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I




SH EL LE Y
A DON AI S
W. M. ROSSETTI
AND
A. 0. PRICKARD




HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHIR TO THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK




S  ELEIA ~tA/Ai '


ADONA


S


EDITED
WITH INTRODUCTION


AND NOTES


BY


WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI
A NEW EDITION
REVISED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF
A. 0. PRICKARD, M.A.
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS


1903




OXFORD
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




/ 2
COTET.NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
PREFACE..
MEMOIR OF SHELLEY
MEMOIR OF KEATS.
ADONAIS:
ITS COMPOSITION AND
ITS ARGUMENT.
GENERAL EXPOSITION
BION AND MOSCHUS
ADONAIS: PREFACE.
ADONAIS.
CANCELLED PASSAGES OF
ITS PREFACE
NOTES..
INDEX..


PAGE
vi
*. vii
*.  I
*. 27


BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADONAIS, AN~D


* 3'
* 48
* 55
* 67
* 74


OF


93
96
'157


2(459




NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
IN this re-issue greater attention has been paid to the
classical sources from which many passages and ideas
in Adonais are derived, and a freer use has been made
of parallel passages from various authors ancient and
modern. Some reviewers —I may name more especially
Mr. Churton Collins-pointed out this requirement. The
improvements of this description are due not to myself,
but to Mr. A. 0. Prickard. In other respects I have
carefully revised my work in the volume: but, with
regard to dates &c. I have not, as a rule, altered references which were correct in the year of original issue,
1890.
W. M. R.
March 1903.




PREFACE
Adonais is the first writing by Shelley which has been
included in the Clarendon Press Series. It is a poem of
convenient length for such a purpose, being neither
short nor decidedly long; and-leaving out of count
some of the short poems-is the single one by this
author which approaches to being 'popular.' It is
elevated in sentiment, classical in form,-in substance,
biographical in relation to Keats, and in some minor
degree autobiographical for Shelley himselTi. - fthese
grounds t claimed a reasonablepreference over all his
other poems, for the present method of treatment;
although some students of Shelley, myself included,
might be disposed to maintain that, in point of absolute
intrinsic beauty and achievement, and of the qualities
most especially characteristic of its author, it is not
superior, or indeed is but, barely equal, to some of his
other compositions. To take, for instance, two poems
not very different in length from Adonais-The Witch of
Atlas is more original, and Epipsychidion more abstract
in ideal.
I have endeavoured to present in my introductory
matter a comprehensive account of all particulars relevant to Adonais itself, and to Keats as its subject, and
Shelley as its author. The accounts here given of both
these great poets are of course meagre, but I assume
them to be not insufficient for our immediate and restricted purpose. There are many other books which




viii
~ *
Vlll


PREFACE


the reader can profitably consult as to the life and works
of Shelley; and three or four (at least) as to the life and
works of Keats. My concluding notes are, I suppose,
ample in scale: if they are excessive, that is an involuntary error on my part. My aim in them has been
to illustrate and elucidate the poem in its details, yet
without travelling far afield in search of remote analogies
or discursive comment-my wish being rather to 'stick
to my text': wherever a difficulty presents itself, I have
essayed to define it, and clear it up-but not always to
my own satisfaction. I have seldom had to discuss the
opinions of previous writers on the same points, for the
simple reason that of detailed criticism of Adonais, apart
from merely textual memoranda, there is next to none.
It has appeared to me to be part of my duty to point
out here and there, but by no means frequently, some
special beauty in the poem; occasionally also something
which seems to me defective or faulty. I am aware that
this latter is an invidious office, which naturally exposes
one to an imputation, from some quarters, of obtuseness,
and, from others, of presumption.; none the less I have
expressed myself with the frankness which, according to
my own view, belongs to the essence of such a task as is
here undertaken. Adonais is a composition which has
retorted beforehand upon its actual or possible detractors.
In the poem itself, and in the prefatory matter adjoined
to it, Shelley takes critics very severely to task: but
criticism has its discerning and temperate, as well as its
'stupid and malignant,' phases.
W. M. ROSSETTI.
July 189o.
ERRATUM
P. II7, 1. I2,for as a knell read like a bell


Adonais




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY
THE life of Percy Bysshe Shelley is one which has
given rise to a great deal of controversy, and which
cannot, for a long time to come, fail to be regarded with
very diverse sentiments. His extreme opinions on questions of religion and morals, anct egreat!l4tidpj4 which
he allowed himself laceg accdrdin g to his own opinions,
however widely they might depart from the law of the
land and of society, could not but produce this result. In
his own time he was generally accounted an outrageous
and shameful offender. At the present date many persons
entertain essentially the same view, although softened by
lapse of years, and by respect for his standing as a poet:
others regard him as a conspicuous reformer. Some take
a medium course, and consider him to have been sincere,
and so far laudable; but rash and reckless of consequences, and so far censurable. His poetry also has
been subject to very different constructions.  During
his lifetime it obtained little notice save for purposes of
disparagement and denunciation. Now it is viewed with
extreme enthusiasm by many, and is generally admitted
to hold a permanent rank in English literature, though
faulty (as some opine) through vague iealism and want
of bacye^ -These are all points on which I shall here
offer no personal opinion. I shall confine myself to
\tracing the chief outlines of Shelley's life, and (very
briefly) the sequence of his literary work.
Percy Bysshe Shelley came of a junior and comparatively undistinguished branch of a very old and noted
family. His branch was termed the Worminghurst
ADONAIS              B




2


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


Shelleys; and it is only quite latelyl that the affiliation
of this branch to the more eminent and senior stock of
the Michelgrove Shelleys has passed from the condition
of a probable and obvious surmise into that of an established fact. The family traces up to Sir William Shelley,
Judge of the Common Pleas under Henry VII, thence
to a Member of Parliament in I415, and to the reign
of Edward I, or even to the Norman Conquest. The
Worminghurst Shelleys start with Henry Shelley, who
died in I623. It will be sufficient here to begin with the
poet's grandfather, Bysshe Shelley. He was born at Christ
Church, Newark, North America, and raised to a noticeable height, chiefly by two wealthy marriages, the fortunes
of the junior branch. Handsome, keen-minded, and adventurous, he eloped with Mary Catherine, heiress of the
Rev. Theobald Michell, of Horsham; after her death he
eloped with Elizabeth Jane, heiress of Mr. Perry, of
Penshurst. By this second wife he had a family, now
represented by the Baron de l'Isle and Dudley: by his
first wife he had (besides a daughter) a son Timothy,
who was the poet's father, and who became in due course
Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., M.P. His baronetcy was
inherited from his father Bysshe-on whom it had been
conferred in i806, chiefly through the interest of the
Duke of Norfolk, the head of the Whig party in the
county of Sussex, to whose politics the new baronet
had adhered.
1 See the Life of Mrs. Shelley, by Lucy Madox Rossetti (Eminent
Women Series), published in 1890. The connexion between the
two branches of the Shelley family is also set forth-incidentally,
but with perfect distinctness-in Collins'sPeerage ofEngland (I756),J
vol. iii. p. II9. He says that Viscount Lumley (who died at some
date towards i670) I married Frances, daughter of Henry Shelley,
of Warminghurst in Sussex, Esq. (a younger branch of the family
seated at Michaelgrove, the seat of the present Sir John Shelley,
Bart.).'


I




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


3


Mr. Timothy Shelley was a very ordinary country
gentleman in essentials, and a rather eccentric one in
some details. He was settled at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Charles
Pilfold, of Effingham, Surrey; she was a beauty, and a
woman of good abilities, but without any literary turn.
Their first child was the poet, Percy Bysshe, born at Field
Place on Aug. 4, I792: four daughters also grew up, and
a younger son, John: the eldest son of John was afterwards the Baronet, having succeeded, in 1889, Sir Percy
Florence Shelley, the poet's only surviving son. No one
has managed to discover in the parents of Percy Bysshe
any qualities furnishing the prototype or the nucleus of
his poetical genius, or of the very exceptional cast of
mind and character which he developed in other directions. The parents were commonplace: if we go back
to the grandfather, Sir Bysshe, we encounter a man who
was certainly not commonplace, but who seems to have
been devoid of any fervour of spirit, whether in the
poetical or in any other direction. He figures as intent
upon his worldly interests, accumulating a massive fortune,
and spending lavishly upon the building of Castle Goring;
in his old age, penurious, unsocial, and almost churlish in
his habits. His Dassion was to domi
point; of this the poet inay have inherited something.
His ideal of success was 'wEa rTfirn"iT<Nrly' pos6iton,
things to which the poet was, on the contrary, abnormally
indifferent.
Shelley's schooling began at six years of age, when he
was placed under the Rev. Mr. Edwards, at Warnham.
At ten he went to Sion House School, Brentford, of which
the Principal was Dr. Greenlaw, the pupils being mostly
sons of local tradesmen. In July, I804, he proceeded to
Eton, where Dr. Goodall was the Head Master, succeeded,
just towards the end of Shelley's stay, by the far severer
Dr. Keate. Shelley was shy, sensitive, and of susceptible
B2




4


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


fancy: at Eton we first find him insubordinate as well.
He steadily resisted the fagging-system, learned more as
he chose than as his masters dictated, and was known as
a"'aTShlU     n dT'eSefleyfTfieMtleist.' It has sometimes been said that an Eton boy, if rebellious, was
termed 'Atheist,' and that the designation, as applied to
Shelley, meant no more than that. I do not feel satisfied
that this is true at all; at any rate it seems to me
probable that Shelley, who constantly called himself an
atheist in after-life, received the epithet at Eton for some
cause more apposite than disaffection to school-authority.
He finally left Eton in July, I8Io. He had already
been entered at University College, Oxford, in April of
that year, and he commenced residence there in October.
His one very intimate friend in Oxford was Thomas
Jefferson Hogg, a student from the county of Durham.
Hogg was not, like Shelley, an enthusiast eaer to learn
new tr     a   _auth~  taA1; but he was a youth
appreciative of classical and other literature, and little or
ot at all less disposed than Percy to disregard all precription in religious dogma. By demeanour and act they
both courted academic censure, and they got it in its
extremest form. Shelley wrote, probably with some
co-operation from Hogg, and he published anonymously
in Oxford, a little pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism;
he projected sending it round broadcast as an invitation
or challenge to discussion. This small pamphlet-it is
scarcely more than a flysheet-hardly amounts to saying
that Atheism is irrefragably true, and Theism therefore
false; but it propounds that the existence of a God cannot
be proved by reason, nor yet by testimony; that a direct
revelation made to an individual would alone be adequate
ground for convincing that individual; and that the
persons to whom such a revelation is not accorded are
in consequence warranted in remaining unconvinced.
The College authorities got wind of the pamphlet, and




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


5


found reason for regarding Shelley as its author, and on
March 25, I8II, they summoned him to appear. He was
required to say whether he had written it or not. To
this demand he refused an answer, and was then expelled
by a written sentence, ready drawn up. With Hogg the
like process was repeated. Their offence, as entered on
the College records, was that of 'contumaciously refusing
to answer questions,' and 'repeatedly declining to disavow' the authorship of the work. In strictness therefore
they were expelled, not for bein  roclaimed at ts,
but for defyin acadefyg   a Utmit,  wh required to be
satisfied as to that question. Shortly before this disaster
an engagement between Shelley and his first cousin on
the mother's side, Miss Harriet Grove, had come to an
end, owing to the alarm excited by the youth's sceptical
opinions.
Settling in lodgings in London, and parting from Hogg,
who went to York to study conveyancing, Percy pretty
soon found a substitute for Harriet Grove in Harriet
Westbrook, a girl of fifteen, schoolfellow of two of his
sisters at Clapham. She was exceedingly pretty, daughter
of a retired hotel-keeper in easy circumstances. Shelley
wanted to talk both her and his sisters out of Christianity;
and he cultivated the acquaintance of herself and of her
much less juvenile sister Eliza, calling from time to time
at their father's house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor
Square. Harriet fell in love with him: besides, he was
a highly eligible parti, being a prospective baronet, absolute
heir to a very considerable estate, and contingent heir (if
he had assented to a proposal of entail, to which however
he never did assent, professing conscientious objections)
to another estate still larger. Shelley was not in love
with Harriet; but he liked her, and was willing to do
anything he could to further her wishes and plans.
Mr. Timothy Shelley, after a while, pardoned his son's
misadventure at Oxford, and made him a moderate




6


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


allowance of ~2oo a-year. Percy then visited a cousin in
Wales, a member of the Grove family. He was recalled
to London by Harriet Westbrook, who protested against
a project of sending her back to school. He counselled
resistance. She replied in July I8Ix (to quote a contemporary letter from Shelley to Hogg), ' tatresistance was
useless bu that she-woutld fly with me, and threw herself
upon my protection' This was clearly a rat:her~eclded
step upon the damsel's part: we may form our own
conclusions whether she was willing to unite with Percy
without the bond of marriage; or whether she confidently
calculated upon inducing him to marry her, her family
being kept in the dark; or whether the whole affair was
a family manceuvre for forcing on an engagement and
a wedding. Shelley returned to London, and had various
colloquies with Harriet: in due course he eloped with
her to Edinburgh, and there on August 28 he married
her. His age was then just nineenn      ssixteen.
\ )Shelley, who was a profound believer in William Godwin's
o:^. Political Justice, rejected the institution of marriage as
y'  beiag.^eidfund,^^;        i 4^wwngful.   But h e
' "Isaw that he could not in this instance apply his own pet
theories without involving in discredit and discomfort the
woman whose love had been bestowed upon him. Either
his opinion cr her happiness must be sacrificed to what
he deemed a prejudice of society: he decided rather to
sacrifice the former.
For two years, or up to an advanced date in I813, the
married life of Shelley and Harriet appears to have been
a happy one, so far as their mutual relation was concerned; though rambling and scrambling, restricted by
mediocrity of income (~4oo a year, made up between the
two fathers), and pestered by the continual, and to Percy
at last very offensive, presence of Miss Westbrook as an
inmate of the house. They lived in York, Keswick in
Cumberland, Dublin (which Shelley visited as an express




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


7


advocate of Catholic emancipation and repeal of the
Union), Nantgwillt in Radnorshire, Lynmouth in Devonshire, Tanyrallt in Carnarvonshire, London, Bracknell in
Berkshire: Ireland and Edinburgh were also revisited.
Various strange adventures befell; the oddest of all being
an alleged attempt at assassination at Tanyrallt. Shelley
asserted it, others disbelieved it: after much disputation
the biographer supposes that, if not an imposture, it was
a romance, and, if not a romance, at least a hallucination,
-Shelley, besides being wild in talk and wild in fancy,
being by this time much addicted to laudanum-dosing.
In June 1813 Harriet gave birth, in London, to her first
child, lanthe Eliza (she married a Mr. Esdaile, and died
in 1876). About the same time Shelley brought out his
earliest work of importance, the poem of Queen Mab: its
speculative audacities   meer~ jLg.ret e for publication,
so it was only privately printed.
Amiable and accommodating at first, and neither illeducated nor stupid, Harriet did not improve in tone as
she advanced in womanhood. Her sympathy or tolerance
for her husband's ideals and vagaries flagged; when they
ifferedshe gave h-iHA the cold shoulder; she wanted
luxuries-such as a carriage of her own-which he neither
cared for nor could properly afford. He even said-and
one can hardly accuse him of saying it insincerely-that
she had been unfaithful to him: this however remains
quite unproved, and may have been a delusion. He
sought the society of the philosopher Godwin, then settled
as a bookseller in Skinner Street, Holborn. Godwin's
household at this time consisted of his second wife, who
had been a Mrs. Clairmont; Mary, his daughter by his first
wife, the celebrated Mary Woflst6onecrkAft; ahd his young
son by his second wife, William; also his step-children,
Charles and Clare Clairmont, and Fanny Wollstonecraft
(or Imlay), the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft by her
first irregular union with Gilbert Imlay. Until May 1814,




8


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


when she was getting on towards the age of seventeen,
Shelley had scarcely set eyes on Mary Godwin: he then
saw her, and a sudden passion sprang up between them
-uncontrollable   at any ra  uncontrolled. Harriet
ShIelley has left it on record that the advances and
importunities came from Mary Godwin to Shelley, and
were for a while resisted: it was natural for Harriet to
allege this, but I should not suppose it to be true, unless
in a very partial sense. Shelley sent for his wife, who
had gone for a while to Bath (perhaps in a fit of pettishness, but this is not clear), and explained to her in June
that they must separate-a resolve which she combated
as far as seemed possible, but finally she returned to
Bath, staying there with her father and sister. Shelley
made some arrangements for her convenience, and on
July 28 he once more eloped, this time with Mary
Godwin. Clare Clairmont chose to accompany them.
Godwin was totally opposed to the whole transaction, and
Mrs. Godwin even pursued the fugitives across the
Channel; but her appeal was unavailing, and the youthful
and defiant trio proceeded in much elation of spirit, and
not without a good deal of discomfort at times, from
Calais to Paris, and thence to Brunen by the Lake of Uri
in Switzerland. It is a curious fact, and shows how
ff    e       yrena      tdedtse matte,,from most
people, that he wrote to Harriet in affectionate terms,
i4: rging her to jinL the.   j     ide hard by them.
1 Mary, before the elopement took place, had made a
|somewhat similar proposal. Harriet had no notion of
complying; and, as it turned out, the adventurers had no
sooner reached Brunen than they found their money
exhausted, and they travelled back in all haste to London
in September,-Clare continuing to house with them now,
and for the most part during the remainder of Shelley's
life. Even a poet and idealist might have been expected
to show a little more worldly wisdom than this. After




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


9


his grievous experiences with Eliza Westbrook, the
sister of his first wife, Shelley might have managed to
steer clear of Clare Clairmont, the sister by affinity of his
second partner in life. He would not take warning, and
he paid the forfeit: not indeed that Clare was wanting in
fine qualities both of mind and of character, but she
proved a constant source of excitement and uneasiness
in the household, of unfounded scandal, and of harassing
complications.
In London Shelley and Mary lived in great straits, abandoned by almost all their acquaintances, and playing hideand-seek with creditors. But in January 1815 Sir Bysshe
Shelley died, and Percy's money affairs improved greatly.
An arrangement was arrived at with his father, whereby
he received a regular annual income of ZIooo, out of
which he assigned to Harriet ~200 for herself and her
two children-a son, Charles Bysshe, having been born
in November I814 (he died in 1826). Shelley and Mary
next settled at Bishopgate, near Windsor Forest. In
May i816 they went abroad, along with Miss Clairmont
and their infant son William, and joined Lord Byron on
the shore of the Lake of Geneva. An amour was already
going on between Byron and Miss Clairmont; it resulted
in the birth of a daughter, Allegra, in January 1817: she
died in 1822, very shortly before Shelley. He and Mary
had returned to London in September I8i6. Very shortly
afterwards, November 9, the ill-starred Harriet Shelley
drowned herself in the Serpentine: her body was only
recovered "onO December io, and the verdict of the
Coroner's jury was 'found drowned,' her name being
given as ' Harriet Smith.' The career of Harriet since
her separation from her husband is very indistinctly
known. It has indeed been asserted in positive terms
that she formed more than one connexion with other
men: she had ceased to live along with her father and
sister, and is said to have been expelled from their house.




iQ         MEMOIR OF SHELLEY
In these statements I see nothing either unveracious or
unlikely: but it is true that a sceptical habit of mind,
which insists upon express evidence and upon severe
sifting of evidence, may remain unconvinced 1. This was
the second suicide in Shelley's immediate circle, for Fanny
Wollstonecraft had taken poison just before under rather
unaccountable circumstances. No doubt he felt dismay
and hector, and self-reproach as weT ihere is nothing
to sitow that he condemned his conduct, at any stage of
the transactions with Harriet, as heinously wrong. He
took the earliest opportunity-December 30-of marrying Marv Gowin; and thus he became reconciled to her
ier and to other members of the family.
It was towards the time of Harriet's suicide that Shelley,
staying in and near London, became personally intimate
with the essayist and poet, Leigh Hunt, and through him
he came to know John Keats: their first meeting appears
to have occurred on February 5, 1817. As this matter
bears directly upon our immediate theme, the poem of
Adonais, I deal with it at far greater length than its
actual importance in the life of Shelley would otherwise
warrant.
Hunt, in his Autobiography, narrates as follows: I had
not known the young poet [Keats] long when Shelley and
he became acquainted under my roof. Keats did not take
toShelley as kadly as Shelley did to ihi  Shelly's
only thoughts of his new acquaintance were such as
regarded his bad health with which he sympathised
[this about bad health seems properly to apply to a date
later than the opening period when the two poets came
together], and his poetry, of which he has left such
a monument of his admiration as Adonais. Keats, being
a little too sensitive on the score of his origin, felt inclined
1 I am indebted to Mr. J. Cordy Jeaffreson for some strongly
reasoned arguments, in private correspondence, tending to
Harriet's disculpation.




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


II


to see in every man of birth a sort of natural enemy.
Their styles in writing also were very different; and
Keats, notwithstanding his unbounded sympathies with
ordinary flesh and blood, and even the transcendental
cosmopolitics of Hyperion, was so far inferior in universalityto his great acquaintance that he could not accompany
him in his daedal rounds with Nature, and his Archimedean endeavours to move the globe with his own hands
[an allusion to the motto appended to Queen Mab]. I am
bound to state thus much; because, hopeless of recovering
his health, under circumstances that made the feeling
extremely bitter, an irritable morbidity appears even to
have driven his suspicions to excess; and this not only
with regard to the acquaintance whom he might reasonably
suppose to have had some advantages over him, but to
myself, who had none; for I learned the other day with
extreme pain... that Keats, at one period of his intercourse with us, suspected both Shelley and myself of
a wish to see him undervalued! Such are the tricks
which constant infelicity can play with the most noble
natures. For Shelley let Adonais answer.' It is to be
observed that Hunt is here rather putting the cart before
the horse. Keats (as we shall see immediately) suspected
Shelley and Hunt 'of a wish to see him undervalued' as
early as February 1818; but his 'irritable morbidity' when
'hopeless of recovering his health' belongs to a later date,
say the spring and summer of 1820.
It is said that in the spring of 1817 Shelley and Keats
agreed that each of them would undertake an epic, to be
written in a space of six months: Shelley produced The
Revolt of Islam (originally entitled Laon and Cythna), and
Keats produced Endymion. Shelley's poem, the longer
of the two, was completed by the early autumn, while
Keats's occupied him until the winter which opened 1818.
On October 8, 1817, Keats wrote to a friend, 'I refused to
visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfettered scope';




12


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


meaning presumably that he wished to finish Endymion
according to his own canons of taste and execution,
without being hampered by any advice from Shelley.
There is also a letter from Keats to his two brothers,
December 22, 8I7, saying: 'Shelley's poem [Laon and
Cythna] is out, and there are words about its being
objected to as much as Queen Mab was. Poor Shelley,
I think he has his quota of good qualities.' As late as
February I8i8 he wrote, 'I have not yet read Shelley's
poem.' On January 23 of the same year he had written;
'The fact is, he [Hunt] and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps
justly, at my not having showed them the affair [Endymion
in MS.] officiously; and, from several hints I have had,
they appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any
trip or slip I may have made.' It was at nearly the same
{date, February 4, that Keats, Shelley, and Hunt wrote
each a sonnet on The Nile: in my judgement, Shelley's
isthe least successful of the three.
Soon after their marriage, Shelley and his second wife
settled at Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. They were
shortly disturbed by a Chancery suit, whereby Mr. Westbrook sought to deprive Shelley of the custody of his
two children by Harriet, Ianthe and Charles. Towards
March x8I8, Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced judgement
against Shelley, on the ground of his culpable conduct as
aJus   id, carrying out culpable opinions upheld in his
writings. The ~cildrienwFere'ianded over to Dr. Hume,
an army-physician named by Shelley: he had to assign
for their support a sum of ~I20 per annum, increased
to 20oo by a supplement from Mr. Westbrook. About
the same date he suffered from an illness which he
regarded as a dangerous pulmonary attack, and he made
iup his mind to quit England for Italy; accompanied by
his wife, their two infants William and Clara, Miss
Clairmont, and her infant Allegra, who was soon afterwards consigned to Lord Byron in Venice. Mr. Charles




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


I3


Cowden Clarke, who was Keats's friend from boyhood,
writes: 'When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told
me that he had received from him an invitation to become
his guest, and in short to make one of his household. It
was upon the purest principle that Keats declined his
noble proffer, for he entertained an exalted opinion of
Shelley's genius-in itself an inducement. He also knew
of Iiis deeds of bounty, and from their frequent social
intercourse he had full faith in the sincerity of his proposal.... Keats said that, in declining the invitation, his
sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever.
prevalent with him, of his being, in its utter extent, not
a free agent, even within such a circle as Shelley's —he
himself nevertheless being the most unrestrictedofbeings.'
Mr. Clarke seems to mean in this passage that Shelley,
before starting for Italy, invited Keats to accompany him
thither-a fact, if such it is, of which I find no trace
elsewhere. It is however just possible that Clarke was
only referring to the earlier invitation, previously mentioned, for Keats to visit at Great Marlow; or he may
most probably, with some confusion as to dates and
details, be thinking of the message which Shelley, when
already settled in Italy for a couple of years, addressed to
his brother-poet-of which more anon.
Shelley and his family-including for the most part
Miss Clairmont-wandered about a good deal in Italy.
They were in Milan, Leghorn, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice
and its neighbourhood, Rome, Naples, Florence, Pisa,
the Bagni di Pisa, and finally (after Shelley had gone
to Ravenna by himself) in a lonely house named Casa
Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, on the Bay of
Spezzia. Their two children died; but in i8I9 another
was born, the Sir Percy Florence Shelley who lived on
till November 1889. They were often isolated or even
solitary. Among their interesting acquaintances at one
place or another were, besides Byron, Mr. and Mrs.




14


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


Gisborne (the latter had previously been Mrs. Reveley,
and had been sought in marriage by Godwin after the
death of Mary Wollstonecraft in x797); the Contessina
Emilia Viviani, celebrated in Shelley's poem of Epipsychidion; Captain Medwin, Shelley's cousin and schoolfellow;
the Greek Prince, Alexander Mavrocordato; Lieutenant
and Mrs. Williams, who joined them at Casa Magni; and
Edward John Trelawny, an adventurous and daring searover, who afterwards accompanied Byron to Greece.
It was only towards the summer of 1819 that Shelley
read the Endymion. He wrote of it thus in a letter to
his publisher, Mr. Oilier, September 6, 1819: 'I have
read... Keats's poem.... Much praise is due to me
for having read it, the author's intention appearing to
be that no person should possibly get to the end of it.
Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams
of poetry: indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the
mind of a poet which is described in it. I think, if he
had printed about fifty pages of fragments from it, I should
have been led to admire Keats as a poet more than
I ought-of which there is now no danger.' Shelley
regarded the Hymn to Pan, in the first Book of Endymion,
as affording ' the surest promise of ultimate excellence.'
The health of Keats having broken down, and consumption having set in, Shelley wrote to him from Pisa
urging him to come over to Italy as his guest. Keats did
not however go to Pisa, but, along with the young painter
Joseph Severn, to Naples, and thence to Rome. I here
subjoin Shelley's letter.
'Pisa-July 27, 1820.
'MY DEAR KEATS,
'I hear with great pain the dangerous accident you
have undergone [recurrence of blood-spitting from the
lungs], and Mr. Gisborne, who gives me the account of it,
adds that you continue to wear a consumptive appearance.
This consumption is a disease particularly fond of people




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


15


who write such good verses asyou have don, and, with
tie~isias-ice of an English winter, it can often indulge
its selection. I do not think that young and amiable poets
are bound to gratify its taste: they have entered into no
bond with the Muses to that effect. But seriously (for
I am joking on what I am very anxious about) I think
you would do well to pass the winter in Italy, and avoid
so tremendous an accident; and, if you think it as necessary as I do, so long as you continue to find Pisa or its
neighbourhood agreeable to you, Mrs. Shelley unites with
myself in urging the request that you would take up your
residence with us. You might come by sea to Leghorn
(France is not worth seeing, and the sea is particularly
good for weak lungs)-which is within a few miles of us.
You ought, at all events, to see Italy; and your health,
which I suggest as a motive, may be an excuse to you.
I spare declamation about the statues and paintings and
ruins, and (what is a greater piece of forbearance) about
the mountains and streams, the fields, the colours of the
sky, and the sky itself.
'I have lately read your Endymion again, and even with
a new sense of the treasures of poetry it contains-though
treasures poured forth with indistinct profusion. This
people in general will not endure; and that is the cause
of the comparatively few copies which have been sold.
I feel persuaded that you are c   ~g          tst
it wll. I always tell Ollier to send you
copies of my books. Prometheus Unbound I imagine you
will receive nearly at the same time with this letter. The
Cenci I hope you have already received: it was studiously
composed in a different style.
"Below the good how far! but far above the great! "
1 This line (should be 'Beneath the good,' &c.) is the final line
of Gray's Progress of Poesy. The sense in which Shelley intends
to apply it to The Cenci may admit of some doubt. He seems to




i6         MEMOIR OF SHELLEY
In;pniet.-I.j-haye g odhtW             mannerism.
twisi those who excel me in genius wout     rsuethe
same plan.
'Whether you remain in England, or journey to Italy,
believe that you carry with you my anxious wishes for
your health and success-wherever you are, or whatever
you undertake-and that I am
'Yours sincerely,
'P. B. SHELLEY.'
Keats's reply to Shelley ran as follows:' Hampstead-August 0o, I82o.
'MY DEAR SHELLEY,
'I am very much gratified that you, in a foreign country,
and with a mind almost over-occupied, should write to me
in the strain of the letter beside me. If I do not take
advantage of your invitation, it will be prevented by
a circumstance I have very much at heart to prophesyl.
There is no doubt that an English winter would put an
end to me, and do so in a lingering hateful manner.
Therefore I must either voyage or journey to Italy, as
a soldier marches up to a battery. My nerves at present
are the worst part of me: yet they feel soothed that, come
what extreme may, I shall not be destined to remain in
one spot long enough to take a hatred of any four partticular bedposts.
'I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor poemwhich I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if
mean that The Cenci is not equal to really good tragedies; but
still is superior to some tragedies which have recently appeared,
and which bad critics have dubbed great.
1 This phrase is not very clear to me. From the context
ensuing, it might seem that the ' circumstance' which prevented
0     Keats from staying with Shelley in Pisa was that his nerves were
in so irritable a state as to prompt him to move from place to
place in Italy rather than fix in any particular city or house.




