SHELLEY
A
CRITICAL
BIOGRAPHY
GLO BARNETT
SMITH
28
5450
55
JP. 2
EDINBURGH
DAVID DOUGLAS
A 523578

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1817
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SHELLEY
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY
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Printed by R. &-R. Clark
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CAMBRIDGE .
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GLASGOW.
•
JAMES MACLEHOSE

I
;
•
SHELLEY
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY
BY
GEORGE BARNETT SMITH
AUTHOR OF 'POETS AND NOVelists,' etc.

EDINBURGH
DAVID DOUGLAS
1877
[All rights reserved.]
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​CONTENTS.
I.-SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.

PAGE
PAGE
Poetic Revival in the Nine-
teenth Century
Comparison between Shelley
and Wordsworth
The Reign of Terror
Shelley's Youth
The Poet's Acquaintance
1
with Southey
36
Shelley's First Marriage
37
2 Incompatibility
between
the Poet and his Wife
38
5
Mrs. Shelley's Death
40
The Poet misapprehended.
7
Carlyle's view of Shelley
41
•
His Biographers
10
The meaning of Queen
De Quincey and Shelley
12
Mab
•
43 ✓
The Poet at Brentford
13
Shelley's opinion of it
43
At Eton
15
The Poet maligned and mis-
Anecdotes of his Boyhood.
Early charged with Atheism
Youthful Literary Efforts
Expulsion from Oxford
Pamphlet on The Necessity
16
understood
45
17
His Elopement with Mary
19
Godwin.
46
22 Friendship with William
Godwin.
48
of Atheism
23
Shelley in London
28
The Philosopher and the
Poet
50
Meets with Harriet West-
Chancery Suit with re-
brook
29
gard to Shelley's Chil-
Marriage:
32
dren
53
Domestic Difficulties
Influence of Shelley's Life
upon his Poetry
33
Lord Chancellor Eldon
55
Shelley in antagonism with
35
Fate
56
•
•
viii
CONTENTS.
II.-POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.
PAGE
PAGE
Shelley's benevolent Spirit
61 "Parliamentary Reform ". 85
His defects as a Reformer.
62
Declaration of Rights
88
Irish Campaign
64
The Poet's Fearlessness in
Ireland and the Govern-
Politics.
91
ment
66
Was Shelley an Atheist ?
92
Shelley's Address to the
Shelley and Byron
93
Irish People
•
68
Liberality of Sentiment
70
The Religious Attitude of
Shelley.
94
Defence of an Irish Patriot
Shelley's Intellectual Ver-
satility.
73
Proposals for an Irish As-
The
71 | The Spirit of Queen Mab
Coleridge on the Atheism
of Shelley
Poet's
•
reverential
96
•
97
sociation
73
Spirit
100
The Advice of Godwin
76
Shelley's interest in Politi-
cal Matters
78
In the Liberty of the Press
Leigh Hunt and the Prince
Regent.
79
His Essay on Christianity. 101
The Benefactor of Humanity 103
Character of Shelley's Life 105
Instances of his Generosity 107
Leigh Hunt on his Charac-
83
Shelley's Sympathy with
Hunt
84
ter and Benevolence . 111
Shelley's Practical Chris-
tianity.
113
·
III.-LATER YEARS AND OPINIONS.
Two Tragic Events in Eng-
Literary Criticism
. 125
lish Literature
•
117
Marlowe and Shelley
118
M. Taine's Criticism
Shelley
on
Comparison between the
Poet and Byron
Shelley in Switzerland
Friendship with Byron
Influence of the Poets upon
each other
119
•
120
istics
•
•
121
Shelley in Italy
122
Death of his Son
Shelley's Political Enthusi-
123
•
asın
·
Byron on the English Dramą 126
His Estimate of Shelley 127
Friendship of the Poet with
T. L. Peacock
Their varying Character-
•
128
•
134
135
•
135
136
•
CONTENTS.
ix

•
139
141
•
142
•
144
Manner and Cause of
Shelley's Death
146
PAGE
Greek Struggles for Freedom 138
Tribute to Greece
Closing Scenes in Shelley's
Life
Strange Visions
The Disaster in the Bay of
Spezzia.
PAGE
Shelley's Prose Writings. 152
His Defence of Poetry
Devotion to Greek Litera-
ture
Views upon Religion and
Immortality
.152
•
156
·
162
Metaphysical Speculations 164
Shelley's Views upon Art. 165
Influence of the Fine Arts
doth fade"
'Nothing of him that
Mrs. Shelley's Tribute to
her Husband.
upon the Poet
167
149
Thirst after Virtue
•
168
149
•
Society will be propitiated
towards Shelley
170
•
173
. 176
. 177
180
·
181
•
184
•
186
•
189
IV. THE POETRY OF SHELLEY.
Shelley pre-eminently a
Poet
Queen Mab
Its Characteristics
tiality
Its Beauty and Insubstan-
Shelley's Philosophy.
The Revolt of Islam
Its Poetic and Moral Qua-
lities
Felicitous Imagery
•
Qualifications necessary for
•
197
Definition of real Poetry 198-
Emerson on the true Singer 199
Shelley ripening into the
Prometheus Unbound.
Author's
201
•
202
highest
Achievement in ideal
the Poet
Seer
Its
Poetry
202
•
Brief Analysis of the Drama 203
Laon and Cythna
Alastor
189
Quoted Passages
204
190
Other Ideal Poems by
. 191
•
The Thirst after Perfec-
tion
The Teachings of Alastor 192
Shelley's Imaginative Sen-
sibility.
Macaulay's Eulogy of him. 194 | Canonisation of a Race . 215
Shelley.
Epipsychidion
Adonais
210
·
211
212
The Drama of Hellas
213
193 Its high lyrical Excellence 213
L
X
CONTENTS.
.
Tragedy of The Cenci
Truly Dramatic
220
The Subject perilous and
V. THE POETRY OF SHELLEY-Concluded.
PAGE
219 The Cloud, a Unique
Poem
Shelley's Dirge for Au-
PAGE
240
•
repulsive
221
tumn
242
A fine Dramatic Scene
. 223
Shelley's Satiric Vein
226
His Poetry his true Bio-
graphy.
243
Peter Bell.
227
tural Objects.
230
•
233
235
Shelley the Poet of Nature 229
His Observations on Na-
Passages showing his In-
timacy with Nature
Lines written among the
Euganean Hills
The Stanzas written near
Naples
•
Mr. Browning's Criticism
Characteristics of the Poet 245
Poets are great Teachers
Shelley "the Trumpet of a
Prophecy"
Divides the Lyric Crown
with Burns
238 | Immortality of his Work. 249
upon Shelley.
244
•
Final Summary
245
•
246
•
•
247
248
I.
SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.
"Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;
Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friends-all loved him well-
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,
;
•
If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes
He neither spurned nor hated-though with fell
And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They passed like aimless arrows from his ear."
Prince Athanase.
:

I.
SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.
These
THE poetic revival witnessed at the dawn of the
nineteenth century came from opposite sides. Its
music and its passion were typified in Shelley,
and its devotion to nature in Wordsworth.
poets were the antithesis of the classical school
represented by Dryden and Pope, men who were
moulded by, and did not mould, their age. I
take Shelley and Wordsworth as exponents of the
new order, because Byron, though uniting, in an
inferior degree, the qualities of both, did not, in the
general outline of his genius, distinctively set forth
the special and distinguishing characteristics of
either. Shelley rebelled against organised society,
and poured his wrath and his ecstasies into his
verse; Wordsworth, touched into a noble frame
of mind by the initiation of the French Revolution,
saw as in a vision the grand triumph of right over
might in the immediate distance. The aristocrat
B

2
SHELLEY:
and the plebeian-Shelley was the descendant of
two illustrious families, and Wordsworth was the
son of a country attorney-early in life indulged
the same sanguine political aspirations. Both
were Republicans and Communists in spirit, in-
spired, in the outset, by the grand idea of hastening
that period when the brotherhood of man should
be recognised throughout the world. Working in
different grooves, they likewise effected a revolution
in poetic literature. Shelley-who by his family
connected himself with Sir Philip Sidney, the pure
and noble knight of immortal renown-never lost
his faith in those principles which filled his own
father with horror. The dignity of man outweighed
with him all titular glories, and to the last this great
and unfortunate genius preserved his conscience
free of reproach, and loved his species after the most
shameful usage. The enfranchisement of humanity
was with him a deeper sentiment than with Words-
worth. The latter-whom we may assuredly re-
gard as the equal of any English poet, save Milton
(whom also he excelled in certain aspects), since the
time of Shakspeare-had really Conservative in-
stincts beneath the enthusiasm which welled up
within him at the thought of freedom being gained
for France. Contentedly absorbed in the tranquil
beauty of nature, he was ultimately seized with
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
3
affright at the natural concomitants of that very
Revolution which, in its inception, he hailed with
so much ardour. The Reign of Terror dissipated
his dream of universal happiness. Shelley, look-
ing back to the Revolution, saw in it a necessary
national purification. So much tyranny and wrong
had been perpetrated for centuries, that he knew
the balance could not be adjusted without blood.
Far from possessing the mental equipoise of Words-
worth, he gazed further into the future than his
fellow-poet, for the effects of the great Revolution-
though in his own crusade against evil he worked
with all the energy and impatience of the man who
believes he can convert the world in a day. The
Reign of Terror, which to many was but a brief yet
terrible episode in a great upheaval, to Wordsworth
was the complete overthrow of all his hopes, and
transformed him into a Conservative. De Quincey,
his friend, wrote in just rebuke of his want of
faith at this crisis "The Reign of Terror was a mere
fleeting and transitional phasis. The Napoleon
dynasty was nothing more. Even that very
Napoleon scourge, which was supposed by many
to have consummated and superseded the Revolu-
tion, has itself passed away upon the wind-has
itself been superseded—leaving no wreck, no relic,
or record behind, except precisely those changes
4
SHELLEY:
•
་་
1
which it worked, not in its character of an enemy to
the Revolution (which also it was), but as its servant
and its tool. See, even whilst we speak, the folly
of that cynical sceptic who would not allow time
for great natural processes of purification to travel
onwards to their birth, or wait for the evolution of
natural results: the storm that shocked him has
wheeled away; the frost and the hail that offended
him have done their office; the rain is over and
gone; happier days have descended upon France;
the voice of the turtle is heard in all her forests;
once again, after two thousand years of serfdom,
man walks with his head erect; Bastiles are no
more; every cottage is searched by the golden light
of law; and the privileges of religious conscience
have been guaranteed and consecrated for ever and
ever." Thirty years have passed since these words
were written, and France has recently gone through
stupendous throes, from which she has emerged
with strong and erect. presence; but the grandeur
of her destiny is not yet accomplished. When we
remember, however, the days of her darkness,
has the price paid for her present position been
too great? Wordsworth yearned for immediate
fruition; but an idea sometimes takes a thousand
years to acquire the concrete form of action.
I have been impelled to this comparison because
.
༔
·
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
5
a fervent radicalism (which remains to be considered
more fully) was one of the changeless ideas and
convictions of Shelley. From his earliest years of
thought we find it asserting itself, separating the
poet from all the natural ties and associations
by which he was environed. To understand him
fully he must be regarded in this light, viz., as
one who, from the first moment of his intellectual
consciousness, indulged an antipathy to many
social institutions, while he loved and pitied the
individual. As a child, his keen and weird im-
agination, teeming with vivid conceptions of the
ideal, was not all that was noticeable in him.
His thoughts and aspirations were not those of the
rest of his schoolfellows, and he must be followed
closely from the time when he first began to think
and to suffer. His mind, even in its first evolutions,
was busy with the Infinite. He was making daily
excursions into the vast region of the unknown.
His schoolfellows, being unable to comprehend
him, busied themselves in tormenting him, and in
endeavouring to render his life a burden. One
can imagine how St. Augustine's language would
apply to him, when he said that "the boy's sufferings
while they last are quite as real as those of the
man;” indeed, we may credibly suppose that his
anguish was almost keener in these early days at
i
6
SHELLEY:
the injustice he endured than it was when oppro-
brious epithets were lavishly hurled at him in
after years. Verses which he subsequently wrote
show how completely isolated he was from those
whom he daily met in statu pupillari, and how even
at that period he was leading a separate existence,
like some lonely, melancholy star :—
"I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep: a fresh May dawn it was,
When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose
From the near schoolroom voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes—
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
"And then I clasped my hands, and look'd around;
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground:
So, without shame, I spake :-'I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check,'
Remembering all that is implied in these lines,
and the facts upon which the description is based,
it is scarcely matter for wonder that Percy Bysshe
Shelley, the most spiritual of all the poets of the
nineteenth century, remains, in many aspects, one
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
7.
Mis-
of the unsolved problems of literature.
apprehended and misunderstood, more perhaps than
any other man of equal genius, by his own genera-
tion, even at this day also his name excites a
visible tremor in those whose estimate of him has
been formed from a superficial examination of his
extraordinary character. The wild beauty of his
song penetrates every mind which is capable of
being moved by poetic thought and expression;
yet from the moment when this grand but erratic
luminary first shot across the horizon of English
literature, readers and critics have been divided
into two distinctly hostile camps whenever any
attempt has been made to assign him his true
position. We are in the habit of thinking that the
poet is never happy till his death; but neither in
his life nor since his death has the just balance been
held with regard to Shelley-his detractors ever
being unwilling to give due weight to the circum-
stances of his life, and his unreasoning admirers
being blinded to his imperfections by the excess
and magnificence of his poetic vision. More than
most men in his art has he excited a personal
interest in the legion of his commentators and
elucidators, and in almost all that has been said of
him some warp or bias is easily discernible. A
curious and interesting study may, however, be
!
8
SHELLEY:
made of this gifted being, if we examine, by the
light of well-ascertained facts, the springs of thought
and action in his early life-and it is a study
which will materially assist towards a conception
of the real nature of the poet in his later years.
From the very youth of Shelley the inter-connection
between sensation, fact, and action was so close and
intimate distinguishing in truth the whole of his
strange and brilliant career-that the incidents of
his history become necessary to a true understanding
of his poetry and of his character. The poet lives
in his emotions; pre-eminently was this the case
with Shelley; and the singular strength and tena-
city of his feelings will in a large measure account
for the failure of mere criticism, unassisted by a
quick sympathy, to arrive at a just estimate of
the poet and the man. My present object is chiefly
to set forth, as I conceive him, Shelley-while yet
in his youth, through his genius and personality,
-a being permeated with the "enthusiasm of
humanity" to a degree seldom witnessed in recent
generations. Biography will be an adjunct, by
whose aid we shall endeavour to get at the soul of
the poet, and to unravel some of those tangled
threads of character which puzzle most students
of his nature, and which have even betrayed men
of kindred gifts into unworthy aspersions upon his
!
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
9
name. For nearly two centuries past no more re-
markable phenomenon has arisen—a phenomenon
at once so striking and so splendid—the terror of
those who saw in him only the fiery champion of
Atheism, but a glorious radiance to all who have
finally comprehended the efforts of his imagination
and the nobility of his heart. He can scarcely
pass for a true lover of poetry who has not in his
youth revelled in the luxuriant, if crude, fancies of
Queen Mab; nor, further, can he be said to have
done justice to strength of thought in his later age
except The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound have,
with other extraordinary creations, commanded his
willing admiration. This sanguine and rebellious
spirit had but one equal in his day-he to whom
I have already made reference-Wordsworth, the
patriarch of the North, who, filled with a calm as
majestic as that which possessed the mountains and
lakes of his inspiration, was in almost every re-
spect the opposite of his younger brother in song.
One trembles for the veracity of history in
relation to past ages, when we remember how
circumstances which occurred only fifty years ago
have been distorted for the convenience of in-
terested persons. Shelley, like Dr. Johnson, had
his Boswell, and the biographer of the former has
left behind him a work almost unique, vying with
:
10
SHELLEY :
the Scotsman's immortal record. But with this
qualifying adjective all similarity ends. Boswell
was content to narrate facts; but, when necessary
for his theories, Shelley's biographer is said to
have been prolific in inventing them. There would
be little difficulty in tracing many of the false con-
ceptions of the poet's character to his door. The
invention of a fact, indeed, appears with him to
have been most easy of accomplishment. And if
other facts more trustworthy than his own proved
refractory, so much the worse for the opposing
facts; but these could not be allowed to deter him
for a moment in his development of the relations
between Shelley's work and his life. To prove that
the poet never conducted himself as other mortals
(even in his youth), a lengthy disquisition was
written upon Shelley's "raising the Devil" at
Oxford-not a formidable operation at any time, if
we are to believe the theologians, seeing that the
enemy of the human race is always close at our
elbow. Yet boyish pranks like this have been
solemnly paraded as affording a clue to the under-
standing of the poet, although every youth of
Shelley's ingenious mind and lively spirit exhibits
similar idiosyncrasies, upon which it would be ab-
surd to build a serious and elaborate superstructure.
Then, again, this biographer-and he was not the
+
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
11
only untrustworthy biographer Shelley has had—
manifested an obvious political bias, and the opinions
of the poet, both religious and political, terribly
disturbed his equilibrium. In one passage Hogg
observes of his friend-"He gave himself up too
much to people who have since been called Radicals;
these were necessarily vulgar; they dreaded and de-
tested his conspicuously aristocratical and gentle-
manlike dispositions, and being commonly needy
men, chiefly perhaps because they were lazy and dis-
sipated, they preyed upon him most unmercifully."
The absurdity of this passage is only equalled by its
puerility; but it is very valuable as showing the
calibre of the man who undertook to tell us the story
of Shelley's life. His greatest condemnation lies in
the fact that the man of genius and the aristocrat
could be a Radical of the most advanced type.
Other biographers have given us details of their
respective friendships with Shelley, and, though
these are marked by errors, they are yet more
useful for the purposes of the student from the
fact that they are not disfigured by personal feel-
ings and animosities. But the reflection still
recurs, how inadequate is all that has been written
to place in a just light in the eyes of posterity that
singular being whose genius was of so sublime and
transcendent an order. Ample materials exist for
12
SHELLEY:
the construction of a complete biography, but
obstacles still intervene to prevent the accomplish-
ment of the task with the requisite fulness and
freedom. "Pelion upon Ossa" is but a faint shadow-
ing forth of the memorial volumes and editions of
Shelley which have been issued; but many of these
never had any raison d'être whatever, and they only
serve to intensify our perplexity and bewilderment
in endeavouring to consolidate the facts of Shelley's
life. Perhaps the only solid rock in these drift-
ing sands of biography is that volume wherein Lady
Shelley has given us a brief memorial of her illus-
trious relative. Meanwhile, pending the publica-
tion of the full and complete history of Shelley,
it is not impossible to advance a solution of many
problems suggested by his career. And one of the
questions we have to ask is, Will the poet yet be
reconciled to the mass of human beings whose feel-
ings De Quincey declared him to have outraged-
not only in his own, but in every age-by his attack
upon established dogma and religion? I refuse, for
one, to signify adhesion to De Quincey's view,—to
believe that when Shelley's character is placed in
a clearer light, he will still be regarded as the
bitter enemy of all religious teaching and belief.
In stating the grounds for this opinion, I shall not
plead for his memory ad misericordiam, but by
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
13
right of that eternal justice which he was ever the
first to invoke and acknowledge.
<<
Before the childish principle of selfishness is
usually eliminated from the breast, Shelley
was troubled and perplexed by the wrongs and
misery of the world. Yet never were divine pity
and magnanimity crushed out of his soul. All
the malignity of his foes, and all the suffering
which fell to his lot, only served to make the flame
of his noble philanthropy burn the brighter and
with a purer radiance. Despotism never con-
quered the fresh feelings of his heart, and his
gentleness seemed to grow by the unlikely meat
it fed on. Of the strange schoolboy at Brentford,
nursing his mighty youth," unsuspected of genius,
and apparently the bitter sport of fate, we have
the following portraiture: "Shelley was slightly
yet elegantly formed; he had deep blue eyes, of a
wild, strange beauty, and a high white forehead,
overshadowed with a quantity of dark-brown
curling hair. His complexion was very fair; and,
though his features were not positively handsome,
the expression of his countenance was one of
exceeding sweetness and sincerity. His look of
youthfulness he retained to the end of his life,
though his hair was beginning to get grey-
the effect of intense study, and of the painful
14
SHELLEY :
agitations of mind through which he had passed. "1
As the result of his endowments, though Shelley
paid little attention to his tasks at school, he
easily outstripped his companions. But the daily
routine was singularly wearisome to him, and was
rendered doubly so by the petty persecutions to
which he was subjected, and which he regarded as
very atrocious. This was one of the first intima-
tions of his recognition of the dignity of the
human soul, and of his unchangeable determina-
tion never to see it degraded in his own person.
A strong antipathy to physical punishments was
displayed when he visited his sister Helen at the
school at Clapham, and insisted upon the cessation
of what he considered to be a derogatory method
of correction. Referring to his school life, one
writer says, "I do not give him as an example
for children to follow. Away with this cant of
schoolboy reproving. I describe, and as far as in
me lies unfold, the secrets of a human heart; and,
if I be true to nature, I depict an uprightness of
purpose, a generosity of sentiment, and a sweet-
ness of disposition, that yielded not to the devil of
hate, but to the God of love, unequalled by any
human being that ever existed. Tamed by affec-
1 Other portraits have been given of Shelley, but this
description appears to be the most authentic.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
15
tion, but unconquered by blows, what chance was
there that Shelley should be happy at a public
school?" It is strange that this man, who should
have excited such an intense veneration in every
individual who knew him personally, should
have been subjected to bitter diatribes from those
who ran with the multitude to condemn him,
but who were utterly unable to comprehend his
nature.
Shelley at Eton displayed that fearlessness of
character which ever strongly distinguished him.
He opposed with passionate ardour the system of
fagging which was pursued, and his individual
force was such that he kept down the hateful
system, so far as he was personally concerned.
As for the stories told of his residence, both here
and at Oxford, are they not too familiar to need
repetition ? Doubtless, his eccentricities have
been exaggerated; whilst his serious periods of
reflection and isolation-during which his fruitful
imagination conjured up strange visions, creating
and peopling worlds-were taken as evidences
that he was unsociable, if not morose. Probably
the whole matter is a misconception. As well
make oil and water coalesce as adapt Shelley to
the moods of the youths with whom he was asso-
ciated. Constantly rising to another sphere, he
16
SHELLEY:
was only occasionally brought down to actual
mundane affairs and persons. Yet that he was
capable of forming sincere and lasting friendships
has been abundantly proved. When a youth, his
large soul was impatient of everything paltry
and mean of which it could not avoid cognizance.
But the pleasures of his imagination were so strong
and satisfying as to draw him away largely from
ordinary communion with humanity. Then, too,
even in the days of boyhood, there were floating
in his mind certain undefined schemes which he
longed to promulgate for the amelioration of the
race; and there is something beautiful, if almost
grotesque, in the fact of a youth of seventeen being
so impressed with the necessity of working for the
good of his species, as to contemplate the issue
of a novel which was to give the death-blow to
intolerance. Concerning those anecdotes which
have sometimes been taken to point to incipient
madness, I need not say much. After carefully
examining them, nothing remains but what may
be attributed to a simple feverishness of the nerves.
Earnestness and restlessness-which never slept
till his body perished in the blue Mediterranean-
qualities whose permeating influences were pecu-
liarly exceptional in him, made him seem a
being of another type. He experienced, also, but
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
17
only on two or three separate occasions in his
lifetime, peculiar visions or hallucinations, which
were probably the result of a surcharge of ideality,
and nothing more. But of many of his extra-
ordinary deeds we should never have heard, had
he not developed into an unquestionably great
poet. When genius becomes manifest, it pays
the penalty of having all the trivial actions of
youth unearthed, and canvassed as remarkable
incidents, whose real import is now only dis-
covered for the first time. Occasionally these in-
cidents are invented. That Shelley was eccentric—
a being, that is, who does not move in the common
groove but who will have his own orbit—is an
undoubted fact; nor does it admit of denial that
his consciousness of divergence from the mental
constitution of others led him to isolate himself,
just as the early intimations of genius, so different
in kind, led to the seclusiveness of James Watt.
The fact that Shelley was called "Atheist" at
Eton has been held to be indicative of his opinions
thus early in life, although it has been pointed
out that the term Atheist was applied at Eton
to one who ventured to set even the temporal
authorities at defiance. Such speculations as these
are worthless in helping us to arrive at a judgment
upon the man. We are at a loss to know what
C
•
18
SHELLEY:
basis of truth exists in them, and it is as foolish as
it is unjust to attempt to construct a theory of
character when we are absolutely in doubt as to
the preliminary steps being sound and undeniable.
This much, and this only, is safely and legitimately
deducible from Shelley's stay at Eton-that here
was a remarkable youth, who could not possibly
be confounded with the common herd; one whose
vivid but confused imagination was struggling
after divine forms in which to express itself; one
who was the sworn foe of injustice, and who was
prepared to combat it, even if the result involved
martyrdom. But he was no Atheist as yet in the
ordinary acceptation of the term. He undoubtedly
hated all authority which did not spring from love;
but upon distinctively religious and theological
questions he had not yet begun to formulate his
views. His idea of abolishing God, and conduct-
ing the world upon an improved principle, was
reserved for a rather later stage of his existence.
There is strong ground for the conviction that
the brief interregnum between Shelley's leaving
Eton and his being entered at Oxford witnessed
a great and noticeable expansion of his mind.
This was the result of the freedom and solitari-
ness which he enjoyed at home, where he busied
himself deeply in learning and in various specula-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
19
tions. At any rate, when we next meet with him
as an undergraduate of University College, it is to
see one who bent himself to the studies which fell to
his lot with an ardour that astonished those of less
sanguine temperament. Several literary efforts
which he put forth antecedent to this period really
gave no adequate foreshadowing of his powers.
Passing by a play which he wrote when a mere boy,
in conjunction with his sister Elizabeth, and which
probably merited no warmer appreciation than it re-
ceived from the great comedian Mathews, we come
to the Wandering Jew, a work, it is said, he wrote
in conjunction with Medwin, but which in reality
was altogether Shelley's own. Some biographers
appear to have no knowledge of this effusion; but as
a matter of fact, all its leading ideas were after-
wards worked up by Shelley in his poems. For
his first published work, Zastrozzi, a novel, Shelley
received the sum of forty pounds; but this in-
discretion of publication as regards Shelley does not
appear to have been repeated by the publishers
who issued the work. Zastrozzi was a mixture of
the styles of Mrs. Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory
Lewis, the latter being then a favourite author with
Shelley; but a story written by Dr. Moore about a
century ago must also have made some impression on
the young author. Suffice it to say, that the novel
20
SHELLEY:
was a wild, if eloquent, absurdity; and that proba-
bly the most satisfactory thing in connection with
it was a magnificent banquet which Shelley was
enabled to give to eight friends out of the proceeds
of the romance. Another work, written by Shelley
at a somewhat later date, St. Irvyne, was simply
the result of an extensive reading of weird tales and
novels, and only those persons who have a keener
insight than is to be obtained by fair criticism
could detect in it anything which would warrant its
republication. A volume to which more interest
attaches is that entitled Original Poetry by Victor
and Cazire. Stockdale, the publisher, gives the
following account of this volume and its principal
author:-"The unfortunate subject of these very
slight recollections introduced himself to me in the
autumn of 1810. He was extremely young. I
should think he did not look more than eighteen.
With anxiety in his countenance, he requested me
to extricate him from a pecuniary difficulty in
which he was involved with a printer, whose name
I cannot call to mind, but who resided at Horsham,
near to which Timothy Shelley, Esquire, afterwards,
I believe, made a baronet, the father of our poet, had
a seat called Field Place. I am not quite certain
how the difference between the poet and the
printer was arranged; but, after I had looked over
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
21
the account, I know that it was paid, though
whether I assisted in the payment by money or
acceptance I cannot remember. The letters show
that it was accomplished just before my too con-
scientious friendship caused our separation. Be
that as it may, on the 17th of September, 1810, I
received fourteen hundred and eighty copies of a
thin royal 8vo volume, entitled Original Poetry by
Alonzo and Cazire, or two names something like
them. The author told me that the poems were
the joint production of himself and a friend, whose
name was forgotten by me as soon as I heard
it." Stockdale adds, that from these trifles which
he published, and from personal intercourse, he at
once formed an opinion that Shelley was not an
every-day character. There are some speculations
to the effect that Shelley's coadjutor in this volume
was his cousin and first love, Miss Harriet Grove,
who was on a visit to Field Place about the time
that Shelley would have written the poems; but it
was Elizabeth Shelley, and not Harriet Grove, who
was his coadjutor in this volume. The work, how-
ever, had a brief existence, for Shelley having dis-
covered incorporated in it a poem now supposed
to have been written by "Monk" Lewis, he ordered
the whole edition to be destroyed. One other
literary venture with which Shelley was connected
22
SHELLEY:
must be mentioned, viz., the Posthumous Frag-
ments of Margaret Nicholson. This book had a
singular origin. Shelley intimated to his friend
Hogg his intention of publishing some poems
anonymously, when the latter, having read them, ex-
pressed an adverse opinion upon them, though he
thought they might easily be rendered into bur-
lesque poetry. Shelley accordingly set to work
and increased the amusing element in the poems,
and Hogg suggested the title. Margaret Nicholson
was a mad washerwoman, who had attempted the
life of George III., and was incarcerated in a
lunatic asylum. The volume, being uncommon in
style, had considerable success in the University
of Oxford. The most revolutionary sentiments were
expressed, and as there was a good deal of wild talk
about freedom just then, it was apparently not
suspected that the work was written as burlesque,
and certainly not that its authors were in such
close proximity to the heads of Colleges.
But these effusions are not of substantial moment
in the development of Shelley's genius, and their
publication was speedily followed by sterner events.
By this time every person who has read of Shelley's
residence at Oxford and expulsion from the
University, has formed his own definite conclusions
thereupon. Yet, in what has been written, justice
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
23
is frequently denied, first to the poet, and then to
the authorities. As this residence of six months
at Oxford, and its unhappy termination, formed
one of the principal turning points in Shelley's
career, it will be of importance to look at the
matter somewhat closely. I must express my
conviction, however, in the outset, that so great
had been the progress which Shelley had made in
free thought, that he would himself, at no distant
date, have felt it his duty to leave the University,
as a place which had become totally incom-
patible with his views. It must eventually have
come to that, for he could never have smothered
his convictions. There were more stages to pass
than the authorities (had they been never so
solicitous) could have aided the poet to traverse.
As the matter stands, there is scarcely room for
doubt that the authorities of the University behaved
with great harshness to the erring student and his
friend. The explanation given by Hogg of the
production of the pamphlet on The Necessity of
Atheism clearly shows, I think, that its author's
judges transgressed on the side of over-severity.
The whole thing was unfortunate in this respect,
that while on the one hand here was an impulsive
young student who could ill brook the indignity
to which he was subjected, as he believed, at the
24
SHELLEY :
hands of the authorities-there were these authori-
ties themselves, on the other hand, who were as-
tounded at the daring of the youth who defied
them. At this time the very indefinite views of
Shelley upon the question of the government of
the world and the existence of God began to assume
form and substance; but I am inclined to think,
after a study of this period, that he was only
feeling for the light. He meant his pamphlet
to be as much of a tentative character as of a
declaratory one; and he would have rejoiced had
the men of accredited erudition been able to dissi-
pate the clouds of scepticism in which he was
fast becoming involved. Lady Shelley's account
of the pamphlet (and her testimony is supported
by Mr. Hogg) is as follows: "Notwithstanding the
extremely spiritual and romantic character of his
(Shelley's) genius, he applied himself to logic with
ardour and success, and of course brought it to
bear on all subjects, including theology. With
his habitual disregard of consequences, he hastily
wrote a pamphlet, in which the defective logic of
the usual arguments in favour of the existence of
a God was set forth: this he circulated among the
authorities and members of his college. In point
of fact, the pamphlet did not contain any positive
assertion; it was merely a challenge to discussion,
1
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
25
1
beginning with certain axioms, and finishing with
a Q. E. D. The publication (consisting of only
two pages) seemed rather to imply, on the part of
the writer, a desire to obtain better reasoning on
the side of the commonly received opinion, than
any wish to overthrow with sudden violence the
grounds of men's belief. In any case, however,
had the heads of the college been men of candid
and broad intellects, they would have recognised
in the author of the obnoxious pamphlet an earnest
love of truth, a noble passion for arriving at the
nature of things, however painful the road. They
might at least have sought, by argument and
remonstrance, to set him in what they conceived
to be the right path; but either they had not the
courage and the regard for truth necessary for
such a course, or they were themselves the victims
of a narrow education. At any rate, for this
exercise of scholastic ingenuity, Shelley was
expelled." In all probability, the authorities were
not at home in discussing the troublesome questions
raised by the disputatious student. They had one
effective weapon within their grasp, however, which
they used, viz., expulsion. While not denying the
authority upon which they acted, yet which they
also somewhat strained, their general obstinacy
and density of intellect call to mind the say-
26
SHELLEY:
ing of Sydney Smith, when he complained that
we should never get a wooden pavement to St.
Paul's till certain ecclesiastical dignitaries "could
be persuaded to lay their heads together." From
Shelley's recorded account of the expulsion it will
be perceived that in the demeanour of the Master
there was much of the fortiter in re, but very little
of the suaviter in modo; and the best proof we
could desire that Shelley did not exaggerate in his
narration is the conduct of his friend Hogg. So
convinced was he of the gross injustice perpetrated
towards Shelley, that he endeavoured to procure a
reversal of the sentence from the authorities, but
only to share the same fate himself. With regard
to the whole subject, though I incline most nearly
to Lady Shelley's view of it, I cannot go the whole
length of her statement. She says that the poet
was expelled from Oxford, with great injustice,
"for a pamphlet which, if it had been given as a
translation of the work of some old Greek, would
have been regarded as a model of subtle meta-
physical reasoning." Perhaps so; but however
admirable as a metaphysical exercise, the authori-
ties would have been compelled to controvert its
positions. The ablest "old Greek" who ever lived
would have been dismissed from Oxford, equally
with Shelley, if he had developed and promulgated
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
27
doctrines thoroughly incompatible with the reli-
gious basis of the Colleges. On the other hand,
De Quincey is wrong in his palliation of Shelley's
conduct when he puts it on the ground of his
extreme youth. He asserts that at this period he
had only entered upon his sixteenth year, whereas
he had entered upon his nineteenth. The course
which humanity should have dictated in the
matter of the pamphlet would have been to allow
some time for reflection on Shelley's part, in order
to ascertain whether he had affirmed and main-
tained what were real fixed principles with him;
and in case he answered in the affirmative, then
to give him the option of withdrawal, after point-
ing out to him that by the very nature of his
tenets he was precluded from remaining a student
at the University. Had this been done, the
University would have been vindicated, whilst
the heart of Shelley might have been saved one
pang, and his life one indignity-both of which
must be regarded as unquestionably severe.
