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 MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 BY T. MEDWIN, ESQ. 
 
 AND 
 
 I 
 ORIGINAL POEMS AND PAPERS 
 
 BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 / 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 WHITTAKER, TREACHER, & CO. 
 1833. 
 
A " 3 
 
 ?**> 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 J. HOLMES, TOOK-'S COURT, CHANCERY LANE. 
 
 / 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The Memoir and the majority of the 
 Papers here collected, originally appeared 
 in the Athenaeum of last year ; but many 
 persons having expressed a wish to have 
 them in a separate form, they are now re- 
 published, with additions, and by consent of 
 the Proprietors. 
 
LINES 
 
 Written by the Author of * The Bride's Tragedy? in the 
 blank-leaf of the 'Prometheus Unbound.' 
 
 Write it in gold — a Spirit of the sun, 
 
 An Intellect ablaze with heavenly thoughts, 
 
 A Soul with all the dews of pathos shining, 
 
 Odorous with love, and sweet to silent woe 
 
 With the dark glories of concentrate song, 
 
 Was sphered in mortal earth. Angelic sounds, 
 
 Alive with panting thoughts, sunned the dim world ; 
 
 The bright creations of a human heart 
 
 Wrought magic in the bosoms of mankind : 
 
 A flooding summer burst on Poetry, 
 
 Of which the crowning sun, the night of beauty, 
 
 The dancing showers, the birds, whose anthems wild. 
 
 Note after note, unbind the enchanted leaves 
 
 Of breaking buds, eve, and the flow of dawn, 
 
 Were centred and condensed in his one name 
 
 As in a providence — and that was SHELLEY. 
 
 Oxford, 1822. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Memoir of Shelley 1—106 
 
 Invocation to Misery 108 
 
 To a Lady singing to her Accompaniment on the 
 
 Guitar 114 
 
 Lines— written during the Castlereagh Administration .. 115 
 
 With a Guitar 117 
 
 The Magnetic Lady to her Patient 120 
 
 To the Queen of my Heart 123 
 
 Similes 125 
 
 The Coliseum : a Fragment 127 ^ 
 
 The Age of Pericles 135 
 
 Sculpture in the Florence Gallery: 
 
 The Niobe 138 
 
 The Minerva 142 
 
 The Venus called Anadyomine 145 
 
 A Bas-relief 147 
 
 Michael Angelo's Bacchus 149 
 
 A Juno 150 
 
 An Apollo 151 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arch op Titus 151 
 
 Reflections : 
 
 Life 153 
 
 Death 155 
 
 Love 156 
 
 Remarks on c Mandeyille' and Mr. Godwin 157 
 
 On < Frankenstein' 165 
 
 On the Revival of Literature 170 
 
 A System of Government by Juries : a Fragment . . 174 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 Lord Byron is said to have prevented the school- 
 room at Harrow from being burnt in a rebellion, 
 by showing the boys the names of their ancestors 
 on the walls*; Shelley, to have entered into a 
 conspiracy at Eton against the odious custom of 
 fagging. I believe that neither of these anecdotes 
 rests on any good authority. Shelley was in love 
 
 * Byron's own name would now act as a spell against any 
 similar attempt. I saw his name carved at Harrow, in three 
 places, in very large characters— a presentiment of his future 
 fame, or a pledge of his ambition to acquire it. 
 
* MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 with no Mary Duff* at eight years old, nor wrote 
 epigrams on lame ducks, like Dr. Johnson, at four. 
 I knew him from a child, our mothers being near 
 relatives, but remember no precocity of genius 
 which he displayed. His parents were not re- 
 markable for any particular talent. It is true that 
 his grandfather possessed what is thought most 
 worth acquiring, the science of getting money, for, 
 commencing the world with no fortune, he con-, 
 trived to marry two of the richest heiresses in 
 England, and to leave 20,0007. a year, and 300,000/. 
 
 I * This love affair of Byron's seems rather to border on the 
 1 ridiculous. That he showed a remarkable precocity of talent 
 I is certain. A schoolfellow of his at Aberdeen, and who used to 
 I visit his mother when lodging at Leslie's the apothecary's in 
 ! Broad Street, told me that Byron and himself were caught in a 
 thunder storm, and obliged to take refuge in a cellar, where, 
 to wile away the time, Byron, with much emphasis and action, 
 recited a tale from the * Arabian Nights/ He might then be five 
 years old. He was exceedingly pugnacious at this school, a 
 character he maintained at Harrow, and notwithstanding the 
 deformity in both his feet, he was very active. He used to 
 blame his mother's mock delicacy for this defect, in common 
 with many Scotch ladies of that time, it seems she had a pre- 
 judice against accouchettrs. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. * 
 
 in the funds. A Greek poet says, that those who 
 amass inordinate wealth " produce a stock that 
 differs from the tree." Thus Shelley, even from 
 a hoy, had a sovereign contempt for the universal 
 idol. — But I am not "beginning with the begin- 
 ning." He was born in August 1792, and brought 
 up till seven or eight years of age in the retirement 
 of Field Place, Sussex, with his sisters, receiving 
 the same education as they — hence, he never showed 
 the least taste for the sports or amusements of boys, 
 and, on account of his girlishness, was, on going 
 to school, subject to many persecutions which, in 
 his introductory stanzas to ' The Revolt of Islam,' 
 he depicts — 
 
 Until there rose 
 From the near school-room, voices that, alas ! 
 Were but an echo from a world of woes, 
 
 The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 
 
 * 
 
 That school-room was not of Eton, but of Sion 
 House, Brentford, where he passed several years 
 preparatory to being sent to Eton. This place was 
 
4 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 a perfect hell to Shelley ; his pure and virgin mind 
 was shocked by the language and manners of his 
 new companions ; but, though forced to be with 
 them, he was not of them. Methinks I see him 
 now, pacing, with rapid strides, a favourite and 
 remote spot of the playground — generally alone — 
 and where, he says, I formed these resolutions : 
 
 To 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. 
 
 Tyranny generally produces tyranny in common 
 minds — not so in Shelley. Doubtless, much of his 
 hatred of oppression may be attributed to what he 
 saw and suffered at this school ; and so odious was 
 the recollection of the place to both of us, that we 
 never made it the subject of conversation in after- 
 life. He was, as a schoolboy, exceedingly shy, 
 bashful, and reserved — indeed, though peculiarly- 
 gentle, and elegant and refined in his manners, he 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 5 
 
 never entirely got rid of his diffidence — and who 
 would have wished he should ? With the charac- 
 teristic of true genius, he was ever modest, humble, 
 and prepared to acknowledge merit, wherever he 
 found it, without any desire to shine himself, by 
 making a foil of others. 
 
 He went to Eton at thirteen. It was a new and 
 better world: but Shelley's was a spirit that ill 
 brooked restraint, or, in his own words, he cared 
 to "learn little that his tyrants knew or taught;" 
 nor did he distinguish himself much at Eton, 
 where, as at other public schools, superior merit is 
 only assigned to those who have the knack of 
 making Latin verses — a task he abhorred. Perhaps 
 his depreciation of the Latin poets (though common 
 to all great Greek scholars) might be partly owing 
 to his disgust at the recollection of being forced to 
 swallow this, to him, bitter drug. I was surprised 
 to find at every vacation the rapid developement of 
 mind which each succeeding half-year produced in 
 
o MEMOIR OF SHELLEY, 
 
 Shelley ; he proved himself also no bad scholar, 
 before leaving Eton, by having translated several 
 books of Pliny's Natural History: he told me he 
 had stopped short at the chapters on Astronomy, 
 which his tutor, on being consulted, owned his 
 inability to explain.* Much of the last year, before 
 he went to the University, was devoted to German, 
 which he studied with his usual ardour of pursuit : 
 and to his particular course of reading in this 
 language I attribute much of his love of the 
 romantic and the mystic and the marvellous. 
 
 He had become a believer in the ghost stories 
 and enchantments of the Black Forest, and was 
 giving birth to no poetical fiction when he con- 
 fessed — 
 
 While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
 Thro' many a lonely chamber, cave, and ruin, 
 
 * I remember his pointing out to me a passage that particu- 
 larly struck him, and with which Calderon puzzles Cyprian, in 
 the ' Magico Prodigioso' — " God must be all sense, all sight, 
 all hearing, all life, all mind, self-existent," &c. Thence arose 
 the first germ of Shelley's scepticism. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. / 
 
 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
 Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
 
 Burgher's tale of ' Leonora' was an especial 
 favourite with him : he had also procured the 
 splendid edition illustrated by Lady Diana Beau- 
 clerk ; and this wild ballad it was which inspired 
 him to write verses. I remember well the first of 
 his effusions, a very German-like fragment, begin- 
 ning with — 
 
 Hark ! the owlet flaps his wings 
 
 In the pathless dell beneath, 
 Hark ! 'tis the night-raven sings 
 
 Tidings of approaching death. 
 
 I think he was then about fifteen. Shortly after- 
 wards we wrote, in conjunction, six or seven cantos 
 on the story of the Wandering Jew, of which the 
 first four, with the exception of a very few lines, 
 were exclusively mine. It was a thing, such as 
 boys usually write, a cento from different favourite 
 authors ; the crucifixion scene altogether a plagiary 
 from a volume of Cambridge prize poems. The 
 
8 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 part which I contributed I have still, and was 
 surprised to find totidem verbis in Fraser's Maga- 
 zine. The Wandering Jew continued to be a fa- 
 vourite subject of Shelley's. In the notes of ' Queen 
 Mab'* he gives the Legend, probably a translation 
 from the German, from which Byron took that 
 splendid idea in Manfred — 
 
 Back, + 
 Back by a single hair, I could not die. 
 
 Shelley also introduces Ahasuerus in his c Hellas.' 
 
 Voltaire did the same in the ' Henriade.' 
 
 As might be shown by the last cantos of that 
 
 poem, which Fraser did not think worth publishing, 
 
 * Qaeen Mab was commenced when Shelley was seventeen, 
 
 as is proved by its being dedicated to his first love, of whom 
 
 he says — 
 
 Thou wast my purer mind — 
 
 Thou wast the inspiration of my song— 
 
 Thine are these early wilding flowers, 
 
 Though garlanded by me. 
 
 This poem underwent, however, considerable correction ; and 
 
 the notes were written after an interval of some years. 
 
 t The pitiless curse held me by the hair, and I could not die. 
 
 —Notes of Queen Mab, 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 9 
 
 his ideas were, at that time, strange and incom- 
 prehensible, mere elements of thought — images 
 wild, vast, and Titanic. 
 
 Shelley, like Byron, knew early what it was to 
 love : almost all the great poets have. After 
 twenty-five years, I still remember Harriet G., and 
 when I call to mind all the women I have ever 
 seen and admired, I know of none that surpassed, 
 few that could compare with her in beauty. I think 
 of her as of some picture of Raphael's, or as one 
 of Shakspeare's women. Shelley and Miss G. were 
 born in the same year. There was a resemblance, 
 as is often the case in cousins, between them, such 
 as Byron describes as existing between Manfred 
 and Astarte, or, as Shelley himself, in a fragment, 
 says — 
 
 They were two cousins almost like to twins, 
 
 ****** 
 And so they grew together like two flowers 
 Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers 
 Lull or awaken in their purple prime. 
 
10 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 If two persons were ever designed for each other, 
 these seemed to be so. His novel of ' Zastrozzi,' 
 a very wonderful work for a boy of sixteen, em- 
 bodies much of the intensity of this passion that 
 devoured him ; and some of the chapters were, he 
 told me, written by the lady herself. Shelley's 
 mishap at Oxford was a blight to all his hopes, 
 the rock on which all his happiness split; — he had 
 the heart-rending misery of seeing her he adored 
 wedded to another. Save for that expulsion (which 
 I had almost called an unfortunate one, but that, as 
 far as the world is concerned, the epithet would 
 have been misapplied), Shelley would probably 
 have become a member for some close borough, a 
 good acting magistrate, and an excellent country 
 'squire. It is my firm belief, that he never wholly 
 shook off this early attachment, that it was long 
 the canker of his life, even if he ever really loved a 
 second time. 
 
 I remember, as if it occurred yesterday, his 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 11 
 
 knocking at my door in the Temple at four o'clock 
 in the morning after his expulsion. I think I hear 
 his cracked voice, with its well-known pipe, " Med- 
 win, let me in; I am expelled, (here followed a 
 loud half-hysteric laugh) — I am expelled for Athe- 
 ism." Though somewhat shocked, I was not much 
 surprised at the news, having heen led, from the 
 tenour of his letters, to anticipate some such end 
 to his collegiate career. In my memoir on Shelley, 
 in the ' Conversations of Lord Byron,' I have 
 already spoken of the marvellous treatise and con- 
 duct which led to this catastrophe. During the last 
 term he had published also a strange half-mad 
 volume of poems, entitled the ? Posthumous Works 
 of my Aunt Margaret Nicholson/ in which were 
 some panegyrical stanzas to the memory of Char- 
 lotte Corday ; the poetry was well worthy of the 
 subject — probably the copy I have is the only one 
 existing. 
 
 Shelley, whilst at University College, formed but 
 
12 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 one friendship,* and even that one was the effect 
 of accident. Nor did this arise from any unsocial 
 feeling, but from an unwillingness and dislike to 
 form acquaintance with strangers, which charac- 
 terized him all his life. That stiffness and for- 
 mality, and unapproachableness, which are so justly 
 ridiculed by foreigners in Englishmen, are not con- 
 fined to the great world, but begin at the Uni- 
 versity — perhaps there were no Etonians whom 
 Shelley knew in the College — perhaps he shrunk 
 from the idea of asking for introductions, and, en- 
 tirely occupied in his pursuits and lucubrations, 
 and always communing with himself, he knew not 
 what solitude meant. 
 
 As to chemistry, he was very superficial in that 
 
 * I can perceive no resemblance to Shelley in the misanthrope 
 Mandeville, though it is generally understood that Godwin in- 
 tended that character as an idealism of Shelley, not of Shelley 
 in the darker traits which led to crime, but to show how the 
 most brilliant talents warped into a wrong direction, counteract 
 all the external advantages of life, and conduce to their pos- 
 sessor's misery. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 13 
 
 science. Its phenomena alone excited his interest. 
 I believe he imbibed his taste for it from a private 
 exhibition of Walker's Lectures, with which he was 
 much struck : but all he knew consisted in setting 
 fire to trees, burning holes in carpets, and flying 
 kites to attract lightning — an idea borrowed from 
 Franklin. He was not very profound either in his 
 metaphysics at this time : Hume's Essays (of which 
 he gave me a copy I have still) were his gospel. 
 He was very serious at my ridiculing the chapter 
 entitled * A Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts,' 
 and asking him what he could make of a doubtful 
 solution of doubtful doubts. 
 
 It was with some reluctance that the head of 
 his college urged against him the fiat of banish- 
 ment — not only on account of his extreme youth 
 (he was only seventeen), but that his ancestors * 
 
 * His grandfather married a descendant of Sir Philip Sydney. 
 If Shelley had any aristocratic feelings, he was proud of this 
 connexion. He told me that his uncle, the possessor of Pens- 
 hurst, when here-settled his estates, offered him some thousand 
 
14 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 had been benefactors to the College, and founders 
 of one exhibition, if not more. Is it not to be re- 
 gretted that his tutor or some of the authorities of 
 the University, did not attempt to convince him of 
 the fallacy of his deductions, instead of resorting 
 at once to expulsion, a poor test of truth? The 
 Germans act differently with their sceptical under- 
 graduates, and if argument fails, leave the correc- 
 tion of their errors to time and good sense. Shelley 
 looked upon the refusal of the examining masters 
 to accept his challenge in the schools, as a proof 
 that his logic was incontrovertible, and gloried in 
 what he considered a persecution. But if Shelley 
 thought thus, it was different with his father, who, 
 proud of his son's talents, had looked forward to a 
 brilliant career for his heir. Shelley, till his father's 
 fury had in some degree evaporated, remained in 
 town, and we lived much together. His mind was 
 
 pounds to make over his contingency (for he was in the entail) ; 
 but, that although he was in great want of money at the time, 
 he declined the proposal. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 15 
 
 at that time wholly devoted to metaphysics, and he 
 lived in a world of shadows, that fitted him well 
 for the Clouds of Aristophanes. To instance this. 
 Being in Leicester Square one morning at five 
 o'clock (I hardly know what I was doing there 
 myself at that early hour), I was attracted hy a 
 group of boys standing round a well-dressed person 
 lying near the rails. On coming up to them I 
 discovered Shelley, who had unconsciously spent a 
 part of the night sub dio. 
 
 I am not sure whether it was at this period that 
 he was in the habit of noting down his dreams. 
 The first day, he said, they made a page, the next 
 two, the third several, till at last they constituted 
 far the greater part of his existence, realizing what 
 Calderon says, in his comedy of La Vida es Sueno — 
 " Sueno es Sueiio." 
 Dreams are but the dreams of other dreams. 
 
 His correspondents had now become very nu- 
 merous, for he was in the habit of writing to all 
 
16 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 those whose works pleased or interested him. 
 Among the rest he addressed some letters to a 
 beautiful girl, who had just published a volume, 
 in which he discovered the germs of that talent 
 which marks her as the first poetess of the day. 
 Why should I not name Mrs. Hemans ? 
 On his return to 
 
 His cold fire-side and alienated home, 
 we kept up an almost daily correspondence. Much 
 of the subject-matter of it was controversial, and, 
 as is common with disputants, literary as well as 
 others, his reasonings made no impression on me — 
 mine had no power to convert him. Yet, sceptic 
 as he was, he became such from no selfish feelings. 
 On the contrary, attributing the vices and miseries 
 of society to the existing system of things, the 
 "anarch custom," he determined to employ all his 
 thoughts, talents, and energies, to combat it, with 
 a view of ameliorating the condition of man. I 
 shall speak of his doctrines at some length hereafter. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 1? 
 
 He had, very early, this ambition of becoming a 
 reformer, and wrote to Rowland Hill under a feigned 
 name, proposing to preach to his congregation — of 
 course he received no answer. 
 
 Of the marriage into which he was inveigled at 
 eighteen, I shall say little. What could be expected 
 from an union where there was no concord, no 
 sympathy of taste or pursuits, and when every 
 coming day must have revived in dismal contrast 
 the being his soul idolized ? 
 
 I shall not follow him during his visit to Mr. 
 Southey * at the Lakes, his residence in Sackville 
 Street, Dublin, or in North Wales. From Ireland 
 he sent me a political pamphlet. It was very long, 
 
 * He was once a great admirer of Southey's poems, particu- 
 larly ' Thalaba/ and ' The Curse of Kehamah.' He told me in 
 Italy, he looked upon him as a great improvisatore, and that it 
 was sufficient to have read his poems once. The fact was, that 
 Shelley always coupled the man with his works, and it must be 
 remembered that Southey once addressed sonnets to the au- 
 thoress of the Rights of Women, and eulogized Charlotte Corday 
 and Wat Tyler. 
 
18 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 closely printed, very ill digested, but abounding in 
 splendid passages. I am only aware of his having 
 written one other pamphlet, under the name of 
 i The Hermit of Mario w.' This was on the occasion 
 of the Princess Charlotte's death. The title was 
 only a masque for politics. Under the lament of 
 the Princess he typified Liberty, and rung her knell. 
 In Ireland, however, he made himself obnoxious to 
 the government, and in consequence left the coun- 
 try. Shelley was of opinion, that for many years a 
 price was set upon his head, and that several at- 
 tempts were made to cut him off. I had a long 
 conversation with Mr. Maddocks, whose tenant he 
 was, in Carnarvonshire, as to what occurred, or 
 Shelley supposed to occur, there. The scene at 
 the inn in ' Count Fathom,' was hardly surpassed 
 in horror by the recital Shelley used to make of the 
 circumstance. The story was this : At midnight, 
 sitting in his study, he heard a noise at the window, 
 saw one of the shutters gradually unclosed, and a 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 1$ 
 
 hand advanced into the room, armed with a pistol. 
 The muzzle was directed towards him, the aim 
 taken, and the trigger drawn. The weapon flashed 
 in the pan. Shelley, with that personal courage 
 which particularly distinguished him, rushed out to 
 discover and endeavour to seize the assassin. In 
 his way towards the outer door, at the end of a 
 long passage leading to the garden, he meets the 
 ruffian, whose pistol misses fire a second time. A 
 struggle now ensues. — This opponent he described 
 as a short powerful man. Shelley, though slightly 
 built, was tall, and at that time strong and mus- 
 cular. They were no unequal match. It was a 
 contest between mind and matter. — After long and 
 painful exertion the victory was fast declaring itself 
 for Shelley, which his antagonist finding, extricated 
 himself from his grasp, rushed into the grounds, 
 and disappeared among the shrubbery. Shelley 
 made a deposition before Maddocks the next day 
 to these facts. An attempt at murder caused a 
 
20 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 great sensation in the principality, where not even 
 a robbery had taken place for twenty years. No 
 clue could be found to unravel the mystery ; and 
 the opinion generally was, that the whole scene 
 was the effect of imagination. Mr. Maddocks, like 
 all who ever knew Shelley, perfectly idolized him — 
 nor without reason. During Maddocks's absence 
 in London, an extraordinary tide menaced that 
 truly Roman undertaking, his embankment against 
 the sea. Shelley, always ready to be of service 
 to his friends, heading a paper with a subscription 
 of 500/., took it himself to all the neighbourhood, 
 and raised, for the use of Mr. Maddocks, a con- 
 siderable sum, which prevented this colossal work 
 from being demolished. I cite this, as I might do 
 many other instances of his active benevolence. 
 This extreme generosity often led him into great 
 pecuniary embarrassments; and some years after- 
 wards he suffered, in all its horrors, the evils of 
 distress. He at length succeeded in borrowing some 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 21 
 
 money from the Jews. In the early part of his life 
 no man was so improvident as Shelley — his heart 
 and purse were alike open to all. He knew I was 
 much attached to a young person whom prudential 
 motives prevented my marrying. To do away with 
 this obstacle, he earnestly proposed (which of course 
 I declined) to raise a sum of money on a post obit, 
 and settle it on the lady. Some one has said, that 
 he would have divided his last sixpence with a 
 friend : I say, that he would have given it to a 
 stranger in distress. 
 