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


I7


possible, did I care so much as I have done about
reputation.
'I received a copy of The Cenci, as from yourself, from
Hunt. There is only one part of it I am judge of-the
poetry and dramatic effect, which by many spirits nowadays is considered the Mammon. A modern work, it is
said, must have a purpose, which may be the God. An
artist must serve Mammon: he must have "self-concentration "-selfishness perhaps. You, 1 am sure, will
forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb
your.  gamityad      be more of an artiaianZ"  oad
Ze-r.py,,oapf,1,~ t        ore. The tlougnt'osuc1h
'dis4iatmus f4l. like cold chanpgayou, who perhaps
never sat with your wings furled for six months together.
And is not this extraordinary talk for the writer of Endymion, whose mind was like a pack of scattered cards?
I am picked up and sorted to a pip. My imagination is
a monastery, and I am its monk.
' I am in expectation of Prometheus every day. Could
I have my own wish effected, you would have it still in
manuscript, or be but now putting an end to the second
Act. I remember you advising me not to publish my first
blights, on Hampstead Heath. I am returning advice
upon your hands. Most of the poems in the volume
I send you [this was the volume containing Lamia,
Hyperion, &c.] have been written above two years2, and
1 Though Shelley gave this advice, which was anything but
unsound, he is said to have taken good-naturedly some steps
with a view to getting the volume printed. Mr. John Dix,
writing in I846, says: ' He [Shelley] went to Charles Richards,
the printer in St. Martin's Lane, when quite young, about the
printing a little volume of Keats's first poems.'
2 This statement is not correct-so far at least as the longer
poems in the volume are concerned. Isabella indeed was finished
by April, 1818; but Hyperion was not relinquished till late in
18I9, and The Eve of St. Agnes and Lamia were probably not
even begun till I8i9.
ADONAIS                C




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


would never have been published but for hope of gain:
so you see I am inclined enough to take your advice
now.
'I must express once more my deep sense of your
kindness, adding my sincere thanks and respects for
Mrs. Shelley. In the hope of soon seeing you I remain
'Most sincerely yours,
'JOHN KEATS.'
It may have been in the interval between writing his
note of invitation to Keats, and receiving the reply of the
latter, that Shelley penned the following letter to the
Editor of the Quarterly Review-the periodical which had
taken (or had shared with Blackwood's Magasine) the
lead in depreciating Endymion. The letter, however,
was left uncompleted, and was not dispatched. (I omit
such passages as are not directly concerned with Keats.)
' SIR,
'Should you cast your eye on the signature of this
letter before you read the contents, you might imagine
that they related to a slanderous paper which appeared
in your Review some time since.... I am not in the habit
of permitting myself to be disturbed by what is said or
written of me.... The case is different with the unfortunate subject of this letter, the author of Endymion, to
whose feelings and situation I entreat you to allow me to
call your attention. I write considerably in the dark;
but, if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, I am persuaded that, in an appeal to his humanity and justice, he
will acknowledge thefas ab hoste doceri. I am aware that
the first duty of a reviewer is towards the public; and
I am willing to confess that the Endymion is a poem
considerably defective, and that perhaps it deserved as
much censure as the pages of your Review record against
it. But, nriot to mention that there is a certain contemptuousness of phraseology, from which it is difficult for




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


19


a critic to abstain, in the review of Endymion, I do not
think that the writer has given it its due praise. Surely
the poem, with all its faults, is a very remarkable production for a man of Keats's age; and the promise of
ultimate excellence is such as has rarely been afforded
even by such as have afterwards attained high literary
eminence. Look at book 2, line 833, &c., and book 3,
lines 113 to 20o; read down that page, and then again
from line 1932. I could cite many other passages to
convince you that it deserved milder usage. Why it
should have been reviewed at all, excepting for the
purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, I cannot
conceive; for it was very little read, and there was no
danger that it should become a model to the age of that
false taste with which I confess that it is replenished.'Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind
by this review, which, I am persuaded, was not written
with any intention of producing the effect-to which it has
at least greatly contributed-of embittering his existence,
and inducing a disease from which there are now but
faint hopes of his recovery. The first effects are described
to me to have resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous
watching that he was restrained from effecting purposes
of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and the
usual process of consumption appears to have begun. He
is coming to pay me a visit in Italy; but I fear that, unless
his mind can be kept tranquil, little is to be hoped from
the mere influence of climate.
1 See p. 97 as to Shelley's underrating of Keats's age. He
must have supposed that Keats was only about twenty years old
at the date when Endymion was completed. The correct age
was twenty-two.
2 The passages to which Shelley refers begin thus: 'And
then the forest told it in a dream;' The rosy veils mantling
the East;' 'Upon a weeded rock this old man sat.'
C 2




20


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


'But let me not extort anything from your pity. I have
just seen a second volume, published by him evidently in
careless despair. I have desired my bookseller to send
you a copy: and allow me to solicit your especial attention to the fragment of a poem entitled Hyperion, the
composition of which was checked by the review in
question. The great proportion of this piece is surely in
the very highest style of poetry. I speak impartially, for
the canons of taste to which Keats has conformed in his
other compositions are the very reverse of my own. I
leave you to judge for yourself: it would be an insult to
you to suppose that, from motives however honourable,
you would lend yourself to a deception of the public.'
The question arises, How did Shelley know what he
here states-that Keats was thrown, by reading the
Quarterly article, into a state resembling insanity, that he
contemplated suicide, &c.? Not any document has been
published whereby this information could have been
imparted to Shelley: his chief informant on the subject
appears to have been Mr. Gisborne, who had now for
a short while returned to England, and some confirmation
may have come from Hunt. As to the statements themselves, they have, ever since the appearance in I848 of
Lord Houghton's Life of Keats, been regarded as very
gross exaggerations: indeed, I think the tendency has
since then been excessive in the reverse direction, and
the vexation occasioned to Keats by hostile criticism has
come to be underrated.
Shelley addressed to Keats in Naples another letter,
'anxiously enquiring about his health, offering him advice
as to the adaptation of diet to the climate, and concluding
with an urgent invitation to Pisa, where he could assure
him every comfort and attention.' Shelley did not, however, reinvite Keats to his own house on the present
occasion; writing to Miss Clairmont, 'We are not rich
enough for that sort of thing.' The letter to Miss Clair



MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


21


mont is dated February I8, 182i, and appears to have
been almost simultaneous with the one sent to Keats. In
that case, Keats cannot be supposed to have received the
invitation; for he had towards the middle of November
quitted Naples for Rome, and by February I8 he was
almost at his last gasp.
Shelley's feeling as to Keats's final volume of poems is
further exhibited in the following extracts. (To Thomas
Love Peacock, November, I820.) 'Among the modern
things which have reached me is a volume of poems by
Keats; in other respects insignificant enough, but containing the fragment of a poem called Hyperion. I dare
say you have not time to read it; but it is certainly an
astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception
of Keats which I confess I had npt before.' (To Mrs.
Leigh Hunt, November I,. I820.) 'Keats's new volume
has arrived to us, and the fragment called Hyperion
promises for him that he is destined to become one of the
first writers of the age. His other things are imperfect
enough, and, what is worse, written in the bad sort of
style which is becoming fashionable among those who
fancy that they are imitating Hunt and Wordsworth....
Where is Keats now   I am anxiously expecting him in
Italy, when I shall take care to bestow every possible
attention on him. I consider his a most valuable life,
and I am deeply interested in his safety. I intend to be
the physician both of his body and his soul,-to keep the
one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish.
I am aware indeed, in part, that I am nourishing a rival
who will far surpass me; and this is an additional motive,
and will be an added pleasure.' (To Peacock, February
15, 1821.) 'Among your anathemas of the modern
1 I do not find in Shelley's writings anything which distinctly
modifies this opinion. However, his biographer, Captain Medwin,
avers that Shelley valued all the poems in Keats's final volume:
he cites especially Isabella and The Eve of St. Agnes.




22


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


attempts in poetry do you include Keats's Hyperion?
I think it very fine. His other poems are worth little;
but, if the Hyperion be not grand poetry, none has been
produced by our contemporaries.' There is also a phrase
in a letter to Mr. Ollier, written on May 14, 1820, before
the actual publication of the Lamia volume: 'Keats, I
hope, is going to show himself a great poet; like the sun,
to burst through the clouds which, though dyed in the
finest colours of the air, obscured his rising.'
Keats died in Rome on February 23, I82I. Soon afterwards Shelley wrote his Adonais. He has left various
written references to Adonais, and to Keats in connexion
with it: these will come more appropriately when I speak
of that poem itself. But I may here at once quote from
the letter which Shelley addressed on June I6, I82I, to
Mr. Gisborne, who had sent on to him a letter from
Colonel Finch, giving a very painful account of the last
1 In books relating to Keats and Shelley the name of this
gentleman appears repeated, without any explanation of who
he was. In a MS. diary of Dr. John Polidori, Byron's travelling
physician (my maternal uncle), I find the following account of
Colonel Finch, whom Polidori met in Milan in I816: 'Colonel
Finch, an extremely pleasant, good-natured, well-informed, clever
gentleman, spoke Italian extremely well, and was very well read
in Italian literature. A ward of his gave a masquerade in London
upon her coming of age. She gave to each a character in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth to support, without the knowledge of
each other; and received them in a saloon in proper style as
Queen Elizabeth. He mentioned to me that Nelli had written
a Life of Galileo, extremely fair, which, if he had money by him,
he would buy, that it might be published. Finch is a great
admirer of architecture in Italy. Mr. Werthern, a gentleman
most peaceable and quiet I ever saw, accompanying Finch, whose
only occupation [I understand this to mean the occupation of
Werthern, but possibly it means of Finch] is, when he arrives
at a town or other place, to set about sketching, and then colouring, so that he has perhaps the most complete collection of




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


23


days of Keats, and especially (perhaps in more than due
proportion) of the violence of temper which he had
exhibited. Shelley wrote thus: 'I have received the
heartrending account of the closing scene of the great
genius whom envy and ingratitude I scourged out of the
world. I do not think that, if I had seen it before, I could
have composed my poem. The enthusiasm of the imagination would have overpowered the sentiment. As it is,
I have finished my Elegy; and this day I send it to the
press at Pisa. You shall have a copy the moment it is
completed. I think it will please you. I have dipped my
pen in consuming fire for his destroyers: otherwise the
style is calm and solemn 2.'
As I have already said, the last residence of Shelley
was on the Gulf of Spezzia. He had a boat built named
sketches of his tour possible. He invited me (taking me for an
Italian), in case I went to England, to see him; and, hearing
I was English, he pressed me much more.' The name ' Werthern'
is not distinctly written: should it be ' Wertheim'?
1 ' Envy' refers no doubt to hostile reviewers. ' Ingratitude'
refers to a statement of Colonel Finch that Keats had 'been
infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had
rescued from want and woe.' It is not quite clear who were
the persons alluded to by Finch. Keats's brother George (then
in America) was presumably one: he is, however, regarded as
having eventually cleared himself from the distressing imputation.
I know of no one else, unless possibly the painter Haydon may
be glanced at: as to him also the charge appears to be too severe
and sweeping.
2 Shelley wrote another letter on June i6-to Miss Clairmont,
then in Florence. It contains expressions to nearly the same
purport. ' I have received a most melancholy account of the last
illness of poor Keats; which I will neither tell you nor send
you, for it would make you too low-spirited. My Elegy on him
is finished. I hav         pen in consumingfirz4eachastise
j^troyers: otherwise tgte              e   is solemn and
exalted. I send it to the press here, and you will soon have
a copy.'




24


MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


the Ariel (by Byron, the Don Juan), boating being his
favourite recreation; and on July i, i822, he and Lieut.
Williams, along with a single sailor-lad, started in her for
Leghorn, to welcome there Leigh Hunt. The latter had
come to Italy with his family, on the invitation of Byron
and Shelley, to join in a periodical to be called The Liberal.
On July 8 Shelley, with his two companions, embarked
to return to Casa Magni. Towards half-past six in the
evening a sudden and tremendous squall sprang up. The
Ariel sank, either upset by the squall, or (as some details
of evidence suggest) run down near Viareggio by an
Italian fishing-boat, the crew of which had plotted to
plunder her of a sum of money. The bodies were
eventually washed ashore; and on August i6 the corpse
of Shelley was burned on the beach under the direction
of Trelawny. In the pocket of his jacket had been found
two books-an Aeschylus, and the Lamia volume, doubled
back as if it had at the last moment been thrust aside.
His ashes were collected, and, with the exception of the
heart which was delivered to Mrs. Shelley, were buried in
Rome, in the New Protestant Cemetery. The corpse of
Shelley's beloved son William had, in 1819, been interred
hard by, and in 1821 that of Keats, in the Old Cemeterya space of ground which had, by 1822, been finally
closed.
The enthusiastic and idealjry.Vur which marks
Shelley's poetry coud not possibly be simulated-it was
_  artthe most essential par t, of dJesi;rc  He was
remarkably single-minded, in the sense of being constantly
ready to do what he professed as, in the abstract, the right
thing to be done; impetuous, bold, uncompromising,
lavishly generous, and inspired by a general love of
humanfkind, aid a coeuttSal detestationof all the narrowing
influences of custom and prescription, p which included self-pity was one of his dominant emotions. If
we consider what are the uses, and what the abuses,




MEMOIR OF SHELLEY


25


of a character of this type, we shall have some notion of
the excellences and the defects of Shelley. In person he
was well-grown and slim; more nearly beautiful than
handsome; his complexion brilliant, his dark-brown but
slightly grizzling hair abundant and wavy, and his eyes
deep-blue, large, and fixed. His voice was high-pitchedat times discordant, but capable of agreeable modulation;
his general aspect uncommonly youthful.
The roll of Shelley's publications is a long one for
a man who perished not yet thirty years of age. I append
a list of the principal ones, according to date of publication, which was never very distant from that of composition. Several minor productions remain unspecified.
i8io. Zastrozzi, a Romance. Puerile rubbish; and the
same may be said of the next three.
Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire. Withdrawn, and for many years unknown. Published in 1898.
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson.
Partly (it would appear) intended as burlesque.
i8IT. St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian, a Romance.
1813. Queen Mab.
1817. Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, and other Poems.
The earliest volume fully worthy of its author.
1818. Laon and Cythna-reissued as The Revolt of
Islam.
1819. Rosalind and Helen, a modern Eclogue, and other
Poems. The character of ' Lionel' is an evident
idealization of Shelley himself.
The Cenci, a Tragedy.
Prometheus Unbound, a Lyrical Drama, and
other Poems. The Prometheus ranks as at
once the greatest and the most thoroughly
characteristic work of Shelley.
Oedipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant. A
Satirical Drama on the Trial of Queen Caroline.




26


MEMOIR OF. SHELLEY


I821. Epipsychidion.,,  Adonais.
I822. Hellas. A Drama on the Grecian War of Liberation.
I824. Posthumous Poems. Include Julian and Maddalo,
written in i8I8, The Witch of Atlas, 1820, The
Triumph of Life, 1822, and many other compositions and translations.
The Masque of Anarchy and Peter Bell the Third, both
written by Shelley in 1819, were published later on; also
various minor poems, complete or fragmentary. PeterBell
the Third has a certain fortuitous connexion with Keats.
It was written in consequence of Shelley's having read in
the Examiner a notice of PeeBell, a Lyrical Ballad (the
iproduction of John Hamilton Reynolds): and this notice,
as has very recently been proved, was the handiwork of
J,-"        as. -She-lley cannot have be-en aware of that fact.
taHis prose Essays and Letters, including The Defence
x        of Poetry, appeared in I840. The only known work of
S\ helley, extant but yet unpublished, is the Philosophical
\    "      View of Reform: an abstract of it, with several extracts,
was printed in the Fortnightly Review in I886.




MEMOIR OF KEATS
THE parents of John Keats were Thomas Keats, and
Frances, daughter of Mr. Jennings, who kept a large
livery-stable, the Swan and Hoop, in the Pavement,
Moorfields, London. Thomas Keats was the principal
stableman or assistant in the same business. John, a
seven months' child, was born at the Swan and Hoop
on October 31, I795. Three other children grew upGeorge, Thomas, and Fanny. John is said to have been
violent and ungovernable in early childhood. He was
sent to a very well-reputed school, that of the Rev.
John Clarke, at Enfield: the son Charles Cowden Clarke,
whom I have previously mentioned, was an undermaster,
and paid particular attention to Keats. The latter did not
show any remarkable talent at school, but learned easily,
and was 'a very orderly scholar,' acquiring a fair amount
of Latin but no Greek. He was active, pugnacious, and
popular among his school-fellows. The father died of
a fall from his horse in April, I804: the mother, after
re-marrying, succumbed to consumption in February,
I8Io. Before the close of the same year John left school,
and he was then apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton.
In July, 1815, he passed with credit the examination at
Apothecaries' Hall.
In I8I2 Keats read for the first time Spenser's Faery
Queen, and was fascinated with it to a singular degree.
This and other poetic reading made him flag in his
surgical profession, and finally he dropped it, and for
the remainder of his life had no definite occupation save
that of writing verse. From his grandparents he inherited
a certain moderate sum of money-not more than suf



28


MEMOIR OF KEATS


ficient to give him a tolerable start in life. He made
acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, then editorof the Examiner,
John Hunt, the publisher, Charles Wentworth Dilke, who
became editor of the Athenaeum, the painter Haydon, and
others. His first volume of Poems (memorable for little
else than the sonnet On Reading Chapman's Homer) was
published in i8I7. It was followed by Endymion in
April, I8i8.
In June of the same year Keats set off with his chief
intimate, Charles Armitage Brown (a retired Russia
merchant, who afterwards wrote a book on Shakespeare's
Sonnets), on a pedestrian tour in Scotland, which extended
into North Ireland as well. In July, in the Isle of Mull,
he got a bad sore throat, of which some symptoms had
appeared also in earlier years: it may be regarded as the
beginning of his fatal malady. He cut short his tour and
returned to Hampstead, where he had to nurse his
younger brother Tom, a consumptive invalid, who died in
December of the same year.
At the house of the Dilkes, in the autumn of I8i8,
Keats made the acquaintance of Miss Fanny Brawne, the
daughter of a gentleman of independent means then dead:
he was soon desperately in love with her, having 'a
swooning admiration of her beauty': towards the spring
of i8i9 they engaged to marry, with the prospect of a long
engagement. On the night of February 3, i82o, on returning to the house at Hampstead which he shared with
Mr. Brown, the poet had his first attack, a violent one, of
blood-spitting from the lungs. He rallied somewhat, but
suffered a dangerous relapse in June, just prior to the
publication of his final volume, containing all his best
poems-Isabella, Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia,
and the leading Odes. His doctor ordered him off, as
a last chance, to Italy; previously to this he had been
staying in the house of Mrs. and Miss Brawne, who
tended him affectionately. Keats was now exceedingly




MEMOIR OF KEATS


29


unhappy. His passionate love, his easily roused feelings
of jealousy of Miss Brawne, and of suspicious rancour
against even the most amicable and attached of his male
intimates, the general indifference and the particular
scorn and ridicule with which his poems had been
received, his narrow means and uncertain outlook, and
the prospect of an early death closing a painful and
harassing illness-all preyed upon his mind with unrelenting tenacity. The worst of all was the sense of
approaching and probably final separation from Fanny
Brawne.
On September I8, I820, he left England for Italy, in
company with Mr. Joseph Severn, a student of painting in
the Royal Academy, who, having won the gold medal,
was entitled to spend three years abroad for advancement
in his art. They travelled by sea to Naples; reached
that city late in October; and towards the middle of
November went on to Rome. Here Keats received the
most constant and kind attention from Dr. (afterwards
Sir James) Clark. But all was of no avail: after continual
and severe suffering, devotedly watched by Severn, he
expired on February 23, I82i. He was buried in the old
Protestant Cemetery of Rome, under a little altar-tomb
sculptured with a Greek lyre. His name was inscribed,
along with the epitaph which he himself had composed in
the bitterness of his soul, ' Here lies one whose name was
writ in water.'
Keats was an undersized man, not much more than
five feet high. His face was handsome, ardent, and full
of expression; the hair rich, brown, and curling; the
hazel eyes 'mellow and glowing-large, dark, and sensitive.' He was framed for enjoyment; but with that
acuteness of feeling which turned even enjoyment into
suffering, and then again extracted a luxury out of
melancholy. He had vehemence and generosity, and the
frankness Wvhich belongs to these qualities, not unmingled,




30


MEMOIR OF KEATS


however, with a strong dose of suspicion. Apart from
the overmastering love of his closing years, his one
ambition was to be a poet. His mind was little concerned
either with the severe practicalities of life, or with the
abstractions of religious faith.
His poems, consisting of three successive volumes, have
been already referred to here. The first volume, the
Poems of 18I7, is mostly of a juvenile kind, containing
only scattered suggestions of rich endowment and eventual
excellence. Endymion is lavish and profuse, nervous and
languid, the wealth of a prodigal scattered in largesse of
baubles and of gems. The last volume-comprising the
Hyperion-is the work of a noble poetic artist, powerful
and brilliant both in imagination and in expression. Of
the writings published since their author's death, the only
one of first-rate excellence is the fragmentary Eve of
St. Mark. There is also the drama of Otho the Great,
written in co-operation with Armitage Brown; and in
Keats's letters many admirable thoughts are admirably
worded.
As to the relations between Shelley and Keats, I have
to refer back to the preceding memoir of Shelley.




ADONAIS:
ITS COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOR nearly two months after the death of Keats,
February 23, 1821, Shelley appears to have remained
in ignorance of the event: he knew it on or before
April 19. The precise date when he began his Elegy
does not seem to be recorded: one may suppose it to
have been in the latter half of May. On June 5 he wrote
to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne: 'I have been engaged these
last days in composing a poem on the death of Keats,
which will shortly be finished; and I anticipate the
pleasure of reading it to you, as some of the very few
persons who will be interested in it and understand it.
It is a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better,
in point of composition, than anything I have written.'
A letter to Mr. Oilier followed immediately afterwards.
' Pisa, June 8, I821.
'You may announce for publication a poem entitled
Adonais. It is a lament on the death of poor Keats, with
some inter'peestabs       on the assassin   o  a
of his ame; and will be preceded y a criticism on
Tyiernon, asserting the due claims which that fragment
gives him to the rank which I have assigned him. My
poem is finished, and consists of about forty Spenser
stanzas ii ftfiftve as ublished' '" I  shall send it to you,
either printed at Pisa, or transcribed in such a manner as
it shall be difficult for the reviser to leave such errors
as assist the obscurity of the Prometheus. But in case
I send it printed, it will be merely that mistakes may
be avoided. I shall only have a few copies struck off in




32 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
the cheapest manner. If you have interest enough in the
subject, I could wish tnatyou eniqulreosome of the
'neis and relations of Keats resDectlnte circumstances
of his death, and could transmit me any informationyou
may beiE ae to collect; and especalily as rto] the degree
in wich    S I am assured) the brutal atta c i n the
Quarter  eview excited the disease by which heperished.
The criticism which Shelley intended to write on
Hyperion remained, to all appearance, unwritten. It will
be seen, from the letter of Shelley to Mr. Severn cited
further on (p. 36), that, from the notion of writing a
criticism on Hyperion to precede Adonais, his intention
developed into the project of writing a criticism and
biography of Keats in general, to precede a volume of
his entire works; but that, before the close of November,
the whole scheme was given up, on the ground that it
would produce no impression on an unregardful public.
In another letter to Ollier, June I, the poet says:
'Adonais is finished, and you will soon receive it. It is
little adapted for popularity, but is perhaps the least'
perect o my compositions.'
"b"e ly7~ on-hune it cau'ed his Elegy to be printed in
Pisa, 'with the types of Didot': a small quarto, and a
handsome one (notwithstanding his project of cheapness); the introductory matter fille five _a s  d
the poem itself going on rom p. to. 2. It appeared
in blue paper wrappers, with a woodcut of a basket of
flowers within an ornamental border. Its price was three
and sixpence: of late years ~40 has been given for itprobably more. Up to July 13 only one copy had reached
the author's hands: this he then sent on to the Gisbornes,
at Leghorn. Some copies of the Pisa edition were afterwards put into circulation in London: there was no
separate English edition. The Gisbornes having acknowledged the Elegy with expressions of admiration, the
poet replied as follows:




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 33


'Bagni [di Pisa], July I9.
'MY DEAREST FRIENDS,
'I am fully repaid for the painful emotions from which
some verses of my poem sprung by your sympathy and
approbation; which is all the reward I expect, and as
much as I desire. It is not for me to judge whether, in
the high praise your feelings assign me, you are right or
wrong. The poet and the man are two different natures:
though ti     xist toget6h:er, they may be unconscious of
each others and incapable of deciding on each other's
powers and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of
the cause whether or not I am a poet is rem'oved from
the present time to the hour when our posterity shall
assemble: but the court is a very severe one, and I fear
that the verdict will be " Guilty-death."'
A letter to Mr. Ollier was probably a little later. It
says: 'I send you a sketch for a frontispiece to the poem
Adonais. Pray let it be put into the engraver's hands
immediately, as the poem is already on its way to you,
and I should wish it to be ready for its arrival. The
poem is beautifully printed, and-what is of more consequence-correctly: indeed, it was to obtain this last
pointthat I sent it to the press at Pisa. In a few days
you will receive the bill of lading.' Nothing is known
as to the sketch which Shelley thus sent. It cannot, I
presume, have been his own production, nor yet Severn's:
possibly it was supplied by Lieutenant Williams, who
had some aptitude as an amateur artist.
I add some of the poet's other expressions regarding
Adonais, which he evidently regarded with more complacency than any of his previous works-at any rate, as
a piece of execution. Hitherto his favourite had been
Prometheus Unbound: I am fain to suppose that that
great effort did not now hold a second place in his affections, though he may have considered that the Adonais,
ADONAIS.            D




34 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
as being a less arduous feat, came nearer to reaching its
goal. (To Peacock, August, I821.) 'I have sent you by
the Gisbornes a copy of the Elegy on Keats. The subject,
I know, will not please you; but the composition of the
poetry, and the taste in which it is written, I do not think
bad.' (To Hunt, August 26.) 'Before this you will have
seen Adonais. Lord Byron-I suppose from modesty on
account of his being mentioned in it-did not say a word
of Adonaisl, though he was loud in his praise of Prometheus, and (what you will not agree with him in)
censure of The Cenci.' (To Horace Smith, September I4.)
'I am glad you like Adonais, and particularly that you
do not think it metaphysical, which I was afraid it was.
I was resolved to pay some tribute of sympathy to the
unhonoured dead; but I wrote, as usual, with a total
ignorance of the effect that I should produce.' (To Ollier,
September 25.) 'The Adonais, in spite of its mysticism,
is the least imperfect of my compositions; and, as the
image of my regret and honour for poor Keats, I wish it
to be so. I shall write to you probably by next post on
the subject of that poem; and should have sent the
promised criticism for the second edition, had I not mislaid, and in vain sought for, the volume that contains
Hyperion.' (To Oilier, November 14.)  I am especially
curious to hear the fate of Adonais. I confess I should
be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of
oblivion.' (To Ollier, January ii, 1822.) 'I was also
more than commonly interested in the success of Adonais.
I do not mean the sale, but the effect produced; and I
should have [been] glad to have received some communication from you respecting it. I do not know even
whether it has been published, and still less whether it
has been republished with the alterations I sent.' As to
1 As Byron is introduced into Adonais as mourning for Keats,
and as in fact he cared for Keats hardly at all, it seems possible
that his silence was dictated by antagonism rather than by modesty,




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 35
the alterations sent nothing definite is known, but some
details bearing on this point will be found in our Notes,
p. io8, &c. (To Gisborne, April io.) 'I know what to
think of Adonais, but what to think of those who confound
it with the many bad poems of the day I know not.'
This expression seems to indicate that Mr. Gisborne had
sent Shelley some of the current criticisms-there were
probably but few in all-upon Adonais: to this matter I
shall recur further on. (To Gisborne, June I8.) 'The
Adonais I wished to have had a fair chance, both because
it is a favourite with me, and on account of the memory
of Keats-who was a poet of great genius, let the classic
party say what it will.'
Earlier than the latest of these extracts Shelley had
sent to Mr. Severn a copy of Adonais, along with a letter
which I append.
'   Pisa, Nov. 29th, 1821.
' DEAR SIR,
'I send you the Elegy on poor Keats, and I wish it
were better worth your acceptance. You will see, by
the preface, that it was written before I could obtain any
particular account of his last moments. All that I still
know was communicated to me by a friend who had
derived his information from Colonel Finch. I have
ventured [in the Preface] to express as I felt the respect
and admiration which your conduct towards him demands.
'In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was,
nor ever will be, a popular poet; and the total neglect
and obscurity in which the astonishing remains of his
mind still lie was hardly to be dissipated by a writer
who, however he may differ from Keats in more important qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental
one, a want of popularity.
'I have little hope therefore that the poem I send you
D 2




36 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
will excite any attention, nor do I feel assured that A
critical notice of his writings would find a single reader.
But for these considerations, it had been my intention to
have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to
have published them with a Life and criticism. Has he
left any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, and in
whose possession are they? Perhaps you would oblige
me by information on this point.
'Many thanks for the picture you promise me [presumably a portrait of Keats, but Shelley does not seem ever
to have received one from Severn]: I shall consider it
among the most sacred relics of the past. For my part,
I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my friend
Leigh Hunt's, that I should survive him.
'Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have
the pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into something pleasant, begun under such
melancholy auspices.
'Accept, my dear Sir, the assurance of my highest
esteem, and believe me
'Your most sincere and faithful servant,
'PERCY B. SHELLEY.
'Do you know Leigh Hunt? I expect him and his
family here every day.'
It may have been observed that Shelley, whenever he
speaks of critical depreciation of Keats, refers only to one
periodical, the Quarterly Review: probably he did not distinctly know of any other: but the fact is that Blackwood's
Magazine was worse than the Quarterly.  The latter
was sneering and supercilious: Blackwood was vulgarly
taunting and insulting, and seems to have provoked
Keats the more of the two, though perhaps he considered
the attack in the Quarterly to be more detrimental to his
literary standing. The Quarterly notice is of so much
import in the life and death of Keats, and in the genesis
RwEV,.* w   - "*14or "~  *"  -ir -ir  A  X II.  -




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 37
of Adonais, that I shall give it, practically in extenso,
Eere closing this section of my work: with Blackwood
I can deal at once. A series of articles On the Cockney
School of Poetry began in this magazine in October 18I7,
being directed mainly and very venomously against Leigh
Hunt. No. 4 of the series appeared in August i8i8,
falling foul of Keats. It is difficult to say whether the
priority in abusing Keats should of right be assigned
to Blackwood or to the Quarterly: the critique in the
latter review belongs to the number for April i8i8, but
this number was not actually issued until September.
The writer of the Blackwood papers signed himself Z.
Z. is affirmed to have been Lockhart, the son-in-law of
Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards editor of the Quarterly
Review: more especially the article upon Keats is attributed to Lockhart. A different account, as to the series in
general, is that the author was John Wilson (Christopher
North), revised by Mr. William Blackwood. But Z.
resisted more than one vigorous challenge to unmask,
and some doubt as to his identity may still remain.
Here are some specimens of the amenity with which
Keats was treated in Blackwood's Magazine:
' His friends, we understand, destined him to the
career of medicine, and he was bound apprentice some
years ago to a worthy apothecary in town.... The
frenzy of the Poems [Keats's first volume, i8I7] was bad
enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so
seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling
idiocy of Endymion.... We hope however that, in
so young a person and with a constitution originally so
good, even now the disease is not utterly incurable....
Mr. Hunt is a small poet, but a clever man; Mr. Keats
is a still smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty
abilities which he has done everything in his power to
spoil.... It is a better and wiser thing to be a starved
apothecary than a starved poet: so back to the shop,




38 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mr. John, back to "plaster, pills, and ointment-boxes,"
&c. But for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little
more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your
practice than you have been in your poetry.'
Even the death of Keats, in 1821, did not abate the
rancour of Blackwoods Magazine. Witness the following
extracts. (1823) ' Keats had been dished-utterly demolished and dished-by Blackwood long before Mr.
Gifford's scribes mentioned his name.... But let us hear
no more of Johnny Keats. It is really too disgusting to
have him and his poems recalled in this manner after
all the world thought they had got rid of the concern.'
(I824) 'Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume of
Mr. Keats's poetry "grasped with one hand in his
bosom"-rather an awkward posture, as you will be
convinced if you try it. But what a rash man Shelley
was to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on
board!... Down went the boat with a "swirl"! I lay
a wager that it righted soon after ejecting Jack.'... (X826)
'Keats was a Cockney, and Cockneys claimed him for
their own. Never was there a young man so encrusted
with conceit.'
If this is the tone adopted by Blackwood's Magazine in
relation to Keats living and dead, one need not be surprised to find that the verdict of the same review upon
the poem of Adonais, then newly published, ran to the
following effect:'Locke says the most resolute liar cannot lie more
than once in every three sentences. Folly is more
engrossing; for we could prove from the present Elegy
that it is possible to write two sentences of pure nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would
bring us to ninety-nine out of every hundred; or-as
the present consists of only fifty-five stanzas-leaving
about five readable lines in the entire.... A Mr. Keats,
who had left a decent calling for the melancholy trade




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 39
of Cockney poetry, has lately died of a consumption,
after having written two or three little books of verses
much neglected by the public.... The New School, however, will have it that he was slaughtered by a criticism
of the Quarterly Review: "O flesh, how art thou fishified!"
There is even an aggravation in this cruelty of the Review
-for it had taken three or four years to slay its victim,
the deadly blow having been inflicted at least as long
since. [This is not correct: the Quarterly critique, having
appeared in September I8i8, preceded the death of
Keats by two years and five months.]... The fact is,
the Quarterly, finding before it a work at once silly and
presumptuous, full of the servile slang that Cockaigne
dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar indecorums which
that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the
truth of the volume, and recommended a change of
manners' and of masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote
on; but he wrote indecently, probably in the indulgence
of his social propensities.'
The virulence with which Shelley, as author of Adonais,
was assailed by Blackwood's Magazine, is the more remarkable, and the more symptomatic of partisanship
against Keats and any of his upholders, as this review
had in previous instances been exceptionally civil to
Shelley, though of course with some serious offsets.
The notices of Alastor, Rosalind and Helen, and Prometheus Unbound-more especially the first-in the years
I819 and 1820, would be found to bear out this statement.
From the dates already cited, it may be assumed that
the Pisan edition of Adonais was in London in the hands
of Mr. Oilier towards the middle of August I821, purchasable by whoever might be minded to buy it. Very
' soon afterwards it was reprinted in the Literary Chronicle
and Weekly Review, published by Limbird in the Strand
1 Blackwood seems to imply that the Quarterly accused Endymion
of indecency: this is not correct.




