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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of
+Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Mary W. Shelley
+
+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: Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
+
+Author: Mary W. Shelley
+
+Posting Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #4695]
+Release Date: November, 2003
+First Posted: March 3, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES TO WORKS OF SHELLEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sue Asscher.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES TO
+
+THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+
+BY
+
+MARY W. SHELLEY.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY
+
+TO FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 1839.
+
+Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect
+edition of Shelley's Poems. These being at last happily removed, I
+hasten to fulfil an important duty,--that of giving the productions of a
+sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and of,
+at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as they
+sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I abstain from any
+remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as the
+passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time
+to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No
+account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality
+in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I
+further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action
+committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as he
+only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the
+firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would
+stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary.
+Whatever faults he had ought to find extenuation among his fellows,
+since they prove him to be human; without them, the exalted nature of
+his soul would have raised him into something divine.
+
+The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley
+were,--First, a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his
+intercourse with warm affection and helpful sympathy. The other, the
+eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the cause of human
+happiness and improvement; and the fervent eloquence with which he
+discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by its happy
+abundance, and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic
+ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate life of its misery and its
+evil was the ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every power
+of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. He looked on political
+freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of mankind; and thus
+any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an exultation more
+intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage.
+Those who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and
+unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and it must be difficult of
+comprehension to the younger generation rising around, since they cannot
+remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were
+regarded some few years ago, nor the persecutions to which they were
+exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the state of feeling
+inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; and believing firmly
+in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a
+nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put
+its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of
+those systems from which he had himself suffered. Many advantages
+attended his birth; he spurned them all when balanced with what he
+considered his duties. He was generous to imprudence, devoted to
+heroism.
+
+These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for
+human weal; the resolution firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit, the
+glad triumph in good; the determination not to despair;--such were the
+features that marked those of his works which he regarded with most
+complacency, as sustained by a lofty subject and useful aim.
+
+In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes,--the
+purely imaginative, and those which sprang from the emotions of his
+heart. Among the former may be classed the "Witch of Atlas", "Adonais",
+and his latest composition, left imperfect, the "Triumph of Life". In
+the first of these particularly he gave the reins to his fancy, and
+luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that sense of
+mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life--a
+clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form--a
+curious and metaphysical anatomy of human passion and perception.
+
+The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once
+to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of love;
+others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments inspired by
+natural objects. Shelley's conception of love was exalted, absorbing,
+allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and warmed by
+earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in verse. Yet
+he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except when highly
+idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had cast aside
+unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had lost him.
+Others, as for instance "Rosalind and Helen" and "Lines written among
+the Euganean Hills", I found among his papers by chance; and with some
+difficulty urged him to complete them. There are others, such as the
+"Ode to the Skylark and The Cloud", which, in the opinion of many
+critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions.
+They were written as his mind prompted: listening to the carolling of
+the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it
+sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames.
+
+No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His
+extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual
+pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of
+outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is,
+among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet,
+and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain;
+to escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy
+when he sheltered himself, from the influence of human sympathies, in
+the wildest regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too
+brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and
+this is a taste shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims
+exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity; but few of us
+understand or sympathize with the endeavour to ally the love of abstract
+beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the to agathon kai to kalon of
+the Socratic philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this,
+Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and
+the ideal than in the special and tangible. This did not result from
+imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made
+Plato his study. He then translated his "Symposium" and his "Ion"; and
+the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than
+Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own
+poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself
+(as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use
+beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his
+verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to
+his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the
+same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he
+has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from
+those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he
+considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached.
+There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent
+to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined with his
+nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever expressed in
+sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or
+more forcible emotions of the soul.
+
+A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: 'You are still very young, and in
+certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you
+are so.' It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have
+got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this
+knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such
+inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his
+nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not
+add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by
+the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to
+ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of
+susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a
+man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and
+forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability,
+or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the
+stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more
+experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I
+die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, 'I have
+lived to be older than my father.' The weight of thought and feeling
+burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame,
+while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated
+countenance and brilliant eyes.
+
+He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over
+mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the
+ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his
+country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles.
+His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though
+late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the
+liberty he so fondly loved.
+
+He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never
+been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort
+and benefit--to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of
+genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once attached
+to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as
+wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation to know
+that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and now
+exists where we hope one day to join him;--although the intolerant, in
+their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can
+judge the heart, never rejected him.
+
+In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the
+origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers
+which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect than
+it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest
+recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my
+knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I
+have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go.
+In other respects I am indeed incompetent: but I feel the importance of
+the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavour to fulfil it
+in a manner he would himself approve; and hope, in this publication, to
+lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley's genius, his
+sufferings, and his virtues:--
+
+    Se al seguir son tarda,
+    Forse avverra che 'l bel nome gentile
+    Consacrero con questa stanca penna.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT IN SECOND EDITION OF 1839.
+
+In revising this new edition, and carefully consulting Shelley's
+scattered and confused papers, I found a few fragments which had
+hitherto escaped me, and was enabled to complete a few poems hitherto
+left unfinished. What at one time escapes the searching eye, dimmed by
+its own earnestness, becomes clear at a future period. By the aid of a
+friend, I also present some poems complete and correct which hitherto
+have been defaced by various mistakes and omissions. It was suggested
+that the poem "To the Queen of my Heart" was falsely attributed to
+Shelley. I certainly find no trace of it among his papers; and, as those
+of his intimate friends whom I have consulted never heard of it, I omit
+it.
+
+Two poems are added of some length, "Swellfoot the Tyrant" and "Peter
+Bell the Third". I have mentioned the circumstances under which they
+were written in the notes; and need only add that they are conceived in
+a very different spirit from Shelley's usual compositions. They are
+specimens of the burlesque and fanciful; but, although they adopt a
+familiar style and homely imagery, there shine through the radiance of
+the poet's imagination the earnest views and opinions of the politician
+and the moralist.
+
+At my request the publisher has restored the omitted passages of "Queen
+Mab". I now present this edition as a complete collection of my
+husband's poetical works, and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add
+to or take away a word or line.
+
+Putney, November 6, 1839.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY
+
+TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1824.
+
+    In nobil sangue vita umile e queta,
+    Ed in alto intelletto un puro core
+    Frutto senile in sul giovenil fibre,
+    E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta.--PETRARCA.
+
+It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems
+of Mr. Shelley, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice; as it
+appeared to me that at this moment a narration of the events of my
+husband's life would come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I
+applied to Mr. Leigh Hunt. The distinguished friendship that Mr. Shelley
+felt for him, and the enthusiastic affection with which Mr. Leigh Hunt
+clings to his friend's memory, seemed to point him out as the person
+best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence from this country,
+which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my
+scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some other occasion he will
+pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the
+volume which I edit has not been honoured by its insertion.
+
+The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived was the occasion
+that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the
+cause which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of
+the moral and physical state of mankind, was the chief reason why he,
+like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No
+man was ever more devoted than he to the endeavour of making those
+around him happy; no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly
+attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and the gap
+it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea
+above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent
+powers of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them
+their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the
+wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever! He is to them as a bright
+vision, whose radiant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the
+realities that society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let
+them appeal to any one who had ever known him. To see him was to love
+him: and his presence, like Ithuriel's spear, was alone sufficient to
+disclose the falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the
+ear of the ignorant world.
+
+His life was spent in the contemplation of Nature, in arduous study, or
+in acts of kindness and affection. He was an elegant scholar and a
+profound metaphysician; without possessing much scientific knowledge, he
+was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural
+objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the
+history and habits of every production of the earth; he could interpret
+without a fault each appearance in the sky; and the varied phenomena of
+heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made his study and
+reading-room of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake, and the
+waterfall. Ill health and continual pain preyed upon his powers; and the
+solitude in which we lived, particularly on our first arrival in Italy,
+although congenial to his feelings, must frequently have weighed upon
+his spirits; those beautiful and affecting "Lines written in Dejection
+near Naples" were composed at such an interval; but, when in health, his
+spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary degree.
+
+Such was his love for Nature that every page of his poetry is
+associated, in the minds of his friends, with the loveliest scenes of
+the countries which he inhabited. In early life he visited the most
+beautiful parts of this country and Ireland. Afterwards the Alps of
+Switzerland became his inspirers. "Prometheus Unbound" was written among
+the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome; and, when he made his home
+under the Pisan hills, their roofless recesses harboured him as he
+composed the "Witch of Atlas", "Adonais", and "Hellas". In the wild but
+beautiful Bay of Spezzia, the winds and waves which he loved became his
+playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of
+his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal
+occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he
+often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered
+it, and, sitting beneath their shelter, wrote the "Triumph of Life", the
+last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of this lonely
+place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few
+selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world,
+all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued
+enjoyment. I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the
+happiest which he had ever known: his health even rapidly improved, and
+he was never better than when I last saw him, full of spirits and joy,
+embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy. I
+was to have accompanied him; but illness confined me to my room, and
+thus put the seal on my misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight with a
+favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his return by the breakers of
+that sea which was about to engulf him.
+
+He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices toward his friend, and
+enjoying with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then
+embarked with Mr. Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his
+pleasures and of his fate, to return to us. We waited for them in vain;
+the sea by its restless moaning seemed to desire to inform us of what we
+would not learn:--but a veil may well be drawn over such misery. The
+real anguish of those moments transcended all the fictions that the most
+glowing imagination ever portrayed; our seclusion, the savage nature of
+the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity
+to the troubled sea, combined to imbue with strange horror our days of
+uncertainty. The truth was at last known,--a truth that made our loved
+and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall. Every heart echoed the
+deep lament, and my only consolation was in the praise and earnest love
+that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for him we
+had lost,--not, I fondly hope, for ever; his unearthly and elevated
+nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although in an
+altered form. Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its
+weed-grown wall, and 'the world's sole monument' is enriched by his
+remains.
