ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER 1. BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. 

CHAPTER 2. ETON AND OXFORD. 

CHAPTER 3. LIFE IN LONDON, AND FIRST MARRIAGE. 

CHAPTER 4. SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. 

CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. 

CHAPTER 6. RESIDENCE AT PISA. 

CHAPTER 7. LAST DAYS. 

CHAPTER 8. EPILOGUE. 

LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 

1. The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. 1 volume. 

2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves and Turner, 1876-7. 4 volumes. 

3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W. M. Rossetti. Moxon, 1870. 2 volumes. 

4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 volumes. 

5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering, 1878. 2 volumes. 

6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 1 volume. 

7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 volumes. 

8. Shelley's Early Life, by D. F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 1 volume. 

9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder. 

10. W. M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above cited, Number 3. 

11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G. B. Smith. David Douglas, 1877. 

12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862. 

13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in "Fraser's Magazine, " 1858 and 1860. 

14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in "Macmillan's Magazine, " June, 1860. 

15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the "Fortnightly Review, " June, 1878. 

16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W. M. Rossetti, in the "University Magazine, " February and March, 1878. 

SHELLEY. 

CHAPTER 1. 

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. 

It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawninggave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yetthe light that shone in them was crescent. That the world should knowMarlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and Mozart, only by the products of theirearly manhood, is indeed a cause for lamentation, when we remember whatthe long lives of a Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held inreserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuadeourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of menuntimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before thecomposition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of hisforgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton beenknown only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibilityhave laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallowwould have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown byfate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime hasbought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law ofwaste that rules inscrutably in nature. 

Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great Englishpoets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when hewas twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the point of completing histhirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed the briefest space for thedevelopment of his extraordinary powers. His achievement, perfect as itis in some poetic qualities, remains so immature and incomplete that noconjecture can be hazarded about his future. Byron lived longer, andproduced more than his brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when hisgenius was still ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations" wereissuing like worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we haveperhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might haveequalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley'searly death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died bya mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, and his aims weremore ambitious than theirs. He therefore needed length of years fortheir co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we havethe certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wroughta clear and lucid harmony. 

These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet thestudent of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almostforced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concernedwith one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, butwith one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of whichhis powers were capable had been accomplished. 

August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history ofEnglish literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at FieldPlace, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy, was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in thesame county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity andconsiderable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendaryhonours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elderbranch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the youngerdating from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather receivedthis honour through the influence of his friend the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. Timothy Shelley was born in the year 1753, and in 1791 he marriedElizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilford, Esquire, a lady of great beauty, and endowed with fair intellectual ability, though not of a literarytemperament. The first child of this marriage was the poet, named Bysshein compliment to his grandfather, the then living head of the family, and Percy because of some remote connexion with the ducal house ofNorthumberland. Four daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret, and one son, John, who died in the year 1866, were the subsequent issueof Mr. Timothy Shelley's marriage. In the year 1815, upon the death ofhis father, he succeeded to the baronetcy, which passed, after his owndeath, to his grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, as thepoet's only surviving son. 

Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region of genealogy, it maybe worth mentioning that Sir Bysshe Shelley by his second marriage withMiss Elizabeth Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Penshurst, became thefather of five children, the eldest son of whom assumed the name ofShelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy, and left a son, Philip CharlesSidney, who was created Lord De l'Isle and Dudley. Such details are notwithout a certain value, inasmuch as they prove that the poet, who wonfor his ancient and honourable house a fame far more illustrious thantitles can confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal force andworldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, thewealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two families, wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name alreadydistinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to makehis own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born inNorth America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There isalso a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person ofobscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, thebeauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of hiswill, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two Englishheiresses; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left it at theage of seventy-four, bequeathing 300, 000 pounds in the English Funds, together with estates worth 20, 000 pounds a year to his descendents. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the Englishsquirearchy; but never assuredly did the old tale of the swan hatchedwith the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustrationthan in this case. Gifted with the untameable individuality of genius, and bent on piercing to the very truth beneath all shams and fictionswoven by society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstancesof his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated warfare with theworld's opinion. His too frequent tirades against:--

 The Queen of Slaves, The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, Custom, --

owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear uponhim by relatives who prized their position in society, their wealth, andthe observance of conventional decencies, above all other things. 

Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man; but he waseverything which the poet's father ought not to have been. As member forthe borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his party; and that partylooked to nothing beyond the interests of the gentry and the pleasure ofthe Duke of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficialimitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect inhis familiar correspondence, though his letters show that he lacked therudiments alike of logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might besummed up in Clough's epigram:--

 At church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world your friend. 

His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be gatheredfrom his telling his eldest son that he would never pardon amesalliance, but would provide for as many illegitimate children as hechose to have. For the rest, he appears to have been a fairly goodlandlord, and a not unkind father, sociable and hospitable, somewhatvain and occasionally odd in manner, but qualified for passing musterwith the country gentlemen around him. In the capacity to understand anature which deviated from the ordinary type so remarkably as Shelley's, he was utterly deficient; and perhaps we ought to regard it as hismisfortune that fate made him the father of a man who was among thegreatest portents of originality and unconventionality that this centuryhas seen. Toward an ordinary English youth, ready to sow his wild oatsat college, and willing to settle at the proper age and take his placeupon the bench of magistrates, Sir Timothy Shelley would have shownhimself an indulgent father; and it must be conceded by the poet'sbiographer that if Percy Bysshe had but displayed tact and considerationon his side, many of the misfortunes which signalized his relations tohis father would have been avoided. 

Shelley passed his childhood at Field Place, and when he was about sixyears old began to be taught, together with his sisters, by Mr. Edwards, a clergyman who lived at Warnham. What is recorded of these early yearswe owe to the invaluable communications of his sister Hellen. Thedifference of age between her and her brother Bysshe obliges us to referher recollections to a somewhat later period--probably to the holidayshe spent away from Sion House and Eton. Still, since they introduce usto the domestic life of his then loved home, it may be proper to makequotations from them in this place. Miss Shelley tells us her brother"would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kindof pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was rebuked, was runninga stick through the ceiling of a low passage to find some new chamber, which could be made effective for some flights of his vividimagination. " He was very much attached to his sisters, and used toentertain them with stories, in which "an alchemist, old and grey, witha long beard, " who was supposed to abide mysteriously in the garret ofField Place, played a prominent part. "Another favourite theme was the'Great Tortoise, ' that lived in Warnham Pond; and any unwonted noise wasaccounted for by the presence of this great beast, which was made intothe fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder. " To hisfriend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake, " who had inhabitedthe gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerableserpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he livedlong in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured thatShelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollectionof his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to pleasehis sisters were grotesque, and some both perilous and terrifying. "Wedressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, and Bysshe would take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammableliquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door. "Shelley often took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge andfence, carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or theirfatigue required it. At this time "his figure was slight andbeautiful, --his hands were models, and his feet are treading the earthagain in one of his race; his eyes too have descended in their wildfixed beauty to the same person. As a child, I have heard that his skinwas like snow, and bright ringlets covered his head. " Here is a littlepicture which brings the boy vividly before our eyes: "Bysshe orderedclothes according to his own fancy at Eton, and the beautifully fittingsilk pantaloons, as he stood as almost all men and boys do, with theircoat-tails near the fire, excited my silent though excessiveadmiration. "

When he was ten years of age, Shelley went to school at Sion house, Brentford, an academy kept by Dr. Greenlaw, and frequented by the sonsof London tradesmen, who proved but uncongenial companions to his gentlespirit. It is fortunate for posterity that one of his biographers, hissecond cousin Captain Medwin, was his schoolfellow at Sion House; for tohis recollections we owe some details of great value. Medwin tells usthat Shelley learned the classic languages almost by intuition, while heseemed to be spending his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds asthey sailed across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketchesof fir-trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he wassubject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, heoften lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. Hisfavourite amusement was novel-reading; and to the many "blue books" fromthe Minerva press devoured by him in his boyhood, we may ascribe thestyle and tone of his first compositions. For physical sports he showedno inclination. "He passed among his school-fellows as a strange andunsocial being; for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and theother boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of ourprison-court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pacebackwards and forwards--I think I see him now--along the southern wall, indulging in various vague and undefined ideas, the chaotic elements, ifI may say so, of what afterwards produced so beautiful a world. "

Two of Shelley's most important biographical compositions undoubtedlyrefer to this period of his boyhood. The first is the passage in thePrelude to "Laon and Cythna" which describes his suffering among theunsympathetic inmates of a school:--

 Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes-- The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 

 And then I clasped my hands and looked around-- --But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground-- So without shame I spake:--"I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannize Without reproach or check. " I then controlled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 

 And from that hour did I with earnest thought Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught I cared to learn, but from that secret store Wrought linked armour for my soul, before It might walk forth to war among mankind. Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more Within me, till there came upon my mind A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 

The second is a fragment on friendship preserved by Hogg. After definingthat kind of passionate attachment which often precedes love in ferventnatures, he proceeds: "I remember forming an attachment of this kind atschool. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which thistook pace; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven ortwelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of acharacter eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements ofhuman feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compoundedwithin him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with himsince my school-boy days; but either I confound my present recollectionswith the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour andutility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft andwinning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was sodeep, that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed frommy eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacredsentiments of friendship. " How profound was the impression made on hisimagination and his feelings by this early friendship, may again begathered from a passage in his note upon the antique group of Bacchusand Ampelus at Florence. "Look, the figures are walking with asauntering and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, as youmay have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, walking in somegrassy spot of the play-ground with that tender friendship for eachother which the age inspires. "

These extracts prove beyond all question that the first contact with theouter world called into activity two of Shelley's strongest moralqualities--his hatred of tyranny and brutal force in any form, and hisprofound sentiment of friendship. The admiring love of women, whichmarked him no less strongly, and which made him second only toShakespere in the sympathetic delineation of a noble feminine ideal, hadbeen already developed by his deep affection for his mother and sisters. It is said that he could not receive a letter from them without manifestjoy. 

"Shelley, " says Medwin, "was at this time tall for his age, slightly anddelicately built, and rather narrow-chested, with a complexion fair andruddy, a face rather long than oval. His features, not regularlyhandsome, were set off by a profusion of silky brown hair, that curlednaturally. The expression of his countenance was one of exceedingsweetness and innocence. His blue eyes were very large and prominent. They were at times, when he was abstracted, as he often was incontemplation, dull, and as it were, insensible to external objects; atothers they flashed with the fire of intelligence. His voice was softand low, but broken in its tones, --when anything much interested him, harsh and immodulated; and this peculiarity he never lost. He wasnaturally calm, but when he heard of or read of some flagrant act ofinjustice, oppression, or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks ofhorror and indignation were visible in his countenance. "

Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained unalteredthrough the short space of life allowed him. Loving, innocent, sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his companions, stronglymoralized after a peculiar and inborn type of excellence, drawing hisinspirations from Nature and from his own soul in solitude, Shelleypassed across the stage of this world, attended by a splendid visionwhich sustained him at a perilous height above the kindly race of men. The penalty of this isolation he suffered in many painful episodes. Thereward he reaped in a measure of more authentic prophecy, and in anobler realization of his best self, than could be claimed by any of hisimmediate contemporaries. 

CHAPTER 2. 

ETON AND OXFORD. 

In 1805 Shelley went from Sion House to Eton. At this time Dr. Keate washeadmaster and Shelley's tutor was a Mr. Bethel, "one of the dullest menin the establishment. " At Eton Shelley was not popular either with histeachers or his elder school-fellows, although the boys of his own ageare said to have adored him. "He was all passion, " writes Mrs. Shelley;"passionate in his resistance to an injury, passionate in his love:" andthis vehemence of temperament he displayed by organizing a rebellionagainst fagging, which no doubt won for him the applause of his juniorsand equals. It was not to be expected that a lad intolerant of rule anddisregardful of restriction, who neglected punctuality in theperformance of his exercises, while he spent his leisure in translatinghalf of Pliny's history, should win the approbation of pedagogues. Atthe same time the inspired opponent of the fagging system, the scornerof games and muscular amusements, could not hope to find much favourwith such martinets of juvenile convention as a public school is wont tobreed. At Eton, as elsewhere, Shelley's uncompromising spirit broughthim into inconvenient contact with a world of vulgar usage, while hislively fancy invested the commonplaces of reality with dark huesborrowed from his own imagination. Mrs. Shelley says of him, "Tamed byaffection, but unconquered by blows, what chance was there that Shelleyshould be happy at a public school?" This sentence probably contains thepith of what he afterwards remembered of his own school life, and thereis no doubt that a nature like his, at once loving and high-spirited, had much to suffer. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that at Etonthere were any serious blows to bear, or to assume that laws of lovewhich might have led a spirit so gentle as Shelley's, were adapted tothe common stuff of which the English boy is formed. The latter mistakeShelley made continually throughout his youth; and only the advance ofyears tempered his passionate enthusiasm into a sober zeal for theimprovement of mankind by rational methods. We may also trace at thisearly epoch of his life that untamed intellectual ambition--that neglectof the immediate and detailed for the transcendental anduniversal--which was a marked characteristic of his genius, leading himto fly at the highest while he overleaped the facts of ordinary humanlife. "From his earliest years, " says Mrs. Shelley, "all his amusementsand occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the term, lawlessnature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a boy, but as a man;and so with manly powers and childish wit, he dared and achievedattempts that none of his comrades could even have conceived. Hisunderstanding and the early development of imagination never permittedhim to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyrannyprevented him from paying due attention to his school duties. But he wasalways actively employed; and although his endeavours were prosecutedwith puerile precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantlydirected to those great objects which have employed the thoughts of thegreatest among men; and though his studies were not followed upaccording to school discipline, they were not the less diligentlyapplied to. " This high-soaring ambition was the source both of hisweakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with theworld of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to extort hersecrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the philanthropistwho dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence, and the poet whoinvented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of grandeur too colossal to beanimated with dramatic life. 

A strong interest in experimental science had been already excited inhim at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grewinto a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of thesimpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure--the more soperhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk ofan old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he wasamusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room andreceived a severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During theholidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. "His ownhands and clothes, " says Miss Shelley, "were constantly stained andcorroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable that some day thehouse would be burned down, or some serious mischief happen to himselfor others from the explosion of combustibles. " This taste for scienceShelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the firstconversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted almostwholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to bewrought by science in all realms of thought. His imagination wasfascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it gavehim the acutest pleasure: and this is highly characteristic of thegenius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the life of lifewithdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he seems to havedelighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar microscope, andmixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without taking the troubleto study any of its branches systematically. In his later years heabandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence of them occurs inthat most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter to MariaGisborne. "

While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was notwholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not acorrect, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished hiscontemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in thelatter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and therapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at aglance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was noless astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae wereindeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we maytrace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also hisfrequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artisticexecution. 

That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may begathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his Oxfordrooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was frequentlyvisited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that he spend the40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi, " on a farewell supperto eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be quoted from hisown poem, the "Boat on the Serchio, " to prove that he did not entertaina merely disagreeable memory of his school life. (Forman's edition, volume 4 page 115. ) Yet the general experience of Eton must have beenpainful; and it is sad to read of this gentle and pure spirit beinggoaded by his coarser comrades into fury, or coaxed to curse his fatherand the king for their amusement. It may be worth mentioning that he wascalled "the Atheist" at Eton; and though Hogg explains this by sayingthat "the Atheist" was an official character among the boys, selectedfrom time to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is notimprobable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for hima title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyishincantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms wouldscarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tingedhis imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, " he makes the following reference tocircumstances which might otherwise be trivial:--

 While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, I was not heard, I saw them not-- When, musing deeply on the lot Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming, -- Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

Among the Eton tutors was one whose name will always be revered byShelley's worshippers; for he alone discerned the rare gifts of thestrange and solitary boy, and Shelley loved him. Dr. Lind was an oldman, a physician, and a student of chemistry. Shelley spent long hoursat his house, conversing with him, and receiving such instruction inphilosophy and science as the grey-haired scholar could impart. Theaffection which united them must have been of no common strength orquality; for when Shelley lay ill of a fever at Field Place, and hadconceived the probably ill-founded notion that his father intended toplace him in a mad-house, he managed to convey a message to his friendat Eton, on the receipt of which Dr. Lind travelled to Horsham, and byhis sympathy and skill restored the sick boy's confidence. It mayincidentally be pointed out that this story, credited as true by LadyShelley in her Memorials, shows how early an estrangement had begunbetween the poet and his father. We look, moreover, vainly for thatmother's influence which might have been so beneficial to the boy inwhom "love and life were twins, born at one birth. " From Dr. LindShelley not only received encouragement to pursue his chemical studies;but he also acquired the habit of corresponding with persons unknown tohim, whose opinions he might be anxious to discover or dispute. Thishabit, as we shall see in the sequel, determined Shelley's fate on twoimportant occasions of his life. In return for the help extended to himat Eton, Shelley conferred undying fame on Dr. Lind; the characters ofZonaras in "Prince Athanase, " and of the hermit in "Laon and Cythna, "are portraits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend. 

The months which elapsed between Eton and Oxford were an importantperiod in Shelley's life. At this time a boyish liking for his cousin, Harriet Grove, ripened into real attachment; and though there wasperhaps no formal engagement between them, the parents on both sideslooked with approval on their love. What it concerns us to know aboutthis early passion, is given in a letter from a brother of Miss Grove. "Bysshe was at that time (just after leaving Eton) more attached to mysister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlightwalks we four had at Strode and also at St. Irving's; that, I think, wasthe name of the place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham. " For sometime after the date mentioned in this letter, Shelley and Miss Grovekept up an active correspondence; but the views he expressed onspeculative subjects soon began to alarm her. She consulted her motherand her father, and the engagement was broken off. The final separationdoes not seem to have taken place until the date of Shelley's expulsionfrom Oxford; and not the least cruel of the pangs he had to suffer atthat period, was the loss of one to whom he had given his whole heartunreservedly. The memory of Miss Grove long continued to haunt hisimagination, nor is there much doubt that his first unhappy marriage wascontracted while the wound remained unhealed. The name of HarrietWestbrook and something in her face reminded him of Harriet Grove; it iseven still uncertain to which Harriet the dedication of Queen Mab isaddressed. (See Medwin, volume 1 page 68. )

In his childhood Shelley scribbled verses with fluency by no meansunusual in the case of forward boys; and we have seen that at Sion Househe greedily devoured the sentimental novels of the day. His favouritepoets at the time of which I am now writing, were Monk Lewis andSouthey; his favourite books in prose were romances by Mrs. Radcliffeand Godwin. He now began to yearn for fame and publicity. Miss Shelleyspeaks of a play written by her brother and her sister Elizabeth, whichwas sent to Matthews the comedian, and courteously returned as unfit foracting. She also mentions a little volume of her own verses, which theboy had printed with the tell-tale name of "H-ll-n Sh-ll-y" on thetitle-page. Medwin gives a long account of a poem on the story of theWandering Jew, composed by him in concert with Shelley during the winterof 1809-1810. They sent the manuscript to Thomas Campbell, who returnedit with the observation that it contained but two good lines:--

 It seemed as if an angel's sigh Had breathed the plaintive symphony. 

