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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
xrbe dilettante Xlbtatg*
1. DANTE AND ms IDEAL. By Herbert Baynes.
M.R.A.S. With a Portrait.
2. BBOWNXNG'S UESSAGE TO HIS TIMES. By
Dr. Edward Berdob. With a Portrait and Fac-
simile Letters.
3-4. THE DOCTOR, AND OTHER POEMS. By
T. E. Browne, M.A., of Clifton College, Author of
" Fo'c's'le Yams." In one vol., y. 6d.
. 5. GOETHE. By Oscar Browning, M.A., Fellow
of King's College, Cambridge. With a Portrait.
/6. DANTE. By Oscar Browning, M.A. With a
V Frontispiece.
Nos. 5 and 6 are enlarged from the articles in the
" Encycloptrdia Britannica"
^ I 7. HENRIX IBSEN. By the Rev. Philip H. Wick-
■« STEED, M A.
8. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. By John Under-
HILL.
9. BROWNING'S CRITICISM OF LIFE. By W. F.
Revell, Member of the London Browning Society.
mCT BYSSHE SHELLET
Hf S;"SALT
LONDON
WAN SOKNENSCHEIN, LOWRET & CO.
PAIEKNOSTEB SQTJABB
Butler A Takker.
The Selwooo Printiko Works.
Promb. and Lonook.
PREFATORY NOTE.
This sketch of the chief scenes of
Shelley's life has been written with the
desire of exhibiting his opinions and
actions as they appear to a sympathetic,
instead of a hostile or indifferent,
observer. Shelley's writings are now
held in great and growing esteem by
a considerable number of earnest
thinkers; yet it so happens that none
of his biographers, with the possible
exception of Leigh Hunt, have been
heartily in accord with his social and
moral doctrines, however sincerely they
•••
111
iv PREFATORY NOTE,
have admired his character and poetical
genius. The inevitable consequence
has been that Shelley's story has seldom
or never been told in such a manner as
to do justice to the real significance of
his ethical creed, and the principles by
which his conduct was directed.
Assuming that most readers are
acquainted with at least the main
outline of Shelley's life, I have em-
ployed what has been styled the
"scenical" method of narration, omit-
ting, as far as possible, the dry details
of dates and places, and avoiding the
mass of controversial matter with which
the whole subject is unfortunately over-
laid. Nor have I scrupled, in dealing
with the conflicting and_ never wholly
reliable accounts left us by Hogg,
PREFATORY NOTE. v
Peacock, Medwin, and Trelawny, to
use my own judgment in accepting
some statements and rejecting others.
** The rule of criticism/* says Shelley
himself in one of his prose essays, " to
be adopted in judging of the life,
actions, and words of a man who has
acted any conspicuous part in the
revolutions of the world, ought not to
be narrow. We ought to form a
general image of his character and
doctrines, and refer to this whole the
distinct portions of action and speech
by which they are diversified." I have
tried to keep this principle in view in
the following study of Shelley's life.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAOB
I. The Elf-child . . . 1
II. The Education op a Gentleman — at
Eton 15
III. The Education of a Gentleman — at
Oxford 28
IV. Marriage without Love . . 51
V. At War with Intolerance . 65
VI. Darkness before Dawn ... 84
VII. Love without Marriage . . 99
VIII. Work at Marlow .... 116
IX. Wanderings in Italy . 137
X. Life at Pisa • 156
XI. Life at Pisa (continued) .175
XII. The Storm at Spezzia . . . 191
XIII. " Cor Cordium " . .211
XIV. Epilogue 224
Appendix 237
vii
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.
And saw, within the moonlight in his room.
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold : —
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold.
And to the presence in the room he said,
" What writest thou ? " — The vision rais'd its head,
And with a look made all of sweet accord,
Answer'd, " The names of those who love the Lord."
" And is mine one ? " said Abou. " Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low.
But cheerly still ; and said, " I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And show'd the names whom love of God hath
bless'd.
And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
Leigh Hunt
Vlll
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
••C9 »
CHAPTER I.
THE ELF'GHILD.
On August 4th, 1792, there was pro-
bably no country gentleman in England
who was better satisfied with himself,
his position, and his prospects, than
Mr. Timothy Shelley, of Field Place,
Horsham, Sussex. For on that day the
felicity of his marriage with the beauti-
ful Elizabeth Pilfold was crowned by
the birth of a son, who was to all ap-
pearances destined to maintain the time-
' B
2 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
honoured traditions of the Shelley house
and property. The heir of a wealthy
landowner, the child of a father who
studied the interests of the Whig party
in politics and the precepts of the ac-
complished Lord Chesterfield in private
life, could scarcely fail to follow duti-
fully in the course which Providence
had evidently marked out for him. It
was gratifying also to reflect that the
boy's mother was a lady not only of
faultless bearing, but of keen observa-
tion and sound common sense, and
quite free from any womanish sentimen-
tality or morbid enthusiasm.
In addition to the family name of
Percy, the child was called Bysshe,
after his grandfather, Mr, Bysshe Shel-
ley; though of course it was not for a
THE ELF'CHILD, 3
moment to be imagined that he would
in any degree resemble that rather
eccentric old gentleman, who, after
leading a strange and chequered Ufe,
and eloping with two heiresses, was
now living in a cottage at Horsham,
where he set all propriety at defiance,
and spent his time in talking politics
at the " Swan Inn." Very different
had been Mr. Timothy Shelley's well-
ordered career; and very different —
such was his confident anticipation —
would be the career of his son. It
could not be doubted that if he lived
to manhood he would be a sturdy
country squire of the old-fashioned
sort, fond of his bottle of wine, de-
voted to field sports, and, above all,
a determined upholder of all orthodox
4 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
and constitutional principles. Mr.
Timothy Shelley, well-meaning and
kind-hearted man that he was, felt
that he could be the best of fathers to
the son who promised to be so close
a likeness of himself.
But as years passed by and By s she
grew into a tall, slim boy, with large
dreamy eyes and long curling hair,
Mr. Shelley found himself less and less
able to forecast with positive certainty
the future bent of his son's character.
There was something strange and elfish
about his manner which seemed to be
out of harmony with the ordinary
course of life at Field Place, and made
him a puzzle and enigma to his anxious.
and disappointed relatives.
Can it be that there is some truth in
THE ELF-CHILD. 5
the old belief that infants are some-
times stolen away from their cradles
by mischief-loving fairies, and elfish
changelings deposited in their stead?
If we incline to the notion that Mr.
Timothy Shelley was the victim of a
fraud of this kind, we must further
conclude that the exchange was effected
before September 7th, 1792, for that is
the date on which the child's christen-
ing is registered, and it has always been
understood that the fairies have no
power to carry off any but unchristened
babes. Had this explanation of the
boy's conduct been adopted, it would at
least have saved his parents much disap-
pointment and heart-burning ; as it was,
they were loth to admit the possibility
of their son growing up otherwise than
6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
as they had anticipated, and they were
consequently not a little perplexed and
annoyed as his aberrations became
more and more pronounced.
It was naturally disquieting to a
country gentleman's mind to hear that
his son and heir, instead of employing
his holidays learning the art of killing
pheasants and partridges, was in the
habit of playing familiarly with a large
snake on the lawn ; or entertaining his
infant sisters with idle stories of an
aged alchemist, said to have his abode
in certain disused garrets and passages
of Field Place; or, worse still, endan-
gering his own safety and that of the
household by the recklessness of his
chemical experiments. It was an un-
healthy sign, too, that an English boy
THE ELF'CHILD. 7
should care less for the society of
grooms and gamekeepers than for soli-
tary rambles about the Sussex lanes
and mysterious nocturnal wanderings
in which neither sense nor purpose
could be discovered.
Then, again, the reports from Dr.
Grreenlaw, of whose school at Brentford
Bysshe had now become an inmate,
were far from satisfactory. If Tom
Medwin, his cousin and school-fellow,
could get on well with masters and
boys, why could not Bysshe do the
same, since he might be presumed to be
Tom's equal in ability? It was pro-
voking to the father to learn that his
son was ridiculed and teased by his
school-fellows, since, being a man of the
world, he knew well that in such cases
8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
it is the victim himself who is to blame ;
nor was he any better pleased by a
letter which Mrs. Shelley received from
Bysshe, giving a long account of a senti-
mental attachment to one particular
school-fellow, whose admirable qualities
were described with much emphasis and
exaggeration. Mrs. Shelley wisely de-
cided to return no answer to this
letter, in the hope that her silence might
administer the most forcible reproof to
this sentimental tendency, which was
probably fostered by the boy's unfortu-
nate habit of reading volume after
volume of sensational romances.
But of all Bysshe's singularities, the
most alarming to his parents was his
strange and reprehensible habit of re-
counting imaginary scenes and conversa-
THE ELF-CHILD, 9
tions; for they clearly saw that this con-
fusion of the boundary-line between fact
and fiction was a symptom of an intellec-
tual and moral laxity especially deplor-
able in a boy of Bysshe's position. Such
eccentricities might be smiled at or par-
doned in the case of a poor aspirant in
art or literature ; but they could not be
tolerated ' in one who was destined to
be a county magnate and Whig member
for the borough of Shoreham.
What did it all portend — snakes, al-
chemists, star-gazings, romance-read-
ings, and inflammable liquids? These
things were little to the liking of a
sober-minded country gentleman such
as Mr. Timothy Shelley, who, being
by nature somewhat irascible and do-
mineering, would occasionally speak
lo PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
out rather strongly on the subject of
Bysshe's misdemeanours, never for a
moment thinking of that more chari-
table explanation of the mystery — that
the lad was not responsible for his
actions, being, in reality, a poor fairy
changeling, instead of a hearty English
boy.
On the other hand, there were occa-
sions when Mr. Shelley was incUned to
feel proud of his son, and to become
reconciled to the idea that he was going
to be clever like his grandfather. Sir
Bysshe, who at that very time was
about to receive a baronetcy from his
leader, the Duke of Norfolk, in return
for his services to the Whig cause.
Could it be that the boy was likely to
Drove what is called a genius ? We are
THE ELF-CHILD. ii
not told whether Mr. Shelley ever specu-
lated on this point; but we may be
quite sure that, if he did so, he looked
forward with some complacency to the
enlistment of Bysshe's powers on the
side of social order and respectability,
which were already threatened by the
insidious and pernicious doctrines of the
revolutionary party. Whigs and Tories
were at least agreed upon one point —
that the strongholds of constitutional-
ism and religion must be henceforth
defended with no imcertain hand against
the increasing assaults of democracy
and free-thought.
It was a time when revolution was
" in the air." The example of France
and America had already given the sig-
nal for other national uprisings ; Ireland
12 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
was in a state of chronic commotion and
overt rebellion; while in England certain
mischievous agitators were busily en-
gaged in setting class against class, and
were striving to impress the labourers
and artisans with the wild notion that
they were the victims of social injustice
and oppression. One William Grodwin
had lately published a book named
** Political Justice," which Mr. Shelley
doubtless heard spoken of as particu-
larly dangerous and seditious; and it
was possibly reported at Field Place,
as an instance of the extreme depravity
of the times, that a woman of the name
of WoUstonecraft had been wicked
enough to write a vindication of the
supposed ** Rights" of her sex. The
good old cause of the throne and the
THE ELF'CHILD, 13
constitution evidently needed a cham-
pion ; and if Bysshe, who seemed to be
so unlike boys of his own age, should
turn out to have talent, here was a fit-
ting object for his ambition.
At any rate, Mr. Shelley now looked
forward to his clever son gaining aca-
demical distinction, and hereafter filling
his seat in Parliament with honour and
success ; and to gain this end, he was of
opinion that he must at once give him
the advantage of the best school educa-
tion which it was in his power to secure.
Himself a disciple of Chesterfield, he
knew the paramount importance of an
easy grace of manner and elegance
of bearing ; he therefore determined to
send the boy to Eton, where, in the con-
tact with others of his own social posi-
14 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
tion, he would rapidly lose those very
unfortunate and unaccountable eccen-
tricities by which his character was at
present deformed.
So at twelve years of age the unlucky
elf-child — who, being himself ignorant
of his own origin, was not able to ex-
plain or protest — found himself sub-
jected to no less an ordeal than that
of undergoing the education of a gentle-
man.
CHAPTER II.
THE EBUOATION OF A QENTLEMAN-^AT
ETON.
Ant one visiting Eton College, that
venerable seat of learning, during the
rather numerous play-hours of the
students (I am speaking of a time some
eighty years ago), might have chanced
to be a witness of a strange and sug-
gestive spectacle, illustrative in a re-
markable degree of the temper and
manners of the average English school-
boy in his gregarious condition.
A crowd of lads of various sorts and
sizes, but almost all enlisted from those
16
1 6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
two great divisions of the genus boy
described by a humorous observer as
the " beef -faced '* and the "mealy-
faced," might have been seen encircling,
jeering, hooting, pelting, and in every
conceivable way annoying and perse-
cuting a solitary individual, whose
appearance seemed to indicate that he
differed in some essential points of
character from the mass of his school-
fellows. He was slight and graceful
in stature, and in the expression of
his face there was something wild and
spiritual, yet at the same time full of
" exceeding sweetness and sincerity " ;
the other features that immediately
arrested attention were the long dark-
brown hair and the large, blue, earnest-
looking eyes. In spite of his occasional
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 17
brief paroxysms of rage, caused by the
attacks of his tormentors, he did not
look like one who had been guilty of
any very heinous offence. What then
was the crime for which he had been
outlawed from the good- will of his
fellows ?
Alasl it was a serious one; it was
none other than the unpardonable sin
of rebelling against that great deity of
boys and men — custom. This elfish
changeling, who answered to the name
of Percy Bysshe Shelley, had already
commenced, to his infinite discredit and
discomfort, to hold and advance certain
opinions of his own on the subject of
the society in which his life was cast;
and these opinions by no means co-
incided with the established Etonian
1 8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
creed, the full acceptance of which was
an indispensable condition of school-boy
salvation.
In the first place, he had audaciously-
violated the fundamental doctrine of
the Etonian constitution — he had re-
fused to fag.
Secondly, he had been guilty of the
high crime and misdemeanour of neg-
lecting and despising the lawful and
necessary practice of athletic games
and exercise, and of occupying himself
in various frivolous and contemptible
amusements ; as, for instance, in dab-
bling and messing with all sorts of
chemical compounds, or floating paper
boats on ponds in the neighbourhood of
Eton, or reading strange books which
were wholly unintelligible to his more
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, 19
sensible school-fellows, or, worst of all
— incorrigible milk-sop that he was — in
taking solitary walks, and even — so it
was whispered — visiting a churchyard at
Stoke Park, where some poet or other
had written an elegy.
The third count in the indictment
was that the offender had shown himself
indifferent to the amenities of personal
adornment, as then practised at Eton,
and had often been known to go out
without a hat.
It was naturally felt that this re-
bellion against all that is most sacred
to the school- boy mind was an act of
positive madness and flagrant atheism.
A decree, therefore, had gone forth that
the criminal should be known by the
name of "Mad Shelley" and '^ The
20 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Atheist/' and should be subjected to a
course of that vigorous but wholesome
treatment which the faithful have so
often found effective for the reclamation
of those who wander from the fold of
orthodoxy. Who shall blame the Eton
boys for acting as they did ? A public
school in such matters is but a micro-
cosm — a reflection of the greater world
that lies around it and beyond; and
when a herd of school-boys thinks fit to
tease and slander one who differs from
his fellows, such conduct is but typical
of that of the overgrown school-boys of
mature life.
But at any rate, it may be thought,
the boy might have turned, for the
necessary consolation and protection, to
the masters who had undertaken the
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 21
duty of educating him. Unfortunately,
there was little or no sympathy with
Shelley in that quarter. Why should
busy men take any special interest in an
apparently half-crazy boy whose Latin
verses, although fluently written, were
often defective in metrical correctness,
and who, instead of seeking distinction
in the ordinary channels, persisted in
following a line of study of his own,
such as translating Pliny's "Natural
History," and reading Grodwin*s " Poli-
tical Justice." To burn down willow-
stumps with gunpowder; to keep an
electric battery in one's room, and to
send up fire-balloons by night — these,
too, are proceedings which are not
exactly calculated to win the hearty
approbation of a schoolmaster ; and it
22 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
is no wonder that Shelley's tutors, in
their dislike of the eccentricities that
lay on the surface of his nature, should
have failed to discover the underlying
wealth.
So the poor elf -child, whose heart
even now was full of love for every
living being, and whose mind was aglow
with the divine thirst for knowledge,
could find no favour with either masters
or boys, but pined in vain for the se-
clusion of his green Sussex lanes and
the more congenial society of the
friendly snake that haunted the lawn
of Field Place. Sadly and slowly it
dawned upon his mind that this life,
which had seemed at first to be all fresh
and pure and fair, was blighted by
a withering curse — the curse of the
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 23
tjxanny which selfish and sordid natures
inflict on the gentle and harmless.
It was in this mood and under these
influences that Shelley, as he stood
alone one May morning on the " glitter-
ing grass " of the Eton Playing Fields,
was visited by one of those sudden and
Divine impulses by which many a
high heroic spirit has been summoned,
in the lightning-flash of a moment's
inspiration, to take his part, once and
for ever, in the battle of life. To be
wise, and just, and free, and mild, and
by the power thus acquired to help the
oppressed to shake off the tyranny of
the oppressor — ^^this was the life-work
to which he solemnly dedicated himself
— he, the shy, gentle, shrinking boy,
who had been sent to Eton to acquire
r
24 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
that external polish wliicli his father
judged to be the chief characteristic of
a gentleman I
Never was vow more nobly made, and
never was vow more nobly kept. We
all know the saying of the Duke of
Wellington (it matters little whether it
be authentic or apocryphal), that the
battle of Waterloo was won in the
Playing Fields of Eton. But we have
not all laid to heart the fact that a still
nobler victory was won in the same
fields on that bright spring morning
when Shelley, in the first flush of youth-
ful enthusiasm, received, if ever human
soul received, a revelation from above,
and pledged himself to devote the whole
strength of his being to the sacred
cause of suffering humanity. Well
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, 2i
might his school-fellows call him ^^ Mad
Shelley '* and " the Atheist " ; for such
is the charge, the old, immemorial accu-
sation, that selfish and worldly minds
have ever brought against those who
refuse to bow the knee in the great
temple of hypocrisy and custom.
So the rapturous moments passed, and
the darkness of the school life, with its
petty tyrannies and wretched mean-
nesses, again settled down on Shelley.
But henceforth there was a brighter side
to his existence ; he had a hope, a faith,
an object before him; and he could
bear with greater constancy the many
trials that daily befell him during his
stormy passage through that great edu-
cational establishment, where it is
probable that he alone, of boys or
26 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
masters, was possessed of any absolute
love of knowledge, any thorough desire
for education. Even in these early
days he was an indefatigable reader;
and though his course of study did not
lead him in the direction of scholastic
honours, he nevertheless acquired a
knowledge of Greek and Latin almost
by intuition, and rose steadily in the
school during the six years he remained
there, till he was eventually in the sixth
form.
Nor was he destitute of friends, few
but affectionate, won from among the
mass of school-fellows who for the most
part misunderstood him ; while in Dr.
Lind, a retired physician then living in
Windsor, he found what he could find
in none of the Eton masters — at once a
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, ^^
friend and a teacher, with whom he
might hold free intellectual converse
without shame or fear of reproof. The
elf-child's dream of a hoary-headed
alchemist, who would be able to sym-
pathize with the feelings on which
others frowned, was thus realized in
actual life; and the contrast between
the ruflfianly bearing of Dr. Keate, the
Etonian archimage, whose magic wand
was the rod, and whose altar the
flogging block, and the gentle benevo-
lence of Dr. Lind, of whom Shelley
never spoke in after-life without grati-
tude and veneration, may suggest some
serious thoughts to us, as it doubtless
did to Shelley, as to the relative value
of fear and love in the process of edu-
cation.
CHAPTER III.
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN— AT
OXFORD.
Having now reaped the benefits of a
great public school, Shelley had still to
attain the fuller and maturer culture of
a great University ; accordingly, we find
him entered, in the autumn of 1810, as
a member of University College, Ox-
ford.
At this time his prospects looked
brighter, when judged from the ordinary
worldly standpoint, than at any other
period of his life; and his father had
as yet perceived no incontestable proofs
28
THE EDUCA TION OF A GENTLEMAN, 29
of the threatened failure of his hopes
for the boy's advancement. When he
left Eton, he had already done two
things, both of which have been known
to be done by other school-boys before
and since, — ^he had written an exceed-
ingly worthless novel, and he had fallen
desperately in love with his beautiful
cousin, Harriet G-rove; but, on the
other hand, unlike the generality of
school-boys, he had further managed to
secure the publication of his book, and
to win the consent of the young lady,
and the sanction of her parents and
his own, to a sort of prospective en-
gagement.
He had now escaped from the tedious
thraldom and innumerable persecutions
of school life to the comparative
30 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
freedom of the University, where
he enjoyed ample time for reading,
writing, conversing, arguing, and
following, to the uttermost, the bent
of his own inclinations. At home
he was on cordial, if not on affec-
tionate, terms with his father, who had
learnt to look with equanimity, and,
perhaps, with a sort of qualified admira-
;lj; tion, on that strong tendency towards
;;f}i authorship which he noted, even at this
early stage, as a distinctive feature of
!' his son's character, and was even heard
to speak with paternal pride of the
"literary turn" and "printing freaks"
of the promising youth.
It almost seemed as if the career
which his relatives had sketched out
for him by anticipation was likely to be
'j
1
-I
i
'.'■■ I
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 31
in some measure fulfilled, and as if
Slielley, after going through Oxford in
the usual manner, would marry his fair
cousin, and settle down at Horsham
to the honourable duties of a county
gentleman and heir to large estates.
The wild, strange boy, with dreamy
eyes and flowing locks, would then be
forgotten in the respectability of the
Whig member for Shoreham; the **Mad
Shelley" and^ "Atheist" of Etonian
notoriety would be sanctified by the un-
questionable orthodoxy of the owner of
many acres. It was a comforting pros-
pect for Mr. Shelley to dwell on, and it
was subject only to one disadvantage
and limitation, which was — that it was
not destined to be realized.
The proverb that if a thing ts to be
32 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
done well, it must be done by the parties
most interested, had been recognised by
the Oxford authorities of those days as
the guiding principle of liberal educa-
tion. The undergraduates were there-
fore permitted to enjoy to the full the
advantages of this voluntary system,
undisturbed by any undue interference
from those who were nominally their
instructors, with the result that while
the majority sunk into a condition of
helpless sloth and sensuality — for which
they were of course themselves alone ta
blame, since no obstruction whatever
was put in the way of their self-educa-
tion — there were a few who made a
good use of the leisure thus obtained for
intellectual purposes.
It is recorded of Shelley that he often
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, 33
devoted sixteen hours out of the twenty-
four to reading; classics and modern
languages, poetry and prose, science
and metaphysics — ^nothing seemed to
come amiss. When "a little man,"
presumably one of the college tutors,
informed Shelley one morning that ** he
must read," the pupil was able to answer,
without any scruple or hesitation, that
" he had no objection." Day after day
Shelley, with one familiar friend, used
to read or discuss all sorts of subjects
connected or not connected with the
academic course of study, notable
among these, on account of their special
influence on his. mind, being the essays
of Locke and Hume. Moreover, he was
still greatly interested in the study of
chemistry ; and his rooms at Oxford, as
D
I
I
I
34 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
at Eton, were strewn with crucibles,
phials, galvanic batteries, air-pumps,
microscopes, and all the apparatus of
the chemist, which continued to excite
in him a wild and lawless delight. Re-
turning fresh from some dull and weari-
some lecture on mineralogy, where a
learned pedant had discoursed heavily
" about stones, about stones," the
youthful enthusiast would dilate to his
wondering friend on the " mysteries of
matter, '* and the glorious future in
store for the human race when the
dream of Bacon's **New Atlantis"
should be realized, and the powers of
nature should be organized and enlisted
in the service of man.