40 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
-December I, I821: a rather singular, not to say piratical,
proceeding. An editorial note was worded thus: ' Through
the kindness of a friend, we have been favoured with the
latest production of a gentleman of no ordinary genius,
Mr. Bysshe Shelley. It is an elegy on the death of a
youthful poet of considerable promise, Mr. Keats, and
was printed at Pisa. As the copy now before us is
perhaps [surely not] the only one that has reached
England, and the subject is one that will excite much
interest, we shall print the whole of it.' This promise
was not literally fulfilled, for stanzas 19 to 24 were
omitted, not apparently with any special object.
After the publication in London of the Pisan edition of
Adonais, the poem remained unreprinted until 1829. It
was then issued at Cambridge, at the instance of Lord
Houghton (Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes) and Mr. Arthur
Hallam, the latter having brought from Italy a copy of
the original pamphlet. The Cambridge edition, an octavo
in paper wrappers, is now still scarcer than the Pisan
one. The only other separate edition of Adonais was
that of Mr. Buxton Forman, i876, corresponding substantially with the form which the poem assumes in the
Complete Works of Shelley, as produced by the same
editor. It need hardly be said that Adonais was included
in Mrs. Shelley's editions of her husband's Poems, and
in all other editions of any fullness: it has also appeared
in most of the volumes of Selections.
As early as 1830 there was an Italian translation of this
Elegy. It is named Adone, nella morte di Giovanni Keats,
Elegia di Percy Bishe Shelley, tradotta da L. A. Damaso
Pareto. Genova, dalla Titpografia Pellas, I830.  In this
small quarto thirty pages are occupied by a notice of the
life and poetry of Shelley.
I shall not here enter upon a consideration of the
cancelled passages of Adonais: they will appear more
appositely further on (see pp. 93-5, &c.). I therefore




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 41
conclude the present section by quoting the Quarterly
Review article upon Endymion-omitting only a few
sentences which do not refer directly to Keats, but
mostly to Leigh Hunt:' Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which they affected to criticise. On the
present occasion we shall anticipate the author's complaint,
and honestly confess that we have not read his work.
Not that we have been wanting in our duty; far from it;
indeed, we have made efforts, almost as superhuman as
the story itself appears to be, to get through it: but, with
the fullest stretch of our perseverance, we are forced to
confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond
the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance
consists. We should extremely lament this want of
energy, or whatever it may be, on our parts, were it not
for one consolation-namely, that we are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we
have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the three
which we have not looked into.
'It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for
we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put
his real name to such a rhapsody)-it is not, we say, that
the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and
gleams of genius. He has all these: but he is unhappily
a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere
called " Cockney Poetry," which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth
language.
' Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in
a former number, aspires to be the hierophant.... This
author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt: but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten
times more tiresome and absurd, than his prototype, who,
though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the
chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by




42 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But
Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound
to support by examples. His nonsense, therefore, is
quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being
bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than
rivals the insanity of his poetry.
'Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced
under peculiar circumstances. " Knowing within myself,"
he says, "the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the
reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience,
immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt
rather than a deed accomplished." We humbly beg his
pardon, but this does not appear to us to be "quite so
clear"; we really do not know what he means. But the
next passage is more intelligible. "The two first books,
and indeed the two last, I feel sensible, are not of such
completion as to warrant their passing the press." Thus
"the two first books" are, even in his own judgment,
unfit to appear, and " the two last" are, it seems, in the
same condition; and, as two and two make four, and as
that is the whole number of books, we have a clear, and
we believe a very just, estimate of the entire work.
'Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this " immature and feverish work " in terms which are themselves
sufficiently feverish; and we confess that we should have
abstained from inflicting upon him any of the tortures of
the "fierce hell" of criticism  which terrify his imagina1 The reader of Keats's Preface will find that this is a misrepresentation. Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism,
nor did he ask to remain uncriticized in order that he might write
more. What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul
of him for hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would
be aware that Keats's own sense of failure in Endymion was as
fierce a hell as he could be chastised by.




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 43
tion if he had not begged to be spared in order that he
might write more; if we had not observed in him a certain
degree of talent which deserves to be put in the right
way, or which at least ought to be warned of the wrong;
and if finally he had not told us that he is of an age and
temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
'Of the story we have been able to make out but little.
It seems to be mythological, and probably relates to the
loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as the scope
of the work has altogether escaped us, we cannot speak
with any degree of certainty, and must therefore content
ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and
versification. And here again we are perplexed and
puzzled. At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats had
been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an
immeasurable game at bouts rimes; but, if we recollect
rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play that
the rhymes, when filled up, shall have a meaning; and
our author, as we have already hinted, has no meaning.
He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he
follows, not the thought excited by this line, but that
suggested by the rhyme with which it concludes. There
is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea
in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to
another, from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds;
and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is quite
evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the
mere force of the catchwords on which they turn.
'We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but
as that least liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening
of the poem:T      s       "Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils,
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
\ That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake




44 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead," &c.
Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, moon,
produces the simple sheep and their shady boon, and
that " the dooms of the mighty dead" would never have
intruded themselves but for the " fair musk-rose blooms."
'Again:"For 'twas the morn. Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds. Rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of Nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold
To feel this sunrise and its glories old."
Here Apollo's fire produces a pyre-a silvery pyre-of
clouds, wherein a spirit might win oblivion, and melt his
essence fine; and scented eglantine gives sweets to the
^  sun, and cold springs had run into the grass; and then the
pulse of the mass pulsed tenfold to feel the glories old of
the new-born day, &c.
'One example more:"Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings, such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven
That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth,
Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth."
Lodge, dodge-heaven, leaven-earth, birth-such, in six
words, is the sum and substance of six lines.
'We come now to the author's taste in versification.
He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may
be able to spin a line. Let us see. The following are




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 45
specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic
metre:"Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite.
"So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.
"Of some strange history, potent to send.
"Before the deep intoxication.
" Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.
"The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared.
"Endymion, the cave is secreter
Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."
'By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied
as to the meaning of his sentences and the structure of
his lines. We now present them with some of the new  /
words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he
adorns our language.                               \
'We are told that turtles passion their voices; that an \
arbour was nested and a 1ad To   anedk up; and, to
supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats,
with great fecundity, spawns.new wones, such as menslugs and human serpentry, the honey-feel of bliss, wives
prepare needments, and so forth.
'Then he has formed new verbs by the process of   \
cutting off their natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing  \
them to their foreheads. Thus the wine out-sparkled,  \
the multitude up-followed, and night up-took; the wind
up-blows, and the hours are down-sunken. But, if he
sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the
language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates
from the parent stock. Thus a lady whispers pantingly
and close, makes hushing signs, and steers her skiff into
a ripply cove, a shower falls refreshfully, and a vulture has
a spreaded tail.




46 COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
'But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple
neophyte. If any one should be bold enough to purchase
this Poetic Romance, and so much more patient than
ourselves as to get beyond the first book, and so much
more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to
make us acquainted with his success. We shall then
return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and
endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to
our readers.'This criticism is not, I think, exactly what Shelley
called it in the Preface to Adonais —' savage': it is less
savy ge than contemptuous, and is far indeed from compf ing with the abuse which was from time to time, and
i various reviews, poured forth upon Shelley himself.: cannot be denied that some of the blemishes which
it points out in Endymion are real blemishes, and very
serious ones. The grounds on which one can fairly object
to the criticism are that its tone is purposely ill-natured;
its recognition of merits scanty out of all proportion to its
censure of defects; and its spirit that of prepense disparagement founded not so much on the poetical errors
of Keats as on the fact that he was a friend of Leigh Hunt,
the literary and also the political antagonist of the
Quarterly Review. The Editor, Mr. Gifford, was long
regarded as the author of this criticism; which is now
known to have been written by Croker (Memoir of John
Murray, i. 48I, note).
That Keats was a friend of Leigh Hunt in the earlier
period of his own poetical career is a fact; but not long
after the appearance of the Quarterly Review article he
conceived a good deal of dislike and even animosity against
this literary ally. Possibly the taunts of the Quarterly
Review, and the alienation of Keats from Hunt, had some
connexion as cause and effect. In a letter from John
Keats to his brother George and his sister-in-law occurs




COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 47
the following passage, dated towards the end of I818:
'Hunt has asked me to meet Tom Moore some day-so
you shall hear of him. The night we went to Novello's
there was a complete set-to of Mozart and punning.
I was so completely tired of it that, if I were to follow my
own inclinations, I should never meet any one of that set
again; not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow
in the main, when you are with him-but in reality he is
vain egotistical and disgusting in matters of taste, and in
no, He understands many a beautiful thing; but
then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same
degree of perception as he himself professes, he begins
an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste
and self-love are offended continually. Hunt does one
harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things
hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care
not for white busts; and many a glorious thing, when
associated with him, becomes a nothing. This distorts
one's mind-makes one's thoughts bizarre-perplexes
one in the standard of Beauty.'
For the text of Adonais in the present edition I naturally
have recourse to the original Pisan edition, but without
neglecting such alterations as have been properly introduced into later issues: these will be fully indicated and
accounted for in my Notes. In the minor matters of
punctuation, &c. I do not consider myself bound to reproduce the first or any other edition, but I follow the plan
which appears to myself most reasonable and correct;
any point worthy of discussion in these details will also
receive attention in the Notes.
1 This passage of the letter had remained unpublished up to
I890. It then appeared in Mr. Buxton Forman's volume, Poetry
and Prose by John Keats. Some authentic information as to
Keats's change of feeling had, however, been published before.




ADONAIS:
ITS ARGUMENT "
THE poem of Adonais can of course be contemplated
from different points of view. Its biographical relations
have been already considered in ouiJr eceding sections:
1,-oetical structure and value, its ideal or spiritual
significance, an  partcuar igery and diction, will
occupy us much as we proceed. At present I mean
smpy todeal with the Argument of Adonais. It has
a thread —certainly a slender thread-of narrative or
fable; the personation of the poetic figure Adonais, as
distinct rom tfe actual man John Keats, afd the incidents
with    h that poeticg re s associated. The numerals
which I put in parentheses indicate the stanzas in which
the details occur.
(i) Adonais is now dead: the Hour which witnessed
his loss mourns nm, and is to rouse the other Hours to
mourn. (a) He was the son of the widowed Urania, (6)
her youngest and dearest son. (2) He- was sla  by
a nightly arrow-' pierced by the shaft which flies in
darkness.' At the time of his death Urania was in her
paradise (pleasure-garden), slumbering, while Echoes
listened to the poems which he had written as death was
impending. (3) Urania should now wake and weep; yet
wherefore? 'He is gone where all things wise and fair
descend.' (4) Nevertheless let her weep and lament.
(7) Adonais had come to Rome. (8) Death and Corruption are now in his chamber, but Corruption delays as
yet to strike. (9) The Dreams whom he nurtured, as
a herdsman tends his flock, mourn around him. (o) One
of them was deceived for a moment into supposing that




ITS ARGUMENT


49


a tear shed by itself came from the eyes of Adonais, and
must indicate that he was still alive.  (iI) Another
washed his limbs, and a third clipped and shed her locks
upon his corpse, &c. (13) Then came others-Desires,
Adorations, Fantasies, &c. (14 to i6) Morning lamented,
and  ch, and Spring. (17) Albion wailed. May the
curse of Cain light on his head who pierced thy innocent
breast,' and scared away its angel soul! (20) Can it be
that the soul alone dies, when nothing else is annihilated?
(22) iseryaroseed  Urania: urged by Dreams and
Echoes, she sprang up, and (23) sought the deathchamber of Adonais, (24) enduring much suffering from
'barljd tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they.'
(25) As she arrived, Death was shamed for a moment,
and Adonais breathed again: but immediately afterwards
'Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.' (26)
Urania would fain have died along with Adonais; but,
chained as she was to Time, this was denied her. (27)
She reproached Adonais for having, though defenceless,
dared the dragon in his den. Had he waited till the day
of his maturity, 'the monsters of life's waste' would have
fled from him, as (28) the wolves, ravens, and vultures
had fled from, and fawned upon, 'the Pythian of the age.'
(36) Then came the    ountain Shepherds bewailing
Adonais: the Pilgrim of Eternity, the Lyrist of erne,
and (3I) among others, one frail form, a pard-like spirit.
(34) Urania asked the name of this last Shepherd: he
then made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
which was like Cain's or Christ's. (35) Another Mountain Shepherd, 'the gentlest of the wise,' leaned over the
deathbed. (36) Adonais has drunk poison. Some 'deaf
and viperous mr   -g     e him the enenomed draught.
i must here= point out a singular discrepancy in the.em of Adonais, considered as a narrative or apologue.
Hitherto we had been told that Adonais was killed by an
arrow or dart-he was 'pierced by the shaft which flies
ADONAIS              E




50o


ADONAIS:


in darkness,' and the man who 'pierced his innocent
breast' had incurred the curse of Cain: he had 'a wound'
(stanza 22). There was also the alternative statement
that Adonais, unequipped with the shield of wisdom or
the spear of scorn, had been so rash as to 'dare the
unpastured dragon in his den'; and from this the natural
inference is that not any ' shaft which flies in darkness,'
but the dragon himself, had slaughtered the too-venturous youth. But now we hear that he was done to
death by poison. Certainly, when we look beneath the
symbol into the Th~n    m      1izE we can seeiit'-i
tese d'Ivergent alleg-ationsrepresentte  same fact and
ereaders of          y are not called upon to form
themselves into a coroner's -ury to  etermie whethr
a 'shaft' or a 'dragon or 'poison' was the instrument
of murder: nevertheless the statements in the text are
neither identical nor reconcileable for purposes of mythical
narration, and it seems strange that the author should
not have taken this into account. It will be found as we
proceed (see p. 70) that the reference to  oismcomes
into the poem as a direct repro uction from the Elegy of
loschus upon Bon-Zbeing the passage which Torms the
second of the two mottoes to Adonais.]
(36) This murderer, a 'nameless worm,' was alone
callous to the prelude of the forthcoming song. (37) Let
him live on in remorse and self-contempt. (38) Neither
should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far from these
carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back
to its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he
is not dead nor sleeping, but' has awakened from the dream
of life.' Not he decays, but we. (41) Let not us, nor the
powers of Nature, mourn for Adonais. (42) He is made
one with Nature.  (45) In 'the unapparent' he awelcomed by Chatterton, Sidney, Lucan, and (46) ma,
more immortals, and was hailed as the master of a ' kingless sphere' in a 'heaven of song.' (48) Let any rash




ITS ARGUMENT


6     St


mourner go to Rome, and (49) visit the cemetery. (53) And
thou, my heart,why linger and shrink? Adonais calls thee:
be no longer divided from him. (55) The soul of Adonais
beacons to thee 'from the abode where the Eternal are.'
This may be the most convenient place for raising
a question of leading importance to the Argument of
Adonais-Who is the personage designated under the
name Urania?-a question which, so far as I know, has
never yet beei  mooted among the students of Shelley.
Who is Urania? Why is she represented as the mother
of Adonais (Keats), and the chief mourner for his untimely death?
In mythology the word Urania has two distinct applications. It is the name of one of the nine Muses (Hesiod,
Theog. 78) to whom in later times Astronomy is assned
as a specialprovince. As an adjective it is attached to
'Aphrodite in one of her aspects (Herodotus, i. ioS, iv. 59,
&c.); and Plato in the Banquet, a dialogue translated by
Shelley (begun in 1818), lays much stress upon the distinction between the elder-born Aphrodite Urania, the
motherless daughter of Heaven, and Aphrodite Pandemos
(the Common), daughter of Zeus and Dione. The fragmentary poem of Shelley named Prince Athanase, written
in 1817, was at first named Pandemos and Urania, and
was intended, as Mrs. Shelley informs us, to embody the
contrast between 'the earthly and unworthy Venus,' and
the nobler ideal oTfTv ebo"Ie heave es
Venus.-_  he poem would thus have borne a certain
relation to Alastor, and also to Epipsychidion. The use
of the name 'Urania' in this proposed title may ep
conf    u in the bel tihat there is no reason w
Shelley should not heustav  e u seth e   name amin Adonais,
witfi tie mpled meaning of Aphrodite Urania.
I  e peonage in Shelley's Elegy is to be regarded,
not as the Muse Urania, but as Aphrodite Urania, she
E 2




52                 ADONAIS:
here represents spiritual or intellectual aspiration, the
love of abstract Eaut"i tie d'rvie emet in poesy or
art As such, Aphrodite Urana woude no Iiss appropriate than Urania or any other Muse to be designated as
the mother of Adonais (Keats). But the more cogent
argument in favour of Aphrodite Urania is to be based
upon grounds of analogy or transfer rather than upon
reasonoantecedent ro        ility. The part assigned
to Urania in Shelley's Elegy is very closely modelled
upon the part assigned to Aphrodite in the Elegy of Bion
upon Adonis (see the section in this volume, Bion and
Moschus). What    hroite  ypris does in the Adonis,
that U raa   es     the Adonais. The resemblances
are exceedingly close, in substance and in detail:the
divergences are only such as the altered conditions
natural  diyprian Aphrodite          he bride
of Adonis, and as such she bewails him: the Uranian
Aphrodite is the mother of Adonais, and she laments
him accordingly. Carnal relationship and carnal love
are transposed into spiritual relationship and spiritual
Tove. The hands are the hands, in both poems, of
Aphrodite: the voices are respectively those of Cypris
and of Urania.
On the whole I am strongly of opinion that the Urania
4     of Adonais is Aphrodite, and not the Muse.
On the other hand, it is to be observed that Urania is
first mentioned in close connexion with Milton. The
'most musical of mourners' is still mourning the loss of
her great elder-born son, and is now called to mourn her
'youngest, dearest one'; just as the Meles,' most musical
of rivers,' who of old lost Homer, is said in Moschus's
Elegy for Bion to weep for another son, wasting'away in
a new sorrow. Many readers will recollect that Milton,
in the elaborate address which opens Book VII of Paradise
Lost, invokes Urania. He is careful however to say that
he does not mean theMe      Urania, but the spirit of........




ITS ARGUMENT


53


'Celestial Song,' sister of Eternal Wisdom both of them
well-pleasingto the ' Alv      ather,n faitth
' Heavenly  use'of t  peni     Book I. It can hardly
be b-it-at some recollection of this 'Heavenly Muse'
was in Shelley's mind, and was meant to be suggested
to his readers, even though the primary reference be to
Aphrodite the Heavenly rn the supposition that Urania the Muse is referred to,
a subordinate point of some difficulty arises from stanza 6,
where Adonais is spoken of as 'the nursling of thy
widowhood'-which seems to mean, son of Urania, born
after the father's death. Urania the Muse is credited in
mythology with the motherhood of two sons-Linus, her
offspring-y Amphimarus, who was a son of Poseidon
nd Hmenaeus, her offspln-    byApoo,    It might be
idle to puzzle over this question of Urania's 'widowhood,'
or to attempt to found upon it any theory as to who her
deceased consort could have been: for it is as likely as
not that the phrase which I have cited from thepoem  s
not intended to deEne wit any sort of precision the
parentage of te su"pposltitl us'  on-als, uu Poalr
ignoring Adionalsapies to Keats himself and means
simply Ithat seats,~ astison of the Muse, was born out
of time-  orn in an unpoetical aniunpireciataiv e.
It would also be accodinmg to the afnoigy of creek and
Latin to use 'wTdowho'od oT b-"reeavement generally,.
ilere o-Ni  eireavement causeidiih to deeath:
o~Hilton'. Compare aeeer s 'murn, widowed Queen.'
If we were to suppose (but I have already discarded
the supposition) that the Urania of Adonais is truly the
Muse, and if we regard this Muse as specially the Muse
of Astronomy, we might ask-why should Shelley have
selected the Muse of Astronom'  a ove a  o
ene mo-i-roeHrio6FK     " Ke-ats?  eats never wrote about
astronomy, and had no qualifications and no faintest
inclination for writing about it: this science, and every
_.




54                  ADONAIS
other exact or speculative science, were highly alien
from his dispositi am 'turn ~  ~o min Ayetii
casting about for a reason, we can find that after all and
in a certain sense there is one forthcoming, of some
considerable amount of relevancy. In the eyes of Shelley,
Keats was principally and above a eoetf:
and  yPeron Is strlI s      akng  em  about the sun.
In like manner, Enmion is apoem about the moon.
Thus, from one point of view-I cannot see any otherKeats might be regarded as inspired by or a son of, the
iuse of Astronomy. But I only make this remark by
the w-ayv as it leaves ihe main argument quite unaffected.




ADONAIS:
GENERAL EXPOSITION
THE consideration which, in the preceding section, we
have bestowed upon the 'Argument' of Adonais will
assist us not a little in grasping the full scope of the poem.
It may be broadly divided into three currents of thought,
or (as one might say) into three acts o passion. i. The
nse     grousohn Keats the
youthful and aspiring poet, cut short as he was approaching his prime; and the instinctive impulse to mourning
and desolation. 2. The mythical or smbolic embodiment
o   e events in the laments of Urania and the Mountain
Shepherds, and in the denunciation of the ruthless destroyer of the peace and life of Adonais. 3. The rejection
of m   ninas one-sided ignorant and a reversal of the
true estimate of the facts; and a recognition of the eternal
dS    f Keats in the world oT mind, coupled with the
yearniof Shelley to have cone witte vain shows.il.
ts       nthis ccle   mortalty and to e at one wh
Keats in themansions of the everlasting. Suc is the         I
evolution of this Elegy; from mourning to rapture: from
aPurblind consideration oi eato hphe      a to he
illumination of the individual spirit which contemplates
the eternity of spirit as the universal substance.
SelIey raises in his poem a very marked contrast,
between the death of Adonais jK(eats as a mortaman
succ"um-ng to 'th ie common fate' and the immortalty
o 1hs spLnrt as a vital immaterial essence-surwing the
de itttirthe body: he uses terms such as might be adopted
by any eliever in the doctrine of' the immortality of the
soul,' in the ordinary sense of that phrase. It would not




56


ADONAIS:


however be safe to infer that Shelley, at the precise time
when he wrote Adonais, was really in a more definite
frame of mind on this theme than at other periods of his
life, or of a radically different conviction. As a fact,
his feelings on the great problems of immortality were
acutehis opons regardin them vagueand unsettie
He certainly was not an adherent of the typjclbeFie ion
this subject: the belief that a man on this earth is a combination of body and soul, in a state-his sole state-of
'probation'; that, when 'the body dies and decays, the
soul continues to be the same absolute individual identity;
and that it passes into a condition of eternal and irreversible happiness or misery, according to the faith
entertained or the deeds done in the body. His belief
amounted more nearly to this: That a human soul i
a portion of the Universal soul, subjected, during its
connexion with the body, to all the illusions, the dreams
and nightmares, of sense; and that, after the death of the
body, it continues to be a portion of the Universal Soul,
liberated from those illusions, and subsisting in some
condition which the human reason is not capable of
defining as a state either of personal consciousness or
of absorption. And, so far as the human being exercised,
during the earthly life, the authentic functions of soul,
that same exercise of function continues to be the permanent record of the soul in the world of mind. If any
reader thinks that this seems a vague form of belief, the
answer is that the belief of Shelley was indeed a vague
g   one. In the poem of Adonais it remainsto myappreh ension, as vague in  s other  tins  but iassumes
a shape of greater definition, because the poem  its
sc neS ient, a persona          whichthe soul
oT Keats hs to be greeted by the soul of Chatterton jlst
as the body of Adonais has to be caressed and bewailed
y Urania. Using lguage       semi-emblemati kinad
we mighl perhaps express something of Shelley's belief




GENERAL EXPOSITION


57


thus:-Mankind is the microcosm, as distinguished from
the rest of the universe, which forms the macrocosm;
and, as long as a man's body and soul remain in combination, his soul pertains to the microcosm: when this
combination ceases with the death of the body, his soul, ()
in whatever sense it may be held to exist, lapses into
the macrocosm, but there is neither knowledge as to
the mode of its existence, nor speech capable of recording
this.
As illustrating our soesconceptions on hese msterous subjects, I append extracts from three of his
ose writings.The first extract comes from his fragment On Life, which may have been written (but this is
quite uncertain) towards 1815; the second from his
fragment On a Future State, for which some similar date
is suggested; the third from the notes to his drama of
Hellas, written in I82I, later than Adonais.
(I) 'The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to
a view of Life which, though startling to the apprehension,
is in fact that which the habitual sense of its repeated
combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it
were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I
confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse
my assent' to the conclusions of those philosophers who
assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived. It is
a decision against which all our persuasions struggleand we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of external things is " such
stuff as dreams are made of." The shocking absurdities
of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal
consequences in morals, and their [? the] violent dog-matism concerning the source of all things, had early
conducted me to Materialism. This Materialism is a
1 This phrase is lumbering and not grammatical. The words
I confess that I am unable to refuse' would be all that the mean.
ing requires.




58


ADONAIS:


seducing system to young and superficial minds: it
allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from
thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of
things as it afforded. Man is a being of high aspirations,
" looking both before and after," whose "thoughts wander
through eternity," disclaiming alliance with transience
and decay; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being, not
what he is, but what he has been and shall be. Whatever
may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit
within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution.
This is the character of all life and being. Each is at
once the centre and the circumference; the point to
which all things are referred, and the line in which all
things are contained. Such contemplations as these
Materialism, and the popular philosophy of mind and
matter, alike forbid: they are only consistent with the
Intellectual System.... The~view of Life presented by
the most refined deductions of the Intellectual Philosophy
is that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived.
The difference is merely nominal between those two
classes of thought which are vulgarly distinguished by
the names of "ideas" and of "external objects." Pursuing
the same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct
individual minds, similar to that which is employed in
now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be
a delusion. The words " I, you, they," are not signs of
any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage
of thoughts thus.indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one
mind. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts
to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who
now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a
portion of it.'
(2) 'Suppose however that the intellectual and vital
principle differs in the most marked and essential man



GENERAL EXPOSITION                   59
ner from all other known substances; that they have all
some resemblance between themselves which it in no
degree participates. In what manner can this concession
be made an argument for its imperishability? All that we
see or know perishes' and is changed. Life and thought
differ indeed from everything else: but that it survives
that period beyond which we have no experience of its
existence such distinction and dissimilarity affords no
shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could
have led us to conjecture or imagine. Have we existed
before birth? It is difficult to conceive the possibility of
this.... If we have not existed before birth; if, at the
period when the parts of our nature on which thought
and life depend seem to be woven together, they are
woven together; if there are no reasons to suppose that
we have existed before that period at which our existence
apparently commences; then there are no grounds for
supposition that we shall continue to exist after our
existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and
life is concerned, the same will take place with regard
to us, individually considered, after death, as had place
before our birth. It is said that it is possible that we
should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most unreasonable
presumption.... Such assertions... persuade indeed
only those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to
be for ever as we are-the reluctance to a violent
and unexperienced change which is common to all the
1 This seems to contradict the phrase in Adonais (stanza 2o)
'Nought we know dies.' Probably Shelley, in the prose passagedoes not intend ' perishes' to &e accepted in the absolute sense
oie' or 'ceases to have any existence:' he means that all
things undergo a process of deterioration and o cay, leading on
to some essential change or transmutati.ton.  T-e"lirfeefa^ hew, ord '"perlr as well as 'perir':Selley's 'perishes' would
correspond to ' deprit.'