Undeterred by this adverse criticism, Shelley subsequently offered "TheWandering Jew" to two publishers, Messrs. Ballantyne and Co. OfEdinburgh, and Mr. Stockdale of Pall Mall; but it remained in MS. AtEdinburgh till 1831, when a portion was printed in "Fraser's Magazine. "

Just before leaving Eton he finished a novel of "Zastrozzi", which somecritics trace to its source in "Zofloya the Moor, " perused by him atSion House. The most astonishing fact about this incoherent medley ofmad sentiment is that it served to furnish forth the 40-pound Etonsupper already spoken of, that it was duly ushered into the world ofletters by Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson on the 5th of June, 1810, andthat it was seriously reviewed. The dates of Shelley's publications nowcome fast and frequent. In the late summer of 1810 he introduced himselfto Mr. J. J. Stockdale, the then fashionable publisher of poems andromances, at his house of business in Pall Mall. With characteristicimpetuosity the young author implored assistance in a difficulty. He hadcommissioned a printer in Horsham to strike off the astounding number of1480 copies of a volume of poems; and he had no money to pay theprinter's bill. Would Stockdale help him out of this dilemma, by takingup the quires and duly ushering the book into the world? Throughout hislife Shelley exercised a wonderful fascination over the people with whomhe came in contact, and almost always won his way with them as much bypersonal charm as by determined and impassioned will. Accordingly onthis occasion Stockdale proved accommodating. The Horsham printer wassomehow satisfied; and on the 17th of September, 1810, the little bookcame out with the title of "Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire. " Thisvolume has disappeared; and much fruitless conjecture has been expendedupon the question of Shelley's collaborator in his juvenile attempt. Cazire stands for some one; probably it is meant to represent a woman'sname, and that woman may have been either Elizabeth Shelley or HarrietGrove. The "Original Poetry" had only been launched a week, whenStockdale discovered on a closer inspection of the book that itcontained some verses well known to the world as the production of M. G. Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole editionwas suppressed--not, however, before about one hundred copies had passedinto circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of pettylarceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfiedStockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason tobreak with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issuedShelley's second novel from his press, and entered into negotiationswith him for the publication of more poetry. The new romance was named"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian. " This tale, no less unreadable than"Zastrozzi, " and even more chaotic in its plan, contained a good deal ofpoetry, which has been incorporated in the most recent editions ofShelley's works. A certain interest attaches to it as the first knownlink between Shelley and William Godwin, for it was composed under theinfluence of the latter's novel, "St. Leon. " The title, moreover, carries us back to those moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded toabove. Shelley's earliest attempts in literature have but little valuefor the student of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate thepsychology of genius and its wayward growth. Their intrinsic merit isalmost less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusalthe course which the future poet of "The Cenci" and "Epipsychidion" wasto take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his greatqualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the wantof grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. Butwhile this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautiouscritic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wonderinghow such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within agerm apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelleydiscernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the "Hoursof Idleness. "

In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner ofUniversity College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made theacquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in hissubsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, ifnot in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellousyouth. Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament andtastes. His feet were always planted on the earth, while Shelley flewaloft to heaven with singing robes around him, or the mantel of theprophet on his shoulders. (He told Trelawny that he had been attractedto Shelley simply by his "rare talents as a scholar;" and Trelawny hasrecorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend was faithful, in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. Thistestimony is extremely valuable. ) Hogg had much of the cynic in hisnature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist. Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose toeminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of astaunch Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divinepoet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preservedfor us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable forthe vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate Shelley'scourse of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. No novelindeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate andsatirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, ofthe student life enjoyed together for a few short months by theinseparable friends. To make extracts from a masterpiece of suchconsummate workmanship is almost painful. Future biographers of Shelley, writing on a scale adequate to the greatness of their subject, will becontent to lay their pens down for a season at this point, and let Hoggtell the tale in his own wayward but inimitable fashion. I must confinemyself to a few quotations and a barren abstract, referring my readersto the ever-memorable pages 48--286 of Hogg's first volume, for the lifethat cannot be transferred to these. 

"At the commencement of Michaelmas term, " says this biographer, "thatis, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened one day to sitnext to a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall. Hisfigure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at ourtable, where all were very young. He seemed thoughtful and absent. Heate little, and had no acquaintance with any one. " The two young menbegan a conversation, which turned upon the respective merits of Germanand Italian poetry, a subject they neither of them knew anything about. After dinner it was continued in Hogg's rooms, where Shelley soon ledthe talk to his favourite topic of science. "As I felt, in truth, but aslight interest in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure toexamine, and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my veryextraordinary guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure wasslight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved modeof the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures wereabrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet morefrequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almostfeminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled byexposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually small; yet the last APPEARED of a remarkable bulk, for hishair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (ifI may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely withhis hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locksunconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times whenit was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible incostume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of oursoldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were notsymmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of thewhole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, anenthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never metwith in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression lessbeautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, agentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air ofprofound religious veneration, that characterizes the best works, andchiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls), ofthe great masters of Florence and of Rome. I recognized the verypeculiar expression in these wonderful productions long afterwards, andwith a satisfaction mingled with much sorrow, for it was after thedecease of him in whose countenance I had first observed it. "

In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the impressionof Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated byTrelawny's recollections of a later date. "There were many strikingcontrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the mostremarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness withagility--of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in steppingacross the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on asmooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivablemanner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircaseof an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the uppersteps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally to disturb thecomposure of a well-bred footman; on the contrary, he would often glidewithout collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerringdexterity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the mostarduous and uncertain ways. "

This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the descriptionsfurnished by other biographers, who had the privilege of Shelley'sfriendship. His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hairwas brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkledface retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted onall sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready isreported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularityof feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personalfascination. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley'svoice "was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh anddiscordant. " This is strongly stated; but, though the terms arecertainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this firstimpression made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable mass ofconvergent testimony to the fact that Shelley's voice was high pitched, and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream. The epithets"shrill, " "piercing, " "penetrating, " frequently recur in thedescriptions given of it. At the same time its quality seems to havebeen less dissonant than thrilling; there is abundance of evidence toprove that he could modulate it exquisitely in the reading of poetry, and its tone proved no obstacle to the persuasive charms of hiseloquence in conversation. Like all finely tempered natures, he vibratedin harmony with the subjects of his thought. Excitement made hisutterance shrill and sharp. Deep feeling of the sense of beauty loweredits tone to richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy withhis intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. Thispeculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting differentsensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion ofhis life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrationsof his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, andunearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heightsof human thought. 

The acquaintance begun that October evening soon ripened into closefriendship. Shelley and Hogg from this time forward spent a large partof their days and nights together in common studies, walks andconversations. It was their habit to pass the morning, each in his ownrooms, absorbed in private reading. At one o'clock they met and lunched, and then started for long rambles in the country. Shelley frequentlycarried pistols with him upon these occasions, and would stop to fix hisfather's franks upon convenient trees and shoot at them. The practice ofpistol shooting, adopted so early in life, was afterwards one of hisfavourite amusements in the company of Byron. Hogg says that in his useof fire-arms he was extraordinarily careless. "How often have I lamentedthat Nature, which so rarely bestows upon the world a creature endowedwith such marvellous talents, ungraciously rendered the gift lessprecious by implanting a fatal taste for perilous recreations, and athoughtlessness in the pursuit of them, that often caused his existencefrom one day to another to seem in itself miraculous. " On their returnfrom these excursions the two friends, neither of whom cared for diningin the College Hall, drank tea and supped together, Shelley's roomsbeing generally chosen as the scene of their symposia. 

These rooms are described as a perfect palace of confusion--chaos onchaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It wasperilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less perchance aseven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at thebottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to cut the lids of woodenboxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for inhis vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what hefound convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talkedand read until late in the night. Their chief studies at this time werein Locke and Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias towardmetaphysical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read theSchool Logic with avidity, and practised himself without intermission indialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed by othertestimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of the essentialbearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended to personal orcaptious arguments, and was Socratically bent on following the dialoguewherever it might lead, without regard for consequences. Plato wasanother of their favourite authors; but Hogg expressly tells us thatthey only approached the divine philosopher through the medium oftranslations. It was not until a later period that Shelley studied hisdialogues in the original: but the substance of them, seen through Mdme. Dacier's version, acted powerfully on the poet's sympathetic intellect. In fact, although at the time he had adopted the conclusions ofmaterialism, he was at heart all through his life an idealist. Thereforethe mixture of the poet and the sage in Plato fascinated him. Thedoctrine of anamnesis, which offers so strange a vista to speculativereverie, by its suggestion of an earlier existence in which ourknowledge was acquired, took a strong hold upon his imagination; hewould stop in the streets to gaze wistfully at babies, wondering whethertheir newly imprisoned souls were not replete with the wisdom stored upin a previous life. 

In the acquisition of knowledge he was then as ever unrelaxing. "Nostudent ever read more assiduously. He was to be found, book in hand, atall hours; reading in season and out of season; at table, in bed, andespecially during a walk; not only in the quiet country, and in retiredpaths; not only at Oxford, in the public walks, and High Street, but inthe most crowded thoroughfares of London. Nor was he less absorbed bythe volume that was open before him, in Cheapside, in Cranbourne Alley, or in Bond Street, than in a lonely lane, or a secluded library. Sometimes a vulgar fellow would attempt to insult or annoy the eccentricstudent in passing. Shelley always avoided the malignant interruption bystepping aside with his vast and quiet agility. " And again:--"I neverbeheld eyes that devoured the pages more voraciously than his; I amconvinced that two-thirds of the period of the day and night were oftenemployed in reading. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that out oftwenty-four hours, he frequently read sixteen. At Oxford, his diligencein this respect was exemplary, but it greatly increased afterwards, andI sometimes thought that he carried it to a pernicious excess: I amsure, at least, that I was unable to keep pace with him. " With Shelleystudy was a passion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entranceinto a thrice-hallowed sanctuary. "The irreverent many cannot comprehendthe awe--the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine theenthusiasm--nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of thingsvisible to the bodily eye, express the mighty emotion that inwardlyagitated him, when he approached, for the first time, a volume which hebelieved to be replete with the recondite and mystic philosophy ofantiquity: his cheeks glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frametrembled, and his entire attention was immediately swallowed up in thedepths of contemplation. The rapid and vigorous conversion of his soulto intellect can only be compared with the instantaneous ignition andcombustion, which dazzle the sight, when a bundle of dry reeds, or otherlight inflammable substance, is thrown upon a fire already rich withaccumulated heat. "

As at Eton, so at Oxford, Shelley refused to keep the beaten track ofprescribed studies, or to run in ordinary grooves of thought. The merefact that Aristotle was a duty, seems to have disgusted him with theauthor of the Organon, from whom, had his works been prohibited toundergraduates, he would probably have been eager to learn much. Formathematics and jurisprudence he evinced a marked distaste. The commonbusiness of the English Parliament had no attraction for him, and heread few newspapers. While his mind was keenly interested in greatpolitical questions, he could not endure the trivial treatment of themin the daily press, and cared far more for principles than for theincidents of party warfare. Here again he showed that impatience ofdetail, and that audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the sourceof both his weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion ofa Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had beensuggested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, hecould never bring himself to mix with the rabble of the House. It isnone the less true, however, that he entertained some vague notion ofeventually succeeding to his father's seat. 

Combined with his eager intellectual activity, there was somethingintermittent and fitful in the working of his mental faculties. Hogg, inparticular, mentions one of his habits in a famous passage, which, sinceit brings the two friends vividly before us, may here be quoted. "I wasenable to continue my studies afterwards in the evening, in consequenceof a very remarkable peculiarity. My young and energetic friend was thenovercome by extreme drowsiness, which speedily and completely vanquishedhim; he would sleep from two to four hours, often so soundly that hisslumbers resembled a deep lethargy; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, but more commonly stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like acat; and his little round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that Iused to wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposedsome shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect; for the sleeperusually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot wherethe fire glowed the brightest. His torpor was generally profound, but hewould sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. Atsix he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of a mostanimated narrative, or of earnest discussion; and he would lie buried inentire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when hewould suddenly start up, and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, andpassing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at onceinto a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his owncomposition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energythat were often quite painful. "

Shelley's moral qualities are described with no less enthusiasm than hisintellectual and physical beauty by the friend from whom I have alreadydrawn so largely. Love was the root and basis of his nature: this love, first developed as domestic affection, next as friendship, then as ayouth's passion, now began to shine with steady lustre as anall-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is something inevitablychilling in the words "benevolence" and "philanthropy. " A disillusionedworld is inclined to look with languid approbation on the former, and todisbelieve in the latter. Therefore I will not use them to describe thatintense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which throughout his lifeled Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows ofhis fellow-creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions ofhumanity made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds ofunnumbered charities. I will rather collect from the page of hisfriend's biography a few passages recording the first impression of hischaracter, the memory of which may be carried by the reader through thefollowing brief record of his singular career:--

"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years hasshown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation ofknowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence thatmarked them, and beamed forth in the whole deportment of thatextraordinary boy, are not less astonishing than they would have been ifthe whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for thesehigh qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel. "

"In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more completelydeveloped than in Shelley; in no being was the perception of right andof wrong more acute. 

"As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour ofhis genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his lifemost conspicuous. "

"I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom theprinciple of veneration was so strong. "

"I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimensof gentlemen; but with all due deference for those admirable persons(may my candour and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm thatShelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was neverwanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and variousobservances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility. "

"Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant than wouldappear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at acoarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest, or uncleanly;in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasinesspre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted byexquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, andperhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness--possibly the more because hewas himself utterly incapable of pleasantry. "

"I could never discern in him any more than two fixed principles. Thefirst was a strong irrepressible love of liberty; of liberty in theabstract, and somewhat after the pattern of the ancient republics, without reference to the English constitution, respecting which he knewlittle and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was anequally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more especiallyof religious opinions; of toleration, complete, entire, universal, unlimited; and, as a deduction and corollary from which latterprinciple, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, public or private. "

The testimony in the foregoing extracts as to Shelley's purity andelevation of moral character is all the stronger, because it is given bya man not over-inclined to praise, and of a temperament as unlike thepoet's as possible. If we were to look only upon this side of hisportrait, we should indeed be almost forced to use the language of hismost enthusiastic worshippers, and call him an archangel. But it must beadmitted that, though so pure and gentle and exalted, Shelley's virtueswere marred by his eccentricity, by something at times approachingmadness, which paralyzed his efficiency by placing him in a glaringlyfalse relation to some of the best men in the world around him. Hepossessed certain good qualities in excess; for, though it soundsparadoxical, it is none the less true that a man may be too tolerant, too fond of liberty: and it was precisely the extravagance of thesevirtues in Shelley which drove him into acts and utterances soantagonistic to society as to be intolerable. 

Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. Hisgenius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those doublestars which dart blue and red rays of light: for it was governed by twoluminaries, poetry and metaphysics; and at this time the latter seems tohave been in the ascendant. It is, however, interesting to learn that heread and re-read Landor's "Gebir"--stronger meat than either Southey'sepics or the ghost-lyrics of Monk Lewis. Hogg found him one day busilyengaged in correcting proofs of some original poems. Shelley asked hisfriend what he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might bepossible by a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. The idea took the young poet's fancy; and the friends between them sooneffected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which theybecame unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they nowbethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should thepoems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered?Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George theThird's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could befound. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, editedby an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke no less than theauthors of it. He provided splendid paper and magnificent type; andbefore long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. Itsold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardlycredible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It wasindeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark ofnice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and thebest criterion of a choice spirit. " Such was the genesis of "PosthumousFragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The nameof the supposititious nephew reminds us of "Original Poems" by Victorand Cazire, and raises the question whether the poems in that lostvolume may not have partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty. 

Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither soinnocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After leavingEton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of correspondingwith distinguished persons whom he did not personally know. Thus we findhim about this time addressing Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He plied his correspondents with all kinds ofquestions; and as the dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, henow endeavoured to engage them in discussions on philosophical andreligious topics. We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke, Hume, and the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar tohis nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallownominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regardall questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, asstill open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to bethe Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, hepassed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regardto Christianity, into an attitude of vehement antagonism. With a view tosecuring answers to his missives, he printed a short abstract of Hume'sand other arguments against the existence of a Deity, presented in aseries of propositions, and signed with a mathematically important"Q. E. D. " This document he forwarded to his proposed antagonists, expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politelyrequesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautiouscorrespondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with mercilessseverity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The littlepamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and itsproposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation alreadydescribed, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the"Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, however, actuallyoffered for sale. 

A copy of this syllabus reached a Fellow of another college, who madethe Master of the University acquainted with the fact. On the morning ofMarch 25, 1811, Shelley was sent for to the Senior Common Room, andasked whether he acknowledged himself to be the author of the obnoxiouspamphlet. On his refusal to answer this question, he was served with aformal sentence of expulsion duly drawn up and sealed. The collegeauthorities have been blamed for unfair dealing in this matter. It isurged that they ought to have proceeded by the legal method of callingwitnesses; and that the sentence was not only out of all proportion tothe offence, but that it ought not to have been executed till persuasionhad been tried. With regard to the former indictment, I do not thinkthat a young man still in statu pupillari, who refused to purge himselfof what he must have known to be a serious charge, had any reason toexpect from his tutors the formalities of an English court of law. Thereis no doubt that the Fellows were satisfied of his being the realauthor; else they could not have ventured on so summary a measure asexpulsion. Their question was probably intended to give the culprit anoccasion for apology, of which they foresaw he would not avail himself. With regard to the second, it is true that Shelley was amenable tokindness, and that gentle and wise treatment from men whom he respectedmight possibly have brought him to retract his syllabus. But it must beremembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart; and theywere probably aware of this. He was a dexterous, impassioned reasoner, whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. Duringhis short period of residence, moreover, he had not shown himself sotractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, who preferconformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely that they were notaverse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous to the peace of theirsociety; and now they had a good occasion. Nor was it to be expectedthat the champion and apostle of Atheism--and Shelley was certainlyboth, in spite of Hogg's attempts to tone down the purpose of hisdocument--should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fatlivings and ecclesiastical dignities. Real blame, however, attaches tothese men: first, for their dulness to discern Shelley's amiablequalities; and, secondly, for the prejudgment of the case implied in theimmediate delivery of their sentence. Both Hogg and Shelley accusedthem, besides, of a gross brutality, which was, to say the least, unseemly on so serious an occasion. At the beginning of this century thelearning and the manners of Oxford dons were at a low ebb; and theFellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, ignorantly but after their own kind, in this matter of Shelley'sexpulsion. $Non ragionem di lor, ma guarda e passa. Hogg, who stood byhis friend manfully at this crisis, and dared the authorities to dealwith him as they had dealt with Shelley, adding that they had just asmuch real proof to act upon in his case, and intimating his intention ofreturning the same answer as to the authorship of the pamphlet, waslikewise expelled. The two friends left Oxford together by coach on themorning of the 26th of March. 

