Peacock's memoir of Shelley, with Shelley's letters to Peacock

A3P33

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,06

PEACOCK'S
MEMOIRS OF SHELLEY

WITH

SHELLEY'S LETTERS TO PEACOCK

EDITED BY
H. F. B. BRETT-SMITH

LONDON

HENRY FROWDE

1909

OXFORD : HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

All Peacock's reminiscences of Shelley made their
first appearance in the pages of Eraser's Magazine.
Part I was the first article in the July number of
1858, and was printed as a review of the following
volumes : —

Shelley and his Writings. By Charles S. Middleton.

London : Newby, 1856. [An error, repeated

in Cole's edition, for 1858.]
Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron.

By E. J. Trelawny. London : Moxon, 1858.
The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas

Jefferson Hogg. In Four Volumes. Vols. I

and II. London : Moxon, 1858.

It is to the titles of these works that Peacock refers

on page 4. Part II of the Memoirs appeared in the

January number of 1860, after the publication of

the Shelley Memorials; the Supplementary Notice

was added in the March number of 1862 ; and

the seventeen letters, with the introductory note on

pp. 93-4, formed the first article in the March

number of 1860.

a 2

iv PREFACE

Of these, Shelley's letters have been included in
various collections, but the Memoirs have been re-
printed only once, in the three volume edition of
Peacock's works edited in 1875 by Sir Henry Cole.
From the sheets of this edition the present text has
been prepared, but every word has been collated with
the original articles in Fraser, and their earliest form
has been strictly preserved. Cole's editing was far
from satisfactory ; he frequently omitted or inserted
words, and made other alterations ; these errors have
been corrected, and Peacock's original punctuation
retained except when it is untenable. Occasionally,
however, it has been necessary to follow the later
version when the earlier is manifestly wrong ; Cole,
for example, tacitly corrects a mistake in the age of
Brown the novelist, which was originally printed as
twenty-nine instead of thirty-nine.

The most difficult question has been that of quo-
tations. Peacock very rarely gave a reference (not
always correct), and invariably quoted with peculiar
inaccuracy. In the present edition, every citation
of more than half a dozen words from an English,
Greek or Latin author, except in the case of legal
documents, has been traced or verified, and the
reference supplied. Where Peacock merely altered
the punctuation, the reference has been considered

PREFACE v

sufficient ; where he altered the text, the correct
version is supplied in a footnote. In the case of
quotations in French, Italian, Portuguese and Welsh,
I have been content to reproduce the exact words
of the Fraser text. In justice to Peacock, it must
be admitted that many of his sins in reforming his
quotations are due to a reluctance to soil his pen
with the abominable English of Med win and Hogg.
For the verification of two references which the
Bodleian Library did not afford, and the generous
sacrifice of time far more valuable than my own,
I have to thank Mr. Percy Simpson.

In regard to the letters, my gratitude is due to
Mr. H. Buxton Forman, who kindly permitted the
text of his monumental edition of Shelley's Prose
Works to be used for purposes of revision and ampli-
fication. From his high authority I have rarely
departed, and never, except in a point of typography
or the correction of an obvious misprint, without due
acknowledgement. To his edition I am indebted also
for a few identifications, and for one essential note,
all of which are marked by the initials H. B. F.
Notes added by Mary Shelley are subscribed M. S.,
and I have occasionally given variae lectiones from
the text of her edition and those of Garnett and
Rhys. It was found necessary to distinguish Peacock's

vi PREFACE

own notes throughout the volume by his initials ;
note 3 on page 133 has unluckily escaped this process.
For all other unsigned notes and references the editor
is alone responsible.

The text of the letters is now reproduced as fully
as possible : Peacock, editing them in 1860, omitted
besides the markedly anti-Christian passages all the
more pointed references to Mr. Gisborne, and the
names of some persons — Barry Cornwall, for example
— who are ungently used. To preserve his lacunae
would have been needless and annoying, but it is
necessary to call attention to his original scrupulosity,
and to the note on pp. 201-2.

Letters 1 and 3 — those which Middleton pirated —

are particularly imperfect. From the sale catalogue

of Peacock's library, however, it is possible to supply

one interesting passage selected from the third letter

by an astute auctioneer :

Lord Byron is an exceedingly interesting person,
and as such is it not to be regretted that he is a slave
to the vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad
as the winds ?

The same source yields an explanation of the

opening of the twenty-seventh letter, which enclosed

' a letter from a creditor pressing for settlement or

threatening outlawry', and an addition to the

Gisborne passages of the twenty-eighth :

PREFACE vii

Cobbett persuaded you, you persuaded me, and I
have persuaded the Gisbornes that the British funds
are very insecure. They come to England accord-
ingly to sell out their property.

Finally, it ought perhaps to be mentioned that
Professor Dowden, in his Life of Shelley, observes
that 'the dates of Shelley's letter from Ferrara,
November 8 and 9 [1818], must be incorrect. The
journal shows that the true dates are November 6
and 7.' But for this explanation, a comparison of
the heading of this letter with that of the next —
Bologna, Nov. 9th — would certainly have been liable
to breed suspicion,

H. F. B. B-S.

INTRODUCTION

Among the early accounts of Shelley, the Memoirs
of Thomas Love Peacock hold an important but
isolated position, which resembles in many points
that of Matthew Arnold's Essay among the later
lives. The likeness, indeed, is somewhat marked.
Each piece made its first appearance as a review, by
a writer of acute observation and comparatively
impartial judgement, of a more pretentious and more
biased piece of Shelley biography; and each review
has become a classic on this very limited subject.
Their authority, indeed, differs in its essence. Peacock
combines with the sympathy and comprehension of
a personal friend of Shelley, the impartiality of
a man, never subject to enthusiasms, who looks back
on his companion's lifetime with the added dis-
interestedness of six and thirty years ; while the
criticism of Arnold, with equal clarity of thought,
is strong in the breadth of view and the complete
candour which could only come with a later and
quite unprejudiced generation. Yet in the biography
of Shelley — an unsavoury and debatable tract, from
which that reader is fortunate who escapes no more
a partisan than he entered in — the short critical
papers of Peacock and Arnold are alike in their
value as purges for the petty disingenuousness of
apologists, who have not yet perceived that Shelley's
vindication, as Peacock claimed, is best permitted

x INTRODUCTION

to rest on the grounds on which it was placed by
himself.

When biography becomes controversial, it should
hibernate for a century ; Shelley's biography, cradled
in a limbo of conflicting witness, has never had a fair
chance. The first fault lay with the reviewers of his
own day, who regarded him, very naturally, as
'a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look
even might infect \ They were faced with the opinions
of his early poems, and the facts of his early life ; and
it was inevitable that they should attack him with
the utmost bitterness of a moral and uncensored
press. From this assault the writers on Shelley's life
have never recovered; they either compile or demolish
needless defences, and the chaos is made worse by the
untrustworthy nature of many of the best qualified
accounts. Medwin's Life is highly inaccurate. That of
Hogg is unrivalled for the Oxford period, but is some-
what discredited in its later development, both by the
writer's peculiar relations with Shelley and his first
wife, and by his tendency to indulge in lurid detail
and caustic satire. Lady Shelley's Shelley Memorials
were written to counteract the influence of Hogg ;
and Trelawny, who gives a pleasing and vigorous
picture of the last months of Shelley's life, reminds
us by frequent discrepancies of Lord Byron's state-
ment that even to save his life he could not tell the
truth. The value of all these books lies chiefly in
their material: method, disinterestedness, and just
perspective could only come with the professional,

INTRODUCTION xi

not the amateur historian. Yet it is not too much
to say that the latter qualities are more conspicuous
in the Memoirs of Peacock, which were written, be it
remembered, as a critical review, than in any of the
accounts of contemporaries ; and during the period
between Shelley's residence at Bracknell and his final
departure from England, Peacock had unequalled
opportunities of observation. Nor is his authority
lessened by the fact that he long refused to write on
Shelley's life ; most lovers of the poet will sympathize
with such reluctance ; and his desire that Shelley, ' like
his own Skylark, had been left unseen in his congenial
region, and that he had been only heard in the
splendour of his song,' is echoed with a more poignant
regret in the pages of Arnold's Essay.

Thomas Love Peacock, the son of a London
merchant, was born towards the end of 1785, and
lost his father before he was four years old. His
mother settled at Chertsey, and the boy was educated
at a private school in Engl efi eld Green. A short
experience as a city clerk at fourteen, and an equally
short one at twenty-three as under-secretary to
Sir Home Popham on board a man-of-war, seem
to have been little to his liking, and certainly did
not interrupt the course of classical study which he
pursued after leaving school. In 1804 and 1806 he
published small collections of verses, and in 1810
appeared his first venture of importance, The Genius
of the Thames. He met Shelley for the first time
two years later.

xii INTRODUCTION

Peacock, at all times an attractive figure, must
have made a considerable impression on the younger
poet, now only in his twentieth year. He was seven
years older,

a fine, tall, handsome man, with a profusion of
bright brown hair, eyes of fine dark blue, massive
brow, and regular features, a Roman nose, a handsome
mouth which, when he laughed, as I well remember,
turned up at the corners, and a complexion, fair as
a girl's ; his hair was peculiar in its wild luxuriant
growth, it seemed to grow all from the top of his
head, had no parting, but hung about in thick locks
with a rich wave all through it.

So says his grand- daughter, Edith Nicolls, de-
scribing a portrait taken about 1810.

In mind, he was little less distinguished; he
possessed already the keenness of intellect, the wit,
and the half- contemptuous, half-amused insight into
the springs of human conduct, which mark his
subsequent novels. Moreover, he had a genuine
knowledge and love of the classics, and in ancient
literature Shelley found him a guide of greater learn-
ing and no less devotion. And while their pursuits
were harmonious, their natures and views were dis-
similar enough for mutual interest, for Peacock was
to Shelley that curious creature, a man of the world,
and Shelley to Peacock, that rara avis, sl genius.
Yet Peacock was no worldling, except in a combina-
tion of clear-headedness, humour, and genial good-
fellowship; his affections were deep, if unobtrusive,
and his friendships were permanent. In one respect,

INTRODUCTION xiii

indeed, he was most unworldly; a distaste for
uncongenial work had kept him out of any regular
profession, and his means were consequently restricted.

It was at Nant Gwillt, in Radnorshire, in the spring
of 1812, that Shelley and Harriet made his acquaint-
ance. But their movements about this time were
rapid and uncertain ; they passed successively from
Nant Gwillt to Lynmouth, Tanyrallt, Dublin and
Killarney ; and although they returned to London
in May, 1813, they saw little of their new friend
till he visited them, some months later, in their tem-
porary house at Bracknell.

Shelley had gone there in order to be near the
de Boinvilles, who were the centre of a little literary
clique of which Peacock gives an amusing account.
Hogg, who had also been there, and had gone away
in disgust, is much more brutal.

'I generally found there,'* he says, 'two or three
sentimental young butchers, an eminently philosophi-
cal tinker, and several very unsophisticated medical
practitioners or medical students, all of low origin
and vulgar and offensive manners. They sighed,
turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it
was, and swore by William Godwin and Political
Justice, acting, moreover, and very clumsily, the
parts of Petrarchs, Werthers, St. Leons, and Fleet-
woods/

Peacock was more tolerant ; and though he joined
Harriet in laughing at their misdirected energies, he
was evidently a congenial companion, for in October
he occupied a seat in the Shelleys' carriage on their

xiv INTRODUCTION

second journey to Edinburgh. Unfortunately he
says little of this visit, or some light might be thrown
on the unsupported statement of the 'informant,
exceedingly unlikely to be mistaken', who told Rossetti
that when Shelley came of age, his ' first act was to
marry Harriet over again in an Episcopal Chapel in
Edinburgh'. Had. this been so, Peacock would
hardly have ignored a piece of evidence which lent
such strong support to his argument on the separation.

The Shelleys returned to London at the end of
1813, and there, in March of the following year,
they were formally remarried. Peacock speaks of this
ceremony as witness to the absence of any estrange-
ment, but the claim is not conclusive, for Shelley's
object was merely to place beyond all doubt the
legitimacy of his expected heir, and in another four
months he had deserted Harriet.

This incident, the most painful in Shelley's life,
demands detailed notice both from the space devoted
to it in the Memoirs, and because it has stumbled so
many of Shelley's biographers. Rossetti and Symonds
were hampered by the want of documents which were
not made public until the appearance, in 1886, of
Professor Dowden's weighty Life ; and Professor
Dowden's unconscious bias in Shelley's favour has
grievously obscured his account of the separation.
The main contention of Peacock — that it did not
take place by mutual consent — stands confirmed, in
spite of Garnett's attack ; but in various minor
matters his account requires correction. That there

INTRODUCTION xv

was 'no shadow of a thought of separation' before
Shelley met Mary Godwin is likely enough, but that
there was 'no estrangement ' is not so probable:
Harriet's intellectual development had not kept
pace with her husband's, and his letter to Hogg
(March 16, 1814) shows clearly enough that even
before the meeting with Mary, the attractions of
Mrs. de Boinville's daughter Cornelia had seriously
engaged his highly susceptible heart. Its ultimate
conquest by some one other than Harriet was humanly
certain.

Peacock's reply, in his Supplementary Notice, to
Garnett's criticism in Macmillan's Magazine, provoked
a rejoinder in the same year. In this article, printed
at the end of his Relics of Shelley, and distinguished
by peculiar acrimony and lack of taste, Garnett
showed the probability of an earlier estrangement,
and the reason of the second marriage, and proved
Peacock to have misquoted Harriet's letter of July 7
(p. 86), and also the interview with Southey (p. 50).
In the latter case Shelley is as likely to have been at
fault as Peacock, who admits his uncertainty of the
facts; and the letter must have been quoted from
memory or hearsay. But Garnett still relied on the
unpublished documents for his main point, that the
separation was 'an amicable agreement effected in
virtue of a mutual understanding ', and their publica-
tion has shown that Peacock was right.

The flaws in Professor Dowden's treatment of the
question have been brilliantly exposed in Matthew

xvi INTRODUCTION

Arnold's Essay. Both Professor Dowden and
Dr. Garnett have hinted that Shelley was unlikely
to make Peacock his confidant over the separation,
and this is highly probable. Shelley could always
persuade himself, quite genuinely, of anything which
he wished to believe ; he had probably persuaded
himself that Harriet no longer loved him ; and
instinct would warn him not to expose the desired
illusion to the searchlight of Peacock's logic, which
had been proved too strong for so many former
hallucinations. He was evidently much annoyed by
Peacock's attitude of tacit disapproval, and his
irritation is clearly shown by a sentence in the
almost ludicrously tactless letter to Harriet from
Troyes :

I have written to Peacock to superintend money
affairs; he is expensive, inconsiderate, and cold, but
surely not utterly perfidious and unfriendly and un-
mindful of our kindness to him ; besides, interest
will secure his attention to these things.

The last sentence probably refers to the annual sum
of i?100 which Shelley allowed Peacock for some
time prior to his India House appointment.

Shelley left London for Switzerland, with Mary
Godwin and Claire Claremont, on July 28, 1814, and
did not return until the following September. By a
clerical error, Peacock mentions the letters he received
during the second tour in Switzerland, two years
later, as belonging to this period : if any reached
him in 1814, all trace of them is now lost. After

INTRODUCTION xvii

their return Shelley and Mary took rooms in London
for the winter, and Peacock several times gave the
poet a night's lodging, lest he should be arrested for
debt at his own door. But early in the following
year the death of Sir Bysshe Shelley placed his grand-
son's affairs on a better footing ; a house was taken
at Bishopgate, and in the summer Peacock, who had
been a frequent visitor there, accompanied the
Shelleys and Charles Clairmont on a river expedition
up the Thames.

To this holiday belongs one of the many amusing
incidents of the Memoirs. Shelley had published the
treatise, A Vindication of Natural Diet, in 1813, but
the practice of his vegetarian principles brought fre-
quent trouble, and on their river trip Peacock's simple
prescription — 'Three mutton chops, well peppered' —
was immediately successful. ' While he was living
from inn to inn,' says an earlier passage, 'he was
obliged to live, as he said, " on what he could get " ;
that is to say, like other people. When he got well
under this process he gave all the credit to locomotion,
and held himself to have thus benefited, not in
consequence of his change of regimen, but in spite of
it.' There is curious confirmation of this statement
in a letter to Hogg written in September, 1815, 'on
my return from a water excursion on the Thames,'
in which Shelley remarks that 'the exercise and
dissipation of mind attached to such an expedition
have produced so favourable an effect on my health,
that my habitual dejection and irritability have
b

xviii INTRODUCTION

almost deserted me.' Not a word here of the change
of diet from tea and bread and butter to a liberal
allowance of mutton !

From this time until Shelley's final departure from
England, his intercourse with Peacock was broken
only by the second Swiss tour of 1816, and both
Alastor and the Revolt of Islam had the advantage of
his friend's criticism.

In 1819, twelve months after the Shelley s went to
Italy, Peacock became a clerk in the service of the
East India Company, and the next twenty years
changed the idle litterateur into a busy and able
official. But before this he had published his third
novel, Nightmare Abbey, which takes rank, in its
bearing on Shelley, with the Memoirs and the Four
Ages of Poetry. The character of Scythrop, in this
novel, is a lively portrait of the poet as he was when
Peacock first met him, and their adventures in love
have a distinct resemblance. Scythrop's early and
transient affection for his cousin Emily is a repetition
of Shelley's for his cousin Harriet Grove ; and his
hesitation between the two heroines, Marionetta and
Stella, recalls the doubtful supremacy of Harriet
Shelley and Mary Godwin. The similarity of situa-
tion required careful handling, but by making his
hero lose both the ladies, Peacock secured the tale
from any infringement of good taste : and his treat-
ment of Scythrop is delightful. Scythrop is a brilliant
realization of the undeveloped Shelley of 1812 : he
devours tragedies and German romances, is troubled

INTRODUCTION xix

with the ' passion for reforming the workV which his
original never lost, and publishes a treatise entitled
Philosophical Gas ; or, a Project for a General Illu-
mination of the Human Mind. * He slept with
Horrid Mysteries under his pillow, and dreamed
of venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates
holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves.**
And his soliloquies echo the views of 'the sublime
Kant, who delivers his oracles in language which none
but the initiated can comprehend \

Shelley's instant and joyful recognition of the
identity of Scythrop, and his keen appreciation of
a novel which presented him in a somewhat ludicrous
light, have usually been regarded with surprise.
Probably he was flattered by the implied compliment ;
in any case he must have recognized the good feeling
of the picture and the brilliance of its setting ; but
the real secret of his pleasure lay, no doubt, in the re-
trospective aspect of Nightmare Abbey — all the events
shown there, and most of the foibles displayed, were
things of the past, and he could afford to join Peacock
in the laugh against his old self. Perhaps his friend's
comprehension of the nature of Shelley's early heroics
appears as well as anywhere at the close of the novel,
where Scythrop, seated over a pistol and a pint of port,
and faced with an unfortunate decision to take his
own life at twenty-five minutes past seven, uses the
pistol for the more reasonable purpose of persuading his
butler vi et armis that the clock is fast. Yet Peacock
could hardly have seen the letter to Hogg, written
b 2

xx INTRODUCTION

seven years earlier, in which Shelley naively wrote :
' Is suicide wrong ? I slept with a loaded pistol and
some poison last night, but did not die."'

Only one of Peacock's remaining prose works has
much interest in regard to Shelley, although there
are distinct traces of his opinions to be found in both
the earlier novels, Headlong Hall and Melincourt.
This is the essay entitled The Four Ages of Poetry,
published by Oilier in 1820 : a humorous and very
characteristic attack, to which Shelley's Defence of
Poetry was a direct reply. The utter difference in
the point of view, and the omission by John Hunt
of the polemic passages of the Defence, have altogether
obscured its controversial origin: in fact, few pro-
cesses bring out the essential dissimilarity between
the minds of the two friends so clearly as a comparison
of these essays. Peacock, who loved poetry as well
as any man, could no more help laughing at some of
its aspects than he could help laughing at some of
Shelley's ; he traces its history from Orpheus and
Amphion, ' building cities with a song, and leading
brutes with a symphony ; which are only metaphors
for the faculty of leading multitudes by the nose,'
down to the dark ages, ■ in which the light of the
Gospel began to spread over Europe, and in which,
by a mysterious and inscrutable dispensation, the
darkness thickened with the progress of the light.'
As Shelley said in the Letter to Maria Gisborne :

His fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.

INTRODUCTION xxi

But his real quarrel is with the moderns, and especially
the Lake Poets in their mountain retirement, ' passing
the whole day in the innocent and amiable occupation
of going up and down hill, receiving poetical impres-
sions, and communicating them in immortal verse to
admiring generations.'

Shelley had neither the wish nor the power to
tackle his opponent on his own ground, but his
incomplete Defence is a serious effort to obtain light,
and all Peacock's wit pales before the glow of the
great definition 'A poem is the very image of life
expressed in its eternal truth1. Shelley believed in the
future, and blundered after better things : Peacock
in the past, and saw the weak points of reformers : the
outlook of the two essays is characteristic of the men.

Yet the clear comprehension of Shelley's foibles
never biased the author of the Memoirs ; he painted
the man as he was, and did not strive after telling
points with Hogg's satiric licence. ' Nothing,' said
Robert Buchanan, who knew him in his old age,
1 can be more gentle, more guarded, than Peacock's
printed account of Shelley. His private conversation
on the subject was, of course, very different. Two
subjects he did not refer to in his articles may safely
be mentioned now — Shelley's violent fits of passion,
and the difficulty Peacock found in keeping on friendly
terms with Mary Godwin.' There is no hint of
either here, although the instance of petulance which
Buchanan gives would have made a good story in the
manner of Hogg.

xxii ■ INTRODUCTION

On the very difficult question of Shelley's hallucina-
tions— ' the degree in which his imagination coloured
events' — the Memoirs are peculiarly rich. They
include the imaginary visit in his childhood, the
Eton incident, the madhouse scare, the affray at
Tanyrallt, the dread of elephantiasis, Williams's
warning, and the cloaked man at Florence. The list
might be doubled from other sources ; the Keswick
robbery and Medwin's veiled lady occur at once, with
the mysterious cry of * Cenci, Cenci ', which thrilled
the poet in the streets of Rome — and proved to be
the request for < old rags ' ! Adventures of this kind,
as Symonds observed, blend fact and fancy in a now
inextricable tangle, but there is no better explanation
of them than that which Peacock suggests : that on
some basis — usually the idea that his father and uncle
had designs on his liberty — % his imagination built a
fabric of romance, and when he presented it as sub-
stantive fact, and it was found to contain more or less
of inconsistency, he felt his self-esteem interested in
maintaining it by accumulated circumstances, which
severally vanished under the touch of investigation.'
The remarkable blend of fact and fiction in Shelley's
second letter to Godwin shows that this habit of
romance must have been very deeply rooted.

The great value of the Memoirs lies in their stand-
point : they attain the just blend of sympathy and
discernment which the nature of their subject makes
so difficult. When Shelley settled himself to the
poetical contemplation of life, he found it a thing

INTRODUCTION xxiii

Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

and this aspect of unreality appealed to him very
strongly : he even found that

Death is the veil which those who live call life :
They sleep, and it is lifted.

But in his actual passage through the world, the
smugness of everyday existence oppressed him with
all the pompous absurdity of a well-regulated public
meeting ; and like all highly-strung persons, he felt
an irresistible desire to shriek — to put the dull orator,
Custom, into a false gallop. This might be done
either willingly or accidentally ; by hooting, or
hysterics. Sometimes he hooted : flicked bread-pellets
into the faces of the Sir Oracles who passed him in
the street, or startled staid old ladies in public
vehicles with the suggestion :

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings !

— ( not eccentricity so much as painful discourtesy ',
wrote de Quincey, who did not know the man.
Sometimes he became hysterical, and the reviewers
received a shock. But always he needed an under-
standing observer more than most objects of criticism ;
and it is intelligent sympathy, neither idealizing nor
vilifying, in which Peacock's Memoirs excel.

xxiv INTRODUCTION

Probably few modern readers will agree with John
Addington Symonds in the opinion that Shelley's
Italian letters to Peacock, ' taken altogether, are the
most perfect specimens of descriptive prose in the
English language.' The writer's brain is too often,
as he admits, ' like a portfolio of an architect, or a
print-shop, or a commonplace-book,' and the poetry
of his continual word-painting occasionally cloys.
' The tourists tell you all about these things,' he says,
6 and I am afraid of stumbling on their language
when I enumerate what is so well known.' There
was little need for the apprehension, though we see
that Shelley could be tourist enough at times, and
could misquote Lycidas and hack pieces off dungeon
doors with the worst. But the magnificence and
variety of the ancient and modern art of Rome
oppressed him ; he laboured to convey his sensations,
and we can see the effort in the presence of one small
but significant phrase — the ; as it were ' of his
descriptions.

There is nothing of the tourist, however, in his
views on art; without pretending to taste, he had
his own opinions and the courage of them. Occasion-
ally there is an excusable blunder — he thought, for
example, that the painted dome of Milan Cathedral
was carved in marble fretwork. But he disliked
Michael Angelo, and had the rare courage to say so.
And in general, his instinct for painting is less true

INTRODUCTION xxv

than for sculpture ; but he is at his best under the
open sky, in the Baths of Caracalla, or meditating on
Greek life among the ruins of Pompeii. This is not
to say that he did not appreciate painting, but he
had a standard of his own for it, as he had for music
and the drama, and in neither art was it a normal
one. Though in the case of the stage, his failure to
enjoy comedy must have been due not only to his
hatred of any injustice, but to that inability to
perceive the essential humour of incongruity which
allowed him to write ■ Single sheet, by God ! ' on the
cover of a letter to Miss Hitchener, by way of 'a
strong, though vulgar appeal to the feelings of the
postmaster".

Michael Angelo is not the only sufferer in the
letters. It is startling, after reading Peacock's state-
ment that Shelley devotedly admired Wordsworth
and Coleridge, to come upon the exclamation :
6 What a beastly and pitiful wretch that Wordsworth! '
But it is not the poet, but the political pervert,
who suffers this denunciation : the Two Addresses
to the Freeholders of Westmorland had just been
published, and Shelley's boundless indignation showed
itself with little less strength in his sonnet to
Wordsworth, and in Peter Bell the Third. Yet
although he admired Wordsworth as a poet, his
reference to the forest pool as * sixteen feet long and
ten feet wide, to venture an unrythmical paraphrase ',
shows that he was no more blind than Peacock to the
dangers of the extreme simplicity of The Thorn.

xxvi INTRODUCTION

Finally, these letters yield much information to the
student of Shelley's poetry. Even among the most
subjective English poets it may be doubted whether
there are any, save Wordsworth, whose verse so
habitually reflects their daily life — of which letters
are the record. And both the manner and the matter
of Shelley's poetry find representation here. For the
former, there are no better instances than two passages
in the letter of March 23, 1819— the period of the
second act of the Prometheus. Speaking of the arch
of Constantine, he describes the supporters of the
keystones : ' two winged figures of Victory, whose hair
floats on the wind of their own speed': and later
4 their lips are parted : a delicate mode of indicating
the fervour of their desire to arrive at the destined
resting-place, and to express the eager respiration of
their speed '. The three main ideas of these sentences
all find a place within ^ve lines of the Prometheus
(II. iv. 135-9) :

Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before.
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright

locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair.

It is a fine example of the truth of Browning's
admirable remark, that in Shelley's letters 'the
musician speaks on the note he sings with ; there is
no change in the scale, as he diminishes the volume
into familiar intercourse ' : and that ' we find even

INTRODUCTION xxvii

his carnal speech to agree faithfully, at faintest as
at strongest, with the tone and rhythm of his most
oracular utterances \

And for an instance of a sketch attempted before
the subject is finally chosen to grace a poem, there
is the picture of the forest pool given with so much
detail in the ninth letter, with its water 'as transparent
as the air, so that the stones and sand at the bottom
seem, as it were, trembling in the light of noonday \
Surely this pool must have been in the mind of
Shelley — who had as keen a zest for the brilliance of
unbroken light as Milton had for the play of light
and shade — when he wrote the lines in the Prometheus
(IV. 503) :

I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound,

and surely there is no doubt that just as the paper
boats which Shelley and Peacock launched, and the
wherries in which they skimmed the Thames, sail for
ever as magic barques on the rivers of Alastor and
Ahrimanes, so the memory of this pool which the
poet loved lives here for a brief moment on Panthea's
lips.

H. F. B. BRETT-SMITH.

Oxford,

September, 1909.

MEMOIRS OF PERCY BYSSHE
SHELLEY

* Rousseau, ne recevant aucun auteur, remercie Madame

de ses bontes, et la prie de ne plus venir chez hnV

Rousseau had a great aversion to visitors of all
classes, but especially to literary visitors, feeling sure
that they would print something about him. A lady
who had long persisted in calling on him, one day
published a brochure, and sent him a copy. He re-
joiced in the opportunity which brought her under
his rule of exclusion, and terminated their intercourse
by the above billet-doux.

Rousseau's rule bids fair to become general with all
who wish to keep in the secretum iter et fallentis semita
vitce, and not to become materials for general gossip.
For not only is a departed author of any note con-
sidered a fair subject to be dissected at the tea-table
of the reading public, but all his friends and con-
nexions, however quiet and retiring and unobtrusive
may have been the general tenor of their lives, must
be served up with him. It is the old village scandal
on a larger scale ; and as in these days of universal
locomotion people know nothing of their neighbours,
they prefer tittle-tattle about notorieties to the retail-
ing of whispers about the Jenkinses and Tomkinses of
the vicinity.

This appetite for gossip about notorieties being once
created in the ' reading public *, there will be always
found persons to minister to it ; and among the
volunteers of this service, those who are best informed
and who most valued the departed will probably not

2 MEMOIRS OF

be the foremost. Then come biographies abounding
with errors ; and then, as matter of defence perhaps,
comes on the part of friends a tardy and more
authentic narrative. This is at best, as Mr. Hogg
describes it, a J difficult and delicate task . But it is
always a matter of choice and discretion. No man
is bound to write the life of another. No man who
does so is bound to tell the public all he knows. On
the contrary, he is bound to keep to himself whatever
may injure the interests or hurt the feelings of the
living, especially when the latter have in no way in-
jured or calumniated the dead, and are not necessarily
brought before the tribunal of public opinion in the
character of either plaintiff's or defendants. Neither
if there be in the life of the subject of the biography
any event which he himself would willingly have
blotted from the tablet of his own memory, can it
possibly be the duty of a survivor to drag it into day-
light. If such an event be the cardinal point of a
life ; if to conceal it or to misrepresent it would be to
render the whole narrative incomplete, incoherent,
unsatisfactory alike to the honour of the dead and the
feelings of the living ; then, as there is no moral com-
pulsion to speak of the matter at all, it is better to
let the whole story slumber in silence.

Having lived some years in very familiar intimacy
with the subject of these memoirs ; having had as
good opportunities as any, and better than most
persons now living, to observe and appreciate his great
genius, extensive acquirements, cordial friendships,
disinterested devotion to the well-being of the few
with whom he lived in domestic intercourse, and
ardent endeavours by private charity and public ad-
vocacy to ameliorate the condition of the many who
pass their days in unremunerating toil ; having been
named his executor conjointly with Lord Byron,

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 3

whose death, occurring before that of Shelley's father,
when the son's will came into effect, left me alone in
that capacity; having lived after his death in the same
cordial intimacy with his widow, her family, and one
or two at least of his surviving friends, I have been con-
sidered to have some peculiar advantages for writing
his life, and have often been requested to do so ; but
for the reasons above given I have always refused.
Wordsworth says to the Cuckoo : —

O blithe new-comer ! I have heard,

I hear thee, and rejoice.
O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice ?

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring !

Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery.1

Shelley was fond of repeating these verses, and
perhaps they were not forgotten in his poem ■ To a
Skylark':-

Hail to thee, blithe spirit !

Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart,
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight :
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight,
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Now, I could have wished that, like Wordsworth's
Cuckoo, he had been allowed to remain a voice and

1 Stanzas 1 and 4- of the earlier (1804) poem * To the Cuckoo '.

B 2

4 MEMOIRS OF

a mystery : that, like his own Skylark, he had been
left unseen in his congenial region,

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth/

and that he had been only heard in the splendour of
his song. But since it is not to be so, since so much
has been, and so much more will probably be, written
about him, the motives which deterred me from
originating a substantive work on the subject, do not
restrict me from commenting on what has been pub-
lished by others, and from correcting errors, if such
should appear to me to occur, in the narratives which
I may pass under review.

I have placed the works at the head of this article
in the order in which they were published. I have
no acquaintance with Mr. Middleton. Mr. Trelawny
and Mr. Hogg I may call my friends.

Mr. Middleton's work is chiefly a compilation from
previous publications, with some very little original
matter, curiously obtained.

Mr. Trelawny's work relates only to the later days
of Mr. Shelley's life in Italy.

Mr. Hogg's work is the result of his own personal
knowledge, and of some inedited letters and other
documents, either addressed to himself or placed at
his disposal by Sir Percy Shelley and his lady. It is
to consist of four volumes, of which the two just pub-
lished bring down the narrative to the period imme-
diately preceding Shelley's separation from his first
wife. At that point I shall terminate this first part
of my proposed review.

I shall not anticipate opinions, but shall go over
all that is important in the story as briefly as I can,

1 Milton, Conrns, 11. 5, 6.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 5

interspersing such observations as may suggest them-
selves in its progress.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at his father's seat,
Field Place, in Sussex, on the 4th of August 1792
His grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, was then living,
and his father, Timothy Shelley, Esquire, was then
or subsequently a Member of Parliament. The family
was of great antiquity ; but Percy conferred more
honour on it than he derived from it.

He had four sisters and a brother, the youngest of
the family, and the days of his childhood appear to
have passed affectionately in his domestic society.

To the first ten years of his life we have no direct
testimony but that of his sister Hellen, in a series of
letters to Lady Shelley, published in the beginning
of Mr. Hogg's work. In the first of these she says : —

A child who at six years old was sent daily to learn
Latin at a clergyman's house, and as soon as it was o
expedient removed to Dr. Greenland's, from thence to
Eton, and subsequently to college, could scarcely have
been the uneducated son that some writers would en-
deavour to persuade those who read their books to
believe he ought to have been, if his parents despised
education.1

Miss Hellen gives an illustration of Shelley's boyish
traits of imagination : —

On one occasion he gave the most minute details of
a visit he had paid to some ladies with whom he was
acquainted at our village. He described their recep-
tion of him, their occupations, and the wandering in
their pretty garden, where there was a well-remembered
filbert- walk and an undulating turf-bank, the delight of
our morning visit. There must have been something
peculiar in this little event ; for I have often heard it

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 6.

6 MEMOIRS OF

mentioned as a singular fact, and it was ascertained
almost immediately, that the boy had never been to
the house. It was not considered as a falsehood to be
punished ; but I imagine his conduct altogether must
have been so little understood and unlike that of the
generality of children, that these tales were left
unnoticed.1

Mr. Hogg says at a later date : —

He was altogether incapable of rendering an account
of any transaction whatsoever, according to the strict
and precise truth, and the bare naked realities of
actual life ; not through an addiction to falsehood,
which he cordially detested, but because he was the
creature, the unsuspecting and unresisting victim, of
his irresistible imagination.

Had he written to ten different individuals the
history of some proceeding in which he was himself
a party and an eye-witness, each of his ten reports
would have varied from the rest in essential and impor-
tant circumstances. The relation given on the morrow
would be unlike that of the day, as the latter would
contradict the tale of yesterday.1

Several instances will be given of the habit, thus
early developed in Shelley, of narrating, as real, events
which had never occurred ; and his friends and rela-
tions have thought it necessary to give prominence to
this habit as a characteristic of his strong imagina-
tiveness predominating over reality. Coleridge has
written much and learnedly on this subject of ideas
with the force of sensations, of which he found many
examples in himself.

At the age of ten, Shelley was sent to Si on House
Academy, near Brentford. 'Our master,'' says his
schoolfellow, Captain Medwin, 'a Scotch Doctor of

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 13.

2 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 68. ■

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 7

Law, and a divine, was a choleric man, of a sanguin-
ary complexion, in a green old age, not wanting in
good qualities, but very capricious in his temper,
which, good or bad, was influenced by the daily
occurrences of a domestic life not the most harmoni-
ous, and of which his face was the barometer and his
hand the index.' This worthy was in the habit of
cracking unbecoming jokes, at which most of the boys
laughed ; but Shelley, who could not endure this sort
of pleasantry, received them with signs of aversion.
A day or two after one of these exhibitions, when
Shelley's manifestation of dislike to the matter
had attracted the preceptor's notice, Shelley had a
theme set him for two Latin lines on the subject of
Tempestas.

He came to me (says Medwin) to assist him in the
task. I had a cribbing book, of which I made great
use, Ovid's Tristibus. I knew that the only work of
Ovid with which the Doctor was acquainted was the
Metamorphoses, and by what I thought good luck, I
happened to stumble on two lines exactly applicable
to the purpose. The hexameter I forget, but the
pentameter ran thus :

Jam, jam tacturos sidera celsa putes.1

So far the story is not very classically told. The
title of the book should have been given as Tristia,
or De Tristibus ; and the reading is tacturas, not

1 Peacock has altered and contracted this quotation, to the
benefit, certainly, of Medwin's grammar. The second and third
sentences should run :

' I had got a cribbing book, and of which I made great use —
Ovid's Tristibus. I knew that the only work of Ovid with which
the Doctor was acquainted was the Metamorphoses, the only
one, indeed, read in that and other seminaries of learning, and
by what I thought great good luck, happened to stumble on two
lines exactly applicable to the purpose.'

Medwin, Life of Shelley, vol. ii, p. 24.

8 MEMOIRS OF

tacturos ; surnma, not celsa : the latter term is inap-
plicable to the stars. The distich is this :

Me miserum ! quanti montes volvuntur aquarum !
Jam, jam tacturas sidera summa putes.1

Something was probably substituted for Me
miserum ! But be this as it may, Shelley was grievously
beaten for what the schoolmaster thought bad Latin.2
The Doctor's judgement was of a piece with that
of the Edinburgh Reviewers, when taking a line of
Pindar, which Payne Knight had borrowed in a
Greek translation of a passage in Gray's Bard, to have
been Payne Knight's own, they pronounced it to be
nonsense.3

The name of the Brentford Doctor according to
Miss Hellen Shelley was Greenland, and according to
Mr. Hogg it was Greenlaw. Captain Medwin does
not mention the name, but says, 'So much did we
mutually hate Sion House, that we never alluded to
it in after-life.' Mr. Hogg says, ' In walking with
Shelley to Bishopsgate4 from London, he pointed
out to me more than once a gloomy brick house as
being this school. He spoke of the master, Doctor

1 Tristium Lib. i. Eleg. ii. 19, 20.

2 Not for the erroneous use of celsa, but for the true Ovidian
Latin, which the Doctor held to be bad. [T. L. P. J

3 etpfici 5' t TC77CWV dditpva arovaxais. This line, which a synod
of North British critics has peremptorily pronounced to be
nonsense, is taken from the tenth Nemean of Pindar, v. 141 ;
and until they passed sentence upon it in No. xiv. of the Edinburgh
Review, was universally thought to express with peculiar force
and delicacy the mixture of indignation and tenderness so appro-
priate to the grief of the hero of the modern as well as of the
ancient ode. — Principles of Taste, part ii. c. 2.

I imagine there are many verses in the best classical poets
which, if presented as original, would not pass muster with either
teachers or critics. [T. L. P. ]

4 More properly Bishopgate, without the s : the entrance to
Windsor Park from Englefield Green. Shelley had a furnished
house, in 1815-16,very near to this park gate. [T. L. P.]

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 9

Greenlaw, not without respect, saying, " he was a
hard-headed Scotchman, and a man of rather liberal
opinions." ' l Of this period of his life he never gave
me an account, nor have I heard or read any details
which appeared to bear the impress of truth. Between
these two accounts the Doctor and his character seem
reduced to a myth. I myself know nothing of the
matter. I do not remember Shelley ever mentioning
the Doctor to me. But we shall find as we proceed,
that whenever there are two evidences to one trans-
action, many of the recorded events of Shelley's life
will resolve themselves into the same mythical
character.

At the best, Sion House Academy must have been
a bad beginning of scholastic education for a sensitive
and imaginative boy.

After leaving this academy, he was sent, in his
fifteenth year, to Eton. The head master was Doctor
Keate, a less mythical personage than the Brentford
Orbilius, but a variety of the same genus. Mr. Hogg
says : —

Dr. Keate was a short, short-necked, short-legged,
man — thick-set, powerful, and very active. His coun-
tenance resembled that of a bull-dog ; the expression
was not less sweet and bewitching : his eyes, his nose,
and especially his mouth, were exactly like that comely
and engaging animal, and so were his short crooked
legs. It was said in the school that old Keate could
pin and hold a bull with his teeth. His iron sway was
the more unpleasant and shocking after the long mild
Saturnian reign of Dr. Goodall, whose temper, character,
and conduct corresponded precisely with his name, and
under whom Keate had been master of the lower

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 22. In Fraser's Magazine the
quotation is wrongly made to include the next sentence.

10 MEMOIRS OF

school. Discipline, wholesome and necessary in modera-
tion, was carried by him to an excess. It is reported
that on one morning he flogged eighty boys. Although
he was rigid, coarse, and despotical, some affirm that
on the whole he was not unjust, nor altogether devoid
of kindness. His behaviour was accounted vulgar and
ungentlemanlike, and therefore he was particularly
odious to the gentlemen of the school, especially to the
refined and aristocratical Shelley.1

But Shelley suffered even more from his school-
fellows than he did from his master. It had been so
at Brentford, and it was still more so at Eton, from
the more organized system of fagging, to which no
ill-usage would induce him to submit. But among
his equals in age he had several attached friends, and
one of these, in a letter dated February 27th, 1857,
gives the following reminiscences of their Eton days: —
(Hogg i. 43.)

My dear Madam, — Your letter has taken me back to
the sunny time of boyhood, 'when thought is speech
and speech is truth/ when I was the friend and com-
panion of Shelley at Eton. What brought us together
in that small world was, I suppose, kindred feelings,
and the predominance of fancy and imagination. Many
a long and happy walk have I had with him in the
beautiful neighbourhood of dear old Eton. We used
to wander for hours about Clewer, Frogmore, the park
at Windsor, the Terrace ; and I was a delighted and
willing listener to his marvellous stories of fairyland,
and apparitions, and spirits, and haunted ground ; and
his speculations were then (for his mind wras far more
developed than mine) of the world beyond the grave.
Another of his favourite rambles was Stoke Park, and
the picturesque churchyard where Gray is said to
have written his ( Elegy ', of which he was very fond.

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 45.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 11

I was myself far too young to form any estimate of
character, but I loved Shelley for his kindliness and
affectionate ways. He was not made to endure the
rough and boisterous pastime at Eton, and his shy and
gentle nature was glad to escape far away, to muse
over strange fancies, for his mind was reflective and
teeming with deep thought. His lessons were child's
play to him, and his power of Latin versification
marvellous. I think I remember some long work he
had even then commenced, but I never saw it. His
love of nature was intense, and the sparkling poetry of
his mind shone out of his speaking eye when he was
dwelling on anything good or great. He certainly was
not happy at Eton, for his was a disposition that needed
especial personal superintendence to watch and cherish
and direct all his noble aspirations and the remarkable
tenderness of his heart. He had great moral courage,
and feared nothing but what was base, and false, and
low. He never joined in the usual sports of the boys,
and what is remarkable, never went out in a boat on
the river. What I have here set down will be of little
use to you, but will please you as a sincere and truthful
and humble tribute to one whose good name was sadly
whispered away. Shelley said to me when leaving
Oxford under a cloud, ( Halliday, I am come to say
good-bye to you, if you are not afraid to be seen with
me ! ' I saw him once again in the autumn of 1 8 1 4,1
when he was glad to introduce me to his wife. I think
he said he was just come from Ireland. You have done
quite right in applying to me direct, and I am only
sorry that I have no anecdotes or letters of that period
to furnish.

I am, yours truly,

Walter S. Halliday.

This is the only direct testimony to Shelley's Eton
life from one who knew him there. It contains two

1 This letter, as quoted by Hogg, contains the words * in
London,' at this point.

12 MEMOIRS OF

instances of how little value can be attached to any
other than such direct testimony. That at that time
he never went out in a boat on the river I believe to
be strictly true: nevertheless Captain Medwin says: —
' He told me the greatest delight he experienced at
Eton was from boating. . . . He never lost the fond-
ness with which he regarded the Thames, no new
acquaintance when he went to Eton, for at Brent-
ford we had more than once played the truant, and
rowed to Kew, and once to Richmond.' l But these
truant excursions were exceptional. His affection
for boating began at a much later period, as I
shall have occasion to notice. The second instance
is : — ■ I think he said he was just come from Ireland.'
In the autumn of 1814 it was not from Ireland, but
from the Continent that he had just returned.