+
+I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume. "Julian
+and Maddalo", the "Witch of Atlas", and most of the "Translations", were
+written some years ago; and, with the exception of the "Cyclops", and
+the Scenes from the "Magico Prodigioso", may be considered as having
+received the author's ultimate corrections. The "Triumph of Life" was
+his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state that I arranged it
+in its present form with great difficulty. All his poems which were
+scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, and I have
+added a reprint of "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude": the difficulty
+with which a copy can be obtained is the cause of its republication.
+Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion,
+and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have
+carefully copied. I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date
+of their composition.
+
+I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some
+of the most imperfect among them; but I frankly own that I have been
+more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape
+me than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the
+fastidious reader. I feel secure that the lovers of Shelley's poetry
+(who know how, more than any poet of the present day, every line and
+word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank
+me: I consecrate this volume to them.
+
+The size of this collection has prevented the insertion of any prose
+pieces. They will hereafter appear in a separate publication.
+
+MARY W. SHELLEY.
+
+London, June 1, 1824.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON QUEEN MAB, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+Shelley was eighteen when he wrote "Queen Mab"; he never published it.
+When it was written, he had come to the decision that he was too young
+to be a 'judge of controversies'; and he was desirous of acquiring 'that
+sobriety of spirit which is the characteristic of true heroism.' But he
+never doubted the truth or utility of his opinions; and, in printing and
+privately distributing "Queen Mab", he believed that he should further
+their dissemination, without occasioning the mischief either to others
+or himself that might arise from publication. It is doubtful whether he
+would himself have admitted it into a collection of his works. His
+severe classical taste, refined by the constant study of the Greek
+poets, might have discovered defects that escape the ordinary reader;
+and the change his opinions underwent in many points would have
+prevented him from putting forth the speculations of his boyish days.
+But the poem is too beautiful in itself, and far too remarkable as the
+production of a boy of eighteen, to allow of its being passed over:
+besides that, having been frequently reprinted, the omission would be
+vain. In the former edition certain portions were left out, as shocking
+the general reader from the violence of their attack on religion. I
+myself had a painful feeling that such erasures might be looked upon as
+a mark of disrespect towards the author, and am glad to have the
+opportunity of restoring them. The notes also are reprinted entire--not
+because they are models of reasoning or lessons of truth, but because
+Shelley wrote them, and that all that a man at once so distinguished and
+so excellent ever did deserves to be preserved. The alterations his
+opinions underwent ought to be recorded, for they form his history.
+
+A series of articles was published in the "New Monthly Magazine" during
+the autumn of the year 1832, written by a man of great talent, a
+fellow-collegian and warm friend of Shelley: they describe admirably the
+state of his mind during his collegiate life. Inspired with ardour for
+the acquisition of knowledge, endowed with the keenest sensibility and
+with the fortitude of a martyr, Shelley came among his fellow-creatures,
+congregated for the purposes of education, like a spirit from another
+sphere; too delicately organized for the rough treatment man uses
+towards man, especially in the season of youth, and too resolute in
+carrying out his own sense of good and justice, not to become a victim.
+To a devoted attachment to those he loved he added a determined
+resistance to oppression. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was treated with
+revolting cruelty by masters and boys: this roused instead of taming his
+spirit, and he rejected the duty of obedience when it was enforced by
+menaces and punishment. To aversion to the society of his
+fellow-creatures, such as he found them when collected together in
+societies, where one egged on the other to acts of tyranny, was joined
+the deepest sympathy and compassion; while the attachment he felt for
+individuals, and the admiration with which he regarded their powers and
+their virtues, led him to entertain a high opinion of the perfectibility
+of human nature; and he believed that all could reach the highest grade
+of moral improvement, did not the customs and prejudices of society
+foster evil passions and excuse evil actions.
+
+The oppression which, trembling at every nerve yet resolute to heroism,
+it was his ill-fortune to encounter at school and at college, led him to
+dissent in all things from those whose arguments were blows, whose faith
+appeared to engender blame and hatred. 'During my existence,' he wrote
+to a friend in 1812, 'I have incessantly speculated, thought, and read.'
+His readings were not always well chosen; among them were the works of
+the French philosophers: as far as metaphysical argument went, he
+temporarily became a convert. At the same time, it was the cardinal
+article of his faith that, if men were but taught and induced to treat
+their fellows with love, charity, and equal rights, this earth would
+realize paradise. He looked upon religion, as it is professed, and above
+all practised, as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of
+those virtues which would make men brothers.
+
+Can this be wondered at? At the age of seventeen, fragile in health and
+frame, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and
+universal kindness, glowing with ardour to attain wisdom, resolved at
+every personal sacrifice to do right, burning with a desire for
+affection and sympathy,--he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a
+criminal.
+
+The cause was that he was sincere; that he believed the opinions which
+he entertained to be true. And he loved truth with a martyr's love; he
+was ready to sacrifice station and fortune, and his dearest affections,
+at its shrine. The sacrifice was demanded from, and made by, a youth of
+seventeen. It is a singular fact in the history of society in the
+civilized nations of modern times that no false step is so irretrievable
+as one made in early youth. Older men, it is true, when they oppose
+their fellows and transgress ordinary rules, carry a certain prudence or
+hypocrisy as a shield along with them. But youth is rash; nor can it
+imagine, while asserting what it believes to be true, and doing what it
+believes to be right, that it should be denounced as vicious, and
+pursued as a criminal.
+
+Shelley possessed a quality of mind which experience has shown me to be
+of the rarest occurrence among human beings: this was his UNWORLDLINESS.
+The usual motives that rule men, prospects of present or future
+advantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the taunts and
+censures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had no
+influence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his
+thoughts. It is difficult even to express the simplicity and directness
+of purpose that adorned him. Some few might be found in the history of
+mankind, and some one at least among his own friends, equally
+disinterested and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, of every
+baser motive. But no one, I believe, ever joined this noble but passive
+virtue to equal active endeavours for the benefit of his friends and
+mankind in general, and to equal power to produce the advantages he
+desired. The world's brightest gauds and its most solid advantages were
+of no worth in his eyes, when compared to the cause of what he
+considered truth, and the good of his fellow-creatures. Born in a
+position which, to his inexperienced mind, afforded the greatest
+facilities to practise the tenets he espoused, he boldly declared the
+use he would make of fortune and station, and enjoyed the belief that he
+should materially benefit his fellow-creatures by his actions; while,
+conscious of surpassing powers of reason and imagination, it is not
+strange that he should, even while so young, have believed that his
+written thoughts would tend to disseminate opinions which he believed
+conducive to the happiness of the human race.
+
+If man were a creature devoid of passion, he might have said and done
+all this with quietness. But he was too enthusiastic, and too full of
+hatred of all the ills he witnessed, not to scorn danger. Various
+disappointments tortured, but could not tame, his soul. The more enmity
+he met, the more earnestly he became attached to his peculiar views, and
+hostile to those of the men who persecuted him.
+
+He was animated to greater zeal by compassion for his fellow-creatures.
+His sympathy was excited by the misery with which the world is burning.
+He witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was aware of the evils of
+ignorance. He desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of
+superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and
+was ready to be the first to lay down the advantages of his birth. He
+was of too uncompromising a disposition to join any party. He did not in
+his youth look forward to gradual improvement: nay, in those days of
+intolerance, now almost forgotten, it seemed as easy to look forward to
+the sort of millennium of freedom and brotherhood which he thought the
+proper state of mankind as to the present reign of moderation and
+improvement. Ill-health made him believe that his race would soon be
+run; that a year or two was all he had of life. He desired that these
+years should be useful and illustrious. He saw, in a fervent call on his
+fellow-creatures to share alike the blessings of the creation, to love
+and serve each other, the noblest work that life and time permitted him.
+In this spirit he composed "Queen Mab".
+
+He was a lover of the wonderful and wild in literature, but had not
+fostered these tastes at their genuine sources--the romances and
+chivalry of the middle ages--but in the perusal of such German works as
+were current in those days. Under the influence of these he, at the age
+of fifteen, wrote two short prose romances of slender merit. The
+sentiments and language were exaggerated, the composition imitative and
+poor. He wrote also a poem on the subject of Ahasuerus--being led to it
+by a German fragment he picked up, dirty and torn, in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields. This fell afterwards into other hands, and was considerably
+altered before it was printed. Our earlier English poetry was almost
+unknown to him. The love and knowledge of Nature developed by
+Wordsworth--the lofty melody and mysterious beauty of Coleridge's
+poetry--and the wild fantastic machinery and gorgeous scenery adopted by
+Southey--composed his favourite reading; the rhythm of "Queen Mab" was
+founded on that of "Thalaba", and the first few lines bear a striking
+resemblance in spirit, though not in idea, to the opening of that poem.
+His fertile imagination, and ear tuned to the finest sense of harmony,
+preserved him from imitation. Another of his favourite books was the
+poem of "Gebir" by Walter Savage Landor. From his boyhood he had a
+wonderful facility of versification, which he carried into another
+language; and his Latin school-verses were composed with an ease and
+correctness that procured for him prizes, and caused him to be resorted
+to by all his friends for help. He was, at the period of writing "Queen
+Mab", a great traveller within the limits of England, Scotland, and
+Ireland. His time was spent among the loveliest scenes of these
+countries. Mountain and lake and forest were his home; the phenomena of
+Nature were his favourite study. He loved to inquire into their causes,
+and was addicted to pursuits of natural philosophy and chemistry, as far
+as they could be carried on as an amusement. These tastes gave truth and
+vivacity to his descriptions, and warmed his soul with that deep
+admiration for the wonders of Nature which constant association with her
+inspired.
+
+He never intended to publish "Queen Mab" as it stands; but a few years
+after, when printing "Alastor", he extracted a small portion which he
+entitled "The Daemon of the World". In this he changed somewhat the
+versification, and made other alterations scarcely to be called
+improvements.
+
+Some years after, when in Italy, a bookseller published an edition of
+"Queen Mab" as it originally stood. Shelley was hastily written to by
+his friends, under the idea that, deeply injurious as the mere
+distribution of the poem had proved, the publication might awaken fresh
+persecutions. At the suggestion of these friends he wrote a letter on
+the subject, printed in the "Examiner" newspaper--with which I close
+this history of his earliest work.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'EXAMINER.'