The results of the expulsion were disastrous to
the poet in many ways. Besides the anguish
which the act itself caused his sensitive spirit, his
father, not in the least understanding the disposition
of his gifted son, informed him that he could no
longer visit at Field Place except upon certain con-
28
SHELLEY:
ditions, to which Shelley found it impossible to
accede. The bluff country member, in writing to
the elder Mr. Hogg, expressed the hope that they
would respectively be able to convert their sons from
the error of their ways. "Paley's 'Natural Theo-
logy,' I shall recommend my young man to read,"
said Mr. Shelley. But his "young man " was too far
gone for Paley, and remained refractory. After his
dismissal from College, the intimacy between
Shelley and his early love also abruptly ceased-an-
other shaft of pain from which he suffered. Miss
Grove was removed from his influence: and his
correspondence with Miss Felicia Browne (after-
wards Mrs. Hemans) also terminated in conse-
quence of his heretical opinions.
In loneliness of heart, but with the pride of his
lofty mind unsubdued by the bolts of misfortune
which had fallen upon him, we next behold the
outcast in London. He is now almost in pecuniary
embarrassment, yet the generosity of his nature is
not one whit impaired; and it is affirmed that on
one occasion he actually pawned his favourite solar
microscope to relieve a case of distress. Shelley
took lodgings in Poland Street, a locality which is
said to have reminded him of Thaddeus of Warsaw
and freedom; and he appears to have nearly arrived
at the same straits as that favourite hero. But
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
29
although his father treated him harshly, his sisters,
whom he seems to have ever deeply loved, played
the part of good Samaritans, sending him from
their store of accumulated pocket-money sufficient
to keep him from starvation. The next important
incident in his life is one that, with his soul and
temperament, might easily have been predicated.
He fell in love. I ought, perhaps, rather to have
said he was fascinated by the æsthetic appearance
of the being who stirred in him this new feeling of
admiration; for it would appear from subsequent
events that love was too strong and too sacred a
name to employ in describing the passion of Shelley
for Harriet Westbrook. Certainly there was not
the strength and intensity of feeling in it which he
afterwards experienced for Mary Godwin. Miss
Westbrook is described as a beautiful girl "with a
complexion brilliant in pink and white, with hair
quite like a poet's dream, and Bysshe's peculiar
admiration”—that is, of a light brown colour.
was of delicate build, and at the time Shelley first
saw her was about sixteen years of age. Her father
was a retired hotel-keeper, and well to do. Harriet
had a sister named Eliza, who was a constant butt
for Mr. Hogg's ridicule, and who does not appear
to have been particularly prepossessing. She had
dark eyes, dark and plentiful hair, was pitted with
She
30
SHELLEY:
the small-pox, had a slight figure and a Jewish as-
pect. Much of the unhappiness of Shelley's life
for the next few years was due to the influence of
this sister, as will probably be one day proven.
The letters of Shelley to Hogg at and near the time
of the meeting of the former with Miss Westbrook
show that he had lost all hope of ever being united
to Miss Grove, and possibly also his affection for
her was on the wane. That he had felt keenly the
disappointment in regard to her, nevertheless, is not
dubious. Miss Westbrook's parents living in
London, Shelley was on one occasion (after a slight
indisposition from which she had suffered) chosen
to escort Harriet back to school at Clapham-the
same school in which were Shelley's sisters.
at this time Sir Timothy Shelley made an amicable
arrangement with his son, who found himself on a
brief visit to Field Place. A new settlement of
the property being arrived at, Sir Timothy agreed
to make Shelley an allowance of £200 a year, and
also gave him permission to live where he pleased.
This latter piece of condescension was not much
of a boon, seeing that the son had a will of his
own; but the money was the substantial lifting of
a cloud. A short period only elapsed after this
settlement when Shelley, being in North Wales
on a visit to Mr. Thomas Grove, his cousin, re-
Just
-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
31
ceived an urgent summons from the sisters West-
brook to return to London. When this letter
came to Shelley, calling him back to town, he said-
"Hear it not, Percy, for it is a knell
That summons thee to Heaven or to Hell."
On reaching London, he found that Harriet was in
the midst of a violent quarrel with her father, who
wished to force her to return to school against her
will. Shelley took her part, and as a solution of
the difficulty Harriet was in, they eloped together
and were married in Edinburgh. In a letter
written to Hogg (but whose authenticity Lady
Shelley does not guarantee, though I do not see
why she should not do so) Shelley says: "I shall
certainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook
will decide whether now or in three weeks. Her
father has persecuted her in a most horrible way
by endeavouring to compel her to go to school.
She asked my advice.. I advised her to resist.
She wrote to say that resistance was useless, but
that she would fly with me, and threw herself
upon my protection." Mr. Rossetti believes from
this that Miss Westbrook was quite ready to live
with Shelley without the ceremony of marriage :
this conjecture, however, may be harsh and unjust
towards Miss Westbrook; for it is possible that there
32
SHELLEY:
was some understanding of marriage implied when
Harriet expressed herself willing to elope. This
idea is further strengthened by another passage in
this same letter to Hogg, where Shelley says, “I
will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by
which I am now almost convinced." One thing is
sufficiently clear, nevertheless-that the advances
as to the elopement were made by Miss West-
brook, though possibly with an understanding of
marriage. Yet Shelley's conduct was undoubtedly
noble at this time; for although he held peculiar
views on marriage, out of regard for Miss West-
brook, he became united with her in matrimony.
Here we arrive at what was undoubtedly one of
the most unhappy passages in his life. It could
not be expected that a man with so fine a mental
organisation, and such cravings after knowledge
and intellectual excellence, could long be satisfied
with the restricted mind which he had now made
his own.
But after all exordiums upon the folly
of the transaction, the character of Shelley stands
out in regard to this marriage in excellent relief;
and no other refutation was needed of the charge
that he was a contemner of morals.
After a short residence in Edinburgh, Shelley
and his wife went to York, where they were joined
by the elder Miss Westbrook, "a visitor," says Lady
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
33
Shelley, "whose presence was in many respects
unfortunate. From strength of character and
disparity of years (for she was much older than
Harriet), she exercised a strong influence over her
sister; and this influence was used without much
discretion, and with little inclination to smooth
the difficulties or promote the happiness of the
young couple, whose united ages amounted to
thirty-five years." This exceedingly strong-minded
person appears soon to have made herself a terror
both to Shelley and his wife, reducing the latter to
a condition of nervousness that boded ill for her
future health. She seems to have considered that
she had a heaven-born mission to take charge
of the poet and Mrs. Shelley, and very early in
the course of his married life she had driven
Shelley to the extremity of declaring that either
he or she should leave the house. This fact is
of some importance in view of what ultimately
occurred, and shows that the ground of Shelley's
dissatisfaction with his matrimonial state was
partly prepared for him by this meddlesome
individual, and that much of the blame for
the ruined happiness of husband and wife should
accrue to her. The singular anecdote is related
that on one occasion, when the little party were
out on an excursion in York, Harriet coolly pro-
D
34
SHELLEY :
pounded these questions to Hogg, "What is your
opinion of suicide? Did you ever think of destroy-
ing yourself?" The biographer adds that she often
discoursed of her purpose of killing herself some
day or other; and this at great length, in a calm
and resolute manner. Without building too much
upon these incidents, many who have busily con-
cerned themselves with the marriage of Shelley to
Harriet Westbrook, and with its tragic ending, have
failed to give due weight to untoward circum-
stances due to the officious intermeddling of his
wife's sister-in their eagerness to fix upon Shelley
the greater portion of the blame for subsequent
events. Instead of talking about the "mad Shelley,"
it would have been much nearer the truth to
assert that it was his poor wife who was afflicted
with a monomania-that of self-destruction-
superinduced, no doubt, by extraneous influences.
There exists abundant evidence to prove that
Harriet was reduced to a state of complete
wretchedness by the unwelcome presence of her
sister in her new abode, and the idea of suicide
was a topic she invariably discussed with the
utmost freedom and fearlessness. Her life was.
embittered by her relative; besides which she was
conscious of a hopeless and ever-widening breach
between herself and her husband.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
35
This brief statement of certain biographical
facts in Shelley's life I have deemed it incumbent
upon me to make, inasmuch as they played a con-
spicuous part in the education of the man and of
the poet. It is impossible to read many of his
fervid lyrics, and those highly-strung passages in the
more important dramas and poems he subsequently
wrote, without perceiving that they owed much of
their most striking thought to his personal experi-
ence. As clearly as Byron depicted in his verse
the suffering and delight of his own soul, so mani-
festly did Shelley draw upon his own anguish and
the exaltation which proceeded from his exquisite
sensibilities. Has not the author of Julian and
Maddalo indeed himself declared that
"Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song?"
For this reason we are bound to trace the connec-
tion between his individual life and song. Save for
those passages in Shelley's career, and others which
it may yet be necessary to mention, who knows.
but that the whole tenor of his life's work might
have been changed? We have received as á
heritage the poetry of inspired passion; poetry
which is the outcome of obloquy, of a burning sense
36
SHELLEY:
of injustice, of the love of divine beauty, of deep
and fierce affection, and of an inextinguishable
devotion to humanity.
Shelley's acquaintance with Southey appears to
have had no influence in directing the genius of
the former. For some of Southey's poems he had
a high admiration, but it is scarcely possible to
conceive of a long friendship between the two.
Shelley must necessarily, sooner or later, have gone
off at a tangent. Yet, though there was very little
in common between them, they appear to have kept
for a brief period on amicable relations, if indeed
they did not cherish a close intimacy. Shelley
on one occasion evidently said something to the
elder poet respecting his married infelicity, or
Southey had discovered it for himself, for we find
the latter observing, in language which showed
that he knew how to accommodate himself to
circumstances, "A man ought to be able to live
with any woman; you see that I can, and so
ought you. It comes to pretty much the same
thing, I apprehend. There is no great choice or
difference." Southey might not have been abso-
lutely serious in this remark upon his marital rela-
tions, and indeed most probably was not, yet his
life, like one of his best-known works, was only
one long " Commonplace Book," His books were in
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
37
reality dearer to him than the human species; but
with Shelley the case was the reverse. He had a
great capacity for being either intensely happy or
intensely miserable; and his feelings were irresist-
ibly enlisted in one direction or the other by those
into whose society he was constantly thrown. It
is imperative to remember this in endeavouring to
pass judgment upon him for his share in the im-
pending tragedy after his marriage with Harriet
Westbrook. His temperament was so keen and
ardent that he could not regard with indifference
any associations in which he stood towards man-
kind.
With respect to Shelley's first marriage, it would
be well if the curtain could for ever fall upon that
unhappy tragedy. As that is impossible, however,
it is necessary to state-holding the scales, as far as
we can, with an even balance-that Shelley cannot
be exonerated from blame-not for absolute harsh-
ness or wrong, but for the thoughtlessness which
first led him into this marriage, and the indifference
which afterwards crept over him with regard to
his wife. He felt, nevertheless, that their natures
were incompatible, and it was impossible for him
to play the hypocrite. One thing will certainly be
hereafter established, viz., that he was not respon-
sible for his wife's death. Though the ill-assorted
38
SHELLEY:
union wrought both the poet and his wife much
misery, I see in this man no trace of the feeling
which would cause others to suffer, but instead
sadness and regret for pain that he might at any
time have thoughtlessly caused: even more than
that for pain which the world would have en-
tirely absolved him from causing, but responsi-
bility for which he was ever too ready to take
upon himself.
It has been demonstrated to a certainty that be-
fore Shelley parted from his first wife he had been
convinced of their mutual incompatibility, and
that they had lived unhappily for a considerable
period preceding the actual separation. Some
have nevertheless asserted that there was no
estrangement, and no shadow of a thought of
separation till Shelley became acquainted with
Mary Godwin. Happily for Shelley, this charge
can be disposed of. There was unquestionably a
deep estrangement; and it is just possible that
the poet might have turned to the love of Mary
Godwin as a solace in his misery; but his affec-
tion for Mary Godwin was certainly not the
origin of the unhappy condition of things between
himself and his wife. The poet only saw Mary
Godwin once till some date between April and
June 1814, whilst Shelley's own statements, and
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
39
the letters of his friends, prove that there was an
estrangement between him and his wife before the
latter period: The first occasion on which Shelley
saw Mary Godwin was in London, in the year 1812;
but the poet regarded her then as a mere child,
and she made scarcely any impression upon him
whatever. The whole subject-matter of conten-
tion as regards this marriage resolves itself, after
an examination of authoritative documents, into
these simple statements,-viz., that the separation
could not have come with surprise upon Mrs.
Shelley-she must have expected it would occur at
some time or other; though, when Shelley left her,
it is true there was no reason on her part for antici-
pating that he would not return, neither was there a
fixed intention, at that time, on his part, of not re-
turning that the wife, equally with the husband,
had become convinced they were ill-suited to each
other, and that it would have been better had they
never met; and, lastly, whatever may have been the
precipitating causes, that the separation was the re-
sult of circumstances known to both. But just as
Shelley's first elopement with Harriet Westbrook
was fostered and mainly brought about by her
elder sister for her own purposes, so the second
elopement was greatly encouraged by Miss Clair-
mont, whose name is preserved in connection with
3
40
SHELLEY:
Byron, and who ought to have known better-while
at this time Mary Godwin was only a girl of
sixteen. The world knows the disastrous end of
Mrs. Shelley; but upon whom shall be placed
the blame of that tragedy? He would be a bold
man who undertook thoroughly to solve that now
insoluble problem. We know, however, that
Shelley-as, indeed, might be readily imagined
-was deeply affected by the event. Leigh Hunt
declares that it completely unmanned him for a
period, and that he suffered remorse at having
brought his wife into a sphere which she was not
qualified to fill. One writer says—“I am well
aware that he had suffered severely, and that he
continued to be haunted by certain recollections,
partly real and partly imaginative, which pursued
him like an Orestes." Captain Medwin affirmed
that the sad circumstance ever after threw a cloud
over the poet, and all biographers speak of the
genuineness and strength of his sorrow. It may
be assumed as indisputable, however, that Mrs.
Shelley's death had no direct and immediate
relation to the differences between herself and
her husband. The fact that Shelley once pro-
claimed himself an Atheist has been quite
sufficient in the eyes of many to prove that
he was capable of conduct directly leading to
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
41
""
the death of his wife, or, indeed, that he was
equal to the commission of almost any other
enormity. It is always your "hard-and-fast-line
Christian who is severest in his censures upon
humanity—that being who clings tenaciously to
the letter, but exhibits very little of the spirit of
Christianity. It was doubtless some such know-
ledge as this that Shelley possessed of his traducers
which led him to breathe open defiance to the
world, and which has given to us one of the most
tragic exhibitions of man fighting against fate to
be found in the annals of mankind.
Carlyle speaks of Shelley "filling the earth with
inarticulate wail; like the infinite, inarticulate
grief and weeping of forsaken infants." In some
respects this is a brief but accurate digest of the
poet's life; in others, it bears in it small remnant
of appropriateness. In that Shelley was driven to
wild despair by the injustice of the world, which
led him to send up such a wail to heaven as hath
rarely been heard from the voice of gifted mortal
such as he, Carlyle's definition is good: if it be
meant to represent Shelley's accomplished work, it
is wholly inadequate in expression. It is true
that, as we have seen, he was "cradled into poetry
by wrong," and some notes of his divine music
have been marred in consequence. Naturally, his
·
42
SHELLEY:
!
voice should not have been given to wailing; he
was fitted to be one of the most competent utterers
and interpreters of the great harmonies of the uni-
verse. His apprehensions of beauty and of the
Divinity should have been clearer than those of
most other mortals; now and then there is a shaft
of light in his poetry which seems to pierce
even away into the Infinite; but the darkness of
desolation fell upon him, and he was outraged and
blinded by grief and anger because he could not
find the Christian's God in the Christian.
No rhapsody, or misinterpretation of the issues
of this man's life, will this affirmation be found to
appear when it is grasped in its full significance.
On the very threshold of existence Shelley was
thrown from the natural track of his spirit, and he
found himself, even in boyhood, in an antagonism
with the world, deeper and more complete than
often falls to riper manhood. The jar thus caused
was never overset. It was not a great mind un-
hinged, as some have vainly supposed; it was a
great heart driven from its moorings and unable in
the long subsequent years to find anchor. The
wonder should be, not that one of his tempera-
ment occasionally railed at society, but that he
should have preserved his noble aspirations and
volitions through all this.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
43
·
Two events in his life I have just dealt with
because of a belief that they were great operating
causes in the production of much which we discover
in Shelley's writings. To what, for instance, do
we owe Queen Mab, a poem which, for some in-
scrutable reason or another, is frequently associated
with the name of Shelley, as though it were at
once both the flower and fruit of his genius? It
was simply the crying out of a sensitive spirit against
that by which it had been injured and crushed.
It took the wild form of rank infidelity from a
strong feeling of disgust which animated the writer,
at the time of its production, against those professors
of religion whose lives were all that the young poet
had to argue upon in search of the truth or the
falsity of their doctrines. The poem is the autobio-
graphy of Shelley in his youth, and when the mind
was in a transition state. What does he himself
say upon the subject? Some years after its publi-
cation he writes :-"I doubt not but that it is per-
fectly worthless in point of literary composition;
and that, in all that concerns moral and political
speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations
of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still
more crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy
to religious, political, and domestic oppression; and
I regret this publication, not so much from literary
44
SHELLEY:
vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure
than to serve the sacred cause of freedom." Further.
on in the same letter he has these significant
observations-"Whilst I exonerate myself from all
share in having divulged opinions hostile to exist-
ing sanctions, under the form, whatever it may be,
which they assume, in this poem, it is scarcely
necessary for me to protest against the system of
inculcating the truth of Christianity or the excel-
lence of monarchy, however true or however excel-
ent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as
confiscation and imprisonment, and invective and
slander, and the insolent violation of the most
sacred ties of nature and society." After these ex-
pressions, and other proofs which could be adduced
to the same effect, it is not a little singular to find
it calmly assumed that Queen Mab is the full ex-
pression of its author's beliefs, or rather nega-
tion of beliefs, respecting religion and God-a
position from which he never swerved. Nothing
could be more unjust than such an assumption,
in view of the overwhelming evidence existing to
the contrary.
I shall not be the apologist for unquestionable
errors which Shelley committed; that would be to
believe him already in possession of the perfection
of humanity for which he strove neither on the
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
45
other hand will I be a silent witness when any
stone is ruthlessly cast at his memory. It is im-
possible, for instance, to apportion the precise
blame which should fall to his lot in connection
with the circumstances of his first marriage and its
results; but it may unhesitatingly be said, and with
perfect accuracy and truth, that he has been much
maligned in this matter. Even so fine and genial a
spirit as James Russell Lowell has adopted some of
the charges as genuine from which it was to be hoped
Shelley had been cleared, and he takes too gross a
view of the relations between Shelley and Mary
Godwin. Mr. Lowell has doubtless erred through
defective information; but in other cases this is
not so.
How strange it is that man should be so
much more on the alert to mark the evil rather
than the good in his fellow-man! Of all lives of
great men with which the world is acquainted, this
has been most peculiarly the case with Shelley.
Transcendent as were his virtues when compared
with his faults, the lime-light of a malevolent
scrutiny has been turned on the latter, while the
former have rarely, if ever, been brought into the
prominence they deserve. If to be an apologist
for Shelley is to endeavour to show the man truly
as he was, then I would rank with his apologists,
ardently longing that the ability of the defence
46
SHELLEY:
were more commensurate with the strength of its
inspiration.
Let me admit at once, however, in arriving at
a consideration of another important event in
Shelley's life-his elopement with Mary Godwin
-that the poet's conduct cannot be defended.
He set at naught the customs of society. The
fact that, by the teachings of her father and
the writings of her mother, the mind of Miss
Godwin had become familiarised with the idea
that marriage was one of those institutions which
a nobler era of mankind would inevitably sweep
away, did not relieve Shelley and his companion
from their obligations to society as constituted.
That new era not having arrived, it is obvious that
to resolve at once to be governed by its laws was
a foolish act, and one not tending to the well-being
of society. There is a certain grandeur in the
dream that the world will one day be a great
commonwealth, in which men will share and share
alike; but it would be both inconvenient and ob-
jectionable if my neighbour endeavoured forcibly
to bring about this equalisation by making a raid
upon my property. We cannot yet get rid of the
policeman in morals. But having said this, our
condemnation of Shelley refines into pity and
sympathy when we remember him as he actually
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
47
appeared on his second meeting with Mary Godwin.
By reason of his very nature he was sorrowing with
no light sorrow, and was afflicted with no common
melancholy. There is something touching in the
story as related by Lady Shelley:-"It was in the
society and sympathy of the Godwins that Shelley
sought and found some relief in his present sorrow.
He was still extremely young. His anguish, his
isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts
of genius, and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep
impression on Godwin's daughter Mary, now a
girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear
Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange.
To her, as they met one eventful day in St. Pancras
churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe in
burning words poured forth the tale of his wild
past-how he had suffered, how he had been misled,
and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in
future years to enrol his name with the wise and
good who had done battle for their fellow-men,
and been true through all adverse storms to the
cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed
her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his
own." And a beautiful union of souls this after-
wards proved, for love and reverence were never
more strongly blended or apparent than in the
passion which was only severed in these hearts by
48
SHELLEY:
*
death. Indefensible as the act of elopement was
in the eyes of society, I believe that Shelley's love
for Mary Godwin was the only thing that saved
him when a greater trouble than almost any which
he had yet endured overtook him.
Shelley's friendship with the philosopher Wil-
liam Godwin is one of the most interesting pass-
ages of literary history. It began in romance,
and culminated in genuine affection. The author
of Political Justice came of a Nonconformist
family, and, having been educated at the Hoxton
College, was himself for some time a Nonconformist
minister. The close spirit of speculation, however,
in which he indulged, led to a change in his
religious opinions, and, resigning his ministerial
position, he devoted himself still more assiduously
to historical and metaphysical inquiries. His novel
of Caleb Williams is distinguished for an originality
which entirely removes it from the category of
ordinary fiction. The man himself is a striking
figure, from his noble independence of character, and
the absence of personal feeling which marked the
whole course of his polemical strife. He succeeded
in attracting as his disciples some of the best spirits
of the age, by whom the philosopher was regarded
with mingled feelings of affection and veneration,
Shelley, inflamed with the desire to be of some
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
49
use to his species, was not likely to remain un-
known to Godwin for any length of time. Accord-
ingly, in the year 1812, and while residing at
Keswick with his young wife, he wrote a letter to
Godwin, in which is to be distinctly traced a fine
spirit of enthusiasm, yet one, for want of proper
direction, which threatened to be of no advantage
to society. In the course of his communication the
writer observes:-"I have but just entered on the
scene of human operations; yet my feelings and
my reasonings correspond with what yours were.
My course has been short, but eventful. I have
seen much of human prejudice, suffered much from
human persecution, yet I see no reason hence
inferrible which should alter my wishes for their
renovation. The ill-treatment I have met with has
more than ever impressed the truth of my principles
on my judgment. I am young. I am ardent in
the cause of philanthropy and truth; do not suppose
that this is vanity; I am not conscious that it in-
fluences this portraiture. I imagine myself dis-
passionately describing the state of my mind. I
am young. You have gone before me,-I doubt
not, are a veteran to me in the years of persecution.
Is it strange that, defying prejudice, as I have done,
I should outstep the limits of custom's prescription,
and endeavour to make my desire useful by a
E
+
50
SHELLEY:
1
•
friendship with William Godwin ?" Godwin does
not quite seem to have known what to make of this
letter from a Paladin who was anxious to "ride
abroad redressing human wrongs;" but he after-
wards took kindly to Shelley; and the latter, in
another epistle to the philosopher, confesses to being
filled with the most intoxicating sensations that
Godwin should have been brought to feel a deep
and earnest interest in his welfare. The specific
public results which sprang from their friendship
cannot be dwelt upon at this juncture, but one
thought it is difficult to repress, viz., the singularity
of the fact that two men differing so utterly in their
mental organisation should have been brought into
close union. On the occasion of Shelley's visit to
Ireland, he discovered the full value of the philo-
sopher's superior wisdom; and if the poet at more
than one subsequent period was rebellious under
Godwin's advice, there never was an instance when,
as quickly as he discovered it, he did not frankly
confess his error. In one juncture Shelley sought
Godwin's aid and judgment upon literary matters,
and the letter he received in reply is a remarkable
specimen both of sound judgment and criticism.
After referring to the proper attitude of the student
in considering the life's work of great men, he
proceeds to say:-"Shakspeare, Bacon, and Milton
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
51
""
are the three greatest contemplative characters that
this island has produced. As I put Shakspeare
and Milton at the head of our poetry, I put Bacon
and Milton at the head of our prose. Yet what
astonishing prose writers had we in Sir Thomas
Browne and Jeremy Taylor! not to mention two
others, only inferior to them, Robert Burton and
Izaak Walton. Hobbes and Shelton also, as prose
translators, may almost rank with Chapman in verse.'
He then compares these writers with the more
modern, concluding by a pungent personal applica-
tion :- "Those were the times when authors
thought. Every line is pregnant with sense, and the
reader is inevitably put to the expense of thinking
likewise. The writers were richly furnished with
conception, imagination, and feeling; and out of
the abundance of their hearts flowed the lucubra-
tions they committed to paper. You have what
appears to me a false taste in poetry.
You love a
as are to be
perpetual sparkle and glittering, such
found in Darwin, and Southey, and Scott, and
Campbell." Putting out of court all questions
upon theological matters, there were just those
qualities of robustness of intellect and firmness of
purpose in Godwin which were invaluable to the
poet at this period, when he was in danger of
allowing his prodigious talents to become mere
+
52
SHELLEY:
wasted forces. One result of the correspondence
which passed between the poet and the philosopher
was that Shelley set himself to the study of
history, which he described as a "record of crimes
and miseries." Of the total sum of Godwin's influ-
ence over the young student we have no adequate
conception; but while the intimacy confirmed
Shelley in proving all things, to see whether they
were honest and true, fearless as to the consequences
of inquiry, it doubtless also led him into a more
exact mode of thinking and writing-which indeed
is observable in his poems after he had sat at the
feet of this philosophical Gamaliel. And Godwin
was admirably seconded by his daughter. In her
love and counsel Shelley at length discovered his
sheet anchor. To her he could unburthen himself,
not only looking confidently for sympathy, but also
for intellectual appreciation and interchange of
ideas. An apparent insolence in the expression of
his infidelity now gave place to moderation, though
the extreme nature of his views was unflinchingly
shared by his wife. Shelley's second love, who was
five years his junior, is described as "rather short,
remarkably fair, and light-haired, with brownish
grey eyes, a great forehead, striking features, and
a noticeable air of sedateness." One writer has
compared her to the classic bust of Clytie. Careless
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
53
as to her personal appearance, she exhibited quali-
ties of mind which fully challenged Shelley's
admiration; she had received by nature a large
share of the endowments of her parents. The
strength of her character, and the acuteness of her
intellect, made her an inestimable companion for
her erratic husband, whose love for her appears to
have amounted almost to idolatry. Of her feelings
towards him, some idea may be gathered from the
passionate bursts of anguish written in her diary
after his melancholy death.
More bitter than almost any experience through
which Shelley was called upon to pass-making
the already impassable gulf between him and
society still deeper and wider-was that which
arose out of the Chancery suit in regard to his
children. Shelley desiring to have possession of
his offspring after his first wife's death, Mr. West-
brook refused to give them up, and instituted pro-
ceedings in Chancery, filing a bill in which he
alleged that their father was unfit to have charge
of them on account of the alleged depravity of his
religious and moral opinions. It is more than
possible that this was not the real motive for Mr.
Westbrook's proceedings, but rather that in con-
sequence of what had gone before, and remembering
his daughter's miserable fate, he had determined
54
SHELLEY :
to thwart Shelley in this important matter.
Whether such a speculation be correct or not,
however, history records the decree that Shelley
was not allowed to have the custody of his own
children. Yet, though the poet's character was
ruled to be dangerous, and offensive to public
morals, the poet's pocket was drawn upon in order
to pay for teachings in which he did not believe.
For this purpose he was mulcted in a sum of £200
a year. Widely as I differ from Shelley's religious
opinions, there is that in this decree of Lord Eldon's
which strikes a severe blow at the strict principles
of justice. Justice, in fact, was defeated on that
very judgment seat where it is supposed to be
enshrined. Let us see to what dilemma the sup-
port of such a decree would lead. It gives the
power into the hands of the Lord Chancellor of
saying what opinions should and should not be
taught to a child, and makes him more the absolute
master of human souls than the parents of the
children whose cases are decided before him. Lord
Eldon did not define precisely where the line was
to be drawn in sceptical opinions, beyond which,
if a man passed, he was to be branded as totally
unfit to retain the possession of his children. By
what right was the Lord Chancellor's orthodoxy
to overrule Shelley's unorthodoxy? According to
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
55
his decision, it would seem that the surviving
maternal relatives of any child might procure its
custody from the father, if they held ordinary
religious views, and that father professed, let us
say, Moravian or Sandemanian principles. It is
impossible to agree with those who say that Shelley
had no ground for complaint in being deprived of
his children. The outraged heart of the father is
the best answer to that, whilst the harshness of
the decree was made still more apparent from the
fact that Shelley had nominated as guardian of
his children (if yielded up to him) a lady who was
in every respect qualified to fulfil the charge.
This bitter trouble probably sank deeper into
Shelley's soul than any other. He has repeated
references to it, which mark the keenness of his
anguish-an anguish which time failed to obliter-
ate. One terrible poem he wrote upon the author
of his woe and despair, and in his Masque of
Anarchy he further described the Lord Chancellor
in these scathing lines:-
"Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown;
His big tears (for he wept well)
Turn'd to mill-stones as they fell :
"And the little children, who
Round his feet play'd to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knock'd out by them."
56
SHELLEY:
The spectacle of a divinely-gifted man, thus
buffeted to and fro, with the measure of his sorrows
proportioned apparently by fate, in subtle irony, to
the greatness of his capacity for suffering, is one
which would surely move any human being to
pity. Circumstances appeared always to fight
against Shelley; his sensitive nature was continu-
ally subjected to trials from which more phlegmatic
spirits are exempt. Restless and agitated as the
sea, the billows were ever surging round his heart,
and never falling into peace and calm. Some of
those incidents in his life which have begotten the
numerous passages of fiery indignation and in-
vective in his poems have been already glanced at.
The misery which he caused to others bore no
proportion to the misery which fell upon himself.
And yet, when the dross of his nature has been
weighed to the uttermost grain, it is contemptible
and insignificant compared with the genuine gold
of which he was mostly wrought. I have reviewed
the preparation which Shelley had in the school
of adversity for the work to which all his
suffering was but the introduction. And in this
lies the key to the development of his character.
From the unfortunate and the unhappy, we cannot
fail to educe further and almost unique interest
when we pass to another phase of his existence,
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
57
and see how this being, who was the sport of
destiny, endeavoured to lift humanity-by the spirit
of sacrifice to that height of dignity and happiness
which had been the dream and ambition of his
life. Shelley, as we shall now behold him, is but
the natural sequence to the Shelley already fore-
shadowed and prefigured.
II.
POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.
"We are assured
Much may be conquered, much may be endured,
Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
That we have power over ourselves to do
And suffer-what, we know not till we try ;
But something nobler than to live and die."
Julian and Maddalo.
II.
POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.
THE sublime picture presented by the Greek drama-
tist, of a great and heroic being struggling against
adversity and the gods, seems almost to find its
modern counterpart in Shelley. We have pre-
viously seen, and shall yet more clearly witness, how
he battled with the inequalities and miseries of the
world. That a super-sensitive poet, and one in
whom the imagination held dominant sway, should
exhibit the keenest desire to benefit his fellow-men
in numberless practical modes, is one of the most
singular episodes in literature. Yet the intensity
of Shelley's devotion to these objects was such that
if his intellectual powers had been less strong and
comprehensive, we should have been forced to the
conclusion that he was a mere enthusiast and fana-
tic. A study of the method of his life, however, on
its practical side, will lead to the opposite result,
and convince us that his schemes for the ameliora-
62
SHELLEY:
tion of mankind sprang from a strong heart and not
from an ill-balanced mind; that he was in reality
far in advance of the age in which he lived-it
is to be feared in advance even of ages yet to
come. Had it not been that from the religious point
of view "that atheist Shelley" was a bugbear to
society, we should have heard more of some aspects
of his character which might justly make his name
illustrious. Nevertheless, after a dispassionate ex-
amination and sifting of his various projects and
panaceas, and in spite of his own firm belief that
he was fitted to cope with the practical govern-
ment of men, I incline to the opinion that he was
better adapted to be the purifier of existing systems
than the originator of others. Binding up the
wounds of humanity, and pouring in the oil and
wine as the good Samaritan, gave a natural outflow
to that all-pervading sympathy which seemed to
throw a halo over his other characteristics. His
impetuosity, and the wonderful force and direct-
ness of his moral sense, interfered probably with
that just attitude of the judgment which should
primarily distinguish the reformer who moves by
gradual stages-one who does not proceed to legis-
lative action until he has carefully weighed all
objections, and obtained a satisfactory basis which
permits of no injustice to one man while a benefit
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
63
is being secured for his brother. Impatience is
fatal to organic changes in society, and however
beautiful may be the enthusiasm which glows in
the earnest reformer, if it be not supported by other
convincing and concrete qualities, it is apt to be
evanescent and to fail in accomplishing its end.
Now, Shelley was rather a destroyer than a builder;
his eye was intently fixed upon one object; he de-
sired to break up utterly the wrong and corruption
of the world. As to the processes by which this
grand result was to be achieved, he was not always
clear; albeit he never wavered in carrying on the
war against error and superstition. His enthusiasm
was as noble and disinterested as that of any other
man whose history has been bequeathed to us; and
it extorted even from Byron the remark that Shelley
was the best as well as the ablest man he had
ever known. It was in consequence of the perse-
cution which the author of Queen Mab suffered,
that Byron also affirmed his belief that if the
Christ people professed to worship reappeared
in the flesh they would again crucify him. So
that we have not to deal with a man who found a
reciprocating sympathy in others, but with one
who, in spite of the great excellence of his personal
character and his benevolent purposes towards
mankind, was hated with a malignity which was as
64
SHELLEY:
singular and wicked as it was profoundly
mysterious.