 Shelley's ill-assorted marriage contributed, as 
 might have been foreseen, to the misery of both 
 parties. 
 
 Some of the outpourings of his soul on this fatal 
 union were these : — 
 
 " What is love ? Ask him who lives, what is 
 life — ask him who adores, what is God. I know 
 not the internal constitution of other men. I see 
 that in some external attributes they resemble me ; 
 
22 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought 
 to appeal to something in common, and unburthen 
 my inmost soul, I have found my language mis- 
 understood, like one in a distant and savage land. 
 The more opportunities they have afforded me for 
 experience, the wider has appeared the interval 
 between us, and to a greater distance have the 
 points of sympathy been withdrawn. 
 
 " With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proofs, 
 trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have 
 everywhere sought, and have found only repulse 
 and disappointment. Thou demandest, What is 
 love ? If we reason, we would be understood : if we 
 imagine, we would that the airy children of our 
 brain were born anew within another's : if we feel, 
 we would that another's nerves should vibrate to 
 our own, — that the beams of her eyes should kindle 
 at once, and mix and melt into our own, — that lips 
 of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering 
 and burning with the heart's best food. This is 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 23 
 
 love; — this is the bond and the sanction which 
 connects not only the two sexes, but everything 
 that exists. 
 
 " We are born into the world, and there is some- 
 thing within us which, from the instant we live and 
 move, thirsts after its likeness. This propensity 
 developes itself with the developement of our nature 
 — to this eagerly refer all sensations thirsting that 
 they should resemble or correspond with it. The 
 discovery of its antetype — the meeting with an 
 understanding capable of clearly estimating the 
 deductions of our own — an imagination which can 
 enter into, and seize upon the subtle and delicate 
 peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish, 
 and unfold in secret — with a frame whose nerves, 
 like the chords of two exquisite lyres strung to the 
 accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with 
 the vibration of our own — -and of a combination of 
 all these in such proportion as the type within 
 demands, — this is the invisible and unattainable 
 
24 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 point to which love tends ; and to attain which it 
 urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest 
 shadow of that without which there is no rest or 
 respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence, 
 in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are 
 surrounded by human beings, and yet they sym- 
 pathize not with us, we love the flowers, and the 
 grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion 
 of the very leaves of spring — in the blue air there 
 is found a secret correspondence with our heart 
 that awakens the spirits to a dance of breathless 
 rapture, and brings tears of mysterious tenderness 
 to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, 
 or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. 
 
 " Sterne says, that, if he were in a desert, he 
 would love some cypress. So soon as this want or 
 power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of 
 himself, and what yet survives is the mere wreck 
 of what he was." 
 
 Is there anything in the writings of Rousseau 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 25 
 
 that can compare with the tenderness, with the elo- 
 quence of passion, contained in these aspirations ? 
 
 What disappointed hopes gave birth to them we 
 may more than conjecture. It was with such 
 lacerated and withered feelings that he sate down 
 to trace the wanderings of Alastor, and, under the 
 idealism of the spirit of solitude, to paint his own 
 vain and fruitless search of a being with whom he 
 could sympathize, and render this earth, what, in 
 his enthusiastic admiration of nature, I have often 
 heard him call it, a paradise. 
 
 In looking back to his first marriage, it is sur- 
 prising, not that it should have ended in a separa- 
 tion, but that he should have continued to drag for 
 more than three years the matrimonial chain, every 
 link of which was a protraction of torture. That 
 separation, for which there were other and more 
 serious grounds, into which I shall not enter, took 
 place by mutual consent, and, considering himself 
 free, he resolved to go abroad. His health, always 
 
26 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 delicate, was impaired by the misery he had under- 
 gone, and the quantity of that beverage, other than 
 a Lethean one to him, laudanum, which he had 
 taken. He required change of scene, and a milder 
 climate; and on the 28th July, 1814, commenced 
 a continental tour. He crossed the Channel in an 
 open boat, and had a very narrow escape of being 
 upset in a sudden squall. Passing a few days in 
 Paris, he received a small remittance ; and after 
 talking over with his party, and rejecting many 
 plans, fixed on one eccentric enough — to walk 
 through France — went to the Marche des Herbes, 
 bought an ass, and thus started for Charenton : 
 there, finding the quadruped too weak to carry his 
 portmanteau, he made the purchase of a mule, and 
 not without many adventures arrived with this sin- 
 gular equipage at Troyes. 
 
 The desolation and ruin that the Cossacks left 
 everywhere behind them in their pestilential march 
 — the distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 27 
 
 been so lately burned, their cattle killed, and their 
 all destroyed, made a deep impression on Shelley's 
 feeling mind, and gave a sting to his detestation of 
 war and despotism. 
 
 Further pedestrianism being rendered impossible 
 by a sprained ancle, the remainder of the journey 
 to Neuchatel was performed par voiture. Lucerne 
 was the next canton visited : coasting its romantic 
 lake up to Brunen, the chateau was hired for a 
 week. But finding he had only 28/. left, and no 
 chance of further remittances till December, he 
 resolved with that small sum to return home by the 
 Reuss and the Rhine. Shelley and his party took 
 the coche d'eaii for Loffenburgh : thence to Mumph 
 the passage was made in a narrow, long flat- 
 bottomed machine, consisting of pieces of deal 
 nailed together. " The river is rapid, and sped 
 swiftly, breaking as it passed over rocks just covered 
 by the water. It was a sight of some dread to see 
 the frail boat winding along the eddies of the rocks, 
 
28 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 which it was death to touch, and where the slightest 
 inclination on one side would instantly have overset 
 it." However, this punt brought them in safety to 
 Basle, where, hiring a boat for Mayence, they bade 
 adieu to Switzerland ; and landed in England from 
 Rotterdam on the 13th August, having travelled 
 800 miles at an expense of less than 30/. Shelley 
 used to describe with an enthusiasm that was infec- 
 tious, the rapturous enjoyment this voyage down 
 the Rhine was to him ; — to dilate with all the fire 
 of poetic inspiration, on the rapidity of their descent 
 of that torrent-like river — winding now along banks 
 of vines, or greenest pastures — now rushing past 
 craggy heights surmounted by feudal castles. 
 
 This was one of the favourite topics in which 
 he delighted to intoxicate his imagination ; and, 
 with a prodigality, like that of Nature in some 
 tropical island, to lavish a world of wealth, as 
 though his store was inexhaustible as hers. 
 
 The next eighteen months after his return were 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 29 
 
 passed almost exclusively in London, where he had 
 to suffer all the horrors of poverty. It was at this 
 time, I imagine, that he walked the hospitals, and 
 studied medicine, not with any intention of prac- 
 tising it as a profession, but with a view of alle- 
 viating the sufferings of humanity. His knowledge 
 of anatomy was very limited ; but he made himself 
 a tolerable botanist. I doubt, however, whether 
 Shelley had not too much imagination to make any 
 great proficiency in the abstract sciences : nature 
 and education both designed him for a poet. 
 
 In May 1816, Shelley paid a second visit to the 
 continent, and reached Secheron, near Geneva, on 
 the 17th of that month. On his arrival he learned, 
 that Byron was living in the Hotel. Some corre- 
 spondence on the subject of e Queen Mab' had 
 already passed between himself and Shelley : it 
 was renewed, and in their interview they were so 
 mutually pleased with each other, that it ended 
 in Shelley's deciding to take a villa immediately 
 
30 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 at the foot of that already taken by Lord Byron, 
 the Campagne Diodati, — a name associated with 
 that of Milton, and perhaps one of Childe Harold's 
 principal reasons for choosing it as a residence. 
 The cottage occupied by Shelley is in a most 
 sequestered spot. There is no access to it in a 
 carriage. It stands only separated from the lake 
 by a small garden, much overgrown by trees. A 
 pathway through the vineyard of Diodati com- 
 municates with it. It was here that Byron formed 
 an attachment to the mother of Allegra. They 
 were not altogether strangers, he having seen her 
 once on the eve of his departure for the continent, 
 when she applied to him for an engagement at 
 Drury Lane ; but he was no longer on the Com- 
 mittee of the theatre, and could not forward her 
 views. I have already spoken of C — — ■. She was 
 a brunette, and gifted with no common talents, 
 and, if I may judge by what she was six years 
 afterwards, possessed at that time no common 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 31 
 
 beauty. This liaison was, however, of very short 
 duration ; — but to return to Shelley. 
 
 At Geneva, then, commenced that friendship 
 between Shelley and Byron, that was destined to 
 contribute so much to their mutual advantage, and 
 to soothe their after regrets, if such they enter- 
 tained, for their lost native land. 
 
 The similarity of their destinies tended not a 
 little to cement this intimacy. Both were marks 
 for the world's obloquy — both were self-exiled. 
 Their pursuits were congenial — they had 
 
 Been cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 And learnt by suffering what they taught in song. 
 
 They both sought and found in solitude, and 
 Nature — to whom the Greeks rightly gave the 
 name of mother, — a balm for their wounded spirits. 
 It cannot, I think, be denied, that the benefit of 
 this intimacy weighed much on the side of Byron. 
 That he profited by the superior reading and refined 
 taste of Shelley, is evident from all he wrote in 
 
32 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Switzerland. There is a higher strain- of poetry — 
 a depth of thought, of feeling — a natural piety — 
 in the third canto of Childe Harold, which we do 
 not find in his previous works. These must be 
 attributed, in some measure, to the influence this 
 daily intercourse had over his mind. Byron took 
 as much pleasure in the society of Shelley as he 
 was capable of taking (and he certainly was very 
 social in Italy,) in that of any one, and soon enter- 
 tained the greatest deference for Shelley's judg- 
 ment, which, in the compositions of others, was 
 infallible. With Shelley, Byron disagreed in many 
 essential points ; but they never came to a differ- 
 ence — which was the case with few of his pseudo- 
 friends. Mr. Hobhouse and himself were always 
 best apart; and it was a relief to him when they 
 finally separated in Greece. A cold, calculating, 
 unoriginal, mathematical mind, could have little in 
 common with Byron's ; but Shelley's was an El 
 Dorado, an inexhaustible mine. Byron, (as in the 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 33 
 
 case of Charles Skinner Matthews, of whom he 
 used to talk so much, and regretted so deeply,) not 
 being a great reader himself, liked the company of 
 those who were, — especially if they could think, 
 for he thus obtained both the matter and spirit 
 distilled through the alembic of others' brains. His 
 admiration of Shelley's talents and acquirements 
 only yielded to an esteem for his virtues ; and (I 
 think from what I witnessed five years after- 
 wards,) to have passed a day without seeing him, 
 would have seemed a lost day. No wonder, then, 
 that in this absolute retirement they were in- 
 separable. They spent their mornings on the 
 lake — their evenings in their own small intel- 
 lectual circle ; and thus, as Byron said, he passed 
 that summer more rationally than any other 
 period of his life. He had before written for 
 fame : here, he was inspired by a higher feeling. 
 Madame Belloe, in her ' Life of Lord Byron,' 
 has given a journal of his tour in the smaller 
 
34 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 cantons ; where are to be found all the elements 
 of l Manfred. ' 
 
 Shelley, in some interesting letters addressed to 
 his friend Mr. Peacock, describes a Tour du Lac, 
 which he made with Lord Byron. Off Miellerie 
 they were in great danger of being lost. He says, 
 " It blew tremendously, and came from the remotest 
 extremity of the lake, producing waves of frightful 
 height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos 
 of foam. My companion, an excellent swimmer, 
 took off his coat : I did the same, and we sate 
 with our arms crossed, every instant expecting to 
 be swamped. My feelings would have been less 
 painful had I been alone, for I was overcome with 
 humiliation, when I thought that his life might be 
 risked to save mine." Shelley dwells with rapture 
 on the scenes of the * Nouvelle Heloise,' which he 
 calls an overflowing of sublimest genius, and more 
 than human sensibility. On visiting Clarens he 
 says, " Why did the cold maxims of the world 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 35 
 
 compel me, at this moment, to repress the tears of 
 melancholy transport which it would have been so 
 sweet to indulge, immeasurably, even until the 
 darkness of night had swallowed up the objects that 
 excited them." At Lausanne, whilst walking on 
 the Acacia-shaded terrace belonging to Gibbon's 
 house, he observes, " Gibbon had a cold and un- 
 impassioned spirit. I never felt more inclination 
 to rail at the prejudices which cling to such a 
 thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne 
 and the Roman Empire, compel me to a contrast 
 between Rousseau and Gibbon." 
 
 At the end of July he went to Chamouni, where 
 at the foot of Mont Blanc were composed his 
 sublime lines on the source of the Arveiron ; which 
 rest their claim to admiration on an attempt to 
 imitate the untameable wildness and inaccessible 
 solemnity from which those feelings sprang. 
 
 Of the Mer de Glace he speaks thus : " I will 
 not pursue BufFon's grand but gloomy theory, that 
 
36 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 this globe which we inhabit will at some future 
 period be changed into a mass of frost, by the 
 encroachments of the polar ice, and of that pro- 
 duced on the most elevated points of the earth. 
 * * * Imagine to yourself Ahriman throned among 
 these desolating snows — among these palaces of 
 death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible 
 magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, 
 and that he casts around him, as the first essays of 
 his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, 
 and glaciers, at once the proofs and symbols of 
 his reign; add to this, the degradation of the 
 human species, who, in these regions, are half 
 deformed, or idiotic, and most of whom are de- 
 prived of anything that can excite interest or 
 admiration. This is a part of the subject more 
 mournful and less sublime, but such as neither 
 the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to 
 regard. One would imagine Mont Blanc, like 
 the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 37 
 
 that the frozen blood for ever circulated through 
 his stony veins." 
 
 What his real opinion of Byron's genius was, 
 may be collected from a sonnet he once showed 
 me, and which the subject of it never saw. The 
 sentiments accord well with that diffidence of his 
 own powers — that innate modesty which always 
 distinguished him. It began thus— 
 
 If I esteemed him less, envy would kill 
 Pleasure, and leave to wonder and despair 
 The ministration of the thoughts that fill 
 My soul, which, as a worm may haply share 
 A portion of the unapproachable, 
 Marks his creations rise as fast and fair 
 As perfect worlds at the Creator's will. 
 
 Shelley used to say, that reading Dante pro- 
 duced in him the same despair. He was at this 
 period oT his life, and continued ever, a warm 
 admirer of the Lakists, especially of Wordsworth 
 and Coleridge. But he was a still greater lover of 
 jEschyrus and Goethe. He read to Lord Byron 
 
38 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the 'Prometheus,' (of which I shall have occasion 
 to speak hereafter,) and 'Faust,' from which was 
 derived the idea of ' Manfred,' — though he has 
 treated that drama in such a way, that Goethe's 
 loud accusations were by no means well founded. 
 Among all his poetical crimes, Shelley has never 
 been taxed with plagiarism. 
 
 It was one of his fanciful notions, that what we 
 call talent, is in some degree magnetic, or epi- 
 demic : that spirits catch from each other a particle 
 of the mens divinior. Such an idea, if not to be 
 found in Plato, is worthy of him. This divine 
 author he had long made his constant companion, 
 and ended in idolizing. It was probably to the 
 1 Phsedo' that he owed his conversion from ma- 
 terialism. 
 
 " Whatever may be the true and final destination 
 of man," writes Shelley, "there is a spirit within 
 him at variance with nothingness and decay. This 
 is the character of all life and being. Each is at 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 39 
 
 once the centre and circumference, — the point to 
 which all things are resolved, and the line within 
 which all things are contained. Such contempla- 
 tions materialism and the popular philosophy of 
 mind and matter alike forbid. They are consistent 
 only with the intellectual system." 
 
 But, though congenial in their pursuits, there 
 was little congeniality of sentiment between Shelley 
 and Byron on these subjects. Byron was doubtless 
 a sceptic; but why, he scarcely knew, or dared ask 
 himself. Almost all his friends at Cambridge had 
 been sceptics ; and he had been rather laughed out 
 of his faith than convinced, by inquiry or argu- 
 ment, of its fallacy. We next find Shelley at Como, 
 where he composed his eclogue of ' Rosalind and 
 Helen,' which glows with all the enchanting scenery 
 of that delicious summer retreat. Though deficient 
 as a story, this tale abounds with isolated passages 
 of beauty, such as are not to be surpassed in our 
 or any language. One would imagine that Byron, 
 
40 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 when, on the banks of the Brenta, he wrote the 
 stanza — 
 
 A single star is by her side, — 
 
 had in his mind's eye the still more exquisite lines 
 
 from ' Rosalind and Helen' — 
 
 Leading the infantine moon, 
 And that one star which to her 
 Seems as if to minister 
 Half the golden light she brings 
 From the sunset's radiant springs. 
 
 Shelley remained on the Lake of Como during 
 the summer of 1817. 
 
 It was to a vivid remembrance of these romantic 
 excursions that we owe the scenes in the ' Revolt 
 of Islam.' He there crowds images on images, 
 each more lovely and fantastic than the former, 
 illustrating one by the other, till he almost forgets, 
 and his readers hardly wish to remember, in the 
 enchantment which his magic wand calls up, that 
 he is wandering from his theme. But I fear I am 
 doing so myself, and shall land him again, after an 
 absence of a year and some months, in England, 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 41 
 
 Shelley was at Bath in November 1817, when 
 an event occurred which was destined to darken 
 the remainder of his existence ; or, in his own 
 words, written about this period, when for him 
 
 Black despair, 
 The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
 Over the world. 
 
 This event, upon which I could wish to throw a 
 veil, was the death of his wife under the most 
 distressing circumstances. Her fate was a dreadful 
 misfortune, to him who survived, and her who 
 perished. It is impossible to acquit Shelley of all 
 blame in this calamity. From the knowledge of 
 her character, and her unfitness for self-govern- 
 ment, he should have kept an eye over her conduct. 
 But if he was blameable, her relations were still 
 more so; and, having confided her to their care, 
 he might consider, with many others similarly 
 circumstanced, that his responsibility was at an 
 end. That he did not do so, his compunction, 
 
42 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 which brought on a temporary derangement, proves ; 
 and yet was it not most barbarous in a reviewer 
 to gangrene the wounds which his sensitive spirit 
 kept ever open ? How pathetically does he, in a 
 dirge not unworthy of Shakspeare, addressed to 
 whom I know not, give vent to his agonized 
 heart : 
 
 That time is dead for ever, child— 
 Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ; 
 
 We look on the past, 
 
 And stare aghast, 
 At the spectres, wailing, pale and ghast, 
 Of hopes that thou and I beguiled 
 
 To death on Life's dark river. 
 
 "Ate does not die childless," says the Greek 
 dramatist. A scarcely less misfortune, consequent 
 on this catastrophe, was the barbarous decree of 
 the Court of Chancery, unhappily since made 
 a precedent, by which he was deprived of his 
 children, had them torn from him and consigned 
 to strangers. 
 
 The grounds upon which this act of oppression 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 43 
 
 and cruelty, only worthy of the most uncivilized 
 
 nations, was founded, — 
 
 Trial 
 I think they call it, — 
 
 was decided against him upon the evidence, if such 
 it can be called, of a printed copy of l Queen 
 Mab,' which, in his preface to 'Alastor,' he dis- 
 claimed any intention of publishing. It is said 
 that he was called upon, by the court, to recant 
 the opinions contained in that work. Shelley was 
 the last man in existence to recant any opinion 
 from fear : and a fiat worse than death was the 
 consequence — sundering all the dearest ties of 
 humanity. 
 