But the ** mysteries of mind '' now
began to claim a still larger share of his
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, ^i
attention, poetry and philosophy being
the two great objects to which the
thoughts of this strange, self-educated
youth were steadily and intuitively at-
tracted. At first it was philosophy to
which he felt the stronger inclination ;
and as if to verify the nomenclature
of his Etonian school-fellows, he had
already adopted the materialistic and
atheistic doctrines of the eighteenth
century writers, and hence regarded
religion "as hostile instead of friendly
to the cultivation of virtue."
The dolorous tone of regret often
employed by Shelley's apologists con-
cerning this early line of reading shows
an inability to grasp the full meaning of
his career. It is true that he was by
nature an idealist, and that the philo-
36 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
sophy of negation is not consonant with
the higher creed of idealism; yet, for
all that, this initial phase of keen and
trenchant scepticism was a valuable and
even indispensable preparation in the
case of one whose special mission was
to overthrow the tyranny of con-
ventional methods of thought. Had it
not been for this sharp brushing away
of intellectual cobwebs, Shelley's genius,
always dangerously prone to mysticism
and metaphysical subtleties, might have
lost itself, like that of Swedenborg or
Coleridge, in a labyrinth of dreams and
phantasies, and thus have wasted and
misdirected its store of moral enthu*
siasm.
It is important, too, to notice that the
materialism of which Shelley became an
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 37
adherent during his residence at Oxford
was not, in his case, the mere cold pro-
fession of intellectual scepticism, but
went hand in hand (fortunately, though
perhaps illogically) with a remarkable
ardour in the cause of gentleness and
humanity. Even as a boy, in Sussex,
he had been keenly aflfected by the sight
of want and suffering among the poor ;
and his reading of Godwin's works, by
which he was profoundly moved at some
early period of his life, had doubtless
already set him thinking, not only on
the contrast, but also on the connection
between poverty and wealth. His chi-
valrous knight-errantry on behalf of the
down-trodden and oppressed, whether
it were a starved child or an over-driven
beast, had more than once brought won-
38 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
der to the mind of the more phlegmatic
companion of his daily rambles round
Oxford and its neighbourhood.
This chosen companion was Thomas
Jefferson Hogg, the Boswell of
Shelleyan biography, destined to be
remembered by succeeding generations
of Shelley students with mingled feel-
ings of gratitude, amusement, and dis-
gust. By nature and disposition he
was a hard-headed, cynical man of the
world, regarding all sentiment and
enthusiasm with a kind of tolerant con-
tempt, and firmly convinced that the
great object of life is to be prosperous,
comfortable, and sarcastic. But at the
time when he first met Shelley, his
worldly propensities were not yet fully
developed, and his character was re-
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, 39
deemed by a touch of literary taste and
a love of intellectual liberty which were
the chief bonds of the friendship that
was soon established between the two
undergraduates, one of whom was now
preparing for the career of a philan-
thropist, the other for that of a lawyer.
The force of the strange influence
which the shy and gentle idealist ex-
ercised over the mind of the shrewd and
confident cynic may be measured by the
warmth of the praise bestowed by Hogg
on Shelley in the record of their life
at Oxford, which he published more
than twenty years later. It was the
first instance of the homage which was
so often paid to Shelley's elfish and
mysterious personality by such rough,
busy, matter-of-fact men as chanced to
i
I
I'
ii
\
if
J!
1
t
■A
I
I
40 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
be brought in contact with it ; it was,
as Carlyle has written of the devotion
of the true Boswell, " a genuine rever-
ence for excellence; a worship for
heroes, at a time when neither heroes
nor worship were surmised to exist.'*
But in Hogg's case the hero-worship
was further set off and enhanced by the
sense of amazement and pity aroused in
his breast at the sight of Shelley's un-
businesslike habits and quixotic tem-
peranaent. How would "his poor
friend" have fared — so Hogg often
thought — had not he been present to
advise and assist him with his keen,
practical sense and shrewd insight into
human character.
Those were pleasant days when the
two friends devoted the autumn after-
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 41
noons to long country rambles, in the
course of which Shelley would indulge
his liking for such pastimes as ducks-
and-drakes and pistol practice, and
when their after-supper conversations
were prolonged until the College clock
struck two.
But already, at the close of Shelley's
first term at Oxford, signs were not
wanting that this happiness would be
but short-lived. His father's suspicions
had been aroused on the subject of his
heterodox opinions, and the Christmas
vacation spent by Shelley at Field
Place was a time of mutual distrust
and recrimination. Now there are some
youthful aberrations which may be
overlooked or condoned in respectable
English households; there are others
42 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
which cannot be overlooked, and un-
fortunately Shelley's belonged to the
latter class. If it had been merely a
propensity to gambling, swearing,
drinking, or some of the youthful in-
discretions not uncommon among
Oxford students at that date, Mr.
Timothy Shelley would not have quite
despaired of his son, and perhaps Miss
Harriet Grrove would not have withheld
all hopes of forgiveness from her lover*
But when a young man, in all simplicity
and good faith, sets himself to test
and examine and inquire into the truth
of certain doctrines, which, according
to the established code of religion and
morality, he is bound to take for
granted, then it is clear that such an
offender must be denounced and dis-
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 43
owned until he sees the necessity of
repenting his errors. Unhappily this
was a necessity that Shelley, in spite
of his excellent education at Eton and
Oxford, could not be brought to under-
stand; and it must, I suppose, be at-
tributed to his elfish origin that instead
of recognising the force of Mr. Timothy
Shelley's lucid and cogent arguments,
he actually had the temerity to attempt
to " illuminate '* his father.
The result was as might have been
foreseen by a youth of more reasonable
disposition. At the end of the vacation
Shelley returned to Oxford in disfavour
with both his parents ; while his happi-
ness was completely shattered by the
breaking off of his engagement with his
cousin ; and he was thrown into a rest-
44 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
less and excited frame of mind. "I
will crush intolerance; I will at least
attempt it." Such was his spirit early
in 1811, and he already hoped "to
gratify some of this insatiable feeling
in poetry.*' No doubt the cynical Hogg
had smiled on receiving the letters from
his " poor friend," which conveyed the
news of this daring resolution, expressed
in the exaggerated language of youthful
emotion; yet the vow, like all those
made by Shelley, was faithfully kept,
and had serious consequences, not only
for Shelley himself, but also for his
friend Hogg, and possibly for a good
many other people besides.
In March, 1811, Shelley and Hogg,
still inseparable in their studies, and
eager in the pursuit of knowledge, had
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. 45
come to the conclusion that they must
henceforth devote a still larger portion
of their time to their joint reading;
both of them being quite unaware that
the attention of the College authorities,
which had for some time been attracted
by their singularity of dress and general
eccentricity of conduct, was now centred
on a small pamphlet, entitled, " The
Necessity of Atheism," which Shelley
had lately written and circulated, and
to which Hogg had contributed a pre-
face. With that childlike simplicity,
which could not, or would not, realize
that learned men are actuated by other
motives than a desire to investigate the
truth, the youthful disputant had for-
warded copies of his pamphlet to
various dignitaries of the University
46 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
and the Church, inviting free discus-
sion, criticism, and, if possible, refu-
tation of the principles enunciated.
The matter was brought under the
cognisance of the Master and Fellows
of University College, and after some
previous consideration they summoned
Shelley before them on March 25th, an
oflficial instinct perhaps suggesting to
them that Lady Day would be a fit
and proper date for the vacation of cer-
tain premises in their great quadrangle.
The aspect of the culprit who had thus
attempted to undermine the pillars of the
English Church was not such as would
have been expected from the desperate
nature of the deed. It is true that
the wildness of his long hair and the
lack of spruceness in his costume con-
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, 47
stituted a breach of etiquette on which
the authorities necessarily looked with
disfavour; yet there was something in
the vivid animation of his expressive
features, the mingled firmness and
gentleness of his manner and gestures,
and his tall, yet bent and fragile figure,
that would have been distinctly pre-
possessing and attractive, even to the
minds of college deans and proctors,
could it have been dissociated from
their abhorrence of his pernicious views.
As he would neither disown the author-
ship of the obnoxious publication, nor
answer any questions on the subject,
a sentence of expulsion was at once
pronounced ; and Hogg's generous in-
tervention only resulted in his sharing
the same fate.
48 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
The two friends left Oxford for Lon-
don on the next morning, and it has
been significantly recorded by one who
was present on the occasion that "no
one regretted their departure/' It was
a departure that has been regretted by
many persons in later years; but at
the time it must have seemed almost
unavoidable, and no blame can fairly
be cast on those by whom it was de-
creed. They merely registered in their
individual capacity one of those many
sentences of anathema, which established
and dominant Churchdom has so often
fulminated, and still continues to ful-
minate in one form or another, against
the great cr ime o f inquiry.
Thus terminated Shelley's experiences
of the education of a gentleman. Let
THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN, 49
US hope that, though he lost the crown-
ing advantages of that highly valued
process, he had gained some other in-
struction in the course of his boyhood
and youth, which exercised a beneficial
influence on his after career. But the
disappointment at the time was none
the less a bitter one, and the blow was
severely felt. " It would seem, indeed,''
wrote Hogg in his " Shelley at Oxford,"
" to one who rightly considered the final
cause of the institution of an University
that all the rewards, all the honours,
the most opulent foundation could ac-
cumulate would be inadequate to re-
munerate an individual whose thirst
for knowledge was so intense, and his
activity in the pursuit of it so wonder-
ful and so unwearied." Shelley cer-
E
so PERC Y B YSSHE SHELLE V.
tainly looked for no reward for what
was in him a natural instinct rather
than a deliberate effort ; but he equally
little anticipated that these very qual-
ities would bring about his expulsion.
CHAPTER IV.
MABBIAGE WITHOUT LOVE.
It was not until the middle of May,
1811, or nearly two months after the
expidsion from Oxford; that Shelley's
father, finding him deaf to threats and
expostulations, consented to receive him
at Field Place, and to make him an al-
lowance of £200 a year, with permission
to live where and how he liked. On
his reappearance at Field Place, Shelley
was doubtless regarded by his relatives
much in the light of a prodigal son,
though he himself was so far from ad-
51
52 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
mitting that he had sinned before
Heaven, that we find him on May 19th
successfully " illuminating *' his uncle
with the very pamphlet which had been
the cause of his present troubles.
Nevertheless, his position at this
time was especially lonely and dis-
heartening, and had not his nature^
though sensitive and impressionable in
the extreme, possessed also a singular
faculty of hopefulness and recovery, he
could hardly have persevered longer in
what must have seemed a vain and
useless struggle. He had long passed
that point which is often reached in
the early stage of independent thought,
where young gentlemen may yet dis-
cover that they have made an error
of judgment, and may make their way
MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 53
back to the fold of propriety and
affluence. He had completely lost the
affections of his cousin; he had for-
feited his bright prospect at the Uni-
versity, and . the goodwill of his
parents. What was he to do in life,
and what hope could he entertain of
carrying out any of the numerous
philanthropic schemes on which he had
set his heart ? He had thought at one
time of studying medicine, but that plan
did not commend itself to his advisers.
His father urged him to become a Whig
politician, but Whiggism was not exactly
congenial to Shelley's tastes.
In this restless and unsettled state
he found a temporary consolation in his
correspondence with his friend Hogg,
who was now studying for the legal
f
54 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
profession at York, and thither he ac-
cordingly despatched a series of letters,
written in alternate moods of gloomy
depression and nervous excitement.
Always quick to magnify and idealize
what interested and affected him, he
had now conceived an exalted notion of
Hogg's virtues and magnanimity, and
he devoted himself eagerly to the con-
sideration of a plan for the union of
that " noble being '' with his sister
Elizabeth.
Miss Hitchener, a Sussex schoolmis-
tress of advanced views, whose ac-
quaintance he had recently made, was
another correspondent to whom Shelley
freely unburdened his mind on contro-
versial subjects, and whom he regarded
at thifi^ time as the ideal of female
MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 55
excellence. Then, again, there were
letters to be exchanged, chiefly on re-
ligious questions, with Miss Harriet
Westbrook, a school-fellow of his sisters,
to whom he had been introduced during
his recent stay in London ; but his in-
terest in this correspondence did not
at all equal that which he felt in the
two former. Harriet Westbrook was a
charming and good-natured girl; but
Shelley* s mind was still too full of
another and yet more beautiful Harriet
for him to be in any danger of again
falling in love.
■
Yet this Westbrook family was fated
within a short time to have a most
powerful and malignant influence on
the course of Shelley*s life, or rather
on his chances of personal happiness.
56 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Eliza Westbrook, Harrietts elder sister,
a grown-up woman of unprepossessing
appearance and character that corre-
sponded to her features, was evidently
interested and attracted by the young
enthusiast who preached the regenera-
tion of society, and was heir to Field
Place. When she invited Shelley to
the house of her father, a wealthy
retired hotel-keeper, and talked to him
of love, and (to quote Shelley's own
words) was " too civil by half," was it
her sole object that Shelley and Harriet
should be brought together, or was she
herself in love with him, and using her
more youthful and engaging sister as
the readiest means of securing and
prolonging her opportunities of enjoy-
ing his society ? The exact truth about
MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 57
these matters will probably never be
published, even if any record survives ;
but those who read the various accounts
of Shelley's life can hardly doubt that
Eliza Westbrook was playing some deep
game at this time, and that Harriet
was a mere tool and instrument in her
hands.
How could it be otherwise ? Harriet
was a school-girl of only sixteen, pretty
and pleasing in appearance and manner,
but utterly destitute of any real
strength of character — the mere reflex
of the surroundings in which her lot
was cast; at first a methodist in re-
ligious creed, and looking forward to
some day marrying a clergyman, though
at the same time confessing in her own
mind that the military were the most
58 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
fascinating of men — afterwards an easy
convert to Shelley's revolutionary
arguments and social heresies. It is
true that she was far from being
actually illiterate; but her interest in
literature was a mere phantom and
simulacrum^ derived at second-hand
from the opinions which she chanced
to hear expressed around her. Neither
in religion nor in culture had she any
fixed principle or intellectual power
which might prove a support and
guidance. But though at this early
age she was bright, winning, and
compliant, there was a fibre of coarse-
ness and worldliness in her nature
which was destined to make itself felt
as the years went on. Philanthropic
schemes, simplicity of living, and
MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 59
theories of universal freedom might
charm her fancy for awhile, but she
was not one who would endure to make
sacrifices for notions which could only
affect her superficially, or dedicate a
lifetime to a work for which in her
heart she cared not at all.
This was the girl who was corre- .
spending with Shelley in the early
summer of 1811, until, in August of
the same year, under the stress of her
father's real or pretended tyranny, she
threw herself on Shelley's protection,
confessed her secret affection, and so
aroused the sympathy and pity of one
who, *' if he knew anything about love>
was not in love," that the affair ended
in their elopement and marriage.
"Foolish, but noble," seems to be
6o . PERC Y B YSSHE SHELLE K
the usual verdict of Shelley's critics
and biographers, regarding this mo-
mentous act, the unhappy consequences
of which were apparent to the last day
of his life. I think, however, it should
be recognised that the folly was greatly
in excess of the nobility. In sacrificing
the strong objections which he felt
to the ceremony of marriage out of
consideration for Harriet's personal
interests, Shelley undoubtedly acted
with his natural unselfishness ; but
otherwise we look in vain for that
clear-sighted and faithful adhesion to
rational principles which was conspicu-
ous in all the other great turning-
points of his life.
Had it not been for the restless,
excited condition of his mind at this
MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 6i
time, he would have seen, as he saw
afterwards, that it could be no duty
of his to devote himself to a girl whom
he did not love, and of whose fitness
to be his permanent companion he had
by no means satisfied himself. From
such a blunder there could only ensue
a painful crop of lifelong calamity,
which, though insufficient to warp the
main purpose of his strong and in-
domitable will, would yet have the
power to cause him and others much
acute sufl^ering and domestic misery.
Unfortunately, in the low state of his
spirits at that time, it seemed to Shelley
that "the only thing worth living for | /
was self-sacrifice," and this self-sacrifice
took the form of becoming the brother-
in-law of Eliza Westbrook.
62 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
It is odd that the hostile critics who
have been at pains to rake up every
fault and foible of Shelley's career
should, as a rule, have looked com-
placently on this one great error of
his lifetime ; but no doubt their leniency
is chiefly due to the tranquillizing effect
of the marriage ceremony performed
at Edinburgh on August 28th, 1811.
That Shelley himself was soon a wiser
and severer judge of his own conduct
is proved by the tone of his letters to
Miss Hitchener in October of the same
year. " In one short week," he writes,
referring to his marriage with Harriet,
** how changed were all my prospects I
How are we the slaves of circumstances!
How bitterly I curse their bondage!
Yet this was unavoidable." And again.
MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. 63
** Blame me if thou wilt, dearest friend,
for still thou art dearest to me; yet
pity even this error if thou blamest
me."
Soon after their arrival in Edinburgh,
Shelley and Harriet were joined by the
admirable Hogg, in whose company
they returned after a few weeks to
York. There the party was further
reinforced by the presence of Eliza
Westbrook, who was henceforth to be
a constant inmate of Shelley's house-
hold, and to exercise complete control
over Harriet in all domestic matters —
an infliction which Shelley, for pecuniary
reasons, was unable to resent as he
might otherwise have done. It was
under these auspices that Shelley,
whose age was then nineteen, com«
— —k
64 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
menced that crusade against tyranny
and intolerance which, in one form or
another, was always the main object of
his life.
It is no part of our purpose to follow
him step by step through all his early
wanderings during this most confused
and restless period, in which he served
a trying but perhaps useful apprentice-
ship before entering on a greater and
more serious warfare; it will be suffi-
cient to note the position in which he
found himself two years after his
marriage, and to view from his own
standpoint that retrospect of his past
life which must have forced itself on
his mind about that time.
CHAPTER V.
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE.
We do not read that there were any-
great or memorable rejoicings at Field
Place when Shelley came of age in
August, 1813. Mr. Timothy Shelley,
presumably, did not regard the event
as one that called for any festive
celebration; while the Sussex farmers
doubtless shook their heads porten-
tously over the doings of the young
heir, whose escapades were rumoured
to be so wild and incomprehensible.
The eccentricities of the younger
66 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
Bysshe certainly seemed likely, to
surpass those of the elder. On an
occasion when most young men of his
position and expectations would have
been receiving congratulatory addresses
from their fathers' tenants, and making
polite speeches in return, this mis-
guided youth was residing in a cottage
in a Berkshire village, with his wife and
an infant daughter, receiving nothing
in the way of congratulation, and
brooding over schemes in which polite
speeches had no part.
If he looked to the future, his pros-
pects were far from encouraging; if he
looked to the past, he could find little
comfort or reassurance in the retro-
spect of his two years of married life.
His campaign against social and re-
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 67
ligious intolerance had failed to produce
the slightest mitigation of the evils
which he sought to cure, its only-
apparent result being to embitter his
own relations with society, and thereby
to disturb his security and peace of
mind. His early ideals of personal
excellence had been in some cases
rudely shaken — in others entirely de-
stroyed. If there was one plan which,
above all others, had been often present
in his mind after the elopement with
Harriet, it was to choose some beautiful
yet unpretentious home, and there, in
the neighbourhood of friends and sym-
pathizers, to dwell '*for ever," and
devote his powers to the study of poetry
and philosophy. Yet, instead of se-
curing this blissful home of rest, he
68 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
had roamed for two years from place
to place, and led a life like that of the
wandering Jew, whose character he was
already fond of introducing in his
writings.
The sojourn at York, short as it was,
had been long enough to disillusion
Shelley's mind respecting the virtues
of his friend Hogg, whose conduct to
Harriet had necessitated a sudden
departure to Keswick; the "noble
being," whose lifelong companionship
Shelley had so ardently desired, being
now left behind to pursue his legal
duties in solitude and remorse, while
Shelley himself found material for
much sorrowful reflection in this un-
suspected baseness on the part of his
first and most trusted friend. At
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 69
Keswick, Shelley made the acquaintance
of Southey, for whose writings he had
long felt a strong admiration, and in
whom he now thought to find a kindred
spirit, inspired by the same passionate
enthusiasm for intellectual freedom ; he
found instead a kindly, middle-aged
gentleman, who could not always see
the point of a discussion, and whose
mainstay in argument was his "Ah,
when you are as old as I am ! "
Disappointed in these personal ex-
periences, Shelley had then begun to
turn his eyes towards the field of
politics, and his interest had been
naturally directed to Ireland as the
scene which illustrated most forcibly
and unmistakably the fatal effects of
a policy of tyranny and repression.
70 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Yet what benefit could he conceive to
have resulted from his two months'
visit to Dublin in the early part of
1812 ? He might indeed feel confident
in his own heart of the justice and
truth of the opinions set forth in his
" Address to the Irish People," but he
could not be unaware that the publi-
cation of the patnphlet had failed to
produce the immediate effect which he
anticipated for it, nor could he foresee,
by way of comfort for temporary
failure, that the history of the next
half-century would amply illustrate
the essential wisdom of his views.
At Dublin, too, as at Keswick, his
youth had been much against hiiri;
and, as if nineteen were not an early
enough age at which to begin the work
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 71
of reforming the world, his Irish
servant had given out that he was only
fifteen, thus throwing an increased
appearance of juvenility over an enter-
prise which had been undertaken in a
very serious spirit.
Moved by the remonstrances of the
veteran and cautious philosopher, God-
win, with whom he had commenced a
correspondence, he had presently with-
drawn from further interference in Irish
affairs, and wandered for a time through
the picturesque parts of Wales and the
coast of North Devon, amusing himself
meanwhile by sending forth copies of
his " Declaration of Rights," and other
revolutionary documents enclosed in
floating bottles, or attached to fire-
balloons, or engaged in the more serious
J
72 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
occupation of writing his ** Queen
Mab."
During these wanderings Shelley had
been reluctantly compelled to sacrifice
another of his youthful ideals of hunnan
excellence. As he had once mistaken
Hogg for the paragon of manly virtue,
so for a longer time did he idealize his
correspondent, Miss Hitchener, until
she became, to his imagination, " a
mighty intellect which may one day
enlighten thousands." The addition of
her presence to Shelley's household had
long been looked forward to as an event
of blissful augury ; but when it had be-
come a reality, a sad disappointment
had ensued, with the result that the
" Portia," whose genius Shelley had
invoked to stimulate his own, was dis-
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 73
covered to be "a woman of desperate
views and dreadful passions," and was
induced after a few months to return to
her Sussex home, to the unspeakable
relief of her former friend and fellow-
enthusiast.
As he looked back in 1813 over this \
restless period of desultory schemes and
broken ideals, Shelley's heart must i
sometimes have been filled with a feel- /
ing akin to despair. It was indeed a ;
strange and chequered experience that/
had been amassed by a youth of twenty-
one. Well might he point out in his
" Notes to Queen Mab " that time is
not to be measured only by its duration,
nor length of life merely by number of
years, and that " the life of a man of
virtue and talent, who should die in his
74 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
thirtieth year," may be, by comparisoD,
a long one.
It was, however, in his domestic affairs,
that about this time Shelley began to
find his chief cause for disquietude.
His money troubles, the result in part of
the small allowance made him by his
father, in part of his own lavish gene-
rosity and total inability to economize,
were now beginning to press heavily on
his mind. But this was not the worst
of his anxieties.
Hitherto his marriage with Harriet
had perhaps been a happier one than its
origin could have warranted him in ex-
pecting, a sincere affection having gradu-
ally grown up between them, owing in
great measure to Harriet's easy good
temper and ready compliance with her
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 75
husband's habits and opinions. But
the fatal seed of disunion was already
sown in the fact that those revolutionary
speculations, which were the life and
soul of Shelley's being, were to Harriet
nothing more than a matter of passing
interest and temporary excitement. As
she grew up to full womanhood, the
true bent of her character, latent hitherto
and merged in Shelley's stronger person-
ality, was slowly but surely developed
and manifested. In addition to the
disenchantment of his boyish ideals, arid
the failure of his philanthropic crusade,
it was becoming evident to Shelley that
he was soon likely to lose even the
consolation of home sympathies and
domestic tranquillity. There was a trait
of coldness and insensibility in Harriet's
76 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
nature which was in painful contrast
with the impassioned warmth and loving
earnestness of his own ; while the pre-
sence of Eliza Westbrook, at first
tolerated as a necessity, was every day
becoming a more insufferable burden
and annoyance.