That was a drastic political programme with
which Shelley, who had only just passed his nine-
teenth year, crossed the Channel, for the pur-
pose of expounding it before the Irish people.
Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal of the Union
were the two chief points of his charter, and al-
though at the time of his brief Irish campaign
these points must to many persons have seemed
the height of absurdity, Catholic Emancipation
became an absolute fact a few years after the poet's
death. Here, at any rate, is evidence that, to some
extent, the youthful reformer read the needs of
oppressed Ireland aright. Godwin overwhelmed
Shelley with the most lugubrious vaticinations
respecting his visit to Ireland, and said he felt it
poignantly that the poet should probably have been
led to take this step through reading his Political
Justice. The philosopher added-"Shelley, you
are preparing a scene of blood! If your Associa-
tions take effect to any extensive degree, tremen-
dous consequences will follow, and hundreds, by
their calamities and premature fate, will expiate
your error. And then what will it avail you to
say, 'I warned them against this; when I put the
seed into the ground I laid my solemn injunctions
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
65
upon it, that it should not germinate ?"" Godwin
appears to have had almost a morbid horror of
associations, and his hostility to them is scarcely
compatible with the exercise of that reason which
peculiarly characterised him. If associations and
institutions have in numbers of cases worked un-
mitigated evil, and do now—on the other hand,
without their aid much good must remain un-
secured. The perfecting and not the abolition of
associations is what will ultimately prove of service
to humanity. Shelley had the courage to pursue
his own course, and though his visit to Ireland was
abortive in one respect, yet the fact remains, as a
writer has well pointed out, that "an association,
the mere probability of which Godwin looked upon
with terror as inevitably leading to bloodshed,
anarchy, and defeat, carried its point successfully,
without violence, and without even a word of in-
sulting exultation over those who opposed it.”1
Yet in many minor details I have no doubt what-
ever that the philosopher's clearer general wisdom
was useful in curbing the exuberance of the poet,
and instrumental in controlling the fiery element
of his character, which might have proved disas-
trous to him had it remained altogether unchecked.
Shelley was no more mistaken with regard to
1 Shelley's Early Life. By Denis Florence MacCarthy.
F
π13
66
SHELLEY:
:
7
Ireland than have been many eminent statesmen
who, for the last fifty years, have found it a prob-
lem whose full solution is not even yet perceived.
Experienced politicians would, of course, regard
with derision any attempt by a mere youth to
deal with a problem which had overtaxed their
own energies; and the apparently chimerical
nature of Shelley's project doubtless lent force to
the absurd charge that the poet was afflicted with
frenzy or madness. The enthusiast always has
to encounter this charge from the critic, for the
latter would not move in the elevation of the
species unless the means he used were such as to
free him from adverse comment. The enthusiast,
on the contrary, goes, if necessary, with his life in
his hand, as well as cherishing a very decided and
wholesome contempt for obloquy. Shelley was
positively in physical danger during his stay in
Ireland, for at that time there existed in England
one of the most miserable of all modern Govern- .
ments, and his Majesty's councils were, in Irish
matters, very largely swayed by an infamous man
whose despicable character differentiated him from
all other statesmen who ever wielded political
power in this country. The treatment which the
Government meted out to many of the best
patriots both of this and the sister isle, was such
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
67
as to make the very nation blush for its boasted
progress. Treachery, that black and hideous bird,
was flying hither and thither, betraying good men
and true, and Shelley knew not but that his turn
also to be betrayed might speedily arrive. More-
over, all his private friends were endeavouring to
dissuade him from his task of recommending
pacificatory measures; while Southey, for whom
he had hitherto had a profound respect, had com-
pletely changed his views on the subject of
Ireland and the Irish. This was a bitter blow to
Shelley, and it is not matter for surprise that his
admiration for his friend, in consequence of his
apparent tergiversation, was speedily on the wane.
Many who indulge a strong feeling of delight in
the works of the author of Thalaba, find it im-
possible to deny that he laid himself open to the
strictures of Byron in the dedication of Don Juan,
when he thus closes his apostrophe:-
"My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean;
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian ?”
Certainly, Southey was far from being a model of
constancy in his views upon any subject; his political
creed, especially, resembled that of the American
candidate, who was dubious whether it coincided
68
SHELLEY:
-
with that of his auditors, yet considerately and
conveniently remarked, "Such are my views,
gentlemen; but if they don't suit, they can be
altered." At one time Southey liked the Irish,
giving them credit for the possession of genius;
but in 1811 Shelley writes in a letter "Southey
hates the Irish; he speaks against Catholic Eman-
cipation. In all these things we differ." But
neither Southey nor any other person could pro-
selytise Shelley from his beliefs, and he ex-
hibited a singular tenacity of judgment as well
as strength of conviction. It is worth while to
examine briefly his Address to the Irish People,
of which some hundreds of copies were speedily
put into circulation. Shelley and his wife them-
selves distributed a great number of copies of the
pamphlet from the balcony of a house in Lower
Sackville Street. The appearance of the young
English poet on such a mission in Ireland natu-
rally created considerable excitement amongst the
population. With regard to the pamphlet, it is very
eloquent in parts, and in some other respects has
scarcely received justice at the hands of those who
have examined it,-Godwin amongst the number,
for instance. The latter complained that Shelley,
together with all too fervent and impetuous re-
formers, lacked the power of perceiving that almost
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
69
every institution or form of society was good in its
place, and in the period of time to which it be-
longed. "How many beautiful and admirable
effects," says the philosopher, "grew out of Popery
and the monastic institution, in the period when
they were in their genuine health and vigour !
To them we owe almost all our logic and our
literature." But surely Shelley was not ignorant
of these facts? and we cannot but think Godwin
did him a little injustice in this matter. Because
in the heat of argument, and for polemical pur-
poses, Shelley made no reference to these things
in his Address, it by no means follows that he
either wilfully ignored, or was ignorant of their
probability. He had one object in view, and bent
his mind to the accomplishment of it, and for the
time being that was all his excitable temperament
allowed him to do under the circumstances. The
pamphlet was not so much intended to convince
by the coldness of its logic as to rouse by the
breadth of its sentiment, and for the attainment
of this object it was excellently devised. The
author himself said in the advertisement of his
pamphlet, "The lowest possible price is set on
this publication, because it is the intention of the
author to awaken in the minds of the Irish poor a
knowledge of their real state, summarily pointing
70
SHELLEY:
out the evils of that state, and suggesting rational
means of remedy." The Address opens by enforc-
ing the necessity of toleration on the part of all
religionists, and it is not sparing in its rebukes of
the Roman Catholics (the very people whom the
writer addressed) for the persecutions of which
they had been guilty in past times; certainly a
bold proceeding on the part of one wishing to con-
vert his hearers to his own views, but one fully
showing the ingenuous nature of Shelley's mind.
The noble liberality of his sentiments is apparent
in the following passage-"Do not inquire if a
man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a
Heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves
liberty and truth, if he wish the happiness and
peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much
a believer and love not these things, he is a heart-
less hypocrite, a rascal, and a knave. Despise and
hate him as ye despise a tyrant and a villain. Oh,
Ireland thou emerald of the ocean, whose sons
are generous and brave, whose daughters are
honourable, and frank, and fair, thou art the isle on
whose green shores I have desired to see the
standard of liberty erected-a flag of fire-a beacon
at which the world shall light the torch of Free-
dom!" This may have been unpleasant writing
to Lord Castlereagh, but it is not very inflam-
1
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
71
mable stuff in itself. Shelley next deals with the
Protestants, and after proving that they also have
been wickedly intolerant, he proceeds to demonstrate
the folly of persecuting men for their religion. He
then exhorts the Irish to disclaim violence in seek-
ing their ends, and to trust their cause solely to its
truth. In prophetic words he foretells the triumph
of Catholic Emancipation, adding, "I do not see
that anything but violence and intolerance amongst
yourselves can leave an excuse to your enemies
for continuing your slavery." Other reforms and
blessings to humanity are to follow, as men are
purified and raised from their debasement by virtue
and knowledge. Passing on to another subject he
remarks that "the liberty of the press is placed as
a sentinel to alarm us when any attempt is made
on our liberties. It is this sentinel, oh, Irishmen,
whom I now awaken! I create to myself a freedom
which exists not. There is no liberty of the press
for the subjects of British Government." Mr.
Finnerty, an Irishman, at that moment languished
in an English gaol for a press libel, and Shelley
had taken up his cause warmly, writing and speak-
ing on his behalf. The Address is really a fine
rhetorical effort, but to show that Shelley did not
depend upon it as a final means for the accomplish-
ment of his design, he appended a postscript, in
72
SHELLEY:
which he said—"For the purpose of obtaining the
emancipation of the Catholics from the penal laws
that aggrieve them, and a repeal of the Legislative
Union Act, and grounding upon the remission of
the church-craft and oppression, which caused these
grievances, a plan of amendment and regeneration
in the moral and political state of society on a com-
prehensive and systematic philanthropy which shall
be sure though slow in its projects; and as it is
without the danger and rapidity of revolution, so
will it be devoid of the time-servingness of tempor-
ising reform-which in its deliberate capacity,
having investigated the state of the Government
of England, shall oppose those parts of it, by intel-
lectual force, which will not bear the touchstone
of reason. I conclude with the words of
Lafayette, a name endeared by its peerless bearer
to every lover of the human race, 'For a nation to
love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; to
be free it is sufficient that she wills it.' A few
days after this Address appeared, Shelley addressed
a great meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, Dublin.
It seems by the reports in the Irish papers to have
been an excitable discourse, and though in one
part of it, when Shelley spoke of religion, he elicited
signs of disapprobation, he succeeded in favourably
impressing his audience. One speaker referred to
•
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
73
the generous eloquence of the young Protestant
from England. The weight of evidence certainly
goes to prove that, on the whole, Shelley was very
favourably received, though-as is the case in all
public meetings of this kind-there were a few
turbulent spirits determined on breaking the peace.
An Englishman who heard Shelley on this me-
morable occasion, and who hated him for the views
he expressed, testified nevertheless to the power
of his oratory, and the ecstasy of the audience,
in a letter to the Dublin Journal. These tributes
to Shelley have only been recovered within the
last few years by the research of Mr. MacCarthy,
and this would probably account for the fact that
an opposite view had hitherto been entertained of
Shelley's visit to Ireland, a view which was also
to some extent adopted by Lady Shelley.
One is astounded at the intellectual force and
fertility which could alternate at nineteen the
production of such poems as Queen Mab and those
which immediately succeeded it, with the drawing
up of formal Proposals for an Association "which
shall have for its immediate objects Catholic
Emancipation and the Repeal of the Act of Union
between Great Britain and Ireland; and grounding
on the removal of these grievances an annihilation
or palliation of whatever moral or political evil it
74
SHELLEY:
may be within the compass of human power to
assuage or eradicate." There are frequent sentences
in these "Proposals" which are sententious, elo-
quent, and imbued with the spirit of a strong and
true philosophy. As a whole, they lack reason-
ableness, and to that extent Godwin's criticism of
them was accurate; but they were unreasonable
simply because they pre-supposed that all to whom
they were addressed would at once apprehend their
spirit and forthwith endeavour to carry them into
effect. Man is a reasonable animal, it is true, but
not in the bulk; it is the individual who does
duty for the community; for, as we have been re-
minded, the fools in every age are in a majority.
Shelley, however, lost sight of this fact, and addressed
men everywhere, and under all circumstances, as
being amenable to reason; an error to which his
eyes were afterwards partially opened, begetting in
him thereby no small measure of disgust. It would
be curious to know what the Government of the
time thought of the poet's proposals for a monster
Association; but the proposals themselves appear
to be drawn up with calmness and dignity. The
rhetoric is tempered, and the logic placed in
the forefront. The writer proceeds to remark
that his association would question established
principles, and though a philanthropic associa-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
75
tion has nothing to fear from the English Con-
stitution, which is always capable of widening
and strengthening its basis, it may expect dangers
from its government; but that fact only proved
the necessity for such an institution. And to
justify himself for thus appealing for help towards
gaining the grand end he contemplates, the author
reminds the people of Ireland that "though the
Parliament of England were to pass a thousand
bills, to inflict upon those who determined to utter
their thoughts a thousand penalties, it could not
render that criminal which was in its nature
innocent before the passing of such bills." In
these pages there is a vigorous onslaught upon
the principles of Mr. Malthus, and Shelley also
endeavours to show that the French philosophers
Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, and Condorcet, were
only partial reformers of society, and conse-
quently failed in their work of renovation. But
what of the practical effect of these eloquent pro-
posals for a gigantic philanthropic Association?
Alas! in searching for the answer we must turn
to the disappointed Shelley, in his lodgings in Dub-
lin, after he had cast forth his doctrines upon the
world, waiting for converts to his principles, when
no man came unto him! The revulsion of feeling
must have been great when hope was destroyed in
76
SHELLEY:
the bosom of this sanguine reformer, who had not
yet attained his twentieth year. Kings, Parliaments,
and society had never yet accomplished what he saw
foreshadowed to a surety in his proposals, and his
joy was turned into bitterness. Shall we laugh at
the optimist spirit which had thus gone out of itself,
and prophesied blessedness for the whole of the
human race? or shall we yield to him the senti-
ment of affection for the manifestation of his noble
and absorbing desires? The latter is demanded
from us, even though mental conviction of the
futile character of his schemes goes side by side
with the sentiment. Doubtless Shelley moved, or
desired to move, too fast; and Godwin truly pricked
the bubble when he told Shelley that he exhorted
persons whom he had himself described as "of
scarcely greater elevation in the scale of intellectual
being than the oyster-thousands huddled together,
one mass of animated filth," to take the redress of
grievances into their own hands. The poet began
building the perfect edifice of humanity by laying its
topmost stone before the foundations. Although, as
we have seen, he exhibited greater political insight
than the philosopher, the latter was able ruthlessly
to shatter the various stages by which he hoped to
arrive at his end. Godwin argumentatively pleads
with his young admirer in these terms: "You say,
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
77
!
'What has been done within the last twenty years?'
Oh that I could place you on the pinnacle of ages,
from which these twenty years would shrink to an
invisible point! It is not after this fashion that
moral causes work in the eye of Him who looks
profoundly through the vast, and, allow me to add,
venerable machine of human society. But so
reasoned the French revolutionists. Auspicious
and admirable materials were working in the gen-
eral mind of France; but these men said, as you
say, 'When we look on the last twenty years we
are seized with a sort of moral scepticism-we must
own we are eager that something should be done.'
And see what has been the result of their doings! He
that would benefit mankind on a comprehensive
scale, by changing the principles and elements of
society, must learn the hard lesson-to put off self
and to contribute by a quiet but incessant activity
like a rill of water, to irrigate and fertilise the in-
tellectual soil." Sound but cruel advice to one
who would change the face of society in a day.
There is no disputing the accuracy of the philo-
sopher's position. Eighteen hundred years ago
England was inhabited by savages, and even at this
day we have not completely exorcised the order,
for statistics demonstrate that there is a goodly per-
centage of the population of this Christian country
78
SHELLEY:
who annually kick their wives to death. Exas-
perating as the slow growth of benevolence and
virtue may be, we cannot unduly hasten the pro-
cess, and a strictly political basis of operation will
never ensure the happiness of the entire race, or
bathe the universe in "sweetness and light."
Knowing what is at length proved concerning
Shelley's great interest in political matters, and his
solicitude for the welfare of the people of the United
Kingdom, we experience no difficulty in utterly dis-
crediting the random statement of one of his bio-
graphers that he hated newspapers, and that none
ever reached him while at the University. On the
face of it, it is an incredible statement, and the
poet's own verified correspondence places its com-
plete inaccuracy beyond a doubt. Even while at
Oxford, it is clearly shown that Shelly was "alive to
the passing political events of the day, writing to the
editors of newspapers, identifying himself with their
opinions, congratulating them on their triumphs,
indignant at their persecution, and, stranger than all,
publishing a poem for the sustainment in prison of
one of them who was considered by the leading
Liberals of the day, as well as by Shelley, a martyr
for the liberty of the Press." More than one of his
biographers assert that they never saw Shelley read-
ing a newspaper, and yet at the time of his acquaint-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
79
ance with them he was taking a keen interest in
newspaper warfare, and writing to several journals.
Even a Boswell is sometimes caught napping, but
this is not surprising when we remember that
aliquando bonus Homerus dormitat. Mr. Peacock's
papers in Fraser show that Shelley read with great
avidity the writings of Cobbett, Leigh Hunt, and
others, in the political journals; and whatever may
be believed as to his fitness to cope with political
problems, it is an unquestionable fact that at one time
they occupied a considerable portion of his thoughts.
In one letter, written in September 1819, Shelley
says, "Pray let me have the earliest political news
which you consider important at this crisis;" and
in another he says, writing from Leghorn, "Many
thanks for your attention in sending the papers
which contain the terrible and important news from
Manchester." At the very time, in truth, during
which Shelley was said to have displayed an incur-
able aversion to newspapers, he was considering the
project of floating one himself, of which he purposed
to retain the supreme direction.
Further, as a follower of Milton in declaring
for the free and unfettered liberty of the press, Shel-
ley wrote a letter to Lord Ellenborough which, as
regards some of its passages, is unsurpassed in
eloquence by any prose writer since the time of
80
SHELLEY:
the sublime poet who penned the Areopagitica.
Macaulay well described Milton's prose as "a perfect
field of cloth of gold, rich with gorgeous embroid-
ery;" and, although the prose eloquence of Shelley
is not so massive and stately, it is in parts more
fervid and impassioned. A severe sentence was
passed on a London bookseller, named Eaton, for
publishing the third part of Thomas Paine's Age of
Reason, and this called forth the letter of Shelley
referred to, which stands almost unique, considering
that the writer of it was only nineteen years of
age. In one passage the writer remarks :-"The
crime of inquiry is one which religion has never
forgiven. Implicit faith and fearless inquiry have
in all ages been irreconcilable enemies. Unre-
strained philosophy has in every age opposed
itself to the reveries of credulity and fanaticism.
The truths of astronomy demonstrated by Newton
have superseded astrology; since the modern
discoveries of chemistry, the philosopher's stone
has no longer been deemed attainable. That
which is false will ultimately be controverted by
its own falsehood." Then, after a closely-reasoned
argument, in which he shows that Lord Ellen-
borough might well fear for the truth of his own
opinions, seeing they require such extreme
measures to support them, Shelley asks: "Whence
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
81
is any right derived, but that which power confers,
for persecution? Do you think to convert Mr.
Eaton to your religion by embittering his existence?
You might force him by torture to profess your
tenets, but he could not believe them, except you
should make them credible, which perhaps exceeds
your power. Do you think to please the God you
worship by this exhibition of your zeal? If so,
the demon to whom some nations offer human
hecatombs is less barbarous than the Deity of
civilised society. . . . If the law de hæretico com-
burendo has not been formally repealed, I conceive
that, from the promise held out by your lordship's
zeal, we need not despair of beholding the flames
of persecution rekindled in Smithfield. Even now
the lash that drove Descartes and Voltaire from
their native country, the chains which bound
Galileo, the flames which burned Vanini, again
resound. . . . Does the Christian God, whom his
followers eulogise as the Deity of humility and
peace—He, the regenerator of the world, the meek
reformer authorise one man to rise against
another, and, because lictors are at his beck, to
chain and torture him as an infidel? When the
Apostles went abroad to convert the nations, were
they enjoined to stab and poison all who disbelieved
the divinity of Christ's mission? Assuredly, they
G
82
SHELLEY:
,
would have been no more justifiable in this case
than he is at present who puts into execution the
law which inflicts pillory and imprisonment on
the Deist." It is unnecessary to enlarge in detail
upon the strength and fulness of the invective
to be found in this remarkable pamphlet, or upon
the evidences of great learning it displayed on the
part of its youthful writer; but towards the close
there is the expression of one sentiment which
will find an echo in the present generation, if it
did not in Shelley's. "The time," he says, "is
rapidly approaching—I hope that you, my Lord,
may live to behold its arrival when the
Mahometan, the Jew, the Christian, the Deist, and
the Atheist will live together in one community,
equally sharing the benefits which arise from its
association, and united in the bonds of charity
and brotherly love." In this aspiration breathes
the catholic spirit of one to whom the very name
of oppression was hateful, and who only needed
to hear of injustice to loathe it from his very
soul.
We perceive, therefore, from what has been
already adduced, that, so far from Shelley declining
the strife of politics, he eagerly rushed into the
fray. If further proofs still were needed, it is
only necessary to refer to his letters to the editors
•
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
83
of the Statesman and the Examiner, and his
espousal of the cause of Mr. Peter Finnerty, the
Irish patriot, to whom some slight reference has
already been made. With regard to the Examiner,
most readers will be cognisant of the now historical
fact that a conviction was procured against its
conductors, John and Leigh Hunt, for writing
somewhat too freely upon political topics. Leigh
Hunt had referred to the Prince Regent as "this
Adonis in loveliness, a corpulent gentleman of
fifty;" and if there was one affront more than
another which his Royal Highness was likely to
resent, it was a reflection upon his august person.
There were stronger passages in the libellous
article than this description, but none so calculated
to bring the Prince into ridicule; and it has
always been understood that the real affront con-
sisted in the use of this particular expression; at
least, it was believed by many at the time that the
article might have been passed over but for these
words. Undoubtedly the Prince had been hand-
some, but his beauty, with all that is lovely, was
fading away," and accordingly the sting of Hunt's
remark lay in its plain and unvarnished truth.
For the luxury of speaking ironically of the
æsthetic appearance of the Regent, the Hunts were
sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and were
(C
1
84
SHELLEY:
condemned to pay a fine of £1000. We can well
understand the kind of feeling this sentence would
arouse in Shelley; and it was fully given utterance
to in a letter addressed to Mr. Hookham, in which
he observes: "I am boiling with indignation at
the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence
pronounced on Hunt and his brother; and it is
on this subject that I write to you. Surely the
seal of abjectness and slavery is indelibly stamped
upon the character of England. Although I do
not retract in the slightest degree my wish for a
subscription for the widows and children of those
poor men hung at York, yet this £1000 which the
Hunts are sentenced to pay is an affair of more
consequence. Hunt is a brave, a good, and an
enlightened man. Surely the public, for whom
Hunt has done so much, will repay in part the
great debt of obligation which they owe the
champion of their liberties and virtues; or are
they dead, cold, stone-hearted, and insensible-
brutalised by centuries of unremitting bondage?
However that may be, they surely may be ex-
cited into some slight acknowledgment of his
merits. Whilst hundreds of thousands are sent
to the tyrants of Russia, he pines in a dungeon,
far from all that can make life desired." Shelley
encloses a cheque, and exclaims, "Oh, that I might
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
85
wallow for one night in the Bank of England!"
Whatever may be said of the visionary character
of Shelley's projects, his sympathy with, and
earnestness in, political reforms and causes were
intense in the extreme.
In considering Shelley as a politician, we cannot
but take cognisance of a pamphlet which he
issued on the subject of Parliamentary Reform,
under the signature of the "Hermit of Marlow."
This was neither more nor less than a proposal for
putting reform to the vote throughout the kingdom.
The writer's views are expressed in very moderate
language, and though personally an extreme Radi-
cal, there evidently dwelt in his mind at the
time he wrote the pamphlet an idea that he could
not expect to gain immediately for the world all
the freedom which might be desirable. The work
is consequently careful and statesmanlike in its
arrangement. The gist of the proposals was that
committees should be formed with a view to polling
the entire people on the subject which was then
agitating all circles, as it has done at set periods
during the whole of this century. Shelley did not
regard it as just and equitable that the people should
be governed by laws, and impoverished by taxes,
originating in the edicts of an assembly which re-
presented somewhat less than a thousandth part of
86
SHELLEY:
J.
the entire community. He therefore drew up six
Resolutions to be submitted to a national meeting
of the friends of reform. These resolutions set
forth that all persons who were of opinion that
reform was necessary in parliamentary representa-
tion, should assemble themselves together for the
purpose of collecting evidence as to how far it was
the will of the majority of the nation to move in
the exercise of their rights; that the whole popu-
lation should be canvassed in favour of a declara-
tion that the House of Commons does not represent
the will of the nation; that meetings should be
held day after day for the reception of evidence
bearing upon the subject; that the reformers dis-
claimed any design of lending their sanction to
revolutionary and disorganising schemes; and that
a subscription be set on foot to defray the expenses
of the plan. Shelley then proceeds to state in
detail the reforms which he considers necessary,
and foremost amongst these is a recommendation
on behalf of annual parliaments. The pamphlet
closes with this very remarkable passage:-" With
respect to universal suffrage, I confess I consider
its adoption, in the present unprepared state of
public feeling and knowledge, a measure fraught
with peril. I think that none but those who register
their names as paying a certain small sum in direct
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
87
taxes ought at present to send members to Parliament.
The consequence of the immediate extension of
the elective franchise to every male adult would
be to place power in the hands of men who have
been rendered brutal and torpid and ferocious by
ages of slavery. It is to suppose that the qualities
belonging to a demagogue are such as are sufficient
to endow a legislator. I allow Major Cartwright's
arguments to be unanswerable; abstractedly, it is
the right of every human being to have a share in
the Government. But Mr. Paine's arguments are
also unanswerable; a pure republic may be shown,
by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to
be that system of social order the fittest to produce
the happiness and promote the genuine eminence
of man. Yet nothing less consists with reason, or
affords smaller hopes of beneficial issue, than the
plan which should abolish the regal and the
aristocratical branches of our Constitution, before
the public mind, through many gradations of
improvement, shall have arrived at the maturity
which can disregard these symbols of its childhood."
I apprehend that this extract effectually disposes
of the ignorant assumption that Shelley knew
nothing whatever of politics; on the contrary,
there were few living in his own day who could
have put in fewer words a better idea of the ideal
88
SHELLEY:
*
state of government and the obstacles which inter-
vene to prevent its realisation. The basis of
representation indicated in the sentence in italics
was long afterwards almost the very groundwork
of the Parliamentary Reform Bill carried by the
present Premier in 1867, as Mr. Rossetti also has
observed in his Memoir of the poet. Not only
must Shelley have studied politics, but, pace Mr.
Hogg, he must have studied them with something
more than a superficial observation, or for the sole
purpose of enlarging glibly upon them. His
writing on political subjects is as far-seeing as
anything he has left behind him, with the excep-
tion of certain of his poems, and in them we natu-
rally look for the prophet of the race.
(C
Another evidence of Shelley's devotion to
political problems, and of his thorough delight in
grappling with them, is seen in his "Declaration
of Rights," which Mr. Rossetti points out resembles
'the two most famous of similar documents in the
history of the great French Revolution-the one
adopted by the Constituent Assembly in August
1789, and the other proposed in April 1793 by
Robespierre." In Shelley's "Declaration," which
seems to have been foreshadowed to a certain
extent by his "Proposals for an Association
already remarked upon, we are struck with the
وو
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}
terseness and vigour of the various affirmations.
Consider a few of them for their exhibition of
sound judgment and wisdom :-"Government has
no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals
for the purpose of securing their own. It is, there-
fore, just only so far as it exists by their consent,
useful only so far as it operates to their well-being."
"As the benefit of the governed is, or ought to be,
the origin of government, no men can have any
authority that does not expressly emanate from
their will." No man has a right to disturb the
public peace by personally resisting the execution
of a law, however bad. He ought to acquiesce,
using at the same time the utmost powers of his
reason to promote its repeal." "A man has a
right to unrestricted liberty of discussion." "False-
hood is a scorpion that will sting itself to death."
"A man has not only a right to express his
thoughts, but it is his duty to do so." "Expediency
is inadmissible in morals. Politics are only sound
when conducted on principles of morality; they
are, in fact, the morals of nations." "Belief is in-
voluntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or
reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered
worse or better for his belief." "A Christian, a
Deist, a Turk, and a Jew have equal rights; they
are men and brethren." "If a person's religious
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SHELLEY:
ideas correspond not with your own, love him
nevertheless. Those who believe that Heaven is,
what earth has been, a monopoly in the hands of
a favoured few, would do well to reconsider their
opinion; if they find that it came from their priest
or their grandmother, they could not do better
than reject it." "The only use of government is
to repress the vices of man. If man were to-day
sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to
demand that government and all its evils. should
cease." In the light of these apothegms we per-
ceive why Shelley was dreaded and detested by
many in his own generation. His views, as thus ex-
pressed, might have extracted the admiration of a
Plato, but were only calculated to sting the aver-
age English politician of the nineteenth century
into indignation. What can there be in common
between the holder of such pure and just views as
those enunciated in these maxims and the man
who buys his seat in the legislature by the most
wholesale and unblushing bribery? Politically, it
may be said that Shelley is summed up by two
broad distinguishing characteristics, viz.—a love of
freedom, and his convictions in favour of an en-
lightened republic. Mrs. Shelley dilates upon his
love of the people, and his ardent admiration of
the idea of equality, and observes that "he looked
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
91
on political freedom as the direct agent to effect
the happiness of mankind." His biographer, Med-
win, has endeavoured to prove that he was some-
what of a lukewarm Republican, but is not very
successful in his effort; indeed, he is compelled to
admit that "Shelley used to say that a republic
was the best form of government, with disinter-
estedness, abnegation of self, and a Spartan virtue;
but to produce which required the black bread and
soup of the Lacedæmonians, an equality of fortunes
unattainable in the present factitious state of
society, and only to be brought about by an agrarian
law, and a consequent baptism of blood." In
politics Shelley knew no fear. And so thoroughly
conscientious was he in giving action to his
views, and so ardent a Radical, that he would pro-
bably have abjured the dignity of a baronet had
it ever been his fortune to succeed to the title.
This view is strengthened by the knowledge that,
in season and out of season, he never refrained from
insisting upon one great cardinal principle or
doctrine, viz.—that no man had a right to enjoy
benefits, or the goodwill of the world, unless these
sprang from the exercise of virtue and talent.
He could not have been a fair-weather politician,
that is, one who croaks republicanism till he gets
a stake in the country, and then becomes that
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SHELLEY:
worst of all Conservatives, an embodiment of self-
ishness; this is proved from the fact that immedi-
ately he inherited wealth he proceeded to distribute
it in a lavish and possibly injudicious manner.
Speaking generally, of course, it may be said that
Shelley's political views were such as had been
formulated in the systems of Paine and Godwin;
but Shelley was Paine and Godwin with a large
heart added; and, certainly, while he was strength-
ened by their countenance, his own political con-
ceptions were self-derived, and a necessity-partly
by reason of his mental constitution, and partly as
the result of his personal experience. Shelley's
politics grew with his growth; he had an innate
sense of political justice and a burning desire for
equality; and those would do his spirit wrong who
could imagine that any circumstances of possible
worldly success, or the dazzling possession of rank,
could ever have caused him to apostatise from the
simplicity of his political faith.
Was Shelley an atheist? Such is the momentous
question which next arises. The affirmative has
so frequently been stated that it has come to be
almost universally accepted. I, also, believe that
he had not quite dived into the depth of all mystery;
that he had not fully understood himself, the
world, and the Great Unknown; that he had not
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
93
quite reconciled all the inconsistencies of this
jarring instrument, human life, nor solved the
problem why evil should be permitted to exist side
by side with virtue, and too frequently prove the
victor. But then he never professed to be anything
but a student upon the threshold of existence, pos-
sessed by a thirst for knowledge. Yet, assuming
for a moment that at one time Shelley was
of the number of the sceptics, there was an earn-
estness in his purposes, and a craving for light,
which were noble in comparison with the cold
Mephistophelean disbelief in virtue so characteristic
of Byron. The author of Queen Mab was a man of
faith compared with the author of Don Juan.
Out of the spirit of inquiry which pervaded the
former it was possible there might arise a sympathy
with and a thirsting after the Divine; out of the
spirit of moral infidelity which distinguished the
latter it was impossible for anything to be generated
but a distrust in all human virtue. So that our
words of indignation as regards Shelley's scepticism
should be measured and sympathetic, not violent
and unsparing. The negations of a philosophical
scepticism have in the world's history very fre-
quently been cast away for a living and vital trust
in the Fountain of all happiness and truth.
Morality always survived in Shelley; therefore it
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SHELLEY:
was possible for him, by an easy and natural
process, to pass from the lower and baser to the
higher and nobler. Shelleyism is not infidelity;
and if systematic doubt really ever was a creed
with the poet, it had been swept away long before
his death. We can distinguish Shelley stretching
out hands of faith after the Divine, imploring,
demanding to be led into the light, and seeking
shelter in the Fatherhood of his Creator. Are not
these eloquent lines one of the finest tributes
which could be cited to the power of the Divine
Nazarene ?-
"A Power from the unknown God,
A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod
The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient planet animates with light :
Hell, sin, and slavery came,
Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set:
While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon,
The Cross leads generations on."
The scepticism which Shelley indulged was not
one of utter disbelief in the future perfection of
humanity, but one that had its root in the sad-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
95
4
ness he experienced for a world which was appa-
rently without a guiding principle, or power; and
in regret for the transitoriness of everything human.
He looked abroad with the sadly-brooding eyes
of the poet, and wept over the absence of that
stability in some person or thing which his soul
longed to have revealed. Earth to him was a land
of shadows, and men "as clouds that veil the mid-
night moon." As he sorrowfully affirms, "Nought
may endure but mutability."
A priest at Lausanne once gesticulated on read-
ing Queen Mab, " Infidel, Jacobine, leveller; nothing
can stop this spread of blasphemy but the stake and
the faggot; the world is retrograding into accursed
heathenism and universal anarchy." It was seeing
so much of the spirit which animated this priest
that retarded Shelley's religious development. But,
with every consideration for the Lausanne clerical
-whose bigotry too often finds its exemplification
in each succeeding age-another critic of Shelley's,
in humbler life, a simple bookseller, was nearer to
the truth when he remarked that Shelley aimed at
regenerating, not levelling mankind, as Byron and
Moore. The detestation of the name of religion
which he at one time unquestionably displayed
arose from the lack of the thing itself in those who
professed it. He looked upon religion, as practised,
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SHELLEY:
"as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of
those virtues which would make men brothers."
From the poem of Queen Mab it is impossible to
come to the conclusion that Shelley was an atheist,
except as regards the God too often represented as
the God of vengeance by the Christians, whom
indeed he rejects with scorn. But there are glim-
merings of a belief in some Power which moulds
all things and runs through all things-in fact a
Pantheistic God. To the God of the theologians
he exhibited an unswerving animosity; but the
pamphlet he wrote at Oxford was much morẹ
atheistical than the poem. There is abundant evi-
dence, notwithstanding, that in after life he ab-
jured both the pamphlet and the poem. By far the
most reckless things Shelley ever wrote are to
be found in the notes to Queen Mab, but here,
appended to the quotation from the poem, "There
is no God!" we find him saying, "This negation
must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity.