6o


ADONAIS:


animated and inanimate combinations of the universeis indeed the secret persuasion which has given birth to
the opinions of a Future State.'
(3. Note to the chorus, ' Worlds on worlds are rolling
ever,' &c.) 'The first stanza contrasts the immortality of
the living and thinking beings which inhabit the planets
and (to use a common and inadequate phrase) clothe
themselves in matter, with the transience of the noblest
manifestations of the external world. The concluding
verses indicate a progressive state of more or less exalted
existence, according to the degree of perfection which
every distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not'
be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject
concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I
think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disen- -
tangled by that or any similar assertions.... That there
is a true solution of the riddle, and that in our present
state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions
which may be regarded as equally certain: meanwhile,
as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to those
ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the condition of that futurity
towards which we are all impelled by an inextinguishable
thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be
produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this
desire itself must remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking
being.'
The reader will perceive that in these three passages
the dominant ideas, very briefly stated, are as follows:(i) Mind is the aggregate of all individual minds; (2) man
has no reason for expecting that his mind or soul will
be immortal (3) no reason except such as inheres in
tie very desire whseich h  i    mortalty.Tese
opinions, deliberately expressed by Shelley at different
dates as a theorist in prose, should be taken into account




11


GENERAL EXPOSITION                    6
if we endeavour to estimate what he medins when, as a
poet, he speaks, whether in H-ellas or in Adonais, of an
individual, his mind and his immortality. When Sheley
onll  uprs to rear  Ket._Aoas)a         otli
body —butnimorta in soul or mind, his~ real intentivs
prbabl T   hmited to this: that Keats ha~s been lMiberatedW
Qde   hoftebod,rmtedminion and delu.sions of the        andnatee,       i e inthe fesh,
veloped certain fruits of mind which survive his bodj,_
anwifllTcntinue o survive it indefintland will form
inheritance                 2.nS
ceedigjg ~erations. Keats himself, in one of his most
f-iiiilines, expressed a like conception'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.'
Shellg was -faithful to his canons of highest literary or
oe t cil fo rm "i-n giigacre~sae to his Elegy on
Ket:btit may be allowed to his English readers, or
at any rate to some of them, to think that he hereby fell
into a certain dekree of artificiality of structure, undesirable in itself, and more especially hampering him in a
plain and self-consistent expression both of his real feeling concerning Kedts, and of his resentment against those
who had cut short, or were supposed to have cut short,
the career and the poetical work of his friend. ~1Qrgover~
Shelley went beyond the mere recurrence to Greek formns.
o f Lm2personation and exipression: he took twoyvaricular
authors~l   a~  w  priular Greek ~po~ems. as his
yrnialimodel. These two poems are the Elegy of
Biori on Adonis, and the Elegy of Moschus on Bion. To
imitate is not to plagiarize; and Shelley cannot reasonably be called a plagiarist because he introduced into
Adonais~a~     which are paraphrased' or,en transTateaT I iii!ion and  oschus_._ It does seem singular
however that neither in the Adonais volume nor in any
of his numerous written remarks upon the poem does




62


ADONAIS:


Shelley ever once refer to this state of the facts. Possibly
in using the name 'Adonais' he intended to refer the
reader indirectly to the 'Adonis' of Bion; and he prefixed to the preface of his poem, as a motto, four verses
from the Elegy of Moschus upon Bion. This may have
been intended for a hint to the reader as to the Grecian
sources of the poem. The whole matter will receive detailed treatment in our next section, as well as in the Notes.
The passages of Adonais which can be traced back to
Bion and Moschus are not the finest thitgs in tioem:
mostly they fill out its abuar 'arumen tbrilliancy
'ana suaity, r-thr than wit nerve andpathos.g Ahe
~inest things are to be noun   e enunciation oTtthe
ea an             lrous       re         stanzas concesrnjpiS
the reountalnthere R:r
sentiun eleey himself; and in the solemn and majestc
conclusion, w re the poet rises from  the regon o
earthly sorrow into the realm of ideal aspiration and
contemplation.
Selley is generally-and I think most justly-regarded
as a peculiarly melodious versifier: but it must not be
supoSetna      te iis ri  _xact n his use of rhyme.
The contrary can be proved from the entire body of his
poems. Adonais is, in this respect, neither more nor
less correct than his other writings. It would hardly be
reasonable to attribute his laxity in rhyming to either
carelessness, indifference, or unskilfulness: but rather to
a deliberate preference for a certain varietyn the rhme
sounds-as tendin to please the ear and availin, to
satisfy it in the total effect, without cloying it by any
ht-drawn uiformty. Such a preference can be justified on two grounds: firstly, that the general effect of the
slightly varied sounds is really the more gratifying of the
two methods, and I believe that, practised within reasonable limits, it is so; and secondly, that the requirements
of sense are superior to those of sound, and that, in the




GENERAL EXPOSITION


63


effort after severely exact rhyming, a writer would often
be compelled to sacrifice some delicacy of thought, or
some grace or propriety of diction. Looking through_
the stanzas of Adonais, I find the following laxities of
11% 1.                              i. — Big-  repetietionrSymIg C6ompeers, dares; anew, knew (this repetition
of a identical syllable as if it were a rhyme is very
frequent with Shelley, who.eidentyJ i       t be     > "
permissible, a     i.h-asand, iJthis.~xieJae..has     X. '
pleno    ip ot); Gods road last, waste..taught.. not;
break, cheek (two instances); ground, moaned; both,
youth; rise, arise; song, stung; steel, fell; light, delight;
part, depart; wert, heart; wrong, tongue; brow, so;
moan, one; crown, tone; song, unstrung; knife, grief;
mourn, burn; dawn, moan; bear, bear; blot, thought;
renown, Chatterton; thought, not; approved, reproved;
forth, earth; nought, not; home, tomb; thither, together;
wove, of; riven, heaven. These are 34 instances of irre-1
gularity. The number of stanzas in Adonais is 55: there-:
fore there.is more than one such irregularity for every
two stanzas.
It may not be absolutely futile if we bestow a little
more attention upon the details of these laxities of rhyme.  /
The repetition of an identical syllable has been cited v/
6 times. In 4 instances the sound of taught is assimilated to that of not (I take here no account of differences
of spelling, but only of the sounds); in 4, the sound of
ground and of renown to that of moaned, or of Chatterton;
in 2, the sound of o in road, both, and wove, to that in God,
youth, and of; in 3, the sound of song to that of stung;
in 2, the sound of ee in compeers, steel, cheek, and grief, to
the sound in dares, fell, break, and knife; in 2, the sound
of e in wert and earth to that in heart and forth; in 3, the
sound of o in moan and home to that in one, dawn, and
tomb; in 2, the sound of thither to that of together. The
other cases which I have cited have only a single instance
apiece. It results therefore that the vowel-sound sub



64


ADONAIS:


jected to the most frequent variations is that of o, whether
single or in combination.
Shelley may be considered to allow himself more than
an average degree of latitude in rhyming: but it is a fact
that, if the general body of English poetry is scrutinized,
it will be found to be more or less lax in this matter.
This question is complicated by another question-that
of how words were pronounced at different periods in
our literary history: in order to exclude the most seriousconsequent difficulties, I shall say nothing here about
any poet prior to Milton. I take at haphazard four pages
of rhymed verse from each of the following six poets, and
the result proves to be as follows:Milton.-Pass, was; feast, rest; come, room; still,
invisible; vouchsafe, safe; moon, whereon; ordained,
land. 7 instances.
Dryden.-Alone, fruition; guard, heard; pursued, good;
procured, secured. 4 instances.
Pope.-Given, heaven; steer, character; board, lord;
fault, thought; err, singular. 5 instances.
Gray.-Beech, stretch; borne, thorn; abode, God;
broke, rock. 4 instances.
Coleridge.-Not a single instance.
Byron.-Given, heaven; Moore, yore; look, duke;
song, tongue; knot, not; of, enough; bestowed, mood.
7 instances.
In all these cases, as in that of Shelley's Adonais, I have
taken no count of t hose instances of lax sound-rh-yme
wlch are correct letter-rhyme-such as the couplng ot
mnove with love, or of star with war; for these, howeve'r
much some more than commonly purist ears may demur
to them, appear to be part and parcel of the rhyming
system of the English language. I need hardly say that,
if thesecases had been included, my list would in every
instance have swelled considerably; nor yet that I am
conscious how extremely partial and accidental is the




GENERAL EXPOSITION


65


test, as to comparative number of laxities, which I have
here supplied.
The' Spenserian stanza,'in which the Adonais is written,  Q;
was devised_              a yvehle prper fr the
expression of the romantic themesof theFae
In the Shepherd's Calendar he had used Chaucer's eightned stanza in which the rhymes run    babbcc. To
ThistanzaSpensej      w aded, as a ninth line, an
Alexandrine or twelve-syllable line, rhyming with the
anh  d   el4a1d iesgthus ababcc      d s obtaine do   -d
some of the effect of the Ottava rima used by Ariosto and
Tasso, abbaabcc where te close oea  strophe is marked
by the rhyme of its two last lines. Warton — Todd's
Spenser, ii. p. cxxv1'criticizes Spe-nser's invention as
showing an imperfect feeling for the genius of the English
language, and leading the poet into redundances and
ellipses of expression, and also into false or strained
rhymes. On the other hand he allows that 'the fullness
and significancy of Spenser's descriptions is often owing  /
to the prolixity of his stanza, and the multitude of his  /
-rhymes.' The stanza was successfully use~ibyTinomson
in the Castle of Indolence, and by Beattie in the Minstrel.
Byron, in his preface to the First and Second Cantos of
Childe Harold (I812), writes:' The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our most
successful poets, admits of every variety. Dr. Beattie
makes the following observation:-" Not long ago, I began
a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in which
I propose to give full scope to my inclination, and be
either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender
or satirical, as the humour strikes me; for, if I mistake
not, the measure which I have adopted admits equally of
all these kinds of composition."'
Shelley had employed it in the Revolt of Islam (1817)
(not to speak of his juvenile Poems by Margaret Nicholson),
and he says: —


ADONAIS


F




66


ADONAIS


\. 'I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure
inexpressibly beautiful) not because I consider it a finer
model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of
Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there
is no shelter for mediocrity: you must either succeed or
fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But
I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of
sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical
thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure.'
As is here pointed out, the metre admits of great
varlet   cor n   to    ncidence ofiepauset. he
i~etrical structure of the first two cantos of tcilTetHarold
is more even and regular than that of the later parts of
the poem. The versification of the Adonais appears j
be more maturedth     than that of the Revolt of Islam; and,.
'weak,' or doublerhymes are very sparinly used.
hemetre has been used by the late Mr. Philip Worsley
for his translations of the Odyssey and Iliad, and has stood
the severe test successfully. It has also been used by
Mr. George Musgrave (1893) in a translation of Dante's
Inferno. This was a bold experiment, but not exactly an
unreasonable one, as the chief pauses of Dante's own
metre often fall naturally on the ninth line.
See Courthope's History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 279;
also Tozer's Childe Harold, Clarendon Press, 1885.


*




BION AND MOSCHUS
THE relation of Shelley's Elegy of'Adonais to the two
Elegies written by Bion and by Moschus must no doubt
have been observed, and been more or less remarked
upon, as soon as Adonais obtained some currency among
classical readers; Captain Medwin, in his Shelley Papers,
1832, referred to it. I am not however aware that the
resemblances had ever been brought out in detail until
Mr. G. S. D. Murray, of Christ Church, Oxford, noted
down the passages from Bion, which were published
accordingly in my edition of Shelley's Poems, I870. Since
then, in i888, Lieut.-Colonel Hime, R.A., issued a pamphlet
(Dulau & Co.) entitled The Greek Materials of Shelley's
Adonais, with Remarks on the three Great English Elegies,
entering into further, yet not exhaustive, particulars on
the same subject. Shelley himself made a fragmentary
translation from the Elegy of Bion on Adonis: it was first
printed in Mr. Forman's edition of Shelley's Poems, 1877.
I append here those passages which are directly related
to Adonais:'I mourn Adonis dead-loveliest AdonisDead, dead Adonis-and the Loves lament.
Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woofWake, violet-stoled queen and weave the crown
Of death,-'tis Misery calls,-for he is dead.. Aphrodite
With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,
Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled-the thorns pierce
Her hastening feet, and drink her sacred blood.
The flowers are withered up with grief.
~.....        a..  ~




68


BION AND MOSCHUS


Echo resounds,..   "Adonis dead!"
She clasped him, and cried.. "Stay, Adonis!
Stay, dearest one,.
And mix my lips with thine!
Wake yet a while, Adonis-oh but once!That I may kiss thee now for the last timeBut for as long as one short kiss may live!"'
The reader familiar with Adonais will recognize the passages in that poem of which we here have the originals.
To avoid repetition, I do not cite them at the moment, but
shall call attention to them successively in my Notes at
the end of the volume.
For other passages, also utilized by Shelley, I have
recourse to the volume of Mr. Andrew Lang (Macmillan
& Co. I889), Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, rendered into
English Prose. And first, from Bion's Elegy on Adonis:'The flowers flush red for anguish.... This kiss will
I treasure, even as thyself, Adonis, since, ah ill-fated!
thou art fleeing me,... while wretched I yet live,
being a goddess, and may not follow thee. Persephone,
take thou my lover, my lord, for thyself art stronger than
I, and all lovely things drift down to thee... For
why, ah overbold! didst thou follow the chase, and, being
so fair, why wert thou thus over-hardy to fight with
beasts?... A tear the Paphian sheds for each blooddrop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are
turned to flowers.... Ah even in death he is beautiful,
beautiful in death, as one that hath fallen on sleep....
All things have perished in his death, yea all the flowers
are faded.... He reclines, the delicate Adonis, in his
raiment of purple, and around him the Loves are weeping and groaning aloud, clipping their locks for Adonis.
And one upon his shafts, another on his bow, is treading,
and one hath loosed the sandal of Adonis, and another
hath broken his own feathered quiver, and one in a
golden vessel bears water, and another laves the wound,




BION AND MOSCHUS


69


and another, from behind him, with his wings is fanning
Adonis.... Thou must again bewail him, again must
weep for him another year.... He does not heed them
[the Muses]; not that he is loth to hear, but that the
Maiden of Hades doth not let him go.'
The next-ensuing passages come from the Elegy of
Moschus for Bion:
'Ye flowers, now in sad clusters breathe yourselves
away. Now redden, ye roses, in your sorrow, and now
wax red, ye wind-flowers; now, thou hyacinth, whisper
the letters on thee graven, and add a deeper ai ai to thy
petals: he is dead, the beautiful singer.... Ye nightingales that lament among the thick leaves of the trees, tell
'ye to the Sicilian waters of Arethusa the tidings that
Bion the herdsman is dead.... Thy sudden doom, O
Bion, Apollo himself lamented, and the Satyrs mourned
thee, and the Priapi in sable raiment, and the Panes
sorrow for thy song, and the Fountain-fairies in the wood
made moan, and their tears turned to rivers of waters.
And Echo in the rocks laments that thou art silent, and
no more she mimics thy voice. And in sorrow for thy
fall the trees cast down their fruit, and all the flowers
have faded.... Nor ever sang so sweet the nightingale
on the cliffs,... nor so much, by the grey sea-waves, did
ever the sea-bird sing, nor so much in the dells of dawn
did the bird of Memnon bewail the son of the Morning,
fluttering around his tomb, as they lamented for Bion
dead.... Echo, among the reeds, doth still feed upon thy
songs.... This, O most musical of rivers, is thy second
sorrow,-this, Meles, thy new woe. Of old didst thou lose
Homer:... now again another son thou weepest, and in
a new sorrow art thou wasting away.... Nor so much
did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus, nor did the Teian
town so greatly bewail her poet,... and not for Sappho
but still for thee doth litylene wail her musical lament....Ah me! when the mallows wither in the garden, and.:*..:




70


BION AND MOSCHUS


the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on
a later day they live again, and spring in another year:
but we men, we the great and mighty or wise, when once
we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into
silence... Poison came, Bion, to  mouth-thou didst
know poison. To such lis as thine did it come, and was
not sweetened? What mortal was so cruel that could
mix  oison for thee, or who could  thee the venom
that heard th voice?  Surely he had no music in his
soul.... Butstice hath overtaken them all.'
Bion was born in Smyrna, or in a neighbouring village
named Phlossa, and may have died at some date not far
from 250 B. C. The statement of Moschus that Bion was
poisoned by certain enemies appears to be intended as an
assertion of actual fact. Of Moschus nothing distinct is
known, beyond his being a native of Sicily.:-:.-,




ADONAIS;
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS,
Author of Endymion, Hyterion, &c.
'Ao-r'p vrplv px'v EXapmnre e'v twoGlav hp-ovNis UE Bav('Av Xatiprris zawflrEs CV C)OLIA6E0LS.  5
PLATO.
PREFACE.
4Mip,1aKov JXO B46y 7roTr~lW OTO/a-7a, rJ.adp,.aKOV (Jacs.
IlcsTEP reToLS' XEL~eoOL coroeapa~lE KOVKE~KaB?
Tic 8E' g9pToCr Troao-0Vro. avat~~pov 1) K~fpao-aL rt,  10
'H 8ouvat XaXE'ovr& To' 4dapuaKcoV; cOvYIV Odv.
Moscnus, EPITPH. BxoN.
IT is my intention to subjoin to the London editiokn of
this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented
object to be classed among the writers of the highest z5
genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several
of his earlier compositions were modelled p roves at least
that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of
Hyfierion as second to nothing that was ever produced by:20
a writer of the same years.
John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his
twenty-fourth year, on the [23rd] of [February] Y821; and
was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the
protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the 25
tomb of Cestius, and- the massy walls and towers, now
mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of
ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among
the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It
might make one in love with death to think that one 30
should be buried in so sweet a place.
The genius of the lamented person to whose memory
I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less




72 Y l,            ADONAIS
delicate and fragile than it was beautiful;.and Vjere
35 canker-worms abound what wonder if its young flower
was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his
Endymion which appeared in the Quarterly Review produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind;
the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of
40 a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued;
and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid
critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual
to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.
It may be well said that these wretched men know not
' 45 what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders
/    without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on
a heart made callous by many blows, or one, like Keats's,
composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled
50 calumniator. As to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever
might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those
who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency
and panegyric Paris, and Woman, and A Syrian Tale,
and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne,
55 and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the
men who, in their venal good-nature, presumed to draw
a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byroa?
What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed
all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery
60 dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his
opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the
meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God: Nor shall it be your
excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken
65 daggers, but used none.
The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's
life were not made known to me until the Elegy was
ready for the press. I am given to understand that the
wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the
70 criticism of Endymion was exasperated by the bitter
sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to
have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those
oh whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than
those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care.
75 He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last
illness, by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest
promise, who, I have been informed, ' almost risked his
*i-  "'.:...




PREFACE                     73
own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied
attendance upon his dying friend.' Had I known these
circumstances before the completion of my poem, I 8o
should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of
applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives.
Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ' such stuff
as dreams are made of.' His conduct is a golden 85
augury of the success of his future career. May the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the
creations of his pencil, and plead against oblivion for his
name!                                            89




ADONAIS
I
I WEEP for Adonais-he is dead!
Oh weep for Adonais, though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thiy obscure compeers, 5
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: With me
Died Adonais! Till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity.
2
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
'Mid listening Echoes, in her paradise       5
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
' Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.
3
Oh weep for Adonais-he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed,
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;    5
For he is gone where all things wise and fair
escen    Oh dream not that the amorous deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.




ADONAIS


75


4
Mosa musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!-He died
Who was the sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride
The priest the slave a the liberticide,
Tram paled and  e    wthmany       at d rite
Of lust and blood. He went unterrified
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
Yet reigns o'er earth, the third among the Sons of
Light.
5
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb:
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished. Others more sublime,  5
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene
abode.
6
But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true love tears instead of dew.
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!         5
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom whose petals, nipt before they blew,
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken  l lies-the storm is overpast.," *,,fy




76


A7DONAIS


7
To that high Capital where kinglyDeath
Keeps his pale court in beauy and dec
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal.-Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day   5
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof, while still
He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay.
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
8
He will awake no more, oh never more
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;   5
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
9
Oh weep for Adonais!-The quick Dreams,
The   assion-win ed ministers o
Who were his flocks, wom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not-    5
Wander no more from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there whence they sprung; and mourn
their lot
Round the cold heart where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again.




ADONAIS


77


10
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
'Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead!
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies  5
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.'
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own,-as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
II
One from a lucid urn of starrydew
Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;  5
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak,
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.
12
Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death 5
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its
eclipse.




78


ADONAIS


I3
And others came,-Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions, and veiled De  nies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,        5. And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp;-the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
I4
All he had loved, and moulded into thought
From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 5
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy Thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their
dismay.
15
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered la
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green
spray,
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;  5
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds:-a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.




ADONAIS


79


Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw
down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen Year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear,        5
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears,-odour, to sighing ruth.
17
Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingae,
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale,
Heaven and could nourish in the sun's domain
Her mihty outh with morning, doth complain, 5
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
18
Ah woe is me   Wnter is come and gone
But grief returns with the revolving ear.
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons'
bier;                                    5.The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.




80


ADONAIS


'9
Through wood and stream and field and hill and
ocean,
A quickening life from the Earth's heart hai burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on chaos. In its steam immersed,
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst,
Diffuse themselves, and spend in love's delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.
20
The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death,
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath.
Nought we know dies: shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning? Th' intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
2I
Alas that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and me5
Meet massed in death   who lends what life must
borrow.
As long as skies are blue and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to
sorrow.




ADONAIS


22
He will awake no more, oh never more!
'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake in thy heart's core
A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.'
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 5
And all the Echoes whom their Sister's song
Had held in holy silence, cried 'Arise!'
Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splen rur sprung.
23
She rose like an autumnal Night that springs
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way,
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
24
Out of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone and steel,
And human hearts, which, to her aery tread
X. elding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell.
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than
they,
Rent the soft form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
ADONXA                G




82


ADONAIS


25
In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear
delight.                                 s
'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!' cried Urania. Her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain
caress.
26
'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again!
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live!
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,      5
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am, to be as thou now art:But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.
27
'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden.paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was then  s
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?Or, hadst thou waited thie tui cycyie wh en
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.




ADONAIS


83


28
'The herded wolves bold only to pursue,
The obscene ravens clamorous o'er the dead,
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true,
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion,-how they fled, s
When like Apollo, from his golden bow,
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped,
And smiled!-The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
29
'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again.
So is it in the world of living men:        s
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven; and, when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.'
30
Thus ceased she: and the Mountain Sh~eherds came,
Their'arlands sere, their magic mantles rent.
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow. From her wilds Ierne sent
The sweetest lyrist of ier saddest wroingi
And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.
G 2




84


ADONAIS


31
'Midst others of less note came one frail Form,
A phantom among men, companionless
As~~   Tras~t c'loud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess,
Had gazed 16n Nature's naked loveliness      5
Actaieohnlike; and now he fled astray
-With fe'eble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts along that rugged way
Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.
32
A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swiftA love in desolation masked-a power
Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift
-The wieighit f the superincumbent hour.
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,        s
A breaking billow;-even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower.The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood even while the heart may
break.
33
His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white and pied and bie;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,  5
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart,




ADONAIS


85


34
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle
band
Who in another's fate now wept his own;
As in the accents of an unknown land,
He sang new sorrow; sad Urana scanned       5
The Stranger's mien, and murmured 'Who art thou?'
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
Which was like Cain's or Christ's-Oh that it should
be so!
35
What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?.
If it be he who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one,
Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs
The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
36
Our Adonais has drunk poison-oh
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown;
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone   5
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.




86


ADONAIS


37
Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free          5
Io       spil the venom when thy fangs o'erflow:
"R' "remoVra1 5sean fselfcontempt shall cling to thee,
Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt-as now.
38
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion kites that scream below.
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.Dust to the dust: but the pure spirit shall flow 5
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Sternal, which must glow
thirough time and change unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of
shame.
39
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep —
He hath awakened from the dream of life.
'Tj.i we who lost in storm  visions, keep
With phantoms an unproftable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife  5
Invulnerabe nothings. We decay
l  'lle  corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us dayrby day.,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within ur living clay.
1M4DI 1_          1 1_P s4S Ui~*Ui/Zlr r  v i, hlW  2r c  1 il  2 I ii 4W, m II I, i i0t04 d4 0L




ADONAIS


87


40
He has outsoared the shadow of our night.
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure; and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vainNor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
4I
He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawns
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone!
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!   5
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains! and thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
42
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,




88


ADONAIS


43
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely. He doth bear
His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world; compelling
there
All new successions to the forms they wear;  5
Torturing th' unwilling dross, that checks its flight,
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the heaven's light.
44
The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 5
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there..
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
45
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose f-   rom ther thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
Far in the unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell and as he lived and loved
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.




ADONAIS


89


46
And many more, whose names on earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry;   5
'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an heaven of song.
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!'
47
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh come forth,
Fond wretch, and know thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the
brink.
48
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought
That ages, empires, and religions, there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend-they borrow not     5
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention wif their tlie's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.




go


ADONAIS


49
Go thou to Rome,-at once the paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness,         5
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.
50
And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand       S
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
5I
Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet
T   ave outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and, if the seal is set
Here on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is why fear we to become?




ADONAIS


91


52
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.-Die,   5
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!-Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
b3
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,
And man and woman; and what still is dear    5
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near:
'Tis Adonais calls! Oh hasten thither!
No more let Life divide what Death can join together.
54
That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,
That benediction which the eclipsing curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which, through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.




2               ADONAIS
55
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirits tark is driven
Far from t ieshore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!   5
I am bornedarkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.




CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS,
AND OF ITS PREFACE
THE expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will
allow myself a first and last word on the subject of
calumny as it relates to me. As an author I have dared 5
and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have
written neither for profit nor for fame: I have employed
my poetical compositions and publications simply as the
instruments of that sympathy between myself and others
which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my Io
kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of stupidity
and insolent contempt from those.... These compositions (excepting the tragedy of The Cenci, which was
written rather to try my powers than to unburden my full
heart) are insufficiently.... Commendation then perhaps IS
they deserve, even from their bitterest enemies; but they
have not obtained any corresponding popularity. As
a man, I shrink from notice and regard; the ebb and
flow Qf the world vexes me: I desire to be left in peace.
Persecution, contumely, and calumny, have been heaped 20
upon me in profuse measure; and domestic conspiracy
and legal oppression have violated in my person the most
sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will say
it was the recompense of my errors-the man of the
world will call it the result of my imprudence; but never 25
upon one head....
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most
stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns
tiief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns
critic. But a young spirit panting for fame, doubtful of 30
its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is illqualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this
world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the
abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as
fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood,35




94        CANCELLED       PASSAGES
the merits and demerits, of -his case, inextricably entangled.... No personal offence should have drawn
from me this public comment upon such stuff.
The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted
40 solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and
some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My
friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take
a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr. Hazlitt,
but...
45 I knew personally but little of Keats; but, on the news
of his situation, I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety
of trying the Italian climate, and inviting him to join me.
Unfortunately he did not allow me
I
AND the green paradise which western waves
Embosom in their ever-wailing sweep,Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves,
Or to the spirits which within them keep
A record of the wrongs which, though they sleep, 5
Die not, but dream of retribution,-heard
His hymns, and echoing them from steepto steep,
Kept-......
2
And ever as he went he swept a lyre
Of unaccustomed shape, and... strings
Now like the... of impetuous fire
Which shakes the forest with its murmurings,
Now like the rush of the aerial wings     5
Of the enamoured wind among the treen,
Whispering unimaginable things,
And dying on the streams of dew serene
Which feed the unmown meads with ever-during
green......




CANCELLED PASSAGES


95


3
And then came one of sweet and earnest looks,
Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like
eyes
Were as the clear and ever-living brooks
Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise,
Showing how pure they are: a paradise
Of happy truth upon his forehead low
Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise
Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow
Of star-deserted heaven while ocean gleams below.
4
His song, though very sweet, was low and faint,
A simple strain.
5
A mighty Phantasm, half concealed
In darkness of his own exceeding light,
Which clothed his awful presence unrevealed,
Charioted on the...   night
Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite.                                5
6
And like a sudden meteor which outstrips
The splendour-winged chariot of the suns
eclipse
The armies of the golden stars, each one
Pavilioned in its tent of light-all strewn  5
Over the chasms of blue night —




NOTES
TITLE AND PREFACE
Line I. Adonais. There is nothing to show positively why
Shelley adopted the name Adonais as a suitable Hellenic name
for John Keats. I have already suggested (p. 62) that he may
perhaps have wished to indicate, in this indirect way, that his
poem was founded partly upon the Elegy of Bion for Adonis.
I believe the name Adonais was not really in use among the
Greeks, and is not anywhere traceable in classical Grecian
literature. It has sometimes been regarded as a Doricized form
of the name Adonis: Mr. William Cory says that it is not this, but
would properly be a female form of the same name. Dr. Furnivall
has suggested to me that Adonais is 'Shelley's variant of Adonias,
the women's yearly mourning for Adonis.' Disregarding details,
we may perhaps say that the whole subjectof hs Elegy is treated
by Shelley as a transpsition of the lament, as conceived by Bion,
of the Cyprian Ahrodite for Adonis and th  as hechange
the C  rian into the Uranian Aphrodite so he changes the dead
youth from Adonis into Adonais. 'Adonais' might possibly mean
a poem about Adons, a lament for Adonis' (cp. such words as
Thebais, &c.). But (to revert to the use of Adonais as a personal
name) the melody of the syllables, possibly also some recollection
of the Hebrew Adonai, may have led Shelley to use it in place
of 'Adonis.' So Keats of Endymion,
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being.'
The ideal beauty of Adonis and his early death made him a
suitable poetical counterpart to Keats. Besides Bion's Elegy the
beautiful hymn introduced into the fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus
(a favourite poet of Shelley's) should be remembered.
1. 4. Motto from the poet Plato. This motto has been translated
by Shelley himself as follows:
'Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled:Now; having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.'
I. 3. Motto from Moschus. Translated on p. 70,' Poison came,
Bion,' &c




NOTES


97


1. I3. It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this
poem a criticism, &c. As to the non-fulfilment of this intention
see p. 32.
I. i6. My known repugnance.. proves at least. In the Pisa
edition the word is printed 'prove' (not 'proves'). Shelley was
far from being an exact writer in matters of this sort. Cp. the
letter written (but not sent) to the editor of the Quarterly
Review:-' I speak impartially, for the canons of taste to which
Keats has conformed in his other (i. e. other than Hyperion)
compositions are the very reverse of my own.'
1. 22. John Keats died... in his twenty-fourth year, on the [23rd]
of [February] I82r. Keats, at the time of his death, was not really
in his twenty-fourth, but in his twenty-sixth year: the date of his
birth was October 31, 1795. In the Pisa edition of Adonais the date
of death is given thus-' the -   of -   I821': for Shelley, when
he wrote his Preface, had no precise knowledge of the facts. In
some later editions, 'the 27th of December 1820' was erroneously
substituted.  Shelley's mistake in supposing that Keats, in I821,
was aged only twenty-three, may be taken into account in
estimating his previous observation, 'I consider the fragment
of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by
a writer of the Same years.' Keats, writing in August I820, had
told Shelley (see p. i7) that some of his poems, perhaps including
Hyperion, had been written 'above two years' preceding that
date.  If Shelley supposed that Keats was twenty-three years
old at the beginning of i821, and that Hyperion had been written
fully two years prior to August I820, he must have accounted
that poem to be the product of a youth of twenty, or at most
twenty-one, which would indeed be a marvellous instance of
precocity. As a matter of fact, Hyperion was written by Keats
when in his twenty-fourth year. This diminishes the marvel, but
does not make Shelley's comment on the poem any the less
correct.
1. 24. Was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius.
As to the burial of the ashes of Shelley himself in a separate
portion of the same cemetery, see p. 24. Cp. letter written from
Rome in December I818, quoted in the note on stanza 49,1. 7.
See also on stanzas 50 and 5I.
1. 36. The savage criticism on his Endymion which appeared
in the Quarterly Review. As to this matter see the prefatory
ADONAIS                  H




98                       NOTES
Memoirs of Shelley and of Keats, and especially, at p. 41, &c.,
a transcript of the criticism.
1. 39. The agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a
blood-vessel in the lungs.  See pp. 28 and 39.  The Quarterly
critique was published in September 1818, and the first rupture
of a blood-vessel occurred in February I82o. Whether the mortification felt by Keats at the critique was small (as is now generally
opined) or great (as Shelley thought), it cannot reasonably -be
propounded that this caused, or resulted in, the rupture of the
pulmonary blood-vessel. Keats belonged to a consumptive family;
his mother died of consumption, and also his younger brother:
and the preliminaries of his mortal illness (even if we do not date
them farther back, for which some reason appears) began towards
the middle of July 1818, when, in very rough walking in the
Island of Mull, he caught a severe and persistent attack of sore
throat.
1. 4I. The succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics,
of the true greatness of his powers. The notice here principally
referred to is probably that which appeared in the Edinburgh
Review in August 1820, written by Lord Jeffrey.
1. 46. Whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by
many blows. Shelley, in this expression, has no doubt himself in
view. He had had serious reason for complaining of the treatment meted out to him by the Quarterly Review: see the opening
(partially cited at p. 18) of his draft-letter to the Editor.
1. 48. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base
and unprinczpled calumniator. Shelley here refers to the writer
of the critique in the Quarterly Review of his poem Laon and
Cythna (The Revolt of Islam). At first he supposed the writer to
be Southey; afterwards, the Rev. H. H. (Dean) Milman. His
indignant phrase is therefore levelled at Milman. But Shelley
was mistaken, for the article was in fact written by Mr. (afterwards Judge) Coleridge.
1. 51. Those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric Paris, and Woman, and A Syrian Tale, and
Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne. I presume that most readers of the present day are in the same
position as I was myself-that of knowing nothing about these
performances and their authors. In order to understand Shelley's
allusion, I looked up the Quarterly Review from April 18I7 to
April I821, and have ascertained as follows. (I) The Quarterl




NOTES


99


of April 1817 contains a notice of Paris in x8Ij, a Poem. The
author was the Rev. George Croly, but the title-page does not
give his name. The poem, numbering about a thousand lines,
is in the Spenserian stanza, varied by the heroic metre, and
perhaps by some other rhythms. Numerous extracts are given,
sufficient to show that the poem is at any rate a creditable piece
of writing. Some of the critical dicta are the following:-' The
work of a powerful and poetic imagination.... The subject of
the poem is a desultory walk through Paris, in which the author
observes, with very little regularity but with great force, on the
different objects which present themselves.... Sketching with
the hand of a master.... In a strain of poetry and pathos
which we have seldom seen equalled.... An admirable poet.'
(2) Woman is a poem by the Mr. Barrett whom Shelley names,
termed on the title-page 'the Author of The Heroine.' It was
noticed in the Quarterly for April I8t8, the very same number
which contained the sneering critique of Endymion.   This
poem is written in the heroic metre; and the extracts given
do certainly comprise some telling and felicitous lines. Such
are:'The beautiful rebuke that looks surprise,
The gentle vengeance of averted eyes;'
also (a line which has borne, and may yet bear, frequent requoting)
' Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.'
For critical utterances we have the ensuing:-' A strain of
patriotism pure, ardent, and even sublime.... Versification
combining conciseness and strength with a considerable degree
of harmony.... Both talent and genius.... Some passages
of it, and those not a few, are of the first order of the pathetic
and descriptive.' (3) A Syrian Tale. Of this book I have failed
to find any trace in the Quarterly Review, or in the Catalogue
of the British Museum. (4) Mrs. Lefanu. Neither can I trace
this lady in the Quarterly. Mrs. Alicia Lefanu, who is stated
to have been a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and also her
daughter, Miss Alicia Lefanu, published books during the lifetime
of Shelley. The former printed The Flowers, a Fairy Tale, I8Io,
and The Sons of Erin, a Comedy, I8r2. To the latter various
works are assigned, such as Rosara's Chain, a Poem.    (5)
Mr. John Howard Payne was author of Brutus, or the Fall of
Tarquin, an Historical Tragedy, criticized in the Quarterly for
H 2..,:
~~ eee.
* **


i




ioo                     NOTES
April I820. I cannot understand why Shelley should have
supposed this criticism to be laudatory: it is in fact unmixed
censure. As thus:-' He appears to us to have no one quality
which we should require in a tragic poet.... We cannot find
in the whole play a single character finely conceived or rightly
sustained, a single incident well managed, a single speech-nay
a single sentence-of good poetry.' It is true that the same
article which reviews Payne's Brutus notices also, and with more
indulgence, Sheil's Evadne: possibly Shelley glanced at the
article very cursorily, and fancied that any eulogistic phrases
which he found in it applied to Payne.
1. 57. A parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron.
I have not succeeded in finding this parallel. The Quarterly
Review for July i8I8 contains a critique of Milman's poem,
Samor, Lord of the Bright City; and the number for May I820,
a critique of Milman's Fall of Jerusalem. Neither of these notices
draws any parallel such as Shelley speaks of.
1. 58. What gnat did they strain at here. The word 'here'
will be perceived to mean 'in Endymion,' or 'in reference
to Endymion'; but it is rather far separated from its right
antecedent.
1. 66. The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life
were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press.
See p. 23.
1. 71. The poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage
of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his
genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care.
This statement of Shelley is certainly founded upon a passage
in the letter (see p. 23) addressed by Colonel Finch to
Mr. Gisborne. Colonel Finch said that Keats had reached Italy,
'nursing a deeply rooted disgust to life and to the world, owing
to having been infamously treated by the very persons whom his
generosity had rescued from want and woe.' The Colonel's
statement seems (as I have previously intimated) to be rather
haphazard; and Shelley's recast of it goes to a further extreme.
1. 77. 'Almost n'sked his own life,' &c. The substance of the
words in inverted commas is contained in Colonel Finch's letter,
but Shelley does not cite verbatim.




