“It is for slaves to lie, and for freemen to speak truth.
“In the examples, which I here bring in, of what I have heard, read, done, or said, I have forbid myself to dare to alter even the most light and indifferent circumstances. My conscience does not falsify one tittle. What my ignorance may do, I cannot say.” Montaigne.
Mr. Shelley, when he died, was in his thirtieth year. His figure was tail and slight, and his constitution consumptive. He was subject to violent spasmodic pains, which would sometimes force him to lie on the ground till they were over; but he had always a kind word to give to those about him, when his pangs allowed him to speak. In this organization, as well as in some other respects, he resembled the German poet, Schiller. Though well-turned, his shoulders were bent a little, owing to premature thought and trouble. The same causes had touched his hair with grey: and though his habits of temperance and exercise gave him a remarkable degree of strength, it is not supposed that he could have lived many years. He used to say, that he had lived three times as long as the calendar gave out; which he would prove, between jest and earnest, by some remarks on Time,
“That would have puzzled that stout Stagyrite.” |
| MR SHELLEY. | 175 |
| 176 | MR SHELLEY. |
Music affected him deeply. He had also a delicate perception of the beauties
of sculpture. It is not one of the least evidences of his conscientious turn of mind, that with
the inclination, and the power, to surround himself in Italy with all the graces of life, be
made no sort of attempt that way; finding other use for his money, and not always satisfied
with himself for indulging even in the luxury of a boat. When he bought elegancies of any kind,
it was to give away. Boating was his great amusement. He loved the mixture of action and repose
which he found in it; and delighted to fancy himself gliding away to Utopian isles, and bowers
of enchantment. But he would give up any pleasure to do a deed of kindness. “His
life,” says Mrs. Shelley, “was spent in
the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. He was
an elegant scholar, and a profound metaphysician. Without possessing much scientific
knowledge, he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural
objects: he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the history and habits of
every production of the earth: he could interpret, without a fault, each appearance in the
sky; and the varied phenomena of heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made
| MR SHELLEY. | 177 |
| 178 | MR SHELLEY. |
That the utility, however, of so much benevolence was not lost to the world, whatever difference of opinion may exist as to its occasional mode of showing itself, will be evinced, I hope, by the following pages.
Mr. Shelley was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart. of Castle-Goring, in Sussex; and was born at Field Place, in that county, the 4th of August, 1792.*
It is difficult, under any circumstances, to speak with proper delicacy of the living connexions of the dead; but it is no violation of decorum to observe (what, indeed, the reader knows already, if he knows any thing of Parliament,) that the family connexions of Mr. Shelley belonged to a small party in the House of Commons, itself belonging to another party. They were Whig Aristocrats; a distinction that, within a late period, has been handsomely merged by some of the bearers of it into the splendour of a more prevailing universality. To a man of genius, endowed with a metaphysical acuteness to discern truth and falsehood, and a strong sensibility to give way to his sense of it, such an origin, however
* Gibbon has a note in his Decline and Fall, in which, with a greater degree of romance than might have been expected of him, even with all his self-love as a man of letters, he “exhorts” the noble family of the Spensers to consider the Fairy Queen as the “brightest jewel in their coronet.” The Shelleys are of old standing, and have branched out into three several baronetcies, one of which has become the representative of the kindred of Sir Philip Sidney. Mr. Shelley had a respect for that distinction, carelessly as he contemplated the other family honours. He would have allowed no claim for superiority to be put in there. But if I had a right to speak like Gibbon, and if affection might be allowed to anticipate the voice of posterity, I would “exhort” in like manner the race of the Shelleys to pierce through the din of existing prejudices, and consider no sound so fair as the name of their aspiring kinsman. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 179 |
Mr. Shelley began to think at a very early age, and to think too of these anomalies. He saw, that at every step in life some compromise was expected between a truth which he was told not to violate, and a colouring and double-meaning of it, which forced him upon the violation.
| 180 | MR SHELLEY. |
Whenever a character like Mr. Shelley’s appears in society, it must be considered with reference to these systems. Others may consent to be spoilt by them, and to see their fellow-creatures spoilt. He was a looker-on of a different nature.
| MR SHELLEY. | 181 |
|
“Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirits sleep: a fresh May-day it was,
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
From the near school-room, voices, that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes—
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
|
|
“And then I clasped my hands, and look’d around—
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground.—
So without shame I spake: ‘I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise
Without reproach or check.’ I then controlled
My tears; my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
|
|
“And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn; but from that secret store
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind.”
|
Mr. Shelley retained all his kindness and energy, but corrected, as he here aspires to do, the irritability of his temper. No man, by the account of all who lived with him, ever turned it into greater sweetness. The Reviewer, by the usual process of tyranny, became a slave.
| 182 | MR SHELLEY. |
Conceive a young man of Mr. Shelley’s character,
with no better experience of the kindness and sincerity of those whom he had perplexed, thrown
forth into society, to form his own judgments, and pursue his own career. It was “Emilius out in the World.”
but formed by his own tutorship. There is a Novel, under that title, written by the German,
La Fontaine, which has often reminded me of him. The
hero of another, by the same author, called the “Reprobate,” still more
resembles him. His way of proceeding was entirely after the fashion of those guileless, but
vehement hearts, which not being well replied to by their teachers, and finding them hostile to
inquiry, add to a natural love of truth all the passionate ardour of a generous and devoted
protection of it. Mr. Shelley had met with Mr.