Captain Medwin's Life of Shelley abounds with
inaccuracies ; not intentional misrepresentations, but
misapprehensions and errors of memory. Several of
these occur in reference to Shelley's boyish passion for
his cousin Harriet Grove. This, like" Lord Byron's
early love for Miss Chaworth, came to nothing.
But most boys of any feeling and imagination have
some such passion, and, as in these instances, it
usually comes to nothing. Much more has been made
of both these affairs than they are worth. It is
probable that few of Johnson's poets passed through
their boyhood without a similar attachment, but
if it came at all under the notice of our literary
Hercules, he did not think it worth recording.
I shall notice this love-affair in its proper place, but
chiefly for the sake of separating from it one or
two matters which have been erroneously assigned
to it.

Shelley often spoke to me of Eton, and of the per-

1 Medwin, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 52.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 13

secutions he had endured from the elder boys, with
feelings of abhorrence which I never heard him express
in an equal degree in relation to any other subject,
except when he spoke of Lord Chancellor Eldon. He
told me that he had been provoked into striking
a penknife through the hand of one of his young
tyrants, and pinning it to the desk, and that this was
the cause of his leaving Eton prematurely : but his
imagination often presented past events to him as
they might have been, not as they were. Such a cir-
cumstance must have been remembered by others if
it had actually occurred. But if the occurrence was
imaginary, it was in a memory of cordial detestation
that the imagination arose.

Mr. Hogg vindicates the system of fagging, and
thinks he was himself the better for the discipline in
after life. But Mr. Hogg is a man of imperturbable
temper and adamantine patience : and with all this
he may have fallen into good hands, for all big boys
are not ruffians. But Shelley was a subject totally
unfit for the practice in its best form, and he seems
to have experienced it in its worst.

At Eton he became intimate with Doctor Lind,
' a name well known among the professors of medical
science,' says Mrs. Shelley, who proceeds : —

1 This man/ Shelley has often said, ' is exactly what
an old man ought to be. Free, calm-spirited, full of
benevolence, and even of youthful ardour ; his eye
seemed to burn with supernatural spirit beneath his
brow, shaded by his venerable white locks ; he was
tall, vigorous, and healthy in his body, tempered, as it
had ever been, by his amiable mind. I owe to that
man far, ah ! far more than I owe to my father ; he
loved me, and I shall never forget our long talks, when !

1 Hogg has ' where \

14 MEMOIRS OF

he breathed the spirit of the kindest tolerance
and the purest wisdom. Once, when I was very ill
during the holidays, as I was recovering from a fever
which had attacked my brain, a servant overheard my
father consult about sending me to a private madhouse.
I was a favourite among all our servants, so this fellow
came and told me, as I lay sick in bed. My horror was
beyond words, and I might soon have been mad indeed
if they had proceeded in their iniquitous plan. I had
one hope. I was master of three pounds in money,
and with the servant's help I contrived to send an
express to Dr. Lind. He came, and I shall never
forget his manner on that occasion. His profession
gave him authority ; his love for me ardour. He dared
my father to execute his purpose, and his menaces had
the desired effect.' l

Mr. Hogg subjoins : —

I have heard Shelley speak of his fever, and this
scene at Field Place, more than once, in nearly the
same terms as Mrs. Shelley adopts. It appeared to
myself, and to others also, that his recollections were
those of a person not quite recovered from a fever, and
still disturbed by the horrors of the disease.

However this may have been, the idea that his
father was continually on the watch for a pretext
to lock him up, haunted him through life, and a
mysterious intimation of his father's intention to effect
such a purpose was frequently received by him, and
communicated to his friends as a demonstration of
the necessity under which he was placed of chang-
ing his residence and going abroad.

I pass over his boyish schemes for raising the devil,
of which much is said in Mr. Hogg's book. He often
spoke of them to me ; but the principal fact of which
I have any recollection was one which he treated

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 31 .

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 15

only as a subject of laughter — the upsetting into the
fire in his chamber at Eton of a frying-pan full of
diabolical ingredients, and the rousing up all the in-
mates in his dame's house in the dead of the night by
the abominable effluvia. If he had ever had any
faith in the possible success of his incantations, he
had lost it before I knew him.

We now come to the first really important event
of his life — his expulsion from Oxford.

At University College, Oxford, in October, 1810,
Mr. Hogg first became acquainted with him. In
their first conversation Shelley was exalting the
physical sciences, especially chemistry. Mr. Hogg
says : —

1 As I felt but little interest in the subject of his
conversation, I had leisure to examine, and I may add
to admire, the appearance of my very extraordinary
guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His
figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and
joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he
stooped so much that he seemed of a low stature. His
clothes were expensive, and made according to the
most approved mode of the day ; but they were
tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were
abrupt and sometimes violent, occasionally even
awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful.
His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of
the purest white and red; yet he was tanned and
freckled by exposure to the sun. . . . His features, his
whole face, and particularly his head, were in fact
unusually small ; yet the last appeared of a remarkable
bulk, for his hair was long and bushy ... he often
rubbed it up2 fiercely with his hands, or passed his
fingers through his locks unconsciously, so that it was

1 Hogg : * As I felt, in truth, but a slight interest '— &c.

2 Hogg: 'rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or passed his
fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously.'

16 MEMOIRS OF

singularly wild and rough. . . . His features were not
symmetrical (the mouth perhaps excepted) ; yet was
the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They
breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid
and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with
in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expres-
sion less beautiful than the intellectual. ... I admired
the enthusiasm of my new acquaintance, his ardour in
the cause of science, and his thirst for knowledge. But
there was one physical blemish that threatened to
neutralize all his excellence.1

This blemish was his voice.

There is a good deal in these volumes about
Shelley's discordant voice. This defect he certainly
had ; but it was chiefly observable when he spoke
under excitement. Then his voice was not only dis-
sonant, like a jarring string, but he spoke in sharp
fourths, the most unpleasing sequence of sound that
can fall on the human ear: but it was scarcely so
when he spoke calmly, and not at all so when he read ;
on the contrary, he seemed then to have his voice
under perfect command : it was good both in tune
and in tone ; it was low and soft, but clear, distinct,
and expressive. I have heard him read almost all
Shakespeare's tragedies, and some of his more poetical
comedies, and it was a pleasure to hear him read
them.

Mr. Hogg's description of Shelley's personal ap-
pearance gives a better idea of him than the portrait
prefixed to his work, which is similar to that prefixed
to the work of Mr. Trelawny, except that Mr.
Trelawny's is lithographed2 and Mr. Hogg's is en-

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 54.

2 Mr. Trelawny says — 'With reference to the likeness of
Shelley in this volume, I must add, that he never sat to a pro-
fessional artist. In 1819, at Rome, a daughter of the celebrated
Curran began a portrait of him in oil, which she never finished,

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 17

graved. These portraits do not impress themselves
on me as likenesses. They seem to me to want the
true outline of Shelley's features, and above all, to
want their true expression. There is a portrait in
the Florentine Gallery which represents him to me
much more truthfully. It is that of Antonio Leisman,
No. 155 of the Ritratti de* Pittori, in the Paris re-
publication.

The two friends had made together a careful
analysis of the doctrines of Hume. The papers were
in Shelley's custody, and from a small part of them he
made a little book, which he had printed, and which
he sent by post to such persons as he thought would
be willing to enter into a metaphysical discussion.
He sent it under an assumed name, with a note, re-
questing that if the recipient were willing to answer
the tract, the answer should be sent to a specified
address in London. He received many answers ; but
in due time the little work and its supposed authors
were denounced to the college authorities.

It was a fine spring morning, on Lady-day, in the
year 1811 (says Mr. Hogg), when I went to Shelley's
rooms. He was absent ; but before I had collected
our books he rushed in. He was terribly agitated.
I anxiously inquired what had happened.

' I am expelled/ he said, as soon as he had recovered

and left in an altogether flat and inanimate state. In 1821 or
1822, his friend Williams made a spirited water-colour drawing,
which gave a very good idea of the poet. Out of these materials
Mrs. Williams, on her return to England after the death of
Shelley, got Clint to compose a portrait, which the few who
knew Shelley in the last year of his life thought very like him.
The water-colour drawing has been lost, so that the portrait
done by Clint is the only one of any value. I have had it copied
and lithographed by Mr. Vinter, an artist distinguished both
forthe fidelity and refinement of his works, andit is nowpublished
for the first time/ [T. L. P.] [This passage occurs at the end
of Trelawny's Preface to the Recollections.]

PEACOCK C

18 MEMOIRS OF

himself a little. i I am expelled ! I was sent for
suddenly a few minutes ago ; I went to the common
room, where I found our master, and two or three of
the fellows. The master produced a copy of the little
syllabus, and asked me if I were the author of it. He
spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. I begged
to be informed for what purpose he put the question.
No answer was given ; but the master loudly and
angrily repeated, " Are you the author of this book ? "
w If I can judge from your manner," I said, " you are
resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it
is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your
evidence ; it is neither just nor lawful to interrogate
me in such a case and for such a purpose. Such
proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but
not free men in a free country." " Do you choose to
deny that this is your composition ? " ■ the master
reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.

Shelley complained much of his violent and un-
gentlemanlike deportment, saying, ( I have experienced
tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what
vulgar violence is, but I never met with such unworthy
treatment. I told him calmly but firmly that I was
determined not to answer any questions respecting the
publication on the table/

c He immediately repeated his demand ; I persisted
in my refusal. And he said furiously, " Then you are
expelled ; and I desire you will quit the college early
to-morrow morning at the latest."

1 One of the fellows took up two papers, and handed
one of them to me ; here it is.' He produced a regular
sentence of expulsion, drawn up in due form, under
the seal of the college. Shelley was full of spirit and
courage, frank and fearless ; but he was likewise shy,
unpresuming, and eminently sensitive. I have been
with him in many trying situations of his after-life, but
I never saw him so deeply shocked and so cruelly
agitated as on this occasion.

A nice sense of honour shrinks from the most distant

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 19

touch of disgrace — even from the insults of those men
whose contumely can bring no shame. He sat on the
sofa, repeating with convulsive vehemence the words,
' Expelled, expelled ! ' his head shaking with emotion,
and his whole frame quivering.1

A similar scene followed with Mr. Hogg himself,
which he very graphically describes. The same
questions, the same refusal to answer them, the same
sentence of expulsion, and a peremptory order to quit
the college early on the morrow. And accordingly,
early on the next morning, Shelley and his friend took
their departure from Oxford.

I accept Mr. Hogg's account of this transaction as
substantially correct. In Shelley's account of it to
me there were material differences ; and making all
allowance for the degree in which, as already noticed,
his imagination coloured the past, there is one matter
of fact which remains inexplicable. According to
him, his expulsion was a matter of great form and
solemnity ; there was a sort of public assembly, before
which he pleaded his own cause, in a long oration, in
the course of which he called on the illustrious spirits
who had shed glory on those walls to look down on
their degenerate successors. Now, the inexplicable
matter to which I have alluded is this : he showed
me an Oxford newspaper, containing a full report of
the proceedings, with his own oration at great length.
I suppose the pages of that diurnal were not death-
less,2 and that it would now be vain to search for it ;

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 278.

2 Registered to fame eternal
In deathless pages of diurnal.

Hudibras. [T. L. P.]
[This is misquoted from part I, canto III, 11. 19-20 :
And register'd by fame eternal,
In deathless pages of diurnal.]
c 2

20 MEMOIRS OF

but that he had it, and showed it to me, is absolutely
certain. His oration may have been, as some of
Cicero's published orations were, a speech in the
potential mood ; one which might, could, should, or
would, have been spoken : but how in that case it got
into the Oxford newspaper passes conjecture.1

His expulsion from Oxford brought to a summary
conclusion his boyish passion for Miss Harriet Grove.
She would have no more to say to him ; but I cannot
see from his own letters, and those of Miss Hellen
Shelley, that there had ever been much love on her
side ; neither can I find any reason to believe that it
continued long on his. Mr. Middleton follows Captain
Med win, who was determined that on Shelley's part it
should be an enduring passion, and pressed into its
service as testimonies some matters which had nothing
to do with it. He 2 says Queen Mab was dedicated to
Harriet Grove, whereas it was certainly dedicated to
Harriet Shelley ; he even prints the dedication with
the title, 'To Harriet G.,' whereas in the original
the name of Harriet is only followed by asterisks;
and of another little poem, he says, ■ That Shelley's
disappointment in love affected him acutely, may be
seen by some lines inscribed erroneously, " On F. G.,"
instead of " H. G.", and doubtless of a much earlier
date than assigned by Mrs. Shelley to the frag-
ment.' 3 Now, I know the circumstances to which the
fragment refers. The initials of the lady's name were
F. G., and the date assigned to the fragment, 1817,
was strictly correct. The intrinsic evidence of both
poems will show their utter inapplicability to Miss
Harriet Grove.

1 All attempts to discover this report have failed.

3 Medwin, not Middleton.

8 Medwin, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 164. In her first edition
of the Poetical Works, 1839, Mrs, Shelley had printed these lines
among the poems of 1817.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 21

First let us see what Shelley himself says of her, in
letters to Mr. Hogg : —

Dec. 23, 1810. — Her disposition was in all probability
divested of the enthusiasm by which mine is charac-
terized. . . . My sister attempted sometimes to plead
my cause, but unsuccessfully. She said : ' Even sup-
posing I take your representation of your brother's
qualities and sentiments, which, as you coincide in
and admire, I may fairly imagine to be exaggerated,
although you ' may not be aware of the exaggeration,
what right have I *, admitting that he is so superior,
to enter into an intimacy which must end in delusive
disappointment when he finds how really inferior I am
to the being ' his heated imagination has pictured ? '

Dec. 26, 1810. — Circumstances have operated in such
a manner that the attainment of the object of my
heart was impossible, whether on account of extraneous
influences, or from a feeling which possessed her mind,
which told her not 2 to deceive another, not to give
him the possibility of disappointment.

Jan. 3, 1811. — She is no longer mine. She abhors
me as a sceptic, as what she was before.3

Jan. 11, 1811. — She is gone. She is lost to me for
ever. She is married — married to a clod of earth.
She will become as insensible herself: all those fine
capabilities will moulder.

Next let us see what Miss Hellen Shelley says of the
matter : —

His disappointment in losing the lady of his love
had a great effect upon him. ... It was not put an
end to by mutual consent ; but both parties were very
young, and her father did not think the marriage would

1 Hogg has you and / in italics, and ■ which ' after * being *.
The passage is quoted from vol. i, p. 146.

2 Hogg prints not in italics : vol. i, p. 149.

3 * She is no longer mine ! She abhors me as a sceptic, as what
she was before ! ' Hogg, vol. i, p. 156.

22 MEMOIRS OF

be for his daughter's happiness. He, however, with
truly honourable feeling, would not have persisted in
his objection if his daughter had considered herself
bound by a promise to my brother ; but this was not
the case, and time healed the wound by means of
another Harriet, whose name and similar complexion
perhaps attracted the attention of my brother.1

And lastly, let us see what the young lady's brother
(C. H. G.) says of it :—

After our visit at Field Place (in the year 1810), we
went to my brother's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
where Bysshe, his mother, and Elizabeth joined us,
and a very happy month we spent. Bysshe was full
of life and spirits, and very well pleased with his
successful devotion to my sister. In the course of that
summer, to the best of my recollection, after we had
retired into Wiltshire, a continual correspondence was
going on, as I believe, between Bysshe and my sister
Harriet.2 But she became uneasy at the tone of his
letters on speculative subjects, at first consulting my
mother, and subsequently my father also, on the
subject. This led at last, though I cannot exactly tell
how, to the dissolution of an engagement between
Bysshe and my sister which had previously been per-
mitted both by his father and mine.

We have here, I think, as unimpassioned a damsel
as may be met in a summer's day. And now let us
see the poems.

First, the dedication of Queen Mab : bearing in
mind that the poem was begun in 1812, and finished
in 1813, and that, to say nothing of the unsuitability
of the offering to her who two years before had

1 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. i, p. 18.

2 In Charles Grove's letter, printed by Hogg (vol. ii, p. 551),
the latter part of this sentence runs : * a continual corre-
spondence was going on, as, I believe, there had been before,
between Bysshe and my sister Harriet/

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 23

abhorred him as a sceptic and married a clod, she had
never done or said any one thing that would justify
her love being described as that which had warded off
from him the scorn of the world : quite the contrary :
as far as in her lay, she had embittered it to the
utmost.

To Harriet

Whose is the love that, gleaming thro' the world,
Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?
Whose is the warm and partial praise,
Virtue's most sweet reward?

Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul
Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow ?
Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,
And loved mankind the more ?

Harriet ! on thine : — thou wert my purer mind,
Thou wert the inspiration of my song ;
Thine are these early wilding flowers,
Though garlanded by me.

Then press into thy breast this pledge of love,
And know, though time may change and years

may roll
Each flowret gathered in my heart
It consecrates to thine.

Next the verses on F. G. : —

Her voice did quiver as we parted,
Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From which it came, and I departed,
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery — oh, Misery !
This world is all too wide for thee !

Can anything be more preposterously inappropriate
to his parting with Harriet Grove ? These verses
relate to a far more interesting person and a deeply

24 MEMOIRS OF

tragic event ; but they belong, as I have said, to the
year 1817, a later period than this article embraces.1

From Oxford the two friends proceeded to London,
where they took a joint lodging, in which, after a
time, Shelley was left alone, living uncomfortably on
precarious resources. It was here that the second
Harriet consoled him for the loss of the first, who,
I feel thoroughly convinced, never more troubled his
repose.

To the circumstances of Shelley's first marriage
I find no evidence but in my own recollection of
what he told me respecting it. He often spoke to
me of it ; and with all allowance for the degree in
which his imagination coloured events, I see no
improbability in the narration.

Harriet Westbrook, he said, was a schoolfellow of
one of his sisters ; and when, after his expulsion from
Oxford, he was in London, without money, his father
having refused him all assistance, this sister had
requested her fair schoolfellow to be the medium of
conveying to him such small sums as she and her
sisters could afford to send, and other little presents
which they thought would be acceptable. Under
these circumstances the ministry of the young and
beautiful girl presented itself like that of a guardian
angel, and there was a charm about their intercourse
which he readily persuaded himself could not be ex-
hausted in the duration of life. The result was that
in August, 1811, they eloped to Scotland, and were
married in Edinburgh.2 Their journey had absorbed
their stock of money. They took a lodging, and
Shelley immediately told the landlord who they were,

1 Shelley commemorated in these lines his last parting from
Fanny Godwin, who committed suicide in the October of 1816.

2 Not at Gretna Green, as stated by Captain Medwin.
[T. L. P.]

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 25

what they had come for, and the exhaustion of their
resources, and asked him if he would take them in,
and advance them money to get married and to carry
them on till they could get a remittance. This the
man agreed to do, on condition that Shelley would
treat him and his friends to a supper in honour of the
occasion. It was arranged accordingly ; but the man
was more obtrusive and officious than Shelley was
disposed to tolerate. The marriage was concluded,
and in the evening Shelley and his bride were alone
together, when the man tapped at their door. Shelley
opened it, and the landlord said to him — ■ It is
customary here at weddings for the guests to come
in, in the middle of the night, and wash the bride
with whisky." ' I immediately,'' said Shelley, 'caught
up my brace of pistols, and pointing them both at
him, said to him, — I have had enough of your im-
pertinence ; if you give me any more of it I will
blow your brains out ; on which he ran or rather
tumbled down stairs, and I bolted the doors.'

The custom of washing the bride with whisky is
more likely to have been so made known to him than
to have been imagined by him.

Leaving Edinburgh, the young couple led for some
time a wandering life. At the lakes they were kindly
received by the Duke of Norfolk, and by others through
his influence. They then went to Ireland, landed at
Cork, visited the lakes of Killarney, and stayed some
time in Dublin, where Shelley became a warm repealer
and emancipator. They then went to the Isle of
Man, then to Nant Gwillt l in Radnorshire, then to

1 Nant Gwillt, the Wild Brook, flows into the Elan (a tribu-
tary of the Wye), about five miles above Rhayader. Above the
confluence, each stream runs in a rocky channel through a
deep narrow valley. In each of these valleys is or was a spacious
mansion, named from the respective streams. Cwm Elan House
was the seat of Mr. Grove, whom Shelley had visited there

26 MEMOIRS OF

Lymouth near Barnstaple,1 then came for a short time
to London ; then went to reside in a furnished house
belonging to Mr. Maddocks at Tanyrallt,2 near
Tremadoc, in Caernarvonshire. Their residence at
this place was made chiefly remarkable by an imag-
inary attack on his life, which was followed by their
immediately leaving Wales.

Mr. Hogg inserts several letters relative to this
romance of a night : the following extract from one
of Harriet Shelley's, dated from Dublin, March 12th,
1813, will give a sufficient idea of it : —

Mr. Shelley promised you a recital of the horrible
events that caused us to leave Wales. I have under-
taken the task, as I wish to spare him, in the present
nervous state of his health, everything that can recall
to his mind the horrors of that night, which I will
relate.

On the night of the 26th February we retired to
bed between ten and eleven o'clock. We had been in

bed about half an hour, when Mr. S heard a noise

proceeding from one of the parlours. He immediately
went down stairs with two pistols which he had loaded
that night, expecting to have occasion for them. He
went into the billiard-room, when he heard footsteps
retreating ; he followed into another little room, which
was called an office. He there saw a man in the act of
quitting the room through a glass window which opened
into the shrubbery ; the man fired at Mr. S , which

before his marriage in 1811. Nant Gwillt House, when Shelley
lived in it in 1812, was inhabited by a farmer, who let some of
the best rooms in lodgings. At a subsequent period I stayed a
day in Rhayader, for the sake of seeing this spot. It is a scene
of singular beauty. [T. L. P. ]

1 He had introduced himself by letter to Mr. Godwin, and
they carried on a correspondence some time before they met.
Mr. Godwin, after many pressing invitations, went to Lymouth
on an intended visit, but when he arrived the birds had flown.
[T. L. P.]

3 Tan-yr-allt— Under the precipice. [T. L. P.]

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 27

he avoided. Bysshe then fired, but it flashed in the
pan. The man then knocked Bysshe down, and they
struggled on the ground. Bysshe then fired his second
pistol, which he thought wounded him in the shoulder,
as he uttered a shriek and got up, when he said these
words — ' By God, I will be revenged. I will murder
your wife, and will ravish your sister ! By God, I will
be revenged ! ' He then fled, as we hoped for the
night. Our servants were not gone to bed, but were
just going when this horrible affair happened. This
was about eleven o'clock. We all assembled in the

parlour, where we remained for two hours. Mr. S

then advised us to retire, thinking it was impossible he
would make a second attack. We left Bysshe and our
man-servant — who had only arrived that day, and who
knew nothing of the house — to sit up. I had been in
bed three hours when I heard a pistol go off. I im-
mediately ran down stairs, when I perceived that
Bysshe's flannel gown had been shot through, and the
window-curtain. Bysshe had sent Daniel to see what
hour it was, when he heard a noise at the window ; he
went there, and a man thrust his arm though the glass
and fired at him. Thank heaven ! the ball went through

his gown and he remained unhurt. Mr. S happened

to stand sideways ; had he stood fronting, the ball must
have killed him. Bysshe fired his pistol, but it would
not go off; he then aimed a blow at him with an old
sword which we found in the house. The assassin
attempted to get the sword from him, and just as he
was pulling it away Dan rushed into the room, when
he made his escape. This was at four in the morning. It
had been a most dreadful night ; the wind was as loud as
thunder, and the rain descended in torrents. Nothing
has been heard of him, and we have every reason to
believe it was no stranger, as there is a man .... who,
the next morning,1 went and told the shopkeepers that

1 Hogg prints : * as there is a man of the name of Luson, who,
the next morning that it happened, went ' — &c. Life of Shelley,
vol. ii, pp. 208-10. The name was really Leeson.

28 MEMOIRS OF

it was a tale of Mr. Shelley's to impose upon them,
that he might leave the country without paying his bills.
This they believed, and none of them attempted to do
anything towards his discovery. We left Tanyrallt on
Sunday.

Mr. Hogg subjoins : —

Persons acquainted with the localities and with the
circumstances, and who had carefully investigated the
matter, were unanimous in the opinion that no such
attack was ever made.

I may state more particularly the result of the
investigation to which Mr. Hogg alludes. I was in
North Wales in the summer of 1813, and heard the
matter much talked of. Persons who had examined
the premises on the following morning had found that
the grass of the lawn appeared to have been much
trampled and rolled on, but there were no footmarks
on the wet ground, except between the beaten spot
and the window ; and the impression of the ball on
the wainscot showed that the pistol had been fired
towards the window, and not from it. This appeared
conclusive as to the whole series of operations having
taken place from within. The mental phenomena
in which this sort of semi-delusion originated will
be better illustrated by one which occurred at a
later period, and which, though less tragical in its
appearances, was more circumstantial in its develop-
ment, and more perseveringly adhered to. It will
not come within the scope of this article.

I saw Shelley for the first time in 1812, just
before he went to Tanyrallt. I saw him again once
or twice before I went to North Wales in 1813.
On my return he was residing at Bracknell, and
invited me to visit him there. This I did, and
found him with his wife Harriet, her sister Eliza,
and his newly-born daughter Ian the.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 29

Mr. Hogg says : —

This accession to his family did not appear to afford
him any gratification, or to create an interest. He never
spoke of this child to me, and to this hour I never set
eyes on her.1

Mr. Hogg is mistaken about Shelley's feelings as
to his first child. He was extremely fond of it, and
would walk up and down a room with it in his arms
for a long time together, singing to it a monotonous
melody of his own making, which ran on the
repetition of a word of his own making. His song
was i Yahmani, Y&hmani, Yahmani, Ydhmani.'2 It
did not please me, but, what was more important,
it pleased the child, and lulled it when it was
fretful. Shelley was extremely fond of his children.
He was pre-eminently an affectionate father. But to
this first-born there were accompaniments which did
not please him. The child had a wet-nurse whom
he did not like, and was much looked after by his
wife's sister, whom he intensely disliked. I have
often thought that if Harriet had nursed her own
child, and if this sister had not lived with them,
the link of their married love would not have been
so readily broken. But of this hereafter, when we
come to speak of the separation.

At Bracknell, Shelley was surrounded by a
numerous society, all in a great measure of his own
opinions in relation to religion and politics, and
the larger portion of them in relation to vegetable

1 Hogg wrote * his child ', not * this child ' {Life of Shelley,
vol. ii, p. 462).

2 The tune was the uniform repetition of three notes, not very
true in their intervals. The nearest resemblance to it will be
found in the second, third, and fourth of a minor key : BCD,
for example, on the key of A natural : a crotchet and two
quavers. [T. L. P.]

30 MEMOIRS OF

diet. But they wore their rue with a difference.
Every one of them adopting some of the articles of
the faith of their general church, had each neverthe-
less some predominant crotchet of his or her own,
which left a number of open questions for earnest
and not always temperate discussion. I was some-
times irreverent enough to laugh at the fervour with
which opinions utterly unconducive to any practical
result were battled for as matters of the highest
importance to the well-being of mankind ; Harriet
Shelley was always ready to laugh with me, and
we thereby both lost caste with some of the more
hot-headed of the party. Mr. Hogg was not there
during my visit, but he knew the whole of the persons
there assembled, and has given some account of them
under their initials, which for all public purposes are
as well as their names.

The person among them best worth remembering
was the gentleman whom Mr. Hogg calls J. F. N.,1
of whom he relates some anecdotes.

I will add one or two from my own experience.
He was an estimable man and an agreeable com-
panion, and he was not the less amusing that he
was the absolute impersonation of a single theory,
or rather of two single theories rolled into one.
He held that all diseases and all aberrations, moral
and physical, had their origin in the use of animal
food and of fermented and spirituous liquors; that
the universal adoption of a diet of roots, fruits, and
distilled2 water, would restore the golden age of
universal health, purity, and peace ; that this most
ancient and sublime morality was mystically incul-

1 Newton, whom Shelley met first in November, 1812.

3 He held that water in its natural state was full of noxious
impurities, which were only to be got rid of by distillation.
[T. L. P.]

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 31

cated in the most ancient Zodiac, which was that
of Dendera; that this Zodiac was divided into two
hemispheres, the upper hemisphere being the realm
of Oromazes or the principle of good, the lower that
of Ahrimanes or the principle of evil ; that each of
these hemispheres was again divided into two com-
partments, and that the four lines of division
radiating from the centre were the prototype of
the Christian cross. The two compartments of
Oromazes were those of Uranus or Brahma the
Creator, and of Saturn or Veishnu the Preserver.
The two compartments of Ahrimanes were those of
Jupiter or Seva the Destroyer, and of Apollo or
Krishna the Restorer. The great moral doctrine
was thus symbolized in the Zodiacal signs : — In the
first compartment, Taurus the Bull, having in the
ancient Zodiac a torch in his mouth, was the type
of eternal light. Cancer the Crab was the type of
celestial matter, sleeping under the all-covering
water, on which Brahma floated in a lotus-flower
for millions of ages. From the union, typified by
Gemini, of light and celestial matter, issued in the
second compartment Leo, Primogenial Love, mounted
on the back of a Lion, who produced the pure and
perfect nature of things in Virgo, and Libra the
Balance denoted the coincidence of the ecliptic with
the equator, and the equality of man's happy
existence. In the third compartment, the first
entrance of evil into the system was typified by
the change of celestial into terrestrial matter — Cancer
into Scorpio. Under this evil influence man became
a hunter, Sagittarius the Archer, and pursued the
wild animals, typified by Capricorn. Then, with
animal food and cookery, came death into the
world, and all our woe. But in the fourth compart-
ment, Dhanwantari or ^Esculapius, Aquarius the

82 MEMOIRS OF

Waterman, arose from the sea, typified by Pisces
the Fish, with a jug of pure water and a bunch of
fruit, and brought back the period of universal
happiness under Aries the Ram, whose benignant
ascendancy was the golden fleece of the Argonauts,
and the true talisman of Oromazes.

He saw the Zodiac in everything. I was walking
with him one day on a common near Bracknell,
when we came on a public-house which had the
sign of the Horse-shoes. They were four on the
sign, and he immediately determined that this
number had been handed down from remote anti-
quity as representative of the compartments of the
Zodiac. He stepped into the public-house, and said
to the landlord, i Your sign is the Horse-shoes ? ' —
1 Yes, sir.1 ' This sign has always four Horse-shoes ? '
— 'Why mostly, sir." 'Not always?' — 'I think I
have seen three.' ' I cannot divide the Zodiac into
three. But it is mostly four. Do you know why it
is mostly four ? ' — ' Why, sir, I suppose because a
horse has four legs.' He bounced out in great
indignation, and as soon as I joined him, he said to
me, c Did you ever see such a fool ? •

I have also very agreeable reminiscences of Mrs. B.
and her daughter Cornelia.1 Of these ladies Shelley
says (Hogg, ii. 515) : —

I have begun to learn Italian again. Cornelia assists
me in this language. Did I not once tell you that I
thought her cold and reserved ? She is the reverse of
this, as she is the reverse of everything bad. She in-
herits all the divinity of her mother.

Mr. Hogg 6 could never learn why Shelley called

1 Mrs. De Boinville was a relative of Mrs. Newton, by whom
Shelley was introduced to her and her daughter.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 33

Mrs. B. Meimoune.'1 In fact he called her, not
Meimoune, but Maimuna, from Southey's Thalaba : —

Her face was as a damsel's face,
And yet her hair was grey.2

She was a young-looking woman for her age, and
her hair was as white as snow.

About the end of 1813, Shelley was troubled by
one of his most extraordinary delusions. He fancied
that a fat old woman who sat opposite to him in a
mail coach was afflicted with elephantiasis, that the
disease was infectious and incurable, and that he
had caught it from her. He was continually on the
watch for its symptoms ; his legs were to swell to
the size of an elephant's, and his skin was to be
crumpled over like goose-skin. He would draw the
skin of his own hands, arms, and neck very tight,
and if he discovered any deviation from smoothness,
he would seize the person next to him, and en-
deavour by a corresponding pressure to see if any
corresponding deviation existed. He often startled
young ladies in an evening party by this singular
process, which was as instantaneous as a flash of
lightning. His friends took various methods of
dispelling the delusion. I quoted to him the words
of Lucretius : —

Est elephas morbus, qui propter flumina Nili
Gignitur Aegypto in media, neque praelerea usquam.3

He said these verses were the greatest comfort he
had. When he found that, as the days rolled on,
his legs retained their proportion, and his skin its
smoothness, the delusion died away.

1 Condensed from a paragraph in the Life of Shelley, vol. ii,
pp. 317-18.

2 Thalaba the Destroyer : Book viii, stanza 23.

3 De Rerum Natura: Book vi, 11. 1114-15.

34 MEMOIRS OF

I have something more to say belonging to this
year 1813, but it will come better in connexion with
the events of the succeeding year. In the meantime
I will mention one or two traits of character in
which chronology is unimportant.

It is to be remarked that, with the exception of the
clergyman from whom he received his first instruc-
tions, the Reverend Mr. Edwards, of Horsham,
Shelley never came, directly or indirectly, under
any authority, public or private, for which he
entertained, or had much cause to entertain, any
degree of respect. His own father, the Brentford
schoolmaster, the head master of Eton, the Master
and Fellows of his college at Oxford, the Lord
Chancellor Eldon, all successively presented them-
selves to him in the light of tyrants and op-
pressors. It was perhaps from the recollection of
his early preceptor that he felt a sort of poetical
regard for country clergymen, and was always
pleased when he fell in with one who had a
sympathy with him in classical literature, and was
willing to pass sub sllentio the debateable ground
between them. But such an one was of rare
occurrence. This recollection may also have in-
fluenced his feeling under the following transitory
impulse.

He had many schemes of life. Amongst them
all, the most singular that ever crossed his mind
was that of entering the church. Whether he had
ever thought of it before, or whether it only arose
on the moment, I cannot say : the latter is most
probable ; but I well remember the occasion. We
were walking in the early summer through a village
where there was a good vicarage house, with a nice
garden, and the front wall of the vicarage was
covered with corchorus in full flower, a plant less

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 35

common then than it has since become. He stood
some time admiring the vicarage wall. The extreme
quietness of the scene, the pleasant pathway through
the village churchyard, and the brightness of the
summer morning, apparently concurred to produce
the impression under which he suddenly said to
me, — ' I feel strongly inclined to enter the church.'
4 What,' I said, ' to become a clergyman, with your
ideas of the faith ? ' ' Assent to the supernatural
part of it,1 he said, ■ is merely technical. Of the
moral doctrines of Christianity I am a more decided
disciple than many of its more ostentatious professors.
And consider for a moment how much good a good
clergyman may do. In his teaching as a scholar
and a moralist ; in his example as a gentleman and
a man of regular life ; in the consolation of his
personal intercourse and of his charity among the
poor, to whom he may often prove a most beneficent
friend when they have no other to comfort them.
It is an admirable institution that admits the possi-
bility of diffusing such men over the surface of the
land. And am I to deprive myself of the advantages
of this admirable institution because there are certain
technicalities to which I cannot give my adhesion,
but which I need not bring prominently forward ?"
I told him I thought he would find more restraint
in the office than would suit his aspirations. He
walked on some time thoughtfully, then started
another subject, and never returned to that of
entering the church.

He was especially fond of the novels of Brown —
Charles Brockden Brown, the American, who died
at the age of thirty-nine.

The first of these novels was Wieland. Wieland's
father passed much of his time alone in a summer-
house, where he died of spontaneous combustion.

D 2

36 MEMOIRS OF

This summer-house made a great impression on
Shelley, and in looking for a country house he
always examined if he could find such a summer-
house, or a place to erect one.

The second was Ormond. The heroine of this
novel, Constantia Dudley, held one of the highest
places, if not the very highest place, in Shelley's
idealities of female character.

The third was Edgar Huntley ; or, the Sleep-
walker. In this his imagination was strangely
captivated by the picture of Clitheroe in his sleep
digging a grave under a tree.

The fourth was Arthur Mervyn : chiefly remark-
able for the powerful description of the yellow fever
in Philadelphia and the adjacent country, a subject
previously treated in Ormond. No descriptions of
pestilence surpass these of Brown. The transfer of
the hero's affections from a simple peasant-girl to
a rich Jewess, displeased Shelley extremely, and he
could only account for it on the ground that it was
the only way in which Brown could bring his story
to an uncomfortable conclusion. The three pre-
ceding tales had ended tragically.

These four tales were unquestionably works of
great genius, and were remarkable for the way in
which natural causes were made to produce the
semblance of supernatural effects. The superstitious
terror of romance could scarcely be more strongly
excited than by the perusal of Wieland.

Brown wrote two other novels, Jane Talbot and
Philip Stanley, in which he abandoned this system,
and confined himself to the common business of life.
They had little comparative success.

Brown's four novels, Schiller's Robbers, and
Goethe's Faust, were, of all the works with which
he was familiar, those which took the deepest root

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 37

in his mind, and had the strongest influence in the
formation of his character. He was an assiduous
student of the great classical poets, and among these
his favourite heroines were Nausicaa and Antigone.
I do not remember that he greatly admired any of
our old English poets, excepting Shakespeare and
Milton. He devotedly admired Wordsworth and
Coleridge, and in a minor degree Southey : these
had great influence on his style, and Coleridge
especially on his imagination ; but admiration is
one thing and assimilation is another ; and nothing
so blended itself with the structure of his interior
mind as the creations of Brown. Nothing stood so
clearly before his thoughts as a perfect combination
of the purely ideal and possibly real, as Constantia
Dudley.

He was particularly pleased with Wordsworth's
Stanzas written in a pocket copy of Thomson's
Castle of Indolence. He said the fifth of these
stanzas always reminded him of me. I told him the
four first stanzas were in many respects applicable
to him.1 He said : ■ It was a remarkable instance
of Wordsworth's insight into nature, that he should
have made intimate friends of two imaginary charac-
ters so essentially dissimilar, and yet severally so true
to the actual characters of two friends, in a poem
written long before they were known to each other,
and while they were both boys, and totally unknown
to him.'

The delight of Wordsworth's first personage in
the gardens of the happy castle, the restless spirit
that drove him to wander, the exhaustion with which
he returned and abandoned himself to repose, might
all in these stanzas have been sketched to the life

1 See Appendix I.

88 MEMOIRS OF

from Shelley. The end of the fourth stanza is
especially apposite : —

Great wonder to our gentle tribe it was

Whenever from our valley he withdrew ;

For happier soul no living creature has

Than he had, being here the long day through.

Some thought he was a lover, and did woo :

Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong :

But verse was what he had been wedded to;

And his oivn mind did like a tempest strong

Come to him thus, and drive the weary wight along.1

He often repeated to me, as applicable to himself,
a somewhat similar passage from Childe Harold : —

On the sea

The boldest steer but where their ports invite :
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity,
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor' d ne'er
shall be.2

His vegetable diet entered for something into his
restlessness. When he was fixed in a place he
adhered to this diet consistently and conscientiously,
but it certainly did not agree with him ; it made
him weak and nervous, and exaggerated the sensitive-
ness of his imagination. Then arose those thick -
coming fancies which almost invariably preceded his
change of place. While he was living from inn
to inn he was obliged to live, as he said, ' on what
he could get ' ; that is to say, like other people.
When he got well under this process he gave all
the credit to locomotion, and held himself to have
thus benefited, not in consequence of his change of
regimen, but in spite of it. Once, when I was

1 Wordsworth wrote ■ drove *, not ■ drive \

2 Canto iii, stanza lxx.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 39

living in the country, I received a note from him
wishing me to call on him in London. I did so,
and found him ill in bed. He said, ' You are looking
well. I suppose you go on in your old way, living
on animal food and fermented liquor ? ' I answered
in the affirmative. ' And here,' he said, ' you see
a vegetable feeder overcome by disease.' I said,
' Perhaps the diet is the cause.' This he would by
no means allow ; but it was not long before he was
again posting through some yet unvisited wilds, and
recovering his health as usual, by living ' on what
he could get '.

He had a prejudice against theatres which I took
some pains to overcome. I induced him one evening
to accompany me to a representation of the School
for Scandal. When, after the scenes which exhibited
Charles Surface in his jollity, the scene returned,
in the fourth act, to Joseph's library, Shelley said
to me — ' I see the purpose of this comedy. It is
to associate virtue with bottles and glasses, and
villany with books.' I had great difficulty to make
him stay to the end. He often talked of * the
withering and perverting spirit of comedy'. I do
not think he ever went to another. But I remember
his absorbed attention to Miss O'Neill's performance
of Bianca in Fazio} and it is evident to me that
she was always in his thoughts when he drew the
character of Beatrice in the Cenci.

In the season of 1817, I persuaded him to
accompany me to the opera. The performance was
Don Giovanni. Before it commenced he asked me
if the opera was comic or tragic. I said it was
composite, — more comedy than tragedy. After the
killing of the Commendatore, he said, ' Do you call
this comedy ? ' By degrees he became absorbed in
1 Dean Milman's early drama.

40 MEMOIRS OF

the music and action. I asked him what he thought
of Ambrogetti ? He said, ' He seems to be the very
wretch he personates.'' The opera was followed by
a ballet, in which Mdlle. Milanie was the principal
danseuse. He was enchanted with this lady ; said
he had never imagined such grace of motion ; and
the impression was permanent, for in a letter he
afterwards wrote to me from Milan he said, 'They
have no Mdlle. Milanie here.'

From this time till he finally left England he
was an assiduous frequenter of the Italian Opera.
He delighted in the music of Mozart, and especially
in the Nozze di Figaro, which was performed several
times in the early part of 1818.

With the exception of Fazio, I do not remember
his having been pleased with any performance at an
English theatre. Indeed I do not remember his having
been present at any but the two above mentioned.
I tried in vain to reconcile him to comedy. I re-
peated to him one day, as an admirable specimen
of diction and imagery, Michael Perez's soliloquy in
his miserable lodgings, from Rule a Wife and Have a
Wife. When I came to the passage :

There 's an old woman that 's now grown to marble,

Dried in this brick-kiln : and she sits i' the chimney

(Which is but three tiles, raised like a house of cards),

The true proportion of an old smoked Sibyl.

There is a young thing, too, that Nature meant

For a maid-servant, but 'tis now a monster :

She has a husk about her like a chestnut,

With laziness, and living under the line here :

And these two make a hollow sound together,

Like frogs, or winds between two doors that murmur — 1

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Act
III, Sc. ii.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 41

he said, ' There is comedy in its perfection. Society
grinds down poor wretches into the dust of abject
poverty, till they are scarcely recognizable as human
beings ; and then, instead of being treated as what
they really are, subjects of the deepest pity, they
are brought forward as grotesque monstrosities to be
laughed at.' I said, ' You must admit the fineness
of the expression ., ' It is true,' he answered ; ■ but
the finer it is the worse it is, with such a perversion
of sentiment.'

I postpone, as I have intimated, till after the
appearance of Mr. Hogg's third and fourth volumes,
the details of the circumstances which preceded
Shelley's separation from his first wife, and those of
the separation itself.

There never was a case which more strongly
illustrated the truth of Payne Knight's observation,
that * the same kind of marriage, which usually ends
a comedy, as usually begins a tragedy '. l

MEMOIRS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Part II

Y Gwir yn erbyn y Byd.

The Truth against the World.

Bardic Maxim.

Mr. Hogg's third and fourth volumes not having
appeared, and the materials with which Sir Percy
and Lady Shelley had supplied him having been
resumed by them, and so much of them as it was

1 No person in his senses was ever led into enterprises of
dangerous importance by the romantic desire of imitating the
fictions of a drama. If the conduct of any persons is influenced

42 MEMOIRS OF

thought desirable to publish having been edited by
Lady Shelley,1 with a connecting thread of narrative,
I shall assume that I am now in possession of all
the external information likely to be available
towards the completion of my memoir ; and I shall
proceed to complete it accordingly, subject to the
contingent addition of a postscript, if any subsequent
publication should render it necessary.
Lady Shelley says in her preface :

We saw the book (Mr. Hoggs) for the first time when
it was given to the world. It was impossible to imagine
beforehand that from such materials a book could have
been produced which has astonished and shocked those
who have the greatest right to form an opinion on the
character of Shelley ; and it was with the most painful
feelings of dismay that we perused what we could only
look upon as a fantastic caricature, going forth to the
public with my apparent sanction, — for it was dedicated
to myself.