The hypothesis of a pervading spirit, co-eternal
with the Universe, remains unshaken." This is an
admission which no man who was an atheist in
the strict sense of the term would make. As one
fact is worth many arguments, however, I would
again remind the reader that in his letter to the
Editor of the Examiner on the subject of Queen Mab,
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
97
Shelley said the poem was never intended for
publication; and that, as we have seen, in regard
to the subtle discriminations of metaphysical and
religious doctrine, it was very crude and immature.
It was written at a period when the poet was dis-
gusted with the constitution of things, and when he
was desirous of hurling from his throne the Deity
whom Christians held up for reverence,
He repu-
diated the notion that this Being described to him
could be the active Governor of the universe. At
the same time he did believe distinctly in some
Spirit that was progressively working for perfection.
These views are corroborated by Shelley's reply to
Trelawny, when the latter asked, “Why do you
call yourself an atheist ?" and he answered, "I used
it (the name atheist) to express my abhorrence of
superstition: I took up the word, as a knight took up
a gauntlet, in defiance of injustice." This is a clear
indication of the character of Shelley's atheism; it
was, as I have maintained, not a universal negative.
The very spirituality of his nature would have
prevented him from embracing the everlasting
"No!"
Coleridge took this view of the poet's opinions,
for in one of his letters he observes, "His (Shelley's)
discussions-tending towards atheism of a certain
sort-would not have scared me; for me it would
H
י
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SHELLEY:
have been a semi-transparent larva, soon to be glori-
fied, and through which I should have seen the true
image,—the final metamorphosis. Besides, I have
ever thought that sort of atheism the next best re-
ligion to Christianity; nor does the betterfaith I have
learnt from Paul and John interfere with the cordial
reverence I feel for Benedict Spinoza." I find also
this remarkable passage in a letter written by
Shelley himself, in 1811;-"I here take God (God
exists) to witness that I wish torments, which
beggar the futile description of a fancied hell, would
fall upon me, provided I could obtain thereby that
happiness for what I love, which, I fear, can never
be! The question is, What do I love? It is almost
unnecessary to answer. Do I love the person, the
embodied identity, if I may be allowed the ex-
pression? No! I love what is superior, what is
excellent, or what I conceive to be so; and I wish,
ardently wish, to be profoundly convinced of the
existence of a Deity, that so superior a spirit might
receive some degree of happiness from my feeble
exertions; for love is heaven, and heaven is love.
You think so too, and you disbelieve not the exist-
ence of an eternal, omnipresent Spirit." Then, in
an argument against the Materialists, the writer
proceeds further to say, "I think I can prove the
existence of a Deity-a First Cause. I will ask a
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
99
Materialist how came this universe at first?
He
will answer, By chance. What chance? I will
answer in the words of Spinoza: An infinite number
of atoms had been floating from all eternity in space,
till at last one of them fortuitously diverged from
its track, which dragging with it another formed
the principle of gravitation, and, in consequence, the
universe! What cause produced this change, this
chance? For where do we know that causes arise
without their correspondent effects; at least we
must here, on so abstract a subject, reason analogi-
cally. Was not this, then, a cause, was it not a first
cause? Was not this first cause a Deity? Now,
nothing remains but to prove that this Deity has a
care, or rather that its only employment consists in
regulating the present and future happiness of its
creation. Our ideas of infinite space, etc., are
scarcely to be called ideas, for we cannot either
comprehend or explain them; therefore the Deity
must be judged by us from attributes analogical to
our situation.' Oh, that this Deity were the Soul
of the universe, the spirit of universal, imperishable
love! Indeed, it is." This is certainly language
never held by an atheist; it was the expression of
a man in doubt about the truths of Christianity, but
not that of an unbeliever. Phrases occur in several
poems by Shelley, which touch upon the same
•
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SHELLEY:
thoughts as those developed in this prose extract.
On one occasion, it is true, he said, "I had rather
be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to
heaven with Paley and Malthus;" but this was
only to indicate his abhorrence of creeds and for-
mulated religions. Yet he held the view which
is common to almost all Christians-viz. that evil
was not originally inherent in the creation, but an
alien element that might be expelled. Every stu-
dent of Shelley must perceive that he had a deeply
religious spirit, that spirit of reverence which invari-
ably distinguishes the great poet; for would it not
be impossible to conceive of a great poet who was
at the same time an atheist? He would at once
lose that spiritual elevation which refines and
glorifies genius. The best description of the re-
ligious attitude of Shelley has been given by one
who knew him most intimately, and as I greatly
prefer his language to my own, in enforcing the point
now at issue, his words shall be reproduced.
"The leading feature of Shelley's character,"
says Leigh Hunt, who may be credited with having
understood more than others the thoughts of his
later life, "may be said to have been a natural
piety. He did himself injustice with the public,
in using the popular name of the Supreme Being
inconsiderately. He identified it solely with the
.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
101
most vulgar and tyrannical notions of a God made
after the worst human fashion; and did not suffi-
ciently reflect that it was often used by a juster
devotion to express a sense of the Great Mover of
the universe. An impatience in contradicting
worldly and pernicious notions of a supernatural
power led his own aspirations to be misunderstood;
for, though in the severity of his dialectics, and
particularly in moments of despondency, he some-
times appeared to be hopeless of what he most de-
sired—and though he justly thought that a Divine
Being would prefer the increase of benevolence
and good before any praise, or even recognition of
himself (a reflection worth thinking of by the in-
tolerant), yet, in reality, there was no belief to
which he clung with more fondness than that of
some great pervading 'Spirit of Intellectual
Beauty;' as may be seen in his aspirations on that
subject. He assented warmly to an opinion which
I expressed in the Cathedral at Pisa, while the
organ was playing, that a truly divine religion
might yet be established, if charity were really
made the principle of it instead of faith." But
in discussing this subject it is necessary to take
into account Shelley's Essay on Christianity, in
which I find him distinctly asserting that "we are
not the creators of our own origin and existence.
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SHELLEY:
We are not the arbiters of every motion of our
own complicated nature; we are not the masters
of our own imaginations and moods of mental
being. There is a Power by which we are sur-
rounded, like the atmosphere in which some motion-
less lyre is suspended, which visits with its breath
our silent chords at will." In this same essay
there is a nobler tribute to Jesus Christ than
many of the cold believers in Christianity, dead
with an infidelity of heart, would be willing to pay.
The whole spirit of the essay forbids for a moment
the assumption that Shelley was an atheist, and
most of the composition might be read with great
profit from any orthodox pulpit. On other col-
lateral religious questions, such as the doctrine of
the immortality of the soul, much is not said by
Shelley. Immortality is a topic rarely discussed
with himself by any man, and when he becomes
agitated therewith it is only to end in a condition.
of vagueness. Yet the expectation of something
after death was very strong in Shelley. Adonais,
if it stood alone as regards the poet's utterances
on immortality, might be conclusive of his belief
in the doctrine in its fullest sense; in speaking of
Keats, in one instance he says that "he hath
awakened from the dream of life," and "is made.
one with Nature." Further, that his spirit "beams
↓
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
103
from the abode where the Eternal are." Other
prose expressions of Shelley's would appear to
contradict this, but never, I believe, does he hint
for a moment at such a thing as annihilation.
He could not conceive that his own spirit, after
the experience of which he was conscious, could ever
be thrown into the void, useless and dead, though
he had no definite ideas as to what would become
of himself after he "had shuffled off this mortal
coil." By this time has he not discovered more
fully that Divine love for which his spirit yearned?
Had a few more years of human life been allotted
to him, he would have emerged from that dark
valley of doubt in which his noble spirit was
searching for the Infinite. The light, however,
came more suddenly; the veil of humanity was
violently rent asunder, and Shelley was face to
face with the solution of the Great Mystery.
The benefactor of humanity has invariably to
sustain much comment respecting his motives, and
Shelley was no exception to the rule in his exer-
cise of the spirit of philanthropy. He gave both
of his labour and substance with an unbounded
generosity, and too frequently had the bitterness
to perceive that his intentions were misunderstood,
and he himself regarded with suspicion. Man is
certainly a reasoning animal, but he is above all a
104
SHELLEY:
!
selfish animal. The species seems much more pro-
lific and ingenious in acts of self-preservation than
it does in argument. Man is, in fact, so selfish
that an undoubtedly benevolent act-an act, that
is, which is open to no other construction-too oft
surprises him by its folly. He furthermore does
not like the rebuke which the act itself necessarily
conveys, and consequently becomes angry, and
slanders his benefactor. This has ever been so.
In the realms of thought and science, as well as
in personal action, the exercise of benevolence has
met with strenuous opposition. The perfect Man,
whose soul was spotless, and who yearned with a
magnificent philanthropy over the whole race, was
crucified on a tree. The world has to be ap-
proached gradually by the philanthropist, or he
will be assailed by the offensive missiles of an
adverse criticism. And when he has done all the
good that is possible, and laid down his life for his
brother, he will gain but a grudging remembrance
from posterity. It is, however, the mark of the
true philanthropist that he pursues his ends re-
gardless of the consequences. No threat, no with-
holding of his just reward, can ever deter him, for
he is armed, not by the principle which expects a
return for its expended benevolence, but by the
sublime idea that the condition of the person he
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
105
means to help can be ameliorated and exalted by
his aid. And in the eyes of the philanthropist
the salvation of the species is the noblest work
to which a man can devote himself. Salvation
from vice, from misery, from poverty, from the
horrors of his own conscience, is to the human the
lifting up of the Divine ideal. Of Shelley it may
be affirmed that he laboured conspicuously for
this end. The record of his life is one of generous
impulse and action from its commencement to
its close. A benignity and reverence, worthy
of all praise, animated him in his relations to
man and the humbler creation; to breathe, to
him, was to aspire to do good, irrespective of
recognition or reward. His own appetites were
conquered and held in subjection, so that he
could be of service to humanity. The plainest
food sufficed for his daily needs, and he would
never use the produce of the cane so long as it
was obtained by slave labour. "Fragile in health
and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of
devoted generosity and universal kindness; glow-
ing with ardour to obtain wisdom; resolved, at
every personal sacrifice, to do right; burning with
a desire for affection and sympathy, he was treated
as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal." Lest
this eulogy, however, which was dictated by the
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SHELLEY:
spirit of an ardent love and admiration for Shelley,
should seem tinged with the extravagance of
personal regard, let us quote from Lady Blessington
what Lord Byron said of his friend. After Shelley's
death his lordship wrote-"You should have
known Shelley to feel how much I must regret
him. He was the most gentle, the most amiable,
the least worldly-minded person I ever met; full
of delicacy, disinterested beyond all other men,
and possessing a degree of genius joined to a
simplicity as rare as it is admirable. He had
formed to himself a beau idéal of all that is fine,
high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this
ideal even to the very letter. He had a most
brilliant imagination, but a total want of worldly
wisdom. I have seen nothing like him, and never
shall again, I am certain." To extract such a
tribute from such a quarter is of itself sufficient
proof to me that all I have alleged with respect
to the natural generosity of Shelley's character is
strictly accurate.
A munificent instance of this trait in the poet's
disposition was afforded during his stay in North
Wales. He had hired a cottage from a gentleman
named Maddox, at Tanyrallt, Carnarvonshire.
Mr. Maddox, Lady Shelley informs us, had re-
claimed several thousand acres of land from the
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
107
sea; but the embankment proved insufficient
during an unusually high tide. The sea made
such serious breaches in the earthworks that the
poor cottagers became terribly alarmed. At this
juncture Shelley stepped forward, took the matter
up warmly, and personally solicited subscriptions
from the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Though
possessing very limited means of subsistence him-
self, he headed the list with the extraordinary
donation of £500. Nor was his enthusiasm checked
here, for he came up to London, still interested in
the same business, and had at length the satisfac-
tion of seeing his efforts crowned with success.
The embankment was repaired and strengthened,
and the inhabitants were protected from future
risk.
Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, tells a story
of another kind, but in excellent illustration of
the same tenderness of heart. On returning home
to Hampstead one night after the opera, Hunt
heard strange and alarming shrieks mixed with the
voice of a man. It appears that it was a fierce
winter night, and Shelley had found a woman
lying near the top of the hill, in fits. He tried in
vain to get the nearest householders to receive her,
assuring them that she was no impostor: doors
were shut upon him. Time was flying, and the
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SHELLEY:
poor creature was in convulsions, with her son
lamenting over her. Seeing a carriage drive up
to a door and a gentleman with his family step
out of it, Shelley implored them to have mercy on
the woman. In response to his request that the
gentleman would go and see her, the latter said,
"No, sir; there's no necessity for that sort of
thing, depend on it. Impostors swarm every-
where; the thing cannot be done; sir, your conduct
is extraordinary." "Sir," cried Shelley, "I am
sorry to say that your conduct is not extraordinary;
and if my own seems to amaze you, I will tell
you something which may amaze you a little
more, and I hope will frighten you. It is such
men as you who madden the spirits and the
patience of the poor and the wretched; and if
ever a convulsion comes in this country (which is
very probable) recollect what I tell you: you will
have your house, that you refuse to put the
miserable woman into, burnt over your head."
Then, as Dr. Johnson rescued a wretched creature
on a similar memorable occasion, the poet, as best
he was able, conveyed the suffering woman to a
haven of rest. Thus this man lived, who was so
subject to violent bodily pains that he was some-
times compelled to lie on the ground during the
paroxysms of suffering; yet preserving always the
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
109
;
1
language of kindness and consideration for those
about him. To multiply the record of his
generous deeds would be to follow the diary of his
whole existence. So strongly imbued was he
with the desire to do good, that he compelled any
recreation or occupation to give way when there
was opened before him an avenue for benevolence.
After pecuniary circumstances became a little
easier with him than they had been, Shelley went
to reside at Great Marlow. Mrs. Shelley has, in a
few lines, detailed how he spent his life there. It
appears that, though Marlow was surrounded by
every natural beauty, it boasted of a very poor
population. "The women," says Mrs. Shelley,
"were lacemakers, and lost their health by
sedentary labour, for which they were very ill
paid. The poor-laws ground to the dust, not only
the paupers, but those who had risen just above
that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates.
The changes produced by peace following a long
war and a bad harvest brought with them the
most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley
afforded what alleviation he could. In the winter,
while bringing out his poem (The Revolt of Islam)
he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught
while visiting the poor cottagers." And there
was no calling out for strangers to come and see
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SHELLEY:
.
the good deeds which he wrought. All sprang from
the purest motives, and he shrank from having his
actions blazoned abroad. Occasionally, neverthe-
less, he assisted friends in the pursuit of schemes
which were chimerical, and which would have been
better left alone; but when the friend was invoked
in time of need, he was only too ready to respond
to the call, whatever it might be. I have made a
passing reference to his sympathy for the brute
creation, which was such that any instance of
cruelty put him into transports of passion. One
such case is recorded in his Memoirs, and this
incident is but typical. Of the broader kind of
philanthropy which seeks to benefit the race, and
not specially the individual, Shelley also gave
many demonstrations; but one fact must suffice-
viz., that long before the abolition of the punish-
ment of death had become a moot question, Shelley
had firmly cherished the idea. He advocated it
upon the same grounds as Dickens-many years
subsequently-to wit, that it served no good or
useful purpose to society, and was contrary to the
spirit of human progress.
In leaving this portion of the subject, I cannot
refrain from quoting a portion of an article which
appeared in the Examiner of October 10, 1819,
which testifies alike to the simplicity of Shelley's
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
111
life and his philanthropic spirit. A reviewer in the
Quarterly had asserted that the poet was "shame-
fully dissolute in his conduct." Meeting this in-
famous charge-which, to those who really knew
Shelley, required no contradiction-the writer in
the Examiner (Leigh Hunt) said: "We heard of
similar assertions when we resided in the same
house with Mr. Shelley for nearly three months;
and how was he living all that time? As much
like Plato himself, as all his theories resemble
Plato or rather still more like a Pythagorean.
This was the round of his daily life-he was up
early, breakfasted sparingly, wrote at the Revolt of
Islam all the morning, went out in his boat, or
into the woods with some Greek author or the
Bible in his hands; came home to a dinner of
vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine),
visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless, whom
others gave Bibles to and no help, wrote or studied
again, or read to his wife and friends the whole
evening; took a crust of bread or a glass of whey
for his supper, and went early to bed. This is
literally the whole of the life he led, or that we
believe he now leads in Italy; nor have we ever
known him, in spite of the malignant and ludicrous
exaggerations on this point, deviate, notwith-
standing his theories, even into a single action
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SHELLEY:
which those who differ from him might think
blameable. We do not say that he would always
square his conduct by their opinions as a matter
of principle, we only say that he acted just as if
he did so square it. We forbear, out of regard for
the very bloom of their beauty, to touch upon
numberless other charities and generosities which
we have known him exercise; but this we must
say in general, that we never lived with a man
who gave so complete an idea of an ardent and
principled aspirant in philosophy as Percy Shelley,
and that we believe him from the bottom of our
hearts to be one of the noblest hearts as well as
heads which the world has seen for a long time.
We never met, in short, with a being who came
nearer, perhaps so near, to that height of humanity
mentioned in the conclusion of an essay of Lord
Bacon's, where he speaks of excess of charity, and
of its not being in the power of man or angel to
come in danger by it." Such is the Shelley of
real life.
We have thus completed another stage in the
consideration of this illustrious friend of humanity.
I have expressed my own unwavering admiration
of the various aspects of his character, and the
triple view of him now presented may assist,
possibly, in elucidating to others a career which is
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
113
at once romantic, beautiful, and tragic. That
career forcibly rebukes the idea that enthusiasm
and personal sacrifice are necessarily divorced from
the selfish and materially progressive age in which
we live. The theologian may well merge his wrath
in the halo of practical Christianity which encircled
this life; the adamantine creed is worthless and
dead before his sleepless and laborious devotion.
In Divine hands we can leave him, resenting the
bigotry and the presumption which would pass
judgment upon him here. If that soul which pos-
sessed so much purity, grace, disinterestedness, and
sincerity could be ultimately lost, the foundations of
our faith might well be in danger of being broken
up. But the speculation is at once impossible and
impious: the Deity himself is pledged to the im-
perishable nature of goodness and virtue.
1
III.
LATER YEARS AND OPINIONS.
"Thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams-ah! thou hast fled !
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius."
Alastor.
III.
LATER YEARS AND OPINIONS.
Two of the most tragic events in the history of
English literature-one occurring at the dawn of
the most famous age in that literature, and the
other at the beginning of the present century,-
deprived the world of two great luminaries in the
realm of poetry. On the 1st of June 1593, Chris-
topher Marlowe, greatest of the founders of the Eng-
lish drama before Shakspeare, was stabbed by one
Francis Archer in a tavern at Deptford, and died of
his wounds: on the 8th of July 1822, during a storm
of only twenty minutes' duration, a little craft, bear-
ing Percy Bysshe Shelley on board, went down in the
Bay of Spezzia, and was afterwards tossed tenant-
less on shore. These distinguished poets, at the
time of their death, might have been regarded as
only upon the threshold of existence, for neither
had quite attained his thirtieth year, and notwith-
standing the opposite character of their lives,
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SHELLEY:
I
there yet existed considerable affinity between
their spirits. In storm and tempest they lived,
and under the same conditions they passed away.
Both were branded with the name of atheist.
Turbulent, and given to excess with many of his
brethren of the Elizabethan era, rare and divine
poetic fancies passed athwart the vision of Mar-
lowe, and similar inspirations visited the later poet.
The life of Shelley was of a higher and nobler type
than that of the early dramatist; but between the
author of Dr. Faustus and the author of The
Cenci there was, as I have intimated, not a little
in common. United to the same wayward, gene-
rous, and impulsive nature was a kindred imagina-
tion, thrown, in the case of Marlowe, into the
dramatic form, in obedience to the spirit of the
genius of the period; Shelley, tortured almost into
madness by that very civilisation into whose
midst he was cast, poured out the burden of his woe
and his anger in any and every form of verse
which seemed meet to his soul, so greatly suffering
and perturbed. But ceasing at this point to pur-
sue whatever analogy may exist between the
Hercules of the sixteenth century and the far-off
genius of the nineteenth, let us now concern our-
selves with the later years of Shelley, distinguish-
ing, if possible, their effect upon his literary work.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
119
In M. Taine's able survey of English Literature
-a work, nevertheless, disfigured by many defects
-the author appears in one passage to read the
character and work of Shelley with keen penetra-
tion. After sketching the brief and troubled life
of the poet, and demanding whether it is not a
type of the genuine bard and prophet, he proceeds
to observe that for souls constituted in a mould
like his, the great consolation is Nature. "Has
any one since Shakspeare and Spenser lighted on
such tender and such grand ecstasies? Has any-
one painted so magnificently the cloud which
watches by night in the sky, enveloping in its net
the swarm of golden bees, the stars?" These are
some of the inquiries of the French critic, and our
sympathies accompany him till this extract is
reached, which may be regarded as a fair specimen
of his occasionally unsound rhetoric,-"It is this
presentiment and yearning which sustains all
modern poetry-now in Christian meditations, as
with Campbell and Wordsworth, now in pagan
visions, as with Keats and Shelley. They hear
the great heart of Nature beat; they wish to reach
it; they try all spiritual and sensible approaches,
through Judea and through Greece, by consecrated
doctrines, and by prescribed dogmas. In this
splendid and fruitless effort the greatest become
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SHELLEY:
exhausted and die. Their poetry, which they drag
with them over these sublime tracts, is torn to
pieces. One alone, Byron, attains the summit;
and of all these grand poetic draperies, which
float like banners, and seem to summon men to
the conquest of supreme truth, we see now but
tatters scattered by the wayside." A fallacy lies
embedded here; for surely a protest must be
entered against the assumption that Byron soared
to the altitude of the full-orbed poet, while Words-
worth, with the treasures of his Excursion, and
Shelley, with all his splendid flights of imagina-
tion, were but the dispensers of fragments of song.
On two occasions, in Prometheus Unbound and The
Cenci, Shelley almost rose to the great height of per-
fect and complete spiritual and dramatic vision-a
height to which Byron, notwithstanding the vigour
of his genius, never fully attained. But the princi-
pal point to which observation should be directed
is, that the inability to discover satisfaction in the
mere contemplation of human life threw Shelley,
as it were, into the bosom of Nature, and led to
his seclusion from the world. He had passed
through bitter experience of humanity; he had
been animated with zeal for its welfare, and fired by
quixotic schemes for its redemption from error and
prejudice; but the world had ill-repaid its sanguine
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
121
apostle and would-be deliverer. Instead of hailing
his ideal schemes for its progress and development,
it had hurled the javelin into the most secret recesses
of his nature. He had been sore wounded through
the domestic affections-trials producing a revul-
sion in his sensitive nature; and we have now to
deal with him, disabused, to a large extent, of his
faith in himself to hasten the regeneration of the
world, and falling back upon the material beauty
and magnificence of the universe for the sustenance
of his ever-yearning and aspiring spirit.
In the year 1816, Shelley was in Switzerland,
having made the acquaintance of Lord Byron at
Geneva. The passionate fondness of both poets
for the water is well known, and one incident is
related which was a faint foreshadowing of the
terrible event that occurred some years later.
Shelley and Byron were sailing from Meillerie to
St. Gingoux when a storm came on, and the vessel
shipped a good deal of water. Here was mani-
fested the unselfish current of Shelley's nature.
Being unable to swim, he made up his mind, under
the most heroic calm, to the death which appeared
inevitable; in fact he said he had no notion of
being saved, and was determined not to allow
Byron to imperil his own life by attempting to
save him. Fortunately, after much difficulty, the
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SHELLEY:
boat righted, and the world was largely the gainer
by this propitious circumstance. This temper of
fearlessness in presence of the very article of
death, which distinguished the ancients much
more than the moderns, was very characteristic of
Shelley. In all circumstances involving personal
danger he was as unconscious and devoid of fear
as a child. Numberless anecdotes could be told
illustrative of this phase of his character. His
moral courage also, as well as his physical, was
pre-eminent. By no persuasion or entreaty could he
be brought to say that a thing was other, in the least
degree, than the complexion of which he thought.
He cut invariably at the root of all things, and was
absolutely fearless in the expression of his views,
upon all occasions, and under all conditions. In-
convenient as this attitude might sometimes be,
viewed in the light of one's relations towards the
outer world, it unquestionably relieves him who
adopts it from much circumlocution, and not a little
of that veneer so prevalent in all classes of society.
Mrs. Shelley's opinion that during the early
stages of Shelley's friendship with Byron, his
genius was in some measure checked by his associa-
tion with the author of Childe Harold, whose
nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, is both
natural and probable. But if Byron endeavoured
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
123
to make Shelley more in love with the real, there
was also a reflex action upon himself proceeding
from the more ethereal and spiritualised poet.
Moore has fully testified to this in his Memorials
of Lord Byron. Although there was scarcely a
point of agreement between the two men when
they came to discuss philosophy and poetry, in
time the influence of Shelley upon Byron was palp-
able and distinct. "Upon no point," we are re-
minded, "were the opposite tendencies of the two
friends-to long-established opinions and matter-
of-fact on one side, and to all that was most in-
novating and visionary on the other-more ob-
servable than in their notions on philosophical
subjects; Lord Byron being, with the great bulk
of mankind, a believer in the existence of matter
and evil, while Shelley so far refined upon the
theory of Berkeley, as not only to resolve the whole
of creation into spirit, but to add also to this
immaterial system some pervading principle, some
abstract nonentity of love and beauty, of which-as
a substitute, at least, for Deity-the philosophic
bishop had never dreamed. On such subjects, and
on poetry, their conversation generally turned; and
as might be expected from Lord Byron's facility in
receiving new impressions, the opinions of his
companion were not altogether without some in-
1
124
SHELLEY:
fluence on his mind." Shelley's detachment from
men and the material side of things was curiously
described by himself in a letter to a friend respecting
his Epipsychidion. He says "The Epipsychidion
is a mystery; as to real flesh and blood you know
that I do not deal in those articles; you might as
well go to a gin-shop for a leg of mutton, as ex-
pect anything human or earthly from me." It is
said that Shelley, when with Byron, felt somewhat
oppressed by the weight of what he conceived to
be his friend's superior poetical powers; and yet
there is no doubt that Shelley influenced Byron
more than the latter influenced Shelley. There
was a certain grandeur in Shelley's nature, which,
combined with his intense earnestness and spirit-
uality, must have left a strong if not always clearly
traceable impression upon the grosser nature of
Byron. Notwithstanding this influence, however, it
is scarcely matter for surprise that Shelley should
have failed to convert Byron completely from that
love of materiality, which was his strong bias both
of body and soul. But it is pleasant to know
that the generous championship of Wordsworth on
the part of Shelley caused Byron to revise and
greatly modify his opinion of the poet of the
Lakes. From a reviler he passed, indeed, at one
time, into a partial imitator of Wordsworth.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
125
In a letter written from Ravenna, some years
after their first meeting, Byron addresses Shelley
upon literary subjects, and takes occasion to refer
to Keats's ultra-sensitiveness. It is curious to
note the difference in poets in this respect.
Adverse criticism produced in Byron rage and
rebelliousness; in Shelley sadness and pity; in
Keats a temporary despair, if not a permanent
feeling akin to that. The idea, once so common,
that Keats was absolutely "snuffed out by an
article," and that he died of a broken heart, has
recently been exploded; but it is not impossible
that the severity of his critics may have given an
impetus to that insidious disease of which he died.
Keats had a proud and sensitive soul, and in all
probability suffered more from the literary on-
slaughts upon him than he was willing to confess
to his friends. It is in the nature of such poets
to cherish their wrongs, and let them gnaw like a
canker at the heart. Shelley was the only one of
the trio named who could appraise criticism at its
true worth. Its venom had little vitality in his
presence. One passage in Byron's letter is worth
quoting both for its references to himself, and to
Shelley's drama, The Cenci. "I recollect," he says,
"the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first
poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress, but
126
SHELLEY:
not despondency nor despair. I grant that those
are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of
bustle and broil, and especially in the career of
writing, a man should calculate upon his powers
of resistance before he goes into the arena.
'Expect not life from pain nor danger free,
Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.'
"You know my opinion of that second-hand school
of poetry. You also know my high opinion of
your own poetry, because it is of no school. I
read Cenci, but-besides that I think the subject
essentially undramatic-I am not an admirer of
our old dramatists as models. I deny that the
English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your
Cenci, however, was a work of power, and poetry."
The reference to the English drama is another
instance with the many to prove that Byron was
incapable of true literary penetration and criticism.
A critic of men, he was but a treacherous guide in
literature. It is interesting to note how his better
nature was drawn out by his connection with
Shelley, though his capacity to be mean and selfish
on occasion is unquestionable. Even to his brother
poet he behaved shabbily in money matters, and
perhaps worse towards his wife. On one occa-
sion he refused to disburse them certain amounts
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
127
due because no one else refunded, and for no other
reason!
Moore appears to have been jealous of Shelley's
intimacy with Byron, and he cannot be altogether
"absolved from the charge of attempting to damage
Shelley in the eyes of his brother poet. Moore, of
course, was delighted with his role of guardian to
so distinguished a literary lion as Lord Byron; and
the noble poet, whose disposition was of the most
easy-going character, gave way but too readily on
various occasions to the genial but withal crotchety
author of Lalla Rookh. The efforts of the minnow,
however, to disturb the harmony between the
tritons were in vain. Of the uninterrupted friend-
liness in the relations between the two great poets
there can be no shadow of a doubt, and Byron was
powerfully impressed by his friend's death. Moore
records that “the melancholy death of poor Shelley
seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind with less
grief for the actual loss of his friend than with
bitter indignation against those who had, through
life, so grossly misrepresented him; and never
certainly was there an instance where the supposed
absence of all religion in an individual was as-
sumed so eagerly as an excuse for the entire
absence of truth and charity in judging him.”
Such, nevertheless, was the actual position of
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SHELLEY:
Shelley towards the world throughout his whole
career; those who knew him only by report pro-
fessed to be horrified and scandalised by his
opinions, whilst those who knew him personally,
and intimately, almost idolised him.
The friendship of Shelley with another remark-
able man—a writer whose singular genius has
recently excited renewed interest in the world of
letters deserves more than a casual mention.
Thomas Love Peacock became acquainted with
Shelley at Great Marlow in the year 1815, and
continued to be one of his friends to the end.
Peacock left memorials behind him from which
many interesting facts are to be gleaned respecting
Shelley's literary and other tastes. Considering
the weird character of the novels of Charles
Brockden Brown, it is not surprising that Shelley
was more impressed with that author than with
any other whose merits he discussed with Peacock.
Constantia Dudley, in Brown's Ormond, he held
to be one of the highest idealities of female
character. As regards the poets, Shakspeare and
Milton were read and keenly enjoyed by Shelley,
but he did not admire greatly any other of the
older poets. Amongst ancient characters, Antigone
was the one which most transfixed his imagination.
Of the modern poets he devotedly admired Words-
4
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
129
worth and Coleridge. Concerning Wordsworth's
stanzas written in a pocket copy of Thomson's
Castle of Indolence, he said "It was a remarkable
instance of Wordsworth's insight into nature, that
he should have made intimate friends of two
imaginary characters so essentially dissimilar, and
yet generally so true to the actual characters of
two friends (Peacock and Shelley), in a poem
written long before they were known to each other,
and while they were both boys, and totally un-
known to him." Shelley had a prejudice against
theatres, and on one occasion, seeing the School for
Scandal performed, he said to Peacock, "I see
the purpose of this comedy. It is to associate
virtue with bottles and glasses, and villainy with
books." Not a totally irrelevant criticism of
Sheridan's brilliant play. Shelley was deeply
absorbed in Miss O'Neill's performance of Bianca
in Fazio, and it was evident to Peacock this actress
was in his thoughts when he drew the character of
Beatrice in the Cenci. It was once suggested to
Shelley that he should see Miss O'Neill appear in
his own drama, but he was almost terrified by the
bare contemplation, and emphatically declined,
alleging that he could not bear it—a strong tribute
to the tragic power of the actress. The opera had
more charms for Shelley than the theatre, on ac-
K
130
SHELLEY:
ཨི༔
count of the music. He especially delighted in
Mozart; went to see Don Giovanni and other
operas, but clung more particularly, as his great-
est favourite, to Nozze di Figaro. A biographer
of the poet, who had no special aptitude for the
work he undertook, and no personal friendship
with Shelley, has gathered together many other per-
sonal details; some of these, however, are untrust-
worthy, and only exaggerated repetitions of more
accurate statements in other quarters. One asser-
tion which this writer makes may be contradicted
at once, and authoritatively, viz., that Shelley
delighted in shocking people. A single incident of
his life has in this matter led to a wholesale charge.
The poet had far more reason to feel shocked by
the conduct of others than they had by his own.
An instance of this in point. Some one happened
to mention Shelley's name to a respectable trades-
man in Great Marlow, when the dry-goods man
became positively alarmed, exclaiming, "Shelley!
why, that is the man who does not believe in the
Devil! what can become of him?" The Devil is
essential to the religion of many creeds; but the
tradesman was only carrying out the general
notion entertained of the poet--a notion which, in
this case, had been imbibed from persons who were
supposed to know him much more intimately.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
131
Shelley, all through his existence, suffered from
nervous debility, and at one time took laudanum.
His absence of mind, too, was in several instances
very remarkable; on one occasion, after sitting
perfectly silent for a long time, he astonished the
company present by quietly asking, "What is the
amount of the National Debt?" He also relapsed
now and then into a state of lethargy, and once
into a condition of somnambulism. All these
details only prove the tension at which he lived,
and are valuable as side-lights thrown upon this
extraordinary being, elucidating much that might
otherwise seem inexplicable in his character.
•
Notwithstanding Peacock's intimacy with Shel-
ley, he failed clearly to understand the poet's
nature, and the caricature of him in Nightmare
Abbey, under the character of Scythrop, is not
very happy. There are a few lines of broad farce
which sufficiently distinguish the original, but, on
the whole, the creation is not so good as many
others which Peacock scattered about his novels
of men well known in literature. Shelley himself,
however, considered it excellent, and laughed
heartily over it, though this kind of literary work
was little to his severe taste. We are told that
"when Scythrop grew up he was sent, as usual, to a
public school, where a little learning was painfully
132
SHELLEY:
beaten into him, and thence to the University,
where it was carefully taken out of him; and he
was sent home, like a well-thrashed ear of corn,
with nothing in his head; having finished his
education to the high satisfaction of the master
and fellows of his college, who had, in testimony
of their approbation, presented him with a silver
fish-slice, on which his name figured at the head
of a laudatory inscription in some semi-barbarous
dialect of Anglo-Saxonised Latin." This is not a
very close parody either of incident or character as
relating to Shelley; it fails to distinguish him as
those who have studied the man apprehend him; the
following passage, which occurs farther on, touches
more nearly, in burlesque fashion, the genuine poet,
and is considerably more amusing: "At the house
of Mr. Hilary, Scythrop first saw the beautiful Miss
Emily Girouette. He fell in love; which is nothing
new. He was favourably received; which is nothing
strange. Mr. Glowry and Mr. Girouette had a
meeting on the occasion, and quarrelled about the
terms of the bargain; which is neither new nor
strange. The lovers were torn asunder, weeping
and vowing everlasting constancy; and in three
weeks after this tragical event, the lady was led a
smiling bride to the altar, by the Hon. Mr. Lackwit;
which is neither strange nor new. Scythrop re-
}
..