NOTES                         11
Stanza 1, 1. i. I weep for Adonais-he is dead. Modelled on
the opening of Bion's Elegy for Adonis. See p. 67.
11. 4, 5. And thou, sad Hour,...rouse thy obscure com~peers.
The compeers are clearly the other Hours. Why they should be
termed ' obscure' is not quite manifest. Perhaps Shelley means
that the weal or woe attaching to these Hours is obscure or
uncertain; or perhaps that they are comparatively obscure,
undistinguished, as not being marked by any such conspicuous
event as the death of Adonais. For this appeal to the Hour
of Adonais' de-ath cp. Hellas:
(Phantom loq.)      ' Ask the cold pale Hour,
Rich in reversion of impending death,
When he shall fall....' #
Also the personification of the Hour (of Prometheus' release) in
Prometheus Unbound. In the Adonis Hymn of Theocritus (Idyll
xv. 3104) the Hours bring back Adonis from Acheron:,6a'p5crTaL pwcappwy t&2pat op[Xai, kxa ~ro~etval,Ep~oYvra, iaiT' v-ecrt 8poTOZ9 Wild TL 4epowuat.
11. 8, 9. His fqte and fame shall be An echo and a light unto
eternity. By ' eternity' we may here understand, not absolute
eternityZas contradistinguished from time, but an indefinite space
of time, the years and the centuries. iFIis fatnd fame sMITl
be echoed on from age to age, and shall be a light thereto.
The Cambridge editors of 1829 considered that the lines 'Till
the future dares... eternity' are not the speech of the Hour,
but the poet's comment. Shelley's punctuation leaves this point
open, and I regard it as rather uncertain.
Stanza 2, 1. i. Where wert thou, mighty Mother. Aphrodite
Urania. See pp. 51, 52. Shelley constantly uses the form 'wert'7
instead of I'wast.' Ths2rs    a   emdelduo        w   ie
near the opning of Milton's Lycidas:
'Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?'
which were suggested to Milton by Theocritus, i. 66 rin! ITo/ ap'
7,7' 0'sa A~ipv is TaixETO9 raL ioica, iv'vjat; IC.T.X: cp. Virgil, Eclogue
X. 9, 10.
11. 2, 3. The shaft which flies In darkness. As Adonis was mortally
wounded by a boar's tusk, so (it is here represented) was Adonais
slain byan insidiously or murderously launched dart: see p. 49.




I02                     NOTES
The allusion is to the attack made upon Keats by the Quarterly
Riew,.  t is true that 'the s at wichi  fliies in darkness' might
be understood in merely a general sense, as the mysterious and
uneseenx             a                  thte Shelley used
the phrase in a more special sense, and probably with an implied
reference to anonymous criticism..-       iteileys, &. Urania is represened as seated in
her paradise (pleasure-ground, garden-bower), with veiled eyesdownward-lidded, as in slumber: an Echo chaunts or recites the
'melodies or poems, which Adonais had composed while Death
was rapidly advancing towards him: Urania is surrounded by
other Echoes, who heairken, and repeat the strain. The phrase,
'one with soft enanmoured breath means 'one of the Echoes':
this is shown in stanza 22, 'all the Echoes whom their Sister's
song,' &c.
Stanza 3, 11. 6, 7. For he is gone where all things wise and fair
Descend. Founded on Bion (p. 68), ' Persephone,.. all lovely
things drift down to thee.'
1. 7. The amorous deep. The depth of earth, or region of the
dead; amorous, because, having once obtained possession of
Adonais, it retains him in a close embrace, and will not restore
m to the lanT of the ivng   his passage has a certain analogy
to that of Bion (p. 69), ' Not that he is loth to hear, but that the
Maiden of Hades will not let him go.' Cp. Romeo and Juliet, Act
v, sc. 3:'Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?'
Stanza 4, 1. i. Most musical of mourners.  This phrase is
modelled upon Moschus iii. 71r &c.:70oU6 TOi, &  Taowrat v AX'yvwTaTE, 8Er'TpoV DkyoS,
TOVTOr Meaiy vtov iajos' dar&AITO rpaYv TO 'O/Ap7pos, K.T.A.
This, O most musical of rivers, is thy new woe. Of old didst
thou lose Homer... Now again another son thou weepest.
1. 2. He died. Milton.
1. 4. When his country's pride, &c. Construe: When the priest,
the slave, and the liberticide, trampled his country's pride, and
mocked [it] with many a loathed rite of lust and blood. This of
course refers to the condition of public affairs and of court-life in
the reign of Charles I  The inversion in this passage is not a




NOTES


103


very serious one, although, for the sense, slightly embarrassing.
Occasionally Shelley conceded to himself great latitude in inversion: as for instance in the Revolt of Islam, canto 3, st. 34,
'And the swift boat the little waves which bore
Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly,'
which means 'And the little waves, which bore the swift boat,
were cut,' &c.; also in the Ode to Naples, strophe 4,
'Florence, beneath the sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation.'
1. 8. His clear Sprite. Shelley, who is exceedingly fond of the
word ' Spirit,' uses the form Sprite in the  ines written among the
Euganean Hills:'Every Sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain
And the earth grow young again.'
In our older poets, especially Spenser, this form is frequently
used, even in the most sacred associations. Thus Faery Queen,
v. 3. 40 ' To gather fresher Sprights,' and Hymn of Heavenly
Beautie, stanza 2, 1. i,
'Vouchsafe then, 0 thou most Almightie Spright.'
I question however, whether, according to the diction of Shelley's
day, the term 'sprite' could reasonaly be appied to Milton: I
certainly thinkl could not at the present time.
1. 9. The third among the Sons of Light. At first sight this
phrase might seem to mean 'the third-greatest poet of the
world': in which case one might suppose Homer and Shakespeare
to be ranked as the first and second. But it may be regarded as
tolerably clear that Shelley is here thinking only of epic poets;
and that he ranges the epic poets according to a criteron of his
own, which is thus expressed in his Defence Lf Poeftr (written in
the same year as Adonais, 82): 'Homer was the first and
Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second poet the series
of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the
knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he
lived, and of the ages which followed it-develpi ing e r
correspondence with their deopm ent... Milton was the third
epic poet.' The poets whom Shelley admired most were probably




104                     NOTES
Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare,
and Milton; he took high delight in the Book of Job, and presumably in some other poetical books of the Old Testament;
Calderon also he prized greatly; and in his own time Goethe,
Byron, and (on some grounds) Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Stanza 5,1. 2. Not all to that bright station dared to climb. The
conception embodied in the diction of this stanza is not quite so
clear as might be wished. The first statement seems to amount
to this-That some pe    t ruep hs th    helwere, did not
aspire so high, nor were capable of reaching so high, as Homer,
Dante, and Mlton, te ypai epic poets.     statement so obviously true that it hardly  xtens,n itself, beyond a truism.
But it must be read as introductory to what follows.
i. 3. And happier they their happiness who knew. Clearly a recast of the phrase of Virgil,
'O fortunati nimium sua si bona norint
Agricolae.'
But Virgil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their
own happiness; Shelley (apparently) of others who did so. He
seems to intimate that the poetical temperament is a happy one, in
the case of those poets who, unconcerned with the greatest ideas
and the most   uous schemes of work pour forth their 'native
wood-notes wild.' I think it possible however that Shelley intended
his phrase to be accepted with the same meaning as Virgil's'happier they, supposing they had known their happiness.' In
that case, the only reason implied why these minor poets were the
happier is that their works have endured the longer.
4, 5.    se pes yet brn through that night of time In which
suns perished. Shelley here appears to say that the minor poets
have left works which survive, while some of the works of the
very greatest poets have disappeared: as, for instance, his own
yical models in  donais, Bo       oschus, are still known by
their writings, while many of the masterpieces of Aeschylus and
Sophocles are lost. Buffon, whose Histoire Naturelle was published
at Paris in 1749 and following years, writes in the chapter of
vol. i. entitled 'Thdorie de la Terre,' answering objections to the
hypothesis that the planets were struck out of our sun by collision
with a comet:-' D'ailleurs ne peut-on pas soupfonner que si le
soleil ou une etoile brulante et lumineuse par elle-m6me se mouvoit
avec autant de vitesse que se meuvent les planetes, le feu s'eteindroit
peut-etre, et que c'est par cette raison que toutes les etoiles que l'on




NOTES                        I105
appelle nouvelles, qui ont probablement changd de lieu, se sont
eteintes aux yeux mmee des observateurs. On pourroit repondre
encore que le feu ne peut pas subsister aussi longtemps dans les
petites que dans les grandes masses, et qu'au sortir du soleil les
planetes ont df brfiler quelque temps, mais qu'elles se sont dteintes
faute de matieres combustibles, comme le soleil s'eteindra probablement par la mime raison, mais dans les dgesfuturs.' (The italics
are not Buffon's.) Buffon's Theorie de la Terre was one of the
books read by the Shelleys in I817. Its fascination appears earlier,
in a letter written by the poet from Geneva in July I8I6:- I will
not pursue Buffon's sublime but gloomy theory-that the globe
which we inhabit will, at some future period, be changed into a
mass of frost by the encroachment of the polar ice.' Shelley's
passionate interest in the phenomena of Nature, which was
developed at Eton, but which dates from earlier years, supplies
him with much of his poetical imagery, and gives it reality and
precision.-Great luminaries (whether great poets, who, for
whatever reason, have failed to realize their genius, or the
works of such men) have been extnguishedt whle the taperlght of lesser men and' wors has continued to shine. See also
on stanza 44,. I.
11. 5-7. Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man
or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime. These others
include Keats (Adonais) himself, to whom the phraseIsruby
the envious wrath of man' may be understood as more peculiarly
appropriated. And generally the 'others' may be regarded as
nearly identicaTl'   'lthe ineritors of unfulfilled renown' who
appear (someo tnem       td out by name) in stanza 5   he The
idea of envy on th  part of the Gods against mortals who dared
to vie with them is familiar in Greek mythology, illustrated by the
fate of Niobe, Marsyas, and Thamyris.
11. 8, 9. And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which
leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. Byron must
be supposed to be the foremost among these; also Wordsworth
and Coleridge; and doubtless Shelley himself should not be
omitted.
Stanza 6,1. a. The nursling of thy widowhood. As to this expression see p. 53. I was there speaking only of the Muse
Urania; but the observations are equally applicable to Aphrodite
Urania and I am unable to carry the argument any further.
11. 3, 4. Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, Andfed




io6                      NOTES
with true love tears instead of dew. It seems sufficiently clear that
Shelley is here glancing at a leading incident in Keats's poem of
Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, founded upon a story in Boccaccio's~
Decameron. Isabella unburies her murdered lover Lorenzo;
preserves his head in a pot of basil; and (as expressed in st. 53
of the poem)
'Hung over her sweet basil evermore,
And moistened it with tears unto the core.'
I give Shelley's words 'true love tears' as they appear in the
Pisan edition: ' true-love tears' might be preferable.
1. 9.- The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast. As much as to
say: The storm came, and shattered the lily;- the storm has now'passed'away," but the 1~  Will niever reive.
S7tanza's 7 -14. Ithstanzas describing Che vigil kept over
the dead Adni       rg~~d      ft~   s niae      ysc esv
~epihets an       es:i ~T e Italian da-h    wlght chamb erher moonlight wings-starry dew-the image at the end of
stanza i12-Morning sought her eastern watch-tower.
Stanza 7, L.i. To that high Capital where kingly Death, &c.
The Capital is Rome (here Keats died). Death is figured as
the King of Rome, who there ' keeps his pale court in beauty and
decay,- amid the beauties of nature and art, and amid the decay
of monuments and institut ons.
IL3, 4-. And bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among
*teeternal. Keas      g in Rome, secured sepplture among
temany illustrious persons who are there buried. This seems
to be the only mea-n",ing of ' the eternal' in the present passage:
%      th tem does not directlZimel (what is sufficiently enforced elseX         I1. 4. Come away!I This call is addressed in fancy to any persons
present in the chi~~iTdah       Th ey remain indefinite bot
tz tiepetF   ndtothe reae         The conclusion of the stanza,
worded with great beaut and delicay mountssubstani~ly-to
saig       aeyu     atlo     fteda Adonais while he may
still semt  h   y   ob   alerS       gbn     a.
7.H    isa        eysep ely'       el~i p 68), ' Beautiful in death, as one, that hath fallen on sleep.' The term ' dewy
pSI 2,eans rbay 'sleep which refreshes the body as nightly
dew refreshes the fie-lds.' This phrase is follwed ythkidre
expre  on Tuidrest.
'Stanza 8, L     I~ Tesadow of white Death, &c. The use of




NOTES


I07


'his' and 'her' in this stanza is not wholly free from ambiguity.
In st. 7 Death was a male impersonation-'kingly Death' who
keeps his pale ourt.may-   ass  u      that he is the same in
the present stanza. Corruption, on the other hand, is a female
impersonation: she (not Death) must e the same as 'the eternal
Hunger,' as to whom it is said that 'pity and awe soothe her
pale rage.'  Premising this, we read: —'Within the twilight
chamber spreads apace the shadow of white Death, and at the
door invisible Corruption waits to trace his [Adonais's] extreme
way to her [Corruption's] dim dwelling-place; the eternal Hunger
[Corruption] sits [at the door], but pity and awe soothe her pale
rage, nor dares she,' &c. The unwonted phrase 'his extreme
way' seems to differ in meaning lte if at all from the very ordinary term 'his last journ   The statement in this stanza therefore is that corruption does not assail Adonais lying on his deathbed; but will shortly folow his remains t the grave, the fdim
[obscure, ligntlessj aoe oT corruption itself.
1. 6. With 'The eternal Hunger' cp. the lines in A Vision of the
Sea (820o):'Like a corpse on the clay which is hung'ring to fold
Its corruption around it.'
11. 8, 9. Till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep
the mortal curtain draw. Until the darkness of the grave and the
universal law of change and dissolution shall tr wthecurt-ainf'
death over his sleep-shall prove hls apparent sleep tobevertable death.   e prolonged interchange in Adonais between the
ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened
with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable
(though in part immature) poem, Queen Mab:How wonderful is Death,Death, and his brother Sleep!' &c.
The mind may also revert to the noble passage in Byron's
Giaour:'He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,' &c.though the idea of actual sleep is not raised in this admirably
beautiful and admirably realistic description. Perhaps the poem,
of all others, in which the conception of death is associated with
that of sleep with the most poignant pathos, is that of Edgar Poe
entitled For Annie:



io8                    NOTES
'Thank Heaven, the crisis,
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called living
Is conquered at last,' &c.where real death is spoken of throughout, in a series of exquisite
and thrilling images, as being real sleep. In Shelley's own edition of Adonais, the lines which we are now considering are
essentially different. They run
'Till darkness and the law
Of mortal changeshall fill the grave which is her maw.'
This is comparatively poor and rude. The change to the present
reading was introduced by Mrs. Shelley in her edition of Shelley's
Poems in 1839. She gives no information as to her authority:
but there can be no doubt that at some time or other Shelley
himself made the improvement. See pp. 34, 35 and notes on
I6, 28.
Stanza 9, 1. i. The quick Dreams. With these words begins
a passage of some length, which is closely modelled upon the passage of Bion (p. 68), 'And around him the Loves are weeping,
&c.: modelled upon it, and also systematically transposed from
it. The transposition goes on the same lines as that of Adonis
into Adonais, and of the Cyprian int -theo mra-anpjhrod-te;
i.e.the persnaor flesy Loves are spiritualized into Dreams
(musings, reveries, conceptions) and other faculties or emotions
of the mind. It is to be observed, moreover, that the trance of
Adonis attended by Cupids forms an incident inj Keats's own
poem of Endymion, Book II:'For on a silken couch of rosy pride,
In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth
Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth,
Than sighs could fathom or contentment reach.
Hard by
Stood serene Cupids, watching silently.
One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings,
Muffling to death the pathos with his wings,
And ever and anon uprose to look
At the youth's slumber; while another took




NOTES                        1l9
A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew,
And shook it on his hair; another flew
In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise
Rained violets upon his sleeping eyes.'
1. a. The passion-winged ministers of thought. The  Dreams'
are here defined as being thoughts (or ministers of thought
winged withassion; not mere abstract cogitations, but thoughts
warm   with the heart's blood, emotional conceptions-such
thoughts as subserve the purposes of poetry, and enter into its
structure; in a word, poetic thoughts.
1. 3. Who were his locks &c. These Dreams were in fact the
very thoughts of Adonais, as conveyed in his poems. He being
dead, they cannot assume new forms of beauty in any future
poems, and anno      hu diffused from mind to minuttey
remain mournig round their deceased herdsman or master. It
is possible that this image of a flock and a herdsman is consequent
upon the phrase in the Elegy of Moschus for Bion-' Bion the
herdsman is dead' (p. 69). The metaphorical application of the
verbs vrotai'veiv, j3ovKioXfETOa (to 'herd') to thoughts and the like
is not uncommon in Greek. Shelley may have had in mind
Nloschus ii. 5:E(Tr ial aTrpeKcEwv TroLtaiverTat 0yvo Oveilpwv.
1. 8. After their sweet pain, i. e. cp. Prometheus Unbound, ii. 2. 40,
'So sweet that joy is almost pain.' The ' bitter-sweet' (-yAvxvinrmpov)
of love is classical: cp. Catullus lxviii. 17:'Non est dea nescia nostri,
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.'
Stanza 10,1: 2. Andfans him with her moonlight wings. See
Bion (p. 69), 'and another, from behind him, with his wings is
fanning Adonis.' The epithet 'moonlight' may indicate either
delicacy of colour, or faint luminosity-rather the latter.
1. 7. Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise. The ruined Paradise is
the mind, now torpid in death, of Adonais. The 'Dream' which
has been speakn is a lost angoeTof  is Paradise, in the sense of
being a messenger or denizen of the mind of         inca
citated for exercising any further action: indeed, the Dream
forthwith fades, and is for ever extinct. Shelley had probably
read the Paradise and the Peri of 'the lyrist of Ierne' (Thomas
Moore-see stanza 30); and there may perhaps in this passage be
a kind of reminiscence of the lines:



Ino                     NOTES
'One morn a Peri at the gate
Of Eden stood disconsolate:...
She wept to think her recreant race
Should e'er have lost that glorious place....
The glorious Angel who was keeping
The gates of light beheld her weeping....
A tear-drop glistened
Within his eyelids.'
1. 8. With no stain. Leaving no trace behind. The rhyme has
entailed the use of the word stain,'which is otherwise a little
arbitrary in this connexion.
1. 9. She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. A raincloud which has fly discharged its rain would no longer constitute a cloud-it would be dispersed and gone. The mage is
therefore a very exact one for  e aeam wi     having accomplished its function, now fades away. There appears to bea
further parallel intended-between the Dream whose existence
closes in a tear, and the rain-cloud which has dichargedts
this is of less moment, and verges upon a conceit. This passage in
Adonais is not without some analogy to one in Keats's Endymion
(quoted on p. 44):
'Therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds.'
Compare the last lines of The Cloud (I820),
c I change, but I cannot die,' &c.
Stanza 11, 11. I, 2. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed
his light limbs, as if embalming them. See the passage from Bion
(p. 68), One in a golden vessel bears water, and another laves
the wound.' The expression 'starry dew' is rather peculiar:
the dew may oginiay have starred a' t   rass, utwhencollected into an urn, it must have lost this property: peraps we
should rather understan  octurnaldeuon which the stars
had been shining. It is difficult to see how the act of washing
the limbs could simulate the process of embalming.
1. 3. Another clipt her profuse locks. See Bion (p. 68), 'clipping
their locks for Adonis.' 'Profuse' is here accented on the first
syllable; although indeed the line can be read with the accent,
as is usual, on the second syllable.
11. 3-5. And threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem Which




NOTES                         III
frozen tears instead of pearls begem. The wreath is the lock of
hair-perhaps'a plait or curl, for otherwise the term wreath is
rather wide oF the mark. The idea that the tears shed by this
Dream herself (or perhaps other Dreams) upon the lock are
'frozen,' and thus stand in lieu of pearls upon an anadem or
circlet, seems strained, and indeed incongruous: one might wish
it away. There is a juvenile poem by Shelley (I8II) named
The Tear, where a tear is termed The pure gem' and 'the dim
ice-drop.' This notion, badly worded in the very boyish composition of I8II, is essentially the same which recurs in this
stanza of Adonais.
11. 6, 7. Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and
winged reeds. Follows Bion closely-' And one upon his shafts,
another on his bow, is treading' (p. 68). This is perfectly
appropriate for the Loves, or Cupids: not equally so for the
Dreams, for t s not so apparent what concern they have with
-'   vws arnrows. These may however be 'winged thoughts'
or 'winged words'-ixrfa 7rrEp6evra. Mr. Andrew Lang observes
(Introduction to his Theocritus volume, p. xl), 'In one or other
of the sixteen Pompeian pictures of Venus and Adonis, the Loves
are breaking their bows and arrows for grief, as in the hymn of
Bion.'
11. 7, 8. As if to stem A greater loss with one which was more
weak.  'To stem  a loss' is a very lax phrase —and more
especially ' to stem a loss with another loss.' ' To stem a torrent
-or, the current of a river,' is a well-known expression, indicating one sort of material force in opposition to another.
Hence we come to the figurative expression, 'to stem the torrent
of his grief,' &c. Shelley -seems to have yielded to a certain
analogy in the sentiment, and al he convenience of a rhyme,
and thus to have permitted himself a phrase which is neither
English nor consistent with sense. Line 8 appears to me extremely feeble throughout.
1. 9. And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. The construction runs-' Another would break, &c., and [would] dull,
&c.' The term 'the barbed fire' represents of course ' the winged
reeds,' or arrows: actua reeds or arrows are now transmuted
into flame-tipped arrows (conformable to the spiritual or immaterial
uality of the Dreams: the ere is to e quenched agans the
frost of the death-cold cheek of Adonais.  Frozen tears-frozen
phee:       ley W'Od   scayrcely, I app'rehend, have allowed this




II2


NOTES


repetition, but for some inadvertence. I am free to acknowledge
that I think the whole of this stanza bad. Its raison dietre is a
figurative but perfectly appropriate and straightforward passage
In bion:n Shieey'"t  attempte to th        nto a still more
figurative passage suitable Tor  G'onas, WltN a result anything
but happy.   e fails to mae t eiter straightforward or aropriate, and declines nto thesuper-subte or wiredrawn.
Stanza 12,.I. Another Splendour. Another luminous Dream.
1. 2. That mouth whence it was wont to:raw the breath,&c.
Adonais (Keats), as a poet, is here figured as if he were a singer:
consequently we are referred to his I mouth' as the vehicle of his
thoughts or poetic imaginings-not to his hand which recorded
them.iriH
1. 3. To pierce the guarded wit. To obtain entry into the otherwise unready minds of others-thheares (or readers) of the et.
11. 5, 6. The damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips.
This phrase is not very clear. I understand it to mean-The
damps of death [upon the visage of Adonais] quenched the caress
of the Splendour [orJreamJprntef on    i y ips. It might
h      owever econtendea t t eerm -th amp deat-h is used as
an energetic synonym for the 'Splendour' itself. In this case
the sense of the whole passage may be amplified thus: The
Splendour, in imprinting its caress upon the icy lips of Adonais,
had its caress quenched by the cold, and was itself converted
into dampness and eMatness: it was no onier         nous
'Splendaour, u't a vaporou-s and c-lammy form of deat. -The
assumption that 'the damp death' stands as a synonym for the
'Splendour' obtains some confirmation from  the succeeding
phrase about the 'dying meteor'-for this certainly seems used
as a simile for the ' Splendour.'
1. 7. And, as a dying meteor, &c. The dying meteor, in this
simile, must represent the Splendour; te wreath of moonlight
vapour stands for the pale limbs of Adonais; the cold night may
in a general way symbolize the night of death.
1. 9. I flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
The Splendour flushed through the limbs of Adonais, and so became eclipsed,-faded into nothingness. This terminates the
episode of the 'quick Dreams,' beginning with stanza 9.
Stanza 13, 1. i. And others came,-Desires and Adorations, &c.
Here Shelley has direct recourse, no longer to the Elegy of Bion
for Adonis, but to the Elegy of Moschus for Bion. As he had




NOTES                             113
spiritualized tlie impersonations of Bion, so he now spiritualizes
those of Moscls. The Sicilian lyrist rives us (see p. 69) Apollo
Satyrs, Priapi, Panes, and Fountain-fairies. Shelley gives us
esires  aoratns Persuasions, Destin    edours,    ooms,
opes, ears,antasies   Sorrow Sighs, and Pleasure. All these
lament Adonais (stanza 14):  eyarec;     abstract
beings as 'he had loved, and moulded into thought from shape
an hue and odour and sweet sound.' The adjectival epithets are
worth noting for their poetic felicity: winged Persuasions (again
hinting at trEa -rEp6ev-ra), veiled Destinies, glimmering Hopes
and Fears, twilight Phantasies.
1. 6. And Pleasure, blind with tears, &c. The Rev. Stopford
Brooke, in an eloquent lecture delivered to the Shelley Society
in June I889, dwelt at some length upon the singular myhopoeeic
giof the poet. These two lines are an instance in point, of a
very condensed kind. Pleasure, heart-struck at.he death of
Adonais, has abrogated her own nature and has become blinded
with tears: her eyes can therefore serve no longer to guide her
steps. Her smile too is dying, but not yet dead: it emits a
faint gfeam which, in default of eyes, serves to distinguish the
pati. If one regards this as a mere image, it may be allowed to
approach close to a conceit: but it suggests a series of incidents
and figurative details which    herounta       co endious
myth.
1. 8. Came in slow pomp;-the moving pomp might seem. The
repetition of the word 'pomp' gives a certain poverty to the
sound of this line: it can hardly, I think, have been deliberately
intended. In other respects this stanza is one of the most melodious in the poem. There is moreover a happ y baance of
consonants in this and the following line, which disappears if
another monosyllable is substituted for the second ' pomp.'
Stanza 14, 11. 3, 4. Morning sought Her eastern watch-tower,
and her hair unbound, &c. Whether Shelley wished the reader
to attribute any distinct naturalistic meaning to the 'hair' of
Morning is a question which may admit of some doubt. If he did
so, the 'hair unbound' is probably to be regarded as streaks of
rain-cloud: these cloudlets ought to fertilize the soil with their
moisture: but, instead of that they merely dim the eyes of  ornd                      L     n t is instance, and in
many other instances ensuing, Shelleyrepresents natural powers
or natural  b ects —morning, echo, flowers, &c.-as suffring
ADONAIS                  I




III.                   NOTES
some interruption or decay of essence or functiort in sympathy
wi-ththe stroke which has cut short the 1i' -of  s;t need
hardly be said that, in doing this, he only followT a host of predecessors. He follows, for example, his speci'al models Bion
and Moschus. They probably followed earlier models: but I
have failed in attempting to trace how far back Beyond them this
scheme of symbolism may have extended: something of it can be
found in Theocritus. The legend-doubtless a very ancient one
-that the sisters of Phaeton wept amber for hisl fall belongs to
the same order of ideas (as a learned friend suggests to mue).
1. 8. Pale Ocean. As not only the real Keats, but also the figurative Adonais, died in Rome, the ocean cannot be a feature in the
immediate scene: it lies in the not very remote distance felt
rather than visible to sight. Of course, too, Ocean 4as well as
Thunder and Winds) is personated in this passage: he is a
cosmic deity, lying pale in unquiet slumber.
Stanza 15, 1. i. Lost Echo sits, &c. Echo is introduced into
both the Grecian elegies, that of Moschus as well as that of Bion.
Bion (p. 68) simply says that 'Echo resounds, "Adonis dead! "'
But Moschus (p. 69), whom Shelley substantially follows, sets
forth that 'Echo in the rocks laments that thou [Bion] art silent,
and no more she mimics thy voice'; also, 'Echo, among the
reeds, doth still feed upon thy songs.' It will be observed that
in this stanza Echo is a single personage-the Nymph known to
mythological fable: but in stanza a we had various  Echoes,'
spirits of minor account, who in the paradise of Urania were
occupied with the poems of Adonais.
II-. 68. His its, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined
away Into a shadow of all sounds. Echo is, in mythology, a
Nymph who was in love with Narcissus. He, \being enamoured
of his own beautiful countenance, paid no heed to Echo, who
consequently 'pined away into a shadow of all sounds.' In this
expression one may discern a     deicate double meaning. () Echo
pined away into (as the accustomed phrase goes) ' a mere shadow
of her former self.' (a) Just as a solid body, lighted by the sun,
casts, as a necessary concomitant, a shadow of itself, so a sound,
emitted under the requisite conditions, casts an echo of itself:
echo is, in relation to sound,the same sort of thing as shadow in
relation to substance.
11. 8, 9. A drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen
hear. Echo will not now repeat the songs of the woodmen: she




NOTES                        II5
erely m  urmurs somerelyd lay ' of
Adojais.
Stanza 16, 1. i. Grief made theyoung Spring wild. This introduction of Spring may be taken as implying that Shelley supposed
Keats to have died in the Spring: but in fact he died in the
Winter-February 23. As to this point see pp. 31 and 97.
11. I-3. And she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn
were, Or they dead leaves. This corresponds to a certain extent
with the phrases in Bion, 'the flowers are withered up with
grief,' and 'yea all the flowers are faded' (p. 68); and in
Moschus, 'and in sorrow for thy fall the trees cast down their
fruit, and all the flowers have faded' (p. 69). It may be
worth observing that Shelley says As if s Autumn wereor
thy dead leaves' (not 'and they dead leaves'). He therefore
seems to present the act of Spring from two separate points of
view: (i) She threw down the buds, as if she had been Autumn,
whose office it is to throw down and not to cherish and develop;
(2) she threw down the buds as if they had been, not buds of the
nascent year, but such dead leaves of the olden year as still liner
on the spray when Sprg arrives.
11. 5-7. To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, Nor to himself
Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and sere, &c.
This passage assimilates two sections in the Elegy of Moschus, p. 69: ' Now, thou hyacinth, whisper the letters on thee
graven, and add a deeper ai ai to thy petals: he is dead, the
beautiful singer.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for
Alcaeus,'&c. The passae of Shelley is rather complicated in its
significance because it mixes u the ersona es H acinthus and
Narcissus with the flowers ihacinth and narcissus. The beautiful
youth Hyacinthus was dear to Peus: on his untimely death
(he was slain by a quoit which Phoebus threw, and which the
jealous Zephyrus blew aside so that it struck Hyacinthus on the
head), the god changed his blood into the flower hyacinth, which
bears markings interpreted by the Grecian fancy into the lettering
at at (alas, alas!). The beautiful youth Narcissus, contemplating
himself in a streamlet, became enamoured of his own face, and,
pining away, was converted into the flower narcissus. This
accounts for the lines, 'To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear,
Nor to himself Narcissus.' But, when we come to the sequence,
'as to both Thou' Adonais,' we have to do no longer with the
youths Hyacinthus and Narcissus, but with the flowers hyacinth
I 2




In6                     NOTES
and narcissus: it is the flowers which (according to Shelley)
loved Adonais better than the youths were loved,  te oneby
Phoebus and the other by hnslf These flowers —being sme of
the kindling buds which Spring had thrown down-stand 'wan
and sere.' (This last point is rather the reverse of a phrase in
Bion's Elegy, p. 68, The flowers flush-red for anguish.') It
may perhaps be held that the transition from the youths to the
flowers, and from the emotions of Phoebus and of Narcissus to
those assigned to the flowers, is not very happily managed by
Shelley: it is artificial, and not free from confusion. As to the
hyacinth, the reader will readily perceive that a flower which
bears markings read off into at at (or AI AI seems more correct)
cannot be the same which we now call hyacinth. Ovid says that
in form the hyacinth resembles a lily, and that its colour is
'purpureus,' or deep red. John Martyn, who published in 1755
The Georgicks of Virgil with an English Translation, has an'elaborate
note on the subject. He concludes thus: 'I am pretty well
satisfied that the flower celebrated by the poets is what we now
are acquainted with under the name ' Lilium floribus reflexis,' or
Martagon, and perhaps may be that very species which we call
Imperial Martagon. The flowers of most sorts of martagons have
many spots of a deeper colour: and sometimes I have seen these
spots run together in such a manner as to form the letters AI
iti several places.' Shelley refers to the hyacinth in another
passage (Prometheus Unbound, ii. I) which seems to indicate
that he regarded the antique hyacinth as being the same as the
modem hyacinth,'As the blue bells
Of hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief'
1. 8. Amid the faint companions of their youth. In Shelley's
edition the words are 'Amid the drooping comrades,' &c. The
change was made under the same circumstances as noted on'
p. ro8. Whether it is a change for the better may admit of some
question. The faint comanions of the out    acinthand the
narcissus must be other flowers, such as S   throw  down
1.9. Wth ew a tuned to ears,-oour, o s     g r. The
dew upon the hyacinth and narcissus is cpnvrted into tears
they exhale sighs, instead of fragrance. All this is in rather a
falsetto tone. It has some resemblance to the more simple and
touching phrase in the Elegy by Moschus (p. 69): Yie fLowems
now in sad clusters breathe yourselyes away.'