Shelley felt his expulsion acutely. At Oxford he had enjoyed theopportunities of private reading which the University afforded in thosedays of sleepy studies and innocuous examinations. He delighted in thesecurity of his "oak, " and above all things he found pleasure in thesociety of his one chosen friend. He was now obliged to exchange thesegood things for the tumult and discomfort of London. His father, afterclumsily attempting compromises, had forbidden his return to FieldPlace. The whole fabric of his former life was broken up. The last hopeof renewing his engagement with his cousin had to be abandoned. Hispecuniary position was precarious, and in a short time he was destinedto lose the one friend who had so generously shared his fate. Yet thenotion of recovering his position as a student in one of our greatUniversities, of softening his father's indignation, or of amelioratinghis present circumstances by the least concession, never seems to haveoccurred to him. He had suffered in the cause of truth and liberty, andhe willingly accepted his martyrdom for conscience' sake. 

CHAPTER 3. 

LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE. 

It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and analysethe substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardinalcharacteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams andconventions, which passed too easily into impatient rejection ofestablished forms as worse than useless. Born in the stronghold ofsquirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial platitudes that thenpassed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit flew to the oppositepole of thought with a recoil that carried him at first to inconsideratenegation. His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intolerance, his impatience of control for self and others, and his vivid logicalsincerity, combined to make him the Quixotic champion of extremeopinions. He was too fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend hisjudgment, too convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, tomature his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, hehoped to take the fortresses of "Anarch Custom" by storm at the firstassault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, Laon or Lionel, whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of despotism, as the sunthaws ice upon an April morning. It was enough, he thought, to hurl theglove of defiance boldly at the tyrant's face--to sow the "Necessity ofAtheism" broadcast on the bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in hispoetry, not because he wished to defend it, but because society mustlearn to face the most abhorrent problems with impartiality. Gifted witha touch as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, he strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crustof dogma and the froth of traditional beliefs; nor does it seem to haveoccurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches thatconceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might drag away theweft and woof of nobler thought. In his poet-philosopher's imaginationthere bloomed a wealth of truth and love and beauty so abounding, thatbehind the mirage he destroyed, he saw no blank, but a new Eternal Cityof the Spirit. He never doubted whether his fellow-creatures werecertain to be equally fortunate. 

Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the blendedtruths and falsehoods through which the mind of man must gradually winits way from the obscurity of myths into the clearness of positiveknowledge, for ever toiling and for ever foiled, and forced to contentitself with the increasing consciousness of limitations. Brimming overwith love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with the conditionsunder which they actually think and feel. Could he but dethrone theAnarch Custom, the millennium, he argued, would immediately arrive; nordid he stop to think how different was the fibre of his own soul fromthat of the unnumbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of whathe recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossifiedexperience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms asaving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no placein his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising, shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuriesof growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survivedthe enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, andwho have suffered from its reactive impulses, can scarcely comprehendthe vivid faith and young-eyed joy of aspiration which sustained Shelleyin his flight toward the region of impossible ideals. For he had a vitalfaith; and this faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible--faithin the duty and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospelof liberty, fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature;faith in a love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibility ofman; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms; faithin affection as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. Theman who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word anAtheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced his hatredof a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of kings and priestsfor the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. As he told his friendTrelawny, he used the word Atheism "to express his abhorrence ofsuperstition; he took it up as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defianceof injustice. " But Shelley believed too much to be consistentlyagnostic. He believed so firmly and intensely in his own religion--akind of passionate positivism, a creed which seemed to have no Godbecause it was all God--that he felt convinced he only needed to destroyaccepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to breakthrough and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called anAtheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto receivedconceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch ofcruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He wasan Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solvingthe insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearlessutterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectualheroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far tooreligious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied. 

The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which attachesto all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of convention, andenthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was marred, however, by extravagance, crudity, and presumption. Much that he would fain havedestroyed because he found it customary, was solid, true, andbeneficial. Much that he thought it desirable to substitute, wasvisionary, hollow, and pernicious. He lacked the touchstone of maturephilosophy, whereby to separate the pinchbeck from the gold of socialusage; and in his intense enthusiasm he lost his hold on common sense, which might have saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. The positive side of his creed remains precious, not because it waslogical, or scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal, fervently felt, and penetrated with the whole life-force of anincomparable nature. Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon hispath amid the glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. The form theseal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was notborn to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort. 

 Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza. 

These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and hisconfidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world wasoverweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom withoutdamping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first ferventspeculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might haveshone that light of aspiration which during his turbid youth burnedsomewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the smoke of mererebelliousness and contradiction. 

Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, soonafter their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: "it remindedhim of Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom. " He was further fascinated bya gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and grapes, which adorned theparlour; and vowed that he would stay there for ever. "For ever, " was aword often upon Shelley's lips in the course of his chequered life; andyet few men have been subject to so many sudden changes through thebuffetings of fortune from without and the inconstancy of their ownpurpose, than he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace andnote with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of hisinnumerable temporary residences. A month had not elapsed before Hoggleft him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shelleyabode "alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to remain, abright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his poeticimagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while longer. "

The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but notunimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. TimothyShelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede fromthe position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off hisintimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for himby his father. For Paley's, or as Mr. Shelley called him "Palley's, "Evidences he expressed unbounded contempt. The breach between themgradually widened. Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect ofcutting off supplies; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustainedhimself by a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley'slast and best biographer, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of thepoet's behaviour as a son. Shelley did not treat his father with thecommon consideration due from youth to age; and the only instances ofunpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes ofhis conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was reallymore unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling fromthe realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of hisfather amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicionswith regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How sojust and gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation, whether by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by agradually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insolubleproblem. We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his fatherso much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on oneoccasion, but that, while at Eton he had already become possessed by adark suspicion concerning him. This is proved by the episode of Dr. Lind's visit during his fever. Then and ever afterwards he expectedmonstrous treatment at his hands, although the elder gentleman wasnothing worse than a muddle-headed squire. It has more than onceoccurred to me that this fever may have been a turning point in hishistory, and that a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixeditself upon his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process ofrecovery. But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof tobe more than passingly alluded to. 

At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buyfood. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to supporthim: and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school onClapham Common. It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyrannydisplayed itself on two occasions. "One day, " writes Miss HellenShelley, "his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one ofour throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour. He expressedgreat disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sistersshould be so punished. Another time he found me, I think, in an ironcollar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in myopinion. It was not worn as a punishment, but because I POKED; butBysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to bediscontinued immediately. " The acquaintance which he now made with oneof his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most importantresults. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, 1811. ) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkablygood-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautifulbrown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was thedaughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named"Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundanthair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of amother to her. Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew" their father, welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was pennilessfor the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family'sdispleasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and abaronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people shouldlook upon him with disfavour. 

Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning's school andat Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as heexpressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to histheories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, thedisinterested and the free. " At first she seems to have been horrifiedat the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did notoverrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of anevangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and hadthe satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does notseem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in theabsence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society. Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysteriousaccounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough torouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow theseeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has beenable to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time wasso irksome that she contemplated suicide. 

During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more than usuallyerratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. Inthe month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father. He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance madehim of 200 pounds a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, wasinstrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Shelley spentsome time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying oneflying visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in NorthWales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time sawthe scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too muchpreoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between hisold affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest inHarriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriagebetween his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written toHogg at this period (volume 1 pages 387-418) are exceedingly importantand interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelingsand the almost morbid excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily sobadly edited, whether designedly or by accident, that it would bedangerous to draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, theyraise injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a properassignment of dates and explanation. 

Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plungedhim suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatestmoment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summerwith regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediatejuxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark ofRhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on HarrietWestbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others intheir own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am NOT inlove. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem. "He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me beforeyou can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly cometo York, but HARRIET WESTBROOK will decide whether now or in threeweeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, byendeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice:resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollifyMr. W. In vain! And in consequence of my advice SHE has thrown herselfupon MY protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering adistinction!--I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have Isaid? I declare, quite LUDICROUS. I advised her to resist. She wrote tosay that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, andthrew herself upon my protection. We shall have 200 pounds a year; whenwe find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Gratitude andadmiration, all demand that I should love her FOR EVER. We shall see youat York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I amnow almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct tome at Graham's, 18 Sackville Street, Piccadilly. " From a letter recentlypublished by Mr. W. M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, February 1878), we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with herpreceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms. 

It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not deeply inlove with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was notprepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced him to take it; andfourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having beenill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful passion, the hatredof tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions atdefiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidencecalled forth his gratitude. Her choice of him for a protector flatteredhim: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance aoutrance. There are many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope withHarriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous andunsophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love. 

In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together byHogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once expresses theutmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge ofcontracting marriage with a woman whom he did not passionately love, andwho had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing toobserve that even Shelley, fearless and uncompromising as he was inconduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he soeloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness washonourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and in histender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon hisgenerosity. (See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hogg 2 page 63) foranother defence of his conduct. "We agreed, " etc. )

"My unfortunate friend Harriet, " he writes under date August 15, 1811, from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of hiselopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself. How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. In my leisure moments forthought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered theimportant point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties oflove and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenialsouls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force ofpower; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments ofimpracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrificewhich the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you haveurged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not thatI suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon toevince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert tomatrimony, not from temporizing, but from YOUR arguments; nor, much as Iwish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret theprejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or assertion. No. The ONE argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; thesacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man cangive--this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiringsubmission to your superior intellect. "

Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was morallyjustified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has oftenhaunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct withregard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness toargument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not squarewith his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, heshould have gone on denouncing an institution which he recognized in hisown practice. The conclusion seems to be that, though he despisedaccepted usage, and would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suithis heart's desire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practicalgood sense were stronger than his theories. 

A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C. H. Grove, gives the details ofHarriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope withMiss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was hiscompanion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early onemorning--I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have beenSeptember--in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in GracechurchStreet, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coachesstart, when they departed in the northern mail for York. " From York theyoung couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they weremarried according to the formalities of the Scotch law. 

Shelley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father'seyes--a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were at once cut offfrom the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainlydependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. EvenJew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughterwedded to the heir of several thousands a year, buttoned up his pockets, either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent, or because he was not certain about Shelley's expectations. Heafterwards made the Shelleys an allowance of 200 pounds a year, andearly in 1812 Shelley says that he is in receipt of twice that income. Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to theextent of the sum above mentioned. 

In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happilyenough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined themearly in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity. Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a finevoice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed toread and comment on her favourite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleepduring the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed withslumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophicalparadoxes with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teachHarriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story byMadame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one ofBuffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one ofShelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless oftheir volume or their cost. These he was wont to leave behind, when themoment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that, as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifsand strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. Thisquiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in theneighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg'scaustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mindis that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, andthat Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too muchgiven to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient insensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet. 

They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obligedto leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, andShelley's programme of life at this period imperatively required thesociety of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the threefriends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other'scompany. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloudnovels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm thetedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triunefelicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice oflodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take anexpensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to someterms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley wasanxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. Hesuggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date ofShelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediateallowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail theland on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelleyrecognized the truth that property is a trust far more than apossession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unbornbeing of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among manyinstances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the barenecessities of life, for principle. 

On his return to York, Shelley found a new inmate established in theirlodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide hisdestinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harrietbelieved her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, andpropriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questionedher wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself andher husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in thefriendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; anelegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely, --dark, bright eyes;jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care itmerited, --almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, sogood!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted ofthis woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley hadafterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. "She was older than Ihad expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely facewas seamed with the smallpox, and of a dead white, as faces so muchmarked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a mass of boiledrice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes weredark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, butcoarse; and there was the admired crop--a long crop, much like the tailof a horse--a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, andconstrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partialyoung sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'JewWestbrook, ' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughtersof Judah. "

This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, inHogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained withmerciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name isnecessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet tofancy that she was a victim of her nerves, how she checked her favouritestudies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to aMrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" wasas often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb werein her hands. 

The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; but itis possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departurewhich he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelleyhad good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, andrefers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation ofGoethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. McCarthy to have been a letterfrom the poet to his friend, in confirmation of his opinion. (McCarthy'sShelley's Early Life, page 117. ) However this may be, the precipitationwith which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving Hogg notice oftheir resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his biography. 

The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engagedlodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. ProbablyShelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated menwho lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness ofits accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey'spoetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But ifhe hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, hewas disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making hisacquaintance--a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that hecould have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician thanSouthey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, doesnot seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; andthough he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley'searly liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. It was notlikely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, andthe political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain"Queen Mab" was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to bemonotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke ofNorfolk's seat, Greystoke. Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip;but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some dayspassed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results. The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bringabout a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, and his rebellious son. 

Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letterto William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied withunbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect inafter-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attentionfrom romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter datedto Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreatsGodwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "ifdesire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference, " ifpersecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy andtruth may commend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is notunworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purityof Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the biggeneralities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by longcontact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelleybut the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet Godwin may bepardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought tocast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases aboutphilanthropy and universal happiness. Shelley's second letter containsan extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curiousromance, illustrating his tendency to colour facts with thehallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think, no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason tobelieve the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton fordisseminating the doctrines of "Political Justice", or that his fatherwished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distantregiment, in order that he might prosecute the "Necessity of Atheism" inhis absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the familyestates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with atissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind; and thisletter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strangeoccurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his want oflove for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposedupon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only fromteachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his owndeliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To Godwin he resignshimself with the implicit confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatlystruck with this letter. Indeed, he must have been "or God or beast, "like the insensible man in Aristotle's "Ethics", if he could haveresisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, pouredforth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. Heaccepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor; and thus began aconnexion which proved not only a source of moral support andintellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in acloser personal tie between the two illustrious men. 

In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then engaged inwriting "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the FrenchRevolution to benefit mankind, " adding, "My plan is that of resolving tolose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness. " Godwin sensiblyreplied that Shelley was too young to set himself up as a teacher andapostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (January16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we setoff to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed toKeswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We goprincipally TO FORWARD AS MUCH AS WE CAN the Catholic Emancipation. " Ina fourth letter (January 28, 1812) he informs Godwin that he has alreadyprepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats thedissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that hiscontemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of greatgood. 

It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his attention toIrish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irishjournalist and editor of "The Press" newspaper, who had been sentencedto eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between February 7, 1811, and August 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, tonearly one hundred pounds. (McCarthy, page 255. ) The young enthusiast, who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whoseheart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned todisseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fittingfield for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed withthe manuscript of his "Address to the Irish People" (It was published inDublin. See reprint in McCarthy, page 179. ), he set sail with Harrietand Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isleof Man; and after a very stormy passage, which drove them to the northcoast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, theparty reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife, "wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings. "Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about thisperiod, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime, ruled the household; "Eliza keeps our common stock of money for safetyin some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, although she gives it out as we want it. " This master-touch ofunconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domesticparty now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street. Before a week hadpassed, the "Address to the Irish People" had been printed. Shelley andHarriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task ofdistribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemedinsufficient. On the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend inEngland: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundredyet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty publichouses. .. . Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day todistribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. Hisaccount corresponds with the multitudes of people who possess them. Istand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man WHO LOOKSLIKELY. I throw a book to him. "

A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet'spoint of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give thepamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that wepass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when itis done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman'shood of a cloak. "

The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense oftheir real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repealof the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and toteach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On thelast point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at theinculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute, rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principleswhich should govern patriots during a great national crisis, thedocument is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been apopulation of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent andoverwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poethimself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale ofintellectual being than the oyster, " were qualified to take the remedyof their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such soundreasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfullyvulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarksit contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry. " Afew extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded inthis aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light theythrow upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make mengood; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method ofworshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all othermen. " "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother. " "Donot inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or aheathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, ifhe wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so mucha believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, arascal and a knave. " "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crimeto be intolerant. " "Anything short of unlimited toleration and completecharity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christprincipally insisted, is wrong. " "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient. .. . Think and talk and discuss. .. . Be free and be happy, but first be wiseand good. " Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, hecondemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will beterrible to your enemies. " "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHTmust be entered into and firmly resolved upon. " Then follow precepts, which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification ofprivate morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masseswhom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass ofanimated filth. "

The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatorydemagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, hebased those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a suddenethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find inthem, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero playsthe part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted withoutappreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guidedShelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy", he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in thetruth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition toforce. 

While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin, Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject ofCatholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association", and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vastsociety, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for therecovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, itmust be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day beenbrought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditionshe foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he usedthese simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will bemended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to theIrish. " These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined tobe even more so. 

With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as apractical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, andcompare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under thetitle of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout theKingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent thecountry; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant ofthe governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of thenation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collectiveopinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed wasthat a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by theirmeans every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the samemethod of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. Howmoderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is provedby the following sentence:--"With respect to Universal Suffrage, Iconfess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state ofpublic knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think thatnone but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum inDIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament. " As in thecase of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shownthat Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated. 

While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics wasannounced for the evening of February 28. It was held in FishambleStreet Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spokefor about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon RomanCatholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent inconversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflictingaccounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to theimpression that he failed to carry his audience with him. Thedissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerableinterest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as anEnglishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. Hisyouth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strongwords of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though toaggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficientagent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master wasfifteen--four years less than his real age. 

In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirtystories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began ahistory of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. Wealso obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep atanother of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herselfby working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in theroom now, and talking to Percy about Virtue. " After less than twomonths' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to theconclusion that he "had done all that he could. " The population ofDublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity hehoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarkedwith his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that thepolice had given him warning that it would be well for him to leaveDublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not whollyvisionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before hequitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remainingcopies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recentlyprinted edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights", to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyheadcustom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to theSurveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery throughthe proper official channels to the government. After somecorrespondence, the authorities decided to take no steps againstShelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination. 

The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourablenotice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does notseem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his mostinteresting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly heentered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learnedto know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you inWales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance withHarriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come andjoin our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and theIrish cause. " "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such awife and such a friend. " Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and itis an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, MissHitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance intoit and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, bothobscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in theShelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon. "Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; andShelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than inclose companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed toleave. 