 Byron told me, that (well knowing Shelley could 
 not exist without sympathy) it was by his per- 
 suasion that Shelley married again. None who 
 have the happiness of knowing Mrs, Shelley can 
 wonder at that step. But in 1812, a year and a 
 half after his first marriage, that he continued to 
 
44 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 think with Plato on the subject of wedlock is 
 clear, from a letter addressed to Sir James Law- 
 rence, who had sent him his l History of the Nairs.' 
 Shelley says, " I abhor seduction as much as I 
 adore love ; and if I have conformed to the usages 
 of the world on the score of matrimony, it is that 
 disgrace always attaches to the weaker sex." An 
 irresistible argument.* 
 
 His short residence at Marlow has been already 
 described. There he led a quiet, retired, domestic 
 life, and has left behind him a character for bene- 
 volence and charity, that still endears him to its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 * Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature, 
 society declares war against- her— pityless and unerring war. 
 She must be the tame slave ; she must make no reprisals : 
 theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. 
 She lives a life of infamy. The loud and bitter laugh of scorn 
 scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering 
 disease; yet she is in fault. She is the criminal — she the fro- 
 ward, the untameable child; — and society, forsooth, the pure 
 and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion from he* 
 undefiled bosom.— Shelley. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 45 
 
 He became about this time acquainted with 
 Keats ; and Shelley told me that it was a friendly 
 rivalry between them, which gave rise to ' Endy- 
 mion' and the ' Revolt of Islam,' — two poems 
 scarcely to, be named in the same sentence. 
 Shelley was too classical — had too much good taste 
 — to have fallen into the sickly affectation — the 
 obsoletas scribendi formas of that perverse and 
 limited school. f The ( Revolt of Islam' must be 
 
 + The following note, by the Editor of the Athenceum, was 
 appended to this passage on its publication in that paper : — 
 
 " Nothing is more ridiculous, than a running commentary, 
 wherein an editor apologizes for, or dissents from, the opinions 
 of a writer in his own paper. Occasions, however, may arise 
 to excuse, if not to justify, such disclaimer ; and for self-satis- 
 faction we enter our protest on this occasion. We go as far 
 as Captain Medwin in admiration of Shelley ; but as far as 
 Shelley — " infallible," says the Captain, " in his judgment of 
 the works of others"— in admiration of Keats. Shelley was a 
 worshipper of Truth— Keats of Beauty ; Shelley had the greater 
 power— Keats the finer imagination : both were single-hearted, 
 sincere, admirable men. When we look into the world,— nay, 
 not to judge others, when we look into our own hearts, and see 
 how certainly manhood shakes hands with worldliness, we 
 should despair, if such men did not occasionally appear among 
 
46 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 looked upon as the greatest effort of any individual 
 mind, (whatever may be its defects,) in one at the 
 
 us. Shelley and Keats were equal enthusiasts — had the same 
 hopes of the moral improvement of society— of the certain in- 
 fluence of knowledge — and of the ultimate triumph of truth; 
 — and Shelley, who lived longest, carried all the generous 
 feelings of youth into manhood ; age enlarged, not narrowed his 
 sympathies; and learning bowed down his humanity to feel 
 its brotherhood with the humblest of his fellow- creatures. If 
 not judged by creeds and conventional opinions, Shelley must 
 be considered as a moral teacher both by precept and example : 
 he scattered the seed of truth, so it appeared to him, every 
 where, and upon all occasions,— confident that, however dis- 
 regarded, however long it might lie buried, it would not perish, 
 but spring up hereafter in the sunshine of welcome, and its 
 golden fruitage be garnered by grateful men. Keats had 
 naturally much less of this political philosophy ; but he had 
 neither less resolution, less hope of, or less good-will towards 
 man. Lord Byron's opinion, that he was killed by the re- 
 viewers, is wholly ridiculous; though his epitaph, and the 
 angry feelings of his friends, might seem to countenance it. 
 Keats died of hereditary consumption, and was fast sinking 
 before either Blackivood or the Quarterly poured out their 
 malignant venom. Even then it came but as a mildew upon 
 his generous nature, injuring the leaves and blossoms, but 
 leaving untouched the heart within, the courage to dare and to 
 suffer. Keats (we speak of him in health and vigour,) had a 
 resolution, not only physical but moral, greater than any man 
 we ever knew : it was unshakable by everything but his affec- 
 tions. We are not inclined to stretch this note into an essay, 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 47 
 
 same period of life. I do not forget Milton, or 
 Chatterton, or Pope, when I say this. It occupied 
 him only six months. The dedicating lines lose 
 nothing in comparison with Byron's to Ian the ; 
 and the structure of his Spenserian stanzas, in har- 
 mony and the varied flow of the versification, may 
 serve as a model for all succeeding writers in that 
 metre. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1818, various reasons in- 
 duced Shelley again to quit England, with scarcely 
 a hope or wish to revisit it. The breach between 
 himself and his relatives had been made irreparable. 
 He was become fatherless — he was highly un- 
 popular from the publicity given to the trial — 
 from the attacks of the reviewing churchmen on 
 his works ; and his health was gradually becoming 
 
 and shall not therefore touch on the ' Endymion' further than 
 to say, that Captain Medwin cannot produce anything in the 
 ' Revolt of Islam' superior to the Hymn to Pan ; nor in the 
 English language anything written by any poet at the same 
 age with which it may not stand in honourable comparison." 
 
48 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 worse. The vegetable system which he followed, 
 as to diet, did not agree with his constitution, and 
 he was finally obliged to abandon it. That he was 
 a Pythagorean from principle, is proved by the 
 very luminous synopsis of all the arguments in 
 its favour, contained in a note appended to ' Queen 
 Mab.' He was of opinion, and I agree with him 
 and the disciples of that school, that abstinence 
 from animal food subtilizes and clears the intel- 
 lectual faculties. For all the sensualities of the 
 table Shelley had an ineffable contempt, and, like 
 Newton, used sometimes to inquire if he had dined 
 — a natural question from a Berkleyist. 
 
 But to follow him in his travels — a more in- 
 teresting topic. He passed rapidly through France 
 and Switzerland, and, crossing the Mont Cenis 
 into Italy, paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice, 
 where he made a considerable stay. 
 
 Under the names of Julian and Maddalo, written 
 at Rome some months afterwards, Shelley paints 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 49 
 
 himself and Byron in that city. The sketch is 
 highly valuable. He says of Byron, at this time, 
 " He is cheerful, frank, and witty : his more serious 
 conversation a sort of intoxication ; men are held 
 by it as a spell" : — of himself, that he " was at- 
 tached to that philosophical sect that assert the 
 power of man over his own mind, and the immense 
 improvements of which, by the extinction of cer- 
 tain moral superstitions, human society may be 
 made susceptible." I shall enter more at large 
 hereafter on Shelley's particular theories, though 
 they are somewhat subtle and difficult of ana- 
 lysis. 
 
 Venice was a place peculiarly adapted to the 
 studious life Shelley loved to lead. 
 
 The town is silent— one may write 
 Or read in gondolas by day or night, 
 Unseen, uninterrupted. Books are there — 
 Pictures, and casts from all the statues fair, 
 That are twin-born with poetry ; and all 
 We seek in towns ; with little to recall 
 Regrets for the green country. 
 
50 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 In the autumn we find Shelley at Naples. For- 
 tune did not seem tired of persecuting him, for he 
 became the innocent actor in a tragedy here, more 
 extraordinary than any to be found in the pages 
 of romance. The story, as he related it to myself 
 and Byron, would furnish perfect materials for a 
 novel in three volumes, and cannot be condensed 
 into a few sentences, marvellous as the scenes of 
 that drama were. Events occur daily, and have 
 happened to myself, far more incredible than any 
 which the most disordered fancy can conjure up, 
 casting " a shade of falsehood" on the records of 
 what are called reality. Certain it is, that Shelley, 
 as may be judged from his ' Lines written in 
 Despondency,' must have been most miserable at 
 Naples. No one could have poured forth those 
 affecting stanzas, but with a mind, as he says in 
 the l Cenci,' hovering on the devouring edge of 
 darkness. His departure from Naples was, he said, 
 precipitated by this event ; and he passed the en- 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 51 
 
 suing winter at Rome. There is something in- 
 spiring in the very atmosphere of Rome. Is it 
 fanciful, that heing encircled by images of beauty 
 — that in contemplating works of beauty such as 
 Rome and the Vatican only can boast — that by 
 gazing on the scattered limbs of that mighty co- 
 lossus, whose shadow eclipsed the world, — we 
 should catch a portion of the sublime — become a 
 portion of that around us ? 
 
 Certain it is, that artists produce at Rome, what 
 they are incapable of conceiving elsewhere, and at 
 which themselves, are most sincerely astonished. 
 No wonder, then, that Shelley should have here 
 surpassed himself in giving birth to two of his 
 greatest works, so different in themselves, the 
 ' Cenci' and the ' Prometheus Unbound.' He 
 drenched his spirit to intoxication in the deep blue 
 sky of Rome. His favourite haunts were the ruined 
 Baths of Caracalla, or the labyrinths of the Coli- 
 seum, where he laid the first scene of a tale which 
 
52 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 promised to rival, if not surpass l Corinne.' Like 
 Byron in ' Childe Harold,' or Madame De Stael, 
 he meant to have idealized himself in the principal 
 character. This exquisite fragment he allowed me 
 to copy ; and during the twelve months I passed at 
 Rome, I read it as many times, sitting, as he says, 
 on some isolated capital of a fallen column in the 
 Arena, and each time with an increased delight. 
 
 Shelley's taste and feeling in works of ancient 
 art were, as might be expected, most refined. Sta- 
 tuary was his passion. He contended, " that the 
 slaughter-house and dissecting-room were not the 
 sources whence the Greeks drew their perfection. 
 It was to be attributed to the daily exhibition of the 
 human form in all its symmetry in their Gymnasia. 
 Their sculptors were not mere mechanicians : they 
 were citizens and soldiers animated with the love 
 of their country. We must rival them in their 
 virtue before we can come up to them in their 
 compositions." The hard, harsh, affected style of 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 53 
 
 the French school and Canova, he could never 
 endure ; and used to contrast what are considered 
 the masterpieces of the latter with those of the age 
 of Pericles, where the outline of form and features 
 is, as in one of Sir Joshua Reynolds's paintings, 
 so soft as to be scarcely traceable by the eye. He 
 considered the Perseus, which Forsyth so ridicu- 
 lously overpraised, a bad imitation of the Apollo ; 
 and said, after seeing the great conceited figurante 
 of the Pitti, " go and visit the modest little creature 
 of the Tribune." 
 
 Shelley used to say that he did not understand 
 painting, — not meaning that he was insensible to 
 the beauty of the pictures — (of the incomparable 
 Raphael, for instance, whom I have often thought 
 Shelley much resembled, not only in face, but 
 genius, though it was differently directed,) — but 
 that he did not know the style of different masters 
 — the peculiarities of different schools. This he 
 thought only to be acquired by long experience 
 
54 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 and observation, a retentive memory of minutiae, 
 the faculty of comparison : whereas sculpture re- 
 quires no previous study ; and of which the Roman 
 peasant is perhaps as good a judge as the best 
 academician or anatomist. 
 
 From Rome, in 1819, Shelley returned to Flo- 
 rence. The view from the Boboli Gardens he thus 
 describes : " You see below, Florence, a smokeless 
 city, with its domes and spires occupying the vale, 
 and beyond, to the right, the Apennines, whose 
 base extends even to the walls ; and whose sum- 
 mits are intersected by ashen-coloured clouds. The 
 green vallies of these mountains, which gently un- 
 fold themselves upon the plains, and the inter- 
 vening hills, covered with vineyards and olive 
 plantations, are occupied by the villas, which are, 
 as it were, another city — a Babylon of palaces and 
 gardens. In the midst of the picture rolls the 
 Arno, now full with the winter rains, through 
 woods, and bounded by aerial snowy summits of 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 55 
 
 the Apennines. On the right, a magnificent but- 
 tress of lofty craggy hills overgrown with wilder- 
 ness, juts out in many shapes over a lovely valley, 
 and approaches the walls of the city. 
 
 " Cascini and other villages occupy the pinnacles 
 and abutments of these hills, over which is seen, at 
 intervals, the ethereal mountain line, hoary with 
 snow, and intersected by clouds. The valley below 
 is covered with cypress groves, whose obeliskine 
 forms of intense green pierce the grey shadow of 
 the wintry hill that overhangs them. The cy- 
 presses, too, of the garden, form a magnificent 
 foreground of accumulated verdure : pyramids of 
 dark green and shining cones, rising out of a mass, 
 between which are cut, like caverns, recesses con- 
 ducting into walks." 
 
 Shelley, while at Florence, passed much of his 
 time in the Gallery, where, after his severe mental 
 labours, his imagination reposed and luxuriated 
 amid the divine creations of the Greeks. The 
 
o6 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Niobe, the Venus Anadyomine, the group of 
 Bacchus and Ampelus, were the objects of his in- 
 exhaustible and insatiable admiration. On these I 
 have heard him expatiate with all the eloquence 
 of poetic enthusiasm. He had made ample notes 
 on the wonders of art in this Gallery, from which, 
 on my leaving Pisa, he allowed me to make 
 extracts, far surpassing in eloquence anything 
 Winkelman has left on this subject. 
 
 In this city, also, he saw one of those republics 
 that opposed for some time a systematic and effec- 
 tual resistance to all the surrounding tyranny of 
 Popedom and despotism. The Lombard League 
 defeated the armies of the despot in the field, and 
 until Florence was betrayed into the hands of 
 those polished tyrants, the Medici, " freedom had 
 one citadel where it could find refuge from a world 
 that was its foe." 
 
 To this cause he attributed the undisputed supe- 
 riority of Italy, in literature and the arts, above all 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 57 
 
 its cotemporaries — the union, and energy, and 
 beauty, which distinguish from all other poets the 
 writings of Dante — that restlessness of fervid 
 power, which surpassed itself in painting and 
 sculpture, and from which Raphael and Michael 
 Angelo drew their inspiration. 
 
 Here Shelley would probably have taken up a 
 permanent residence, but that the winds that sweep 
 from the Apennines were too keen for his nerves. 
 After passing some months at Leghorn and the 
 Baths of Lucca, he finally fixed himself at Pisa, 
 where, in the tenderness of affection and sympathy 
 of her who partook of his genius, and could appre- 
 ciate his transcendent talents, he sought for that 
 repose in domestic retirement, which the persecu^- 
 tions of fortune, and a life chequered by few rays 
 of sunshine, had as yet denied him. 
 
 In the autumn of 1 820 I accepted Shelley's in- 
 vitation to winter with him at Pisa. He had been 
 passing part of the summer among the chesnut 
 
58 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 forests of that delicious retreat — the baths of 
 Lucca; and I found him at those of St. Julian, at 
 the foot of the mountain, which Dante calls the 
 Screen of Lucca. A few days after my arrival, 
 we were driven from his house by the overflowing 
 of the Serchio, and migrated to the south side of 
 the Arno, at Pisa, next door to the Marble Palace, 
 with the mystical inscription " Alia Giornata." 
 Shelley complained of his health : his nerves 
 seemed dreadfully shattered ; but his appearance 
 was youthful, — nay, almost boyish, although his 
 hair (which had a natural wave) was mixed with 
 grey. A few weeks only had elapsed since a sin- 
 gular, and almost incredible and dastardly outrage 
 had been committed on him. He was at the post- 
 office asking for his letters, when a stranger, on 
 
 hearing his name, said, M What ! are you that 
 
 atheist Shelley?" and without more preamble, 
 being a tall powerful man, struck him a blow 
 which felled to the ground and stunned him. On 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 59 
 
 coming to himself, Shelley found that the villain 
 had disappeared. Raging with the insult, he im- 
 mediately sought his friend Mr. Tighe, who lost 
 no time in taking measures to obtain satisfaction. 
 Mr. Tighe was some time in discovering the hotel 
 at which the cowardly aggressor had put up, but 
 at length traced him to the Donzelli. It seems that 
 he was an Englishman, and an officer in the Por- 
 tuguese service : his name I have now forgotten. 
 
 He had, however, started for Genoa, whither 
 Mr. Tighe and Shelley followed, but without being 
 able to overtake him, or learn his route from that 
 city. This anecdote will show the feeling of ani- 
 mosity which the malice of Shelley's enemies had 
 excited against him in the breasts of his compa- 
 triots ; — but the time is happily past when Quar- 
 terly Reviews can deal out damnation, or that they 
 can drive out of the pale of society, or point out as 
 a mad dog to be knocked on the head, any one 
 who does not happen to profess the same creed as 
 
60 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 themselves. How little did the reverend writer of 
 that article know of Shelley, when he says that 
 " from childhood he (Shelley) has carried about 
 with him a soured and discontented spirit — un- 
 tractable as a boy, and unamiable in youth — queru- 
 lous and unmanly in all three." But as if this 
 foul nomenclature was inexhaustible, the critic 
 ends by taxing him with " low fraud, cold selfish- 
 ness, and unmanly cruelty." Are such libellers to 
 pass with impunity ? Is this proper and decorous 
 language from a clergyman ? 
 
 Shelley's whole time was dedicated to study. 
 He was then reading Calderon, and mad about the 
 Autos ; but he did not the more lay aside his 
 favourite authors, the Greek dramatists : a volume 
 of Sophocles he used to take with him in his 
 rambles : he generally had a book even at dinner, 
 if his abstemious meal could be called one ;* and 
 
 * The reason for Byron's abstemiousness was a very different 
 one from Shelley's. Like his late Majesty, Byron was horrified 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 61 
 
 told me he always took a book to bed with him. 
 In the evenings he sometimes read aloud a canto 
 of Dante or Tasso, or a canzone of Petrarch. 
 Though his voice was somewhat broken in the 
 sound, his recitation of poetry was wonderfully 
 effective, and the tones of his voice of varied 
 modulation. He entered into the soul of his 
 author, and penetrated those of his listeners. 
 
 Prince Mavrocordato was his daily, almost his 
 only visitor. It was with peculiar delight that I 
 listened to Shelley's spirited and poetical version 
 
 at the idea of getting fat ; and to counteract this tendency of 
 his to corpulency, mortified his Epicurean propensities. Hence 
 he dined four days in the week on fish and vegetables ; and 
 had e~ven stinted himself, when I last saw him, to a pint of 
 claret. 
 
 Naturam expellasfurca, tamen usque recurret. 
 
 Thus his sensuality broke out now and then; and I have 
 seen him eat of as great a variety of dishes, as a German at a 
 table d'hbte. He succeeded, it is true, in overmastering nature, 
 and clipping his rotundity of its fair proportions ; but with it 
 shrunk his cheek and his calf. This the Guiccioli observed, 
 and seemed by no means to admire Milord's eremitish diet. 
 
62 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of the Prometheus and Agamemnon of iEschylus ; 
 — in the last of which he used to rave about the 
 opening chorus. He was become, as well he might 
 be, disgusted with publishing, with seeing poets 
 enjoying reputation who did not possess a tithe 
 of his genius, and some even of those decking 
 themselves out, like daws, in his borrowed plumes. 
 He used to say, that as he had failed in original 
 compositions, he would translate the ' Prometheus'; 
 and it is to be lamented that he did not carry his 
 design into effect. His ' Cyclops' of Euripides and 
 1 Hymn to Mercury' of Homer, are specimens of 
 what his powers as a translator were, and how 
 critically he was versed in Greek, and caught the 
 true spirit of his authors. Plato he read with all 
 the facility of a modern work, and had made a 
 translation of the ' Symposium,' — an attempt so 
 difficult, that the Germans pretend their language 
 is alone capable of mastering it. This splendid 
 effort I had hoped Mrs. Shelley would have given 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 63 
 
 the public, having promised, in 1 824, some of his 
 posthumous prose works. 
 
 During this winter he wrote little — without en- 
 couragement, who can ? One of his poems I must 
 not, however, forget to mention, (and perhaps not 
 the least exquisite, though it fell dead from the 
 press,) the ' Epipsychidion.' This Psyche was the 
 Contessina Emilia V. She was an interesting, 
 beautiful, and accomplished girl, and immured in 
 the odious Convent of St. Anne, by a jealous step- 
 mother. 
 
 Shelley was a martyr to a most painful complaint, 
 which constantly menaced to terminate fatally, and 
 was subject to violent paroxysms, which, to his 
 irritable nerves, were each a separate death. I 
 had seen magnetism practised in India and at 
 Paris, and at his earnest request consented to try 
 its efficacy. Mesner himself could not have hoped 
 for more complete success. The imposition of my 
 hand on his forehead instantaneously put a stop 
 
64 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to the spasm, and threw him into a magnetic sleep, 
 which, for want of a better word, is called som- 
 nambulism. Mrs. Shelley and another lady were 
 present. The experiment was repeated more than 
 once. 
 
 During his trances I put some questions to him. 
 He always pitched his voice in the same tone as 
 mine. I inquired about his complaint, and its 
 cure — the usual magnetic inquiries. His reply 
 was — " What would cure me, would kill me," 
 (alluding probably to lithotomy). I am sorry I did 
 not note down some of his other answers. Animal 
 magnetism is, in Germany, confined by law to the 
 medical professors ; and with reason — it is not to 
 be trifled with. Shelley afterwards used to walk in 
 his sleep; and Mrs. Shelley once found him getting 
 up at night, and going to a window. It is remark- 
 able, that in the case of the boy Matthew Schwir, 
 recorded by Dr. Tritchler, the patient spoke in 
 French, as Shelley in Italian. He improvised also 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 65 
 
 verses in Italian, in which language he was never 
 known to write poetry. I am aware that in 
 England the phenomena of animal magnetism are 
 attributed to the imagination. I only state those 
 facts that may perhaps shake the incredulity of the 
 most sceptical. 
 
 Shelley was afterwards magnetized by a lady, to 
 whom he addressed some lines, of which I remember 
 some of the stanzas.* 
 
 There has been an imaginary voyage of Lord 
 Byron's to Corsica and Sardinia, with the Countess 
 Guiccioli and Shelley, published by Galignani, and 
 which has passed through several editions. This 
 voyage is said to have taken place during the 
 winter I passed at Pisa, and which Shelley never 
 quitted. The writer of this vision conjures up a 
 storm, and makes Shelley so terrified, that he is 
 put on shore God knows where. Now, it so hap- 
 pens, that Shelley was never so much in his element 
 * See Table of Contents for reference to these stanzas. 
 
66 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 as at sea. Storms were his delight; and when 
 at the lake of Geneva, he used to be taken for 
 Byron braving Bises in his boat, which none of the 
 batteliers could face. 
 