Godwin’s “Political
Justice;” and he seemed to breathe, for the first time, in an open and bright
atmosphere. He resolved to square all his actions by what he conceived to be the strictest
justice, without any consideration for the opinions of those, whose little exercise of that
virtue towards himself, ill-fitted them, he thought, for better teachers, and as ill warranted
him in deferring to the opinions of the world whom they guided. That he did some extraordinary
things in consequence, is admitted: that he did many noble ones, and all with sincerity, is
well known to his friends, and will be admitted by all sincere persons. Let those who are so
fond of exposing
| MR SHELLEY. | 183 |
| 184 | MR SHELLEY. |
The philosophic observer will confess, that our young author’s
experiences in education, politics, and gentlemanly morality, were not of a nature to divert
him from his notions of justice, however calculated to bring him into trouble. Had he now
behaved himself pardonably in the eyes of the orthodox, he would have gone to London with the
resolution of sowing his wild oats, and becoming a decent member of society; that is to say, he
would have seduced a few maidservants, or at least haunted the lobbies; and then bestowed the
remnant of his constitution upon some young lady of his own rank in life, and settled into a
proper church-and-king man, perhaps a member of the Suppression of Vice. This is the proper
routine, and gives one a right to be didactic. Alas! Mr. Shelley did not
do so; and bitterly had he to repent, not that he did not do it, but that he married while yet
a stripling, and that the wife whom he took was not of a
nature to appreciate his understanding, or perhaps to come from contact with it, uninjured in
what she had of her own. They separated by mutual consent, after the birth of two children. To
this measure his enemies would hardly have
| MR SHELLEY. | 185 |
| 186 | MR SHELLEY. |
On the death of this unfortunate lady, Mr. Shelley
married the daughter of Mr. Godwin; and resided at
Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, where he
was a blessing to the poor. His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He inquired personally
into the circumstances of the petitioners; visited the sick in their beds, (for he had gone the
round
| MR SHELLEY. | 187 |
* “Another anecdote remains, not the least in interest.” (I was speaking, in the Literary Examiner, of an adventure of Mr. Shelley’s, at the time he was on a visit to me at Hampstead.) Some years ago, when a house (on the top of the Heath) “was occupied by a person whose name I forget, (and I should suppress it in common humanity, if I did not,) I was returning home to my own, which was at no great distance from it, after the Opera. As I approached my door, I heard strange and alarming shrieks, mixed with the voice of a man. The next day, it was reported by the gossips, that Mr. Shelley, no Christian, (for it was he, who was there,) had brought some ‘very strange female’ into the house, no better of course than she ought to be. The real Christian had puzzled them. Mr. Shelley, in coming to our house that night, had found a woman lying near the top of the hill, in fits. It was a fierce winter night, with snow upon the ground; and winter loses nothing of its fierceness at Hampstead. My friend, always the promptest as well as most pitying on these occasions, knocked at the first houses he could reach, in order to have the woman taken in. The invariable answer was, that they could not do it. He asked for an outhouse to put her in, while he went for a doctor. Impossible! In vain he assured them she was no impostor. They would not dispute the point with him; but doors were closed, and windows were shut down. Had he lit upon worthy Mr. Park, the philologist, he would assuredly have come, in spite of his Calvinism. But he lived too far off. Had he lit upon you, dear B—n, or your neighbour D—e, you would either of you have jumped up from amidst your books or your bed-clothes, and have gone out with him. But the paucity of Christians is astonishing, considering the number of them. Time flies; the poor woman is in convulsions; her son, a young man, lamenting over her. At last my friend sees a carriage driving up to a house at a little distance. The knock is given; the warm door opens; servants and lights pour forth. Now, thought he, is the time. He puts on his best address, which any body might recognize for that of the highest gentleman as well as an interesting individual, and plants himself in the way of an elderly person, who is stepping out of the carriage with his family. He tells his story. They only press on the faster. ‘Will you go and see her?’ ‘No, Sir; there’s no necessity for that sort of thing, depend on it: impostors swarm every where: the thing cannot be done: Sir, your conduct is extraordinary.’ ‘Sir,’ cried Mr. Shelley at last, assuming a very different appearance, and forcing the flourishing householder to stop out of astonishment, ‘I am sorry to say that your conduct is not extraordinary: and if my own seems to amaze you, I will tell you something that may amaze you a little |
| 188 | MR SHELLEY. |
The reader perhaps is not aware, that in this country of England, where the domestic institutions are boasted of as so perfect, and are apt to be felt as so melancholy, where freedom of opinion is so much cried up, and the tribunals take so much pains to put it down,—where writers and philosophers in short, and what may be called the unconstituted authorities, have done so much for all the world, and the constituted authorities, particularly the lawyers, have done so little for
| MR SHELLEY. | 189 |
* Always excepting Bacon, who can hardly be called a lawyer. His profession was but an accident in his life. It was in philosophy that he lived and moved and had his being; and with it he has moved the world. Experiment was that standing ground which Aristotle desired without knowing it, and on which the great lever has at last been fixed. Mechanical philosophy has not only moved; it will inevitably alter the world; and moral improvements, of all sorts, will follow. Two other lawyers’ names must be added not unworthy to follow Bacon’s; that of Mr. Bentham, who had no sooner entered the profession, than he got out of it; and that of Henry Brougham; who, though he remains a lawyer, presents the singular spectacle of a lawyer, equally active in his lesser calling and his greater, and consenting, perhaps, to realize the gains of the one, only that he may secure the power of pursuing time noblest of all ambitions in the other. Mr. Brougham was “meant for mankind;” and luckily he has not been prevented, by the minuter demands on his eyesight, from looking abroad and knowing it. His world is the world it ought to be,—the noble planet, capable of being added to the number of other planets which have perhaps worked out their moral beauty;—not a mere little despairing corner of it, entitled a court of justice. |
| 190 | MR SHELLEY. |
* The boy is since dead; and Mr. Shelley’s son by his second wife, the daughter of Mr. Godwin, is heir to the baronetcy. It seldom falls to the lot of a child to have illustrious descent so heaped upon him; his mother a woman of talents, his father a man of genius, his grandfather, Mr Godwin, a writer secure of immortality; his grandmother, Mr. Godwin’s wife, the celebrated Mary Wollstonecraft; and on the side of Mr. Shelley’s ancestors he partakes of the blood of the intellectual as well as patrician family of the Sackvilles. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 191 |
| 192 | MR SHELLEY. |
Some alarmists at Marlow said, that if he went on at
this rate, he would make all the poor people infidels. He went on, till ill health and calumny,
and the love of his children, forced him abroad. During his residence at
Marlow, Mr. Shelley published a “Proposal for putting Reform to the
Vote” throughout England; for which purpose, as an earnest of his sincerity, he
offered to contribute a hundred pounds. This hundred pounds (which owing to his liberal habits
he could very ill spare at the time) he would have done his best to supply, by saving and
economizing. It was not uncommon with him to give away all his ready money, and be compelled to
take a journey on foot or on the top of a stage, no matter during what weather. His
constitution, though naturally consumptive, had attained, by temperance and exercise, to a
surprising power of resisting fatigue. As an instance of his extraordinary generosity, an
acquaintance of his, a man of letters, enjoyed from him at that period a pension of a hundred
a-year; and he continued to enjoy it, till fortune rendered it superfluous. But the
princeliness of his disposition was seen most in his behaviour to his friend, the writer of
this memoir, who is proud to relate, that Mr. Shelley once made him a
present of fourteen hundred pounds, to extricate him from debt. I was not extricated, for I had
not yet learnt to be careful: but the shame of not being so, after such generosity, and the
pain which my friend afterwards underwent, when I was in trouble and he was helpless, were the
first causes of my thinking of money-matters to any purpose. His last sixpence
| MR SHELLEY. | 193 |
From Marlow, Mr. Shelley went
with his wife and a new family to Italy, where he lived
in his usual quiet and retired manner. He had become acquainted with Lord Byron during a former visit to the Continent; and the acquaintance was now
renewed. He visited his Lordship at Venice; but it was only latterly
that he saw much of him, when they both lived at Pisa. He had the
highest admiration of his Lordship’s genius; but they differed, as might be expected, on
many other points. Lord Byron thought his philosophy too spiritual and
romantic. Mr. Shelley thought his Lordship’s too material and
despairing. The noble Lord often expressed the highest opinion of his companion’s
virtues, and of his freedom from selfishness. An account has been published of a voyage to Sicily, in which
Mr. Shelley is described as behaving with want of courage. To those
who knew him, it is unnecessary to repeat, that the whole account is a fabrication, voyage and
all. Lord Byron and he never were in Sicily, nor
ever sailed together, except on the Lake of Geneva. Mr.