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
133
•
ceived this intelligence at Nightmare Abbey, and
was half distracted on the occasion. It was his first
disappointment, and preyed deeply on his sensitive
spirit. His father, to comfort him, read him a
commentary on Ecclesiastes, which he had himself
composed, and which demonstrated incontrovertibly
that all is vanity. He insisted particularly on
the text, 'One man among a thousand have I found,
but a woman amongst all those have I not found.'
'How could he expect it,' said Scythrop, 'when the
whole thousand were locked up in his seraglio!
His experience is no precedent for a free state of
society like that in which we live."" But those
who may be desirous of seeing how much better
work of this class Peacock could produce may turn
to the caricatures of Coleridge and Byron in the
same novel. Unquestionably there were many
points of sympathy between Peacock and Shelley.
Both were out of harmony with, and indulged a con-
tempt for, the society of their time; but Epicureanism
solaced the former, while the latter roamed about the
world in a state of semi-distraction, taking things
to heart much more deeply than Peacock. The
satirist was marvellously enamoured of excellent
living; whereas Shelley detested it-lived in the
plainest possible manner, and would have rejoiced
if he could have dispensed with eating altogether.
134
SHELLEY:
:
Many of Shelley's views upon the conduct and
constitution of society were handled very severely
by Peacock; but both had a common ground in
their love for ancient literature. To both the
Greeks were the apotheosis of humanity. Yet
Peacock detested the ideal in the sense in which
it was almost the life-blood of Shelley, and not-
withstanding the friendship that existed between
the two men, there could never be that perfect
understanding, which will ensure such an inter-
pretation of each other's work as to leave no room
for further explanation, and still more loving ap-
preciation. Great as may justly be our admiration
of Peacock, he is precisely the last man we
should expect to find thoroughly comprehending
such a character as Shelley's. Therefore, those
who go to Peacock's memorials of Shelley may
reasonably expect to be disappointed either with
the biographer or his subject. Certain phases of
Shelley's character undoubtedly commended them-
selves to Peacock, but he was occasionally un-
just towards the poet. There was, manifestly,
much about the life and labours of Shelley
which belonged to a totally different range of
feeling and being from the characteristics which
were so strikingly developed in Peacock and his
inimitable writings.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
135
It was in the year 1818 that Shelley finally
expatriated himself from his native land. He then
left England for Italy, never to return. Weary
with his own private griefs, sick with the aspect of
public affairs, and afraid-as Lady Shelley has
since informed the world-that the Lord Chancellor
would deprive him of his infant son by his second
wife, he left this country for more clement shores.
He made no secret of it, that rather than have his
feelings as a parent again outraged, he preferred to
abandon England for ever. Deep as the trial may
have been to him personally in some aspects, it
undoubtedly had a beneficial effect upon the
development of his genius. The richness of the
Italian scenery, the effulgence of the Italian suns,
profoundly impressed him, and these have left their
mark upon the noble poems which he wrote while
travelling from one southern city to another. Not
long, however, was the happiness of Shelley to
continue uninterrupted. In little more than
twelve months from the period at which he fled
with his child from England, that child was no
more. He died in Rome, and was buried in the
English cemetery, Shelley writing in reference
thereto "This spot is the repository of a sacred
loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart are
now prophetic; he is rendered immortal by love,
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SHELLEY:
·
as his memory is by death. My beloved child lies
buried here. I envy death the body far less than
the oppressors the minds of those whom they have
torn from me. The one can only kill the body;
the other crushes the affections." The loss of this
son, who was at that time their only surviving
child, affected Shelley and his wife most deeply.
On Shelley it must have had a peculiarly keen
and crushing effect; it seemed as if the very Fates
joined with men in endeavouring to prevent the
transmission of his name to posterity.
This untoward event drove the poet more and
more to the solace of his art; and, as the fruit of
some two years of intellectual labour, in 1819-20
appeared two of Shelley's greatest works, Prome-
theus Unbound and The Cenci, The climate in
which he lived stimulated the brain to a degree
which had been quite unparalleled in England,
and he wrote his noblest lines with singular ease
and freedom.
Shelley's political enthusiasm finds its strongest
and most enduring monument in his poems, into
which he cast all the energy of his fiery spirit.
During his residence in Italy, much occurred in
the south of Europe to enlist his warmest sym-
pathies. Liberty, long the dream of ardent patriots,
seemed at length to be almost within the range of
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
137
universal accomplishment. After successive re-
volutions in Spain and Naples, Italy began to
stretch her arms about her, desirous of freedom.
The story of that time is well known. The
struggle of Italy is written in the blood of her
sons; she was crushed by a foreign nation; the
power of Austria was too strong for the first
breathings of the soul of patriotism, and these
breathings were for the time stifled. So excited
did Shelley become at one period over the struggles
of the Italian people that his usual benevolent
spirit seems almost to have become exorcised, for
we find him writing as follows in the year
1820" At Naples the constitutional party have
declared to the Austrian minister, that if the
Emperor should make war upon them, their first
action would be to put to death all the members
of the Royal Family-a necessary and most just
measure, where the forces of the combatants, as
well as the merits of their respective causes, are so
unequal. That kings should be everywhere the
hostages for liberty was admirable." This is an
isolated passage in Shelley's remains upon politics,
and must not blind us to the fact (as there is some
fear of its doing, were it taken alone) that Shelley
was always in favour of proceeding in the accom-
plishment of his purposes by just and humane
138
SHELLEY:
steps. The fire of freedom which burnt so inex-
tinguishably in his breast received further fuel, not
so much from Italy, however, as from that other
country farther east, whose history has been, per-
haps, the most glorious of the human race. Greece,
which has had the honour of stirring with noble
sentiments the minds of more men of genius,
foreign to herself, than any other clime, received
the devotion of Byron, and awoke into the
sublimest transports the soul of Shelley. Prince
Mavrocordato called on the Shelleys at Pisa, and
informed them that his cousin, Prince Ipsilanti,
had issued a proclamation-that thenceforward
Greece would be free. This news filled the poet
with the liveliest joy, and he embodied his ex-
ultant feelings in the lyrical drama of Hellas,
which was written, he says, "at the suggestion of
the events of the moment, is a mere improvise,
and derives its interest (should it be found to
possess any) solely from the intense sympathy
which the author feels with the cause he would
celebrate." One needs only to read this drama to
perceive in what school many of our later poets
have studied before attaining their full musical
force and expression. Take, for example, these
lines from a semi-chorus in Shelley's poem :-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
139
(6
Through the sunset of hope,
Like the shapes of a dream,
What paradise islands of glory gleam!
Beneath Heaven's cope,
Their shadows more clear float by—
The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,
The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe,
Burst like morning on dream, or heaven on death,
Through the walls of our prison;
And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!"
The callous conduct-hypocritical in some
cases of the European powers generally towards
Greece afflicted Shelley profoundly, and in giving
vent to his righteous indignation in his preface to
Hellas we have a passage bearing a splendid
tribute to that illustrious country. "The apathy
of the rulers of the civilised world," he observes, "to
the astonishing circumstances of the descendants
of that nation to which they owe their civilisation
-rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin,
is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere
spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We
are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our
religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. But
for Greece-Rome, the instructor, the conqueror,
or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have
spread no illumination with her arms, and we
might still have been savages and idolaters; or
140
SHELLEY:
what is worse, might have arrived at such a
stagnant and miserable state of social institutions
as China and Japan possess." It is this grand
capacity of going out of himself, and becoming not
only the patriot of his own nation but a citizen
of the world, which makes the poet's song so
deathless, and covers him with a fadeless glory in
the eyes of posterity. Again and again did this
cosmopolitan spirit manifest itself in Shelley. "I
have seen Dante's tomb, and worshipped the sacred
spot," he writes in one letter, and in others gives
full utterance to his reverence for genius and his
passion for liberty.
These
To follow Shelley through his entire sojourn
in Italy is not my present intention.
details are to be read elsewhere; but in coming
towards the close of his brief life it is impossible
to avoid reflecting what sorrow the world must
have engraved upon that heart which, before it
throbbed for the last time, caused its owner to
exclaim with melancholy pathos, "If I die to-
morrow, I have lived to be older than my father;
I am ninety years of age." Only twenty-nine is
the real record; and even before these were
attained his hair had become partially white.
Had he avoided the catastrophe which resulted in
his death, there is reason to fear he would not
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
141
have passed middle life. A few short years had
made strange and rapid changes in him, and on
looking back at what he was, he might have ex-
claimed with Wycherley (though at the close of a
different career), when the dramatist gazed in old
age upon a portrait representing him in the bloom
of youth-" Quantum mutatus ab illo.”
I shall not linger over the closing scenes of
Shelley's life, but some facts have recently tran-
spired which lend an additional interest to the
story of his death. The Shelleys, accompanied by
their friends, Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams, left Pisa
on the 26th of April 1822 for their new house, the
Villa Magni, in the Bay of Spezzia, a point remark-
able for its wild and magnificent scenery-the house
being on the very border of the sea, with the moun-
tains rising up immediately behind it. A boat
was brought from Genoa on the 21st of May, and
Shelley and Williams walked to Lerici in order to
test her. Williams was enthusiastic over the
tiny craft, but it is not a little singular that both
Trelawny and Captain Roberts, the builder of the
boat, did not think very highly of her. Roberts,
it is recorded, had protested, but in vain, against
building the boat upon the actual model adopted.
Shelley could now experience one of his supremest
delights, for boating was to him what swimming
+
.
142.
SHELLEY:
was to Lord Byron. The former, as we have seen
already, never knew what physical fear was in his
life, and we can therefore imagine the feeling with
which he would regard all exordiums upon the
necessity for careful management. A large portion
of the coast of Italy was rapidly explored by
Shelley and Williams, and the poet was able to
utilise his voyages for the purposes of his art, as
he invariably kept writing materials on board.
This will account for the extraordinary vigour,
freshness, and first-hand impressions of scenery
discoverable in the verse he wrote at this period.
The Triumph of Life was composed as he lay in
his boat, charmed with the beauty and grandeur
of the coast scenery round which the craft con-
tinually moved. A very singular incident is
recorded in the Shelley Memorials as having oc-
curred during one of these voyages-it was one
of the few extraordinary visions which the poet
had during his lifetime. Loud cries being heard
to issue from the saloon, the Williamses wished to
see what was the matter; Mrs. Shelley also
endeavoured to gain the saloon, but fainted outside.
Shelley was discovered in a trance. On recovering
perfect consciousness, he related that a figure
wrapped in a mantle came to his bedside, and
beckoned him. He then rose in his sleep, followed
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
143
the imaginary figure into the saloon, when it
lifted the hood of its mantle, ejaculated "Siete
sodisfatto?” (“Are you satisfied ?") and vanished.
The excessive liveliness of the poet's imagination,
which was intensified by the themes of his studious
contemplation, led him again shortly after this
incident to encounter another apparition. This
time he was walking with Williams on the beach,
when he suddenly pointed to the waves, and ex-
claimed, "There it is again, there!" His friend
states that Shelley declared he saw plainly a
naked child (Allegra, who had recently died) rise
from the sea, and clasp its hands as if in joy,
smiling at him. On the 1st of July 1822, Shelley,
accompanied by Williams, left the Villa Magni, to
proceed by the boat to Leghorn, with the intention
of meeting Leigh Hunt. This journey was accom-
plished successfully, and Hunt accompanied Shelley
to Pisa, where they met Lord Byron, Shelley
taking a floor in his lordship's palace, and furnish-
ing it himself. Byron had pledged himself to assist
in establishing a magazine which his brother poet
was eager to float on behalf of his friend Hunt;
but having been persuaded (principally by Moore,
who had great influence over him at this period)
that it would injure his fame, he now desired to
withdraw from his bargain. Lord Byron's be-
.
144
SHELLEY:
-haviour on this occasion was one of those ex-
hibitions of the meaner part of his nature which
have detracted from his character. It affected
Shelley-who believed in the sacredness of obliga-
tions-so keenly, that he was almost on the point
of coming to an open rupture with Byron. Shelley
manifested great depression of spirits when he
left, and this unfortunately proved to be the
last occasion of meeting between these eminent
poets.
Mrs. Shelley appears to have had a strange
presentiment of evil during her husband's absence;
in fact she had expressed, before he left the Villa
Magni on his expedition, an indefinable dread
which clung to her. After he had been gone some
time she wrote an urgent letter to him to return,
being still under the influence of "the shadow of
coming misery." He accordingly hastened his de-
parture from Leghorn, and on July 8th he and
Williams set sail in the Don Juan for Lerici.
When they started, black and threatening clouds
were already gathering in the south-west. Mr.
Trelawny and Captain Roberts witnessed their
departure, and the Genoese mate of the Bolivar
remarked to his companion that "the Devil was
brewing mischief." The rest of that dark day's
work is familiar history. The day, which had
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
145
been intensely hot and oppressive, but profoundly
still, ended with a storm of almost unparalleled
intensity. The elements were speedily lashed
into fury, the thunder roared, and the sea responded
with its still more terrible wave-voices. The
storm, however, as is frequently the case in these
latitudes, was of very brief duration, lasting only
for the space of some twenty minutes. Captain
Roberts had watched the progress of Shelley's
vessel with his glass from the top of the Leghorn
lighthouse; but when the cloud had passed onward,
and Roberts looked again, he "saw every other
vessel sailing on the ocean, except the little
schooner, which had vanished." Now came weary
watching and miserable suspense for Mrs. Shelley.
She and Mrs. Williams imagined that their husbands
might have run the boat ashore and been saved;
and on one of these days of anxiety Lord Byron
was startled by the appearance at Pisa of his
friend's wife rushing into his room, and passionately
demanding to know where her husband was.
Byron gave a graphic picture of this incident after-
wards to Lady Blessington. Hope was at length
destroyed by a fearful certainty; and Lady Shelley
thus briefly relates the final knowledge of the
catastrophe; "Two bodies were found on the shore,
one near Via Reggio, the other close to the town
L
146
SHELLEY:
of Migliarino, at the Bocca Lericcio. They lay
about four miles apart; Mr. Trelawny went to see
both, and recognised the first as the corpse of
Shelley, and the second as that of Williams. Wil-
liams was nearly undressed, having evidently made
an attempt to swim. He had on one of his boots,
which Mr. Trelawny recognised by comparing it
with another belonging to the same owner. Shelley
had probably gone down at once, for he was un-
able to swim, and had always declared (according
to Mr. Trelawny) that in case of wreck he would
vanish instantly, and not imperil others in the en-
deavour to save him."
For many years Shelley's death was believed
in England to be attributable to the accidental
oversetting of his craft; but this belief has never
been shared by his descendants; and the poet's
friend who recovered the boat-she was found
some two miles away, off the coast of Via Reggio—
has stated that the cause of her loss was at once
apparent; her starboard quarter was stove in, evi-
dently by a blow from the bows of a felucca; and
being undecked, and having three tons and a half
of iron ballast, she would have sunk in two minutes.
An Italian seaman recently confessed that he was
one of those who ran down Shelley's boat, believing
that Lord Byron was on board, and that his lordship
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
147
would pay a heavy ransom for his rescue; and this
man stated that the moment the vessel struck, Shel-
ley's craft went down. Several attempts have been
made to throw discredit upon this story, for whose
accuracy no one could vouch; but as regards the
running down, Shelley's relatives have always be-
lieved it, though they imagine it was probably the
result of a misadventure. Besides the hole dis-
covered in the boat, many circumstances in the
attitude of the poet himself confirm the belief that
his death was not the result of the accidental over-
setting of the boat, but of a collision. Firmly
clasped in the hand of Shelley when the boat went
down was a copy of Eschylus (not of Keats's
poems). Shelley was passionately enamoured of
Eschylus, and was apparently reading him at
the very moment when the vessel was struck, an
occupation which would not have engaged him if
the vessel had at that moment been in imminent
peril from the storm. There was a volume of
Keats in his breast pocket, but the volume of Æs-
chylus, as already intimated, was in his hand, and
with the finger clasped in its pages. The volume
still opens at the page where Shelley had been
reading when the storm arose, and the print of his
finger is still to be perceived upon the page. The
book was in his hand when the body was found,
148
SHELLEY:
and it was taken from him by Mr. Trelawny as he
laid him on the pile for the burning: the volume
remains in the possession of Sir Percy Shelley.
The poet had probably, however, been reading
Keats's last volume not long before the disaster,
for it was found, with some of the pages doubled
back, thrust away, probably in haste, into his
breast pocket. The copy of Keats had been lent
by Leigh Hunt, who told Shelley to keep it till he
could give it to him again with his own hands.
As the lender would receive it from no one else, it
was burnt with the body. Trelawny, speaking of
the cremation of Shelley, records a remarkable
fact:-"The only portions that were not consumed
were some fragments of bones, the jaw and the
skull; but what surprised us all was that the heart
remained entire." It has been generally stated in
biographies of the poet that his ashes were buried
in the Protestant cemetery at Rome; but the heart
alone reposes in the cemetery-in a space of ground
immediately adjoining that where Keats was buried
—while the ashes have been preserved at Boscombe
Manor, the seat of the Shelley family.
Shelley had wept for "Adonais," had hung
upon his words, not very long before that cata-
strophe which lost to mankind the second poet;
and in death, as it were, they were not divided.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
149
Thus perished one of the divinest of English
singers, one in memory of whom it was meet and
right that Shakspeare's lines should be placed
over his grave :—
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange."
I cannot help recurring to the strange circum-
stance that the heart of Shelley was indestruc-
tible. There was something of him, and that the
noblest part, which neither time nor death could
conquer or destroy. The impetuous career closed
in a tempest from heaven; yet while storm and
convulsion presided over the whole of his mortal
life, his soul remained calm, and inevitably
fixed in love, till the end. The heart which had
throbbed so deeply for humanity refused to have
even its material substance obliterated. Surviving
both flood and fire, it still remained, the symbol
of those great and generous feelings which inspired
its possessor, emotions entitling him to be regarded
as one of the best-beloved spirits of the universe.
It would be difficult to cite a finer tribute to
the memory of any man of genius than is to be
found in Mrs. Shelley's private journal, written after
Shelley's death. A being who could inspire such
sentiments in the breast of another must not only
16
150
SHELLEY:
}
have set himself lofty ideals of life, but must in a
great measure have attained to the height of those
ideals. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was no
ordinary woman, and yet she compares her own
powers and feelings as moonlight to sunlight, when
placed beside those of Shelley. Throughout his
troubled career, from the first moment they met,
she was probably the one individual who alone
understood and comprehended the poet, with his
manifold desires and schemes for the advancement
of humanity. Seeing him, also, as the world never
saw him, she has left on record how singularly pure
was that soul which had the misfortune to run
counter to so many others of human-kind as to
earn for itself a heritage of undeserved obloquy.
In one passage, addressing the spirit of the de-
parted, she says :—
"You will be with me in all my studies, dearest
love! Your voice will no longer applaud me, but
in spirit you will visit and encourage me: I know
you will. What were I, if I did not believe that
you still exist! It is not with you as with another.
I believe that we all live hereafter; but you, my
only one, were a spirit caged, an elemental being,
enshrined in a frail image, now shattered
After my William's death, this world seemed only
a quicksand, sinking beneath my feet, yet beside
•
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
151
me was this bank of refuge-so tempest-worn and
frail, that methought its very weakness was
strength, and since nature had written destruction
on its brow, so the power that rules human affairs
had determined, in spite of nature, that it should
endure. But that is gone. His voice can no
longer be heard; the earth no longer receives the
shadow of his form; annihilation has come over
the earthly appearance of the most gentle creature
that ever yet breathed this air." These reflections
are not the rhapsodies of a mind that had lost its
balance because of the affliction which had befallen
it; the writer possessed one of the strongest and
clearest intellects ever bestowed upon a member
of her sex. This passionate outcry, also, was the
result of a close communion with the spirit of the
dead-"I cannot grieve for you, beloved Shelley!
I grieve for thy friends-for the world-for thy
child-most for myself, enthroned in thy love,
growing wiser and better beneath thy gentle influ-
ence, taught by you the highest philosophy,—your
pupil, friend, lover, wife, mother of your children !
The glory of the dream is gone. I am a cloud
from which the light of sunset has passed. Give
me patience in the present struggle. Meum cor-
dium cor! Good night!
152
SHELLEY:
'I would give
All that I am, to be as thou now art;
But I am chain'd to time, and cannot thence depart.'
The theory that a great poet must also be a
good prose writer might be supported by references
to numbers of instances in both this and other
countries. Shelley is an additional proof in favour
of the contention. The vigour, clearness, and
beauty of his style have seldom been surpassed,
though he has not the weighty and stately tread
of a Bacon or a Hobbes. Unfortunately for him-
self, many of the best prose efforts which Shelley
has left behind him can, only be described as
fragments. But even as a fragment, I would point
to his Defence of Poetry to show what he was
capable of achieving in this direction. So far as
he has travelled in this argumentative and yet at
the same time poetical discourse, he delights us
by his power in putting things, and by his extra-
ordinary aptness of illustration.
Mrs. Shelley
regarded this essay as his only entirely finished
prose work, but the feeling after its perusal
decidedly is that Shelley intended to supplement
it by another paper. Take it as it stands, neverthe-
less, it is a powerful plea for the divine art in
which he excelled, and the various stages of reason-
ing, enforced in beautiful periods, bear us irre-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
153
sistibly to a conviction of the lofty and dignified
vocation of the poet. Reason, he begins by
pointing out, is the enumeration of quantities
already known, while imagination is the perception
of the value of those quantities, both separately
and as a whole. This definition of the two forces
is very happy, as, also, is the continuation of the
thought, that reason is to imagination as the
instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit,
as the shadow to the substance. He next pro-
ceeds to show how this poetry lies embedded in
the heart of man, and is one with him and eternal.
Yet all are not singers; only those in whom the
faculty of approximation to the beautiful exists to
excess are poets, that is, in the most universal
sense of the word. He further brings us to a
wide and somewhat startling statement, which at
first sight appears to have an ill-grounded basis,
but which on closer examination proves how
deeply Shelley had studied the question. He
remarks that "poets, or those who imagine and
express this indestructible order, are not only the
authors of language and of music, of the dance,
and architecture, and statuary, and painting;
they are the institutors of laws and the founders
of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of
life, and the teachers who draw into a certain pro-
154
SHELLEY:
pinquity with the beautiful and the true that
partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible
world which is called religion. Poets, according
to the circumstances of the age and nation in
which they appeared, were called, in the earlier
epochs of the world, legislators or prophets; a
poet essentially comprises and unites both these
characters." There is a little vagueness in this
statement, for poets are really neither the great
artificers nor the actual legislators of the world.
They are the instigators of all civilisation, but in
many cases the noblest and best poets have failed
to do more than simply to indicate. In this
sense, therefore, of observers and indicators, they
may be said to be the leaders of the world. Their
divine moods are the throes from which spring
the greatest discoveries. Centuries ago the poet
sang of the wondrous beauty that shone in the
flowers and grasses of the field, before Linnæus
attempted their classification. All the nomen-
clature and classification which scientific men
have given to the forces and products of nature
have never once stirred the heart of man; it has
been the office of the poet to extract the real
secrets of nature, and to read as with an eye of
fire her many hidden analogies. We see, then, by
this the position which should be assigned to the
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
155
greatest poet of the world, viz. a loftier and
sublimer height than that which we should accord
to the greatest exponents of mechanics, science, or
philosophy. The philosopher does not necessarily
include the poet, though he may, as in the case
of Plato and Bacon, in whom poetry certainly
dwelt, as Shelley has pointed out; but the great
poet always embraces the philosopher, and
"Shakspeare, Dante, and Milton are philosophers of
the loftiest power." In strains of real eloquence, the
essayist, having demonstrated who are poets, pro-
ceeds to estimate the effects of poetry upon society.
These lines will sufficiently distinguish the scope
of his argument, though it is enforced by other
passages, till the position he has assumed seems
to me impregnable: "The poems of Homer and
his contemporaries were the delight of infant
Greece; they were the elements of that social
system which is the column upon which all
succeeding civilisation has reposed. Homer em-
bodied the ideal perfection of his age in human
character; nor can we doubt that those who read
his verses were awakened to an ambition of
becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses:
the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and
persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled
to their depths in these immortal creations: the
156
SHELLEY:
sentiments of the auditors must have been refined
and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and
lovely impersonations, until from admiring they
imitated, and from imitation they identified them-
selves with the objects of their admiration. . . .
Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry
has created, and propounds schemes, and proposes
examples of civil and domestic life: nor is it for
want of admirable doctrines that men hate, and
despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate
one another. But poetry acts in another and
diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the
mind itself, by rendering it the receptacle of a
thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of
the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they
were not familiar; it reproduces all that it repre-
sents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian
light stand thenceforward in the minds of those
who have once contemplated them as memorials
of that gentle and exalted content which extends
itself over all thoughts and actions with which it
co-exists."
Shelley's devotion to Greek literature was
equal to that of Mrs. Browning and other poets of
our own time, and it is consequently not surprising
to find him assert that "never were blind strength
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
157
and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered
subject to the will of man, or that will less
repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the
true, as during the century which preceded the
death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the his-
tory of our species have we records and fragments
stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity
in man." Much could, of course, be said in depre-
cation of this as well as other positions assumed by
Shelley; to go no further into detail, two ages in
the world's history have in sublimity of conception
excelled even that of Socrates, the period of the
old Hebrew poets, and our own Elizabethan age.
Yet there is a keen pleasure in following Shelley
through the remaining stages of this singularly
valuable disquisition, which has charmed many
men of genius of the present generation. In
defending the drama, he regards it as offering the
greatest opportunity for effecting the most varied
forms of success of any development of the poetic
art. Yet occasionally a lack of breadth is per-
ceived in this able dissertation. The great poet
has always been a salutary break upon the wheel
of progress when a nation has been moving by
rapid but disastrous stages. Shelley well observes
that “the abolition of personal slavery is the basis
of the highest political hope that it can enter into
158
SHELLEY:
the mind of man to conceive." While deep in the
treasures of Æschylus, his active sympathies were
in unison with those of Clarkson and Wilberforce.
This expression of opinion on slavery in an elabo-
rately reasoned essay will alone sufficiently de-
monstrate the vast amount of political and social
enlightenment which had seized upon Shelley's
mind during the later years of his life. He was
on all occasions ready and eager to champion the
claims of woman, for whom he had more than the
ordinary consideration and esteem. He never re-
garded it as derogatory to the dignity of man to
admit the equality of women. Without insisting
upon it, he also carried conviction of his immense
knowledge and superior originality to the minds
of all with whom he was brought into contact, in-
cluding that highly-gifted being with whose for-
tunes his own were united.
Returning for a moment to the Defence of Poetry,
-which will be found a remarkable study, even by
those who may be acquainted with more recondite
treatises, I find this noble passage, in which the
effect upon mankind of the lives of the philoso-
phers is compared with that of the poets: "The
exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire,
Rousseau, and their disciples, in favour of oppressed
and deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
159
of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree
of moral and intellectual improvement which the
world would have exhibited had they never lived.
A little more nonsense would have been talked for
a century or two; and perhaps a few more men,
women, and children burnt as heretics. We might
not at this moment have been congratulating each
other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain.
But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what
would have been the moral condition of the world
if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer,
Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton,
had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo
had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had
never been translated; if a revival of the study of
Greek literature had never taken place; if no
monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed
down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of
the ancient world had been extinguished together
with its belief. The human mind could never,
except by the intervention of these excitements,
have been awakened to the invention of the grosser
sciences, and that application of analytical reason-
ing to the aberrations of society, which it is now
attempted to exalt over the direct expression of
the inventive and creative faculty itself." The
contemplative mind, which views these questions
.
160
SHELLEY:
solely from an unbiassed stand-point, will be much
more likely to arrive at the same conclusion as
Shelley in regard to the position and influence of
poetry upon society and human progress, than it
will be ready to adopt a lower estimate. Few there
are who will not at once recognise the excellence
of the definition that "poetry is the record of the
best and happiest moments of the best and
happiest minds." Many intuitive and noteworthy
things have been said respecting the poetic art,
but the one I have just quoted is sufficiently
cosmopolitan to touch the sympathies of all, though
it may not embrace the perfect fulness of the
theme. Take Shelley's treatise as a whole, and
rarely has utterance been given to so convincing
and eloquent a defence of his race. Though
manifestly tinged by the enthusiasm of the writer,
this sentiment is not apparent in such a degree
as to interfere with sound judgment, or to prevent
him from laying down principles which may be
useful to the student of the art of poetry.
Captain Medwin published some of Shelley's
prose writings in a mutilated form, probably with
the best intentions towards his friend, but also with
some little lack of discretion. Fortunately, all that
the poet left behind him in this respect has now
assumed a permanent shape. The influence upon
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
161
Shelley's mind of a thorough knowledge of Plato is
apparent; no prose author of ancient or modern
times had the same power over the poet that he
wielded. He drank largely at the fount of his
inspiration, and few are acknowledged to have
either so thoroughly comprehended the spirit of the
original, or so happily to have reproduced it into an
alien language. Shelley's translations are remark-
able for their flow, melody, and vivacity, and his
version of The Banquet is a marvel of power
and elegance. Unfortunately, other writings which
succeeded his efforts in this direction were mostly
fragments. Such is the case with two papers on
Love and the Coliseum; and with that striking
prose idyll known as The Assassins. Shelley
always had an affection for the weird legend of The
Wandering Jew, and we find it occupying a portion
of the story forming the basis of the fragment just
cited; it is an untoward circumstance that he
never had an opportunity of dealing completely
with this singular and startling subject. Two other
papers by Shelley are of considerable importance
as throwing light upon his views on morals. In
the Essay upon Life, he demonstrates that at one
time, at any rate, he was a firm believer in the Im-
material Philosophy of Berkeley. The theory in
question, however it may lack accord with the
M
162
SHELLEY:
later tendencies of thought, doubtless gave the
poet many sublime ideas, and permitted him to
revel in that grand and immense exercise of the
imagination which must always have a strange
attraction for a mind constituted like his. With
regard to his views upon religion and immortality,
and the paper upon a future state, lest those who
have done him injustice hitherto should persist in
the same course, it may be as well to refer to what
Mrs. Shelley says respecting his theories. She
distinctly affirms that he certainly regarded the
existence beyond the grave as one by no means
foreign to our interests and hopes. Yet many of
Shelley's biographers have failed to discover in his
writings any clear and unmistakable proof that
he believed in the immortality of the soul. This
is a point of some importance, and traces of such
belief are to be found over and over again in his
works. Mrs. Shelley observes-and her knowledge
is much more trustworthy than the random asser-
tions of inaccurate biographers-that, “ considering
his individual mind as a unit, divided from a
mighty whole, to which it was united by restless
sympathies and an eager desire for knowledge, he
assuredly believed that hereafter, as now, he would
form a portion of that whole, and a portion less
imperfect, less suffering, than the shackles insepar-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
163
able from humanity impose on all beneath the
moon." Such was Mrs. Shelley's expressed belief;
but in Shelley's own words we find such reflections
as the following: "The destiny of man can scarcely
be so degraded that he was born only to die;" and
again, on the occasion of his being in imminent
danger at sea-"I had time at that moment to
reflect and come to reason on death; it was rather
a thing of discomfort and disappointment than
terror to me. We should never be separated, but
in death we might not know and feel our union as
now. I hope, but my hopes are not unmixed with
fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit
when we appear to die." There is nothing here
pointing to annihilation, but strongly to the con-
trary, in accordance with some previous references
I have made to the subject of immortality.
In Shelley, of course, there was not the slightest
tinge of religious terrorism, and he was pre-
cisely the kind of being to defy his Creator if he
thought the universe was being conducted upon
tyrannical principles; but an intimate knowledge
of his character will reveal the presence of an
undercurrent of deep religious faith that was
never disturbed by the occurrences which agitated
his outward life. On many occasions he appeared
unconscious of the existence of this sentiment
-
1
164
SHELLEY:
•
within himself, but upon others it forced itself
upwards and made utterance, as when he sang :-
"For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death, nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure."
First as a poet, Shelley was yet an acute specu-
lator upon morals. He had a direct and decided
tendency towards metaphysics, but whether he
would have fulfilled all Mrs. Shelley's vaticinations
may be reasonably open to doubt. He had, how-
ever, great and unquestionable originality of mind
in this direction. "Had not Shelley deserted
metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he
not been lost to us early, so that all his vaster pro-
jects were wrecked with him in the waves, he
would have presented the world with a complete
theory of mind, a theory to which Berkeley, Cole-
ridge, and Kant would have contributed; but more
simple, unimpregnable, and entire, than the
systems of these writers." So observes his most
ardent apologist. It has always been the earnest
belief of philosophers and speculators upon morals,
from the time of Thales to Comte, that their several
systems were the most clear and distinct ever sub-
mitted for the approval of mankind; but the rough
edge of criticism has shown how fallacious have
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
165
been these assumptions. We can well afford to
lose one metaphysician more or less in the person
of Shelley the poet; the world prefers his music
to his speculations upon the recondite problems of
human nature.
It frequently occurs that the true poet has
also a true appreciation of, and love for, the kindred
arts of sculpture and painting, though it would be
hazardous to affirm this as a general proposition.