Small wonder, then, that Shelley was
dejected and despondent during the
days which he spent in his cottage at
Bracknell, for he must have felt that a
sharp crisis was approaching in his fate.
He was destined yet to rise to nobler
efforts, and wiser methods of warfare;
but first there was a valley of deep
humiliation to be crossed, and a heavy
penalty to be paid for the error which
he had committed two years before.
Whatever some men of the world may
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE, 77
do, a champion of humanity and free- ^
dom cannot, with impunity, yoke him-
self to that most galling of social bon-
dages — marriage without love — which
has given the death-blow to many lofty -
aspirations. Shelley had already learnt
the force of this lesson, or was about to
learn it very shortly.
In the meantime the years had not
passed without their natural pleasures
and consolations. Through all the
vicissitudes of his wanderings, through
all the embarrassments of his pecuniary
anxieties, he had contrived to satisfy
that innate love of reading and craving
for self-instruction which were to him
a lifelong instinct and positive necessity
of his existence. What matter if he
had not " completed his education " ?
/
/
78 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
For what more could Oxford have
taught him than to read as he had
always read from the beginning ?
Scarcely less powerful, even at this
early age, was that other instinctive
desire which prompted him to give Ids
own thoughts and opinions to the world.
Even as a schoolboy, Shelley had found
his way to the publishers, and the
speedy publication of his writings was
naturally an aim and object of one
whose idealistic speculations went side
by side with a singularly practical dis-
position, and by whom theory was
regarded as almost identic al with per -
formance.
Among the various productions of
this youthful period, the majority of
which Shelley could jj^p.t but acknow-
■•'■••UMtoMIUBa
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE, 79
ledge to be failures, ** Queen Mab," at
any rate, must have given some satis-
faction to its author, who could not
have been left quite in ignorance that
a few sympathetic hearts had here and
there been thrilled by this eloquent
expression of the gospel of free thought
and humanity. Whatever else he had
done, or failed to do, this strange youth
of one-and-twenty had penned the most
notable and spirited protest of his
generation against that religious^^igotry ^
which stifles and stunts the fair growth
of the human intellect, and against that
moral d epravity which tramples out all
the gentler instincts of life. Never
before in English poetry had the
tyranny of the rich over the poor, of
the strong over the weak, been so in-
8o PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
dignantly, and, withal, so truthfully,
denounced. Never before had such
consistent and eloquent witness been
borne against the heedless cruelty of
man, who " slays the lamb that looks
him in the face," in order to satisfy a
gluttonous appetite at the cost of his
humble fellow-creatures.
The vigorous enthusiasm which had
inspired " Queen Mab " was a proof
that Shelley possessed that happy union
, of sensibility and , determination which ^
1 alone could enaole nim to go through •
the trials and troubles of life without
either abating the keenness of his
sympathies, or withdrawing in despair
from a crusade which might well have
seemed to be hopeless and quixotic. In
a word, his chief support in this darkest
A T WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 8i
period of his lifetime was to be found
in the inflexible tenacity with which he
still clung to his early boyish vow — to
be wise and just, and free and mild.
To the comforts thus derived from
a single-hearted integrity of purpose
were added those of friendship. Shelley
was soon reconciled to his old college
comrade; and though their intimacy
could never be restored on the former
confident footing, Hogg was a frequent
and welcome visitor both at Bracknell
and in London. In the novelist Pea-
cock SheUey had lately made another
friend, a man of more literary and
cultured tastes than Hogg, but fully
as sarcastic and cynical, and furnishing
an equally striking illustration of the
singular attraction which Shelley could
G
82 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
exercise on minds of a wholly alien cast
from his own. By this time, too, the
correspondence with William Godwin
had led to a personal acquaintance, and
Shelley frequently enjoyed the conversa-
tion of the philosopher whose moral and
political writings had influenced him so
profoundly.
But the friendship in which, above
all others, Shelley found a solace and
delight at this period of his life,
was that of the New tons and Boin-
villes, two families whose humane and
refined tastes were in close accordance
with his own, and who undoubtedly
stimulated him very strongly in the
direction of that simplicity of living
and vegetarian diet to which he had
long been inclined, and which he had
AT WAR WITH INTOLERANCE. 83
now actually adopted. To such con-
finned mockers and hon vivants as
Peacock and Hogg the principles of
the reformed diet were necessarily un-
intelligible ; and it must often have
been a relief to Shelley to turn from
their sarcasms and witticisms to the
congenial society where he met with a
more liberal and sympathetic intelli-
gence. Mrs. Boinville, the sister of
Mrs. Newton, had a house at Brack-
nell, and it was for this reason that
Shelley was staying in that neighbour-
hood in 1813.
Such was his position at the close of
his first campaign against intolerance.
CHAPTER VT.
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN.
Ox\ March 24th, 1814, Shelley and
Harriet were remarried in London, the
object of this second ceremony being
simply to establish beyond doubt the
legitimacy of their child, as the validity
of the Scotch marriage was considered
to be open to question.
Seldom, if ever, has a marriage been
celebrated under such gloomy and de-
pressing circumstances. In one of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's " Twice - told
Tales " there is a description of
the wedding of an aged couple, once
84
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN, 85
lovers, but now long separated by years
of misunderstanding, at which the usual
marriage rites were replaced by funereal
solemnities, typical of a lifetime lost in
emptiness and despair. "The train of
withered mourners, the hoary bride-
groom in his shroud, the pale features
of the aged bride, and the death-bell
tolling through the whole, till its deep
voice overpowered the marriage words,
all marked the funeral of earthly
hopes." Scarcely less portentous to
Shelley's imaginative mind must have
appeared the solemn mockery of this
second union with Harriet; it was
a veritable "wedding -knell," which
sounded the approaching extinction of
his early aspirations and youthful
dreams of happiness.
86 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Towards the end of the previous year
grave discussions had arisen between
Shelley and his wife ; and he was now
face to face with the alternative of
living on in a state of continual do-
mestic disagreement, or cutting the
knot of his own troubles, and not less,
as he might well believe, of Harriet's,
by a bold and decisive step. ** The
institutions and opinions of all ages
and countries have admitted in various
degrees the principle of divorce." So
wrote Shelley in his Chancery paper
three years later, and the desire to
obtain release from the matrimonial
bond, practically if not legally, must
certainly have existed in Shelley's mind
in the spring of 1814, although, for
his children's sake, he was even then
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN, 87
willing to be nominally bound. If so
many persons of ordinary temperament
have found it an almost intolerable bur-
den to be yoked throughout life to an
unsympathetic companion, we can judge
what a death-in-life such an existence
must have been to Shelley, whose quick
and emotional disposition the more
eagerly craved rest and sympathy at
home, in proportion to the strength of
bis declared hostility against the outer
world. " In looking back to this
marriage," says his cousin and bio-
grapher, Medwin, " it is surprising,
not that it should have ended in a
separation, but that for so long a
time he should have continued to
drag on a chain, every link of which
was a protraction of torture."
SS PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
It might have been foretold that a
girl who always looked " as if she had
just that moment stepped out of a
glass case'' could not be a fit com-
panion for one whose mind was set on
wholly other objects than personal
elegance; but though Shelley, as I
have said, must himself bear the blame
of having married one whom he did
not love, and whose character he had
not rightly fathomed, he might be par-
doned for not foreseeing that Harriet's
easy good temper would be replaced,
as the years went on, by hardness and
cold insensibility, which would not only
cause a division between husband and
wife, but would render vain all attempts
at reconciliation. For, through all the
conflicting and perplexing records of
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN. 89
this period of Shelley's life, one fact
is distinctly evident, that it was Har riet
and not Shelley who took up an atti-
tude of deliberate coldness and es-
trangement.
When we seek to go a step further,
and to inquire into the precise origin
of the discord, and the reason of
Harriet's inflexibility, we find that the
whole subject is shrouded in a mystery,
which none of Shelley's biographers
have been able, or willing, to dispel.
*' We who bear his name," wrote the
authoress of the " Shelley Memorials,"
in 1859, **we who bear his name, and
are of his family, have in our possession
papers written by his own hand, which
in after years may make the story of his
life complete, and which few now living,
90 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
except Shelley's own children, have
ever perused/' We look in vain for
these papers in the latest and most
authentic " Life of Shelley," which has
been generally understood to be the
full and final account of his career —
the only clue to the mystery which is
there indicated being the statement
that Shelley, rightly or wrongly, was
firmly convinced that Harriet had been
unfaithful to him at this time.
It so happens, however, that in his
poem of " Julian and Maddalo," Shelley
himself left a sketch of a character, —
that of a deserted and distracted lover,
— which was certainly meant to be an
idealized record of this passage of his
life, though the true import of the
poem has been generally overlooked.
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN. 91
The impression conveyed by the poe-
tical autobiography of "Julian and
Maddalo " is that the gradual aliena-
tion of Shelley's affections from his
wife was due— or at any rate was sup-
posed by the writer to be due— to some
coarse tendency, some nloral grossness,
in Harriet's character, which shocked
and outraged Shelley's finer suscepti-
bilities. If there be any truth in this
view of the case, we can well believe
that the influence of the ever-present
Eliza Westbrook was not exercised with
the object of allaying the dissensions
that had now sprung up between her
sister and her sister's husband.
This, then, was Shelley's position in
the early months of 1814. There was
a hopeless lack of sympathy between
92 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
himself and his wife, but the barrier
that separated them was not of his
making; for, however great the mea-
sure of his folly in originally allowing
himself to be entrapped into the
marriage, his conscience acquitted him
of any guilt in his after-conduct to-
wards Harriet, who had coldly rejected
his oflFers of renewed affection. What,
then, was it his duty to do ? Was he
to sacrifice happiness to respectability,
and drag on a weary existence until
death should relieve him or his wife
from their loveless and hypocritical
union ? In the opinion of the orthodox
worid he was bound to do this ; but in
his own opinion, as expressed in his
Notes to "Queen Mab," the opposite
course was far more in accordance with
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN, 93
true morality, " A husband and wife,"
he had written, "ought to continue so
long united as they love each other."
Conscientiously holding these views,
he looked upon his marriage with
Harriet as already at an end. To his
protection, support, and assistance she
had still, and would always have, a
right; but their closer union must
henceforth be as irrevocably dissolved
as if the divorce court had pronounced
a formal decree of judicial separation.
It was at this critical period of his
affairs that Shelley first became ac-
quainted with the noble woman whose
life and fortunes were soon to be in-
dissolubly blended with his own. We
have seen how he sought relief from
the dull monotony of his domestic
94 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
troubles in the pleasant conversation
and congenial society of his friends at
Bracknell and elsewhere — one of the
houses at which he was always sure of
a kindly welcome being that of William
Godwin, who was now carrying on the
trade of a bookseller in Skinner Street,
Godwin himself had long exercised a
moderating and, on the whole, beneficial
influence on the eager mind of his
youthful pupil and admirer, while on
his part Shelley was doing his best to
assist the veteran philosopher in the
vV^ pecuniary embarrassments ^hich were
' already embittering his declining years ;
they were thus drawn somewhat closely
together when Shelley was in London
in the early part of 1,814.
In this way an intimacy arose be*
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN. 95
tween Shelley and Mary Godwin, then
in her seventeenth year, the daughter
of the famous Mary WoUstonecraft,
Godwin's first wife ; and the friendship
thus formed soon ripened into love — a
love, be it remembered, which was
not the cause but the consequence of
Shelley's estrangement from Harriet.
Before passing judgment on Shelley
and Mary for their conduct in this
matter, it would be well if orthodox
moralists would bring themselves to
view what happened from the stand-
point of those whom they condemn,
and to remember that both Shelley and
Mary, and, indeed, Harriet also, be-
longed to that not inconsiderable class of
social heretics who see in the marriage-
bond nothing more than a conventional
96 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
institution, devoid alike of moral sanc-
tity and true utility. Shelley's union
with Harriet being practically, if not
legally, at an end, neither he nor Mary
could reasonably be blamed for not
conforming to a standard of morality
from which they conscientiously and
emphatically dissented. It was in no
reckless or immoral spirit, but with a
/ / deep and earnest conviction of the es-
j / sential innocence and rightness of their
act, that they plighted their love as they
stood by Mary WoUstonecraft's grave,
in the old St. Pancras' churchyard. As
the spot was full of sacred memories,
so the vow there made was full of
solemn and loyal intent.
On the 28th of July, some two or
three weeks after this event, Shelley
DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN, 97
and Mary left England for the Conti-
nent. About the middle of the pre-
ceding month Harriet had gone to live
with her father and sister at Bath ; and
before his departure from England,
Shelley, after a final interview, had
been careful to provide that she should
be in no want of money. If there was
one crime of which he was by his very
nature absolutely and specially incap-
able, it was that of a cruel and selfish
desertion ; and he therefore appears to
have had no sort of apprehension that
in thus gravely, deliberately, and deter-
minately separating himself from his
wife, he would incur the odious charge
of having wantonly deserted her. With
all his early experience of intolerance,
he had yet to realize that calumny is
' — H
98 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
the most effective weapon of religious
bigotry, and that the social Pharisaism
which can look complacently on mar-
riage without love can never forget or
forgive the far less reprehensible prac-
tice of love without marriage.
CHAPTER VII.
LOVE WITHOUT MABBIAOE.
It was a strange party that started
from Godwin's house in the early dawn
of that memorable summer morning-
Shelley, with his eager eyes and wild
elfish appearance; Mary, even at that
early age, calm and sedate in manner,
and noticeable for her fair hair and
high, tablet-like forehead; and Claire
Clair mont, Godwin's stepdaughter, a
lively, quick-eyed brunette, whose whim
it was to accompany them in their
adventures abroad,
99
loo PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
To baffle pursuit by driving in a fleet
post-chaise to Dover; to cross the
channel in an open boat, at the immi-
nent risk of their lives; to purchase
an ass at Paris, on which they might
ride in turn during the onward journey
to Switzerland; to despatch a letter
to Harriet, with a suggestion, made
in all sincerity and good faith, that
she too should join the party as
a friend and guest; to hire a
house for six months on the shore
of the lake of Lucerne, and then
to leave it after two days' sojourn; to
travel homewards in public boats and
fragile canoes down the Reuss and the
Rhine; and to reach England with
scarcely a crown in their purse after
a "six weeks' tour" — these were a
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE, loi
few of the incidents in what was per-
haps the strangest and most romantic
honeymoon ever vouchsafed by guar-
dian sprites to mortal lovers.
But the months that followed this
brief dream of happiness were, like
those that had preceded it, a time of
trouble and anxiety; and it may be
doubted if Shelley could ever have
fought his way through the dreary
close of this most trying year, had he
not now been cheered and supported
by the knowledge that he possessed the
love and sympathy of a gifted and
intellectual woman. It was this that
alone could compensate him for the
changed looks of shocked and alienated
friends; for the coldness of Godwin,
who bitterly resented the step his
I02 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
daughter had taken in connecting
herself with Shelley ; for the accumula-
tion of debts, and the persecution of
duns, which rendered life in London
almost unbearable towards the end of
the year; and, above all, for the pain
of the occasional interviews with
Harriet, whom he still continued to
visit and advise.
Yet, in spite of the many trials which
had to be undergone during this period
of probation, Shelley's alliance with
Mary Grodwin was nothing less to him
than the beginning of a new moral and
intellectual life. It was not merely
that through Mary's companionship
and inspiration, his mind, which was
always delicately balanced between
hopefulness and despondency, was now
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 103
again filled with reviving hope; but
henceforth, partly from the experience
gained in the past, and partly from the
more stimulating influence of his new
surroundings, he seemed to have en-
tered on a larger and fuller existence,
with wider views of man and nature,
and more wisdom in his manner of
promoting the doctrines which he still
had at heart.
Repeated failure and disappointment
had made him realize the folly of ex-
pecting that any immediate and tangible
success would crown his appeal from
Prejudice to Reason; yet his en-
thusiasm, so far from being dimmed
and lessened by this knowledge, was,
on the contrary, clarified and elevated.
Instead of trusting to the barren study
I04 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
of argumentation and dialectics, he now
made love and humanity the watch-
words of his faith ; and by a natural
connection it was about this period
that he finally abandoned the cold
tenets of the materialistic creed, and
adopted the ideal philosophy of Plato
and Berkeley. Very important, too,
in the strong impression left on
Shelley's mind, and powerfully affect-
ing his subsequent writings, was his
recent visit, in the six weeks' tour, to
the mighty mountains and rivers of
the Continent, the first sight of the
Alps and the Rhine being to him a
new revelation of the holiness and
majesty of Nature.
With the opening of the new year,
Shelley was relieved from the pressing.
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE, loj
pecuniary cares by which he had so
long been harassed. At the death of
his grandfather, old Sir Bysshe, on
January 6th, 1815, he became the
immediate heir to the estates, and
henceforth received an annual income
of £1000. He had, moreover, the
option of largely increasing the
property to which he would succeed
on his father's death, if he were now
willing to agree to a perpetual entail;
but he refused this, as he had refused
a similar offer three years previously,
on the ground that he could not fairly
and conscientiously entail so great a
'* command over labour " on those who
might use the power thus given for
purposes of injustice or oppression.
In the summer and autumn of 1815
io6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
we see him settled awhile at Bishops-
gate, on the border of Windsor Forest,
and within reach of the Thames,
where he enjoyed a period of greater
happiness and tranquillity than had
fallen to his lot for a long time past;
and accordingly he now began once
more to devote himself to literary
work. His poem "Alastor," written
under the oaks of Windsor Forest,
was the first proof that he undoubtedly
possessed the essential qualities of a
great poet; he was also busy about
this time with a series of prose writ-
ings, of which the "Essay on Christi-
anity" is the most important, as
showing the profound respect felt for
the teaching of Christ by one who
believed the spirit of established Chris-
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 107 ^y
tianity to be wholly at variance with
that of its founder. N
But it is noticeable that a tone of
pensive melancholy pervades most of
Shelley's writings of this date; his
sufferings, physical and mental, had
seriously undermined his health, and
in the eariy months of this year
the danger of consumption had com-
pelled him to look death closely in
the face. A sorrowful reminiscence,
a legacy of despondency left from
past calamities, was thus found to
give a slightly morbid tinge to work
which was in reality done under
circumstances of unusual restfulness
and prosperity; but this dejection
was soon to pass away, together
with the particular symptoms of ill-
io8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
health in which it originated. The
close of Shelley's and Mary's stay at
Bishopsgate was made memorable to
them by the birth of their son William,
the "delightful child" to whom some
of Shelley's most beautiful and pathetic
verses were afterwards dedicated.
At the approach of the next summer,
Shelley and Mary, again accompanied
by Claire Clairmont, started on a second
visit to Switzerland, and there spent
■*M>hree months in the neighbourhood of
Geneva. Here they became closely
associated with Byron, with whom
Claire, unknown to her friends, had
already formed an acquaintance in
London during the previous year; and
the two poets, unlike in all else, but
sworn allies in their revolt against the
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE, 109
formalities of society, spent many long
days together in the region which
Rousseau's genius had immortalized.
Water- excursions by day, in which
Shelley gratified to the full that
passion for boating which he had
already acquired on the Thames, and
the telling of ghost-stories by night,
from which Mary Shelley's novel,
" Frankenstein," originated, made the
^^^^— I"'— — ■ - "- — -. ->
months pass pleasantly enough until
their return to England in September.
Then again, as after their six weeks'
tour in 1814, there awaited them a
time of sorrow and calamity, two
heavy blows falling in rapid succession.
The first of these was the suicide of
Fanny Imlay (known as Fanny Godwin
in her step-father's household), the
no PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
daughter of Mary WoUstonecraft by
a previous marriage, and therefore the
half-sister of Mary Shelley. Her
gentle and unselfish disposition had
endeared her greatly to Shelley as well
as to Mary, and her death was long
a severe grief to him, not to be
obliterated by the still heavier shock
that was to follow. *'My airy elf,
how unlucky you are!" wrote Mary
to Shelley, during a brief absence in
December of the same year; but the
writer of these words little knew that
Fanny's suicide had already been
followed by that of Harriet Shelley.
At the very time when Shelley was
vainly searching for her in London,
Harriet had drowned herself in the
Serpentine, thus realizing in sad earnest
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. iii
a suicidal purpose of which she had
been iu the habit of speaking Hgbttj
in her youthful days.
It was a dark and terrible eodmg lo
that ill-omened marriage^ for th<6: eom^
mencement of which Shellej wa^g^ irj
part, though not wholly, to hlsaae ; bar.
unless we are prepared to hrAd that aa
acquiescence in one rash and foolhh
act involves a resportsibility fior trjuer
whole train of conseqFienc€:S that ne^ilt^
therefrom, we cannot fix any guilt on
Shelley's head for the eonelosion of the
tragedy. In the whole matter of the
separaDon from Harriet he had acted
oooseientiously, deliberately, and with
doe consideration for Harriet's interests
as wen as his own. He had sacrificed
his own wish to keep the two children.
112 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
out of deference to her earnest entreaty
that they should be left with her; he
had visited her from time to time, and
made her an ample pecuniary provision.
Cruelly, then, though he felt the shock
of this death, which, as Leigh Hunt has
recorded, ** tore his being to pieces," he
yet had the consolation of knowing that
his own conscience acquitted him of
any sense of guilt. " I am innocent,"
he solemnly declared in a letter written
four years later, " of ill either done or
intended; the consequences you allude
to flowed in no respect from me."
It is obvious that the maxim de
mortuis nil nisi bonum has been
stretched to the utmost in the case of
Harriet Shelley, and that there has been
too much disposition on the part of
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 113
Shelley's biographers to overlook the
truth, well stated by De Quincey, that
" on this principle, in cases innumerable,
tenderness to the dead would become
the ground of cruel injustice to the
living; nay, the maxim would con-
tinually counterwork itself, for too
inexorable a forbearance with regard
to one dead person would oftentimes
effectually close the door to the vindica-
tion of another."
Let Shelley take his just share of the
blame, whatever that may be; but let
us not be so hypocritical as to affect
to believe that the conduct of Harriet
after the separation has no bearing on
the vexed question as to her conduct
before it. Pity we must all feel for her
sad fate ; but it cannot be denied that
I
ti4 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
the adverse view of her character, which
is suggested by Shelley's veiled re-
ferences to the cause of the separation,
and by his conviction of her unfaithful-
ness, receives additional significance
from the ascertained fact that she sank
into a degraded and vicious way of
living at a time when she was quite^
secure from^^ecuniary want, when she
had her children with her, and could
count on the protection of both her
husband and her father.
It was owing to the remorse that
sprang from this self-inflicted degrada-
tion, and the knowledge that her
father's doors would henceforth be
closed against her, that, in a fit of
desperation, she put an end to her life.
So good an opportunity for blasting the
LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. 115
reputation of one who was in revolt
against society was not likely to be
lost. Malignant slanders were soon
afloat, and sedulously propagated by
respectable and venerable calumniators.
Hence arose the lying fiction, long pre-
valent and not yet wholly extinct, that
Shelley, by his cruel desertion and
shameless immorality, had caused the
death of an innocent and affectionate
wife.
CHAPTER VIII.
WORK AT MABLOW,
On the outskirts of the town of Great
Mario w there is a small, quaint-looking
house, with an inscription on the outer
wall which commemorates the fact that
Percy Bysshe Shelley there " lived and
wrote." It is further recorded that
Shelley was there visited by Lord
Byrou, and that the mural tablet was
erected " at the instance of Sir William
Robert Clayton, Bart. ; " but of these
two statements the former must be
regarded as inaccurate, and the latter
116
WORK AT MARLOW, 117
as superfluous. Here, however, during
tlie greater part of the year 1817, lived
Shelley and Mary, with their son
William, and here another child, a
daughter, was bom in September,
while Claire Clairmont, with her infant
daughter, AUegra, of whom Byron was
the father, was again an inmate of their
household.