 Shelley was in danger of being lost more than 
 once at sea, and had a very narrow escape in 
 coming from the Isle of Man in the year 1813 or 
 1814. He had taken his passage in a small trading 
 craft, which had only three hands on board. It 
 was in the month of November, and the weather 
 boisterous when they left Douglas, which soon 
 increased to a dreadful gale. The Captain attri- 
 buted to Shelley's exertions so much the safety of 
 his vessel, that he refused, on landing, to accept 
 his fare. It is a strange fancy some people have 
 to libel the dead, in order to gratify the malignity 7 
 of the living. 
 
 It was during my stay with Shelley that the 
 Neapolitan insurrection broke out. His ardent 
 mind, with a truly poetical, but, unhappily, not a 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 6 7 
 
 prophetic spirit, hailed this as the dawn of Italian 
 freedom ; and as the Spanish short-lived revolution 
 had inspired him with his magnificent c Psean to 
 Liberty,' so he then wrote his i Ode to Naples ;' 
 compared with which, those of Collins have always 
 seemed to me tame and lifeless. It has the merit 
 of being, what few of our English modern odes (ill 
 called so) are, really an ode, constructed on the 
 model of those left us by Pindar, and worthy of the 
 best days of Greece. The Italians are enthusiastic 
 in their praise of this ode; — perhaps neither 
 Felicaja nor Petrarch have produced any more 
 sublime. Shelley could never endure Moore's lines 
 against the Neapolitans, beginning, " Yes, down 
 to the dust with them/' &c. He used to say that 
 such taunts came ill from an Irishman ; and, 
 whether merited or no, were cruel and ungenerous. 
 Shelley considered Coleridge's ' Ode to Switzer- 
 land' as the best in modern times. He knew it 
 by heart, and used to declaim it and the/ Ancient 
 
68 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Mariner' in his peculiar and emphatic manner. 
 Byron knew as little what an ode meant, as he did 
 a sonnet — the most difficult of all compositions. 
 Shelley's lines beginning, 
 
 Then the ground, 
 
 were not composed on the occasion of the Spanish 
 revolution, as they are entitled, but on the Man- 
 chester massacre. 
 
 We had many conversations on the subject of 
 Keats, who, with a mind and frame alike worn out 
 by disappointment and persecution, was come to 
 lay his bones in Italy. Shelley was enthusiastic in 
 his admiration of ' Hyperion' and the Ode to Pan 
 in the ' Endymion* ; but was little partial to Keats 's 
 other works. Their correspondence at this period 
 would prove highly interesting. Poor Keats died 
 three days before I arrived at Rome, in March or 
 April 1821; and much of the remainder of that 
 year, which Shelley passed at the Baths of St. 
 Julian, was occupied on 'Adonais,' which breathes 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 69 
 
 all the tenderness of Moschus and Bion, and loses 
 nothing in comparison with those divine produc- 
 tions on which it was modelled. Not the least 
 valuable part of that Idyll is the picture he has 
 drawn of himself, in the two well-known stanzas 
 beginning " 'Mid others of less note." How well 
 do those expressions, " a pard-like spirit, beautiful 
 and swift!" — "a love in desolation marked" — 
 " a power girt round with weakness" — designate 
 him. 
 
 There is a passage in that elegy which has 
 always struck me as among the sublimest in any 
 language, though it is rather understood than to 
 be explained, like Milton's " Smoothing the raven 
 down," &c. 
 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity, 
 Until death tramples it to fragments. 
 
 His great amusement during this summer was, 
 with his friend Williams, to navigate the clear and 
 
70 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 rapid little river, the Serchio, and the canals that 
 branch from it. This chosen companion and par- 
 taker of his fate, lived in the place of Pisan Villa- 
 giatura, some miles higher up the stream, against 
 which Shelley used often to tow his light skiff, in 
 order to enjoy the rapidity of the descent. A boat 
 was to Shelley what a plaything is to a child — his 
 peculiar hobby. He was eighteen when he used 
 to float paper ones on the Serpentine ; and I have 
 no doubt, at twenty- eight, would have done the 
 same with any boy. It was the revival of this 
 dormant passion for boat-building which led to the 
 fatal project of building a schooner at Genoa, of 
 a most dangerous construction: all her ballast, I 
 forget how many pounds of lead, being in her 
 keel. 
 
 It may be imagined that Shelley was of a melan- 
 choly cast of mind — on the contrary, he was natu- 
 rally full of playfulness, and remarkable for the 
 fineness of his ideas ; and I have never met with 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 71 
 
 any one in whom the brilliance of wit and humour 
 was more conspicuous. In this respect he fell 
 little short of Byron; and perhaps it was one of 
 the great reasons why Byron found such a peculiar 
 charm in his conversation. I doubt whether Byron 
 could have surpassed him in his Parody on Words- 
 worth's ' Peter Bell,' and some other fugitive pieces 
 of the same kind, remarkable for a keen sense of 
 the ridiculous. 
 
 At the latter end of this year he paid a visit to 
 Lord Byron at Ravenna. He was then writing 
 1 Cain,' and owes to Shelley the Platonic idea of 
 his Hades and the phantasmal worlds — perhaps 
 suggested to Shelley himself by Lucian's ' Icaro- 
 Menippus.'* 
 
 * Northcote used to take leave of his pupils going on their 
 continental tours, with " Now, young man, remember you cross 
 the Alps expressly to become a thief." Byron was as little 
 scrupulous as the great artist in appropriating to himself the 
 works of others ; but he had the ingenuity to select those that 
 were in bad repute, and therefore not generally read. Shelley's 
 i Queen Mab* and Casti's * Novelle' were two of his favourite 
 
i ^ MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 It was this visit which decided Byron on win- 
 tering at Pisa — a wish to be near Shelley was one 
 of his inducements ; independent of which, Tus- 
 cany was almost the only State in Italy where a 
 foreigner, situated as Byron then was, could find 
 
 cribbing books. I taxed him roundly more than once with 
 this habit of his ; and especially of his having plagiarized his 
 lines in ' Cain' from 
 
 Earth's distant orb appeared 
 
 The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens ; 
 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 
 Innumerable systems rolled, 
 
 And countless spheres diffused 
 
 An ever varying glory, &c 
 and of taking c Don Juan' from Casti, passim. '■' I mean," said 
 I to him, " one of these days to translate the ' Novelle.' " Byron 
 seemed rather alarmed at the idea. " Casti ! why you could 
 not have a notion of such a thing? There are not ten English- 
 men who have ever read the ' Novelle.' They are a sealed book 
 to women. It is in the Pope's Index. The Italians think 
 nothing of it."—" What do you think of it, Byron V — " I sha'nt 
 tell you," replied he, laughing, and changed the subject. Speak- 
 ing of the ' Index Expurgatorius,' Shelley used to tell an amusing 
 anecdote of the Roman Dogannieri. On passing the frontier, his 
 books were searched with much strictness, and among them 
 was a Spinosa and an English Bible. Which do you suppose 
 was seized and confiscated ? The Bible ! 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 73 
 
 refuge or safety. The part he took in the affair of 
 Romagna, though denied by that veridical article 
 in the Westminster Review, is now known ; — nor 
 shall I enter into the question how far he was 
 wrong in intermeddling with the politics of other 
 countries. I bear too great a love for Italy, and 
 abhorrence of Austrian despotism, to blame him. 
 Had not Cardinal Gonsalvi been then the Pope's 
 prime minister, perhaps the stiletto (if he had not 
 been openly arrested) would have ended his days. 
 Byron's name is still a terror to the despots of 
 Italy.* His writings have done much to fan 
 the flame of liberty. Shelley used to say that 
 poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the 
 world. 
 
 * Some months since, being at Genoa, the police, hearing 
 that I had been with Byron at Pisa, sent me an order to leave 
 the city in twenty-four hours, on the suspicion of my being a 
 Carbonaro. It is true, that on my arrival at Turin, our am- 
 bassador offered me his protection ; but British officers and 
 subjects are now insulted in every petty state. 
 
74 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I shall end this part of my sketch with some 
 curious observations of his : — 
 
 " In one sense, religion may be called poetry, 
 though distorted from the beautiful simplicity of 
 its truth. The persons in whom this power abides 
 may often, as far as regards many portions of their 
 nature, be Atheists; but although they may deny 
 and abjure, they are compelled to serve — which is 
 seated in the throne of their own soul ; and what- 
 ever systems they may professedly support, they 
 actually advance the interests of liberty. It is 
 impossible to read the productions of our most 
 celebrated writers, whatever may be their systems 
 relative to thought or expression, without being 
 startled by the electric life which there is in their 
 words. They measure the circumference and sound 
 the depths of human nature, with a comprehensive, 
 all-embracing, all-penetrating spirit, at which they 
 are themselves most sincerely astonished : it is less 
 their own spirit, than the spirit of the age. They 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. ? 5 
 
 are the priests of an unapprehended inspiration — 
 the mirror of the gigantic shadow that invests 
 them — the echoes of words, of which they conceive 
 not the power which they express — the trumpet 
 which sounds to battle, and feels not what it 
 inspires — the influence that is moved not, but 
 moves. Poets and philosophers [he repeats] are 
 the unacknowledged legislators of the world." 
 
 It was a strange coincidence, that I should have 
 been exposed to the same squall which proved fatal 
 to two of my oldest and best friends, Shelley and 
 Williams. I embarked on the 2nd of July, with 
 a party with whom I was acquainted, on board of 
 a vessel they had hired, for Genoa. During the 
 first three days of our voyage, we were constantly 
 becalmed, lying one whole night off the Pontine 
 Marshes, where some of our passengers were at- 
 tacked with malaria. On the fourth day set in 
 a sirocco, which brought us into the gulph of 
 Genoa.' That gulph is subject to violent gusts of 
 
76 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 wind at all seasons of the year, but more especially 
 in the hot months ; and our captain, as the breeze 
 died away, foresaw that we should not get into 
 port at least that night. Over the Apennines, 
 which encircle Genoa as with an amphitheatre, 
 hung columns up-piled of dark threatening clouds, 
 which soon confirmed his opinion. I forget the 
 precise hour at which the squall came on, but 
 neither between the Tropics nor on the Line, did 
 I ever witness a severer one, and, being accom- 
 panied by a heavy rain, it was the more felt. 
 We were, however, all snug, and in smooth water, 
 in consequence of the Mistral* blowing right off 
 the shore. We must have been 20 or 25 miles 
 from Spezia, when the storm burst upon us. 
 
 I should think few pleasure-boats could have 
 lived in such weather, especially in the bay of 
 Spezia, where it was impossible to run before the 
 
 * The old way of spelling Mistral was Maestral, or pre- 
 vailing wind — Vento Maestro. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 77 
 
 wind, the reefs stretching a long way out, and 
 the surf rising very high all along the coast. After 
 beating all night and the best part of the next 
 day, we at length got into harbour. x\t the 
 Hotel de l'Europe there was a rumour that two 
 Englishmen had been lost near Lerici ; but though 
 I knew my friends were living in the vicinity of 
 that place, it never entered my mind that they 
 were the individuals, and proceeded on my journey 
 to Switzerland. Some days after my arrival at 
 Geneva, however, I heard from Byron and Mrs. 
 Shelley the melancholy news, and immediately 
 recrossed the Alps. At Sarzana, the people of the 
 place told me that the bodies of my friends had 
 been washed on shore. On the evening of the 
 same day I arrived at Pisa. I have already, as 
 taken from the mouth of Mr. Trelawney, given a 
 description of the funeral ceremony, and my finding 
 Byron in a high fever, on his return from the sad 
 obsequies, and have nothing to add to that account. 
 
78 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I believe that Byron felt severely the loss of 
 Shelley — though, it must be confessed, his remarks 
 at the pyre, and swimming off to his yacht, little 
 prove it. Don Juan like, he was a strange com- 
 pound of meanness and generosity, of the pathetic 
 and ludicrous, the grave and the gay, the sublime 
 and the ridiculous.* An instance of this was not 
 wanting during the first days of my visit. In the 
 burning of Shelley, there was a portion of his body 
 that would not consume. It was supposed to be 
 his heart. Mr. Leigh Hunt carefully preserved 
 and took with him the relic to the Lanfranchi. 
 This Mrs. Shelley of course claimed. But her 
 
 * There is an anecdote of Byron, which justice requires 
 should not be passed over. At one of the dinners he gave at 
 Pisa, (before dinner, I should say,) he proposed to Shelley a 
 bet of 1000 1, on the longevity of Sir Timothy Shelley and Lady 
 Noel. This bet Shelley accepted ; and many weeks had not 
 transpired before Lady Byron's mother died ; but Byron never 
 mentioned, or offered to pay the debt. Qucere, if the Countess 
 had survived the Baronet,- whether Byron would not have 
 claimed, and Shelley paid the 1000 £. 1 Both may be answered 
 in the affirmative. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 79 
 
 right was contested for some time on the part of 
 Mr. Hunt, who contended that his friendship 
 surpassed her love. 
 
 Byron compared this amiable dispute to that be- 
 tween Ajax and Ulysses, for the arms of Achilles, 
 and said, "What does Hunt want with it? He'll 
 only put it in a glass case and make sonnets on 
 it." Byron had heard also that Mrs. Williams 
 meant to preserve her husband's ashes in an urn. 
 His remark was, "Why, she'll make tea in it one 
 of these days." 
 
 These grim jokes were certainly ill-timed, but 
 are in character with the writer of the shipwreck 
 in Don Juan. 
 
 During several evenings we passed together, it 
 was a melancholy satisfaction to talk over all the 
 particulars of the wreck. It would seem that 
 Shelley had been insensible of the danger, as well 
 as Williams, for the boat was seen to have gone 
 down with every stitch of sail set, as proved after- 
 
80 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 wards, when it was found. Williams was a good 
 swimmer, and had no douht made strong efforts 
 for his life, having heen washed on the beach 
 partly undressed ; but Shelley had his hand locked 
 in his waistcoat, where he had in his haste thrust 
 a volume of Keats's poems, showing that he had 
 been reading to the last moment, and had not 
 made the slightest struggle to save himself. We 
 both agreed that he wished to die young, though 
 if years are to be measured by events, he had 
 lived, as he used to say, to a hundred. Shelley's 
 writings are prophetic of his destiny. He singularly 
 remarks : " The life of a man of talent, who should 
 die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own 
 feelings, longer than that of a miserable, priest- 
 ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. 
 The one has perpetually cultivated his mental 
 faculties — has rendered himself master of his 
 thoughts — can abstract and generalize amid the 
 lethargy of every-day business ; — the other can 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 81 
 
 slumber over the brightest moments of his being, 
 and is unable to remember the happiest hour of 
 his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys 
 a longer life than the tortoise." Byron did ample 
 justice to his talents and virtues, and we passed 
 in review the strange occurrences of his life, and 
 among the rest canvassed fully his Naples Ro- 
 mance. Byron thought, as Maddocks had done 
 in the Welch affair, that the whole was the effect 
 of an overwrought imagination. I am of a very 
 different opinion — for, however visionary Shelley 
 might be in his poetical theories, in the concerns 
 of life he always showed a particular sagacity and 
 rationality; for it was a curious anomaly in his 
 character, that, although he was extremely negli- 
 gent as to his own, there was no one to whom a 
 friend could better intrust his affairs, no one who 
 displayed more judgment, prudence, and caution 
 in their arrangement. This, Byron, who was not 
 a man of business, knew, and latterly, seldom 
 
82 MEMOIR OF SHELLEW 
 
 acted without having recourse to Shelley — whose 
 advice he generally adopted. We had much dis- 
 cussion about the c Liberal' then preparing. The 
 influence Shelley had over Byron, was proved in 
 nothing more than his being persuaded to join in 
 that review, the first idea of which was suggested 
 by Shelley for the benefit of Mr. Hunt. Byron, 
 by Shelley's death, found himself in a cleft stick 
 — was in honour bound, though " a contre cceur" 
 to lend his name to a periodical the fate of which 
 he foresaw. Had Shelley lived, it probably might 
 have been different ; though the tide of cant was 
 then running so strong, that the addition of even 
 his talent would hardly have availed to stem it. 
 Byron's friends were all hostile to the under- 
 taking : he himself never entered heartily into it, 
 and was not sorry to see it fail. He only wrote, 
 I believe, one prose article, that on ' My Grand- 
 mother's Review, the British,' and I am surprised 
 that Messrs. Moore and Murray, who have scraped 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 83 
 
 together every scrap, raked up the rags and 
 tatters and cinders of Byron, should have for- 
 gotten to give a place, in their castrated quartos,* 
 
 * I am at no loss to account for the inveteracy with which 
 I was assailed by the press, through the influence of the 
 all-mighty of bibliopolists, and the persevering attempts that 
 were for a time but too successfully exerted, to cast doubts 
 on the authenticity of Byron's ' Conversations.' Much credit 
 is due to the publisher for this very ingenious, and to him 
 useful policy. The fact is, that Messrs. Moore, Murray, and 
 Hobhouse looked upon Lord Byron as an heir-loom, as their 
 private property ; and were highly indignant that any one 
 should presume to know anything about their noble friend. 
 Considering how fond Lord Byron was of mystifying, it is most 
 singular that almost every anecdote contained in my Sketch 
 of his Life, should have been subsequently confirmed by his 
 letters or autobiography ; but I must consider it a remarkable 
 piece of effrontery that Mr. Moore should treat me as so far 
 dead in the world of letters, as, without any acknowledg- 
 ment, apology, or citation of the ' Conversations/ to strengthen 
 his diluted volumes with the most spiritual part of mine. 
 The communication from Goethe to me, he has taken upon 
 himself to extract, only changing a few words of my translation, 
 and omitting that of the Sonnet addressed by that much- 
 lamented poet to Lord Byron. The beautiful lines to the 
 Countess Guiccioli, and the Irish Avatara, and many of the 
 Epigrams, he has assumed to himself the same privilege of 
 adding to this edition ; and to the seventh volume, containing 
 the Juvenile Poems, has appended, with the signature E., (as 
 
 g2 
 
84 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to one of the most humorous of their noble cor- 
 respondent's jeux d esprit. 
 
 Byron, the most superstitious of beings, related 
 also the following story of Shelley, which I after- 
 wards heard confirmed. Shortly before his fatal 
 voyage to Leghorn, the inhabitants of the country 
 house at San Lorenzo were alarmed, at midnight, 
 by piercing shrieks. They rushed out of their 
 bed-rooms. Mrs. Shelley, who had miscarried a 
 few days before, got as far as the door and fainted. 
 
 his own notes,) several pages of my book, prefacing them with 
 " Lord Byron said— so and so." If such a gross violation of 
 literary property should be passed over, adieu to copyright. 
 
 Had I considered Mr. Moore's a real Life of Lord Byron — 
 had his materials been such as to enable him to say 
 
 Unde fit ut pateat veluti descripta tabella 
 
 Vita— 
 I should have felt the less indignant at this liberty ; or, even 
 had he acknowledged the source from which he had derived 
 his information, should have been the less inclined to object to 
 this piracy ; but, as nothing can be more imperfect, more 
 garbled, more timid and time-serving and oae-sided, than the 
 Memoirs so splendidly illustrated and vauntingly put forth to 
 the public, I am not willing to be silent on this topic. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 85 
 
 The rest of the party found Shelley in the saloon 
 with his eyes wide open, and gazing on vacancy, 
 as though he beheld some spectre. On waking 
 him, he related that he had had a vision. He 
 thought that a figure wrapped in a mantle came 
 to his bed-side, and beckoned to him. He got 
 up and followed it, and when in the hall, the 
 phantom lifted up the hood of his cloak, and 
 showed the phantasm of himself— and saying, 
 " Siete satisfatto" — vanished. 
 
 Shelley had been reading a strange drama, which 
 is supposed to have been written by Calderon, 
 entitled, El embozado, 6 el encapotado. It is so 
 scarce, that Washington Irving told me he had 
 sought for it without success in several of the 
 public libraries of Spain. The story is — that a kind 
 of Cipriano or Faust is through life thwarted in 
 all his plans for the acquisition of wealth, or 
 honour, or happiness, by a masked stranger, who 
 stands in his way like some Alastor or evil spirit. 
 
86 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 He is at length in love — the day is fixed for his 
 marriage, — when the unknown contrives to sow 
 dissension between him and his betrothed, and to 
 break off the match. Infuriate with his wrongs, 
 he breathes nothing but revenge, but all his at- 
 tempts to discover his mysterious foe prove abor- 
 tive : at length his persecutor appears of his own 
 accord. When about to fight, the Embozado un- 
 masks, and discovers the phantasm of himself, 
 saying, "Are you satisfied?" The hero of the play 
 dies with horror. 
 
 This play had worked strongly on Shelley's ima- 
 gination, and accounts for the awful scene at San 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 On the 22nd of August, I took my last leave of 
 Byron, to return to Geneva. I performed this 
 journey in a caratella, with relays of horses, a 
 mode of conveyance which Matthews, the Invalid, 
 had reason for recommending, for it enabled me 
 to make much more progress than I could have 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 87 
 
 done post. I shall not enter into my feelings 
 during this mournful pilgrimage to the sites of 
 my friends' funeral pyres, easily discoverable by 
 their ashes. I had another duty to perform, to 
 visit the country house, where they had passed their 
 Villegiatura. 
 