Shelley’s bravery was remarkable and was the ultimate ruin of him. In a
scuffle that took place on horseback, in the streets of Pisa, with a
hot-headed dragoon, he be-
| 194 | MR SHELLEY. |
A very melancholy period of my narrative is now arrived. In June 1822, I
arrived in Italy, in consequence of the invitation to set up a work with my friend and
Lord Byron. Mr. Shelley was passing
the summer season at a house he had taken for that purpose on the Gulf of
Lerici. He wrote to me at Genoa to say that he hoped
“the waves would never part us again;” and on hearing of my arrival at
Leghorn, came thither, accompanied by Mr. Williams, formerly of the 8th Dragoons, who was then on a visit to him. He
came to welcome his friend and family, and see us comfortably settled at
Pisa. He accordingly went with us to that city, and after remaining
in it a few days, took leave on the night of the 7th July, to return with Mr.
Williams to Lerici, meaning to come back to us shortly.
In a day or two the voyagers were missed. The afternoon of the 8th had been stormy, with
violent squalls from the southwest. A night succeeded, broken up with that tremendous thunder
and lightning, which appals the stoutest seaman in the Mediterranean, dropping its bolts in all
directions more like melted brass, or liquid pillars of fire, than any thing we conceive of
lightning in our northern climate.
| MR SHELLEY. | 195 |
“Mr. Shelley, Mr. Williams (formerly of the 8th Dragoons),
and one seaman, Charles Vivian, left
Villa Magni near Lerici, a
small town situate in the Bay of Spezia, on the 30th of
June, at twelve o’clock, and arrived the same night at
Leghorn. Their boat had been built for Mr.
Shelley at Genoa by a captain in the
navy. It was twenty-four feet long, eight in the beam, schooner-rigged, with
gaft topsails, &c. and drew four feet water. On Monday, the 8th of July, at
the same hour, they got under weigh to return home, having on board a quantity
of household articles, four hundred dollars, a small canoe, and some books and
manuscripts. At half
| 196 | MR SHELLEY. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 197 |
“After a variety of applications to the Lucchese and
Tuscan Governments, and our Ambassador at Florence, I obtained, from the
kindness and exertions of Mr. Dawkins,
an order to the officer commanding the tower of Migliarino, (near to which
Lieutenant Williams had been cast,
and buried in the sand,) that the body should be at my disposal. I likewise
obtained an order to the same effect to the Commandant at Via
Reggio, to deliver up the remains of Mr.
Shelley, it having been decided by the friends of the parties
that the bodies should be reduced to ashes by fire, as the readiest mode of
conveying them to the places
| 198 | MR SHELLEY. |
It was thought that the whole of these melancholy operations
might have been performed in one day: but the calculation turned out to be
erroneous. Mr. Williams’s remains were
commenced with. Mr. Trelawney and Captain Shenley were at the tower by noon, with
proper persons to assist, and were joined shortly by Lord
Byron and myself. A portable furnace and a tent had been prepared.
“Wood,” continues Mr. Trelawney, “we
found in abundance on the beach, old trees and
| MR SHELLEY. | 199 |
| 200 | MR SHELLEY. |
Mr. Trelawney proceeds to describe the disinterment and burning of Mr. Williams’s remains. Calumny, which never shows itself grosser than in its charges of want of refinement, did not spare even these melancholy ceremonies. The friends of the deceased, though they took no pains to publish the proceeding, were accused of wishing to make a sensation; of doing a horrible and unfeeling thing, &c. The truth was, that the nearest connexions, both of Mr. Shelley and Mr. Williams, wished to have their remains interred in regular places of burial; and that for this purpose they could be removed in no other manner. Such being the case, it is admitted that the mourners did not refuse themselves the little comfort of supposing, that lovers of books and antiquity, like Mr. Shelley and his friend, would not have been sorry to foresee this part of their fate. Among the materials for burning, as many of the gracefuller and more classical articles as could be procured—frankincense, wine, &c. were not forgotten.
The proceedings of the next day, with Mr.
Shelley’s remains, exactly resembled those of the foregoing, with the
exception of there being two assistants less. The inaccuracies of Captain Medwin on this subject I have noticed before. On both days, the
extraordinary beauty of the flame arising from the funeral pile was noticed. The weather was
beautifully fine. The Mediterranean, now soft and lucid, kissed the shore as if to make peace
with it. The yellow sand and blue sky intensely contrasted with one another: marble mountains
touched the air with coolness, and the flame of the fire bore away towards heaven in vigorous
amplitude, waving and quivering with a brightness of incon-
| MR SHELLEY. | 201 |
Among the various conjectures respecting this lamentable event, a suspicion
was not wanting, that the boat had been run down by a larger one, with a view to plunder it.
