Shelley's principles; has time refuted or confirmed them?

SHELLEY'S \
PRINCIPE

r c / T nr

i

SHELLEY'S PRINCIPLES

HAS TIME REFUTED OR
CONFIRMED THEM?

A

Retrospect and Forecast.

HENRY S. SALT.

LONDON :
WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, E.G.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

Prefatory Note . . . v. — viii.

I. Retrospect .... i — 6

II. Three Stages of Shelley

Criticism .... 7 — 33

III. Shelley's Principles . . 34 — 63

IV. Shelley's Ideals . . . 64 — 75
V. Conclusion and Forecast . 76 — 82

PREFATORY NOTE,

The following essay on ** Shelley's
Principles," which has been read, under
a different title, at one of the Shelley
Society's meetings, was indirectly the
outcome of a friendly challenge from
Professor Dowden, to the effect that
he, **as a lover of Shelley, should like
to see someone who places him in the
first rank of poets, other than lyrical,
show where he is original in his body of
thought."

Now with regard to Shelley's ** origin-
ality" as a thinker, I have clearly

V. B

vi. Prefatory Note,

indicated in what limited, though not
unimportant sense that quality is
claimed for him. Certainly he is to be
ranked among our greatest poets for
other reasons than his supreme lyrical
genius. The excellence of his poetry,
at first strenuously denied, is now un-
reservedly admitted ; arguing from the
past to the future, I assert that what
Time has done for him as a poet, it
will also do for him as a man, inasmuch
as his great poetry is indissolubly
bound up with the great message that
inspired it. The Centenary of Shelley's
birth seems a fit date for the publication
of this retrospect and forecast.

I am under no illusions as to the
reception that awaits this estimate of
Shelley from those who sit in the
reputable places of criticism. It is

Prefatory Note. vii.

true that Mrs Grundy has now sub-
stituted for the grim old notion of a
diaboHcal Shelley that pleasanter pic-
ture of an ** ineffectual angel," which
one of her own special artists so
felicitously designed for her ; but it is
also a fact that she strongly resents
being reminded that the later theory is
every bit as nonsensical as the earlier.
To present the Shelleyan view of Shelley,
instead of Mrs. Grundy's view, is
therefore to experience, in a modified
form, those amenities of criticism of
which Shelley himself was so notable a
victim, and to which even the obscurest
of his followers may not unreasonably
aspire.

For example, I was informed a few
years ago, by the Westminster Review,
that I was one of those writers who

viii. Prefatory Note,

grub amongst *' the offensive matter " of

Shelley's life '^with gross minds and

grunts of satisfaction," and that my

monograph on Shelley was * 'an impudent

endeavour to gain the notoriety of a

social iconoclast amongst social heretics

with immoral tendencies and depraved

desires." There is the true old

genuine ring about such words as these ;

and I was greatly encouraged by the

thought that to have elicited quite

a number of such criticisms was in

itself a proof of being on the right

track as a Shelley student.

I inscribe this essay to those who

know, and appreciate, and reverence

Shelley, not as poet only, but as poet

and man in one.

H. S. S.

SHELLEY'S PRINCIPLES.

I . — Retrospect.

F it be true, as we are often
assured, that literary criticism

IS

''science," and if its

professors cherish, as their position
requires that they should cherish,
a sense of historical continuity and
editorial succession, then, I submit,
the Shelley Centenary of this year
should be observed by the recognised
guardians of our literature as a season
of self-abasement and mortification.
On August 4, 1892, our chief critics,
with the editor of the Quarterly Review
at their head, should march in penitential

'^a^

2 Shelley's Principles,

procession to Shelley's birth-place in
Sussex, there to expiate and formally
recant the monstrous blunders of their
literary forefathers, and perhaps, if the
suggestion may be ventured, to medi-
tate also on certain not inconsider-
able errors of their own.