Our feelings of duty to the memory of Shelley left
us no other alternative than to withdraw the materials
which we had originally entrusted to his early friend,
and which we could not but consider had been strangely
misused ; and to take upon ourselves the task of laying
them before the public, connected only by as slight

by the examples exhibited in such fictions, it is that of young
ladies in the affairs of love and marriage : but I believe that such
influence is much more rare than severe moralists are inclined
to suppose ; since there were plenty of elopements and stolen
matches before comedies or plays of any kind were known. If,
however, there are any romantic minds which feel this influence,
they may draw an awful lesson concerning its consequences from
the same source, namely, that the same kind of marriage, which
usually ends a comedy, as usually begins a tragedy. — Principles
of Taste, Book III, c. 2, sec. 17. [T. L. P.] [Peacock suppresses
the quotation : • viderunt primos argentea secula moechos ' after
1 were known > ]

1 Shelley Memorials. From Authentic Sources. Edited by
Lady Shelley. London : Smith and Elder. 1859. [T. L. P.J

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 48

a thread of narrative as would suffice to make them
intelligible to the reader.

I am very sorry, in the outset of this notice, to
be under the necessity of dissenting from Lady
Shelley respecting the facts of the separation of
Shelley and Harriet.

Captain Medwin represented this separation to
have taken place by mutual consent. Mr. Leigh
Hunt and Mr. Middleton adopted this statement;
and in every notice I have seen of it in print it has
been received as an established truth.

Lady Shelley says —

Towards the close of 1813 estrangements, which for
some time had been slowly growing between Mr. and
Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisis. Separation ensued, and
Mrs. Shelley returned to her father's house. Here she
gave birth to her second child — a son, who died in 1826.

The occurrences of this painful epoch in Shelley's
life, and of the causes which led to them, I am spared
from relating. In Mary Shelley's own words — ( This is
not the time to relate the truth ; and I should reject any
colouring of the truth. No account of these events has
ever been given at all approaching reality in their details,
either as regards himself or others ; nor shall I further
allude to them than to remark that the errors of action
committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley,
may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed
by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that,
were they judged impartially, his character would stand
in fairer and brighter light than that of any con-
temporary.'

Of those remaining who were intimate with Shelley
at this time, each has given us a different version of this
sad event, coloured by his own views or personal feelings.
Evidently Shelley confided to none of these friends.
We, who bear his name, and are of his family, have in our
possession papers written by his own hand, which in

44 MEMOIRS OF

after years may make the story of his life complete ; and
which few now living, except Shelley's own children,
have ever perused.

One mistake, which has gone forth to the world, we
feel ourselves called upon positively to contradict.

Harriet's death has sometimes been ascribed to
Shelley. This is entirely false. There was no immediate
connexion whatever between her tragic end and any
conduct on the part of her husband. It is true, how-
ever, that it was a permanent source of the deepest
sorrow to him ; for never during all his after-life did
the dark shade depart which had fallen on his gentle
and sensitive nature from the selfsought grave of the
companion of his early youth.

This passage ends the sixth chapter. The seventh
begins thus —

To the family of Godwin, Shelley had, from the
period of his self-introduction at Keswick, been an
object of interest ; and the acquaintanceship which had
sprung up between them during the poet's occasional
visits to London had grown into a cordial friendship.
It was in the society and sympathy of the Godwins that
Shelley sought and found some relief in his present
sorrow. He was still extremely young. His anguish,
his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of
genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression
on Godwin's daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who
had been accustomed to hear Shelley spoken of as
something rare and strange. To her, as they met one
eventful day in St. Pancras* churchyard, by her mother's
grave, Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale
of his wild past — how he had suffered, how he had been
misled ; and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in
future years to enrol his name with the wise and good
who had done battle for their fellow-men, and been
true through all adverse storms to the cause of humanity.

Unhesitatingly she placed her hand in his, and linked

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 45

her fortune with his own ; and most truthfully, as the
remaining portion of these Memorials will prove, was the
pledge of both redeemed.

I ascribe it to inexperience of authorship, that
the sequence of words does not, in these passages,
coincide with the sequence of facts : for in the order
of words, the present sorrow would appear to be
the death of Harriet. This however occurred two
years and a half after the separation, and the union
of his fate with Mary Godwin was simultaneous with
it. Respecting this separation, whatever degree of
confidence Shelley may have placed in his several
friends, there are some facts which speak for them-
selves and admit of no misunderstanding.

The Scotch marriage had taken place in August,
1811. In a letter which he wrote to a female friend
sixteen months later (Dec. 10, 1812), he had said —

How is Harriet a fine lady? You indirectly accuse
her in your letter of this offence — to me the most un-
pardonable of all. The ease and simplicity of her
habits, the unassuming plainness of her address, the
uncalculated connexion of her thought and speech,
have ever formed in my eyes her greatest charms : and
none of these are compatible with fashionable life, or
the attempted assumption of its vulgar and noisy eclat.
You have a prejudice to contend with in making me
a convert to this last opinion of yours, which, so long as
I have a living and daily witness to its futility before
me, I fear will be insurmountable. — Memorials, p. 44.

Thus there had been no estrangement to the end
of 1812. My own memory sufficiently attests that
there was none in 1813.

From Bracknell, in the autumn of 1813, Shelley
went to the Cumberland lakes ; then to Edinburgh.
In Edinburgh he became acquainted with a young

46 MEMOIRS OF

Brazilian named Baptista, who had gone there to
study medicine by his father's desire, and not from
any vocation to the science, which he cordially
abominated, as being all hypothesis, without the
fraction of a basis of certainty to rest on. They
corresponded after Shelley left Edinburgh, and
subsequently renewed their intimacy in London.
He was a frank, warm-hearted, very gentlemanly
young man. He was a great enthusiast, and
sympathized earnestly in all Shelley's views, even
to the adoption of vegetable diet. He made some
progress in a translation of Queen Mab into Portu-
guese. He showed me a sonnet, which he intended
to prefix to his translation. It began —

Sublime Shelley, cantor di verdade !

and ended —

Surja Queen Mab a restaurar o mundo.

I have forgotten the intermediate lines. But he
died early, of a disease of the lungs. The climate
did not suit him, and he exposed himself to it
incautiously.

Shelley returned to London shortly before
Christmas, then took a furnished house for two or
three months at Windsor, visiting London occasion-
ally. In March, 1814, he married Harriet a second
time, according to the following certificate : —

Marriages in March 1814.

1 64. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Harriet Shelley (formerly
Harriet Westbrook, Spinster, a Minor), both of
this Parish, were remarried in this Church by
Licence (the parties having been already married
to each other according to the Rites and Cere-
monies of the Church of Scotland), in order to
obviate all doubts that have arisen, or shall or

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 47

may arise, touching or concerning the validity of

the aforesaid Marriage (by and with the consent

of John Westbrook, the natural and lawful father

of the said Minor), this Twenty-fourth day of

March, in the Year 1814.

Byrne,

Edward Williams, Curate.

^r ( Percy Bysshe Shelley,

1 his Marriage was Harriet She formerl

pmni/pn hPTWPPn lie 1 __ .

solemnized between us ( Harriet Westbrook.

T .1 n (John Westbrook,

In the presence of \ T c '

r (John Stanley.

The above is a true extract from the Register Book
of Marriages belonging to the Parish of Saint George,
Hanover-square ; extracted thence this eleventh day of
April, 1859.— By me,

H. Weightman, Curate.

It is, therefore, not correct to say that ■ estrange-
ments which had been slowly growing came to a crisis
towards the close of 1813 \ The date of the above
certificate is conclusive on the point. The second
marriage could not have taken place under such cir-
cumstances. Divorce would have been better for
both parties, and the dissolution of the first marriage
could have been easily obtained in Scotland.

There was no estrangement, no shadow of a thought
of separation, till Shelley became acquainted, not long
after the second marriage, with the lady who was
subsequently his second wife.

The separation did not take place by mutual con-
sent. I cannot think that Shelley ever so represented
it. He never did so to me : and the account which
Harriet herself gave me of the entire proceeding was
decidedly contradictory of any such supposition.

He might well have said, after first seeing Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, * Ut vidi! ut peril ! ' Nothing

48 MEMOIRS OF

that I ever read in tale or history could present
a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible,
uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found
him labouring when, at his request, I went up from
the country to call on him in London. Between his
old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he was not
then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he
showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the
state of a mind ' suffering, like a little kingdom, the
nature of an insurrection \ His eyes were bloodshot,
his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle
of laudanum, and said : ' I never part from this.' !
He added : * I am always repeating to myself your
lines from Sophocles * :

Man's happiest lot is not to be :

And when we tread life's thorny steep,

Most blest are they, who earliest free
Descend to death's eternal sleep.'

Again, he said more calmly : ' Every one who knows
me must know that the partner of my life should be
one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy.
Harriet is a noble animal, but she can do neither.'
I said, ' It always appeared to me that you were very

* Soph. 0. C. 1225.

1 In a letter to Mr. Trelawny, dated June 18th, 1822, Shelley-
says : — * You of course enter into society at Leghorn. Should
you meet with any scientific person capable of preparing the
Prussic Acid, or Essential Oil of Bitter Almonds, I should regard
it as a great kindness if you could procure me a small quantity.
It requires the greatest caution in preparation, and ought to be
highly concentrated. I would give any price for this medicine.
You remember we talked of it the other night, and we both
expressed a wish to possess it. My wish was serious, and sprung
from the desire of avoiding needless suffering. I need not tell you
I have no intention of suicide at present ; but I confess it would
be a comfort to me to hold in my possession that golden key to the
chamber of perpetual rest. The Prussic Acid is used in medicine
in infinitely minute doses ; but that preparation is weak, and
has not the concentration necessary to medicine all ills infallibly.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 49

fond of Harriet.' Without affirming or denying this,
he answered : ' But you did not know how I hated
her sister.'

The terra ■ noble animal ' he applied to his wife, in
conversation with another friend now living, intimat-
ing that the nobleness which he thus ascribed to her
would induce her to acquiesce in the inevitable transfer
of his affections to their new shrine. She did not so
acquiesce, and he cut the Gordian knot of the diffi-
culty by leaving England with Miss Godwin on the
28th of July, 1814.

Shortly after this I received a letter from Harriet,
wishing to see me. I called on her at her father's
house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square. She then
gave me her own account of the transaction, which,
as I have said, decidedly contradicted the supposition
of anything like separation by mutual consent.

She at the same time gave me a description, by no
means flattering, of Shelley's new love, whom I had
not then seen. I said, 'If you have described her
correctly, what could he see in her ? ' ? Nothing,' she
said, ■ but that her name was Mary, and not only
Mary, but Mary Wollstonecraft.'

The lady had nevertheless great personal and in-
tellectual attractions, though it is not to be wondered
at that Harriet could not see them.

I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my
most decided conviction that her conduct as a wife

A single drop, even less, is a dose, and it acts by paralysis.' —
Trelawny, pp. 100, 101.

I believe that up to this time he had never travelled without
pistols for defence, nor without laudanum as a refuge from intoler-
able pain. His physical suffering was often very severe ; and
this last letter must have been written under the anticipation
that it might become incurable, and unendurable to a degree
from which he wished to be permanently provided with the
means of escape. [T. L. P.]
peacock E

50 MEMOIRS OF

was as pure, as true, as absolutely faultless, as that of
any who for such conduct are held most in honour.

Mr. Hogg says : • Shelley told me his friend Robert
Southey once said to him, " A man ought to be able
to live with any woman. You see that I can, and so
ought you. It comes to pretty much the same thing,
I apprehend. There is no great choice or differ-
ence." ' — Hogg: vol. i, p. 423. Any woman, I
suspect, must have been said with some qualification.
But such an one as either of them had first chosen,
Southey saw no reason to change.

Shelley gave me some account of an interview he
had had with Southey. It was after his return from
his first visit to Switzerland, in the autumn of 1814.
I forget whether it was in town or country ; but it
was in Southey's study, in which was suspended a
portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft. Whether Southey
had been in love with this lady, is more than I know.
That he had devotedly admired her is clear from his
Epistle to Amos Cottle, prefixed to the latter's Icelandic
Poetry (1797) ; in which, after describing the scenery
of Norway, he says : —

Scenes like these
Have almost lived before me, when I gazed
Upon their fair resemblance traced by1 him,
Who sung the banished man of Ardebeil ;
Or to the eye of Fancy held by her,
Who among women left no equal mind
When from this world she passed ; and I could weep
To think that she 8 is to the grave gone down !

Where a note names Mary Wollstonecraft, the allusion
being to her Letters from Norway.

1 In Cottle's Icelandic Poetry, p. xxxvi, a footnote on this word
runs as follows: — * Alluding to some views in Norway, taken by
Mr. Charles Fox— -Whose Plains, Consolations, and Delights of
Achmed Ardebeili, from the Persian, are well known.'

> <SHEy in the Epistle.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 51

Shelley had previously known Southey, and wished
to renew or continue friendly relations ; but Southey
was repulsive. He pointed to the picture, and ex-
pressed his bitter regret that the daughter of that
angelic woman should have been so misled. It was
most probably on this occasion that he made the re-
mark cited by Mr. Hogg : his admiration of Mary
Wollstonecraft may have given force to the obser-
vation : and as he had known Harriet, he might have
thought that, in his view of the matter, she was all
that a husband could wish for.

Few are now living who remember Harriet Shelley.
I remember her well, and will describe her to the best
of my recollection. She had a good figure, light,
active, and graceful. Her features were regular and
well proportioned. Her hair was light brown, and
dressed with taste and simplicity. In her dress she
was truly simplex munditiis. Her complexion was
beautifully transparent ; the tint of the blush rose
shining through the lily. The tone of her voice was
pleasant ; her speech the essence of frankness and
cordiality ; her spirits always cheerful ; her laugh
spontaneous, hearty, and joyous. She was well edu-
cated. She read agreeably and intelligently. She
wrote only letters, but she wrote them well. Her
manners were good ; and her whole aspect and de-
meanour such manifest emanations of pure and truth-
ful nature, that to be once in her company was to
know her thoroughly. She was fond of her husband,
and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society, she adorned it ; if they lived
in retirement, she was satisfied ; if they travelled, she
enjoyed the change of scene.

That Shelley's second wife was intellectually better
suited to him than his first, no one who knew them
both will deny ; and that a man, who lived so totallv
e 2

52 MEMOIRS OF

out of the ordinary world and in a world of ideas,
needed such an ever-present sympathy more than the
general run of men, must also be admitted ; but
Southey, who did not want an intellectual wife, and
was contented with his own, may well have thought
that Shelley had equal reason to seek no change.

After leaving England, in 1814, the newly-affianced
lovers took a tour on the Continent. He wrote to
me several letters from Switzerland, which were sub-
sequently published, together with a Six Weeks' Tour,
written in the form of a journal by the lady with
whom his fate was thenceforward indissolubly bound.
I was introduced to her on their return.

The rest of 1814 they passed chiefly in London.
Perhaps this winter in London was the most solitary
period of Shelley's life. I often passed an evening
with him at his lodgings, and I do not recollect ever
meeting any one there, excepting Mr. Hogg. Some
of his few friends of the preceding year had certainly
at that time fallen off from him. At the same time
he was short of money, and was trying to raise some
on his expectations, from * Jews and their fellow-
Christians', as Lord Byron says. One day, as we
were walking together on the banks of the Surrey
Canal, and discoursing of Wordsworth, and quoting
some of his verses, Shelley suddenly said to me : ' Do
you think Wordsworth could have written such poetry,
if he had ever had dealings with money-lenders ? *
His own example, however, proved that the association
had not injured his poetical faculties.

The canal in question was a favourite walk with us.
The Croydon Canal branched off from it, and passed
very soon into wooded scenery. The Croydon Canal
is extinct, and has given place to the, I hope, more
useful, but certainly less picturesque, railway.
Whether the Surrey exists, I do not know. He had

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 53

a passion for sailing paper-boats, which he indulged
on this canal, and on the Serpentine river. The best
spot he had ever found for it was a large pool of
transparent water, on a heath above Bracknell, with
determined borders free from weeds, which admitted
of launching the miniature craft on the windward,
and running round to receive it on the leeward, side.
On the Serpentine, he would sometimes launch a boat
constructed with more than usual care, and freighted
with halfpence. He delighted to do this in the
presence of boys, who would run round to meet it,
and when it landed in safety, and the boys scrambled
for their prize, he had difficulty in restraining him-
self from shouting as loudly as they did. The river
was not suitable to this amusement, nor even Virginia
Water, on which he sometimes practised it ; but the
lake was too large to allow of meeting the landing.
I sympathized with him in this taste : I had it before
I knew him : I am not sure that I did not originate
it with him ; for which I should scarcely receive the
thanks of my friend, Mr. Hogg, who never took any
pleasure in it, and cordially abominated it, when, as fre-
quently happened, on a cold winter day, in a walk from
Bishopgate over Bagshot Heath, we came on a pool of
water, which Shelley would not part from till he had
rigged out a flotilla from any unfortunate letters he
happened to have in his pocket. Whatever may be
thought of this amusement for grown gentlemen, it was
at least innocent amusement, and not mixed up with
any ' sorrow of the meanest thing that feels V

1 This lesson, shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she2 shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

Wordsworth, Hartleap Well. [T. L. P.]
[Wordsworth wrote 'One lesson', not 'This lesson'.]
2 Nature.

54 MEMOIRS OF

In the summer of 1815, Shelley took a furnished
house at Bishopgate, the eastern entrance of Wind-
sor Park, where he resided till the summer of 181 6. At
this time he had, by the sacrifice of a portion of his
expectations, purchased an annuity of ^lOOO a-year
from his father, who had previously allowed him
£200.

I was then living at Marlow, and frequently walked
over to pass a few days with him. At the end of
August, 1815, we made an excursion on the Thames
to Lechlade, in Gloucestershire, and as much higher
as there was water to float our skiff. It was a dry
season, and we did* not get much beyond Inglesham
Weir, which was not then, as now, an immovable
structure, but the wreck of a movable weir, which
had been subservient to the navigation, when the
river had been, as it had long ceased to Jbe, navigable
to Cricklade. A solitary sluice was hanging by
a chain, swinging in the wind and creaking dismally.
Our voyage terminated at a spot where the cattle
stood entirely across the stream, with the water
scarcely covering their hoofs. We started from, and
returned to, Old Windsor, and our excursion occupied
about ten days. This was, I think, the origin of
Shelley^s taste for boating, which he retained to the
end of his life. On our way up, at Oxford, he was so
much out of order that he feared being obliged to
return. He had been living chiefly on tea and bread
and butter, drinking occasionally a sort of spurious
lemonade, made of some powder in a box, which,
as he was reading at the time the Tale of a Tub, he
called the powder of pimperlimpimp. He consulted
a doctor, who may have done him some good, but it
was not apparent. I told him, * If he would allow me
to prescribe for him, I would set him to rights." He
asked, * What would be your prescription ? ' I said,

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 55

' Three mutton chops, well peppered/ He said, ' Do
you really think so ? ' I said, ' I am sure of it." He
took the prescription ; the success was obvious and
immediate. He lived in my way for the rest of our
expedition, rowed vigorously, was cheerful, merry,
overflowing with animal spirits, and had certainly one
week of thorough enjoyment of life. We passed two
nights in a comfortable inn at Lechlade, and his lines,
* A Summer Evening on the Thames at Lechlade,'
were written then and there. Mrs. Shelley (the
second, who always bore his name), who was with us,
made a diary of the little trip, which I suppose is
lost.

The whole of the winter 1815-16 was passed
quietly at Bishopgate. Mr. Hogg often walked
down from London ; and I, as before, walked over
from Marlow. This winter was, as Mr. Hogg ex-
pressed it, a mere Atticism. Our studies were
exclusively Greek. To the best of my recollection,
we were, throughout the whole period* his only
visitors. One or two persons called on him ; but
they were not to his mind, and were not encouraged
to reappear. The only exception was a. physician
whom he had called in ; the Quaker, Dr. Pope, of
Staines. This worthy old gentleman came more
than once, not as a doctor, but a friend. He liked
to discuss theology with Shelley* Shelley at first
avoided the discussion, saying his opinions would
not be to the Doctor's taste ; but the Doctor
answered, ' I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley ;
I see thee art very deep/

At this time Shelley wrote his Alastor. He was
at a loss for a title, and I proposed that which he
adopted: Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude. The
Greek word 'AAaorcop is an evil genius, KaKobaifxcov,
though the sense of the two words is somewhat

56 MEMOIRS OF

different, as in the Pavels 'AAaoTcoo 17 kclkos baCfjLonv
TToOev, of Aeschylus.1 The poem treated the spirit
of solitude as a spirit of evil. I mention the true
meaning of the word because many have supposed
Alastor to be the name of the hero of the poem.

He published this, with some minor poems, in the
course of the winter.

In the early summer of 1816, the spirit of restless-
ness again came over him, and resulted in a second
visit to the Continent. The change of scene was
preceded, as more than once before, by a mysterious
communication from a person seen only by himself,
warning him of immediate personal perils to be
incurred by him if he did not instantly depart.

I was alone at Bishopgate, with him and Mrs.
Shelley, when the visitation alluded to occurred.
About the middle of the day, intending to take
a walk, I went into the hall for my hat. His was
there, and mine was not. I could not imagine what
had become of it ; but as I could not walk without
it, I returned to the library. After some time had
elapsed, Mrs. Shelley came in, and gave me an
account which she had just received from himself,
of the visitor and his communication. I expressed
some scepticism on the subject, on which she left me,
and Shelley came in, with my hat in his hand. He
said, ' Mary tells me, you do not believe that I have
had a visit from Williams/ I said, ' I told her there
were some improbabilities in the narration.'' He
said, ' You know Williams of Tremadoc ? ' I said,
fc I do.1 He said, 6 It was he who was here to-day.
He came to tell me of a plot laid by my father and

1 THp£€i/ /x4u, fit b€(Tiroiva9 rov iravrbs fcaKov
ipavils aXaoTcup rj /catco? daifjicjv iroOiv. Aesch. Pers. 353-4.
[The author of the mischief, O my mistress,
Was some foul fiend or Power on evil bent. Plumptre.']

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 57

uncle, to entrap me and lock me up. He was in
great haste, and could not stop a minute, and
I walked with him to Egham.1 I said, ' What hat
did you wear ? ' He said, • This, to be sure.' I said,
' I wish you would put it on.1 He put it on, and
it went over his face. I said, ' You could not have
walked to Egham in that hat.1 He said, ' I snatched
it up hastily, and perhaps I kept it in my hand.
I certainly walked with Williams to Egham, and he
told me what I have said. You are very sceptical.1
I said, 'If you are certain of what you say, my
scepticism cannot affect your certainty.1 He said,
6 It is very hard on a man who has devoted his life
to the pursuit of truth, who has made great sacrifices
and incurred great sufferings for it, to be treated as
a visionary. If I do not know that I saw Williams,
how do I know that I see you ? ' I said, $ An idea
may have the force of a sensation ; but the oftener
a sensation is repeated, the greater is the probability
of its origin in reality. You saw me yesterday, and
will see me to-morrow.1 He said, ■ I can see Williams
to-morrow if I please. He told me he was stopping
at the Turk's Head Coffee-house, in the Strand, and
should be there two days. I want to convince you
that I am not under a delusion. Will you walk
with me to London to-morrow, to see him ? ' I said,
*■ I would most willingly do so.1 The next morning
after an early breakfast we set off on our walk to
London. We had got half way down Egham Hill,
when he suddenly turned round, and said to me,
1 I do not think we shall find Williams at the
Turk's Head.1 I said, 'Neither do I.1 He said,
' You say that, because you do not think he has been
there ; but he mentioned a contingency under which
he might leave town yesterday, and he has probably
done so.1 I said, * At any rate, we should know

58 MEMOIRS OF

that he has been there.' He said, i I will take other
means of convincing you. I will write to him.
Suppose we take a walk through the forest." We
turned about on our new direction, and were out all
day. Some days passed, and I heard no more of the
matter. One morning he said to me, ' I have some
news of Williams ; a letter and an enclosure.1 I said,
' I shall be glad to see the letter.' He said,
' I cannot show you the letter ; I will show you the
enclosure. It is a diamond necklace. I think you
know me well enough to be sure I would not throw
away my own money on such a thing, and that if
I have it, it must have been sent me by somebody
else. It has been sent me by Williams.' ' For what
purpose,' I asked. He said, * To prove his identity
and his sincerity.' w Surely,' I said, *- your showing
me a diamond necklace will prove nothing but that
you have one to show.' i Then,' he said, 4 1 will not
show it you. If you will not believe me, I must
submit to your incredulity.' There the matter
ended. I never heard another word of Williams,
nor of any other mysterious visitor. I had on one
or two previous occasions argued with him against
similar semi-delusions, and I believe if they had
always been received with similar scepticism, they
would not have been often repeated ; but they were
encouraged by the ready credulity with which they
were received by many who ought to have known
better. I call them semi-delusions, because, for the
most part, they had their basis in his firm belief
that his father and uncle had designs on his liberty.
On this basis, his imagination built a fabric of
romance, and when he presented it as substantive
fact, and it was found to contain more or less of
inconsistency, he felt his self-esteem interested in
maintaining it by accumulated circumstances, which

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 59

severally vanished under the touch of investigation,
like Williams's location at the Turk's Head Coffee-
house.

I must add, that in the expression of these differ-
ences, there was not a shadow of anger. They were
discussed with freedom and calmness ; with the good
temper and good feeling which never forsook him in
conversations with his friends. There was an evident
anxiety for acquiescence, but a quiet and gentle
toleration of dissent. A personal discussion, how-
ever interesting to himself, was carried on with the
same calmness as if it related to the most abstract
question in metaphysics.

Indeed, one of the great charms of intercourse with
him was the perfect good humour and openness to
conviction with which he responded to opinions
opposed to his own. I have known eminent men,
who were no doubt very instructive as lecturers to
people who like being lectured ; which I never did ;
but with whom conversation was impossible. To
oppose their dogmas, even to question them, was to
throw their temper off its balance. When once this
infirmity showed itself in any of my friends, I was
always careful not to provoke a second ebullition.
I submitted to the preachment, and was glad when
it was over.

The result was a second trip to Switzerland.
During his absence he wrote me several letters, some
of which were subsequently published by Mrs. Shelley;
others are still in my possession. Copies of two of
these were obtained by Mr. Middleton, who has
printed a portion of them. Mrs. Shelley was at
that time in the habit of copying Shelley's letters,
and these were among some papers accidentally left
at Marlow, where they fell into unscrupulous hands.
Mr. Middleton must have been aware that he had

60 MEMOIRS OF

no right to print them without my consent. I might
have stopped his publication by an injunction, but
I did not think it worth while, more especially as
the book, though abounding with errors adopted from
Captain Medwin and others, is written with good
feeling towards the memory of Shelley.

During his stay in Switzerland he became ac-
quainted with Lord Byron. They made together
an excursion round the lake of Geneva, of which he
sent me the detail in a diary. This diary was pub-
lished by Mrs. Shelley, but without introducing the
name of Lord Byron, who is throughout called fc my
companion1. The diary was first published during
Lord Byron's life ; but why his name was concealed
I do not know. Though the changes are not many,
yet the association of the two names gives it great
additional interest.

At the end of August, 1816, they returned to
England, and Shelley passed the first fortnight of
September with me at Marlow. July and August,
1816, had been months of perpetual rain. The first
fortnight of September was a period of unbroken
sunshine. The neighbourhood of Marlow abounds
with beautiful walks ; the river scenery is also fine.
We took every day a long excursion, either on foot
or on the water. He took a house there, partly,
perhaps principally, for the sake of being near me.
While it was being fitted and furnished, he resided
at Bath.

In December, 1816, Harriet drowned herself in
the Serpentine river, not, as Captain Medwin says,
ill a pond at the bottom of her father's garden at
Bath. Her father had not then left his house in
Chapel Street, and to that house his daughter's body
was carried.

On the 30th of December, 1816, Shelley married his

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 61

second wife; and early in the ensuing year they
took possession of their house at Marlow. It was
a house with many large rooms and extensive
gardens. He took it on a lease for twenty-one
years, furnished it handsomely, fitted up a library
in a room large enough for a ball-room, and settled
himself down, as he supposed, for life. This was an
agreeable year to all of us. Mr. Hogg was a frequent
visitor. We had a good deal of rowing and sailing,
and we took long walks in all directions. He had
other visitors from time to time. Amongst them
were Mr. Godwin and Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Hunt.
He led a much more social life than he had done at
Bishopgate; but he held no intercourse with his
immediate neighbours. He said to me more than
once, 'I am not wretch enough to tolerate an
acquaintance.1

In the summer of 1817 he wrote the Revolt of
Islam, chiefly on a seat on a high prominence in
Bisham Wood, where he passed whole mornings
with a blank book and a pencil. This work, when
completed, was printed under the title of Laon and
Cythna. In this poem he had carried the expression
of his opinions, moral, political, and theological,
beyond the bounds of discretion. The terror which,
in those days of persecution of the press, the perusal
of the book inspired in Mr. Oilier, the publisher,
induced him to solicit the alteration of many
passages which he had marked Shelley was for
some time inflexible; but Mr. Ollier's refusal to
publish the poem as it was, backed by the advice of
all his friends, induced him to submit to the required
changes. Many leaves were cancelled, and it was
finally published as The Revolt of Islam, Of Laon
and Cythna only three copies had gone forth. One
of these had found its way to the Quarterly Review,

62 MEMOIRS OF

and the opportunity was readily seized of pouring
out on it one of the most malignant effusions of the
odium theologicum that ever appeared even in those
days, and in that periodical.

During his residence at Marlow we often walked
to London, frequently in company with Mr. Hogg.
It was our usual way of going there, when not
pressed by time. We went by a very pleasant route
over fields, lanes, woods, and heaths to Uxbridge,
and by the main road from Uxbridge to London.
The total distance was thirty-two miles to Tyburn
turnpike. We usually stayed two nights, and walked
back on the third d.ay. I never saw Shelley tired
with these walks. Delicate and fragile as he ap-
peared, he had great muscular strength. We took
many walks in all directions from Marlow, and saw
everything worth seeing within a radius of sixteen
miles. This comprehended, among other notable
places, Windsor Castle and Forest, Virginia Water,
and the spots which were consecrated by the
memories of Cromwell, Hampden, and Milton, in the
Chiltern district of Buckinghamshire. We had also
many pleasant excursions, rowing and sailing on the
river, between Henley and Maidenhead.

Shelley, it has been seen, had two children by his
first wife. These children he claimed after Harriet's
death, but her family refused to give them up.
They resisted the claim in Chancery, and the decree
of Lord Eldon was given against him.

The grounds of Lord Eldon's decision have been
misrepresented. The petition had adduced Queen
Mab, and other instances of Shelley's opinions on
religion, as one of the elements of the charges
against him ; but the judgement ignores this element,
and rests entirely upon moral conduct. It was
distinctly laid down that the principles which Shelley

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 63

had professed in regard to some of the most impor-
tant relations of life, had been carried by him into
practice ; and that the practical development of
those principles, not the principles themselves, had
determined the judgement of the Court.

Lord Eldon intimated that his judgement was not
final ; but nothing would have been gained by an
appeal to the House of Peers. Liberal law lords
were then unknown ; neither could Shelley have
hoped to enlist public opinion in his favour. A
Scotch marriage, contracted so early in life, might
not have been esteemed a very binding tie : but the
separation which so closely followed on a marriage
in the Church of England, contracted two years and
a half later, presented itself as the breach of a much
more solemn and deliberate obligation.

It is not surprising that so many persons at the
time should have supposed that the judgement had
been founded, at least partly, on religious grounds.
Shelley himself told me, that Lord Eldon had
expressly stated that such grounds were excluded,
and the judgement itself showed it. But few read
the judgement. It did not appear in the newspapers,
and all report of the proceedings was interdicted.
Mr. Leigh Hunt accompanied Shelley to the Court
of Chancery. Lord Eldon was extremely courteous ;
but he said blandly, and at the same time deter-
minedly, that a report of the proceedings would be
punished as a contempt of Court. The only ex-
planation I have ever been able to give to myself of his
motive for this prohibition was, that he was willing
to leave the large body of fanatics among his political
supporters under delusion as to the grounds of his
judgement ; and that it was more for his political
interest to be stigmatized by Liberals as an inquisitor,
than to incur in any degree the imputation of

64 MEMOIRS OF

theological liberality from his own persecuting
party.

Since writing the above passages I have seen, in
the Morning Post of November 22nd, the report of
a meeting of the Juridical Society,1 under the
presidency of the present Lord Chancellor, in which
a learned brother read a paper, proposing to revive
the system of persecution against ' blasphemous
libel'; and in the course of his lecture he said —
' The Court of Chancery, on the doctrine Parens
patriae, deprived the parent of the guardianship of
his children when his principles were in antagonism
to religion, as 2 in the case of the poet Shelley.''
The Attorney-General observed on this : 4 With
respect 3 to the interference of the Court of Chancery
in the case of Shelley's children, there was a great
deal of misunderstanding. It was not because their
father was an unbeliever in Christianity, but because
he violated and refused to acknowledge the ordinary
usages of morality."' The last words are rather vague
and twaddling, and I suppose are not the ipsissima
verba of the Attorney-General. The essence and
quintessence of Lord Eldon's judgement was this :
' Mr. Shelley long ago published and maintained the
doctrine that marriage is a contract binding only
during mutual pleasure. He has carried out that
doctrine in his own practice ; he has done nothing
to show that he does not still maintain it; and
I consider such practice injurious to the best interests
of society.' I am not apologizing for Lord Eldon,
nor vindicating his judgement. I am merely ex-
plaining it, simply under the wish that those who
talk about it should know what it really was.

Some of Shelley's friends have spoken and written

1 See Appendix II. 2 Morning Post : ' as it did in the case '.
3 Morning Post : * With regard to \

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 65

of Harriet as if to vindicate him it were necessary
to disparage her. They might, I think, be content
to rest the explanation of his conduct on the ground
on which he rested it himself — that he had found in
another the intellectual qualities which constituted
his ideality of the partner of his life. But Harriet's
untimely fate occasioned him deep agony of mind,
which he felt the more because for a long time he
kept the feeling to himself. I became acquainted
with it in a somewhat singular manner.

I was walking with him one evening in Bisham
Wood, and we had been talking, in the usual way,
of our ordinary subjects, when he suddenly fell into
a gloomy reverie. I tried to rouse him out of it,
and made some remarks which I thought might
make him laugh at his own abstraction. Suddenly
he said to me, still with the same gloomy expression :
' There is one thing to which I have decidedly made
up my mind. I will take a great glass of ale every
night.'' I said, laughingly, ' A very good resolution,
as the result of a melancholy musing.1 'Yes,' he
said ; * but you do not know why I take it. I shall
do it to deaden my feelings : for I see that those
who drink ale have none.' The next day he said to
me : w You must have thought me very unreasonable
yesterday evening ? ' I said, c I did, certainly.'
' Then,' he said, • I will tell you what I would not
tell any one else. I was thinking of Harriet. ' I told
him, 4 1 had no idea of such a thing : it was so long
since he had named her. I had thought he was
under the influence of some baseless morbid feeling ;
but if ever I should see him again in such a state of
mind, I would not attempt to disturb it.'

There was not much comedy in Shelley's life ; but
his antipathy to ' acquaintance ' led to incidents of
some drollery. Amongst the persons who called

66 MEMOIRS OF

on him at Bishopgate, was one whom he tried hard
to get rid of, but who forced himself on him in
every possible manner. He saw him at a distance
one day, as he was walking down Egham Hill, and
instantly jumped through a hedge, ran across a field,
and laid himself down in a dry ditch. Some men
and women, who were haymaking in the field, ran up
to see what was the matter, when he said to them,
4 Go away, go away: don't you see it's a bailiff?'
On which they left him, and he escaped discovery.

After he had settled himself at Marlow, he was in
want of a music-master to attend a lady staying in
his house, and I inquired for one at Maidenhead.
Having found one, I requested that he would call on
Mr. Shelley. One morning Shelley rushed into my
house in great trepidation, saying: 'Barricade the
doors ; give orders that you are not at home. Here

is in the town.' He passed the whole day with

me, and we sat in expectation that the knocker or
the bell would announce the unwelcome visitor ; but
the evening fell on the unfulfilled fear. He then
ventured home. It turned out that the name of the
music-master very nearly resembled in sound the
name of the obnoxious gentleman ; and when Shelley's

man opened the library door and said, ' Mr. ,

sir,"1 Shelley, who caught the name as that of his
Monsieur Tonson, exclaimed, 'I would just as soon
see the devil ! \ sprang up from his chair, jumped
out of the window, ran across the lawn, climbed over
the garden-fence, and came round to me by a back-
path : when we entrenched ourselves for a day's siege.
We often laughed afterwards at the thought of what
must have been his man's astonishment at seeing his
master, on the announcement of the musician, dis-
appear so instantaneously through the window, with
the exclamation, 'I would just as soon see the

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 67

devil ! ' and in what way he could explain to the
musician that his master was so suddenly 'not at
home \

Shelley, when he did laugh, laughed heartily, the
more so as what he considered the perversions of
comedy excited not his laughter but his indignation,
although such disgusting outrages on taste and
feeling as the burlesques by which the stage is now
disgraced had not then been perpetrated. The
ludicrous, when it neither offended good feeling, nor
perverted moral judgement, necessarily presented
itself to him with greater force.

Though his published writings are all serious, yet
his letters are not without occasional touches of
humour. In one which he wrote to me from Italy,
he gave an account of a new acquaintance * who had
a prodigious nose. ■ His nose is something quite
Slawkenbergian. It weighs on the imagination to
look at it. It is that sort of nose that transforms all
the g's its wearer utters into k's. It is a nose once
seen never to be forgotten, and which requires the
utmost stretch of Christian charity to forgive. I,

you know, have a little turn-up nose, H has a

large hook one ; but add them together, square them,
cube them, you would have but a faint notion of the
nose to which I refer.'

I may observe incidentally, that his account of
his own nose corroborates the opinion I have pre-
viously expressed of the inadequate likeness of the
published portraits of him, in which the nose has no
turn-up. It had, in fact, very little; just as much
as may be seen in the portrait to which I have
referred, in the Florentine Gallery.

The principal employment of the female population

1 Mr. Gisborne.
F %

68 MEMOIRS OF

in Marlow was lace-making, miserably remunerated.
He went continually amongst this unfortunate popu-
lation, and to the extent of his ability relieved the
most pressing cases of distress. He had a list of
pensioners, to whom he made a weekly allowance.

Early in 1818 the spirit of restlessness again came
over him. He left Marlow, and, after a short stay
in London, left England in March of that year, never
to return.

I saw him for the last time, on Tuesday the 10th
of March. The evening was a remarkable one, as
being that of the first performance of an opera of
Rossini in England, and of the first appearance here
of Malibran's father, Garcia. He performed Count
Almaviva in the Barbiere di Siviglia. Fodor was
Rosina; Naldi, Figaro; Ambrogetti, Bartolo ; and
Angrisani, Basilio. I supped with Shelley and his
travelling companions after the opera. They de-
parted early the next morning.

Thus two very dissimilar events form one epoch in
my memory. In looking back to that long-past time,
I call to mind how many friends, Shelley himself
included, I saw around me in the old Italian Theatre,
who have now all disappeared from the scene. I
hope I am not unduly given to be laudator temporis
acti, yet I cannot but think that the whole arrange-
ment of the opera in England has changed for the
worse. Two acts of opera, a divertissement, and a
ballet, seem very ill replaced by four or five acts of
opera, with little or no dancing. These, to me,
verify the old saying, that I Too much of one thing
is good for nothing'; and the quiet and decorous
audiences, of whom Shelley used to say, 'It is delightful
to see human beings so civilized,1 are not agreeably
succeeded by the vociferous assemblies, calling and
recalling performers to the footlights, and showering

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 69

down bouquets to the accompaniment of their noisy
approbation.

At the time of his going abroad, he had two
children by his second wife — William and Clara;
and it has been said that the fear of having these
taken from him by a decree of the Chancellor had
some influence on his determination to leave England;
but there was no ground for such a fear. No one
could be interested in taking them from him ; no
reason could be alleged for taking them from their
mother ; the Chancellor would not have entertained
the question, unless a provision had been secured for
the children ; and who was to do this ? Restlessness
and embarrassment were the causes of his determina-
tion ; and according to the Newtonian doctrine, it is
needless to look for more causes than are necessary to
explain the phenomena.

These children both died in Italy; Clara, the
youngest, in 1818, William, in the following year.
The last event he communicated to me in a few lines,
dated Rome, June 8th, 1819 : —

f Yesterday, after an illness of only a few days, my
little William died. There was no hope from the
moment of the attack. You will be kind enough to tell
all my friends, so that I need not write to them. It is
a great exertion to me to write this, and it seems to me
as if, hunted by calamity as I have been, that I should
never recover any cheerfulness again.'

A little later in the same month he wrote to me
again from Livorno : —

' Our melancholy journey finishes at this town ; but
we retrace our steps to Florence, where, as I imagine,
we shall remain some months. O that I could return
to England ! How heavy a weight when misfortune is
added to exile ; and solitude, as if the measure were

70 MEMOIRS OF

not full, heaped high on both. O that I could return
to England ! I hear you say, " Desire never fails to
generate capacity." Ah ! but that ever-present Mal-
thus, necessity, has convinced desire, that even though
it generated capacity its offspring must starve/

Again from Livorno; August, 1819 (they had
changed their design of going to Florence) : —

f I most devoutly wish that I were living near London.
I don't think that I shall settle so far off as Richmond,
and to inhabit any intermediate spot on the Thames,
would be to expose myself to the river damps. Not to
mention that it is not much to my taste. My inclina-
tions point to Hampstead ; but I don't know whether I
should not make up my mind to something more com-
pletely suburban. What are mountains, trees, heaths,
or even the glorious and ever-beautiful sky, with such
sunsets as I have seen at Hampstead, to friends?
Social enjoyment in some form or other is the Alpha
and Omega of existence. All that I see in Italy, and
from my tower window I now see the magnificent
peaks of the Apennine, half enclosing the plain, is
nothing — it dwindles to smoke in the mind, when I
think of some familiar forms of scenery, little perhaps in
themselves, over which old remembrances have thrown
a delightful colour. How we prize what we despised
when present ! So the ghosts of our dead associations
rise and haunt us, in revenge for our having let them
starve and abandoned them to perish/

This seems to contrast strangely with a passage in
Mrs. Shelley's journal, written after her return to
England : —

' Mine own Shelley ! What a horror you had of return-
ing to this miserable country ! To be here without you
is to be doubly exiled ; to be away from Italy is to lose
you twice/ — Shelley Memorials, p. 224.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 71

It is probable, however, that as Mrs. Shelley was
fond of Italy, he did not wish to disturb her enjoy-
ment of it, by letting her see fully the deep-seated
wish to return to his own country, which lay at the
bottom of all his feelings.

It is probable also that, after the birth of his last
child, he became more reconciled to residing abroad.

In the same year, the parents received the best
consolation which nature could bestow on them, in
the birth of another son, the present Sir Percy, who
was born at Florence, on the 12th of November,
1819.

Shelley's life in Italy is best traced by his letters.
He delighted in the grand aspects of nature;
mountains, torrents, forests, and the sea ; and in the
ruins, which still reflected the greatness of antiquity.
He described these scenes with extraordinary power
of language, in his letters as well as in his poetry ;
but in the latter he peopled them with phantoms of
virtue and beauty, such as never existed on earth.
One of his most striking works in this kind is the
Prometheus Unbound. He only once descended into
the arena of reality, and that was in the tragedy of
the Cenci.1 This is unquestionably a work of great
dramatic power, but it is as unquestionably not a
work for the modern English stage. It would have

1 Horace Smith's estimate of these two works appears to me
just : * 1 got from Oilier last week a copy of the Prometheus
Unbound, which is certainly a most original, grand, and occasion-
ally sublime work, evincing in my opinion a higher order of talent
than any of your previous productions ; and yet, contrary to your
own estimation, I must say I prefer the Cenci, because it contains
a deep and sustained human interest, of which we feel a want in
the other. Prometheus himself certainly touches us nearly ; but
we see very little of him after his liberation ; and, though I have
no doubt it will be more admired than anything you have written,
I question whether it will be so much read as the Cenci.' — Shelley
Memorials, p. 145. [T. L. P.] [This letter is dated September
4th, 1820.]

72 MEMOIRS OF

been a great work in the days of Massinger. He
sent it to me to introduce it to Covent Garden
Theatre. I did so ; but the result was as I expected.
It could not be received ; though great admiration
was expressed of the author's powers, and great hopes
of his success with a less repulsive subject. But he
could not clip his wings to the littleness of the acting
drama; and though he adhered to his purpose of
writing for the stage, and chose Charles I for his
subject, he did not make much progress in the task.
If his life had been prolonged, I still think he would
have accomplished something worthy of the best days
of theatrical literature. If the gorgeous scenery of
his poetry could have been peopled from actual life,
if the deep thoughts and strong feelings which he
was so capable of expressing, had been accommodated
to characters such as have been and may be, however
exceptional in the greatness of passion, he would
have added his own name to those of the masters of
the art. He studied it with unwearied devotion in
its higher forms ; the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare,
and Calderon. Of Calderon, he says, in a letter to
me from Leghorn, September 21st, 1819 : —

( C. C. ' is now with us on his way to Vienna. He has
spent a year or more in Spain, where he has learnt
Spanish ; and I make him read Spanish all day long. It
is a most powerful and expressive language, and I have
already learnt sufficient to read with great ease their poet
Calderon. I have read about twelve of his plays. Some
of tliem certainly deserve to be ranked among the
grandest and most perfect productions of the human
mind. He excels all modern dramatists, with the ex-
ception of Shakespeare, whom he resembles, however,
in the depth of thought and subtlety of imagination of
his writings, and in the one rare power of interweaving

1 Charles Clairmont.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 73

delicate and powerful comic traits with the most tragic
situations, without diminishing their interest. I rank
him far above Beaumont and Fletcher.'