Mr. Shelley was known to have taken money on board. Crimes of that
nature had occurred often enough to warrant such a suspicion; and they could be too soon washed
out of the consciences of the ignorant perpetrators by confession. But it was lost in the more
probable conclusions arising from the weather. One bitter consolation to the friends of
Mr. Shelley was, that his death, as far as he alone was concerned, was
of a nature he would have preferred to many others, probably to any. A reflection, more
pleasing, reminded them, that in the rapid decomposition occasioned by the sea and the fire,
the mortal part of him was saved from that gradual corruption, which is seldom contemplated
without shuddering by a lively imagination. And yet the same imagination and suffering which
make us cling to life at one time, and give us a horror of dissolution, can render the grave
desirable and even beautiful at another. Mr. Shelley’s remains were
taken to Rome, and deposited in the Protestant
burial-ground, near those of a child he had lost in that city, and of Mr. Keats. It is the cemetery he speaks of in the preface to
his Elegy on the death of his young friend,
as calculated to “make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in
so sweet a place.” A like tenderness of patience, in one who possessed a like
energy, made Mr. Keats say on his death-bed that he “seemed to
feel the daisies growing over him.”
| 202 | MR SHELLEY. |
The writer who criticised the “Posthumous Poems,” in the “Edinburgh Review,” does justice to the
excellence of Mr. Shelley’s intentions, and acknowledges him to be
one of those rare persons called men of genius; but accuses him of a number of faults, which he
attributes to the predominance of his will, and a scorn of every thing received and
conventional. To this cause he traces the faults of his poetry, and what he conceives to be the
errors of his philosophy. Furthermore, he charges Mr. Shelley with a want
of reverence for antiquity, and quotes a celebrated but not unequivocal passage from Bacon, where the Philosopher, according to the advice of the
Prophet, recommends us to take our stand upon the ancient ways, and see what road we are to
take for progression. He says Mr. Shelley had “too little
sympathy with the feelings of others, which he thought he had a right to sacrifice, as well
as his own, to a grand ethical experiment; and asserts that if a thing were old and
established, this was with him a certain proof of its having no solid foundation to rest
upon: if it was new, it was good and right: every paradox was to him a self-evident truth:
every prejudice an undoubted absurdity. The weight of authority, the sanction of ages, the
common consent of mankind, were vouchers only for ignorance, error, and imposture. Whatever
shocked the feelings of others, conciliated
| MR SHELLEY. | 203 |
Alas! Mr. Shelley was so little relieved by what was
light and vain, (if I understand what the Reviewer means by those epithets,) and so little
disposed to quarrel with the common consent of mankind, where it seemed reasonably founded,
that at first he could not endure even the comic parts of Lord
Byron’s writings, because he thought they tended to produce mere
volatility instead of good; and he afterwards came to relish them, because he found an accord
with them in the bosoms of society. Whatever shocked the feeling of others so little
conciliated his regard, that with the sole exception of matters of religion (which is a point
on which the most benevolent Reformers, authors of “grand ethical experiments,” in
all ages, have thought themselves warranted in hazarding alarm and astonishment,) his own
feelings were never more violated than by disturbances given to delicacy, to sentiment, to the
affections. If ever it seemed otherwise, as in the subject of his tragedy of the Cenci, it was only out of a more intense
apprehensiveness, and the right it gave him to speak. He saw, in every species of tyranny and
selfish will, an image of all the rest of the generation. That a love of paradox is
occasionally of use to remind commonplaces of their weakness, and to prepare the way for
liberal opinions, nobody knows better or has more unequivocally shown than Mr.
Shelley’s critic; and yet I am not aware that Mr.
Shelley was at all addicted to paradox; or that he loved any contradiction, that
did not directly contradict some great and tyrannical abuse. Prejudices that he thought
innocent, no man was more inclined to respect, or even to fall in with. He was prejudiced in
favour of the dead languages; he had a theoretical an-
| 204 | MR SHELLEY. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 205 |
Mr. Shelley had no doubt a great deal of will; but the mistake of the
Reviewer lies in giving it an antipathetical,
instead of a sympathetic
| 206 | MR SHELLEY. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 207 |
| 208 | MR SHELLEY. |
The Reviewer, still acknowledging
the genius of Mr. Shelley, and his benevolent intentions, finds the same
fault with his poetry as with his philosophy, and traces it to the same causes. Of all my
friend’s writings, the poetical parts are those which I should least conceive to subject
him to the charge of want of sympathy. Is the quarrelling with constituted authorities and
received calamities, the same thing as scorning the better part of what exists? Is the quitting
the real world for the ideal in search of consolation, the same thing as thrusting one’s
foot against it in contempt, and flying off on the wings of antipathy? And what did
Mr. Shelley carry thither when he went? A perpetual consciousness of
his humanity; a clinging load of the miseries of his fellow-creatures. The Witch of Atlas, for example, is but
a personification of the imaginative faculty in its most airy abstractions; and yet the author
cannot indulge himself long in that fairy region, without dreaming of
mortal strife. If he is not in this world, he must have visions of it. If fiction is his
reality by day, reality will be his fiction during his slumbers. The truth is, Mr.
Shelley was in his whole being, mental and physical, of an extreme delicacy and
sensibility. He felt every part of his nature intensely; and his impulse, object, and use in
this world, was to remind others of some important points touching our common nature and
endeavours, by affording a more than ordinary example of their effect
| MR SHELLEY. | 209 |
| 210 | MR SHELLEY. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 211 |
Let the reader, whom these pages may have rendered more desirous of knowing Mr. Shelley, turn to the volume in question, and judge for himself in what sort of spirit it was that he wrote the “Witch of Atlas,” the “Letter” to a Friend at p. 59, part of the “Ode to Naples,” the “Song.” at p. 141, a “Lament,” the “Question,” “Lines to an Indian Air,” “Stanzas written in dejection near Naples,” Lines on a “Faded Violet,” “Lines to a Critic,” “Tomorrow,” “Good Night,” “Love’s Philosophy,” the “Stanzas” at p. 214, and the “Translations from Goethe and Homer.” The verses “On the Medusa’s Head of Leonardo da Vinci” are perhaps as fine as any thing in the book, for power. The poetry seems sculptured and grinning, like the subject. The words are cut with a knife. But love is the great inspirer of Mr. Shelley. His very abstract ideas are in love.
“The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air, Which had the power all spirits of compelling, Folded in cells of crystal silence there; Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling Will never die—yet ere we are aware, The feeling and the sound are fled and gone, And the regret they leave remains alone. |
| 212 | MR SHELLEY. |
“And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis; Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint With the soft burthen of intensest bliss. |
“The hills of snow, and lofts of piled thunder,—” |
| MR SHELLEY. | 213 |
The way in which Mr. Shelley’s eye darted “from heaven to earth,” and the sort of call at which his imagination was ever ready to descend, is well exemplified in the following passage of the Letter at p. 59. The unhappy mass of prostitution which exists in England, contrasted with something which seems to despise it, and which, in more opinions than his, is a main cause of it, was always one of the subjects that at a moment’s notice would overshadow the liveliest of his moods. The picturesque line in italics is beautifully true. The poet is writing to a friend in London.