The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to tracethe Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, theysettled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales. Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. HereShelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the endsof government and the rights of man, --framed in imitation of two similarFrench Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly inAugust, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy, page 324. ) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set itafloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it wouldtraverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He alsoemployed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among theSomersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested inthe streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment foruttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with thepuerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to LordEllenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple. (Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29. ) A printer, named D. J. Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship forpublishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistleis an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of theintellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyrannywhich occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, ifimpassioned seriousness. 

An extract from this composition will serve to show his power ofhandling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. Ihave chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:--

"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. Toattribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it iscapable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex tothis incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possibledefinition of his nature. 

"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess theperfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualitiesof man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out ofcorporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannotpossess. .. . But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerableold man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of variouspassions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable anduncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice arequalities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that hedisapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecutionfor opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippersof a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of theirfellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from thosewhich they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutorswho worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would aloneact consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing inhis name. "

Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. Thesage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season. Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where hefound that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without givingany notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorouslydescribed by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the followingyear to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now establishedat Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging toMr. W. A. Madocks, M. P. For Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed aconsiderable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it withan embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him wasalways keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance atTremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused hisenthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by aheavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading thelist with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, heendeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, andeven ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the samepurpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personalacquaintance of the Godwin family. 

Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversioncaused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing herLatin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in thatlanguage to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him. There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza andKant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appearsthat at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted toconquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to applymyself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, butwhich is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to asa mender of antiquated abuses, --I mean, that record of crimes andmiseries--history. " Although he may have made an effort to apply himselfto historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined himto metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetratedwith speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; andwhen he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedyupon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance, continued with effort, and finally abandoned. 

In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on whichhe was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears, from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem onQueen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the earlyage of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the springof 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The firstimpression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, whichShelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It waspirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to thepublic by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republicationShelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a productionwhich he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that itis perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in allthat concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtlerdiscriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still morecrude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political anddomestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much fromliterary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than toserve the sacred cause of freedom. " This judgment is undoubtedly severe;but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley'scriticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on itsfirst appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work ofart it lacks maturity and permanent vitality. 

The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysteriousoccurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after theevent, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twiceattacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom hestruggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made hisescape from the house without being recognized. His motive and hispersonality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affairwas a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptibleby laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was aperilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; orwhether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by anunfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures ofthis kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are ofno unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating therelative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be bornein mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in theparlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols onthe evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen thevillain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, andconfirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, aretoo circumstantial to be lightly set aside. 

On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was thesubject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies atTanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escapefrom the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. Butno investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on thecircumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks, concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion. 

There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment. In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher, who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After ashort residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit toKillarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason asunexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, wasleft behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes thefirst important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in Londonmarks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences anddecisive of his future. 

CHAPTER 4. 

SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. 

Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joinedby Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet hadrecently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while inhotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had aprojecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, andcatch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by achary English summer. "He wanted, " said one of his female admirers, "only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some younglady's lark, hanging outside for air and song. " According to Hogg, thisperiod of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley'stroubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of Germanmetaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeplystudied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintancewith Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. 

The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular; forShelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was anindifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less byforethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there wasno meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, the table wassupplied with buns, procured by Shelley from the nearest pastry-cook. Hehad already abjured animal food and alcohol; and his favourite dietconsisted of pulse or bread, which he ate dry with water, or made intopanada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felthungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tuckedunder his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading atthe same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity ofmovement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any manshould want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint, " says Hogg, "about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice. "This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. Duringthe last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequentattacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend, Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure, to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eatinto the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequentlyremained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the dayhe might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no lesssimple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat, and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on histhroat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fieldsand gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long, wild, ragged locks. " Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkablysmall and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water, and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs. Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on theirhouse-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigatedardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by ablazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by thehour. 

These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a manas Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subjectto the laws of custom in his habits as in his modes of thought, livingliterally as the spirit moved him, with a natural nonchalance that hasperhaps been never surpassed. To time and place he was equallyindifferent, and could not be got to remember his engagements. "He tookstrange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions andpanic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacredengagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, personsand seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, hequickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnlypromised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency andimportance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vainpursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up incustody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to becaressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancywould too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved andalmost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fairsubjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company. " If he had beenfairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time passunheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by thespell of his unrivalled eloquence; for wonderful as was his poetry, those who enjoyed the privilege of converse with him, judged it evenmore attractive. "He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, andeloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were inclining toyield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when they wouldhave been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the bewitching charmsof his discourse. "

From Half Moon Street the Shelleys moved into a house in Pimlico; and itwas here, according to Hogg, or at Cooke's Hotel in Dover Streetaccording to other accounts, that Shelley's first child, Ianthe Eliza, was born about the end of June, 1813. Harriet did not take much to herlittle girl, and gave her over to a wet-nurse, for whom Shelleyconceived a great dislike. That a mother should not nurse her own babywas no doubt contrary to his principles; and the double presence of theservant and Eliza, whom he now most cordially detested, made his homeuncomfortable. We have it on excellent authority, that of Mr. Peacock, that he "was extremely fond of it (the child), and would walk up anddown a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to ita song of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of hisown coining. His song was Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani, Yáhmani. " To thewant of sympathy between the father and the mother in this matter ofIanthe, Mr. Peacock is inclined to attribute the beginning of troublesin the Shelley household. There is, indeed, no doubt that the revelationof Harriet's maternal coldness must have been extremely painful to herhusband; and how far she carried her insensibility, may be gathered froma story told by Hogg about her conduct during an operation performedupon the child. 

During this period of his sojourn in London, Shelley was again in somepecuniary difficulties. Yet he indulged Harriet's vanity by setting up acarriage, in which they afterwards took a hurried journey to Edinburghand back. He narrowly escaped a debtor's prison through this act ofextravagance, and by a somewhat ludicrous mistake Hogg was arrested forthe debt due to the coach-maker. His acquaintances were few andscattered, and he saw nothing of his family. Gradually, however, heseems to have become a kind of prophet in a coterie of learned ladies. The views he had propounded in "Queen Mab", his passionate belief in theperfectibility of man, his vegetarian doctrines, and his readiness toadopt any new nostrum for the amelioration of his race, endeared him toall manners of strange people; nor was he deterred by aristocraticprejudices from frequenting society which proved extremely uncongenialto Hogg, and of which we have accordingly some caustic sketches from hispen. His chief friends were a Mrs. Boinville, for whom he conceived anenthusiastic admiration, and her daughter Cornelia, married to avegetarian, Mr. Newton. In order to be near them he had moved toPimlico; and his next move, from London to a cottage named High Elms, atBracknell, in Berkshire, had the same object. With Godwin and his familyhe was also on terms of familiar intercourse. Under the philosopher'sroof in Skinner Street there was now gathered a group of miscellaneousinmates--Fanny Imlay, the daughter of his first wife, MaryWollstonecraft; Mary, his own daughter by the same marriage; his secondwife, and her two children, Claire and Charles Clairmont, the offspringof a previous union. From this connexion with the Godwin householdevents of the gravest importance in the future were destined to arise, and already it appears that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilousapproval on the fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-knownnovelist, described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, hasneither taste nor feeling, " were his only intimates. 

Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord between thetwo chief elements of Shelley's present society; and indeed it willappear to a careful student of his biography that Hogg, Peacock, andHarriet, now stood somewhat by themselves and aloof from the innercircle of his associates. If we regard the Shelleys as the centre of anextended line, we shall find the Westbrook family at one end, theBoinville family at the other, with Hogg and Peacock somewhere in themiddle. Harriet was naturally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, andShelley to the Boinville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but asincere regard for Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was inmuch the same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs. Newton. The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercisedtheir influence at a distance from the rest. Frequent change fromBracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying journey toEdinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother andsisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left inthe narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces. We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes andTheosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief. 

Since we are now approaching the gravest crisis in Shelley's life, itbehoves us to be more than usually careful in considering hiscircumstances at this epoch. His home had become cold and dull. Harrietdid not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure with herMount Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, andthe Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, torefrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he foundamong the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extractsfrom a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak moreeloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader theantagonism which had sprung up in Shelley's mind between his own homeand the circle of his new friends:--"I have been staying with Mrs. B--for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all thatphilosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude ofmyself. They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I havefelt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality butits transitoriness; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of thishappy home, --for it has become my home. The trees, the bridge, theminutest objects, have already a place in my affections. "

"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when theinfinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but littleinclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heartand soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation ofdisgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom Imay hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faintwith the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrencefor this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsomeworm, that cannot see to sting. "

While divided in this way between a home which had become distasteful tohim, and a house where he found scope for his most romantic outpouringsof sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and passionately in love withGodwin's daughter, Mary. Peacock, who lived in close intimacy with himat this period, must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming natureof the new attachment:--"Nothing that I ever read in tale or historycould present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouringwhen, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him inLondon. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, FROM WHOM HE WAS NOTTHEN SEPARATED, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, inhis gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind 'suffering, like alittle kingdom, the nature of an insurrection. ' His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, andsaid, 'I never part from this. '"

We may therefore affirm, I think, with confidence that in the winter andspring of 1814, Shelley had been becoming gradually more and moreestranged from Harriet, whose commonplace nature was no mate for his, and whom he had never loved with all the depth of his affection; thathis intimacy with the Boinville family had brought into painfulprominence whatever was jarring and repugnant to him in his home; andthat in this crisis of his fate he had fallen in love for the first timeseriously with Mary Godwin. (The date at which he first made Mary'sacquaintance is uncertain. Peacock says that it was between April 18 andJune 8. ) She was then a girl of sixteen, "fair and fair-haired, paleindeed, and with a piercing look, " to quote Hogg's description of her, as she first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. Withher freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, heracute intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, MaryGodwin was naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than the goodHarriet, however beautiful. 

That Shelley early in 1814 had no intention of leaving his wife, isprobable; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, eight daysafter his impassioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, Hanover Square. Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the Scotch marriage wasno doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a possible heir beyond allquestion. Yet it seems, if we may found conjecture on "Stanzas, April, 1814, " that in the very month after this new ceremony Shelley found thedifficulties of his wedded life insuperable, and that he was alreadymaking up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June theseparation actually occurred--not by mutual consent, so far as anypublished documents throw light on the matter, but rather by Shelley'ssudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiographypage 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutualconsent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, Relics of Shelly, page 147. ) For a short while Harriet was left inignorance of his abode, and with a very insufficient sum of money at herdisposal. She placed herself under the protection of her father, retiredto Bath, and about the beginning of July received a letter from Shelley, who was thenceforth solicitous for her welfare, keeping up acorrespondence with her, supplying her with funds, and by no meansshrinking from personal communications. 

That Shelley must bear the responsibility of this separation seems to mequite clear. His justification is to be found in his avowed opinions onthe subject of love and marriage--opinions which Harriet knew well andprofessed to share, and of which he had recently made ample confessionin the notes to "Queen Mab". The world will still agree with Lord Eldonin regarding those opinions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon thepoet's character; but it would be unfair, while condemning them asfrankly as he professed them, to blame him also because he did notconform to the opposite code of morals, for which he frequentlyexpressed extreme abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that theShelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet'sconduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await theirpublication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile thereremains no doubt about the fact that forty days after leaving Harriet, Shelley departed from London with Mary Godwin, who had consented toshare his fortunes. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand ofher who was destined to be his companion for life, may best be told inLady Shelley's words:--

"His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts ofgenius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin'sdaughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hearShelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met oneeventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past--how he hadsuffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, hehoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who haddone battle for the fellow-men, and been true through all adverse stormsto the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as theremaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of bothredeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of"Political Justice", and of the "Rights of Woman", had been educated, spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For shewas the child of parents whose writings had had for their object toprove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new erain the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whomshe loved--by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught tovenerate--these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It wastherefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of her ownheart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of herlove. "

Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley'ssecond child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formedanother connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, 1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. Thedistance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the newties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was noimmediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and hersuicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, asHogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and itmay be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second timeunhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, andcut the knot of life and all its troubles. 

So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painfulperiod in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and withoutcondemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by LadyShelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible thatthe poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancyin this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my beliefin the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we mustdo, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, thatI for my own part am willing to suspend my judgment till the timearrives for his vindication. The language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. Garnett justify us in expecting that that vindication will be asstartling as complete. If it is not, they, as pleading for him, willhave overshot the mark of prudence. 

On the 28th of July Shelley left London with Mary Godwin, who up to thisdate had remained beneath her father's roof. There was some secrecy intheir departure, because they were accompanied by Miss Clairmont, whosemother disapproved of her forming a third in the party. Having madetheir way to Dover, they crossed the Channel in an open boat, and wentat once to Paris. Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intendingto perform the journey across France on foot. Shelley, however, sprainedhis ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In thisconveyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neufchatel. Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their residence; andhere Shelley began his romantic tale of "The Assassins", a portion ofwhich is printed in his prose works. Want of money compelled them soonto think of turning their steps homeward; and the back journey wasperformed upon the Reuss and Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a badpassage, on the 13th of September. Mrs. Shelley's "History of a SixWeek's Tour" relates the details of this trip, which was of greatimportance in forming Shelley's taste, and in supplying him with thescenery of river, rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilized in"Alastor". 

The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty; but on the6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became the next heir to thebaronetcy and the family estates, and an arrangement was made with hisfather by right of which he received an allowance of 1000 pounds a year. A portion of his income was immediately set apart for Harriet. Thewinter was passed in London, where Shelley walked a hospital, in order, it is said, to acquire some medical knowledge that might be of serviceto the poor he visited. His own health at this period was very bad. Aphysician whom he consulted pronounced that he was rapidly sinking underpulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. Theconsumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for the next threeyears he had no doubt that he was destined to an early death. In 1818, however, all danger of phthisis passed away; and during the rest of hisshort life he only suffered from spasms and violent pains in the side, which baffled the physicians, but, though they caused him extremeanguish, did not menace any vital organ. To the subject of his health itwill be necessary to return at a later period of this biography. For thepresent it is enough to remember that his physical condition was such asto justify his own expectation of death at no distant time. (See Letterto Godwin in Shelley's Memorials, page 78. )

Fond as ever of wandering, Shelley set out in the early summer for atour with Mary. They visited Devonshire and Clifton, and then settled ina house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. The summer wasfurther broken by a water excursion up the Thames to its source, in thecompany of Mr. Peacock and Charles Clairmont. Peacock traces the poet'staste for boating, which afterwards became a passion with him, to thisexcursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells usthat Shelley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that heenjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W. S. Halliday, a farbetter authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never sawShelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that hepractised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fondof boats and every kind of water--river, sea, lake, or canal--he neverlearned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg onoccasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to floata mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having onceconstructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lakein Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion. 

On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem of"Alastor", haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of WindsorForest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration. It wasprinted with a few other poems in one volume the next year. Not only was"Alastor" the first serious poem published by Shelley; but it was alsothe first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of hisgenius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music;and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced incertain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, is such as only Shelley could have produced. 

"Alastor" is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victiminto desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for thetitle of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apartfrom its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has greatautobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written underthe expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for thesomewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of itssublime descriptions. All that Shelley had observed of naturalbeauty--in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of theReuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest--is presented to us in aseries of pictures penetrated with profound emotion. But the deepermeaning of "Alastor" is to be found, not in the thought of death nor inthe poet's recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St. Augustine placed upon its title page, and in the "Hymn to IntellectualBeauty", composed about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, thepoet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuagethe thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longingfor some mortal realization of his love. "Alastor", like"Epipsychidion, " reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking thatthe idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form:while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that suchrealization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written byShelley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one isalways in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it isnot easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists inseeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal. "But this Shelley discovered only with "the years that bring thephilosophic mind, " and when he was upon the very verge of his untimelydeath. 

The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of"Alastor". It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideallove, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet'sheart:--

 At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight:--"Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed, Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. 

William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24thof January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together, accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. Theyreached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by LordByron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yetmade Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab", with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown intodaily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at nogreat distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in aboat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. MissClairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripenedinto an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This facthas to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, because Allegra afterwardsbecame an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant ofwhat was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy fromthe mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelleyduring the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both wereto seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become oneof the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influenceof Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as hiswife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron'sgenius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possibleopinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his famewith Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom heerroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive. Shelley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty tonobler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtleintellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Muchas he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley was notblind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has leftus of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice andRavenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit toItaly, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet beenpassed upon his brother poet's character. It is clear that he neverfound in Byron a perfect friend, and that he had not accepted him as onewith whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling andconduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Shelley the purest nature hehad ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and leastworldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyondall other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity asrare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of allthat is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal evento the very letter. "

Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva intheir boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie. Onthis occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of death from drowning. Hisone anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peacock, was lest Byron shouldattempt to save him at the risk of his own life. Byron described him as"bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, thatShelley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness. He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justlybe said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursionwas a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions inhis letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on MontBlanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impressionhad been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in theelement of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words whichrecord the experiences of his two journeys in Switzerland andFrance:--"I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes andthe sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon thebrink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciersof the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been awanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, andseen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I havesailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seenpopulous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen thetheatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities andvillages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, andthe naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. "

On their return to the lake, the Shelleys found M. G. Lewis establishedwith Byron. This addition to the circle introduced much conversationabout apparitions, and each member of the party undertook to produce aghost story. Polidori's "Vampyre" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" werethe only durable results of their determination. But an incidentoccurred which is of some importance in the history of Shelley'spsychological condition. Toward midnight on the 18th of July, Byronrecited the lines in "Christabel" about the lady's breast; when Shelleysuddenly started up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen avision of a woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he waswriting notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his"Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mereeffort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbedhis nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period ofhis life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painfulvividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out ofhis intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as theprojection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations wereabnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused theborder-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature asShelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common evenwhen with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strungemotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object;and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek toestimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certainepisodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told byPeacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of thisyear from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on thehypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, bothear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of asubjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98. )

On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage at GreatMarlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peacock. While itwas being prepared for the reception of his family, he stayed at Bath, and there heard of Harriet's suicide. The life that once was dearest tohim, had ended thus in misery, desertion, want. The mother of his twochildren, abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven fromher father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle withcircumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was freefrom blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingledwith his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered mostacutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been theconviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought andfeeling for which she was not qualified, and that had it not been forhim and his opinions, she might have lived a happy woman in some commonwalk of life. One of his biographers asserts that "he continued to behaunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, which pursued him like an Orestes, " and even Trelawny, who knew him onlyin the last months of his life, said that the impression of thatdreadful moment was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelingsin some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817 (Forman, 3 148. ); andthough he did not often speak of Harriet, Peacock has recorded onememorable occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to afriend. (Fraser, January, 1860, page 102. )

Shelley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation in thesociety of Leigh Hunt. The friendship extended to him by that excellentman at this season of his trouble may perhaps count for something withthose who are inclined to judge him harshly. Two important eventsfollowed immediately upon the tragedy. The first was Shelley's marriagewith Mary Godwin on the 30th of December, 1816. Whether Shelley wouldhave taken this step except under strong pressure from without, appearsto me very doubtful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the mostresolutely bent on confirming his theories by his practice; and in thisinstance there was no valid reason why he should not act up toprinciples professed in common by himself and the partner of hisfortunes, no less than by her father and mother. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that he yielded to arguments; and these argumentsmust have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him withcordiality since he left England in 1816. Godwin, though overrated inhis generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Shelley, was a manwhose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. Hisconduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of aself-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed whenShelley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradictionwith his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified inconcluding that he worried Shelley, the one enthusiastic andthorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite ofhis disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmisethat Godwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bearthe name of a future baronet. 