In a letter to Mr. Gisborne dated November, 1820,
he says : 'I am bathing myself in the light and odour
of the flowery and starry Autos, I have read them
all more than once.'1 These were Calderon's religious
dramas, being of the same class as those which were
called Mysteries in France and England, but of a far
higher order of poetry than the latter ever attained.

The first time Mr. Trelawny saw him, he had a
volume of Calderon in his hand. He was translating
some passages of the Magico Prodigioso.

I arrived late, and hastened to the Tre Palazzi, on the
Lung' Arno, where the Shelleys and Williamses lived on
different flats under the same roof, as is the custom on
the Continent. The Williamses received me in their
earnest, cordial manner ; we had a great deal to com-
municate to each other, and were in loud and animated
conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in
the passage near the open door, opposite to where I
sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine ; it
was too dark to make out whom they belonged to.
With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes
followed the direction of mine, and going to the door-
way, she laughingly said —

' Come in, Shelley ; it 's only our friend Tre just
arrived.'

Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin
stripling held out both his hands ; and although I could
hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and
artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his
warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and
courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from
astonishment : was it possible this wild-looking, beard-
less boy, could be the veritable monster at war with all

74 MEMOIRS OF

the world ? — excommunicated by the Fathers of the
Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim
Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his
family, and denounced by the rival sages of our liter-
ature as a founder of a Satanic school ? I would not
believe it ; it must be a hoax. He was habited like
a boy, in a black jacket and trousers, which he seemed
to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had
most shamefully stinted him in his * sizings \ Mrs.
Williams saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me
asked Shelley what book he had in his hand ? His face
brightened, and he answered briskly —

' Calderon's Magico Prodigioso ; I am translating some
passages in it/

c Oh, read it to us ! '

Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents
that could not interest him, and fairly launched on
a theme that did, he instantly became oblivious of every-
thing but the book in his hand. The masterly manner
in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid
interpretations of the story, and the ease with which he
translated into our language the most subtle and imagina-
tive passages of the Spanish poet, were marvellous, as
was his command of the two languages. After this
touch of his quality, I no longer doubted his identity.
A dead silence ensued ; looking up, I asked — ■

c Where is he ? *

Mrs. Williams said, c Who ? Shelley ? Oh, he comes
and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.' —
Trelawny, pp. 19-22.

From this time Mr. Trelawny was a frequent visitor
to the Shelleys, and, as will be seen, a true and inde-
fatigable friend.

In the year 1818, Shelley renewed his acquaintance
with Lord Byron, and continued in friendly intercourse
with him till the time of his death. Till that time
his life, from the birth of his son Percy, was passed

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 75

chiefly in or near Pisa, or on the seashore between
Genoa and Leghorn. It was unmarked by any
remarkable events, except one or two, one of which
appears to me to have been a mere disturbance of
imagination. This was a story of his having been
knocked down at the post office in Florence, by a
man in a military cloak, who had suddenly walked
up to him, saying, 'Are you the damned atheist
Shelley ? ' This man was not seen by any one else,
nor ever afterwards seen or heard of; though a man
answering the description had on the same day left
Florence for Genoa, and was followed up without
success.

I cannot help classing this incident with the Tan-
yr-allt assassination, and other semi-delusions, of
which I have already spoken.

Captain Medwin thinks this ■ cowardly attack • was
prompted by some article in the Quarterly Review.
The Quarterly Reviewers of that day had many sins
to answer for in the way of persecution of genius,
whenever it appeared in opposition to their political
and theological intolerance ; but they were, I am
satisfied, as innocent of this ' attack ' on Shelley, as
they were of the death of Keats. Keats was con-
sumptive, and foredoomed by nature to early death.
His was not the spirit ' to let itself be snuffed out by
an article \ x

With the cessation of his wanderings, his beautiful
descriptive letters ceased also. The fear of losing

1 Peacock had in mind the lines in Don Juan, canto xi, stanza lx :
Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article,
where Byron refers to Croker's attack on Keats in the Quarterly,
vol. xix, pp. 204-8, taking Shelley's view (an unfounded one) of
its deadly effect on

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great.

76 MEMOIRS OF

their only surviving son predominated over the love
of travelling by which both parents were characterized.
The last of this kind which was addressed to me was
dated Rome, March 23rd, 1819. This was amongst
the letters published by Mrs. Shelley. It is preceded
by two from Naples — December 22nd, 1818, and
January 26th, 1819. There was a third, which is
alluded to in the beginning of his letter from Rome :
y I wrote to you the day before our departure from
Naples.' When I gave Mrs. Shelley the other letters,
I sought in vain for this. I found it, only a few
months since, in some other papers, among which it
had gone astray.

His serenity was temporarily disturbed by a
calumny, which Lord Byron communicated to him.
There is no clue to what it was; and I do not
understand why it was spoken of at all. A mystery
is a riddle, and the charity of the world will always
give such a riddle the worst possible solution.

An affray in the streets of Pisa was a more serious
and perilous reality. Shelley was riding outside the
gates of Pisa with Lord Byron, Mr. Trelawny, and
some other Englishmen, when a dragoon dashed
through their party in an insolent manner. Lord
Byron called him to account. A scuffle ensued, in
which the dragoon knocked Shelley off his horse,
wounded Captain Hay in the hand, and was danger-
ously wounded himself by one of Lord Byron's
servants. The dragoon recovered ; Lord Byron left
Pisa ; and so ended an affair which might have had
very disastrous results.

Under present circumstances the following passage
in a letter which he wrote to me from Pisa, dated
March, 1820, will be read with interest : —

6 1 have a motto on a ring in Italian : " 77 buon tempo

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 77

verra." There is a tide both in public and in private
affairs which awaits both men and nations.

(l have no news from Italy. We live here under
a nominal tyranny, administered according to the philo-
sophic laws of Leopold, and the mild opinions which are
the fashion here. Tuscany is unlike all the other Italian
States in this respect.'

Shelley's last residence was a villa on the Bay of
Spezzia. Of this villa Mr. Trelawny has given a view.

Amongst the new friends whom he had made to
himself in Italy were Captain and Mrs. Williams. To
these, both himself and Mrs. Shelley were extremely
attached. Captain Williams was fond of boating,
and furnished a model for a small sailing vessel,
which he persisted in adopting against the protest of
the Genoese builder and of their friend Captain
Roberts, who superintended her construction. She
was called the Don Juan. It took two tons of iron
ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and even
then she was very crank in a breeze. Mr. Trelawny
dispatched her from Genoa under the charge of two
steady seamen and a boy named Charles Vivian.
Shelley retained the boy and sent back the two
sailors. They told Mr. Trelawny that she was
a ticklish boat to manage, but had sailed and worked
well, and that they had cautioned the gentlemen
accordingly.

It is clear from Mr. Trelawny's account of a trip
he had with them, that the only good sailor on board
was the boy. They contrived to jam the mainsheet
and to put the tiller starboard instead of port. ' If
there had been a squall,' he said, ' we should have had
to swim for it/

1 Not I,' said Shelley ; 1 I should have gone down
with the rest of the pigs at the bottom of the boat,'
meaning the iron pig-ballast.

78 MEMOIRS OF

In the meantime, at the instance of Shelley, Lord
Byron had concurred in inviting Mr. Leigh Hunt and
his family to Italy. They were to co-operate in
a new quarterly journal, to which it was expected
that the name of Byron would ensure an immediate
and extensive circulation. This was the unfortunate
Liberal, a title furnished by Lord Byron, of which
four numbers were subsequently published. It proved
a signal failure, for which there were many causes;
but I do not think that any name or names could
have buoyed it up against the dead weight of its title
alone. A literary periodical should have a neutral
name, and leave its character to be developed in
its progress. A journal might be pre-eminently,
on one side or the other, either aristocratical or
democratical in its tone; but to call it the ' Aristocrat1
or the ' Democrat ' would be fatal to it.

Leigh Hunt arrived in Italy with his family on
the 14th of June, 1822, in time to see his friend
once and no more.

Shelley was at that time writing a poem called the
Triumph of Life. The composition of this poem,
the perpetual presence of the sea, and other causes
(among which I do not concur with Lady Shelley in
placing the solitude of his seaside residence, for his
life there was less solitary than it had almost ever
been),

contributed to plunge the mind of Shelley into a state
of morbid excitement, the result of which was a tendency
to see visions. One night loud cries were heard issuing
from the saloon. The Williamses rushed out of their
room in alarm ; Mrs. Shelley also endeavoured to reach
the spot, but fainted at the door. Entering the saloon,
the Williamses found Shelley staring horribly into the
air, and evidently in a trance. They waked him, and
he related that a figure wrapped in a mantle came to

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 79

his bedside and beckoned him. He must then have
risen in his sleep, for he followed the imaginary figure
into the saloon, when it lifted the hood of its mantle,
ejaculated ' Siete sodisfatto ? ' ■ and vanished. The
dream is said to have been suggested by an incident
occurring in a drama attributed to Calderon.

Another vision appeared to Shelley on the evening
of May 6th, when he and Williams were walking
together on the terrace. The story is thus recorded
by the latter in his diary : —

Fine. Some heavy drops of rain fell without a cloud
being visible. After tea, while walking with Shelley on
the terrace, and observing the effect of moonshine on
the waters, he complained of being unusually nervous,
and, stopping short, he grasped me violently by the
arm, and stared steadfastly on the white surf that broke
upon the beach under our feet. Observing him sensibly
affected, I demanded of him if he was in pain ; but he
only answered by saying ' There it is again ! there ! '
He recovered after some time, and declared that he
saw, as plainly as he then saw me, a naked child ( Allegra,
who had recently died) rise from the sea, and clasp its
hands as if in joy, smiling at him. This was a trance
that it required some reasoning and philosophy entirely
to wake him from, so forcibly had the vision operated
on his mind. Our conversation, which had been at first
rather melancholy, led to this, and my confirming his
sensations by confessing that I had felt the same, gave
greater activity to his ever- wandering and lively imagina-
tion.— Shelley Memorials, pp. 191-3. 2

On the afternoon of the 8th of July, 1822, after

1 Are you satisfied ?

2 The whole of the foregoing extract, from * contributed ' to
1 imagination ', including the sentences printed in Fraser's
Magazine as a connecting link of Peacock's, forms one continuous
passage in the Shelley Memorials.

80 MEMOIRS OF

an absence of some days from home, Shelley and
Williams set sail from Leghorn for their home on the
Gulf of Spezzia. Trelawny watched them from Lord
Byron's vessel, the Bolivar. The day was hot and
calm. Trelawny said to his Genoese mate, 'They
will soon have the land breeze."' g May be,' said the
mate, ' they 1 will soon have too much breeze. That
gaff-topsail is foolish, in a boat with no deck and no
sailor on board. Look at those black lines, and the
dirty rags hanging under2 them out of the sky.3
Look at the smoke on the water. The devil is brew-
ing mischief. ' Shelley's boat disappeared in a fog.

Although the sun was obscured by mists, it was op-
pressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the
harbour. The heaviness of the atmosphere, and an
unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down
into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused
up by a noise over-head and went on deck. The men
were getting up a chain cable to let go another anchor.
There was a general stir amongst the shipping ; shifting
berths, getting down yards and masts, veering out cables,
hauling in of hawsers, letting go anchors, hailing from
the ships and quays, boats scudding 4 rapidly to and fro.
It was almost dark, although only half-past six o'clock.
The sea was of the colour, and looked as solid and
smooth as a sheet of lead, and covered with an oily
scum. Gusts of wind swept over without ruffling it, and
big drops of rain fell on its surface, rebounding, as if they
could not penetrate it. There was a commotion in the
air, made up of many threatening sounds, coming upon
us from the sea. Fishing-craft and coasting-vessels
under bare poles rushed by us in shoals, running foul
of the ships in the harbour. As yet the din and

1 Trelawny : 4 she ' not * they \

2 Trelawny : 4 on ' not * under \

3 Peacock omits Trelawny's ' they are a warning after * sky \

4 Trelawny : ' sculling ' not * scudding \

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 81

hubbub was that made by men, but their shrill pipings
were suddenly silenced by the crashing voice of a
thunder-squall that burst right over our heads. For
some time no other sounds were to be heard than the
thunder, wind and rain. When the fury of the storm,
which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had
abated, and the horizon was in some degree cleared,
I looked to seaward anxiously, in the hope of descrying
Shelley's boat amongst the many small craft scattered
about. I watched every speck that loomed on the
horizon, thinking that they would have borne up on
their return to the port, as all the other boats that had
gone out in the same direction had done. — Trelawny,
pp. 116-18.

Mrs. Shelley and Mrs. Williams passed some days
in dreadful suspense. Mrs. Shelley, unable to endure
it longer, proceeded to Pisa, and rushing into Lord
Byron's room with a face of marble, asked passion-
ately, 'Where is my husband?' Lord Byron afterwards
said, he had never seen anything in dramatic tragedy
to equal the terror of Mrs. Shelley's appearance on
that day.

At length the worst was known. The bodies of
the two friends and the boy were washed on shore.
That of the boy was buried in the sand. That of
Captain Williams was burned on the 15th of August.
The ashes were collected and sent to England for
interment. The next day the same ceremony was
performed for Shelley ; and his remains were collected
to be interred, as they subsequently were, in the
Protestant cemetery at Rome. Lord Byron and Mr.
Leigh Hunt were present on both occasions. Mr.
Trelawny conducted all the proceedings, as he had
conducted all the previous search. Herein, and in
the whole of his subsequent conduct towards Mrs.
Shelley, he proved himself, as I have already observed,

82 MEMOIRS OF

a true and indefatigable friend. In a letter which
she wrote to me, dated Genoa, Sept. 29th, 1822, she
said : —

'Trelawny is the only quite disinterested friend I
have here ; the only one who clings to the memory of my
loved ones as I do myself; but he, alas ! is not ' one of
them, though he is really kind and good.'

The boat was subsequently recovered ; the state in
which everything was found in her, showed that she
had not capsized. Captain Roberts first thought
that she had been swamped by a heavy sea ; but on
closer examination, finding many of the timbers on
the starboard quarter broken, he thought it certain
that she must have been run down by a felucca in
the squall.

I think the first conjecture the most probable.
Her masts were gone, and her bowsprit broken.
Mr. Trelawny had previously dispatched two large
feluccas with ground-tackling to drag for her. This
was done for five or six days. They succeeded in
finding her, but failed in getting her up. The task
was accomplished by Captain Roberts. The specified
damage to such a fragile craft was more likely to
have been done by the dredging apparatus, than by
collision with a felucca.

So perished Percy Bysshe Shelley, in the flower of
his age, and not perhaps even yet in the full flower
of his genius ; a genius unsurpassed in the description
and imagination of scenes of beauty and grandeur ;
in the expression of impassioned love of ideal beauty ;
in the illustration of deep feeling by congenial
imagery ; and in the infinite variety of harmonious

1 It is notable that in Peacock's longer citation of this letter
(p. 215) he prints ' not as one of them ' — a much more probable
reading.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 83

versification. What was, in my opinion, deficient in
his poetry, was, as I have already said, the want of
reality in the characters with which he peopled his
splendid scenes, and to which he addressed or imparted
the utterance of his impassioned feelings. He was
advancing, I think, to the attainment of this reality.
It would have given to his poetry the only element
of truth which it wanted ; though at the same time,
the more clear development of what men were would
have lowered his estimate of what they might be, and
dimmed his enthusiastic prospect of the future des-
tiny of the world. I can conceive him, if he had lived
to the present time, passing his days like Volney,
looking on the world from his windows without taking
part in its turmoils ; and perhaps like the same, or
some other great apostle of liberty (for I cannot at
this moment verify the quotation), desiring that
nothing should be inscribed on his tomb, but his
name, the dates of his birth and death, and the
single word,

1 DESILLUSIONNE.'

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE

In MacmillarCs Magazine for June, 1860, there
is an article entitled * Shelley in Pall Mall; by
Richard Garnett', which contains the following

Much has been written about Shelley during the last
three or four years, and the store of materials for his
biography has been augmented by many particulars,
some authentic and valuable, others trivial or mythical,
or founded on mistakes or misrepresentations. It does
t G %

84 MEMOIRS OF

not strictly fall within the scope of this paper to notice
any of these, but some of the latter class are calculated
to modify so injuriously what has hitherto been the
prevalent estimate of Shelley's character, and, while
entirely unfounded, are yet open to correction from the
better knowledge of so few, that it would be inexcusable
to omit an opportunity of comment which only chance
has presented, and which may not speedily recur. It
will be readily perceived that the allusion is to the
statements respecting Shelley's separation from his first
wife, published by Mr. T. L. Peacock, in Frasers
Magazine for January last. According to these, the
transaction was not preceded by long-continued un-
happiness, neither was it an amicable agreement effected
in virtue of a mutual understanding. The time cannot
be distant when these assertions must be refuted by
the publication of documents hitherto withheld, and
Shelley's family have doubted whether it be worth
while to anticipate it. Pending their decision, I may
be allowed to state most explicitly that the evidence
to which they would in such a case appeal, and
to the nature of which I feel fully competent to
speak, most decidedly contradicts the allegations of
Mr. Peacock.

A few facts in the order of time will show, I will
not say the extreme improbability, but the absolute
impossibility, of Shelley's family being in possession
of any such documents as are here alleged to exist.

In August, 1811, Shelley married Harriet West-
brook in Scotland.

On the 24th of March, 1814, he married her a
second time in the Church of England, according
to the marriage certificate printed in my article of
January, 1860. This second marriage could scarcely
have formed an incident in a series of 4 long-continued
unhappiness \

In the beginning of April, 1814, Shelley and

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 85

Harriet were together on a visit to Mrs. B.,1 at
Bracknell. This lady and her family were of the
few who constituted Shelley's most intimate friends.
On the 18th of April, she wrote to Mr. Hogg : —
4 Shelley is again a widower. His beauteous half
went to town on Thursday with Miss Westbrook,
who is gone to live, I believe, at Southampton.2

Up to this time, therefore, at least, Shelley and
Harriet were together; and Mrs. B.'s letter shows
that she had no idea of estrangement between them,
still less of permanent separation.

I said in my article of January, 1860 : * There
was no estrangement, no shadow of a thought of
separation, till Shelley became acquainted, not long
after the second marriage, with the lady who was
subsequently his second wife.''

When Shelley first saw this lady, she had just
returned from a visit to some friends in Scotland;
and when Mr. Hogg first saw her, she wore \ a frock
of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time \3
She could not have been long returned.

Mr. Hogg saw Mary Godwin for the first time on
the first day of Lord Cochrane's trial. This was
the 8th of June, 1814. He went with Shelley to
Mr. Godwin's. < We entered a room on the first floor.
. . . William Godwin was not at home. . . . The
door was partially and softly opened. A thrilling
voice called " Shelley ! f A thrilling voice answered
" Mary ! " And he darted out of the room like an
arrow from the bow of the far-shooting king.' 3

Shelley's acquaintance with Miss Godwin must,
therefore, have begun between the 18th of April
and the 8th of June ; much nearer, I apprehend, to

1 Mrs. De Boinville.

2 Hogg's Life of Shelley, vol. ii, p. 533. [T. L. P.]

3 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 537-8. [T. L. P.]

86 MEMOIRS OF

the latter than the former, but I cannot verify the
precise date.

On the 7th of July, 1814, Harriet wrote to a
mutual friend, still living, a letter in which ' she
expressed a confident belief that he must know
where Shelley was, and entreating his assistance to
induce him to return home '. She was not even then
aware that Shelley had finally left her. /

On the 28th of the same month, Shelley and Miss
Godwin left England for Switzerland.

The interval between the Scotch and English
marriages was two years and seven months. The
interval between the second marrriage and the
departure for Switzerland, was four months and
four days. In the estimate of probabilities, the
space for voluntary separation is reduced by
Mrs. B.'s letter of April 18, to three months and
thirteen days ; and by Harriet's letter of July 7,
to twenty-one days. If, therefore, Shelley's family
have any document which demonstrates Harriet's
consent to the separation, it must prove the consent
to have been given on one of these twenty-one days.
I know, by my subsequent conversation with Harriet,
of which the substance was given in my article of
January, 1860, that she was not a consenting party ;
but as I have only my own evidence to that con-
versation, Mr. Garnett may choose not to believe
me. Still, on other evidence than mine, there remain
no more than three weeks within which, if at all,
the * amicable agreement ' must have been concluded.

But again, if Shelley's family had any conclusive
evidence on the subject, they must have had some
clear idea of the date of the separation, and of the
circumstances preceding it. That they had not, is
manifest from Lady Shelley's statement, that ' towards
the close of 1813, estrangements, which for some time

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 87

had been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs.
Shelley, came to a crisis: separation ensued, and
she x returned to her father's house.'' 2 Lady Shelley
could not have written thus if she had known the
date of the second marriage, or had even adverted
to the letter of the 18th of April, 1814, which had
been published by Mr. Hogg long before the pro-
duction of her own volume.

I wrote the preceding note immediately after the
appearance of Mr. Garnett's article ; but I postponed
its publication, in the hope of obtaining copies of
the letters which were laid before Lord Eldon in
1817. These were nine letters from Shelley to
Harriet, and one from Shelley to Miss Westbrook
after Harriet's death. These letters were not filed ;
but they are thus alluded to in Miss Westbrook's
affidavit, dated 10th January, 1817, of which I have
procured a copy from the Record Office : —

Elizabeth Westbrook, of Chapel Street, Grosvenor
Square, in the parish of Saint George, Hanover Square,
in the county of Middlesex, spinster, maketh oath and
saith, that she knows and is well acquainted with the
handwriting of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, one of
the defendants in this cause, having frequently seen
him write ; and this deponent saith that she hath
looked upon certain paper writings now produced,
and shown to her at the time of swearing this her
affidavit, and marked respectively 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9 ; and this deponent saith that the female
mentioned or referred to in the said letters, marked
respectively 2, 4, 6, 9, under the name or designation
of ' Mary ', and in the said other letters by the character
or description of the person with whom the said
defendant had connected or associated himself, is Mary

1 Shelley Memorials : ' Mrs. Shelley returned.
a Shelley Memorials, pp. 64 5. [T. L. P.]

88 MEMOIRS OF

Godwin, in the pleadings of this cause named, whom
the said defendant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, in the life-
time of his said wife, and in or about the middle of
the year 1814, took to cohabit with him, and hath ever
since continued to cohabit, and still doth cohabit with ;
and this deponent saith that she hath looked upon a
certain other paper writing, produced and shown to this
deponent now at the time of swearing this her affidavit,
and marked 1 0 ; and this deponent saith that the
same paper writing is of the handwriting of the said
defendant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and was addressed by
him to this deponent, since the decease of her said sister,
the late wife of the said Percy Bysshe Shelley. And
this deponent saith that the person referred to in the
said last mentioned letter as ( the Lady whose union with
the said defendant this deponent might excusably regard as
the cause of her Sisters Ruin', is also the said Mary
Godwin.

The rest of the affidavit relates to Queen Mab.

The words marked in italics could not possibly
have been written by Shelley, if his connexion with
Miss Godwin had not been formed till after a
separation from Harriet by mutual consent.

In a second affidavit, dated 13th January, 1817,
Miss Westbrook stated in substance the circum-
stances of the marriage, and that two children were
the issue of it : that after the birth of the first
child, Eliza Ianthe, and while her sister was pregnant
with the second, Charles Bysshe, Percy Bysshe
Shelley deserted his said wife, and cohabited with
Mary Godwin; and thereupon Harriet returned to
the house of her father, with her eldest child, and
soon afterwards the youngest child was born there ;
that the children had always remained under the
protection of Harriet's father, and that Harriet
herself had resided under the same protection until

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 89

a short time previous to her death in December,
1816. It must be obvious that this statement could
not have been made if the letters previously referred
to had not borne it out ; if, in short, they had not
demonstrated, first, that the separation was not by
mutual consent ; and secondly, that it followed, not
preceded, Shelley's first acquaintance with Mary
Godwin. The rest of the affidavit related to the
provision which Mr. Westbrook had made for the
children.

Harriet suffered enough in her life to deserve that
her memory should be respected. I have always
said to all whom it might concern, that I would
defend her, to the best of my ability, against all
misrepresentations. Such are not necessary to
Shelley's vindication. That is best permitted to
rest, as I have already observed, on the grounds on
which it was placed by himself.1

The Quarterly Review for October, 1861, has an
article on Shelley's life and character, written in a tone
of great fairness and impartiality, with an evident
painstaking to weigh evidence and ascertain truth.
There are two passages in the article, on which
I wish to offer remarks, with reference solely to
matters of fact.

Shelley's hallucinations, though not to be confounded
with what is usually called insanity, are certainly not
compatible with perfect soundness of mind. They
were the result of an excessive sensibility, which, only
a little more severely strained, would have overturned
reason altogether. It has been said that the horror of
his wife's death produced some such effect, and that for
a time at least he was actually insane. Lady Shelley

1 Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, p. 102. [T.L.P.] [See
p. 65 of this volume.]

90 MEMOIRS OF

says nothing about this, and we have no explicit
statement of the fact by any authoritative biographer.
But it is not in itself improbable. — p. 323. j

It was not so, however. He had at that time
taken his house at Marlow, where I was then living.
He was residing in Bath, and I was looking after
the fitting-up of the house and the laying out of
the grounds. I had almost daily letters from him
or Mary. He was the first to tell me of Harriet's
death, asking whether I thought it would become
him to interpose any delay before marrying Mary.
I gave him my opinion that, as they were living
together, the sooner they legalized their connexion
the better. He acted on this opinion, and shortly
after his marriage he came to me at Marlow. We
went together to see the progress of his house and
grounds. I recollect a little scene which took place
on this occasion. There was on the lawn a very fine
old wide- spreading holly. The gardener had cut it
up into a bare pole, selling the lop for Christmas
decorations. As soon as Shelley saw it, he asked
the gardener, i What had possessed him to ruin that
beautiful tree ? ' The gardener said, he thought he
had improved its appearance. Shelley said : * It is
impossible that you can be such a fool.' The culprit
stood twiddling his thumbs along the seams of his
trousers, receiving a fulminating denunciation, which

1 This extract begins with the second sentence of a paragraph
that extends for two pages of the Quarterly Review. It opens
as follows : —

1 The man,' says Coleridge, ' who mistakes his thoughts for
persons and things is mad.' And Shelley's hallucinations, [&c.
as above] . . . improbable, and there are not wanting in his own
writings indication of such a calamity. We cannot tell how much
of the description of the maniac in ■ Julian and Maddalo ' may
not be taken from the history of his own mind. There are other
poems which suggest the same observation.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 91

ended in his peremptory dismissal. A better man was
engaged, with several assistants, to make an extensive
plantation of shrubs. Shelley stayed with me two
or three days. I never saw him more calm and self-
possessed. Nothing disturbed his serenity but the
unfortunate holly. Subsequently, the feeling for
Harriet's death grew into a deep and abiding sorrow :
but it was not in the beginning that it was felt
most strongly.

It is not merely as a work of art that the Revolt of
Islam must be considered. It had made its first ap-
pearance under the title of Laon and Cythna, but Laoti
and Cythna was still more outspoken as to certain
matters than the Revolt of Islam, and was almost
immediately withdrawn from circulation, to appear * with
alterations4 under its present name. There is something
not quite worthy of Shelley in this transaction. On
the one hand, merely prudential reasons, mere dread
of public indignation, ought not to have induced him to
conceal opinions 2 which for the interest of humanity he
thought it his duty to promulgate. But those who
knew most of Shelley will be least inclined to attribute
to him such a motive as this. On the other hand, if
good feeling induced him to abstain from printing what
he knew must be painful3 to the great majority of his
countrymen, the second version should have been sup-
pressed as well as the first. — pp. 314-15.

Shelley was not influenced by either of the
motives supposed. Mr. Oilier positively refused to
publish the poem as it was, and Shelley had no hope
of another publisher. He for a long time refused to
alter a line : but his friends finally prevailed on him

1 Quarterly Review : * reappear \

2 Ibid. : * opinions which he believed that, for the sake of
humanity, it was his bounden duty at all risks to promulgate \

3 Ibid. : * painful and shocking to '.

92 MEMOIRS

to submit. Still he could not, or would not, sit
down by himself to alter it, and the whole of the
alterations were actually made in successive sittings
of what I may call a literary committee. He con-
tested the proposed alterations step by step : in the
end, sometimes adopting, more frequently modifying,
never originating, and always insisting that his
poem was spoiled.

LETTERS OF SHELLEY
TO PEACOCK

Shelley wrote to me many letters from Italy — scarcely
less than fifty. Of these, thirteen were published by
Mrs. Shelley, and I now publish seventeen more. These
are all I can find, and are perhaps all that contain any-
thing of general interest.

I have from time to time thought of printing these
letters, but I have always hesitated between two op-
posite disinclinations — on the one hand to omit the
passages which show my friend's kind feelings towards
me, and on the other, to bring myself personally before
the public. But as these passages, especially those
relating to Nightmare Abbey (in which he took to him-
self the character of Scythrop), are really illustrative of
his affectionate, candid, and ingenuous character, I have
finally determined not to suppress them.

We were for some time in the habit of numbering
our letters. The two first in the following series were
numbered 6 and 7, and the third 16. Of the letters
preceding No. 6, Mrs. Shelley published four; and of
those between Nos. 7 and 16 she published six, leaving
a deficiency of three, of which I can give no account.
No. 16 was the last numbered letter, so that I have no
clue to my subsequent losses.

In his letter to me from Naples, dated January 26th,
1819 (published by Mrs. Shelley), he said: — 'In my
accounts of pictures and things, I am more pleased to
interest you than the many ; and this is fortunate,
because in the first place I have no idea of attempting
the latter, and if I did attempt it, I should assuredly
fail. * A perception of the beautiful characterizes those
who differ from ordinary men, and those who can

94 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

perceive it would not buy enough to pay the printer.
Besides, I keep no journal, and the only records of my
voyage will be the letters I send you.'

The letter from Naples, dated February 25th, 1819, is
the last I can find unpublished ; and that from Rome,
June 5th, 1819, published by Mrs. Shelley, was probably
the last of his beautiful descriptive letters to me.

Of the cessation of his wanderings, and consequently
of his descriptions, I have spoken in my last paper.
There is something to the point in one of the following
letters: 'Livorno, June, 1819- — I do not as usual send
you an account of my journey, for I had neither the
health nor the spirit to take notes.'

[The preceding paragraphs form Peacock's introduc-
tion to the sixteen letters, or portions of letters, which he
published in Frasers Magazine for March, 1 860. Letter
27, of which he had already used the more important part
in the Memoirs, he merely referred to, and did not print ;
but presumably he counted it as his seventeenth.

It will be noticed that he speaks of a total number of
thirty letters, while the present edition contains thirty-
four — all that are known to exist. Of the remaining
four, two (Nos. 2 and 4) had been published separately
by Shelley in 1817, with Mrs. Shelley's History of a Six
Weeks' Tour through France, Switzerland, Germany and
Holland ; and two more (Nos. 1 and 3) are portions of
letters which were also sent to Peacock during Shelley's
second visit to Switzerland. These last form the
'some very little original matter, curiously obtained'
which Peacock mentions, early in the first part of the
Memoirs, as figuring in Middleton's Shelley and his
Writings. How Middleton procured them is explained
in the second part of the Memoirs, page 59 of this
edition. The letters which Peacock speaks of above
as having been numbered 6, 7, and 16 in Shelley's corre-
spondence with him, are respectively Nos. 9, 10 and 17
of this edition.]

TO PEACOCK 95

LETTER 1

Hotel de Secheron, Geneva, May 15th, 1816.

After a journey of ten days, we arrived at Geneva.
The journey, like that of life, was variegated with
intermingled rain and sunshine, though these many
showers were to me, as you know, April showers,
quickly passing away, and foretelling the calm bright-
ness of summer.

The journey was in some respects exceedingly delight-
ful, but the prudential considerations arising out of the
necessity of preventing delay, and the continual attention
to pecuniary disbursements, detract terribly from the
pleasure of all travelling schemes.

You live by the shores of a tranquil stream, among
low and woody hills. You live in a free country, where
you may act without restraint, and possess that which
you possess in security ; and so long as the name of
country and the selfish conceptions it includes shall
subsist, England, I am persuaded, is the most free and
the most refined.

Perhaps you have chosen wisely, but if I return and
follow your example, it will be no subject of regret to
me that I have seen other things. Surely there is much
of bad and much of good, there is much to disgust and
much to elevate, which he cannot have felt or known
who has never passed the limits of his native land.

So long as man is such as he now is, the experience
of which I speak will never teach him to despise the
country of his birth — far otherwise, like Wordsworth,
he will never know what love subsists between that
and him until absence shall have made its beauty more
heartfelt ; our poets and our philosophers, our mountains
and our lakes, the rural lanes and fields which are so
especially our own, are ties which, until I become utterly
senseless, can never be broken asunder.

These, and the memory of them, if I never should

96 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

return, these and the affections of the mind, with which,
having been once united, [they] l are inseparable, will
make the name of England dear to me for ever, even
if I should permanently return to it no more.

But I suppose you did not pay the postage of this,
expecting nothing but sentimental gossip, and I fear it
will be long before I play the tourist properly. I will,
however, tell you that to come to Geneva we crossed
the Jura branch of the Alps.

The mere difficulties of horses, high bills, postilions,
and cheating, lying aubergistes, you can easily conceive ;
fill up that part of the picture according to your own
experience, and it cannot fail to resemble.

The mountains of Jura exhibit scenery of wonderful
sublimity. Pine forests of impenetrable thickness,
and untrodden, nay, inaccessible expanse, spreading on
every side. Sometimes, descending, they follow the
route into the valleys, clothing the precipitous rocks,
and struggling with knotted roots between the most
barren clefts. Sometimes the road winds high into the
regions of frost, and there these forests become scattered,
and loaded with snow.

The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and
stand in scattered clumps over the white wilderness.
Never was scene more utterly desolate than that which
we passed on the evening of our last day's journey.

The natural silence of that uninhabited desert con-
trasted strangely with the voices of the people who
conducted us, for it was necessary in this part of the
mountain to take a number of persons, who should assist
the horses to force the chaise through the snow, and
prevent it from falling down the precipice.

We are now at Geneva, where, or in the neighbour-
hood, we shall remain probably until the autumn. I
may return in a fortnight or three weeks, to attend to

1 Mr. Buxton Forman suggests 'we ' before ■ are \ which is
without a subject in Middleton's text ; I follow Rhys, however,
in the opinion that ' they ! is the word omitted.

TO PEACOCK 97

the last exertions which L l is to make for the

settlement of my affairs ; of course I shall then see
you ; in the meantime it will interest me to hear all
that you have to tell of yourself.

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 2

MEILLERIE, CLARENS, CHILLON, VEVAI, LAUSANNE.

Montalegre, near Coligni, Geneva, July 12th, [181 6.]

It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned
from Vevai. This journey has been on every account
delightful, but most especially, because then I first knew
the divine beauty of Rousseau's imagination, as it exhibits
itself in Julie. It is inconceivable what an enchantment
the scene itself lends to those delineations, from which
its own most touching charm arises. But I will give you
an abstract of our voyage, which lasted eight days, and
if you have a map of Switzerland, you can follow me.

We left Montalegre at half-past two on the 23rd of
June. The lake was calm, and after three hours of
rowing we arrived at Hermance, a beautiful little
village, containing a ruined tower, built, the villagers
say, by Julius Caesar. There were three other towers
similar to it, which the Genevese destroyed for their
own fortifications in 1560. We got into the tower by a
kind of window. The walls are immensely solid, and
the stone of which it is built so hard, that it yet retained
the mark of chisels. The boatmen said, that this tower
was once three times higher than it is now. There are
two staircases in the thickness of the walls, one of which
is entirely demolished, and the other half ruined, and
only accessible by a ladder. The town itself, now an
inconsiderable village inhabited by a few fishermen, was
built by a queen of Burgundy, and reduced to its present
state by the inhabitants of Berne, who burnt and ravaged
everything they could find.

1 Longdill, Shelley's solicitor, I presume. [H. B. F.]

98 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the
village of Nerni. After looking at our lodgings, which
were gloomy and dirty, we walked out by the side of the
lake. It was beautiful to see the vast expanse of these
purple and misty waters broken by the craggy islets near
to its slant and ' beached margin*. There were many
fish sporting in the lake, and multitudes were collected
close to the rocks to catch the flies which inhabited them.

On returning to the village, we sat on a wall beside
the lake, looking at some children who were playing at
a game like ninepins. The children here appeared in
an extraordinary way deformed and diseased. Most of
them were crooked, and with enlarged throats ; but one
little boy had such exquisite grace in his mien and
motions, as I never before saw equalled in a child.
His countenance was beautiful for the expression with
which it overflowed. There was a mixture of pride and
gentleness in his eyes and lips, the indications of
sensibility, which his education will probably pervert
to misery or seduce to crime ; but there was more of
gentleness than of pride, and it seemed that the pride
was tamed from its original wildness by the habitual
exercise of milder feelings. My companion gave him a
piece of money, which he took without speaking, with
a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and then with an
unembarrassed air turned to his play. All this might
scarcely be ; but the imagination surely could not
forbear to breathe into the most inanimate forms, some
likeness of its own visions, on such a serene and glowing
evening, in this remote and romantic village, beside the
calm lake that bore us hither.

On returning to our inn, we found that the servant
had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the
greater portion of their former disconsolate appearance.
They reminded my companion of Greece : it was five
years, he said, since he had slept in such beds. The
influence of the recollections excited by this circumstance
on our conversation gradually faded, and I retired to
rest with no unpleasant sensations, thinking of our

TO PEACOCK 99

journey to-morrow, and of the pleasure of recounting
the little adventures of it when we return.

The next morning we passed Y voire, a scattered
village with an ancient castle, whose houses are inter-
spersed with trees, and which stands at a little distance
from Nerni, on the promontory which bounds a deep
bay, some miles in extent. So soon as we arrived at
this promontory, the lake began to assume an aspect of
wilder magnificence. The mountains of Savoy, whose
summits were bright with snow, descended in broken
slopes to the lake : on high, the rocks were dark with
pine forests, which become deeper and more immense,
until the ice and snow mingle with the points of naked
rock that pierce the blue air ; but below, groves of
walnut, chestnut, and oak, with openings of lawny fields,
attested the milder climate.

As soon as we had passed the opposite promontory,
we saw the river Drance, which descends from between
a chasm in the mountains, and makes a plain near the
lake, intersected by its divided streams. Thousands of
besolets, beautiful water-birds, like sea-gulls, but smaller,
with purple on their backs, take their station on the
shallows where its waters mingle with the lake. As
we approached Evian, the mountains descended more
precipitously to the lake, and masses of intermingled
wood and rock overhung its shining spire.

We arrived at this town about seven o'clock, after
a day which involved more rapid changes of atmosphere
than I ever recollect to have observed before. The
morning was cold and wet ; then an easterly wind, and the
clouds hard and high ; then thunder showers, and wind
shifting to every quarter ; then a warm blast from the
south, and summer clouds hanging over the peaks, with
bright blue sky between. About half an hour after we had
arrived at Evian, a few flashes of lightning came from a
dark cloud, directly overhead, and continued after the
cloud had dispersed. ' Diespiter per pura tonantes egit
equos :' a phenomenon which certainly had no influence on
me, corresponding with that which it produced on Horace.
H 2

100 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

The appearance of the inhabitants of Evian is more
wretched, diseased and poor, than I ever recollect to
have seen. The contrast indeed between the subjects of
the King of Sardinia and the citizens of the independent
republics of Switzerland, affords a powerful illustration
of the blighting mischiefs of despotism, within the space
of a few miles. They have mineral waters here, eaux
savonnenses, they call them. In the evening we had
some difficulty about our passports, but so soon as the
syndic heard my companion's rank and name, he apolo-
gized for the circumstance. The inn was good. During
our voyage, on the distant height of a hill, covered with
pine-forests, we saw a ruined castle, which reminded
me of those on the Rhine.

We left Evian on the following morning, with a wind
of such violence as to permit but one sail to be carried.
The waves also were exceedingly high, and our boat so
heavily laden, that there appeared to be some danger.
We arrived, however, safe at Meillerie, after passing with
great speed mighty forests which overhung the lake,
and lawns of exquisite verdure, and mountains with bare
and icy points, which rose immediately from the summit
of the rocks, whose bases were echoing to the waves.

We here heard that the Empress Maria Louisa had
slept at Meillerie — before the present inn was built,
and when the accommodations were those of the most
wretched village — in remembrance of St. Preux. How
beautiful it is to find that the common sentiments of
human nature can attach themselves to those who are
the most removed from its duties and its enjoyments,
when Genius pleads for their admission at the gate of
Power. To own them was becoming in the Empress,
and confirms the affectionate praise contained in the
regret of a great and enlightened nation. A Bourbon
dared not even to have remembered Rousseau. She
owed this power to that democracy which her husband's
dynasty outraged, and of which it was, however, in some
sort, the representative among the nations of the earth.
This little incident shows at once how unfit and how

TO PEACOCK 101

impossible it is for the ancient system of opinions, or for
any power built upon a conspiracy to revive them,
permanently to subsist among mankind. We dined
there, and had some honey, the best I have ever tasted,
the very essence of the mountain flowers, and as fragrant.
Probably the village derives its name from this produc-
tion. Meillerie is the well-known scene of St. Preux's
visionary exile ; but Meillerie is indeed enchanted
ground, were Rousseau no magician. Groves of pine,
chestnut, and walnut overshadow it ; magnificent and
unbounded forests to which England affords no parallel.
In the midst of these woods are dells of lawny expanse,
inconceivably verdant, adorned with a thousand of the
rarest flowers, and odorous with thyme.

The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left
Meillerie, sailing close to the banks, whose magni-
ficence augmented with the turn of every promontory.
But we congratulated ourselves too soon : the wind
gradually increased in violence, until it blew tremen-
dously ; and, as it came from the remotest extremity of
the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and
covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One
of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow,
persisted in holding the sail at a time when the boat
was on the point of being driven under water by the
hurricane. On discovering his error, he let it entirely
go, and the boat for a moment refused to obey the
helm ; in addition, the rudder was so broken as to render
the management of it very difficult ; one wave fell in, and
then another. My companion, an excellent swimmer,
took off his coat, I did the same, and we sat with our
arms crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped.
The sail was, however, again held, the boat obeyed the
helm, and still in imminent peril from the immensity of
the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a sheltered
port, in the village of St. Gingoux.

I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of
sensations, among which terror entered, though but
subordinately. My feelings would have been less painful

102 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

had I been alone ; but I knew that my companion would
have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with
humiliation, when I thought that his life might have
been risked to preserve mine. When we arrived at
St. Gingoux, the inhabitants, who stood on the shore,
unaccustomed to see a vessel as frail as ours, and fearing
to venture at all on such a sea, exchanged looks of
wonder and congratulation with our boatmen, who, as
well as ourselves, were well pleased to set foot on shore.

St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Meillerie ;
the mountains are higher, and their loftiest points of
elevation descend more abruptly to the lake. On high,
the aerial summits still cherish great depths of snow in
their ravines, and in the paths of their unseen torrents.
One of the highest of these is called Roche de St. Julien,
beneath whose pinnacles the forests become deeper and
more extensive ; the chestnut gives a peculiarity to the
scene, which is most beautiful, and will make a picture
in my memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes
which I have ever before visited.

As we arrived here early, we took a voiture to visit the
mouth of the Rhone. We went between the mountains
and the lake, under groves of mighty chestnut trees,
beside perpetual streams, which are nourished by the
snows above, and form stalactites on the rocks, over
which they fall. We saw an immense chestnut tree,
which had been overthrown by the hurricane of the
morning. The place where the Rhone joins the lake
was marked by a line of tremendous breakers ; the river
is as rapid as when it leaves the lake, but is muddy and
dark. We went about a league farther on the road to
La Valais, and stopped at a castle called La Tour de
Bouverie, which seems to be the frontier of Switzerland
and Savoy, as we were asked for our passports, on the
supposition of our proceeding to Italy.

On one side of the road was the immense Roche de
St. Julien, which overhung it ; through the gateway of
the castle we saw the snowy mountains of La Valais,
clothed in clouds, and, on the other side, was the

TO PEACOCK 103

willowy plain of the Rhone, in a character of striking
contrast with the rest of the scene, bounded by the
dark mountains that overhang Clarens, Vevai, and the
lake that rolls between. In the midst of the plain rises
a little isolated hill, on which the white spire of a
church peeps from among the tufted chestnut woods.
We returned to St. Gingoux before sunset, and I passed
the evening in reading Julie.

