40 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
The life Shelley led at Pisa was one
of much isolation, but not so complete as it had been. Prince
Mavrocordato was his constant visitor; with him he read the Paradise Lost,
and as both were great linguists, the task was rendered the easier. Speaking of this,
Shelley used to say that “in interpreting a foreign
tongue, it was a great mutual advantage to know several; for that hence synonymes,
which failed in one, could be found in another;” and thus he would often give
the exact meaning of a word in Italian, or Spanish, or Latin, or still more frequently in
Greek, which he found the best medium as regarded the Paradise Lost,—perhaps the most difficult of
all poems to explain. Let him who doubts it make the experiment. In return, the prince read
with us the Agamemnon, though
Shelley little approved of his emendations, and would not admit
that a modern Greek was a better scholiast than an English scholar. He admitted,
“that he might know better the names of plants and flowers, but had no
advantage over
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 41 |
Shelley would as little adopt the Italian mode as to Latin, and used to say, “that if we were wrong, we erred with Erasmus.” I remember pointing out to him in Plautus, a play on the words arca and arce, which latter must have been pronounced arke. Shelley told me he never read Latin, and looked on the Romans as pale copyists of the Greeks; not that he was insensible to the beauty of Virgil, but thought his Eclogues poor and artificial compared with the Pastorals of Theocritus. “Greek,” said he, “is as superior to Latin, as German is to French; and the Augustan age bears the same relation to that of Lucretius, as Queen Anne’s did to the Elizabethean.”
42 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
But to return to Mavrocordato. There
was at that time little prospect of a Greek revolution, though the subject frequently
formed part of our conversation. It was a favourite speculation of Shelley’s, and with a prophetic spirit he
anticipated the emancipation of that oppressed race; and Mavrocordato,
warmed by these aspirations for the independence of his country, which indeed filled the
hearts of so many of his countrymen, half resolved to believe, almost against reason, that
an insurrection in Greece was possible; but had no idea it was so near at hand.
Shelley entertained a sincere regard for Prince
Mavrocordato, who had very enlarged and enlightened views of the state of
Europe. He says of him,—“I know one Greek of the highest qualities, both of
courage and conduct, the Prince Mavrocordato, and if the rest be
like him, all will go well.” Whether Shelley’s
opinion of this statesman has been confirmed by his career, it remains for some future
Thucydides to decide. The prince was at that time
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 43 |
Among his other guests, Rosini (the
author of that episode to the Promesse
Spose, the “Monoca di Monza,”) made
occasionally one; but no intimacy subsisted between them. Sgricci also passed some evenings at his house. He was perhaps the greatest
of improvisatores that existed, and gave us more than one specimen
of his talent. He used to say that “the God when invoked was always
propitious.” He was on his way to Lucca, there to give a tragedy
44 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 45 |
Vacca, whose medical celebrity was the least of his merits, for he was an ardent lover of his country, and enthusiastical for the emancipation of Italy, was also Shelley’s particular friend; but his great practice left him little leisure for visits, besides that the state of his health, that shortly after brought him to an untimely grave, made his professional fatigues require a repose, that even conversation in his leisure hours would have disturbed. He died of consumption—a gradual decay.
Two other persons among my oldest and best friends, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, so often mentioned or alluded to in Shelley’s Works, and Mrs. Shelley’s Notes, and of whom I shall have somewhat to speak hereafter, added in the spring to their circle.
It was under the idea that their enlightened society and sympathy would tend to chase Shelley’s melancholy, that I allured them to Pisa.
Shelley had indeed during that winter been subject
to a prostration, physical and psychical,
46 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 47 |
I have alluded to his physical sufferings—they, if they did not
produce, tended to aggravate his mental ones. He was a martyr to the most painful
complaint, Nephritis, for which he had,
48 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 49 |
After my departure from Pisa, he was magnetised by a lady, which gave rise
to the beautiful stanzas entitled “The
Magnetic Lady to
50 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
Shelley showed me a treatise he had written, of some length, on the Life of Christ, and which Mrs. Shelley should give to the world. In this work he differs little from Paulus, Strauss, and the Rationalists of Germany. The first of these has been for fifty years professor of divinity in the university of Heidelberg, and is venerated with honours due to his talents and exemplary virtues; the latter once filled the theological chair at Zurich, from which he was ousted by the Jesuits.
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 51 |
The new sect which has lately sprung up, with Ronge at its head, whose doctrines were running like wildfire through the Confederation, but are now at the ebb-tide,—this New Catholicism which it was once proposed by the Baden Chamber to make one of the religions of the state, proves the wide dissemination which Rationalism has had, and the revolution in men’s minds in Germany. Rongeism is only a more extended form of Unitarianism.
But the Rongeists go far beyond the Unitarians or Rationalists, and have so refined away the tenets of our religion, discarding prophecy, miracles, the divinity of our Saviour, and the atonement, that they can scarcely be denominated Christians.
Shelley, in this treatise, does no more than Strauss, Paulus, and Ronge; he indeed treats the subject with more respect than
either, and although he may reduce Christianity to a code of morals, how does he differ in
so doing from the
52 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
But without entering on this discussion, which might lead me too far out
of the track, I can say, with reference to Shelley,
that whatever his early opinions might have been, he on becoming a Platonist, firmly
believed in a future state. He used to say, that “no man who reflected could be a
Materialist long;” and in his Essay on Poetry, (though he seems in Mrs.
Shelley’s transcript of the MS. to have made a considerable alteration
in the passage afterwards from that originally written, which he shewed to me,) the words
ran thus, verbatim: “The persons in whom this power (poetry) abides, may often, as
regards many parts of their nature, be Atheists; but though they may deny and abjure,
they are compelled to serve, which is seated in the throne of their own
soul;” and in his Essay on a Future
State, unfortunately a fragment, he says, “The destiny of man can
hardly be so degraded
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 53 |
Glorious shapes have life in thee, Heaven, and all Heaven’s company, |
Thou art the abode Of that Power, which is the glass Where man his image sees. Generations as they pass, Worship thee on bended knees; Their unreturning gods and they Like a river pass away; Thou remainest such alway. |
The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. |
Let these passages suffice, though I might multiply them ad infinitum.
Return we to life and its realities.
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