+
+'Sir,
+
+'Having heard that a poem entitled "Queen Mab" has been surreptitiously
+published in London, and that legal proceedings have been instituted
+against the publisher, I request the favour of your insertion of the
+following explanation of the affair, as it relates to me.
+
+'A poem entitled "Queen Mab" was written by me at the age of eighteen, I
+daresay in a sufficiently intemperate spirit--but even then was not
+intended for publication, and a few copies only were struck off, to be
+distributed among my personal friends. I have not seen this production
+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. I have directed my solicitor to apply to
+Chancery for an injunction to restrain the sale; but, after the
+precedent of Mr. Southey's "Wat Tyler" (a poem written, I believe, at
+the same age, and with the same unreflecting enthusiasm), with little
+hope of success.
+
+'Whilst I exonerate myself from all share in having divulged opinions
+hostile to existing sanctions, under the form, whatever it may be, which
+they assume in this poem, it is scarcely necessary for me to protest
+against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the
+excellence of Monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be,
+by such equivocal arguments as confiscation and imprisonment, and
+invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred
+ties of Nature and society.
+
+'SIR,
+
+'I am your obliged and obedient servant,
+
+'PERCY B. SHELLEY.
+
+'Pisa, June 22, 1821.'
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON "ALASTOR", BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+"Alastor" is written in a very different tone from "Queen Mab". In the
+latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his
+youth--all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope, to
+which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper destiny of
+his fellow-creatures, gave birth. "Alastor", on the contrary, contains
+an individual interest only. A very few years, with their attendant
+events, had checked the ardour of Shelley's hopes, though he still
+thought them well-grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the
+noblest task man could achieve.
+
+This is neither the time nor place to speak of the misfortunes that
+chequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did, he
+at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own
+conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends
+brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had
+also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward;
+inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own
+soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in "Queen Mab", the whole
+universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of
+1815, an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a
+consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute
+spasms. Suddenly a complete change took place; and though through life
+he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary disease
+vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unexampled
+degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state of his health.
+
+As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad.
+He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and
+returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. The
+river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of "Thalaba", his
+imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the
+summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and
+a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopsgate Heath, on the
+borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of
+comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months were
+warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the
+Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Crichlade. His
+beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that
+occasion. "Alastor" was composed on his return. He spent his days under
+the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a
+fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest scenery we
+find in the poem.
+
+None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn
+spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the
+broodings of a poet's heart in solitude--the mingling of the exulting
+joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the
+sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts--give a touching
+interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during
+the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours
+as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The
+versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it
+is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic
+than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in
+the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his
+brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation
+of death.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON THE "REVOLT OF ISLAM", BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect--a brilliant
+imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led him
+(he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions. I say
+'he fancied,' because I believe the former to have been paramount, and
+that it would have gained the mastery even had he struggled against it.
+However, he said that he deliberated at one time whether he should
+dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and, resolving on the former,
+he educated himself for it, discarding in a great measure his
+philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the study of the poets
+of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be added a constant perusal
+of portions of the old Testament--the Psalms, the Book of Job, the
+Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of which filled him with
+delight.
+
+As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced by
+exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He was
+very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this restlessness. The
+sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made him pine, especially
+when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial climate. In 1816 he
+again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on the banks of the Lake
+of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed alone in his
+boat--sailing as the wind listed, or weltering on the calm waters. The
+majestic aspect of Nature ministered such thoughts as he afterwards
+enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of the Arve, and his "Hymn to
+Intellectual Beauty", were written at this time. Perhaps during this
+summer his genius was checked by association with another poet whose
+nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the poem he wrote
+at that time, gave tokens that he shared for a period the more abstract
+and etherealised inspiration of Shelley. The saddest events awaited his
+return to England; but such was his fear to wound the feelings of others
+that he never expressed the anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the
+indignation roused by the persecutions he underwent; while the course of
+deep unexpressed passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire
+to embody themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil
+which cling to real life.
+
+He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty,
+some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the
+world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a
+resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on
+his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he
+delighted to imagine--full of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they
+both, with will unvanquished, and the deepest sense of the justice of
+their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this poem a
+memorial of a friend of his youth. The character of the old man who
+liberates Laon from his tower prison, and tends on him in sickness, is
+founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, had often
+stood by to befriend and support him, and whose name he never mentioned
+without love and veneration.
+
+During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.
+Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no
+great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The
+poem 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. The chalk hills break into cliffs
+that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the wilder
+portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation;
+and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all this wealth of
+Nature which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks or soil dedicated
+to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was inhabited (I hope it is
+altered now) by a very poor population. The women are lacemakers, and
+lose their health by sedentary labour, for which they were very ill
+paid. The Poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those
+who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates.
+The changes produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest,
+brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley
+afforded what alleviation he could. In the winter, while bringing out
+his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting
+the poor cottages. I mention these things,--for this minute and active
+sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to
+his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human
+race.
+
+The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression,
+met with many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue but
+such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those whose
+opinions were similar to his own. I extract a portion of a letter
+written in answer to one of these friends. It best details the impulses
+of Shelley's mind, and his motives: it was written with entire
+unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own opinion of
+his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour with which he
+clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow of death, to
+views from which he believed the permanent happiness of mankind must
+eventually spring.
+
+
+'Marlowe, December 11, 1817.
+
+'I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers,
+and the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to
+develop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest
+which your admonitions express. But I think you are mistaken in some
+points with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be
+their amount. I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your
+censures of "The Revolt of Islam"; but the productions of mine which you
+commend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassures me,
+in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a series of thoughts
+which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm. I felt the
+precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave
+some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was written with
+the same feeling--as real, though not so prophetic--as the
+communications of a dying man. I never presumed indeed to consider it
+anything approaching to faultless; but, when I consider contemporary
+productions of the same apparent pretensions, I own I was filled with
+confidence. I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my
+own mind. I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this
+have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part
+of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am
+formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to
+apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to
+external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to
+communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the
+moral or the material universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these
+faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist
+very imperfectly in my own mind. But, when you advert to my
+Chancery-paper, a cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant piece of
+cramped and cautious argument, and to the little scrap about
+"Mandeville", which expressed my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two
+minutes' thought to express, as specimens of my powers more favourable
+than that which grew as it were from "the agony and bloody sweat" of
+intellectual travail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I
+am mistaken in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the
+selection of the specimens of it. Yet, after all, I cannot but be
+conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity
+which is the attribute and accompaniment of power. This feeling alone
+would make your most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of the
+economy of intellectual force, valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I
+see any trust in coming years, doubt not but that I shall do something,
+whatever it may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of my powers
+will suggest to me, and which will be in every respect accommodated to
+their utmost limits.
+
+[Shelley to Godwin.]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON ROSALIND AND HELEN BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+"Rosalind and Helen" was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside--till I found
+it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of
+his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind, and develop
+some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the
+human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more
+subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but he shed a grace
+borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed
+on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch
+as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he
+promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes
+it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war
+made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By
+reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source
+of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his
+delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our
+nature.
+
+"Rosalind and Helen" was finished during the summer of 1818, while we
+were at the Baths of Lucca.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+From the Baths of Lucca, in 1818, Shelley visited Venice; and,
+circumstances rendering it eligible that we should remain a few weeks in
+the neighbourhood of that city, he accepted the offer of Lord Byron, who
+lent him the use of a villa he rented near Este; and he sent for his
+family from Lucca to join him.
+
+I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent,
+demolished when the French suppressed religious houses; it was situated
+on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of
+higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk,
+a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall-door to a
+summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and
+in which he began the "Prometheus"; and here also, as he mentions in a
+letter, he wrote "Julian and Maddalo". A slight ravine, with a road in
+its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of
+the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo,
+and from whose ruined crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as
+the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked
+from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by
+the far Apennines, while to the east the horizon was lost in misty
+distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine,
+and chestnut-wood, at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely
+gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new
+abode.
+
+Our first misfortune, of the kind from which we soon suffered even more
+severely, happened here. Our little girl, an infant in whose small
+features I fancied that I traced great resemblance to her father, showed
+symptoms of suffering from the heat of the climate. Teething increased
+her illness and danger. We were at Este, and when we became alarmed,
+hastened to Venice for the best advice. When we arrived at Fusina, we
+found that we had forgotten our passport, and the soldiers on duty
+attempted to prevent our crossing the laguna; but they could not resist
+Shelley's impetuosity at such a moment. We had scarcely arrived at
+Venice before life fled from the little sufferer, and we returned to
+Este to weep her loss.
+
+After a few weeks spent in this retreat, which was interspersed by
+visits to Venice, we proceeded southward.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND", BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return.
+His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a
+milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his
+emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December, 1817,
+he had written from Marlow to a friend, saying:
+
+'My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals are of a
+deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to such a state of unnatural and
+keen excitement that, only to instance the organ of sight, I find the
+very blades of grass and the boughs of distant trees present themselves
+to me with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I sink into a state
+of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours on the sofa
+between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful irritability of
+thought. Such, with little intermission, is my condition. The hours
+devoted to study are selected with vigilant caution from among these
+periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling to
+Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I have
+experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and although at present it has
+passed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this
+symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be
+consumptive. It is to my advantage that this malady is in its nature
+slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive to its advances, is susceptible
+of cure from a warm climate. In the event of its assuming any decided
+shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to Italy without delay. It is not mere
+health, but life, that I should seek, and that not for my own sake--I
+feel I am capable of trampling on all such weakness; but for the sake of
+those to whom my life may be a source of happiness, utility, security,
+and honour, and to some of whom my death might be all that is the
+reverse.'
+
+In almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left
+behind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds,
+many springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his
+native country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had no
+compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence in
+helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the
+scenes of Nature, was marred by the same circumstance.
+
+He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any pause
+till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley;
+it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter
+heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive
+letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as
+compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he
+appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in that divine
+land.