For the details of art, and for particular schools,
the poet may possibly have no special enthusiasm,
but the expression of beauty in any form must
move his soul. The painter also is a poet in the
sense that, when he pursues art from the noblest
motives, it is with a view of elevating men, and
insisting upon the lesson that human life consists
not in the accumulation of material treasure, nor in
the simple enjoyment of material good. Art, as
well as poetry, is humanising in its effects, though
the influence of art is less directly palpable upon
the mind; the sensations produced by it are keen,
but individually evanescent, and its refining influ-
ence upon mankind can be perceived in its entirety,
but not in its gradual progress. It moves men
silently and slowly; does not play so great a part
in morals perhaps as music; and certainly not so
operative a part as poetry. Further, the love of
166
SHELLEY:
art is a taste which affects the root of the human
character but in a moderate degree, yet it is a taste
which can be encouraged and enkindled in the
commonest minds with substantial success. But
in minds of a superior order it will generally be
found that there is a very strong though some-
times dormant power of appreciation of art. This
power may slumber till the opportuneness of
circumstances calls it into activity. Such was the
case with Shelley. In early years he cared little
for the concrete forms of art, and his first awaken-
ing was towards sculpture. Many years elapsed
after that before he expressed any great delight in
painting, but when he did, as we discover in his
Letters from Italy, his sympathy was very strong,
and, upon occasion, penetrating. Correggio and
Guido moved him deeply, the latter, probably,
by reason of the high poetic beauty which gener-
ally distinguishes his works. If Shelley erred in
this admiration-as many critics are disposed to
think-he erred in company with thousands who
in every generation have perceived the beauty and
grandeur of Guido's conceptions. Of course, in
matters of art the individual very largely consults
his own taste; it is difficult to lay down canons
and affirm emphatically that they must be ac-
cepted. Art affords unbounded scope for em-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
167
piricism. Shelley's aversion to Michael Angelo,
during the greater part of his life, should, I think,
be chiefly attributed to his horror of materialism.
He was touched by the poetry of Guido, but re-
volted (somewhat unreasonably) from the rougher
and more gigantic, but equally sublime, produc-
tions of Michael Angelo. Yet, when he knew the
latter more intimately, his distaste for him waned.
Travel, suffering, and ever-expanding thought en-
larged his views; and amongst other prejudices
which fell away as the treasures of southern art were
unfolded before him in all their beauty, majesty,
and sublimity, was his strong feeling of animosity
towards the great Italian.
What is of importance to consider here, however,
is that the treasures of art, the raptures of music,
and the companionship of the illustrious in letters,
from Plato downwards, were cherished not alone
for the supreme delight which they afforded to the
soul of Shelley, but also as incitements to excel-
lence, and ministrants to virtue. Few could bear
the light to beat upon their lives, upon their every
thought, deed, and emotion, as could this guileless
and child-like poet-this man in whom frail hu-
manity and divine genius were combined in a
degree at once striking and unique. His life was
super-eminently that described in Bailey's Festus-
168
SHELLEY:
"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths ;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most; feels the noblest; acts the best."
""
If Shelley never consciously found God, he
drank of the streams of his eternal goodness and
virtue unwittingly; for there is but one Source
whence these streams flow-the universe presents
but one Fountain of benevolence, purity, and love.
After the poet's death, Mrs. Shelley wrote-" To be
something great and good was the precept given
me by my father: Shelley reiterated it." And
again-"I would endeavour to consider myself a
faint continuation of Shelley's being, and, as far as
possible, the revelation to the earth of what he was.
Yet, to become this, I must change much, and
above all I must acquire that knowledge, and drink
at those fountains of wisdom and virtue from
which he quenched his thirst." Shelley himself,
in writing to his friend Mr. Hookham (after an
attempt had been made to assassinate the poet in
North Wales), remarked-glad to discover friend-
ship in a world disfigured by deceit and villainy—
"If the discovery of truth be a pleasure of singu-
lar purity, how far surpassing is the discovery of
virtue!" In all seasons, and under all circum-
stances, he constituted himself the champion of
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
169
the oppressed. Nor did he confine his benevo-
lence to pecuniary aid, or the mere language of
sympathy. Injustice and suffering evoked in him
a personal interest, as in the case of Mr. Finnerty,
the Irish patriot, whose imprisonment for libel
was referred to in the earlier part of this work.
To sustain one whom he regarded as a political
martyr, Shelley wrote (in the year 1811) A Poeti-
cal Essay on the Existing State of Things—a poem
whose authorship has latterly excited considerable
interest; but which, up to the present moment,
remains unfortunately amongst the unrecovered
treasures of our literature. And from his earliest
years onwards, Shelley never flagged in the pro-
secution of a practical philanthropy. To the
cultivation of virtue and benevolence he devoted
himself, not from motives of ostentation or of self-
gratulation, but in obedience to those natural in-
stincts which, as we have observed, were in him
irresistible from the cradle to the grave. Though
he experienced the malevolence of humanity him-
self, he met inhumanity by humanity, and trans-
lated into his daily life the spirit that breathes
through the Beatitudes.
Some aspects of Shelley-not so familiar to
general readers as the poetic,--that first and great-
est which the mention of his name immediately re-
170
SHELLEY.
calls,—have now been presented; and, upon a close
study of his character, it is impossible to under-
stand why the poet should continue to be regarded
with the unjust suspicion and unreasonable terror
which he excited in so many minds to whom his
character can have been but partially known and
evolved. His principles of life were few and
simple; and it is not a little singular that many
unworthy so-called benefactors of humanity should
have been lifted upon the pinnacle of the world's
regard, while this man, who never knew what it
was to indulge a selfish propensity, only succeeded
to an inheritance of misrepresentation and ob-
loquy. That the religious section of society can
never be propitiated towards his memory, as pro-
phesied by De Quincey, is incredible under the
circumstances of an ever-widening philanthropy of
sentiment. Those larger and nobler impulses
which are the growing characteristic of English
freedom and civilisation, will, in their inevitable
march, roll away the opprobrium which has too
long attached to the memory of Shelley.
IV.
THE POETRY OF SHELLEY.
Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star
Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone?
A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a beloved light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A lute, which those whom love has taught to play
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond grief asleep?"
Epipsychidion.
}
IV.
THE POETRY OF SHELLEY.
THAT there is a common and tangible ground for
apprehension of the poetic form in thought and
language, is proved from the fact that hostile
critics, equally with fervent admirers, admit that
Shelley was a poet of a true and lofty order. Men
are baffled when they endeavour to establish
clearly the nature of this subtle poetic essence,
but its presence and force in certain writers are
universally felt and acknowledged. The most
imperfect utterances of Shelley, for example, bear
upon them traces of the divine afflatus, and while
men will always be divided as to the ultimate
value and influence of his works, none will deny
that in him originally were those qualities which
go to the formation of the Seer. If he failed in
the highest branches of his art-and in some
aspects there does appear to exist a disparity
between his endowments and his poetic creations
-we must look for this failure, not in his imagina-
174
SHELLEY:
tive and spiritual gifts, but in some intellectual,
moral, or physical rift or defect which trammelled
or marred his song-sometimes transforming its
most hopeful utterances into incoherency, and its
native majesty into uncontrolled violence and
fury. In Shelley we have to deal with one who
pre-eminently—and with God's purpose visibly
stamped upon him-was a poet, and yet with one
of so mercurial a temperament that his philosophy
for the regeneration of the world bore him swiftly
along in search of the impracticable. Contra-
dictory in his character, changeful and erratic in
his impressions, noble in his sympathies, really
sublime when in his highest moods, we find the
reflex of all these in his poems. His revolt against
society and Christianity dictated Queen Mab and
kindred effusions; his hatred of oppression found
vent in his lines written on the Castlereagh admini-
stration, and the political poems of which this is
the type; while the rapture and power of his
genius only reached their full and perfect enuncia-
tion in such works as The Cenci, Prometheus, and
his magnificent odes. His vision of happiness
was unrealisable by others; with all its misery
and inequality the world was sufficiently satisfy-
ing to their natures, and this depressed him.
Then it was he imbibed the idea that animal
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
175
content under political and religious despotism
was due to the so-called teachers, and under the
influence of this feeling he was lashed into passion
and despair. He held, as he thought, a magician's
wand by which he could change earth into para-
dise; but his incantations were of no avail, and
he broke the wand, as Moses broke the tablets,
when he perceived the people given over to
idolatry. There is much ground to be considered
before we rashly condemn Shelley for his defiance
of the actual and the real. Probably there is no
finer example of devotion to the ideal in literature
than he presents for our contemplation; but his
excess of spiritual and imaginative vision was
aided by no aptitude for the practical, as perceived
in Shakspeare and the very greatest poets.
He
Let us not forget, as one writer has remarked,
that Shelley led the existence of a genuine poet.
His life was not that of other men's lives. From
his earliest years he was wrapt in visions un-
translatable by our common vocabulary.
wept in secret, and clenched his hands in anger
at the Power which the world said was responsible
for the inconsistencies and the jarring elements in
all created things. But this spasm of the emotions
could not endure for ever. Those who still regard
that wild yet singularly beautiful tirade, Queen
176
SHELLEY :
Mab, as his chief and most admirable work, form a
judgment as incomprehensible as it is indefensible ;
the Shelley of Queen Mab was only a passing phase
of a human spirit, a phantom raised speedily to be
dispelled. The poet's original notes to that pro-
duction, wilder in sentiment and more daring in
their blasphemy than the poem itself, must perish
with it. They are not the final utterances of
Shelley upon the high themes which he therein
professes to handle, but in reality satirises and
defames. We now know that he never intended
to publish Queen Mab as it appears. Writing to
Mr. Ollier, he said:"In the name of poetry, and
as you are a bookseller (you observe the strength
of these conjurations), pray give all manner of
publicity to my disapprobation of this publication;
in fact, protest for me in an advertisement in the
strongest terms." The poet awoke to the conviction
that if the buttresses of Christianity were to be
undermined it must be by something more potent
than invective or slander. At the same time-as
I again feel called upon to insist the poem was not
atheistic in the sense in which atheism is generally
understood: it is emphatically pantheistic. When
he wrote it, the author was an evident disbeliever
in a Creative Deity, but he fully accepted the hypo-
+
thesis of a presiding Spirit permeating all things.
.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
177
In truth, too much and too little has been made
of this poem. It is neither so good nor so bad as
continually represented. Its ideas are crude, but
in parts its language is singularly flowing and
graceful. Its philosophic value may be gauged
from the fact that it was projected by Shelley in
his eighteenth year and completed in his twentieth
-an age quite too early for weighing the universe
in the balance, and declaring both man and his
Creator to be found wanting.
There is scarcely a page of Queen Mab which
will not offend, at some point, the moral or re-
ligious convictions of the reader; while those
passages which have been cited as the finest ex-
amples of poetic excellence must appear to the
really unprejudiced but as sounding brass and
the tinkling cymbal. However gorgeous language
may be in itself, it is only valuable as associated
with idea; and it is noteworthy that those portions
of Queen Mab which are most striking in thought
are the least ornate in language. The poet, for
instance, is much more effective in this passage—
though still visionary and impracticable—than he
is in numberless other quoted extracts only notice-
able for their word-painting :—
"When Reason's voice,
Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked
N
178
SHELLEY:
The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
Is discord, war, and misery-that virtue
Is peace, and happiness, and harmony;
When man's maturer nature shall disdain
The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority
Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth is now."
The poet is lucid and forcible when he unveils
his republicanism, though his positions may bẹ
groundless. If the succeeding passages be dis-
tinguished by an underlying fallacy, which causes
the poet to flap his wings uselessly against the
inevitable, it will be conceded that there is much
power in the very structure and essence of the
lines:-
"Nature rejects the monarch, not the man ;
The subject, not the citizen: for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanised automaton.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
179
т
"Look on yonder earth :
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees
Arise in due succession; all things speak
Peace, harmony, and love. The Universe,
In nature's silent eloquence, declares
That all fulfil the works of love and joy,—
All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up
The tyrant whose delight is in his woe,
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,
Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch
Than on the dome of kings?"
Even in his fiercest invective it will be per-
ceived that Shelley cannot suppress his most natu-
ral voice, which is not that of the polemic, the
philosopher, or the religious controversialist, but
of the poet. In the closing lines of the preceding
passages the poetic spirit is really the dominant
element, and this is characteristic of the whole.
If the reader turns to Queen Mab as to a literary
curiosity of some value and merit he will not
err; but if he goes to it for a system of ethics,
and a coherent statement of objections to Chris-
tianity, he can only land himself into a quagmire
of bewilderment. It is the utterance of a soul
disturbed by the echoes of a sceptical philosophy,
180
SHELLEY:
but with no power of placing in order and logical
sequence the very premises of that philosophy.
It is essential to be thus plain with regard to
the first work of this distinguished writer, in order
to combat the notion that Shelley is pre-eminently
the poet of Queen Mab. If that were the case, our
admiration for him would dissolve as rapidly as
Prospero's vision. It is because of the injustice
done to his memory and position in literature by
accepting this crude and unsatisfactory poem, as
an evidence of the highest exhibition of Shelley's
poetic faculty, that it becomes necessary to dwell
upon it. His belief in "Necessity the mother of
the world," as the only article of his faith, was very
transient, and the less said about this belief perhaps
the better, seeing that it was but the cry of one
groping in the darkness, and not a deliberate con-
viction arrived at after mental struggles stretch-
ing through a number of years. There is, no
doubt, a weird beauty in Queen Mab which enchants
the ordinary reader, and gives him a higher appre-
ciation of the poem than a more matured judgment
warrants; but it is the most insubstantial of the
poet's productions, and its creations are vague and
shadowy in the extreme. We move in a land, of
golden mist peopled by beings of fantastic shape;
the language we hear has nothing in common with
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
181
that spoken by ordinary men; the poet's symbolism
passes out of our reach, and his conceptions are
altogether superhuman and unrealisable. To frame,
therefore, from such hazy material, an indictment
against Shelley is sheer injustice-the fabric, as
constructed, exists simply for our admiration; the
diverse hues of which it is composed are a delight to
the senses, but the poem possesses no serious vitality
of purpose. As the poet's desire for its suppression
could not be, or has not been observed, it remains,
what it has indeed been already in part described, a
rhapsody-wonderful, it may be, but still a rhapsody
-proceeding from one who felt for the first time the
flow or motion of the imaginative gift, and whose
spirit was a chaos of mingled doubt and emotion.
Shelley afterwards evolved a philosophy, or
rather imbibed one by fragmentary processes from
various sources. This theory has been most nearly.
described by the system of idealism, as generally
understood. He arrived at the conclusion that
thought was universal; nothing existed but "in
and through thought." And we here find a solu-
tion for the lofty position he constantly assigned
to the imagination as a social and operative force
in the world, in addition to its functions in the
domain of poetry. In his Essay upon Poetry he
strongly insists that the poet is the greatest regene-
182
SHELLEY:
:
rator of the world, in that his thought is more
refined, and is of a far more exalted kind, than that
of any other class of thinkers. The poet is also
the collector and interpreter of the thoughts of
other men.
He holds the crucible from which alone
the pure gold can be extracted. "He peoples
worlds, and then imagines new." Such was Shel-
ley's theory; but it has been well pointed out by
Mr. Masson that, "as is often the case with philo-
sophers, there is a gap in which we cannot see the
links connecting Shelley's theoretical or ascending
with his practical or descending reason. But he
has a practical system, and a very definite one.
Unlike Hume, he ascends to the extreme of
idealism, not to end in indifference or scepticism,
but to descend again all the more vehemently upon
the world of man and life armed with a faith. He
speaks, indeed, of Deity, and other such ideas, as
being only 'the modes in which thoughts are com-
bined;' but it is evident, whatever he calls them,
that it is only the presence or the absence of certain
ideas of this class that constitutes, in his view, the
difference between the right and the wrong, between
the splendid and the mean in thought. Thoughts
combined so are eternally noble and good; thoughts
combined otherwise are eternally ignoble and bad
-no man ever cherished a belief of this kind
more passionately than Shelley. No man, there-
1
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
183
"...
fore, had more of the essence of an absolute ethical
faith, of a faith not fabricated out of experience,
but structurally derived from an authority in the
invisible." But when we come to the question
how this faith is to be borne into the life of the
community generally, we receive no answer. It is
to be taught by enthusiasm, and not enforced by
reason. This is Shelley's teaching throughout the
whole of his poetry. All the evils which oppress
humanity are to be abolished by a conformity to
some spirit animating nature, but whose likeness
has been almost obliterated by the folly and
wickedness of mankind. If eternal right and
justice could be but perceived by humanity they
must henceforth have sway. This was the dream
of Shelley, one which he constantly iterated in the
ears of men. But, alas for his philosophy! the
progress of the world toward the ideal state is not
commensurate with the perception of right and
justice. Men have long perceived these things,
but have their actions conformed to them? The
pandemonium of the world is not to be reduced
to order by any good or noble thought-combination.
Shelley's original hypothesis was wrong. We have
seen in the extracts from Queen Mab, and they are
but an infinitesimal portion of such outpourings,
how the poet attributed the numberless evils of the
universe to kings, priests, and governments, ignoring
184
SHELLEY:
the fact that all these had their origin in the
defective condition of humanity, and are, therefore,
not primarily responsible for its deterioration and
degradation. With the offending institutions swept
off the face of the earth, his vision perceived a
world purged of its guilt and free from its misery.
Yet the changes he desired to effect in the world's
government would exercise little or no influence
towards eradicating the principle of evil. We can
fully admit Shelley's devotion to a liberal and
comprehensive morality, but at the same time
must question the soundness of his theories.
The poem in which Shelley chieffy advocates
these theories of human improvement is The Revolt
of Islam, and here we perceive, in its fullest force,
the poet's rebellion against custom and authority.
"Custom," he says, "maketh blind and obdurate
the loftiest hearts;" and then he unburdens himself
of his anger in the following strain:-
1
'Opinion is more frail
Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon
Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail
To hide the orb of truth: and every throne
Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow rests thereon,
One shape of many names :-for this ye plough
The barren waves of ocean; hence each one
Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,
Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.
X
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185
"This need not be; ye might arise, and will
That gold should lose its power, and thrones their
glory;
That love, which none may bind, be free to fill
The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary
With crime, be quenched and die. Yon promontory
Even now eclipses the descending moon!
Dungeons and palaces are transitory-
High temples fade like vapour-Man alone
Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone."
This is not always the poet's mood, however,
through this the longest of his poems. Occa-
sionally there is a gleam of hope and confidence
in the future, and of an active belief in the im-
mortality of goodness and virtue—
"The good and mighty of departed ages
Are in their graves,—the innocent and free,
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,
Who leave the vesture of their majesty
To adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we
Are like to them-such perish, but they leave
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive
To be a rule and law to ages that survive.
"Our many thoughts and deeds, our life, and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been,
Immortally must live, and burn, and move
When we shall be no more."
1
The Revolt of Islam unquestionably remains an origi-
186
SHELLEY:
nal and striking poem, and in some aspects Shelley's
greatest effort. Its invention is marvellous, its
imagery abundant to profusion, and the pictures
it presents gorgeous in the extreme. Yet, with
all this, it is a hopeless and tangled maze to the
reader, and must ever continue so. It is imagina-
tion run riot-splendid imagination, if you like;
but still its licentiousness of fancy is the princi-
pal thought remaining in the reader's mind after a
perusal of the poem. It is a kaleidoscope, in which
the most brilliant colours follow each other in
rapid succession, but with no binding zone to
encircle the several parts, save that of the hatred
of its author for the forms and customs of man-
kind, and an irrepressible aspiration after liberty.
I refrain from discussing the original form of this
poem, Laon and Cythna, seeing that Shelley was
convinced of the propriety of making radical
alterations in it. If we cannot commit Laon and
Cythna to the waters of Lethe, we can, at any
rate, leave it to him whom it now only concerns,—
the bibliographer. In The Revolt of Islam Shelley
apostrophises love as the only true governor of the
moral world, and is careful to state that when he
speaks against the erroneous and degrading idea
entertained by some of the Supreme Being, he is not
speaking against the Supreme Being himself. In
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
187
his preface to the poem, Shelley's abnegation of
atheism is complete, for he expressly says—" The
belief which some superstitious persons whom I
have brought upon the stage entertain of the
Deity, as injurious to the character of his bene-
volence, is widely different from my own.". The
poem is a story of human passion in its broadest
aspects, in which Laon and Cythna, impossible
persons, are mixed up with impossible events in
hopeless perplexity. "It is a succession of
pictures illustrating the growth and progress of
individual mind aspiring after excellence, and
devoted to the love of mankind; its influence in
refining and making pure the most daring and
uncommon impulses of the imagination, the
understanding, and the senses; its impatience at
'all the oppressions that are done under the sun;'
its tendency to awaken public hope, and to en-
lighten and improve mankind; the rapid effects
of the application of that tendency; the awakening
of an immense nation from their slavery and
degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and
freedom; the bloodless dethronement of their
oppressors, and the unveiling of the religious
frauds by which they had been deluded into sub-
mission; the tranquillity of successful patriotism,
and the universal toleration and benevolence of
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SHELLEY:
true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of
hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment
and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithless-
ness of tyrants; the confederacy of the Rulers of
the World, and the restoration of the expelled
Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and the
extermination of the Patriots, and the victory of
established power; the consequences of legitimate
despotism-civil war, famine, plague, superstition,
and an utter extinction of the domestic affections;
the judicial murder of the advocates of Liberty;
the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure
earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient
nature of ignorance and error, and the eternity of
Such are the pictures, as
virtus genius and error.”
Shelley himself intimates, by which he intended
to inculcate his views of man and society in this
poem ;
his nature at the time of its production
having been stirred to its depths by the French
Revolution and subsequent events. But with
persons as impalpable as the dagger of Macbeth,
and incidents so intricate and inconsequent that
it is impossible to trace their course, it is not
greatly to be wondered at that the poem should
fail to strike deep root. The probability is that the
readers and admirers of this poem could be num-
bered upon one's fingers; yet Shelley's imagina-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
189
tion was never displayed to greater advantage than
where it revels in isolated passages of this narrative,
describing the journeyings of Laon and Cythna.
To demonstrate Shelley's command of felicitous
imagery, and to show his power of delineating
true and minute pictures upon an incredibly small
piece of canvas, take these two stanzas :—
"The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds
Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain,
And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;
Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
And music on the waves and woods she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.
"O Spring! of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness,
Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best, and fairest!
Whence comest thou, when with dark Winter's sadness
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;
Thy mother, Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet."
The following stanza, allegorically describing
the world under the season of Winter, which must
be displaced to make way for the new birth of
Spring, concludes with a magnificent image :—
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SHELLEY:
:
"This is the Winter of the world ;-and here
We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,
Expiring in the frore and foggy air.-
Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made
The promise of its birth,-even as the shade
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings
The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed
As with the plumes of over-shadowing wings,
From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs."
Although only two years elapsed between the
production of Queen Mab and Alastor, the latter
poem exhibits a marked advance in the poetic art.
It is worthy of Shelley in his best period. De-
void of what I may call the sensational elements
which disfigure Queen Mab, it is rounded and com-
plete, and charged with beauty and deep reflection.
In two short years the poet had been taught the
hopelessness of the campaign against error-upon
which he had entered with so much enthusiasm-
and though he had not abandoned his opinions,
it is obvious that a marked change had come over
the writer of these two works. Alastor is imbued
with a grand and touching melancholy. We
behold the student who has drank deeply at every
accessible spring of knowledge and finds his thirst
still unappeased. For some time he contemplates
the Infinite with satisfaction, having dismissed
from his conceptions material things, but an ever-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
191
burning and increasing desire gnaws at his heart—
he longs for something, he knows not what. He con-
ceives an ideal being, upon whom he centres every
perfection, ransacking the ages to add to the glory
which gathers round her. But where is such a
being? Disappointed in his quest, Alastor is re-
presented as despairing of ever finding this perfect
image, and in consequence he is overtaken by a
premature death. In the outset of his career
"The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips; and all of great,
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past ·
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had past, he left
His cold fireside and alienated home,
To seek strange truth in undiscovered lands.”"
He lingered in Athens, Jerusalem, and Babylon,
wandered through Arabia, Persia, and India, till,
in the Vale of Cachmire, came to him the concep-
tion of a perfect being, whose voice was as the
voice of his own soul. Their spirits met together;
but his trance is quickly over, the vision has de-
parted, and Alastor once more begins the weary
quest of his ideal. Sleep and death divide them,
and he wastes in despair, but still travels on. All
labour is vain, and Alastor is left to death and the
grave. This is the end and sum of all things :-
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SHELLEY:
"Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.
It is a woe 'too deep for tears,' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
""
The whole of this poem is noble; it is charac-
terised by a pure and solemn spirit, and its evident
allegory is not without its purport for mankind.
On the one hand we have the up-welling joy and
happiness which fill the student, as life and nature
unfold to him their mysteries, and on the other
is graphically delineated the burden of sorrow for
all created things, that they contain not in their
most secret places and recesses that ideal perfec-
tion which the mind can conceive but is unable
to grasp. There is also enfolded a second meaning
in Alastor for those whom the poet describes as
"morally dead." Those who have no hopes, no
joys or sorrows in common with humanity, who
have no desires after the pure and the exalted in
sentiment and being, Shelley maintains "are
neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
193
of the world, nor benefactors of their country.
Among those who attempt to exist without human
sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish
through the intensity and passion of their search
after its communities, when the vacancy of their
spirit suddenly makes itself felt. Those who love
not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and
prepare for their old age a miserable grave."
Such are some of the higher teachings of Alastor,
a work which, if not so great as the Prometheus
Unbound, is one of the most extraordinary which
Shelley has bequeathed to us.
An electric dazzle plays round all the poetry of
this writer. His sensibility is so keen that he
appears to be constantly under the influence of a
galvanic battery, which strains his nerves to the
highest tension. Of an order which, as we saw at
the outset, is the very antithesis of that of Pope, he
is yet more fervid than any other of the imaginative
school. His imagery is ceaseless and inexhaustible.
In beauty of expression merely, probably no poet
of either ancient or modern times has equalled even,
much less transcended him; and it is only when we
come to the more substantial attributes of the great
poet that we are sensible of his defects. Yet,
looking at what he has accomplished, Macaulay
considered himself justified in pronouncing upon
+
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SHELLEY:
him a fervid eulogy, with which the coldest critic
of Shelley cannot but largely agree.
Referring to the great imaginative gifts of Bun-
yan, the essayist observed that in this respect the
genius of the author of The Pilgrim's Progress "bore
a great resemblance to that of a man who had very
little else in common with him, Percy Bysshe
Shelley. The strong imagination of Shelley made
him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the
most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, meta-
physical system, he made a gorgeous Pantheon,
full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like forms. He
turned atheism itself into a mythology, rich with
visions as glorious as the gods that live in the
marble of Phidias, or the virgin saints that smile
on us from the canvas of Murillo. The Spirit of
Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of
Evil, when he treated of them, ceased to be ab-
stractions. They took shape and colour. They
were no longer mere words, but 'intelligible forms,'
'fair humanities;' objects of love, of adoration, or
of fear. As there can be no stronger sign of a
mind destitute of the poetical faculty than that
tendency which was so common among the writers
of the French school to turn images into abstrac-
tions-Venus, for example, into Love, Minerva
into Wisdom, Mars into War, and Bacchus into
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
195
Festivity, so there can be no stronger sign of a
mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse
this abstracting process, and to make individualities
out of generalities. Some of the metaphysical and
ethical theories of Shelley were certainly most
absurd and pernicious. But we doubt whether
any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree
some of the highest qualities of the great ancient
masters. The words bard and inspiration, which
seem so cold and affected when applied to other
modern writers, have a perfect propriety when ap-
plied to him. He was not an author, but a bard.
His poetry seems not to have been an art, but an in-
spiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he
might not improbably have given to the world
some great work, of the very highest rank in design
and execution." Substantially, as I have said, all
must endorse this estimate; but the question of
Shelley's poetry by no means ends here. His
admirers have been too fervid in their admiration,
-or so, at least, it has been affirmed, and his de-
tractors too depreciatory in their detraction. In the
midst of truly wonderful work, Shelley has written
occasionally inflated poetry, which has no kind of
relevance to "things in heaven, or things in earth,
or things under the earth." Nevertheless, with here
and there defective and discordant notes, his mind
1
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SHELLEY:
{
had yet a great and noble, tone: and they wrong
his memory most who unhesitatingly describe as
perfect and sublime, work which, in maturer years,
the poet himself would have described as shallow
and inferior. It is his unbounded luxuriance of
imagery which incapacitates many from perceiving
the want of depth in some of his utterances, and
his constant brilliancy deprives for the moment
such admirers of their natural vision. The most
transient feelings may be expressed with such
perfect music that the senses shall be charmed and
the intellect laid to sleep; and unquestionably this
is the influence which some portion of Shelley's
writings is calculated to produce. Wisdom and
reason go to the making of the greatest poets, as
well as that mystical enchantment which proceeds
from the thrilling tones of the lyre. It is because
Shelley so truly reads nature in Alastor, and gives
us careful and penetrating observation as well as
the hidden harmony of verse, that it takes an
infinitely higher rank than poems of the type of
Queen Mab. Shelley is always beautiful in diction ;
yet beauty, without thought, is but the shadow
and semblance of poetry, and not the living,
breathing form itself. Thought must, after all, be
the innate force of poetry-her soul-her vitality;
music and imagery but the robes wherewith she is
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
197
clothed.
It is in the combination of the three that
we look for the justly great poet.
In the preface to his drama of Philip van
Artevelde, Sir Henry Taylor-briefly discussing
the poetry of Lord Byron and of Shelley-takes
the opportunity of pointing out that the maxim
describing the poet as " of imagination all compact
should not be adopted too literally. The advice is
not altogether unnecessary, for there is some danger
still of the fancy and the imagination being unduly
regarded as the only essentials to successful and
durable poetry. We are reminded that imagina-
tion and passion may, unsupported, make a rhap-
sodist, or a visionary, but nothing more. Reflection
and observation must play no unimportant part in
the constitution of the poet. Upon what are his
divine powers to be fed if these are neglected?
An uninformed and unobservant poet may make
melody to please the ear, but he will never nourish
the soul. In proportion as Shelley advances from
the melodious singer, and nothing more, towards the
full-orbed poet, in that proportion does he become
great. Instead of phantoms he then creates
individuals, as in The Cenci; instead of meaningless
melody we get true music, as in his Adonais and
magnificent lyrics. The highest poetry, then, is
not the outcome of the musical talent alone;
函
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SHELLEY:
delightful sounds are nothing if unaccompanied by
that spiritual lesson it is the office of the poet to
express, or that hidden meaning which it belongs
to the Seer to expound. There is more of real
poetry and immortal essence in one true lyric than
in a purposeless, vague, and yet verbally perfect
epic. When a poet has passed out of the stage of
mere rhetorical music, and has communed with
man and nature in the sense described by Words-
worth, we may fairly look for those riper fruits
which such experience is calculated to produce.
It is then that he rises to the sublimest height of
his art. His perceptions have become keener and
truer, and he can say, with the last-named great
singer of his race,—
"I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes.
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
·
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
199
The true speech of the poet, the articulate voice
begotten of such observation as Wordsworth here
depicts, has been well distinguished by Emerson-
"We are symbols and inhabit symbols: workmen,
work, and tools, words and things, birth and death,
all are emblems; but we sympathise with the sym-
bols, and being infatuated with the economical uses
of things we do not know that they are thoughts.
The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception,
gives them a power which makes their old use
forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue into every
dumb and inanimate object. He perceives the
independence of the thought in the symbol,-the
stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacity
of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncæus were said
to see through the earth, so the poet turns the
world to glass, and shows us all things in their
right series and procession. For, through that
better perception he stands one step nearer to
things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis;
perceives that thought is multiform; that within
the form of every creature is a force impelling it
to ascend into a higher form; and, following with
his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that
life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of
nature. All the facts of the animal economy, sex,
nutriment, gestation, birth, growth, are symbols of
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SHELLEY:
the passage of the world into the soul of man, to
suffer there a change, and reappear a new and
higher fact. He uses forms according to the life
and not according to the form. This is true science.
The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vege-
tation, and animation, for he does not stop at these
facts but employs them as signs. He knows why
the plain or meadow of space was strewn with these
flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why
the great deep is adorned with animals, with men,
and gods; for in every word he speaks he rides on
them as the horses of thought. By virtue of this ·
science the poet is the Namer or Language-maker."
He is the link between God and man.
gate of the Creator, he speaks his language to the
creature. He is, emphatically, the voice of God.
The dele-
We thus perceive that the poet, while not in our
presence begetting any sense of inferiority in us, is
immeasurably our superior when surveying man
and nature in his contemplative mood. He per-
ceives analogies which would pass unnoticed by
ordinary men-he establishes relations between
objects which we deemed to lie irreparably asunder
—he finds in the seasons a corresponding life to
that of humanity, and he unveils the very heart
and meaning of created things.
In his later years Shelley was ripening into
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
201
such a poet. The reed upon which he played
with such marvellous musical skill began to be
distinguished for the deeper undertones of thought.
He was rapidly qualifying, when death so treacher-
ously overtook him, to take his place amongst the
great Seers of mankind. His griefs were becoming
sublimated to the highest uses, and his nature
was being quickly purged of its dross. Even
when he wrote Julian and Maddalo he had begun
to create as well as to sing. The characters in
this poem assume the ordinary shapes of humanity
—and these autobiographical sketches may be
readily apprehended and understood by the general
reader. The narrative was intended by Shelley to
be a translation of poetic thought into familiar
language, with himself and Byron as the speakers.
It is a representation of the real and not the ideal,
and, as such, is successful from the artistic point of
view. The poem is valuable—if for no other reason
as showing the new life dawning upon Shelley,
with its influence upon his poetry. The element
of the practical, as touching the right use of his
divine gift-which seemed previously as far from
his grasp as the noon-day sun-is brought near in
this record of the story of the madman in San
Lazzaro, at Venice. Moreover, the characteristics
of Maddalo and Julian-the pride and ambition
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SHELLEY:
of the former, the philosophy and heterodoxy of
the latter are well distinguished. We now re-
cognise, in short, some affinity between Shelley
and the rest of the human species.
The highest achievement of Shelley in ideal
poetry is the Prometheus Unbound, frequently
regarded now as perhaps the greatest of all his
works. Saturated with the sublime tragedies of
Æschylus, the modern poet conceived the idea of
completing three dramas after the Greek type.
Two of these—one founded upon the story of Tasso,
and the other upon the Book of Job-were never
undertaken. The third only remains to us.
Æschylus among the literary gods and demigods
had an irresistible attraction for Shelley, and his
own conceptions at length found vent in this
remarkable lyric drama. The work is not without
its interest for every person, apart from its poetry,
by its symbolism, and the use Shelley has made
of mythology. A great moral purpose runs through
the drama, whose principal features remain vividly
impressed upon us. Prometheus, chained to the
rock by Jupiter, represents the whole race of
humanity suffering under the sway of evil. Asia
represents nature, and when evil is overthrown,
she is espoused by Prometheus, now delivered
from his chains-the poet thereby intending to
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203
show the ultimate triumph of good. Prometheus
is. regarded by Shelley as a higher being than the
Satan of Milton and the generally-conceived char-
acter of the Prince of Darkness. He is considered
to be the type of the highest perfection of moral
and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and
the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.