The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up thecustody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was instituted; at theconclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Shelley of hisson and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in"Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children wereplaced in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance withprinciples diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Shelley'sincome was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thussternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim, to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His ownimpulsiveness, his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities, his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of theworld's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pass--to the suicide ofthe woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspringwhom he loved. 

Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we maylearn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic story. His life wasa tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable oferring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar ofjustice as established in the daily sanctities of human life; and now hehad to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated likethe dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be arock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of hismoral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had beengranted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacleof one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitterfruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seekingto obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude ofShelley's over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinaryexistence, which makes his history so tragic; and we may justly wonderwhether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did notapply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own fortunes. 

CHAPTER 5. 

LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. 

Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his children, and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and with the cloudof what he thought swift-coming death above his head, Shelley workedsteadily, during the summer of 1817, upon his poem of "Laon and Cythna". Six months were spent in this task. "The poem, " to borrow Mrs. Shelley'swords, "was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves ofBisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which isdistinguished for peculiar beauty. " Whenever Shelley could, he composedin the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and theBaths of Caracalla were the birthplace of "Prometheus". "The Cenci" waswritten on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The Cascine ofFlorence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, andthe summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of hisloveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", wastransferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia. 

If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devotion toIdeal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder senserepresentative of its author. All his previous experiences and all hisaspirations--his passionate belief in friendship, his principle of theequality of women with men, his demand for bloodless revolution, hisconfidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, his doctrine of freelove, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious intolerance andtyranny--are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos ofthis wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the selfwhich he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitelyfeminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and ofgrappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. Inthe first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother andsister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, butbecause he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack theintolerance of custom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells usthat it was his purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers "avirtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, thatfaith and hope in something good, which neither violence normisrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish amongmankind;" to illustrate "the growth and progress of individual mindaspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and tocelebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world. "The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poemhighly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserianstanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that areShelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom atthe cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the goodcause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of thehero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing victim. It is fullof thrilling incidents and lovely pictures; yet the tale is the leastpart of the poem; and few readers have probably been able either tosympathize with its visionary characters, or to follow the narrativewithout weariness. As in the case of other poems by Shelley--especiallythose in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art hisgenius was not well suited--the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" issurrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that itis difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess ofsplendour. Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or thelovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had heretried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth wasby no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before thepublic. Hooted down, derided, stigmatized, and howled at, it only servedto intensify the prejudice with which the author of "Queen Mab" had cometo be regarded. 

I have spoken of this poem under its first name of "Laon and Cythna". Acertain number of copies were issued with this title (How many copieswere put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have beenmany more than the traditional three; for when I was a boy at Harrow, Ipicked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for theprice of 2 shillings and 6 pence a piece. ); but the publisher, Ollier, not without reason dreaded the effect the book would make; he thereforeinduced Shelley to alter the relationship between the hero and hisbride, and issued the old sheets with certain cancelled pages under thetitle of "Revolt of Islam". It was published in January, 1818. Whilestill resident at Marlow, Shelley began two autobiographical poems--theone "Prince Athanase, " which he abandoned as too introspective andmorbidly self-analytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which hefinished afterwards in Italy. Of the second of these compositions heentertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his bestwork. To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character ofLionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of theman he would have wished to be. The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the"Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone andscale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. Later on in life, Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directedhis genius to more objective themes. Yet the autobiographic tendency, asbefitted a poet of the highest lyric type, remained to the end apowerful characteristic. 

Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may bewell to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetrywhich characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a singlepassage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosenthe lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel:

 To Lionel, Though of great wealth and lineage high, Yet through those dungeon walls there came Thy thrilling light, O Liberty! And as the meteor's midnight flame Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth Flashed on his visionary youth, And filled him, not with love, but faith. And hope, and courage mute in death; For love and life in him were twins, Born at one birth: in every other First life, then love its course begins, Though they be children of one mother; And so through this dark world they fleet Divided, till in death they meet: But he loved all things ever. Then He past amid the strife of men, And stood at the throne of armed power Pleading for a world of woe: Secure as one on a rock-built tower O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, 'Mid the passions wild of human kind He stood, like a spirit calming them; For, it was said, his words could find Like music the lulled crowd, and stem That torrent of unquiet dream, Which mortals truth and reason deem, But IS revenge and fear and pride. Joyous he was; and hope and peace On all who heard him did abide, Raining like dew from his sweet talk, As where the evening star may walk Along the brink of the gloomy seas, Liquid mists of splendour quiver. His very gestures touch'd to tears The unpersuaded tyrant, never So moved before: his presence stung The torturers with their victim's pain, And none knew how; and through their ears, The subtle witchcraft of his tongue Unlocked the hearts of those who keep Gold, the world's bond of slavery. Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see One sow what he could never reap: For he is rich, they said, and young, And might drink from the depths of luxury. If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd The champion of a trampled creed: If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned 'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, Those who would sit near Power must toil; And such, there sitting, all may see. 

During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor atLeigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, andthe brothers Smith, authors of "Rejected Addresses". Hunt'srecollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg andPeacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing themanner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: "He rose early inthe morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and readagain, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) againwalked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till teno'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book wasgenerally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiringinterest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job. " Mrs. Shelley, in her note on the "Revolt of Islam", confirms this account of his Biblestudies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his stylemay be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from whichI have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation toChristianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between thePauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of theGospels. "His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith inthe spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, veryformidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observeson that point. " We have only to read Shelley's "Essay on Christianity", in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and howprofoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to asound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressedby many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on thesubject. It is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaevalphase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and moreapproximate to Shelley's exposition. Here and here only is a vitalfaith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructiblebecause essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds ofdivers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all mena clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but itwas precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him todiscern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to itsFounder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what ispermanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitableconclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. Hisfierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directedagainst an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, andsuperstition, which in his opinion had retarded the growth of freeinstitutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, hedistinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with hisblood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify theirLord if he returned to earth. 

That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To helpthe needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which hecheerfully discharged. "His charity, though liberal, was not weak. Heinquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visitedthe sick in their beds, . .. . And kept a regular list of industrious poor, whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts. " At Marlow, the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all hisenergies; and Mrs. Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from whichhe twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A storytold by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, andcarrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a manas charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature withhis friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ'sparable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-calledpoor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open tohis friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and hedischarged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds. In his pamphlet on "Putting Reform to the Vote", he offered to subscribe100 pounds for the purpose of founding an association; and we havealready seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied;and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out ofwhich 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will beunderstood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that hewas in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raisingfunds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters ofexpenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, thisheir of the richest baronet in Sussex illustrated by his own conductthose principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity whichformed his political and social creed. 

A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a carelesssentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus. " FancyShelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of theBelvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts byShout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brotherand Allegra, lived as Shelley's guests; and here Clara Shelley was bornon the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered froma severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and theapprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor might layhis vulture's talons on the children of his second marriage, were themotives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric "The billows onthe beach. ") He never returned. Four years only of life were left tohim--years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts. 

It was on the 11th of March that the Shelleys took their departure withMiss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, andafter visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice andRome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Shelley'sletters to Peacock form the invaluable record of this period of hisexistence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens ofdescriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged withcolour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes ofItaly, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate inobservation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of astyle at once familiar and elevated. That Shelley's sensibility to artwas not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enoughin many passages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in hiscomments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works ofantique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of theopinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among thepeople made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, thespirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began hisstudies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the presentday by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famouscritic's verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were space for along quotation from these letters, I should choose the description ofPompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, 1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminentlycharacteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:--

"The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energyof mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there isa checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the lettersinto a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times itsown depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters ofoblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek inwhat I see the manifestation of something beyond the present andtangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may notagree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not toattempt to inspire others with them. "

In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in athunderstorm. "Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of thisexcursion--a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossettias the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatmentof ordinary things. " The description of a Venetian sunset, touched tosadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, ranks among Shelley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse ofByron's life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of thesunset and the island of San Lazzaro:--

 Oh! How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers Of cities they encircle!--it was ours To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola. As those who pause on some delightful way, Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared Between the east and west; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep west into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills. They were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seem from Lido through the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-- And then, as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade, " Said my companion, "I will show you soon A better station. " So o'er the lagune We glided; and from that funereal bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. I was about to speak, when--"We are even Now at the point I meant, " said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row. "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell. " I looked, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island, such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile, -- A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung, -- We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled In strong and black relief--"What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower, "-- Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour, Those who may cross the water hear that bell, Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers. "

It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiarquotations from Shelley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":--

 Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song. 

Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, wherethey spent some weeks in the autumn. Here "Prometheus Unbound" wasbegun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed;and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary torush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten theirpassport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice--only in time, however, for the child to die. 

Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelleysuffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. Mrs. Shelleyattributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells astrange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better accountfor the poet's melancholy. He says that so far back as the year 1816, onthe night before his departure from London, "a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connexions, " came to him, avowed the passionatelove she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should flytogether. (Medwin's Life of Shelley, volume 1 324. His date, 1814, appears from the context to be a misprint. ) He explained to her that hishand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, afterthe expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, theyparted. She followed him, however, from place to place; and withoutintruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remainingnear him. Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died. The web ofShelley's life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own. Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of FannyImlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet hasalready been told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable inMedwin's story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorouslytells us about Shelley's attraction for women in London. At any rate, the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly beaccounted for by the "constant and poignant physical sufferings" of whichMrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him. She washerself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing somethingfrom her, and we know from her own words in another place that his "fearto wound the feelings of others" often impelled him to keep his deepestsorrows to himself. (Note on the Revolt of Islam. )

All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace ofconsumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks ofpain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem tohave been ascertained. At Naples he was under treatment for disease ofthe liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and itis certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied withthe quality of the water he drank. He was, for instance, forced toeschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated hissymptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitableresidence. The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to havebeen determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed withhim. That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremelyserious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived withhim at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was obtained bymesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of thetorment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, that even during thelast months of his life we find him begging Trelawny to procure himprussic acid as a final and effectual remedy for all the ills that fleshis heir to. It may be added that mental application increased themischief, for he told Leigh Hunt that the composition of "The Cenci" hadcost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitablyreal, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease;and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley'sspasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continualover-taxing of his nervous system. 

Mrs. Shelley states that the change from England to Italy was in allrespects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to refer thedepression from which he occasionally suffered, to his solitary habits;and there are several passages in his own letters which connect hismelancholy with solitude. It is obvious that when he found himself inthe congenial company of Trelawny, Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, he was simply happy; and nothing could be further from the truth than topaint him as habitually sunk in gloom. On the contrary, we hear quite asmuch about his high spirits, his "Homeric laughter, " his playfulnesswith children, his readiness to join in the amusements of his chosencircle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his solitarybroodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories over-cast hisheaven. Byron, who had some right to express a judgment in such amatter, described him as the most companionable man under the age ofthirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shootingwith his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romanticpersons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. Thevoice of a stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar withShelley's almost inconceivable quickness of perception, was enough tomake him leave the house; and one of his prettiest poems is written onhis mistaking his wife's mention of the Aziola, a little owl commonenough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dislikefor intercourse with commonplace people was a source of somedisagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further apartfrom Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable letterrecently published by Mr. Garnett, he writes:--"I detest allsociety--almost all, at least--and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all thatis hateful and tiresome in it. " And again, speaking about his wife toTrelawny, he said:--"She can't bear solitude, nor I society--the quickcoupled with the dead. "

In the year 1818-19 the Shelleys had no friends at all in Italy, exceptLord Byron at Venice, and Mr. And Mrs. John Gisborne at Leghorn. Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin. She was awoman of much cultivation, devoid of prejudice, and, though lessenthusiastic than Shelley liked, quite capable of appreciating theinestimable privilege of his acquaintance. Her husband, to use a nowalmost obsolete phrase, was a scholar and a gentleman. He shared hiswife's enlightened opinions, and remained staunch through good and illreport to his new friends. At Rome and Naples they knew absolutely noone. Shelley's time was therefore passed in study and composition. Inthe previous summer he had translated the "Symposium" of Plato, andbegun an essay on the Ethics of the Greeks, which remains unluckily afragment. Together with Mary he read much Italian literature, and hisobservations on the chief Italian poets form a valuable contribution totheir criticism. While he admired the splendour and invention ofAriosto, he could not tolerate his moral tone. Tasso struck him as coldand artificial, in spite of his "delicate moral sensibility. " Boccacciohe preferred to both; and his remarks on this prose-poet are extremelycharacteristic. "How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions ofnature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is themorning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes itobscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense ofthe fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. Hismore serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He oftenexpresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a verybeautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember onelittle remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to thecommon, narrow-minded conceptions of love, --'Bocca baciata non perdeventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch remainedthe objects of his lasting admiration, though the cruel Christianity ofthe "Inferno" seemed to him an ineradicable blot upon the greatest ofItalian poems. Of Petrarch's "tender and solemn enthusiasm, " he speakswith the sympathy of one who understood the inner mysteries ofidealizing love. 

It will be gathered from the foregoing quotations that Shelley, notwithstanding is profound study of style and his exquisite perceptionof beauty in form and rhythm, required more than merely artisticexcellences in poetry. He judged poems by their content and spirit; andwhile he plainly expressed his abhorrence of the didactic manner, heheld that art must be moralized in order to be truly great. Thedistinction he drew between Theocritus and the earlier Greek singers inthe "Defence of Poetry", his severe strictures on "The Two NobleKinsmen" in a letter to Mary (August 20, 1818) and his phrase aboutAriosto, "who is entertaining and graceful, and SOMETIMES a poet, "illustrate the application of critical canons wholly at variance withthe "art for art" doctrine. 

While studying Italian, he continued faithful to Greek. Plato was oftenin his hands, and the dramatists formed his almost inseparablecompanions. How deeply he felt the art of the Homeric poems, may begathered from the following extract:--"I congratulate you on yourconquest of the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the perpetuallyincreasing magnificence of the last seven books. Homer there trulybegins to be himself. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral ofPatroclus, and the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale intenderness and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparablewith anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there isnothing like this. " About this time, prompted by Mrs. Gisborne, he beganthe study of Spanish, and conceived an ardent admiration for Calderon, whose splendid and supernatural fancy tallied with his own. "I ambathing myself in the light and odour of the starry Autos, " he writes toMr. Gisborne in the autumn of 1820. "Faust", too, was a favourite. "Ihave been reading over and over again "Faust", and always withsensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom andaugments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfitstudy for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory, and thedelusions of an imagination not to be restrained. " The profoundimpression made upon him by Margaret's story is expressed in two lettersabout Retzsch's illustrations:--"The artist makes one envy his happinessthat he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared lookupon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf onthe opposite side of which I knew that it was figured. "

The fruits of this occupation with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Germanwere Shelley's translations from Homer and Euripides, from Dante, fromCalderon's "Magico Prodigioso", and from "Faust", translations whichhave never been surpassed for beauty of form and complete transfusion ofthe spirit of one literature into the language of another. Ontranslation, however, he set but little store, asserting that he onlyundertook it when he "could do absolutely nothing else, " and writingearnestly to dissuade Leigh Hunt from devoting time which might bebetter spent, to work of subordinate importance. (Letter from Florence, November 1819. ) The following version of a Greek epigram on Plato'sspirit will illustrate his own method of translation:--

 Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? To what sublime and star-y-paven home Floatest thou? I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, Ascending heaven:--Athens does inherit His corpse below. 

Some time in the year 1820-21, he composed the "Defence of Poetry", stimulated to this undertaking by his friend Peacock's article onpoetry, published in the Literary Miscellany. (See Letter to Ollier, January 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, page 135. ) This essay not only setsforth his theory of his own art, but it also contains some of his finestprose writing, of which the following passage, valuable alike for matterand style, may be cited as a specimen:--

"The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it createsnew materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other itengenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them accordingto a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and thegood. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than atperiods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantityof the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it. 

"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre andcircumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same timethe root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that fromwhich all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, ifblighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barrenworld the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree oflife. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things;it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of theelements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beautyto the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful universewhich we inhabit--what were our consolations on this side of thegrave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascendto bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-wingedfaculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A mancannot say, "I will compose poetry. " The greatest poet even cannot sayit; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisibleinfluence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness;this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fadesand changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of ournatures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Couldthis influence be durable in its original purity and force, it isimpossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when compositionbegins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most gloriouspoetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feebleshadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatestpoets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that thefinest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil andthe delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean nomore than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and anartificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by theintermixture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed bythe limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the"Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We havehis own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the"unpremeditated song. " And let this be an answer to those who wouldallege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "OrlandoFurioso. " Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is topainting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is stillmore observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue orpicture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother'swomb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation isincapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or themedia of the process. 

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiestand best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought andfeeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regardingour own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departingunbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so thateven in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but bepleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is asit were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; butits footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the comingcalm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand whichpaves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experiencedprincipally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the mostenlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at warwith every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, andfriendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst theylast, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are notonly subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refinedorganization, but they can colour all that they combine with theevanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in therepresentation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, thesleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makesimmortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arreststhe vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, andveiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sistersabide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the cavernsof the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetryredeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. "

In the midst of these aesthetic studies, and while producing his owngreatest works, Shelley was not satisfied that his genius ought to bedevoted to poetry. "I consider poetry, " he wrote to Peacock, January26th, 1819, "very subordinate to moral and political science, and if Iwere well, certainly I would aspire to the latter; for I can conceive agreat work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing thecontending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me is suchan attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amusemyself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into thescale of that balance which the Giant of Arthegall holds. " Whether hewas right in the conviction that his genius was no less fitted formetaphysical speculation or for political science than for poetry, is aquestion that admits of much debate. (See Mrs. Shelley's note on theRevolt of Islam, and the whole Preface to the Prose Works. ) We havenothing but fragments whereby to form a definite opinion--the unfinished"Defence of Poetry", the unfinished "Essay on a Future State", theunfinished "Essay on Christianity", the unfinished "Essay on thePunishment of Death", and the scattered "Speculations on Metaphysics". None of these compositions justify the belief so confidently expressedby Mrs. Shelley in her Preface to the prose works, that "had not Shelleydeserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lostto us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him inthe waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory ofmind; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant would havecontributed; but more simple, and unimpugnable, and entire than thesystems of these writers. " Their incompleteness rather tends to confirmwhat she proceeds to state, that the strain of philosophical compositionwas too great for his susceptible nerves; while her further observationthat "thought kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered himdizzy from too great keenness of emotion, " seems to indicate that hisnature was primarily that of a poet deeply tinctured with philosophicalspeculation, rather than that of a metaphysician warmed at intervals toan imaginative fervour. Another of her remarks confirms us in thisopinion. "He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature tobe instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry. " (Note on Prometheus. )This is the position of the poet rather than the analyst; and on thewhole, we are probably justified in concluding with Mrs. Shelley, thathe followed a true instinct when he dedicated himself to poetry, andtrained his powers in that direction. (Note on Revolt of Islam. ) Todogmatize upon the topic would be worse than foolish. There wassomething incalculable, incommensurable, and daemonic in Shelley'sgenius; and what he might have achieved, had his life been spared andhad his health progressively improved, it is of course impossible tosay. 