NOTES                         t17
Stanza 17, 1. I, a. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns
not her mate, &c. The reason for calling the nightingale the sister of
the spirit of Keats (Adonais) does not perhaps go beyond this-that,
as the nightingale is a supreme songster among birds, so was Keats
a supreme songster among men. It is possible however-and one
willingly supposes so-that Shelley singled out the nightingale for
mention, in recognition of the consummate beauty of Keats's Ode to
the NghtingaSe, published in the same volume with Hyperion. The
epithet 'lorn 'may also be noted in the same connexion; as Keats's
Ode terminates with a celebrated passage in which ' forlorn 'is the
leading word (but not as an epithet for the nightingale itself)-; '<-e- (-.- W.
Forlorn!-the very word is ara-knelt,' &c.
Keats does not seem to contemplate the nightingale as a 'lorn'
or distressful bird but as one that sings' 'of summer in fullthroated ease,' and yet (as at the end of the Ode) with a ' plaintive
anthem.' The nightingale is also introduced into the Elegy of
Moschus for Bion: 'Ye nightingales that lament,' &c. (p. 69),
and 'Nor ever sang so sweet the nightingale on the cliffs.'
Poets are fond of speaking of the nightingale as being the henbird, and Shelley follows this precedent. It is a fallacy, for the
songster is always the cock-bird.
1. 3. Not so the eagle, &c. The general statement in these
lines is that Albion wails for the death of Keats more melodiously than the nightingale mourning for her lost mate, and
more passionately than the eagle robbed of her young. This'
statement has proved true enough n tlong run: when Shelley
wrote it was only prospectively or potentially true, for the death
of Keats excited no immediate widespread concern in England.
It should be observed that, by introducing Albion as a figurative
personage in his Elegy, Shelley disregards his emblematic Grecian
youth Adonais,and goes strah to the ctuaan Keats.
this passage, taken as awhoe, is related to that of Moschus
(p. 69) regarding the nightingale, the sea-bird, and the bird of
Memnon; see also the passage, 'and not for Sappho, but still
for thee,' &c.
11. 4, 5. Could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with
morning. This phrase seems to have some analogy to that of
Milton in his Areopagitica: 'Methinks I see in my mind a noble
and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep
and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle




II8


NOTES


muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the
full mid-day beam-purging and unsealing her long-abused sight
at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.' Cp. in Hellas: ' As
an eagle fed with morning.' The image which follows, of the
eagle's wrath over her empty nest, was suggested by Aeschylus,
Agamemnon 49-56:
Trporov alyvtriwv, ofr' icmraTrioL
A^yeaTi iraiwv iraroti AXEwv
Trpopo8tLOV^Tal KcX.
as that passage was suggested by Odyssey xvi. 26:KXCaov 5Z x7ylrs, dvc&'repov ' T' Ot QYOl,
frpivat e avlvTrvio yc/ap'tvvyxes, otal' re Te'vaK
aipTaLrat elovTO 7Tpos erErEvd yevelOat.
11. 7, 8. The curse of Cain Light on his head, &c. An imprecation against the critic of Keats's Endymion in the Quarterly Review:
see especially p. 41, &c. The curse of Cain was that he should
be 'a fugitive and a vagabond,' as well as unsuccessful in tilling
the soil. Shnelley probajly" "pays no attention to these details,
but simply means ' the curse for murder.'
Stanza 18, 11. i, 2. Ah woe is me! WYinter is come and gone,
Butgrief returns with the revolving year, &c. See the passage in
Moschus (p. 69): Ah me! when the mallows wither,' &c. The
phrase in Bion has also a certain but restricted analogy to this
stanza: 'Thou must again bewail him, again must weep for him
another year' (p. 69). As to the phrase 'Winter is come and
gone,' see the note (p. 115) on 'Grief made the young Spring
wild.'. 5. Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier. This
phrase is barely consistent th the statement (st.  as toSr
throwing down her kindling buds. Perhaps, moreover, it was an
error of print to give ' Seasons'' in the plural: Sason's (eanwitr wuld         seem more accurate. A somewhat similar
idea is conveyed in one of Shelley's lyrics, Autumn, a Dirge,
written in 1820:'And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.'
1. 7. Brere. An antiquated form of the word brier.




NOTES                         119
1. 9. Like unimprisonedflames. Flames which, after being pent
up within some substance or space finally find a vent.
Stanza 19, 1. a. A quickening life, &c. The present stanza is
generally descriptive of the effects of Springtime upon the earth.
This reawakening of Nature (Shelley says) has always taken place,
in annual recurrence, since 'the great morning of the world when
first God dawned on chaos.' This last expression must be construed with a certain latitude. The change from an imagined
chaos into a divinely-ordered cosmos is not necessaril coincident
with the interchange of seasons and especiallythe transition
from Winter to Spring, upon the planet Earth. All that can be
safely propounded on such asbje    is   a the sequence of
seasons is a constant and infallible phenomenon of Nature in that
condition of our planet with which alone we have, or can have,
any acquaintance. So in Hellas:'In the great morning of the world
The Spirit of God with might unfurled
The flag of Freedom over Chaos.'
(See a paper by Mr. T. J. Wise. Shelley Society.) With the
whole of this stanza and the next should be compared the lines to
Venus as the quickening power, with which Lucretius opens his
poem (i. 6-9):'Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
Adventumque tuum; tibi suavis daedala tellus
Summittit flores; tibi rident aequora ponti,
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.'
1. 5. In its steam immersed, i.e. n the steam-or vapour or
exhalation-of the 'uickenin life.'
Stanza 20, 11. I, a. The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit
tender, Exhales itself in flowers ofgentle breath. I This spirit tender'
is the 'uickenin lie   of the renascent _ ear; or briefly the
Spring. By ' the leprous corpse' Shelley may mean, not the
corpse of an actual leper, but any corpse in a loathsome state
of decay. Even so abhorrent an obect avails tofertilizethe soil,,
and thus romotes the rowth of odorous flowers.
1. 3. Like incarnations of the stars, &c. These flowers-starlike blossoms-illumine death and the grave: the light which
would belong to them as stars is converted into the frarance
proper to them as flowers. This image is rather confused, and
I think rather stilted: moreover, ' incarnation' (or embodiment in




120


NOTES


fLksh)- is hardly the right word for the vegetative nature of flowers.
As forms of life, the flowers mock or       rh~ave-worm
whc  atn   rmae;mr          ncr          Thie appropriateness of the term  ' merry Iworm  seems very 4isputable. Cp.
Hatmlet's ' a certain convocation of politic worms' (Hamlet, iv.
3). Here the alliterations help to give point to the words.
1. 6. Nought we know dies. This affirmation sp~rings directL~y out
oftecnieain'stpeetdt                 sta even the leprous
corpse does not, through various stages of decay, pass into absolute nothingness: on the contrary, its constituents take new forms,
and subserve a re-growth of life, as in the flowers which bedeck
the grave. From this single and impressive instance the_ poet
passes to the g~neral and unfailn  law-No material object of
which we have cognizance really dies: all such obects are in a
p~erp~etual Scyce of change.. This conception has been finely
developed in a brace of early poems of Lord Tennyson, All Things
weill Die, and Nothing will Die
'The stream will cease to flow,
The wind will cease to blow,
The clouds will cease to fleet,
The heart will cease to beat -
For all things must die.
'The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.
Nothing will die;
All things will change
Through eternity.'
Cp. also Romeo and juliet, ii. 3:
'The earth, that's Nature's mother, is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb.
And Aeschylus, Choeph. I27-8:
cal -yw'ay ab~tev, 4  waTal av  'rhffraL,
Opi4'aaai T avBtr 'r&.iv5c xijua Aa#9ivyet.
Also Lucretius, ii. 990-io010.
11. 6-8. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed
before the sheath By stightkss lig'htning? From the axiom ' Nought




NOTES


12I


we know dies '-an axiom which should be understood as limited
to what we call material ojects which Shellye however con —
sidered to be indistinguishable, in essenc from ideas, see p. 57)he proceeds to the question, 'Shall that alone which knows '-i. e.
shall the mind alone-die and be annihilated? If the mind were to
die, while the body continues extant (not indeed in the form of 'a
human body, but in various phases of ulterior development), then
the mind would resemble a sword which, by the action of lightning is consumed (molten dissolved)within its sheath while the
sheath itself remains unconsumed. This is put as a question, and
Shelley does not supply an answer to it here, though the terms
in which his inquiry is couched seem intended to suggest
a reply to the effect that the mind shall not die. The meaning
of the epithet 'sightless,' as applied to lightning, seems disputable. Of course the primary sense of this word is 'notseeing, blind'; but Shelley would probably not have scrupled
to use it in the sense of 'unseen.' I incline to suppose that
Shelley means ' unseen'; not so much that the lightning is itself
unseen as that its action in fusing the sword which remains concealed within the sheath is unseen. But the more obvious sense
O   il   unaegd r  ' could also be justified. The image of these
lines is illustrated by a passage in the Defence of Poetry, where, after
speaking of passionless poets, such as Addison, Shelley continues:
'Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheath'd which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.' To recur to the epithet
sightless.  mong     e many epithets used by Shelley of lightning
are 'silent' (Adonais, st. a5), 'voiceless' (Mont Blanc, st. 5),
blind' (Cenci, v. 4. Io7),' invisible' (Epipsychidion, 399). The two
last, and still more clearly the line ' Like lightning that flash'd and
died' (We met4 ii. 2), may perhaps help us to understand 'sightless'
here, at least in one aspect of the term. The lightningis invisibl
as soon as it has done its work.
11. 8, 9. Th' intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in
a most cold repose. The term ' th' intense atom' is a synonym for
'that which knows,' or the mind. By death it is quenched in
a most cold reose': but the  e is not necessaril extinction.
Stanza 21. The thought of the later lines of this stanza is well
illustrated by Lucretius, ii. 578-581:'Nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.'




122                     NOTES
11. i, 2. Alas that all we loved of him should be, But for our grif,
as if it had not been. ' All we loved ofh  mst be the mind and
character-the mental and Personal z' wmen'ts-off Adonais:
his bodily frame is little or not at all in question here. By these
lines therefore Shelley seems to  i              r
Adonais is indeed now and for ever exiiet it ives nonger
save in the grief of the survivors. Sut it does not follow that this
- is a final expression of Shelley's conviction on the subject: the
passage should be read as in context with the whole oem.
11 5, 6. Great and mean Meet massed in death, who lends what
life must borrow. The meaning of the last words is far from clear
to me. I think Shelley may intend to say that, in this our mrttal
state death is the solid and permanent fact it is rather a jorld
of death than of life. The phenomena of life ae bu like a
transitory loan from the great empgrium, death,  helley no
doubt wanted a rhyme for   morrow' and 'sorrow': he has
made use of ' borrow' in a compact but not perspicuous phrase.
Stanza 22, 1. a. ' Wake thou,' cried Misery, ' childless Mother!'
We here return to Urania, of whom we had last heard in st. 6. See
the passage translated by Shelley from Bion (p. 67), 'Sleep no
more, Venus:... 'tis Misery calls,' &c.; but here the phrase,
''Tis Misery calls,' is Shelley's own. He more than once introduces Misery in the sense of Lhappi      Tribton) as an
emblematic personae. There is his lyric named Misery, written
in 8i8S, which begins'Come, be happy,-sit by me,
Shadow-vested Misery:
Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
Mourning in thy robe of pride,
Desolation deified.'
There is also the briefer lyric named Death, 1817, which begins'They idie-the dead return not. Misery
Sits near an open grave, and calls them over,
A youth with hoary hair and haggard eye.'
1l. 3 4. ' Slake in thy heart's core A wound more fierce than his,
with tears and sighs.' Construe: ' Slake with tear and sighs
a wound in thy heart's core-a wound more fierce tahis  See
(p. I02) the remarks, apposite to st. 4, upon the use of inversion
by Shelley.
1. 5. All the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes. We had




NOTES                         123
not hitherto heard of' Dreams' in connexion with Urania, but
only in connexion with Adonais himself. These 'Dreams that
watched Urania's eyes' appear to be dreams in the more obvious
sense of that word-visions which had haunted the slumbers of
Trifania.
1. 8. Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung. The context
suggests that the 'thought'herein uestonisa  rievousthought.
and the term ' the snake memory' conveys therefore a corresponding impression of pain. Shelley however had not the usual
reeling of repulsion or abhorrence for snakes and serpents. Various
passages could be cited to prove this; more especially canto I of
the Revolt of Islam, where the Spirit of Good is figured under the
form of a serpent: see also 'the golden snake,' stanza 18.
1. 9. From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.
Urania. She is in her own nature a splendour, or celestial deity:
at the present moment her brightness is 'fading,' as being
overcast by sorrow and dismay, or else the epithet is to be
accepted as anticipating what is more fully developed in the next
stanza. ' Her ambrosial rest' does not appear to signify anything
more precise than ' her rest properto an immortabein.' The
forms 'sprung, sung,' &c. are constantly used by Shelley instead
of 'sprang, sang,' &c.
Stanza 23,. 5. Had left the Earth a corpse. Shelley, in this
quasi-Greekpoem, takes no count of the fact that the sun, when
it ceases to illumine one part of the earth, is shining upon another
part. He treats the unillumined part as if it were the whole
earth-which has hereby become a corpse.'
anza 24, 11. i, a. Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through
camps and cities, &c. ' Secret' has here the sense (as in Latin) of
'secluded.' In highly figuratie language,this stanza ctures
the passage of Urania to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rom
as if the spiritual essence and external form of the goddess were
wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and
detraction through which she has to pass. The whole description
is spiritualized from that of Bion (p. 67):-  'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled-the thorns pierce
Her hastening feet, and drink her sacred blood.'
1. 3. And human hearts. These words come as a surprise in the
climax, stone-steel-human hearts. This figure is common in
satirical poets, and conveys a meaning sometimes playful, sometimes, as here, bitter.
I




124


NOTES


11. 4, 5. The invisible Palms of her tenderfeet. Shelley more than
once uses 'palms' for 'sles' of the feet. See Prometheus Unbound, iv:'Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm';
and The Triumph of Life:
'As she moved under the mass
Of the deep cavern, and, with palms so tender
Their tread broke not the mirror of the billow,
Glided along the river.'
Perhaps Shelley got this usage from the Italian: in that language
the web-feet of aquatic birds are termed 'palme.'
11. 8, 9. Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, Paved.
with eternal flowers that undeserving way. The tears of May are
rain-drops *youn, because theyear is not f advanced.  'That
dndeserving way' se&ms a very poor expression. See (p. 68) the
passage from Bion: 'A tear the Paphian sheds for each blooddrop of Adonis, and tears and blood on the earth are turned to
flowers.'
Stanza 25,11. -3. Death... Blushed to annihilation. This very
daring hXy2erole will hardly bear-nor does it want-manipulation
into prose. Briefly, the nature of Dea.h ji   allid9.: there.-..
fore Death in blushin    abnegates his ve  natur  and almost
ceases to be Death.
11. 3, 4. The breath Revisited those lips, &c. As Death tended
towards ' annihilation.' so Adonais tended towards revival.
1. 7. 'Silent lightning.' Lightning unaccompnie b dersummer lightning. See above on stanza 20, 11. 6-8.
Stanza 26, 1. i. ' Stay yet awhile.' See Bion (p. 68): 'Stay,Adonis! stay, dearest one!'
1. 2. 'Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live.' See as above:'That I may kiss thee now for the last timeBut for as long as one short kiss may live I'
1. 3. My heartless breast.' Urania's breast is heartless, in the
sense that, having bestowed her whole heart.upon Adonais she
has none to bestow upon an   o: so I understand the
epithet.
1. 4. 'That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,' &c.
See Bion (p. 68): ' This kiss will I treasure,' &c.




NOTE                         125
11. 7-9. I would give All that I am, to be as thou now art:-But
lam chained to Time, and cannot thence depart.' Founded on Bion
(p. 68): 'While wretched I yet live, being a goddess, and may
not follow thee.' The alteration of phraseis somewhat remarkable. In Bion's Elegy the Cyprian Aphrodite is 'a goddess,'
and therefore immortal. In Shelley's Elegy the Uranian Aphrodite does not speak of herself under an desiation of immortality or eternity, but as 'chained to Time' and incapable of departing from Time. As long as Time lives and operates, Urania
must do the same. The dead have escaped from the dominion of
Time: this Urania cannot do. There is a somewhat similar train
of hought n Promethus Unbound, where Prometheus the Titan,
after enduring the torture of the Furies (i.), says'Peace is in the grave:
The grave holds all things beautiful and good.
I am a God, and cannot find it there.'
Stanza 27, 11. I-4. 'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Why
didst thou leave,' &c. This is founded on-and as usual spiritualized
from-the passage in Bion (p. 68): ' For why, ah overbold! didst
thou follow the chase, and, being so fair, why wert thou thus
over-hardy to fight with beasts?'
1. 4. 'Dare the unpastured dragon in his den.' This phrase must
no doubt be interpreted, not only in relation to the figurative
Adonais, but also to the actual Keats. Keats had dared the unpastured dragon in hig den, in the sense that le ma-l a oadventure into the poetical field, under co-nd'tf'l-ns cretai toiee
the ire of adherents of the old school wether in literature or in
politics. For ' unpastured' cp. Prometheus Unbound, iii. a:'It is the unpastured sea, hungering for calm.'
The epithet is Greek in form (cp. droirlaavros of the bee in Anthol.
Pal. vi. 239). Shelley may have had in mind the language used
about Leviathan in the Book of Job, ch. xli.
1. 6. ' Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear.' Urania
arraigns Keats for having made his inroad upon the dragon, unguarded by wisdom or by scorn. His want of wisdom was shown
(we may assume) by the grave-blemishes an-d defects in  is
Endymion, the wilf  aul n     ervrse excesse s a   etrava
gances which mark its composition, and wantonly invited attack.
His want of scorn was (according to Shelley's view of the facts)
clear enough: he ha  no been equal to despising a s iteful




126                    '4OTES
attack, but had fretted himself to death under it. Shelley was
proiably thininkig in the first place of Perseus, who, armed with
a bright shield by Athene, and a scimitar by Hermes, cut off the
head of Medusa, watching her reflection in the mirror-shield,
since a look from the monster herself would have turned him into
stone. The story is told by Ovid, Metam. iv. 770-79I, and Lucan,
ix. 659-684. In Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, ii. 55; xxxii. 75) we read
of a magic shield casting a supernatural and intolerable splendour,
whereby every gazer (including a sea-monster) is cast into a trance;
and of a spear whose lightest touch overthrows every opponent.
Compare the shield of Arthur in the Faery Queen, Book I, canto
vii. 33, and canto viii. g9. The spear may well symbolize scorn,
and is the appropriate weapon for dealing wth mean enemies;
cp. Ithuriel's spear in Paradise Lost, Book VII. In Lucian'sdialogue
between Eros and Aphrodite, Eros complains that he has no
power against Athene alone of goddesses, since besides the terrors
of her majestic demeanour and her shield (not here a mirror-shield),
he would be at once transfixed by her spear.
11. 7, 8. ' The full cycle when Thy spirit should have filled its
crescent sphere.' The spirit of Keats is here assimilated to the
moon, which grows from a crescent into a diskike f
1. 9. ' The monsters of life's waste.' The noxious creatures
which infest the wilderness of human life. As Shelley had in
the previous line referred to the moon  iana), it seems possible
that he here again refers to Diana in her character of a huntress;
and an allusion to Diana involves a kind of allusion to Keats's
Endymion.
Stanza 28, 1. I. ' The herded wolves,' &c. These same  onsters'
are now pictured under three aspects. They are herded wolves,
which will venture to pursue a traveller, but will not face him if
he turns upon them boldly; and obscene ravens, which make an
uproar over dead bodies, or dead reputations; and vultures,
which follow in the wake of a conqueror, and gorge upon that
which is already overthrown. In the succeeding stanza, 29, two
other epithetal similes are bestowed upon the monsters-they
become 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects.' All these repulsive
images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully obtuse
or malignantr mind_ such as Shelley accounted the Quarterly
reviewer of Keats to be. The epithet 'obscene' is applied by
Latin poets to birds and other creatures of Siiter omen. So in
en. xrH-ll 8762 &C.




NOTES                        I27
1. 5. 'And whose wings rain contagion.' Cp. Marlowe's Jew of
Malta, ii. I:'Thus, like the sad presaging raven, that...
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings.'
11. 5, 6. 'How they fled, When like Apollo,' &c. The allusion
is to perfectly well-known incidents in the opening poetic career
of Lord Byron. His lordship, in earliest youth, published a very
insignificant volume of verse named Hours of Idleness. The
Edinburgh Review-rightly in substance, but with some superfluous
harshness of tone-pronounced this volume to be poor stuff.
/ Byron retaliated by producing his satire entitled English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers. With this book he scored a success. His
next publication was the generally and enthusiastically admired
commencement of Childe Harold, 18I2; after which date the
critics justly acclaimed him as a poet-although in course of time
they grew lavishly severe upon him from the point of view of
morals and religion. I reproduce from the Pisan edition the
punctuation- IWhen like Apollo, from his golden. bw'; but I
think the exact sense would be better brought out if we readWhen, like Apollo from his golden bow, The pythian '  &c.
11. 7, 8. ' The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, And smiled.'
Byron is here assimilated to Apollo Pythius-pollo the Pythonslayer. The statue named Apollo Belvedere has been regarded
as representing the god at the moment after he has discharged
his arrow at the python (serpent), his countenance irradiated with
a half-smile of divine scorn and triumph. In recent years, however,
various writers of credit have held that the action of Apollo in
this statue is truly that of holding the aegis in battle. The terms
employed by Shelley seem to glance more particularly at this
celebrated statue: which was the more appropriate as Byron had
devoted to the same figure two famous stanzas in the 4th canto of
Childe Harold'Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life and poesy and light,' &c.
1. 9. 'Theyfawn on the proudfeet that spurn them lying low.' In
the Pisan edition we read 'that spurn them as they go. No
doubt the change (introduced as in other instances named on
pp. Io8 and II6) must be Shelley's own. The picture presented to
the mind is more consistent, according to the altered reading.
The critics, as we are told in this stanza, had at first 'fled' from




128                     NOTES
Byron's arrow: afterwards they ' fawned on his proud feet.' In
order to do this, they must have paused in their flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they must
have err -ned down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman, in his
edition of Shelley, pointed this out.) With the words 'as they
go' the image wag not self-consistent: for the critics could not be
'going,' or walking away, at the same time when they were
fawning on the poet's feet. This last remark assumes that the
words ' as they go' mean 'as the critics go' but perhaps (and
indeed I think this is more than probable) the real meaning was
as the feet of Byron go '-as Byron proceeds disdainfully on his
way. If this was Shelley's original meaning, he probably observed after a while that the words 'as they go' seem to follow
on with ' they fawn,' and not with 'the proud feet'; and, in order
to remove the ambiguity, he substituted the expression 'lying
low.'
Stanza 29, 11. 1-3. 'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles
spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death.'
The spawning of a reptile (say a lizard or toad), and the death
of an insect (say a beetle or gnat), are two things totally unconnected. Shelley however seems on the first readinog,  link them
together, as if ths spawning were the origin of the l the brief
life, o the insect. He might thus appear to use 'reptile,' not in
the defined sense which we commonly attach to the word, but in
the general sense of 'a creeping creature' such for instance as
a grub or caterpillar, the first form of an insectt leading on to its
final metamorphosis or development. His natural history would
then be curiously at fault: for no grub or caterpillar can spawnwhich is the function of the fully-developed insect itself, whether
"'ephemeral ' or otherwise. Probably the full meaning is: ' When
the sun rises, reptiles spawn and insects come forth when he sets
the reptiles (i. e. the meanest creeping tngs) an  the insects die
r Mever. But -S elley, by an economy not uncommon with poets,
has only given one term of each statement: ' When the sun rises,
reptiles spawn; when the sun sets insects die.' It is not exact
to say that ' reptiles spawn,' if the meaning is that young reptiles
come out of yesterday's spawn.
1. 4. 'And the immortal stars awake again.' The imagery of
this stanza (apart from the 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects')
deserves a little consideration. The sun (says Shelley)A_ ises. and
then sets; when it sets, the immortal stars awake again. Simi



NOTES                        129
-larly, a godlike mind (say the mind of Keats) appears and its
light illumines the earth, and veils the heaven: when it disappears
'the spirit's awful ni  is left to  its indred lam   This
seems as muci as to say that the splendour of a new  oetic
genius appears to contemporaries to  ro  preceding poets into
obscurity; but this is only a matter of the moment, for, when the
new genius sinks in death the others shine forth again as stars
of the intellectual zenith to which the new genius is kidred
indeed- but not supeir   but meanwhile the swarms of gnats,
which depended upon the sun for their life, though they dimmed
iis brightness, die. With these words concludes the speech of
Urania, which began in stanza 25.
Stanza 30,1. i. The Mountain Shepherds. These are contemporary British poets, whom Shelleyreresents as mourinng the
death of Keats. Sjepherds are such familiar figures in poetryultilized or nsance in Milton's Lycidas, as well as by many poets
of antiquity-that the introduction of them into Shelley's Elegy
is no matter for surprise. As to the term ' mountain shepherdsShelley may have written with a certain degree of referece to
that couplet in Lycidas'For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.'.
In the celebrated pastoral of Sannazzaro, the Arcadia, the scene
is 'on the summit of Parthenius, a mount not low in pastoral
Arcadia'; and we are told, 'In this spot the shepherds with their
flocks are often wont to meet from the neighbouring mounts.'
1. 2. Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent. The garlands
or chaplets of the mountain shepherds have become sere because
(it may be presumed) the wearers, in their grief for the mortal
illness and death of Adonais, have for some little while lft them:Unrenewed. Or..
unrenewed   O1r possibly the garlands withered at the moment
when Spring ' threw down herkinding   buds' (stanza 16). I do
not well understand the expression 'magic mantles.' There
seems to be no reason why the mantles of the shepherds, considered as shepherds, should be magic. Even when we contemplate the shepherds as poets, we may fail to discern why any
magical property should be assigned to their mantles. Perhaps
we should understand that the shepherds wore mantles, which,
when we convert the shepherds into  ets, can be regarded as
their 'singingbrobes,' comparable to black robes embroidered with
mystic characters, proper to magicians. Sheley would thus have
ADONAIS                  K




130


NOTES


intended to bridge over the gap between the nominal shepherds
and the real poets viewed as inspired singers: for this purpose
he has adopted a bold verbal expedient, but not I think an efficient
one. It may be noticed that the 'uncouth svain who is represented in LZcidas as singing the dirge (in other words, Milton
himself) is spoken of as having a mantle-it is a 'mantle blue'
(see the penultimate line of that poem). Cp. magic tone,' said
of Keats's poetry in stanza 36.
1. 3, PThe Pigim of Etrnty. This is LordByron. As inventor
of the personage Childe Harold, the hero and so-called ' Pilgrim'
of the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and as being himself to
a great extent identical with his hero, Byron was frequently
termed ithie hiM.' Shelley adopts this designation, which he
magnifies into 'the Pilrim of Eternit.' He admired Byron
most enthusiastically as a poet, and was generally on easysometimes on cordial-terms with him as a man. He has left us
a fine and discriminating portrait of Byron in the 'Count Maddalo'
of his poem Julian and Maddalo, written in 1818. At times, however, Shelley felt and expressed great indignation against Byron,
especially in reference to the ungenerous and cruel conduct of
the latter towards Miss Clairmont. See some brief reference to
this matter at p. 9.
11. 3-5. Whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An
early but enduring monument. These phrases are not very definite.
When fame is spoken of as being bent over Byron's head, we
must conceive of fame as taking a form cognizable by the senses.
I think Shelley means to assimilate it to the rainbow; saying
substantially-Fame is like an arc bent over Byron's head, as the
arc of the rainbow is bent over the expanse of heaven. The
ensuing term 'monument appliesrather to fa  n te astract
than to any image of fame as an arc.
11. 6, 7. Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow. No
doubt it would have been satisfactory to Shelley if he could have
found that Byron entertained or expressed any serious concern
at Keats's premature death, and at the hard measure which had
been meted out to him by critics. Byron did in fact admire
Hyperion; writing (in November I82I, not long after the publication of Adonais)-' His fragment of Hyperion seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Aeschylus'; and other
utterances of his show that-being with difficulty persuaded to
suppose that Keats's health and life had succumbed to the attack




NOTES


131


in the Quarterly-he fittingly censured the want of feeling or
want of reflection on the critic's part which had produced such
a result. But on the whole Byron's feeling towards Keats was
one of savage contempt during the young poet's life, and of
bantering levity after his death. Here are some specimens.
(From a letter to Mr. Murray, October 1a, i820.) 'There is such
a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed
to look at them... No more Keats, I entreat. Flay him alive:
if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing
the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.'
" "Who killed John Keats?"
"I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
" 'Twas one of my feats."'
'John Keats, who was killed off by one critique
Just as he really promised something great
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow, his was an untoward fate!
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.'
11. 7-9. From her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest
wrong, And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.
lerne (Ireland) sent Thomas Moore the yrist of her wrongsan allusion to tome other poems. There
is not, I believe, any evidence to show that Moore took the
slightest interest in Keats, his doings or his fate: Shelley is
responsible for Moore's love, grief, and music, in this connexion.
A letter from Keats has been published showing that at one time
he expected to meet Moore personally (see p. 47). Whether he
did so or not I cannot say for certain, but I apprehend not: the
published Diary of Moore, of about the same date, suggests the
negative.
Stanza 31, 1.. 'Midst others of less note. Shelley clearly means
less note' than Byron and Moore-not less note than the 'one
frail form.'
1. i. Came one frail Form, &c.  This personage represents
Shelley himself. Shelley here describes himself under a profusion of characteristics, briefly defined: it may be interesting
K 2




132


NOTES


to summarize them, apart from the other details with which they
are interspersed. He is a frail form; aphantom among men;  -
companionless; one who had   azed Actaeon-like on Nature's'
naked loveliness, and who now fled with feeble steps, hounded
by his own thoughts; a pard-like spirit beautiful and swift; a
love masked in desolation; a power begirt with weakns
scarcely capable of lifting the weight of the hour; a breaking
billow which ma  even now be broken; the last of the compan?,
neglected and apart-a herd-abandoned deer struck b    the
hunter's dart; in Keats's fate he wept his own  his brow was
branded and ensanguined.  Most of these attributes can be
summed up under one heading-that of extreme sensitiveness
and susceptibility which meet with no  nse or sustainmen.     _urather with_ misjgementreu and outrae. Some readers
may think that Shelley insists upon this aspect of his character
to a degree rather excessive, and dangerously near the confines
of feminine sensibility, rather than virile fortitude. Apart from
this predominant type of character, Shelley describes his spirit
as ' beautiful and swift '-which surely it was: and he says that,
having gazed upon Nature's naked loveliness, he had suffered
the fate of a second Actaeon, fleeing ' o'er the world's wilderness,'
and pursued by his own thoughts like raging hounds. By this
expression Shelley apparently means that he had over-boldly
*         tried to fathom the depths of things and of  b  baed and..dismayed in the effort, suffered, as a man livipg among men, by
the very tension and vividness of his thoughts, and their daring
in expression. See what he says of himself, in prose, on p. 93.
11. 4, 5. He, as I guess, Had gazed, &c. The use of the verb
'guess' in the sense of 'to surmise, conjecture, infer,' is now
mostly counted as an Americanism. This is not correct; for
the verb has often been thus used by standard English authors.
Such a practice was not however common in England in Shelley's
time, and he may have been guided chiefly by the rhyming.
Stanza 32,1. 4. The weight of the superincumbent hour. This
line is scarcely rhythmical: to bring it within the ordinary
scheme of rhythm, one would have to lay an exaggerated stress
on two of its syllables-' thd superincumbent.' Neither this
treatment of the line, nor the line itself apart from this treatment,
can easily be justified.
Stanza 33, 11. i, 2. His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets. The Ea    nsee  is the flower of thought,
Jo-__




NOTES                         I33
or memo:    we commonly call it heartsease, but Shelley no
— autuses it here with a different, or indeed contrary, meaning.
Th     volet indica  accordin __to some authorities fidelity
according to others moes!. A stanza from one of his lyrics
may be appropriately cited-Remembrance, dated 1821i:
'Lilies for a bridal bed,
Roses for a matron's head,
Violets for a maiden dead,
Pansies let my flowers be.
On the living grave I bear
Scatter them without a tear;
Let no friend, however dear,
Waste a hope, a fear, for me.'
See also Hamlet, iv. 5 (Ophelia loq.): ' And there is pansies,
that's for thoughts.... There's a daisy. I would give you
some violets; but they withered all, when my father died.'
Mrs. Shelley writes July 26, i82:2: ' In a little poem of his
are these words: "Pansies let my flowers be." Pansies are
heartsease; and in another he says that pansies mean memory.'
1. 3. Shelley here represents himself as bearing the-iZ~su
or Bacchic wand-' The~ th USwas a 1 ht wand with its head
covered with a bunch of ivv or vine -leaves, or the cone of a firtreo        ihcn    and leaves cmie.Sometimes a sharp
spike was imbeddedr arttthestick.' (Sandys'
note on Euripides, Bacchae 25.) The iv ws _the ot' s emblem
'Me doctarum hederae praemia frontium
dis miscent superis.' (Horace, Od. i. I. 29-30.)
The th rsus was a~ro~riate to Poets as well as to Bacchanals
cp. Lucretius (i. 922-3)
'nec me animi fallit quamn sint obscura; sed acri
percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor.'
To the usual foliage of the thyrsus Shelley has added the~
mournm   c     iress.
1. 9. A herd-abandoned deer..Cp. As You Like It, ii. i
'To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish.'
Shelley doubtless knew Cowper's beautiful lines in The Task,
Book III (published in i785):
I'I was a stricken deer that left the herd,' &C.
He does not elsewhere mention Cowper.