“Unpavilioned heaven is fair, Whether the moon, into her chamber gone, Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan Climbs with dimnish’d beams the azure steep; Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep, Piloted by the many-wandering blast, And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast. |
| 214 | MR SHELLEY. |
All this is beautiful in every land. But what see you beside? A shabby stand Of hackney coaches—a brick house or wall, Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl Of our unhappy politics; or worse. A wretched woman, reeling by, whose curse Mix’d with the watchman’s, partner of her trade, You must accept in place of serenade.” |
“I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright; I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me—who knows how? To thy chamber-window, sweet! |
“The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream— The champak odours fall, Like sweet thoughts in a dream; |
| MR SHELLEY. | 215 |
The nightingale’s complaint It dies upon her heart, As I must upon thine, Beloved as thou art! |
“O lift me from the grass! I die, I faint, I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast; Oh! press it close to thine again Where it will break at last.” |
|
“The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple moon’s transparent light
|
| 216 | MR SHELLEY. |
|
†******
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City’s voice itself is soft, like Solitude’s.
|
|
“I see the deep’s untrampled floor
With green and purple sea-weeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.
I sit upon the sands alone;
The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
|
|
“Alas! I have nor hope, nor health,
Nor peace within, nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned;
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround;
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;—
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
|
|
“Yet now despair itself is mild,
Ev’n as the winds and waters are;
I could be down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
|
|
† A line is wanting in the Edition. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 217 |
|
“Some might lament that I were cold,
As I when this sweet day is done,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan:
They might lament, for I am one
Whom men love not, and yet regret;
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.”
|
The pieces, that call to mind Beaumont and Fletcher, are such as the following:—
“Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. |
“Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.” |
“Love’s Philosophy” is another. It has been often printed; but for the same reason will bear repetition. The sentiment must he understood with reference to the delicacy as well as freedom of Mr. Shelley’s opinions, and not as supplying any excuse to that heartless libertinism which no man disdained more. The poem is here quoted for its grace and lyrical sweetness.
|
“The fountains mingle with the river,
And the river with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever,
With a sweet emotion:
|
| 218 | MR SHELLEY. |
|
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle—
Why not I with thine?
|
|
“See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdain’d its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
|
Mr. Shelley ought to have written nothing but dramas, interspersed with
such lyrics as these. Perhaps had he lived, he would have done so; for, after all, he was but
young; and he had friends of that opinion, whom he was much inclined to agree with. The
fragment of the tragedy of Charles the First, in this volume,
makes us long for more of it. With all his republicanism, he would have done justice to
Charles, as well as to Pym and Hampden. His completest
production is unquestionably the tragedy of the “Cenci.” The objections to the subject are, on the face
of them, not altogether unfounded; but they ought not to weigh with those who have no scruple
in grappling with any of the subjects of our old English drama; still less, if they are true
readers of that drama, and know how to think of the great ends of poetry in a liberal and
masculine manner. “Cenci” is the personification of a
will, maddened, like a Roman emperor’s, by the possession of impunity; deadened to all
sense of right and wrong by degrading notions of a Supreme Being; and consequently subjected to
the most frightful wants, and knowing no pleasure
| MR SHELLEY. | 219 |
The Translations that conclude the “Posthumous Poems,” are masterly. That of the
“Hymn to Mercury,”
containing the pranks of the Deity when young, abounds in singular animal spirits, a careless
yet exuberant feeling of mixed power and indifference, of the zest of newborn life, and a
godlike superiority to its human manifestations of it, such as we might suppose to take place
before vice and virtue were thought of, or only thought of to afford pastime for mischievous
young gods, who were above the necessity of behaving themselves. I will confine myself,
however, to the quotation of a passage or two from the scenes out of Goethe’s “Faust.” They contain the Prologue in
Heaven, which Lord Leveson Gower has omitted in
his translation, and the May-day Night, which he has abridged, and
thought untranslatable. The
| 220 | MR SHELLEY. |
|
Meph. Would you not like a broomstick? As for me,
I wish I had a good stout ram to ride;
For we are still far from th’ appointed place.
Faust. This knotted staff is help enough for me,
Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What good
Is there in making short a pleasant way?
To creep along the labyrinths of the vales,
And climb those rocks, where ever-babbling springs
Precipitate themselves in waterfalls,
Is the true sport that seasons such a path.
Already Spring kindles the birchen spray,
|
| MR SHELLEY. | 221 |
|
And the hoar pines already feel her breath
Shall she not work also within our limbs?
Meph. Nothing of such an influence do I feel.
My body is all wintry, and I wish
The flowers upon our path were frost and snow.
But see; how Melancholy rises now
Dimly uplifting her belated beam,
The blank unwelcome round of the red moon,
And gives so bad a light, that every step
One stumbles ’gainst some crag. With your permission,
I’ll call an Ignis-Fatuus to our aid;
I see one yonder burning jollily.
Halloo, my friend! may I request that you
Would favour us with your bright company?
Why should you blaze away there to no purpose?
Pray, be so good as light us up this way.
Ignis-Fatuus. With reverence be it spoken, I will try
To overcome the lightness of my nature:
Our course, you know, is generally zig-zag.
Meph. Ha! ha! your worship thinks you have to deal
With men. Go strait on, in the Devil’s name,
Or I shall puff your flickering light out.
Ignis-Fatuus. Well,
I see you are the master of the house;
I will accommodate myself to you.
Only consider, that to-night this mountain
Is all enchanted, and if Jack-a-lanthorn
Shows you his way, though you should miss your own,
You ought not to be too exact with him.
|
|
The limits of the sphere of dream,
The bounds of true and false, are past.
Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam,
Lead us onward, far and fast,
To the wide, the desert waste.
|
| 222 | MR SHELLEY. |
|
But see how swift advance and shift
Trees behind trees, row by row,—
How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift
Their frowning foreheads as we go.