As my companion rises late, I had time before break-
fast, on the ensuing morning, to hunt the waterfalls of
the river that fall into the lake at St. Gingoux. The
stream is indeed, from the declivity over which it falls,
only a succession of waterfalls, which roar over the rocks
with a perpetual sound, and suspend their unceasing spray
on the leaves and flowers that overhang and adorn its sav-
age banks. The path that conducted along this river
sometimes avoided the precipices of its shores, by leading
through meadows ; sometimes threaded the base of the
perpendicular and caverned rocks. I gathered in these
meadows a nosegay of such flowers as I never saw in
England, and which I thought more beautiful for that rarity.

On my return, after breakfast, we sailed for Clarens,
determining first to see the three mouths of the Rhone,
and then the Castle of Chillon ; the day was fine, and
the water calm. We passed from the blue waters of
the lake over the stream of the Rhone, which is rapid
even at a great distance from its confluence with the
lake ; the turbid waters mixed with those of the lake,
but mixed with them unwillingly. (See Nouvelle Helo'ise,
Lettre 1 7, Part. 4). I read Julie all day ; an overflow-
ing, as it now seems, surrounded by the scenes which it
has so wonderfully peopled, of sublimest genius, and
more than human sensibility. Meillerie, the Castle of
Chillon, Clarens, the mountains of La Valais and Savoy,
present themselves to the imagination as monuments of
things that were once familiar, and of beings that were
once dear to it. They were created indeed by one
mind, but a mind so powerfully bright as to cast a shade
of falsehood on the records that are called reality.

104 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and visited its
dungeons and towers. These prisons are excavated
below the lake ; the principal dungeon is supported by
seven columns, whose branching capitals support the
roof. Close to the very walls, the lake is eight hundred
feet deep ; iron rings are fastened to these columns,
and on them were engraven a multitude of names,
partly those of visitors, and partly doubtless of the
prisoners, of whom now no memory remains, and who
thus beguiled a solitude which they have long ceased to
feel. One date was as ancient as 1670. At the com-
mencement of the Reformation, and indeed long after
that period, this dungeon was the receptacle of those who
shook, or who denied the system of idolatry, from the
effects of which mankind is even now slowly emerging.

Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a narrow
cell, and beyond it one larger and far more lofty and
dark, supported upon two unornamented arches. Across
one of these arches was a beam, now black and rotten,
on which prisoners were hung in secret. I never saw
a monument more terrible of that cold and inhuman
tyranny, which it has been the delight of man to exercise
over man. It was indeed one of those many tremen-
dous fulfilments which render the 'pernicies humani
generis ' of the great Tacitus so solemn and irrefragable
a prophecy. The gendarme, who conducted us over
this castle, told us that there was an opening to the
lake, by means of a secret spring, connected with which
the whole dungeon might be filled with water before
the prisoners could possibly escape !

We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens against
a heavy swell. I never felt more strongly than on
landing at Clarens, that the spirit of old times had
deserted its once cherished habitation. A thousand
times, thought I, have Julia and St. Preux walked on
this terraced road, looking towards these mountains
which I now behold ; nay, treading on the ground
where I now tread. From the window of our lodging
our landlady pointed out Me bosquet de Julie'. At

TO PEACOCK 105

least the inhabitants of this village are impressed with
an idea, that the persons of that romance had actual
existence. In the evening we walked thither. It is,
indeed, Julia's wood. The hay was making under the
trees ; the trees themselves were aged, but vigorous,
and interspersed with younger ones, which are destined
to be their successors, and in future years, when we are
dead, to afford a shade to future worshippers of nature,
who love the memory of that tenderness and peace of
which this was the imaginary abode. We walked
forward among the vineyards, whose narrow terraces
overlook this affecting scene. Why did the cold maxims
of the world compel me at this moment to repress the
tears of melancholy transport which it would have been
so sweet to indulge, immeasurably, even until the dark-
ness of night had swallowed up the objects which
excited them.

I forgot to remark, what indeed my companion
remarked to me, that our danger from the storm took
place precisely in the spot where Julie and her lover
were nearly overset, and where St. Preux was tempted
to plunge with her into the lake.

On the following day we went to see the castle of
Clarens, a square strong house, with very few windows,
surrounded by a double terrace that overlooks the
valley, or rather the plain of Clarens. The road which
conducted to it wound up the steep ascent through
woods of walnut and chestnut. We gathered roses on
the terrace, in the feeling that they might be the
posterity of some planted by Julie's hand. We sent
their dead and withered leaves to the absent.

We went again to e the bosquet de Julie ', and found
that the precise spot was now utterly obliterated, and
a heap of stones marked the place where the little
chapel had once stood. Whilst we were execrating the
author of this brutal folly, our guide informed us that
the land belonged to the convent of St. Bernard, and
that this outrage had been committed by their orders.
I knew before, that if avarice could harden the hearts

106 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

of men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence
far more inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an
isolated man is sometimes restrained by shame from
outraging the venerable feelings arising out of the
memory of genius, which once made nature even love-
lier than itself; but associated man holds it as the very
sacrament of his union to forswear all delicacy, all
benevolence, all remorse ; all that is true, or tender, or
sublime.

We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a town
more beautiful in its simplicity than any I have ever
seen. Its market-place, a spacious square interspersed
with trees, looks directly upon the mountains of Savoy
and La Valais, the lake, and the valley of the Rhone. It
was at Vevai that Rousseau conceived the design of Julie.

From Vevai we came to Ouchy, a village near
Lausanne. The coasts of the Pays de Vaud, though
full of villages and vineyards, present an aspect of
tranquillity and peculiar beauty which well compensates
for the solitude which I am accustomed to admire.
The hills are very high and rocky, crowned and inter-
spersed with woods. Waterfalls echo from the cliffs,
and shine afar. In one place we saw the traces of two
rocks of immense size, which had fallen from the moun-
tain behind. One of these lodged in a room where a
young woman was sleeping, without injuring her. The
vineyards were utterly destroyed in its path, and the
earth torn up.

The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We, how-
ever, visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house. We
were shown the decayed summer-house where he finished
his History, and the old acacias on the terrace, from
which he saw Mont Blanc, after having written the last
sentence. There is something grand and even touching
in the regret which he expresses at the completion of
his task. It was conceived amid the ruins of the
Capitol. The sudden departure of his cherished and
accustomed toil must have left him, like the death of
a dear friend, sad and solitary.

TO PEACOCK 107

My companion gathered some acacia leaves to preserve
in remembrance of him. I refrained from doing so,
fearing to outrage the greater and more sacred name of
Rousseau ; the contemplation of whose imperishable
creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal
things. Gibbon had a cold and unimpassioned spirit.
I never felt more inclination to rail at the prejudices
which cling to such a thing, than now that Julie and
Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire, compelled
me to a contrast between Rousseau and Gibbon.

When we returned, in the only interval of sunshine
during the day, I walked on the pier which the lake
was lashing with its waves. A rainbow spanned the
lake, or rather rested one extremity of its arch upon the
water, and the other at the foot of the mountains of
Savoy. Some white houses, I know not if they were
those of Meillerie, shone through the yellow fire.

On Saturday the 30th of June we quitted Ouchy, and
after two days of pleasant sailing arrived on Sunday
evening at Montalegre.

LETTER 3

Geneva } July Mth, 18l6.

My opinion of turning to one spot of earth and calling
it our home, and of the excellencies and usefulness of
the sentiments arising out of this attachment, has at
length produced in me the resolution of acquiring this
possession.

You are the only man who has sufficient regard for
me to take an interest in the fulfilment of this design,
and whose tastes conform sufficiently to mine to engage
me to confide the execution of it to your discretion.

I do not trouble you with apologies for giving you
this commission. I require only rural exertions, walks,
and circuitous wanderings, some slight negotiations
about the letting of a house — the superintendence of
a disorderly garden, some palings to be mended, some
books to be removed and set up.

108 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

I wish you would get all my books and all my furni-
ture from Bishopgate, and all other effects appertaining
to me. I have written to ... to secure all that belongs

to me there to you. I have written also to L to

give up possession of the house on the third of August.

When you have possessed yourself of all my affairs, I
wish you to look out for a home for me and Mary and
William, and the kitten, who is now en pension. I wish
you to get an unfurnished house, with as good a garden
as may be, near Windsor Forest, and take a lease of it
for fourteen or twenty-one years. The house must not
be too small. I wish the situation to resemble as nearly
as possible that of Bishopgate, and should think that
Sunning Hill, or Winkfield Plain, or the neighbourhood
of Virginia Water would afford some possibilities.

Houses are now exceedingly cheap and plentiful ; but
I entrust the whole of this affair entirely to your own
discretion.

I shall hear from you of course, as to what you have
done on this subject, and shall not delay to remit you
whatever expenses you may find it necessary to incur.
Perhaps, however, you had better sell the useless part
of the Bishopgate furniture — I mean those odious
curtains, &c.

Will you write to L to tell him that you are

authorized on my part to go over the inventory with

Lady L 's people on the third of August, if they

please, and to make whatever arrangements may be
requisite. I should be content with the Bishopgate

house, dear as it is, if Lady L would make the sale

of it a post obit transaction. I merely suggest this,
that if you see any possibility of proposing such an
arrangement with effect, you might do it.

My present intention is to return to England, and to
make that most excellent of nations my perpetual resting
place. I think it is extremely probable that we shall
return next spring — perhaps before, perhaps after, but
certainly we shall return.

On the motives and on the consequences of this

TO PEACOCK 109

journey, I reserve much explanation for some future
winter walk or summer expedition. This much alone is
certain, that before we return we shall have seen, and
felt, and heard, a multiplicity of things which will haunt
our talk and make us a little better worth knowing than
we were before our departure.

If possible, we think of descending the Danube in a
boat, of visiting Constantinople and Athens, then Rome
and the Tuscan cities, and returning by the south of
France, always following great rivers. The Danube, the
Po, the Rhone, and the Garonne ; rivers are not like
roads, the work of the hands of man ; they imitate
mind, which wanders at will over pathless deserts, and
flows through nature's loveliest recesses, which are
inaccessible to anything besides. They have the viler
advantage also of affording a cheaper mode of conveyance.

This eastern scheme is one which has just seized on our
imaginations. I fear that the detail of execution will
destroy it, as all other wild and beautiful visions ; but
at all events you will hear from us wherever we are, and
to whatever adventures destiny enforces us.

Tell me in return all English news. What has
become of my poem ? l I hope it has already sheltered
itself in the bosom of its mother, Oblivion, from whose
embraces no one could have been so barbarous as to
tear it except me.

Tell me of the political state of England. Its litera-
ture, of which when I speak Coleridge is in my thoughts ;
— yourself, lastly your own employments, your historical
labours.

I had written thus far when your letter to Mary
dated the 8th arrived. What you say of Bishopgate of
course modifies that part of this letter which relates to
it. I confess I did not learn the destined ruin without
some pain, but it is well for me perhaps that a situation
requiring so large an expense should be placed beyond
our hopes.

1 Presumably Alastor. [H. B. F.]

110 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

You must shelter my roofless Penates, dedicate some
new temple to them, and perform the functions of a
priest in my absence. They are innocent deities, and
their worship neither sanguinary nor absurd.

Leave Mammon and Jehovah to those who delight in
wickedness and slavery — their altars are stained with
blood, or polluted with gold, the price of blood. But
the shrines of the Penates are good wood fires, or
window frames intertwined with creeping plants ; their
hymns are the purring of kittens, the hissing of kettles ;
the long talks over the past and dead, the laugh of
children ; the warm wind of summer filling the quiet
house, and the pelting storm of winter struggling in
vain for entrance. In talking of the Penates, will you
not liken me to Julius Caesar dedicating a temple to
Liberty ?

As I have said in the former part of my letter, I trust
entirely to your discretion on the subject of a house.
Certainly the Forest engages my preference, because of
the sylvan nature of the place, and the beasts with
which it is filled. But I am not insensible to the
beauties of the Thames, and any extraordinary eligibility
of situation you mention in your letter would over-
balance our habitual affection for the neighbourhood of
Bishopgate.

Its proximity to the spot you have chosen is an argu-
ment with us in favour of the Thames. Recollect, how-
ever, we are now choosing a fixed, settled, eternal home,
and as such its internal qualities will affect us more con-
stantly than those which consist in the surrounding
scenery, which whatever it may be at first, will shortly
be no more than the colours with which our own habits
shall invest it.

I am glad that circumstances do not permit the choice
to be my own. I shall abide by yours as others abide by
the necessity of their birth.

P. B. S.

TO PEACOCK 111

LETTER 4

ST. MARTIN, SERVOZ, CHAMOUNI, MONTANVERT,
MONT BLANC.

Hotel de Londres, Chamouni, July 22nd, 1816.

Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing a home
for us, we are wandering in search of recollections to
embellish it. I do not err in conceiving that you are
interested in details of all that is majestic or beautiful
in nature ; but how shall I describe to you the scenes by
which I am now surrounded ? To exhaust the epithets
which express the astonishment and the admiration —
the very excess of satisfied astonishment, where expecta-
tion scarcely acknowledged any boundary, is this to
impress upon your mind the images which fill mine now,
even till it overflow? I too have read the raptures of
travellers ; I will be warned by their example ; I will
simply detail to you all that I can relate, or all that, if
related, would enable you to conceive of what we have
done or seen since the morning of the 20th, when we
left Geneva.

We commenced our intended journey to Chamouni at
half-past eight in the morning. We passed through the
champain country, which extends from Mont Saleve to
the base of the higher Alps. The country is sufficiently
fertile, covered with corn-fields and orchards, and inter-
sected by sudden acclivities with flat summits. The day
was cloudless and excessively hot, the Alps were per-
petually in sight, and as we advanced, the mountains,
which form their outskirts, closed in around us. We
passed a bridge over a stream, which discharges itself
into the Arve. The Arve itself, much swollen by the
rains, flows constantly to the right of the road.

As we approached Bonneville through an avenue
composed of a beautiful species of drooping poplar, we
observed that the corn-fields on each side were covered
with inundation. Bonneville is a neat little town, with
no conspicuous peculiarity, except the white towers of

112 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

the prison, an extensive building overlooking the town.
At Bonneville the Alps commence, one of which, clothed
by forests, rises almost immediately from the opposite
bank of the Arve.

From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts through
a spacious and fertile plain, surrounded on all sides by
mountains, covered like those of Meillerie with forests
of intermingled pine and chestnut. At Cluses the road
turns suddenly to the right, following the Arve along
the chasm, which it seems to have hollowed for itself
among the perpendicular mountains. The scene assumes
here a more savage and colossal character : the valley
becomes narrow, affording no more space than is sufficient
for the river and the road. The pines descend to the
banks, imitating, with their irregular spires, the pyra-
midal crags, which lift themselves far above the regions
of forest into the deep azure of the sky, and among the
white dazzling clouds. The scene, at the distance of
half a mile from Cluses, differs from that of Matlock in
little else than in the immensity of its proportions, and
in its untameable inaccessible solitude, inhabited only
by the goats which we saw browsing on the rocks.

Near Maglans, within a league of each other, we saw
two waterfalls. They were no more than mountain
rivulets, but the height from which they fell, at least of
twelve hundred feet, made them assume a character
inconsistent with the smallness of their stream. The
first fell from the overhanging brow of a black precipice
on an enormous rock, precisely resembling some colossal
Egyptian statue of a female deity. It struck the head
of the visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell
from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than water,
imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. It then
united, concealing the lower part of the statue, and
hiding itself in a winding of its channel, burst into a
deeper fall, and crossed our route in its path towards
the Arve.

The other waterfall was more continuous and larger.
The violence with which it fell made it look more

TO PEACOCK 113

like some shape which an exhalation had assumed, than
like water, for it streamed beyond the mountain, which
appeared dark behind it, as it might have appeared
behind an evanescent cloud.

The character of the scenery continued the same
until we arrived at St. Martin (called in the maps
Sallanches), the mountains perpetually becoming more
elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road more
craggy summits, loftier and wider extent of forests,
darker and more deep recesses.

The following morning we proceeded from St. Martin,
on mules, to Chamouni, accompanied by two guides. We
proceeded, as we had done the preceding day, along the
valley of the Arve, a valley surrounded on all sides by
immense mountains, whose rugged precipices are inter-
mixed on high with dazzling snow. Their bases were
still covered with the eternal forests, which perpetually
grew darker and more profound as we approached the
inner regions of the mountains.

On arriving at a small village at the distance of a league
from St. Martin, we dismounted from our mules, and
were conducted by our guides to view a cascade. We
beheld an immense body of water fall two hundred and
fifty feet, dashing from rock to rock, and casting a spray
which formed a mist around it, in the midst of which hung
a multitude of sunbows, which faded or became unspeak-
ably vivid, as the inconstant sun shone through the
clouds. When we approached near to it, the rain of
the spray reached us, and our clothes were wetted by the
quick-falling but minute particles of water. The
cataract fell from above into a deep craggy chasm at
our feet, where, changing its character to that of a
mountain stream, it pursued its course towards the Arve,
roaring over the rocks that impeded its progress.

As we proceeded, our route still lay through the
valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine,
which is at once the couch and the creation of the
terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between moun-
tains, whose immensity staggers the imagination. We

PEACOCK I

114 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

crossed the path of a torrent, which three days since had
descended from the thawing snow, and torn the road
away.

We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there are
lead and copper mines, and where we saw a cabinet of
natural curiosities, like those of Keswick and Bethgelert.
We saw in this cabinet some chamois' horns, and the
horns of an exceedingly rare animal called the bouquetin,
which inhabits the deserts of snow to the south of Mont
Blanc : it is an animal of the stag kind ; its horns weigh,
at least, twenty-seven English pounds. It is inconceiv-
able how so small an animal could support so inordinate
a weight. The horns are of a very peculiar conforma-
tion, being broad, massy, and pointed at the ends, and
surrounded with a number of rings, which are supposed
to afford an indication of its age : there were seventeen
rings on the largest of these horns.

From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni. —
Mont Blanc was before us — the Alps, with their in-
numerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the
complicated windings of the single vale — forests inex-
pressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty — inter-
mingled beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road,
or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have never
seen before, occupied these openings, and gradually be-
came darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before
us, but it was covered with cloud ; its base, furrowed
with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow
intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont
Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high.
I never knew — I never imagined — what mountains were
before. The immensity of these aerial summits excited,
when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of
ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And remember
this was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard
and our imagination. Though it embraced a vast extent
of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright
blue sky seemed to overhang our path ; the ravine, clothed
with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below,

TO PEACOCK 115

so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve,
which rolled through it, could not be heard above — all
was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of
such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied
our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our
spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.

As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact,
may be considered as a continuation of those which we
have followed from Bonneville and Cluses), clouds hung
upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6,000 feet
from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal, not only
Mont Blanc, but the other aiguilles, as they call them
here, attached and subordinate to it. We were travel-
ling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound
as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above ; yet
there was something earthly in the sound, that told us it
could not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out
to us a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the
sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke
of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at
intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of
a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw its
tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves over the
ravine, which was their couch.

We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier des
Bossons to-day, although it descends within a few
minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it at least
when unfatigued. We saw this glacier, which comes close
to the fertile plain, as we passed. Its surface was broken
into a thousand unaccountable figures ; conical and pyra-
midical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height,
rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling
splendour, overhang the woods and meadows of the
vale. This glacier winds upwards from the valley, until
it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced
above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt
flung over the black region of pines. There is more in
all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion :
there is a majesty of outline ; there is an awful grace in

116 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes
— a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even
from the reality of their unutterable greatness.

Juh) 24.

Yesterday morning we went to the source of the
Arveiron. It is about a league from this village ; the
river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and
spreads itself in many streams over a vast space of the
valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The
glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs
this cavern and the plain, and the forests of pine which
surround it, with terrible precipices of solid ice. On
the other side rises the immense glacier of Montanvert,
fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among moun-
tains of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed
and abrupt, that they seem to pierce the sky. From
this glacier we saw, as we sat on a rock, close to one of
the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach them-
selves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise
into the vale. The violence of their fall turned them
into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation
of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and filled.

In the evening, I went with Ducree, my guide, the
only tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit
the glacier of Bossons. This glacier, like that of Mont-
anvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging the green
meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling white-
ness of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires
of radiant crystal, covered with a net-work of frosted
silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the valley,
ravaging in their slow but irresistible progress the
pastures and the forests which surround them, per-
forming a work of desolation in ages, which a river of
lava might accomplish in an hour, but far more irre-
trievably ; for wThere the ice has once descended, the
hardiest plant refuses to grow ; if even, as in some
extraordinary instances, it should recede after its pro-
gress has once commenced. The glaciers perpetually

TO PEACOCK 117

move onward, at the rate of a foot each day, with a
motion that commences at the spot where, on the
boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced
by the freezing of the waters which arise from the
partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag with
them, from the regions whence they derive their origin,
all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and
immense accumulations of sand and stones. These are
driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid ice ;
and when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain,
sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one
of these rocks which had descended in the spring
(winter here is the season of silence and safety), which
measured forty feet in every direction.

The verge of a glacier, like that of Bossons, presents
the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to
conceive. No one dares to approach it ; for the enormous
pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall, are perpetually
reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at
one extremity, are overthrown and shattered, to a wide
extent, at its base. There is something inexpressibly
dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks,
which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted
soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and
stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have ad-
vanced three hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the
naturalist, says, that they have their periods of increase
and decay : the people of the country hold an opinion
entirely different ; but as I judge, more probable. It is
agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont
Blanc and the neighbouring mountains perpetually
augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, subsists
without melting in the valley of Chamouni during its
transient and variable summer. If the snow which pro-
duces this glacier must augment, and the heat of the
valley is no obstacle to the perpetual existence of such
masses of ice as have already descended into it, the
consequence is obvious ; the glaciers must augment and
will subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale,

118 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

I will not pursue Buflfon's sublime but gloomy theory
— that this globe which we inhabit will, at some future
period, be changed into a mass of frost by the encroach-
ments of the polar ice, and of that produced on the
most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert
the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among
these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and
frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence
by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts
around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation,
avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all
these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his
reign; — add to this, the degradation of the human species
— who, in these regions, are half deformed or idiotic, and
most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite
interest or admiration. This is part of the subject more
mournful and less sublime ; but such as neither the
poet nor the philosopher should disdain to regard.

This morning we departed, on the promise of a fine
day, to visit the glacier of Montanvert. In that part
where it fills a slanting valley, it is called the Sea of Ice.
This valley is 950 toises, or 7,600 feet, above the level of
the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain
began to fall, but we persisted until we had accom-
plished more than half of our journey, when we returned,
wet through.

Chamouni, July 25th.

We have returned from visiting the glacier of Mont-
anvert, or as it is called the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth
of dizzying wonder. The path that winds to it along
the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines, now
intersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The
cabin of Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni,
half of which distance is performed on mules, not so
surefooted but that on the first day the one which I
rode fell in what the guides call a mauvais pas, so that
I narrowly escaped being precipitated down the moun-
tain. We passed over a hollow covered with snow,

TO PEACOCK 119

down which vast stones are accustomed to roll. One
had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had
returned : our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is
said that sometimes the least sound will accelerate their
descent. We arrived at Montanvert, however, safe.

On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of
unrelenting frost, surround this vale : their sides are
banked up with ice and snow, broken, heaped high, and
exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are sharp and
naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not
even permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling
ice occupy here and there their perpendicular rifts, and
shine through the driving vapours with inexpressible
brilliance : they pierce the clouds like things not belong-
ing to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass
of undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual
even to the remotest abysses of these horrible deserts.
It is only half a league (about two miles) in breadth,
and seems much less. It exhibits an appearance as if
frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools
of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its
surface. The waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen
feet from the surface of the mass, which is intersected
by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose
sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these
regions everything changes, and is in motion. This
vast mass of ice has one general progress, which ceases
neither day nor night ; it breaks and bursts for ever :
some undulations sink while others rise ; it is never the
same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which
fall from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their
aerial summits, scarcely ceases for one moment. One
would think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics,
was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever
circulated through his stony veins.

We dined (Mary, Claire, and I) on the grass, in the
open air, surrounded by this scene. The air is piercing
and clear. We returned down the mountain sometimes
encompassed by the driving vapours, sometimes cheered

120 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

by the sunbeams, and arrived at our inn by seven
o'clock.

Montalegre, July 28th.

The next morning we returned through the rain to
St. Martin. The scenery had lost something of its im-
mensity, thick clouds hanging over the highest moun-
tains ; but visitings of sunlight intervened between the
showers, and the blue sky shone between the accumu-
lated clouds of snowy whiteness which brought them ;
the dazzling mountains sometimes glittered through a
chasm of the clouds above our heads, and all the charm
of its grandeur remained. We repassed Pont Pellisier,
a wooden bridge over the Arve, and the ravine of the
Arve. We repassed the pine forests which overhang
the defile, the chateau of St. Michael ; a haunted ruin,
built on the edge of a precipice, and shadowed over by the
eternal forest. We repassed the vale of Servoz, a vale
more beautiful, because more luxuriant, than that of
Chamouni. Mont Blanc forms one of the sides of this
vale also, and the other is enclosed by an irregular amphi-
theatre of enormous mountains, one of which is in ruins,
and fell fifty years ago into the higher part of the valley :
the smoke of its fall was seen in Piedmont, and people
went from Turin to investigate whether a volcano had
not burst forth among the Alps. It continued falling
many days, spreading, with the shock and thunder of
its ruin, consternation into the neighbouring vales. In
the evening we arrived at St. Martin. The next day
we wound through the valley, which I have described
before, and arrived in the evening at our home.

We have bought some specimens of minerals and
plants, and two or three crystal seals, at Mont Blanc,
to preserve the remembrance of having approached it.
There is a cabinet of histoire naturelle at Chamouni, just
as at Keswick, Matlock, and Clifton ; the proprieter of
which is the very vilest specimen of that vile species of
quack, that, together with the whole army of aubergistes
and guides, and indeed the entire mass of the popu-

TO PEACOCK 121

lation, subsist on the weakness and credulity of
travellers as leeches subsist on the sick. The most
interesting of my purchases is a large collection of all
the seeds of rare alpine plants, with their names written
upon the outside of the papers that contain them.
These I mean to colonize in my garden in England, and
to permit you to make what choice .you please from
them. They are companions which the Celandine — the
classic Celandine — need not despise ; ' they are as wild
and more daring than he, and will tell him tales of
things even as touching and sublime as the gaze of
a vernal poet.

Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves among
these mountains ? In the winter they descend into the
valleys, which the snow occupies six months of the year,
and devour everything that they can find out of doors.
A wolf is more powerful than the fiercest and strongest
dog. There are no bears in these regions. We heard,
when we were in Lucerne, that they were occasionally
found in the forests which surround that lake.

Adieu, S.

LETTER 5

Milan, April, 1818.
My Dear Peacock,

Behold us arrived at length at the end of our
journey — that is, within a few miles of it — because we
design to spend the summer on the shore of the lake of
Como. Our journey was somewhat painful from the
cold — and in no other manner interesting until we
passed the Alps : of course I except the Alps them-
selves ; but no sooner had we arrived at Italy, than the
loveliness of the earth and the serenity of the sky made
the greatest difference in my sensations. I depend on
these things for life ; for in the smoke of cities, and the
tumult of human kind, and the chilling fogs and rain of
our own country, I can hardly be said to live. With
what delight did I hear the woman, who conducted us

1 Compare Peacock's note on the celandine, Letter 22.

\m LETTERS OF SHELLEY

to see the triumphal arch of Augustus at Susa, speak
the clear and complete language of Italy, though half
unintelligible to me, after that nasal and abbreviated
cacophony of the French. A ruined arch of magnificent
proportions, in the Greek taste, standing in a kind of road
of green lawn overgrown with violets and primroses,
and in the midst of stupendous mountains, and a blonde
woman, of light and graceful manners, something
in the style of Fuseli's Eve, were the first things we met
in Italy.

This city is very agreeable. We went to the opera
last night — which is a most splendid exhibition. The
opera itself was not a favourite, and the singers very
inferior to our own. But the ballet, or rather a kind of
melodrama or pantomimic drama, was the most splendid
spectacle I ever saw. We have no Miss Melanie here
— in every other respect, Milan is unquestionably
superior. The manner in which language is translated
into gesture, the complete and full effect of the whole
as illustrating the history in question, the unaffected
self-possession of each of the actors, even to the
children, made this choral drama more impressive than
I could have conceived possible. The story is Othello,
and strange to say, it left no disagreeable impression.

I write, but I am not in the humour to write, and
you must expect longer, if not more entertaining, letters
soon — that is, in a week or so — when I am a little re-
covered from my journey. Pray tell us all the news
with regard to our own offspring, whom we left at
nurse in England ; as well as those of our friends.
Mention Cobbett and politics too — and Hunt — to whom
Mary is now writing — and particularly your own plans
and yourself. You shall hear more of me and my plans
soon. My health is improved already — and my spirits
something — and I have many literary schemes, and one
in particular — which I thirst to be settled that I may
begin. I have ordered Oilier to send you some sheets,
&c, for revision. Adieu. — Always faithfully yours,

P. B. S,

TO PEACOCK 123

LETTER 6

Milan, April 20, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

I had no conception that the distance between
us, measured by time in respect of letters, was so great.
I have but just received yours dated the 2nd — and
when you will receive mine written from this city
somewhat later than the same date, I cannot know. I
am sorry to hear that you have been obliged to remain
at Marlow ; a certain degree of society being almost a
necessity of life, particularly as we are not to see you
this summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as
it is. I often revisit Marlow in thought. The curse of
this life is, that whatever is once known, can never be
unknown. You inhabit a spot, which before you inhabit
it, is as indifferent to you as any other spot upon earth,
and when, persuaded by some necessity, you think to
leave it, you leave it not ; it clings to you — and with
memories of things, which, in your experience of them,
gave no such promise, revenges your desertion. Time
flows on, places are changed ; friends who were with us,
are no longer with us ; yet what has been seems yet to
be, but barren and stripped of life. See, I have sent
you a study for Nightmare Abbey.

Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como,
looking for a house. This lake exceeds any thing I
ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the
arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow,
and has the appearance of a mighty river winding
among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from
the town of Como to a tract of country called the
Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by
that part of the lake. The mountains between Como
and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered
on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on
which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of
scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge

124 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches.
But usually the immediate border of this shore is com-
posed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild
fig-trees, and olives, which grow in the crevices of the
rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep
glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the
waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name,
grow there also. On high, the towers of village churches
are seen white among the dark forests. Beyond, on
the opposite shore, which faces the south, the moun-
tains descend less precipitously to the lake, and although
they are much higher, and some covered with perpetual
snow, there intervenes between them and the lake a
range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening
to the other, such as I should fancy the abysses of Ida
or Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and orange,
and lemon trees, which are now so loaded with fruit,
that there is more fruit than leaves — and vineyards.
This shore of the lake is one continued village, and the
Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of
culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of
nature is here so close, that the line where they are
divided can hardly be discovered. But the finest
scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana ; so called from a
fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, de-
scribed by the younger Pliny, which is in the court-
yard. This house, which was once a magnificent palace,
and is now half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure.
It is built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the
lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a semi-
circular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of
chestnut. The scene from the colonnade is the most
extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye
ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and
immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees
of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky.
Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends
a waterfall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks
into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other

TO PEACOCK 125

side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the moun-
tains, speckled with sails and spires. The apartments
of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill furnished
and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake,
and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-
trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most
delightful. We staid at Como two days, and have now
returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation
about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan,
and its mountains are seen from the cathedral.

This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It
is built of white marble, and cut into pinnacles ot
immense height, and the utmost delicacy of work-
manship, and loaded with sculpture. The effect of it,
piercing the solid blue with those groups of dazzling
spires, relieved by the serene depth of this Italian
heaven, or by moonlight when the stars seem gathered
among those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing I
had imagined architecture capable of producing. The
interior, though very sublime, is of a more earthly
character, and with its stained glass and massy granite
columns overloaded with antique figures, and the silver
lamps, that burn for ever under the canopy of black
cloth beside the brazen altar and the marble fretwork of
the dome, give it the aspect of some gorgeous sepulchre.
There is one solitary spot among those aisles, behind
the altar, where the light of day is dim and yellow under
the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and
read Dante there.

I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next
year, to the composition of a tragedy on the subject of
Tasso's madness, which I find upon inspection is, if
properly treated, admirably dramatic and poetical. But,
you will say, I have no dramatic talent ; very true, in a
certain sense ; but I have taken the resolution to see
what kind of a tragedy a person without dramatic talent
could write. It shall be better morality than Fazio,1 and

1 By Dean Milman.

126 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

better poetry than Bertram,1 at least. You tell me
nothing of Rhododaphne,2 a book from which, I confess,
I expected extraordinary success.

Who lives in my house at Marlow now, or what is to
be done with it? I am seriously persuaded that the
situation was injurious to my health, or I should be
tempted to feel a very absurd interest in who is to be
its next possessor. The expense of our journey here
has been very considerable — but we are now living at
the hotel here, in a kind of Pension, which is very
reasonable in respect of price, and when we get into
a menage of our own, we have every reason to expect
that we shall experience something of the boasted
cheapness of Italy. The finest bread, made of a sifted
flour, the whitest and the best I ever tasted, is only
one English penny a pound. All the necessaries of life
bear a proportional relation to this. But then the
luxuries, tea, &c, are very dear, — and the English, as
usual, are cheated in a way that is quite ridiculous, if
they have not their wits about them. We do not know
a single human being, and the opera, until last night,
has been always the same. Lord Byron, we hear, has
taken a house for three years, at Venice ; whether we
shall see him or not, I do not know. The number of
English who pass through this town is very great.
They ought to be in their own country in the present
crisis. Their conduct is wholly inexcusable. The
people here, though inoffensive enough, seem both in
body and soul a miserable race. The men are hardly
men ; they look like a tribe of stupid and shrivelled
slaves, and I do not think that I have seen a gleam of
intelligence in the countenance of man since I passed
the Alps. The women in enslaved countries are always
better than the men ; but they have tight-laced figures,

1 By Maturin. Both these tragedies had been staged in
London within three years of the date of this letter.

2 Shelley wrote a review of this, the most ambitious of
Peacock's poems, for Leigh Hunt ; but it was not published.
It has been printed in Mr. Buxton Forman's third volume.

TO PEACOCK 127

and figures and mien which express (O how unlike the
French !) a mixture of the coquette and prude, which re-
minds me of the worst characteristics of the English.1
Everything but humanity is in much greater perfection
here than in France. The cleanliness and comfort of the
inns is something quite English. The country is beauti-
fully cultivated ; and altogether, if you can, as one ought
always to do, find your happiness in yourself, it is a most
delightful and commodious place to live in.

Adieu. — Your affectionate friend,

P. B. S.

LETTER 7

Milan, April 30th, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

I write, simply to tell you, to direct your next
letters, Poste Restante, Pisa. We have engaged a
vetturino for that city, and leave Milan to-morrow
morning. Our journey will occupy six or seven days.

Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, with
which it communicates by the river Arno. We shall
pass by Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, the Apennines, and
Florence, and I will endeavour to tell you something of
these celebrated places in my next letter ; but I can-
not promise much, for, though my health is much
improved, my spirits are unequal, and seem to desert
me when I attempt to write.

Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst of
summer — we shall do, therefore, what other people do,
retire to Florence, or to the mountains. But I will
write to you our plans from Pisa, when I shall under-
stand them better myself.

1 These impressions of Shelley, with regard to the Italians,
formed in ignorance, and with precipitation, became altogether
altered after a longer stay in Italy. He quickly discovered the
extraordinary intelligence and genius of this wonderful people,
amidst the ignorance in which they are carefully kept by their
rulers, and the vices, fostered by a religious system, which these
same rulers have used as their most successful engine. [M. S.]

128 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

You may easily conjecture the motives which led us
to forego the divine solitude of Como. To me, whose
chief pleasure in life is the contemplation of nature,
you may imagine how great is this loss.

Let us hear from you once a fortnight. Do not
forget those who do not forget you.

Adieu. — Ever most sincerely yours,
P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 8

Livorno, June 5, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

We have not heard from you since the middle of
April — that is, we have received only one letter from
you since our departure from England. It necessarily
follows that some accident has intercepted them.
Address, in future, to the care of Mr. Gisborne, Livorno
— and I shall receive them, though sometimes some-
what circuitously, yet always securely.

We left Milan on the 1st of May, and travelled across
the Apennines to Pisa. This part of the Apennine is
far less beautiful than the Alps ; the mountains are
wide and wild, and the whole scenery broad and
undetermined — the imagination cannot find a home in
it. The plain of the Milanese, and that of Parma, is
exquisitely beautiful — it is like one garden, or rather
cultivated wilderness ; because the corn and the meadow-
grass grow under high and thick trees, festooned to one
another by regular festoons of vines. On the seventh
day we arrived at Pisa, where we remained three or
four days. A large disagreeable city, almost without
inhabitants. We then proceeded to this great trading
town, where we have remained a month, and which, in
a few days, we leave for the Bagni di Lucca, a kind of
watering-place situated in the depth of the Apennines ;
the scenery surrounding this village is very fine.

We have made some acquaintance with a very amiable
and accomplished lady, Mrs. Gisborne, who is the sole

TO PEACOCK 129

attraction in this most unattractive of cities. We had
no idea of spending a month here, but she has made it
even agreeable. We shall see something of Italian
society at the Bagni di Lucca, where the most fashion-
able people resort.

When you send my parcel — which, by the bye, I
should request you to direct to Mr. Gisborne — I wish
you could contrive to enclose the two last parts of
Clarke's Travels, relating to Greece, and belonging to
Hookham. You know I subscribe there still — and I
have determined to take the Examiner here. You
would, therefore, oblige me, by sending it weekly, after
having read it yourself, to the same direction, and so
clipped, as to make as little weight as possible.

I write as if writing where perhaps my letter may
never arrive.

With every good wish from all of us,

Believe me most sincerely yours,

P. B. S.

LETTER 9

Bagni di Lucca, July 9,5th, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

I received on the same day your letters marked
5 and 6, the one directed to Pisa and the other to
Livorno, and I can assure you they are most welcome
visitors.

Our life here is as unvaried by any external events
as if we were at Marlow, where a sail up the river or
a journey to London makes an epoch. Since I last
wrote to you, I have ridden over to Lucca, once with
Claire, and once alone ; and we have been over to the
Casino, where I cannot say there is anything remarkable,
the women being far removed from anything which the
most liberal annotator could interpret into beauty or
grace, and apparently possessing no intellectual ex-
cellences to compensate the deficiency. I assure you
it is well that it is so, for the dances, especially the

130 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

waltz, are so exquisitely beautiful that it would be
a little dangerous to the newly unfrozen senses and
imaginations of us migrators from the neighbourhood of
the pole. As it is — except in the dark — there could be
no peril. The atmosphere here, unlike that of the rest
of Italy, is diversified with clouds, which grow in the
middle of the day, and sometimes bring thunder and
lightning, and hail about the size of a pigeon's egg, and
decrease towards the evening, leaving only those finely
woven webs of vapour which we see in English skies,
and flocks of fleecy and slowly moving clouds, which all
vanish before sunset ; and the nights are for ever
serene, and we see a star in the east at sunset — I think
it is Jupiter — almost as fine as Venus was last summer ;
but it wants a certain silver and aerial radiance, and soft
yet piercing splendour, which belongs, I suppose, to the
latter planet by virtue of its at once divine and female
nature. I have forgotten to ask the ladies if Jupiter
produces on them the same effect. I take great
delight in watching the changes of the atmosphere.
In the evening, Mary and I often take a ride, for horses
are cheap in this country. In the middle of the day, I
bathe in a pool or fountain, formed in the middle of
the forests by a torrent. It is surrounded on all sides
by precipitous rocks, and the waterfall of the stream
which forms it falls into it on one side with perpetual
dashing. Close to it, on the top of the rocks, are alders,
and above the great chestnut trees, whose long and
pointed leaves pierce the deep blue sky in strong
relief. The water of this pool, which, to venture
an unrythmical paraphrase, is ' sixteen feet long and
ten feet wide ', is as transparent as the air, so that the
stones and sand at the bottom seem, as it were, trembling
in the light of noonday. It is exceedingly cold also.
My custom is to undress and sit on the rocks, reading
Herodotus, until the perspiration has subsided, and then
to leap from the edge of the rock into this fountain — a
practice in the hot weather excessively refreshing. This
torrent is composed, as it were, of a succession of pools

TO PEACOCK 131

and waterfalls, up which I sometimes amuse myself by
climbing when I bathe, and receiving the spray over all
my body, whilst I clamber up the moist crags with
difficulty.

I have lately found myself totally incapable of
original composition. I employed my mornings, there-
fore, in translating the Symposium, which I accomplished
in ten days. Mary is now transcribing it, and I am
writing a prefatory essay. I have been reading scarcely
anything but Greek, and a little Italian poetry with
Mary. We have finished Ariosto together — a thing I
could not have done again alone.

Frankenstein seems to have been well received ; for
although the unfriendly criticism of the Quarterly is an
evil for it, yet it proves that it is read in some con-
siderable degree, and it would be difficult for them,
with any appearance of fairness, to deny it merit
altogether. Their notice of me, and their exposure of
their true motives for not noticing my book, shows how
well understood an hostility must subsist between me
and them.

The news of the result of the elections, especially that
of the metropolis, is highly inspiriting. I received
a letter, of two days' later date, with yours, which
announced the unfortunate termination of that of
Westmoreland. I wish you had sent me some of the
overflowing villany of those apostates. What a beastly
and pitiful wretch that Wordsworth ! That such a man
should be such a poet ! I can compare him with no
one but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants,
and at the same time the most natural and tender of
lyric poets.

What pleasure would it have given me if the wings
of imagination could have divided the space which
divides us, and I could have been of your party. I have
seen nothing so beautiful as Virginia Water in its kind.
And my thoughts for ever cling to Windsor Forest, and
the copses of Marlow, like the clouds which hang upon
the woods of the mountains, low trailing, and though
k 2

132 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

they pass away, leave their best dew when they them-
selves have faded. You tell me that you have finished
Nightmare Abbey, I hope that you have given the
enemy no quarter. Remember, it is a sacred war.
We have found an excellent quotation in Ben Jonson's
Every Man in his Humour. I will transcribe it, as I do
not think you have these plays at Marlow.

' Matthew. O, it's your only fine humour, sir.
Your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir.
I am melancholy myself divers times, sir; and then
do I no more but take pen and paper presently, and
overflow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at
a sitting.

'Ed. Knowell. Sure, he utters them by the gross.

' Stephen. Truly, sir ; and I love such things out
of measure.

'Ed. Knowell. V faith, better than in measure, I'll
undertake.

* Matthew. Why, I pray you, sir, make use of my
study ; it 's at your service.

' Stephen. I thank you, sir; I shall be bold, I
warrant you. Have you a stool there to be melancholy
upon ? ' — Every Man in his Humour, Act 3, scene i.

The last expression would not make a bad motto.1

LETTER 10

Bagni de Lucca, Aug. 1 6th, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

No new event has been added to my life since I
wrote last : at least none which might not have taken
place as well on the banks of the Thames as on those of
the Serchio. I project soon a short excursion, of a week
or so, to some of the neighbouring cities ; and on the
10th of September we leave this place for Florence,

1 I adopted this passage as a second motto, omitting E.
Knq well's interlocutions. [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 133

when I shall at least be able to tell you of some things
which you cannot see from your windows.

I have finished, by taking advantage of a few days of
inspiration — which the Camoenae have been lately very
backward in conceding — the little poem I began sending
to the press in London.1 Oilier will send you the
proofs. Its structure is slight and aery; its subject
ideal. The metre corresponds with the spirit of the poem,
and varies with the flow of the feeling. I have trans-
lated, and Mary has transcribed, the Symposium, as well
as my poem ; and I am proceeding to employ myself on
a discourse, upon the subject of which the Symposium
treats, considering the subject with reference to the
difference of sentiments respecting it, existing between
the Greeks and modern nations ; a subject to be
handled with that delicate caution which either I can-
not or I will not practise in other matters, but which here
I acknowledge to be necessary. Not that I have any
serious thought of publishing either this discourse or the
Symposium, at least till I return to England, when we
may discuss the propriety of it.

Nightmare Abbey finished. Well, what is in it ? What
is it ? You are as secret as if the priest of Ceres had
dictated its sacred pages. However, I suppose I shall
see in time, when my second parcel arrives. My first is
yet absent. By what conveyance did you send it ?