+
+The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and
+with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three
+subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story of
+Tasso; of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The other
+was one founded on the Book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea,
+but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was the
+"Prometheus Unbound". The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar
+companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aeschylus
+filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not
+possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of
+Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated
+above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and
+demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley.
+
+We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that
+interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of
+Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we
+returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated
+the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were
+composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di Lucca he
+translated Plato's "Symposium". But, though he diversified his studies,
+his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a
+bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time to the
+composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his
+preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are
+little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a
+letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of description which
+render his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and
+interest.
+
+At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several
+months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a
+sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with
+regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.
+
+The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human
+species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but
+an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of
+Christianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,
+
+    'Brought death into the world and all our woe.'
+
+Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no
+evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to
+notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to
+mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it
+with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be
+able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the
+creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved
+best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle,
+oppressed not only by it, but by all--even the good, who were deluded
+into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of
+fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance
+in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had depicted in his last
+poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took
+a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain
+classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter
+the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to
+bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to
+defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond the state wherein they are
+sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through
+wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a
+rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed
+heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of
+Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the
+god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated
+to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the
+offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father.
+Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with
+his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and
+set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.
+
+Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views. The
+son greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis,
+was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier reign than that of
+Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries
+of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event,
+but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will flow, espouses
+Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his
+usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of Hercules, liberates
+Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil
+done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, is the wife of
+Prometheus--she was, according to other mythological interpretations,
+the same as Venus and Nature. When the benefactor of mankind is
+liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her
+husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In
+the Fourth Act, the Poet gives further scope to his imagination, and
+idealizes the forms of creation--such as we know them, instead of such
+as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty parent, is
+superseded by the Spirit of the Earth, the guide of our planet through
+the realms of sky; while his fair and weaker companion and attendant,
+the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in
+the superior sphere.
+
+Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his
+abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It
+requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the
+mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary
+reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are
+far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on
+the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is
+obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations and
+remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of Mind
+and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.
+
+More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery.
+Shelley loved to idealize the real--to gift the mechanism of the
+material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on
+the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind.
+Sophocles was his great master in this species of imagery.
+
+I find in one of his manuscript books some remarks on a line in the
+"Oedipus Tyrannus", which show at once the critical subtlety of
+Shelley's mind, and explain his apprehension of those 'minute and remote
+distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the
+living beings which surround us,' which he pronounces, in the letter
+quoted in the note to the "Revolt of Islam", to comprehend all that is
+sublime in man.
+
+'In the Greek Shakespeare, Sophocles, we find the image,
+
+    Pollas d' odous elthonta phrontidos planois:
+
+a line of almost unfathomable depth of poetry; yet how simple are the
+images in which it is arrayed!
+
+    "Coming to many ways in the wanderings of careful thought."
+
+If the words odous and planois had not been used, the line might have
+been explained in a metaphorical instead of an absolute sense, as we say
+"WAYS and means," and "wanderings" for error and confusion. But they
+meant literally paths or roads, such as we tread with our feet; and
+wanderings, such as a man makes when he loses himself in a desert, or
+roams from city to city--as Oedipus, the speaker of this verse, was
+destined to wander, blind and asking charity. What a picture does this
+line suggest of the mind as a wilderness of intricate paths, wide as the
+universe, which is here made its symbol; a world within a world which he
+who seeks some knowledge with respect to what he ought to do searches
+throughout, as he would search the external universe for some valued
+thing which was hidden from him upon its surface.'
+
+In reading Shelley's poetry, we often find similar verses, resembling,
+but not imitating the Greek in this species of imagery; for, though he
+adopted the style, he gifted it with that originality of form and
+colouring which sprung from his own genius.
+
+In the "Prometheus Unbound", Shelley fulfils the promise quoted from a
+letter in the Note on the "Revolt of Islam". (While correcting the
+proof-sheets of that poem, it struck me that the poet had indulged in an
+exaggerated view of the evils of restored despotism; which, however
+injurious and degrading, were less openly sanguinary than the triumph of
+anarchy, such as it appeared in France at the close of the last century.
+But at this time a book, "Scenes of Spanish Life", translated by
+Lieutenant Crawford from the German of Dr. Huber, of Rostock, fell into
+my hands. The account of the triumph of the priests and the serviles,
+after the French invasion of Spain in 1823, bears a strong and frightful
+resemblance to some of the descriptions of the massacre of the patriots
+in the "Revolt of Islam".) The tone of the composition is calmer and
+more majestic, the poetry more perfect as a whole, and the imagination
+displayed at once more pleasingly beautiful and more varied and daring.
+The description of the Hours, as they are seen in the cave of
+Demogorgon, is an instance of this--it fills the mind as the most
+charming picture--we long to see an artist at work to bring to our view
+the
+
+    'cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds
+    Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
+    A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
+    Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
+    And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
+    Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
+    With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
+    As if the thing they loved fled on before,
+    And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
+    Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all
+    Sweep onward.'
+
+Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of
+love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the
+prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law
+of the world.
+
+England had been rendered a painful residence to Shelley, as much by the
+sort of persecution with which in those days all men of liberal opinions
+were visited, and by the injustice he had lately endured in the Court of
+Chancery, as by the symptoms of disease which made him regard a visit to
+Italy as necessary to prolong his life. An exile, and strongly impressed
+with the feeling that the majority of his countrymen regarded him with
+sentiments of aversion such as his own heart could experience towards
+none, he sheltered himself from such disgusting and painful thoughts in
+the calm retreats of poetry, and built up a world of his own--with the
+more pleasure, since he hoped to induce some one or two to believe that
+the earth might become such, did mankind themselves consent. The charm
+of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty
+than they had ever worn before. And, as he wandered among the ruins made
+one with Nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that
+throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul
+imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are
+many passages in the "Prometheus" which show the intense delight he
+received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty
+of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must
+feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he
+wrote from Rome, 'My "Prometheus Unbound" is just finished, and in a
+month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and
+mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better
+than any of my former attempts.'
+
+I may mention, for the information of the more critical reader, that the
+verbal alterations in this edition of "Prometheus" are made from a list
+of errata written by Shelley himself.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON THE CENCI, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+The sort of mistake that Shelley made as to the extent of his own genius
+and powers, which led him deviously at first, but lastly into the direct
+track that enabled him fully to develop them, is a curious instance of
+his modesty of feeling, and of the methods which the human mind uses at
+once to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to make its way
+out of error into the path which Nature has marked out as its right one.
+He often incited me to attempt the writing a tragedy: he conceived that
+I possessed some dramatic talent, and he was always most earnest and
+energetic in his exhortations that I should cultivate any talent I
+possessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer estimate of my powers;
+and above all (though at that time not exactly aware of the fact) I was
+far too young to have any chance of succeeding, even moderately, in a
+species of composition that requires a greater scope of experience in,
+and sympathy with, human passion than could then have fallen to my
+lot,--or than any perhaps, except Shelley, ever possessed, even at the
+age of twenty-six, at which he wrote The Cenci.
+
+On the other hand, Shelley most erroneously conceived himself to be
+destitute of this talent. He believed that one of the first requisites
+was the capacity of forming and following-up a story or plot. He fancied
+himself to be defective in this portion of imagination: it was that
+which gave him least pleasure in the writings of others, though he laid
+great store by it as the proper framework to support the sublimest
+efforts of poetry. He asserted that he was too metaphysical and
+abstract, too fond of the theoretical and the ideal, to succeed as a
+tragedian. It perhaps is not strange that I shared this opinion with
+himself; for he had hitherto shown no inclination for, nor given any
+specimen of his powers in framing and supporting the interest of a
+story, either in prose or verse. Once or twice, when he attempted such,
+he had speedily thrown it aside, as being even disagreeable to him as an
+occupation.
+
+The subject he had suggested for a tragedy was Charles I: and he had
+written to me: 'Remember, remember Charles I. I have been already
+imagining how you would conduct some scenes. The second volume of "St.
+Leon" begins with this proud and true sentiment: "There is nothing which
+the human mind can conceive which it may not execute." Shakespeare was
+only a human being.' These words were written in 1818, while we were in
+Lombardy, when he little thought how soon a work of his own would prove
+a proud comment on the passage he quoted. When in Rome, in 1819, a
+friend put into our hands the old manuscript account of the story of the
+Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces, where the portraits of
+Beatrice were to be found; and her beauty cast the reflection of its own
+grace over her appalling story. Shelley's imagination became strongly
+excited, and he urged the subject to me as one fitted for a tragedy.
+More than ever I felt my incompetence; but I entreated him to write it
+instead; and he began, and proceeded swiftly, urged on by intense
+sympathy with the sufferings of the human beings whose passions, so long
+cold in the tomb, he revived, and gifted with poetic language. This
+tragedy is the only one of his works that he communicated to me during
+its progress. We talked over the arrangement of the scenes together. I
+speedily saw the great mistake we had made, and triumphed in the
+discovery of the new talent brought to light from that mine of wealth
+(never, alas, through his untimely death, worked to its depths)--his
+richly gifted mind.
+
+We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest child,
+who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the
+idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world, anxious for a time
+to escape a spot associated too intimately with his presence and loss.
+(Such feelings haunted him when, in "The Cenci", he makes Beatrice speak
+to Cardinal Camillo of
+
+     'that fair blue-eyed child
+    Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and say--
+    All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
+    That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
+    And all the things hoped for or done therein
+    Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief.')
+
+Some friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, and
+we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town
+and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was
+situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked
+beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and in the
+evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on,
+and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges: Nature was
+bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic
+terror, such as we had never before witnessed.
+
+At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such
+in Italy, generally roofed: this one was very small, yet not only roofed
+but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide
+prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The
+storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most
+picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark
+lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water-spouts that
+churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and scattered
+by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it
+almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his
+health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he
+wrote the principal part of "The Cenci". He was making a study of
+Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies with an accomplished
+lady living near us, to whom his letter from Leghorn was addressed
+during the following year. He admired Calderon, both for his poetry and
+his dramatic genius; but it shows his judgement and originality that,
+though greatly struck by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet,
+none of his peculiarities crept into the composition of "The Cenci"; and
+there is no trace of his new studies, except in that passage to which he
+himself alludes as suggested by one in "El Purgatorio de San Patricio".