The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
How they snort, and how they blow!
|
|
Through the mossy sods and stones,
Stream and streamlet hurry down;
A rushing throng! A sound of song
Beneath the vault of heaven is blown!
|
A profound living critic (I forget his name) has discovered, that the couplet in italics is absurd—crags having no snouts properly so called, and being things by no means alive or blowing! The plot now thickens. Every thing is vivified like the rocks; every thing takes a devilish aspect and meaning; the winds rise; the stragglers of the Devil’s festival begin to appear, and the travellers feel themselves in the “witch element.”
|
Faust. How
The children of the wind rage in the air!
With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck!
*****
Meph. Dost thou not hear?
Strange accents are ringing
Aloft, afar, anear,
The witches are singing
The torrent of the raging wizard song
Streams the whole mountain along.
Chorus of Witches.
The stubble is yellow, the corn is green,
Now to the Brocken the witches go;
The mighty multitude here may be seen
Gathering, wizard and witch, below.
Sir Urean is sitting aloft in the air;
Hey over stock, and hey over stone!
’Twixt witches and incubi what shall be done?
Tell it who dare! tell it who dare!
|
| MR SHELLEY. | 223 |
|
A Voice. Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine,
Old Baubo rideth alone.
Chorus. Honour her to whom honour is due,
Old Mother Baubo! honour to you!
An able sow, with old Baubo upon her,
Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honour
The legion of witches is coming behind,
Darkening the night, and outspeeding the wind.
A Voice. Which way comest thou?
A Voice. Over Ilsenstein;
The owl was awake in the white moonshine;
I saw her at rest in her downy nest,
And she stared at me with her broad, bright eye.
Voices. And you my now as well take your course on to Hell,
Since you ride by so fast, on the headlong blast.
A Voice. She dropped poison upon me, as I past.
Here are the wounds.
Chorus of Witches. Come away! come along!
The way is wide, the way is long,
But what is that for a Bedlam throng?
Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom.
The child in the cradle lies strangled at home,
And the mother is clapping her hands.
Semi-chorus of Wizards—lst.—We glide in
Like snails when the women are all away.
From a house once given over to sin,
Woman has a thousand steps to stray.
Semi-chorus—2nd.—A thousand steps must a woman
take,
Where a man but a single step will make.
Voices above. Come with us, come with us, from Felsensee!*
Voices below. With what joy would we fly through the upper
sky!
We are washed, we are ’nointed, stark naked are we:
But our toil and our pain are for ever in vain.
|
| 224 | MR SHELLEY. |
|
Both Chorusses. The wind is still, the stars are fled,
The melancholy moon is dead;
The magic notes, like spark on spark,
Drizzle, whistling through the dark.
Come away!
Voices below. Stay, oh, stay!
Voices above. Out of the crannies of the rocks,
Who calls?
Voice below. Oh let me join your flocks!
I three hundred years have striven
To catch your skirt, and mount to heaven,
And still in vain. Oh, might I be
In company akin with me!
Both Chorusses. Some on a ram, and some on a prong,
On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along;
Forlorn is the wight, who can rise not to-night.
A Half-Witch below. I have been tripping this many an hour;
Are the others already so far before?
No quiet at home, and no peace abroad!
And less methinks is found by the road.
Chorus of Witches. Come onward, away! aroint thee, aroint!
A witch to be strong must anoint, anoint—
Then every trough will be boat enough;
With a rag for a sail, he can sweep through the sky,—
Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly?
Both Chorusses. We cling to the skirt, and we strike on the
ground;
Witch ’legions thicken around and around;
Wizard swarms cover the heath all over.
(They descend.)
Meph. What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling;
What whispering, babbling, hissing, bustling;
What glimmering, spurting, stinking, burning;
As heaven and earth were overturning.
There is a true witch element about us;
Take hold on me, or we shall be divided:—
Where are you?
Faust.(from a distance.) Here!
|
| MR SHELLEY. | 225 |
|
Meph. What!
I must exert my authority in the house.
Place for young Voland! pray make way, good people.
Take hold on me, Doctor, and with one step
Let us escape from this unpleasant crowd:
They are too mad for people of my sort.
Just there shines a peculiar kind of light—
Something attracts me in those bushes. Come
This way: we shall slip down there in a minute.
Faust. Spirit of Contradiction! Well, lead on—
’Twere a wise feat, indeed, to wander out
Into the Brocken upon May-day night,
And then to isolate oneself in scorn,
Disgusted with the humours of the time.
Meph. See yonder, round a many-coloured flame
A merry club is huddled altogether:
Even with such little people as sit there,
One would not be alone.
Faust. Would that I were
Up yonder in the glow and whirling smoke,
Where the blind million rush impetuously
To meet the evil ones! there might I solve
Many a riddle that torments me.
Meph. Yet
Many a riddle there is tied anew
Inextricably. Let the great world rage
We will stay here, safe in the quiet dwellings.
It ’s an old custom. Men have ever built
Their own small world in the great world of all.
|
| 226 | MR SHELLEY. |
|
Meph. (to Faust, who has seceded from the
dance.)
Why did you let that fair girl pass by you,
Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance?
Faust. A red mouse in the middle of her singing
Sprung from her mouth.
Meph. That was all right, my friend;
Be it enough that the mouse was not grey.
Do not disturb your hour of happiness
With close consideration of such trifles.
|
This is an image of bad and disgusting passions detected in one whom we love, and in the very midst and heart of our passion!—The following may be interpreted to shadow forth either the consequences of seduction, or the miserable regret with which a man of the world calls to mind his first love, and his belief in goodness.
|
Faust. Then saw I—
Meph. What?
Faust. Seest thou not a pale,
Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away
She drags herself now forward with slow steps,
And seems as if she moved with shackled feet:
I cannot overcome the thought that she
Is like poor Margaret.
Meph. Let it be—pass on—
No good can come of it—it is not well
To meet it—it is an enchanted phantom,
A lifeless idol: with its numbing look
|
| MR SHELLEY. | 227 |
|
It freezes up the blood of man; and they
Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,
Like those who saw Medusa.
Faust. Oh too true!
Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse
Which no beloved hand has closed, alas!
That is the heart which Margaret yielded to me—
Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!
Meph. It is all magic: poor deluded fool!
She looks to every one like his first love.
Faust. Oh what delight! what woe! I cannot turn
My looks from her sweet piteous countenance.
How strangely does a single blood-red line,
Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,
Adorn her lovely neck!
Meph. Ay, she can carry
Her head under her arm, upon occasion;
Perseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures
End in delusion.
|
| 228 | MR SHELLEY. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 229 |
[I regret extremely, on the reader’s account, as well as my own, that I have not taken better and more grateful care of the letters which my friend wrote to me. I know not how they were lost. I thought I had preserved them better. What I can lay before the public, I do.]