In the spring of 1819 the Shelleys settled in Rome, where the poetproceeded with the composition of "Prometheus Unbound". He used to writeamong the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, not then, as now, despoiledof all their natural beauty, but waving with the Paradise of flowers andshrubs described in his incomparable letter of March the 23rd toPeacock. Rome, however, was not destined to retain them long. On the 7thof June they lost their son William after a short illness. Shelley lovedthis child intensely, and sat by his bedside for sixty hours withouttaking rest. He was now practically childless; and his grief foundexpression in many of his poems, especially in the fragment headed"Roma, Roma, Roma! non e piu com' era prima. " William was buried in theProtestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description toPeacock in the previous December. "The English burying-place is a greenslope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, Ithink, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see thesun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, withthe autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leavesof the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soilwhich is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostlyof women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one wereto die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, andso it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion. "

Escaping from the scene of so much sorrow, they established themselvesat the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn. Here Shelley began and finished"The Cenci" at the instance of his wife, who rightly thought that heundervalued his own powers as a dramatic poet. The supposed portrait ofBeatrice in the Barberini Palace had powerfully affected hisimagination, and he fancied that her story would form the fittingsubject for a tragedy. It is fortunate for English literature that thereal facts of that domestic drama, as recently published by SignorBertolotti, were then involved in a tissue of romance and legend. Duringthis summer he saw a great deal of the Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne'sson by a previous marriage, Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelleyconceived a project of helping him build a steamer which should plybetween Leghorn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and thepecuniary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family. The schemeeventually fell through, though Shelley spent a good deal of money uponit; and its only importance is the additional light it throws upon hispublic and private benevolence. From Leghorn the Shelleys removed in theautumn to Florence, where, on the 12th of November, the present SirPercy Florence Shelley was born. Here Shelley wrote the last act of"Prometheus Unbound", which, though the finest portion of that uniquedrama, seems to have been an afterthought. In the Cascine outsideFlorence he also composed the "Ode to the West Wind", the mostsymmetrically perfect as well as the most impassioned of his minorlyrics. He spent much time in the galleries, made notes upon theprincipal antique statues, and formed a plan of systematic art-study. The climate, however, disagreed with him, and in the month of January, 1820, they took up their abode at Pisa. 

1819 was the most important year in Shelley's life, so far as literaryproduction is concerned. Besides "The Cenci" and "Prometheus Unbound", of which it yet remains to speak, this year saw the production ofseveral political and satirical poems--the "Masque of Anarchy", suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the mostimportant. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songswhich should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to betheir degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could makesuch verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men ofEngland in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of hisachievement in this style:--

 Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty mother, Hopes of her, and one another!

 Rise, like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fall'n on you. Ye are many, they are few. 

"Peter Bell the Third", written in this year, and "Swellfoot theTyrant", composed in the following autumn, are remarkable as showingwith what keen interest Shelley watched public affairs in England fromhis exile home; but, for my own part, I cannot agree with those criticswho esteem their humour at a high rate. The political poems mayprofitably be compared with his contemporary correspondence; with theletters, for instance, to Leigh Hunt, November 23rd, 1819; and to Mr. John Gisborne, April 10th, 1822; and with an undated fragment publishedby Mr. Garnett in the "Relics of Shelley", page 84. No student ofEnglish political history before the Reform Bill can regard hisapprehensions of a great catastrophe as ill-founded. His insight intothe real danger to the nation was as penetrating as his suggestion of aremedy was moderate. Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as avisionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the sober linesin which he warns his friend to be cautious about the security offeredby the English Funds. Another letter, dated Lerici, June 29, 1822, illustrates the same practical temper of mind, the same logicalapplication of political principles to questions of public economy. 

That "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" should have been composed inone and the same year must be reckoned among the greatest wonders ofliterature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but alsobecause of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, hadwritten a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the finalreconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, thechampion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supportingany probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion ofcompromise. He could not conceive of the Titan "unsaying his highlanguage, and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. "He therefore, approached the theme of liberation from a wholly differentpoint of view. Prometheus in his drama is the human vindicator of love, justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical oppressor, andcreator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is the mind of manidealized, the spirit of our race, as Shelley thought it made to be. Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts its free development. Thuscounterposed, the two chief actors represent the fundamental antithesesof good and evil, liberty and despotism, love and hate. They give theform of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism alreadyexpressed in the first canto of "Laon and Cythna"; but, instead of beingrepresented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed intothe reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resistsJove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, thatthe tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and calmlyexpectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, and leave thespirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives; Jove disappears; theburdens of the world and men are suddenly removed; a new age of peaceand freedom and illimitable energy begins; the whole universe partakesin the emancipation; the spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain, but sings alternate love-songs with his sister orb, the moon; Prometheusis re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting inher exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. Sheis the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises inthe Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time oftribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beautyincarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world andenkindles it with love, the reality of Alastor's vision, the breathingimage of the awful loveliness apostrophized in the "Hymn to IntellectualBeauty, " the reflex of the splendour of which Adonais was a part. At themoment of her triumph she grows so beautiful that Ione her sister cannotsee her, only feels her influence. The essential thought of Shelley'screed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalized, made real by aspirit, which he sometimes called the spirit of Nature, but which isalways conceived as more than Life, as that which gives its actuality toLife, and lastly as Love and Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp itwith affection, and to blend with it, is, he thought the true object ofman. Therefore the final union of Prometheus with Asia is theconsummation of human destinies. Love was the only law Shelleyrecognized. Unterrified by the grim realities of pain and crime revealedin nature and society, he held fast to the belief that, if we could butpierce to the core of things, if we could but be what we might be, theworld and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. What resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected byShelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the universe, wehardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form: and his newscience of love remains a luminous poetic vision--nowhere morebrilliantly set forth than in the "sevenfold hallelujahs and harpingsymphonies" of this, the final triumph of his lyrical poetry. 

In "Prometheus", Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, and sketchedout the main figures on a scale of surpassing magnificence. Whilepainting in these figures, he seems to reduce their proportions too muchto the level of earthly life. He quits his god-creating, heaven-compelling throne of mythopoeic inspiration, and descends to alove-story of Asia and Prometheus. In other words, he does not sustainthe visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions;nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detailas to give them the substantiality of persons. There is thereforesomething vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinatepassages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty--the faculty offinding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion withpersonality--shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. Wefeel ourselves in the grasp of a primitive myth-maker while we read thedescription of Oceanus, and the raptures of the Earth and Moon. 

A genuine liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned thetouch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. Theworld in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices;and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross thanany other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart'ssong, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in "Prometheus", which seem to realize the miracle of making words, detached frommeaning, the substance of a new ethereal music; and yet, although theirverbal harmony is such, they are never devoid of definite significancefor those who understand. Shelley scorned the aesthetics of a schoolwhich finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic isso dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or towhom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a manwhose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. Avoice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of herapotheosis:--

 Life of Life! thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; And thy smiles before they dwindle Make the cold air fire; then screen them In those looks where whoso gazes Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

 Child of Light! thy limbs are burning Through the vest which seems to hide them, As the radiant lines of morning Through the clouds, ere they divide them; And this atmosphere divinest Shrouds thee whereso'er thou shinest. 

 Fair are others; none beholds thee. But thy voice sounds low and tender, Like the fairest, for it folds thee From the sight, that liquid splendour, And all feel, yet see thee never, As I feel now, lost for ever!

 Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, And the souls of whom thou lovest Walk upon the winds with lightness, Till they fail, as I am failing, Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

It has been said that Shelley, as a landscape painter, is decidedlyTurneresque; and there is much in "Prometheus Unbound" to justify thisopinion. The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker shadowsare omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be continually radiatedfrom the objects at which he looks; and in this radiation ofmany-coloured lights, the outline itself is apt to be a little misty. Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their spiritual essence. The actual world was less for him than that which lies within it andbeyond it. "I seek, " he says himself, "in what I see, the manifestationof something beyond the present and tangible object. " For him, as forthe poet described by one of the spirit voices in "Prometheus", the beesin the ivy-bloom are scarcely heeded; they become in his mind, --

 Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality. 

And yet who could have brought the bees, the lake, the sun, the bloom, more perfectly before us than that picture does? (Forman, volume 2 page181. ) What vignette is more exquisitely coloured and finished than thelittle study of a pair of halcyons in the third act? (Forman, volume 2page 231. ) Blake is perhaps the only artist who could have illustratedthis drama. He might have shadowed forth the choirs of spirits, thetrailing voices and their thrilling songs, phantasmal Demorgorgon, andthe charioted Hour. Prometheus, too, with his "flowing limbs, " has justBlake's fault of impersonation--the touch of unreality in that painter'sAdam. 

Passing to "The Cenci", we change at once the moral and artisticatmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely dirge, isabsent. Imagery and description are alike sternly excluded. Instead ofsoaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly planted on the earth. Inexchange for radiant visions of future perfection, we are brought intothe sphere of dreadful passions--all the agony, endurance, andhalf-maddened action, of which luckless human innocence is capable. Totell the legend of Beatrice Cenci here, is hardly needed. Her father, amonster of vice and cruelty, was bent upon breaking her spirit byimprisonment, torture, and nameless outrage. At last her patience ended;and finding no redress in human justice, no champion of her helplessnessin living man, she wrought his death. For this she died upon thescaffold, together with her step-mother and her brothers, who had aidedin the execution of the murder. The interest of "The Cenci", and it isoverwhelmingly great, centres in Beatrice and her father; from these twochief actors in the drama, all the other characters fall away intogreater or less degrees of unsubstantiality. Perhaps Shelley intendedthis--as the maker of a bas-relief contrives two or three planes offigures for the presentation of his ruling group. Yet there appears tomy mind a defect of accomplishment, rather than a deliberate intention, in the delineation of Orsino. He seems meant to be the wily, crafty, Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form acontrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of oldFrancesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love forBeatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down withan infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand theuneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminineweakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm will ofBeatrice into prominent relief; while her innocence, sustained throughextraordinary suffering in circumstances of exceptional horror--theinnocence of a noble nature thrust by no act of its own but by itswrongs beyond the pale of ordinary womankind--is contrasted with themerely childish guiltlessness of Bernardo. Beatrice rises to her fullheight in the fifth act, dilates and grows with the approach of danger, and fills the whole scene with her spirit on the point of death. Hersublime confidence in the justice and essential rightness of her action, the glance of self-assured purity with which she annihilates thecut-throat brought to testify against her, her song in prison, and hertender solicitude for the frailer Lucrezia, are used with wonderfuldramatic skill for the fulfilment of a feminine ideal at once delicateand powerful. Once and once only does she yield to ordinary weakness; itis when the thought crosses her mind that she may meet her father in theother world, as once he came to her on earth. 

Shelley dedicated "The Cenci" to Leigh Hunt, saying that he had strivenin this tragedy to cast aside the subjective manner of his earlier work, and to produce something at once more popular and more concrete, moresober in style, and with a firmer grasp on the realities of life. He wasvery desirous of getting it acted, and wrote to Peacock requesting himto offer it at Covent Garden. Miss O'Neil, he thought, would play thepart of Beatrice admirably. The manager, however, did not take thisview; averring that the subject rendered it incapable of being evensubmitted to an actress like Miss O'Neil. Shelley's self-criticism isalways so valuable, that it may be well here to collect what he saidabout the two great dramas of 1819. Concerning "The Cenci" he wrote toPeacock:--"It is written without any of the peculiar feelings andopinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attendedsimply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probablethe persons represented really were, together with the greatest degreeof popular effect to be produced by such a development. " "'Cenci' iswritten for the multitude, and ought to sell well. " "I believe itsingularly fitted for the stage. " "'The Cenci' is a work of art; it isnot coloured by my feelings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don'tthink much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have writtenof the same length. " "Prometheus", on the other hand, he tells Ollier, "is my favourite poem; I charge you, therefore, specially to pet him andfeed him with fine ink and good paper"--which was duly done. Again:--"For 'Prometheus', I expect and desire no great sale; Prometheuswas never intended for more than five or six persons; it is in myjudgment of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted, andis perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it; it isoriginal, and cost me severe mental labour. " Shelley was right injudging that "The Cenci" would be comparatively popular; this was provedby the fact that it went through two editions in his lifetime. The valuehe set upon "Prometheus" as the higher work, will hardly be disputed. Unique in the history of literature, and displaying the specificqualities of its author at their height, the world could less easilyafford to lose this drama than "The Cenci", even though that be thegreatest tragedy composed in English since the death of Shakespeare. Forreasons which will be appreciated by lovers of dramatic poetry, Irefrain from detaching portions of these two plays. Those who desire tomake themselves acquainted with the author's genius, must devote longand patient study to the originals in their entirety. 

"Prometheus Unbound", like the majority of Shelley's works, fellstill-born from the press. It furnished punsters with a joke, however, which went the round of several papers; this poem, they cried, is wellnamed, for who would bind it? Of criticism that deserves the name, Shelley got absolutely nothing in his lifetime. The stupid but venomousreviews which gave him occasional pain, but which he mostly laughed at, need not now be mentioned. It is not much to any purpose to abuse theauthors of mere rubbish. The real lesson to be learned from such of themas may possibly have been sincere, as well as from the failure of hiscontemporaries to appreciate his genius--the sneers of Moore, thestupidity of Campbell, the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness ofSouthey, or the condescending tone of Keats--is that nothing is moredifficult than for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to thegreatest in their lifetime. Those who may be interested in studyingShelley's attitude toward his critics, should read a letter addressed toOllier from Florence, October 15, 1819, soon after he had seen the vileattack upon him in the "Quarterly", comparing this with the fragments ofan expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the preface to "Adonais". (Shelley Memorials, page 121. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pages 49, 190. Collected Letters, page 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in onevolume 1840. ) It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse withpatience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On the 11thof June, 1821, he wrote to Ollier:--"As yet I have laughed; but woe tothose scoundrels if they should once make me lose my temper!" Thestanzas on the "Quarterly" in "Adonais", and the invective against LordEldon, show what Shelley could have done if he had chosen to castigatethe curs. Meanwhile the critics achieved what they intended. Shelley, asTrelawny emphatically tells us, was universally shunned, coldly treatedby Byron's friends at Pisa, and regarded as a monster by such of theEnglish in Italy as had not made his personal acquaintance. On oneoccasion he is even said to have been knocked down in a post-office bysome big bully, who escaped before he could obtain his name and address;but this is one of the stories rendered doubtful by the lack of precisedetails. 

CHAPTER 6. 

RESIDENCE AT PISA. 

On the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelley's established themselves atPisa. From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, Shelley's lifedivides itself into two periods of unequal length; the first spent atPisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn; the second at Lerici, onthe Bay of Spezia. Without entering into minute particulars of dates orrecording minor changes of residence, it is possible to treat of thefirst and longer period in general. The house he inhabited at Pisa wason the south side of the Arno. After a few months he became theneighbour of Lord Byron, who engaged the Palazzo Lanfranchi it order tobe near him; and here many English and Italian friends gathered roundthem. Among these must be mentioned in the first place Captain Medwin, whose recollections of the Pisan residence are of considerable value, and next Captain Trelawny, who has left a record of Shelley's last daysonly equalled in vividness by Hogg's account of the Oxford period, andmarked by signs of more unmistakable accuracy. Not less importantmembers of this private circle were Mr. And Mrs. Edward EllekerWilliams, with whom Shelley and his wife lived on terms of the closestfriendship. Among Italians, the physician Vacca, the improvisatoreSgricci, and Rosini, the author of "La Monaca di Monza", have to berecorded. It will be seen from this enumeration that Shelley was nolonger solitary; and indeed it would appear that now, upon the eve ofhis accidental death, he had begun to enjoy an immunity from many of hisprevious sufferings. Life expanded before him: his letters show that hewas concentrating his powers and preparing for a fresh flight; and themonths, though ever productive of poetic masterpieces, promised a stillmore magnificent birth in the future. 

In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his mostgenial poems: the "Letter to Maria Gisborne", which might be mentionedas a pendent to "Julian and Maddalo" for its treatment of familiarthings; the "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the"Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the"Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a newlyric form to English literature. In the winter he wrote the "SensitivePlant", prompted thereto, we are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. Shelley's drawing room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperateItalian sunlight. Whether we consider the number of these poems or theirdiverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely subtleline from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence and the mostethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished. Every chord of thepoet's lyre is touched, from the deep bass string that echoes thediurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was, to the fine vibrations of atreble merging its rarity of tone in accents super-sensible to ordinaryears. One passage from the "Letter to Maria Gisborne" may here bequoted, not for its poetry, but for the light it casts upon the circleof his English friends. 

 You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin, --greater none than he Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand Among the spirits of our age and land, Before the dread tribunal of "To come" The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, with its own internal lightning blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair-- A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls. You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it is--a tomb; Who is, what others seem. His room no doubt Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung; The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. And there is he with his eternal puns, Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns Thundering for money at a poet's door; Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"-- Or oft in graver mood, when he will look Things wiser than were ever read in book, Except in Shakespere's wisest tenderness. You will see Hogg; and I cannot express His virtues, though I know that they are great, Because he locks, then barricades the gate Within which they inhabit. Of his wit And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, One of the richest of the deep. And there Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair, -- Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird That gleams in the Indian air. Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him. But you Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, With the milk-white Snowdownian antelope Match'd with this camelopard. His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it; A strain too learned for a shallow age, Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, Fold itself up for the serener clime Of years to come, and find its recompense In that just expectation. Wit and sense, Virtue and human knowledge, all that might Make this dull world a business of delight, Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these, With some exceptions, which I need not tease Your patience by descanting on, are all You and I know in London. 