In addition to the heroic attributes usually ascribed
to Satan-courage, majesty, and endurance-
Prometheus is portrayed as a being of too lofty a
nature to indulge in the passions of envy, revenge,
and the thirst for self-aggrandisement. Shelley
departed from the ancient fable in one important
respect—he represents Prometheus as refusing to
yield to the oppressor of mankind, whereas in the
lost drama of Eschylus there is supposed the
reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the
price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to
his empire by the consummation of his marriage
with Thetis. In whatever light we view Shelley's
drama it is a remarkable production. It is grand
and magnificent in scope; its moral purport is
lofty; the passions of its persons are the passions
of superhuman creations; the whole subject is
steeped in the most gorgeous colours of which
poetry is capable; while its music is more splendid
and sonorous than anything which had hitherto
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SHELLEY:
❤
proceeded from the golden mouth of the singer.
Always daring, frequently to rashness, in his
speculations, Shelley has here transcended every
other example of this quality of his mind-he has
thrown off all trammels, and given us, through the
vivid medium of his allegory, his idea of man,
free and erect before the Spirit of all things, and
triumphant after ages of suffering. It is a grand
conception, and the artistic skill with which the
poet has woven out his ideas is worthy of the
conception. A higher eulogy than that could
scarcely be passed upon this or any similar enter-
prise. Its rank in the scale of great imaginative
works is, of course, beneath the inspirations of
Dante and those few spirits of the same sublime
calibre, but only beneath these-to no inferior
level can it be relegated.
In the first act of the drama are many passages
of which the following, with its passionate energy,
may be taken as a fair type. It occurs in the closing
part of the dialogue between Prometheus, Panthea,
and the Fury, and is a picture of the confusion
that has come upon all things:- drama
"Fury. Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear
groans:
Worse things unheard, unseen, remain behind.
Prometheus. Worse?
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
205
Fury.
survives
In each human heart terror
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
Prometheus. Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.
Prometheus.
Fury. Thou pitiest them? I speak no more! [Vanishes.
Ah, woe!
Ah, woe! Alas! pain, pain, ever, for ever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumined mind,
Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
I am a God, and cannot find it there,
Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce king! not victory.
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
With new endurance, till the hour arrives
When they shall be no types of things which are.
Panthea. Alas! what sawest thou?
Prometheus.
There are two woes;
To speak, and to behold :-thou spare me one.
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SHELLEY :
Fr. RL.
Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
As with one voice, Truth, Liberty, and Love!
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
This was the shadow of the truth I saw."
Although this drama is and ever has been a
source of considerable perplexity, yet by a care-
ful process of disintegration the reader will be able
to get at the moral truths Shelley is desirous of
enforcing. Sometimes, however, darkness ensues
from excess of light, and the poetic ideal so pre-
dominates in Prometheus as almost to blind us to
whatever additional claims it may have upon us.
The choruses absolutely ring with music, and the
speeches in blank verse teem with imagery. I
have given a specimen of Shelley's power and
energy in this drama; let me now quote a pass-
age for its extraordinary beauty of language and
imagery. The scene depicted is morning in a
lonely vale of the Indian Caucasus, where Asia is
waiting for her sister Panthea :—
"Asia. From all the blasts of heaven thou hast
descended :
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
207
And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended,
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
O child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
Like genius, or like joy, which riseth up
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life.-
This is the season, this the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
Too-long desired, too-long delaying, come!
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains: through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it; now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow
The roseate sun-light quivers: hear I not
The Æolian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn?
[PANTHEA enters.
I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew.
Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest
The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the spherèd sun had climbed
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes."
.
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SHELLEY:
-་
The speech in which Asia details the creation
of the world and of man is very powerful; yet
the lyric portions of the drama are probably those
which will remain most deeply rooted in popular
favour. The fourth act is a marvellous triumph of
melody from its opening to its closing lines. What
poet has in this respect excelled these stanzas,
which are a fitting introduction to the last stage
of this lyrical drama?—
"VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS.
"The pale stars are gone,
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard,
But where are ye?
'A train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly
singing.
"Here, oh! here:
We bear the bier
Of the Father of many a cancelled year!
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
209
"Strew, oh strew!
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death's bare bowers
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours !
Haste, oh haste!
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.
We melt away,
Like dissolving spray,
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!"
The choruses of Spirits of the Mind are all equàl
to this in ease and lilt of rhythm, as well as in
that power of haunting the memory when the
last cadence has died away, which is so peculiar
a characteristic of the lyrics of Shelley. In the
whole poem a strength and a majesty are percep-
tible, which were only indicated, never fully dis-
played, in previous conceptions.
It is matter for regret that Shelley did not
more frequently woo those moods in which his
own soul might find distinct points of contact and
sympathy with the rest of mankind. Mrs. Shelley
was desirous that he should adopt subjects more
adapted to the popular taste and apprehension
Р
210
SHELLEY:
This
than the dreamy and abstract which had for him
the greatest charm. The consequence is, that
while the world has much over which it can re-
joice as the produce of his genius, a finer harvest
has been lost to it. Look, for instance, at The
Witch of Atlas, another poem of the ideal school,
and one absolutely prodigal in fancy.
is one of the most Shelleyan of all Shelley's
poems, for the freedom with which the reins are
given to the imagination. He has allowed the
steeds yoked to the fiery car of Fancy to bear him
whither they will, and it is beyond the power of
others to follow him in his career. Consequently,
however beautiful The Witch of Atlas may be
as a triumph of the fancy, men will be tempted
to ask concerning it, Cui bono? Although art
may not always involve simplicity of purpose,
there is a point at which hopeless confusion and
an obvious lack of purpose forbid us to associate art
with anything in which these are conjoined; un-
less, indeed, an artist or a poet be satisfied that
mere colour and musical sound are art, in which
case we should be compelled to assign a high posi-
tion to The Witch of Atlas. But the popular judg-
ment and instinct in this matter are right. Similar
reflections arise upon reading Epipsychidion, of
which Shelley himself observed that few would
-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
211
fitly conceive its reasoning. He calculated that
there were not one hundred persons capable of
judging and feeling rightly with respect to a
composition of so abstruse a nature. Yet a great
deal of poetic treasure is embedded in it—enough
to have sufficed for half-a-dozen poems with
practical aims and objects. The poet delighted to
revel in fanciful mazes, whither his fellow-men
could not advance, and in Epipsychidion he en-
joyed the distinction of having fabricated a Gordian
knot which none of his admirers and commentators
has been able to unravel. Such an enterprise,
however pleasant, and however splendidly exe-
cuted, only serves to divorce the poet from that
position of teacher and prophet of humanity
to which it should be his most ardent hope to
aspire. The circumstances under which this
poem were produced were very romantic, and it
appears chiefly to be a panegyric of love, founded
on Shelley's feelings towards an Italian lady. It is
perhaps needless to say that these feelings bore no
tinge of any other character save the Platonic.
Shelley was so constituted, and so worshipped
goodness, beauty, and virtue, that he was capable
of being inspired by truly Platonic sentiments.
This is how the poem should probably be read,
but, in truth, here again we are met by one
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SHELLEY:
of that series of poems which afford `only psycho-
logical problems wrapped in the most beautiful
poetic forms.
In Adonais and Hellas, fortunately, we obtain
more foothold. The former takes rank after the
finest of elegiac poems, the Lycidas of Milton, and
might have been counted worthy of equality with
it had Shelley been Milton's predecessor. If it
be the first quality of the elegiac poem to fix the
grief of the singer upon the heart and mind of the
listener, Shelley's poem fulfils this requirement.
When once read, it is ever remembered, and the
echo of the opening lines clings to the memory in
the midst of the absorption of ever-varying ideas.
The popular belief that Keats had died of an over-
dose of criticism no doubt plunged Shelley's soul
into a paroxysm of grief and anger-hence the
depth and sincerity of the poem. We now know
that Keats was not "snuffed out by an article ;
but Shelley's noble expression of regret still retains
its place with us, and will continue to do so.
Few passages in modern writers equal that describ-
ing the awakening of the Earth after winter, and
the setting forth by contrast of the non-awakening
of the poet; but the whole is extremely beautiful,
luxuriant, and tender in its grief, and studded with
rich gems of imagery.
""
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
213
were in
With such a theme as Greece, and her struggles
for freedom, it was to be expected that Shelley
would rise to the full height of his inspiration.
The adulation of the Greeks in his preface to Hel-
las seems almost extravagant, notwithstanding that
the race has occupied the highest pinnacle of fame
in the world's history. But men ever pardon excess
in a noble cause. At the time of the composition of
the lyrical drama of Hellas, Shelley was regarding
with the deepest interest the struggles in Spain
and Italy, which it is said he looked upon as
"decisive of the destinies of the world, probably
for centuries to come." While these struggles
progress, a revolution broke out in Greece,
and the poet hailed the new effort after freedom
with the wildest enthusiasm. Under the influence
of this feeling he produced Hellas, but as the war
at the time had not concluded, he was compelled
to give a vague and shadowy termination to his
drama. It remains one of the most perfect of his
productions, if we bear in mind the quality of its
music alone. In construction-principally through
the element of uncertainty which was necessarily
connected with it-Shelley regarded it as faulty.
It is in this drama, however, that he touched the
highest point of lyrical excellence. No work of
his, nor indeed of any other modern poet, gives us
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SHELLEY:
stanzas superior to these, for their vivid imagination
and picturesque force :—
"Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river,
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
But they are still immortal
Who, through birth's orient portal,
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
Clothe their unceasing flight
In the brief dust and light
Gathered around their chariots as they go;
New shapes they still may weave,
New gods, new laws receive,
Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last
On Death's bare ribs had cast.
A Power from the unknown God,
A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod
The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient planet animates with light;
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,
Like blood-hounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set :
While, blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon,
The Cross leads generations on.
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
215
Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep
From one whose dreams are paradise,
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
And day peers forth with her blank eyes;
So fleet, so faint, so fair,
The Powers of earth and air
Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem :
Apollo, Pan, and Love,
And even Olympian Jove,
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.
Our hills, and seas, and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams,
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,
Wailed for the golden years."
Shelley has concentrated within a few lines, put
into the mouth of the Semichorus, his thoughts of
the Greeks, and the immortality of their renown :—
"Temples and towers,
Citadels and marts, and they
Who live and die there, have been ours,
And may be thine, and must decay;
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity ;
Her citizens, imperial spirits,
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set."
Hellas is the canonisation of a race. It is the
216
SHELLEY.
י,
expression in "words that breathe and thoughts
that burn" of the inextinguishable admiration and
affection of a poet for a people the most illustrious
in arts, literature, and civilisation that the world
has ever seen.
2
1
V
THE POETRY OF SHELLEY-Concluded.
"He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own ;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.”
Adonais.
i
V.
THE POETRY OF SHELLEY-Concluded.
1
IN connection with Shelley and his poetry, some-
thing still remains to be said; though when all
has been uttered, a subject so richly suggestive
must continue unexhausted. That the poet too
frequently misapprehended his own capacity is
proved by the tragedy of The Cenci. Here we
have his only attempt in the pure, unmixed
dramatic form, and in scarcely anything was
Shelley more successful. The works which gave
him most satisfaction to contemplate are those
which posterity does not regard with general
favour, chiefly for the reason that they are as far
from its complete understanding as the Eleusinian
mysteries; while this tragedy, which Shelley
entered upon with so much distrust in his own
powers, remains one of the most durable monu-
ments of his genius. Its diction is noble, though
its incident is limited. It is more dramatic than
220
SHELLEY:
any work by Lord Byron, for the latter poet was
himself all too conspicuous in his creations,-Man-
fred, Cain, and the rest of his gallery of striking
and powerful portraits. Shelley, on the contrary,
gives us the Cencis severally as they might have
lived. Especially is the character of Beatrice
elaborated with a skill worthy of the great masters
of the dramatic art. The poet depicts vividly all
the stages of feeling towards her guilty father,
through which she passed, down to the sublime
attitude of resignation before her execution. The
full details of the terrible story of the Cenci family
are unutterable. Shelley has taken them, and has
worked by suggestion; in his tragedy there is
nothing to offend the sensibility, and yet the black
and bloody story is charged with horror in the vigor-
ous and nervous language of the poet. That profu-
sion of imagery which distinguishes most of Shelley's
lengthier poems is greatly subdued in The Cenci;
the author has rightly deemed it of more import-
ance for dramatic purposes that the imaginative
and the descriptive should not predominate over
the delineation of the passions; and in the fifth
act he exclusively depends upon the simple ex-
pression of the emotions, and the native pathos
and tragic grandeur of the situations. Hence his
undoubted triumph, the drama being justly re-
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
221
F
garded as one of the greatest efforts since the time
of Shakspeare. There are those, doubtless, who
think that Shelley was unwise in selecting so
repulsive a story for dramatic treatment; but he
has answered this objection when he observes that
"the highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest
species of the drama is the teaching of the human
heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the
knowledge of itself; in proportion to the posses-
sion of which knowledge, every human being is just,
wise, sincere, tolerant, and kind. No person can
be truly dishonoured by the act of another." It
is scarcely possible to conceive that a perusal of
The Cenci would lead any mind from a course of
equity and goodness; on the contrary, an intense
reflex light is cast upon these virtues by the very
horrors which a contemplation of their opposites
engenders. In the hands of some writers, such a
subject might have been perilous: Shelley has
not only encountered the ordeal, but has triumphed
over it. Of all the passages representing the
conflict of human sensation and passion in this
drama, perhaps the following, which occurs towards
the close of the fifth act, deserves to be best re-
membered :—
"Beatrice.
Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:
•
222
SHELLEY:
→
It is the only ill which can find place
Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring:
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch
Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free;
Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. O, plead
With famine, or wind-walking pestilence,
Blind lightning, or the deaf sea ;-not with man!
Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,
In deeds a Cain! No, mother, we must die:
Since such is the reward of innocent lives,
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.
And, whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,
Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
To death as to life's sleep, 'twere just the grave
Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
Like a fond mother, hide me in thy bosom,
And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
Live ye, who live, subject to one another,
As we were once, who now---
"Bernardo.
BERNARDO rushes in.
O, horrible!
That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,
Should all be vain! The ministers of death
Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
Blood on the face of one-what if 'twere fancy?
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
As if 'twere only rain. O life! O world!
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
223
*
Cover me! let me be no more! To see
That perfect mirror of pure innocence
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon-
Thee, light of life—dead, dark! while I say, sister,
To hear I have no sister; and thou, mother,
Whose love was as a bond to all our loves-
Dead! The sweet bond broken."
One of the finest things also, in a dramatic sense,
is that second scene of the fifth act, between the
Judges, Beatrice, and her accuser Marzio, the
assassin. The speech of Beatrice is eloquent and
impassioned, but it excites our admiration in yet
a superior degree by reason of its effect. Tenacious
of life, with all the young and the beautiful, and
afraid of the infamy, as well as the act of death,
under circumstances so horrible, Beatrice thus
pleads with her accomplice:
"Oh, thou who tremblest on the giddy verge
Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;
So mayst thou answer God with less dismay :
What evil have we done thee? I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years,
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then
Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul,
And my untainted fame; and even that peace
224
SHELLEY:
Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart.
But the wound was not mortal; so my hate
Became the only worship I could lift
To my great Father, who in pity and love,
Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation:
And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest
Mercy in heaven show justice upon earth:
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path
Over the trampled laws of God and man,
Rush not before thy Judge, and say; 'My Maker,
I have done this and more, for there was one
Who was most pure and innocent on earth;
And because she endured what never any,
Guilty or innocent, endured before;
Because her wrongs could not be told, nor thought;
Because thy hand at length did rescue her;
I with my words killed her and all her kin.'
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
The reverence living in the minds of men
Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame !
Think what it is to strangle infant pity
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood,
All that which shows like innocence, and is,-
Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,
So that the world lose all discrimination
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,
And that which now compels thee to reply
To what I ask: Am I, or am I not,
A parricide?"
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
225
The appeal is irresistible: mark the triumph
which the poet has achieved by it in an artistic
sense. In previous scenes were witnessed the con-
spiracy between Beatrice and the assassins, the
murder of the Count, and the rewards heaped by
his daughter upon the murderers. In the Hall of
Justice the bloody story is unfolded; Marzio is
conscious of his doom; therefore, he has no reason
for sparing those who were implicated in the
tragedy. Yet so powerful is Beatrice's appeal,
even upon the mind of one so base that he has
executed crimes merely for the sake of material
gain, that he cries out before the Judges he alone
is guilty those whom he previously accused are
innocent. Tortures are applied; but the memory
of Beatrice's appeal is so vivid that he adheres
to his assertion of her innocence when upon the
wheel, smiles upon the officers of justice, and,
holding his breath, dies with his secret stubbornly
preserved. This scene, as I have said, is eminently
powerful and dramatic: it will favourably compare
with some of the best passages in the Elizabethan
dramatists.
:
Naturally, Shelley was a man of a pleasant
humour, but that which might have become in him
a grateful and delectable stream was early turned
into a river of gall. In personal intercourse he
Q
226
SHELLEY:
had the sense of humour, and his own observations
were frequently enlivened by a nimble wit, but in
his writings this quality changes into fierce in-
vective and the bitterest satire. His disappoint-
ments, and the cruel treatment he received at the
hands of others, begat in him what we cannot but
regard as an unhealthy condition of mind. This
did not last through his career, but it embittered
many of his best years, and cramped his energies
in the noblest fields of poetic enterprise. While
under the sway of a heart bleeding from wrong and
injustice, he penned that portion of his writings
which may be designated as the satiric. Through
this vehicle it was that he, whose philosophy
for the recovery of mankind was love, sent forth
blazing curses upon his enemies. He believed in
no hell, and yet all the reputed tortures of the
damned pale before those he calls down upon Lord
Castlereagh and Lord Chancellor Eldon. Wit
becomes a burning lava, which he pours forth from
an apparently inexhaustible supply. The man
who wrote that part of Peter Bell the Third com-
mencing "Hell is a city much like London," was
in no humorous or even cynical mood. He had
almost lost his faith in the virtue of mankind.
is, however, necessary that there should be no
misconception with regard to this poem. It was
It
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
227
vulgarly supposed, and the error is not yet
completely exorcised, that Shelley intended a
severe personal attack upon Wordsworth, under
the cognomen of Peter, and nothing more, by the
work. But while he certainly desired to express
his sense of what he considered to be Wordsworth's
time-serving character, he cherished a very high
opinion of his poetry, and by Peter Bell, he in-
tended to depict the pitiable state of any man who
gives way to constant tergiversation-especially the
man whose changes of opinion result in material
advantage. Shelley deeply regretted that he
should only be able to compare Wordsworth, "the
most natural and tender of lyric poets" (to use his
own phrase) with "Simonides, that flatterer of the
Sicilian tyrants." Under the influence of this
feeling he wrote Peter Bell, intending, nevertheless,
that it should bear with it and convey the most
general signification. The only passage, perhaps,
of the poem which approaches real humour (the
rest being too deeply satiric to be thus described)
is that detailing how the disease of dulness over-
took Peter, and infected everything in connection
with him :-
"Peter was dull-he was at first
Dull-O, so dull, so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed,
228
SHELLEY:
7
Still with this dulness was he cursed-
Dull; beyond all conception, dull.
"No one could read his books—no mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him ;
The parson came not near his portal;
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swift-no man could bear him.
"A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side ;
Like those famed seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy's vigil rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.
"Even the reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired ;-
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing."
The contagion spread beyond all power of sup-
pression. Peter's servant maids, dogs, and sportive
kitten, grew somnolent; every cottager yawned
upon his neighbour; asses refused to bray, and no
little cur cocked up his ears; within the space of
seven miles no bailiff dared to enter a house lest
he should bear upon his face for fifteen months
the yawn of such a venture. The whole thing is
well done; and there can be no doubt that some
portions of Wordsworth's poetry, which readily
lend themselves to burlesque, suggested this
J
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
229
travesty. But whenever Shelley devotes himself
to the witty or the humorous, he gives us either
the grotesque, as in Swellfoot the Tyrant, or the
fiercely satiric, as in the Masque of Anarchy, and
several of his personal miscellaneous poems.
Whatever interest these efforts may possess, how-
ever (and there are lines in the Masque of Anarchy
equal to almost anything that Shelley has written)
they do not contribute to the ground-work of his
fame. Some of them we could well do without
-they contain no evidence of that mission it is
the poet's office to unfold; and I am no believer in
the chimera that every line which a man of genius
has written must necessarily be valuable. Political
poems can be written by individuals who are not
poets, and while Shelley is deserving of every
justification which can be advanced-when we call
to remembrance the deep provocations which
drew forth these outbursts of indignation-the poet
of Adonais and Prometheus is a being of a far
loftier type than the castigator of an infamous
British minister.
As the poet of Nature, Shelley challenges the
warmest eulogy. He possesses so many other
claims upon us, that we are apt to forget he has
no modern rival save Wordsworth in the intensity
of his natural vision. The moods and manifesta-
230
SHELLEY :
tions of nature were to him as an open book, and
the passages which could be culled from his works
in support of this are infinite in number, and
endless in variety and beauty. He enjoyed the
empire over nature as well as that of humanity.
Lord of the earth, the sea, and the sky, the
numberless forms of beauty peculiar to each
element fed his spirit with love and all spiritual
thoughts. The lark in the firmament; the flower
which bursts into loveliness by the wayside; the
cloud which flits restlessly in the heavens; the
wave which sobs out its strength upon the pathless
and impenetrable shore-spoke to him as they
spoke to the great poet with whom I have compared
him. He counted not his days by the calendars
of men, but by the calendars of nature. Nothing
existed that to him was not a minister of grace.
Unrivalled we know him to have been in the
justness and extent of his observations on natural
objects; and though he accumulated little scienti-
fic knowledge, “he knew every plant by its name,
and was familiar with the history and habits of
every production of the earth; he could inter-
pret without a fault each appearance in the
sky: and the varied phenomena of heaven and
earth filled him with deep emotion." There has
probably been no poet who, considering the
1
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
.231
brevity of his life, spent so much time in the
open air; he revelled in the changeful aspects of
nature, and his communings with her spirit filled
him with a joy far deeper than that he drew from
contact with human kind. It is a mistake to
suppose that the most divinely gifted poet has
found himself sufficient to the highest tasks by
the aid of his inspiration alone; he who would
prove he is a poet must not only love but study
and understand nature. He must be perfectly
acquainted with her, in her manifold aspects.
Every lyric of Shelley's shows him to have been
a singer of this character. The Eolian harp of
the woods, and the moans and struggles of the
tempestuous ocean, had for him no clearer or more
articulate utterance than the meanest and most
diminutive objects in animate or inanimate nature.
The joyous skylark, high in air, filled him with
exquisite soul music,—
"Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
"Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now."
232
SHELLEY:
¿
:
Mingled. emotions succeed, as he wails forth a
dirge for the dying year; but even here there are
indications of that intense joy which nature fore-
shadows in her darkest hour, and will inevitably
bring to pass,-
Orphan hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
For the year is but asleep:
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
"As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So white Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the dead-cold year to-day ;
Solemn hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
"As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the year :-be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes.
"January grey is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps-but, O ye hours!
Follow with May's fairest flowers."
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
233
Let me cite a few passages from the poems of
Shelley which will prove his acquaintance with,
and power to depict, the varying phases of nature.
Discarding his lengthier works, which will not so
readily yield the extracts we need, but which
are nevertheless charged with the same elements,
take one of the early poems, "A Summer Evening
in the Churchyard of Lechlade, Gloucestershire,”-
and see what a picture is furnished of the descend-
ing twilight:-
"The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day:
Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
"They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
"Thou too, aërial Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
234
SHELLEY:
"The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres;
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
"Thus solemnised and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep."
The mastery of Shelley, in this and in other
poems, is shown in his capacity to infuse the reader
with feelings similar to those originally felt by the
poet-similar in kind, if not in intensity. The
scene and the churchyard of Lechlade, and that par-
ticular evening when Shelley conceived his stanzas,
are all presented vividly to the reader. Witness,
again, the lines on Mont Blanc, which challenge
comparison with the similar poem by Coleridge:
the latter has probably the advantage of sublimity,
but Shelley once more demonstrates his superiority
in imitating the very aspects and operations of
nature. The mountain speaks to him of things
multitudinous, of remoter worlds, of dark and stolid
power, of the earthquake, of the mortality of man,
and the immutability of nature. As it rears its
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
235
mighty head before him in silent majesty, Mont
Blanc has a lesson and a reflection for the poet :-
"Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them: winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things,
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?"
How fine, in its merely descriptive aspect, and the
richness of its colour, is the following passage from
the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills"
"Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy,.
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath day's azure eyes,
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,-
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
1
236
SHELLEY:
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright,
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies;
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marbled shrines did rise
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
"Sun-girt City! thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen ;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier.
A less drear ruin then than now,
With thy conquest-branded brow
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne among the waves,
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew
Flies as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
237
*
Save where many a palace-gate
With green sea-flowers overgrown
Like a rock of ocean's own,
Topples o'er the abandon'd sea
As the tides change sullenly.
The fisher on his watery way,
Wandering at the close of day,
Will spread his sail and seize his oar,
Till he pass the gloomy shore,
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death
O'er the waters of his path."
Here is also an exceedingly majestic image, drawn
from the same poem :—
66
Lo, the sun floats up the sky,
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread,
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago."
Occasionally, within the compass of a few lines,
Shelley paints a landscape as completely as the
more extended labours of the conscientious artist
could produce it for us. This is a picture of such
a character, a fragment, which the poet entitles
The Isle :—
+
238
SHELLEY.
}
"There was a little lawny islet
By anemone and violet,
Like mosaic, paven;
And its roof was flowers and leaves
Which the summer's breath enweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
Each a gem engraven.
Girt by many an azure wave
With which the clouds and mountains pave
A lake's blue chasm."
The same felicity and power are displayed, com-
bined with the presentation of a remarkable image,
in the succeeding lines upon the waning moon :—
"And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass."
Not even the minutest additional stroke is requisite
to enable the mind to grasp this true and powerful
figure. On other occasions Shelley's poetry is
noticeable for revealing the influence of nature
upon the sentiments and emotions. He probably
never was happier in exhibiting the singular
harmony and relation between outward nature
and the inner feeling and emotion, than in the
Stanzas, written in dejection, near Naples.
In
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
239
these lines is perceived the mind when under the
subtle operation of exterior influences-
“The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might;
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.
"I see the Deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple sea-weeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,
The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
"Some might lament that I were cold,
As I when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan ;
They might lament—for I am one
Whom men love not-and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
240
SHELLEY:
At the risk of citing a lyric familiar in the mouths
of readers as any lyric by any poet, it is impossible
in speaking of Shelley as an interpreter of nature,
to omit mention of The Cloud. The poem is more
than exquisite amongst the exquisitely beautiful;
it is unique. The English language, probably,
does not present its equal for music, metaphor,
and full and untrammelled expression. Where
every stanza is so rich in melody, it is difficult
to confer upon any the distinction of being the
best. The first and last are most frequently
quoted and applauded; but, if compelled to select,
I should say that Shelley reached his highest
elevation, in the poetic sense, in the third and
fourth. These latter stanzas, with the conclud-
ing one, must be given as an additional evidence
of the poet's wonderful perception of nature, and
his power of felicitous comparison-
"The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead.
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
241
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
"That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
"I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky:
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.”
R
242
SHELLEY:
It would be possible to linger over each page of
Shelley, and discover in it some references to the
beauty or grandeur of this ever-changing nature,
and to the endless variety of atmospheric pheno-
mena. Nature and the elements are the warp
and woof of his poetry. How we see a comming-
ling of both in these stanzas on Summer and
Winter!—
"It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon-and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.
All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.
"It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod, as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas! then for the homeless beggar old!"
To equal Shelley's dirge for Autumn, we must go
back to the older poets. The modern have not
rivalled it in simplicity and intensity, nor yet in
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
243
that striking element of personification which is
so characteristic of Shelley-
"The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying;
Come, months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array ;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
"The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
To his dwelling;
Come, months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray,
Let your light sisters play—
Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear."
It is in Shelley's poetry that we find his true
biography. What life had he-life, that is, in its
largest, fullest sense-apart from his poetic visions
and aspirations? Shelley is a vague and shadowy
being till we study his poetry and become per-
244
SHELLEY :
meated with his spirit. In proportion as we under-
stand his work, do we attain knowledge of his
humanity. Mr. Browning, in defining what he
regards as Shelley's highest and most predomi-
nating characteristic, calls it "his simultaneous
perception of power and love in the absolute; and
of beauty and good in the concrete; while he
throws from his poet's station, between both,
swifter, subtler, and more numerous films, for the
connection of each with each, than have been
thrown by any modern artificer' of whom I have
knowledge." The justness and accuracy of these
distinctions may be tested by a consideration of
such fascinating and noble poems as The Triumph
of Life, the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and the
Ode to the West Wind. Shelley is here at his best,
when his crude philosophy no longer obtrudes
itself, and he is content with the simple exercise
of the imagination. His pure imaginative gifts
were superior to those of either Byron or Words-
worth; and, like the latter, he had comparative
command of his genius-though he could not, with
the author of the Excursion, subdue the personal
to the universal. It has been well said of Shelley
that in poems with a political vein "he had the use
of the left hand only." As I have before intimated,
he was a destroyer and not a builder, politically
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
245
and socially. Shelley's refined intellect mistook
its office in giving his political opinions through
a poetic medium; and the harmony of his work
was destroyed by convulsions of anger at what he
deemed the violation of the eternal principles of
right. It is in his perception of the beautiful, his
sympathy, his grand enthusiasm, his eloquence,
and his imagination, that his strength lies. He
lacked the philosophic calm of Plato and the
towering invention of the great Elizabethan poets.
His life and his poetry are a record of ecstatic
passion and spiritual unrest. Yet after all deduc-
tions, he will exercise a more durable influence
upon the poetry of England than any of his con-
temporaries and successors save Wordsworth. His
bays cannot wither with the lapse of time. Other
poets may have their seasons of spasmodic popu-
larity, but he can never be superseded. With
twenty years added to his career, his hand might
have touched that of Shakspeare.
And now to gather up the threads of this criti-
cism. In addition to those aspects in which we have
regarded him, Shelley stands confessed a consum-
mate master of lyrical verse-the greatest lyric
poet of the nineteenth century. And lyric poetry, it
should ever be remembered, bears a serious import
and purpose, besides that of ministering to the
·
T
246
SHELLEY:
delight of men.
could we legitimately assign to this writer that
position which is now universally conceded to
him? The poet is greater as a teacher than the
man of science, because of his capacity to speak
to all men, and his one organ of speech is effec-
tive in reaching all. He discovers that which
is of interest to humanity, and unfolds it. It
is the faculty of discovering hidden analogies,
combined with the power of expressing them
artistically and musically, which makes the poet.
Nations have in every epoch throbbed with the de-
sire for liberty; all men have observed the clouds
which veil the midnight sky; sunset and sunrise
are every-day occurrences; the daisy has bloomed
for centuries; the bird has carolled in the sky for
unnumbered ages-yet to ordinary men all these
things bear no second meaning behind their
palpable existence as facts and things. But the
poet, the immortal singer, fills other men with
that enthusiastic love for freedom which consumes
himself; he deduces lessons from the passage of
the midnight clouds across the heavens, and finds
new links between nature, man, and the Deity, in
the song of the bird, the upturned face of the
daisy, and the crimson robes in which the sun is
arrayed as he goes forth upon his triumphant
Were such not the case how
•
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
247
career. In this view of the bard, who is a worthier
votary in the great temple of poesy than Shelley,
whose soul overflowed with love and sympathy,
whose mind was ever open to the endless forms of
beauty in the universe, and whose heart yearned
for the emancipation of humanity from vice and
error? His hopes and his inextinguishable desires
find expression in the lines which he addresses to
the West Wind-
"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is ;
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
"Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
"Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
"Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
"The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
Who shall say that Shelley has not been "the
trumpet of a prophecy?" What matters it, though
some of his poems should be disfigured by affec-
tation, and others by a quixotic assault upon
248
SHELLEY:
windmills of his own creation ?-there is yet a
glamour over all his song, which proclaims him
the great poet. Even in his translations-an
important branch of his art-the same glamour
shines. We understand the old aphorism, poeta
nascitur, non fit, when it is applied to him. The
value and extent of his work, when placed in juxta-
position with the brevity of his life, leave us but
astonishment and wonder. He was inspired, and
has since been the source of inspiration in others.
It is little to say that his melody is superior to that
of any other modern poet. He divides the lyric
crown with Burns. The latter is a poet of universal
sympathies, and in that respect takes precedence
of Shelley, but the author of The Cloud transcends
even the poet-king of the north in simple music.
His lyrical endowment was also accompanied by
passion and earnestness. His sincerity cannot be
denied, nor his rigid adherence to what, in his
seer's vision, he deemed to be the truth. He sang
of things old and new, and justified his title to the
appellation of bard by the new fire which he
struck out of the expiring ashes of the past.
Nothing in nature appeared ugly or discordant to
him; and had his faith in humanity equalled his
reverence for the Spirit that breathes through all
things, he would, by an extension of his brief
A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY.
249
span of life, have taken rank with the greatest of
our poets. The day for which he longed with all the
ardour of his passionate nature was as yet unborn-
sleeping in the womb of Time—a day when men
should be knit together by the sacred ties of benevo-
lence and love. His prophetic eyes shone with a
glorified light from other suns than ours. Imperfect
as the rest of humanity, and yet waging ceaselessly
the conflict with evil, the Eternal Voice which
speaks to all—but to many fruitlessly and in vain
—thrilled him to the very springs of his being.
His soul was one with all things: it embraced the
outcast of the world, and the children of light; the
grandeur and minutiae of the material universe;
the majestic creations of mythology; and the
human Prometheus struggling with woe and
wrong. He was the sweet singer of his age, des-
tined to live in the reverent affection of all suc-
ceeding ages; for out of the burning depths of
his soul sprang immortal music in praise of love,
beauty, and virtue.

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ON POETIC INTERPRETATION
OF NATURE,
By J. C. SHAIRP, LL.D.
PRINCIPAL OF THE United COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR AND
ST. LEONARD, ST. ANDREWS, AND
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
The appearance of such a book as this at the present
moment reminds us of a famous passage in one of the ancient
poets, whose beauties it especially commemorates. The lover
of Nature, says Virgil, who knows the rural deities, Pan and
Sylvanus, and the nymphs, lives undisturbed by political
turmoils; he listens unconcerned, if he listens at all, to the
descent of confederate armies from the banks of the Danube,
and is equally unmoved by contending factions or by falling
empires. We are afraid that the country and the town are
no longer so completely separated from each other as to
afford this enviable serenity to even the most devout wor-
shipper of the god Pan. But at the same time there is a real
sense of relief and refreshment on turning from the news of
the day to the unspeakable repose of Nature, and in the
sense of coolness, and stillness, and greenness, of which we
become conscious as we follow Professor Shairp through
these interesting and suggestive pages.-The Times.