Why did you not wake me that night before we left England, you and Marianne? I take this as rather an unkind piece of kindness in you; but which, in consideration of the six hundred miles between us, I forgive.
| 230 | MR SHELLEY. |
We have journeyed towards the spring that has been hastening to meet us from the south; and though our weather was at first abominable, we have now warm sunny days, and soft winds, and a sky of deep azure, the most serene I ever saw. The heat in this city to-day, is like that of London in the midst of summer. My spirits and health sympathize in the change. Indeed, before I left London, my spirits were as feeble as my health, and I had demands upon them which I found difficult to supply. I have read Foliage:—with most of the poems I was already familiar. What a delightful poem the “Nymphs” is! especially the second part. It is truly poetical, in the intense and emphatic sense of the word.* If six hundred miles were not between us, I should say what pity that glib was not omitted, and that the poem is not as faultless as it is beautiful. But for fear I should spoil your next poem, I will not let slip a word on the subject. Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and tell Marianne she defrauded me of a kiss by not waking me when she went away, and that as I have no better mode of conveying it, I must take the best, and ask you to pay the debt. When shall I see you all again? Oh that it might be in Italy! I confess that the thought of how long we may be divided, makes me very melancholy. Adieu, my dear friends. Write soon.
| MR SHELLEY. | 231 |
How good of you to write to us so often, and such kind letters! But it is like lending to a beggar. What can I offer in return?*
Though surrounded by suffering and disquietude, and latterly almost overcome by our strange misfortune,† I have not been idle. My Prometheus is finished, and I am also on the eve of completing another work, totally different from any thing you might conjecture that I should write, of a more popular kind; and, if any thing of mine could deserve attention, of higher claims. “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou approve the performance.”
I send you a little poem to give to Ollier for publication, but without my name: Peacock will correct the proofs. I wrote it with the idea of offering it to the Examiner, but I find it is too long.‡ It was composed last year at Este: two of the characters you will recognize; the third is also in some degree a painting from nature, but, with respect to time and place, ideal. You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language to express the actual way in which people talk with each other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment have
* Such is the way in which the most generous of men used to talk to those whom he had obliged. |
† The taking away of his children by the Court of Chancery. |
‡ “Julian and Maddalo,” printed in the Posthumous Poems. Maddalo is Lord Byron; Julian himself. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 233 |
If you would really correct the proof, I need not trouble Peacock, who, I suppose, has enough. Can you take it as a compliment that I prefer to trouble you?
I do not particularly wish this poem to be known as mine, but, at all events, I would not put my name to it. I leave you to judge whether it is best to throw it in the fire, or to publish it. So much for self—self, that burr that will stick to one. Your kind expressions about my Eclogue gave me great pleasure; indeed, my great stimulus in writing is to have the approbation of those who feel kindly towards me. The rest is mere duty. I am also delighted to hear that you think of us, and form fancies about us. We cannot yet come home.
|
* Let me admire with the reader (I do not pretend to be under the necessity of calling his attention to it.) this most noble image. |
| 234 | MR SHELLEY. |
At length has arrived Ollier’s parcel, and with it the portrait. What a delightful present! It is almost yourself, and we sate talking with it, and of it, all the evening. . . . . . . . . It is a great pleasure to us to possess it, a pleasure in a time of need; coming to us when there are few others. How we wish it were you, and not your picture! How I wish we were with you!
This parcel, you know, and all its letters, are now a year old; some older. There are all kinds of dates, from March to August, 1818, and “your date,” to use Shakspeare’s expression, “is better in a pie or a pudding, than in your letter.” “Virginity,” Parolles says,—but letters are the same thing in another shape.
With it came, too, Lamb’s works. I have looked at none of the other books yet. What a lovely thing is his “Rosamond Gray!” how much knowledge of the sweetest and deepest part of our nature in it! When I think of such a mind as Lamb’s,—when I see how unnoticed remain things of such exquisite and complete perfection, what should I hope for myself, if I had not higher objects in view than fame?
I have seen too little of Italy and of pictures. Perhaps
Peacock has shown you some of my letters
to him. But at Rome I was very ill, seldom able to go out
without a carriage; and though I kept horses for two months there, yet there is so
much to see! Perhaps I attended more
| MR SHELLEY. | 235 |
As to Michael Angelo’s Moses—but you have seen a cast of that in England.—I write these things, Heaven knows why!
I have written something and finished it, different from any thing else, and a new attempt for me; and I mean to dedicate it to you. I should not have done so without your approbation, but I asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent: If I did not think it in some degree worthy of you, I would not make you a public offering of it. I expect to have to write to you soon about it. If Ollier is not turned
| 236 | MR SHELLEY. |
Mary has written to Marianne for a parcel, in which I beg you will make Ollier enclose what you know would most interest me,—your “Calendar,” (a sweet extract from which I saw in the Examiner,) and the other poems belonging to you; and, for some friends of mine, my Eclogue. This parcel, which must be sent instantly, will reach me by October; but don’t trust letters to it, except just a line or so. When you write, write by the post.
My love to Marianne and Bessy, and Thornton too, and Percy, &c., and if you could imagine any way in which I could be useful to them here, tell me. I will inquire about the Italian chalk. You have no idea of the pleasure this portrait gives us.
| MR SHELLEY. | 237 |
| 238 | MR SHELLEY. |
It would give me much pleasure to know Mr. Lloyd. When I was in Cumberland, I got Southey to borrow a copy of “Berkeley” from him, and I remember observing some pencil notes in it, probably written by Lloyd, which I thought particularly acute.
Yesterday morning Mary brought me a little boy. She suffered but two hours’ pain, and is now so well that it seems a wonder that she stays in bed. The babe is also quite well, and has begun to suck. You may imagine this is a great relief and a great comfort to me, amongst all my misfortunes, past, present, and to come.
Since I last wrote to you, some circumstances have occurred,
not necessary to explain by letter, which make my pecuniary condition a very
difficult one. The physicians absolutely forbid my travelling to England in the
winter, but I shall probably pay you a visit in the spring. With what pleasure,
among all the other sources of regret and discomfort with which England abounds for
me, do I think of looking on the original of that kind and
earnest face which is now opposite Mary’s
| MR SHELLEY. | 239 |
I will tell you more about myself and my pursuits, in my next letter.