 From Sarzana to Lerici, there is only a cross 
 (and that a narrow) carriage road. After a some- 
 what difficult ascent of three miles, the caleche 
 set me down at a bye foot-path, which conducts 
 to San Lorenzo. The sky was perfectly cloudless, 
 and not a breath of air relieved the intense heat 
 of an Italian August sun. The day had been 
 unusually oppressive, and there was a mistiness in 
 the atmosphere, or rather a glow which softened 
 down the distances into those mellow tints in which 
 Claude delighted to bathe his landscapes. I was 
 little in a mood to enjoy the beauties which in- 
 creased every moment during this walk. I followed 
 mechanically a pathway overhung with trellised 
 
88 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 vines, and bordered with olive trees, contrasted 
 here and there with the massy broad dark foliage 
 of the fig tree. For a mile or two I continued to 
 ascend, till on a sudden a picture burst on my 
 view, that no pen could describe. Before me was 
 the broad expanse of the Mediterranean, studded 
 with islands and a few fishing boats, with their 
 lattine sail?, the sun's broad disk just dipping in 
 the waves ; thick groves of fruit trees, interspersed 
 with cottages and villas sloped down to the shores 
 of the gulph of Spezia : and safely land-locked, a 
 little to the left, Lerici, with its white fiat-roofed 
 houses almost in the sea, stood in the centre, and 
 followed the curve of this bay; the two promon- 
 tories projecting from which were surmounted with 
 castles for the protection of the coast, and the 
 enforcing of the quarantine laws. The descent 
 now became rapid and broken, and, deeply worn 
 into the rock, only offered occasional glimpses of 
 the sea, the two islets in front, and the varied 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 89 
 
 coast of Porto Venere to the right. I now came 
 in sight of San Lorenzo, a village, or rather a 
 miserable collection of windowless black huts, 
 piled one above the other, inclosed within barren 
 rocks that overhang and encircle it. The place is 
 inhabited solely by fishermen and their families, 
 on the female part of whom devolves (as is com- 
 mon in Italy) the principal labour, However 
 ungraceful in itself, the peasantry of this part of 
 Italy have some peculiarity of costume ; but the 
 women of San Lorenzo are in a savage state of 
 nature — perfect Ichthyophagi ; their long coal- 
 black hair trails in greasy strings, unwashed and 
 uncombed, over their faces, and some of these 
 fiendish-looking creatures had not even fastened 
 it in a knot behind the head, but suffered it to 
 hang half way down their backs. They had 
 neither shoes nor stockings, and the rags which 
 scarcely hid their deformity, were strongly im- 
 pregnated with the effluvia of the fish they carried 
 
§0 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 on their bare heads to the neighbouring markets. 
 Their children were just such meagre yellow imps 
 as, from such mothers, and filth, and poverty of 
 food, might be supposed. The men I did not see. 
 
 Between this village and Lerici, but nearer to 
 the former, was pointed out to me the solitary villa 
 or palazzo, as it was called, which was about to 
 waken in me so many bitter recollections. It is 
 built immediately upon the shore, and consists 
 of one story ; — the ground floor, when the Libeccio 
 set strongly in, must have been washed by the 
 waves. 
 
 A deaf unfeeling old wretch, a woman who 
 had the care of the house, and had witnessed all 
 the desolation of which it had been the scene, with 
 a savage unconcern and much garrulity, -gave a 
 dry narrative of the story as she led me through 
 the apartment. 
 
 Below was a large unpaved sort of entrance 
 hall, without doors or windows, where lay the 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 91 
 
 small flat-bottomed boat or skiff, much shattered, 
 of which I have already spoken. It was the same 
 my poor friends had on the Serchio. Against the 
 wall, and scattered about the floor, were oars, and 
 fragments of spars and masts, some of which had 
 been cast on shore from the wreck : they told too 
 well the tale of woe. 
 
 A dark and somewhat perpendicular staircase 
 now led us to the only floor that remained. It 
 reminded me somewhat in its arrangement of an 
 Indian Bungalow : the walls white-washed — the 
 rooms, now without furniture, consisted of a saloon 
 with eight doors, and four chambers at the four 
 corners : this, with the exception of a terrace in. 
 front, was the whole house. This verandah, which 
 ran the whole length of the villa, was of consider- 
 able width, and the view from it, of a magical 
 and supernatural beauty. 
 
 There was now a calm desolation in the un- 
 rippled marble of the sea, that reminded me, in its 
 
92 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 contrast, of the days and nights of tempest and 
 horror which Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Shelley 
 experienced, balanced between hope and fear for 
 the fate of their devoted husbands — fancying now 
 that every sail would bring them to their homes, 
 and now, that, in the roaring of every wave, they 
 could discover their drowning cries. I could pic- 
 ture to myself the ghastly smile with which 
 Trelawney related the finding of their corpses — 
 the torpor and unconsciousness of Mrs. Williams, 
 the sublime firmness of Mrs. Shelley, contrasted 
 with her frame, worn out with sickness — their 
 children, too young to be sensible of their loss, 
 clasped in their despairing and widowed mothers' 
 arms. All this rushed upon my imagination, and, 
 insensible to the heat or fatigue of the ascent, 
 I found myself, scarcely knowing how, where 
 my caleche was waiting for me ; — and it was 
 midnight, and after a twenty-two hours' jour- 
 ney, more harassing in mind and body than I 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 93 
 
 had ever experienced, that I reached the inn at 
 Spezia. 
 
 Shelley though an outcast from his family, 
 the continual object of the persecution of the 
 press, and a mark for the calumny and detraction 
 of the world, imbibed none of the gloom and 
 misanthropy common to little minds : on the 
 contrary, we can trace in his works no anger 
 or dissatisfaction with the world — none of the 
 fret or fever of disappointed ambition : every line 
 he wrote breathes a spirit of benevolence, a love 
 for the whole creation, animate and inanimate. 
 Almost any but a Promethean spirit would have 
 sunk under the weight of his misfortunes and 
 injuries, and that past events should occasionally 
 cast their shadows over him, was natural; but 
 nothing could long ruffle the azure and calm 
 depths of his soul. 
 
 Shelley had at command the same weapons 
 which Byron used : but he disdained the arm of 
 
94 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 satire, and treated his critics with a nohle scorn ; 
 he says to one of them — 
 
 The grass may grow in wintry weather 
 As soon as hate in me. 
 
 Byron had more of the cynicism of Apemantus 
 than the real sense of injury that drove Tim on 
 into misanthropy. This is perceptible in all his 
 writings — that Shelley could wield a lash of bronze 
 for others, he proved in Adonais, and not except- 
 ing even the strongest lines of our English Juvenal, 
 Churchill, perhaps the stanzas on Keats 's Re- 
 viewer cut nearer to the bone than any in our 
 language. Among the few satirical poems he 
 wrote, was one on the Court of Chancery, on 
 being robbed of his children; but, great as his 
 wrongs were, even this he never published, though 
 it should have found a place among his posthumous 
 works. This satire was an abstraction, but of awful 
 power. 
 
 His longest satirical work was a comic drama 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 95 
 
 in imitation of Aristophanes, entitled, ' (Edipus 
 Tyrannus ; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant.' It was 
 printed somewhere in the City, and suppressed on 
 the day of publication by the desire of the then 
 Lord Mayor, who was acquainted with a friend 
 of Shelley's, who had superintended the press. 
 Many passages in this drama are parodied from 
 Sophocles, and the choruses are truly Aristophanic. 
 The Queen is there designated by Pasiphae, and, 
 like Io, persecuted by a swarm of gad-flies, mean- 
 ing her spies and informers. The chorus, which 
 traces her wanderings over the world, is very 
 humorous, and, in parts, full of poetry, and begins 
 
 thus : — 
 
 With a Ha, and a Hum, 
 We come ! we come ! 
 .> From the ends of the earth — 
 
 In some of the scenes, the swinish multitude are 
 introduced before the monarch. But I have alto- 
 gether forgotten the plot. 
 
 Yet, though Shelley despised the sort of criti- 
 
96 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 cism with which he was all his life assailed, he 
 was not insensible to the injustice of the world. 
 But what could he expect from the reviewers, after 
 telling them almost in the outset of his career 
 that the system of reviewing was incompatible 
 with poetry, and sprung up in that torpid interval 
 when poetry was not ; — that Longinus and Homer 
 could never have existed together, &c. — was it not 
 natural that he should be attacked? Yet, writing 
 with the hell of reviews before his eyes, nothing 
 could ever induce him to throw a bone to the 
 Cerberuses — to change one tittle or iota, in order 
 to deprecate their animosity. Nor was it vanity 
 or longing after fame, the common incentives of 
 authors, which made him continue to publish. 
 However visionary might be Shelley's theories of 
 reform, they sprung from a mind in which selfish- 
 ness never entered — a mind ardently devoted to 
 what he considered the vital interests of humanity. 
 I look upon most of his poems to be a comment 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 97 
 
 on the Phaedo and Republic of Plato, and that 
 they have a tendency to promote liberty, and with 
 it that greatest and best of truths, the immortality 
 of the soul. The sincerity of his opinions, how- 
 ever erroneous, was proved by the willingness 
 with which he submitted to obloquy and reproach, 
 in order to inculcate them. Shelley attributed 
 the vice and misery of mankind — the degradation 
 of the many for the benefit of the few — to an 
 unnatural state of society, — to a general misgovern- 
 ment in its rulers, — to the superstition and bigotry 
 of a mercenary and insincere priesthood. With 
 a poet's eye he foresaw a millennium — the per- 
 fectability of the human race, when man would be 
 happy, free, high, and majestical. 
 
 Pure and moral himself, loving virtue for her 
 own sake, and not from fear, he thought no other 
 ties were necessary than the restraints imposed 
 by a consciousness of right and wrong implanted 
 in our natures, and could not see that in the pre- 
 
 H 
 
98 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 sent state of the world, and in the default of 
 education, such a system was fallacious. 
 
 His tenets, therefore, should have heen looked 
 at as those of Owen of Lanark are with us, or 
 those of St. -Simon in France, as the aspirations 
 of the philanthropist ; and the critic might have 
 said with Maddalo — 
 
 You talk Utopias, 
 
 instead of calumniating the man, and attributing 
 to his speculations the desire of corrupting youth, 
 which could be as little said of him as it was 
 untrue of Socrates. Besides, it should have been 
 considered that works so abstruse, so subtle, so 
 profound and metaphysical, are far beyond the 
 capacities of the many, and can only be thoroughly 
 comprehended by those who have made the 
 Platonic philosophy the study of their lives. Even 
 the Quarterly reviewers, in 1810, confessed that 
 there was no danger in his writings. 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 99 
 
 Shelley lived in a world of his own, and, be- 
 lieving with Berkley only in the existence of mind, 
 it was with an effort to himself that he descended 
 to matter and the realities of life ; — hence, he 
 used to say, that ' The Cenci' was a heavy task, 
 and produced with infinite labour. Yet he proved 
 in that tragedy no less an acquaintance with the 
 workings of the human mind than he had done 
 in displaying the secret springs of nature. He 
 laboured at his ' Charles I. ' for months, and yet 
 made little progress, whilst ' The Revolt of Islam' 
 only occupied six months, and the ' Prometheus 
 Unbound' fewer weeks. 
 
 It was said of Heraclitus, by Socrates, that 
 where he understood his works he found them 
 magnificent, and where he did not, he supposed 
 them to be equally so. Thus, the subtilty of 
 Shelley's poetry escapes from common intellects 
 — the brilliancy of his ideas, the prodigality of 
 his imagination, is lost on common minds. His 
 h2 
 
100 
 
 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 talents were developed by an unwearied and un- 
 ceasing cultivation. Poetry was not the amuse- 
 ment, it was the serious occupation of his life — 
 the object of his waking and dreaming thoughts. 
 He exercised the severest self-criticism on every 
 thing he wrote, and his MSS., like that of Tasso 
 at Ferrara, are scarcely decipherable. It has been 
 supposed also, that Byron improvised his poems. 
 This is a great mistake, and I am told, that in 
 the proofs sent him, he made what the painters 
 call innumerable " Pentimentos." 
 
 Shelley, as a poet, stands alone. He is to be 
 tried by the test of no other writer. Like Byron, 
 he belongs to no school. The world now begins 
 to do him justice, and assign him the place he 
 deserves — a niche by the side of his friend. Byron 
 could set bounds to his imagination, control it at 
 will. Shelley was carried away by his. Byron 
 shuddered at the name of Swift, and was always, 
 but without cause, terrified at the idea of ending 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 101 
 
 life in madness or idiotism. Insanity hung as by 
 a hair suspended over the head of Shelley. 
 
 The Greeks were right about Trophonius's Cave. 
 No man was ever a great poet who had not, as 
 Shakspeare says, a fine frenzy. Almost all Shel- 
 ley's and Byron's finest things were written under 
 the effects of a temporary derangement. Perhaps 
 few will agree with me in thinking Shelley the 
 second master spirit of the age. His creations 
 remind me of the ideal beauty of some of Ra- 
 phael's Madonnas; — Byron's, of Titian's Venuses. 
 Shelley's figures possess all the classical truth that 
 distinguished Nicholas Poussin's, whilst his land- 
 scapes combine Martin's wild imaginations with 
 Turner's gorgeous sunsets filled with deepening 
 gold. Byron could be a Salvator or a Claude. 
 Both, like Guido, could give to every subject 
 they touched a portion of their own elastic minds 
 — convert everything into beauty. Neither Byron 
 nor Shelley would have been the poets they were, 
 
102 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 but for a certain poetical education. They both 
 drank their inspiration from true and pure sources 
 — from all the wild and the wonderful and the 
 beautiful of nature. The memory of Switzerland 
 was ineffaceable in both. In his books Shelley 
 used to scrawl pines and alpine summit raised 
 upon alpine summit, only to be scaled by the 
 Oceanides, with some spectral being stalking from 
 peak to peak. 
 
 It was the imagination directed the pen, and 
 he was himself unconscious of what he was 
 tracing. It was said of De Lamartine and De- 
 lavigne, that if one could have swallowed the other, 
 they would have made the greatest (I do not mean 
 in size) of French Poets. So with Shelley and 
 Byron: each wanted what the other possessed, 
 to have made a paragon. 
 
 It is to be lamented that Shelley did not live 
 to complete his 'Triumph of Life/ composed in 
 the fatal gulph of Spezia, or in the caverns that 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 103 
 
 indent that romantic coast. It is unhappily a 
 fragment, and, in its present arrangement, very 
 obscure. He has proved that, in his hands at 
 least, ' Terza Rima' is well adapted to our lan- 
 guage. I made a singular discovery some time ago 
 in reading a favourite author of mine, Cardan — 
 that this vision of Shelley's, by a strange coinci- 
 dence (for I am convinced he never saw the 
 work), should have been nearly the same as Car- 
 dan's, as will be seen by the following extracts: — 
 
 Methinks I sate beside a public way, 
 
 And a great stream 
 Of people there were hurrying to and fro, 
 All hastening onward, but none seemed to know 
 Whither : 
 Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, 
 
 With steps towards the tomb. 
 
 Cardan, in his chaste Latinity, says — 
 " Illuscente Aurora, visus sum toto humano 
 genere, maximaque turba mulierum, non solum 
 ac virorum sed puerorum atque infantium, juxta 
 
104 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 radicem montis qui mihi a dextera erat, currere. 
 Cum, admiratione captus, unum a turba interro- 
 garem, quonam omnes tarn prsecipiti cursu ten- 
 deremus ; Ad mortem, respondit." 
 
 It is to be lamented that no bust or portrait 
 exists of Shelley, though the infinite versatility 
 and play of his features would have baffled either 
 sculpture or painting. His frame was a mere tene- 
 ment for spirit, and in every gesture and lineament 
 showed that intellectual beauty which animated 
 him. There was in him a spirit which seemed to 
 defy time, and suffering, and misfortune. He was 
 twenty-nine when he died, but he might have been 
 taken for nineteen. His features were small; the 
 upper part not strictly regular. The lower had 
 a Grecian contour. He did not look so tall as 
 he was, his shoulders being a little bent by study 
 and ill health. Like Socrates, he united the 
 gentleness of the lamb with the wisdom of the 
 serpent — the playfulness of the boy with the pro- 
 
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 105 
 
 foundness of the philosopher. In argument he 
 was irresistible, always calm and unruffled; and 
 in eloquence surpassed all men I have ever con- 
 versed with. Byron was so sensible of his in- 
 ability to cope with him, that he always avoided 
 coming to any trial of their strength; for Shelley 
 was what Byron could not be, a close, logical and 
 subtle reasoner, much of which he owed to Plato, 
 whose writings he used to call the model of a 
 prose style. 
 
 He was not likely to have lived long. His 
 health had been impaired by what he had under- 
 gone, and by the immoderate use he at one time 
 made of laudanum. He was, besides, narrow- 
 chested, and subject to a complaint which, from 
 day to day, might have cut him off. Its tortures 
 were excruciating, but, during his worst spasms, 
 I never saw him peevish or out of humour — 
 indeed, as an Italian said to me, he was veramente 
 un angelo. 
 
106 MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But thou art fled, 
 Like some fair exhalation, — 
 The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, 
 The child of grace and genius : 
 Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 
 Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee 
 Been purest ministers ; who are, alas ! 
 Now thou art not. 
 
 These affecting lines would have furnished his 
 most appropriate epitaph. I have never been 
 able to read them without applying them to Shel- 
 ley, or his tribute to the memory of Keats, with- 
 out, under the name of Adonais, impersonating 
 the companion of my youth. There was, unhappily, 
 too much similarity in the destinies of Keats and 
 Shelley: both were victims to persecution — both 
 were marked out for the envenomed shafts of in- 
 vidious critics — and both now sleep together in a 
 foreign land. Peace to their manes ! 
 
POEMS AND PAPERS 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
INVOCATION TO MISERY. 
 
 Come, be happy !— sit by me, 
 Shadow-vested Misery : 
 Coy, unwilling, silent bride, 
 Mourning in thy robe of pride, 
 Desolation — deified ! 
 
 Come, be happy ! — sit near me : 
 Sad as I may seem to thee, 
 I am happier far than thou, 
 Lady, whose imperial brow 
 Is endiademed with woe. 
 
110 INVOCATION TO MISERY. 
 
 Misery! we have known each other, 
 Like a sister and a brother 
 Living in the same lone home, 
 Many years — we must live some 
 Years and ages yet to come. 
 
 'Tis an evil lot, and yet 
 Let us make the most of -it ; 
 If love lives when pleasure dies, 
 We will love, till in our eyes 
 This heart's Hell seem Paradise. 
 
 Come, be happy ! — lie thee down 
 On the fresh grass newly mown, 
 Where the Grasshopper doth sing 
 Merrily — one joyous thing 
 In a world of sorrowing ! 
 
INVOCATION TO MISERY. HI 
 
 There our tent shall be the willow, 
 And thine arm shall be my pillow ; 
 Sounds and odours sorrowful 
 Because they once were sweet, shall lull 
 Us to slumber, deep and dull. 
 
 Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter 
 With a love thou darest not utter. 
 
 Thou art murmuring, thou art weeping, 
 Whilst my burning bosom 's leaping. 
 
 Kiss me ; — oh ! thy lips are cold : 
 Round my neck thine arms enfold— - 
 They are soft, but chill and dead ; 
 And thy tears upon my head 
 Burn like points of frozen lead. 
 
112 INVOCATION TO MISERY. 
 
 Hasten to the bridal bed — 
 Underneath the grave 'tis spread : 
 In darkness may our love be hid, 
 Oblivion be our coverlid — 
 We may rest, and none forbid. 
 
 Clasp me till our hearts be grown 
 Like two lovers into one ; 
 Till this dreadful transport may 
 Like a vapour fade away, 
 In the sleep that lasts alway. 
 
 We may dream, in that long sleep, 
 That we are not those who weep ; 
 E'en as Pleasure dreams of thee, 
 Life-deserting Misery, 
 Thou mayst dream of her with me. 
 
INVOCATION TO MISERY. 113 
 
 Let us laugh, and make our mirth, 
 At the shadows of the earth, 
 As dogs bay the moonlight clouds, 
 That, like spectres wrapt in shrouds, 
 Pass o'er night in multitudes. 
 
 All the wide world beside us 
 Are like multitudinous 
 Shadows shifting from a scene — 
 What but mockery may they mean ? 
 Where am I ? — Where thou hast been, 
 
[ 114] 
 
 AN ARIETTE FOR MUSIC. 
 
 TO A LADY SINGING TO HER ACCOMPANIMENT ON 
 THE GUITAR. 
 
 As the moon's soft splendour 
 O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven 
 Is thrown, 
 So thy voice most tender 
 To the strings without soul has given 
 Its own. 
 
 The stars will awaken, 
 Though the moon sleep a full hour later 
 To-night : 
 No leaf will be shaken 
 Whilst the dews of thy melody scatter 
 Delight. 
 
ARIETTE FOR MUSIC. 115 
 
 Though the sound overpowers, 
 Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing 
 A tone 
 Of some world far from ours, 
 Where music and moonlight and feeling 
 Are one. 
 
 [Note. — This Ariette has been very beautifully set to music 
 by Mr. Henry Lincoln.] 
 
 LINES 
 
 WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH 
 ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 Corpses are cold in the tomb ; 
 Stones on the pavement are dumb ; 
 Abortions are dead in the womb, — 
 And their mothers look pale, like the white shore 
 Of Albion, free no more ! 
 
116 WRITTEN DURING THE 
 
 Her sons are as stones in the way ; 
 
 They are masses of senseless clay ; 
 
 They are trodden, and move not away ;- 
 
 The abortion with which she travaileth, 
 
 Is Liberty, smitten to death. 
 
 Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor ! 
 For thy victim is no redresser ; 
 Thou art sole lord and possessor 
 Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions — they pave 
 Thy path to the grave. 
 
 Hearest thou the festal din 
 Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin, 
 And Wealth crying HavocJc ! within ? 
 5 Tis the Bacchanal triumph which makes truth 
 dumb — 
 Thine Epithalamium ! 
 
CASTLEREAGH ADMmiSTRATION. 117 
 
 Aye, marry thy ghastly wife ! 
 Let Fear, and Disgust, and Strife, 
 Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life : 
 Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant ! and God be thy guide 
 To the bed of thy bride J 
 
 WITH A GUITAR. 
 
 The artist who this idol wrought, 
 To echo all harmonious thought, 
 Felled a tree, while on the steep 
 The winds were in their winter sleep, 
 Rocked in that repose divine 
 On the wind-swept Apennine ; 
 And dreaming some of Autumn past, 
 And some of Spring approaching fast, 
 And some of April buds and showers, 
 And some of songs in July bowers, 
 
118 WITH A GUITAR. 
 
 And all of love ; and so this tree, — 
 
 O that such our death may be ! — 
 
 Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 
 
 To live in happier form again ; 
 
 From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 
 
 The artist wrought that loved Guitar, 
 
 And taught it justly to reply, 
 
 To all who question skilfully, 
 
 In language gentle as its own, 
 
 Whispering in enamoured tone 
 
 Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
 
 And summer winds in sylvan cells ; 
 
 For it had learnt all harmonies 
 
 Of the plains and of the skies, 
 
 Of the forests and the mountains, 
 
 And the many-voiced fountains ; 
 
 The clearest echoes of the hills, 
 
 The softest notes of falling rills, 
 
 The melodies of birds and bees, 
 
 The murmuring of summer seas, 
 
WITH A GUITAR. 119 
 
 And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 
 And airs of evening ; and it knew 
 That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 
 Which, driven in its diurnal round, 
 As it floats through boundless day, 
 Our world enkindles on its way — 
 All this it knows, but will not tell 
 To those who cannot question well 
 The spirit that inhabits it. 
 It talks according to the wit 
 Of its companions ; and no more 
 Is heard than has been felt before, 
 By those who tempt it to betray 
 These secrets of an elder day : 
 But sweetly as its answers will 
 Flatter hands of perfect skill, 
 It keeps its highest, holiest tone, 
 For our beloved friend alone. 
 
[ 120 ] 
 
 THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER 
 PATIENT.* 
 
 Sleep on ! sleep on! forget thy pain : 
 
 My hand is on thy brow, 
 My spirit on thy brain ; 
 My pity on thy heart, poor friend ; 
 
 And from my fingers flow 
 The powers of life, and like a sign, 
 
 Seal thee from thine hour of woe ; 
 And brood on thee, but may not blend 
 With thine. 
 
 * See the Memoir, page 65, 
 
MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT. 121 
 
 Sleep on ! sleep on ! I love thee not ; 
 
 But when I think that he 
 Who made and makes my lot 
 As full of flowers as thine of weeds, 
 
 Might have been lost like thee ; 
 And that a hand which was not mine, 
 
 Might then have chased his agony 
 As I another's — my heart bleeds 
 For thine. 
 
 Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of 
 
 The dead and the unborn : 
 Forget thy life and woe; 
 Forget that thou must wake for ever ; 
 
 Forget the world's dull scorn ; 
 Forget lost health, and the divine 
 
 Feelings that die in youth's brief morn ; 
 And forget me, for I can never 
 Be thine. 
 
122 MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT. 
 
 Like a cloud big with a May shower, 
 
 My soul weeps healing rain, 
 On thee, thou withered flower ; 
 It breathes mute music on thy sleep ; 
 
 Its odour calms thy brain ! 
 Its light within thy gloomy breast 
 
 Speaks like a second youth again. 
 By mine thy being is to its deep 
 Possest. 
 
 The spell is done. How feel you now ? 
 
 Better — Quite well, replied 
 The sleeper. — What would do 
 You good when suffering and awake ? 
 
 What cure your head and side ? — 
 'T would kill me what would cure my pain ; 
 
 And as I must on earth abide 
 Awhile, yet tempt me not to break 
 My chain. 
 
123 
 
 TO THE QUEEN OF MY HEART. 
 
 Shall we roam, my love, 
 To the twilight grove, 
 
 When the moon is rising bright ; 
 Oh, I '11 whisper there, 
 In the cool night-air, 
 
 What I dare not in broad day-light ! 
 
 I '11 tell thee a part 
 
 Of the thoughts that start 
 
 To being when thou art nigh j 
 And thy beauty, more bright 
 Than the stars' soft light, 
 
 Shall seem as a weft from the sky. 
 
124 TO THE QUEEN 
 
 When the pale moonbeam 
 On tower and stream 
 
 Sheds a flood of silver sheen, 
 How I love to gaze 
 As the cold ray strays 
 
 O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen ! 
 
 Wilt thou roam with me 
 To the restless sea, 
 
 And linger upon the steep, 
 And list to the flow 
 Of the waves below 
 
 How they toss and roar and leap? 
 
 Those boiling waves 
 And the storm that raves 
 
 At night o'er their foaming crest, 
 Resemble the strife 
 That, from earliest life, 
 
 The passions have waged in my breast. 
 
OF MY HEART. 125 
 
 Oh, come then and rove 
 To the sea or the grove 
 
 When the moon is rising bright, 
 And I '11 whisper there 
 In the cool night-air 
 
 What I dare not in broad day-light. 
 
 SIMILES. 
 
 As from an ancestral oak 
 
 Two empty ravens sound their clarion, 
 Yell by yell, and croak by croak, 
 When they scent the noonday smoke 
 
 Of fresh human carrion : — 
 
 As two gibbering night birds flit 
 From their bowers of deadly hue, 
 
 Through the night to frighten it, 
 
 When the morn is in a fit, 
 
 And the stars are none, or few : — 
 
126 SIMILES. 
 
 As a shark and dog-fish wait 
 
 Under an Atlantic isle, 
 For the negro-ship, whose freight . 
 Is the theme of their debate, 
 
 Wrinkling their red gills the while — 
 
 Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, 
 
 Two scorpions under one wet stone, 
 Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, 
 Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, 
 Two vipers tangled into one. 
 
[ 127 ] 
 
 THE COLISEUM. 
 
 A FRAGMENT.* 
 
 At the hour of noon, on the feast of the Pass- 
 over, an old man, accompanied by a girl, appa- 
 rently his daughter, entered the Coliseum at Rome. 
 They immediately passed through the arena, and, 
 seeking a solitary chasm among the arches of the 
 southern part of the ruin, selected a fallen column 
 for their seat, and, clasping each other's hands, sate 
 in silent contemplation of the scene. But the 
 eyes of the girl were fixed upon her father's 
 lips : his countenance, sublime and sweet, but mo- 
 tionless as some Praxitelian image of the greatest 
 of poets, filled the air with smiles reflected from 
 external forms. 
 
 It was the great feast of the Resurrection, and 
 the whole native population, together with the 
 foreigners, who flock from all parts of the earth to 
 contemplate its celebration, were assembled round 
 
 * This is the fragment referred to in the Memoir, p. 51. 
 
128 THE COLISEUM. 
 
 the Vatican. The most awful religion in the world 
 went forth surrounded with the emblazonry of 
 mortal greatness, and mankind had assembled to 
 wonder at and worship the creation of its own 
 power. No stranger was to be met with in the 
 avenues that led to the Coliseum. Accident had 
 conducted the father and daughter to the spot 
 immediately on their arrival. 
 
 A figure, only visible at Rome in night or soli- 
 tude, and then only to be seen amid the desolated 
 temples of the Forum, or gliding among the gal- 
 leries of the Coliseum, or the ruined arches of 
 the Baths of Caracalla, crossed their path. 
 
 His form, that, though emaciated, displayed the 
 elementary outline of exquisite grace, was enveloped 
 in an ancient chlamys, which half concealed his 
 face. It was a face, once seen, never to be for- 
 gotten. The lips and the moulding of the chin 
 resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness 
 of the shapes of Antinous ; but, instead of the 
 effeminate sullenness of the eye, and the narrow 
 smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of 
 profound and piercing thought. His brow was 
 clear and open, and his eyes deep, and like two 
 wells of crystalline water which reflect the all- 
 
THE COLISEUM. 129 
 
 beholding heavens. Over all was spread a timid 
 expression of diffidence and retirement, which in- 
 termingled strangely with the abstract and fearless 
 character which predominated in his form and 
 gestures.f He avoided, in an extraordinary de- 
 gree, what is called society, but was occasionally 
 seen to converse with some accomplished foreigner, 
 whose appearance might attract him in his solemn 
 haunts. He spoke Italian with fluency, though 
 with a peculiar but sweet accent. There was no 
 circumstance connected with him that gave the 
 least intimation of his country, his origin, or his 
 occupations. He was for ever alone. 
 
 Such was the figure which interrupted the con- 
 templation (if they were so engaged) of the 
 strangers, in the clear and exact, but unidiomatic 
 phrase of their native language. 
 
 " Strangers, you are two — behold the third in 
 this great city, to whom alone the spectacle of 
 these ruins is more delightful than the pageantry 
 of religion." 
 
 " I see nothing," said the old man. 
 
 t There never was drawn a more perfect portrait of Shelley 
 himself. 
 
130 THE COLISEUM. 
 
 " What do you hear, then ?" 
 
 " I listen to the sweet singing of the birds, the 
 humming of the bees, which, and the sound of 
 my daughter's breathing, compose me like the soft 
 murmur of waters ; and this sun-warm wind is 
 pleasant to me." 
 
 " Wretched old man ! know you not that these 
 are the ruins of the Coliseum?" 
 
 " Alas, stranger !" said the girl, in a voice like 
 mournful music : " speak not so, my father is 
 blind." 
 
 The stranger's eyes now suddenly filled with 
 tears, and the lines of his countenance became 
 relaxed. 
 
 "Blind!" he exclaimed, in a tone of suffering 
 which was more than an apology, and seated 
 himself apart on a flight of shallow and mossy 
 steps, which wound up among the labyrinths of 
 the ruin. 
 
 "My sweet Helen," said the old man, "you 
 did not tell me that this was the Coliseum." 
 
 "How should I tell you, dearest father, what 
 I knew not ? I was on the point of inquiring the 
 way to that building when we entered the circle 
 of the ruins ; and until the stranger accosted us, I 
 
THE COLISEUM. 131 
 
 remained silent, subdued by the greatness of what 
 I saw." 
 
 "'Tis your custom, sweetest girl, to describe 
 to me the objects that give you delight; you array 
 them in the soft radiance of your words; and whilst 
 you speak, I only feel the infirmity which holds 
 me in such dear diffidence as a blessing. Why 
 have you been so long silent ?" 
 
 u I know not. First, the wonder and the pleasure 
 of the sight; then, the words of the stranger, and 
 then thinking on what he said, and how he looked ; 
 and now, beloved father, on your own words." 
 
 "Well, dearest, what do you see?" 
 
 " I see a vast circle of arches built upon arches, 
 and stones like shattered crags, so vast are they, 
 and walls giddily hanging — totteringly : — on walls. 
 In the crevices and in the vaulted roofs, grows a 
 multitude of shrubs : the wild olive, the myrtle, 
 and the jasmine, and intricate brambles, and en- 
 tangled weeds, and strange feathery plants like 
 dishevelled hair, such as I never saw before. The 
 stones are immensely massive, and they jut out 
 from each other like mountain cliffs. There are 
 terrible rifts in the walls and high windows, through 
 which is seen the light of the blue heavens. There 
 
132 THE COLISEUM. 
 
 seem to me more than a thousand arches, some 
 ruined, some entire, and they are all immensely 
 high and wide. Some are broken, and stand forth 
 in great heaps, and the underwood is tufted in 
 their crumbling fragments. Around us lie enor- 
 mous collections of shattered and shapeless capitals 
 and cornices, loaded with delicate sculpture." 
 
 " It is open to the sky," said the old man. 
 
 " We see the liquid depth of heaven above, and 
 through the rifts and the windows, the flowers 
 and the weeds and the grass and creeping moss, 
 are nourished by the unforbidden rain. The blue 
 sky is above — the wide bright blue sky ; it flows 
 through the great rifts on high, and through the 
 bare boughs of the marble-rooted fig-tree, and 
 through the leaves and flowers of the weeds, even 
 to the dark arcades beneath. I feel, I see it — 
 its clear and piercing beams fill the universe and 
 impregnate the joy-inspiring wind with warmth 
 and light and life, and interpenetrate all things, 
 even me, father. And through the highest rift, 
 the noonday waning moon is hanging, as it were, 
 out of the solid sky: and this shows that the 
 atmosphere has the clearness which it rejoices me 
 that I feel." 
 
THE COLISEUM. 133 
 
 " Dearest child, what else see you ?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Nothing?" 
 
 " Only the bright, green, mossy ground inter- 
 spersed with tufts of dewy clover-grass, that run 
 into the interstices of the shattered arches, and 
 round the isolated pinnacles of the ruins." 
 
 " Like those lawny dells of soft short grass which 
 wind among the high forests and precipices of the 
 Alps of Savoy."* 
 
 " Indeed, father, your eye has a vision more 
 serene than mine." 
 
 " And the great wrecked arches, the shattered 
 masses of precipitous ruin overgrown with the 
 younglings of the forest, and more like chasms 
 rent by earthquakes among the mountains, than 
 the vestige of what was human workmanship." 
 
 "What are they?" 
 
 " Things awe-inspiring and wonderful — are they 
 not caverns such as the untamed elephant and 
 
 * Shelley on visiting Meillerie, says, " Groves of pine, chesnut, 
 and walnut, overshadow it ; magnificent and unbounded forests, 
 to which England affords no parallel. In the midst of these 
 woods are dells of lawny expanse inconceivably verdant, 
 adorned with a thousand of the rarest floweFs, and odorous 
 with thyme." 
 
134 THE COLISEUM. 
 
 tigress might choose amid the Indian wildernesses 
 where to hide their cubs — such as, were the sea to 
 overflow the earth, the mighty monsters of the 
 deep would change into their vast chambers V* 
 
 " Father, your words image forth what I would 
 have expressed, but could not." 
 
 "I hear the rustling of leaves, and the sound 
 of water — but it does not rain — like the faint drops 
 of a fountain among woods." 
 
 " It falls from among the heaps of ruin over 
 our heads. It is, I suppose, the water collected 
 in the rifts from the showers." 
 
 " A nursling of man now abandoned by his care, 
 and transformed by the enchantment of Nature 
 into a likeness of her own creations, and destined 
 to partake their immortality. Changed to a moun- 
 tain cloven into woody dells, which overhang its 
 labyrinthine glades, and shattered into toppling 
 precipices, even the clouds, intercepted by its craggy 
 summits, supply eternal fountains with their rain." 
 
 " By the column on which we sit, I should judge 
 that it had once been crowned with a temple or 
 theatre, and that in sacred days the radiant mul- 
 titude wound up its craggy path to the spectacle 
 or the sacrifice." 
 
 i 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 135 
 
 " It was such, Helen — What sound of wings 
 is that?" 
 
 " It is of the wild pigeons returning to their 
 young. Do you not hear the murmur of those that 
 are brooding in their nests?" 
 
 " It is the language of their happiness." 
 
 THE AGE OF PERICLES: 
 
 WITH CRITICAL NOTICES OF THE SCULPTURE IN 
 THE FLORENCE GALLERY. 
 
 The period which intervened between the birth 
 of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubt- 
 edly, whether considered in itself, or with reference 
 to the effects which it produced upon the subse- 
 quent destinies of civilized man, the most me- 
 morable in the history of the world. What was 
 the combination of moral and political circum- 
 stances which produced so unparalleled a progress 
 during that period in literature and the arts; — 
 why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so 
 soon received a check, and became retrograde, — are 
 problems left to the wonder and conjecture of 
 
136 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those 
 subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine 
 statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and 
 perfection of the whole. Then very language, — a 
 type of the understanding, of which it was the 
 creation and the image, — in variety, in simplicity, 
 in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other 
 language of the western world. Their sculptures 
 are such as, in our perception, assume to be the 
 models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which, 
 no artist of modern times can produce forms in 
 any degree comparable. Their paintings, according 
 to Pausanias, were full of delicacy and harmony; 
 and some were powerfully pathetic, so as to awaken, 
 like tender music or tragic poetry, the most over- 
 whelming emotions. We are accustomed to con- 
 sider the painters of the sixteenth century, as those 
 who have brought this art to the highest perfection, 
 probably because none of the ancient pictures have 
 been preserved. 
 
 All the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a 
 sympathetic connexion between each other, being 
 no more than various expressions of one internal 
 power, modified by different circumstances, either 
 of an individual, or of society. 
 

 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 137 
 
 The paintings of that period would probably 
 bear the same relation as is confessedly borne by 
 the sculptures to all successive ones. Of their 
 music we know little; but the effects which it is 
 said to have produced, whether they be attributed 
 to the skill of the composer, or the sensibility of his 
 audience, were far more powerful than any which 
 we experience from the music of our times ; and 
 if, indeed, the melody of their compositions were 
 more tender, and delicate, and inspiring, than the 
 melodies of some modern European nations, their 
 progress in this art must have been something 
 wonderful, and wholly beyond conception. Their 
 poetry seems to maintain a high, though not so 
 disproportionate a rank, in comparison. Perhaps 
 Shakspeare, from the variety and comprehension 
 of his genius, is to be considered as the greatest 
 individual mind, of which we have specimens re- 
 maining ; — perhaps Dante created imaginations of 
 greater loveliness and beauty than any that are to be 
 found in the ancient literature of Greece ; — perhaps 
 nothing has been discovered in the fragments of 
 the Greek lyric poets equivalent to the sublime 
 and chivalrous sensibility of Petrarch : — but, as a 
 poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shak- 
 
138 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 speare in the truth and harmony, the sustained 
 grandeur, and satisfying completeness of his images, 
 their exact fitness to the illustration, and to that 
 which they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient 
 in conduct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, 
 have been brought into comparison, but for the 
 fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit, which alone 
 could tempt any one to embark in the misty ocean 
 of his dark and extravagant fiction. 
 
 ON THE NIOBE. 
 
 Of all that remains to us of Greek antiquity, 
 this figure is perhaps the most consummate per- 
 sonification of loveliness, with regard to its coun- 
 tenance, as that of the Venus of the Tribune is 
 with regard to its entire form of woman. It is 
 colossal : the size adds to its value ; because it 
 allows to the spectator the choice of a greater 
 number of points of view, and affords him a more 
 analytical one, in which to catch a greater number 
 of the infinite modes of expression, of which any 
 form approaching ideal beauty is necessarily com- 
 posed. It is the figure of a mother in the act of 
 sheltering, from some divine and inevitable peril, 
 the last, we may imagine, of her surviving children. 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 139 
 
 The little creature, terrified, as we may conceive, 
 at the strange destruction of all its kindred, has 
 fled to its mother, and is hiding its head in the 
 folds of her robe, and casting back one arm, as in 
 a passionate appeal for defence, where it never 
 before could have been sought in vain. She is 
 clothed in a thin tunic of delicate woof; and her 
 hair is fastened on her head into a knot, probably 
 by that mother whose care will never fasten it 
 again. Niobe is enveloped in profuse drapery, a 
 portion of which the left hand has gathered up, 
 and is in the act of extending it over the child in 
 the instinct of shielding her from what reason 
 knows to be inevitable. The right (as the restorer 
 has properly imagined,) is drawing up her daughter 
 to her ; and with that instinctive gesture, and by 
 its gentle pressure, is encouraging the child to be- 
 lieve that it can give security. The countenance of 
 Niobe is the consummation of feminine majesty and 
 loveliness, beyond which the imagination scarcely 
 doubts that it can conceive anything. 
 
 That masterpiece of the poetic harmony of 
 marble expresses other feelings. There is embodied 
 a sense of the inevitable and rapid destiny which 
 is consummating around her, as if it were already 
 
140 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 over. It seems as if despair and beauty had 
 combined, and produced nothing but the sublimity 
 of grief. As the motions of the form expressed 
 the instinctive sense of the possibility of protect- 
 ing the child, and the accustomed and affectionate 
 assurance that she would find an asylum within 
 her arms, so reason and imagination speak in the 
 countenance the certainty that no mortal defence 
 is of avail. There is no terror in the countenance, 
 only grief — deep, remediless grief. There is no 
 anger : — of what avail is indignation against what 
 is known to be omnipotent ? There is no selfish 
 shrinking from personal pain — there is no panic 
 at supernatural agency — there is no adverting to 
 herself as herself : the calamity is mightier than to 
 leave scope for such emotions. 
 
 Everything is swallowed up in sorrow : she is 
 all tears : her countenance, in assured expectation 
 of the arrow piercing its last victim in her em- 
 brace, is fixed on her omnipotent enemy. The 
 pathetic beauty of the expression of her tender, 
 and inexhaustible, and unquenchable despair, is 
 beyond the effect of sculpture. As soon as the 
 arrow shall pierce her last tie upon earth, the fable 
 that she was turned into stone, or dissolved into 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 141 
 
 a fountain of tears, will be but a feeble emblem 
 of the sadness of hopelessness, in which the few 
 and evil years of her remaining life, we feel, must 
 flow away. 
 
 It is difficult to speak of the beauty of the 
 countenance, or to make intelligible in words, from 
 what such astonishing loveliness results. 
 