Pray, are you yet cured of your Nympholepsy ? 'Tis
a sweet disease : but one as obstinate and dangerous as
any — even when the Nymph is a Poliad.2 Whether
such be the case or not, I hope your nympholeptic tale
is not abandoned.3 The subject, if treated with a due
spice of Bacchic fury, and interwoven with the manners
and feelings of those divine people, who, in their very
errors, are the mirrors, as it were, in which all that is

1 Rosalind and Helen.

2 I suppose I understood this at the time ; but I have now not
the most distant recollection of what it alludes to. [T. L. P.]

8 I abandoned this design on seeing the announcement of
Horace Smith's Amarynthus the Nympholept.

134 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

delicate and graceful contemplates itself, is perhaps
equal to any. What a wonderful passage there is in
Vhaedrus — the beginning, I think, of one of the speeches
of Socrates1 — in praise of poetic madness, and in defini-
tion of what poetry is, and how a man becomes a poet.
Every man who lives in this age and desires to write
poetry, ought, as a preservative against the false and
narrow systems of criticism which every poetical empiric
vents, to impress himself with this sentence, if he would
be numbered among those to whom may apply this
proud, though sublime, expression of Tasso : No?i ce in
rnondo cki merita nome di creator e, che Dio ed il Poeta.

The weather has been brilliantly fine ; and now,
among these mountains, the autumnal air is becoming
less hot, especially in the mornings and evenings. The
chestnut woods are now inexpressibly beautiful, for the
chestnuts have become large, and add a new richness
to the full foliage. We see here Jupiter in the east ;
and Venus, I believe, as the evening star, directly after
sunset.

More and better in my next. Mary and Claire desire
their kind remembrances. Most faithfully your friend,

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 11

Este, October 8, 1818.
My Dear Peacock,

I have not written to you, I think, for six weeks.
But I have been on the point of writing many times,
and have often felt that I had many things to say. But
I have not been without events to disturb and distract
me, amongst which is the death of my little girl. She
died of a disorder peculiar to the climate. We have all

1 The passage alluded to is this :— ■ There are several kinds,1
says Socrates, * of divine madness. That which proceeds from the
Muses taking possession of a tender and unoccupied soul, awaken-
ing, and bacchically inspiring it towards songs and other poetry,
adorning myriads of ancient deeds, instructs succeeding genera-
tions ; but * he who, without this madness from the Muses,

TO PEACOCK 135

had bad spirits enough, and I, in addition, bad health.
I intend to be better soon ; there is no malady, bodily or
mental, which does not either kill or is killed.

We left the Baths of Lucca, I think, the day after I
wrote to you — on a visit to Venice — partly for the sake
of seeing the city. We made a very delightful acquain-
tance there with a Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, the gentleman
an Englishman, and the lady a Swissesse, mild and
beautiful, and unprejudiced, in the best sense of the
word. The kind attentions of these people made our
short stay at Venice very pleasant. I saw Lord Byron,
and really hardly knew him again ; he is changed into
the liveliest and happiest-looking man I ever met. He
read me the first canto of his ' Don Juan ' — a thing in
the style of Beppo, but infinitely better, and dedicated
to Southey, in ten or a dozen stanzas, more like
a mixture of wormwood and verdigrease than satire.
Venice is a wonderfully fine city. The approach to it
over the laguna, with its domes and turrets glittering in
a long line over the blue waves, is one of the finest
architectural delusions in the world. It seems to have
— and literally it has — its foundations in the sea. The
silent streets are paved with water, and you hear nothing
but the dashing of the oars, and the occasional cries of
the gondolieri. I heard nothing of Tasso. The gon-
dolas themselves are things of a most romantic and
picturesque appearance ; I can only compare them to
moths of which a coffin might have been the chrysalis.
They are hung with black, and painted black, and
carpeted with grey ; they curl at the prow and stern,
and at the former there is a nondescript beak of shining
steel, which glitters at the end of its long black mass.

approaches the poetical gates, having persuaded himself that by
art alone he may become sufficiently a poet, will find in the end
his own imperfection, and see the poetry of his cold prudence
vanish into nothingness before the light of that which has sprung
from divine insanity. ' — Platonis Phaedrus, p. 245 a. [T. L. P.]
The passage occurs in § 49 of the Phaedrus, § 245 a of Plato's
Works. Peacock's first sentence is introductory, not a translation.
This is the third kind of madness which Plato enumerates.

136 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

The Doge's palace, with its library, is a fine monu-
ment of aristocratic power. I saw the dungeons, where
these scoundrels used to torment their victims. They
are of three kinds — one adjoining the place of trial,
where the prisoners destined to immediate execution
were kept. I could not descend into them, because the
day on which I visited it was festa. Another under the
leads of the palace, where the sufferers were roasted to
death or madness by the ardours of an Italian sun : and
others called the Pozzi — or wells, deep underneath, and
communicating with those on the roof by secret passages
— where the prisoners were confined sometimes half up
to their middles in stinking water. When the French
came here, they found only one old man in the dun-
geons, and he could not speak. But Venice, which was
once a tyrant, is now the next worst thing, a slave ; for
in fact it ceased to be free, or worth our regret as
a nation, from the moment that the oligarchy usurped
the rights of the people. Yet, I do not imagine that it
was ever so degraded as it has been since the French,
and especially the Austrian yoke. The Austrians take
sixty per cent, in taxes, and impose free quarters on the
inhabitants. A horde of German soldiers, as vicious and
more disgusting than the Venetians themselves, insult
these miserable people. I had no conception of the
excess to which avarice, cowardice, superstition, igno-
rance, passionless lust, and all the inexpressible brutalities
which degrade human nature, could be carried, until I
had passed a few days at Venice.

We have been living this last month near the little
town from which I date this letter, in a very pleasant
villa which has been lent to us, and we are now on the
point of proceeding to Florence, Rome, and Naples — at
which last city we shall spend the winter, and return
northwards in the spring. Behind us here are the
Euganean hills, not so beautiful as those of the Bagni
di Lucca, with Arqua, where Petrarch's house and tomb
are religiously preserved and visited. At the end of our
garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the habitation

TO PEACOCK 137

of owls and bats, where the Medici family resided before
they came to Florence. We see before us the wide
flat plains of Lombardy, in which we see the sun and
moon rise and set, and the evening star, and all the
golden magnificence of autumnal clouds. But I reserve
wonder for Naples.

I have been writing — and indeed have just finished
the first act of a lyric and classical drama, to be called
* Prometheus Unbound '. Will you tell me what there
is in Cicero about a drama supposed to have been
written by Aeschylus under this title.

I ought to say that I have just read Malthus in
a French translation. Malthus is a very clever man,
and the world would be a great gainer if it would
seriously take his lessons into consideration, if it were
capable of attending seriously to anything but mischief
— but what on earth does he mean by some of his
inferences !

Yours ever faithfully,

P. B. S.

I will write again from Rome and Florence — in better
spirits, and to more agreeable purpose, I hope. You
saw those beautiful stanzas in the fourth canto about
the Nymph Egeria.1 Well, I did not whisper a word
about nympholepsy : I hope you acquit me — and I hope
you will not carry delicacy so far as to let this suppress
anything nympholeptic.

LETTER 12

Ferrara, Nov. 8th, 1818.
My Dear Peacock,

We left Este yesterday on our journey towards
Naples. The roads were particularly bad ; we have,
therefore, accomplished only two days' journey, of
eighteen and twenty-four miles each, and you may
imagine that our horses must be tolerably good ones, to

1 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv, stanzas cxv to cxix.

138 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

drag our carriage, with five people and heavy luggage,
through deep and clayey roads. The roads are, how-
ever, good during the rest of the way.

The country is flat, but intersected by lines of wood,
trellised with vines, whose broad leaves are now stamped
with the redness of their decay. Every here and there
one sees people employed in agricultural labours, and
the plough, the harrow, or the cart, drawn by long teams
of milk-white or dove-coloured oxen of immense size
and exquisite beauty. This, indeed, might be the
country of Pasiphaes. In one farm-yard I was shown
sixty-three of these lovely oxen, tied to their stalls, in
excellent condition. A farm-yard in this part of Italy
is somewhat different from one in England. First, the
house, which is large and high, with strange-looking
unpainted window-shutters, generally closed, and dreary
beyond conception. The farm-yard and out-buildings,
however, are usually in the neatest order. The thresh-
ing-floor is not under cover, but like that described in
the Georgics, usually flattened by a broken column, and
neither the mole, nor the toad, nor the ant, can find on
its area a crevice for their dwelling. Around it, at this
season, are piled the stacks of the leaves and stalks of
Indian corn, which has lately been threshed and dried
upon its surface. At a little distance are vast heaps of
many-coloured zucche or pumpkins, some of enormous
size, piled as winter food for the hogs. There are
turkeys, too, and fowls wandering about, and two or
three dogs, who bark with a sharp hylactism. The
people who are occupied with the care of these things
seem neither ill-clothed nor ill-fed, and the blunt in-
civility of their manners has an English air with it, very
discouraging to those who are accustomed to the
impudent and polished lying of the inhabitants of the
cities. I should judge the agricultural resources of this
country to be immense, since it can wear so flourishing
an appearance, in spite of the enormous discouragements
which the various tyranny of the governments inflicts
on it. I ought to say that one of the farms belongs to

TO PEACOCK 139

a Jew banker at Venice, another Shylock. — We arrived
late at the inn where I now write ; it was once the
palace of a Venetian nobleman, and is now an excellent
inn. To-morrow we are going to see the sights of
Ferrara.

Nov. 9-
We have had heavy rain and thunder all night ; and the
former still continuing, we went in the carriage about
the town. We went first to look at the cathedral, but
the beggars very soon made us sound a retreat, so,
whether, as it is said, there is a copy of a picture of
Michael Angelo there or no, I cannot tell. At the
public library we were more successful. This is, indeed,
a magnificent establishment, containing, as they say,
1 60,000 volumes. We saw some illuminated manuscripts
of church music, with verses of the psalms interlined
between the square notes, each of which consisted of
the most delicate tracery, in colours inconceivably vivid.
They belonged to the neighbouring convent of Certosa,
and are three or four hundred years old ; but their hues
are as fresh as if they had been executed yesterday.
The tomb of Ariosto occupies one end of the largest
saloon of which the library is composed ; it is formed of
various marbles, surmounted by an expressive bust of
the poet, and subscribed with a few Latin verses, in
a less miserable taste than those usually employed for
similar purposes. But the most interesting exhibitions
here, are the writings, &c, of Ariosto and Tasso, which are
preserved, and were concealed from the undistinguish-
ing depredations of the French with pious care. There
is the armchair of Ariosto, an old plain wooden piece
of furniture, the hard seat of which was once occupied
by, but has now survived its cushion, as it has its master.
I could fancy Ariosto sitting in it ; and the satires in
his own handwriting which they unfold beside it, and
the old bronze inkstand, loaded with figures, which
belonged also to him, assists the willing delusion. This
inkstand has an antique, rather than an ancient appear-

140 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

ance. Three nymphs lean forth from the circumference,
and on the top of the lid stands a cupid, winged and
looking up, with a torch in one hand, his bow in the
other, and his quiver beside him. A medal was bound
round the skeleton of Ariosto, with his likeness im-
pressed upon it. I cannot say I think it had much
native expression, but perhaps the artist was in fault.
On the reverse is a hand, cutting with a pair of scissors
the tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass, with
this legend — Pro bono malum. What this reverse of
the boasted Christian maxim means, or how it applies to
Ariosto, either as a satirist or a serious writer, I cannot
exactly tell. The cicerone attempted to explain, and
it is to his commentary that my bewildering is probably
due — if, indeed, the meaning be very plain, as is possibly
the case.1

There is here a manuscript of the entire Gerusalemme
Liberata, written by Tasso's own hand ; a manuscript
of some poems, written in prison, to the Duke Alfonso ;
and the satires of Ariosto, written also by his own hand ;
and the Pastor Fido of Guarini. The Gerusalemme,
though it had evidently been copied and recopied, is
interlined, particularly towards the end, with numerous
corrections. The handwriting of Ariosto is a small,
firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say,
a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind ;
that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that
there is a checked expression in the midst of its flow,
which brings the letters into a smaller compass than

1 Dr. Garnett explains this legend by the following quotation
from Mr. C. F. Keary's Guide to the Italian Medals exhibited in
the British Museum : — * The motto of this medal [by Poggini] is
the same as that on the medal of Ariosto by Pastorini of Siena.
But the meaning of the reverse design is very different. Both,
it is probable, refer to the quarrel between Ariosto and the elder
Cardinal d'Este ; but one takes the side of the poet, who is
symbolized by the bees, expelled from their home as an ungrate-
ful return for the honey which they have given ; while the other
medal, taking the side of Cardinal d'Este, symbolizes Ariosto as
a serpent who stings those that have nurtured him/

TO PEACOCK 141

one expected from the beginning of the word. It is the
symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at
times its own depth, and admonished to return by the
chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its
adventurous feet. You know I always seek in what I
see the manifestation of something beyond the present
and tangible object ; and as we do not agree in physiog-
nomy, so we may not agree now. But my business is
to relate my own sensations, and not to attempt to
inspire others with them. Some of the MSS. of Tasso
were sonnets to his persecutor, which contain a great
deal of what is called flattery. If Alfonso's ghost were
asked how he felt those praises now, I wonder what he
would say. But to me there is much more to pity than
to condemn in these entreaties and praises of Tasso. It
is as a bigot prays to and praises his god, whom he knows
to be the most remorseless, capricious, and inflexible of
tyrants, but whom he knows also to be omnipotent.
Tasso' s situation was widely different from that of any
persecuted being of the present day ; for, from the depth
of dungeons, public opinion might now at length be
awakened to an echo that would startle the oppressor.
But then there was no hope. There is something irre-
sistibly pathetic to me in the sight of Tasso' s own hand-
writing, moulding expressions of adulation and entreaty
to a deaf and stupid tyrant, in an age when the most
heroic virtue would have exposed its possessor to hope-
less persecution, and — such is the alliance between
virtue and genius — which unoffending genius could not
escape.

We went afterwards to see his prison in the hospital
of Sant' Anna, and I enclose you a piece of the wood of
the very door, which for seven years and three months
divided this glorious being from the air and the light
which had nourished in him those influences which, he
has communicated, through his poetry, to thousands.
The dungeon is low and dark, and when I say that it is
really a very decent dungeon, I speak as one who has
seen the prisons in the doge's palace of Venice. But it

142 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

is a horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest thing
that ever wore the shape of man, much more for one of
delicate susceptibilities and elevated fancies. It is low,
and has a grated window, and being sunk some feet
below the level of the earth, is full of unwholesome
damps. In the darkest corner is a mark in the wall
where the chains were rivetted, which bound him hand
and foot. After some time, at the instance of some
Cardinal, his friend, the Duke allowed his victim a fire-
place ; the mark where it was walled up yet remains.

At the entrance of the Liceo, where the library is, we
were met by a penitent ; his form was completely
enveloped in a ghost-like drapery of white flannel ; his
bare feet were sandalled ; and there was a kind of net-
work visor drawn over his eyes, so as entirely to conceal
his face. I imagine that this man had been adjudged to
suffer this penance for some crime known only to
himself and his confessor, and this kind of exhibition is
a striking instance of the power of the Catholic supersti-
tion over the human mind. He passed, rattling his
wooden box for charity.1

Adieu. — You will hear from me again before I arrive
at Naples.

Yours, ever sincerely,

P. B. S.

LETTER 13

Bologna, Monday, Nov. 9th, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

I have seen a quantity of things here — churches,
palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures ; and my brain
is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or
a print-shop, or a commonplace-book. I will try to
recollect something of what I have seen ; for, indeed, it
requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, we
went to the cathedral, which contains nothing remark-

1 These penitents ask alms, to be spent in masses for the souls
in purgatory. [M. S.]

TO PEACOCK 143

able, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy,
loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble
columns. We went then to a palace — I am sure I
forget the name of it — where we saw a large gallery of
pictures. Of course, in a picture gallery you see three
hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. I
remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido, of
the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back
her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the
flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of Enna.
There was an exquisitely executed piece of Correggio,
about four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet
dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the devil who
was bound in that style — but who can make anything
of four saints ? For what can they be supposed to be
about ? There was one painting, indeed, by this master,
Christ beatified, inexpressibly fine. It is a half figure,
seated on a mass of clouds, tinged with an aethereal,
rose-like lustre ; the arms are expanded ; the whole
frame seems dilated with expression ; the countenance
is heavy, as it were, with the weight of the rapture of
the spirit; the lips parted, but scarcely parted, with
the breath of intense but regulated passion ; the eyes
are calm and benignant ; the whole features harmonized
in majesty and sweetness. The hair is parted on the
forehead, and falls in heavy locks on each side. It is
motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath would
move it. The colouring, I suppose, must be very good,
if I could remark and understand it. The sky is of
a pale aerial orange, like the tints of latest sunset ; it
does not seem painted around and beyond the figure,
but everything seems to have absorbed, and to have
been penetrated by its hues. I do not think we saw
any other of Correggio, but this specimen gives me
a very exalted idea of his powers.

We went to see heaven knows how many more
palaces — Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you
want Italian names for any purpose, here they are ; I
should be glad of them if I was writing a novel. I saw

144 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

many more of Guido. One, a Samson drinking water
out of an ass's jaw-bone, in the midst of the slaughtered
Philistines. Why he is supposed to do this, God, who
gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows — but certain
it is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure
of Samson stands in strong relief in the foreground,
coloured, as it were, in the hues of human life, and full
of strength and elegance. Round him lie the Philistines
in all the attitudes of death. One prone, with the
slight convulsion of pain just passing from his forehead,
whilst on his lips and chin death lies as heavy as sleep.
Another leaning on his arm, with his hand, white and
motionless, hanging out beyond. In the distance, more
dead bodies ; and, still further beyond, the blue sea and
the blue mountains, and one white and tranquil sail.

There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido,
finely coloured, with much fine expression — but the sub-
ject is very horrible, and it seemed deficient in strength
— at least, you require the highest ideal energy, the
most poetical and exalted conception of the subject,
to reconcile you to such a contemplation. There was a
Jesus Christ crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets
tired, indeed, whatever may be the conception and
execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and agonized
form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of
torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross with
the look of passive and gentle despair beaming from
beneath her bright flaxen hair, and the figure of St.
John, with his looks uplifted in passionate compassion ;
his hands clasped, and his fingers twisting themselves
together, as it were, with involuntary anguish ; his feet
almost writhing up from the ground with the same
sympathy ; and the whole of this arrayed in colours of
a diviner nature, yet most like nature's self :— of the
contemplation of this one would never weary.

There was a ( Fortune', too, of Guido ; a piece of
mere beauty. There was the figure of Fortune on a
globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, and Love was trying
to catch her back by the hair, and her face was half

TO PEACOCK 145

turned towards him ; her long chestnut hair was floating
in the stream of the wind, and threw its shadow over
her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were fixed on her
pursuer with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light
smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which
arrayed her delicate limbs were aethereal and warm.

But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the pictures
of Guido which I saw was a Madonna Lattante. She is
leaning over her child, and the maternal feelings with
which she is pervaded are shadowed forth on her soft
and gentle countenance, and in her simple and affec-
tionate gestures — there is what an unfeeling observer
would call a dullness in the expression of her face ; her
eyes are almost closed ; her lip depressed ; there is a
serious, and even a heavy relaxation, as it were, of all
the muscles which are called into action by ordinary
emotions : but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost
insupportable from its intensity, were brooding over and
weighing down the soul, or whatever it is, without
which the material frame is inanimate and inexpressive.

There is another painter here, called Franceschini,
a Bolognese, who, though certainly very inferior to
Guido, is yet a person of excellent powers. One entire
church, that of Santa Catarina, is covered by his works.
I do not know whether any of his pictures have ever
been seen in England. His colouring is less warm than
that of Guido, but nothing can be more clear and
delicate ; it is as if he could have dipped his pencil in
the hues of some serenest and star-shining twilight.
His forms have the same delicacy and aerial loveliness ;
their eyes are all bright with innocence and love ; their
lips scarce divided by some gentle and sweet emotion.
His winged children are the loveliest ideal beings
ever created by the human mind. These are generally,
whether in the capacity of Cherubim or Cupid, acces-
sories to the rest of the picture; and the underplot
of their lovely and infantine play is something almost
pathetic, from the excess of its unpretending beauty.
One of the best of his pieces is an Annunciation of the

146 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

Virgin ; the Angel is beaming in beauty ; the Virgin,
soft, retiring, and simple.

We saw, besides, one picture of Raphael — St. Cecilia ;
this is in another and higher style ; you forget that it is a
picture as you look at it ; and yet it is most unlike any
of those things which we call reality. It is of the
inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been
conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling
to that which produced among the ancients those
perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the
baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a
unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind.
The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such
inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind ;
her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up ; her chestnut
hair flung back from her forehead — she holds an organ
in her hands — her countenance, as it were, calmed by
the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated
throughout with the warm and radiant light of life.
She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I
imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures
that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes,
towards her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender
yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards
her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her
feet lie various instruments of music, broken and
unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak ; it eclipses
nature, yet it has all her truth and softness.

We saw some pictures of Domenichino, Caracci, Albano,
Guercino, Elisabetta Sirani. The two former — remem-
ber, I do not pretend to taste — I cannot admire. Of
the latter there are some beautiful Madonnas. There
are several of Guercino, which they said were very fine.
I dare say they were, for the strength and complication
of his figures made my head turn round. One, indeed,
was certainly powerful. It was the representation of the
founder of the Carthusians exercising his austerities in
the desert, with a youth as his attendant, kneeling
beside him at an altar ; on another altar stood a skull

TO PEACOCK 147

and a crucifix ; and around were the rocks and the
trees of the wilderness. I never saw such a figure as
this fellow. His face was wrinkled like a dried snake's
skin, and drawn in long hard lines : his very hands
were wrinkled. He looked like an animated mummy.
He was clothed in a loose dress of death-coloured flannel,
such as you might fancy a shroud might be, after it had
wrapt a corpse a month or two. It had a yellow,
putrefied, ghastly hue, which it cast on all the objects
around, so that the hands and face of the Carthusian
and his companion were jaundiced by this sepulchral
glimmer. Why write books against religion, when we
may hang up such pictures? But the world either
will not or cannot see. The gloomy effect of this
was softened, and, at the same time, its sublimity
diminished, by the figure of the Virgin and Child in the
sky, looking down with admiration on the monk, and
a beautiful flying figure of an angel.

Enough of pictures. I saw the place where Guido
and his mistress, Elisabetta Sirani, were buried. This
lady was poisoned at the age of twenty-six, by another
lover, a rejected one of course. Our guide said she
was very ugly, and that we might see her portrait to-
morrow.

Well, good-night, for the present. ' To-morrow to
fresh fields and pastures new.'

November 10.

To-day we first went to see those divine pictures ot
Raphael and Guido again, and then rode up the moun-
tains, behind this city, to visit a chapel dedicated to
the Madonna. It made me melancholy to see that
they had been varnishing and restoring some of these
pictures, and that even some had been pierced by the
French bayonets. These are symptoms of the mortality
of man ; and perhaps few of his works are more evan-
escent than paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness
for twenty centuries — the Apollo and the Venus are as
they were. But books are perhaps the only productions
L 2

148 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

of man coeval with the human race. Sophocles and
Shakspeare can be produced and reproduced for ever.
But how evanescent are paintings ! and must necessarily
be. Those of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, and
perhaps they bore the same relation to Homer and
Aeschylus, that those of Guido and Raphael bear to
Dante and Petrarch. There is one refuge from the
despondency of this contemplation. The material part,
indeed, of their works must perish, but they survive in
the mind of man, and the remembrances connected with
them are transmitted from generation to generation.
The poet embodies them in his creations ; the systems
of philosophers are modelled to gentleness by their
contemplation ; opinion, that legislator, is infected with
their influence ; men become better and wiser ; and the
unseen seeds are perhaps thus sown, which shall produce
a plant more excellent even than that from which they
fell. But all this might as well be said or thought at
Marlow as Bologna.

The chapel of the Madonna is a very pretty Corinthian
building — very beautiful, indeed. It commands a fine
view of these fertile plains, the many -folded Apennines,
and the city. I have just returned from a moonlight
walk through Bologna. It is a city of colonnades, and
the effect of moonlight is strikingly picturesque. There
are two towers here — one 400 feet high — ugly things,
built of brick, which lean both different ways ; and with
the delusion of moonlight shadows, you might almost
fancy that the city is rocked by an earthquake. They
say they were built so on purpose ; but I observe in all
the plain of Lombardy the church towers lean.

Adieu. — God grant you patience to read this long
letter, and courage to support the expectation of the
next. Pray part them from the Cobbetts on your break-
fast table — they may fight it out in your mind.
Yours ever, most sincerely,

P. B. S.

TO PEACOCK 149

LETTER 14

Rome, November 20th, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

Behold me in the capital of the vanished world !
But I have seen nothing except St. Peter's and the
Vatican, overlooking the city in the mist of distance,
and the Dogana, where they took us to have our luggage
examined, which is built between the ruins of a temple
to Antoninus Pius. The Corinthian columns rise over
the dwindled palaces of the modern town, and the
wrought cornice is changed on one side, as it were, to
masses of wave-worn precipice, which overhang you,
far, far on high.

I take advantage of this rainy evening, and before
Rome has effaced all other recollections, to endeavour
to recall the vanished scenes through which we have
passed. We left Bologna, I forget on what day, and
passing by Rimini, Fano, and Foligno, along the Via
Flaminia and Terni, have arrived at Rome after ten
days' somewhat tedious, but most interesting journey.
The most remarkable things we saw were the Roman
excavations in the rock, and the great waterfall of Terni.
Of course you have heard that there are a Roman bridge
and a triumphal arch at Rimini, and in what excellent
taste they are built. The bridge is not unlike the
Strand bridge, but more bold in proportion, and of
course infinitely smaller. From Fano we left the coast
of the Adriatic, and entered the Apennines, following
the course of the Metaurus, the banks of which were
the scene of the defeat of Asdrubal : and it is said (you
can refer to the book) that Livy has given a very exact
and animated description of it. I forget all about it,
but shall look as soon as our boxes are opened. Follow-
ing the river, the vale contracts, the banks of the river
become steep and rocky, the forests of oak and ilex
which overhang its emerald-coloured stream, cling to
their abrupt precipices. About four miles from Fossom-
brone, the river forces for itself a passage between the

150 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

walls and toppling precipices of the loftiest Apennines,
which are here rifted to their base, and undermined by
the narrow and tumultuous torrent. It was a cloudy
morning, and we had no conception of the scene that
awaited us. Suddenly the low clouds were struck by
the clear north wind, and like curtains of the finest
gauze, removed one by one, were drawn from before
the mountain, whose heaven-cleaving pinnacles and black
crags overhanging one another, stood at length defined
in the light of day. The road runs parallel to the river,
at a considerable height, and is carried through the
mountain by a vaulted cavern. The marks of the chisel
of the legionaries of the Roman Consul are yet evident.

We passed on day after day, until we came to Spoleto,
I think the most romantic city I ever saw. There is
here an aqueduct of astonishing elevation, which unites
two rocky mountains — there is the path of a torrent
below, whitening the green dell with its broad and
barren track of stones, and above there is a castle,
apparently of great strength and of tremendous magni-
tude, which overhangs the city, and whose marble
bastions are perpendicular with the precipice. I never
saw a more impressive picture ; in which the shapes of
nature are of the grandest order, but over which the
creations of man, sublime from their antiquity and great-
ness, seem to predominate. The castle was built by
Belisarius or Narses, I forget which, but was of that epoch.

From Spoleto we went to Terni, and saw the cataract
of the Velino. The glaciers of Mon tan vert and the
source of the Arveiron is the grandest spectacle I ever
saw. This is the second. Imagine a river sixty feet in
breadth, with a vast volume of waters, the outlet of a
great lake among the higher mountains, falling 300 feet
into a sightless gulf of snow-white vapour, which bursts
up for ever and for ever from a circle of black crags,
and thence leaping downwards, making ] five or six other
cataracts, each fifty or a hundred feet high, which
exhibit, on a smaller scale, and with beautiful and sub-
1 I making \ Garnett : ■ make \ H. B. F. : * made \ M. S. and Rhys.

TO PEACOCK 151

lime variety, the same appearances. But words (and
far less could painting) will not express it. Stand
upon the brink of the platform of cliff which is directly
opposite. You see the ever-moving water stream down.
It comes in thick and tawny folds, flaking off like solid
snow gliding down a mountain. It does not seem hollow
within, but without it is unequal, like the folding of
linen thrown carelessly down ; your eye follows it, and
it is lost below ; not in the black rocks which gird it
around, but in its own foam and spray in the cloud-like
vapours boiling up from below, which is not like rain, nor
mist, nor spray, nor foam, but water, in a shape wholly
unlike anything I ever saw before. It is as white as
snow, but thick and impenetrable to the eye. The
very imagination is bewildered in it. A thunder comes
up from the abyss wonderful to hear; for, though it
ever sounds, it is never the same, but, modulated by the
changing motion, rises and falls intermittingly ; we
passed half an hour in one spot looking at it, and thought
but a few minutes had gone by. The surrounding
scenery is, in its kind, the loveliest and most sublime
that can be conceived. In our first walk we passed
through some olive groves, of large and ancient trees,
whose hoary and twisted trunks leaned in all directions.
We then crossed a path of orange trees by the river side,
laden with their golden fruit, and came to a forest of
ilex of a large size, whose evergreen and acorn-bearing
boughs were intertwined over our winding path.
Around, hemming in the narrow vale, were pinnacles of
lofty mountains of pyramidical rock clothed with all
evergreen plants and trees ; the vast pine, whose
feathery foliage trembled in the blue air, the ilex, that
ancestral inhabitant of these mountains, the arbutus
with its crimson-coloured fruit and glittering leaves.
After an hour's walk, we came beneath the cataract of
Terni, within the distance of half a mile ; nearer you
cannot approach, for the Nar, which has here its con-
fluence with the Velino, bars the passage. We then
crossed the river formed by this confluence, over a

152 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

narrow natural bridge of rock, and saw the cataract
from the platform I first mentioned. We think of
spending some time next year near this waterfall. The
inn is very bad, or we should have stayed there longer.

We came from Terni last night to a place called Nepi,
and to-day arrived at Rome across the much-belied
Campagna di Roma, a place I confess infinitely to my
taste. It is a flattering picture of Bagshot Heath. But
then there are the Apennines on one side, and Rome
and St. Peter's on the other, and it is intersected by
perpetual dells clothed with arbutus and ilex.
Adieu — verv faithfully yours,

P. B. S.
LETTER 15

Naples, December 22, 1818.

My Dear Peacock,

I have received a letter from you here, dated
November 1st; you see the reciprocation of letters
from the term of our travels is more slow. I entirely
agree with what you say about Childe Harold. The
spirit in which it is written is, if insane, the most
wicked and mischievous insanity that ever was given
forth. It is a kind of obstinate and self-willed folly, in
which he hardens himself. I remonstrated with him in
vain on the tone of mind from which such a view of
things alone arises. For its real root is very different
from its apparent one. Nothing can be less sublime
than the true source of these expressions of contempt
and desperation. The fact is, that first, the Italian
women with whom he associates, are perhaps the most
contemptible of all who exist under the moon — the
most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted ;
countesses smell so strongly of garlic, that an ordinary
Englishman cannot approach them. Well, L. B. is
familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the
people his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associ-
ates with wretches who seem almost to have lost the
gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple
to avow practices which are not only not named, but I

TO PEACOCK 153

believe seldom even conceived in England. He says he
disapproves, but he endures. He is heartily and deeply
discontented with himself; and contemplating in the
distorted mirror of his own thoughts the nature and the
destiny of man, what can he behold but objects of con-
tempt and despair ? But that he is a great poet, I think
the address to Ocean ' proves. And he has a certain de-
gree of candour while you talk to him, but unfortunately
it does not outlast your departure. No, I do not doubt,
and, for his sake, I ought to hope, that his present
career must end soon in some violent circumstance.

Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins of
Rome, the Vatican, St. Peter's, and all the miracles of
ancient and modern art contained in that majestic city.
The impression of it exceeds anything I have ever
experienced in my travels. We stayed there only
a week, intending to return at the end of February, and
devote two or three months to its mines of inexhaustible
contemplation, to which period I refer you for a minute
account of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins of
the Coliseum every day. 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 fig-tree, and threaded by little
paths, which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasur-
able galleries : the copse wood overshadows you as you
wander through its labyrinths, and the wild weeds of this
climate of flowers bloom under your feet. The arena is
covered with grass, and pierces, like the skirts of a
natural plain, the chasms of the broken arches around.
But a small part of the exterior circumference remains
— it is exquisitely light and beautiful ; and the effect of
the perfection of its architecture, adorned with ranges

1 Stanzas clxxix-clxxxiv of the fourth canto, published early
in 1818, of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

154 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

of Corinthian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice, is such
as to diminish the effect of its greatness. The interior is
all ruin. I can scarcely believe that when encrusted with
Dorian marble and ornamented by columns of Egyptian
granite, its effect could have been so sublime and so im-
pressive as in its present state. It is open to the sky, and it
was the clear and sunny weather of the end of November
in this climate when we visited it, day after day.

Near it is the arch of Constantine, or rather the
arch of Trajan ; for the servile and avaricious senate of
degraded Rome ordered that the monument of his pre-
decessor should be demolished in order to dedicate
one to the Christian reptile, who had crept among the
blood of his murdered family to the supreme power. It
is exquisitely beautiful and perfect. The Forum is a
plain in the midst of Rome, a kind of desert full of heaps
of stones and pits, and though so near the habitations of
men, is the most desolate place you can conceive. The
ruins of temples stand in and around it, shattered
columns and ranges of others complete, supporting
cornices of exquisite workmanship, and vast vaults of
shattered domes distinct with regular compartments,
once filled with sculptures of ivory or brass. The
temples of Jupiter, and Concord, and Peace, and the Sun,
and the Moon, and Vesta, are all within a short distance
of this spot. Behold the wrecks of what a great nation
once dedicated to the abstractions of the mind ! Rome
is a city, as it were, of the dead, or rather of those who
cannot die, and who survive the puny generations which
inhabit and pass over the spot which they have made
sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least in the first
enthusiasm of your recognition of ancient time, you see
nothing of the Italians. The nature of the city assists
the delusion, for its vast and antique walls describe a
circumference of sixteen miles, and thus the population
is thinly scattered over this space, nearly as great as
London. Wide wild fields are enclosed within it, and
there are grassy lanes and copses winding among the
ruins, and a great green hill, lonely and bare, which

TO PEACOCK 155

overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern
palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress,
and pine, and the neglected walks are overgrown with
weeds. 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 first 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.

I have told you little about Rome ; but I reserve the
Pantheon, and St. Peter's, and the Vatican, and Raphael,
for my return. About a fortnight ago I left Rome, and
Mary and Claire followed in three days, for it was
necessary to procure lodgings here without alighting at
an inn. From my peculiar mode of travelling I saw little
of the country, but could just observe that the wild
beauty of the scenery and the barbarous ferocity of the
inhabitants progressively increased. On entering Naples,
the first circumstance that engaged my attention was an
assassination. A youth ran out of a shop, pursued by a
woman with a bludgeon, and a man armed witli a knife.
The man overtook him, and with one blow in the neck
laid him dead in the road. On my expressing the emo-
tions of horror and indignation which I felt, a Calabrian
priest, who travelled with me, laughed heartily, and
attempted to quiz me, as what the English call a flat.
I never felt such an inclination to beat any one.
Heaven knows I have little power, but he saw that I
looked extremely displeased, and was silent. This same
man, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, had ex-
pressed the most frantic terror of robbers on the road :
he cried at the sight of my pistol, and it had been with

156 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

great difficulty that the joint exertions of myself and
the vetturino had quieted his hysterics.

But external nature in these delightful regions con-
trasts with and compensates for the deformity and degra-
dation of humanity. We have a lodging divided from the
sea by the royal gardens, and from our windows we see
perpetually the blue waters of the bay, forever changing,
yet forever the same, and encompassed by the mountain-
ous island of Capreae, the lofty peaks which overhang
Salerno, and the woody hill of Posilipo, whose promon-
tories hide from us Misenum and the lofty isle Inarime,1
which, with its divided summit, forms the opposite horn
of the bay. From the pleasant walks of the garden we
see Vesuvius ; a smoke by day and a fire by night is seen
upon its summit, and the glassy sea often reflects its
light or shadow. The climate is delicious. We sit
without a fire, with the windows open, and have almost
all the productions of an English summer. The weather
is usually like what Wordsworth calls ' the first fine
day of March ' ; sometimes very much warmer, though
perhaps it wants that ' each minute sweeter than before ',
which gives an intoxicating sweetness to the awakening
of the earth from its winter's sleep in England. We
have made two excursions, one to Baiae and one to
Vesuvius, and we propose to visit, successively, the
islands, Paestum, Pompeii, and Beneventum.

We set off an hour after sunrise one radiant morning
in a little boat ; there was not a cloud in the sky, nor
a wave upon the sea, which was so translucent that you
could see the hollow caverns clothed with the glaucous
sea-moss, and the leaves and branches of those delicate
weeds that pave the unequal bottom of the water. As
noon approached, the heat, and especially the light,
became intense. We passed Posilipo, and came first to the
eastern point of the bay of Puzzoli, which is within the
great bay of Naples, and which again incloses that of
Baiae. Here are lofty rocks and craggy islets, with
arches and portals of precipice standing in the sea, and
1 The ancient name of Ischia. [M. S.]

TO PEACOCK 157

enormous caverns, which echoed faintly with the murmur
of the languid tide. This is called La Scuola di
Virgilio. We then went directly across to the pro-
montory of Misenum, leaving the precipitous island of
Nesida on the right. Here we were conducted to see the
Mare Morto, and the Elysian fields ; the spot on which
Virgil places the scenery of the Sixth Aeneid. Though
extremely beautiful, as a lake, and woody hills, and this
divine sky must make it, I confess my disappointment.
The guide showed us an antique cemetery, where the
niches used for placing the cinerary urns of the dead yet
remain. We then coasted the Bay of Baiae to the left,
in which we saw many picturesque and interesting ruins ;
but I have to remark that we never disembarked but we
were disappointed — while from the boat the effect of the
scenery was inexpressibly delightful. The colours of
the water and the air breathe over all things here the
radiance of their own beauty. After passing the Bay of
Baiae, and observing the ruins of its antique grandeur
standing like rocks in the transparent sea under our
boat, we landed to visit lake Avernus. We passed
through the cavern of the Sibyl (not Virgil's Sybil)
which pierces one of the hills which circumscribe the
lake, and came to a calm and lovely basin of water, sur-
rounded by dark woody hills, and profoundly solitary.
Some vast ruins of the temple of Pluto stand on a
lawny hill on one side of it, and are reflected in its
windless mirror. It is far more beautiful than the
Elysian fields — but there are all the materials for beauty
in the latter, and the Avernus was once a chasm of
deadly and pestilential vapours. About half a mile
from Avernus, a high hill, called Monte Novo, was
thrown up by volcanic fire.

Passing onward we came to Pozzoli, the ancient
Dicaearchea, where there are the columns remaining of
a temple to Serapis, and the wreck of an enormous
amphitheatre, changed, like the Coliseum, into a natural
hill of the overteeming vegetation. Here also is the
Solfatara, of which there is a poetical description in the

158 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

Civil War of Petronius, beginning — ' Est locus/ and in
which the verses of the poet are infinitely finer than
what he describes, for it is not a very curious place.
After seeing these things we returned by moonlight to
Naples in our boat. What colours there were in the sky,
what radiance in the evening star, and how the moon
was encompassed by a light unknown to our regions !

Our next excursion was to Vesuvius. We went to
Resina in a carriage, where Mary and I mounted mules,
and Claire was carried in a chair on the shoulders of four
men, much like a Member of Parliament after he has
gained his election, and looking, with less reason, quite
as frightened. So we arrived at the hermitage of San
Salvador, where an old hermit, belted with rope, set
forth the plates for our refreshment.

Vesuvius is, after the glaciers, the most impressive
exhibition of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has
not the immeasurable greatness, the overpowering
magnificence, nor, above all, the radiant beauty of the
glaciers ; but it has all their character of tremendous
and irresistible strength. From Resina to the hermitage
you wind up the mountain, and cross a vast stream of
hardened lava, which is an actual image of the waves of
the sea, changed into hard black stone by enchantment.
The lines of the boiling flood seem to hang in the air,
and it is difficult to believe that the billows which seem
hurrying down upon you are not actually in motion.
This plain was once a sea of liquid fire. From the
hermitage we crossed another vast stream of lava, and
then went on foot up the cone — this is the only part of
the ascent in which there is any difficulty, and that
difficulty has been much exaggerated. It is composed
of rocks of lava, and declivities of ashes ; by ascending
the former and descending the latter, there is very little
fatigue. On the summit is a kind of irregular plain,
the most horrible chaos that can be imagined ; riven into
ghastly chasms, and heaped up with tumuli of great
stones and cinders, and enormous rocks blackened and
calcined, which had been thrown from the volcano upon

TO PEACOCK 159

one another in terrible confusion. In the midst stands
the conical hill from which volumes of smoke, and the
fountains of liquid fire, are rolled forth forever. The
mountain is at present in a slight state of eruption ; and
a thick heavy white smoke is perpetually rolled out,
interrupted by enormous columns of an impenetrable
black bituminous vapour, which is hurled up, fold after
fold, into the sky with a deep hollow sound, and fiery
stones are rained down from its darkness, and a black
shower of ashes fell even where we sat. The lava, like
the glacier, creeps on perpetually, with a crackling
sound as of suppressed fire. There are several springs
of lava ; and in one place it rushes 1 precipitously over
a high crag, rolling down the half-molten rocks and
its own overhanging waves ; a cataract of quivering
fire. We approached the extremity of one of the rivers
of lava ; it is about twenty feet in breadth and ten in
height ; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, its
motion was very slow. We saw the masses of its dark
exterior surface detach themselves- as it moved, and
betray the depth of the liquid flame. In the day the fire
is but slightly seen ; you only observe a tremulous
motion in the air, and streams and fountains of white
sulphurous smoke.

At length we saw the sun sink between Capreae and
Inarime, and, as the darkness increased, the effect of
the fire became more beautiful. We were, as it were,
surrounded by streams and cataracts of the red and
radiant fire ; and in the midst, from the column of bitu-
minous smoke shot up into the air, fell the vast masses of
rock, white with the light of their intense heat, leaving
behind them through the dark vapour trains of splendour.
We descended by torch-light, and I should have enjoyed
the scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I know
not how, to the hermitage in a state of intense bodily
suffering, the worst effect of which was spoiling the
pleasure of Mary and Claire. Our guides on the occa-
sion were complete savages. You have no idea of the
1 So M. S. and Rhys ; but Garnett and H. B. F. read ' gushes \

160 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

horrible cries which they suddenly utter, no one knows
why ; the clamour, the vociferation, the tumult. Claire
in her palanquin suffered most from it ; and when I had
gone on before, they threatened to leave her in the
middle of the road, which they would have done had
not my Italian servant promised them a beating, after
which they became quiet. Nothing, however, can be
more picturesque than the gestures and the physiog-
nomies of these savage people. And when, in the dark-
ness of night, they unexpectedly begin to sing in chorus
some fragments of their wild but sweet national music,
the effect is exceedingly fine.

Since I wrote this, I have seen the museum of this
city. Such statues ! There is a Venus ; an ideal shape
of the most winning loveliness. A Bacchus, more
sublime than any living being. A Satyr, making love
to a youth : in which the expressed life of the sculpture,
and the inconceivable beauty of the form of the youth,
overcome one's repugnance to the subject. There are
multitudes of wonderfully fine statues found in Hercula-
neum and Pompeii. We are going to see Pompeii the
first day that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum is almost
filled up ; no more excavations are made ; the king
bought the ground and built a palace upon it.

You don't see much of Hunt. I wish you could con-
trive to see him when you go to town, and ask him
what he means to answer to Lord Byron's invitation.
He has now an opportunity, if he likes, of seeing Italy.
What do you think of joining his party, and paying us
a visit next year ; I mean as soon as the reign of winter
is dissolved ? Write to me your thoughts upon this. I
cannot express to you the pleasure it would give me to
welcome such a party.

I have depression enough of spirits and not good
health, though I believe the warm air of Naples does
me good. We see absolutely no one here.
Adieu, my dear Peacock,

Affectionately your friend,

P. B. S.

TO PEACOCK 161

LETTER 16

Naples, Jan. 26th, 1819.