Shelley and Mary had been married
at the close of the preceding year, and
though their own union of hearts had
long before been complete, yet the
ceremony, " so magical in its effects,"
as Shelley wrote of it, was fortunately
instrumental in bringing about a re-
conciliation with Godwin and other
alienated friends. Now at last Shelley
was able to settle down to something
ii8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
like an uninterrupted spell of thinking,
reading, and writing ; and the time
spent at Marlow is therefore found to
be one of the most interesting and im-
portant periods of his life, a year of
mingled happiness and sorrow, made
memorable by the acquisition of life-
long friendships and the creation of
great and characteristic works in poetry
and prose. The situation and nature of
his new home were altogether favour-
able to the peculiarities of his mind and
genius ; for living close to the best
scenery of the Thames, and yet within
easy reach of London, he had always
the choice of complete solitude or con-
genial conversation. At no other time
did he enjoy such free scope for carry-
ing into efEect his ideals of private life,
WORK AT MARLOW. 119
aud for giving expression to his
opinions on public policy. He was
never more active, more enthusiastic —
in a word, more thoroughly himself —
than during this final and crowning
year of his residence in England.
Early in March, 1817, the good people
of Marlow were somewhat scandalized by
the news that Albion House was now
tenanted by a strange family, the mem-
bers of which were rumoured to have
announced an impious determination
never to go to church or mix in the
ordinary local society. All sorts of un-
favourable reports were quickly current
respecting Mr. Shelley's antecedents,
and these were in great measure con-
firmed, shortly after his arrival, by the
statement that, at the instance of the
I20 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
relatives of his former wife, he had just
been deprived of the custody of her two
children, no less eminent a personage
than Lord Chancellor Bldon having
declared Mr. Shelley's conduct to have
been so "highly immoral" as to in-
capacitate him for the duty of taking
charge of his own offspring. Much
interest was accordingly excited in the
quiet little town by the advent of this
dangerous and unprincipled young man,
and some surprise was doubtless ex-
pressed that such-respectable inhabitants
as Mr. Peacock and Mr. Madocks should
tolerate the acquaintance of one who, as
it was sometimes darkly whispered, had
come to Marlow with the purpose of
keeping a seraglio.
The appearance, however, of the new-
WORK A T MARLO IV, 121
comer, odd though it was, did not con-
vey the impression of any extreme
wickedness or depravity to those who
marked him as he hurriedly returned,
bare-throated and sometimes bare-
headed, from his expeditions to wood
or river; indeed, there were some who
descried a singular and striking be-
nignity in his firm yet gentle bearing,
and eyes bright and wild as those of a
deer. The lady, too, by whom he was
often accompanied, seemed fair, and
innocent and young. Then again, his
extreme kindness to the distressed lace-
makers of Marlow and his instant
generosity to those who claimed his
help soon created a strong reaction in his
favour — at any rate, among the poorer
classes of the town. It was felt that a
122 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
gentleman who had been seen to come
home bare-footed, having given his
shoes to a poor woman whom he had
met limping along the stony road,
could not be altogether wicked, however
gravely the parson might shake his
head. " Every spot is sacred that he
visited," — so wrote an inhabitant of
Marlow forty years after Shelley's
sojourn there, and the words are a
worthy testimony to the utter unselfish-
ness of his disposition and the lasting
impression left by his frank and
gracious benevolence.
The decision of Lord Bldon in the
Chancery suit by which the Westbrooks
had succeeded in depriving Shelley of
the care of his daughter lanthe and
his son Charles, was, perhaps, the
WORK AT AfARLOW. 123
heaviest blow of all that Shelley had
to bear on account of his heretical
opinions. It was a subject on which he
could not easily trust himself to speak
even to his nearest and dearest friends.
But when the judgment of the court
had been delivered, and the wretched
suspense of the preceding weeks was at
an end, he sought and found the best
and surest consolation in those literary
labours to which he was ever eager to
devote himself, forgetting his private
sorrows in his anxiety for the welfare
of a cause. It was foreseen by Shelley,
with a sagacity of political instinct
which deserves to be clearly recognised
at the present day, that the two great
questions which must, above all others,
engage the earnest attention of all
124 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
lovers of liberty, were the improvement
of the condition of the working classes
and the social and intellectual emancipa-
tion of women.
The state of the English poor during
the early years of the nineteenth century,
and especially after the conclusion of
the war in 1815, was in many ways
pitiable, and Shelley, with his keen
sympathies, clear intellect, and strong
sense of justice, was the last man to
shut his eyes to the true causes of
social inequality and distress, as several
anecdotes recorded by Hogg and other
friends testify very distinctly. When
he adopted the socialistic doctrines of
Godwin's " Political Justice," and gave
new expi'ession to the same in his own
" Notes to Queen Mab," he did this in
WORK AT MARLOIV. 125
no spirit of mere boyish bravado, but
with a clear conviction from which
he never afterwards swerved, although
these heterodox views on the subject
of property obtained him more ill-will,
according to one of his biographers,
than any other of his heresies.
In the two political pamphlets which
he published during his residence at
Marlow he now reverted to these social
topics of which he had treated in
" Queen Mab,'* and though he had long
outgrown those errors of style from
which his youthful poem was not wholly
free, he could conscientiously assert that
his opinions had been strengthened
and confirmed by the experience that
the years had brought him. However
statesmen might temporize and learned
126 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
economists split straws in their par-
tiality for the established order of
society, one writer, at any rate, the
despised and calumniated " Hermit of
Marlow," would go to the root of the
matter in his plea for justice and free-
dom. " I put the thing," he wrote, " in
its simplest and most intelligible shape.
/ The labourer — he that tills the ground
i
and manufactures cloth — is the man who
has to provide, out of what he would
bring home to his wife and children,
for the luxuries and comforts of those
whose claims are represented by an
annuity of forty-four millions a year
levied upon the English nation."
This fact, according to the upshot of
Shelley's teaching, is the key to the
right understanding of the great social
WORK AT MARLOW. 127
problem, and until this fact is recognised
and clearly faced, no true solution will
be found. But, while thus insisting on
the supreme importance of the question
of property, Shelley was in other re-
spects an ardent upholder of the or-
dinary programme of political reform
then advocated by Leigh Hunt and the
Radical party of the day; though he
was strongly convinced of the necessity
of proceeding with caution, and asserted
in these same Marlow pamphlets that
the enfranchisement of the people and
the consequent abolition of aristocracy
must be carried out by a prudent and
gradual process of change.
It was in poetry, however, and not
in prose, that Shelley's chief work at
Marlow was effected. For now it was
128 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
that he wrote his " Laon and Cythna,"
that great epic of free thought and free
love, in which the revolutionary opinions
advanced in " Queen Mab '* were further
developed, and the doctrine of human
perfectibility, which Shelley had adopted
from Godwin, was set forth in narrative
and poetical form. In the character of
Cythna, the heroine of the story, we
have Shelley's ideal of woman as she
might be in the perfect state — the free,
equal, fearless companion of man, no
longer the slave of religious and con-
ventional superstitions, but saving and
cherishing all that is innocent and beau-
tiful in life by her gospel-message of
liberty and redeeming love.
It is no wonder that Shelley, with his
lofty conception of the purity of woman's
WORK AT MARLOW. 129
nature and the holiness of her mission,
should have been, by a sort of magnetic
attraction, an object of interest and
affection to all women with whom he
became acquainted. We are told by
Hogg, who, it may be surmised, was
the more impressed by the treatment
Shelley received, owing to the contrast
afforded by his own experiences, that,
fjpom the moment the poet entered a
house, he excited the liveliest and
warmest solicitude of all female in-
mates from the highest to the lowest,
and that he was " often called by names
of endearment as Ariel, Oberon, and
spoken of by the ladies of his acquaint-
ance as the Elfin King, the King of
Faery, and under other affectionate
titles."
K
I30 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
And it is certain that the elfish
traits in Shelley's youthful character
had not been obliterated by the maturer
qualities of philanthropist and poet;
the hermit of Marlow was still essen-
tially the same person as the elf-child
of Field Place. "He took strange
caprices," says the same friend and
biographer, " unfounded frights and
dislikes, vain apprehensions and panic
terrors, and therefore he absented him-
self from formal and sacred engage-
ments. He was unconscious and ob-
livious of times, places, persons, and
seasons; and falling into some poetic
vision, some day-dream, he quickly and
completely forgot all that he had re-
peatedly and solemnly promised ; or he
;ran away after some object of imaginary
WORK AT MARLOW. 131
urgency and importance, which suddenly
came into his head, setting ofE in vain
pursuit of it, he knew not whither."
At Marlow he would sometimes play-
fully account for these strange absences
and disappearances by saying that he
•
had been raising the devil in Bisham
woods; and the simple country folk
might be pardoned for believing that
there was something unearthly about
this solitary haunter of waters and
woodland places, when even his intimate
friends felt a strong suspicion that he
"came from the planet Mercury," or
some other mysterious quarter.
It was known, too, that to escape an
unwelcome visitor, or any of the weari-
some ordinances of what mortals call
"society," he did not hesitate to leap
132 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
through an open window, or to sit a
whole day with barricaded doors ; since,
as he himself expressed it, he was not
"wretch enough" to tolerate a mere
acquaintance. But there was some
society of which he never tired : that
of children, for instance, with whom he
was always and instantly in sympathy ;
and especially that of the few congenial
and intellectual friends who frequently
visited him. First and foremost among
these was the warm-hearted, noble-
minded Leigh Hunt, who was linked to
Shelley by a close bond of true and
lasting friendship ; Peacock, Hogg, and
Godwin were also visitors at Marlow;
while in Leigh Hunt's house at Hamp-
stead ^ Shelley became acquainted with
Hazlitt, Keats, and Horace Smith, for
WORK AT MARLOW. 133
the last-named of. wliom he conceived
a sincere aflFection.
Yet, dear as his friends were, there
were times when, like all other men of
great and original genius, Shelley felt
a sense of loneliness and despondency.
*' I know not," he wrote in his essay on
Love, " the internal constitution of other
men, I see that in some external attri-
butes they resemble me ; but when, mis-
led by that appearance, I have thought
to appeal to something in common, and
unburthen my inmost soul to them, I
have found my language misunderstood,
like one in a distant and savage land."
It had been the same at Eton, at Ox-
ford, and during the period of his first
marriage, and it was destined to be the
same to the end of his life. An Ariel
134 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
cannot readily be comprehended by or-
dinary mortals, even though he preach
the gospel of love, and live according
to its strictest precepts.
For it should be clearly noted, that
Shelley gave expression to his doctrines
in practice and not only in theory, being
strongly of opinion that individual self-
reform is no less necessary than the
abolition of legalized injustice. Sim-
plicity of living was an essential feature
of the creed which asserted that "all
men are called to participate in the
community of nature's gifts." To rise
early ; to spend the mornings in study,
and the evenings in social converse ; to
write his poem as he drifted in his boat,
or sat in some leafy haunt ; to walk now
and then in Peacock's company from
WORK AT MARLOIV. 135
Marlow to London, a distance of over
thirty miles; to live frugally and
healthily on a diet from which flesh
and wine were excluded — such was
Shelley's course of life during the year
he spent at Marlow, and it seems a
matter for regret that his stay there
could not have been further prolonged.
But towards the end of 1817 a variety
of reasons determined Shelley and Mary
to make another change of residence
early in the new year. The chief cause
of their desertion of a home which they
had once thought would be permanent,
was probably their fear that their chil-
dren, William and Clara, might be taken
from them by another high-handed act
of despotic bigotry ; for they had learnt
by bitter experience that " in this extra-
/
136 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
ordinary country/' as Leigh Hunt ex-
pressed it, " any man's children may be
taken from him to-morrow, who holds
a different opinion from the Lord
Chancellor in faith and morals." ' They
desired also to migrate to a warmer
climate for the sake of Shelley's health,
and by withdrawing for a time to a
more secluded region, to be able to
curtail their expenses, which had been
rendered heavy of late by the too
numerous loans to friends an d rela-
Jives ; while a further object was to aid
Claire Clairmont in taking her child
Allegra to Byron.
After much consideration, it was de-
cided that all these conditions would
be best fulfilled by their undertaking a
journey to Italy.
CHAPTER IX,
WANDERINGS IN ITALY,
At Venice, in the autumn of 1818, two
English poets, each of whom oflFered
very striking points of contrast to the
other in appearance, character, opinions,
and mode of life, were spending much
time together in daily conversations and
rides along the sandy flat of the Lido.
These poets were Byron and Shelley,
the former of whom was then living in
a palace on the Grand Canal, while the
latter was on a visit to Venice, having
preceded his wife in their wanderings
137
138 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
through Northern Italy. Both poets
were exiles from their native land on
account of their insults to the great
social fetich of Eespectability, but ex-
cept for this bond of union there was
little in common between them — the
one a professed cynic, a votary of pride,
scepticism, and libertinism; the other
an enthusiastic believer in the perfecti-
bility of man and the gospel of purity,
gentleness, and love.
" In the forehead and head of Byron,"
says the author of a description which
has been often and deservedly quoted,
" there was a more massive power and
breadth ; Shelley's had a smooth, arched,
spiritual expression ; wrinkles there
seemed none on his brow ; .it was as if
perpetual youth had there dropped its
WANDERINGS IN ITALY. 139
freshness. Byron's eye seemed the
focus of lust and pride; Shelley's
was mild, pensive, fixed on you, but
seeing through the mist of its own
idealism. Defiance curled Byron's nos-
tril, and sensuality steeped his full,
large lips; the lower portions of
Shelley's face were frail, feminine, and
flexible. Byron's head was turned up-
wards, as if, having proudly risen above
his contemporaries, he were daring to
claim kindred or to demand a contest
with a superior order of beings ; Shelley's
was half bent in reverence and humility
before some vast vision seen by his eye
alone. In the portrait of Byron, taken
at the age of nineteen, you see the un-
natural age of premature passion; his
hair is grey, his dress is youthful, but
140 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
his face is old. In Shelley you see the
eternal child, none the less because the
hair is grey, and that sorrow seems half
his immortality."
It might well have been thought that
Byron, the haughty misanthrope and
man of the world, would scorn the
gentle and disinterested idealist whose
creed must have seemed to him so
strange and unintelligible. But this
was not the case; for Byron had dis-
covered two years before in Switzerland
what he now again realized at Venice,
that there was a strength and sincerity
in Shelley's nature, — " genius joined to
simplicity " was his own expression, —
which was quite unlike anything he had
seen in other men, and against which
he felt neither inclination nor power to
WANDERINGS IN ITAL Y. 141
employ the shafts of ill-natured sarcasm
or invective. It was not Byron's habit
to be too sparing or scrupulous in his
remarks on friend or foe ; but it is said
that against Shelley he never uttered a
word of detractation ; while in their
personal intercourse he treated his
opinion with marked and unusual de-
ference. It was a notable tribute of
admiration and respect, paid almost
unconsciously by a proud and faulty
spirit to one whom he secretly and in-
stinctively felt to be his own superior,
whatever might be the verdict of con-
temporary opinion. " If people only
appreciated Shelley, where should /
be?" was Byron's remark; and the
words spoken playfully at the time of
utterance have much significance when
142 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
looked back to by later generations of
readers.
With the exception of this visit to
Byron, of which " Julian and Maddalo "
was the poetical record, Shelley's first
year in Italy was a time of comparative
loneliness and temporary cessation from
literary labour. Accompanied by Mary
and Claire, whose daughter Allegra was
transferred to Byron's charge soon after
their arrival in Italy, he visited Milan,
Leghorn, Lucca, Rome, Naples, and
other cities, but found no congenial
resting-place in which to make a home
such as that he had made at Marlow.
The winter, which was spent at Naples,
left Shelley in a state of unusual de-
jection and despondency. His daughter
Clara had died in the preceding autumn;
WANDERINGS IN ITALY, 143
and at Naples there died also, if report
be true, a certain mysterious and en-
amoured lady, who had made avowal
of her love for the author of "Queen
Mab '* on the eve of his departure for
Switzerland in 1816, and had since fol-
lowed him from place to place with
faithful but hopeless affection.
Such anecdotes as this, amounting to
quite a list of secret perils, attempted
assassinations, strange occurrences, and
supernatural portents, of which the
authenticity can neither be proved nor
disproved, must be classed among the
apocrypha rather than the history of
Shelley's life ; but they at least indicate
the sense of romance with which that
Ufe was surrounded, and the inclination
of Shelley's intimate friends to regard
144 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
him as an incomprehensible being,
scarcely subject to the usual laws of
space and time, of whom many things
might be credited which are held to be
incredible in the case of. ordinary men.
There was, unhappily, no doubt about
the reality of the blow which overtook
Shelley and Mary on their visit to Rome
in the following year; for in the early
summer their only remaining child,
William, died of a fever. This crown-
ing sorrow, coming at a time when
Shelley regarded himself, not without
reason, as " hunted by calamity," " an
exile and a Pariah," who could name^
at the most^five individuals to whom he
did not appear a prodigy of crime, might
well have been expected to put a final
close to all literary hopes and aspira-
WANDERINGS IN ITALY. 145
tions. But it was not so ; for the same
indomitable spirit which had carried him
through the chancery suit, by which he
had suffered an even heavier loss — the
loss inflicted by the tyranny of man
being more grievous than that dealt by
the mysterious providence of nature —
did not desert him now. The life in
Italy, lonely, unhappy, almost desultory
though it had hitherto been, was never-
theless acting like the summer warmth
to ripen and bring to maturity the
thoughts that were germinating in his
mind ; and the year 1819 accordingly
witnessed the creation of his most
characteristic and triumphant works.
It was not as an idle tourist that Shelley
had become familiar with the aspect of
Alps and Apennines, with the Italian
L
146 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
sky and the Italian waters, and with
the glories of such cities as Milan,
Venice, Naples, and Borne; the land
of ideal scenery could not fail to foster
and stimulate the most idealistic genius
with which poet was ever endowed.
Now were written the best and most
vivid of the letters from Italy, which,
for richness of colour, combined with
perfect grace and naturalness of ex-
pression, have never been surpassed by
those of any Englishman who has taken
up his pen in a foreign land to describe
what he saw and felt; now, too, was
written the great tragedy of " The
Oenci," pre-eminently the finest and
most remarkable of all modern English
dramas. But the chief production of
this period, and, indeed, of Shelley's
WANDERINGS IN ITALY, 147
manhood, was the lyrical drama entitled
"Prometheus Unbound/' that splendid
vision of the ultimate emancipation of
humanity from the oppression of cus-
tom ; the third and crowning part of
that glorious trinity of poems which
Shelley devoted to the purpose of
showing how the world may be re-
generated by the power of love. The
sonorous rhetoric of " Queen Mab," and
the polemic narrative of " Laon and
Oythna, " were now succeeded and
perfected by the solemn idealistic
harmonies of " Prometheus Unbound."
There is a legend told of one of
Shelley's ancestors, which may perhaps
be considered as allegorical and pre-
figurative of this great humanitarian
trilogy. " Sir Guyon de Shelley,"
148 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
says Hogg, "one of the most famous
of the Paladins, carried about with him
at all times three conchs, fastened to
the inside of his shield, tipt respectively
with brass, with silver, and with gold.
When he blew the first shell, all giants,
however huge, fled before him. When
he put the second to his lips, all
spells were broken, all enchantments
dissolved ; and when he made the third
conch, the golden one, vocal, the law of
God was immediately exalted, and the
law of the devil annulled and abrogated,
wherever the potent sound reached."
Was Shelley thinking of this golden
conch when he described, in his great
poem, that " mystic shell " from which
is sounded the trumpet-blast of uni-
versal freedom? For truly such a
WANDERINGS IN ITALY. 149
trampet-blast, to those who have ears
to hear and hearts to nnderstand it, may
be said to ring through every passage
of " Prometheus Unbound."
It was in the autumn of this same
year, after the completion of his great
work, that Shelley once more reverted
to those political subjects of which he
had treated in his Marlow pamphlets,
deserting, to quote his own words,
** the odorous gardens of literature, to
journey across the great sandy desert
of politics." The time was an anxious
and critical one, the bitter class-strife
under which England had long been
suffering having culminated on August
16th in the famous " Peterloo " mas-
sacre, when the soldiers fired on the
unarmed people at a reform meeting
ISO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
near Manohester — the darkest hoar,
perhaps, of all the dark and disgraceful
period of the Regency. Shelley, who, in
spite of his absence in Italy, continued
throughout to take a deep interest in
English politics, now conceived the
notion of writing a series of political
poems ; but though some of these were
written and even forwarded to Leigh
Hunt, they were not published till many
years afterwards; while his "Philoso-
phical View of Reform," a prose essay
written about the same time, is to this
day known only by excerpts and para-
phrases.
In all these writings Shelley never
fails to enforce what he regarded as
the central fact of the situation, that
it is social and not only political reform
IV4NI>EHINGS IN ITALY. 151
that is needed to avert a terrible revolu-
tion ; wealth on the one hand and want
on the other being the two fertile causes
of discord and misery. In the ** Masque
of Anarchy," that "flaming robe of
verse," as Leigh Hunt called it, he
distinctly asserted that real liberty
cannot exist in a country where there
is penury and starvation ; while in the
stirring lines, ^* To the Men of England,"
we find the true socialist doctrine thus
admirably and tersely expressed : —
/
" The seed ye sow another reaps ;
The wealth ye find another keeps ;
The robes ye weave another wears ;
The arms ye forge another bears.
\
L
Sow seed — but let no tyrant reap ;
Find wealth — let no impostor heap ;
Weave robes — let not the idle wear ; \
Forge arms — in your defence to bear." j
152 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
But this defence was to be, according
to Shelley's teaching, as far as possible
a passive and constitutional protest.
He had imbibed Godwin's strong ab-
horrence of any violent or revolutionary
outbreak, and believed that it would be
better and wiser to postpone even the
attainment of reforms which are other-
wise desirable, such as universal
suffrage and the abolition of aristocracy,
rather than to risk the stability of a
righteous cause by any immature at-
tempt at establishing a republic. It
was because he aimed at a complete but
bloodless revolution that he distrusted
and deprecated much of the teaching
of Cobbett and his followers, in whose
speeches he detected too many traces
of the spirit of revenge.
WANDERINGS IN ITALY, 153
On the other hand, he did not dis-
guise the fact that if the aristocracy
and plutocracy set themselves stub-
bornly and persistently against the gra-
dual introduction of reforms, a forcible
reformation would eventually become
both necessary and justifiable. "I
imagine," he says, " that before the
English nation shall arrive at that point
of moral and political degradation now
occupied by the Chinese, it will be
necessary to appeal to an exertion of
physical strength." The reforms to
which Shelley pointed as most essential
to further progress are the abolition of
the national debt, the disbanding of the
regular army, the institution of a sys-
tem of freejuatice instead of the present
legal anomalies, and the concession of
154 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
complete liberty of thought and lan-
guage.
During the latter half of 1819, the
year in which these various works were
produced, Shelley and Mary, having left
Rome after the death of their child, were
living at Leghorn and Florence, with
Claire Clairmont still in their company.
At Florence another son was born on
November 12th, and was named Percy
Florence. This event did much to raise
the drooping spirits of both parents;
and as it was felt that a more settled
mode of life was now desirable, both
for the infant's sake and for Shelley's
health, which was affected by severe
periodical attacks of spasms, the exact
cause of which was never satisfactorily
determined, they decided to take up
WANDERINGS IN ITALY. 155
their abode at Pisa, that place being
especially recommended on account of
the purity of the water. They accord-
ingly left Florence early in the new-
year, and journeyed by boat down the
river Arno to Pisa.
CHAPTER X.
LIFE AT PISA.