Seventy years ago, it was the almost
unanimous opinion of the most eminent
and respected reviewers that Shelley
was a wretched poetaster of the most
worthless kind*; now it is admitted

* There were, however, a few exceptions to
this judgment. "The disappearance of Shelley
from the world," wrote T. L. Beddoes in 1824
*' seems, like the tropical setting of that luminary to
which his poetical genius can alone be compared,
with reference to the companions of his day, to have
been followed by instant darkness and owl-season."
Shelley's high poetical gift was freely recognised by
Macaulay and a small but brilliant circle of Cam-
bridge students. Moultrie's poem *♦ The Witch of
the North," 1824, contains passages which are direct
imitations of Shelley's " Witch of Atlas,"

Retrospect, 3

with equal unanimity that he is the
greatest lyric poet whom England has
yet seen. There is no need to labour
this point, for the Quarterly has itself
cried pecoavi as regards Shelley's literary
genius Hear the oracular verdict
of 1822 as compared with that of
1887.

"The predominant characteristic of
Kr. Shelley's poetry," said the earlier
reviewer, '* is its frequent and total want
of meaning. We fear that his notions of
pcetry are fundamentally erroneous. . .
Mr. Shelley's poetry is, in sober sadness,
dr veiling prose run mad.'' ** Language
bends and plays beneath his hand, "says
the lineal descendant of this man after
Gfford's heart ; *' the greatest power is
ccmbined with the greatest ease, the
perfection of art with the entire absence

4 Shelley's Principles.

of conscious display. . . Shelley shows
himself to be the unrivalled lord and
master of lyric song." Truly, in this
case, Time has proved to be a signal
avenger, since less than a century has
witnessed the ignominious reversal
of the most approved critical judg-
ments ! \

Nor is it only the literary qualities of
Shelley that have thus been vindicated —
there is another and still more importafit
appreciation even now in process, which
the next century will in all probability
see fulfilled. The recognition of Shelfey
the man is beginning to follow hard bn
that of Shelley the poet ; and thoum
there is little doubt that those criticslof
the present day who deprecate anything
more than *' the very baldest and brief-
est statement of the facts of the poef s

Retrospect. 5

life,"* are truly expressing the natural
disinclination of the privileged classes
to hear more than they are obliged to
hear of this most persistent prophet of
social reformation, yet it must be already
apparent that this naive injunction of
silence, wherein the v^^ish is obviously
father to the thought, will produce ex-
actly as much impression on the study
of Shelley as did Canute's imperial
prohibition on the flowing tide. If the
present century has had much to say
about Shelley, the next will have still
more, and the critics who would mini-
mise the growing interest in his life,
personality, and principles, will only
succeed in exhibiting their own com-

*" I would confine the critic or editor of Shelley, it
I had my way, to the very baldest and briefest state-
ment of the facts of the poet's life." — H. D. Traill,
Macmillan^s Magazine, July, 1887.

6 Shelley^ s Principles.

plete inability to understand the spirit
and tendency of the age in which they
live.

II. — Three Stages of Shelley Criti-
cism. THE Abusive, the Apolo-
getic, THE Appreciative.

T is very instructive to note
the series of changes which
public opinion has under-
gone, or is undergoing, with regard
to Shelley's character. During the
poet's life and for some time after,
his detractors had the field almost
entirely to themselves, the voices raised
on his behalf being those of a few
personal friends or literary enthusiasts
who could scarcely make themselves

heard amid the general chorus of
7

8 Shelley^s Principles.

detestation.''' It is only by a study
of the contemporary criticism of
Shelley's poems that we can realise the
intensity of the feeling aroused by his
attacks on the established code of
religion and ethics, which seem to have
filled his readers with a conviction that
he was a monster of abnormal and
almost superhuman wickedness.

"We feel" wrote one of these out-
raged moralists in reference to Queen
Mabjf '* as if one of the darkest of the
fiends had been clothed with a human
body to enable him to gratify his enmity
against the human race, and as if the
supernatural atrocity of his hate were
only heightened by his power to do

* Leigh Hunt, in particular, deserves grateful
mention for his early recognition of Shelley's noble
qualities.

f Literary Gazette^ May 19, 1821.

