up. The last hope +of renewing his engagement with his cousin had to be abandoned. His +pecuniary position was precarious, and in a short time he was destined +to lose the one friend who had so generously shared his fate. Yet the +notion of recovering his position as a student in one of our great +Universities, of softening his father's indignation, or of ameliorating +his present circumstances by the least concession, never seems to have +occurred to him. He had suffered in the cause of truth and liberty, and +he willingly accepted his martyrdom for conscience' sake. + + + +CHAPTER 3. + +LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE. + +It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and analyse +the substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardinal +characteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams and +conventions, which passed too easily into impatient rejection of +established forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold of +squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that then +passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the opposite +pole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsiderate +negation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance, +his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logical +sincerity, combined to make him the Quixotic champion of extreme +opinions. He was too fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend his +judgment, too convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, to +mature his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, he +hoped to take the fortresses of "Anarch Custom" by storm at the first +assault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, Laon or Lionel, +whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of despotism, as the sun +thaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl the +glove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face--to sow the "Necessity of +Atheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his +poetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society must +learn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted with +a touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, +he strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crust +of dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to have +occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches that +conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away the +weft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imagination +there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, that +behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal City +of the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures were +certain to be equally fortunate. + +Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the blended +truths and falsehoods through which the mind of man must gradually win +its way from the obscurity of myths into the clearness of positive +knowledge, for ever toiling and for ever foiled, and forced to content +itself with the increasing consciousness of limitations. Brimming over +with love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with the conditions +under which they actually think and feel. Could he but dethrone the +Anarch Custom, the millennium, he argued, would immediately arrive; nor +did he stop to think how different was the fibre of his own soul from +that of the unnumbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of what +he recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified +experience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a +saving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no place +in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising, +shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuries +of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survived +the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, and +who have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehend +the vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley +in his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital +faith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible--faith +in the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel +of liberty, fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature; +faith in a love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibility of +man; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms; faith +in affection as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. The +man who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word an +Atheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced his hatred +of a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of kings and priests +for the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. As he told his friend +Trelawny, he used the word Atheism "to express his abhorrence of +superstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defiance +of injustice." But Shelley believed too much to be consistently +agnostic. He believed so firmly and intensely in his own religion--a +kind of passionate positivism, a creed which seemed to have no God +because it was all God--that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy +accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break +through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an +Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received +conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of +cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was +an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving +the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless +utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual +heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too +religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied. + +The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which attaches +to all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of convention, and +enthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was marred, however, +by extravagance, crudity, and presumption. Much that he would fain have +destroyed because he found it customary, was solid, true, and +beneficial. Much that he thought it desirable to substitute, was +visionary, hollow, and pernicious. He lacked the touchstone of mature +philosophy, whereby to separate the pinchbeck from the gold of social +usage; and in his intense enthusiasm he lost his hold on common sense, +which might have saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. +The positive side of his creed remains precious, not because it was +logical, or scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal, +fervently felt, and penetrated with the whole life-force of an +incomparable nature. Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon his +path amid the glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. The form the +seal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was not +born to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort. + + Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, + Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza. + +These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, +when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his +confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was +overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without +damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent +speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, +there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might have +shone that light of aspiration which during his turbid youth burned +somewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the smoke of mere +rebelliousness and contradiction. + +Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, soon +after their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: "it reminded +him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom." He was further fascinated by +a gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and grapes, which adorned the +parlour; and vowed that he would stay there for ever. "For ever," was a +word often upon Shelley's lips in the course of his chequered life; and +yet few men have been subject to so many sudden changes through the +buffetings of fortune from without and the inconstancy of their own +purpose, than he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace and +note with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of his +innumerable temporary residences. A month had not elapsed before Hogg +left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelley +abode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, a +bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poetic +imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer." + +The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but not +unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy +Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from +the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his +intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for him +by his father. For Paley's, or as Mr. Shelley called him "Palley's," +Evidences he expressed unbounded contempt. The breach between them +gradually widened. Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect of +cutting off supplies; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustained +himself by a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley's +last and best biographer, Mr. W.M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of the +poet's behaviour as a son. Shelley did not treat his father with the +common consideration due from youth to age; and the only instances of +unpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes of +his conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was really +more unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling from +the realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of his +father amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicions +with regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so +just and gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation, +whether by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by a +gradually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insoluble +problem. We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his father +so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on one +occasion, but that, while at Eton he had already become possessed by a +dark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr. +Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expected +monstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman was +nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than once +occurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in his +history, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed +itself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process of +recovery. But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof to +be more than passingly alluded to. + +At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buy +food. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to support +him: and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school on +Clapham Common. It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyranny +displayed itself on two occasions. "One day," writes Miss Hellen +Shelley, "his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one of +our throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour. He expressed +great disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sisters +should be so punished. Another time he found me, I think, in an iron +collar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my +opinion. It was not worn as a punishment, but because I POKED; but +Bysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be +discontinued immediately." The acquaintance which he now made with one +of his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most important +results. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, +1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably +good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful +brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the +daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named +"Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, +called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant +hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. +Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a +mother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father, +welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless +for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family's +displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a +baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should +look upon him with disfavour. + +Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning's school and +at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he +expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his +theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the +disinterested and the free." At first she seems to have been horrified +at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not +overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an +evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had +the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not +seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the +absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society. +Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious +accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to +rouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the +seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has been +able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was +so irksome that she contemplated suicide. + +During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more than usually +erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. In +the month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father. +He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made +him of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was +instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spent +some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, +Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one +flying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North +Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw +the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much +preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between his +old affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest in +Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriage +between his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written to +Hogg at this period (volume 1 pages 387-418) are exceedingly important +and interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings +and the almost morbid excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily so +badly edited, whether designedly or by accident, that it would be +dangerous to draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, they +raise injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a proper +assignment of dates and explanation. + +Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plunged +him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest +moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer +with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate +juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of +Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet +Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in +their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT in +love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." +He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before +you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly come +to York, but HARRIET WESTBROOK will decide whether now or in three +weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by +endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice: +resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify +Mr. W. in vain! And in consequence of my advice SHE has thrown herself +upon MY protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a +distinction!--I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have I +said? I declare, quite LUDICROUS. I advised her to resist. She wrote to +say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and +threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200 pounds a year; when +we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Gratitude and +admiration, all demand that I should love her FOR EVER. We shall see you +at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am +now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to +me at Graham's, 18 Sackville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently +published by Mr. W.M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, February 1878), +we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her +preceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms. + +It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not deeply in +love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was not +prepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced him to take it; and +fourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having been +ill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful passion, the hatred +of tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions at +defiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidence +called forth his gratitude. Her choice of him for a protector flattered +him: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance a +outrance. There are many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope with +Harriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and +unsophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love. + +In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together by +Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once expresses the +utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge of +contracting marriage with a woman whom he did not passionately love, and +who had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing to +observe that even Shelley, fearless and uncompromising as he was in +conduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he so +eloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness was +honourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and in his +tender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon his +generosity. (See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hogg 2 page 63) for +another defence of his conduct. "We agreed," etc.) + +"My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date August 15, 1811, +from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his +elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself. +How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. In my leisure moments for +thought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered the +important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of +love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial +souls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of +power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of +impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice +which the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you have +urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that +I suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon to +evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to +matrimony, not from temporizing, but from YOUR arguments; nor, much as I +wish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret the +prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or assertion. No. +The ONE argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the +sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can +give--this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring +submission to your superior intellect." + +Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was morally +justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often +haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with +regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to +argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square +with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, +having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, he +should have gone on denouncing an institution which he recognized in his +own practice. The conclusion seems to be that, though he despised +accepted usage, and would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suit +his heart's desire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practical +good sense were stronger than his theories. + +A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C.H. Grove, gives the details of +Harriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with +Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his +companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one +morning--I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been +September--in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch +Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches +start, when they departed in the northern mail for York." From York the +young couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were +married according to the formalities of the Scotch law. + +Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father's +eyes--a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were at once cut off +from the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainly +dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. Even +Jew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughter +wedded to the heir of several thousands a year, buttoned up his pockets, +either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent, +or because he was not certain about Shelley's expectations. He +afterwards made the Shelleys an allowance of 200 pounds a year, and +early in 1812 Shelley says that he is in receipt of twice that income. +Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to the +extent of the sum above mentioned. + +In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happily +enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined them +early in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity. +Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a fine +voice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed to +read and comment on her favourite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleep +during the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed with +slumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical +paradoxes with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach +Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story by +Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one of +Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one of +Shelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless of +their volume or their cost. These he was wont to leave behind, when the +moment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that, +as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifs +and strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This +quiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in the +neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's +caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind +is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and +that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much +given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in +sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet. + +They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obliged +to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, and +Shelley's programme of life at this period imperatively required the +society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the three +friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's +company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud +novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the +tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune +felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of +lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an +expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some +terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was +anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, +which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. He +suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of +Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediate +allowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail the +land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley +recognized the truth that property is a trust far more than a +possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, +such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn +being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among many +instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the bare +necessities of life, for principle. + +On his return to York, Shelley found a new inmate established in their +lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his +destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet +believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and +propriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned +her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and +her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the +friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an +elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,--dark, bright eyes; +jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it +merited,--almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so +good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of +this woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley had +afterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. "She was older than I +had expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely face +was seamed with the smallpox, and of a dead white, as faces so much +marked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a mass of boiled +rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes were +dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but +coarse; and there was the admired crop--a long crop, much like the tail +of a horse--a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and +constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, +in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial +young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew +Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters +of Judah." + +This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, in +Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with +merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is +necessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet to +fancy that she was a victim of her nerves, how she checked her favourite +studies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to a +Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" was +as often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb were +in her hands. + +The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; but it +is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure +which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. +One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelley +had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, and +refers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation of +Goethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. McCarthy to have been a letter +from the poet to his friend, in confirmation of his opinion. (McCarthy's +Shelley's Early Life, page 117.) However this may be, the precipitation +with which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving Hogg notice of +their resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his biography. + +The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged +lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. Probably +Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men +who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of +its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's +poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if +he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he +was disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making his +acquaintance--a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he +could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than +Southey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does +not seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; and +though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley's +early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. It was not +likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and +the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, +should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain +"Queen Mab" was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to be +monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of +Norfolk's seat, Greystoke. Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip; +but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days +passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results. +The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring +about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, +and his rebellious son. + +Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letter +to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with +unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in +after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention +from romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter dated +to Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, +and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreats +Godwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "if +desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference," if +persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and +truth may commend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is not +unworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity +of Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big +generalities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long +contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelley +but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet Godwin may be +pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to +cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about +philanthropy and universal happiness. Shelley's second letter contains +an extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curious +romance, illustrating his tendency to colour facts with the +hallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think, +no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason to +believe the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton for +disseminating the doctrines of "Political Justice", or that his father +wished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant +regiment, in order that he might prosecute the "Necessity of Atheism" in +his absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family +estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with a +tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind; and this +letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange +occurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his want of +love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposed +upon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only from +teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his own +deliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To Godwin he resigns +himself with the implicit confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatly +struck with this letter. Indeed, he must have been "or God or beast," +like the insensible man in Aristotle's "Ethics", if he could have +resisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured +forth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He +accepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor; and thus began a +connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and +intellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in a +closer personal tie between the two illustrious men. + +In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then engaged in +writing "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French +Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, "My plan is that of resolving to +lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness." Godwin sensibly +replied that Shelley was too young to set himself up as a teacher and +apostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (January +16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we set +off to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed to +Keswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We go +principally TO FORWARD AS MUCH AS WE CAN the Catholic Emancipation." In +a fourth letter (January 28, 1812) he informs Godwin that he has already +prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the +dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that his +contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of great +good. + +It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his attention to +Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irish +journalist and editor of "The Press" newspaper, who had been sentenced +to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between February 7, +1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, +roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, +for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to +nearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255.) The young enthusiast, +who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose +heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to +disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting +field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with +the manuscript of his "Address to the Irish People" (It was published in +Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, page 179.), he set sail with Harriet +and Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle +of Man; and after a very stormy passage, which drove them to the north +coast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, the +party reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. +Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife," +wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings." +Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about this +period, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime, +ruled the household; "Eliza keeps our common stock of money for safety +in some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, +although she gives it out as we want it." This master-touch of +unconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domestic +party now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street. Before a week had +passed, the "Address to the Irish People" had been printed. Shelley and +Harriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task of +distribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemed +insufficient. On the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend in +England: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, +and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundred +yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty public +houses.... Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day to +distribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. His +account corresponds with the multitudes of people who possess them. I +stand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man WHO LOOKS +LIKELY. I throw a book to him." + +A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's +point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the +pamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we +pass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it +is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's +hood of a cloak." + +The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of +their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal +of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to +teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the +last point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the +inculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute, +rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles +which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the +document is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a +population of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and +overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet +himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of +intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy +of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound +reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully +vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks +it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A +few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in +this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they +throw upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make men +good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of +worshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all other +men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do +not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a +heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if +he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much +a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a +rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime +to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete +charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ +principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient.... +Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise +and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he +condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be +terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT +must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts, +which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of +private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses +whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of +animated filth." + +The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory +demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he +based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden +ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in +them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays +the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without +appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided +Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy", +he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the +truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to +force. + +While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin, +Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of +Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association", +and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast +society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the +recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it +must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been +brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions +he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used +these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be +mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the +Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to +be even more so. + +With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a +practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and +compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the +title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the +Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the +country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of +the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the +nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective +opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was +that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their +means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same +method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How +moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved +by the following sentence:--"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I +confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of +public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that +none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in +DIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the +case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown +that Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated. + +While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was +announced for the evening of February 28. It was held in Fishamble +Street Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spoke +for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, +though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman +Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in +conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting +accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the +impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The +dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable +interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an +Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His +youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong +words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to +aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient +agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was +fifteen--four years less than his real age. + +In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty +stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a +history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We +also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at +another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself +by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the +room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two +months' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to the +conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of +Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he +hoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarked +with his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the +police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave +Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly +visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he +quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining +copies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recently +printed edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights", +to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead +custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the +Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through +the proper official channels to the government. After some +correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against +Shelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination. + +The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, +who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourable +notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does not +seem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his most +interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly he +entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned +to know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you in +Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with +Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and +join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the +Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a +wife and such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it +is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss +Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into +it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both +obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the +Shelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon." +Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and +Shelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in +close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to +leave. + +The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace +the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they +settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales. +Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. Here +Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the +"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was, +as Mr. W.M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends +of government and the rights of man,--framed in imitation of two similar +French Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly in +August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy, +page 324.) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it +afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would +traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also +employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the +Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in +the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for +uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the +"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with the +puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to Lord +Ellenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple. +(Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29.) A printer, named D.J. +Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for +publishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistle +is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the +intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny +which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if +impassioned seriousness. + +An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of +handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I +have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:-- + +"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To +attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is +capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to +this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible +definition of his nature. + +"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the +perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities +of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of +corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot +possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable +old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various +passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and +uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are +qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he +disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution +for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers +of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their +fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those +which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors +who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone +act consonantantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in +his name." + +Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The +sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. +Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he +found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving +any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously +described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following +year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established +at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to +Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a +considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with +an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was +always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at +Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his +enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a +heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the +list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he +endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and +even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same +purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal +acquaintance of the Godwin family. + +Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion +caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her +Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that +language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him. +There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and +Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears +that at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted to +conquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to apply +myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but +which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as +a mender of antiquated abuses,--I mean, that record of crimes and +miseries--history." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself +to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him +to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated +with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and +when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy +upon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance, +continued with effort, and finally abandoned. + +In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which +he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears, +from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on +Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early +age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring +of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first +impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which +Shelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was +pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the +public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication +Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to +"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production +which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it +is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all +that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler +discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more +crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political and +domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from +literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to +serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe; +but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's +criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include +"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, +in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its +first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of +art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality. + +The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious +occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. +According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the +event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice +attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he +struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, +and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his +escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his +personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair +was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible +by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a +perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or +whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an +unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of +this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of +no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the +relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne +in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the +parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on +the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the +villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and +confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are +too circumstantial to be lightly set aside. + +On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the +subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at +Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape +from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But +no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the +circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks, +concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion. + +There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment. +In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher, +who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a +short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to +Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as +unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was +left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the +first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London +marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and +decisive of his future. + + + +CHAPTER 4. + +SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. + +Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joined +by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet had +recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while in +hotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had a +projecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, and +catch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a +chary English summer. "He wanted," said one of his female admirers, +"only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young +lady's lark, hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this +period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley's +troubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of German +metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeply +studied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintance +with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. + +The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular; for +Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was an +indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less by +forethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there was +no meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, the table was +supplied with buns, procured by Shelley from the nearest pastry-cook. He +had already abjured animal food and alcohol; and his favourite diet +consisted of pulse or bread, which he ate dry with water, or made into +panada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felt +hungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked +under his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading at +the same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of +movement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any man +should want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint," says Hogg, +"about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice." +This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. During +the last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequent +attacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend, +Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure, +to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat +into the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequently +remained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day +he might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no less +simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat, +and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on his +throat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fields +and gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long, +wild, ragged locks." Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkably +small and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water, +and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs. +Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on their +house-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated +ardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a +blazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the +hour. + +These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a man +as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subject +to the laws of custom in his habits as in his modes of thought, living +literally as the spirit moved him, with a natural nonchalance that has +perhaps been never surpassed. To time and place he was equally +indifferent, and could not be got to remember his engagements. "He took +strange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and +panic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred +engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons +and seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he +quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly +promised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and +importance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain +pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up in +custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be +caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancy +would too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved and +almost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fair +subjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company." If he had been +fairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time pass +unheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by the +spell of his unrivalled eloquence; for wonderful as was his poetry, +those who enjoyed the privilege of converse with him, judged it even +more attractive. "He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, and +eloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were inclining to +yield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when they would +have been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the bewitching charms +of his discourse." + +From Half Moon Street the Shelleys moved into a house in Pimlico; and it +was here, according to Hogg, or at Cooke's Hotel in Dover Street +according to other accounts, that Shelley's first child, Ianthe Eliza, +was born about the end of June, 1813. Harriet did not take much to her +little girl, and gave her over to a wet-nurse, for whom Shelley +conceived a great dislike. That a mother should not nurse her own baby +was no doubt contrary to his principles; and the double presence of the +servant and Eliza, whom he now most cordially detested, made his home +uncomfortable. We have it on excellent authority, that of Mr. Peacock, +that he "was extremely fond of it (the child), and would walk up and +down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it +a song of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his +own coining. His song was Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani." To the +want of sympathy between the father and the mother in this matter of +Ianthe, Mr. Peacock is inclined to attribute the beginning of troubles +in the Shelley household. There is, indeed, no doubt that the revelation +of Harriet's maternal coldness must have been extremely painful to her +husband; and how far she carried her insensibility, may be gathered from +a story told by Hogg about her conduct during an operation performed +upon the child. + +During this period of his sojourn in London, Shelley was again in some +pecuniary difficulties. Yet he indulged Harriet's vanity by setting up a +carriage, in which they afterwards took a hurried journey to Edinburgh +and back. He narrowly escaped a debtor's prison through this act of +extravagance, and by a somewhat ludicrous mistake Hogg was arrested for +the debt due to the coach-maker. His acquaintances were few and +scattered, and he saw nothing of his family. Gradually, however, he +seems to have become a kind of prophet in a coterie of learned ladies. +The views he had propounded in "Queen Mab", his passionate belief in the +perfectibility of man, his vegetarian doctrines, and his readiness to +adopt any new nostrum for the amelioration of his race, endeared him to +all manners of strange people; nor was he deterred by aristocratic +prejudices from frequenting society which proved extremely uncongenial +to Hogg, and of which we have accordingly some caustic sketches from his +pen. His chief friends were a Mrs. Boinville, for whom he conceived an +enthusiastic admiration, and her daughter Cornelia, married to a +vegetarian, Mr. Newton. In order to be near them he had moved to +Pimlico; and his next move, from London to a cottage named High Elms, at +Bracknell, in Berkshire, had the same object. With Godwin and his family +he was also on terms of familiar intercourse. Under the philosopher's +roof in Skinner Street there was now gathered a group of miscellaneous +inmates--Fanny Imlay, the daughter of his first wife, Mary +Wollstonecraft; Mary, his own daughter by the same marriage; his second +wife, and her two children, Claire and Charles Clairmont, the offspring +of a previous union. From this connexion with the Godwin household +events of the gravest importance in the future were destined to arise, +and already it appears that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilous +approval on the fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-known +novelist, described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, has +neither taste nor feeling," were his only intimates. + +Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord between the +two chief elements of Shelley's present society; and indeed it will +appear to a careful student of his biography that Hogg, Peacock, and +Harriet, now stood somewhat by themselves and aloof from the inner +circle of his associates. If we regard the Shelleys as the centre of an +extended line, we shall find the Westbrook family at one end, the +Boinville family at the other, with Hogg and Peacock somewhere in the +middle. Harriet was naturally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, and +Shelley to the Boinville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but a +sincere regard for Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was in +much the same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs. +Newton. The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercised +their influence at a distance from the rest. Frequent change from +Bracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying journey to +Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother and +sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in +the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, +and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces. +We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes and +Theosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief. + +Since we are now approaching the gravest crisis in Shelley's life, it +behoves us to be more than usually careful in considering his +circumstances at this epoch. His home had become cold and dull. Harriet +did not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure with her +Mount Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and +the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to +refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he found +among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, +sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extracts +from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more +eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the +antagonism which had sprung up in Shelley's mind between his own home +and the circle of his new friends:--"I have been staying with Mrs. B-- +for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that +philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of +myself. They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have +felt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but +its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, +which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this +happy home,--for it has become my home. The trees, the bridge, the +minutest objects, have already a place in my affections." + +"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when the +infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but little +inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart +and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of +disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I +may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint +with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence +for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome +worm, that cannot see to sting." + +While divided in this way between a home which had become distasteful to +him, and a house where he found scope for his most romantic outpourings +of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and passionately in love with +Godwin's daughter, Mary. Peacock, who lived in close intimacy with him +at this period, must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming nature +of the new attachment:--"Nothing that I ever read in tale or history +could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, +uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouring +when, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him in +London. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, FROM WHOM HE WAS NOT +THEN SEPARATED, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in +his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind 'suffering, like a +little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection.' His eyes were bloodshot, +his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and +said, 'I never part from this.'" + +We may therefore affirm, I think, with confidence that in the winter and +spring of 1814, Shelley had been becoming gradually more and more +estranged from Harriet, whose commonplace nature was no mate for his, +and whom he had never loved with all the depth of his affection; that +his intimacy with the Boinville family had brought into painful +prominence whatever was jarring and repugnant to him in his home; and +that in this crisis of his fate he had fallen in love for the first time +seriously with Mary Godwin. (The date at which he first made Mary's +acquaintance is uncertain. Peacock says that it was between April 18 and +June 8.) She was then a girl of sixteen, "fair and fair-haired, pale +indeed, and with a piercing look," to quote Hogg's description of her, +as she first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. With +her freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, her +acute intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, Mary +Godwin was naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than the good +Harriet, however beautiful. + +That Shelley early in 1814 had no intention of leaving his wife, is +probable; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, eight days +after his impassioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, Hanover Square. +Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the Scotch marriage was +no doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a possible heir beyond all +question. Yet it seems, if we may found conjecture on "Stanzas, April, +1814," that in the very month after this new ceremony Shelley found the +difficulties of his wedded life insuperable, and that he was already +making up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June the +separation actually occurred--not by mutual consent, so far as any +published documents throw light on the matter, but rather by Shelley's +sudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiography +page 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutual +consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, +Relics of Shelly, page 147.) For a short while Harriet was left in +ignorance of his abode, and with a very insufficient sum of money at her +disposal. She placed herself under the protection of her father, retired +to Bath, and about the beginning of July received a letter from Shelley, +who was thenceforth solicitous for her welfare, keeping up a +correspondence with her, supplying her with funds, and by no means +shrinking from personal communications. + +That Shelley must bear the responsibility of this separation seems to me +quite clear. His justification is to be found in his avowed opinions on +the subject of love and marriage--opinions which Harriet knew well and +professed to share, and of which he had recently made ample confession +in the notes to "Queen Mab". The world will still agree with Lord Eldon +in regarding those opinions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon the +poet's character; but it would be unfair, while condemning them as +frankly as he professed them, to blame him also because he did not +conform to the opposite code of morals, for which he frequently +expressed extreme abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, +as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the +Shelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, +Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, +that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's +conduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await their +publication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile there +remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after leaving Harriet, +Shelley departed from London with Mary Godwin, who had consented to +share his fortunes. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand of +her who was destined to be his companion for life, may best be told in +Lady Shelley's words:-- + +"His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of +genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's +daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear +Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one +eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, +in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past--how he had +suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he +hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had +done battle for the fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms +to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, +and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the +remaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both +redeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of +"Political Justice", and of the "Rights of Woman", had been educated, +spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she +was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to +prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era +in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom +she loved--by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to +venerate--these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was +therefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own +heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her +love." + +Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley's +second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formed +another connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, +1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. The +distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new +ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no +immediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and her +suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as +Hogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and it +may be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time +unhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and +cut the knot of life and all its troubles. + +So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painful +period in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and without +condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady +Shelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that +the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy +in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief +in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must +do, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, that +I for my own part am willing to suspend my judgment till the time +arrives for his vindication. The language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. +Garnett justify us in expecting that that vindication will be as +startling as complete. If it is not, they, as pleading for him, will +have overshot the mark of prudence. + +On the 28th of July Shelley left London with Mary Godwin, who up to this +date had remained beneath her father's roof. There was some secrecy in +their departure, because they were accompanied by Miss Clairmont, whose +mother disapproved of her forming a third in the party. Having made +their way to Dover, they crossed the Channel in an open boat, and went +at once to Paris. Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intending +to perform the journey across France on foot. Shelley, however, sprained +his ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In this +conveyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neufchatel. +Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their residence; and +here Shelley began his romantic tale of "The Assassins", a portion of +which is printed in his prose works. Want of money compelled them soon +to think of turning their steps homeward; and the back journey was +performed upon the Reuss and Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a bad +passage, on the 13th of September. Mrs. Shelley's "History of a Six +Week's Tour" relates the details of this trip, which was of great +importance in forming Shelley's taste, and in supplying him with the +scenery of river, rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilized in +"Alastor". + +The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty; but on the +6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became the next heir to the +baronetcy and the family estates, and an arrangement was made with his +father by right of which he received an allowance of 1000 pounds a year. +A portion of his income was immediately set apart for Harriet. The +winter was passed in London, where Shelley walked a hospital, in order, +it is said, to acquire some medical knowledge that might be of service +to the poor he visited. His own health at this period was very bad. A +physician whom he consulted pronounced that he was rapidly sinking under +pulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. The +consumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for the next three +years he had no doubt that he was destined to an early death. In 1818, +however, all danger of phthisis passed away; and during the rest of his +short life he only suffered from spasms and violent pains in the side, +which baffled the physicians, but, though they caused him extreme +anguish, did not menace any vital organ. To the subject of his health it +will be necessary to return at a later period of this biography. For the +present it is enough to remember that his physical condition was such as +to justify his own expectation of death at no distant time. (See Letter +to Godwin in Shelley's Memorials, page 78.) + +Fond as ever of wandering, Shelley set out in the early summer for a +tour with Mary. They visited Devonshire and Clifton, and then settled in +a house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. The summer was +further broken by a water excursion up the Thames to its source, in the +company of Mr. Peacock and Charles Clairmont. Peacock traces the poet's +taste for boating, which afterwards became a passion with him, to this +excursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us +that Shelley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he +enjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W.S. Halliday, a far +better authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never saw +Shelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that he +practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fond +of boats and every kind of water--river, sea, lake, or canal--he never +learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, +and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on +occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float +a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once +constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake +in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion. + +On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem of +"Alastor", haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor +Forest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration. It was +printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year. Not only was +"Alastor" the first serious poem published by Shelley; but it was also +the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his +genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; +and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in +certain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, +is such as only Shelley could have produced. + +"Alastor" is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim +into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the +title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart +from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great +autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under +the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, +consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the +somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its +sublime descriptions. All that Shelley had observed of natural +beauty--in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the +Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest--is presented to us in a +series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion. But the deeper +meaning of "Alastor" is to be found, not in the thought of death nor in +the poet's recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St. +Augustine placed upon its title page, and in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty", composed about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the +poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage +the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing +for some mortal realization of his love. "Alastor", like +"Epipsychidion," reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that +the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form: +while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that such +realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written by +Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one is +always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is +not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in +seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +But this Shelley discovered only with "the years that bring the +philosophic mind," and when he was upon the very verge of his untimely +death. + +The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of +"Alastor". It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideal +love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet's +heart:-- + + At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore + He paused, a wide and melancholy waste + Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged + His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, + Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. + It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings + Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course + High over the immeasurable main. + His eyes pursued its flight:--"Thou hast a home, + Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, + Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck + With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes + Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. + And what am I that I should linger here, + With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, + Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned + To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers + In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven + That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile + Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. + For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly + Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed, + Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, + With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. + +William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24th +of January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together, +accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. They +reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord +Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yet +made Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab", +with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into +daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no +great distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a +boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. Miss +Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened +into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This fact +has to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, because Allegra afterwards +became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of +what was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from +the mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelley +during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were +to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become one +of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influence +of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his +wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron's +genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible +opinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame +with Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he +erroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive. +Shelley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to +nobler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtle +intellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much +as he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley was not +blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has left +us of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice and +Ravenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to +Italy, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet been +passed upon his brother poet's character. It is clear that he never +found in Byron a perfect friend, and that he had not accepted him as one +with whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling and +conduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Shelley the purest nature he +had ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least +worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond +all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity as +rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all +that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even +to the very letter." + +Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva in +their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie. On +this occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of death from drowning. His +one anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peacock, was lest Byron should +attempt to save him at the risk of his own life. Byron described him as +"bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, that +Shelley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness. +He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly +be said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursion +was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in +his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont +Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression +had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the +element of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words which +record the experiences of his two journeys in Switzerland and +France:--"I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and +the sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the +brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers +of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a +wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and +seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have +sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen +populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, +and sink and change amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the +theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and +villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and +the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds." + +On their return to the lake, the Shelleys found M.G. Lewis established +with Byron. This addition to the circle introduced much conversation +about apparitions, and each member of the party undertook to produce a +ghost story. Polidori's "Vampyre" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" were +the only durable results of their determination. But an incident +occurred which is of some importance in the history of Shelley's +psychological condition. Toward midnight on the 18th of July, Byron +recited the lines in "Christabel" about the lady's breast; when Shelley +suddenly started up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen a +vision of a woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he was +writing notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his +"Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mere +effort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed +his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period of +his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. +Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful +vividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of +his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the +projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were +abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the +border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature as +Shelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even +when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung +emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; +and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to +estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain +episodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told by +Peacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this +year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the +hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both +ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a +subjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98.) + +On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage at Great +Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peacock. While it +was being prepared for the reception of his family, he stayed at Bath, +and there heard of Harriet's suicide. The life that once was dearest to +him, had ended thus in misery, desertion, want. The mother of his two +children, abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven from +her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with +circumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free +from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled +with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most +acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the +conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and +feeling for which she was not qualified, and that had it not been for +him and his opinions, she might have lived a happy woman in some common +walk of life. One of his biographers asserts that "he continued to be +haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, +which pursued him like an Orestes," and even Trelawny, who knew him only +in the last months of his life, said that the impression of that +dreadful moment was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelings +in some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817 (Forman, 3 148.); and +though he did not often speak of Harriet, Peacock has recorded one +memorable occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to a +friend. (Fraser, January, 1860, page 102.) + +Shelley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation in the +society of Leigh Hunt. The friendship extended to him by that excellent +man at this season of his trouble may perhaps count for something with +those who are inclined to judge him harshly. Two important events +followed immediately upon the tragedy. The first was Shelley's marriage +with Mary Godwin on the 30th of December, 1816. Whether Shelley would +have taken this step except under strong pressure from without, appears +to me very doubtful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the most +resolutely bent on confirming his theories by his practice; and in this +instance there was no valid reason why he should not act up to +principles professed in common by himself and the partner of his +fortunes, no less than by her father and mother. It is, therefore, +reasonable to suppose that he yielded to arguments; and these arguments +must have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him with +cordiality since he left England in 1816. Godwin, though overrated in +his generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Shelley, was a man +whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. His +conduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of a +self-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed when +Shelley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradiction +with his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified in +concluding that he worried Shelley, the one enthusiastic and +thorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite of +his disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmise +that Godwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bear +the name of a future baronet. + +The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the +custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was instituted; at the +conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Shelley of his +son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in +"Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children were +placed in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance with +principles diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Shelley's +income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thus +sternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim, +to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own +impulsiveness, his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities, +his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the +world's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pass--to the suicide of +the woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspring +whom he loved. + +Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we may +learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic story. His life was +a tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of +erring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of +justice as established in the daily sanctities of human life; and now he +had to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated like +the dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be a +rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of his +moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had been +granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle +of one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter +fruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking +to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of +Shelley's over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinary +existence, which makes his history so tragic; and we may justly wonder +whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did not +apply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own fortunes. + + + +CHAPTER 5. + +LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. + +Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his children, +and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and with the cloud +of what he thought swift-coming death above his head, Shelley worked +steadily, during the summer of 1817, upon his poem of "Laon and Cythna". +Six months were spent in this task. "The poem," to borrow Mrs. Shelley's +words, "was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of +Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is +distinguished for peculiar beauty." Whenever Shelley could, he composed +in the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and the +Baths of Caracalla were the birthplace of "Prometheus". "The Cenci" was +written on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The Cascine of +Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, and +the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of his +loveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", was +transferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia. + +If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devotion to +Ideal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder sense +representative of its author. All his previous experiences and all his +aspirations--his passionate belief in friendship, his principle of the +equality of women with men, his demand for bloodless revolution, his +confidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, his doctrine of free +love, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious intolerance and +tyranny--are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos of +this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self +which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, +Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely +feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of +grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In +the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and +sister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, but +because he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack the +intolerance of custom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells us +that it was his purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers "a +virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that +faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor +misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among +mankind;" to illustrate "the growth and progress of individual mind +aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and to +celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world." +The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem +highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian +stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that are +Shelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom at +the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the good +cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of the +hero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing victim. It is full +of thrilling incidents and lovely pictures; yet the tale is the least +part of the poem; and few readers have probably been able either to +sympathize with its visionary characters, or to follow the narrative +without weariness. As in the case of other poems by Shelley--especially +those in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art his +genius was not well suited--the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" is +surrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it +is difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of +splendour. Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the +lovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here +tried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was +by no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before the +public. Hooted down, derided, stigmatized, and howled at, it only served +to intensify the prejudice with which the author of "Queen Mab" had come +to be regarded. + +I have spoken of this poem under its first name of "Laon and Cythna". A +certain number of copies were issued with this title (How many copies +were put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have been +many more than the traditional three; for when I was a boy at Harrow, I +picked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for the +price of 2 shillings and 6 pence a piece.); but the publisher, Ollier, +not without reason dreaded the effect the book would make; he therefore +induced Shelley to alter the relationship between the hero and his +bride, and issued the old sheets with certain cancelled pages under the +title of "Revolt of Islam". It was published in January, 1818. While +still resident at Marlow, Shelley began two autobiographical poems--the +one "Prince Athanase," which he abandoned as too introspective and +morbidly self-analytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which he +finished afterwards in Italy. Of the second of these compositions he +entertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his best +work. To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of +Lionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the +man he would have wished to be. The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the +"Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, +are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone and +scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. Later on in life, +Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directed +his genius to more objective themes. Yet the autobiographic tendency, as +befitted a poet of the highest lyric type, remained to the end a +powerful characteristic. + +Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may be +well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetry +which characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a single +passage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosen +the lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel: + + To Lionel, + Though of great wealth and lineage high, + Yet through those dungeon walls there came + Thy thrilling light, O Liberty! + And as the meteor's midnight flame + Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth + Flashed on his visionary youth, + And filled him, not with love, but faith. + And hope, and courage mute in death; + For love and life in him were twins, + Born at one birth: in every other + First life, then love its course begins, + Though they be children of one mother; + And so through this dark world they fleet + Divided, till in death they meet: + But he loved all things ever. Then + He past amid the strife of men, + And stood at the throne of armed power + Pleading for a world of woe: + Secure as one on a rock-built tower + O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, + 'Mid the passions wild of human kind + He stood, like a spirit calming them; + For, it was said, his words could find + Like music the lulled crowd, and stem + That torrent of unquiet dream, + Which mortals truth and reason deem, + But IS revenge and fear and pride. + Joyous he was; and hope and peace + On all who heard him did abide, + Raining like dew from his sweet talk, + As where the evening star may walk + Along the brink of the gloomy seas, + Liquid mists of splendour quiver. + His very gestures touch'd to tears + The unpersuaded tyrant, never + So moved before: his presence stung + The torturers with their victim's pain, + And none knew how; and through their ears, + The subtle witchcraft of his tongue + Unlocked the hearts of those who keep + Gold, the world's bond of slavery. + Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see + One sow what he could never reap: + For he is rich, they said, and young, + And might drink from the depths of luxury. + If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd + The champion of a trampled creed: + If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned + 'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed + Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, + Those who would sit near Power must toil; + And such, there sitting, all may see. + +During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor at +Leigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and +the brothers Smith, authors of "Rejected Addresses". Hunt's +recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and +Peacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing the +manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: "He rose early in +the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, +wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read +again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), +conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again +walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten +o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was +generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, +in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring +interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job." Mrs. Shelley, +in her note on the "Revolt of Islam", confirms this account of his Bible +studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style +may be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from which +I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to +Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the +Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the +Gospels. "His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in +the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very +formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes +on that point." We have only to read Shelley's "Essay on Christianity", +in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how +profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, +brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to a +sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed +by many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on the +subject. It is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaeval +phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more +approximate to Shelley's exposition. Here and here only is a vital +faith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructible +because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of +divers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all men +a clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but it +was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to +discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to its +Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is +permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable +conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His +fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed +against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and +superstition, which in his opinion had retarded the growth of free +institutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, he +distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his +blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their +Lord if he returned to earth. + +That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To help +the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he +cheerfully discharged. "His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He +inquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visited +the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, +whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts." At Marlow, +the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his +energies; and Mrs. Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which +he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story +told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and +carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man +as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with +his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's +parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called +poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to +his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 +pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and he +discharged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds. +In his pamphlet on "Putting Reform to the Vote", he offered to subscribe +100 pounds for the purpose of founding an association; and we have +already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500 +pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied; +and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out of +which 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will be +understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that he +was in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raising +funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters of +expenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, this +heir of the richest baronet in Sussex illustrated by his own conduct +those principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity which +formed his political and social creed. + +A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless +sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, +as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy +Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, +correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the +Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by +Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother +and Allegra, lived as Shelley's guests; and here Clara Shelley was born +on the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered from +a severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the +apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor might lay +his vulture's talons on the children of his second marriage, were the +motives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of +1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric "The billows on +the beach.") He never returned. Four years only of life were left to +him--years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts. + +It was on the 11th of March that the Shelleys took their departure with +Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, and +after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and +Rome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Shelley's +letters to Peacock form the invaluable record of this period of his +existence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of +descriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged with +colour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of +Italy, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate in +observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, +combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a +style at once familiar and elevated. That Shelley's sensibility to art +was not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enough +in many passages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in his +comments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works of +antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the +opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the +people made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, the +spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his +studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present +day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous +critic's verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were space for a +long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of +Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, +1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently +characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:-- + +"The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, +expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy +of mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is +a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters +into a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. +It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its +own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of +oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek in +what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and +tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not +agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to +attempt to inspire others with them." + +In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, +and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in a +thunderstorm. "Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of this +excursion--a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti +as the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatment +of ordinary things." The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to +sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, +ranks among Shelley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of +Byron's life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of the +sunset and the island of San Lazzaro:-- + + Oh! + How beautiful is sunset, when the glow + Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, + Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, + Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers + Of cities they encircle!--it was ours + To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, + Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men + Were waiting for us with the gondola. + As those who pause on some delightful way, + Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood + Looking upon the evening, and the flood + Which lay between the city and the shore, + Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar + And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, + Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared + Between the east and west; and half the sky + Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, + Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew + Down the steep west into a wondrous hue + Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent + Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent + Among the many-folded hills. They were + Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, + As seem from Lido through the harbour piles, + The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-- + And then, as if the earth and sea had been + Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen + Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, + Around the vaporous sun, from which there came + The inmost purple spirit of light, and made + Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade," + Said my companion, "I will show you soon + A better station." So o'er the lagune + We glided; and from that funereal bark + I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark + How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, + Its temples and its palaces did seem + Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. + I was about to speak, when--"We are even + Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, + And bade the gondolieri cease to row. + "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well + If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." + I looked, and saw between us and the sun + A building on an island, such a one + As age to age might add, for uses vile,-- + A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile; + And on the top an open tower, where hung + A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,-- + We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: + The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled + In strong and black relief--"What we behold + Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"-- + Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour, + Those who may cross the water hear that bell, + Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, + To vespers." + +It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar +quotations from Shelley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":-- + + Most wretched men + Are cradled into poetry by wrong: + They learn in suffering what they teach in song. + +Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where +they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here "Prometheus Unbound" was +begun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed; +and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to +rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their +passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, +and they entered Venice--only in time, however, for the child to die. + +Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley +suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. Mrs. Shelley +attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a +strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account +for the poet's melancholy. He says that so far back as the year 1816, on +the night before his departure from London, "a married lady, young, +handsome, and of noble connexions," came to him, avowed the passionate +love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly +together. (Medwin's Life of Shelley, volume 1 324. His date, 1814, +appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his +hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after +the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they +parted. She followed him, however, from place to place; and without +intruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remaining +near him. Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died. The web of +Shelley's life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own. +Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny +Imlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet has +already been told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in +Medwin's story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorously +tells us about Shelley's attraction for women in London. At any rate, +the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly be +accounted for by the "constant and poignant physical sufferings" of which +Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him. She was +herself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing something +from her, and we know from her own words in another place that his "fear +to wound the feelings of others" often impelled him to keep his deepest +sorrows to himself. (Note on the Revolt of Islam.) + +All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace of +consumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks of +pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem to +have been ascertained. At Naples he was under treatment for disease of +the liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and it +is certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied with +the quality of the water he drank. He was, for instance, forced to +eschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated his +symptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitable +residence. The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have +been determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed with +him. That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely +serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived with +him at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was obtained by +mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of the +torment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, that even during the +last months of his life we find him begging Trelawny to procure him +prussic acid as a final and effectual remedy for all the ills that flesh +is heir to. It may be added that mental application increased the +mischief, for he told Leigh Hunt that the composition of "The Cenci" had +cost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitably +real, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease; +and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley's +spasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continual +over-taxing of his nervous system. + +Mrs. Shelley states that the change from England to Italy was in all +respects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to refer the +depression from which he occasionally suffered, to his solitary habits; +and there are several passages in his own letters which connect his +melancholy with solitude. It is obvious that when he found himself in +the congenial company of Trelawny, Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, +he was simply happy; and nothing could be further from the truth than to +paint him as habitually sunk in gloom. On the contrary, we hear quite as +much about his high spirits, his "Homeric laughter," his playfulness +with children, his readiness to join in the amusements of his chosen +circle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his solitary +broodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories over-cast his +heaven. Byron, who had some right to express a judgment in such a +matter, described him as the most companionable man under the age of +thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shooting +with his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, +and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. +All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, +remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romantic +persons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The +voice of a stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar with +Shelley's almost inconceivable quickness of perception, was enough to +make him leave the house; and one of his prettiest poems is written on +his mistaking his wife's mention of the Aziola, a little owl common +enough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dislike +for intercourse with commonplace people was a source of some +disagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further apart +from Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable letter +recently published by Mr. Garnett, he writes:--"I detest all +society--almost all, at least--and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that +is hateful and tiresome in it." And again, speaking about his wife to +Trelawny, he said:--"She can't bear solitude, nor I society--the quick +coupled with the dead." + +In the year 1818-19 the Shelleys had no friends at all in Italy, except +Lord Byron at Venice, and Mr. and Mrs. John Gisborne at Leghorn. Mrs. +Gisborne had been a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin. She was a +woman of much cultivation, devoid of prejudice, and, though less +enthusiastic than Shelley liked, quite capable of appreciating the +inestimable privilege of his acquaintance. Her husband, to use a now +almost obsolete phrase, was a scholar and a gentleman. He shared his +wife's enlightened opinions, and remained staunch through good and ill +report to his new friends. At Rome and Naples they knew absolutely no +one. Shelley's time was therefore passed in study and composition. In +the previous summer he had translated the "Symposium" of Plato, and +begun an essay on the Ethics of the Greeks, which remains unluckily a +fragment. Together with Mary he read much Italian literature, and his +observations on the chief Italian poets form a valuable contribution to +their criticism. While he admired the splendour and invention of +Ariosto, he could not tolerate his moral tone. Tasso struck him as cold +and artificial, in spite of his "delicate moral sensibility." Boccaccio +he preferred to both; and his remarks on this prose-poet are extremely +characteristic. "How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of +nature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is the +morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it +obscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of +the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. His +more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He often +expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very +beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, +stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one +little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the +common, narrow-minded conceptions of love,--'Bocca baciata non perde +ventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch remained +the objects of his lasting admiration, though the cruel Christianity of +the "Inferno" seemed to him an ineradicable blot upon the greatest of +Italian poems. Of Petrarch's "tender and solemn enthusiasm," he speaks +with the sympathy of one who understood the inner mysteries of +idealizing love. + +It will be gathered from the foregoing quotations that Shelley, +notwithstanding is profound study of style and his exquisite perception +of beauty in form and rhythm, required more than merely artistic +excellences in poetry. He judged poems by their content and spirit; and +while he plainly expressed his abhorrence of the didactic manner, he +held that art must be moralized in order to be truly great. The +distinction he drew between Theocritus and the earlier Greek singers in +the "Defence of Poetry", his severe strictures on "The Two Noble +Kinsmen" in a letter to Mary (August 20, 1818) and his phrase about +Ariosto, "who is entertaining and graceful, and SOMETIMES a poet," +illustrate the application of critical canons wholly at variance with +the "art for art" doctrine. + +While studying Italian, he continued faithful to Greek. Plato was often +in his hands, and the dramatists formed his almost inseparable +companions. How deeply he felt the art of the Homeric poems, may be +gathered from the following extract:--"I congratulate you on your +conquest of the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the perpetually +increasing magnificence of the last seven books. Homer there truly +begins to be himself. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of +Patroclus, and the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale in +tenderness and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable +with anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there is +nothing like this." About this time, prompted by Mrs. Gisborne, he began +the study of Spanish, and conceived an ardent admiration for Calderon, +whose splendid and supernatural fancy tallied with his own. "I am +bathing myself in the light and odour of the starry Autos," he writes to +Mr. Gisborne in the autumn of 1820. "Faust", too, was a favourite. "I +have been reading over and over again "Faust", and always with +sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom and +augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit +study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory, and the +delusions of an imagination not to be restrained." The profound +impression made upon him by Margaret's story is expressed in two letters +about Retzsch's illustrations:--"The artist makes one envy his happiness +that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look +upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on +the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured." + +The fruits of this occupation with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German +were Shelley's translations from Homer and Euripides, from Dante, from +Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso", and from "Faust", translations which +have never been surpassed for beauty of form and complete transfusion of +the spirit of one literature into the language of another. On +translation, however, he set but little store, asserting that he only +undertook it when he "could do absolutely nothing else," and writing +earnestly to dissuade Leigh Hunt from devoting time which might be +better spent, to work of subordinate importance. (Letter from Florence, +November 1819.) The following version of a Greek epigram on Plato's +spirit will illustrate his own method of translation:-- + + Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? + To what sublime and star-y-paven home + Floatest thou? + I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, + Ascending heaven:--Athens does inherit + His corpse below. + +Some time in the year 1820-21, he composed the "Defence of Poetry", +stimulated to this undertaking by his friend Peacock's article on +poetry, published in the Literary Miscellany. (See Letter to Ollier, +January 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, page 135.) This essay not only sets +forth his theory of his own art, but it also contains some of his finest +prose writing, of which the following passage, valuable alike for matter +and style, may be cited as a specimen:-- + +"The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates +new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it +engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according +to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the +good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at +periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, +the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity +of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. +The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it. + +"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and +circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, +and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time +the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from +which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if +blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren +world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of +life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; +it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the +elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty +to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, +patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful universe +which we inhabit--what were our consolations on this side of the +grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend +to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged +faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, +a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man +cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say +it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible +influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; +this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades +and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our +natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could +this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is +impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition +begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious +poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble +shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest +poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the +finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and +the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no +more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an +artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the +intermixture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by +the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the +"Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have +his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the +"unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who would +allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando +Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to +painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still +more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or +picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's +womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is +incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the +media of the process. + +"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest +and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and +feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding +our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing +unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that +even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be +pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as +it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but +its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming +calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which +paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced +principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most +enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war +with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and +friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they +last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not +only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined +organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the +evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the +representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, +and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the +sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes +immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests +the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and +veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, +bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters +abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns +of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry +redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." + +In the midst of these aesthetic studies, and while producing his own +greatest works, Shelley was not satisfied that his genius ought to be +devoted to poetry. "I consider poetry," he wrote to Peacock, January +26th, 1819, "very subordinate to moral and political science, and if I +were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter; for I can conceive a +great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the +contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me is such +an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse +myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into the +scale of that balance which the Giant of Arthegall holds." Whether he +was right in the conviction that his genius was no less fitted for +metaphysical speculation or for political science than for poetry, is a +question that admits of much debate. (See Mrs. Shelley's note on the +Revolt of Islam, and the whole Preface to the Prose Works.) We have +nothing but fragments whereby to form a definite opinion--the unfinished +"Defence of Poetry", the unfinished "Essay on a Future State", the +unfinished "Essay on Christianity", the unfinished "Essay on the +Punishment of Death", and the scattered "Speculations on Metaphysics". +None of these compositions justify the belief so confidently expressed +by Mrs. Shelley in her Preface to the prose works, that "had not Shelley +deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lost +to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in +the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of +mind; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant would have +contributed; but more simple, and unimpugnable, and entire than the +systems of these writers." Their incompleteness rather tends to confirm +what she proceeds to state, that the strain of philosophical composition +was too great for his susceptible nerves; while her further observation +that "thought kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him +dizzy from too great keenness of emotion," seems to indicate that his +nature was primarily that of a poet deeply tinctured with philosophical +speculation, rather than that of a metaphysician warmed at intervals to +an imaginative fervour. Another of her remarks confirms us in this +opinion. "He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to +be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry." (Note on Prometheus.) +This is the position of the poet rather than the analyst; and on the +whole, we are probably justified in concluding with Mrs. Shelley, that +he followed a true instinct when he dedicated himself to poetry, and +trained his powers in that direction. (Note on Revolt of Islam.) To +dogmatize upon the topic would be worse than foolish. There was +something incalculable, incommensurable, and daemonic in Shelley's +genius; and what he might have achieved, had his life been spared and +had his health progressively improved, it is of course impossible to +say. + +In the spring of 1819 the Shelleys settled in Rome, where the poet +proceeded with the composition of "Prometheus Unbound". He used to write +among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, not then, as now, despoiled +of all their natural beauty, but waving with the Paradise of flowers and +shrubs described in his incomparable letter of March the 23rd to +Peacock. Rome, however, was not destined to retain them long. On the 7th +of June they lost their son William after a short illness. Shelley loved +this child intensely, and sat by his bedside for sixty hours without +taking rest. He was now practically childless; and his grief found +expression in many of his poems, especially in the fragment headed +"Roma, Roma, Roma! non e piu com' era prima." William was buried in the +Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description to +Peacock in the previous December. "The English burying-place is a green +slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I +think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the +sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with +the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves +of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil +which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly +of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were +to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and +so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion." + +Escaping from the scene of so much sorrow, they established themselves +at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn. Here Shelley began and finished +"The Cenci" at the instance of his wife, who rightly thought that he +undervalued his own powers as a dramatic poet. The supposed portrait of +Beatrice in the Barberini Palace had powerfully affected his +imagination, and he fancied that her story would form the fitting +subject for a tragedy. It is fortunate for English literature that the +real facts of that domestic drama, as recently published by Signor +Bertolotti, were then involved in a tissue of romance and legend. During +this summer he saw a great deal of the Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne's +son by a previous marriage, Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelley +conceived a project of helping him build a steamer which should ply +between Leghorn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and the +pecuniary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family. The scheme +eventually fell through, though Shelley spent a good deal of money upon +it; and its only importance is the additional light it throws upon his +public and private benevolence. From Leghorn the Shelleys removed in the +autumn to Florence, where, on the 12th of November, the present Sir +Percy Florence Shelley was born. Here Shelley wrote the last act of +"Prometheus Unbound", which, though the finest portion of that unique +drama, seems to have been an afterthought. In the Cascine outside +Florence he also composed the "Ode to the West Wind", the most +symmetrically perfect as well as the most impassioned of his minor +lyrics. He spent much time in the galleries, made notes upon the +principal antique statues, and formed a plan of systematic art-study. +The climate, however, disagreed with him, and in the month of January, +1820, they took up their abode at Pisa. + +1819 was the most important year in Shelley's life, so far as literary +production is concerned. Besides "The Cenci" and "Prometheus Unbound", +of which it yet remains to speak, this year saw the production of +several political and satirical poems--the "Masque of Anarchy", +suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the most +important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs +which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be +their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make +such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of +England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his +achievement in this style:-- + + Men of England, Heirs of Glory, + Heroes of unwritten story, + Nurslings of one mighty mother, + Hopes of her, and one another! + + Rise, like lions after slumber, + In unvanquishable number, + Shake your chains to earth like dew, + Which in sleep had fall'n on you. + Ye are many, they are few. + +"Peter Bell the Third", written in this year, and "Swellfoot the +Tyrant", composed in the following autumn, are remarkable as showing +with what keen interest Shelley watched public affairs in England from +his exile home; but, for my own part, I cannot agree with those critics +who esteem their humour at a high rate. The political poems may +profitably be compared with his contemporary correspondence; with the +letters, for instance, to Leigh Hunt, November 23rd, 1819; and to Mr. +John Gisborne, April 10th, 1822; and with an undated fragment published +by Mr. Garnett in the "Relics of Shelley", page 84. No student of +English political history before the Reform Bill can regard his +apprehensions of a great catastrophe as ill-founded. His insight into +the real danger to the nation was as penetrating as his suggestion of a +remedy was moderate. Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as a +visionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the sober lines +in which he warns his friend to be cautious about the security offered +by the English Funds. Another letter, dated Lerici, June 29, 1822, +illustrates the same practical temper of mind, the same logical +application of political principles to questions of public economy. + +That "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" should have been composed in +one and the same year must be reckoned among the greatest wonders of +literature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but also +because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had +written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final +reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the +champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, +because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting +any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of +compromise. He could not conceive of the Titan "unsaying his high +language, and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary." +He therefore, approached the theme of liberation from a wholly different +point of view. Prometheus in his drama is the human vindicator of love, +justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical oppressor, and +creator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is the mind of man +idealized, the spirit of our race, as Shelley thought it made to be. +Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts its free development. Thus +counterposed, the two chief actors represent the fundamental antitheses +of good and evil, liberty and despotism, love and hate. They give the +form of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism already +expressed in the first canto of "Laon and Cythna"; but, instead of being +represented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into +the reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resists +Jove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, that +the tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and calmly +expectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, and leave the +spirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives; Jove disappears; the +burdens of the world and men are suddenly removed; a new age of peace +and freedom and illimitable energy begins; the whole universe partakes +in the emancipation; the spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain, +but sings alternate love-songs with his sister orb, the moon; Prometheus +is re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, +withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in +her exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. She +is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises in +the Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time of +tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beauty +incarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world and +enkindles it with love, the reality of Alastor's vision, the breathing +image of the awful loveliness apostrophized in the "Hymn to Intellectual +Beauty," the reflex of the splendour of which Adonais was a part. At the +moment of her triumph she grows so beautiful that Ione her sister cannot +see her, only feels her influence. The essential thought of Shelley's +creed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalized, made real by a +spirit, which he sometimes called the spirit of Nature, but which is +always conceived as more than Life, as that which gives its actuality to +Life, and lastly as Love and Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp it +with affection, and to blend with it, is, he thought the true object of +man. Therefore the final union of Prometheus with Asia is the +consummation of human destinies. Love was the only law Shelley +recognized. Unterrified by the grim realities of pain and crime revealed +in nature and society, he held fast to the belief that, if we could but +pierce to the core of things, if we could but be what we might be, the +world and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. +What resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected by +Shelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the universe, we +hardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form: and his new +science of love remains a luminous poetic vision--nowhere more +brilliantly set forth than in the "sevenfold hallelujahs and harping +symphonies" of this, the final triumph of his lyrical poetry. + +In "Prometheus", Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, and sketched +out the main figures on a scale of surpassing magnificence. While +painting in these figures, he seems to reduce their proportions too much +to the level of earthly life. He quits his god-creating, +heaven-compelling throne of mythopoeic inspiration, and descends to a +love-story of Asia and Prometheus. In other words, he does not sustain +the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; +nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail +as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore +something vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinate +passages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty--the faculty of +finding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion with +personality--shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. We +feel ourselves in the grasp of a primitive myth-maker while we read the +description of Oceanus, and the raptures of the Earth and Moon. + +A genuine liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned the +touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. The +world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices; +and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross than +any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart's +song, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in "Prometheus", +which seem to realize the miracle of making words, detached from +meaning, the substance of a new ethereal music; and yet, although their +verbal harmony is such, they are never devoid of definite significance +for those who understand. Shelley scorned the aesthetics of a school +which finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic is +so dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or to +whom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a man +whose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A +voice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of her +apotheosis:-- + + Life of Life! thy lips enkindle + With their love the breath between them; + And thy smiles before they dwindle + Make the cold air fire; then screen them + In those looks where whoso gazes + Faints, entangled in their mazes. + + Child of Light! thy limbs are burning + Through the vest which seems to hide them, + As the radiant lines of morning + Through the clouds, ere they divide them; + And this atmosphere divinest + Shrouds thee whereso'er thou shinest. + + Fair are others; none beholds thee. + But thy voice sounds low and tender, + Like the fairest, for it folds thee + From the sight, that liquid splendour, + And all feel, yet see thee never, + As I feel now, lost for ever! + + Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest + Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, + And the souls of whom thou lovest + Walk upon the winds with lightness, + Till they fail, as I am failing, + Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing! + +It has been said that Shelley, as a landscape painter, is decidedly +Turneresque; and there is much in "Prometheus Unbound" to justify this +opinion. The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker shadows +are omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be continually radiated +from the objects at which he looks; and in this radiation of +many-coloured lights, the outline itself is apt to be a little misty. +Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their spiritual essence. +The actual world was less for him than that which lies within it and +beyond it. "I seek," he says himself, "in what I see, the manifestation +of something beyond the present and tangible object." For him, as for +the poet described by one of the spirit voices in "Prometheus", the bees +in the ivy-bloom are scarcely heeded; they become in his mind,-- + + Forms more real than living man, + Nurslings of immortality. + +And yet who could have brought the bees, the lake, the sun, the bloom, +more perfectly before us than that picture does? (Forman, volume 2 page +181.) What vignette is more exquisitely coloured and finished than the +little study of a pair of halcyons in the third act? (Forman, volume 2 +page 231.) Blake is perhaps the only artist who could have illustrated +this drama. He might have shadowed forth the choirs of spirits, the +trailing voices and their thrilling songs, phantasmal Demorgorgon, and +the charioted Hour. Prometheus, too, with his "flowing limbs," has just +Blake's fault of impersonation--the touch of unreality in that painter's +Adam. + +Passing to "The Cenci", we change at once the moral and artistic +atmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely dirge, is +absent. Imagery and description are alike sternly excluded. Instead of +soaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly planted on the earth. In +exchange for radiant visions of future perfection, we are brought into +the sphere of dreadful passions--all the agony, endurance, and +half-maddened action, of which luckless human innocence is capable. To +tell the legend of Beatrice Cenci here, is hardly needed. Her father, a +monster of vice and cruelty, was bent upon breaking her spirit by +imprisonment, torture, and nameless outrage. At last her patience ended; +and finding no redress in human justice, no champion of her helplessness +in living man, she wrought his death. For this she died upon the +scaffold, together with her step-mother and her brothers, who had aided +in the execution of the murder. The interest of "The Cenci", and it is +overwhelmingly great, centres in Beatrice and her father; from these two +chief actors in the drama, all the other characters fall away into +greater or less degrees of unsubstantiality. Perhaps Shelley intended +this--as the maker of a bas-relief contrives two or three planes of +figures for the presentation of his ruling group. Yet there appears to +my mind a defect of accomplishment, rather than a deliberate intention, +in the delineation of Orsino. He seems meant to be the wily, crafty, +Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form a +contrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of old +Francesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love for +Beatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down with +an infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand the +uneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminine +weakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm will of +Beatrice into prominent relief; while her innocence, sustained through +extraordinary suffering in circumstances of exceptional horror--the +innocence of a noble nature thrust by no act of its own but by its +wrongs beyond the pale of ordinary womankind--is contrasted with the +merely childish guiltlessness of Bernardo. Beatrice rises to her full +height in the fifth act, dilates and grows with the approach of danger, +and fills the whole scene with her spirit on the point of death. Her +sublime confidence in the justice and essential rightness of her action, +the glance of self-assured purity with which she annihilates the +cut-throat brought to testify against her, her song in prison, and her +tender solicitude for the frailer Lucrezia, are used with wonderful +dramatic skill for the fulfilment of a feminine ideal at once delicate +and powerful. Once and once only does she yield to ordinary weakness; it +is when the thought crosses her mind that she may meet her father in the +other world, as once he came to her on earth. + +Shelley dedicated "The Cenci" to Leigh Hunt, saying that he had striven +in this tragedy to cast aside the subjective manner of his earlier work, +and to produce something at once more popular and more concrete, more +sober in style, and with a firmer grasp on the realities of life. He was +very desirous of getting it acted, and wrote to Peacock requesting him +to offer it at Covent Garden. Miss O'Neil, he thought, would play the +part of Beatrice admirably. The manager, however, did not take this +view; averring that the subject rendered it incapable of being even +submitted to an actress like Miss O'Neil. Shelley's self-criticism is +always so valuable, that it may be well here to collect what he said +about the two great dramas of 1819. Concerning "The Cenci" he wrote to +Peacock:--"It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and +opinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attended +simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable +the persons represented really were, together with the greatest degree +of popular effect to be produced by such a development." "'Cenci' is +written for the multitude, and ought to sell well." "I believe it +singularly fitted for the stage." "'The Cenci' is a work of art; it is +not coloured by my feelings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't +think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written +of the same length." "Prometheus", on the other hand, he tells Ollier, +"is my favourite poem; I charge you, therefore, specially to pet him and +feed him with fine ink and good paper"--which was duly done. +Again:--"For 'Prometheus', I expect and desire no great sale; Prometheus +was never intended for more than five or six persons; it is in my +judgment of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted, and +is perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it; it is +original, and cost me severe mental labour." Shelley was right in +judging that "The Cenci" would be comparatively popular; this was proved +by the fact that it went through two editions in his lifetime. The value +he set upon "Prometheus" as the higher work, will hardly be disputed. +Unique in the history of literature, and displaying the specific +qualities of its author at their height, the world could less easily +afford to lose this drama than "The Cenci", even though that be the +greatest tragedy composed in English since the death of Shakespeare. For +reasons which will be appreciated by lovers of dramatic poetry, I +refrain from detaching portions of these two plays. Those who desire to +make themselves acquainted with the author's genius, must devote long +and patient study to the originals in their entirety. + +"Prometheus Unbound", like the majority of Shelley's works, fell +still-born from the press. It furnished punsters with a joke, however, +which went the round of several papers; this poem, they cried, is well +named, for who would bind it? Of criticism that deserves the name, +Shelley got absolutely nothing in his lifetime. The stupid but venomous +reviews which gave him occasional pain, but which he mostly laughed at, +need not now be mentioned. It is not much to any purpose to abuse the +authors of mere rubbish. The real lesson to be learned from such of them +as may possibly have been sincere, as well as from the failure of his +contemporaries to appreciate his genius--the sneers of Moore, the +stupidity of Campbell, the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness of +Southey, or the condescending tone of Keats--is that nothing is more +difficult than for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to the +greatest in their lifetime. Those who may be interested in studying +Shelley's attitude toward his critics, should read a letter addressed to +Ollier from Florence, October 15, 1819, soon after he had seen the vile +attack upon him in the "Quarterly", comparing this with the fragments of +an expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the preface to "Adonais". +(Shelley Memorials, page 121. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pages 49, +190. Collected Letters, page 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in one +volume 1840.) It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse with +patience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On the 11th +of June, 1821, he wrote to Ollier:--"As yet I have laughed; but woe to +those scoundrels if they should once make me lose my temper!" The +stanzas on the "Quarterly" in "Adonais", and the invective against Lord +Eldon, show what Shelley could have done if he had chosen to castigate +the curs. Meanwhile the critics achieved what they intended. Shelley, as +Trelawny emphatically tells us, was universally shunned, coldly treated +by Byron's friends at Pisa, and regarded as a monster by such of the +English in Italy as had not made his personal acquaintance. On one +occasion he is even said to have been knocked down in a post-office by +some big bully, who escaped before he could obtain his name and address; +but this is one of the stories rendered doubtful by the lack of precise +details. + + + +CHAPTER 6. + +RESIDENCE AT PISA. + +On the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelley's established themselves at +Pisa. From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, Shelley's life +divides itself into two periods of unequal length; the first spent at +Pisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn; the second at Lerici, on +the Bay of Spezia. Without entering into minute particulars of dates or +recording minor changes of residence, it is possible to treat of the +first and longer period in general. The house he inhabited at Pisa was +on the south side of the Arno. After a few months he became the +neighbour of Lord Byron, who engaged the Palazzo Lanfranchi it order to +be near him; and here many English and Italian friends gathered round +them. Among these must be mentioned in the first place Captain Medwin, +whose recollections of the Pisan residence are of considerable value, +and next Captain Trelawny, who has left a record of Shelley's last days +only equalled in vividness by Hogg's account of the Oxford period, and +marked by signs of more unmistakable accuracy. Not less important +members of this private circle were Mr. and Mrs. Edward Elleker +Williams, with whom Shelley and his wife lived on terms of the closest +friendship. Among Italians, the physician Vacca, the improvisatore +Sgricci, and Rosini, the author of "La Monaca di Monza", have to be +recorded. It will be seen from this enumeration that Shelley was no +longer solitary; and indeed it would appear that now, upon the eve of +his accidental death, he had begun to enjoy an immunity from many of his +previous sufferings. Life expanded before him: his letters show that he +was concentrating his powers and preparing for a fresh flight; and the +months, though ever productive of poetic masterpieces, promised a still +more magnificent birth in the future. + +In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his most +genial poems: the "Letter to Maria Gisborne", which might be mentioned +as a pendent to "Julian and Maddalo" for its treatment of familiar +things; the "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the +"Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the +"Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a new +lyric form to English literature. In the winter he wrote the "Sensitive +Plant", prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. +Shelley's drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate +Italian sunlight. Whether we consider the number of these poems or their +diverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely subtle +line from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence and the most +ethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished. Every chord of the +poet's lyre is touched, from the deep bass string that echoes the +diurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was, to the fine vibrations of a +treble merging its rarity of tone in accents super-sensible to ordinary +ears. One passage from the "Letter to Maria Gisborne" may here be +quoted, not for its poetry, but for the light it casts upon the circle +of his English friends. + + You are now + In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow + At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore + Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. + Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see + That which was Godwin,--greater none than he + Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand + Among the spirits of our age and land, + Before the dread tribunal of "To come" + The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. + You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure + In the exceeding lustre and the pure + Intense irradiation of a mind, + Which, with its own internal lightning blind, + Flags wearily through darkness and despair-- + A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, + A hooded eagle among blinking owls. + You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls + Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom + This world would smell like what it is--a tomb; + Who is, what others seem. His room no doubt + Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, + With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, + And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, + And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung; + The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens + Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. + And there is he with his eternal puns, + Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns + Thundering for money at a poet's door; + Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"-- + Or oft in graver mood, when he will look + Things wiser than were ever read in book, + Except in Shakespere's wisest tenderness. + You will see Hogg; and I cannot express + His virtues, though I know that they are great, + Because he locks, then barricades the gate + Within which they inhabit. Of his wit + And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. + He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, + One of the richest of the deep. And there + Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair,-- + Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird + That gleams in the Indian air. Have you not heard + When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, + His best friends hear no more of him. But you + Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, + With the milk-white Snowdownian antelope + Match'd with this camelopard. His fine wit + Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it; + A strain too learned for a shallow age, + Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page + Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, + Fold itself up for the serener clime + Of years to come, and find its recompense + In that just expectation. Wit and sense, + Virtue and human knowledge, all that might + Make this dull world a business of delight, + Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these, + With some exceptions, which I need not tease + Your patience by descanting on, are all + You and I know in London. + +Captain Medwin, who came late in the autumn of 1820, at his cousin's +invitation, to stay with the Shelleys, has recorded many interesting +details of their Pisan life, as well as valuable notes of Shelley's +conversation. "It was nearly seven years since we had parted, but I +should have immediately recognized him in a crowd. His figure was +emaciated, and somewhat bent, owing to near-sightedness, and his being +forced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them; his +hair, still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed +with grey; but his appearance was youthful. There was also a freshness +and purity in his complexion that he never lost." Not long after his +arrival, Medwin suffered from a severe and tedious illness. "Shelley +tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered my +medicines, and during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was +assiduous and unintermitting in his affectionate care of me." The poet's +solitude and melancholy at this time impressed his cousin very +painfully. Though he was producing a long series of imperishable poems, +he did not take much interest in his work. "I am disgusted with +writing," he once said, "and were it not for an irresistible impulse, +that predominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing." The +brutal treatment he had lately received from the "Quarterly Review", the +calumnies which pursued him, and the coldness of all but a very few +friends, checked his enthusiasm for composition. Of this there is +abundant proof in his correspondence. In a letter to Leigh Hunt, dated +January 25, 1822, he says: "My faculties are shaken to atoms and torpid. +I can write nothing; and if "Adonais" had no success, and excited no +interest, what incentive can I have to write?" Again: "I write little +now. It is impossible to compose except under the strong excitement of +an assurance of finding sympathy in what you write." Lord Byron's +company proved now, as before, a check rather than an incentive to +production: "I do not write; I have lived too long near Lord Byron, and +the sun has extinguished the glow-worm; for I cannot hope, with St. +John, that THE LIGHT CAME INTO THE WORLD AND THE WORLD KNEW IT NOT." "I +despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other +with whom it is worth contending." To Ollier, in 1820, he wrote: "I +doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with the +hell or the paradise of poetry; but the torments of its purgatory vex +me, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to the +vexation." It was not that his spirit was cowed by the Reviews, or that +he mistook the sort of audience he had to address. He more than once +acknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the many, his poems were +intended for the understanding few. Yet the sunetoi, as he called them, +gave him but scanty encouragement. The cold phrases of kindly Horace +Smith show that he had not comprehended "Prometheus Unbound"; and +Shelley whimsically complains that even intelligent and sympathetic +critics confounded the ideal passion described in "Epipsychidion" with +the love affairs of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart." This almost +incomprehensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have known +better, combined with the coarse abuse of vulgar scribblers, was enough +to make a man so sincerely modest as Shelley doubt his powers, or shrink +from the severe labour of developing them. (See Medwin, volume 2 page +172, for Shelley's comment on the difficulty of the poet's art.) "The +decision of the cause," he wrote to Mr. Gisborne, "whether or no _I_ am +a poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterity +shall assemble; but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the +verdict will be, guilty--death." Deep down in his own heart he had, +however, less doubt: "This I know," he said to Medwin, "that whether in +prosing or in versing, there is something in my writings that shall live +for ever." And again, he writes to Hunt: "I am full of thoughts and +plans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which +encloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should +do great things." It seems almost certain that the incompleteness of +many longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandonment of the +tragedy on Tasso's story, the unfinished state of "Charles I", and the +failure to execute the cherished plan of a drama suggested by the Book +of Job, were due to the depressing effects of ill-health and external +discouragement. Poetry with Shelley was no light matter. He composed +under the pressure of intense excitement, and he elaborated his first +draughts with minute care and severe self-criticism. + +These words must not be taken as implying that he followed the Virgilian +precedent of polishing and reducing the volume of his verses by an +anxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he observed the Horatian +maxim of deferring their publication till the ninth year. The contrary +was notoriously the case with him. Yet it is none the less proved by the +state of his manuscripts that his compositions, even as we now possess +them, were no mere improvisations. The passage already quoted from his +"Defence of Poetry" shows the high ideal he had conceived of the poet's +duty toward his art; and it may be confidently asserted that his whole +literary career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence of +his earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision of +form that are the index of mastery over style. At the same time it was +inconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to attempt +composition except under an impulse approaching to inspiration. To +imperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, moral, +intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline exacted by his +own fastidious taste, with no other object in view than the frigid +compliments of a few friends, was more than even Shelley's enthusiasm +could endure. He, therefore, at this period required the powerful +stimulus of some highly exciting cause from without to determine his +activity. + +Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters early in the +year 1821. Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa was a clever but +disreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a very piquant portrait. +This man one day related the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, +the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had been confined by her father in a +dismal convent of the suburbs, to await her marriage with a distasteful +husband. Shelley, fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visit +the fair captive. The Professor accompanied him and Medwin to the +convent-parlour, where they found her more lovely than even the most +glowing descriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. +Shelley soon discovered that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I +have ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon the +subject of Uranian Love--Il Vero Amore--justifies the belief that she +possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. +Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her +convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and by +presents of flowers and books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathy +for this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, however +spiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate. The result was the +composition of "Epipsychidion," the most unintelligible of all his poems +to those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's "Symposium" and +Dante's "Vita Nuova". In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as the +incarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in +mortal flesh:-- + + Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, + Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman + All that is insupportable in thee + Of light, and love, and immortality! + +He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and +deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicate +obscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for his +soul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of ideal +beauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he ever +been deluded. At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truth +of the vision veiled from him so many years. She and Mary shall +henceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him. Then +he calls on her to fly. They three will escape and live together, far +away from men, in an Aegean island. The description of this visionary +isle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and +undiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this +century in the rhymed heroic metre. + + It is an isle under Ionian skies, + Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise; + And, for the harbours are not safe and good, + This land would have remained a solitude + But for some pastoral people native there, + Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air + Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, + Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. + The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, + With ever-changing sound and light and foam + Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar; + And all the winds wandering along the shore, + Undulate with the undulating tide. + There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; + And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, + As clear as elemental diamond, + Or serene morning air. And far beyond, + The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer, + (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,) + Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls + Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls + Illumining, with sound that never fails + Accompany the noonday nightingales; + And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. + The light clear element which the isle wears + Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, + Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, + And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; + And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, + And dart the arrowy odour through the brain, + Till you might faint with that delicious pain. + And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, + With that deep music is in unison: + Which is a soul within a soul--they seem + Like echoes of an antenatal dream. + It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea, + Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; + Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, + Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air. + It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, + Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light + Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they + Sail onward far upon their fatal way. + The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm + To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm + Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, + From which its fields and woods ever renew + Their green and golden immortality. + And from the sea there rise, and from the sky + There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, + Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, + Which sun or moon or zephyr draws aside, + Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride + Glowing at once with love and loveliness, + Blushes and trembles at its own excess: + Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less + Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, + An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile + Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen + O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, + Filling their bare and void interstices. + +Shelley did not publish "Epipsychidion" with his own name. He gave it to +the world as a composition of a man who had "died at Florence, as he was +preparing for a voyage to one of the Sporades," and he requested Ollier +not to circulate it, except among a few intelligent readers. It may +almost be said to have been never published, in such profound silence +did it issue from the press. Very shortly after its appearance he +described it to Leigh Hunt as "a portion of me already dead," and added +this significant allusion to its subject matter:--"Some of us have in a +prior existence been in love with Antigone, and that makes us find no +full content in any mortal tie." In the letter of June 18, 1822, again +he says:--"The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom it +celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from the +Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious, +however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something +thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one +is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it +is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists +in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." +This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant as +the poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in the +author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of the +emotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetorical +exaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but because +Shelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really been +its subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publication +of "Epipsychidion," confirms the impression made by it, and justifies +the conclusion that he had utilized his feeling for Emilia to express a +favourite doctrine in impassioned verse. + +To students of Shelley's inner life "Epipsychidion" will always have +high value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing his +doctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principle +presented to us in "Alastor", the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and +"Prince Athanase." But the words just quoted, which may be compared with +Mrs. Shelley's note to "Prince Athanase," authorize our pointing out +what he himself recognized as the defect of his theory. Instead of +remaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn," +Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love." Thus, while +his doctrine in "Epipsychidion" seems Platonic, it will not square with +the "Symposium." Plato treats the love of a beautiful person as a mere +initiation into divine mysteries, the first step in the ladder that +ascends to heaven. When a man has formed a just conception of the +universal beauty, he looks back with a smile upon those who find their +soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by this +standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many +daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is a spurious +Platonism. Plato would have said that to seek the Idea of Beauty in +Emilia Viviani was a retrogressive step. All that she could do, would be +to quicken the soul's sense of beauty, to stir it from its lethargy, and +to make it divine the eternal reality of beauty in the supersensual +world of thought. This Shelley had already acknowledged in the "Hymn;" +and this he emphasizes in these words:--"The error consists in seeking +in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." + +The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman's edition do +not throw much light upon "Epipsychidion." The longest, entitled "To his +Genius" by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads like the induction to a +poem conceived and written in a different key, and at a lower level of +inspiration. It has, however, this extraordinary interest, that it deals +with a love which is both love and friendship, above sex, spiritual, +unintelligible to the world at large. Thus the fragment enables the +student better to realize the kind of worship so passionately expressed +in "Epipsychidion." + +The news of Keats's death at Rome on the 27th of December, 1820, and the +erroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not caused, by a +contemptible review of "Endymion" in the "Quarterly", stirred Shelley to +the composition of "Adonais". He had it printed at Pisa, and sent copies +to Ollier for circulation in London. This poem was a favourite with its +author, who hoped not only that it might find acceptance with the +public, but also that it would confer lustre upon the memory of a poet +whom he sincerely admired. No criticisms upon Shelley's works are half +so good as his own. It is, therefore, interesting to collect the +passages in which he speaks of an elegy only equalled in our language by +"Lycidas", and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior to +Milton's youthful lament for his friend. "The 'Adonais', in spite of its +mysticism," he writes to Ollier, "is the least imperfect of my +compositions." "I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born +to an immortality of oblivion." "It is a highly wrought PIECE OF ART, +and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have +written." "It is absurd in any review to criticize 'Adonais', and still +more to pretend that the verses are bad." "I know what to think of +'Adonais', but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad +poems of the day, I know not." Again, alluding to the stanzas hurled +against the infamous "Quarterly" reviewer, he says:--"I have dipped my +pen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm +and solemn." + +With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. Although +"Adonais" is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets as +"Prometheus" or "Epipsychidion," it presents Shelley's qualities in a +form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the +dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART of +the poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the +student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of +Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic +products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their +material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, +reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby +the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the +sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; +the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substituted +for Bion's cupids; and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bards +of England are summoned to lament around the poet's bier. Yet it is only +when Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that he +soars aloft on mighty wing. This point, too, is the point of transition +from death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture of +the things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions of the +poem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the passage from +the one to the other is natural. Two quotations from "Adonais" will +suffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse. + +The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron and +Moore--the "Pilgrim of Eternity," and Ierne's "sweetest lyrist of her +saddest wrong"--to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathos +and unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, +when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats in "Don Juan", and what +Moore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how +far both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron +his supreme place in the heaven of poetry. + + Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, + A phantom among men, companionless + As the last cloud of an expiring storm, + Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, + Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, + Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray + With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, + And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, + Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. + + A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift-- + A love in desolation masked--a Power + Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift + The weight of the superincumbent hour; + Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower, + A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak + Is it not broken? On the withering flower + The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek + The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. + + His head was bound with pansies over-blown, + And faded violets, white and pied and blue; + And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, + Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew + Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, + Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart + Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew + He came the last, neglected and apart; + A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart. + +The second passage is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere has Shelley +expressed his philosophy of man's relation to the universe with more +sublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in these +stanzas. If it were possible to identify that philosophy with any +recognized system of thought, it might be called pantheism. But it is +difficult to affix a name, stereotyped by the usage of the schools, to +the aerial spiritualism of its ardent and impassioned poet's creed. + +The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just been interrupted +by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He now +bursts forth afresh into the music of consolation:-- + + Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! + He hath awakened from the dream of life. + 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep + With phantoms an unprofitable strife, + And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife + Invulnerable nothings. WE decay + Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief + Convulse us and consume us day by day, + And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. + + He has outsoared the shadow of our night; + Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, + And that unrest which men miscall delight, + Can touch him not and torture not again; + From the contagion of the world's slow stain + He is secure, and now can never mourn + A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; + Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, + With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. + + He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he; + Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn, + Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee + The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; + Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! + Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air + Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown + O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare + Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! + + He is made one with Nature: there is heard + His voice in all her music, from the moan + Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird; + He is a presence to be felt and known + In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, + Spreading itself where'er that Power may move + Which has withdrawn his being to its own; + Which wields the world with never wearied love, + Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. + + He is a portion of the loveliness + Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear + His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress + Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there + All new successions to the forms they wear; + Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight + To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; + And bursting in its beauty and its might + From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. + +But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, the +blending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit of +beauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after immortality. +Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of the +personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into the +company of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:-- + + The splendours of the firmament of time + May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: + Like stars to their appointed height they climb, + And death is a low mist which cannot blot + The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought + Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, + And love and life contend in it, for what + Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, + And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. + + The inheritors of unfulfilled renown + Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, + Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton + Rose pale, his solemn agony had not + Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought + And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, + Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, + Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:-- + Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. + + And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, + But whose transmitted effluence cannot die + So long as fire outlives the parent spark, + Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. + "Thou art become as one of us," they cry; + "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long + Swung blind in unascended majesty, + Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. + Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" + +From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poet +once more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonais +lies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave. He has escaped: +to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on death +unterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keat's +resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to +be Shelley's own, is introduced:-- + + Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth, + Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright. + Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; + As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light + Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might + Satiate the void circumference: then shrink + Even to a point within our day and night; + And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sink + When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. + + Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, + Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought + That ages, empires, and religions there + Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; + For such as he can lend,--they borrow not + Glory from those who made the world their prey; + And he is gathered to the kings of thought + Who waged contention with their time's decay, + And of the past are all that cannot pass away. + + Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise, + The grave, the city, and the wilderness; + And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, + And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses dress + The bones of Desolation's nakedness, + Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead + Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, + Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead + A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; + + And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time + Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; + And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, + Pavilioning the dust of him who planned + This refuge for his memory, doth stand + Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, + A field is spread, on which a newer band + Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, + Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. + + Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet + To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned + Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, + Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, + Break if not thou! too surely shalt thou find + Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, + Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind + Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. + What Adonais is, why fear we to become? + +Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the +mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of +the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The +symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the +eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of +one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the +somewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of all +Shelley's qualities--the liberation of incalculable energies, the +emancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious over +circumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes as +make a feebler spirit tremble: + + The One remains, the many change and pass; + Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; + Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, + Stains the white radiance of Eternity, + Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, + If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! + Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, + Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak + The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. + + Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? + Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here + They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! + A light is past from the revolving year, + And man and woman; and what still is dear + Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. + The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: + 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither! + No more let Life divide what Death can join together. + + That light whose smile kindles the Universe, + That beauty in which all things work and move, + That benediction which the eclipsing curse + Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love + Which through the web of being blindly wove + By man and beast and earth and air and sea, + Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of + The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, + Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. + + The breath whose might I have invoked in song + Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven + Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng + Whose sails were never to the tempest given. + The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! + I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; + Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, + The soul of Adonais, like a star, + Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. + +It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have said +about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no +believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he was +too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of +no solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but my hopes are not +unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we +appear to die." On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content to +see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; +I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our +faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the +mystery will be solved." How constantly the thought of death as the +revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident +related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who +could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the +bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to +save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he +said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies +there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have +found an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life; +they sleep, and it is lifted." Yet being pressed by his friend, he +refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the +imperishability of the human soul. "We know nothing; we have no +evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are +incomprehensible even to ourselves." The clear insight into the +conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very +characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of his +essay on a "Future Life", which would certainly have stated the problem +with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of +doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination +with wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities +was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as +perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the +personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of +the "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence of +his hope upon this most intangible of riddles. + + Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that + Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, + Ere its outward form had known decay, + Now felt this change, I cannot say. + + I dare not guess; but in this life + Of error, ignorance, and strife, + Where nothing is, but all things seem, + And we the shadows of the dream: + + It is a modest creed, and yet + Pleasant, if one considers it, + To own that death itself must be, + Like all the rest, a mockery. + + That garden sweet, that lady fair, + And all sweet shapes and odours there, + In truth have never passed away: + 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. + + For love, and beauty, and delight, + There is no death nor change; their might + Exceeds our organs, which endure + No light, being themselves obscure. + +But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem which +suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate its +author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last lines +of "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. +The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say the +least, singular. In "Alastor" we read:-- + + A restless impulse urged him to embark + And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; + For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves + The slimy caverns of the populous deep. + +The "Ode to Liberty" closes on the same note: -- + + As a far taper fades with fading night; + As a brief insect dies with dying day, + My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, + Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away + Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, + As waves which lately paved his watery way + Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. + +The "Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples", echo the thought with a slight variation:-- + + Yet now despair itself is mild, + Even as the winds and waters are; + I could lie down like a tired child, + And weep away the life of care + Which I have borne, and yet must bear,-- + Till death like sleep might steal on me, + And I might feel in the warm air + My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea + Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. + +Trelawny tells a story of his friend's life at Lerici, which further +illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. he took +Mrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat one +afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he had +fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, "Now let us together +solve the great mystery!" Too much value must not be attached to what +might have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal not +unreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley's friends were +accustomed to expect the realisation of his wildest fancies. It may +incidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed its +victim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatal +element--during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channel +with Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at +least with Williams. + +A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of Prince +Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copy +of Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and announced that Greece was +determined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley's +enthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama of "Hellas", which he has +described as "a sort of imitation of the 'Persae' of Aeschylus." We find +him at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by the +end of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, +1821. Shelley did not set great store by it. "It was written," he says, +"without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which +now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits." The +preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his sound +and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions of +this century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancient +Hellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the part +played by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the +poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at +times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic +cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." +Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, +equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called +Prologue. (Forman, 4 page 95.) This truly magnificent torso must, I +think, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a +different and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for some +unknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, but +also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind. + +The lyric movement of the Chorus from "Hellas", which I propose to +quote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical invention. As for +the matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas are +written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does not +prevent their feeling a regret for the "mightier forms of an older, +austerer worship." Shelley's note reminds the reader, with +characteristic caution and frankness, that "the popular notions of +Christianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation to +the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will +supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more +universal." + + Worlds on worlds are rolling over + From creation to decay, + Like the bubbles on a river + Sparkling, bursting, borne away. + But they are still immortal + Who, through birth's orient portal, + And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, + Clothe their unceasing flight + In the brief dust and light + Gathered around their chariots as they go; + New shapes they still may weave, + New gods, new laws receive; + Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last + On Death's bare ribs had cast. + + A power from the unknown God, + A Promethan conqueror came; + Like a triumphal path he trod + The thorns of death and shame. + A mortal shape to him + Was like the vapour dim + Which the orient planet animates with light. + Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, + Like bloodhounds mild and tame, + Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight. + The moon of Mahomet + Arose, and it shall set: + While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon + The cross leads generations on. + + Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep + From one whose dreams are paradise, + Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, + And day peers forth with her blank eyes; + So fleet, so faint, so fair, + The Powers of earth and air + Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem: + Apollo, Pan, and Love + And even Olympian Jove, + Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. + Our hills, and seas, and streams, + Dispeopled of their dreams, + Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, + Wailed for the golden years. + +In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna, +where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccoli. It was then +settled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal to +be called "The Liberal" in concert with Leigh Hunt, should himself +settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the same +place. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerely +attached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to the +journal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partly +because he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of +Byron's, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to +his friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poet +of the age. (See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, August 26, 1821.) That +he was not without doubts as to Byron's working easily in harness with +Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully these +doubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known. + +At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usually +infamous calumny. What it was, we do not know; but that it made profound +impression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed to +his wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeats +his growing weariness, and his wish to escape from society to solitude; +the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the +world, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is +noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of +residence:--"our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the +transplanted tree flourishes not." At Pisa he had found real rest and +refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some of +his saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed to +Jane--for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students may +perceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtle +transitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible in +its intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the supposition +that Shelley was quite happy in his home. ("The Serpent is shut out from +Paradise.") These words must be taken as implying no reflection either +upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter +troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak +egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never +finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he +had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could +probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more +from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. +Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression has +bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory; +nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, like +all poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art, +converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. This +was almost certainly the case with "Epipsychidion." + +So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for careful +readers of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction that +during the last year of his life he often found relief from a +wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the +sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane was +beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to her +passed through her husband's hands without the slightest interruption to +their intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous of +her Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage from +Shelley's letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his +relation to the Williamses:--"They are people who are very pleasing to +me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane +more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She +has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that +compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement." + +Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake of +their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundity +of Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil industry which he +passed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:-- + + Swiftly walk over the western wave, + Spirit of Night! + Out of the misty eastern cave, + Where all the long and lone daylight, + Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, + Which make thee terrible and dear,-- + Swift be thy flight! + + Wrap thy form in a mantle grey + Star-inwrought! + Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, + Kiss her until she be wearied out. + Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, + Touching all with thin opiate wand- + Come, long-sought! + + When I arose and saw the dawn, + I sighed for thee; + When light rode high, and the dew was gone, + And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, + And the weary Day turned to his rest, + Lingering like an unloved guest, + I sighed for thee. + + Thy brother Death came, and cried, + "Wouldst thou me?" + Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, + Murmured like a noon-tide bee, + "Shall I nestle near thy side? + Wouldst thou me?"--and I replied, + "No, not thee!" + + Death will come when thou art dead, + Soon, too soon-- + Sleep will come when thou art fled; + Of neither would I ask the boon + I ask of thee, beloved Night-- + Swift be thine approaching flight, + Come soon, soon! + +The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend +Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not +uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given +by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that Shelley was no +careless writer. + + The golden gates of sleep unbar + Where strength and beauty, met together, + Kindle their image like a star + In a sea of glassy weather! + + Night, with all thy stars look down-- + Darkness, weep thy holiest dew! + Never smiled the inconstant moon + On a pair so true. + Let eyes not see their own delight; + Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight + Oft renew. + + Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! + Holy stars, permit no wrong! + And return to wake the sleeper, + Dawn, ere it be long. + O joy! O fear! what will be done + In the absence of the sun! + Come along! + +Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form, +were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of his +happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave's +"Golden Treasury" shows how large a place they occupy among the +permanent jewels of our literature. + +The month of January added a new and most important member to the little +Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more than +to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet's +life are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic. +Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far away +from literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with the +sternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-reliance +and his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore, +made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who still +incline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. This +true child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byron +the stuff of a real man. "To form a just idea of his poetry, you should +have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated +his writings." "The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best and +ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everything +better than himself." "I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and the +contrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking of +himself, was as much at ease in his own home, omitting no occasion of +obliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with all +or any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or +address." "All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest +manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, +coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship." "Shelley's +mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action." +"He was always in earnest." "He never laid aside his book and magic +mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, +stood mute.... Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held him +captive." These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself +somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting +affectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities +this "dreamy bard,"--"uncommonly awkward," as he also called him--bad +rider and poor seaman as he was--"over-sensitive," and "eternally +brooding on his own thoughts," who "had seen no more of the waking-day +than a girl at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with +the courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned +boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid +of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced +companion of his last few months that very rare product for which +Diogenes searched in vain--a man. + +Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no less +certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The +Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great +deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated +conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near +the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes +steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged +to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the +direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come +in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, +blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; +and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, +feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his +warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down +and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this +mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with +all the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of +his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by +every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our +literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; +it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and +trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the +custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams +saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had +in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,- + +"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"--I am translating some passages in it.' + +"'Oh, read it to us.' + +"Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not +interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly +became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly +manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid +interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into +our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish +poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After +this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a dead +silence ensued; looking up, I asked,-- + +"'Where is he?' + +"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, +no one knows when or where.'" + +Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to +be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man +who had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Shelley +proposed that the English--himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. +Taafe--should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme +took Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before +they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing +that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other +affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police. +The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted +dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr. +Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man +struck Shelley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English then +pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron's +servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded +the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was +necessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter "a +trifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by the +authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, +Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the +exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron's +final departure from Pisa. + +The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by such +adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his +days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, +with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams +in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from +thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When +the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until +midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his +favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, +and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to +Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his +finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run +together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a +sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild +ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a +manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When +my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images +and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled +down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a +drawing." + +A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly +with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began +to gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go +pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend's +firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing +was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in +fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the +circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and +the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding +movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by +Byron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line of +Mephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange," and translated +it, "My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, "Then you are her +nephew." Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to +it in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above. + +Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to +nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with +Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly +lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined +to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking +the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his +mind to have one too. Shelley's was to be an open boat carrying sail, +Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted +to a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain +Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost the +lives of Shelley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carried +Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain +Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelley +and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, +which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams +overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his +cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two +tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was +very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, +strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, +not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, +Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. +"It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching the +poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had +a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one +was mental, the other mechanical." "The boy was quick and handy, and +used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, but +over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in +emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing +sea and sky; he heeded not the boat." + + + +CHAPTER 7. + +LAST DAYS. + +The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and +early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging +for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon +a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which +"looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. it +consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing +boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided +into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been +white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought +the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about +it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to +be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room +of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other; +the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another. +Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon; +and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when +Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris +naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever +Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the +dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected +apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. +Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no +easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's +laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin. + +They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course of +life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8. +These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley's life. We +seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr. +Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from +which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably +have risen to a loftier altitude, by a calmer and more equable exercise +of powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life in +Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is +calm for the passing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with +none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the +calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world +he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little +removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures +of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the +element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well +mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in +solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows +in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to +bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to +Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets +aloud to the assembled party. + +In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this +uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms and +inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if +we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been +one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his +masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of +compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, +and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and +inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in +chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous +march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their +tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty +with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe +of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to +abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this +solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a +Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer +heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, +which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante +plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the +Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide. +The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is +brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a +moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how +Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime +philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more +soul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, as +we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? I +cried"--a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that the +questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death. + +To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of its +splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary +images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley is +the only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficult +of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot +be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in +treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature, +and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To +select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict +less violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach one +of its episodes. + + Swift as a spirit hastening to his task + Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth + Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask + + Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. + The smokeless altars of the mountain snows + Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth + + Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, + To which the birds tempered their matin lay. + All flowers in field or forest which unclose + + Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, + Swinging their censers in the element, + With orient incense lit by the new ray, + + Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent + Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; + And, in succession due, did continent, + + Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear + The form and character of mortal mould, + Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear + + Their portion of the toil, which he of old + Took as his own, and then imposed on them. + But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold + + Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem + The cone of night, now they were laid asleep, + Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem + + Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep + Of a green Apennine. Before me fled + The night; behind me rose the day; the deep + + Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,-- + When a strange trance over my fancy grew + Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread + + Was so transparent that the scene came through + As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn + O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew + + That I had felt the freshness of that dawn + Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, + And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn + + Under the self-same bough, and heard as there + The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold + Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. + And then a vision on my brain was rolled. + +Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point +one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph of +Life" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision +for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not +without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza +rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the +labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming +in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with +clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: +yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement. + + As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, + This was the tenour of my waking dream:-- + Methought I sate beside a public way + + Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream + Of people there was hurrying to and fro, + Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, + + All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know + Whither he went, or whence he came, or why + He made one of the multitude, and so + + Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky + One of the million leaves of summer's bier; + Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, + + Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: + Some flying from the thing they feared, and some + Seeking the object of another's fear; + + And others, as with steps towards the tomb, + Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, + And others mournfully within the gloom + + Of their own shadow walked and called it death; + And some fled from it as it were a ghost, + Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath. + + But more, with motions which each other crossed, + Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, + Or birds within the noon-day ether lost, + + Upon that path where flowers never grew-- + And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, + Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew + + Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; + Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told + Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed, + + With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, + And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they + Pursued their serious folly as of old. + +Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to +notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in +one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the passing of a +multitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by +accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding +genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to +note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the +definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and +mystic. + + And as I gazed, methought that in the way + The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June + When the south wind shakes the extinguished day; + + And a cold glare, intenser than the noon + But icy cold, obscured with blinding light + The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon-- + + When on the sunlit limits of the night + Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, + And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,-- + + Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear + The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form + Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair; + + So came a chariot on the silent storm + Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape + So sate within, as one whom years deform, + + Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, + Crouching within the shadow of a tomb. + And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape + + Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom + Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam + A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume + + The guidance of that wonder-winged team; + The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings + Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream + + The music of their ever-moving wings. + All the four faces of that charioteer + Had their eyes banded; little profit brings + + Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, + Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, + Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere + + Of all that is, has been, or will be done. + So ill was the car guided--but it past + With solemn speed majestically on. + +The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic +effort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of +Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make +Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw +visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the +sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another +he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained +terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood +he communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what +she afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed +that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable that +the last words written to him by Jane were these:--"Are you going to +join your friend Plato?" + +The Leigh Hunts arrived at last in Genoa, whence they again sailed for +Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediately +prepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams in +the "Don Juan" for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his old +friend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon +the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and +established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as +comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The +negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised +forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from +Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how +irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven +disorderly children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was +positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, +who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly +cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough +to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and +the tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, +harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two +together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa to +his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he used +to be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touch +relating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:--"He +assented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, +while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet be +established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of +faith." + +On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise for +Leghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, with +Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, Charles +Vivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on board +the "Bolivar", in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weather +for some time had been unusually hot and dry. "Processions of priests +and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;" so runs +the last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or +nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "Don +Juan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a.m. +instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief." +Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was an +oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, and +slept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in the +harbour making all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest was +upon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more than +twenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously for +Shelley's boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard +of her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of +the catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of +a felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running her +down is still uncertain. + +On the morning of the third day after the storm, Trelawny rode to Pisa, +and communicated his fears to Hunt. "I then went upstairs to Byron. When +I told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned +me." Couriers were despatched to search the sea-coast, and to bring the +"Bolivar" from Leghorn. Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, and +there found a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been in +Shelley's boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with the +coast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last two +bodies were cast upon the sand. One found near the Via Reggio, on the +18th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the volume of +Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the other, doubled back, +as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away." +The other, found near the tower of Migliarino, at about four miles' +distance, was that of Williams. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, though +cast up on the same day, the 18th of July, near Massa, was not heard of +by Trelawny till the 29th. + +Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to the two +widowed women, who had spent the last days in an agony of alternate +despair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny discharged +faithfully and firmly. "The next day I prevailed on them," he says, "to +return with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of the +next day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neither +describe nor forget." It was decided that Shelley should be buried at +Rome, near his friend Keats and his son William, and that Williams's +remains should be taken to England. But first the bodies had to be +burned; and for permission to do this Trelawny, who all through had +taken the lead, applied to the English Embassy at Florence. After some +difficulty it was granted. + +What remains to be said concerning the cremation of Shelley's body on +the 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own words. Williams, it +may be stated, had been burned on the preceding day. + +"Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the poet's grave, +but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut a +trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertain +the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave. + +"In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended +by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand +scenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, +that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the +islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented +watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested +Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified +outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight. + +"As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness +and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of +wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked +body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him +back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to +check the sacrilege--the work went on silently in the deep and +unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch +of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron +was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a +dull, hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had +struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered.... After the fire was +well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine +was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his +life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and +quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the +atmosphere was tremulous and wavy.... The fire was so fierce as to +produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey +ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of +bones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all was that the +heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, +my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act, I should +have been put into quarantine." + +Shelley's heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not without +reluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. It is now +at Boscombe. His ashes were carried by Trelawny to Rome and buried in +the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter to +Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely in "Adonais". The epitaph, composed +by Hunt, ran thus: "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. August +MDCCXCII. Obiit VIII Jul. MDCCCXXII." To the Latin words Trelawny, +faithfullest and most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel's +song, much loved in life by Shelley: + + Nothing of him that doth fade, + But doth suffer a sea-change + Into something rich and strange. + +"And so," writes Lady Shelley, "the sea and the earth closed over one +who was great as a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist; and of +whom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to have +prepared him for being thus snatched from life under circumstances of +mingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in their spring +freshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal body decrepit, or +to wither the heart which could not be consumed by fire." + + + +CHAPTER 8. + +EPILOGUE. + +After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelley +the narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by one +commanding reason. Shelley's life and his poetry are indissolubly +connected. He acted what he thought and felt, with a directness rare +among his brethren of the poet's craft; while his verse, with the +exception of "The Cenci", expressed little but the animating thoughts +and aspirations of his life. That life, moreover, was "a miracle of +thirty years," so crowded with striking incident and varied experience +that, as he said himself, he had already lived longer than his father, +and ought to be reckoned with the men of ninety. Through all +vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and died, like one whom +the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story, young, despite grey +hairs and suffering. His life has, therefore, to be told, in order that +his life-work may be rightly valued: for, great as that was, he, the +man, was somehow greater; and noble as it truly is, the memory of him is +nobler. + +To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate for +truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. The +anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. The +right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: in +his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot the +mark of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest purpose with +moral and social theories that could not but have proved pernicious to +mankind at large, produced at times an almost grotesque mixture in his +actions no less than in his verse. We cannot, therefore, wonder that +society, while he lived, felt the necessity of asserting itself against +him. But now that he has passed into the company of the great dead, and +time has softened down the asperities of popular judgment, we are able +to learn the real lesson of his life and writings. That is not to be +sought in any of his doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his +resolute loyalty to an unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolent +ideal. It is this which constitutes his supreme importance for us +English at the present time. Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, +and we belong to a race in which men who follow them so single-heartedly +are not common. + +As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature--a +quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which severe +critics of other nations think we lack. Byron's daring is in a different +region: his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate our +energies, or cheer us with new hopes and splendid vistas. Wordsworth, +the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, +suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, and +braces us by healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But in +Wordsworth there is none of Shelley's magnetism. $What remains of +permanent value in Coleridge's poetry--such work as "Christabel", the +"Ancient Mariner", or "Kubla Khan"--is a product of pure artistic fancy, +tempered by the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he +was, loved Nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for him a +mistress rather than a Diotima; nor did he share the prophetic fire +which burns in Shelley's verse, quite apart from the direct enunciation +of his favourite tenets. In none of Shelley's greatest contemporaries +was the lyrical faculty so paramount; and whether we consider his minor +songs, his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowledge +that he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of our +language. In range of power he was also conspicuous above the rest. Not +only did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best +translations, and the best familiar poems of his century. As a satirist +and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do; +and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts +forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its +myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor rhetoric. + +While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached in +swiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, had +faults from which the men with whom I have compared him were more free. +The most prominent of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness, +incompleteness, a want of narrative force, and a weak hold on objective +realities. Even his warmest admirers, if they are sincere critics, will +concede that his verse, taken altogether, is marked by inequality. In +his eager self-abandonment to inspiration, he produced much that is +unsatisfying simply because it is not ripe. There was no defect of power +in him, but a defect of patience; and the final word to be pronounced in +estimating the larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not only +was the poet young; but the fruit of his young mind had been plucked +before it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not care +enough for common things to present them with artistic fulness. He was +intolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with the roundness that +we find in Goethe's work. He flew at the grand, the spacious, the +sublime; and did not always succeed in realizing for his readers what he +had imagined. A certain want of faith in his own powers, fostered by the +extraordinary discouragement under which he had to write, prevented him +from finishing what he began, or from giving that ultimate form of +perfection to his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces like +the "Ode to the West Wind". When a poem was ready, he had it hastily +printed, and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurred +to interrupt his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of these +defects, if we may use this word at all to indicate our sense that +Shelley might by care have been made equal to his highest self, were in +a great measure the correlative of his chief quality--the ideality, of +which I have already spoken. He composed with all his faculties, mental, +emotional, and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of +intense fervour, striving to attain one object, the truest and most +passionate investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed his +ever-quick imagination. The result is that his finest work has more the +stamp of something natural and elemental--the wind, the sea, the depth +of air--than of a mere artistic product. Plato would have said: the +Muses filled this man with sacred madness, and, when he wrote, he was no +longer in his own control. There was, moreover, ever-present in his +nature an effort, an aspiration after a better than the best this world +can show, which prompted him to blend the choicest products of his +thought and fancy with the fairest images borrowed from the earth on +which he lived. He never willingly composed except under the impulse to +body forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the spirit +of the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, this +earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of +inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. But it +cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art should +always be found in them. They have something of the waywardness and +negligence of nature, something of the asymmetreia we admire in the +earlier creations of Greek architecture. That Shelley, acute critic and +profound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and show +himself an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly proved +by "The Cenci" and by "Adonais". The reason why he did not always +observe this method will be understood by those who have studied his +"Defence of Poetry", and learned to sympathize with his impassioned +theory of art. + +Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice to +Shelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are almost +overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meet +in love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him, +and baffling the most eager seeker for the truth. (See Lady Shelley v. +Hogg; Trelawny v. the Shelley family; Peacock v. Lady Shelley; Garnett +v. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, etc., etc.) Through +the turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible to +discern the whole personality of the man. By careful comparison and +refined manipulation of the biographical treasures at our disposal, a +fair portrait of Shelley might still be set before the reader with the +accuracy of a finished picture. That labour of exquisite art and of +devoted love still remains to be accomplished, though in the meantime +Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Memoir is a most valuable instalment. Shelley in his +lifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, +impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, +Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he was +the gentlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had ever +met. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his four +last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, +wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youth +were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, his +character mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Without +losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experience +into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, +he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready to +unfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when life at +last seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, +death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product of +his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them into +something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end. + +If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of waste +excited in us by Shelley's premature absorption into the mystery of the +unknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own "Alastor":-- + + Art and eloquence, + And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain + To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. + It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all + Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit, + Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves + Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, + The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; + But pale despair and cold tranquillity, + Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, + Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. + +THE END. + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Percy Bysshe Shelley, by John Addington Symonds + diff --git a/old/pbshl10.zip b/old/pbshl10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..38cbb25 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pbshl10.zip |