 The head, resting somewhat backward upon the 
 full and flowing contour of the neck, is as in the 
 act of watching an event momently to arrive. 
 The hair is delicately divided on the forehead, 
 and a gentle beauty gleams from the broad and 
 clear forehead, over which its strings are drawn. 
 The face is of an oval fulness, and the features 
 conceived with the daring of a sense of power. 
 In this respect it resembles the careless majesty 
 which Nature stamps upon the rare masterpieces 
 of her creation, harmonizing them as it were from 
 the harmony of the spirit . within. Yet all this 
 not only consists with, but is the cause of the 
 subtlest delicacy of clear and tender beauty — the 
 expression at once of innocence and sublimity of 
 soul — of purity and strength — of all that which 
 touches the most removed and divine of the chords 
 that made music in our thoughts — of that which 
 
 i 
 
142 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 shakes with astonishment even the most super- 
 ficial. 
 
 THE MINERVA. 
 
 The head is of the highest beauty. It has a 
 close helmet, from which the hair, delicately parted 
 on the forehead, half escapes. The attitude gives 
 entire effect to the perfect form of the neck, and 
 to that full and beautiful moulding of the lower 
 part of the face and mouth, which is in living 
 beings the seat of the expression of a simplicity 
 and integrity of nature. Her face, upraised to 
 heaven, is animated with a profound, sweet, and 
 impassioned melancholy, with an earnest, and 
 fervid, and disinterested pleading against some 
 vast and inevitable wrong. It is the joy and 
 poetry of sorrow making grief beautiful, and giving 
 it that nameless feeling which, from the imperfection 
 of language, we call pain, but which is not all 
 pain, though a feeling which makes not only its 
 possessor, but the spectator of it, prefer it to what 
 is called pleasure, in which all is not pleasure. It 
 is difficult to think that this head, though of the 
 highest ideal beauty, is the head of Minerva, al- 
 though the attributes and attitude of the lower 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 143 
 
 part of the statue certainly suggest that idea. The 
 Greeks rarely, in their representations of the cha- 
 racters of their gods, — unless we call the poetic 
 enthusiasm of Apollo a mortal passion, — expressed 
 the disturbance of human feeling ; and here is 
 deep and impassioned grief animating a divine 
 countenance. It is, indeed, divine. Wisdom 
 (which Minerva may be supposed to emblem,) is 
 pleading earnestly with Power, — and invested with 
 the expression of that grief, because it must ever 
 plead so vainly. The drapery of the statue, the 
 gentle beauty of the feet, and the grace of the 
 attitude, are what may be seen in many other 
 statues belonging to that astonishing era which 
 produced it : such a countenance is seen in few. 
 
 This statue happens to be placed on a pedestal, 
 the subject of whose reliefs is in a spirit wholly 
 the reverse. It was probably an altar to Bacchus 
 — possibly a funeral urn. Under the festoons of 
 fruits and flowers that grace the pedestal, the 
 corners of which are ornamented with the sculls 
 of goats, are sculptured some figures of Maenads 
 under the inspiration of the god.* Nothing can 
 
 * There is an urn in the British Museum, whose relievos 
 are of the same era, and where the same subject is treated in 
 
144 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 be conceived more wild and terrible than their ges- 
 tures, touching, as they do, the verge of distortion, 
 into which their fine limbs and lovely forms are 
 thrown. There is nothing, however, that exceeds 
 the possibility of nature, though it borders on its 
 utmost line. 
 
 The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by 
 drunkenness, producing something beyond insanity, 
 seems to have caught them in its whirlwinds, and 
 to bear them over the earth, as the rapid volutions 
 of a tempest have the ever- changing trunk of a 
 waterspout, or as the torrent of a mountain river 
 whirls the autumnal leaves resistlessly along in its 
 full eddies. The hair, loose and floating, seems 
 caught in the tempest of their own tumultuous 
 motion ; their heads are thrown back, leaning with 
 a strange delirium upon their necks, and looking 
 up to heaven, whilst they totter and stumble even 
 in the energy of their tempestuous dance. 
 
 One represents Agave with the head of Pentheus 
 in one hand, and in the other a great knife; a 
 second has a spear with its pine cone, which 
 was the Thyrsus; another dances with mad vo- 
 
 a way by no means inferior to that described so enthusias- 
 tically by Shelley. It is in the room of the admirable Faun. 
 
 i 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 145 
 
 luptuousness; the fourth is beating a kind of tam- 
 bourine. 
 
 This was indeed a monstrous superstition, even 
 in Greece, where it was alone capable of combining 
 ideal beauty and poetical and abstract enthusiasm 
 with the wild errors from which it sprung. In 
 Rome it had a more familiar, wicked, and dry 
 appearance ; it was not suited to the severe and 
 exact apprehensions of the Romans, and their 
 strict morals were violated by it, and sustained a 
 deep injury, little analogous to its effects upon the 
 Greeks, who turned all things — superstition, pre- 
 judice, murder, madness — to beauty. 
 
 ON THE VENUS CALLED ANADYOMINE. 
 
 She has just issued from the bath, and yet is 
 animated with the enjoyment of it. 
 
 She seems all soft and mild enjoyment, and the 
 curved lines of her fine limbs flow into each other 
 with a never-ending sinuosity of sweetness. Her 
 face expresses a breathless, yet passive and inno- 
 cent voluptuousness, free from aiFectation. Her 
 lips, without the sublimity of lofty and impetuous 
 passion, the grandeur of enthusiastic imagination 
 
 L 
 
146 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 of the Apollo of the Capitol, or the union of both, 
 like the Apollo Belvidere, have the tenderness of 
 arch, yet pure and affectionate desire, and the mode 
 in which the ends of the mouth are drawn in, yet 
 lifted or half-opened, with the smile that for ever 
 circles round them, and the tremulous curve into 
 which they are wrought by inextinguishable desire, 
 and the tongue lying against the lower lip, as in the 
 listlessness of passive joy, express love, still love. 
 
 Her eyes seem heavy and swimming with plea- 
 sure, and her small forehead fades on both sides 
 into that sweet swelling and thin declension of the 
 bone over the eye, in the mode which expresses 
 simple and tender feelings. 
 
 The neck is full, and panting as with the 
 aspiration of delight, and flows with gentle curves 
 into her perfect form. 
 
 Her form is indeed perfect. She is half-sitting 
 and half-rising from a shell, and the fullness of 
 her limbs, and their complete roundness and per- 
 fection, do not diminish the vital energy with 
 which they seem to be animated. The position of 
 the arms, which are lovely beyond imagination, is 
 natural, unaffected, and easy. This, perhaps, is 
 the finest personification .of Venus, the deity of 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 147 
 
 superficial desire, in all antique statuary. Her 
 pointed and pear-like person, ever virgin, and her 
 attitude modesty itself. 
 
 A BAS-RELIEF. 
 
 PROBABLY THE SIDES OE A SARCOPHAGUS. 
 
 The lady is lying on a couch, supported by a 
 young woman, and looking extremely exhausted; 
 her dishevelled hair is floating about her shoulder, 
 and she is half-covered with drapery that falls on 
 the couch. 
 
 Her tunic is exactly like a chemise, only the 
 sleeves are longer, coming half way down the 
 upper part of the arm. An old wrinkled woman, 
 with a cloak over her head, and an enormously 
 sagacious look, has a most professional appearance, 
 and is taking hold of her arm gently with one 
 hand, and with the other is supporting it. I 
 think she is feeling her pulse. At the side of the 
 couch sits a woman as in grief, holding her head 
 in her hands. At the bottom of the bed is another 
 matron tearing her hair, and in the act of scream- 
 ing out most violently, which she seems, however, 
 by the rest of her gestures, to do with the utmost 
 
148 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 deliberation, as having come to the resolution, that 
 it was a correct thing to do so. Behind her is a 
 gossip of the most ludicrous ugliness, crying, I 
 suppose, or praying, for her arms are crossed upon 
 her neck. There is also a fifth setting up a wail. 
 To the left of the couch a nurse is sitting on the 
 ground dandling the child in her arms, and wholly 
 occupied in so doing. The infant is swaddled. 
 Behind her is a female who appears to be in the 
 act of rushing in with dishevelled hair and violent 
 gesture, and in one hand brandishing a whip or a 
 thunder-bolt. This is probably some emblematic 
 person, the messenger of death, or a fury, whose 
 personification would be a key to the whole. What 
 they are all wailing at, I know not ; whether the 
 lady is dying, or the father has directed the child 
 to be exposed: but if the mother be not dead, 
 such a tumult would kill a woman in the straw in 
 these days. 
 
 The other compartment, in the second scene 
 of the drama, tells the story of the presentation of 
 the child to its father. An old man has it in his 
 arms, and with professional and mysterious offici- 
 ousness is holding it out to the father. The father, 
 a middle-aged and very respectable-looking man, 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 149 
 
 perhaps not long married, is looking with the ad- 
 miration of a bachelor on his first child, and perhaps 
 thinking, that he was once such a strange little 
 creature himself. His hands are clasped, and he is 
 gathering up between his arms the folds of his cloak, 
 an emblem of his gathering up all his faculties to 
 understand the tale the gossip is bringing. 
 
 An old man is standing beside him, probably 
 his father, with some curiosity, and much tender- 
 ness in his looks. Around are collected a host of 
 his relations, of whom the youngest, a handsome 
 girl, seems the least concerned. It is altogether 
 an admirable piece, quite in the spirit of the 
 comedies of Terence.* 
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S BACCHUS. 
 
 The countenance of this figure is a most revolt- 
 ing mistake of the spirit and meaning of Bacchus. 
 It looks drunken, brutal, narrow-minded, and has 
 an expression of desolateness the most revolting. 
 The lower part of the figure is stiff, and the manner 
 in which the shoulders are united to the breast, 
 and the neck to the head, abundantly inharmonious. 
 
 * This bas-relief is not antique. It is of the Cinquecento. 
 
150 THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
 
 It is altogether without unity, as was the idea of 
 the deity of Bacchus in the conception of a Catholic. 
 On the other hand, considered only as a piece of 
 workmanship, it has many merits. The arms are 
 executed in a style of the most perfect and manly 
 beauty. The body is conceived with great energy, 
 and the manner in which the lines mingle into 
 each other, of the highest boldness and truth. It 
 wants unity as a work of art — as a representation 
 of Bacchus it wants everything. 
 
 A JUNO. 
 A statue of great merit. The countenance ex- 
 presses a stern and unquestioned severity of domi- 
 nion, with a certain sadness. The lips are beautiful 
 — susceptible of expressing scorn — but not without 
 sweetness. With fine lips a person is never wholly 
 bad, and they never belong to the expression of 
 emotions wholly selfish — lips being the seat of ima- 
 gination. The drapery is finely conceived, and the 
 manner in which the act of throwing back one leg 
 is expressed, in the diverging folds of the drapery 
 of the left breast fading in bold yet graduated lines 
 into a skirt, as it descends from the left shoulder, 
 is admirably imagined* 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 151 
 
 AN APOLLO. 
 
 with serpents twining round a wreath of laurel 
 on which the quiver is suspended. It probably 
 was, when complete, magnificently beautiful. The 
 restorer of the head and arms, following the indi- 
 cation of the muscles of the right side, has lifted 
 the arm, as in triumph, at the success of an arrow, 
 imagining to imitate the Lycian Apollo in that, 
 so finely described by Apollonius Rhodius, when 
 the dazzling radiance of his beautiful limbs shone 
 over the dark Euxine. The action, energy, and 
 godlike animation of these limbs speak a spirit 
 which seems as if it could not be coftsumed. 
 
 ARCH OF TITUS. 
 
 On the inner compartment of the Arch of Titus, 
 is sculptured in deep relief, the desolation of a city. 
 On one side, the walls of the Temple, split by the 
 fury of conflagrations, hang tottering in the act of 
 ruin. The accompaniments of a town taken by 
 assault, matrons and virgins and children and old 
 men gathered into groups, and the rapine and 
 
152 ARCH OF TITUS. 
 
 licence of a barbarous and enraged soldiery, are 
 imaged in the distance. The foreground is occu- 
 pied by a procession of the victors, bearing in their 
 profane hands the holy candlesticks and the tables 
 of shewbread, and the sacred instruments of the 
 eternal worship of the Jews. On the opposite side, 
 the reverse of this sad picture, Titus is represented 
 standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, crowned 
 with laurel, and surrounded by the tumultuous 
 numbers of his triumphant army, and the magis- 
 trates, and priests, and generals, and philosophers, 
 dragged in chains beside his wheels. Behind him, 
 stands a Victory eagle-winged. 
 
 The arch is now mouldering into ruins, and the 
 imagery almost erased by the lapse of fifty gene- 
 rations. Beyond this obscure monument of Hebrew 
 desolation, is seen the tomb of the Destroyer's 
 family, now a mountain of ruins. 
 
 The Flavian amphitheatre has become a habi- 
 tation for owls and dragons. The power, of whose 
 possession it was once the type, and of whose de- 
 parture it is now the emblem, is become a dream 
 and a memory. Rome is no more than Jerusalem. 
 
[ 153] 
 
 REFLECTIONS. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 Life, and the world, and whatever we call that 
 which we are, and feel, is an astonishing thing. 
 The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder 
 of our being. We are struck with astonishment at 
 some of its transient modifications, but it is itself 
 the great miracle. What are the changes of em- 
 pires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions 
 that supported them — what is the birth and ex- 
 tinction of religions, and of political systems, to 
 life?* What are the revolutions of the globe which 
 we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of 
 which it is composed, compared with life ? what is 
 the universe of stars and suns, and their motions, 
 and the destiny of those that inhabit them, com- 
 pared with life ? Life, the great miracle, we admire 
 not because it is so miraculous. If any artist, I do 
 
 * It is singular, that Napoleon at St. Helena, as stated in 
 Las Cases' Memoirs, should have been led into a similar reflexion. 
 " Qu'est-ce que la vie 1 Quand et comment la recevons-nous ? 
 Tout cela est-il autre chose encore que le myst^re V 
 
154 REFLECTIONS. 
 
 not say had executed, but had merely conceived 
 in his mind, the system of the sun, the stars, and 
 planets, they not existing, and had painted to us 
 in words or upon canvas the spectacle now afforded 
 by the sight of the cope of heaven, and illustrated 
 it by astronomy, what would have been our admi- 
 ration ! — or had imagined the scenery of the earth, 
 the mountains, and the seas, and the rivers, and 
 the grass and the flowers, and the varieties of the 
 forms and the masses of the leaves of the woods, 
 and the colours which attend the rising and the 
 setting sun, and the hues of the atmosphere turbid 
 or serene, truly we should have been wonder- 
 struck, and should have said, what it would have 
 been a vain boast to have said, Truly, this creator 
 deserves the name of a God. But now, these things 
 are looked upon with little wonder ; and who views 
 them with delight, is considered an enthusiast or 
 an extraordinary person. 
 
 The multitude care little for them. It is thus 
 with life, that includes all. What is life? Thoughts 
 and feelings arise with or without our will, and we 
 employ words to express them. 
 
 We are born, and our birth is unremembered, 
 and our infancy remembered but in fragments' 
 
REFLECTIONS. 155 
 
 We live, and in living we lose the apprehension 
 of life. 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 By the word death, we express that condition in 
 which natures resembling ourselves apparently 
 cease to be what they were. We no longer hear 
 them speak, nor see them move. If they have 
 sensations or apprehensions, we no longer partici- 
 pate in them. We know no more, than that those 
 internal organs, and all that fine texture of material 
 frame, without which we have no experience that 
 life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and 
 scattered abroad. # 
 
 The body is placed under the ground, and after 
 a certain period there remains no vestige even of 
 its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaust- 
 ible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the bright- 
 ness of the world. The commonest observer is 
 struck with dejection at the spectacle, and contends 
 in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that 
 the dead indeed cease to be. 
 
 The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own 
 destiny. Those who have perceived him, whose 
 voice was delightful to his ear, whose touch met, 
 
156 REFLECTIONS. 
 
 and thrilled, and vibrated to his like sweet and 
 subtle fire, whose aspect spread a visionary light 
 upon his path, these he cannot meet again. The 
 organs of sense are destroyed, and the intellectual 
 operations dependent on them, have perished in 
 their sources. How can a corpse see and feel? 
 What intercourse can there be in two heaps of 
 putrid clay and crumbling bones piled together ? 
 
 Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations, 
 that, in spite of religion, we are sometimes forced 
 to confess to ourselves. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 The mind selects among those who most re- 
 semble it, that which is most its archetype and 
 instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect 
 image, in the same manner as the imagination 
 moulds and completes the shape in the clouds, or 
 in the fire, into a resemblance of whatever form, 
 animal, building, &c. happens to be present to it. 
 
 Man is in his wildest state a social animal — a 
 certain degree of civilization and refinement ever 
 produces the want of sympathies still more intimate 
 and complete, and the gratification of the senses 
 is no longer all that is desired. It soon becomes 
 
REFLECTIONS. 157 
 
 a very small part of that profound and complicated 
 sentiment which we call love, which is rather the 
 universal thirst for a communion not merely of the 
 senses, hut of our whole nature, intellectual, imagi- 
 native, and sensitive, and which, when indivi- 
 dualized, becomes an imperious necessity, only to 
 be satisfied by the complete, or partial, or supposed 
 fulfilment of its claims. This want grows more 
 powerful in proportion to the developement which 
 our nature receives from civilization ; for man never 
 ceases to be a social being. 
 
 REMARKS ON 'MANDEVILLE' AND 
 MR. GODWIN. 
 
 The author of ' Mandeville' is one of the most 
 illustrious examples of intellectual power of the 
 present age. He has exhibited that variety and 
 universality of talent which distinguishes him who 
 is destined to inherit lasting renown, from the 
 possessors of temporary celebrity. If his claims 
 were to be measured solely by the accuracy of his 
 researches into ethical and political science, still it 
 
158 REMARKS ON < MANDEVILLE' 
 
 would be difficult to name a contemporary compe- 
 titor. Let us make a deduction of all those parts 
 of his moral system which are liable to any possible 
 controversy, and consider simply those which only 
 to allege is to establish, and which belong to that 
 most important class of truths which he that an- 
 nounces to mankind seems less to teach than to 
 recall. 
 
 ' Political Justice' is the first moral system expli- 
 citly founded upon the doctrine of the negativeness 
 of rights and the positiveness of duties, — an obscure 
 feeling of which has been the basis of all the poli- 
 tical liberty and private virtue in the world. But 
 he is also the author of ' Caleb Williams' ; and if 
 we had no record of a mind, but simply some frag- 
 ment containing the conception of the character of 
 Falkland, doubtless we should say, "This is an 
 extraordinary mind, and undoubtedly was capable 
 of the very sublimest enterprises of thought." 
 
 St. Leon and Fleetwood are moulded with some- 
 what inferior distinctness, in the same character of 
 an union of delicacy and power. The Essay on 
 Sepulchres has all the solemnity and depth of 
 passion which belong to a mind that sympathises, 
 as one man with his friend, in the interest of future 
 
AND MR. GODWIN. 159 
 
 ages, in the concerns of the vanished generations 
 of mankind. 
 
 It may be said with truth, that Godwin has 
 been treated unjustly by those of his countrymen, 
 upon whose favour temporary distinction depends. 
 If he had devoted his high accomplishments to 
 flatter the selfishness of the rich, or enforced those 
 doctrines on which the powerful depend for power, 
 they would, no doubt, have rewarded him with 
 their countenance, and he might have been more 
 fortunate in that sunshine than Mr. Malthus or 
 Dr. Paley. But the difference would have been as 
 wide as that which must for ever divide notoriety 
 from fame. Godwin has been to the present age 
 in moral philosophy what Wordsworth is in poetry. 
 The personal interest of the latter would probably 
 have suffered from his pursuit of the true prin- 
 ciples of taste in poetry, as much as all that is 
 temporary in the fame of Godwin has suffered 
 from his daring to announce the true foundations 
 of minds, if servility, and dependence, and super- 
 stition, had not been too easily reconcileable with 
 his species of dissent from the opinions of the 
 great and the prevailing. It is singular that the 
 other nations of Europe should have anticipated, 
 
160 REMARKS ON ' MANDEVILLE' 
 
 in this respect, the judgment of posterity; and 
 that the name of Godwin and that of his late 
 illustrious and admirable wife, should be pro- 
 nounced, even by those who know but little of 
 English literature, with reverence and admiration ; 
 and that the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft should 
 have been translated, and universally read, in France 
 and Germany, long after the bigotry of faction has 
 stifled them in our own country. 
 