On Poetic Interpretation of Nature.
"I don't see anything in that," said one who watched
Turner as he painted. "Don't you," growled the artist in
reply, "don't you wish you could though?" And this, per-
haps, after all, is the only answer painter and poet can make
to the complaint of the unperceiving. The gulf between
them is one philosophy will not bridge and argument will
never plumb. In this, as in so much else, ""Tis the taught
already who profit by teaching." And the man or the woman
who would understand Professor Shairp's book must bring to
it a mind already in keen sympathy with his subject. For such
he has provided a true intellectual feast. Young students, to
whom he specially addresses himself, will find themselves here
in communion with a mind which places its rich resources at
their disposal.-The Spectator.
It would be difficult to find more delightful reading than
what remains of the volume, and equally hard to say which
part of it is the most delightful. The Sacred Writers,
Homer, Lucretius, and Virgil, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton,
and Wordsworth, all these are treated with the hand of a
master equally familiar with the nature which they sing and
with the songs they sing about her. We can recommend no
better, fresher, more helpful, more exhilarating exercise to the
young lover of poetry, who has a real desire to know whereof
he affirms-or ought to affirm-delight, when he reads a good
poetical description, than to study these pages with attention,
and to confirm or correct their criticisms by carefully exam-
ining the poets referred to for himself. He will learn to read
them with new eyes, and will experience the same delight
which he felt on turning to Tennyson after reading Brimley's
essay.-Edinburgh Evening Courant.
The work is one that, in the very highest sense, is of a
healthy and elevating character, while its comparatively easy
and familiar style will only serve to render it the more at-
tractive and interesting to the large class whom it is desirable
to have influenced through the medium of conceptions that
On Poetic Interpretation of Nature.
lift the thoughts above our mere material surroundings.—
Aberdeen Free Press.
A book which must be a pleasure and a profit to every
cultivated mind.—The Scottish Guardian.
A good book on a great subject.-The Daily Review.
Principal Shairp states that the truth to which he wishes
specially to fix attention in this volume, is "the relation that
exists between nature and the sensitive and imaginative soul
of man, and the result or creation which arises from the
meeting of these two." The subject has a metaphysical air,
but as it is treated popularly in this work, it is rather for the
general reader than the critical student.—Inverness Courier.
Principal Shairp puts it that the secrets of science must
become the property of the market-place before the poet can
efficiently translate them into symbol, and he cites the "In
Memoriam" as illustrative; though he might well have
added that some of the obscurity of that great poem is due to
the closeness of the interest with which Mr. Tennyson con-
templated truth in purely scientific aspects, using, or
attempting to use, as symbols scientific truths not yet the
property of the market-place. Principal Shairp's criticisms
of Wordsworth are, as we should expect, most delicate and
discerning, no less than the contrast he carries out between
that poet's modes of dealing with Nature, and those of
others.-The Nonconformist.
The ancient poets made human action the centre of their
contemplation, and it is mostly a modern art or sentiment
which seems to find an independent life in external nature,
a physiognomy in the features of the landscape, and a vary-
ing expression, so to speak, in the countenance of the
weather. Still more modern is the practice of philosophising
On Poetic Interpretation of Nature.
Ovid
on these appearances, as if their perception arose from a
superior illumination or providential instinct in the mind,
and revealed truths to us which the mechanical processes of
science were insufficient to refute or estimate. Yet the
modern poets are not more scientific than the ancient, but
relatively to their opportunities much less so, in the aspects
of Nature which they select for representation. The ancients
loved to trace an appearance of law and order in her; the
moderns are delighted with her casual combinations.
and Dante were familiar with the figures of the constellations
and the seasons at which they are seen to rise and set; but
we now know other poets to whom one group of stars is
much the same as another, if it can only be seen to rush out
of a cloud "like a swarm of golden bees." Of the modern
art and theory which we have indicated, Dr. Shairp is a
historian, and still more a panegyrist.—The Pall Mall
Gazette.
The sub-
There are now before us, bearing in each case strong
marks of individuality, a volume of the lectures with which
Sir Francis Doyle signalised his term of office, and an ante-
past of the intellectual fare which the university may expect
from his successor, Principal Shairp.
stance of Mr. Shairp's book was not originally addressed
to a learned audience; but he is so essentially thoughtful
and meditative, so rich in the facts and fruits of culture, so
ably and suggestively critical, that Oxford has good reasons
for expecting results of paramount value from his efforts as
Professor of Poetry.—The Guardian.
EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS.
9 CASTLE STREET,
EDINBURGH, June 1877.
LIST OF
OF BOOKS
PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
Bible Readings.
Extra fcap. 8vo, 2s.
BLACKIE-Lyrical Poems.
By JOHN STUART BLACKIE, Professor of Greek in the University
of Edinburgh. Crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d.
BLACKIE—The Language and Literature of the
Scottish Highlands. In 1 vol. crown 8vo, 6s.
"The way to a mother's heart is through her children; the way to a
people's heart is through its language."-Jean Paul Richter.
• •
“Ein Buch, das ich auch deutschen Lesern, und zwar in einem beträchtlich
weitem Umfange, nicht angelegentlich genug empfehlen kann. Eingehend
wird von den Wurzeln und ihrem Verhältnisz innerhalb der groszen Sprachen-
familie, von Vocalen und Consonanten insbesondere, von der Regeln der Wort-
und Satzbildung gehandelt, wobei viele sprachliche Alterthümer und einige
Ueberreste an den Tag kommen, welche in den englisch-schottischen Dialekten
fortleben.... Mit F. A. Wolfs lebendiger Auffassung vom Ursprunge der
homerischen Epen vor der Seele weisz er die echten lyrischen Schöpfungen der
Vorzeit mit ihrem Ansatz zu epischer Fassung zu erkennen und greift aus den
Resten des wahren Ossian einige köstliche Perlen heraus, wie sie zu Anfang
des 16. Jahrhunderts der Dechant Macgregor von Lismore aufzeichnete.
Das letzte Capitel enthält eine Reihe anziehender Beispiele gaelischer Dichtung
aus den letzten hundert Jahren. . . . Auch über die kümmerlich gedeihende
Prosa werden lehrreiche Angaben hinzugefügt."-Dr. Reinhold Pauli.
BLACKIE-Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aris-
·
totle, Christianity, and Utilitarianism. Lectures delivered
before the Royal Institution, London. Fcap. 8vo, second edi
tion, 58.
3
2
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
BLACKIE-Songs of Religion and Life.
Fcap. 8vo, 68.
'The poems in this volume may be regarded as a Second Edition of the
second part of my 'Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece,' which has long
been out of print, along with other Poems not hitherto published, and a
few from a volume of 'Lyrical Poems' previously published, all having one
common object, viz., 'the cultivation of religious reverence without sectarian
dogmatism, and of poetical sentiment tending not so much to arouse the
imagination or to take the fancy, as to purify the passions and to regulate
the conduct of life.""--Preface.
BLACKIE—On Self-Culture: Intellectual, Physical,
and Moral. A Vade-Mecum for Young Men and Students.
Tenth edition. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d.
"Every parent should put it into the hands of his son."-Scotsman.
"Students in all countries would do well to take as their vade-mecum a little
book on self-culture by the eminent Professor of Greek in the University of
Edinburgh."-Medical Press and Circular.
"An invaluable manual to be put into the hands of students and young
men."-Era.
"Written in that lucid and nervous prose of which he is a master.".
Spectator.
BLACKIE-On Greek Pronunciation.
Demy 8vo, 3s. 6d.
BLACKIE—On Beauty.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d.
BLACKIE-Musa Burschicosa.
A Book of Songs for Students and University Men. Fcap. 8vo,
2s. 6d.
BLACKIE-War Songs of the Germans.
Feap. 8vo, price 2s. 6d. cloth; 2s. paper.
BLACKIE-Political Tracts.
No. 1. GOVERNMENT. No. 2. EDUCATION.
BLACKIE-Homer and the Iliad.
In three Parts. 4 vols. demy 8vo, price 42s.
Price 1s. each.
.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
3
BOWEN-Daily Meditations by Rev. G. Bowen of
Bombay. With Introductory Notice by Rev. W. Hanna, D.D.,
Author of "The Last Day of our Lord's Passion." Third
edition, small 4to, cloth, price 5s. ; or limp roan, red edges,
price 78. 6d.
"Among such books we shall scarcely find another which exhibits the same
freshness and vividness of idea, the same fervour of faith, the same intensity
of devotion. I count it a privilege to introduce in this country a book so
•
fitted to attract and to benefit."-Extract from Preface.
"These meditations are the production of a missionary whose mental history
is very remarkable. . . . His conversion to a religious life is undoubtedly one
of the most remarkable on record. They are all distinguished by a tone of true
piety, and are wholly free from a sectarian or controversial bias.”—Morning
Post.
BROWN-John Leech and other Papers.
By JOHN BROWN, M.D., F.R.S.E. Crown 8vo. [In the Press.
BROWN-Locke and Sydenham, and other Papers.
Extra fcap. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
BROWN-Hore Subsecivæ.
Ninth edition. Extra fcap. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
BROWN-Letter to the Rev. John Cairns, D.D.
Second edition. Crown 8vo, sewed, 2s.
BROWN-Arthur H. Hallam;
Extracted from "Horæ Subseciva." Fcap. sewed, 28.; cloth,
28. 6d.
BROWN-Rab and his Friends;
Extracted from "Hora Subsecivæ." Forty-ninth thousand.
Fcap. sewed, 6d.
BROWN-Rab and his Friends.
Cheap Illustrated edition. Square 12mo, ornamental wrapper, 18.
4
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
BROWN-Rab and his Friends.
With Illustrations by Sir George Harvey, R.S.A., Sir J. Noel
Paton, R.S.A., and J. B. New edition. Demy quarto, cloth, 6s.
BROWN-Marjorie Fleming: A Sketch.
Fifteenth thousand. Fcap. sewed, 6d.
BROWN-Our Dogs;
Extracted from "Hora Subseciva." Nineteenth thousand.
Fcap. sewed, 6d.
BROWN-" With Brains, Sir;"
Extracted from "Hora Subsecive." Fcap. sewed, 6d.
BROWN-Minchmoor.
Fcap. sewed, 6d.
BROWN—Jeems the Doorkeeper: A Lay Sermon.
6d.
BROWN-The Enterkin.
6d.
CAMPBELL-My Indian Journal,
Containing descriptions of the principal Field Sports of India,
with Notes on the Natural History and Habits of the Wild
Animals of the Country. By Colonel WALTER CAMPBELL,
Author of "The Old Forest Ranger." 8vo, with Illustrations,
16s.
CUMMING_Wild Men and Wild Beasts.
Adven-
tures in Camp and Jungle. By Lieut.-Colonel GORDON CUMMING.
-With Illustrations by Lieut.-Col. BAIGRIE and others. Second
edition. Demy 4to, price 24s.
Also, a cheaper edition, with Lithographic Illustrations.
8vo, 12s.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
5
CHALMERS-Life and Works of Rev. Thomas
Chalmers, D.D., LL.D.
MEMOIRS OF THE REV. THOMAS CHALMERS. By Rev. W.
HANNA, D.D., LL.D. Cheap edition. 2 vols. crown 8vo,
cloth, 12s.
DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS. Cheap edition. 2 vols. crown
8vo, 10s.
ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES, 18.
COMMERCIAL DISCOURSES, 18.
SELECT WORKS, in 12 vols., crown 8vo, cloth, per vol., 68.
LECTURES ON THE ROMANS. 2 vols.
SERMONS. 2 vols.
NATURAL THEOLOGY, LECTURES ON BUTLER'S ANALOGY, ETC. 1 vol.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, LECTURES ON PALEY'S EVIDENCES, ETC. 1 vol.
INSTITUTES OF THEOLOGY. 2 vols.
POLITICAL ECONOMY, WITH COGNATE ESSAYS. 1 vol.
POLITY OF A NATION. 1 vol.
CHURCH AND COLLEGE ESTABLISHMENTS. 1 vol.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS, INDEX, ETC. 1 vol.
CHIENE Lectures on Surgical Anatomy.
By JOHN CHIENE, Assistant-Surgeon, Royal Infirmary, Edin-
burgh. In 1 vol. 8vo. With numerous Illustrations drawn on
Stone by BERJEAU.
[In the Press.
CONSTABLE-Archibald Constable and his Literary
Correspondents: a Memorial. By his Son, THOMAS CONSTABLE.
3 vols. 8vo, 368., with Portrait.
"The cream of a generation of interesting men and women now gone from
among us-these are the subjects of this important memoir."-Saturday Review.
"These three volumes are decidedly additions to our knowledge of that
great and brilliant epoch in the history of letters to which they refer."-
Standard.
"He (Mr. Constable) was a genius in the publishing world.
creator of the Scottish publishing trade."-Times.
•
The
"These three volumes are of a singular and lasting interest."-Nonconformist.
6
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
“The third volume (Sir Walter Scott) of this elaborate and interesting history
is almost an independent work."—Athenæum.
"We heartily commend this book to the notice of all readers."-Guardian.
DASENT-Tales from the Norse.
By Sir GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L. Third edition, with
Introduction and Appendix. In 1 vol. demy 8vo. [In the Press.
DUN-Veterinary Medicines; their Actions and
Uses. By FINLAY DUN. Fourth edition, revised and enlarged.
8vo, 12s.
DUNBAR-Social Life in Former Days;
Chiefly in the Province of Moray. Illustrated by Letters and
Family Papers. By E. DUNBAR DUNBAR, late Captain 21st
Fusiliers. 2 vols. demy 8vo, 19s. 6d.
ERSKINE-Letters of Thomas Erskine of Lin-
lathen, from 1800 till 1840. Edited by WILLIAM HANNA, D.D.,
Author of the "Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers," etc. In 1 vol.
crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
[Now ready.
"Here is one who speaks out of the fulness of a large living human heart;
whose words will awaken an echo in the hearts of many burdened with the
cares of time, perplexed with the movements of the spirit of our time, who
will speak to their deepest needs, and lead them to a haven of rest.”— Daily
Review.
"It does one good to come in contact with so saintly a man, and Dr. Hanna
has certainly conferred a benefit on the Church at large by editing this
volume."-Edinburgh Courant.
"How high must that peak have been which caught the light so early,'
were the words with which a writer in the Contemporary Review, in sketching
the life of Thomas Erskine, shortly after his death, characterised his position,
his spirit, and his influence."-Nonconformist.
"It is impossible by brief quotation to communicate the beautiful spirit
which the letters breathe, but we may indicate what Dr. Hanna has so well
done to make the letters answer as nearly as practicable the purposes of a
biography. We take leave of the volume with a hearty commendation of the
purity of spirit it is fitted to impart."-Banffshire Journal.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
7
ERSKINE-The Unconditional Freeness of the
Gospel. New edition, revised. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
ERSKINE-An Essay on Faith.
Fourth edition. 12mo, 38.
ERSKINE—The Spiritual Order, and other Papers
selected from the MSS. of the late THOMAS ERSKINE of Lin-
lathen. Second edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s.
"It will for a few have a value which others will not the least understand.
But all must recognise in it the utterance of a spirit profoundly penetrated
with the sense of brotherhood, and with the claims of common humanity."—
Spectator.
"Very deserving of study."-Times.
Vide BIBLE READINGS and FRAGMENTS OF TRUTH.
FINLAY-Essay to which was awarded the First
Mackenzie Prize for the best Essay on the best means of Im-
proving the Relations between Capital and Labour. By JAMES
FAIRBAIRN FINLAY, M. A. Demy 8vo, 18.
FLETCHER-Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher (of
Edinburgh), with Letters and other Family Memorials. Edited
by her Daughter. Second edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
"This is a delightful book. It contains an illustrative record of a singularly
noble, true, pure, prolonged, and happy life. The story is recounted with a
candour, vivacity, and grace which are very charming."-Daily Review.
FLEURY-L'Histoire d'Angleterre.
Par M. LAMÉ FLEURY. 18mo, cloth, 2s. 6d.
FLEURY-L'Histoire de France.
Par M. LAMÉ FLEURY. New edition. 18mo, cloth, 2s. 6d.
FORBES—The Deepening of the Spiritual Life.
By A. P. FORBES, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin. Fifth edition.
18mo, cloth, price ls. 6d. ; or paper covers, 1s. ; calf, red edges,
38. 6d.
8
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
FORBES-Kalendars of Scottish Saints, with Per-
sonal Notices of those of Alba, etc. By ALEXANDER PENROSE
FORBES, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin. 1 vol. 4to, price £3, 3s.
A few copies for sale on large paper, £5, 15s. 6d.
A truly valuable contribution to the archæology of Scotland."-Guardian.
"We must not forget to thank the author for the great amount of informa-
tion he has put together, and for the labour he has bestowed on a work which
can never be remunerative."-Saturday Review.
"His laborious and very interesting work on the early Saints of Alba,
Laudonia, and Strathclyde."-Quarterly Review.
Fragments of Truth. Being the Exposition of several
passages of Scripture. Third edition. Extra fcap. 8vo, 5s.
GAIRDNER-On Medicine and Medical Education.
By W. T. GAIRDNER, Professor of the Practice of Medicine in
the University of Glasgow. Three Lectures, with Notes and am
Appendix. 8vo, 3s. 6d.
GAIRDNER-Clinical and Pathological Notes on
Pericarditis. By W. T. GAIRDNER, Professor of the Practice of
Medicine in the University of Glasgow. 8vo, sewed, ls.
GIBSON, C. P.-Cheerfulness.
By CHARLES P. GIBSON. In 1 vol. fcap., 3s. 6d.
"It depicts, in very graphic and glowing terms, much of the scenery of
this northern district of England, and is therefore sure to be prized very
highly by those Northumbrians into whose hands it may happen to fall.
Apart, however, from its local interest, it has peculiar merits of its own,
and no one can read it without feeling that his own spirit has been en-
livened and elevated by so doing. Its pictures remind us very forcibly of
those of Thomson, Cowper, and Burns. In fact, since Thomson wrote his
'Seasons,' no poem has appeared in this country that so graphically and
beautifully describes the pursuits of rural industry. 'His Muse,' writes Dr.
John Cairns of Berwick, 'at home amidst every glimpse of rural beauty and
sweetness, gilds the living processes of husbandry and sheep-tending rather
than the raids and sieges of other days, and turns away from the death-scenes
of romance to pour the blessed light of a pure and loving sympathy over the
humble abodes scattered all up and down the lovely borderland.' These
words truthfully describe the nature of the poem."-Newcastle Daily Journal.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
9
GORDON—The Home Life of Sir David Brewster.
By his Daughter, Mrs. GORDON. Second edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"With his own countrymen it is sure of a welcome, and to the savants of
Europe, and of the New World, it will have a real and special interest of its
own."-Pall Mall Gazette.
GORDON-Workers.
Fourth thousand. Fcap. 8vo, limp cloth, ls.
GORDON—Work; or, Plenty to do and How to do it.
Thirty-fifth thousand. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d.
GORDON-Little Millie and her Four Places.
Cheap Edition. Fifty-fifth thousand. Limp cloth, 18.
GORDON-Sunbeams in the Cottage; or, What
Women may do. A Narrative chiefly addressed to the Work-
ing Classes. Cheap edition. Forty-fourth thousand. Limp
cloth, 1s.
GORDON-Prevention; or, An Appeal to Economy
and Common Sense. 8vo, 6d.
GORDON—The Word and the World.
Twelfth edition. Price 2d.
GORDON-Leaves of Healing for the Sick and
Sorrowful. Fcap. 4to, cloth, 3s. 6d.
cloth, 28.
GORDON-The Motherless Boy;
Cheap edition, limp
With an Illustration by Sir J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A. Cheap
edition, limp cloth, 18.
"Alike in manner and matter calculated to attract youthful attention, and
to attract it by the best of all means-sympathy."-Scotsman.
GRAHAM—“Mystifications.”
By Miss STIRLING GRAHAM. Fourth edition.
Edited by
JOHN BROWN, M.D. With Portrait of "Lady Pitlyal." Fcap.
8vo, 38. 6d.
10
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
HANNA-The Life of our Lord.
By the Rev. WILLIAM HANNA, D.D., LL.D. 6 vols., hand-
somely bound in cloth extra, gilt edges, 30s.
Separate vols., cloth extra, gilt edges, 5s. each.
1. THE EARLIER YEARS OF OUR LORD. Eighth thousand.
2. THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE.
3. THE CLOSE OF THE MINISTRY.
Third edition.
Sixth thousand.
4. THE PASSION WEEK. Fifth thousand.
5. THE LAST DAY OF OUR LORD'S PASSION. Forty-seventh
thousand.
6. THE FORTY DAYS AFTER THE RESURRECTION,
thousand.
HANNA-The Resurrection of the Dead.
Ninth
By WILLIAM HANNA, D.D., LL.D., author of "The Last Day
of our Lord's Passion," etc. Second edition. One vol. fcap.
8vo, 5s.
JOHNNY GIBB of Gushetneuk, in the Parish of
Pyketillim: with Glimpses of the Parish Politics about A.d.
1843. Fourth edition, with a Glossary. 12mo. [In the Press.
"It is a grand addition to our pure Scottish dialect; . . . it is not merely
à capital specimen of genuine Scottish northern dialect; but it is a capital
specimen of pawky characteristic Scottish humour. It is full of good hard
Scottish dry fun."-Dean Ramsay.
Notes and Sketches Illustrative of Northern Rural
Life in the Eighteenth Century, by the Author of "Johnny
Gibb of Gushetneuk." In 1 vol. fcap. 8vo, 2s.
KER-Sermons by the Rev. John Ker, D.D., Glas-
gow. Eleventh edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
We have not seen a volume
"This is a very remarkable volume of sermons.
of sermons for many a day which will so thoroughly repay both purchase and
perusal and re-perusal. And not the least merit of these sermons is, that they
are eminently suggestive."-Contemporary Review.
"The sermons before us are indeed of no common order; among a host of
competitors they occupy a high class-we were about to say the highest class
--whether viewed in point of composition, or thought, or treatment."-British
and Foreign Evangelical Review.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
11
LAING-Lindores Abbey, and the Burgh of New-
burgh: their History and Annals. By ALEXANDER LAING,
F.S.A. Scot. 1 vol. small 4to. With Index, and thirteen Full-
page and ten Woodcut Illustrations, 21s.
"This is a charming volume in every respect."-Notes and Queries.
"The prominent characteristics of the work are its exhaustiveness and the
thoroughly philosophic spirit in which it is written."-Scotsman.
"It will repay attentive and minute study on the part even of those who
may be well acquainted with the subject."-Fifeshire Journal.
"The real value of the volume is certainly not indicated by its title. Lin-
dores Abbey and Newburgh are but the centre around which are clustered
masses of historical, antiquarian, and genealogical lore."-Dundee Advertiser.
"The contents of the volume are full of interest, do the utmost credit to
the author, and give it a strong claim to a place on the shelves of all who have
a taste for reading in the line of his researches."-Daily Review.
LAURIE—On the Philosophy of Ethics. An Analy-
tical Essay. By S. S. LAURIE, A.M., F.R.S. E., Professor of
the Theory, History, and Practice of Education in the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh. Demy 8vo, 6s.
"Mr. Laurie's volume now before us is in substance, though not in form, a
reply to Mr. Mill's Utilitarianism. Mr. Laurie has the metaphysical head and
the metaphysical training of his countrymen, and has brought both to bear
with great force on the problem proposed."-Saturday Review.
LAURIE-Notes on British Theories of Morals.
Demy 8vo, 6s.
"His criticisms are candid and highly instructive, e.g. those of the views of
Bentham, Mill, and Bain. He manifests great aptitude in detecting radical
defects, in exposing logical inconsistencies, and in detecting the legitimate
tendencies of philosophical systems."-British Quarterly.
MACLAGAN-The Hill Forts, Stone Circles, and
other Structural Remains of Ancient Scotland. By C. MAC-
LAGAN, Lady Associate of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
With Plans and Illustrations. 1 vol. fol., 31s. 6d.
"We need not enlarge on the few inconsequential speculations which rigid
archæologists may find in the present volume. We desire rather to commend
it to their careful study, fully assured that not only they, but also the general
reader, will be edified by its perusal."-Scotsman.
12
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
MACKAY-Memoir of Sir James Dalrymple, First
Viscount Stair, President of the Court of Session in Scotland,
and Author of "The Institutions of the Law of Scotland." A
Study in the History of Scotland and Scotch Law during the
Seventeenth Century. By E. J. G. MACKAY, Advocate. 8vo.
12s.
MACPHERSON-Omnipotence belongs only to the
Beloved. By Mrs. BREWSTER MACPHERSON. 1 vol., extra
fcap., 3s. 6d.
MAXWELL-Soliman the Magnificent, and the
Turks in the Sixteenth Century. By Sir WILLIAM STIRLING
MAXWELL, Bart., K.T. and M.P. Illustrated by numerous
Facsimiles of rare contemporary Drawings and Portraits.
In 1 vol. folio.
[In the Press.
MILN-Researches and Excavations at Carnac
(Morbihan), the Bossenno, and Mont St. Michel. By JAMES
MILN. In 1 vol. royal 8vo, with Maps, Plans, and numerous
Illustrations in Wood-Engraving and Chromo-Lithography.
NAPIER "The Lanox of Auld:" an Epistolary
Review of "The Lennox, by William Fraser." To which is
added, A Postscriptive Memorie of the House of Merchiston.
By MARK NAPIER. With Woodcuts and Plates. 1 vol. 4to.
[In preparation.
PATRICK, R. W. COCHRAN-Records of the Coin-
age of Scotland, from the earliest period to the Union. Col-
lected by R. W. COCHRAN PATRICK of Woodside. Only Two
Hundred and Fifty Copies printed. Now ready, in 2 vols. 4to,
with 16 Full-page Illustrations, Six Guineas.
"The future Historians of Scotland will be very fortunate if many parts of
their materials are so carefully worked up for them and set before them in so
complete and taking a form.”—Athenceum.
"When we say that these two volumes contain more than 770 records, of
which more than 550 have never been printed before, and that they are illus-
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
13
trated by a series of Plates, by the autotype process, of the coins themselves,
the reader may judge for himself of the learning, as well as the pains, bestowed
on them both by the Author and the Publisher.”—Times.
"The most handsome and complete Work of the kind which has ever
been published in this country.”—Numismatic Chronicle, Pt. IV., 1876.
Popular Genealogists;
Or, The Art of Pedigree-making. Crown 8vo, 48
"We have here an agreeable little treatise of a hundred pages, from an anony-
mous but evidently competent hand, on the ludicrous and fraudulent sides of
genealogy. The subject has a serious and important historical character,
when regarded from the point of view of the authors of The Governing
Families of England. But it is rich in the materials of comedy also.
"The first case selected by the writer before us is one which has often
excited our mirth by the very completeness of its unrivalled absurdity.
Nobody can turn over the popular genealogical books of our day without
dropping on a family called Coulthart of Coulthart, Collyn, and Ashton-under-
Lyne. The pedigree given makes the house beyond all question the oldest in
Europe. Neither the Bourbons nor Her Majesty's family can be satisfactorily
carried beyond the ninth century, whereas the Coultharts were by that time
an old and distinguished house.
"We are glad to see such a step taken in the good work as the publication
of the essay which has suggested this article, and which we commend to those
who want a bit of instructive and amusing reading.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
RENTON, W.-Oils and Water Colours.
By WILLIAM RENTON. 1 vol. fcap. 5s.
"The book is obviously for the Artist and the Poet, and for every one who
shares with them a true love and zeal for nature's beauties."-Scotsman.
"To have observed such a delicate bit of colouring as this, and to have
written so good a sonnet in the 'strict style,' as that we have quoted, shows
that our author has no common powers either as an observer or a writer."
-Liverpool Albion.
"To those minds that really hold this joy in beauty, Mr. Renton's book
will undoubtedly give delight."-Northern Ensign.
ROBERTSON-Historical
Essays in connection
with the Land and the Church, etc. By E. WILLIAM ROBERT-
SON, Author of "Scotland under her Early Kings." In 1 vol.
8vo, 10s. 6d.
14
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
ROBERTSON-Scotland under her Early Kings.
A History of the Kingdom to the close of the 13th century.
By E. WILLIAM ROBERTSON. In 2 vols. 8vo, cloth, 36s.
"Mr. Robertson's labours are of that valuable kind where an intelligent
and thorough sifting of original authorities is brought to bear upon a portion
of history handed over hitherto, in a pre-eminent degree, to a specially
mendacious set of Medieval Chroniclers, and (not so long ago) to a specially
polemical and uncritical class of modern Historians. He belongs to the school
of Innes and Skene and Joseph Robertson, and has established a fair right to
be classed with the Reeves and Todds of Irish historical antiquarianism, and
the Sharpes, and Kembles, and Hardys in England."-Guardian.
SHAIRP-Studies in Poetry and Philosophy.
By J. C. SHAIRP, LL.D., Principal of the United College of
St. Salvator and St. Leonard, St. Andrews. Second Edition.
1 vol. fcap. 8vo, 6s.
SHAIRP—On Poetic Interpretation of Nature.
By J. C. SHAIRP, LL.D., Principal of the United College of
St. Salvator and St. Leonard, St. Andrews. In 1 vol. crown
8vo.
SHAIRP-Wordsworth's Tour in Scotland in 1803,
in company with his Sister and S. T. Coleridge; being the
Journal of MISS WORDSWORTH, now for the first time made
public. Edited by PRINCIPAL SHAIRP, LL.D. Second Edition,
1 vol. crown 8vo, 6s.
"If there were no other record of her than those brief extracts from her
Journal during the Highland Tour, which stand at the head of several of her
brother's poems, these alone would prove her possessed of a large portion of
his genius."-North British Review.
SKENE-The Four Ancient Books of Wales,
Containing the Cymric Poems attributed to the Bards of the
Sixth Century. By WILLIAM F. SKENE. With Maps and
Facsimiles. 2 vols. 8vo, 368.
"Mr. Skene's book will, as a matter of course and necessity, find its place
on the tables of all Celtic antiquarians and scholars."-Archeologia Cambrensis.
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
15
SKENE-The Coronation Stone.
By WILLIAM F. SKENE.
Small 4to. With Illustrations in
Photography and Zincography. 68.
SKENE-Celtic Scotland.
A History of Ancient Alban. By WILLIAM F. SKENE.
Book 1, History and Ethnology. Illustrated with Maps.
Vol. I.
158.
"It is a book of solid and good work, and which ought to be thankfully
welcomed by all who are engaged in any minute study of the early history of
Britain."-Pall Mall Gazette.
'This volume is the first instalment of a work which will bring the early
history of Scotland out of the clouds and mists of artificially constructed
systems of history, exaggerated tradition, and legendary fiction, and into a
real, if still somewhat dim, historic light."-Edinburgh Courant.
"Da ist es denn in der That ein Fortschritt, wenn ein Gelehrter, der sich
die schwierigen, aber unerläszlichen Sprachkenntnisse erworben und seit
Jahren mit Sichtung der vertrauenswerthen Ueberlieferung von den Trugge-
bilden, welche alles Keltische so leicht bedecken, befaszt hat, die bedeutende
Aufgabe in die Hand nimmt nach strenger Methode die wirklichen Thatsachen
jener Anfangsjahrhunderte hinzustellen. Er hat sich gründlich mit der
einheimischen Literatur von Wales und Irland bekannt gemacht und steht
durch Kenntnisz des Deutschen in verbindung mit den Fortschritten der
sprachvergleichenden Wissenschaft überhaupt. .... Ungemein lehrreich
mit Hülfe einiger Kärtchen, deren wissenschaftliche Begründung wohl
verdient von der neuen Ausgabe des Historischen Atlas von Spruner-Menke
für die britannische Abtheilung ernstlich in Betracht gezogen zu werden, ist
Alles, was ein so genauer Kenner seiner Heimath, wie Skene es ist, hinsicht-
lich der physikalischen und ganz besonders der geschichtlichen, Geographie
derselben beibringt. . . . . Linguistik, Ethnographie, Topographie und
Kritik der historischen Quellen greifen für diese wichtige Epoche des
Uebergangs wirkungsvoll in einander, wie es meines Wissens bisher in
keinem anderen Werke geschehn ist."-Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen.-
Dr. R. PAULI.
SKENE-Celtic Scotland.
A History of Ancient Alban. Vol. II. Book 2, Church and
Culture. In 8vo. With Maps, 15s.
SKENE-Celtic Scotland.
A History of Ancient Alban. Vol. III. Book 3, Land and
People.
[In preparation.

16
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS.
SMALL-Scottish Woodwork of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries. Measured, Drawn, and Lithographed
by J. W. SMALL, Architect. In one folio volume with 100
Plates.
[In the Press.
SMYTH-Life and Work at the Great Pyramid.
With a Discussion of the Facts ascertained. By C. PIAZZI
SMYTH, F.R.SS.L. and E., Astronomer-Royal for Scotland.
3 vols. demy 8vo, 56s.
SMYTH--An Equal-Surface Projection for Maps of
the World, and its Application to certain Anthropological
Questions. By C. PIAZZI SMYTH, F.R.SS.L. and E., Astronomer-
Royal for Scotland. 8vo, 3s.
SOUTHESK-Britain's Art Paradise; or, Notes on
some Pictures in the Royal Academy, 1871. By the EARL OF
SOUTHESK. 8vo, sewed, 1s.
SOUTHESK - Saskatchewan
and the Rocky
Mountains. Diary and Narrative of Travel, Sport, and Adven-
ture, during a Journey through part of the Hudson's Bay
Company's Territories, in 1859 and 1860. By the EARL OF
SOUTHESK, K.T., F.R.G.S. 1 vol. demy 8vo, with Illustrations
on Wood by WHYMPER, 18s.
SOUTHESK-Herminius.
A Romance. By I. E. S. Fcap. 8vo, 6s.
STRACHAN-What is Play?
A Physiological Inquiry. Its bearing upon Education and
Training. By JOHN STRACHAN, M.D., Jun. In 1 vol. fcap., ls.
Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner things, whom Nature leads,
Are seldom known to stray.
WILSON-Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh.
By DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of History and
English Literature in University College, Toronto, Author of
"Prehistoric Annals of Scotland," etc. etc. 2 vols. post 8vo.

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