+
+Shelley wished "The Cenci" to be acted. He was not a playgoer, being of
+such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad filling-up
+of the inferior parts. While preparing for our departure from England,
+however, he saw Miss O'Neil several times. She was then in the zenith of
+her glory; and Shelley was deeply moved by her impersonation of several
+parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, the sublime
+vehemence of passion she displayed. She was often in his thoughts as he
+wrote: and, when he had finished, he became anxious that his tragedy
+should be acted, and receive the advantage of having this accomplished
+actress to fill the part of the heroine. With this view he wrote the
+following letter to a friend in London:
+
+'The object of the present letter us to ask a favour of you. I have
+written a tragedy on a story well known in Italy, and, in my conception,
+eminently dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my play fit for
+representation, and those who have already seen it judge favourably. It
+is written without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions which
+characterize my other compositions; I have 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. I send you a translation of
+the Italian manuscript on which my play is founded; the chief
+circumstance of which I have touched very delicately; for my principal
+doubt as to whether it would succeed as an acting play hangs entirely on
+the question as to whether any such a thing as incest in this shape,
+however treated, would be admitted on the stage. I think, however, it
+will form no objection; considering, first, that the facts are matter of
+history, and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have treated
+it. (In speaking of his mode of treating this main incident, Shelley
+said that it might be remarked that, in the course of the play, he had
+never mentioned expressly Cenci's worst crime. Every one knew what it
+must be, but it was never imaged in words--the nearest allusion to it
+being that portion of Cenci's curse beginning--"That, if she have a
+child," etc.)
+
+'I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this attempt of
+mine will succeed or not. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative at
+present; founding my hopes on this--that, as a composition, it is
+certainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been acted,
+with the exception of "Remorse"; that the interest of the plot is
+incredibly greater and more real; and that there is nothing beyond what
+the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand, either
+in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a complete
+incognito, and can trust to you that, whatever else you do, you will at
+least favour me on this point. Indeed, this is essential, deeply
+essential, to its success. After it had been acted, and successfully
+(could I hope for such a thing), I would own it if I pleased, and use
+the celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.
+
+'What I want you to do is to procure for me its presentation at Covent
+Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss
+O'Neil, and it might even seem to have been written for her (God forbid
+that I should see her play it--it would tear my nerves to pieces); and
+in all respects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief male
+character I confess I should be very unwilling that any one but Kean
+should play. That is impossible, and I must be contented with an
+inferior actor.'
+
+The play was accordingly sent to Mr. Harris. He pronounced the subject
+to be so objectionable that he could not even submit the part to Miss
+O'Neil for perusal, but expressed his desire that the author would write
+a tragedy on some other subject, which he would gladly accept. Shelley
+printed a small edition at Leghorn, to ensure its correctness; as he was
+much annoyed by the many mistakes that crept into his text when distance
+prevented him from correcting the press.
+
+Universal approbation soon stamped "The Cenci" as the best tragedy of
+modern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said: 'I have been cautious
+to avoid the introducing faults of youthful composition; diffuseness, a
+profusion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness, generality, and, as Hamlet
+says, "words, words".' There is nothing that is not purely dramatic
+throughout; and the character of Beatrice, proceeding, from vehement
+struggle, to horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly to the elevated
+dignity of calm suffering, joined to passionate tenderness and pathos,
+is touched with hues so vivid and so beautiful that the poet seems to
+have read intimately the secrets of the noble heart imaged in the lovely
+countenance of the unfortunate girl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It
+is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not
+only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet. The varying feelings of
+Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart-reaching eloquence. Every
+character has a voice that echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to
+one acquainted with the written story, to mark the success with which
+the poet has inwoven the real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes,
+and yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated all that would
+otherwise have shown too harsh or too hideous in the picture. His
+success was a double triumph; and often after he was earnestly entreated
+to write again in a style that commanded popular favour, while it was
+not less instinct with truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went
+the other way; and, even when employed on subjects whose interest
+depended on character and incident, he would start off in another
+direction, and leave the delineations of human passion, which he could
+depict in so able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy, or the
+expression of those opinions and sentiments, with regard to human nature
+and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of his
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON THE MASK OF ANARCHY, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+Though Shelley's first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist
+openly the oppressions existent during 'the good old times' had faded
+with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He
+was a republican, and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings
+as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our
+nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and
+intellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon
+the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance,
+was intense. He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing
+"The Cenci", when the news of the Manchester Massacre reached us; it
+roused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion. The great
+truth that the many, if accordant and resolute, could control the few,
+as was shown some years after, made him long to teach his injured
+countrymen how to resist. Inspired by these feelings, he wrote the "Mask
+of Anarchy", which he sent to his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in
+the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor.
+
+'I did not insert it,' Leigh Hunt writes in his valuable and interesting
+preface to this poem, when he printed it in 1832, 'because I thought
+that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do
+justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked
+in this flaming robe of verse.' Days of outrage have passed away, and
+with them the exasperation that would cause such an appeal to the many
+to be injurious. Without being aware of them, they at one time acted on
+his suggestions, and gained the day. But they rose when human life was
+respected by the Minister in power; such was not the case during the
+Administration which excited Shelley's abhorrence.
+
+The poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular
+tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many
+stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired, those
+beginning
+
+    'My Father Time is old and gray,'
+
+before I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching
+passage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; it might
+make a patriot of any man whose heart was not wholly closed against his
+humbler fellow-creatures.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+In this new edition I have added "Peter Bell the Third". A critique on
+Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley
+exceedingly, and suggested this poem.
+
+I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of "Peter
+Bell" is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's poetry
+more;--he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its
+beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He
+conceived the idealism of a poet--a man of lofty and creative
+genius--quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the
+beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices and
+pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour for
+truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of
+the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false and injurious
+opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best
+allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a man gifted, even as
+transcendently as the author of "Peter Bell", with the highest qualities
+of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be infected with dulness.
+This poem was written as a warning--not as a narration of the reality.
+He was unacquainted personally with Wordsworth, or with Coleridge (to
+whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat,
+his poem is purely ideal;--it contains something of criticism on the
+compositions of those great poets, but nothing injurious to the men
+themselves.
+
+No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the
+errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious
+effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully
+written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of "Swellfoot", it must
+be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry--so much of
+HIMSELF in it--that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by right
+belongs to the world for whose instruction and benefit it was written.
+
+NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles
+from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his
+nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.
+The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque
+by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a
+handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread
+over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and
+bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a
+solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino--a
+mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the
+object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The
+excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too
+much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his
+return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the
+three days immediately succeeding to his return, the "Witch of Atlas".
+This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes--wildly fanciful,
+full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to
+revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.
+
+The surpassing excellence of "The Cenci" had made me greatly desire that
+Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that would
+more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and
+dreamy spirit of the "Witch of Atlas". It was not only that I wished him
+to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he
+would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater
+happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The
+few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my
+representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the
+right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public;
+but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that ought to have
+sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources, and on
+the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because his mind overflowed,
+without the hope of being appreciated. I had not the most distant wish
+that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations for
+the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many; but I felt
+sure that, if his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of
+men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged,
+and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice
+to his character and virtues, which in those days it was the mode to
+attack with the most flagitious calumnies and insulting abuse. That he
+felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with
+the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The
+truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a
+few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting; among such I
+find the following:--
+
+    'Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.
+    I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
+    Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
+    Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
+    In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
+    The hearts of others...And, when
+    I went among my kind, with triple brass
+    Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
+    To bear scorn, fear, and hate--a woful mass!'
+
+I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of
+sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions
+were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination.
+Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with its
+mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened
+again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved to shelter himself
+rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and
+regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues from
+sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or paly twilight, from the
+aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods,--which celebrated
+the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring
+stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which Nature creates in her
+solitudes. These are the materials which form the "Witch of Atlas": it
+is a brilliant congregation of ideas such as his senses gathered, and
+his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much
+loved.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August,
+1820, Shelley 'begins "Swellfoot the Tyrant", suggested by the pigs at
+the fair of San Giuliano.' This was the period of Queen Caroline's
+landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of
+her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the "Green Bag" on
+the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an
+enquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These
+circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We
+were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on the
+day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley
+read to us his "Ode to Liberty"; and was riotously accompanied by the
+grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared
+it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and,
+it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting
+another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of
+the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus--and "Swellfoot" was
+begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and
+published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by
+the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it,
+if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of
+bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and
+expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
+
+Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my
+publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back anything
+he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and
+sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the
+bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right
+to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and
+thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the
+original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright
+truth
+
+    'from the pale-faced moon;
+    Or dive into the bottom of the deep
+    Where fathom-line would never touch the ground,
+    And pluck up drowned'
+
+truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that
+he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in
+his slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly
+prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama, however,
+must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of
+the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will
+not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the
+ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes
+that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against
+its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the
+beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to
+Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose to declare
+the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot
+of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821
+the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at first their
+coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long
+enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the
+yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the
+people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the conge to their
+sovereign, and set up a republic.
+
+Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian
+minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging
+their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, 'I do not know whether
+these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall
+directly have sixty thousand start up.' But, though the Tuscans had no
+desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they
+slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions
+with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every
+bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would
+offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the
+overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow
+against all struggles for liberty in Italy.
+
+We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was
+alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful
+triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom
+in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it
+prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily
+the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the
+exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited extent, have
+extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and knowledge have
+now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it continue thus, we
+may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said--in
+1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the
+struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world,
+probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress of
+affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at
+their highest. Day after day he read the bulletins of the Austrian army,
+and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the
+revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul
+were in the triumph of the cause. We were living at Pisa at that time;
+and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the
+celebrated Vacca, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes
+from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally
+experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen.