My Dear Peacock,

Your two letters arrived within a few days of
each other, one being directed to Naples, and the other
to Livorno. They are more welcome visitors to me
than mine can be to you. I writing as from sepulchres,
you from the habitations of men yet unburied ; though
the sexton, Castlereagh, after having dug their grave,
stands with his spade in his hand, evidently doubting
whether he will not be forced to occupy it himself.
Your news about the bank-note trials is excellent good.
Do I not recognize in it the influence of Cobbett?
You don't tell me what occupies Parliament? I know
you will laugh at my demand, and assure me that it is
indifferent. Your pamphlet I want exceedingly to see.
Your calculations in the letter are clear, but require
much oral explanation. You know I am an infernal
arithmetician. If none but me had contemplated
c lucentemque globum lunae, Titaniaque astra', the world
would yet have doubted whether they were many
hundred feet higher than the mountain tops.

In my accounts of pictures and things, I am more
pleased to interest you than the many ; and this is
fortunate, because, in the first place, I have no idea of
attempting the latter, and if I did attempt it, I should
assuredly fail. A perception of the beautiful character-
izes those who differ from ordinary men, and those who
can perceive it would not buy enough to pay the printer.
Besides, I keep no journal, and the only records of my
voyage will be the letters I send you. The bodily
fatigue of standing for hours in galleries exhausts me ;
I believe that 1 don't see half that I ought, on that
account. And then we know nobody, and the common
Italians are so sullen and stupid, it 's impossible to get
information from them. At Rome, where the people
seem superior to any in Italy, I cannot fail to stumble on

162 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

something more. O, if I had health, and strength, and
equal spirits, what boundless intellectual improvement
might I not gather in this wonderful country ! At
present I write little else but poetry, and little of that.
My first act of Prometheus is complete, and I think you
would like it. I consider poetry very subordinate to
moral and political science, and if I were well, certainly
I would aspire to the latter, for I can conceive a great
work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmon-
izing the contending creeds by which mankind have
been ruled. Far from me is such an attempt, and I
shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse
myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight
I can into the scale of that balance, which the Giant of
Arthegall holds.1

Since you last heard from me, we have been to see
Pompeii, and are waiting now for the return of spring
weather, to visit, first, Paestum, and then the islands ;
after which we shall return to Rome. I was astonished
at the remains of this city; I had no conception of
anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea of the
mode of its destruction was this : — First, an earthquake
shattered it, and unroofed almost all its temples, and
split its columns ; then a rain of light, small pumice-
stones fell ; then torrents of boiling water, mixed with
ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, from

1 The allusion is to the Fairy Queen, book v, canto 3. The
Giant has scales, in which he professes to weigh right and wrong,
and rectify the physical and moral evils which result from
inequality of condition. Shelley once pointed out this passage
to me, observing, * Artegall argues with the Giant ; the Giant
has the best of the argument ; Artegall's iron man knocks him
over into the sea and drowns him. This is the usual way in which
power deals with opinion.' I said, * That was not the lesson which
Spenser intended to convey.' * Perhaps not,' he said ; ' it is the
lesson which he conveys to me. I am of the Giant's faction.'

In the same feeling, with respect to Thomson's Castle of
Indolence, he held that the Enchanter in the first canto was a
true philanthropist, and the Knight of Arts and Industry in the
second an oligarchical impostor overthrowing truth by power.
[T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 163

which the city was excavated, is now covered by thick
woods, and you see the tombs and the theatres, the
temples and the houses, surrounded by the uninhabited
wilderness. We entered the town from the side towards
the sea, and first saw two theatres ; one more magnifi-
cent than the other, strewn with the ruins of the white
marble which formed their seats and cornices, wrought
with deep, bold sculpture. In the front, between the
stage and the seats, is the circular space occasionally
occupied by the chorus. The stage is very narrow, but
long, and divided from this space by a narrow enclosure
parallel to it, I suppose for the orchestra. On each
side are the consuls' boxes, and below, in the theatre at
Herculaneum, were found two equestrian statues of
admirable workmanship, occupying the same place as
the great bronze lamps did at Drury Lane. The smallest
of the theatres is said to have been comic, though I
should doubt. From both you see, as you sit on the
seats, a prospect of the most wonderful beauty.

You then pass through the ancient streets ; they are
very narrow, and the houses rather small, but all con-
structed on an admirable plan, especially for this climate.
The rooms are built round a court, or sometimes two,
according to the extent of the house. In the midst
is a fountain, sometimes surrounded with a portico,
supported on fluted columns of white stucco ; the floor
is paved with mosaic, sometimes wrought in imitation of
vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and more or
less beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant.
There were paintings on all, but most of them have been
removed to decorate the royal museums. Little winged
figures, and small ornaments of exquisite elegance, yet
remain. There is an ideal life in the forms of these
paintings of an incomparable loveliness, though most
are evidently the work of very inferior artists. It seems
as if, from the atmosphere of mental beauty which sur-
rounded them, every human being caught a splendour
not his own. In one house you see how the bedrooms
were managed ; — a small sofa was built up, where the
M 2

164 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

cushions were placed ; two pictures, one representing
Diana and Endymion, the other Venus and Mars,
decorate the chamber ; and a little niche, which contains
the statue of a domestic god. The floor is composed of
a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and
porphyry ; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-
white columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of
the portico they supported. The houses have only one
storey, and the apartments, though not large, are very
lofty. A great advantage results from this, wholly
unknown in our cities. The public buildings, whose
ruins are now forests, as it were, of white fluted columns,
and which then supported entablatures, loaded with
sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the
houses. This was the excellence of the ancients. Their
private expenses were comparatively moderate ; the
dwelling of one of the chief senators of Pompeii is
elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful
specimens of art, but small. But their public buildings
are everywhere marked by the bold and grand designs of
an unsparing magnificence. In the little town of Pompeii
(it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants), it
is wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of
their public buildings. Another advantage, too, is that,
in the present case, the glorious scenery around is not
shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the Cim-
merian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeians
could contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven ;
could see the moon rise high behind Vesuvius, and the
sun set in the sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of
golden vapour, between Inarime and Misenum.

We next saw the temples. Of the temple of Aesculapius
little remains but an altar of black stone, adorned with
a cornice imitating the scales of a serpent. His statue,
in terra-cotta, was found in the cell. The temple of I sis
is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted
columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and
many ceppi for statues ; and a little chapel of white
stucco, as hard as stone, of the most exquisite proportion ;

TO PEACOCK 165

its panels are adorned with figures in bas-relief, slightly
indicated, but of a workmanship the most delicate and
perfect that can be conceived. They are Egyptian
subjects, executed by a Greek artist, who has harmonized
all the unnatural extravagances of the original conception
into the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius.
They scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and
their wind-uplifted robes seem in the place of wings.
The temple in the midst, raised on a high platform,
and approached by steps, was decorated with exquisite
paintings, some of which we saw in the museum at
Portici. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel,
with a pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of
white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look at it.

Thence through other porticos and labyrinths of walls
and columns (for I cannot hope to detail everything to
you), we came to the Forum. This is a large square,
surrounded by lofty porticos of fluted columns, some
broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under
them. The temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another
temple, the Tribunal, and the Hall of Public Justice,
with their forests of lofty columns, surround the
Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size
(for, whether they supported equestrian statues, or were
the altars of the temple of Venus, before which they
stand, the guide could not tell), occupy the lower end
of the Forum. At the upper end, supported on an
elevated platform, stands the temple of Jupiter. Under
the colonnade of its portico we sate, and pulled out our
oranges, and figs, and bread, and medlars (sorry fare,
you will say), and rested to eat. Here was a magni-
ficent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous
shafts of the sun-shining columns was seen the sea,
reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, and
supporting, as it were, on its line the dark lofty
mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and
tinged towards their summits with streaks of new-fallen
snow. Between was one small green island. To the
right was Capreae, Inarime, Prochyta, and Misenum.

166 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth
volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column
was sometimes darted into the clear dark sky, and fell
in little streaks along the wind. Between Vesuvius
and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm, was seen
the main line of the loftiest Apennines, to the east.
The day was radiant and warm. Every now and then
we heard the subterranean thunder of Vesuvius ; its
distant deep peals seemed to shake the very air and
light of day, which interpenetrated our frames, with the
sullen and tremendous sound. This scene was what
the Greeks beheld (Pompeii, you know, was a Greek
city). They lived in harmony with nature ; and the
interstices of their incomparable columns were portals,
as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates
this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired.
If such is Pompeii, what was Athens ? What scene was
exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the
temples of Hercules, and Theseus, and the Winds ?
The islands and the Aegean sea, the mountains of
Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and Olympus, and the
darkness of the Boeotian forests interspersed ?

From the Forum we went to another public place ;
a triangular portico, half enclosing the ruins of an enor-
mous temple. It is built on the edge of the hill over-
looking the sea. ^ That black point is the temple. In
the apex of the triangle stands an altar and a fountain,
and before the altar once stood the statue of the builder
of the portico. Returning hence, and following the
consular road, we came to the eastern gate of the city.
The walls are of enormous strength, and inclose a space
of three miles. On each side of the road beyond the
gate are built the tombs. How unlike ours ! They seem
not so much hiding-places for that which must decay,
as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They are
of marble, radiantly white ; and two, especially beautiful,
are loaded with exquisite bas-reliefs. On the stucco-
wall that incloses them are little emblematic figures, of a
relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals, and

TO PEACOCK 167

little winged genii, and female forms bending in groups
in some funeral office. The higher reliefs represent,
one a nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one.
Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one,
sometimes more. It is said that paintings were found
within ; which are now, as has been everything mov-
able in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal
museums. These tombs were the most impressive things
of all. The wild woods surround them on either side ;
and along the broad stones of the paved road which
divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver
and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it
were, like the step of ghosts. The radiance and mag-
nificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white
freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the impassioned
or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them,
contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses
of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed
them.

I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of great
magnitude, though much inferior to the Coliseum.
I now understand why the Greeks were such great
poets : and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for
the harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform
excellence, of all their works of art. They lived in a
perpetual commerce with external nature, and nourished
themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theatres
were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their
columns, the ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof
of interwoven tracery, admitted the light and wind ; the
odour and the freshness of the country penetrated the
cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric ; and the
flying clouds, the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above.
O, but for that series of wretched wars which terminated
in the Roman conquest of the world; but for the
Christian religion, which put the finishing stroke on the
ancient system ; but for those changes that conducted
Athens to its ruin — to what an eminence might not
humanity have arrived !

168 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

In a short time I hope to tell you something of the
museum of this city.

You see how ill I follow the maxim of Horace, at
least in its literal sense : * nil admirari ■ — which I should
say. 'prope res est una' — to prevent there ever being
anything admirable in the world. Fortunately Plato is
of my opinion ; and I had rather err with Plato than be
right with Horace.

At this moment I have received your letter, indicating
that you are removing to London. I am very much
interested in the subject of this change, and beg you
would write me all the particulars of it. You will be
able now to give me perhaps a closer insight into the
politics of the times than was permitted you at Marlow.

Of H I have a very slight opinion. There are

rumours here of a revolution in Spain. A ship came in
twelve days from Catalonia, and brought a report that
the king was massacred ; that eighteen thousand insur-
gents surrounded Madrid ; but that before the popular
party gained head enough seven thousand were murdered
by the Inquisition. Perhaps you know all by this time.
The old king of Spain is dead here. Cobbett is a fine
vfievonoios — does his influence increase or diminish ?
What a pity that so powerful a genius should be com-
bined with the most odious moral qualities.

We have reports here of a change in the English
ministry — to what does it amount ? for, besides my
national interest in it, I am on the watch to vindicate
my most sacred rights, invaded by the chancery court.

I suppose now we shall not see you in Italy this
spring, whether Hunt comes or not. It's probable
I shall hear nothing from him for some months, par-
ticularly if he does not come. Give me ses nouvelles.

I am under an English surgeon here, who says I have
a disease of the liver, which he will cure. We keep
horses, as this kind of exercise is absolutely essential
to my health. Elise * has just married our Italian

1 A Swiss girl whom we had engaged as nursery-maid two
years before, at Geneva. [M. S.]

TO PEACOCK 169

servant, and has quitted us ; the man was a great rascal,
and cheated enormously : this event was very much
against our advice.

I have scarcely been out since I wrote last.

Adieu ! yours most faithfully,
P. B. S.

LETTER 17

Naples, February 25th, 1819-

My Dear Peacock,

I am much interested to hear your progress in
the object of your removal to London, especially as I
hear from Horace Smith of the advantages attending it.
There is no person in the world who would more
siucerely rejoice in any good fortune that might befall
you than I should.

We are on the point of quitting Naples for Rome.
The scenery which surrounds this city is more delight-
ful than any within the immediate reach of civilized
man. I don't think I have mentioned to you the Lago
d'Agnano and the Caccia d'Ischieri, and I have since
seen what obscures those lovely forms in my memory.
They are both the craters of extinguished volcanoes, and
nature has thrown forth forests of oak and ilex, and
spread mossy lawns and clear lakes over the dead or
sleeping fire. The first is a scene of a wider and milder
character, with soft sloping, wooded hills, and grassy
declivities declining to the lake, and cultivated plains
of vines woven upon poplar trees, bounded by the theatre
of hills. Innumerable wild water-birds, quite tame, in-
habit this place. The other is a royal chace, is surrounded
by steep and lofty hills, and only accessible through
a wide gate of massy oak, from the vestibule of which
the spectacle of precipitous hills, hemming in a narrow
and circular vale, is suddenly disclosed. The hills are
covered with thick woods of ilex, myrtle, and laurustinus ;
the polished leaves of the ilex, as they wave in their

170 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

multitudes under the partial blasts which rush through
the chasms of the vale, glitter above the dark masses of
foliage below, like the white foam of waves upon a deep
blue sea. The plain so surrounded is at most three
miles in circumference. It is occupied partly by a lake,
with bold shores wooded by evergreens, and interrupted
by a sylvan promontory of the wild forest, whose mossy
boughs overhang its expanse, of a silent and purple
darkness, like an Italian midnight ; and partly by the
forest itself, of all gigantic trees, but the oak especially,
whose jagged boughs, now leafless, are hoary with thick
lichens, and loaded with the massy and deep foliage of
the ivy. The effect of the dark eminences that surround
this plain, seen through the boughs, is of an enchanting
solemnity. (There we saw in one instance wild boars
and a deer, and in another — a spectacle little suited to
the antique and Latonian nature of the place — King
Ferdinand in a winter enclosure, watching to shoot wild
boars.) The underwood was principally evergreen, all
lovely kinds of fern and furze ; the cytisus, a delicate
kind of furze with a pretty yellow blossom, the myrtle,
and the myrica. The willow trees had just begun to
put forth their green and golden buds, and gleamed like
points of lambent fire among the wintry forest. The
Grotta del Cane, too, we saw, because other people see
it ; but would not allow the dog to be exhibited in
torture for our curiosity. The poor little animals 1 stood
moving their tails in a slow and dismal manner, as if
perfectly resigned to their condition — a cur-like emblem
of voluntary servitude. The effect of the vapour, which
extinguishes a torch, is to cause suffocation at last,
through a process which makes the lungs feel as if they
were torn by sharp points within. So a surgeon told
us, who tried the experiment on himself.

There was a Greek city, sixty miles to the south of
Naples, called Posidonia, now Pesto, where there still

1 Several dogs are kept for exhibition, but only one is exhibited
at a time. |T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 171

subsist three temples of Etruscan1 architecture, still
perfect. From this city we have just returned. The
weather was most unfavourable for our expedition.
After two months of cloudless serenity, it began raining
cats and dogs. The first night we slept at Salerno,
a large city situate in the recess of a deep bay ; sur-
rounded with stupendous mountains of the same name.
A few miles from Torre del Greco we entered on the
pass of the mountains, which is a line dividing the
isthmus of those enormous piles of rock which compose
the southern boundary of the Bay of Naples, and the
northern one of that of Salerno. On one side is a lofty
conical hill, crowned with the turrets of a ruined castle,
and cut into platforms for cultivation ; at least every
ravine and glen, whose precipitous sides admitted of
other vegetation but that of the rock-rooted ilex : on
the other, the aethereal snowy crags of an immense
mountain, whose terrible lineaments were at intervals
concealed or disclosed by volumes of dense clouds
rolling under the tempest. Half a mile from this spot,
between orange and lemon groves of a lovely village,
suspended as it were on an amphitheatral precipice,
whose golden globes contrasted with the white walls
and dark green leaves which they almost outnumbered,
shone the sea. A burst of the declining sunlight
illumined it. The road led along the brink of the
precipice, towards Salerno. Nothing could be more
glorious than the scene. The immense mountains
covered with the rare and divine vegetation of this
climate, with many-folding vales, and deep dark recesses
which the fancy scarcely could penetrate, descended from
their snowy summits precipitously to the sea. Before us
was Salerno, built into a declining plain, between the
mountains and the sea. Beyond, the other shore of
sky-cleaving mountains, then dim with the mist of
tempest. Underneath, from the base of the precipice
where the road conducted, rocky promontories jutted

1 The architecture is Doric. [T. L. P.]

172 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

into the sea, covered with olive and ilex woods, or with
the ruined battlements of some Norman or Saracenic
fortress. We slept at Salerno, and the next morning,
before daybreak, proceeded to Posidonia. The night
had been tempestuous, and our way lay by the sea sand.
It was utterly dark, except when the long line of wave
burst, with a sound like thunder, beneath the starless
sky, and cast up a kind of mist of cold white lustre.
When morning came, we found ourselves travelling in
a wide desert plain, perpetually interrupted by wild
irregular glens, and bounded on all sides by the Apennines
and the sea. Sometimes it was covered with forest,
sometimes dotted with underwood, or mere tufts of fern
and furze, and the wintry dry tendrils of creeping plants.
I have never, but in the Alps, seen an amphitheatre of
mountains so magnificent. After travelling fifteen miles,
we came to a river, the bridge of which had been broken,
and which was so swollen that the ferry would not take the
carriage across. We had, therefore, to walk seven miles
of a muddy road, which led to the ancient city across
the desolate Maremma. The air was scented with the
sweet smell of violets of an extraordinary size and beauty.
At length we saw the sublime and massy colonnades,
skirting the horizon of the wilderness. We entered by the
ancient gate, which is now no more than a chasm in the
rock-like wall. Deeply sunk in the ground beside it
were the ruins of a sepulchre, which the ancients were
in the custom of building beside the public way. The
first temple, which is the smallest, consists of an outer
range of columns, quite perfect, and supporting a perfect
architrave and two shattered frontispieces.1 The pro-
portions are extremely massy, and the architecture
entirely unornamented and simple. These columns do
not seem more than forty feet high,2 but the perfect

1 The three temples are amphiprostyle ; that is, they have two
prospects or fronts, each of six columns in the two first, and of
nine in the Basilica. See Major's Ruins of Paestum. 1768.
[T.L.P.]

2 The height of the columns is respectively 18 feet 6 inches,

TO PEACOCK 173

proportions diminish the apprehension of their magni-
tude ; it seems as if inequality and irregularity of form
were requisite to force on us the relative idea of great-
ness. The scene from between the columns of the
temple consists on one side of the sea, to which the
gentle hill on which it is built slopes, and on the other,
of the grand amphitheatre of the loftiest Apennines, dark
purple mountains, crowned with snow, and intersected
there by long bars of hard and leaden-coloured cloud.
The effect of the jagged outline of mountains, through
groups of enormous columns on one side, and on the
other the level horizon of the sea, is inexpressibly grand.
The second temple is much larger, and also more
perfect. Beside the outer range of columns, it contains
an interior range of column above column, and the
ruins of a wall which was the screen of the pene-
tralia. With little diversity of ornament, the order of
architecture is similar to that of the first temple. The
columns in all are fluted, and built of a porous volcanic
stone, which time has dyed with a rich and yellow colour.
The columns are one-third larger, and like that of the
first, diminish from the base to the capital, so that, but
for the chastening effect of their admirable proportions,
their magnitude would, from the delusion of perspective,
seem greater, not less, than it is ; though perhaps we
ought to say, not that this symmetry diminishes your
apprehension of their magnitude, but that it overpowers
the idea of relative greatness, by establishing within
itself a system of relations destructive of your idea of its
relation with other objects, on which our ideas of size
depend. The third temple is what they call a Basilica ;
three columns alone remain of the interior range ; the
exterior is perfect, but that the cornice and frieze in
many places have fallen. This temple covers more
ground than either of the others, but its columns are of

and 28 feet 5 inches and 6| lines, in the two first temples ; and
21 feet 6 inches in the Basilica. This shows the justice of the
remarks on the difference of real and apparent magnitude.
[T. L. P.]

174 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

an intermediate magnitude between those of the second
and the first.

We only contemplated these sublime monuments for
two hours, and of course could only bring away so im-
perfect a conception of them as is the shadow of some
half-remembered dream.

The royal collection of paintings in this city is
sufficiently miserable. Perhaps the most remarkable
is the original studio by Michael Angelo, of the ( Day of
Judgement ', which is painted in fresco on the Sixtine
chapel of the Vatican. It is there so defaced as to be
wholly indistinguishable. I cannot but think the genius
of this artist highly overrated. He has not only no
temperance, no modesty, no feeling for the just boun-
daries of art (and in these respects an admirable genius
may err), but he has no sense of beauty, and to want this
is to want the sense of the creative power of mind.
What is terror without a contrast with, and a connexion
with, loveliness. How well Dante understood this
secret— Dante, with whom this artist has been so
presumptuously compared ! What a thing his c Moses '
is ; how distorted from all that is natural and majestic,
only less monstrous and detestable than its historical
prototype. In the picture to which I allude, God is
leaning out of heaven, as it were eagerly enjoying the
final scene of the infernal tragedy he set the Universe
to act. The Holy Ghost, in the shape of a dove, is
under Him. Under the Holy Ghost stands Jesus Christ,
in an attitude of haranguing the assembly. This figure,
which his subject, or rather the view which it became
him to take of it, ought to have modelled of a calm,
severe, awe-inspiring majesty, terrible yet lovely, is in
the attitude of commonplace resentment. On one side
of this figure are the elect ; on the other, the host of
heaven ; they ought to have been what the Christians
call glorified bodies, floating onward and radiant with
that everlasting light (I speak in the spirit of their
faith), which had consumed their mortal veil. They
are in fact very ordinary people. Below is the ideal

TO PEACOCK 175

purgatory, I imagine, in mid-air, in the shapes of spirits,
some of whom daemons are dragging down, others
falling as it were by their own weight, others half
suspended in that Mahomet-coffin kind of attitude
which most moderate Christians, I believe, expect to
assume. Every step towards hell approximates to the
region of the artist's exclusive power. There is great
imagination in many of the situations of these unfortu-
nate spirits. But hell and death are his real sphere.
The bottom of the picture is divided by a lofty rock, in
which there is a cavern whose entrance is thronged by
devils, some coming in with spirits, some going out for
prey. The blood-red light of the fiery abyss glows
through their dark forms. On one side are the devils
in all hideous forms, struggling with the damned, who
have received their sentence at the redeemer's throne,
and chained in all forms of agony by knotted serpents,
and writhing on the crags in every variety of torture.
On the other, are the dead coming out of their graves —
horrible forms. Such is the famous ' Day of Judgement '
of Michael Angelo ; a kind of Titus Andronicus in
painting, but the author surely no Shakespeare. The
other paintings are one or two of Raphael or his pupils,
very sweet and lovely. A ' Danae ' of Titian, a picture,
the softest and most voluptuous form, with languid and
uplifted eyes, and warm yet passive limbs. A ' Madde-
lena ', by Guido, with dark brown hair, and dark brown
eyes, and an earnest, soft, melancholy look. And some
excellent pictures, in point of execution, by Annibal
Carracci. None others worth a second look. Of the
gallery of statues I cannot speak. They require a
volume, not a letter. Still less what can I do at Rome ?
I have just seen the Quarterly for September (not
from my own box). I suppose there is no chance now
of your organizing a review ! This is a great pity. The
Quarterly is undoubtedly conducted with talent, great
talent, and affords a dreadful preponderance against the
cause of improvement. If a band of staunch reformers,
resolute yet skilful infidels, were united in so close and

176 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

constant a league1 as that in which interest and
fanaticism have bound the members of that literary
coalition !

Adieu. Address your next letter to Rome, whence
you shall hear from me soon again. Mary and Clara
unite with me in the very kindest remembrances. Most
faithfully yours,

P. B. S.

A doctor here has been messing me, and I believe
has done me an important benefit. One of his pretty
schemes has been putting caustic on my side. You
may guess how much quiet I have had since it was
laid on. . . .

LETTER 18

Rome, March 23rd, 1819-
Mv Dear Peacock,

I wrote to you the day before our departure
from Naples. We came by slow journeys, with our own
horses, to Rome, resting one day at Mola di Gaeta, at
the inn called Villa di Cicerone, from being built on the
ruins of his Villa, whose immense substructions overhang
the sea, and are scattered among the orange-groves.
Nothing can be lovelier than the scene from the terraces
of the inn. On one side precipitous mountains, whose
bases slope into an inclined plane of olive and orange-
copses — the latter forming, as it were, an emerald sky
of leaves, starred with innumerable globes of their
ripening fruit, whose rich splendour contrasted with
the deep green foliage ; on the other the sea — bounded
on one side by the antique town of Gaeta, and the
other by what appears to be an island, the promontory
of Circe. From Gaeta to Terracina the whole scenery
is of the most sublime character. At Terracina preci-

1 This was the idea which was subsequently intended to be
carried out in the Liberal, [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 177

pitous conical crags of immense height shoot into the sky
and overhang the sea. At Albano we arrived again in
sight of Rome. Arches after arches in unending lines
stretching across the uninhabited wilderness, the blue
defined line of the mountains seen between them;
masses of nameless ruin standing like rocks out of the
plain ; and the plain itself, with its billowy and unequal
surface, announced the neighbourhood of Rome. And
what shall I say to you of Rome ? If I speak of the
inanimate ruins, the rude stones piled upon stones,
which are the sepulchres of the fame of those who once
arrayed them with the beauty which has faded, will
you believe me insensible to the vital, the almost
breathing creations of genius yet subsisting in their
perfection? What has become, you will ask, of the
Apollo, the Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol ? What
of the Apollo di Belvedere, the Laocoon? What of
Raphael and Guido? These things are best spoken
of when the mind has drunk in the spirit of their forms ;
and little indeed can I, who must devote no more than
a few months to the contemplation of them, hope to
know or feel of their profound beauty.

I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impressions
on me on my first visit to this city. The next most
considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is
the Thermae of Caracalla. These consist of six enormous
chambers, above 200 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 more sublime and lovely.
The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep
ravines filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick
twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stones. 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.
The perpendicular walls resemble nothing more than that

178 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

cliff of Bisham wood, that is overgrown with wood, and
yet is stony and precipitous — you know the one I mean ;
not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the pretty copse
of fir-trees and privet-bushes at its base, and where
H and I scrambled up, and you, to my infinite dis-
content, would go home. These walls surround green
and level spaces of lawn, on which some elms have
grown, and which are interspersed towards their skirts
by masses of the fallen ruin, overtwined with the broad
leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies
it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous
halls.

But the most interesting effect remains. In one of
the buttresses, that supports an immense and lofty arch,
which ( bridges the very winds of heaven ', are the
crumbling remains of an antique winding staircase,
whose sides are open in many places to the precipice.
This you ascend, and arrive on the summit of these
piles. There grow on every side thick entangled wilder-
nesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the
flowering laurestinus, whose white blossoms are just
developed, the white fig, and a thousand nameless
plants sown by the wandering winds. These woods are
intersected on every side by paths, like sheep-tracks
through the copse-wood of steep mountains, which wind
to every part of the immense labyrinth. From the
midst rise those pinnacles and masses, themselves like
mountains, which have been seen from below. In one
place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown
ruin : on one side is the immensity of earth and sky, on
the other a narrow chasm, which is bounded by an arch
of enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured foliage
and blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular
pyramid, overgrown like itself with the all-prevailing
vegetation. Around rise other crags and other peaks,
all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desolation
softened down, by the undecaying investiture of nature.
Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is
overpowered ; which words cannot convey. Still further.

TO PEACOCK 179

winding up one-half of the shattered pyramids, by the
path through the blooming copse-wood, you come to
a little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild shrubs ; it
is overgrown with anemones, wallflowers, and violets,
whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant
blue flowers, whose names I know not, and which scatter
through the air the divinest odour, which, as you recline
under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of
voluptuous faintness, like the combinations of sweet
music. The paths still wind on, threading the perplexed
windings, other labyrinths, other lawns, and deep dells
of wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific chasms. When
I tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and that
the paths above penetrate at least half their extent,
your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to
express of this astonishing scene.

I speak of these things not in the order in which I
visited them, but in that of the impression which they
made on me, or perhaps chance directs. The ruins of
the ancient Forum are so far fortunate that they have
not been walled up in the modern city. They stand in
an open, lonesome place, bounded on one side by the
modern city, and the other by the Palatine Mount,
covered with shapeless masses of ruin. The tourists
tell you all about these things, and I am afraid of
stumbling on their language when I enumerate what is
so well known. There remain eight granite columns of
the Ionic order, with their entablature, of the temple of
Concord, founded by Camillus. I fear that the immense
expense demanded by these columns forbids us to hope
that they are the remains of any edifice dedicated by
that most perfect and virtuous of men. It is supposed
to have been repaired under the Eastern Emperors ;
alas, what a contrast of recollections ! Near them stand
three Corinthian fluted columns, which supported the
angle of a temple ; the architrave and entablature are
worked with delicate sculpture. Beyond, to the south,
is another solitary column ; and still more distant,
three more, supporting the wreck of an entablature.
N %

180 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

Descending from the Capitol to the Forum, is the
triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, less perfect than that
of Constantine, though from its proportions and magni-
tude a most impressive monument. That of Constantine,
or rather of Titus (for the relief and sculpture, and even
the colossal images of Dacian captives, were torn by
a decree of the senate from an arch dedicated to the
latter, to adorn that of this stupid and wicked monster,
Constantine, one of whose chief merits consists in estab-
lishing a religion, the destroyer of those arts which
would have rendered so base a spoliation unnecessary),
is the most perfect. It is an admirable work of art. It
is built of the finest marble, and the outline of the
reliefs is in many parts as perfect as if just finished.
Four Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side,
a bold entablature, whose bases are loaded with reliefs of
captives in every attitude of humiliation and slavery.
The compartments above express in bolder relief the
enjoyment of success ; the conqueror on his throne, or in
his chariot, or nodding over the crushed multitudes, who
writhe under his horses' hoofs, as those below express
the torture and abjectness of defeat. There are three
arches, whose roofs are panelled with fretwork, and
their sides adorned with similar reliefs. The keystone
of these arches is supported each by two winged figures
of Victory, whose hair floats on the wind of their own
speed, and whose arms are outstretched, bearing trophies,
as if impatient to meet. They look, as it were, borne
from the subject extremities of the earth, on the breath
which is the exhalation of that battle and desolation,
which it is their mission to commemorate. Never were
monuments so completely fitted to the purpose for
which they were designed, of expressing that mixture
of energy and error which is called a triumph.

I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an
Italian evening, and return by star or moonlight, through
this scene. The elms are just budding, and the warm
spring winds bring unknown odours, all sweet, from the
country. I see the radiant Orion through the mighty

TO PEACOCK 181

columns of the temple of Concord, and the mellow
fading light softens down the modem buildings of the
Capitol, the only ones that interfere with the sublime
desolation of the scene. On the steps of the Capitol
itself, stand two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux,
each with his horse, finely executed, though far inferior
to those of Monte Cavallo, the cast of one of which you
know we saw together in London. This walk is close
to our lodging, and this is my evening walk.

What shall I say of the modern city? Rome is yet
the capital of the world. It is a city of palaces and
temples, more glorious than those which any other city
contains, and of ruins more glorious than they. Seen
from any of the eminences that surround it, it exhibits
domes beyond domes, and palaces, and colonnades
interminably, even to the horizon ; interspersed with
patches of desert, and mighty ruins which stand girt by
their own desolation, in the midst of the fanes of living
religions and the habitations of living men, in sublime
loneliness. St. Peter's is, as you have heard, the loftiest
building in Europe. Externally it is inferior in archi-
tectural beauty to St Paul's, though not wholly devoid
of it ; internally it exhibits littleness on a large scale,
and is in every respect opposed to antique taste. You
know my propensity to admire ; and I tried to persuade
myself out of this opinion — in vain ; the more I see of
the interior of St. Peter's, the less impression as a whole
does it produce on me. I cannot even think it lofty,
though its dome is considerably higher than any hill
within fifty miles of London ; and when one reflects, it
is an astonishing monument of the daring energy of
man. Its colonnade is wonderfully fine, and there are
two fountains, which rise in spire-like columns of water
to an immense height in the sky, and falling on the
porphyry vases from which they spring, fill the whole
air with a radiant mist, which at noon is thronged with
innumerable rainbows. In the midst stands an obelisk.
In front is the palace-like facade of St. Peter's, certainly
magnificent ; and there is produced, on the whole, an

182 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

architectural combination unequalled in the world. But
the dome of the temple is concealed, except at a very
great distance, by the facade and the inferior part of
the building, and that diabolical contrivance they call
an attic.

The effect of the Pantheon is totally the reverse of
that of St. Peter's. Though not a fourth part of the
size, it is, as it were, the visible image of the universe ;
in the perfection of its proportions, as when you regard
the unmeasured dome of heaven, the idea of magnitude
is swallowed up and lost. It is open to the sky, and its
wide dome is lighted by the ever-changing illumination
of the air. The clouds of noon fly over it, and at night
the keen stars are seen through the azure darkness,
hanging immovably, or driving after the driving moon
among the clouds. We visited it by moonlight ; it is
supported by sixteen columns, fluted and Corinthian, of
a certain rare and beautiful yellow marble, exquisitely
polished, called here giallo antico. Above these are
the niches for the statues of the twelve gods. This is
the only defect of this sublime temple ; there ought to
have been no interval between the commencement of
the dome and the cornice, supported by the columns,
Thus there would have been no diversion from the
magnificent simplicity of its form. This improvement
is alone wanting to have completed the unity of the
idea.

The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, magnificent
combinations of art, such as alone it were worth coming
to see. That in the Piazza Navona, a large square, is
composed of enormous fragments of rock, piled on
each other, and penetrated, as by caverns. This mass
supports an Egyptian obelisk of immense height. On
the four corners of the rock recline, in different attitudes,
colossal figures representing the four divisions of the
globe. The water bursts from the crevices beneath them.
They are sculptured with great spirit ; one impatiently
tearing a veil from his eyes ; another with his hands
stretched upwards. The Fontana di Trevi is the most

TO PEACOCK 183

celebrated, and is rather a waterfall than a fountain ;
gushing out from masses of rock, with a gigantic figure
of Neptune ; and below are two river gods, checking
two winged horses, struggling up from among the rocks
and waters. The whole is not ill-conceived nor exe-
cuted ; but you know not how delicate the imagination
becomes by dieting with antiquity day after day ! The
only things that sustain the comparison are Raphael,
Guido, and Salvator Rosa.

The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group
formed by the statues, obelisk, and the fountain, is,
however, the most admirable of all. From the Piazza
Quirinale, or rather Monte Cavallo, you see the bound-
less ocean of domes, spires, and columns, which is the
City, Rome. On a pedestal of white marble rises an
obelisk of red granite, piercing the blue sky. Before it
is a vast basin of porphyry, in the midst of which rises
a column of the purest water, which collects into itself
all the overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks them
into a thousand prismatic hues and graduated shadows —
they fall together with its dashing water-drops into the
outer basin. The elevated situation of this fountain
produces, I imagine, this effect of colour. On each side,
on an elevated pedestal, stand the statues of Castor and
Pollux, each in the act of taming his horse, which are
said, but I believe wholly without authority, to be the
work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These figures combine
the irresistible energy with the sublime and perfect
loveliness supposed to have belonged to their divine
nature. The reins no longer exist, but the position of
their hands and the sustained and calm command of
their regard, seem to require no mechanical aid to enforce
obedience. The countenances at so great a height are
scarcely visible, and I have a better idea of that of
which we saw a cast together in London, than of the
other. But the sublime and living majesty of their
limbs and mien, the nervous and fiery animation of the
horses they restrain, seen in the blue sky of Italy, and
overlooking the city of Rome, surrounded by the light

184 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

and the music of that crystalline fountain, no cast can
communicate.

These figures were found at the Baths of Constan-
tine, but, of course, are of remote antiquity. I do not
acquiesce however in the practice of attributing to
Phidias, or Praxiteles, or Scopas, or some great master,
any admirable work that may be found. We find little
of what remained, and perhaps the works of these were
such as greatly surpassed all that we conceive of most
perfect and admirable in what little has escaped the
deluge. If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks,
our masters, and creators, the gods whom we should
worship — pardon me.

I have said what I feel without entering into any
critical discussions of the ruins of Rome, and the mere
outside of this inexhaustible mine of thought and
feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, and Forsyth, will tell all
the show-knowledge about it — f the common stuff of the
earth/ By the by, Forsyth is worth reading, as I judge
from a chapter or two I have seen. I cannot get the
book here.

I ought to have observed that the central arch of the
triumphal arch of Titus yet subsists, more perfect in its
proportions, they say, than any of a later date. This I
did not remark. The figures of Victory, with unfolded
wings, and each spurning back a globe with outstretched
feet, are, perhaps, more beautiful than those on either
of the others. Their lips are parted : a delicate mode
of indicating the fervour of their desire to arrive at the
destined resting-place, and to express the eager respira-
tion of their speed. Indeed, so essential to beauty were
the forms expressive of the exercise of the imagination
and the affections considered by Greek artists, that no
ideal figure of antiquity, not destined to some represent-
ation directly exclusive of such a character, is to be
found with closed lips. Within this arch are two panelled
alto-relievos, one representing a train of people bearing
in procession the instruments of Jewish worship, among
which is the holy candlestick with seven branches ; on

TO PEACOCK 185

the other, Titus standing in a quadriga, with a winged
Victory. The grouping of the horses, and the beauty,
correctness, and energy of their delineation, is remark-
able, though they are much destroyed.

LETTER 19

Rome, April 6th, 1819.

My Dear Peacock,

I sent you yesterday a long letter, all about
antique Rome, which you had better keep for some
leisure day. I received yours, and one of Hunt's,

yesterday.— So, you know the B s? I could not

help considering Mrs. B.1, whea I knew her, as the
most admirable specimen of a human being I had
ever seen. Nothing earthly ever appeared to me more
perfect than her character and manners. It is improb-
able that I shall ever meet again the person whom I so
much esteemed, and still admire. I wish, however, that
when you see her, you would tell her that I have not
forgotten her, nor any of the amiable circle once assem-
bled round her ; and that I desired such remembrances
to her as an exile and a Pariah may be permitted to
address to an acknowledged member of the community
of mankind. I hear they dined at your lodgings. But

no mention of A and his wife — where were they ?

C 2, though so young when I saw her, gave indica-
tions of her mother's excellencies ; and, certainly less
fascinating, is, I doubt not, equally amiable, and more
sincere. It was hardly possible for a person of the
extreme subtlety and delicacy of Mrs. B 's under-
standing and affections, to be quite sincere and constant.

I am all anxiety about your I. H.3 affair. There are
few who will feel more hearty satisfaction at your
success, in this or any other enterprise, than I shall.
Pray let me have the earliest intelligence.

1 Mrs. de Boinville. 2 Cornelia. 3 India House.

186 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

When shall I return to England ? The Pythia has
ascended the tripod, but she replies not. Our present
plans — and I know not what can induce us to alter
them — lead us back to Naples in a month or six weeks,
where it is almost decided that we should remain until
the commencement of 1820. You may imagine, when
we receive such letters as yours and Hunt's, what this
resolution costs us — but these are not our only communi-
cations from England. My health is materially better.
My spirits, not the most brilliant in the world ; but that
we attribute to our solitary situation, and, though happy,
how should I be lively ? We see something of Italian
society indeed. The Romans please me much, especially
the women, who, though totally devoid of every kind
of information, or culture of the imagination, or affections,
or understanding — and, in this respect, a kind of gentle
savages — yet contrive to be interesting. Their extreme
innocence and naivete, the freedom and gentleness of
their manners ; the total absence of affectation, makes
an intercourse with them very like an intercourse with
uncorrupted children, whom they resemble in loveliness
as well as simplicity. I have seen two women in society
here of the highest beauty ; their brows and lips, and
the moulding of the face modelled with sculptural
exactness, and the dark luxuriance of their hair floating
over their fine complexions — and the lips — you must
hear the commonplaces which escape from them, before
they cease to be dangerous. The only inferior part are
the eyes, which, though good and gentle, want the
mazy depth of colour behind colour, with which the
intellectual women of England and Germany entangle
the heart in soul-inwoven labyrinths.

This is holy week, and Rome is quite full. The
Emperor of Austria is here, and Maria Louisa is coming.
On their journey through the other cities of Italy, she
was greeted with loud acclamations, and vivas of
Napoleon. Idiots and slaves ! Like the frogs in the
fable, because they are discontented with the log, they
call upon the stork, who devours them. Great festas, and

TO PEACOCK 187

magnificent funzioni here — we cannot get tickets to all.
There are five thousand strangers in Rome, and only
room for five hundred at the celebration of the famous
Miserere, in the Sixtine chapel, the only thing I regret
we shall not be present at. After all, Rome is eternal,
and were all that is extinguished, that which has been,
the ruins and the sculptures, would remain, and Raphael
and Guido be alone regretted.

In the square of St. Peter's there are about three
hundred fettered criminals at work, hoeing out the
weeds that grow between the stones of the pavement.
Their legs are heavily ironed, and some are chained two
by two. They sit in long rows, hoeing out the weeds,
dressed in parti-coloured clothes. Near them sit or
saunter groups of soldiers, armed with loaded muskets.
The iron discord of those innumerable chains clanks
up into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted with
the musical dashing of the fountains, and the deep
azure beauty of the sky, and the magnificence of the
architecture around, a conflict of sensations allied to
madness. It is the emblem of Italy — moral degradation
contrasted with the glory of nature and the arts.

We see no English society here ; it is not probable
that we could if we desired it, and I am certain that we
should find it insupportable. The manners of the rich
English are wholly insupportable, and they assume pre-
tensions which they would not venture upon in their
own country. I am yet ignorant of the event of
Hobhouse's election. I saw the last numbers were —
Lamb, 4,200 ; and Hobhouse, 3,900 — 14th day. There
is little hope. That mischievous Cobbett has divided
and weakened the interest of the popular party, so that
the factions that prey upon our country have been able

to coalesce to its exclusion. The N s1 you have

not seen. I am curious to know what kind of a girl

Octavia becomes; she promised well. Tell H his

Melpomene is in the Vatican, and that her attitude and

drapery surpass, if possible, the graces of her countenance.

1 Newtons.

188 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a
month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with
characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted ;
and I think the execution is better than any of my
former attempts. By the by, have you seen Oilier? I
never hear from him, and am ignorant whether some
verses I sent him from Naples, entitled, I think, Lines
on the Euganean Hills, have reached him in safety or
not. As to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but
abuse ; and this is not hearty or sincere enough to amuse
me. As to the poem now printing,1 I lay no stress on
it one way or the other. The concluding lines are
natural.

I believe, my dear Peacock, that you wish us to come
back to England. How is it possible ? Health, compe-
tence, tranquillity — all these Italy permits, and England
takes away. I am regarded by all who know or hear
of me, except, I think, on the whole, five individuals,
as a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look
even might infect. This is a large computation, and I
don't think I could mention more than three. Such is
the spirit of the English abroad as well as at home.2

Few compensate, indeed, for all the rest, and if I
were alone I should laugh ; or if I were rich enough to

1 Mosalind and Helen.

2 These expressions show how keenly Shelley felt the calum-
nies heaped on him during his life. The very exaggeration of
which he is guilty, is a clue to much of his despondency. His
seclusion from society resulted greatly from his extreme ill-
health, and his dislike of strangers and numbers, as well as the
system of domestic economy which his lavish benevolence forced
us to restrict within narrow bounds. In justice to our country-
men, I must mention that several distinguished for intellectual
eminence, among them, Frederic Earl of Guildford and Sir
William Drummond, called on him at Rome. Accident at the
time prevented him from cultivating their acquaintance— the
death of our son, and our subsequent retirement at Pisa, shut
us out still more from the world. I confess that the insolence
of some of the more vulgar among the travelling English,
rendered me anxious that Shelley should be more willing to
extend his acquaintance among the better sort, but his health
was an insuperable bar. [M. S.]

TO PEACOCK 189

do all things, which I shall never be. Pity me for my
absence from those social enjoyments which England
might afford me, and which I know so well how to
appreciate. Still, I shall return some fine morning, out
of pure weakness of heart.

My dear Peacock, most faithfully yours,

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 20

Rome, June 8th, 1819.
My Dear Friend,

Yesterday, after an illness of only a few days,
my little William died. There was no hope from the
moment of the attack. You will be kind enough to
tell all my friends, so that I need not write to them.
It is a great exertion to me to write this, and it seems
to me as if, hunted by calamity as I have been, that
I should never recover any cheerfulness again.