Captain Medwin, who came late in the autumn of 1820, at his cousin'sinvitation, to stay with the Shelleys, has recorded many interestingdetails of their Pisan life, as well as valuable notes of Shelley'sconversation. "It was nearly seven years since we had parted, but Ishould have immediately recognized him in a crowd. His figure wasemaciated, and somewhat bent, owing to near-sightedness, and his beingforced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them; hishair, still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersedwith grey; but his appearance was youthful. There was also a freshnessand purity in his complexion that he never lost. " Not long after hisarrival, Medwin suffered from a severe and tedious illness. "Shelleytended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered mymedicines, and during six weeks that I was confined to my room, wasassiduous and unintermitting in his affectionate care of me. " The poet'ssolitude and melancholy at this time impressed his cousin verypainfully. Though he was producing a long series of imperishable poems, he did not take much interest in his work. "I am disgusted withwriting, " he once said, "and were it not for an irresistible impulse, that predominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing. " Thebrutal treatment he had lately received from the "Quarterly Review", thecalumnies which pursued him, and the coldness of all but a very fewfriends, checked his enthusiasm for composition. Of this there isabundant proof in his correspondence. In a letter to Leigh Hunt, datedJanuary 25, 1822, he says: "My faculties are shaken to atoms and torpid. I can write nothing; and if "Adonais" had no success, and excited nointerest, what incentive can I have to write?" Again: "I write littlenow. It is impossible to compose except under the strong excitement ofan assurance of finding sympathy in what you write. " Lord Byron'scompany proved now, as before, a check rather than an incentive toproduction: "I do not write; I have lived too long near Lord Byron, andthe sun has extinguished the glow-worm; for I cannot hope, with St. John, that THE LIGHT CAME INTO THE WORLD AND THE WORLD KNEW IT NOT. " "Idespair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no otherwith whom it is worth contending. " To Ollier, in 1820, he wrote: "Idoubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with thehell or the paradise of poetry; but the torments of its purgatory vexme, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to thevexation. " It was not that his spirit was cowed by the Reviews, or thathe mistook the sort of audience he had to address. He more than onceacknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the many, his poems wereintended for the understanding few. Yet the sunetoi, as he called them, gave him but scanty encouragement. The cold phrases of kindly HoraceSmith show that he had not comprehended "Prometheus Unbound"; andShelley whimsically complains that even intelligent and sympatheticcritics confounded the ideal passion described in "Epipsychidion" withthe love affairs of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart. " This almostincomprehensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have knownbetter, combined with the coarse abuse of vulgar scribblers, was enoughto make a man so sincerely modest as Shelley doubt his powers, or shrinkfrom the severe labour of developing them. (See Medwin, volume 2 page172, for Shelley's comment on the difficulty of the poet's art. ) "Thedecision of the cause, " he wrote to Mr. Gisborne, "whether or no _I_ ama poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterityshall assemble; but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that theverdict will be, guilty--death. " Deep down in his own heart he had, however, less doubt: "This I know, " he said to Medwin, "that whether inprosing or in versing, there is something in my writings that shall livefor ever. " And again, he writes to Hunt: "I am full of thoughts andplans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame whichencloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I shoulddo great things. " It seems almost certain that the incompleteness ofmany longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandonment of thetragedy on Tasso's story, the unfinished state of "Charles I", and thefailure to execute the cherished plan of a drama suggested by the Bookof Job, were due to the depressing effects of ill-health and externaldiscouragement. Poetry with Shelley was no light matter. He composedunder the pressure of intense excitement, and he elaborated his firstdraughts with minute care and severe self-criticism. 

These words must not be taken as implying that he followed the Virgilianprecedent of polishing and reducing the volume of his verses by ananxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he observed the Horatianmaxim of deferring their publication till the ninth year. The contrarywas notoriously the case with him. Yet it is none the less proved by thestate of his manuscripts that his compositions, even as we now possessthem, were no mere improvisations. The passage already quoted from his"Defence of Poetry" shows the high ideal he had conceived of the poet'sduty toward his art; and it may be confidently asserted that his wholeliterary career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence ofhis earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision ofform that are the index of mastery over style. At the same time it wasinconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to attemptcomposition except under an impulse approaching to inspiration. Toimperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, moral, intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline exacted by hisown fastidious taste, with no other object in view than the frigidcompliments of a few friends, was more than even Shelley's enthusiasmcould endure. He, therefore, at this period required the powerfulstimulus of some highly exciting cause from without to determine hisactivity. 

Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters early in theyear 1821. Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa was a clever butdisreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a very piquant portrait. This man one day related the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had been confined by her father in adismal convent of the suburbs, to await her marriage with a distastefulhusband. Shelley, fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visitthe fair captive. The Professor accompanied him and Medwin to theconvent-parlour, where they found her more lovely than even the mostglowing descriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. Shelley soon discovered that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what Ihave ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon thesubject of Uranian Love--Il Vero Amore--justifies the belief that shepossessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make herconvent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and bypresents of flowers and books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathyfor this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, howeverspiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate. The result was thecomposition of "Epipsychidion, " the most unintelligible of all his poemsto those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's "Symposium" andDante's "Vita Nuova". In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as theincarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible inmortal flesh:--

 Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman All that is insupportable in thee Of light, and love, and immortality!

He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles anddeceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicateobscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for hissoul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of idealbeauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he everbeen deluded. At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truthof the vision veiled from him so many years. She and Mary shallhenceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him. Thenhe calls on her to fly. They three will escape and live together, faraway from men, in an Aegean island. The description of this visionaryisle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull andundiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written thiscentury in the rhymed heroic metre. 

 It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise; And, for the harbours are not safe and good, This land would have remained a solitude But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, With ever-changing sound and light and foam Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering along the shore, Undulate with the undulating tide. There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, As clear as elemental diamond, Or serene morning air. And far beyond, The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer, (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year, ) Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls Illumining, with sound that never fails Accompany the noonday nightingales; And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. The light clear element which the isle wears Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, And dart the arrowy odour through the brain, Till you might faint with that delicious pain. And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, With that deep music is in unison: Which is a soul within a soul--they seem Like echoes of an antenatal dream. It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea, Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air. It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they Sail onward far upon their fatal way. The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From which its fields and woods ever renew Their green and golden immortality. And from the sea there rise, and from the sky There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, Which sun or moon or zephyr draws aside, Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride Glowing at once with love and loveliness, Blushes and trembles at its own excess: Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, Filling their bare and void interstices. 

Shelley did not publish "Epipsychidion" with his own name. He gave it tothe world as a composition of a man who had "died at Florence, as he waspreparing for a voyage to one of the Sporades, " and he requested Olliernot to circulate it, except among a few intelligent readers. It mayalmost be said to have been never published, in such profound silencedid it issue from the press. Very shortly after its appearance hedescribed it to Leigh Hunt as "a portion of me already dead, " and addedthis significant allusion to its subject matter:--"Some of us have in aprior existence been in love with Antigone, and that makes us find nofull content in any mortal tie. " In the letter of June 18, 1822, againhe says:--"The 'Epipsychidion' I cannot look at; the person whom itcelebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno; and poor Ixion starts from theCentaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are curious, however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you somethingthereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think oneis always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess itis not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consistsin seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal. "This paragraph contains the essence of a just criticism. Brilliant asthe poem is, we cannot read it with unwavering belief either in theauthor's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or in the permanence of theemotion it describes. The exordium has a fatal note of rhetoricalexaggeration, not because the kind of passion is impossible, but becauseShelley does not convince us that in this instance he had really beenits subject. His own critique, following so close upon the publicationof "Epipsychidion, " confirms the impression made by it, and justifiesthe conclusion that he had utilized his feeling for Emilia to express afavourite doctrine in impassioned verse. 

To students of Shelley's inner life "Epipsychidion" will always havehigh value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing hisdoctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principlepresented to us in "Alastor", the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, " and"Prince Athanase. " But the words just quoted, which may be compared withMrs. Shelley's note to "Prince Athanase, " authorize our pointing outwhat he himself recognized as the defect of his theory. Instead ofremaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed in the "Hymn, "Shelley "sought through the world the One whom he may love. " Thus, whilehis doctrine in "Epipsychidion" seems Platonic, it will not square withthe "Symposium. " Plato treats the love of a beautiful person as a mereinitiation into divine mysteries, the first step in the ladder thatascends to heaven. When a man has formed a just conception of theuniversal beauty, he looks back with a smile upon those who find theirsoul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by thisstandard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so manydaughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is a spuriousPlatonism. Plato would have said that to seek the Idea of Beauty inEmilia Viviani was a retrogressive step. All that she could do, would beto quicken the soul's sense of beauty, to stir it from its lethargy, andto make it divine the eternal reality of beauty in the supersensualworld of thought. This Shelley had already acknowledged in the "Hymn;"and this he emphasizes in these words:--"The error consists in seekingin a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal. "

The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman's edition donot throw much light upon "Epipsychidion. " The longest, entitled "To hisGenius" by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads like the induction to apoem conceived and written in a different key, and at a lower level ofinspiration. It has, however, this extraordinary interest, that it dealswith a love which is both love and friendship, above sex, spiritual, unintelligible to the world at large. Thus the fragment enables thestudent better to realize the kind of worship so passionately expressedin "Epipsychidion. "

The news of Keats's death at Rome on the 27th of December, 1820, and theerroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not caused, by acontemptible review of "Endymion" in the "Quarterly", stirred Shelley tothe composition of "Adonais". He had it printed at Pisa, and sent copiesto Ollier for circulation in London. This poem was a favourite with itsauthor, who hoped not only that it might find acceptance with thepublic, but also that it would confer lustre upon the memory of a poetwhom he sincerely admired. No criticisms upon Shelley's works are halfso good as his own. It is, therefore, interesting to collect thepassages in which he speaks of an elegy only equalled in our language by"Lycidas", and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior toMilton's youthful lament for his friend. "The 'Adonais', in spite of itsmysticism, " he writes to Ollier, "is the least imperfect of mycompositions. " "I confess I should be surprised if that poem were bornto an immortality of oblivion. " "It is a highly wrought PIECE OF ART, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I havewritten. " "It is absurd in any review to criticize 'Adonais', and stillmore to pretend that the verses are bad. " "I know what to think of'Adonais', but what to think of those who confound it with the many badpoems of the day, I know not. " Again, alluding to the stanzas hurledagainst the infamous "Quarterly" reviewer, he says:--"I have dipped mypen in consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calmand solemn. "

With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. Although"Adonais" is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets as"Prometheus" or "Epipsychidion, " it presents Shelley's qualities in aform of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of thedullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART ofthe poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike thestudent most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments ofBion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most patheticproducts of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of theirmaterial into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis wherebythe art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into thesphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite;the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substitutedfor Bion's cupids; and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bardsof England are summoned to lament around the poet's bier. Yet it is onlywhen Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that hesoars aloft on mighty wing. This point, too, is the point of transitionfrom death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture ofthe things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions of thepoem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the passage fromthe one to the other is natural. Two quotations from "Adonais" willsuffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse. 

The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron andMoore--the "Pilgrim of Eternity, " and Ierne's "sweetest lyrist of hersaddest wrong"--to the couch where Keats lies dead. There is both pathosand unconscious irony in his making these two poets the chief mourners, when we remember what Byron wrote about Keats in "Don Juan", and whatMoore afterwards recorded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, howfar both Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byronhis supreme place in the heaven of poetry. 

 Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. 

 A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift-- A love in desolation masked--a Power Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. 

 His head was bound with pansies over-blown, And faded violets, white and pied and blue; And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew He came the last, neglected and apart; A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart. 

The second passage is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere has Shelleyexpressed his philosophy of man's relation to the universe with moresublimity and with a more imperial command of language than in thesestanzas. If it were possible to identify that philosophy with anyrecognized system of thought, it might be called pantheism. But it isdifficult to affix a name, stereotyped by the usage of the schools, tothe aerial spiritualism of its ardent and impassioned poet's creed. 

The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just been interruptedby three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He nowbursts forth afresh into the music of consolation:--

 Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings. WE decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 

 He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 

 He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais. --Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

 He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird; He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 

 He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 

But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature-forces, theblending of the principle of thought with the universal spirit ofbeauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after immortality. Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility of thepersonal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais passes into thecompany of the illustrious dead who, like him, were untimely slain:--

 The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it, for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 

 The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:-- Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 

 And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, But whose transmitted effluence cannot die So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. "Thou art become as one of us, " they cry; "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"

From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his theme, the poetonce more turns to the special subject that had stirred him. Adonaislies dead; and those who mourn him must seek his grave. He has escaped:to follow him is to die; and where should we learn to dote on deathunterrified, if not in Rome? In this way the description of Keat'sresting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined tobe Shelley's own, is introduced:--

 Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth, Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference: then shrink Even to a point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. 

 Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought That ages, empires, and religions there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend, --they borrow not Glory from those who made the world their prey; And he is gathered to the kings of thought Who waged contention with their time's decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

 Go thou to Rome, --at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant corpses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness, Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

 And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. 

 Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break if not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and themystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit ofthe universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. Thesymphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into theeternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood ofone whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in thesomewhat less than jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of allShelley's qualities--the liberation of incalculable energies, theemancipation and expansion of a force within the soul, victorious overcircumstance, exhilarated and elevated by contact with such hopes asmake a feebler spirit tremble:

 The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments. --Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 

 Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! A light is past from the revolving year, And man and woman; and what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither! No more let Life divide what Death can join together. 

 That light whose smile kindles the Universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 

 The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given. The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 

It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have saidabout the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and nobeliever in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. Yet he wastoo wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits ofno solution in this world. "I hope, " he said, "but my hopes are notunmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when weappear to die. " On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content tosee no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil;I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state ourfaculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, themystery will be solved. " How constantly the thought of death as therevealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incidentrelated by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, whocould not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at thebottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle tosave himself. " Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath hesaid: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth liesthere. In another minute I should have found it, and you would havefound an empty shell. Death is the veil which those who live call life;they sleep, and it is lifted. " Yet being pressed by his friend, herefused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in theimperishability of the human soul. "We know nothing; we have noevidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts. They areincomprehensible even to ourselves. " The clear insight into theconditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is verycharacteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret the non-completion of hisessay on a "Future Life", which would certainly have stated the problemwith rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss ofdoubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combinationwith wise suspension of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexitieswas the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal asperceived by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of thepersonal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion ofthe "Sensitive Plant" might be cited as conveying the quintessence ofhis hope upon this most intangible of riddles. 

 Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, Ere its outward form had known decay, Now felt this change, I cannot say. 

 I dare not guess; but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream:

 It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant, if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery. 

 That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, In truth have never passed away: 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. 

 For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change; their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure. 

But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem whichsuggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illustrate itsauthor's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. The last linesof "Adonais" might be read as a prophecy of his own death by drowning. The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry is, to say theleast, singular. In "Alastor" we read:--

 A restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 

The "Ode to Liberty" closes on the same note:--

 As a far taper fades with fading night; As a brief insect dies with dying day, My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. 

The "Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples", echo the thought witha slight variation:--

 Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear, -- Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

Trelawny tells a story of his friend's life at Lerici, which furtherillustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. He tookMrs. Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little boat oneafternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into which he hadfallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, "Now let us togethersolve the great mystery!" Too much value must not be attached to whatmight have been a mere caprice of utterance. Yet the proposal notunreasonably frightened Mrs. Williams, for Shelley's friends wereaccustomed to expect the realisation of his wildest fancies. It mayincidentally be mentioned that before the water finally claimed itsvictim, he had often been in peril of life upon his fatalelement--during the first voyage to Ireland, while crossing the Channelwith Mary in an open boat, again at Meillerie with Byron, and once atleast with Williams. 

A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired by the visit of PrinceMavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, showed him a copyof Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and announced that Greece wasdetermined to strike a blow for freedom. The news aroused all Shelley'senthusiasm, and he began the lyrical drama of "Hellas", which he hasdescribed as "a sort of imitation of the 'Persae' of Aeschylus. " We findhim at work upon it in October; and it must have been finished by theend of that month, since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, 1821. Shelley did not set great store by it. "It was written, " he says, "without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm whichnow seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits. " Thepreface might, if space permitted, be cited as a specimen of his soundand weighty judgment upon one of the greatest political questions ofthis century. What he says about the debt of the modern world to ancientHellas, is no less pregnant than his severe strictures upon the partplayed by Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, thepoem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising attimes to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-patheticcadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew. "Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-calledPrologue. (Forman, 4 page 95. ) This truly magnificent torso must, Ithink, have been the commencement of the drama as conceived upon adifferent and more colossal plan, which Shelley rejected for someunknown reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job, butalso of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind. 

The lyric movement of the Chorus from "Hellas", which I propose toquote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical invention. As forthe matter expressed in it, we must not forget that these stanzas arewritten for a Chorus of Greek captive women, whose creed does notprevent their feeling a regret for the "mightier forms of an older, austerer worship. " Shelley's note reminds the reader, withcharacteristic caution and frankness, that "the popular notions ofChristianity are represented in this Chorus as true in their relation tothe worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they willsupersede, without considering their merits in a relation moreuniversal. "

 Worlds on worlds are rolling over From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away. But they are still immortal Who, through birth's orient portal, And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight In the brief dust and light Gathered around their chariots as they go; New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws receive; Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast. 

 A power from the unknown God, A Promethan conqueror came; Like a triumphal path he trod The thorns of death and shame. A mortal shape to him Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light. Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight. The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on. 

 Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep From one whose dreams are paradise, Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, And day peers forth with her blank eyes; So fleet, so faint, so fair, The Powers of earth and air Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem: Apollo, Pan, and Love And even Olympian Jove, Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. Our hills, and seas, and streams, Dispeopled of their dreams, Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years. 

In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at Ravenna, where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccoli. It was thensettled that Byron, who had formed the project of starting a journal tobe called "The Liberal" in concert with Leigh Hunt, should himselfsettle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his brother poets in the sameplace. The prospect gave Shelley great pleasure, for he was sincerelyattached to Hunt; and though he would not promise contributions to thejournal, partly lest his name should bring discredit on it, and partlybecause he did not choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on ofByron's, he thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable tohis friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous poetof the age. (See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, August 26, 1821. ) Thathe was not without doubts as to Byron's working easily in harness withLeigh Hunt, may be seen in his correspondence; and how fully thesedoubts were destined to be confirmed, is only too well known. 