+
+While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading
+Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him
+with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several
+Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly
+Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed
+finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his
+treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the
+gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince
+Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his
+country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He often
+intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we had no
+idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April 1821, he
+called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin, Prince
+Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared that
+henceforth Greece would be free.
+
+Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two odes
+dictated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himself naturally impelled
+to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that people
+whose works he regarded with deep admiration, and to adopt the
+vaticinatory character in prophesying their success. "Hellas" was
+written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he
+overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant materials.
+His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not their
+particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry,
+which was to be the epoch of a change in English politics, particularly
+as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy of his country would
+fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by the battle of Navarino
+secure their enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as
+it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would prove
+triumphant; and in this spirit, auguring ultimate good, yet grieving
+over the vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, he composed his
+drama.
+
+"Hellas" was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most
+beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in
+their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify
+Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the
+intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the
+country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--
+
+    'But Greece and her foundations are
+    Built below the tide of war,
+    Based on the crystalline sea
+    Of thought and its eternity.'
+
+And again, that philosophical truth felicitously imaged forth--
+
+    'Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,
+    The foul cubs like their parents are,
+    Their den is in the guilty mind,
+    And Conscience feeds them with despair.'
+
+The conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his
+lyrics. The imagery is distinct and majestic; the prophecy, such as
+poets love to dwell upon, the Regeneration of Mankind--and that
+regeneration reflecting back splendour on the foregone time, from which
+it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past virtuous
+deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace of tenfold
+value.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+The remainder of Shelley's Poems will be arranged in the order in which
+they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of the
+shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside, and
+I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings
+after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of
+others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are
+often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess,
+by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains
+poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the
+present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed
+together at the end.
+
+The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the
+poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as "Early Poems", the greater
+part were published with "Alastor"; some of them were written
+previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning 'Oh, there are
+spirits in the air' was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never
+knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through
+his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.
+He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than
+conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
+what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.
+The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the
+churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815.
+He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the
+open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the
+Thames to its source. He never spent a season more tranquilly than the
+summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe pulmonary attack;
+the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest; and his
+life was spent under its shades or on the water, meditating subjects for
+verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at extending his political
+doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in prose essays to the
+people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to
+feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen
+was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things.
+
+In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the
+books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814
+and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,
+Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes
+Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a
+large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's
+poems, Wordsworth's "Excursion", Southey's "Madoc" and "Thalaba", Locke
+"On the Human Understanding", Bacon's "Novum Organum". In Italian,
+Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d'un Solitaire" of
+Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He read
+few novels.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+Shelley wrote little during this year. The poem entitled "The Sunset"
+was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at
+Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.
+The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round
+the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by
+reading the "Nouvelle Heloise" for the first time. The reading it on the
+very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he was at
+once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and earnest
+enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was something in the
+character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship
+he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and,
+though differing in many of the views and shocked by others, yet the
+effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful.
+
+"Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding
+peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way
+through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of
+this poem in his publication of the "History of a Six Weeks' Tour, and
+Letters from Switzerland": 'The poem entitled "Mont Blanc" is written by
+the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It was composed
+under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited
+by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as an undisciplined
+overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to
+imitate the untamable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which
+those feelings sprang.'
+
+This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual.
+In the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the
+"Prometheus" of Aeschylus, several of Plutarch's "Lives", and the works
+of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny's "Letters", the "Annals" and
+"Germany" of Tacitus. In French, the "History of the French Revolution"
+by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's
+"Essays", and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful and
+instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English works:
+Locke's "Essay", "Political Justice", and Coleridge's "Lay Sermon", form
+nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud to me in the
+evening; in this way we read, this year, the New Testament, "Paradise
+Lost", Spenser's "Faery Queen", and "Don Quixote".
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had
+approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life
+the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by
+pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year.
+The "Revolt of Islam", written and printed, was a great
+effort--"Rosalind and Helen" was begun--and the fragments and poems I
+can trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection
+were his solitary hours.
+
+In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a
+stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression,
+and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without
+a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his
+manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken
+and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's
+mind, and desire to trace its workings.
+
+He projected also translating the "Hymns" of Homer; his version of
+several of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already
+published in the "Posthumous Poems". His readings this year were chiefly
+Greek. Besides the "Hymns" of Homer and the "Iliad", he read the dramas
+of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the "Symposium" of Plato, and Arrian's
+"Historia Indica". In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the
+Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of it aloud in the
+evening. Among these evening readings I find also mentioned the "Faerie
+Queen"; and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries,
+Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore and Byron.
+
+His life was now spent more in thought than action--he had lost the
+eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the
+benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was
+far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or
+politics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful; and
+indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others--not in
+bitterness, but in sport. The author of "Nightmare Abbey" seized on some
+points of his character and some habits of his life when he painted
+Scythrop. He was not addicted to 'port or madeira,' but in youth he had
+read of 'Illuminati and Eleutherarchs,' and believed that he possessed
+the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of men and the
+state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and adversity had
+struck home; but he struggled with despondency as he did with physical
+pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats, and watching
+the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness--or repeating with wild
+energy "The Ancient Mariner", and Southey's "Old Woman of Berkeley"; but
+those who do will recollect that it was in such, and in the creations of
+his own fancy when that was most daring and ideal, that he sheltered
+himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that
+beset his life.
+
+No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were
+torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the
+passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes,
+besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's love,
+which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences.
+
+At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had
+said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be
+permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared
+that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to
+resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything,
+and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas
+addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under
+the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to
+preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not
+written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the
+spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and
+was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable
+emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the fourth verse of this
+effusion is introduced in "Rosalind and Helen". When afterwards this
+child died at Rome, he wrote, a propos of the English burying-ground in
+that city: 'This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the
+yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal
+by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child lies buried here. I
+envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom
+they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other
+crushes the affections.'
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1818, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+We often hear of persons disappointed by a first visit to Italy. This
+was not Shelley's case. The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its
+majestic storms, of the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the
+noble marble-built cities, enchanted him. The sight of the works of art
+was full enjoyment and wonder. He had not studied pictures or statues
+before; he now did so with the eye of taste, that referred not to the
+rules of schools, but to those of Nature and truth. The first entrance
+to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of antique grandeur that far
+surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its
+environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent and
+glorious beauty of Italy.
+
+Our winter was spent at Naples. Here he wrote the fragments of
+"Marenghi" and "The Woodman and the Nightingale", which he afterwards
+threw aside. At this time, Shelley suffered greatly in health. He put
+himself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and
+made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good results. Constant
+and poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and though he preserved
+the appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our wanderings
+in the environs of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny sea, yet many
+hours were passed when his thoughts, shadowed by illness, became
+gloomy,--and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which he hid
+from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural bursts of
+discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable regret and
+gnawing remorse to such periods; fancying that, had one been more alive
+to the nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe them, such
+would not have existed. And yet, enjoying as he appeared to do every
+sight or influence of earth or sky, it was difficult to imagine that any
+melancholy he showed was aught but the effect of the constant pain to
+which he was a martyr.
+
+We lived in utter solitude. And such is often not the nurse of
+cheerfulness; for then, at least with those who have been exposed to
+adversity, the mind broods over its sorrows too intently; while the
+society of the enlightened, the witty, and the wise, enables us to
+forget ourselves by making us the sharers of the thoughts of others,
+which is a portion of the philosophy of happiness. Shelley never liked
+society in numbers,--it harassed and wearied him; but neither did he
+like loneliness, and usually, when alone, sheltered himself against
+memory and reflection in a book. But, with one or two whom he loved, he
+gave way to wild and joyous spirits, or in more serious conversation
+expounded his opinions with vivacity and eloquence. If an argument
+arose, no man ever argued better. He was clear, logical, and earnest, in
+supporting his own views; attentive, patient, and impartial, while
+listening to those on the adverse side. Had not a wall of prejudice been
+raised at this time between him and his countrymen, how many would have
+sought the acquaintance of one whom to know was to love and to revere!
+How many of the more enlightened of his contemporaries have since
+regretted that they did not seek him! how very few knew his worth while
+he lived! and, of those few, several were withheld by timidity or envy
+from declaring their sense of it. But no man was ever more
+enthusiastically loved--more looked up to, as one superior to his
+fellows in intellectual endowments and moral worth, by the few who knew
+him well, and had sufficient nobleness of soul to appreciate his
+superiority. His excellence is now acknowledged; but, even while
+admitted, not duly appreciated. For who, except those who were
+acquainted with him, can imagine his unwearied benevolence, his
+generosity, his systematic forbearance? And still less is his vast
+superiority in intellectual attainments sufficiently understood--his
+sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory.
+All these as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he
+lived, and are now silent in the tomb:
+
+    'Ahi orbo mondo ingrato!
+    Gran cagion hai di dever pianger meco;
+    Che quel ben ch' era in te, perdut' hai seco.'
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1819, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as
+always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than
+the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society
+was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He
+had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to
+commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in
+those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They are
+not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled
+when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could
+not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his
+earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home to the
+direct point of injury--that oppression is detestable as being the
+parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these
+outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the
+cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph: such is the
+scope of the "Ode to the Assertors of Liberty". He sketched also a new
+version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1820, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+We spent the latter part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley
+passed several hours daily in the Gallery, and made various notes on its
+ancient works of art. His thoughts were a good deal taken up also by the
+project of a steamboat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, to ply
+between Leghorn and Marseilles, for which he supplied a sum of money.
+This was a sort of plan to delight Shelley, and he was greatly
+disappointed when it was thrown aside.
+
+There was something in Florence that disagreed excessively with his
+health, and he suffered far more pain than usual; so much so that we
+left it sooner than we intended, and removed to Pisa, where we had some
+friends, and, above all, where we could consult the celebrated Vacca as
+to the cause of Shelley's sufferings. He, like every other medical man,
+could only guess at that, and gave little hope of immediate relief; he
+enjoined him to abstain from all physicians and medicine, and to leave
+his complaint to Nature. As he had vainly consulted medical men of the
+highest repute in England, he was easily persuaded to adopt this advice.