Pisa soon became to Shelley in Italy
what Marlow had been to him in Eng-
land. He came there out of health and
out of spirits, depressed by the apparent
failure of his literary hopes, and dis-
gusted by the coldness or insolence of
the Englishmen he met abroad. Hither-
to he and Mary had been leading a
solitary and cheerless life among people
with whom they were wholly out of
sympathy; being, in fact, as Shelley had
himself described it, "like a family of
15fi
LIFE AT PISA. 157
Wahabee Arabs, pitching their tent in
the midst of London "; but at Pisa they
found health and repose, and gradually
gathered around them quite a circle
of congenial and sympathetic friends.
They stayed there during the whole of
1820 and 1821, with the exception of
visits occasionally made to Leghorn, and
more frequently to the baths of San
Griuliano — a village distant about four
miles; so that there was truth in
Shelley's words when he wrote on a later
occasion to Mary, " Our roots never
struck so deeply as at Fisa, and the
transplanted tree flourishes not."
The manner of Shelley's life at Pisa
was much the same as at Marlow. He
was up early, and was busily engaged
in reading or writing till two o'clock,
158 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
with a hunch of dry bread beside him
for food, and water for drink. Among
his favourite books were Plato, the
Greek dramatists, the Bible, Dante,
Petrarch, Calderon, Goethe, Schiller,
Shakespeare, Lord Bacon, Spinoza,
and Milton. In the afternoon he would
sail in his skiff on the Arno, or go off*,
book in hand, to the solitary pine-
forests by the shore. In the evening
he would again read, or devote the time
to conversing with friends. Next to
his books and his boat, Shelley's chief
source of delight was, perhaps, in the
numerous plants which he and Mary
gathered round them in their Pisan
home, and which throve well in that
mild and equable climate; hence, per-
haps, originated the idea of " The Sen-
UFE AT PISA. 159
sitive Plant," which was written at this
date.
To society, in the conventional sense
of the word, he was still as averse as
ever, finding "saloons and compli-
ments " too great bores to be endur-
able, and having the same horror
as at Marlow of the wearisome and
oflBcious visits of "idle ladies and
gentlemen." " The few people we see,"
so he informed Medwin, " are those who
suit us — and, I believe, nobody but us/ '
He was also equally disinclined to dress
in the approved fashion of society, de-
claring a hat to be little better than " a
crown of thorns," and a stiff collar a
halter. " I bear what I can, and suffer
what I must," he groaned on one occa-
sion, when compliance was absolutely
i6o PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
demanded of hiin ; but the Ariel in his
nature could not often be induced thus
to shackle itself in the prison-house of
decorous costume.
At the beginning of their residence
at Pisa, the only families with which
the Shelleys were intimate were the
Gisbornes, who had a house at Leghorn,
and the Tighes, who lived at Pisa under
the assumed name of Mr. and Mrs.
Mason; in both of which households
Shelley found enlightened views and
opinions to a great extent in accord-
ance with his own. Maria Gisborne,
once the intimate friend of Godwin and
Mary WoUstonecraft, was a woman of
quick intelligence and keen sensibility,
in whose society and conversation
Shelley took much pleasure, and by
LIFE AT PISA. i6i
whom he was first introduced to the
study of the Spanish language, .and
especially the works of Calderon. Mrs.
Mason was a still more remarkable
character. As a girl she had been the
pupil of Mary WoUstonecraft, and had
then become the wife of Lord Mount-
cashell, from whom she was afterwards
separated ; she was famous also as
being an ardent democrat, although a
countess, and a thoroughly patriotic
Irishwoman, until all her hopes were
dashed by the disastrous Act of Union
in 1800. It is, no wonder that Shelley
and Mary spent much time at the
Masons' house at Fisa, and that they
valued the society of such friends
with whom they could freely exchange
opinionfi on social and political topics
M
i62 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
without being looked on with aversion
or mistrust. The correspondence with
the Gisbornes was also a pleasure to
Shelley, and he took great interest in
a scheme originated by Henry Reveley,
Mrs. Gisborne's son by a former mar-
riage, for starting a steamer to ply
between Leghorn and Marseilles.
In the autumn of 1820 Claire Clair -
mont ceased to be a regular inmate of
Shelley's family, her misunderstandings
with Mary rendering a change advisable.
Sisters by connection and not by birth,
and differing widely in character and
temperament, Mary and Claire were not
likely to be drawn so closely together
as to make it possible that they should
always share the same home. Claire was
excitable, quick-tempered, and prone to
LIFE AT PISA. 163
take offence on slight provocation; and
this accorded ill with Mary's calm,
sedate, and somewhat exacting habit of
mind. It was agreed, therefore, that
Claire should take the post of governess
in a family at Florence. Shelley, who
was better able than Mary to sympathize
with Claire, and who was full of pity for
her on account of the harsh treatment
she received from Byron, and the pro-
longed separation from her child AUegra,
did all he could to cheer and comfort
her in her new position. Friendly cor-
respondence was also maintained with
Mary, and it was not long before Claire
again visited the Shelleys at Pisa.
We have seen how, in the preceding
year, Shelley's interest had been specially
aroused by the social condition of the
1 64 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
English working classes ; it was now to
be arrested by the movements in favour
of national independence, by which the
South of Europe was agitated in 1820
and 1821. Spain was in arms against
the tyranny of Ferdinand VII.; there
was an insurrection at Naples against
the dynasty of the Bourbons; and
Greece was already on the point of
proclaiming its independence of Turkish
misrule. Shelley, the determined and
consistent enemy of oppression in all its
forms and phases, was, of course, deeply
interested in the cause of these rising
nationalities, and it was his good for-
tune at this time to number among his
friends some sincere and earnest-minded
patriots. Vacca, his medical adviser at
Pisa, was not only a skilful and eminent .
LIFE AT PISA, 165
physician, but an enthusiastic advocate
of Italian freedom, and his professional
visits to his friend and patient were the
more helpful and beneficial alike to body
and mind, since he wisely forbore to
afflict Shelley with drugs, but was
always ready to engage in a ^* profound
and atheistical " conversation. Still
more stimulating to Shelley's zeal was
his friendship with Mavrocordato, the
exiled Greek prince who afterwards
became a leader in the Greek revolution,
and who even now, under the inspira-
tion of Shelley's prophetic spirit, was
plotting revolt, and looking forward to
the emancipation of his fellow-country-
men.
It was at this time, and under these
circumstances, that Shelley wrote his
i66 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
splendid odes "To Liberty" and ''To
Naples," which were followed, in 1821,
by the still loftier and more ambitious
" Hellas," a poetic vision of the delivery
of Greece, which was to a great extent
realized by the result of the war of inde-
pendence.
It is here worthy of note that Shelley's
detestation of tyranny was not of that
partial and intermittent kind which has
sometimes been exhibited by certain
English politicians and poets, who have
sympathized warmly with the national
aspirations of foreign and remote coun-
tries, while they have been hostile or
indifferent to the progress of equally
important and equally justifiable move-
ments at home. " There is no such
thing as a rebellion in Ireland," he
LIFE AT PISA. 167
wrote, in 1821, "nor anything that
looks like it. The people are indeed
stung to madness by the oppression of
the Irish system, and there is no such
tiling as getting rents or taxes, even at
the point of the bayonet, throughout the
southern provinces. But there are no
regular bodies of men in opposition to
the Government, nor have the people
any leaders." If the Irish people had
then found leaders, as they have since
done, there can be little question where
Shelley's sympathies would have been.
'* Now has descended a serener hour,
And with inconstant fortune friends return."
So wrote Shelley of his Marlow home
in 1817, and the same was true to a
still greater degree of his residence at
i68 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Pisa. Immediately after Claire's de-
parture to Florence, who should arrive
at Pisa but Shelley's cousin and old
school acquaintance, Tom Medwin,
whom he had not seen for at least
seven years. Since that time Medwin
had become a captain in the cavalry,
and bad travelled in the East; but he
still retained his habit of dabbling in
poetry, and was soon as eager as ever
to resume his joint literary labours with
the fellow-poet who had assisted him,
nine years before, in such juvenile pro-
ductions as " The Wandering Jew."
After the first pleasure of the reunion
was over, Medwin's visit was found to
give more gratification to himself than
to his host; for, apart from the fact
that he fell sick and had to be nursed
UFE AT PISA, 169
through a severe illness, during which,
as he tells us, Shelley tended him like
a brother, his vanity and dilettanteism
made his prolonged society somewhat
of an infliction.
Yet, in spite of all his shortcomings,
and in spite of the literary sins of
carelessness and inaccuracy which he
committed at a later date as a bio-
grapher, Tom Medwin deserves to be
kindly thought of by all students of
Shelley's life. Vain and self-complacent
though he was, he was profoundly im-
pressed by the greatness of Shelley's
genius and the nobility of his character,
which in many ways he was better
qualified to understand than were Hogg
and Peacock, since he was at least free
from the coldness and cynicism which
I70 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
made them blind to much that far less
clever men could perceive and appre-
ciate.
Among other acquaintances who
occasionally figured in Shelley's literary
circle were Sgricci, the famous Italian
improvisatorey whose unpremeditated
utterances in the theatre at Pisa greatly
surprised and delighted Shelley; Count
Taaffe, an eccentric Irishman, whose
poetical pretensions caused much amuse-
ment to his audience; and Pacchiani,
a disreputable professor, who made
himself useful to the Shelleys by
introducing them to more worthy
friends, — above all, to Emilia Viviani,
a name for ever immortalized in English
literature by the rapturous verses of the
" Epipsychidion."
LIFE AT PISA. 171
That was a strange and memorable
meeting, in the Pisan convent of St.
Anne, between the beautiful and
passionate-souled Italian girl, whose
life was wasting away under the con-
straint of her enforced seclusion, and
the young English poet, himself not
unacquainted with tyranny and mis-
fortune, who had devoted his whole
being to the quest after that ideal
beauty, which, if it could be embodied
in any earthly shape, might most surely,
he thought, be found in the form of
womanly perfection. It seemed to
Shelley that in Emilia Viviani he had
at last discovered a visible image and
personification of that divine spirit of
love, that "dim object of his soul's
idolatry," which he had long wor-
172 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
shipped by intuition, and to which he
had always appealed as the one redeem-
ing power by which a sorrowful world
might be regenerated.
Nor was Emilia on her part less
affected by the apparition of so strange
a visitor on the gloomy threshold of her
prison-house. "Yesterday night,'* she
wrote to Mary, when the acquaintance
with her English friends had ripened
into intimacy, " Claire narrated to me
a part of his history. His many mis-
fortunes, - his unjust persecutions, and
his firm and innate virtue in the midst
of these terrible and unmerited sorrows,
filled my heart with admiration and
affection, and made me think, and
perhaps not untruly, that he is not a
human creature; he has only a human
UFE AT PISA. 173
exterior, but the interior is all divine.
The Being of all beings has doubt-
less sent him to earth to accredit
virtue, and to give an exact image of
Himself."
So thought Emilia of Shelley, and so
thought Shelley of Emilia, and from
this spiritualized union of hearts sprang
the rhapsody of the " Epipsychidion," a
poem ever sacred to the *^ esoteric few "
for whom it was written, while, as
Shelley remarked in his Preface, " to a
certain other class it must ever remain
incomprehensible . ' '
Years later, when Emilia had broken
the bonds of an unhappy marriage —
that still worse slavery for which she
had been compelled to exchange her con-
vent life — Med win saw her at Florence
174 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
shortly before her death. " I might fill
many a page," he says, "by speaking
of the tears she shed over the memory
of Shelley.''
CHAPTER XI.
LIFE AT PISA (continued).
In the autumn of 1821, after a pleasant
summer spent chiefly at the baths of
San Giuliano, where they had a boat on
the canal that united the streams of the
Amo and the Serchio, the Shelleys once
more found themselves settled at Pisa,
again surrounded by a considerable
circle of friends. , Claire, it is true, was
no longer of their party; and Prince
Mavrocordato had already sailed for
Greece, to take part in the war of
independence which was even now
176
176 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
commencing; while Emilia Viviani had
exchanged her Pisan conyent, or was
just about to exchange it, for a love-
less union with the husband whom her
father and step-mother had selected.
But the Masons were still living at Pisa,
and Medwin returned there towards
the close of the year ; more important
actors had also begun to appear on the
scene.
Byron, to whom Shelley had paid a
visit at Ravenna in August, had now
transferred his household to Pisa for
the winter months, and the friendly
intercourse between the two poets was
continued, until a coldness sprang up
between them owing to the indignation
felt by Shelley at Byron's conduct to
Claire, whose daughter Allegra had
LIFE AT PISA. 177
been left, against the mother's wishes,
in a convent near Ravenna* In the
meantime a scheme had been started
for the establishment of a new liberal
periodical, to which Byron, Shelley, and
Leigh Hunt should be the joint con-
tributors ; and in order to carry out this
idea, it was arranged that Leigh Hunt
should shortly set out with his family
and take up his abode at Pisa.
Vague hopes also floated through
Shelley's mind of forming a still larger
colony of select spirits in his Italian
home; he would be like Lucifer, and
"seduce a third part of the starry
flock." " I wish you, and Hogg, and
Hunt," — so he had written to Peacock in
the preceding year, — " and I know not
who besides, would come and spend some
N
178 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
months with me together in this won-
derful land." These wishes, however,
were not fated to be realized. Peacock,
who was now married, showed no
inclination to leave his native country ;
and though a visit from Hogg was
«
talked of, it was never carried out;
while Horace Smith, a true friend, for
whom Shelley always had a deep re-
gard, was compelled to give up his
intended journey on account of his
wife's health; and Keats, another old
acquaintance whom Shelley had earnestly
hoped to see at Pisa, had died at Rome
early in 1821, a loss commemorated by
Shelley in the splendid elegy of the
" Adonais."
But, as a set-off against these losses
and disappointments, Shelley and Mary
LIFE AT PISA. 179
had lately formed the closest and most
intimate friendship of their married life,
a friendship which was of special value
to Shelley as affording him the solace of
congenial companionship in his fits of
dejection, and stimulating that passion
for lyric composition to which his mind
was now chiefly directed. It was by
Medwin that the long-promised intro-
duction was given; but when Shelley,
writing in 1820, before Medwin's visit
to Pisa, had expressed the hope of
seeing "the lovely lady'* and her
husband on their arrival in Italy, and
the conviction that such society would
be of more benefit to his health than
any medical treatment, he little thought
how amply his words would be fulfilled.
Who could have anticipated that the
i8o PEkCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
outcast poet, in his distant place of
sojourn, would find a devoted friend
and admirer in a retired lieutenant of
the 8th Dragoons, who, sixteen years
before this time, had been his school-
fellow at Eton, and possibly a witness of
the " Shelley-baits " that were then in
vogue ; and, further, that the wife of
this friend would be discovered by
Shelley to be the " exact antitype " of
the guardian spirit of his own ** Sen-
sitive Plant " ;
" A lady, the wonder of her kind,
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind."
Yet so in reality it turned out; for
none of Shelley's friends — Leigh Hunt
perhaps alone excepted — proved to be
so true and sympathetic as Edward
LIFE AT PISA, iSi
Williams; while Jane, with her sweet
voice and gentle manner, soon became
to the Pisan company, and to Shelley in
particular, ** a sort of embodied peace
in the midst of their circle of tem-
pests." They had spent the summer
of 1821 in a village in the neighbour-
hood of San Giuliano, where Williams
and Shelley had been constantly to-
gether on the waters of the Serchio
Canal, and they were now living in the
same house with the Shelleys at Pisa,
opposite the mansion occupied by Byron
on the Lung'Amo.
Thither came also, before the winter
was far advanced, the latest, but not
least memorable, of Shelley's friends, a
man "of savage, but noble, nature" —
the tall, dark, handsome Trelawny,
1 82 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
whose contempt for orthodox opinions
and conventional habits, together with
the adventurous sea-faring experiences
of his early manhood, seemed to in-
dicate a mixture in his nature of pagan
and pirate. Like all who were brought
into close connection with Shelley, he
soon became conscious of the indefin-
able charm of the poet's character and
genius.
And, indeed, very impressive was the
figure of this young man of twenty-nine,
who was commonly regarded by those
who knew him only by hearsay as a
monster of wickedness, while those im-
mediately around him were convinced
that he was the gentlest and least selfish
of men. His bent and emaciated form,
his features, which betrayed signs of
LIFE AT PISA. 183
acute mental suffering, and his hair,
already interspersed with grey, gave
him at times the appearance of prema-
ture age; yet the spirit of triumphant
energy and indomitable youth which
had sustained him, and still sustained
him, through all his misfortunes, was
never wholly absent from his counte-
nance and demeanour. He was still
the unwearied student, the eager con-
troversialist, and 'the enthusiastic votary
of liberty of speech and action ; yet he
was subject now, perhaps, more than in
his earlier years, to moods of despon-
dency, which his friends regarded as
" a melancholy too sacred to notice."
Nor was it surprising that he was
thus affected ; for he had, indeed, " run
the gauntlet," to quote his own words.
1 84 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
" through a hellish society of men."
The religious, ethical, and political
speculations which he had advanced in
" Queen Mab," " Laon and Cythna,"
" Prometheus Unbound," and his other
writings, had brought down on him a
very storm of obloquy and misrepresen-
tation ; he who above all men was filled
with love, reverence, and natural piety
was branded as a desperate atheist and
wanton blasphemer; while the most
wild and ludicrous calumnies respecting
the conduct of his life were freely cir-
culated and credited.
In 1819 the Quarterly Review ^ in
those days the great organ of religious
intolerance and social respectability, had
published a criticism of " Laon and
Cythna," and the writer had not
LIFE AT PISA. 185
scrupled to lend himself to the basest
and most reckless insinuations on
Shelley's private character, assuming
the tone of one who was behind the
scenes on subjects of which it is now
evident that he was almost entirely
ignorant. " If we might withdraw the
veil of private life," so wrote this pious
and conscientious moralist, "and tell
what we now know about him, it would
be indeed a disgusting picture that we
should exhibit, but it would be an un-
answerable comment on our text ; it is
not easy for those who read only to
conceive how much low pride, how
much cold selfishness, how much un-
manly cruelty are consistent with the
laws of this universal and lawless love."
Ridiculous as such assertions as this
1 86 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
were seen to be when the true outlines
of Shelley's life were published, they
constituted at the time a very grave
annoyance and even danger, since they
were widely disseminated and almost
universally believed. It is said that
Shelley, during his residence in Eng-
land, contemplated the possibility of
being some day condemned to the
public pillory; and who can say that
in that age of tyrannical prosecutions
such a fear was altogether groundless ?
In Italy he more than once met with
rudeness, or even violent insult, at the
hands of his fellow-countrymen, whose
minds were vehemently prejudiced
against him by the reports published
in the press. " The calumnies, the
sources of which are probably deeper
LIFE AT PISA, 187
than we perceive, have ultimately for
object the depriving us of the means of
security and subsistence/' So Shelley
wrote to Mary from Kavenna in 1821,
with reference to a newly discovered
piece of slander, of which he and
Claire were the victims; and though
he doubtless deceived himself as to the
existence of any concerted and pre-
meditated attack of so serious a nature,
he had ample reason for looking with
some apprehension both on his present
position and his prospects in the
future.
But these anxieties, keenly as they
were sometimes felt, could not appre-
ciably diminish Shelley's intellectual
activity nor his delight in open-air
pursuits. After devoting a long morn-
i88 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
ing to that love of study which even
the least literary of his friends found
to be infectious in his company, he
would be off with Edward Williams to
breast the current of the Arno in his
light skiff, his passion for boating still
remaining as strong as ever; or he
would join Byron's party in riding or
pistol-practice, his skill in the latter
pastime giving proof that the imagin-
ative temperament of an idealist is not
incompatible with the possession of a
steady eye and hand ; or he would walk
abroad with Trelawny and other com-
panions, all of whom he could distance
by his long stride across broken ground.
But his favourite haunts were the soli-
tary sandy flats and the wild pine-
forests that bordered the coast near
LIFE AT PISA. 189
the estuary of the Arno, where, as in
the Bisham woods at Marlow, he could
sit and write in complete quietude and
seclusion, with no fear of human inter-
ruption to the visions that passed be-
fore him.
Here were written some of the most
beautiful poems in that well-known
series of lyrics addressed to Jane
Williams, which was the chief produc-
tion of Shelley's genius in the winter
of 1821-22. These lyrics, in the di-
rectness and simplicity of their style
and the predominance of the personal
element, reflect faithfully the feelings
and workings of the mind of the revo-
lutionary enthusiast, when, after giving
expression to the doctrines which he
believed to be of vital importance to
I90 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
the welfare of mankind, and reaping,
the consequent harvest of hatred and
misrepresentation, he paused awhile in
his " passion for reforming the world,"
and solaced himself in the sweet as-
surance of the sympathy and friendship
accorded him in all frankness and sin-
cerity by a gentle and tender-hearted
woman.
CHAPTER XII.
THE 8T0BM AT 8PEZZIA.
Before the commencemeiit of the hot
weather in 1822, Shelley and Mary had
moved their household from Pisa to the
neighbourhood of Lerici, a small town
on the Gulf of Spezzia, where they pur-
posed spending the summer months.
Edward and Jane Williams were again
of the party, and Claire Clairmont,
saddened now and subdued by the re-
cent death of her child Allegra, was a
visitor from time to time ; but Trelawny
still remained at Pisa in Byron's com-
191
192 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
pany, and with Byron Shelley henceforth
held but little communication, being
desirous to withdraw himself as much
as possible from a society in which he
had ceased to take pleasure.
The Casa Magni, the house occupied
by the Shelleys and Williamses, was a
solitary and desolate-looking building,
standing amid the wildest scenery of
the Gulf of Spezzia, with a precipitous
wooded slope behind it, and the sea in
front. So close was it to the shore
that the plash and moan of the waves
could be heard in all the rooms, so that
the inmates almost fancied themselves
to be on board a ship in mid - sea,
rather than housed in a durable dwell-
ing. At the very door of the house,
or even within the large unpaved en-
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA. 193
trance hall, was kept the light skiff,
made of canvas and reeds, in which
Shelley, fond as ever of the paper
boats of his boyhood, delighted to float
on the waters of the bay, to the no
slight apprehension of his friends and
neighbours. In addition to this fragile
toy-i)oat, he was now the possessor of
a small undecked yacht, the Ariel^
lately built for him at Genoa, in which
he and Edward Williams could sail to
Leghorn and other neighbouring ports,
and even meditated still longer voyages
along the Mediterranean coasts.
It was a pleasant change to Shelley
— this relapse into wild, unconventional
life, after the comparatively large de-
mands made on his time by his ac-
quaintances at Pisa; and he was never
o
194 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
happier than when sailing in his Ariel
under the blazing Italian sun, or listen-
ing to the music of Jane's guitar on
the terrace of the Casa Magni by moon-
light. He was in no mood at this
time for any great creative work, or
for any close co-operation in the joint
literary enterprise, for which Leigh
Hunt was already on his way to meet
Byron at Pisa. To Mary, who was in
weak health when they came to Lerici,
there was something ominous and dis-
quieting in the " unearthly beauty " of
the place, and the savage wildness of
its scenery; but Shelley only felt the
influence of these surroundings in a
sense of temporary suspension and
mental passiveness. " I stand, as it
were, upon a precipice," — so he wrote
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA. 195
in June, — " which I have ascended with
great, and cannot descend without
greater, peril ; and I am content if the
heaven above me is calm for the pass-
ing moment."
For the moment the heaven was calm,
but the calmness was of that kind which
too often precedes and prognosticates
the storm. The droughts of the early
summer were followed by a period of
fierce heat and sultry splendour; day
after day the sun blazed down with un-
abated fury on sea and land, while
prayers were offered up in churches
for the rain that was still withheld.