If the things Mary desired to be sent to Naples have
not been shipped, send them to Livorno.

We leave this city for Livorno to-morrow morning
where we have written to take lodgings for a month.
I will then write again.

Yours ever affectionately,

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 21

Livorno, June — *, 1819-
My Dear Peacock,

Our melancholy journey finishes at this town,
but we retrace our steps to Florence, where, as I imagine,
we shall remain some months. O that I could return
to England ! How heavy a weight when misfortune is

1 20th or 21st, the London postmark being July 6th. [T .L. P.]

190 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

added to exile, and solitude, as if the measure were not
full, heaped high on both. O that I could return to
England ! I hear you say, ' Desire never fails to generate
capacity.' Ah, but that ever-present Mai thus, Necessity,
has convinced Desire that even though it generated
capacity, its offspring must starve. Enough of melan-
choly ! Nightmare Abbey, though no cure, is a palliative.
I have just received the parcel which contained it, and
at the same time the Examiners, by the way of Malta.
I am delighted with Nightmare Abbey. I think Scythrop
a character admirably conceived and executed; and I
know not how to praise sufficiently the lightness, chastity,
and strength of the language of the whole. It perhaps
exceeds all your works in this. The catastrophe is
excellent. I suppose the moral is contained in what
Falstaff says — ( For God's sake, talk like a man of this
world ' ; and yet, looking deeper into it, is not the
misdirected enthusiasm of Scythrop what J. C. calls
the ' salt of the earth ' ? My friends the Gisbornes here
admire and delight in it exceedingly. I think I told
you that they (especially the lady) are people of high
cultivation. She is a woman of profound accomplish-
ments and the most refined taste.

Cobbett still more and more delights me, with all my
horror of the sanguinary commonplaces of his creed.
His design to overthrow bank notes by forgery is very
comic. One of the volumes of Birkbeck interested me
exceedingly. The letters I think stupid, but suppose
that they are useful.

I do not, as usual, give you an account of my journey,
for I had neither the health nor the spirit to take notes.
My health was greatly improving, when watching and
anxiety cast me into a relapse. The doctors (I put little
faith in the best) tell me I must spend the winter in
Africa or Spain. I shall of course prefer the latter, if I
choose either.

Are you married, or why do I not hear from you ?
That were a good reason.

Mary and Claire unite with me in kindest remem-

TO PEACOCK 191

brances to you, and in congratulations, if she exist, to
the new married lady.

When shall I see you again ?

Ever most faithfully yours, P. B. S.

Pray do not forget Mary's things.

I have not heard from you since the middle of April.

LETTER 22

My Dear Peacock, Livomo> ** 6> 1S19'

I have lost some letters, and, in all probability, at
least one from you, as I can account in no other manner
for not having heard from you since your letter dated
March 26th . . . We have changed our design of going to
Florence immediately, and are now established for three
months in a little country house in a pretty verdant
scene near Livorno.

I have a study here in a tower, something like
Scythrop's, where I am just beginning to recover the
faculties of reading and writing. My health, whenever
no Libecchio blows, improves. From my tower I see
the sea, with its islands, Gorgona, Capraja, Elba, and
Corsica, on one side, and the Apennines on the other.
Milly surprised us the other day by first discovering a
comet, on which we have been speculating. She may
' make a stir, like a great astronomer \*

1 Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star :
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that make * a mighty rout :
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little flower ! I'll make a stir,
Like a great astronomer.

Wordsworth. — To the Little Celandine.
This little flower has a very starry aspect. It is not properly
a Chelidonium, and will not be found with that name in modern
botanical works.

* Wordsworth wrote * keep \ The lines occur in the earlier
poem of 1807, To the Small Celandine,

192 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

The direct purpose of this letter, however, is to ask
you about the box which I requested you to send to me
to Naples. If it has been sent, let me entreat you (for
really it is of the most serious consequence to us) to
write to me by return of post, stating the name of the
ship, the bill of lading, &c, so that I may get it with-
out difficulty. If it has not been sent, do me the favour
to send it instantly, direct to Livorno. If you have
not the time, you can ask Hogg. If you cannot get the
things from Mrs. Hunt (a possible case), send those you
were to buy, and the things from Furnival1, alone.
You can add what books you think fit. The last parcel
I have received from you is that of last September.

All good wishes, and many hopes that you have
already that success on which there will be no
congratulations more cordial than those you will receive
from me.

Ever most sincerely yours,

P. B. Shelley.

I shall receive your letter, if written by return of post,
in thirty days : a distance less formidable than Rome
or Naples.

The Chelidonivm majus— Celandine : Swallowwort— blossoms
from April to October. It is supposed to begin and end blooming
with the arrival and departure of the swallow. It belongs to the
class Poliandria monogynia, and to the natural order of Papa-
veraceae.

Chelidonium minus— Little Celandine— is an obsolete name for
the Ficaria ranunculoeides : Pilewort. It blossoms from the end
of February to the end of April. It is so far connected with the
arrival of the swallow, that it ceases to blossom when the swallow-
wort begins. This probably was the reason for its being called
celandine, though the plants have nothing in common. But I
think, in honour of Wordsworth, its old name should not have
been entirely banished from botanical nomenclature. It might
have been left, in Homeric phraseology, as the flower which men
call Pilewort and Gods call Celandine. Its French name is La
Petite Ch&idoine. It belongs to the class Polyandria polygynia,
and the natural order of Ranunculaceae. f T. L. P.]

1 A surgeon at Egham, in whom Shelley had great confidence.
[T. L. P.J

TO PEACOCK 193

LETTER 23

Livorno, July, 1819.
My Dear Peacock,

We still remain, and shall remain nearly two
months longer, at Livorno. Our house is a melancholy
one, ' and only cheered by letters from England. I got
your note, in which you speak of three letters having
been sent to Naples, which I have written for. I have

heard also from H , 2 who confirms the news of your

success, an intelligence most grateful to me.

The object of the present letter is to ask a favour of
you. I have written a tragedy, on the subject of a story
well known in Italy, and, in my conception, eminently
dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my play fit
for representation, and those who have already seen it
judge favourably. It is written without any of the
peculiar feelings and opinions which characterize my
other compositions ; I having attended simply to the
impartial development of such characters, as it is probable
the persons represented really were, together with the
greatest degree of popular effect to be produced by such
a development. I send you a translation of the Italian
manuscript on which my play is founded, the chief
subject of which I have touched very delicately ; for my
principal doubt, as to whether it would succeed as an
acting play, hangs entirely on the question, as to
whether such a thing as incest in this shape, however
treated, would be admitted on the stage. I think,
however, it will form no objection : considering, first,
that the facts are matter of history ; and, secondly, the
peculiar delicacy with which I have treated it.

I am exceedingly interested in the question of
whether this attempt of mine will succeed or no. I am
strongly inclined to the affirmative at present, founding
my hopes on this, that, as a composition, it is certainly
not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been

1 We had lost our eldest, and at that time, only child, the
preceding month at Rome. [M. S.]

2 Hunt

i94 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

acted, with the exception of Remorse ; that the
interest of its plot is incredibly greater and m'ore real ;
and that there is nothing beyond what the multitude
are contented to believe that they can understand,
either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to
preserve a complete incognito, and can trust to you, that
whatever else you do, you will at least favour me on
this point. Indeed this is essential, deeply essential, to
its success. After it had been acted, and successfully
(could I hope such a thing), I would own it if I pleased, and
use the celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.

What I want you to do is, to procure for me its pre-
sentation at Covent Garden. The principal character,
Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss O'Neill, and it might
even seem written for her (God forbid that I should ever
see her play it — it would tear my nerves to pieces), and, in
all respects, it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The
chief male character, I confess, I should be very unwill-
ing that any one but Kean should play — that is impos-
sible, and I must be contented with an inferior actor.
I think you know some of the people of that theatre,
or, at least, some one who knows them ; and when you
have read the play, you may say enough, perhaps, to
induce them not to reject it without consideration — but
of this, perhaps, if I may judge from the tragedies which
they have accepted, there is no danger at any rate.

Write to me as soon as you can on this subject,
because it is necessary that I should present it, or, if
rejected by the theatre, print it this coming season ; lest
somebody else should get hold of it, as the story, which
now exists only in manuscript, begins to be generally
known among the English. The translation which I
send you is to be prefixed to the play, together with
a print of Beatrice. I have a copy of her picture by
Guido, now in the Colonna palace at Rome — the most
beautiful creature you can conceive.

Of course, you will not show the manuscript to any
one — and write to me by return of post, at which time
the play will be ready to be sent.

TO PEACOCK 195

I expect soon to write again, and it shall be a less
selfish letter. As to Oilier, I don't know what has
been published, or what has arrived at his hands. My
Prometheus, though ready, I do not send till I know
more.

Ever yours, most faithfully,

P. B. S.

LETTER 24

Livorno, August (probably 22nd J, 1819.

Mv Dear Peacock,

I ought first to say, that I have not yet received
one of your letters from Naples ; in Italy such things
are difficult ; but your present letter tells me all that
I could desire to hear of your situation.

My employments are these : I awaken usually at seven ;
read half an hour ; then get up ; breakfast ; after break-
fast ascend my tower, and read or write until two. Then
we dine. After dinner I read Dante with Mary, gossip a
little, eat grapes and figs, sometimes walk, though
seldom, and at half-past five pay a visit to Mrs. Gisborne,
who reads Spanish with me until near seven. We then
come for Mary, and stroll about till supper time. Mrs.
Gisborne is a sufficiently amiable and very accomplished
woman ; she is SrjfxoKpaTLKr) and aOer) — how far she may
be cfaiXavOpuyn-Y) I don't know, for she is the antipodes of
enthusiasm. Her husband, a man with little thin lips,
receding forehead, and a prodigious nose, is an [
bore. His nose is something quite Slawkenbergian —
it weighs on the imagination to look at it. It is that
sort of nose which transforms all the g's its wearer
utters into k's. It is a nose once seen never to be for-
gotten, and which requires the utmost stretch of
Christian charity to forgive. I, you know, have a little
turn-up nose ; Hogg has a large hook one ; but add
them both together, square them, cube them, you will
have but a faint idea of the nose to which I refer.
02

196 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

I most devoutly wish I were living near London. I
do not think I shall settle so far off as Richmond ; and
to inhabit any intermediate spot on the Thames would
be to expose myself to the river damps ; not to mention
that it is not much to my taste. My inclinations point
to Hampstead ; but I do not know whether I should
not make up my mind to something more completely
suburban. What are mountains, trees, heaths, or
even the glorious and ever-beautiful sky, with such
sunsets as I have seen at Hampstead, to friends ?
Social enjoyment, in some form or other, is the alpha
and the omega of existence. All that I see in Italy — and
from my tower window I now see the magnificent peaks
of the Apennine half enclosing the plain — is nothing ;
it dwindles into smoke in the mind, when I think of
some familiar forms of scenery, little perhaps in them-
selves, over which old remembrances have thrown a
delightful colour. How we prize what we despised when
present ! So the ghosts of our dead associations rise
and haunt us, in revenge for our having let them starve,
and abandoned them to perish.

You don't tell me if you see the Boinvilles ; nor are
they included in the list of the conviti at the monthly
symposium. I will attend it in imagination.

One thing, I own, I am curious about ; and in the
chance of the letters not coming from Naples, pray tell
me. What is it you do at the India House ? Hunt
writes, and says you have got a situation in the India
House : Hogg, that you have an honourable employment :
Godwin writes to Mary that you have got so much or so
much : but nothing of what you do. The devil take
these general terms. Not content with having driven
all poetry out of the world, at length they make war on
their own allies ; nay, on their very parents, dry facts.
If it had not been the age of generalities, any one of
these people would have told me what you did. 1

1 I did my best to satisfy his curiosity on this subject ; but it
was in letters to Naples, which he had left before they arrived,
and he never received them. I observed that this was the case

TO PEACOCK 197

I have been much better these last three weeks. My
work on the Cenci, which was done in two months, was
a fine antidote to nervous medicines, and kept up,
I think, the pain in my side, as sticks do a fire. Since
then, I have materially improved. I do not walk enough.
Clare, who is sometimes my companion, does not dress
in exactly the right time. I have no stimulus to
walk. Now, I go sometimes to Livorno on business ;
and that does me good.

England seems to be in a very disturbed state, if we
may judge from some Paris papers. I suspect it is
rather exaggerated ; but when I hear them talk of
paying in gold — nay I dare say take steps towards it,
confess that the sinking fund is a fraud, &c, I no longer
wonder. But the change should commence among the
higher orders, or anarchy will only be the last flash
before despotism.

I have been reading Calderon in Spanish. A kind of
Shakespeare is this Calderon ; and I have some thoughts,
if I find that I cannot do anything better, of translating
some of his plays.

The Examiners I receive. Hunt, as a political writer,
pleases me more and more. Adieu. Mary and Clare
send their best remembrances.

Your most faithful friend,

P. B. Shelley.

Pray send me some books, and Clare would take it as
a great favour if you would send her music books.

LETTER 25

Livorno, September 9th, 1819-
My Dear Peacock,

I send you the tragedy1, addressed to Stamford
Street, fearing lest it might be inconvenient to receive
such bulky packets at the India House. You will see

with the greater portion of the letters which arrived at any town
in Italy after he had left it. [T. L. P.]
1 The Cenci.

198 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

that the subject has not been treated as you suggested,
and why it was not susceptible of such treatment. In
fact, it was then already printing when I received your
letter, and it has been treated in such a manner that I do
not see how the subject forms an objection. You know
Oedipus is performed on the fastidious French stage,1
a play much more broad than this. I confess I have some
hopes, and some friends here persuade me that they are
not unfounded.

Many thanks for your attention in sending the papers
which contain the terrible and important news of Man-
chester.2 These are, as it were, the distant thunders
of the terrible storm which is approaching. The tyrants
here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood.
May their execrable lessons not be learnt with equal
facility ! Pray let me have the earliest political news
which you consider of importance at this crisis.

Yours ever most faithfully,
P. B. S.

I send this to the India House, the tragedy to Stam-
ford Street.

LETTER 26

Leghorn, September 2lst, 1819-
My Dear Peacock,

You will have received a short letter sent with the
tragedy, and the tragedy itself by this time. I am, you

1 The Oedipus of Dryden and Lee was often performed in the
last century ; but never in my time. There is no subject of this
class treated with such infinite skill and delicacy as in Alfierfs
beautiful tragedy, Mirra. It was the character in which Madame
Ristori achieved4 her great success in Paris ; but she was
prohibited from performing it in London. If the Covent
Garden managers had accepted the Cenci, I doubt if the
licenser would have permitted the performance. [T. L. P.]

2 These papers doubtless gave an account of the Reform
Meeting of August 16th, which was dispersed by government
troops at the cost of half a dozen lives. The incident made
a deep impression upon Shelley, who promptly wrote and sent
off to Leigh Hunt his Mask of (Anarchy.

TO PEACOCK 199

may believe, anxious to hear what you think of it, and
how the manager talks about it. I have printed in Italy
250 copies, because it costs, with all duties and freight-
age, about half what it would cost in London, and these
copies will be sent by sea. My other reason was a
belief that the seeing it in print would enable the people
at the theatre to judge more easily. Since I last wrote
to you, Mr. Gisborne is gone to England for the purpose
of obtaining a situation for Henry Reveley.1 I have
given him a letter to you, and you would oblige me by
showing what civilities you can, and by forwarding his
views, either by advice or recommendation, as you may
find opportunity, not for his sake, who is a great bore,
but for the sake of Mrs. Gisborne and Henry Reveley,
people for whom we have a great esteem. Henry is a
most amiable person, and has great talents as a mechanic
and engineer. I have given him also a letter to Hunt,
so that you will meet him there. Mr. Gisborne is a man
who knows I cannot tell how many languages, and
has read almost all the books you can think of ; but all
that they contain seems to be to his mind what water is to
a sieve. His liberal opinions are all the reflections of
Mrs. G.'s, a very amiable, accomplished, and completely
unprejudiced woman.

Charles Clairmont is now with us on his way to Vienna.
He has spent a year or more in Spain, where he has
learnt Spanish, and I make him read Spanish all day
long. It is a most powerful and expressive language,
and I have already learnt sufficient to read with great
ease their poet Calderon. I have read about twelve of
his plays. Some of them certainly deserve to be ranked
among the grandest and most perfect productions of the
human mind. He exceeds all modern dramatists, with
the exception of Shakespeare, whom he resembles,
however, in the depth of thought and subtlety of imag-
ination of his writings, and in the rare power of inter-
weaving delicate and powerful comic traits with the

1 A son of Mrs. Gisborne by a former marriage. [T. L, P.]

200 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

most tragical situations, without diminishing their in-
terest. I rate him far above Beaumont and Fletcher.

I have received all the papers you sent me, and the
Examiners regularly, perfumed with muriatic acid. What
an infernal business this of Manchester ! What is to be
done? Something assuredly. H. Hunt has behaved, I
think, with great spirit and coolness in the whole affair.

I have sent you my Prometheus, which I do not wish
to be sent to Oilier for publication until I write to that
effect. Mr. Gisborne will bring it, as also some volumes
of Spenser, and the two last of Herodotus and Paradise
Lost, which may be put with the others.

If my play should be accepted, don't you think it
would excite some interest, and take off the unexpected
horror of the story, by showing that the events are real,
if it could be made to appear in some paper in some
form?

You will hear from me again shortly, as I send you by
sea the Cencis printed, which you will be good enough
to keep. Adieu.

Yours most faithfully,

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 27

[Postmark, Pisa, Mr. 25, 1820.]

My Dear Peacock,

I have received your letter, and in a few days

afterwards that of B and E and I enclose you

theirs and my answer. ... I have written to them a plain
statement of the case, and a plain account of my situa-
tion. ... I think by the interposition of your kind
offices the affair may be arranged.

I see with deep regret in to-day's papers the attempt
to assassinate the Ministry. Everything seems to con-
spire against Reform. How Cobbett must laugh at the
f resumption of gold payments '. I long to see him.

TO PEACOCK 201

I have a motto on a ring in Italian 'II buon tempo
verra '. There is a tide both in public and in private
affairs, which awaits both men and nations.

I have no news from Italy. We live here under a
nominal tyranny administered according to the philo-
sophic laws of Leopold and the mild opinions which are
the fashion here. . . . Tuscany is unlike all the other
Italian States, in this respect.

LETTER 28

Pisa, May, 1820.
My Dear Peacock,

I congratulate you most sincerely on your choice
and on your marriage. ... I was very much amused by
your laconic account of the affair. It is altogether
extremely like the denouement of one of your own novels,
and as such serves to l a theory I once imagined, that in
everything any man ever wrote, spoke, acted, or ima-
gined, is contained, as it were, an allegorical idea of his
own future life, as the acorn contains the oak.

But not to ascend in my balloon. I have written to
Hogg to ask him to pay me a visit, and though I had no
hope of success, I commissioned him to endeavour to
bring yon. This becomes still more improbable from
your news ; but I need not say that your amiable
mountaineer would make you still more welcome. My
friends the Gisbornes are now really on their way to
London, where they propose to stay only six weeks. I
think you will like Mrs. Gisborne. Henry is an excellent
fellow, but not very communicative. If you find any-
thing in the shape of dullness or otherwise to endure in
Mr. Gisborne, endure it for the lady's sake and mine ;
but for Heaven's sake ! do not let him know that I
think him stupid. Indeed, perhaps I do him an injustice,2

1 H. B. F. inserts [support ?]

a I think he did. I found Mr. Gisborne an agreeable and
well-informed man. He and his amiable and accomplished wife

202 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

though certainly he proses. Hogg will find it very
agreeable (if he postpones his visit so long, or if he
visits me at all) to join them on their return. I wish you,
and Hogg, and Hunt, and — I know not who besides —
would come and spend some months with me together
in this wonderful land.

We know little of England here. I take in Galignani's
paper, which is filled with extracts from the Courier, and
from those accounts it appears probable that there is
but little unanimity in the mass of the people ; and that
a civil war impends from the success of ministers, and
the exasperation of the poor.

I see my tragedy has been republished in Paris ; if
that is the case, it ought to sell in London ; but I hear
nothing from Oilier.

I have suffered extremely this winter; but I feel
myself most materially better at the return of spring.
I am on the whole greatly benefited by my residence in
Italy, and but for certain moral causes should probably
have been enabled to re-establish my system completely.
Believe me, my dear Peacock, yours very sincerely,

P. B. S.

Pray make my best regards acceptable to your new
companion.

LETTER 29

Leghorn, July 12th, 1820.
My Dear Peacock,

I remember you said that when Auber married
you were afraid you would see or hear but little of him.
* There are two voices/ says Wordsworth, \ one of the
mountains and one of the sea, both a mighty voice.'
So you have two wives — one of the mountains, all of
whose claims I perfectly admit, whose displeasure I
deprecate, and from whom I feel assured that I have
nothing to fear : the other of the sea, the India House,

have long been dead. I should not have printed what Shelley-
says of him if; any person were living whom the remembrance
could annoy, g [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK

who perhaps makes you write so much that I suppose you
have not a scrawl to spare. I make bold to write to you
on the news that you are correcting my Prometheus, for
which I return thanks, and I send some things which
may be added. I hear of you from Mr. Gisborne, but
from you I do not hear. Well, how go on the funds and
the Romance ? ' Cobbett's euthanasia seems approach-
ing, and I suppose you will have some rough festivals
at the apotheosis of the Debt.

Nothing, I think, shows the generous gullibility of
the English nation more than their having adopted her
Sacred Majesty as the heroine of the day, in spite of
all their prejudices and bigotry. I, for my part, of course
wish no harm to happen to her, even if she has, as
I firmly believe, amused herself in a manner rather
indecorous with any courier or baron. But I cannot help
adverting to it as one of the absurdities of royalty, that
a vulgar woman, with all those low tastes which prejudice
considers as vices, and a person whose habits and
manners every one would shun in private life, without
any redeeming virtues, should be turned into a heroine
because she is a queen, or, as a collateral reason, because
her husband is a king ; and he, no less than his minis-
ters, are so odious that everything, however disgusting,
which is opposed to them, is admirable. The Paris
paper, which I take in, copied some excellent remarks
from the Examiner about it.

We are just now occupying the Gisbornes' house at
Leghorn, and I have turned Mr. Reveley's workshop
into my study. The Libecchio here howls like a chorus
of fiends all day, and the weather is just pleasant, — not
at all hot, the days being very misty, and the nights
divinely serene. I have been reading with much
pleasure the Greek romances. The best of them is the
pastoral of Longus : but they are all very entertaining,
and would be delightful if they were less rhetorical and
ornate. I am translating in ottava rima the Hymn to

1 Presumably Peacock's Maid Marian.

204 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

Mercury of Homer. Of course my stanza precludes
a literal translation. My next effort will be, that it
should be legible — a quality much to be desired in
translations.

I am told that the magazines, &c, blaspheme me at
a great rate. I wonder why I write verses, for nobody
reads them. It is a kind of disorder, for which the
regular practitioners prescribe what is called a torrent
of abuse ; but I fear that can hardly be considered as
a specific. . . .

I enclose two additional poems, to be added to those
printed at the end of Prometheus : and I send them to
you, for fear Oilier might not know what to do in case
he objected to some expressions in the fifteenth and
sixteenth stanzas ; 1 and that you would do me the
favour to insert an asterisk, or asterisks, with as little
expense of the sense as may be. The other poem I send
to you, not to make two letters. I want Jones's Greek
Grammar very much for Mary, who is deep in Greek.
I thought of sending for it in sheets by the post ; but
as I find it would cost as much as a parcel, I would
rather have a parcel, including it and some other books,
which you would do me a great favour by sending by
the first ship. Never send us more reviews than two
back on any of Lord Byron's works, as we get them
here. Ask Oilier, Mr. Gisborne, and Hunt whether
they have anything to send.

Believe me, my dear Peacock,

Sincerely and affectionately yours,

P. B. S.

Jones's Greek Grammar ; Schrevelii Lexicon ; The
Greek Exercises ; Melincourt, and Headlong Hall ; papers,
and Indicators, and whatever else you may think inter-
esting. Godwin's Answer to Malthus, if out. Six copies
of the second edition of Cenci.

1 These were the fifteenth and sixteenth stanzas of the Ode to
Liberty. [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 205

LETTER 30
Pisa, November (probably 8th J, 1820.

My Dear Peacock,

I also delayed to answer your last letter, because
I was waiting for something to say : or at least, some-
thing that should be likely to be interesting to you.
The box containing my books, and consequently your
Essay against the cultivation of poetry, has not arrived ;
my wonder, meanwhile, in what manner you support
such a heresy in this matter of fact and money-
loving age, holds me in suspense. Thank you for your
kindness in correcting Prometheus, which I am afraid
gave you a great deal of trouble. Among the modern
things which have reached me is a volume of poems by
Keats : in other respects insignificant enough, but con-
taining 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 not before.

I hear from Mr. Gisborne that you are surrounded
with statements and accounts, — a chaos of which you
are the God ; a sepulchre which encloses in a dormant
state the chrysalis of the Pavonian Psyche. May you
start into life some day, and give us another Melincourt.
Your Melincourt is exceedingly admired, and I think
much more so than any of your other writings. In this
respect the world judges rightly. There is more of the
true spirit, and an object less indefinite, than in either
Headlong Hall or Scythrop.

I am, speaking literally, infirm of purpose. I have
great designs, and feeble hopes of ever accomplishing
them. I read books, and, though I am ignorant enough,
they seem to teach me nothing. To be sure, the
reception the public have given me might go far enough
to damp any man's enthusiasm. They teach you, it may
be said, only what is true. Very true, I doubt not, and
the more true the less agreeable. I can compare my

206 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

experience in this respect to nothing but a series of wet
blankets. I have been reading nothing but Greek and
Spanish. Plato and Calderon have been my gods. We
are now in the town of Pisa. A schoolfellow of mine
from India l is staying with me, and we are beginning
Arabic together. Mary is writing a novel/ illustrative
of the manners of the Middle Ages in Italy, which she
has raked out of fifty old books. I promise myself
success from it ; and certainly, if what is wholly original
will succeed, I shall not be disappointed. . . .

Adieu. In publica commoda peccem, si longo sermone.
Ever faithfully yours,

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 31

Pisa } February \bth, 1821.
My Dear Peacock,

The last letter I received from you, nearly
four months from the date thereof, reached me by the
boxes which the Gisbornes sent by sea. I am happy to
learn that you continue in good external and internal
preservation. I received at the same time your printed
denunciations against general, and your written ones
against particular poetry ; and I agree with you as
decidedly in the latter as I differ in the former. The
man whose critical gall is not stirred up by such ottava
rimas as Barry Cornwall's, may safely be conjectured to
possess no gall at all. The world is pale with the sick-
ness of such stuff. At the same time, your anathemas
against poetry itself excited me to a sacred rage, or
caloethes3 scribendi of vindicating the insulted Muses.
I had the greatest possible desire to break a lance with
you, within the lists of a magazine, in honour of my
mistress Urania ; but God willed that I should be too

1 Thomas Medwin. 2 Valperga.

3 Peacock printed cacoethes for caloethes, apparently not per-
ceiving Shelley's joke. It is certainly caloethes in the letter.
[H. B. F.]

TO PEACOCK 207

lazy, and wrested the victory from your hope : since
first having unhorsed poetry, and the universal sense of
the wisest in all ages, an easy conquest would have
remained to you in me, the knight of the shield of
shadow and the lance of gossamere. Besides, I was at
that moment reading Plato's Ion, which I recommend
you to reconsider. Perhaps in the comparison of
Platonic and Malthusian doctrines, the mavis errare of
Cicero is a justifiable argument ; but I have a whole
quiver of arguments on such a subject.

Have you seen Godwin's answer to the apostle of the
rich ? 1 And what do you think of it ? It has not yet
reached me, nor has your box, of which I am in daily
expectation.

We are now in the crisis and point of expectation in
Italy. The Neapolitan and Austrian armies are rapidly
approaching each other, and every day the news of
a battle may be expected. The former have advanced
into the Ecclesiastical States, and taken hostages
from Rome to assure themselves of the neutrality of
that power, and appear determined to try their strength
in open battle. I need not tell you how little chance
there is that the new and undisciplined levies of Naples
should stand against a superior force of veteran troops.
But the birth of liberty in nations abounds in examples
of a reversal of the ordinary laws of calculation : the
defeat of the Austrians would be the signal of insur-
rection throughout all Italy.

I am devising literary plans of some magnitude. But
nothing is more difficult and unwelcome than to write
without a confidence of finding readers ; and if my play
of the Cenci found none or few, I despair of ever
producing anything that shall merit them.

Among your anathemas of the modern 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.

1 Godwin's treatise Of Population, in answer to Malthus.

208 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

I suppose you are writing nothing but Indian laws,
&c. I have but a faint idea of your occupation ; but
I suppose it has much to do with pen and ink.

Mary desires to be kindly remembered to you ; and
I remain, my dear Peacock, yours very faithfully,

P. B. Shelley.

LETTER 32

Pisa, March 2lst, 1821.
My Dear Peacock,

I dispatch by this post the first part of an essay
intended to consist of three parts, which I design for an
antidote to your Four Ages of Poetry.1 You will see
that I have taken a more general view of what is poetry
than you have, and will perhaps agree with several of
my positions, without considering your own touched.
But read and judge ; and do not let us imitate the
great founders of the picturesque, Price and Payne
Knight, who, like two ill-trained beagles, began snarling
at each other when they could not catch the hare.

I hear the welcome news of a box from England
announced by Mr. Gisborne. How much new poetry
does it contain ? The Bavii and Maevii of the day are
very fertile ; and I wish those who honour me with boxes

1 The Four Ages of Poetry here alluded to was published in
Ollier's Literary Miscellany. Shelley wrote the Defence of
Poetry as an answer to it ; and as he wrote it, it contained many
allusions to the article and its author, such as * If I know the
knight by the device of his shield, I have only to inscribe Cas-
sandra, Antigone, or Alcestis on mine to blunt the point of his
spear *; taking one instance of a favourite character from each
of the three great Greek tragedians. All these allusions were
struck out by Mr. John Hunt when he prepared the paper for
publication in the Liberal. The demise of that periodical pre-
vented the publication, and Mrs. Shelley subsequently printed
it from Mr. Hunt's rifacciamento, as she received it. The paper
as it now stands is a defence without an attack. Shelley
intended this paper to be in three parts, but the other two were
not written. IT. L- p0

TO PEACOCK 209

would read and inwardly digest your Four Ages of Poetry ;
for I had much rather, for my own private reading,
receive political, geological, and moral treatises, than
this stuff in terza, ottava, and tremillesima rima whose
earthly baseness has attracted the lightning of your
undiscriminating censure upon the temple of immortal
song. Procter's verses enrage me far more than those of
Codrus did Juvenal, and with better reason. Juvenal
need not have been stunned unless he had liked it ;
but my boxes are packed with this trash, to the
exclusion of what I want to see. But your box will
make amends.

Do you see much of Hogg now ? and the Boinvilles
and Colson ? Hunt I suppose not. And are you occu-
pied as much as ever? We are surrounded here in
Pisa by revolutionary volcanoes, which, as yet, give
more light than heat : the lava has not yet reached
Tuscany. But the news in the papers will tell you far
more than it is prudent for me to say ; and for this once
I will observe your rule of political silence. The Aus-
trians wish that the Neapolitans and Piedmontese would
do the same.

We have seen a few more people than usual this
winter, and have made a very interesting acquaintance
with a Greek Prince, perfectly acquainted with ancient
literature, and full of enthusiasm for the liberties and
improvement of his country. Mary has been a Greek
student for several months, and is reading Antigone
with our turbaned friend, who, in return, is taught
English. Claire has passed the carnival at Florence, and
has been preternaturally gay. I have had a severe
ophthalmia, and have read or written little this winter ;
and have made acquaintance in an obscure convent with
the only Italian for whom I ever felt any interest.1

1 Lady Emilia Viviani, the subject of his Epipsychidion. She
was the daughter of an Italian Count, who shut her up in a
convent till he could find for her a husband to his own taste. It
was there Shelley became acquainted with her. He was struck
by the beauty of her person, the graces of her mind, the misery

210 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

I want you to do something for me : that is, to get
me two pounds' worth of Tassi's gems, in Leicester
Square, the prettiest, according to your taste ; among
them, the head of Alexander ; and to get me two seals
engraved and set, one smaller, and the other hand-
somer ; the device a dove with outspread wings, and
this motto round it :

Marris elf* icrOXCjv dycovoov.

Mary desires her best regards * ; and I remain, my
dear Peacock, ever most sincerely yours,

P. B. S.

LETTER 33
Ravenna, August (probably 10th), 1821.
My Dear Peacock,

I received your last letter just as I was setting
off from the Bagni on a visit to Lord Byron at this place.

of her imprisonment in dismal society. He took for the motto
of his poem her own words, Vanima amante si slancia fuori del
creato, e si crea nelV infinite un mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai
da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. *She was subsequently
married to a gentleman chosen for her by her father, and after
pining in his society, and in the marshy solitudes of the
Maremma, for six years, she left him, with the consent of her
parent, and died of consumption, in a dilapidated old mansion
at Florence.1 (Shelley Memorials, p. 149.) Though she was
not killed by her husband, her fate always recalls to me the
verses of Dante :

Ricordati di me, che son la Pia :
Siena mi fe\ disfecemi Maremma
Salsi colui che innanellata pria
Disposando m'avea con la sua gemma.

Purgatorio, v. 133-6. [T. L. P.]

1 There is a postscript from Mrs. Shelley, asking me to execute
one or two small commissions, and adding : —

Am I not lucky to have got so good a master ? I have finished
the two plays of Oedipus, and am now reading the Antigone.
The name of the prince is A\e£av8pos MavpoK6pdaros. He can read
English perfectly well. [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 211

Many thanks for all your kind attention to my accursed
affairs. . . .

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. You and the
enlightened public will judge. Lord Byron is in excel-
lent cue both of health and spirits. He has got rid
of all those melancholy and degrading habits which he
indulged at Venice. He lives with one woman, a lady of
rank here, to whom he is attached, and who is attached
to him, and is in every respect an altered man. He
has written three more cantos of Don Juan. I have yet
only heard the fifth, and I think that every word of
it is pregnant with immortality. I have not seen his
late plays, except Marino Faliero, which is very well,
but not so transcendently fine as Don Juan. Lord
Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to
my usual custom (but one must sleep or die, like
Southey's sea-snake in Kehama), at twelve. After
breakfast, we sit talking till six. From six till eight we
gallop through the pine forests which divide Ravenna
from the sea ; we then come home and dine, and sit up
gossiping till six in the morning. I don't suppose this
will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try
it longer. Lord B.'s establishment consists, besides
servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three mon-
keys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon ; and all
these, except the horses, walk about the house, which
every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated
quarrels, as if they were the masters of it. Lord B.
thinks you wrote a pamphlet signed John Bull ; he says
he knew it by the style resembling Melincourt, of which
he is a great admirer. I read it, and assured him that
it could not possibly be yours. 1 I write nothing, and

1 Most probably Shelley's partiality for me and my book put

too favourable a construction on what Lord Byron may have

said. Lord Byron told Captain Medwin that a friend of Shelley's

had written a novel, of which he had forgotten the name, founded

p2

212 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

probably shall write no more. It offends me to see
my name classed among those who have no name.
If I cannot be something better, I had rather be
nothing . . . and the accursed cause to the downfall of
which I dedicated what powers I may have had — flour-
ishes like a cedar and covers England with its boughs.
My motive was never the infirm desire of fame ; and
if I should continue an author, I feel that I should
desire it. This cup is justly given to one only of an age ;
indeed, participation would make it worthless : and
unfortunate they who seek it and find it not.

I congratulate you — I hope I ought to do so — on
your expected stranger. He is introduced into a rough
world. My regards to Hogg, and Colson if you see him.
Ever most faithfully yours,

P. B. S.

After I have sealed my letter, I find that my enumera-
tion of the animals in this Circaean Palace was defective,
and that in a material point. I have just met on the
grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea-hens, and an
Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were,
before they were changed into these shapes.

LETTER 34

Pisa, January (probably 11th J, 1822.
My Dear Peacock,

I am still at Pisa, where I have at length fitted
up some rooms at the top of a lofty palace that overlooks

on his bear. He described it sufficiently to identify it, and
Captain Medwin supplied the title in a note : but assuredly, when
I condensed Lord Monboddo's views of the humanity of the Oran
Outang into the character of Sir Oran Haut-ton, I thought
neither of Lord Byron's bear nor of Caligula's horse. But Lord
Byron was much in the habit of fancying that all the world was
spinning on his pivot. As to the pamphlet signed John Bull, I
certainly did not write it. I never even saw it, and do not know
what it was about. [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 213

the city and the surrounding region, and have collected
books and plants about me, and established myself for
some indefinite time, which, if I read the future, will
not be short. I wish you to send my books by the very
first opportunity, and I expect in them a great augmen-
tation of comfort. Lord Byron is established here, and
we are constant companions. No small relief this, after
the dreary solitude of the understanding and the
imagination in which we past the first years of our
expatriation, yoked to all sorts of miseries and dis-
comforts.

Of course you have seen his last volume, and if you
before thought him a great poet, what is your opinion
now that you have read Cain ! The Foscari and
Sardanapalus I have not seen ; but as they are in the
style of his later writings, I doubt not they are very fine.
We expect Hunt here every day, and remain in great
anxiety on account of the heavy gales which he must
have encountered at Christmas.1 Lord Byron has fitted
up the lower apartments of his palace for him, and
Hunt will be agreeably surprised to find a commodious
lodging prepared for him after the fatigues and dangers
of his passage. I have been long idle, and, as far as
writing goes, despondent ; but I am now engaged on
Charles the First, and a devil of a nut it is to crack.

Mary and Clara (who is not with us just at present) are
well, and so is our little boy, the image of poor William.
We live as usual, tranquilly. I get up, or at least wake

1 Mr. Hunt and his family were to have embarked for Italy
in September, 1821 ; but the vessel was delayed till the 16th of
November. They were detained three weeks by bad weather at
Ramsgate, and were beaten up and down channel till the 22nd
of December, when they put in at Dartmouth. Mrs. Hunt being
too ill to proceed, they went to Plymouth, resumed their voyage
in another vessel on the 13th of May, 1822, and arrived at
Leghorn about the end of June, having been nine months from
the time of their engagement with the first vessel in finding
their way to Italy. In the present days of railways and steam
navigation, this reads like a modern version of the return of
Ulysses. [T. L. P.]

214 LETTERS OF SHELLEY

early ; read and write till two ; dine ; go to Lord B.'s,
and ride, or play billiards, as the weather permits ; and
sacrifice the evening either to light books or whoever
happens to drop in. Our furniture, which is very neat,
cost fewer shillings than that at Marlow did pounds
sterling ; and our windows are full of plants, which turn
the sunny winter into spring. My health is better —
my cares are lighter ; and although nothing will cure
the consumption of my purse, yet it drags on a sort of
life in death, very like its master, and seems, like
Fortunatus's, always empty yet never quite exhausted.
You will have seen my Adonais and perhaps my Hellas,
and I think, whatever you may judge of the subject,
the composition of the first poem will not wholly displease
you. I wish I had something better to do than furnish
this jingling food for the hunger of oblivion, called verse,
but I have not ; and since you give me no encourage-
ment about India 1 I cannot hope to have.

How is your little star, and the heaven which contains
the milky way in which it glimmers ?

Adieu. — Yours ever, most truly,

S.

[The following extract, which forms the conclusion of
a letter to him from Mrs. Shelley, was printed by Peacock
at the end of Shelley's letters. It was dated,]

Genoa, Sept 29th, 1822.

1 have written you a letter entirely about business.
When I hold my pen in my hand, my natural impulse is
to express the feelings that overwhelm me ; but resisting
that impulse, I dare not for a moment stray from my
subject, or I should never find it again. . . . Alas, find
in the whole world so transcendent a being as mine
own Shelley, and then tell me to be consoled ! And it

1 He had expressed a desire to be employed politically at the
court of a native prince, and I had told him that such employ-
ment was restricted to the regular service of the East India
Company. [T. L. P.]

TO PEACOCK 215

is not he alone I have lost, though that misery, swallow-
ing up all others, has hitherto made me forgetful of all
others. My best friend, my dear Edward,1 whom
next to S. 1 loved, and whose virtues were worthy of
the warmest affection, he too is gone ! Jane (i. e.
Mrs. Williams), driven by her cruel fate to England,
has also deserted me. What have I left ? Not one that
can console me ; not one that does not show by
comparison how deep and irremediable my losses are.
Trelawny is the only quite disinterested friend 1 have
here — the only one who clings to the memory of my
loved ones as I do myself; but he, alas, is not as one of
them, though he is really good and kind. Adieu, my
dear Peacock ; be happy with your wife and child. I
hear that the first is deserving of every happiness, and
the second a most interesting little creature. I am
glad to hear this. Desolate as I am, I cling to the idea
that some of my friends at least are not like me.
Again, adieu.

Your attached friend,

Mary W. Shelley.

1 Captain Williams, who was drowned with Shelley. [T. L. P.]

216

APPENDIX I

STANZAS

Written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson's Castle of
Indolence. 1

Within our happy Castle there dwelt One

Whom without blame I may not overlook ;

For never sun on living creature shone

Who more devout enjoyment with us took :

Here on his hours he hung as on a book,

On his own time here would he float away,

As doth a fly upon a summer brook ;

But go to-morrow, or belike to-day,

Seek for him, — he is fled ; and whither none can say.

Thus often would he leave our peaceful home,

And find elsewhere his business or delight ;

Out of our Valley's limits did he roam :

Full many a time, upon a stormy night,

His voice came to us from the neighbouring height :

Oft could we see him 2 driving full in view

At mid-day when the sun was shining bright ;

What ill was on him, what he had to do,

A mighty wonder bred among our quiet crew.

Ah ! piteous sight it was to see this Man

When he came back to us, a withered flower, —

Or like a sinful creature, pale and wan.

Down would he sit ; and without strength or power

Look at the common grass from hour to hour ;

1 See p. 37.

2 1836.

1815. Oft did we see him ....

APPENDIX I 217

And oftentimes, how long I fear to say,
When apple-trees in blossom made a bower,
Retired in that sunshiny shade he lay ;
And, like a naked Indian, slept himself away.

Great wonder to our gentle tribe it was

Whenever from our Valley he withdrew ;

For happier soul no living creature has

Than he had, being here the long day through.

Some thought he was a lover, and did woo :

Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong ;

But verse was what he had been wedded to ;

And his own mind did like a tempest strong

Come to him thus, and drove the weary Wight along.

With him there often walked in friendly guise,

Or lay upon the moss by brook or tree,

A noticeable Man with large grey eyes,

And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly

As if a blooming face it ought to be ;

Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear,

Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy ;

Profound his forehead was, though not severe ;

Yet some did think that he had little business here ;

There are three more stanzas in the poem, which was
composed at Grasmere in 1802, and published in 1815.
Wordsworth himself and Coleridge are the persons de-
scribed ; but Shelley could not have known this at the
time when he discussed the Stanzas with Peacock. The
text given above is Wordsworth's own final textus receptus,
as printed in Knight's Edinburgh edition of 1882.

218

APPENDIX II

The report of this meeting 1 fills near a column of the
Morning Post of Nov. 22, 1859- The meeting is stated
to have taken place ' last night ', and the paper, which
was read by ( Mr. Lewis, Q.C. ', was followed by a dis-
cussion * of more than ordinary interest \ Appended is
a bare outline of the paper, condensed from this account.

The reader maintained the right of the state 'to
protect the Christian religion from ribald and scurrilous
attacks \ The state, he argued, is * under a twofold
obligation to do so — first, for the sake of protecting
society from the public evil that would ensue, should
the sanctions of that creed be weakened ; and secondly,
for the preservation of the law which is based upon
it \ The dicta of various justices are quoted, and e he
gathered from them that the reason of the law making
blasphemy an indictable offence was — first, that
Christianity was part and parcel of the law ; so that
when Christianity was attacked, the law itself was
attacked ; secondly, because blasphemy endangered
Government and society; thirdly, that it was pre-
judicial to morality ; and fourthly, that it interfered
with the due administration of justice, inasmuch as a
denial of revealed religion implied a disbelief in a state of
future rewards and punishments, the belief in which
was the basis of the oath administered in the courts of
justice.'

The reader proceeded to enumerate three classes as
incurring liability, of which he would have the first include
e such cases as were matters of police ' ; for example,
that of the publishers of Paine* s Age of Reason. In the
second class he placed * foundations for unchristian
1 See p. 64.

APPENDIX II 219

objects ', instancing ' Lady Hudley's charity' ; and c the
third class comprised all those in which the Court of
Chancery, on the doctrine Parens 'patriae, deprived the
parent of the guardianship of his children when his
principles were in antagonism to religion, as it did in
the case of the poet Shelley.'

A~3P35~