+Pain and ill-health followed him to the end; but the residence at Pisa
+agreed with him better than any other, and there in consequence we
+remained.
+
+In the Spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house
+of some friends who were absent on a journey to England. It was on a
+beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose
+myrtle-hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the
+carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his
+poems. He addressed the letter to Mrs. Gisborne from this house, which
+was hers: he had made his study of the workshop of her son, who was an
+engineer. Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of my father in her younger
+days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming from her
+frank and affectionate nature. She had the most intense love of
+knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness
+of mind after a life of considerable adversity. As a favourite friend of
+my father, we had sought her with eagerness; and the most open and
+cordial friendship was established between us.
+
+Our stay at the Baths of San Giuliano was shortened by an accident. At
+the foot of our garden ran the canal that communicated between the
+Serchio and the Arno. The Serchio overflowed its banks, and, breaking
+its bounds, this canal also overflowed; all this part of the country is
+below the level of its rivers, and the consequence was that it was
+speedily flooded. The rising waters filled the Square of the Baths, in
+the lower part of which our house was situated. The canal overflowed in
+the garden behind; the rising waters on either side at last burst open
+the doors, and, meeting in the house, rose to the height of six feet. It
+was a picturesque sight at night to see the peasants driving the cattle
+from the plains below to the hills above the Baths. A fire was kept up
+to guide them across the ford; and the forms of the men and the animals
+showed in dark relief against the red glare of the flame, which was
+reflected again in the waters that filled the Square.
+
+We then removed to Pisa, and took up our abode there for the winter. The
+extreme mildness of the climate suited Shelley, and his solitude was
+enlivened by an intercourse with several intimate friends. Chance cast
+us strangely enough on this quiet half-unpeopled town; but its very
+peace suited Shelley. Its river, the near mountains, and not distant
+sea, added to its attractions, and were the objects of many delightful
+excursions. We feared the south of Italy, and a hotter climate, on
+account of our child; our former bereavement inspiring us with terror.
+We seemed to take root here, and moved little afterwards; often, indeed,
+entertaining projects for visiting other parts of Italy, but still
+delaying. But for our fears on account of our child, I believe we should
+have wandered over the world, both being passionately fond of
+travelling. But human life, besides its great unalterable necessities,
+is ruled by a thousand lilliputian ties that shackle at the time,
+although it is difficult to account afterwards for their influence over
+our destiny.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+My task becomes inexpressibly painful as the year draws near that which
+sealed our earthly fate, and each poem, and each event it records, has a
+real or mysterious connection with the fatal catastrophe. I feel that I
+am incapable of putting on paper the history of those times. The heart
+of the man, abhorred of the poet, who could
+
+  'peep and botanize
+  Upon his mother's grave,'
+
+does not appear to me more inexplicably framed than that of one who can
+dissect and probe past woes, and repeat to the public ear the groans
+drawn from them in the throes of their agony.
+
+The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at the Baths of San Giuliano. We
+were not, as our wont had been, alone; friends had gathered round us.
+Nearly all are dead, and, when Memory recurs to the past, she wanders
+among tombs. The genius, with all his blighting errors and mighty
+powers; the companion of Shelley's ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of
+his fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and
+fearless; and others, who found in Shelley's society, and in his great
+knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction, and solace; have
+joined him beyond the grave. A few survive who have felt life a desert
+since he left it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert
+every other into a blessing, or heal its sting--death alone has no cure.
+It shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread; it destroys
+its beauty; it casts down our shelter; it exposes us bare to desolation.
+When those we love have passed into eternity, 'life is the desert and
+the solitude' in which we are forced to linger--but never find comfort
+more.
+
+There is much in the "Adonais" which seems now more applicable to
+Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The
+poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards
+his calumniators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny when received
+among immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished
+into emptiness before the fame he inherits.
+
+Shelley's favourite taste was boating; when living near the Thames or by
+the Lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the
+shore of every lake or stream or sea near which he dwelt, he had a boat
+moored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no
+pleasure-boats on the Arno; and the shallowness of its waters (except in
+winter-time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating)
+rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley,
+however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived
+a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to
+cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,--a boat
+of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons; and he was often
+seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated
+on the danger, and could not understand how anyone could take pleasure
+in an exercise that risked life. 'Ma va per la vita!' they exclaimed. I
+little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured, with
+a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the
+coast to Leghorn, which, by keeping close in shore, was very
+practicable. They returned to Pisa by the canal, when, missing the
+direct cut, they got entangled among weeds, and the boat upset; a
+wetting was all the harm done, except that the intense cold of his
+drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went down with him to the
+mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and swift, met the
+tideless sea, and disturbed its sluggish waters. It was a waste and
+dreary scene; the desert sand stretched into a point surrounded by waves
+that broke idly though perpetually around; it was a scene very similar
+to Lido, of which he had said--
+
+    'I love all waste
+    And solitary places; where we taste
+    The pleasure of believing what we see
+    Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
+    And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
+    More barren than its billows.'
+
+Our little boat was of greater use, unaccompanied by any danger, when we
+removed to the Baths. Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano, four
+miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our boat, by the
+canal; which, fed by the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a full and
+picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by
+trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day,
+multitudes of Ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the
+fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day
+kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a
+pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley's health and inconstant
+spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and more
+attached to the part of the country were chance appeared to cast us.
+Sometimes he projected taking a farm situated on the height of one of
+the near hills, surrounded by chestnut and pine woods, and overlooking a
+wide extent of country: or settling still farther in the maritime
+Apennines, at Massa. Several of his slighter and unfinished poems were
+inspired by these scenes, and by the companions around us. It is the
+nature of that poetry, however, which overflows from the soul oftener to
+express sorrow and regret than joy; for it is when oppressed by the
+weight of life, and away from those he loves, that the poet has recourse
+to the solace of expression in verse.
+
+Still, Shelley's passion was the ocean; and he wished that our summers,
+instead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on
+the shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank
+from Naples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Percy:
+Leghorn had lost its only attraction, since our friends who had resided
+there were returned to England; and, Monte Nero being the resort of many
+English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a colony of
+chance travellers. No one then thought it possible to reside at Via
+Reggio, which latterly has become a summer resort. The low lands and bad
+air of Maremma stretch the whole length of the western shores of the
+Mediterranean, till broken by the rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a
+vague idea, but Shelley suggested an excursion to Spezia, to see whether
+it would be feasible to spend a summer there. The beauty of the bay
+enchanted him. We saw no house to suit us; but the notion took root, and
+many circumstances, enchained as by fatality, occurred to urge him to
+execute it.
+
+He looked forward this autumn with great pleasure to the prospect of a
+visit from Leigh Hunt. When Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna, the
+latter had suggested his coming out, together with the plan of a
+periodical work in which they should all join. Shelley saw a prospect of
+good for the fortunes of his friend, and pleasure in his society; and
+instantly exerted himself to have the plan executed. He did not intend
+himself joining in the work: partly from pride, not wishing to have the
+air of acquiring readers for his poetry by associating it with the
+compositions of more popular writers; and also because he might feel
+shackled in the free expression of his opinions, if any friends were to
+be compromised. By those opinions, carried even to their outermost
+extent, he wished to live and die, as being in his conviction not only
+true, but such as alone would conduce to the moral improvement and
+happiness of mankind. The sale of the work might meanwhile, either
+really or supposedly, be injured by the free expression of his thoughts;
+and this evil he resolved to avoid.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
+
+    This morn thy gallant bark
+    Sailed on a sunny sea:
+    'Tis noon, and tempests dark
+    Have wrecked it on the lee.
+    Ah woe! ah woe!
+    By Spirits of the deep
+    Thou'rt cradled on the billow
+    To thy eternal sleep.
+
+    Thou sleep'st upon the shore
+    Beside the knelling surge,
+    And Sea-nymphs evermore
+    Shall sadly chant thy dirge.
+    They come, they come,
+    The Spirits of the deep,--
+    While near thy seaweed pillow
+    My lonely watch I keep.
+
+    From far across the sea
+    I hear a loud lament,
+    By Echo's voice for thee
+    From Ocean's caverns sent.
+    O list! O list!
+    The Spirits of the deep!
+    They raise a wail of sorrow,
+    While I forever weep.
+
+With this last year of the life of Shelley these Notes end. They are not
+what I intended them to be. I began with energy, and a burning desire to
+impart to the world, in worthy language, the sense I have of the virtues
+and genius of the beloved and the lost; my strength has failed under the
+task. Recurrence to the past, full of its own deep and unforgotten joys
+and sorrows, contrasted with succeeding years of painful and solitary
+struggle, has shaken my health. Days of great suffering have followed my
+attempts to write, and these again produced a weakness and languor that
+spread their sinister influence over these notes. I dislike speaking of
+myself, but cannot help apologizing to the dead, and to the public, for
+not having executed in the manner I desired the history I engaged to
+give of Shelley's writings. (I at one time feared that the correction of
+the press might be less exact through my illness; but I believe that it
+is nearly free from error. Some asterisks occur in a few pages, as they
+did in the volume of "Posthumous Poems", either because they refer to
+private concerns, or because the original manuscript was left imperfect.
+Did any one see the papers from which I drew that volume, the wonder
+would be how any eyes or patience were capable of extracting it from so
+confused a mass, interlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense
+could only be deciphered and joined by guesses which might seem rather
+intuitive than founded on reasoning. Yet I believe no mistake was made.)
+
+The winter of 1822 was passed in Pisa, if we might call that season
+winter in which autumn merged into spring after the interval of but few
+days of bleaker weather. Spring sprang up early, and with extreme
+beauty. Shelley had conceived the idea of writing a tragedy on the
+subject of Charles I. It was one that he believed adapted for a drama;
+full of intense interest, contrasted character, and busy passion. He had
+recommended it long before, when he encouraged me to attempt a play.