 1 Mandeville' is Godwin's last production. In 
 interest it is perhaps inferior to ' Caleb Williams.' 
 There is no character like Falkland, whom the 
 author, with that sublime casuistry which is the 
 parent of toleration and forbearance, persuades us 
 personally to love, whilst his actions must for ever 
 remain the theme of our astonishment and abhor- 
 rence. Mandeville challenges our compassion, and 
 no more. His errors arise from an immutable 
 necessity of internal nature, and from much con- 
 stitutional antipathy and suspicion, which soon 
 spring up into hatred and contempt, and barren 
 misanthropy, which, as it has no root in genius or 
 virtue, produces no fruit uncongenial with the soil 
 wherein it grew. Those of Falkland sprang from a 
 high, though perverted conception of human nature, 
 
AND MR. GODWIN. 161 
 
 from a powerful sympathy with his species, and 
 from a temper which led him to believe that the 
 very reputation of excellence should walk among 
 mankind unquestioned and unassailed. So far as 
 it was a defect to link the interest of the tale 
 with anything inferior to Falkland, so is Man- 
 deville defective. But the varieties of human cha- 
 racter, the depth and complexity of human motive, 
 — those sources of the union of strength and weak- 
 ness — those powerful sources of pleading for uni- 
 versal kindness and toleration, — are just subjects 
 for illustration and developement in a work of 
 fiction ; as such, ' Mandeville' yields in interest 
 and importance to none of the productions of the 
 author. The events of the tale flow like the stream 
 of fate, regular and irresistible, growing at once 
 darker and swifter in their progress : there is no 
 surprise, no shock : we are prepared for the worst 
 from the very opening of the scene, though we 
 wonder whence the author drew the shadows which 
 render the moral darkness, every instant more 
 fearful, at last so appalling and so complete. The 
 interest is awfully deep and rapid. To struggle 
 with it, would be the gossamer attempting to bear 
 up against the tempest. In this respect it is more 
 
162 REMARKS ON < MANDEVILLE' 
 
 powerful than ' Caleb Williams': the interest of 
 1 Caleb Williams' being as rapid, but not so pro- 
 found, as that of ' Mandeville.' It is a wind that 
 tears up the deepest waters of the ocean of mind. 
 
 The language is more rich and various, and the 
 expressions more eloquently sweet, without losing 
 that energy and distinctness which characterize 
 ' Political Justice' and ( Caleb Williams.' The 
 moral speculations have a strength, and consis- 
 tency, and boldness, which has been less clearly 
 aimed at in his other works of fiction. The plead- 
 ings of Henrietta to Mandeville, after his recovery 
 from madness, in favour of virtue and of bene- 
 volent energy, compose, in every respect, the most 
 perfect and beautiful piece of writing of modern 
 times. It is the genuine doctrine of ' Political 
 Justice,' presented in one perspicacious and im- 
 pressive river, and clothed in such enchanting 
 melody of language, as seems, not less than the 
 writings of Plato, to realize those lines of Milton : 
 
 How charming is divine philosophy — 
 
 Not harsh and crabbed— 
 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute .' 
 
 Clifford's talk, too, about wealth, has a beautiful, 
 and readily to be disentangled intermixture of truth 
 
AND MR. GODWIN. 163 
 
 and error. Clifford is a person, who, without those 
 characteristics which usually constitute the sublime, 
 is sublime from the mere excess of loveliness and 
 innocence. Henrietta's first appearance to Man- 
 deville, at Mandeville House, is an occurrence 
 resplendent with the sunrise of life : it recalls to 
 the memory many a vision — or perhaps but one — 
 which the delusive exhalations of unbaffled hope have 
 invested with a rose-like lustre as of morning, yet 
 unlike morning — a light which, once extinguished, 
 never can return. Henrietta seems at first to be 
 all that a susceptible heart imagines in the object 
 of its earliest passion. We scarcely can see her, 
 she is so beautiful. There is a mist of dazzling 
 loveliness which encircles her, and shuts out from 
 the sight all that is mortal in her transcendant 
 charms. But the veil is gradually undrawn, and 
 she "fades into the light of common day." Her 
 actions, and even her sentiments, do not correspond 
 to the elevation of her speculative opinions, and 
 the fearless sincerity which should be the accom- 
 paniment of truth and virtue. But she has a 
 divided affection, and she is faithful there only 
 where infidelity would have been self-sacrifice. 
 Could the spotless Henrietta have subjected her 
 
164 REMARKS ON « MANDEVILLE' 
 
 love to Clifford, to the vain and insulting accident 
 of wealth and reputation, and the babbling of a 
 miserable old woman, and yet have proceeded un- 
 shrinking to her nuptial feast from the expostu- 
 lations of Mandeville's impassioned and pathetic 
 madness I It might be well in the author to show 
 the foundations of human hope thus overthrown, 
 for his picture might otherwise have been illumined 
 with one gleam of light. It was his skill to enforce 
 the moral, " that all things are vanity," and "that 
 the house of mourning is better than the house 
 of feasting" ; and we are indebted to those who 
 make us feel the instability of our nature, that we 
 may lay the knowledge (which is its foundation) 
 deep, and make the affections (which are its cement) 
 strong. But one regrets that Henrietta, — who 
 soared far beyond her contemporaries in her opi- 
 nions, who was so beautiful that she seemed a 
 spirit among mankind, — should act and feel no 
 otherwise than the least exalted of her sex; and 
 still more, that the author, capable of conceiving 
 something so admirable and lovely, should have 
 been withheld, by the tenor of the fiction which 
 he chose, from execrating it in its full extent. It 
 almost seems in the original conception of the cha- 
 
AND MR. GODWIN. 165 
 
 racter of Henrietta, that something was imagined 
 too vast and too uncommon to be realized ; and 
 the feeling weighs like disappointment on the mind. 
 But these objections, considered with reference to 
 the close of the story, are extrinsical. 
 
 The reader's mind is hurried on as he approaches 
 the end with breathless and accelerated impulse. 
 The noun smorfia comes at last, and touches some 
 nerve which jars the inmost soul, and grates, as it 
 were, along the blood ; and we can scarcely believe 
 that that grin which must accompany Mandeville 
 to his grave, is not stamped upon our own visage. 
 
 ON < FRANKENSTEIN.' 
 
 The novel of ' Frankenstein ; or, the Modern 
 Prometheus,' is undoubtedly, as a mere story, one 
 of the most original and complete productions of 
 the day. We debate with ourselves in wonder, as 
 we read it, what could have been the series of 
 thoughts — what could have been the peculiar ex- 
 periences that awakened them — which conduced, 
 in the author's mind, to the astonishing combi- 
 
166 ON < FRANKENSTEIN/ 
 
 nations of motives and incidents, and the startling 
 catastrophe, which compose this tale. There are, 
 perhaps, some points of subordinate importance, 
 which prove that it is the author's first attempt. 
 But in this judgment, which requires a very nice 
 discrimination, we may be mistaken ; for it is 
 conducted throughout with a firm and steady hand. 
 The interest gradually accumulates and advances 
 towards the conclusion with the accelerated rapidity 
 of a rock rolled down a mountain. We are led' 
 breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the 
 heaping up of incident on incident, and the work- 
 ing of passion out of passion. We cry " hold, hold ! 
 enough!" — but there is yet something to come; 
 and, like the victim whose history it relates, we 
 think we can bear no more, and yet more is to be 
 borne. Pelion is heaped on Ossa, and Ossa on 
 Olympus. We climb Alp after Alp, until the horizon 
 is seen blank, vacant, and limitless ; and the head 
 turns giddy, and the ground seems to fail under 
 our feet. 
 
 This novel rests its claim on being a source of 
 powerful and profound emotion. The elementary 
 feelings of the human mind are exposed to view ; 
 and those who are accustomed to reason deeply 
 
ON « FRANKENSTEIN.' 167 
 
 on their origin and tendency will, perhaps, be the 
 only persons who can sympathize, to the full extent, 
 in the interest of the actions which are their result. 
 But, founded on nature as they are, there is perhaps 
 no reader, who can endure anything beside a new 
 love story, who will not feel a responsive string 
 touched in his inmost soul. The sentiments are so 
 affectionate and so innocent — the characters of the 
 subordinate agents in this strange drama are clothed 
 in the light of such a mild and gentle mind — the 
 pictures of domestic manners are of the most simple 
 and attaching character : the father's is irresistible 
 and deep. Nor are the crimes and malevolence of 
 the single Being, though indeed withering and 
 tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable 
 propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain 
 causes fully adequate to their production. They 
 are the children, as it were, of Necessity and Hu- 
 man Nature. In this the direct moral of the book 
 consists ; and it is perhaps the most important, and 
 of the most universal application, of any moral that 
 can be enforced by example. Treat a person ill, 
 and he will become wicked. Requite affection 
 with scorn ; — let one being be selected, for what- 
 ever cause, as the refuse of his kind — divide him, 
 
168 ON « FRANKENSTEIN/ 
 
 a social being, from socie v \ and you impose upon 
 him the irresistible obligations — malevolence and 
 selfishness. It is thus that, too often in society, 
 those who are best qualified to be its benefactors 
 and its ornaments, are branded by some accident 
 with scorn, and changed, by neglect and solitude 
 of heart, into a scourge and a curse. 
 
 The Being in c Frankenstein' is, no doubt, a 
 tremendous creature. It was impossible that he 
 should not have received among men that treatment 
 which led to the consequences of his being a social 
 nature. He was an abortion and an anomaly ; and 
 though his mind was such as its first impressions 
 framed it, affectionate and full of moral sensibility, 
 yet the circumstances of his existence are so mon- 
 strous and uncommon, that, when the consequences 
 of them became developed in action, his original 
 goodness was gradually turned into inextinguishable 
 misanthropy and revenge. The scene between the 
 Being and the blind De Lacey in the cottage, is 
 one of the most profound and extraordinary in- 
 stances of pathos that we ever recollect. It is 
 impossible to read this dialogue, — and indeed many 
 others of a somewhat similar character,-— without 
 feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with 
 
ON < FRANKENSTEIN/ 169 
 
 wonder, and the "teai. tream down the cheeks." 
 The encounter and argument between Franken- 
 stein and the Being on the sea of ice, almost ap- 
 proaches, in effect, to the expostulations of Caleb 
 Williams with Falkland. It reminds us, indeed, 
 somewhat of the style and character of that ad- 
 mirable writer, to whom the author has dedicated 
 his work, and whose productions he seems to have 
 studied. 
 
 There is only one instance, however, in which 
 we detect the least approach to imitation ; and 
 that is the conduct of the incident of Frankenstein's 
 landing in Ireland. The general character of the 
 tale, indeed, resembles nothing that ever preceded 
 it. After the death of Elizabeth, the story, like a 
 stream which grows at once more rapid and pro- 
 found as it proceeds, assumes an irresistible 
 solemnity, and the magnificent energy and swift- 
 ness of a tempest. 
 
 The churchyard scene, in which Frankenstein 
 visits the tombs of his family, his quitting Geneva, 
 and his journey through Tartary to the shores of 
 the Frozen Ocean, resemble at once the terrible 
 reanimation of a corpse and the supernatural career 
 of a spirit. The scene in the cabin of Walton's 
 
170 ON « FRANKENSTEIN.' 
 
 ship — the more than mortal enthusiasm and gran- 
 deur of the Being's speech over the dead body of 
 his victim — is an exhibition of intellectual and ima- 
 ginative power, which we think the reader will 
 acknowledge has seldom been surpassed. 
 
 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 
 
 In the fifteenth century of the Christian era, a 
 new and extraordinary event roused Europe from 
 her lethargic state, and paved the way to her pre- 
 sent greatness. The writings of Dante in the 
 thirteenth, and of Petrarch in the fourteenth, were 
 the bright luminaries which had afforded glim- 
 merings of literary knowledge to the almost be- 
 nighted traveller toiling up the hill of Fame. But 
 on the taking of Constantinople, a new and sudden 
 light appeared : the dark clouds of ignorance rolled 
 into distance, and Europe was inundated by learned 
 monks, and still more by the quantity of learned 
 manuscripts which they brought with them from 
 the scene of devastation. The Turks settled them- 
 selves in Constantinople, where they adopted no- 
 
REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 171 
 
 thing but the vicious habits of the Greeks : they 
 neglected even the small remains of its ancient 
 learning, which, filtered and degenerated as it was 
 by the absurd mixture of Pagan and Christian 
 philosophy, proved, on its retirement to Europe, 
 the spark which spread gradually and successfully 
 the light of knowledge over the world. 
 
 Italy, France, and England, — for Germany still 
 remained many centuries less civilized than the 
 surrounding countries, — swarmed with monks and 
 cloisters. Superstition, of whatever kind, whether 
 earthly or divine, has hitherto been the weight 
 which clogged man to earth, and prevented his 
 genius from soaring aloft amid its native skies. The 
 enterprises, and the effects of the human mind, are 
 something more than stupendous : the works of 
 nature are material and tangible : we have a half 
 insight into their kind, and in many instances we 
 predict their effects with certainty. But mind seems 
 to govern the world without visible or substantial 
 means. Its birth is unknown ; its action and in- 
 fluence unperceived ; and its being seems eternal. 
 To the mind both humane and philosophical, there 
 cannot exist a greater subject of grief, than the re- 
 flection of how much superstition has retarded the 
 
172 REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 
 
 progress of intellect, and consequently the happiness 
 of man. 
 
 The monks in their cloisters were engaged in 
 trifling and ridiculous disputes : they contented 
 themselves with teaching the dogmas of their re- 
 ligion, and rushed impatiently forth to the colleges 
 and halls, where they disputed with an acrimony 
 and meanness little befitting the resemblance of 
 their pretended holiness. But the situation of a 
 monk is a situation the most unnatural that bigotry, 
 proud in the invention of cruelty, could conceive ; 
 and their vices may be pardoned as resulting from 
 the wills and devices of a few proud and selfish 
 bishops, who enslaved the world that they might 
 live at ease. 
 
 The disputes of the schools were mostly scho- 
 lastical : it was the discussion of words, and had 
 no relation to morality. Morality, — the great 
 means and end of man, — was contained, as they 
 affirmed, in the extent of a few hundred pages of 
 a certain book, which others have since contended 
 were but scraps of martyrs' last dying words, 
 collected together and imposed on the world. In 
 the refinements of the scholastic philosophy, the 
 world seemed in danger of losing the little real 
 
REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 173 
 
 wisdom that still remained as her portion ; and the 
 only valuable part of their disputes was such as 
 tended to develope the system of the Peripatetic 
 Philosophers. Plato, the wisest, the profoundest, 
 and Epicurus, the most humane and gentle among 
 the ancients, were entirely neglected by them. 
 Plato interfered with their peculiar mode of thinking 
 concerning heavenly matters ; and Epicurus, main- 
 taining the rights of man to pleasure and happiness, 
 would have afforded a seducing contrast to their 
 dark and miserable code of morals. It has been 
 asserted, that these holy men solaced their lighter 
 moments in a contraband worship of Epicurus, and 
 profaned the philosophy which maintained the rights 
 of all by a selfish indulgence of the rights of a few. 
 Thus it is : the laws of nature are invariable, and 
 man sets them aside that he may have the pleasure 
 of travelling through a labyrinth in search of them 
 again. 
 
 Pleasure, in an open and innocent garb, by some 
 strange process of reasoning, is called vice ; yet man 
 (so closely is he linked to the chains of necessity — 
 so irresistibly is he impelled to fulfil the end of his 
 being,) must seek her at whatever price : he becomes 
 a hypocrite, and braves damnation with all its pains. 
 
174 REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Grecian literature, — the finest the world has ever 
 produced, — was at length restored: its form and 
 mode we obtained from the manuscripts which the 
 ravages of time, of the Goths, and of the still more 
 savage Turks, had spared. The burning of the 
 library at Alexandria was an evil of importance. 
 This library is said to have contained volumes of 
 the choicest Greek authors. 
 
 A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 Government, as it now subsists, is perhaps an 
 engine at once the most expensive and inartificial 
 that could have been devised as a remedy for the 
 imperfections of society. Immense masses of the 
 product of labour are committed to the discretion 
 of certain individuals for the purpose of executing 
 its intentions, or interpreting its meaning. These 
 have not been consumed, but wasted, in the prin- 
 cipal part of the past history of political society. 
 
 Government may be distributed into two parts : 
 — First, the fundamental — that is, the permanent 
 
GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 175 
 
 forms, which regulate the deliberation or the action 
 of the whole ; from which it results that a state is 
 democratical, or aristocratical, or despotic, or a 
 combination of all these principles. 
 
 And Secondly — the necessary or accidental — 
 that is, those that determine, not the forms accord- 
 ing to which the deliberation or the action of the 
 mass of the community is to be regulated, but the 
 opinions or moral principles which are to govern 
 the particular instances of such action or delibera- 
 tion. These may be called, with little violence to 
 the popular acceptation of those terms, Constitution, 
 and Law : understanding by the former, the collec- 
 tion of those written institutions or traditions which 
 determine the individuals who are to exercise, in 
 a nation, the discretionary right of peace and war, 
 of death or imprisonment, fines and penalties, and 
 the imposition and collection of taxes, and their 
 application, thus vested in a king, or an hereditary 
 senate, or in a representative assembly, or in a 
 combination of all ; and by the latter, the mode of 
 determining those opinions, according to which the 
 constituted authorities are to decide on any action ; 
 for law is either a collection of opinions expressed 
 by individuals without constitutional authority, or 
 
176 GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 
 
 the decision of a constitutional body of men, the 
 opinion of some or all of whom it expresses — and 
 no more. 
 
 To the former, or constitutional topics, this 
 treatise has no direct reference. Law may be con- 
 sidered, simply — an opinion regulating political 
 power. It may be divided into two parts— General 
 Law, or that which relates to the external and in- 
 tegral concerns of a nation, and decides on the 
 competency of a particular person or collection of 
 persons to discretion in matters of war and peace 
 — the assembling of the representative body — the 
 time, place, manner, form, of holding judicial 
 courts, and other concerns enumerated before, and 
 in reference to which this community is considered 
 as a whole; — and Particular Law, or that which 
 decides upon contested claims of property, which 
 punishes or restrains violence and fraud, which 
 enforces compacts, and preserves to every man that 
 degree of liberty and security, the enjoyment of 
 which is judged not to be inconsistent with the 
 liberty and security of another. 
 
 To the former, or what is here called general 
 law, this treatise has no direct reference. How 
 far law, in its general form or constitution, as it 
 
GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 177 
 
 at present exists in the greater part of the nations 
 of Europe, may be affected by inferences from the 
 ensuing reasonings, it is foreign to the present pur- 
 pose to inquire — let us confine our attention to 
 particular law, or law strictly so termed. 
 
 The only defensible intention of law, like that 
 of every other human institution, is very simple and 
 clear — the good of the whole. If law is found 
 to accomplish this object very imperfectly, that im- 
 perfection makes no part of the design with which 
 men submit to its institution. Any reasonings 
 which tend to throw light on a subject hitherto so 
 dark and intricate, cannot fail, if distinctly stated, 
 to impress mankind very deeply, because it is a 
 question in which the life and property and liberty 
 and reputation of every man are vitally involved. 
 
 For the sake of intelligible method, let us assume 
 the ordinary distinctions of law, those of civil and 
 criminal law, and of the objects of it, private and 
 public wrongs. The author of these pages ought 
 not to suppress his conviction, that the principles 
 on which punishment is usually inflicted are essen- 
 tially erroneous ; and that, in general, ten times 
 more is apportioned to the victims of law, than is 
 demanded by the welfare of society, under the shape 
 
1/8 GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 
 
 of reformation or example. He believes that, al- 
 though universally disowned, the execrable passion 
 of vengeance, exasperated by fear, exists as a chief 
 source among the secret causes of this exercise of 
 criminal justice. He believes also, that in ques- 
 tions of property, there is a vague but most effective 
 favouritism in courts of law and among lawyers, 
 against the poor to the advantage of the rich — 
 against the tenant in favour of the landlord — against 
 the creditor in favour of the debtor ; thus enforcing 
 and illustrating that celebrated maxim, against 
 which moral science is a perpetual effort : To whom 
 much is given, of him shall much he required ; and 
 to whom men have committed much, of him they will 
 ask the more. 
 
 But the present purpose is, not the exposure of 
 such mistakes as actually exist in public opinion, 
 but an attempt to give to public opinion its legi- 
 timate dominion, and an uniform and unimpeded 
 influence to each particular case which is its object. 
 
 When law is once understood to be no more 
 than the recorded opinion of men, no more than 
 the apprehensions of individuals on the reason- 
 ing of a particular case, we may expect that the 
 sanguinary or stupid mistakes which disgrace the 
 
GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 179 
 
 civil and criminal jurisprudence of civilized nations 
 will speedily disappear. How long, under its pre- 
 sent sanctions, do not the most exploded violations 
 of humanity maintain their ground in courts of 
 law, after public opinion has branded them with 
 reprobation ; sometimes even until by constantly 
 maintaining their post under the shelter of venerable 
 names, they out- weary the very scorn and abhor- 
 rence of mankind, or subsist unrepealed and silent, 
 until some check, in the progress of human im- 
 provement, awakens them, and that public opinion, 
 from which they should have received their reversal, 
 is infected by their influence. Public opinion would 
 never long stagnate in error, were it not fenced 
 about and frozen over by forms and superstitions. 
 If men were accustomed to reason, and to hear the 
 arguments of others, upon each particular case that 
 concerned the life, or liberty, or property, or repu- 
 tation of their peers, those mistakes, which at pre- 
 sent render these possessions so insecure to all but 
 those who enjoy enormous wealth, never could 
 subsist. If the administration of law ceased to 
 appeal ^om the common sense, or the enlightened 
 minds of twelve contemporary good and true men, 
 who should be the peers of the accused, or, in 
 
'fe. 
 
 180 GOVERNMENT BY JURIES. 
 
 cases of property, of the claimant, to the obscure 
 records of dark and barbarous epochs, or the pre- 
 cedents of what venal and enslaved judges might 
 have decreed to please their tyrants, or the opinion 
 of any man or set of men who lived when bigotry 
 was virtue, and passive obedience that discretion 
 which is the better part of valour, — all those 
 mistakes now fastened in the public opinion, would 
 be brought at each new case to the * * * . * 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON-: J. HOLMES, TOOK'S COURT, CHANCERY LAKE. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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