Kind love to Marianne, Bessy, and all the children. Poor Mary begins (for the first time) to look a little consoled. For we have spent, as you may imagine, a miserable five months.
I have had no letter from you for a month.
Why don’t you write to us? I was preparing to send you something for your “Indicator,” but I have been a drone instead of a bee in this business, thinking that perhaps, as you did not acknowledge any of my late enclosures, it would not be welcome to you, whatever I might send.
What a state England is in! But you will never write politics.
I don’t wonder;—but I wish, then, that you would write a paper in
“The Examiner,” on the
actual state, of the country, and what, under all the circumstances of the
conflicting passions and interests of men, we are to expect. Not what we ought to
expect, or what, if so and so were to
| 240 | MR SHELLEY. |
I have no spirits to write what I do not know whether you will care much about: I know well, that if I were in great misery, poverty, &c., you would think of nothing else but how to amuse and relieve me. You omit me if I am prosperous. * * * *
I could laugh if I found a joke, in order to put you in good-humour with me after my scolding;—in good-humour enough to write to us. * * * * * * Affectionate love to and from all. This ought not only to be the Vale of a letter, but a superscription over the gate of life.
I send you a sonnet. I don’t expect you to publish it, but you may show it to whom you please,
Two letters, both bearing date Oct. 20, arrive on the same day:—one is always glad of twins.
We hear of a box arrived at Genoa with
books and clothes; it must be yours. Meanwhile the babe is wrapped in flannel petticoats, and we
| MR SHELLEY. | 241 |
You do not tell me whether you have received my lines on the Manchester affair. They are of the exotic species, and are meant, not for “The Indicator,” but “The Examiner.” I would send for the former, if you like, some letters on such subjects of art as suggest themselves in Italy. Perhaps I will, at a venture, send you a specimen of what I mean next post. I enclose you in this a piece for “The Examiner;” or let it share the fate, whatever that fate may be, of the “Mask of Anarchy.”
I am sorry to hear that you have employed yourself in translating “Aminta,” though I doubt not it will be a just and beautiful translation. You ought to write Amintas. You ought to exercise your fancy in the perpetual creation of new forms of gentleness and beauty.
With respect to translation, even I will not be seduced by it; although the Greek plays, and some of the ideal dramas of Calderon, (with which I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight, become acquainted,) are perpetually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey veil of my own words. And you know me too well to suspect, that I refrain from the belief that what I would substitute for them would deserve the regret which yours would, if suppressed. I have confidence in my moral sense alone; but that is a kind of originality. I have only translated the Cyclops of Euripides when I could absolutely do nothing else, and the Symposium of Plato, which is the delight and astonishment of all who read it:—I mean, the original, or so much of the original as is seen in my translation, not the translation itself. * * * *
| 242 | MR SHELLEY. |
I think I have an accession of strength since my residence in Italy, though the disease itself in the side, whatever it may be, is not subdued. Some day we shall all return from Italy. I fear that in England things will be carried violently by the rulers, and that they will not have learned to yield in time to the spirit of the age. The great thing to do is to hold the balance between popular impatience and tyrannical obstinacy; to inculcate with fervour both the right of resistance and the duty of forbearance. You know, my principles incite me to take all the good I can get in politics, for ever aspiring to something more. I am one of those whom nothing will fully satisfy, but who am ready to be partially satisfied by all that is practicable. We shall see.*
Give Bessy a thousand thanks from me for writing out in that pretty neat hand your kind and powerful defence. Ask what she would like best from Italian land? We mean to bring you all something; and Mary and I have been wondering what it shall be. Do you, each of you, choose.
|
* Mr. Shelley would have been pleased to see the change that took place under the administration of Mr. Canning,—a change, which is here described by anticipation. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 243 |
Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. The result of this visit was a determination on his part to come and live at Pisa, and I have taken the finest palace on the Lung’Arno for him. But the material part of my visit consists in a message which he desires me to give you, and which I think ought to add to your determination—for such a one I hope you have formed—of restoring your shattered health and spirits by a migration to these “regions mild of calm and serene air.”
He proposes that you should come and go shares with him and me, in a periodical work, to be conducted here; in which each of the contracting parties should publish all their original compositions, and share the profits. He proposed it to Moore, but for some reason it was never brought to bear. There can be no doubt that the profits of any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, must, from various yet co-operating reasons, be very great. As to myself, I am, for the present, only a sort of link between you and him, until you can know each other and effectuate the arrangement; since (to entrust you with a secret which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord Byron,) nothing would induce me to share in the profits, and still less in the borrowed splendour, of such a partnership.* You and he, in different manners, would be equal, and would bring, in a different manner, but in the same proportion, equal stocks of reputation and success: do not let my frankness with you, nor
* Mr. Shelley afterwards altered his mind; but he had a reserved intention underneath it, which he would have endeavoured to put in practice, had his friend allowed him. |
| 244 | MR SHELLEY. |
I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in sending a remittance for your journey; because there are men, however excellent, from whom we would never receive an obligation, in the worldly sense of the word; and I am as jealous for my friend as for myself. I, as you know, have it not: but I suppose that at last I shall make up an impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to add to the many obligations he has conferred on me. I know I need only ask.
I think I have never told you how very much I like your Amyntas; it almost reconciles me to Translations. In another sense I still demur. You might have written another such poem as the “Nymphs,” with no great access of effort.* I am full of thoughts and plans, and should do something if the feeble and irritable frame which incloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should do great things. Before this you will have seen “Adonais.” Lord Byron, I suppose from
* In one of Lord Byron’s letters, having a quarrel with the memory of Mr. Shelley, and being angry with me for loving it so entirely, his Lordship tells me that I was mistaken if I thought Mr. Shelley entertained a very high opinion of my poetry. I answered, that I had already had the mortification of making that discovery; upon which he expressed his vexation at having told it me. I did not add, that I believed Mr. Shelley’s opinion of my poetry to have decreased since his becoming used to his Lordship’s libels of his “friends all round,” and that he had latterly exhibited an uneasy suspicion that his intimacy had had an ill effect upon his kindlier views of things in general. But I must own, that I never looked upon Mr. Shelley’s real opinion of my poetry as any thing very great; though his affection for me, and his sympathy with the world I lived in, poetical as well as political, sometimes led him to persuade himself otherwise. I suspect he had a very accurate notion of it; greater than what vulgar critics would think just, but as little as a due appreciation of poetry, properly so called, could admit. |
| MR SHELLEY. | 245 |
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