There was something expectant and
portentous in the season, and this,
perhaps, awoke a similar feeling in the
minds of the two families at the Casa
196 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Magni. Shelley himself, though he did
not share Mary's vague apprehensions
and distrust of Lerici and its wild
neighbourhood, was haunted by strange
visions, which surprised those to whom
he told them at the time, and were
afterwards recalled with increased in-
terest and attention. On one occasion
it was the face of his former child-
friend, AUegra, that looked forth and
smiled on him from the waves; on
another it was his own wraith that
met him, cloaked and hooded, on the
terrace of the Casa Magni; on a third
it was the figure of Edward Williams,
pale and dying, that appeared to him
in a dream, with the tidings that the
sea was even then flooding the house
in which they were sleeping. Nor was
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA, 197
it only the vivid imagination of the
poet that was thus disturbed, for Jane
Williams was also troubled with the
apparition of what she took to be
Shelley, at times when Shelley himself
was far absent and out of sight ; while,
in addition to these mysterious day-
dreams and midnight panics, there was
always present to the minds of Shelley's
friends the real fear that his life might
some day be the penalty paid for the
rashness with which he ventured on
the element which he loved so well,
but which had so often threatened to
engulf him.
But still the heaven remained calm,
and still Shelley was happy while he
basked in the full heat of the Italian
summer, writing his poem on "The
198 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Triumpli of Life " as he cruised in his
yacht along the picturesque windings ot
the coast, or drifted in the little skiff
across the land-locked waters of the
bay. In " The Triumph of Life," which
caught its tone and colour as much from
the scenery and season in which it was
written as from the transient mood of
its author, we have a mystical descrip-
tion of the pomp and pageantry of
that triumphal procession in which
the spirit of Man is dragged captive
behind the chariot of Life. It is no
recantation of idealism, — as some
readers, misled by the despondent spirit
of the poem, have been too quick to
assume, — ^but rather, like "Alastor," a
recognition of the price that even the
greatest idealists must pay to reality;
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA, 199
it is the cost, not the failure, of the
ideal philosophy that is here allegori-
cally represented; and it is probable
that if the poem, which was left a
fragment, had been completed by
Shelley, it would have dealt with the
saving influence and regenerating power
of love.
It is scarcely credible that Shelley
could have given up his ideal faith
without his friends noticing and record-
ing so momentous a change ; indeed, the
evidence of his biographers, so far as it
goes, points to exactly the opposite
conclusion. Speaking of his writings
of the previous autumn, Mary Shelley
afterwards recorded that his opinions
then remained unchanged. "By those
opinions," she said, " carried even to
200 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
their utmost extent, he wished to live
and die, as being in his conviction not
only true, but such as alone would
conduce to the moral improvement and
happiness of mankind." But though
Shelley's ideal faith in love and liberty
was still unshaken, he had learnt by
long and bitter experience that it can
only be upheld at the cost of much
personal error and painful collision with
the established system of society. Now,
as at previous periods of his life, the
ill-will and hostility of his calumniators
had wrought a temporary discourage-
ment — a disposition to look on the
darker rather than the brighter aspect
of his fortunes, to contemplate the loss
incurred rather than the success
achieved.
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA, 201
Can it be wondered that so sensi-
tive a nature as Shelley's should at
times have shrunk instinctively from
further contact with this world of men
by whom he seemed destined to be for
ever misunderstood, even as their
motives were to him unintelligible?
Some months before the time of which
I speak, his eager fancy had pictured
the relief of retiring with those he loved
to some solitary island, — a Greek island,
perhaps, and part of a free Hellas re-
deemed from the Turkish oppressor, —
and there dwelling in blissful seclusion,
far from the miserable jealousies and
contagion of the world. Then the
dream had taken the still stranger form
of a desire to obtain political employ-
ment at the court of some Indian
202 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
poteDtate, sucli as those of whom he
had heard Williams and Medwin dis-
course; he would be an Avatar, and
dispense his blessings in the far regions
of the East, instead of casting his
poems before the cold, ungrateful West,
as "jingliDg food for the hunger of
oblivion." And now, at Lerici, when
the balance of the season and of his
own destiny seemed to be hanging in
suspense, the thought even of suicide
was not wholly absent from his mind
as a dim possibility of the future; at
any rate, it comforted him to feel that
he might possess this " golden key to
the chamber of perpetual rest."
Yet it must not be supposed that
these despondent meditations had made
Shelley morbid in his habits or less
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA, 203
helpful and kindly to those around him ;
on the contrary, he impressed those who
saw him at this time with the belief that
he was now physically and intellectually
as strong and healthy as at any other
period of his life; and the visits and
assistance which he rendered to his
poverty-stricken neighbours in the
cottages near the Casa Magni were long
gratefully remembered. The gentleness
and benevolence of this supposed enemy
of mankind were still written very
legibly in his features. " If he is not
pure and good," said a lady who had
met Shelley at Pisa, " then there is no
truth and goodness in this world ; " and
even a hostile reviewer in a London
periodical was fain to admit that it was
** not in his outer semblance, but in his
204 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
inner man, that the explicit demon was
seen." To his intimate friends no
traces of this " explicit demon '* were
discoverable; but they did feel that
there was something in Shelley's nature
too subtle and spiritual to be gauged by
the ordinary estimate of humanity ; and
their feelings found expression in such
nicknames as "Ariel" and "The Snake,"
as he came and went like a spirit,
with glittering eyes and noiseless step,
an enigma and a mystery even to those
who were nearest and dearest to him.
In the meantime no calmness of sky
or sea could allay Mary Shelley's un-
accountable but persistent anxiety.
"During the whole of our stay at
Lerici," — so she afterwards wrote, — " an
intense presentiment of coming evil
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA, 205
brooded over my mind, and covered
this beautiful place and genial summer
with the shadow of coming misery.'*
Constitutionally prone to fits of despon-
dency and dejection, she had meditated
long before on the solemn and pathetic 1
subject of the flight of time, how swiftly /
the future becomes the present, and the/
present the past, and how in the last
moment of life all is found to be but a .
t
dream. Her life with Shelley had now
extended over almost eight years — years
full of strange vicissitudes and mingled
happiness and sorrow, but cheered .
throughout by the sense of the mutual I
love and respect that existed between ,
them . "^ '^'
For, in spite of the natural dis-
similarity in character between the
2o6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
most enthusiastic of idealists and one
who, in manner and sentiment, was,
above all things, the daughter of
William Godwin, that calmest and most
passionless of philosophers ; in spite of
Mary's occasional coldness of bearing,
and her greater regard for conven-
tionalities and the opinion of society —
" that mythical monster, Everybody,"
as Shelley called it; and, finally, in
spite of temporary misunderstandings
caused between them by the presence
in their household of Claire Clairmont,
a domestic firebrand idealized in
Shelley's " Epipsychidion " as a
" comet, beautiful but fierce," — the
union of Shelley and Mary had been
a true union of hearts. What if this
bond, that had survived the shock and
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA. 207
strain of so many troubles and
calamities, were now about to be
severed ?
Such was the dim, unformed thought
that darkened Mary's mind when, on
the 1st of July, Shelley left Lerici in
company with Edward Williams, and
sailed in the Ariel to Leghorn, in
order to greet Leigh Hunt, who had
now arrived in Italy.
Very cordial and affectionate was the
meeting between the two friends, who
had not seen each other for more than
four years, and had much to talk over
and communicate. The next few days
were spent by Shelley at Pisa, and were
devoted chiefly to arranging Leigh
Hunt's affairs and negotiating with
Byron on his friend's behalf respecting
2o8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
the forthcoming periodical. On the
following Sunday, these affairs being
settled, Shelley and Leigh Hunt visited
the chief buildings of Pisa, among them
the cathedral, where, as they listened
to the rolling tones of the organ, Shelley
warmly assented to Leigh Hunt's
remark that the world might yet see a
divine religion, of which the principle
would be sought, not in faith, but in
love. The same evening he bid fare-
well to the Hunts, Mrs. Mason, and
other friends in Pisa, and returned to
Leghorn, in order to sail homewards
with Edward Williams on the follow-
ing day.
It was the early afternoon of Mon-
day, the 8th of July, when the Ariel
sailed out of Leghorn harbour on its
THE STORM AT SPEZZIA. 209
computed journey of seven or eight
hours. On the same afternoon the long
tension of the oppressive summer
weather was relaxed; the sultry spell
was at last broken; and the dull,
ominous calm of the preceding weeks
found voice and spoke its secret in a
single burst of sudden and irresistible
storm. That night the thunder pealed
loudly along the Italian coast, and the
din of winds and waves and rain carried
doubt and terror to several anxious
English hearts. In the lonely house
by the Gulf of Spezzia the two wives
were eagerly expecting their husbands'
return; at Pisa, Mrs. Mason dreamed
that Shelley was dead, and awoke
weeping bitterly; while at Leghorn,
Trelawny was awaiting the dawn with
p
2IO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
grave anxiety, for the last that had been
seen of Shelley's boat was its entry into
the dense sea-fog that preceded the rush-
ing tempest.
" The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ;
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar."
So Shelley had written, as if by some
prophetic instinct, in the concluding
stanza of his "Adonais"; and who
shall say that so swift and mysterious
a death was not the fittest ending to a
life so full of wonder and mystery?
The elf-child's task on earth was now
accomplished ; his message of love was
now delivered; and the pure spirit,
purged of the last dross of mortality,
was now summoned " back to the burn-
ing fountain whence it came."
CHAPTER XIIL
((
COB GOBBIUMr
After ten days of cruel suspense, two
bodies were cast up by the sea on the
coast between Pisa and Spezzia, and
were identified as those of Shelley and
Williams. The Italian quarantine laws
for the prevention of plague being most
strictly enforced, the bodies were at
once buried in the sands, — ^in those very
sands over which Shelley had but lately
ridden in company with Byron and
other friends,— until arrangements had
been made with the authorities at
211
212 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Florence for their disinterment and
cremation. This ceremony took place
on the 15th and 16th of August, the
body of Williams being burned on the
former day, and that of Shelley on
the latter, in the presence of numerous
spectators, among whom were Byron,
Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny.
It was a scene that impressed itself
ineffaceably on the memory of those
who witnessed it — ^the vast expanse of
yellow sand, unbroken by sign of human
habitation ; the blue and cloudless sky ;
the sea calm and smiling; the distant
outline of marble-crested Apennines ;
and, in the centre of the group of by-
standers, the fierce flame that rose
from the funeral-pile, quivering with
extraordinary clearness from the frank-
''COR CORDIUMP 213
incense, oil^ and wine that were plen-
tifully poured over it, while close above,
in the tremulous and glassy atmosphere,
a solitary curlew wheeled and circled
with strange pertinacity. "One might
have expected," said Leigh Hunt, " a
sun-bright countenance to look out of
the flame, coming once more before it
departed, to thank the friends who had
done their duty." There was, indeed,
something in the nature of the wild
scene and the pagan ceremony that was
appropriate to the obsequies of one who
was himself a Greek in his instinctive
reverence for the elemental purity of
sea and fire.
It was Trelawny who had undertaken
and faithfully discharged the duty of
conducting the search for the bodies
214 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
of Shelley and Williams, and of carry-
ing the news to the two widows. It
was he, too, who, at the end of the cre-
mation, snatched Shelley's heart, which
remained unconsumed, from the flames,
and collected the ashes in a coffer, in
order that they might be buried at
Rome in the same Protestant burying-
place where Shelley's child, William,
had been laid — a spot which Shelley
had long before described as "the
most beautiful and solemn cemetery"
he ever beheld. To Leigh Hunt be-
longs the honour of having suggested
the inscription on the tombstone of the
words Gov Cordium — a perfect tribute of
reverence and affection to the memory
of that heart of hearts, whose over-
mastering passion, the source of all its
""COR cordium:* 215
strengtli and all its weakness, had been
the love of humankind.
Nor was it only Trelawny and Hunt
and Byron who thus gave proof of their
respect for the dead. A week after the
burning of the bodies, the lonely house
at Lerici, now unfurnished and deserted
by its former inhabitants, was visited
by a solitary traveller, who had turned
out of his course, as he journeyed from
Pisa to Genoa, to perform this last act
of melancholy pilgrimage. It was
" poor Tom Medwin," as Shelley had
called him, who, poetaster and dilettante
though he was, could yet feel keenly
the supreme sadness of gazing on those
empty and silent rooms that had so
lately been filled with the voices of life
and happiness, and of standing on the
2i6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
seaward-^cing terrace where Shelley
had 80 often listened witiii delight to
Jane Williams's simple melodies. As
he passed through the rude entrance-
hall on the groimd floor, Medwin no-
ticed oars and fi:^gments of spars lying
scattered in confusion, and among them
the broken frame of Shelley's favourite
skiff, destined never again to find so
venturesome a pilot.
And where, meantime, was the
Ariel herself? She was discovered
by some sailors, employed by Trelawny
for that purpose, sunk in ten or fifteen
fathoms of water, about two miles off
the coast, and being raised in the fol-
lowing September, was found to have
her gunwale stove in, as if she had been
run down by an Italian felucca during
''COR CORDIUM/* 217
the squall ; whence arose the suspicioD,
which has never been satisfactorily
proved or disproved, that there was an
intent to plunder the vessel of some
money which was known to be on
board. Having been repaired and
rigged afresh, the Ariel was again
sent to sea, but she proved unsea-
worthy, and a second time suffered
shipwreck. "Her shattered planks,"
wrote Mrs. Shelley in 1839, " now lie
rotting on the shore of one of the Ionian
islands on which she was wrecked."
Strange that the ArieVs existence should
have ended on one of those very Greek
islands to which Shelley's fancy had so
often been attracted as a possible home
and place of refuge from the calamities
that beset him I
2i8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
For a year after her husband's death,
Mary Shelley remained in Italy, unable
to tear herself away from the land of
their adoption, in spite of the many
painful memories it awakened. In all
the records of fact and fiction it would
be difficult to find anything more truly
pathetic and heart-rending than the
published extracts from the journal she
kept during those first dreary months
of bereavement and solitude. The
thought and image of Shelley were
ever present to her mind; now it was
the tone of Byron's voice that, by sheer
force of old association, would make
her listen for that other voice which,
when Byron spoke, had ever been wont
to ^reply; now, as she mused and read
in a fit of deep abstraction, it was
''COR cordium:' 219
Shelley himself who seemed to call
her, as a sudden voice cried " Mary ! '*
The sense of utter loneliness was only
relieved by the confident expectation
of hereafter rejoining, in another ex-
istence, that swift and gentle soul, who,
in this earthly prison-house, had been
like a caged spirit, " an elemental being,
enshrined in a frail image." But this
desire for death was not yet to be
gratified ; there was first a long course
of widowhood to be bravely encoun-
tered and lived through ; her aged
father to be cheered and tended; her
child to be educated ; and, most sacred
duty of all, her husband's writings to
be collected, edited, and given to the
world.
Meanwhile, in stolid contrast to these
220 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
shiftiDg scenes of life and deaths grief
and pleasure, rapturous aspiration and
heavy despondency, Sir Timothy Shelley,
now an old man of seventy years of age,
still lived on, as stem and unyielding
as ever. Eton, Oxford, London, Edin-
burgh, Ireland, Wales, Switzerland,
Marlow, Venice, Naples, Florence, Pisa,
Spezzia, and Rome — these were the
places at which were enacted the
strangest events of that strange drama
of a lifetime, that " miracle of thirty
years," of which the secret and motive
power were love; but Field Place still
remained as it had been when its doors
were first closed against the youthful
offender who, by his reprehensible thirst
for knowledge, had incurred the anger
of the learned men entrusted with his
''COR cordium:* 221
religious and intellectual education. V
Eleven years had now passed since Sir
Timothy, writing to the father of
Shelley's college friend and fellow
sufferer, had insisted on the necessity
of keeping ** my young man " and
" your young man " apart. And now
" my young man " had run a desperate
and erratic career, in which a few mis-
guided people affected to see a subject
for interest and approval, but which
had brought down on him the unsparing /
condemnation of the Lord Chancellor, j
the Quarterly Review^ and all that Eng-
land possessed of wealth, orthodoxy,
and respectability.
The dishonour to Field Place was
deep and indelible; there was one
thing, however, which was still within
222 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
Sir Timothy Shelley's power, as it was
clearly his duty, to do. He could take
advantage of his control of the purse
to forbid his son's widow writing a life
of the poet, and thus further disgracing
the Shelley family by the publication of
deeds which it was far wiser to consign
to a charitable f orgetfulness. Moreover,
that an innocent child might not suffer
for the offences of guilty parents. Sir
Timothy offered to imdertake the main-
tenance of his infant grandson, on con-
/ dition that he was wholly taken from
1 his mother's charge ; but this offer, it
is. needless to say, was refused by Mary
. Shelley. "Why, I live only to keep
/ him from their hands," was the entry
in her journal.
So Sir Timothy Shelley, by no means
''COR cordium:' 223
breathing reconciliation, lived on till he
had completed his ninetieth year, a life
three times the length of that of his
undutiful son ; and when he died, no
Got Cordium, but a flattering inscrip-
tion of the conventional kind was set
to blazen his virtues on the walls of
Horsham Church. It may be, however,
that those who thoughtfully ponder the
contrast between these two lives, and
the lessons conveyed by each, will see
in the contrast a striking instance of
the truth of an old poet's words : —
" Circles are praised, not that abound
In largeness, but the exactly round;
So life we praise that does excel
Not in much time, but living well."
CHAPTER XIV.
EPILOGUE.
It has been the main object of the fore-
going chapters to depict Shelley not,
according to the common notion, as
merely an impassioned singer and wild-
hearted visionary, full of noble though
misdirected enthusiasm, and giving
promise of better things if his brief
life had been prolonged; but rather as
one who was charged with a sacred
and indispensable mission, which was
seriously undertaken and faithfully ful-
filled. His life and writings were a
224
EPILOGUE. . 225
mirror held up to our present social
system from without; he came like a
messenger from another planet to de-
nounce and expose the anomalies that
exist on this terrestrial globe, to show
the glaring contrast between might and
right, law and justice, ephemeral cus-
tom and essential piety.
It was formerly the humour of im-
aginative moralists to illustrate this
contrast between the conventional and
the natural by the narration of a
supposed visit to some fabled " Utopia "
or " Oceana " or " New Atlantis '' ; but
in later times the process has been re-
versed, and the follies and frailties of
artificial society have been pointed out
through the medium of some " Chinese
Philosopher," or " New Adam and Eve,"
Q
226 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
or intelligent " traveller from New Zea-
land." But Shelley actually embodied
in his own person and feelings what
other writers have only fancifully sug-
gested, and the moral at which they
vaguely hinted was by him directly and
persistently enforced. He was himself
the visitor from another region, but the
Utopia from which he came was tem-
poral rather than geographical, being,
indeed, nothing else than a future
phase of our own civilized society.
He anticipates in his ethical teaching
the next period of social and moral
evolution ; his gospel of humanity is
the creed of the new era that slowly,
but surely, is dawning on mankind.
It is a mistake to suppose that
Shelley's moral and ethical opinions
EPILOGUE, 227
are incompatible with the scientific
theory of evolution; for though he
sometimes sings, as all poets have
sung, of a golden age in the past,
there is ample evidence in his writings
to show that he knew this to be merely
a poetical legend, and the exact contrary
of the truth. " Their doctrine," he
says (speaking of the poets who had
celebrated this Saturnian age), "was
philosophically false. Later and more
correct observations have instructed us
that uncivilized man is the most per-
nicious and miserable of beings. . . ,
Man was once a wild beast; he has
become a moralist, a metaphysician, a
poet, and an astronomer." In fact,
Shelley's doctrine of the perfectibility
of man, so far from being antagonistic
228 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
to evolution, is as fully in harmony with
it as any pre-Darwinian utterance could
be, being based on the intuitive belief
that man's progress in the future will
be not less amazing than his progress
in the past.
Shelley himself, as I have already
said, might almost be regarded as a
representative of the future and nobler
social state, a prophet and forerunner
of the higher intellectual development,
a soul sent on earth before its due
season by some strange freak of des-
tiny, or rather, let us say, by some
benignant disposition of^ Providence.
The religion which he preached, with
love for its faith, and natural piety
towards all living things for its com-
mandment, has this supreme advantage
EPILOGUE. 229
over the creed of the theologian — that
it can look with confidence, instead of
suspicion, on the advance of science,
and find a friend instead of an enemy
in time.
But this religion, being a religion of
the future, is for that very reason un-
intelligible and unacceptable to those
who, by sentiment or circumstances,
are upholders of the present order of
things — that is to say, the great bulk
of society. Many people are naturally
incapable of sympathizing with Shelley's
ideal philosophy and humanitarian en-
thusiasm, perceiving in it nothing but
a cold and brilliant display of intel-
lectual subtleties ; while others are
roused to positive hostility by their
dislike of his revolutionary opinions
250 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
and aggressive attitade. All this is
natural and inevitable; for it was not
to be expected tbat tbe full significance
of Shelley's career should be appreciated
by that very society whose displacement
he heralded, since the prophet is pro-
verbially without honour among the
mass of his own generation. Shelley's
good fame, both as regards the right-
ness of his personal conduct and the
soundness of his views, can afford to
wait till the new wave of social evolu-
tion has swept away the present barriers
of prejudice and intolerance.
In the meanwhile, he will not be un-
honoured of the discerning few, who,
reading the signs of the times, can
already perceive that the great social
and ethical questions, which are grad*
EPILOGUE, 231
ually being reoogaised as of primary
importance to the welfare of the com^
munity, are precisely those on which
Shelley instinctively fixed his attention.
It is for this reason, and not only be-
cause he is our greatest lyric poet,
that Shelley's life and doctrines are. de-
serving of more general study than is
at present accorded them; and those
who love and admire him are not likely
to be affected by the idle taunt, so often
levelled at them by their opponents
that they are attributing an absurd
infallibility to his opinions, and an
absurd perfection to his character.
Shelley, the votary of liberty and free-
thought, who, in spite of his wide
' reading, was so entirely devoid of the
academic spirit, was the last person in
232 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
the world who would have wished to
found a " school '' and be regarded as
a " master " ; and the respect that is
now felt for his writings is not based
on any superstitious or sentinoiental
reverence for the ipse dixit of the poet,
but simply on the belief that his
opinions are being more and more cor-
roborated by time and experience.
In the same way not even the most
uncompromising admirers of Shelley's
character and conduct need be sus-
pected of the intent to endow him with
an unnatural and impossible perfection,
merely because they decline to subscribe
to that modern fear of hero-worship,
which makes most of our critics, dis-
believing in the existence of any truly
heroic figure in this age of mediocrity,
EPILOGUE. 233
SO careful to mete out praise and blame
in nicely balanced portions, like a grocer
dealing out his wares in a succession of
sweets and acids. However justifiable
our dread of mere sentimental eulogy,
we may surely venture to speak gener-
ously and unreservedly in our praise of
a man whose great primary qualities of
unworldliness and sincerity drew un-
stinted tributes of admiration from those
who knew him personally, whether
they chanced to be cynical lawyers,
satirical novelists, ardent reformers,
misanthropic poets, dilettante dawdlers,
bluff sailors, or retired cavalry oflBcers.
Such homage paid to such a charac-
ter does not imply that we are blind to
the many foibles, eccentricities, and
minor blemishes by which even the
234 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
noblest nature may be crossed and
chequered, and from which Shelley was
certainly not exempt. We are well
aware that his life, except in its one
dominant feature, was a strange mix-
ture of contrary tendencies and varying
moods. He was hopeful and despon-
dent; strong and weak; graceful and
awkward; frugal and lavish; serious
and playful; wise and whimsical; for-
bearing and charitable to a singular
degree in his intercourse with friend or
foe, yet on rare occasions hasty and un-
just in his judgments ; by habit candid
and trustworthy, yet sometimes led on
by a predilection for mystery, and by an
extreme dislike of causing pain or disap-
pointment, to be evasive and circuitous
in his dealings. But while he was thus.
EPILOGUE, 235
to some extent, the creature of conflict-
ing moods and circumstances, " chased
by the spirit of his destiny," as he him-
self expressed ifc, " from purpose to
purpose, like clouds by the wind," it is
important to remember that these* con-
tradictions and weaknesses lay, so to
speak, on the surface of his nature, and
not at its core ; for his character, in all
vital and essential points, was strikingly
firm and consistent, his innate and solid
virtues standing him in good stead in
all the great and fateful crises of his
mature life.