134                     NOTES
Stanza 34, 1. x. His partial moan. The epithet Cpartial' is
accounted for by what immediately follows-viz. that Shelley
'in another's fate now wept his own.' He, like Keats, was the
obiect of critical virulence_ and he was wont (but on very
different grouds) to antiipate an earl death. See (on p. 35)
the expression in a etter rom Sheley-' a writer who, however
he may differ,' &c.
1. a. Smiled through their tears.  Cp. Homer, Iliad vi. 484
BaKpv&6v 'ye*Xcaaa.
11.4, 5. As in the accents of an unknown land, He sang new sorrow.
It is not vey clear why Shelley should represent that he, as one
of the Mountain Shepheds used a lauae different (as one
miht infer  from that of his companions. All those whom he
particularizes were his compatriots. Perhaps however Shelley
merely means that the language (English) was that of a land
unknown to the Greek deity Ahrodite Urania or to the in;
habitants of Rome. The phrase 'new  sorrow' occurs in the
Elegy by Moschus (p. 69). By the use of this phrase Shelley
seems to mean not merely that the death of Keats was a recent
and sorrowful event, but more especially that it constituted a new
sorrow-one more sorrow-to Shej=,himself.
11. 3, 5. I reproduce the punctuation of the Pisan edition,
withsemicolons     fter 'his own  ad  rro     It appears
to me however that the sense would rather require either a
full stop after 'his own  and a comma after 'sorrow' or else a
comma after 'his own ' and a full sto  or colon after sorrow.'
Yet it is possible that the phrase, ' As in the accents,' &c., forms
a separate clause by iseelf meaning,' As. in the accents of an
unknown land,.he  sang new sorrow.' The comma which in the
Pisan edition follows 'land' makes this probable, the reference
being to the Greek form of the Adonais.
11.8, 9. Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was
like Cain's or Christ's. Shelley represents his own brow as being
branded like Cain's-stamped with the mark of reprobation; and
ensanguined like Christ's-bleeding from a crown of thorns.
This indicates the extreme repugnance with which he was
generally regarded, and in especial perhaps the decree of the
Court of Chancery which deprived him of his children by his
first marriage-and generally the troubles and sufferings which
he had undergone. The close coupling-together, in this line,




NOTES                        135
of the names of Cain and Christ, was not likely to conciliate
antagonists; and indeed one may safely surmise that it was done
by Shelley more for the rather wanton purpose of exasperating
them than with any other object. It might be suggested that
the mention of Cain, taken in connexion with the epithets
' branded and ensanguined' in 1. I, points to some genuine touches
of remorse for the incidents of the poet's first marriage, and its
unhappy end. I do not however think that this was intended:
Shelley seems always to have maintained that he was not in the
wrong in that matter. By.the naming of Chri.t in this stanza..and of   n o                              ey ges puiside
the limits of classical allusion. These, if we except the name
Albion, are the sole instances, but he has to name some modern
poets-Milton, Chatterton, Sidney. In this stanza Urania appears
for the last time.
Stanza 35,1. i. What softer voice is hushed over the dead? The
personage here referred to is Leigh-Hunt. See p. 46.
1. 6. Gentlest of the wise. It is apparent that Shelley entertained
a very sincere affection and regard for Leigh Hunt. He dedicated
to Hunt the tragedy of The Cenci, using the following expressions
among others: 'Had I known a person more highly endowed
than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had
solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more
gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave; one of more exalted
toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more
free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how
to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than
he can receive; one of simpler and (in the highest sense of
the word) of purer life and manners, I never knew: and I had
already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added
to the list.'
1. 7. Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one. It has
sometimes been maintained that Hunt, whatever may have been
the personal friendship which he felt for Keats, did not, during
the latter's lifetime, champion his literary cause with so much
zeal as might have been expected from his professions. This
is a point open to a good deal of discussion from both sides.
Mr. Buxton Forman, who as Editor of Keats had occasion to
investigate the matter attentively, pronounces decidedly in favour
of Hunt.
Stanza 86, 1. i. Our Adonais has drunk poison. Founded on




136                    NOTES
those lines of Moschus which appear as a mo   o        s..Mg ley's
Elegy. See also p. 49.
1. a. What deaf and vhierous murderer. Deaf, because insensib.
tothe beauty of Keats's verse: and viperous, becaue 0oisonous
alignant. The juxtaposition of the two epithets may probably be also partly dependent on that passage in the Psalms
(lviii. 4, 5) which has become proverbial: 'They are as venomous
as the poison of a serpent: even like the deaf adder that stoppeth
her ears; which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm
he never so wisely.'
1.4. The nameless worm. A worm, as being one of the lowest
forms of life, is constantly used as a term implying contempt; but
it may be assumed that Shelley here uses ' Worm' in its original
sense, that of any crawlin creaturemo,,jreciallv of he snake
kind. There would thus be no departure fro m t he  revious
epithet 'viperous.' See the remarks as to ' reptiles,' st. 29.
II. 5, 6. The magic tone Whose prelude, &c. Shelley, it will be
perceived, here figures Keats as a minstrel ri   lre an
prerparing ton. He strikes the lyre in ama  tone' the ver
prelu e'of this was enou h to comand.   en   x   t
This prelude is the poem of Endymon, to with the Quartrly
reviewer a one (according to Shelley) was insensitive, owing to
feelings of 'envy, hate, and wrong.' The prelude was only an
induction to the' song,'-which was eventually poured forth in
the Lamia volume, and especially (as our poet opined) in Hyperion. But now Keats's hand is cold in          isar
unstrung.As I have already observed-see - p 3  a6,-  Shelley
was mistaken in supposing that the Quarterly Review had
held a monopoly of' envy, hate, and wrong '-or, as one might
now term them, detraction, spite, and unfairness-in reference
to Keats.
Stanza 37, 1. 4. But be thyself and know thyself to be  The
precise import of. this line is not, I think, entirely plain at
first sight. I conceive that we should take the line as immediately consequent upon the preceding words —' Live thou, live! '
Premising this, one might amplify the idea as follows: 'While
Keat is dead, be it th doom? thou deaf and viperous m.rd
to jivej.  But Ltou shalt live in thine on de
and shalt thyself be conscious how  egraded to art  Another
suggestion might be that the words          are equivalent
to   e but thself.'
i Z.'V...loo tplI."~...~2..,..X




NOTES


I37


11. 5, 6. And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom
when thy fangs o'erflow. This keeps up the image o the vi p er.
ous' murderer-the viper. 'At thy season' can be understood
as a reference to the periodical issues of the Quarterly Review.
The word 'o'erflow' is, in the Pisan edition, printed as two
words-' o'er flow.'
1. 7. Remorse and self-contempt. Shelley frequently dwells upon
self-contempt as one of the least toleble of human  i
Thus in the Revolt of Islam (canto viii, st. o):'Yes, it is Hate-that shapeless fiendly thing
Of many names, all evil, some divineWhom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting,' &c.
And in Prometheus Unbound (i.):'Regard this earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.'
Again (ii. 4):'And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood.'
Stanza 38, 1.. Nor let us weep, &c. So far.f   th- broad mr
rent   ntiment is concerned thisis turnin
Elegy. _ Hitherto the tone has been continuousl and throh
variety of phases, one of mourn m  for the fact that Keats the
great poetical genius. is untimely dead. But now the writer
pauses, checks himself, and recognizes that mourning is not the
only possible feeli2n  nor indeed the most appropriate one.
As his thought expands and his, rapture rises, he soon acknowledges that, so far from srieving for Keats who is dead it were
far more relevant to grieve for himself who is not dead. This
aen of recantation and aspiration  ioe   iimCr of
4hcDpoem.
''""TJ.-F7h-.se carrion kites. A term of disparagement corresponding nearly enough to the' ravens' and 'vultures' f st. 28.
1. 3. He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead. With= such of
thedead as have done somethine which survives themselves  It
will be observed that the phrase 'he wakes or sleeps' leaves the
stion of ersonal or individual immortalit auite open. As to
this point see the remarks on p. 55, &c.




138                     NOTES
1. 4. Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. This is again
addressed to the ' deaf and viperous murderer,' regarded for the
moment as a ' carrion kite.' As kites are eminently  h fers
the phrase here used becomes the more emphatic. This line of
Shelley's is obviously adapted from a passage in Milton's Paradise
Lost, where Satan addresses the angels in Eden (Book IV):'Ye knew me once, no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar.'
1. 5. The pure spirit shall flow, &c. The spirit which once was
the vital or mental essence-the soul-of Adonais came from the
Eternal Soul, and, now that he is dead, is re-absorbed into the
Eternal Soul: as such it is imperishable.
1. 9. Whilst thy cold embers choke, &c. The spirit of Adonais
came as a flame from the 'burng founta' f heter     and
has now reverted thither, he being one of the 'enduring dead.'
But the 'deaf and viperous murderer' must not hope for a ike
destiny. His spirit, after death, will be merely like I cold embers,'
cumbering the I hearth of shame As a rhetorical antithesis, this
serves its purpose well: no doubt Shelley would not have pretended that it is a strictly reasoned antithesis as well, or furnishes a full account of the post-mortem fate of the Quarterly
reviewer.
Stanza 39, 11. r, 2. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not
sleep-He hath awakened from the dream of life.  hlle..now
prieecedreldly.od4eclare that the state which we call death is
to be preferred to that which we call life. Keats is neither dead
nor sleeping. He used to be asleep, perturbed and tantalized
by the dream which is termed life. Havin  at last awakened
from the dream, he is no longer asleep: ais no        ore
than a dream, neither does the cessation of life deserve to be
named death. The transition from one emotion to another in
this passage, and also in the preceding stanza, 'Nor let us weep,'
c., resembles the transition towards the  ose o
'Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,' &c.
The general view has considerable affinity to that which is
expounded in a portion of Plato's dialogue Phaedo, and which
has been thus summarized.  Death is merely the separation of
soul and body. And this is the very consummation at which
Philosophy aims: the body hinders thought,-the mind attains




NOTES                         139
to. truth by retiring into herself Through no bodily sense does
she perceive justice, beauty, goodness, and other ideas. The
philosopher has a lifelong quarrel with bodily desires, and he
should welcome the release of his soul.' Cp. Plato, Gorgias,
p. 492 c:-ob 'yap ToL OavuzaCoLJA' av, El EvplriBl-s adX10eij  v 7oT'aE
X.y~(, \kyauv
7is ' os13E, El Ta Xjv 'Y lrT KcaTQavdev,
T7a ICaTOaVEi a; ^v;
The quotation is from the Polyidus of Euripides, and there is a
very similar passage in his Phrixus.
1. 3. 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, &c. We, the so-called
living, are in fact merely beset by a series of stormy  isions
which constitute life; all our efforts are expended upon mere
phantoms, and are therefore profitless; our mental conflict is an
act of trance, exercised upon mere nothings. The very energetic
expression, 'strike with our spirit's knife invulnerable nothings'
is worthy of remark.  t will be remembered tlat, acorng to
Shelley's belief, nothig exists but as it is perceved: see
p. 57. The view of life expressed with passionate' crce in this
passage of Adonais is the same which forms the calm and placid
conclusion of The Sensitive Plant, a poem written in I820 (and
indeed nearly the same view is implied in leats's phrase, 'a
thing of beauty is a joy for ever'):'But, in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that Lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.'




140                     NOTES
11.6, 7. We decay Like corpses in a charnel, &c. Human life
consists of a process of decay. While living, we are consumed
by fear and grief; our disppointed hopes swarm in our living
persons like worms in our corpses.
Stanza 40,1. I. He has outsoared the shadow of our night. As
human life was in the last stanza represented as a dream, so
the state of existence in which it is enacted is here figured as night.
1. 5. From the contagion of the world's slow stain. It may be
said that ' the world's slow stain '-the lowerin influence of the
aims and associations of all orlinary human life-is the main
subject-matter of Shelley's latest important poem, Th riumph
ofLife.
1. 9. With sparkless ashes. See the cognate expression 'thy
cold embers,' in st. 38.
Stanza 41, 1..HelIves, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he. In
the preceding three stanzas Adonais is contemplated as being
alve, owipng to the very fac that t his death has awakened him
'from the dream of life '-mundane life. Death has bestowed
upon him a vitality superior to that of mundane life. Death
therefore has erformed an act contrary to his own essence as
death and has ractical killed not Adonais buhimself
1. 2. Thouyoung Dawn. We he    recur to the image in st. 14,
Morning sought her easternwatch-tower'&c.
1. 5. Ye caverns and ye forests, &c. The poet now adjures the
caverns forests flowers fountains,  an air to' cease to moan.'
Of the flowers we had heard in st. x6: but the other features of
Nature which are now addressed had not previously been individually mentioned-except, to some extent, by implication, in
st. I2, which refers more directly to ' Echo.' The reference to
the air had also been, in a certain degree, prepared for in st.
The stars are said to smile on the Earth's despair. Tis;
does not, I apprehend indicate any despair of the Earth consesquent on the death of Adonais, but a general condition of woe.
A reference of a different kind to stars-a figurative referenceappears in st. 29
Stanza 42, 1. x. He is made one with Nature. This stanza
ascribes to Keats the same phase of immortality which belongs to
Nature. Having ' awakened from the dream of [mundane] life,'
his spirit forms an integral portion of the universe, Those acts of
intellect which he performed in the flesh remain withusas
thunder and thsoof the nihtingae remain with us.




r


NOTES                        141
11. 6, 7. Whee'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his
being to its own. This corresponds to the expression in st. 38 -' The pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence
it came, A'portion of the Eternal.'
1. 8. Which wields the world with never wearied love, &c. These
two lines are about the nearest approach to definite Theism to
be found in any writing of Shelley. The conception, which may
amount to Theism, is   lcnsistent with Pantheism. Even
in his most anti-theistic poem, Queen Mab, Shelley said in a note
-'The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the
universe, remains unshaken.'
Stanza 43, 11. 1-3. He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he
made more lovely. He doth bear His part, &c. The conception
embodied in this passage may become more clear to the reader if
its terms are pondered in connexion with the passage of Shelley's
prose extracted on p. 58-' the existence of distinct individual
minds,' &c. Keats while a living man, had made the loveliness
of the universe more lovely by expressing in poetry his acute and
subtle sense of its beauties-by lavishing on it (as we say) 'the
colours of his imagination.' He was then an 'individual mind'according to the current, but (as Shelley held) inexact terminology. He has now, by death, wholly passed out of the class of
individual minds; and he forms a portion of the Universal Mind
(the ' One Spirit') which is the animation of the universe.
11. 3, 4. While the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the
dull dense world, &c. The function ascribed in these lines to the
One Spirit is a formative or animating function: the Spirit constitutes the life of 'trees and beasts and men.' This view is
strictly within the limits of Pantheism.
Stanza 44, 1. i. The splendours of the firmament of time, &c.
As there are stars in the firmament of heaven, so are there
splendours-luminous intellects-in the firmament of time. The
stars, though at times eclipsed, are not extinguished; nor yet the
mental luminaries. In stanza 5 Shelley speaks of 'suns' which
'perished,' and poets who sank 'in their refulgent prime.' In
he latter partof the poem, following the inspiration of Milton in
cidas, he denies the rea-rty ot eath', to  in another sense
from Milton's.  he great poet may be eclipsed, but does not
peri   as did the lost suns. Thus there is some intentional contradiction between the two passages: the later one is a palinode.
11. 5, 6. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart, &c. The sense




142                    NOTES
of this passage may be paraphrased thus:-When lofty thought
lifts a young heart above its mundane environments, and when
its earthly doom has to be determined by the conflicting influences
of love, which would elevate it, and the meaner cares and interests of life, which would drag it downwards, then the illustrious
dead live again in that heart-for its higher emotions are nurtured by their noble thoughts and aspirations,-and they move,
like exhalations of light along dark and stormy air. tis illustrates then revi           t                 of the firma-,meat of time are not extinguished; and in thie most jmme:late
application.of the-praposaitiaon,.eats is not extinguis hedh will
continue an ennobling influence upon minds stru ng towards
the lighl_.t
-'S::ff za 45, 11. i, 2. The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose
from their thrones. There is a grand abruptness in this phrase,
which makes it-as a point of oetical or literary structure-one
of the finest things in the Elegy. We are to understand (but
Shelley is too great a master to formulate it in words) that Keats,
as an 'inheritor of unfulfilled renown '-i. e. a great intellect cut
off y death before its maturest fruits could be produced-has now
arrived among his compeers: they rise from their thrones to welcome him. In this connexion Shelley chooses torward Keats as
still a livin. spiritulal personalt-not simply as ' made one with
_/S__WS__Vll^lll.'.-not vply as I made one with
Nature, He is one of those 'splendours of the firmament of time'
who 'may be eclipsed, but are extinguished not.' With the
whole stanza compare Isaiah xiv. 9, o0: 'Hell from beneath
is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming.... It hath raised
up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall
speak and say unto thee: "Art thou also become weak as we?
art thou become like unto us?"'
11. 3-5. Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded
from him. For precocity and exceptional turn of genius Chatterton
was certainly one of the most extraordinary of ' the inheritors of
unfulfilled renown'; indeed, the most extraordinary: he committed
suicide by poison in 1770, before completing the eighteenth year
of his age. His supposititious modern-antique Poems of Rowley
may, as actual achievements, have been sometimes overpraised:
but at the lowest estimate they have beauties and excellences of
the most startling kind. He wrote besides a quantity of verse and
prose, of a totally different order. Keats admired Chatterton profoundly, and dedicated Endymion to his memory. I cannot find




NOTES                        i43
that Shelley, except in Adonais, has left any remarks upon
Chatterton: but he is said by Captain Medwin to have been, in
early youth, very much impressed by his writings.
1. 5. Sidney, as hefought, &c. Sir Philip Sidney, author of The
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, thd Apology for Poetry, and the
sonnets named Astrophel and Stella, died in his thirty-second year,
of a wound received in the battle of Zutphen, 1586. Shelley intimates that Sidney maintained the character of being 'sublimely
mild' in fighting, falling (dying), and loving, as well as generally
in living. The special references appear to be these. (i) Sidney,
observing that the Lord Marshal, the Earl of Leicester, had
entered the field of Zutphen without greaves, threw off his own,
and thus exposed himself to the cannon-shot which slew him.
(2) Being mortally wounded, and receiving a cup of water, he
handed'it (according to a tradition which is not unquestionable)
to a dying soldier. (3) His series of sonnets record his love for
Penelope Devereux, sister to the Earl of Essex, who married
Lord Rich. She had at one time been promised to Sidney. He
wrote the sonnets towards 1581: in I583 he married another
lady, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. It has been said that
Shelley was wont to make some self-parade in connexion with
Sir Philip Sidney, giving it to be understood that he was himself
a descendant of the hero-which was not true, although the
Sidney blood came into a different line of the family. Of this
story I have not found any tangible confirmation.
1.8. Lucan, by his death approved. Lucan, the author of the
Pharsalia, was condemned under Nero as being an accomplice in
the conspiracy of Piso. He was induced to turn informer, and
denounced even his own mother: being notwithstanding condemned to death, he caused his veins to be opened, and died
magnanimously, aged about twenty.six, A.D. 65. The phrase
'by his death approved' appears to be suggested by Lucan himself,
who, in describing the death of Pompey, writes, viii. 6ao Seque
probat moriens '; and again, 11. 625-6 'ignorant populi, si non in
morte probaris An scieris adversa pati.' Lucan's views of the
merit of such a death, voluntary, or accepted as a necessity, will
be found more at length in iv. 474-528. Shelley speaks of Lucan
in the Defence of Poetry as a second-rate poet, as one of the 'mockbirds' 'whose notes were sweet'; but yet with sympathy as of
one who, by hard conditions of date and nationality, was
forbidden to realize his own genius. He had at an earlier date




-\


I44                     NOTES
entertained a much higher opinion of Lucan: for in a letter
to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, dated September 1815, he wrote:
'I have also read the four first books of Lucan's Pharsalia, a poem
(as it appears to me) of wonderful genius, and transcending
Virgil.'
Stanza 46, 11. I, 2. And many more, whose names on earth are
dark, But whose transmitted effluence cannot die, &c. This glorious
company would include, no doubt, not only the recorders of great
thoughts, or performers of great deeds which are silil borne
in memory although the names*of the authors are forgotten, but
also many whose work is as totally unknown as their names, but
who exerted nevertheless a bright and elevating ascendant over
other minds, and who thus conduced to the greatness of iumankind.
1. 6. It was for thee, &c. The synod of the inheritors of unfulfilled renown here invite Keats to assume possession of a
sphere, or star, which had hitherto been 'kingless,' or unapproriated. It had 'swung blind in unascended majesty':
had not been assigned to any radiant spirit, whose brightness
would impart brilliancy to the sphere itself.
1. 8. Silent alone amid an heaven of song. This phrase points
primarily to ' the music of the spheres': the sphere now assigned
to Keats had hitherto failed to take part in the music of its
fellows but henceforward will chime n. Probably there is also
a subsidiary, but in its context not less prominent meaningnamely, that, while the several poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney,
and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of his own, apposite to his
particular poetic quality, the sphere which Keats is now to control
had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet of that special
te of genius which it demanded had as yet appeared. Its
affinity was for Keats, and for no one else,,,This is an implied
jtestation of Keats's poetic originality. See also the phrase
(stanza 44) Like stars to their appointed height they climb.'
1. 9. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!
The winged throne is, I think, a synonym of the 'sphere' itself
not a throne within the sphere: ' winged,' because the sphere
revolves in space. Yet the statement in stanza 45 that 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown rose from their thrones' (which
cannot be taken to represent distinct spheres or constellations)
suggests theopposite interpretation. Keats is termed 'thou Vesper
of our throng' because he is the latest member of this glorified




NOTES                        145
band-or, reckoning the lapse of ages as if they were but a day,
its evening star.' The exceptional brilliancy of the Vesper star
is not, I think, implied-though it may be remotely suggested.
Stanza 47, 1.3. Clasp with thy panting soul, &c. The significance of this stanza-perhaps a rather obscure one-requires to
be estimated as a whole. Shelley summons any person who
persists in mourning for Adonais to realize to his own mind what
are tTe true terms of comparison between Adonais and himself.
lter this, ne says in this stanza no more about Ad6nais, but only
about the mourner. He calls upon the mourner to consider
(I) the magnitude of the planet earth; then, using the earth as his
centre, to consider (a) the whole universe of worlds, and the
illimitable void of space beyond all worlds; next he is to consider
(3) what he himself is-he is confined within the day and night
of our planet, and even within those restricted limits he is but
an lnfnitesimalpoint. After he shall have realized this to himself, and after the tension of his soul in ranging through the
universe and through space shall have kindled hope after hope,
wonderment and aspiration after aspiration and wonderment,
then indeed will he need to keep his heart light, lest it make him
sink at tihe contempEltion of His owni niii ty.
1. 9. And lured thee to the brink. This phrase is not definitely
accounted for in the preceding exposition. I think Shelley means
that the successive hopes kindled in the mourner by the ideas of a
boundless universe of space and of spirit will have lured him to the
very brink of mundane life-to the borderland between life and
death: he will almost have been tempted to have done with life,
and to explore the possibilities of death.
Stanza 48, 1. I. Or go to Rome. This is still addressed to the
mourner, the 'fond wretch' of the preceding stanza. He is here
invited to adopt a different test for ' knowing himself and Adonais
aright'; namely, he is to visit Rome, and muse over the grave of
the youthful poet.
11. I, a. Which is the sepulchre, Oh not of him, tut of our joy.
Keats is not entombed in Rome: his poor mortal remains are
there enltom'bled,'cand? along with them the joy which we felt in
him as a living and breathing presence.
11.2, 3. 'Tis nought That ages, empires, and religions, &c. Keats,
and others such as he, derive no adventitious honour from being
buried in Rome, amid the wreck of agest empires and religions:
rather they confer honour. He is among his peers, the kings
ADONAIS                 L




146                    MOTES
of thought, who, so far from being dragged down in the ruin of
institutions, contended against tiat riin, and are alone immorta[
whiie all the rest of the past has come to nought. This consideration may be said to qualify, but not to reverse, that which
is presented in stanza 7, that Keats 'bought, with price of purest
breath, a grave among tjeeteriap'; th~ose eternal ones, buried
in Rome, include many oTithe i'kingsg of thought.'
Stanza 49, 11. 3, 4. And where its wrecks like shattered mountains
rise, And flowering weeds, &c. These expressions point more
especially, but not exclusively, to the Coliseum and the Baths of
Caracalla. In Shelley's time (and something alike was the case
in 1862, the year when the present writer saw them first) both
these vast monuments were in a state wholly different from that
Which they now, under the hands of learned archaeologists and
skilled restorers, present to the eye. Shelley began, probably in
1819, a romantic or ideal tale named The Coliseum; and, ensconced
amid the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, he composed, in the
same year, a large part of Prometheus Unbound. A few extracts
from his letters may here be given appropriately. (To T. L.
Peacock, Decemberaa, 18I8.) 'The Coliseum is unlike any work of
human hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit,
and the arches, built of massy stones, are piled on one another, and
jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging
rocks. It has been changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle,
and the figtree, and threaded by little paths which wind among
its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries: the copsewood overshadows you as you wander through its labyrinths.' —(To the
same, March 23, I819.) 'The next most considerable relic of
antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Caracalla.
These consist of six enormous chambers, above 2oo feet in height,
and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are in
addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden
and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never
was any desolation so sublime and lovely.... At every step the
aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as
the distant mountains change their aspect to one travelling
rapidly along the plain.... Around rise other crags and other
peaks-all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desolation
softened down, by the undecaying investiture of Nature.'