+Whether the subject proved more difficult than he anticipated, or
+whether in fact he could not bend his mind away from the broodings and
+wanderings of thought, divested from human interest, which he best
+loved, I cannot tell; but he proceeded slowly, and threw it aside for
+one of the most mystical of his poems, the "Triumph of Life", on which
+he was employed at the last.
+
+His passion for boating was fostered at this time by having among our
+friends several sailors. His favourite companion, Edward Ellerker
+Williams, of the 8th Light Dragoons, had begun his life in the navy, and
+had afterwards entered the army; he had spent several years in India,
+and his love for adventure and manly exercises accorded with Shelley's
+taste. It was their favourite plan to build a boat such as they could
+manage themselves, and, living on the sea-coast, to enjoy at every hour
+and season the pleasure they loved best. Captain Roberts, R.N.,
+undertook to build the boat at Genoa, where he was also occupied in
+building the "Bolivar" for Lord Byron. Ours was to be an open boat, on a
+model taken from one of the royal dockyards. I have since heard that
+there was a defect in this model, and that it was never seaworthy. In
+the month of February, Shelley and his friend went to Spezia to seek for
+houses for us. Only one was to be found at all suitable; however, a
+trifle such as not finding a house could not stop Shelley; the one found
+was to serve for all. It was unfurnished; we sent our furniture by sea,
+and with a good deal of precipitation, arising from his impatience, made
+our removal. We left Pisa on the 26th of April.
+
+The Bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and divided by a rocky
+promontory into a larger and smaller one. The town of Lerici is situated
+on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay, which bears
+the name of this town, is the village of San Terenzo. Our house, Casa
+Magni, was close to this village; the sea came up to the door, a steep
+hill sheltered it behind. The proprietor of the estate on which it was
+situated was insane; he had begun to erect a large house at the summit
+of the hill behind, but his malady prevented its being finished, and it
+was falling into ruin. He had (and this to the Italians had seemed a
+glaring symptom of very decided madness) rooted up the olives on the
+hillside, and planted forest trees. These were mostly young, but the
+plantation was more in English taste than I ever elsewhere saw in Italy;
+some fine walnut and ilex trees intermingled their dark massy foliage,
+and formed groups which still haunt my memory, as then they satiated the
+eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was indeed of unimaginable
+beauty. The blue extent of waters, the almost landlocked bay, the near
+castle of Lerici shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to
+the west; the varied forms of the precipitous rocks that bound in the
+beach, over which there was only a winding rugged footpath towards
+Lerici, and none on the other side; the tideless sea leaving no sands
+nor shingle, formed a picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's
+landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine vanished when the sirocco
+raged--the 'ponente' the wind was called on that shore. The gales and
+squalls that hailed our first arrival surrounded the bay with foam; the
+howling wind swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared
+unremittingly, so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. At
+other times sunshine and calm invested sea and sky, and the rich tints
+of Italian heaven bathed the scene in bright and ever-varying tints.
+
+The natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbours of San
+Terenzo were more like savages than any people I ever before lived
+among. Many a night they passed on the beach, singing, or rather
+howling; the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their
+feet, the men leaning against the rocks and joining in their loud wild
+chorus. We could get no provisions nearer than Sarzana, at a distance of
+three miles and a half off, with the torrent of the Magra between; and
+even there the supply was very deficient. Had we been wrecked on an
+island of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves farther
+from civilisation and comfort; but, where the sun shines, the latter
+becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among
+ourselves. Yet I confess housekeeping became rather a toilsome task,
+especially as I was suffering in my health, and could not exert myself
+actively.
+
+At first the fatal boat had not arrived, and was expected with great
+impatience. On Monday, 12th May, it came. Williams records the
+long-wished-for fact in his journal: 'Cloudy and threatening weather. M.
+Maglian called; and after dinner, and while walking with him on the
+terrace, we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto
+Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley's boat. She had left Genoa
+on Thursday last, but had been driven back by the prevailing bad winds.
+A Mr. Heslop and two English seamen brought her round, and they speak
+most highly of her performances. She does indeed excite my surprise and
+admiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, and made a stretch off the
+land to try her: and I find she fetches whatever she looks at. In short,
+we have now a perfect plaything for the summer.'--It was thus that
+short-sighted mortals welcomed Death, he having disguised his grim form
+in a pleasing mask! The time of the friends was now spent on the sea;
+the weather became fine, and our whole party often passed the evenings
+on the water when the wind promised pleasant sailing. Shelley and
+Williams made longer excursions; they sailed several times to Massa.
+They had engaged one of the seamen who brought her round, a boy, by name
+Charles Vivian; and they had not the slightest apprehension of danger.
+When the weather was unfavourable, they employed themselves with
+alterations in the rigging, and by building a boat of canvas and reeds,
+as light as possible, to have on board the other for the convenience of
+landing in waters too shallow for the larger vessel. When Shelley was on
+board, he had his papers with him; and much of the "Triumph of Life" was
+written as he sailed or weltered on that sea which was soon to engulf
+him.
+
+The heats set in in the middle of June; the days became excessively hot.
+But the sea-breeze cooled the air at noon, and extreme heat always put
+Shelley in spirits. A long drought had preceded the heat; and prayers
+for rain were being put up in the churches, and processions of relics
+for the same effect took place in every town. At this time we received
+letters announcing the arrival of Leigh Hunt at Genoa. Shelley was very
+eager to see him. I was confined to my room by severe illness, and could
+not move; it was agreed that Shelley and Williams should go to Leghorn
+in the boat. Strange that no fear of danger crossed our minds! Living on
+the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything: as a child may sport
+with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest, and spreads
+destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with
+danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean. Our Italian
+neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; and
+the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more notion of
+peril than a fair-weather inland navigation would have done to those who
+had never seen the sea. Once, some months before, Trelawny had raised a
+warning voice as to the difference of our calm bay and the open sea
+beyond; but Shelley and his friend, with their one sailor-boy, thought
+themselves a match for the storms of the Mediterranean, in a boat which
+they looked upon as equal to all it was put to do.
+
+On the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow of future ill darkened
+the present hour, such was over my mind when they went. During the whole
+of our stay at Lerici, an intense presentiment of coming evil brooded
+over my mind, and covered this beautiful place and genial summer with
+the shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with these
+emotions--they seemed accounted for by my illness; but at this hour of
+separation they recurred with renewed violence. I did not anticipate
+danger for them, but a vague expectation of evil shook me to agony, and
+I could scarcely bring myself to let them go. The day was calm and
+clear; and, a fine breeze rising at twelve, they weighed for Leghorn.
+They made the run of about fifty miles in seven hours and a half. The
+"Bolivar" was in port; and, the regulations of the Health-office not
+permitting them to go on shore after sunset, they borrowed cushions from
+the larger vessel, and slept on board their boat.
+
+They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. The want of rain was severely
+felt in the country. The weather continued sultry and fine. I have heard
+that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long before,
+talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found
+infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt
+peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such
+inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of
+the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from
+all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its
+roaring for ever in our ears,--all these things led the mind to brood
+over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to
+be familiar with the unreal. A sort of spell surrounded us; and each
+day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted,
+and yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent
+danger.
+
+The spell snapped; it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt--of
+days passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took
+firmer root even as they were more baseless--was changed to the
+certainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness for the survivors for
+evermore.
+
+There was something in our fate peculiarly harrowing. The remains of
+those we lost were cast on shore; but, by the quarantine-laws of the
+coast, we were not permitted to have possession of them--the law with
+respect to everything cast on land by the sea being that such should be
+burned, to prevent the possibility of any remnant bringing the plague
+into Italy; and no representation could alter the law. At length,
+through the kind and unwearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, our Charge
+d'Affaires at Florence, we gained permission to receive the ashes after
+the bodies were consumed. Nothing could equal the zeal of Trelawny in
+carrying our wishes into effect. He was indefatigable in his exertions,
+and full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a
+fearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and
+blistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt
+relics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose.
+And there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that remained
+on earth of him whose genius and virtue were a crown of glory to the
+world--whose love had been the source of happiness, peace, and good,--to
+be buried with him!
+
+The concluding stanzas of the "Adonais" pointed out where the remains
+ought to be deposited; in addition to which our beloved child lay buried
+in the cemetery at Rome. Thither Shelley's ashes were conveyed; and they
+rest beneath one of the antique weed-grown towers that recur at
+intervals in the circuit of the massy ancient wall of Rome. He selected
+the hallowed place himself; there is
+
+    'the sepulchre,
+    Oh, not of him, but of our joy!--
+    ...
+    And gray 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.'
+
+Could sorrow for the lost, and shuddering anguish at the vacancy left
+behind, be soothed by poetic imaginations, there was something in
+Shelley's fate to mitigate pangs which yet, alas! could not be so
+mitigated; for hard reality brings too miserably home to the mourner all
+that is lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that
+remains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it
+invests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied
+may regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all
+such ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now
+seems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind figures
+his skiff wrapped from sight by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen
+upon the purple sea, and then, as the cloud of the tempest passed away,
+no sign remained of where it had been (Captain Roberts watched the
+vessel with his glass from the top of the lighthouse of Leghorn, on its
+homeward track. They were off Via Reggio, at some distance from shore,
+when a storm was driven over the sea. It enveloped them and several
+larger vessels in darkness. When the cloud passed onwards, Roberts
+looked again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the ocean except
+their little schooner, which had vanished. From that time he could
+scarcely doubt the fatal truth; yet we fancied that they might have been
+driven towards Elba or Corsica, and so be saved. The observation made as
+to the spot where the boat disappeared caused it to be found, through
+the exertions of Trelawny for that effect. It had gone down in ten
+fathom water; it had not capsized, and, except such things as had
+floated from her, everything was found on board exactly as it had been
+placed when they sailed. The boat itself was uninjured. Roberts
+possessed himself of her, and decked her; but she proved not seaworthy,
+and her shattered planks now lie rotting on the shore of one of the
+Ionian islands, on which she was wrecked.)--who but will regard as a
+prophecy the last stanza of the "Adonais"?
+
+    '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.'
+
+Putney, May 1, 1839.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes to the Complete Poetical Works
+of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Mary W. Shelley
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