Few lives have been subjected to
such a searching scrutiny as that which
Shelley's has undergone, and still fewer
have come forth from the ordeal so
nearly unscathed.
236 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
But, as I have insisted all along, he
must, in common honesty, be judged by
his own standard of morality, and not
by that which it was his special object
to discredit and overthrow. This is the
only key to a right understanding of
Shelley's career, and if this rational
principle be adopted, it will be found
to explain much that has hitherto
seemed unaccountable to many readers.
Difficulties there must always be in
estimating so subtle and complex a
character; but, whatever mystery may
still hang over certain isolated episodes
and scenes, the general effect and
leading purpose of Shelley's life will
be seen to be singularly harmonious and
clear.
APPENDIX.
SHELLEY'S EARLY YOW. »
" I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walked forth npon the glittering grass,
And wept I knew not why ; until there rose
From the near schoolroom voices that, alas !
Were but one echo from a world of woes —
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes."
Tuis incident of Shelley's moral and intellectual
awakening, recorded in the introductory stanzas of
"Laonand Cythna," is referred by Professor Dowden
and all recent authorities to the period of Shelley's
life at Sion House Academy , and not at Eton. I
venture, however, to think that Lady Shelley was
right, when, in the " Shelley Memorials," she indicated
Eton as the scene of Shelley's vow. It is in the
highest degree improbable that any boy, even such a
1 Cf. Chap. II., p. 23.
237
238 APPENDIX,
boj as Sbellej, would have experienced such emotions
before the age of twelve ; but this difficulty vanishes
if we suppose the vow to have been made at Eton,
where Shelley stayed till he was eighteen. It is
significant, too, that in his letter to Godwin, dated
Jan. 10, 1812, Shelley distinctly attributes the
awakening of his moral sense to his reading of
Godwin's "Political Justice; " and there is evidence
ill the same letter that he first read this book some-
where about the year 1809, It would seem pro-
bable therefore, that the vow was made at Eton, and
when Shelley was in his seventeenth or eighteenth
year.
The arguments on which the contrary view is based
do not seem to me to be of much weight. They are,
briefly, the authority of Medwin, who, in his " Shelley
Papers,'' refers to the incident as having happened at
Sion House, and secondly, the idea that the mention
of ** the near schoolroom " precludes the possibility
of Eton being the locality indicated, as the Eton
schoolrooms do not immediately adjoin the Playing
Fields. But it should be remembered that Medwin,
never a very reliable biographer, was especially in-
clined to assign undue importance to those parts of
Shelley's career which had come under his own cog-
nizance, and therefore, having been Shelley's school-
fellow at Sion House, but not at Eton, he was likely
enough to exalt the former period at the expense of
APPENDIX, 239
the latter bj representing it as the scene of Shelley's
early awakening. As to the second argument— the
distance of the Eton Playing Fields from the school
buildings — it is snrely rather dangerous to take the
words of so imaginative a poet as Shelley in such a
literal sense, and to reject the most natural inter-
pretation of a lyrical passage, which was written, be
it noted, at least eight years later than the incident
recorded, because it does not precisely tally with the
acoustics and measuring-rod of the critic. Shelley,
coming straight from the strife of the schoolroom to
the ** glittering grass" of the play-ground, still heard,
or seemed to hear, the sounds he had such good
cause to remember ; nor, as a matter of fact, is there
really any reason why he should not actually have
heard them, for the distance is not so great that the
shouts of an unruly class of boys would not be easily
audible. If the critics will go into every detail, let
them also consider the laxity of discipline which then
obtained in public schools, and is even now not alto-
gether unknown. I can testify, from personal know-
ledge of Eton, that the " harsh and grating strife of
tyrants and of foes," may often be heard at a con-
siderable distance, especially when it is the boys who
are the tyrants, and not the masters.
In the " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,'* there is
another reference to this early vow. Professor
Dowden, however, is inclined to regard the incident
240 APPENDIX.
there mentioned as a second and intellechial awaken-
ing, not to be identified with the moral awakening
described in *' Laon and Cjthna." This seems to me
to be jui entirely arbitrary and unproved distinction;
indeed, the internal evidence goes directly to disprove
Professor Dowden's supposition, since in both
passages the vow is said to have been made in
the season of spring. It is worth noting that in
" Julian and ^laddalo," there is a third reference to
the same event; but this has generally been over-
lookeil, on account of the passage in which it occnrs
(the soliloquy of the ** Maniac*') not being recognised
as autobiographical.
I think that the three passages above mentioned,
and possibly also the letter to Godwin, the more care-
fully they are examined, will be found to refer to one
and the same event, and that the balance of proba-
bality will incline us to regard that event as having
taken place at Eton, rather than at Sion House.
SHELLEY'S YEGETARL^NISM.^
TuE importance of a man's dietetic tastes and habits
in their bearing on his intellectual development and
moral character is too often overlooked or under-
estimated by critics and biographers. We hear much
1 Cf. Chap, v., pp. 82, 83.
APPENDIX. 241
interesting speoalation on the hereditary characteris-
tics of men of genius, and on the inflaenoe of events
contemporary with their birth and education; as,
for instance, that Shelley's ancestors were ''con-
spicuous by their devotion to falling or desperate
causes/' or that on the day of his birth the French
National Assembly decreed " that all religions houses
should be sold for the benefit of the nation." But
the significance of the fact that the most ethereal of
English lyrists and one of the most unselfish of
English reformers was a bread-eater and a water-
drinker is allowed to pass unnoticed, or, at any rate,
nnemphasized ; Shelley's humanitarian instincts and
consequent inclination to extreme simplicity of diet
being regarded as a mere crotchet and harmless
eccentricity — and this, too, by those very writers who
praise his gospel of gentleness and universal love !
I think that on this point some of Shelley's detrac-
tors have done him more justice than some of his
admirers; for the former have at least been con-
sistent and logical in arguing that his vegetarian
proclivities were all of a piece with his " pernicious "
views on social and religious subjects, and with his
" Utopian " belief in the ultimate perfectibility of
man. This is not the place to discuss the rights or
wrongs of vegetarianism ; but we may at least assert
that Shelley's dietetic tastes must have had some
influence both on the doctrines advanced in his
B
242 APPENDIX.
longer poems and on that spiritaalifcy of lyrical tone
which makes him unique among singers. " What
one eats, that one t^/' says a German writer, and it
cannot be without interest, and even importance, to
those who would read Shelley's character aright, to
note to what extent he adopted and advocated a
vegetarian diet.
We find that Shelley first adopted vegetarianism
in 1812, when in his twentieth year, though even
at Oxford, in 1810, his food, according to the testi-
mony of his biographer Hogg, was "plain and
Kimplo as that of a hermit, with a certain anticipa-
tion, even at this time, of a vegetable diet," In 1813,
when he spent the spring in London, and the
summer at Bracknell, Berks, he saw much of the
Newton family, who were strict vegetarians, and was
strongly influenced by their views and example. On
the other hand, his friends Hogg and Peacock,
especially the latter, who looked upon the Newtons
as foolish crotchet-mongers, did their best to laugh
him out of his new system of diet, though Hogg
was on friendly terms with the Newton circle, and
speaks ap{)rovingly, in his " Life of Shelley," of their
vegetarian repasts. At this time, as always, bread
was his favourite food, and Hogg tells us how he
would buy a loaf at a bakcr*s shop, and eat it as he
dodged the foot-passengers on aXondou pavement.'
During his residence at Bishopsgate in 1815, and at
APPENDIX. 243
Marlow in 1817, we find Shelley still persevering in
the reformed diet, though not withont occasional
lapses, if we are to believe his biographers Hogg
and Peacock. The former gives a humorous account
of an occasion when, in the dearth of other food,
Shelley was induced to try fried bacon, and found it
very good ; and Peacock asserts that during a boat-
ing excursion, in 1815, his prescription of ** three
mutton chops, well peppered," was of great service
to Shelley's health. Nevertheless, Leigh Hunt re-
ports him in 1817, when living at Marlow, as
"coming home to a dinner of vegetables, for he took
neither meat nor wine." In 1818 he left England,
and spent the short remainder of his life in Italy.
During this time he seems to have given up his
vegetarianism to some slight extent, not from any
want of faith in its principles, but simply from the
inconvenience caused to his non-vegetarian house-
hold. (Cy. the poetic " Letter to Maria Gisborne,"
written in 1820— "Though we eat little flesh, and
drink no wine.") His forgetfulness and indiflerence
about his food became still more marked during his
later years, and Trelawny relates how his dinner
would often stand unnoticed and neglected while he
was engaged in writing. But now, as before, bread
remained literally his " staff of life," and he always
preferred simple food to costly.
The state of Shelley's health has given rise to
244 APPENDIX,
mnch discussion among his biographers; bat, in spite
of some assertions to the contrary, it seems toler-
ably established that he had an early tendency
towards consumption, and suffered latterly from
spasms and some nervous affliction, of which the
precise nature is unknown. How far his health was
affected by his diet is an interesting point which it
is easier to raise than to decide. Hogg and Peacock,
of course, lay his maladies to the charge of vege-
tarianism. "When he was fixed in a place," says
Peacock, " he adhered to this diet consistently and
conscientiously, but it certainly did not agree with
him;" and he adds that when he travelled, and was
obliged to transgress, he got well. It seems more
possible that, as Trelawny hints, the irregularity of
Shelley's diet had a bad effect on his health ; but
Leigh Hunt's testimony on this subject is valuable
and explicit. "His constitution, though naturally
consumptive, had attained, by temperance and exer-
cise, to a surprising flower of resisting fatigue."
The passages in which Shelley advances vege-
tarian doctrines are briefly these: (1) The well-
known lines in " Queen Mab," commencing " No
longer now, he slays the lamb that looks him in the
face." (2) The still more remarkable note to "Queen
Mab," afterwards issued as a separate pamphlet
under the title of " A Vindication of Natural Diet."
(3) A passage in " A Eefutation of Deism," a prose
APPENDIX, 245
work published in 1814. (4) The lyric poem in-
serted between stanzas 51 and 52 of the 5th canto
of '* Laon and Gjthna," which has been called " The
Lyric of Vegetarianism." There is also a reference
to Shelley's humanitarian creed in the opening lines
of "Alastor," where, in his invocation of earth,
ocean, air, the beloved " brotherhood " of nature, the
poet bases his appeal to their favour on the ground
of his own habit of gentleness and humanity.
It appears, therefore, that Shelley was a vegetarian
at heart and by conviction, and, in the main, in
practice also, though, for the reasons I have men-
tioned, he was not invariably consistent in his
practice. There are many signs that his simple diet
was in keeping with his whole character, and
essential to his imaginative style of thought and
writing.— T^ Vegetarian Annual, 1887.
"JULIAN AND MADDALO."^
It is to be regretted that Professor Dowden's ** Life
of Shelley," excellent and copious work that it is, has
not thrown a fuller light on some of those mysterious
passages in the poet's life and writings which have
» Cf. Chap. VI., pp. 90, 91.
246 APPENDIX,
long been a pazzle to Shelley students. Among
these must be included that portion of " Julian and
Maddalo " which deals with the story of the maniac
or deserted lover.
The poem of " Julian and Maddalo/' as all readers
of Shelley are aware, was the outcome of Shellej's
visit to Byron at Yenice in 1818; and gives us a
familiar, yet at the same time poetical, description
of the rides, conversations, and friendly intercourse
of the two poets. Of the two chief characters who
give their names to the " Conversation," Julian is
evidently a sketch of Shelley, and Maddalo of Byron;
but there is also a third personage, to whose history
at least two-thirds of the poem are devoted. This is
the maniac, whom Maddalo and Julian go to visit in
their gondola, and whose soliloquy occupies some two
hundred lines of the narrative. In what light are we
to regard this character p '* We cannot guess in this
instance," says Professor Dowden, " of what original
the painting presents an idealization" — a reticence
on the part of Shelley's latest and fullest biographer,
which is the more disappointing because there are
several indications in Shelley's letters, and in the
poem itself, that this part of Julian and Maddalo"
ought to be read and studied in connection with the
history of certain passages in his life. The character
of the maniac is, I believe, like most of Shelley's
sketches, a piece of poetical autobiography. We
APPENDIX, 247
have, in fact, tvoo pictures of Shelley ia this poem :
in Jaliaa we see him as he was in 1818 ; in the dis-
tracted lover we see him as ho had been, or as he
conceived himself to have been, four years earlier.
There is a sort of humorous significance in
Shelley's own references to this mysterious char-
acter, which makes it seem strange that the true-
import of the story should have been generally over-
looked in the numerous essays that have been written
concerning Shelley's poems, with the exception, I
think, of Dr. Todhunter's *' Study of Shelley." " Of
the maniac," he says in his preface, *' I can give no
information. He seems by his own account to have
been disappointed in love." In the letter to Leigh
Hunt, in which the manuscript of '* Julian and
Maddalo " was enclosed, there is a still more striking
remark. "Two of the characters," says Shelley,
" you will recognise, and the third is also in some
degree a painting from nature, but, with respect to
time and place, ideal." Once again, in a letter to
the publisher Oilier, dated December 15tb, 1819, he
refers to this subject, when he states that he intends
to write three other poems, " the subjects of which
will be all drawn from dreadful or beautiful realities,
as that of this [t.d., of * Julian and Maddalo'] was."
Thus we have it distinctly stated by Shelley that the
subject of " Julian and Maddalo " was drawn from a
reality, and that the character of the maniac is a
248 APPENDIX,
painting from nature. Who but Shelley himself
could have been the original of this sketch P There
is no mention in any of Shelley's letters of his ac-
companying Byron on a visit to a Venetian mad-
house, or of his meeting any one who could possibly
have suggested the incident of the distracted and
'deserted lover. The inference would be inevitable,
even apart from the internal evidence of the poem,
that this is another of Shelley's many subjective and
autobiographical studies, of course idealized, as he
says, with respect to time and place, but neverthe-
less in the main '* a painting from nature."
"When we proceed to examine the poem itself, our
previous conviction is still further strengthened. " I
know one like yon," says Maddalo to Julian, as he
tells him something of the maniac's story before they
set out to visit him ; and when he relates how he
had fitted up rooms for the sufferer, with busts,
books, flowers, and instruments of music, we cannot
help noting the similarity to a passage in '* Epipsy-
chidion," where Shelley imagines himself to be pos-
sessed of just such a dwelling in some Ionian isle.
The whole description of the maniac in " Julian and
Maddalo," should be compared with the account given
in the " Advertisement " of " Epipsychidion *' of the
writer to whom that poem is playfully attributed, a
character obviously meant for that of Shelley him-
self. When we come to the maniac's soliloquy, we
APPENDIX, 249
find thafc, obscure as it is in parts, it becomes to
some extent intelligible, when we recognise in it an
idealized description of Shelley's disastrous marriage
with Harriet West brook. Imagination carries him
back to the death- in-life of those terrible days at the
beginning of 1814, when he found that love had de-
parted from the home where it was once present, and
when his only consolation was the knowledge that
his own conscience absolved him of any sense of
guilt. In the lines —
" I am prepared, in truth, with no proud joy,
To do or suffer aught, as when a boy
I did devote to justice and to love
My nature, worthless now ** —
we see a distinct reference to that youthful awaken-
ing, in the school-days at Sion House or Eton, which
is mentioned in the introductory stanzas of " The
Revolt of Islam " and in the *' Hymn to Intelleotoal
Beauty." To what, again, can the following lines
refer, unless to the marriage with Harriet P —
'' Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast
Which like a serpent thou envenomest.
As in repayment of the warmth it lent ?
Bidst thou not seek me for thine own content ?
Bid not thy love awaken mine ? *'
Particular passages of this kind (and there are
others equally significant which a careful reader can
2 so APPENDIX.
scarcely fail to note), taken in conjunction with the
general tone of this part of the poem, and with the
remarks in Shelley's Preface and letters, seem to
leave little room for doubt that the maniac's story
is a poetical description of Shelley's bewildered feel-
ings shortly before or after his separation from
Harriet. It is certainly strange that he should have
chosen, four years later, to recur in his writings to
that most painful period of his life. "We might even
have deemed it impossible he should do so ; but here
again his own lines are significant :
" How vain
Are words ! I never thought to speak again,
Not even in secret — not to my own heart ;
But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
And from my pen the words flow as I write.
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears."
From wJiose pen, it may be asked, did the words
flow P And would Shelley thus have forgotten that
the maniac in his poem was speaking, and not
writing, unless he had to a great extent identified
the character and the story with his own P
In the more mysterious and terrible passages of
the madman's soliloquy, ** the unconnected exclama-
tions of his agony," as Shelley calls them in his
Preface, it is of course easier to suspect than to
prove that there are any traces of personal reference.
APPENDIX, 251
We naturally wonder if the real history of Shelley's
first marriage could have famished material for the
shuddering reminiscence and tragic horror of which
this part of ** Julian and Maddalo " is full. The full
story will probably never be known ; bat those who
read between the lines in the various records of
Shelley's life, can see indications of the existence
of some still graver breach of sympathy between
Shelley and Harriet than such as coald be ac-
counted for by mere divergence of tastes, or even by
that suspicion of his wife's infidelity which Shelley,
rightly or wrongly, entertained to the end of his life.
In the statement drawn up at the time of the Chan-
cery suit, Shelley thus alluded to his parting from
Harriet : " Delicacy forbids me to say more than that
we were disunited by incurable dissensions." " It is
certain," says Professor Dowden, "that some cause or
causes of deep division between Shelley and his wife
were in operation during the early part of 1814. To
guess at the precise nature of these causes, in the
absence of definite statement, were useless." It may
not fall within the province of a biographer to follow
up speculations such as these ; yet the question of a
possible connection between the story told in broken
utterances by the distracted lover in '^ Julian and
Maddalo,'' and that unknown passage in Shelley's
life, is one of peculiar interest to Shelley students.
At any rate, it seems clear that the last part of
2S2 APPENDIX,
Shelley's ]ife with Harriet was to him, if uot to her,
a time of horror and despair ; and this lends some
colour to the supposition that the passages above
referred to were more or less a reflex of the poet's
own experiences. It might even be conjectured that
the manaic's soliloquy was written independently, or
at an earlier period than the rest of the poem with
which it is incorporated ; but I doubt if the internal
evidence of style and structure would bear out this
theory.
In giving directions for the publication of " Julian
and Maddalo," Shelley gave special and urgent in-
junctions that his name was not to be put to it. As
it turned out, however, the poem, for some unex-
plained reason, was not issued during Shelley's
life- time. Mr. Buxton For man suggests that Leigh
Hunt, to whom the MS. was entrusted, "probably
thought it well to stop the issue on account of the
unmistakable personality of two of the characters
depicted — Byron and Shelley." But, on the other
hand, it might have been supposed that Shelley's
friends would be glad to publish a poem which, as
Mr. Eossetti has pointed out, would probably have
increased its author's reputation among ordinary
readers, by the interest excited through the intro-
duction of Byron's character. Is it not more pro-
bable that Shelley's wish to publish the poem anony-
mously, was due to the &ict that in the character of
APPENDIX. 253
the raaniao he had partially unveiled his own inmosfc
life and feeling, while for the same reason Leigh
Hunt, who presumably recognised the true import
of this part of the poem, thought it wiser to with-
hold it altogether from immediate publication ? " If
you were my friend," wrote Shelley to Soubhey in
1820, on the subject of his first marriage, ** I could
tell you a history that would make you open your
eyes; but I shall certainly never make the public
my familiar confidant." This characteristic remark
may be compared with the closing lines of "Julian
and Maddalo " —
** I urged and questioned still ; she told me how
All happened — but the cold world shall not know."
—The Academy, March 26th, 1887.
SHELLEY AND THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.'
The utterances of the Quarterly Review on the sub-
ject of Shelley's life, character, poetry, and opinions,
afibrd a striking instance of the strange shifts to
which a periodical may be driven, when it under-
» Cf. Chap. XI., pp. 184-187.
254 APPENDIX,
takes the task of defending, throagh thick and thin,
the ataiiM quo of a particular religion or social
system, and when it entrusts this solemn charge to
the care of certain anonymous, and therefore, as
far as the public is concerned, irresponsible writers.
What was to be expected when this champion of
rigid orthodoxy and constitutionalism in poetry,
politics, and ethics, first felt it to be its duty to
throw light on the poems and doctrines of a revolu-
tionary enthusiast such as Shelley; and further,
when subsequent writers in the same Review were
compelled, if only for consistency's sake, and out of
regard for that sequence of judgment which such
periodicals afi*ect, to follow in the same strain, and
put a bold face on the unhappy blunders of their
predecessors ! Four times has this inspired oracle
now uttered its portentous verdict on the Shelleyan
heresy, and each separate utterance has been a veri-
table 1)08 locutus ; yet all the time Shelley's character
and genius have been steadily rising higher and
higher in general estimation. ^
It was in 1819, the year after that in which Shelley
left England for Italy, that the Quarterly Review
first addressed itself to the attack, in an article which
was read by Shelley in a newsroom at Florence, and
drew from him a loud peal of " convulsive laughter,"
according to the testimony of one who happened to
be present. The article was, from the Quarterly
APPENDIX, 255
standpoiat, one of the right sort. It purported to
deal with the " Eevolt of Islam," which had been
published early in the preceding year; but the re-
viewer had also before him a copy of '' Laon and
Cythna," the more outspoken form in which the
poem liad been first issued, and almost immediately
withdrawn. Dismissing the poetry as of no real
value, and as at best containing only a few beantifal
passages, the writer devoted himself to a forioas
attack on Shelley's ethical opinions and moral char-
acter — "these are indeed bold convictions," he wrote,
" for a young and inexperienced man, imperfectly
educated, irregular in his application, and shamefully
dissolute in his conduct." The charge of personal
immorality is freely used throughout; indeed, it is
this significant shake of the head, this solemn as-
sumption of the position of one who knows, that lent
the article its chief weight at the time, and makes
it appear to us, in the light of fuller knowledge, so
singularly unfair and disingenuous. The reviewer
nnhesitatingly charges Shelley with insincerity in
his views and with vanity in his ambitions attempt
to advertise himself before the world. "We will
frankly confess," he says, " that with every disposi-
tion to judge him charitably, we find it hard to con-
vince ourselves of his belief in his own conclasions ; "
and, again, '* he is too young, too ignorant, too inex-
perienced, and too vicions, to undertake the task of
256 APPENDIX.
reforming any world but the little world within his
own breast." After prophesying that, like "the
Egyptian of old," Shelley would shortly be over-
whelmed by the mighty waters of oblivion, the
writer concluded with a masterpiece of malignant
innuendo which can be surpassed by nothing to be
found in the pages of the Quartei-ly Review from the
time of its institution to the present day.^ It is not
surprising that Shelley, in his letter to the editor of
the Quarterly Review on the subject of Keats's " En-
dymion " should have referred to this article as " a
slanderous paper," and to its anthor as " the wretch
who wrote it," for it must always stand conspicuous
as one of the lasting disgraces of literary criticism.
It was written by John Taylor Coleridge, and not,
as Shelley wrongly suspected, by Southey or Mil-
man ; and it is curious to reflect that its writer owes
his only remembrance by posterity to the very poet
whose speedy extinction he so confidently pro-
phesied.
In 1821 the Quarterly deemed it necessary to re-
turn to the attack, after the manner of an angry
bull which detects signs of recovery and renewed
vitality in the victim which it has recently mangled.
This time it was Shelley's poetry rather than opinions
on which the reviewer exercised his ingenuity ; and
^ Quoted on p. 185.
APPENDIX, 257
from the remark that "of Mr. Shelley himself we
know uothing, and we desire to know nothing," it
may be inferred that the article did not emanate
from the same source as that of 1819. In his own
way, however, this writer must be admitted to have
fully equalled Mr. J. T. Coleridge's performance.