NOTES                        I47
1. 7. A slope of green access.  The old Protestant Cemetery.
Shelley described it thus in his letter to Mr. Peacock of December
22, I8x8: The English burying-place is a green slope near the
walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the
most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld.  To see
the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we visited it, with
the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the
leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and
the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark
the tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried
there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem
to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples with its
wishes vacancy and oblivion.'-See also p. 71.
Stanza 50, l. 3. One keen pyramid. The tomb (see last note)
of Caius Cestius, a Tribune of the People.
ii. 4, 5. The dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory.
Shelley probably means that this sepulchral pyramid alone pre-   e - -6f 'Ciii'lu-s  whi — -~ ----~- ~serves to remembrance the name of Cestius: which is true
-enough, as next to nothing is otherwise known about him.
1. 8. Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death. The
practice which Shelley follows in this line of making 'heaven'
a dissyllable is very frequent with him. So also with 'even,
higher,' and other such words.
Stanza 51, 11. 3, 4. If the seal is set Here on one fountain of
a mourning mind.  Shelley certainly alludes to himself in this
line. His beloved son William, who died in June 1819, in the
fourth year of his age, was buried in this cemetery: the precise
spot is not now known.
11.5-7. Too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou
returnesthome, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind, &c.
The apposition between the word ' well' and the preceding word
'fountain' will be observed. The person whom Shelley addresses
would, on returning home from the cemetery, find more than
ample cause, of one sort or another, for distress and discomposure.
Hence follows the conclusion that he would do well to 'seek
shelter in the shadow of the tomb': he should prefer the condition of death to that of life. And so we reach in stanza 5' the
same result which, in stanza 47, was deduced from a different
range of considerations.
Stansa 62, I. I. The One remains, the many change andpass.
The language and thought of this stanza are Platonic. It was
L2




148                     NOTES
a problem of early philosophy to find the One in the many. Thus
Parmenides and the Eleatics taught thiat te One only is, while
the many, i. e. the phenomena of the material universe, are not.
And so the Platonic Socrates is made to say (Phaedrus 266,
Jowett's Translation): 'If I find any man who is able to see
" a One and Many " in nature, him I follow, and walk in his footsteps, as if he were a god.' Line 2 recalls the famous image of the
cave in Plato's Republic: menac are c   ina cave, and can only
see t-e -'T ows cast po1n a wall by -ngures passmng -getween
it and a light at whiethey'canrotbear to look directly. The
-eaWifi mage o te many colours and the one bright radiance
which they stain may have been suggested by Plato's scheme of
colours given in the Timaeus, but, as here presented, it is Shelley's
own.
11. 3-5  Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the
white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Two different views have been taken as to the essential meaning
of these lines.  My own view is that, while eternity is here
figured as white light-light in its quintessence —Ie, mundane
life'j figured as a dome ofglass (or, as one might say, an immense'
glass bubble), which becomes man ycoloured by its prismatic
refraction of the white ligt. Death ultimately tramples the glass
dome into fragments: each individual life is shattered, and
integral life, made up of many individual lives, is shattered. This
I regard as a metaphorical symbol as daring, and with as deep
and spacious a meaning, as any that has been employed by any
poet. A consummate image, vast in purport, and terse in form.
A second view, which appears to me sadly to reduce the importance of the symbol, is that the dome of glass is ' many-coloured'
in the literal sense-stained glass of various hues.  This is
certainly not inconsistent with the diction of the passage, but
I demur to accepting it as correct.
11. 5, 6. Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek.
This phrase is addressed by the poet to anybody, and more
especially to himself.  As in stanza 38-' the pure spirit shall
flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of
the.. E*a]7.r,*.....,,.................. _,...-...
the Eternal.!
I 7-9. Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words,
are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. I follow
here the punctuation of the Pisan edition-with a comma after
words' as well as after ' sky, flowers,' &c. According to this




NOTES                        I49
punctuation, the words of Rome, as well as her sky and other
beautiful endowments, are t oo6 weak to eclare at full the glory
'wlcb' they impart; and the inference from this rather abruptly
itroduced recurrence to Rome is (I suppose), that the spiritual
glory faintly adumbrated by Rome can only be 1ealized in that
realm of eternity to which death gives access.  Taken in this
sense, the 'words' of Rome appear to mean 'the beautiful language spoken in Rome'-the Roman or Latin language, as
modified into modern Italian. The pronunciation of Italian in
Rome is counted peculiarly pure and rich: hence the Italian
adage, 'lingua toscana in bocca romana'-Tuscan tongue in
Roman mouth. At first sight, it would seem far more natural to
punctuate thus: 'Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music,
-words are weak The glory,' &c. The sense would then beWords are too weak to declare at full the glory inherent in the
sky, flowers, &c. of 'ome. Yet, although this seems a more
straightforwari arrangeenFiit for the words of the sentence, as
such, it is not clear that such a comment on the beauties of Rome.would have any great relevancy in its immediate context.
Stanza 53, 1. 2. Thy hopes are gone before, &c. This stanza
contains some very pointed references to the state of Shelley's
feelings at the time when he was writing Adonais; pointed, but
not so clearly defined as to make his actual meaning transparent.
We are told that his hopes are gone before (i. e. have vanished
before the close of his lifehias icome), and have departed from all
things here. This may partly refei to the deaths of William
Sheley and of Keats; but I think the purport of the phrase
extends further, and implies that Shelley's hopes generally-those
animating conceptions which had inspired him in early youth, and
had buoyed him up through many adversities-are now waning in
disappointment. This is confirmed by the ensuing statement-that
' A lglt is past from the revolving year [a phrase repeated from
stanza i8], And man and woman.' Next we are told that 'what
still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee [me] wither.'
The persons who were more particularly dear to Shelley at this
time must have been (not to mention the two children Percy
Florence Shelley and Allegra Clairmont) his wife, Miss Clairmont,
Emilia Viviani, and Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams: Byron,
Leigh Hunt, and Godwin can hardly be in question. No doubt
Shelley's acute feelings and mobile sympathies involved him in
some considerable agitations, from time to time, with all the four




I5o


NOTES


ladies here named: but the strong expressions which he uses
as to attracting and repelling, crushing and withering, seem,
hardly likely to have been employed by him in this personal
sense in a published book. Perhaps therefore we shall be safest
in supposing that he alludes, not to persons who are dear, but to
circumstances and conditions of a more general kind-such as are
involved in his self-portraiture, stanzas 3I-34.
1. 8. 'Tis Adonais calls! Oh hasten thither I 'Thither' may mean
'to Adonais': a laxity of expression. Or it may apply, with
vagueness of reference, to the region to which Adonais has now
migrated.
Stanza 54, 1. I. That light whose smile kindles the universe, &c.
This is again the 'One Spirit' of stanza 43. And see, in stanza
42, the cognate expression, ( kindles it above.'
11. 3, 4. That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can
quench not. The curse of birth is, I think, simply the calamitous
condition of mundane life-so often referred to in this Elegy as
a condition of abjection and unhappiness. The curse of birth can
eclipse the benediction of Universal Mind, but cannot quench it:
in other words, the human mind, in its passage from the birth to
the death of the body, is still an integral portion of the Universal
Mind.
1.7. Each are mirrors. This is of course a grammatical irregularity-the verb should be ' is.' It is not the only instance of the
same kind in Shelley's poety.
1.9. Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. This does not
imply that Shelley is shortly about to die. ' Cold mortality' is
that condition in which the human mind, aportion of the Universal
Mind, is united to a mortal body: and the general sense is that
the Universal Mind at this moment beams with such effulgence
upon Shelley that his mind responds to it as if the mortal body no
longer interposed any impediment.
Stanza 55,... ihe breath whose might I have invoked in song.
The breath or afflatus of the Universal Mind. It has been 'invoked in song' throughout the whole later section of this Elegy,
from stanza 38 onwards.
1. 2. My spirits bark is driven, &c. As was observed with
reference to the preceding stanza, line 9, this phrase does not
forecast the author's death: it only re-emphasizes the abnormal
illumination of his mind by the Universal Mind-as i his spirit
(like that of Keats) had flowed ' Back to the burning fountain




NOTES                        151
whence it came, A portion of the Eternal' (stanza 38). Nevertheless, it is very remarkable that this image of 'the spirit's bark,'
beaconed by ' the soul of Adonais,' should have been written so
soon before Shelley's death by drowning, which occurred on
July 8, I822,-but little more than a year after he had completed
this Elegy. Besides this passage, there are in Shelley's writings,
both verse and prose, several other passages noticeable on the
same account-relating to drowning, and sometimes with a strong
personal application; and in various instances he was in imminent
danger of this mode of death before the end came.
11. 3, 4. Farfrom the shore, farfrom the trembling throng Whose
sails were never to the tempest given. In saying that his spirit's
bark is driven far from the shore, Shelley apparently means that
his mind, in speculation and aspiration, ranges far beyond those
mundane and material interests with which the mass of men are
ordinarily concerned. 'The trembling throng' is, I think, a throng
of men: though it might be a throng of barks, contrasted with
my spirit's bark.' Their sails ' were never to the tempest given,'
in the sense that they never set forth on a bold ideal or spiritual
adventure, abandoning themselves to the stress and sway of a
spiritual storm.
1. 5. The massy earth, &c. As the poet launches forth on his
voyage upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to
gape, and the sky above him to open: his course however is still
held on in darkness-the arcanum is hardly or not at all revealed.
1'. r7.  ti1st, burning through the inmost veil, &c. A star pilots
his course: it is the soul of Adonais, which, being still a 6prtion
of the Eternal' (st. 38), is in 'the abode where the Eternal are,'
and testifies to the eternity of mind. In this passage, and in others.r..,'t eff 6ncluslon 6fthe poem, we find the nearest approach
which Shelley can furnish to an answer to that question which he
asked in stanza o2-' Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword
consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?'
Cancelled Passages of Adonais, Preface. These are taken from
Dr. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, published in I862.  He says:
IAmong Shelley's MSS. is a fair copy of the Defence of Poetry,
apparently damaged by sea-water, and illegible in many places.
Being prepared for the printer, it is written on one side of the
paper only: on the blank pages, but frequently undecipherable




152                     NOTES
for the reason just indicated, are many passages intended for, but
eventually omitted from, the preface to Adonais.'
11. 7-II. I have employed my poetical compositions and publications
simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others
which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited
me to acquire. This is an important indication of the spirit in which
Shelley wrote, and consequently of that in which his reader should
construe his writings. He poured out his full heart, craving for
'sympathy.' Loving mankind, he wished to find some love in
response.
1. 21. Domestic conspiracy and legal oppression, &c. The direct
reference here is to the action taken by Shelley's father-in-law
and sister-in-law, Mr. and Miss Westbrook, which resulted in the
decree of Lord Chancellor Eldon whereby Shelley was deprived of the custody of the two children of his first marriage.
See p. I2.
11. 28-30. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an
unsuccessful author turns critic. Various writers have said something of this kind. I am not sure how far back the sentiment
can be traced; but I presume that Shelley was not the first.
Some readers will remember a passage in the dedication to his
Peter Bell the Third (1819), which forestalled Macaulay's famous
phrase about the ' New Zealander on the ruins of London Bridge.'
Shelley wrote: 'In the firm expectation that, when London shall
be an habitation of bitterns;.. when the piers of Waterloo
Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and
cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary
stream; some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing, in the
scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the
respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians,
I remain,' &c.
11. 39, 40. The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted
solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, &c. See the remarks on
p. 46. There can be no doubt that Shelley was substantially
correct in this opinion. Not only the Quarterly Review, of which
he knew, but also Blackwood's Magazine, which did not come
under his notice, abused Keats because he was personally
acquainted with Hunt, and was, in one degree or another, a
member of the literary coterie in which Hunt held a foremost
place. And Hunt'was in bad odour with these reviews because
he was a hostile politician, still more than because of any actual




NOTES                         153
or assumed defects in his performances as an ordinary man of
letters.
1. 40. Mr. Haslitt. William Hazlitt was (it need scarcely be
said) a miscellaneous writer of much influence in these years,
in politics an advanced Liberal. A selection of his writings was
issued by Mr. Alexander Ireland in I889, and of late years a
large amount of attention and eulogium has once more been
bestowed upon Hazlitt. Keats admired Hazlitt much more than
Hunt.
1. 46. I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety, &c. See
pp. I4, I5.
Cancelled Passages of Adonais (the poem). These passages
also were in the first instance published in the Shelley Relics
of Dr. Garnett. They come, not from the same MS. which
contains the prefatory fragments, but from some of Shelley's
notebooks.
Stanza 1, 1. I. And the green paradise, &c. The green paradise
is the 'Emerald Isle'-Ireland. This stanza refers to Thomas
Moore, and would have followed on after st. 30 in the body of
the poem.
Stanza 2, 11. I, 2. And ever as he went he swept a lyre Of unaccustomed shape.  'He' has always hitherto, I think, been
understood as the ' one frail form' of st. 3I-i. e. Shelley himself.
The lyre might be of unaccustomed shape for the purpose of
indicating that Shelley's poetry differs very essentially, in tone
and treatment, from that of other writers. But I incline to think
that Shelley, in this stanza, refers not to himself but to Moore.
Moore was termed a ' lyrist,' and here we are told about his lyre.
The latter would naturally be the Irish harp, and therefore ' of
unaccustomed shape': the concluding reference to ' ever-during
green' might again glance at the 'Emerald Isle.' As to Shelley,
he was stated in st. 33 to be carrying ' a light spear': if he was
constantly sweeping a lyre as well, he must have had his hands
rather full.
1. 3. Now like the... of impetuous fire, &c. Shelley compares
the strains of the lyre-the spirit of the poetry-to two things:
(i) to a conflagration in a forest; and (2) to the rustling of wind
among the trees. The former image may be understood to apply
principally to the revolutionary audacity and fervour of the ideas
expressed; the latter, to those qualities of imagination, fantasy,
beauty, and melody, which characterize the verse. Of course all




154


NOTES


this would be more genuinely appropriate to Shelley himself than
to Moore: still it would admit of some application to Moore, of
whom our poet spoke highly more than once elsewhere. The
image of a forest on fire is more fully expressed in a passage
from the Lines written among the Euganean Hills, composed by
him in i818:'Now new fires from antique light
Spring beneath the wide world's might,But their spark lies dead in thee [i. e. in Padua],
Trampled out by Tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depths of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn,
By the fire thus lowly born;The spark beneath his feet is dead;
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With a myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear;-so thou,
O Tyranny! beholdest now
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest.
Grovel on the earth! ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!'
Stanza 3, 1. I. And then came one of sweet and earnest looks. It
is sufficiently clear that this stanza, and also the fragmentary
beginning of stanza 4, refer to Leigh Hunt-who, in the body of
the Elegy, is introduced in st. 35. The reader will observe, on
looking back to that stanza. that the present one could not be
added on to the description of Hunt: it is an alternative form,
ultimately rejected. Its tone is ultra-sentimental, and perhaps
on that account it was condemned. The simile at the close of the
present stanza is ambitious, but by no means felicitous.
Stanza 4, 11. I, 2. His song, though very sweet, was low and
faint, A simple strain. It may be doubted whether this description of Hunt's poetry, had it been published in Adonais, would
have been wholly pleasing to Hunt. Neither does it define, with_
any exceptional aptness, the particular calibre of that poetry.




NOTES                         155
Stanza 5, 11. I, 2. A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness of his own exceeding light. It seems to have been generally
assumed that Shelley, in this stanza, describes one more of the
'Mountain Shepherds' (see st. 30)-viz. Coleridge. No doubt, if
any poet or person is here indicated, it must be Coleridge: and
the affirmative assumption is so far confirmed by the fact that in
another poem-the Letter to Maria Gisborne, i820-Shelley spoke
of Coleridge in terms partly similar to these:'You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind
Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
Flags wearily through darkness and despairA cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls.'
But the first question is-Does this cancelled stanza relate to a
Mountain Shepherd at all? To speak of a Mountain Shepherd as
a 'mighty Phantasm,' having an 'awful presence unrevealed,'
seems to be taking a considerable liberty with language. To me
it appears more likely that the stanza relates to some abstract
impersonation-perhaps Death, or else Eternity. It is true that
Death figures elsewhere in Adonais (stanzas 7, 8, 25) under an
aspect with which the present phrases are hardly consistent: but,
in the case of a cancelled stanza, that counts for very little. In
Prometheus Unbound (Act ii, sc. 4) Eternity, symbolized in Demogorgon, is described in terms not wholly unlike those which we
are now debating: -
'I see a mighty Darkness
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun,
Ungazed upon and shapeless. Neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.'
As to the phrase in the cancelled stanza, ' In darkness of his own
exceeding light,' it need hardly be observed that this is modified
from the expression in Paradise Lost (Book III):' Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear.'
1. 5. Thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite. Technically,
chrysolite is synonymous with the precious stone peridot, or
olivine-its tint is a yellowish green. But probably Shelley




156                    NOTES
thought only of the primary meaning of the word chrysolite,
i golden-stone,' and his phrase as a whole comes to much the same
thing as ' a cloud with a golden lining.'
Stanza 6, 1. i. And like a sudden meteor. We here have a
fragmentary simile which may-or equally well may not-follow
on as connected with st. 5. See on p. 155, for whatever it may
be worth in illustration, the line relating to Coleridge:'A cloud-encircled meteor of the air.'
1... Pavilioned in its tent of light. Shelley was fond of the
word Pavilion, whether as substantive or as verb. See st. 50:
' Pavilioning the dust of him,' &c.




INDEX


Aeschylus, 24, 104,11 8,120,130.
Ariosto, 65.
- Orlando Furioso by, 126.
Athenaeum, The, 28.
Barrett, The Heroine by, 99.
- Woman, a Poem by, 7 2, 98, 99.
Bath, 8.
Beattie's Minstrel, 6s.
Bion, 70, 104.
Elegy on Adonis by, 52, 6i,
62, 67, 68, 96, 101, 102, 104,
105, io6, io8-12, 114, 115,
iii6, II8, I22, 123, 124, 125.
Bishopgate, 9.
Blackwood, William, 37.
Blackwood's Magazine, 19, 36,
39, 152.
Boccaccio's Decameron, io6.
Bracknell, 7.
Brawne, Miss Fanny, 28, 29.
- Mrs., 28.
Brooke, Rev. Stopford, 113.
Brown, Charles Armitage, 2 8, 30.
Brunen, 8.
Buffon, Flistoire Naturelle, 104.
Byron, Lord, 9, 12, 13, 14, 22,
24, 34, 64, 72, 84, '00, 1041,
105, 127, 128, 130, 131, 149.
- Childe Harold by, 65, 66,
127, -130.
- English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers by, 127.
- Hours of Idleness by, I227.
- The Giaour by, i107.
Calderon, 104.
Cambridge, 40.
Caracalla, Baths of, 146.
Caroline, Queen, 25.
Casa Magni, 13, 24.
Catullus, 109.


Cestius, Caius, 71, 97, 147.
Chapel Street, Grosvenor Sq.,,5.
Charles 11, 102.
Chatterton., Thomas, 5o, 88, 135,
142, 143, 144.
-Poems of Rowley by, 142.
Chaucer, 65.
Clairmont, Allegra, 9, 12, 149.
- Charles, 7.
- Clare, 7, 8., 9, 12, 13,3 20, 23,
130, 149.
Clapham., 5.
Clark, Sir James, 29.
Clarke, Charles Cowden, 1 2, I3~
27.
- Rev. John, 27.
Cockney School of Poetry, Articles on the, 37.
Coleridge, judge, 98.
- Samuel T., 64, 104, 105, 155,
i56.
Coliseum, The, 146.
Collins, Mr. Churton, vi.
Collins's Peerage, 2.
Cory, William, 96.
Courthope's History of Eng&lish
Poetry, 66.
Cowper, William, 133.
Croker, J. Wilson, 46.
Croly, Dr. George, 99.
- Paris in z8z5 by, 72, 98, 99.
Damaso Pareto, Adone (translation by), 40.
Dante, 66, I03, 104.
De l'Isle and Dudley, Baron, 2.
Didot, 32.
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 28.
Dix, John, 27.
Dryden, 64.
Dublin, 6.




158                      INI
Edinburgh, 6, 7.
Edinburgh Review, The, 99,127.
Edmonton, 27.
Edwards, Rev. Mr., 3.
Eldon, Lord, 12, I52.
Enfield, 27.
Esdaile, Mrs., 7, I2.
Eton, 3, 4.
Euripides, 133.
Examiner, The, 26, 28.
Field Place, 3.
Finch, Colonel, 22, 23, 35, 00oo.
Florence, I3, 23.
Forman, H. Buxton, 40, 47, 135.
-  Shelley's Works edited by,
40, 67, 128.
Fortnightly Review, The, 26.
Furnivall, Dr., 96.
Garnett, Dr., Relics of Shelley
by, 151, 152, I53.
Geneva, Lake of, 9.
Gifford, William, I8, 46.
Gisborne, John, I3, 14, 20, 22,
3I, 32, 34, 35, I00.
-Mrs., 13, 14, 3I.
Godwin, Miss Mary Wollstonecraft (see Shelley, Mrs).
- Mrs. (Clairmont), 7, 8.
Mrs. (Mary Wollstonecraft),
7, 14.
-William, 7, 8, Io, I4, 149.
- Political Justice by, 6.
- William, junior, 7.
Goethe, 104.
Goodall, Dr., 3.
Gray, Thomas, I5, 64.
Great Marlow, I2, 13.
Greek Anthology, I25.
Greenlaw, Dr., 3.
Grove, Harriet, 5.
- Mr., 6.
Hallam, Arthur, 40.
Hampstead, 28.
Haydon, Benjamin R., 23, 28.
Hazlitt, William, 94, 153.


)EX


Heber, 53.
Herodotus, 51.
Hesiod, 5T.
- Theogony by, f,.
Hime, Colonel, The Greek Materials of Adonais by, 67.
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 4, 5,
6, I44.
Homer, 0I2, Io3, 704.
- Iliad by, 66, I34.
-Odyssey by, 66, I 8.
Houghton, Lord, 40.
- Life of Keats by, 20.
Hume, Dr., 12.
Hunt, John, 28.
- Leigh, o1, II, 20, 7, 2, 2, 4,
28, 34, 36, 37, 41, 42, 45-47,
85, 94, I35, 149, X52, 154 -- Autobiography by, Io.
- Sonnet on The Nile by, 2.
- Mrs. Leigh, 21.
Imlay, Gilbert, 7.
Ireland, 7, 153.
Ireland, Alexander, Selection
from Hazlitt by, I53.
Isaiah, 142.
Jeaffreson, J. Cordy, I0.
Jeffrey, Lord, 98.
Jennings, Mr., 27.
Job, The Book of, 104, 125.
Keate, Dr., 3.
Keats, George, 23, 27, 46.
Keats, John.
-Endymion by, II, T4, 15, I7,
i8, 19, 28, 30, 37, 4I-46, 54,
72, 97, 99, Ioo, 0o8, IIo, II8,
125, 126, I36, 142.
— Eve ofSt. Agnes by, 17, 2, 28.
-Eve of St. Mark by, 30.
- Hyperion by, Il, 17, 20, 2I,
22, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 54, 77,
97, I30, 136.
- Isabella by, I7, 2I, 28, io6.
- Lamia by, 17, 22, 24, 28.




INDE~X


'59


Keats, John (cont.).
- Letters by, 30.by
-  Ode to the Nightingaleby
117.
- Otho the Great by, 30.
- Poems (first volume) by, 17,
28, 30, 37.
- Poetry andProse by, edited by
Forman, 47.
- Review of Reynolds's Peter
Bell by, 26.
- Sonnet on Chapman's Homer
by, 2 8.
- Sonnet on The Nlile by, 112.
- His acquaintance and correspondence with Shelley, io22.
- Narrative of his life and death,
27-30.
- Ridicule of him in Blackwood's
Magazine' and the Quarterly
Review, 36-40.
- The article from the Quarterly Review quoted, 41-46.
- Shelley's remarks on his
death, 72, 97, TOO.
- His burial-place in Rome, 29,
71, 90,197.
- Byron's feeling regarding him,
34, 130, 131.
- Miss Fanny, 27.
- Mrs. Frances, 27, 98.
- Thomas, 27.
- Thomas, junior, 27, 28, 98.
Keswick, 6.
Lefanu, Miss Alicia, 99.
-Rosara's Chain by, 99.
-Mrs. Alicia, 72, 98, 99.
-The Flowers by, 99.
-The Sons of Er/n by, 99.
Leghorn, I3, 15, 24, 32.
Leicester, Earl of, I43.
Lerici, i13.
Liberal, The, 24.
Limbird, 39.
Lionel (Shelley), 25.
Literary Chronicle, &.c., The, 39.


Lockhart, John Gibson, 37.
Lucan, 50, 88, 126, 143, 144.
Lucca, Bagni di, 13.
Lucian, 126.
Lucretius, 104, 121, 133.
Lumley, Viscount, 2.
- Viscountess, 2.
L~prmouth, 7.
Macaulay, Lord, 152.
Marlowe'sjew of Malta, 127.
Martyn, John, The Georgicks- of
Virgil, with an English Translation by, i i 6.
Mavrocordato, Prince Alexander,
14.
Medwin, Captain, 14, 21, 1143.
- Shelley Papers by, 67.
Michelgrove, 2.
Michell, Mary Catherine (see
Shell-" Mrs. M. C.).
- Rev. rfheobald', 2.
Milan, 13.
Milman, Dean, 72, 98, 100.
- Samor by, i oo.
- The Fall of Jerusalem by,
100.
Milton, 64, 66, 75, 102, 103,
104, I35, 15.5.
A Areopagitica by, 1i17.
-Lycidas by, 101, 129, 130,
138, 141.
-Paradise Lost by, 5 2, 53, 126,
1 38.
Moore, Thomas, 47, 83, 131,
153, 154.
-Diaries, &c. of, 131.
-Irish Melodies by, 131.
-Paradise and the Peni by,
l09.
Moschus, 70, 104.
-Elegy on Bion by, 50, 5 2, 6 i,
62, 67, 69, 96, 102, 104, 109,
112-118, 134, 136.
Mozart, 47.
Mull, Isle Of, 28, 98.
Murray, G. S. D., 67.
- John, 1 37.




x6o


INDEX


Murray, John, Memoir Of, 46.
Musgrave's translation of Dante,
66.
Nantgwillt, 7.Naples, 1 3, 14, 2 0, 21I, 2 9.
Nelli, Life of Galileo by, 22.
Nero, 143.
Newark, North America, 2.
Norfolk, Duke Of, 2.
Novello, Mr., 47.
Oilier, Mr., 14, 15, 22, 3I-34,
39.
Ovid, 11i6, 126.
Padua, 1 54.
Parmenides, 148.
Payne, John Howard, 72, 98.
- Brutus by, 99.
Peacock, Thomas Love, 21, 34,
146, 147.
Perry, Elizabeth Jane (see Shelley, Mrs. E. J.).
-Mr., 2.
Pilford, Charles, 3.
- Elizabeth (see Shelley, Lady).
Pisa, 13, 14, 15, 20, 23, 31, 33,
40, 47.
- Bagni di, I13.
Piso, 143.
Plato (the Poet), 96.
Plato's Banquet, 5 '.
- Gorgias, 139.
-Phaedo, 138.
- Phaedrus, 148.
- Republic, 148.
- Timaeus, 148.
Poe, Edgar A., For Annie by,
107.
Polidori, Dr. John, 22.
Pope, Alexander, 64.
Psalms, The, 136.
Quarterly Review, The, I8, 20,
3 2, 36, 3 7, 39, 41-46, 7 2, 9 7,
98, 99, 100, 102, ii8, i31,
136, 137, 152.


Ravenna, 13.
Reynolds, J. Hamilton, Peter
Bell by, 26.
Rich, Lady, 143.
Richards, Charles, i7.
Rome, 1 3, 14, 21,2 22, 24, 29, 48,
71, 72, 89, io6, 1E14, 145,
146, 149.
Rossetti, Lucy M., Life of Mrs.
Sh elley b y, 2.
San Terenzio, 13.
Sannazzaro's Arcadia, 129.
Serpentine River, 9.
Severn, Joseph, 14, 29, 32, 35,
36, 72, 73.
Shakespeare, 28, 66, 103, 104.
- As You Like It by, 133.
- Hamlet by, 120, 133.
- Romeo and Juliet by, io 2,
I120.
Sheil, R. L., Evadne by, ioo.
Shelley, Charles Bysshe, 9, 12.
- Clara, 12, 13.
- Elizabeth Jane, 2.
- Frances, 2.
- Henry, 2.
- Ianthe Eliza (see Mrs. Esdaile).
- John, 3.
- Lady (Elizabeth), 3.
- Mary Catherine, 2.
- Mrs. (Harriet), 5-io.
- Mrs. (Mary Wollstonecraft),
7-Jo, II2, 15, 24., 40., 51, 1oS,
133, I49.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe.
- A donais by, i o, I 1, 2 2, 46.
- Its treatment in this volume,
vii, viii, 47. -
- Its composition and publication, 311-40.
- Shelley's own observations
regarding it, 31-35.
- Its -argument, 48-54.
- Shelley's views concerning
the Soul, as exhibited in




INDEX


i6i


Shelley, Percy Bysshe (cont.).
Adonais and in other writings,
55-61.
-  Adonais founded partly on
Bion and Moschus, 50, 52, 6I,
62, 68-70.
-Rhyming in Adonais, 62-66.
- The name Adonais, 96.
-  Shelley's self-portraiture in
the poem, 62, 84, 94, 131,
132, 153.
- Alastor by, 25, 39, 51.
- Autumn by, xI8.
- Cenci (The) by, 15, i6, I7,
25, 34, 93, 135.
- Cloud (The) by, I o.
- Coliseum (The) by, 146.
- Death by, 122.
-  Defence of Poetry by, 26,
103, I2I, 51I.
- Epipsychidion by, vii, 14, 26,
51, 12I.
- Essays and Letters by, 26.
-  Hellas by, 26, 57, Ioi, II8,
119.
- Julian and Maddalo by, 26,
I30.
- Laon and Cythna by (see
Revolt of Islam).
- Letter to Maria Gisborne by,
I55.
-   Lines written among the
Euganean Hills by, 103, 154.
-Margaret Nicholson by, 2 5,65.
- Masque of Anarchy by, 26.
- Misery by, I22.
- Mont Blanc by, 12I.
- Necessity of Atheism by, 4.
- Ode to Naples by, 103.
- Oedipus 7jrannus by, 25.
- On a Future State by, 57.
- On Lifeby, 57.
- Peter Bell the Third by, 26,
152.
-  Philosophical View of Reform by, 26.
- Plato's Banquet, translation
by, 51.


Shelley, Percy Bysshe (cont.).
- Poems by, edited by W. M.
Rossetti, 67.
-Poetry by Victor and Cazire
by, 25.
- Prince Athanase by, 5i.
- Prometheus Unbound by, I5,
17, 25, 31, 33, 34, 39, o10, 1o9,
II6, 124, 125, 137, 146, I55.
- Queen Mab by, 7, II, 12, 25,
Io7, 141.
- Remembrance by, I33.
- Revolt of Islam by, II, 12,
25, 65, 66, 98, 103, 123, I37 -- Rosalind and Helen by, 25,
39.
- Saint Irvyne by, 25.
- Sensitive Plant (The) by,
I39.
- Sonnet on The Nile by, 12.
- Tear (The) by, III.
- Translation from Bion by,
67, 68.
- Triumph of Life by, 26,
I24, 140.
- Vision of the Sea by, Io7.
- Witch of Atlas by, vii, 26.
- Zastrozzi by, 25.
- Narrative of the events of
Shelley's life, 1-26.
- His acquaintance and correspondence with Keats, 10-22.
- Shelley's death, 24, 150, I51.
- His principal writings, 25,
26.
- The state of his feelings
towards the date of writing
Adonais, I49.
Shelley, Sir Bysshe, 2, 3, 9.
- Sir John, 2.
- Sir Percy Florence, 3, 13,
149.
- Sir Timothy, 2, 5, 9.
- Sir William, 2.
- Society, The, 113.
- William, 9, 12, 13, 24, I47,
I49.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 99.


ADONAIS


M




162


INDEX


Sidney, Lady, 143.
- Sir Philip, 50, 88, 143;
'44.                   } 1
Apolo11gy/for Poetry  1~; 43.-Astropihel and Stella by, I4.3.
- The Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia by, 143.
Sion House School, 5.
Skinner Street, 7.
Smith, Horace, 34.
Sophocles, 104.
Southey, Robert, 98.
Spenser, 65, 66.
- Faery Queen by, 27, 65, 103,
126.
- She~pherd's Calendar by, 65.
Swan and Hoop, The, 27.
Syrian Tale, A, 72, 98, 99.
Tanyrallt, 7.
Tasso, 65.
Tennyson, All1 Things will Die,
&'c. by, 120.
Theocritus, 101, 114.
Theocritus, Blion, and Moschus,
translated by Lang, 68, ixiI.
Thomson's Castle of Indolence,
65.
Trelawny, Edward John, 14,
24.
University College, Oxford, 4.


Venice, 12, 13.
Viaregigio, 24.
Virgil, 104, 244.
- Eclogues by, 201.
- The Georgicbj.xbi,6.
Viviani, Emilia, 14,,249.
Walsinghiam, Sir Francis, I43
Warnharn, 3.
Warton, 65.
Werthern, Mr., 22, 23.
Westbrook, Eliza, 5, 6,9g, 1.52.
- Harriet (see Shelley, Mrs.
Harriet).
- Mr., 5, 2 2, 1 52.
Williams, Lieutenant, 24, 24,
33, 149.
- Mrs., 14, 249.
Wilson, John, 37.
Wise, T. J., 129g.
Wollstonecraft, Fanny, 7,, Jo0.
- Mary (see Godwin, Mrs.
M. W.).
Wordsworth, William, 21, 104,
105.
Worminghurst, 2.
Worsley's translation of the
Odyssey, 66.
York, 5, 6.
Z, 37.
Zutphen, 143.
END


UNIV. OF MICHIGAN,


JUL 26 1912




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