At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than usuallyinfamous calumny. What it was, we do not know; but that it made profoundimpression on his mind, appears from a remarkable letter addressed tohis wife on the 16th and 17th of August from Ravenna. In it he repeatshis growing weariness, and his wish to escape from society to solitude;the weariness of a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with theworld, but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It isnoticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place ofresidence:--"our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and thetransplanted tree flourishes not. " At Pisa he had found real rest andrefreshment in the society of his two friends, the Williamses. Some ofhis saddest and most touching lyrics of this year are addressed toJane--for so Mrs. Williams was called; and attentive students mayperceive that the thought of Emilia was already blending by subtletransitions with the new thought of Jane. One poem, almost terrible inits intensity of melancholy, is hardly explicable on the suppositionthat Shelley was quite happy in his home. ("The Serpent is shut out fromParadise. ") These words must be taken as implying no reflection eitherupon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slightertroubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weakegotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and neverfinding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, hehad loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman couldprobably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding morefrom love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. Moreover, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression hasbestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been but transitory;nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as Shelley was, he, likeall poets, made use of the emotion of the moment for purposes of art, converting an ephemeral mood into something typical and universal. Thiswas almost certainly the case with "Epipsychidion. "

So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject; for carefulreaders of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction thatduring the last year of his life he often found relief from awretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in thesympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for Jane wasbeyond question pure and honourable. All the verses he addressed to herpassed through her husband's hands without the slightest interruption totheir intercourse; and Mrs. Shelley, who was not unpardonably jealous ofher Ariel, continued to be Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage fromShelley's letter of June 18, 1822, expresses the plain prose of hisrelation to the Williamses:--"They are people who are very pleasing tome. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Janemore and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. Shehas a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions thatcompensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement. "

Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the sake oftheir intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate the fecundityof Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil industry which hepassed at Pisa. The first is an Invocation to Night:--

 Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, -- Swift be thy flight!

 Wrap thy form in a mantle grey Star-inwrought! Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, Kiss her until she be wearied out. Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thin opiate wand-- Come, long-sought!

 When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, And the weary Day turned to his rest, Lingering like an unloved guest, I sighed for thee. 

 Thy brother Death came, and cried, "Wouldst thou me?" Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noon-tide bee, "Shall I nestle near thy side? Wouldst thou me?"--and I replied, "No, not thee!"

 Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon-- Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night-- Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friendWilliams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it notuninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, givenby Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89. ) They prove that Shelley was nocareless writer. 

 The golden gates of sleep unbar Where strength and beauty, met together, Kindle their image like a star In a sea of glassy weather!

 Night, with all thy stars look down-- Darkness, weep thy holiest dew! Never smiled the inconstant moon On a pair so true. Let eyes not see their own delight; Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight Oft renew. 

 Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! Holy stars, permit no wrong! And return to wake the sleeper, Dawn, ere it be long. O joy! O fear! what will be done In the absence of the sun! Come along!

Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in form, were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this season of hishappiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr. Palgrave's"Golden Treasury" shows how large a place they occupy among thepermanent jewels of our literature. 

The month of January added a new and most important member to the littlePisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Trelawny, to whom more thanto any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shelley, the students of the poet'slife are indebted for details at once accurate and characteristic. Trelawny had lived a free life in all quarters of the globe, far awayfrom literary cliques and the society of cities, in contact with thesternest realities of existence, which had developed his self-relianceand his physical qualities to the utmost. The impression, therefore, made on him by Shelley has to be gravely estimated by all who stillincline to treat the poet as a pathological specimen of humanity. Thistrue child of nature recognized in his new friend far more than in Byronthe stuff of a real man. "To form a just idea of his poetry, you shouldhave witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustratedhis writings. " "The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best andablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved everythingbetter than himself. " "I have seen Shelley and Byron in society, and thecontrast was as marked as their characters. The former, not thinking ofhimself, was as much at ease in his own home, omitting no occasion ofobliging those whom he came in contact with, readily conversing with allor any who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, dress oraddress. " "All who heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnestmanner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship. " "Shelley'smental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action. ""He was always in earnest. " "He never laid aside his book and magicmantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, stood mute. .. . Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held himcaptive. " These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himselfsomewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detestingaffectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualitiesthis "dreamy bard, "--"uncommonly awkward, " as he also called him--badrider and poor seaman as he was--"over-sensitive, " and "eternallybrooding on his own thoughts, " who "had seen no more of the waking-daythan a girl at a boarding-school. " True to himself, gentle, tender, withthe courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditionedboy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoidof selfishness and vanity, " Shelley seemed to this unprejudicedcompanion of his last few months that very rare product for whichDiogenes searched in vain--a man. 

Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no lesscertain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "TheWilliamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a greatdeal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animatedconversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage nearthe open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyessteadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belongedto. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed thedirection of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Comein, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived. ' Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands;and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned hiswarm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat downand listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible thismild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war withall the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived ofhis civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded byevery member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of ourliterature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it;it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket andtrousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is thecustom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings. ' Mrs. Williamssaw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he hadin his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly, --

"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"--I am translating some passages in it. '

"'Oh, read it to us. '

"Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could notinterest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantlybecame oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterlymanner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucidinterpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated intoour language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanishpoet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. Afterthis touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a deadsilence ensued; looking up, I asked, --

"'Where is he?'

"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where. '"

Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve tobe recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a manwho had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Shelleyproposed that the English--himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. Taafe--should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The schemetook Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures beforethey had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearingthat the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The otheraffair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police. The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounteddragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr. Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the manstruck Shelley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English thenpursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron'sservants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and woundedthe fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it wasnecessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter "atrifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by theauthorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was theexile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron'sfinal departure from Pisa. 

The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by suchadventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed hisdays: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williamsin a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and fromthence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. Whenthe birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read untilmidnight. " The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was hisfavourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, toMiranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with hisfinger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all runtogether in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for asketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wildducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for amanifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'Whenmy brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off imagesand words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooleddown, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt adrawing. "

A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensiblywith Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he beganto gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would gopistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend'sfirmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firingwas called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was infact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in thecircle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel andthe Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless glidingmovement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him byByron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line ofMephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange, " and translatedit, "My aunt, the renowned Snake, " Byron cried, "Then you are hernephew. " Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes toit in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above. 

Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts tonautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating withWilliams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearlylost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determinedto build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, likingthe project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up hismind to have one too. Shelley's was to be an open boat carrying sail, Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrustedto a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, CaptainRoberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost thelives of Shelley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carriedByron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. CaptainRoberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelleyand Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williamsoverruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to hischerished fancy. "When it was finished, " says Trelawny, "it took twotons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she wasvery crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, strongly built, and Torbay rigged. " She was christened by Lord Byron, not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. "It was great fun, " says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching thepoet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley hada book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as onewas mental, the other mechanical. " "The boy was quick and handy, andused to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, butover-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt inemergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changingsea and sky; he heeded not the boat. "

CHAPTER 7. 

LAST DAYS. 

The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; andearly in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodgingfor themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upona house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which"looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. Itconsisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storingboat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, dividedinto a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once beenwhite-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thoughtthe Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing aboutit was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it. " When it came tobe inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating roomof the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other;the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another. Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon;and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, whenShelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in purisnaturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the cleverItalian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in thedining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpectedapparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny. Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was noeasy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny'slaconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin. 

They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course oflife which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8. These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley's life. Weseem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr. Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform fromwhich he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probablyhave risen to a loftier altitude, by a calmer and more equable exerciseof powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life inItaly. Meanwhile, "I am content, " he writes, "if the heaven above me iscalm for the passing moment. " And this tranquillity was perfect, withnone of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes thecalm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the worldhe hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population littleremoved from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasuresof a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on theelement he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and wellmixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or insolitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallowsin shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze tobring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening toJane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poetsaloud to the assembled party. 

In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, thisuninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms andinspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, ifwe may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have beenone of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of hismasterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain ofcompliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions andinordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged inchains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorousmarch and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on theirtide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet mistywith the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robeof light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain toabandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of thissolemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to aPanathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summerheat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Danteplays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of theRevolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide. The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world isbrought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for amoment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But howShelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublimephilosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation moresoul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, aswe have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? Icried"--a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that thequestioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death. 

To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of itssplendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionaryimages, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley isthe only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficultof metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannotbe appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed intreating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature, and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. Toselect the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflictless violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach oneof its episodes. 

 Swift as a spirit hastening to his task Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

 Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

 Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, To which the birds tempered their matin lay. All flowers in field or forest which unclose

 Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element, With orient incense lit by the new ray, Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent, Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear

 Their portion of the toil, which he of old Took as his own, and then imposed on them. But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

 Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep, Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem

 Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine. Before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

 Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, -- When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread

 Was so transparent that the scene came through As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew

 That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

 Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. And then a vision on my brain was rolled. 

Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this pointone series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph ofLife" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the visionfor which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is notwithout perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terzarima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by thelabyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimmingin his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged withclinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour:yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement. 

 As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream:-- Methought I sate beside a public way

 Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so

 Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky One of the million leaves of summer's bier; Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another's fear;

 And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom

 Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And some fled from it as it were a ghost, Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath. 

 But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether lost, Upon that path where flowers never grew-- And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

 Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed, With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they Pursued their serious folly as of old. 

Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, tonotice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven inone paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the passing of amultitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy byaccumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presidinggenius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail tonote what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted thedefinite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical andmystic. 

 And as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;

 And a cold glare, intenser than the noon But icy cold, obscured with blinding light The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon--

 When on the sunlit limits of the night Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might, --

 Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair;

 So came a chariot on the silent storm Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape So sate within, as one whom years deform, Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, Crouching within the shadow of a tomb. And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape

 Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume

 The guidance of that wonder-winged team; The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream

 The music of their ever-moving wings. All the four faces of that charioteer Had their eyes banded; little profit brings

 Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere

 Of all that is, has been, or will be done. So ill was the car guided--but it past With solemn speed majestically on. 

The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poeticeffort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour ofItalian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to makeShelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he sawvisions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from thesea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On anotherhe roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remainedterror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This moodhe communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw whatshe afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamedthat he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable thatthe last words written to him by Jane were these:--"Are you going tojoin your friend Plato?"

The Leigh Hunts arrived at last in Genoa, whence they again sailed forLeghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediatelyprepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams inthe "Don Juan" for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his oldfriend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell uponthe moment. " From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, andestablished them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, ascomfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. Thenegotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raisedforebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet fromByron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us howirksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and sevendisorderly children, " established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he waspositively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never whollycast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enoughto understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; andthe tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or twotogether, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa tohis English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he usedto be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touchrelating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:--"Heassented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet beestablished, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead offaith. "

On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise forLeghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, withWilliams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, CharlesVivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on boardthe "Bolivar", in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weatherfor some time had been unusually hot and dry. "Processions of priestsand religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;" so runsthe last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry ornature too powerful. " Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "DonJuan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a. M. Instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief. "Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was anoppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, andslept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in theharbour making all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest wasupon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more thantwenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously forShelley's boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heardof her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure ofthe catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow ofa felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running herdown is still uncertain. 

On the morning of the third day after the storm, Trelawny rode to Pisa, and communicated his fears to Hunt. "I then went upstairs to Byron. WhenI told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questionedme. " Couriers were despatched to search the sea-coast, and to bring the"Bolivar" from Leghorn. Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, andthere found a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been inShelley's boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with thecoast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last twobodies were cast upon the sand. One found near the Via Reggio, on the18th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the volume ofAeschylus in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away. "The other, found near the tower of Migliarino, at about four miles'distance, was that of Williams. The sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, thoughcast up on the same day, the 18th of July, near Massa, was not heard ofby Trelawny till the 29th. 

Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to the twowidowed women, who had spent the last days in an agony of alternatedespair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny dischargedfaithfully and firmly. "The next day I prevailed on them, " he says, "toreturn with me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the journey of thenext day, and of many days and nights that followed, I can neitherdescribe nor forget. " It was decided that Shelley should be buried atRome, near his friend Keats and his son William, and that Williams'sremains should be taken to England. But first the bodies had to beburned; and for permission to do this Trelawny, who all through hadtaken the lead, applied to the English Embassy at Florence. After somedifficulty it was granted. 

What remains to be said concerning the cremation of Shelley's body onthe 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own words. Williams, itmay be stated, had been burned on the preceding day. 

"Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the poet's grave, but as they were at some distance from each other, we had to cut atrench thirty yards in length, in the line of the sticks, to ascertainthe exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before we came upon the grave. 

"In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attendedby soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grandscenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with theislands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlementedwatch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crestedApennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversifiedoutlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight. 

"As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of lonelinessand grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd ofwolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and nakedbody from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag himback to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power tocheck the sacrilege--the work went on silently in the deep andunresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touchof sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byronwas silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by adull, hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron hadstruck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered. .. . After the fire waswell kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more winewas poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during hislife. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten andquiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that theatmosphere was tremulous and wavy. .. . The fire was so fierce as toproduce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to greyashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments ofbones, the jaw, and the skull; but what surprised us all was that theheart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act, I shouldhave been put into quarantine. "

Shelley's heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not withoutreluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. It is nowat Boscombe. His ashes were carried by Trelawny to Rome and buried inthe Protestant cemetery, so touchingly described by him in his letter toPeacock, and afterwards so sublimely in "Adonais". The epitaph, composedby Hunt, ran thus: "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. AugustMDCCXCII. Obiit VIII Jul. MDCCCXXII. " To the Latin words Trelawny, faithfullest and most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel'ssong, much loved in life by Shelley:

 Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. 

"And so, " writes Lady Shelley, "the sea and the earth closed over onewho was great as a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist; and ofwhom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to haveprepared him for being thus snatched from life under circumstances ofmingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in their springfreshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal body decrepit, orto wither the heart which could not be consumed by fire. "

CHAPTER 8. 

EPILOGUE. 

After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelleythe narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by onecommanding reason. Shelley's life and his poetry are indissolublyconnected. He acted what he thought and felt, with a directness rareamong his brethren of the poet's craft; while his verse, with theexception of "The Cenci", expressed little but the animating thoughtsand aspirations of his life. That life, moreover, was "a miracle ofthirty years, " so crowded with striking incident and varied experiencethat, as he said himself, he had already lived longer than his father, and ought to be reckoned with the men of ninety. Through allvicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and died, like one whomthe gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story, young, despite greyhairs and suffering. His life has, therefore, to be told, in order thathis life-work may be rightly valued: for, great as that was, he, theman, was somehow greater; and noble as it truly is, the memory of him isnobler. 

To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate fortruth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. Theanomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. Theright he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: inhis desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot themark of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest purpose withmoral and social theories that could not but have proved pernicious tomankind at large, produced at times an almost grotesque mixture in hisactions no less than in his verse. We cannot, therefore, wonder thatsociety, while he lived, felt the necessity of asserting itself againsthim. But now that he has passed into the company of the great dead, andtime has softened down the asperities of popular judgment, we are ableto learn the real lesson of his life and writings. That is not to besought in any of his doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, hisresolute loyalty to an unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolentideal. It is this which constitutes his supreme importance for usEnglish at the present time. Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, and we belong to a race in which men who follow them so single-heartedlyare not common. 

As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature--aquality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which severecritics of other nations think we lack. Byron's daring is in a differentregion: his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate ourenergies, or cheer us with new hopes and splendid vistas. Wordsworth, the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, andbraces us by healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But inWordsworth there is none of Shelley's magnetism. $What remains ofpermanent value in Coleridge's poetry--such work as "Christabel", the"Ancient Mariner", or "Kubla Khan"--is a product of pure artistic fancy, tempered by the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as hewas, loved Nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for him amistress rather than a Diotima; nor did he share the prophetic firewhich burns in Shelley's verse, quite apart from the direct enunciationof his favourite tenets. In none of Shelley's greatest contemporarieswas the lyrical faculty so paramount; and whether we consider his minorsongs, his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowledgethat he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer of ourlanguage. In range of power he was also conspicuous above the rest. Notonly did he write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the besttranslations, and the best familiar poems of his century. As a satiristand humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do;and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he putsforth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all itsmyriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor rhetoric. 

While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached inswiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, hadfaults from which the men with whom I have compared him were more free. The most prominent of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness, incompleteness, a want of narrative force, and a weak hold on objectiverealities. Even his warmest admirers, if they are sincere critics, willconcede that his verse, taken altogether, is marked by inequality. Inhis eager self-abandonment to inspiration, he produced much that isunsatisfying simply because it is not ripe. There was no defect of powerin him, but a defect of patience; and the final word to be pronounced inestimating the larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not onlywas the poet young; but the fruit of his young mind had been pluckedbefore it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not careenough for common things to present them with artistic fulness. He wasintolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with the roundness thatwe find in Goethe's work. He flew at the grand, the spacious, thesublime; and did not always succeed in realizing for his readers what hehad imagined. A certain want of faith in his own powers, fostered by theextraordinary discouragement under which he had to write, prevented himfrom finishing what he began, or from giving that ultimate form ofperfection to his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces likethe "Ode to the West Wind". When a poem was ready, he had it hastilyprinted, and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurredto interrupt his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of thesedefects, if we may use this word at all to indicate our sense thatShelley might by care have been made equal to his highest self, were ina great measure the correlative of his chief quality--the ideality, ofwhich I have already spoken. He composed with all his faculties, mental, emotional, and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat ofintense fervour, striving to attain one object, the truest and mostpassionate investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed hisever-quick imagination. The result is that his finest work has more thestamp of something natural and elemental--the wind, the sea, the depthof air--than of a mere artistic product. Plato would have said: theMuses filled this man with sacred madness, and, when he wrote, he was nolonger in his own control. There was, moreover, ever-present in hisnature an effort, an aspiration after a better than the best this worldcan show, which prompted him to blend the choicest products of histhought and fancy with the fairest images borrowed from the earth onwhich he lived. He never willingly composed except under the impulse tobody forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the spiritof the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, thisearnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity ofinspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. But itcannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art shouldalways be found in them. They have something of the waywardness andnegligence of nature, something of the asymmetreia we admire in theearlier creations of Greek architecture. That Shelley, acute critic andprofound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and showhimself an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly provedby "The Cenci" and by "Adonais". The reason why he did not alwaysobserve this method will be understood by those who have studied his"Defence of Poetry", and learned to sympathize with his impassionedtheory of art. 

Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice toShelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are almostoverwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meetin love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him, and baffling the most eager seeker for the truth. (See Lady Shelley v. Hogg; Trelawny v. The Shelley family; Peacock v. Lady Shelley; Garnettv. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, etc. , etc. ) Throughthe turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible todiscern the whole personality of the man. By careful comparison andrefined manipulation of the biographical treasures at our disposal, afair portrait of Shelley might still be set before the reader with theaccuracy of a finished picture. That labour of exquisite art and ofdevoted love still remains to be accomplished, though in the meantimeMr. W. M. Rossetti's Memoir is a most valuable instalment. Shelley in hislifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he wasthe gentlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had evermet. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his fourlast years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youthwere being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, hischaracter mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Withoutlosing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experienceinto tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready tounfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when life atlast seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product ofhis cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them intosomething nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end. 

If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of wasteexcited in us by Shelley's premature absorption into the mystery of theunknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own "Alastor":--

 Art and eloquence, And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. It is a woe "too deep for tears, " when all Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 

THE END.