The two fatal defects which he points out in Shelley's
poetry (the volume under examination being "Prome-
theus Unbound" and the lyrics published at the
same time) are the want of music and the want of
moaning. *' The rhytlim of the verse is often harsh
and unmusical," is his first complaint; and he pro-
ceeds to insist that "the predominating character of
Mr. Shelley's poetry is its frequent and total want
of meaning." Among instances adduced of this
unintelligibility, are *' something that is done by a
Cloud," reference being made to the last and most
beautiful stanza of the lyric of that name ; the "debut
of the Spirit of the Earth," in Act 3 of " Prometheus
Unbound " ; the comparison of a poet to a chameleon,
which is shewn to have " no more meaning than the
jingling of the bells of a fool's cap, and far less
music " ; and the stanza of the " Sensitive Plant,"
concerning *'the hyacinth purple, and white, and
blue," which is held up to special ridicule. "In
short," says the reviewer, summing up the qualities
of the most splendid volume of lyrics that Shelley
ever published, "it is not too much to affirm, that
S
258 APPENDIX,
in the whole volume there is not one original image
of nature, one simple expression of human feeling,
or one new association of the appearances of the
moral with those of the material world," the sole
merit that could be allowed the poet being "con-
siderable mental activity." In conclusion, this
brilliant critic, chuckling at his own humour, quotes
the final passage of Act 3 of ** Prometheus Un-
bound," printing it like prose in continuous sen-
tences, and then gaily informs his readers that it
was meant by its author for verse, since " Mr. Shel-
ley's poetry is, in sober sadness, drivelling prose run
mad.'*
Thus tbese two Quarterly reviewers of 1819 and
1821 did their utmost to darken Shelley's fame; the
one stating that not only were his opinions perni-
cious, but that he was personally licentious, vain,
selfish, cruel, and unmanly; the other demonstrating
the utter worthlessness of his poetry; while both
scoffed at the mere idea of his gaining a permanent
place in literature. There has never been a more
significant illustration of the perils of prophecy ; for
though the writers themselves were protected by
their anonymity from being personally confronted
with the non-fulfilment of their predictions, they left
an extremely awkward and compromising legacy to
the succeeding generation of Quarterly critics. Their
conduct was as inconsiderate as that of the rash
APPENDIX, 259
merchant, who commits himself to some wild specu-
lation without reflecting that, though he may himself
abscond in case of failure, he may leave to his em-
barrassed kinsmen the unpleasant duty of liquidating
his debts. For forty years the great oracle observed
a discreet silence; and watched the increasing repu-
tation of that " shamefully dissolute " poet, whose
poetry did not contain " one original image of
nature." Between 1847 and 1860 no less than six
Lives or Memoirs of Shelley had been published,
and it had become sufficiently evident, even to
Quarterly reviewers, that his poems were not des-
tined to be speedily forgotten. Accordingly, in
1861, there appeared a new article, dealing afresh
with Shelley's life, character, and writings, and
taking note of the editions issued by Mrs. Shelley,
and the lives by Hogg, Trelawny, Peacock, and Lady
Shelley, which are referred to as ** a Shelley litera-
ture quite extensive enough for a modest English
poet." The writer evidently felt that his task was
far from being an easy one, and to some extent the
article is apologetic rather than actively hostile, the
line taken being to modify the judgment expressed
in 1821 as regards the value of Shelley's writings,
while repeating and emphasizing the condemnation
of his opinions and conduct. The lyrics, which once
had less music than the bells of a fool's cap, arc now
praised as " moving and exquisite poetry " ; even the
26o APPENDIX,
•
*' Prometheas Unbound," though still found to have
some unintelligible passage?, is spoken of as '*a
grand conception *' and a " great work/' " We are
far from sajing," confesses the reviewer, *' that the
criticisms of forty years ago contain a full and just
estimate of Shelley's genius/' But on the subject of
the review of **The Eevolt of Islam" in 1819, and
the strictures on Shelley's ethical theories, the
Qnarterhj moralist remains as obdurate as ever.
" We cannot look back," he says, " on that matter,
with the humiliation which, if we believed the par-
tisans of Shelley, it would become us to feel "; he is,
however, judiciously silent regarding the memorable
passage in which his predecessor had hinted that he
could tell dreadful things of Shelley's disgusting
wickedness, but for his delicate reluctance to with-
draw the veil of private life. On the whole, it must
be gratefully recognised that this reviewer of 1861
wrote in a somewhat milder and humaner mood than
that which is traditionally manifested by contribu-
tors to the Quarterly; indeed, in one noticeable
passage, to be presently quoted, he set an example
which his successor of 1887 would have done wisely
to follow. The rest of his article was chiefly oc-
cupied with a sketch of Shelley's life; a defence of
Harriet's conduct in the separation, and of Lord
' Eldon's judgment in the Chancery suit ; and a sug-
gestion that the pantheism expressed by Shelley in
APPENDIX, 261
tho '* Adonais," might in time have ripeued into a
belief in the doctrines of Christianity.
In the qaarter of a century that has elapsed since
this third ukase was issued by the imperial despot
of criticism, who had vainly condemned Shelley to
the Siberia of neglected authors, the Shelley cult is
found to have made still more remarkable progress.
Browning, Swinburne, Thomson, Bossetti, Garnett,
Forman, Dowden, Symonda, Stopford Brooke — these
are the leading names of those who have done hom-
age to the '* considerable mental activity " of the
" imperfectly educated '* young man whose vanity
"had been his ruin." The publication of Prof.
Dowden's ** Life of Shelley," towards the close of 1886,
marked a now epoch in the appreciation of Shelley's
genius; and the Quarterly Bevietu, like the bungling
headsman who causes a shudder to the reader of
English history, was again under the uncomfortable
necessity of taking up its axe for the purpose of
slaying the slain. There is a terrible story of Edgar
Poes, entitled " The Tell-Tale Heart/' in which a mur-
derer who hap, as he thinks, securely disposed of his
victim under the flooring of his room, is driven to
desperation by the continued and audible beating of
the heart of the supposed dead man. Equally em-
barrassing had become the position of the Quarterly
towards the cor cordium, that heart of hea.ts to
whose melodies it had been so strangely deaf, and
262 APPENDIX,
whose motives it had so grosslj maligDed. What.
was to be done? The re viewer of 1887 found he had
no course open to him bat to follow still farther the
path on which his foreronner of 1861 had entered,
and to entirely disavow the early criticism by which
it had been sought to destroy Shelley's poetical
reputation. The " driTelling prose run mad " is now
transfigured into " the statuesque and radiant beaaty
of • Prometheus Unbound/ " which drama is farther
described as ''a dizzy summit of Ijric inspiration,
where no foot but Shelley's ever trod before." Even
the " Cloud," whose metamorphoses so severely puz-
zled the wiseacre of 1821, is declared to be inspired
by "the essential spirit of classic poets"; and we
learn with a sati^ faction enhanced by the source of
the confession that " there are but two or three poets
at the most, whom literature could less afford to lose
than this solitary master of ethereal verse." -After
such praise, from such a quarter, the question of
Shelley's poetical genius may well be considered to
be settled. The Canute of literature has discovered
that on this point the tides of thought are not subject
to his control.
But there remained the further question of S bel-
ief's life, character, and ethical creed, on which the
opinions of thinking men are still sharply divided,
and where it was possible for the Qiiarterly Review
to make amends to its wounded amour projpre by the
APPENDIX. 263
reiteration of some of its ancient aud characteristic
calumnies. Here it was that the modern reviewer
proved himself to be a man after Gifford's own heart,
a chip of the old block (or blockhead) of 1819, and
showed conclusively that though times change, and
manners of speech are modified, the spirit that ani-
mates the stafi* of the Quarterly does not greatly
degenerate. There is no need to follow the full
course of this latest attack on Shelley's " supposed
ethical wisdom/' the upshot of the argument being
that *' as the apostle of incest, adultery, and deser-
tion, his life and principles merit the strongest
reprobation." But the master-stroke of the article
is undoubtedly the charge which the reviewer brings
against Sbelley of meditating incest with his sister
in 1811; a charge which Prof. Dowden* has since
shown to be absolutely groundless, being founded on
a complete misreading of one of Shelley's letters,
published by Hogg. The intellect which could put
such a monstrous interpretation on a letter which,
though hurriedly and excitedly written, is perfectly
innocent and intelligible in its main purport, will
bear comparison with the literary acumen which,
sixty years ago, could detect no meaning in the
"Cloud" and "Sensitive Plant"; and the fact that the
full exposition of this savoury morsel of criticism
1 Athenceum^ May 14, 1887.
264 APPENDIX.
should have been reserved for so late a generation of
Quarterly reviewers may convince us that there is
no substantial falling off in the vigour of the race,
and that there are still as good fish in the Qiyjbrt&rly
as ever came out of it. The remarkable thing is
that, on this particular point, the critic of to-day
has scorned the comparative moderation and delicacy
evinced by the critic of a quarter of a century ago;
for in the article published in 1861, the writer ex-
pressly blamed Hogg for publishing those of Shel-
ley's letters which were written in an incoherent and
excited mood after his expulsion from Oxford, and
seems to foresee that they might be put to an evil
use by an unscrupulous interpreter. "Mr. Hogg,"
he said, ** gives us pages of rhapsody from which it
would be easy for a little hostile ingenuity to extract
worse meanings than we believe the writer ever
dreamed. He has not condescended to guard against
such an injustice by the smallest commentary of his
own. For the purposes of biography the letters are
all but valueless. If there were any motive for so
using them, they would be fatal weapons in the hand
of calumny." A Quarterly reviewer may be supposed
to be proof against all external remonstrance, but he
must surely feel some filial respect for the solemn
adjurations of his own literary forefathers, and the
passage just quoted from the anonymous, but not
wholly unscrupulous, writer of 1861 may therefore be
APPENDIX. 265
confidently commended to the serious attention of
the anonymous and very unscrupuloas calumniator
of 1887.
It seems, then, that there is still a certain amount
of trath in the remark made by Shelley in one of
his cancelled prefaces, that ''reviewers, with some
rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant
race/* The Quarterly Review claimed to be able to
instruct the general public on points of literary
taste ; and we have seen that in its estimate of Shel-
ley's poems it has been at least a quarter of a century
behind the rest of the world, and has at last been
compelled entirely to recant its earlier opinions.
The attempt now made to excuse the former unjust
depreciation of Shelley's literary genius, because of
his social heresies, is singularly pointless and feeble;
for though an ordinary reader might be pardoned for
not discovering the poetical value of writings which
for other reasons he disliked, this oould be no valid
excuse for the blindness of a professed reviewer,
whose special duty it was to separate the g^d from
the bad. Yet we find the latest Qaarterly reviewer
complacently remarking that *' the attitude in which
Shelley stands towards the past, the present, and
the future, explains the unreasoning neglect of his
poetic genius during his life." True, it explains it,
but it does not on that account justify it. On the
contrary, it suggests the thought that the same
4
266 APPENDIX,
odiu7}i theologicum which so long retarded the recog-
nition of Shelley's poetical powers may still be a
fertile cause of the obloqay and misrepresentation
often cast on his character and opinions. But this,
too, will pass. It has taken the Quarterly Review
close on seventy years to discover that Shelley is a
great poet ; seventy years more, and it will perhaps
think fit to rescind its present verdict that he was
''in mind a genius, in moral character and per-
ception, a child.'* — To-day f Jan., 1888.
SHELLEY'S EELIGIOUS OPINIONS.^
Among all the fallacies current respecting Shelley's
character, none perhaps is so remarkable as the idea
that if his life hud been prolonged he would have
adopted the tenets of the Christian religion. At first
sight there seems to be something so paradoxical in
this theory, that it might be thought to be pro-
pounded on the lucus a non lucendo principle, to wit,
the assumption that a man's nature is to be estimated,
not from what he is, but from what he is not. Bat,
on second thoughts, it is less difiicult to discover the
origin of this disposition to recognise a possible friend
1 Cf. Chap. XII., p. 199.
APPENDIX, 267
in an avowed foe. The natural piety and unaOected
sincerity of Shelley's character attracted the admira-
tion of all who knew him. Even the anonymous
" Newspaper Editor/' who published his '^ Beminis-
cences" in Fraser in 1841, though hostile to Shelley
on most points, condescended to make an exception
on this. " When I remember," wrote this acute
moralist, ** how kind he was to his friends, how
charitable to the unfortunate, I feel inclined to exclaim
that infidelity does not necessarily make a man a
scoundrel."
It is not surprising, therefore, that a number of
Christian writers, who could admire the practice of
virtue apart from the profession of religion, were
inclined to treat Shelley with indulgence, and almost
with tenderness. Hence arose what may be called
the " poor, poor Shelley " theory, by which it was
pleaded on the poet's behalf that this erring lamb
would eventually have developed into a respectable
sheep of the orthodox fold. I believe this notion
rests on a serious misconception of Shelley's char-
acter and mental abilities. It is the more necessary
it should be controverted, since otherwise, having
been held and advanced by men who were in the
main sincere admirers of Shelley's genius, it is likely
to be accepted as an undeniable estimate of what his
position would have been, had he lived the full term
of life ; whereas it is really nothing more than a mere
262, APPESDIX.
sapposition, in which the irish is obrioaalj father to
the tboaght.
We find that the idea of Shelley's possible con-
version to the Christian faith had been advanced bj
some of his readers even in his life-time. In a letter
written in 1820, he alludes to an article in OUier't
Literary MiscelUiny,written by Archdeacon Hare^whoy
as we are told in the " Shelley Memorials," "despite
his orthodoxy, was a great admirer of Shelley's
genius." In this article the hope was expressed that
Sbelley woald in time hamble his soul, and " receive
the spirit into him ; " a suggestion which caused him
irreverently to inquire " wliat he means by receiving
the spirit into me, and (if really it is any good) how
one is to get at it/'
But it was not until after Shelley's death that the
theory of ultimate reconciliation was very seriously
propounded. Coleridge's fine remark on the subject
is well known. "His (Shellej's) discussion, tending
towards Atheism of a certain sort, would not have
scared m^; for me it would have been a semi-trans-
parent larva, soon to be glorified, and through which
I should have seen the true image, the final meta-
morphosis. Besides, I have ever thought that sort
of Atheism the next best religion to Christianity;
nor does the better faith I have learnt from Paul and
John interfere with the cordial reverence I feel for
Benedict Spinoza." It may well be that Coleridge,
APPENDIX. 269
if he had conversed with Shelley at the time of the
writing of " Queen Mab," would have foreseen the
true image of his later ideal philosophy through the
"semi-transparent larva "of his early materialism;
but to become a follower of Plato is not the same
thing as to accept the Christian dogma. Profound
thinker as he was, Coleridge was conspicuously
destitute of that moral enthusiasm which was the
chief motive-power in Shelley's character ; it is not
surprising, therefore, that he should have partly mis-
judged him, especially as they had never personally
met.
Yet Coleridge's opinion of the change that might
have been wrought in Shelley's creed has been un-
hesitatingly accepted by many other writers. In Gil-
fillan's " Gallery of Literary Portraits," we find it sug-
gested that *' had pity and kindhearted expostulation
been tried, instead of reproach and abrupt expulsion,
they (i.e., the Oxford authorities) might have weaned
Shelley from the dry dugs of Atheism to the milky
breast of the faith and ' worship of sorrow,' and the
touching spectacle had been renewed of the demoniac
sitting, clothed and in his right mind, at the feet of
Jesus." It seems to me that this "literary portrait,"
kindly and well-meant as it was, would have appeared
to Shelley, could he have seen it, as " immeasurably
amusing" as the hope expressed by Archdeacon
Hare.
<
270 APPENDIX.
Nevertheless the same idea is stated, though in a
more weighty manner, and without any admixture of
the grotesque, both in Frederick Robertson's address
to the Brighton " Working Men's Institute," and in
Robert Browning's "Preface to Shelley's Letters."
Keferring specially to " Queen Mab," Kobertson
speaks as follows : " Poor, poor Shelley ! All that
he knew of Christianity was as a system of exclusion
and bitterness which was to drive him from his
country. . . . Yet I cannot help feeling that there
was a spirit in poor Shelley's mind which might have
assimilated with the spirit of his Redeemer — nay,
which I will dare to say was kindred with that
spirit, if only his Redeemer had been differently
imaged to him." Robert Browning's view is very
similar : '* I shall say what I think ; had Shelley
lived he would have finally ranged himself with the
Christians ; his very instinct for helping the weaker
side (if numbers make strength) ; his very * hate of
hate,' which at first mistranslated itself into delirious
* Queen Mab' notes, and the like, would have got
clearer-sighted by exercise." Elsewhere in the same
essay he speaks of Shelley " mistaking Churchdom
for Christianity," and for marriage " the sale of love
and the law of sexual oppression."
Last, but not least, in this list of authorities (a for-
midable list it must be confessed) who are inclined
to see the potential Christian in the actual heretic.
APPENDIX. 271
I must mention Hawthorne's very characteristic
reference to Shelley in the second series of his
'* Mosses from an Old Manse." " P's Correspondence "
professes to be a letter received from a lunatic friend
who, " without once stirring from his little white-
washed, iron-grated room, is nevertheless a great
traveller, and meets in his wanderings a variety of
personages who have long ceased to be visible to any
eye save his own." Shelley, now well advanced in
years, is one of these imaginary personages. The
writer, *'P.," describes how, on his first introduction
to the author of " Queen Mab," who had now become
reconciled to the Church of England and had lately
taken orders, he felt considerable embarrassment,
but was speedily reassured by Shelley's perfect self-
possession. The poet pointed out to him that in all
his works, from the juvenile *' Queen Mab," to his
recently-published volume treating of the " Proofs
of Christianity on the Basis of the Thirty-nine
Articles," there was a logical sequence and natural
progression. "They are like the successive steps of
a staircase, the lowest of which, in the depth of chaos,
is as essential to the support of the whole as the
highest and final one resting upon the threshold of
the heavens." It is difficult to judge how far there
is serious intent in this imaginary sketch of Shelley's
later life ; for the passage is veiled in that cloak of
fantastic humour in which Hawthorne delighted to
272 APPENDIX.
envelop hia writings. For mj ovrn part I should be
inclined to regard it as a delicate satire on the theory
of Shelley's probable conversion to orthodoxy, were
it not that Hawthorne, whose genius was so diverse
from that of the yonthfal poet, woald be natorally
prone to nnder-valoe Shelley's mental powers and
the stability of his philosophic creed. Believing
that Shelley's revolntionary doctrines were all moon-
shine, he probably thoaght they would have dis-
appeared with the advent of matnrer years, thus
making way for the adoption of the established
faith.
It may seem presumptuous to question the pro-
bability of a theory which can boast among its sup-
porters such names as those of Coleridge, Browning,
and Hawthorne ; but it must be remembered, on the
other hand, that this view of Shelley's character is
not one which has found favour among the earnest
group of Shelley students who during the last ten or
twelve years have thrown so much new light on the
subject of his life and writings. Even De Quincey,
who of course differed toio coelo from Shelley on
religious questions, long ago saw the absurdity of
Gilfillan's "portrait" of Shelley as the converted
" demoniac." ** I am not of that opinion," he wrote,
hi his essay on Shelley, '* and it is an opinion which
seems to question the sincei'ity of Shelley, that quality
which in him was deepest so as to form the basis of
APPENDIX, 273
his uature, if we allow ourselves to think that by
personal irritation he had been piqued into in-
fidelity, or that by flattering conciliation he could
have been bribed back into a profession of Chris-
tianity. Like a wild horse of the Pampas, he would
have thrown up his heels, and whinnied his dis-
dain of any man coming to catch liim with a bribe
of oats."
Those again, who argue that because Shelley died
young, his doctrines were necessarily crude and im-
mature, forget that life is not measured by years, but
experience. Shelley is reported to have said on the
day before his death — " If I die to-morrow, I have
lived to be older than my father; I am ninety years
of age ; " and the more one considers his character
the more untenable seems the contention that his
opinions were the outcome of mere thoughtlessness
and immaturity. Whether he was right or wrong in
his conclusions is another question ; but his con-
victions were certainly formed and held both rationally
and conscientiously, and up to the date of his death
there is no sign that he had changed, was changing,
or was likely to change, in the determined hostility
which he always felt and expressed against the
Christian dogma.
Frederick Robertson's remark that Shelley knew
nothing of Christianity bat as *' a system of exclusion
and bitterness " was only partly correct. It is true
T
274 APPENDIX,
that Shelley had not carefully studied the historical
development of Chrifltianity ; but he was very far
from beiii^ the bigoted opponent for which Robert-
son mistook him. The Bible was one of the books
tliat were most often in his hands, and his intimate
love and knowledge of the Old and New Testaments
might have put to sliame many of those religions
peryoiis who regarded him as a scoflRng infidel. But
the most important point of all to notice, in the con-
sider.ktion of this question, is that Shelley drew a
strong lino of distinction between the character of
Christ and the character of Christianity; so that
those who claim him as a possible convert to Chris-
tianity are laying stress on what tells against their
own theory, when they point out his affinity to the
spiiit of Christ.
Shelley's views on this subject may be seen in
various passages of his writings, especially in the
" Letter to Lord Ellenborough," the " Essay on
Christianity," and the ** Notes to Hellas." In the
last-mentioned work, written in the full maturity of
his powers, he thus states his opinion of the contrast
between Christ and Christian. ** The sublime human
character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an im-
puted identification with a power who tempted, be-
betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who
were called into existence by his sole will ; and for
the period of a thousand years the spirit of this most
APPENDIX 275
just, wise and benevoleut of men has been propiti-
ated with myriads of hecatombs of those who ap-
proached the nearest to his innocence and wisdom,
sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and
variety of torture.'*" When we are told that Shelley,
holding these Views, would have ultimately embraced
the Christian religion because of his sympathy with
its founder, we can only reply that such an argu-
ment (to quote Shelley's own words) ** presupposes
that he who rejects Christianity must be utterly
divested of reason and feeling."
It may be said that the gospel preached by Shelley
was, like that of Christianity, a gospel of love. But
here again the distinction between the teaching of
Christ and the teaching of his followers is a vital
point. And it must be noted that the love which
Shelley inculcates is represented by him as resulting
from the innate goodness, the natural benevolence of
mankind, and not from any sense of religions obliga-
tion. Free-thought and liberty are the very basis
of the Shelleyan morality, it being Shelley's conten-
tion that virtue results from the intuitive desire to
promote the happiness of others, and that morality
must languish in proportion as freedom of thought
and action is withdrawn. Whatever may be the
merits or demerits of this code of morals, it can
scarcely be held to be compatible with the doc-
trines of established Christianity. If Shelley had
276 APPENDIX,
been merely sceptical and irreligious, if his character
had in the slightest degree resembled that of Byron,
there would have been some colonr for the notion
that he would not have always remained a recusant ;
but so far was he from being simply an " honest
doubter/' on the look-out for a religious creed, that
he must be regarded as an enthusiast of the strongest
type, with a mission to perform and a message
to deliver to the world; above all, with a firm faith
in the truth of what he was preaching.
It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that
the idea of Shelley's conversion to Christianity is
inconceivable ; but it is simple truth to say that, had
such an event taken place, he would no longer have
been Shelley, but a wholly different person, — whether
better or worse it is not within my province to
determine, but certainly wholly different in nature,
character, and habits of thought. Whether it is
likely that such a transformation would have taken
place if Shelley's life had been prolonged, is a point
which every Shelley student will determine for him-
self; but, the likelihood once granted, I myself
should find no diflficulty in further believing (with
the madman of Hawthorne's story) that Shelley
would have ** applied his fine powers to the vindica-
tion of the Christian faith," and, having taken orders,
would have been " inducted to a small country living
in the gift of the Lord Chancellor." This would
APPENDIX, 277
indeed have been a gratifying realiBation of Gilfillan'H
picture of the demoniac, " clothed and in his right
mind." — Progress, April, 1887.
Butler A Tanner, The Helwood Printing Wurks, Frome, und Loudon.
*
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