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. g

injury. So strongly has this impression
dwelt upon our minds that we absolutely
asked a friend, who had seen this
individual, to describe him to us — as if a
cloven foot, or horn, or flames from the
mouth, must have marked the external
appearance of so bitter an enemy to
mankind." In the same article, Shelley
is variously alluded to as "the fiend-
writer," " the blaster of his race,'' and
* ' the demoniac proscriber of his species."
The Englishman who, meeting the poet
in an Italian post-office, asked whether
he was" that damned atheist, Shelley,"
and unceremoniouslyknocked him down,
was merely translating into action the al-
most unanimous sentimentof his fellow-
countrymen concerning the author of
Queen Mah, Those were the true old
Tory days, when the insidious growth of

10 Shelley's Principles.

Shelleyism had not yet been developed.
But as time went on, bringing with
it a period of poHtical reform instead
of govermental repression, and as the
disinterested nobleness of Shelley's
character was vindicated in the narra-
tives of Hogg, Medwin, and other
biographers, while the high value of his
poetry was recognised — slowly and
reluctantly at first — by the more dis-
cerning critics, it gradually came about
that he was viewed in a milder light by
the succeeding generation of readers.
A kindly though somewhat sorrowful
tone was now adopted towards him, a
real admiration for his poetical genius
and personal sincerity being tempered
by a stern censure, more in grief than
anger, of the misguided principles on
which his life was framed.

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. ii

Thus he no longer figured as a
deUberate scoundrel, fired with infernal
animosity against the salvation of man-
kind, but as a wild enthusiast, possessed
of many noble instincts, though un-
happily warped and perverted by the
sophisms of Godwin and other mis-
chievous innovators. Had religion been
differently represented to him ; had he
been more wisely educated by those
who had charge of him in his youth ;
had he studied history more carefully ;
or conversed with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge ; or enjoyed this, that, or the
other advantage which his fate with-
held,— then, it was argued, Shelley's
career would have been a wholly
different one, and to quote the words of
Gilfillan, we should have seen the
demoniac " clothed, and in his right

12 Shelley's Principles.

mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus."
'* Poor, poor Shelley," exclaimed
Frederick Robertson, when he medi-
tated on these touching possibilities ;
and his words give us the keynote
of this apologetic phase of sentimental
patronage. The age of abuse and
vilification had now become obsolete,
and the "poor, poor Shelley" era had
succeeded it.*

This, it is important to note, has been
the prevailing conception of Shelley's
character for the last forty years, though
there have not been wanting signs that
it is destined to be replaced in its turn
by a new and more accurate interpreta-
tion. Meantime, Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson's

* It was delightful to find Mr. W. T. Stead
alluding, quite as a matter of course, to ** poor
Shelley," in a passing reference in his Christmas
"Ghost Stories."

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 13

book, and the occasional splenetic out-
bursts of the Saturday Review and other
crabbed periodicals, should be regarded
as a survival or recrudescence of the
abusive period — a few belated bottles
of a sour old vintage, which, in the
changed atmosphere of a later day, go
pop from time to time, and sprinkle some
musty literary cellar with their pent-up
remnant of superannuated bitterness.
The main tendency of the age has been
distinctly towards a more genial esti-
mate of Shelley, a view which has been
fully, and perhaps finally, expressed in
the thoroughly representative work of
Professor Dowden, whose opinion of
Shelley's ethics may be summed up in
the judgment he pronounces on Queen
Mab, that '* such precipitancy may con-
stitute a grave offence against social

c

14 Shelley's Principles.

morality, yet we may dare to love the
offender."

Professor Dowden is the authorised
exponent of what I have called the
apologetic Shelleyism, which asks that
the poet's social heresies may be for-
given him in consideration of the beauty
ot his poems and the devoted though
mistaken earnestness of his life. But,
like all transitional ideas, this view of
Shelley, when strictly examined, will be
found to be an untenable one, however
gracious and welcome it maybe (and the
spirit of Professor Dowden's work is
especially generous and liberal) when
contrasted with the old contumely of
seventy years back, since it rests on the
assumption that ennobHng poetry can
result from an immoral and therefore
pernicious ideal. In estimating the life-

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 15

work of such a character as Shelley's, it
must surely be an error to set aside as
valueless the central underlying convic-
tions, while professing admiration for
the poetry which resulted therefrom,
as if the proverb ''by their fruits ye
shall know them " did not hold good in
literature as elsewhere.

Now there can be no mistake what-
ever about the attitude which Shelley
took up, not in Queen Mab only, but in
the whole body of his writings, towards
the established system of society, which,
as he avowed in one of his later letters,
he wished to see " overthrown from the
foundations, with all its superstructure
of maxims and forms." The principles
which he inculcated are utterly subver-
sive of all that orthodoxy holds most
sacred, whether in ethics or religion ;

1 6 Shelley's Principles,

if he was wrong in them, he is deserving
of the severest possible condemnation ;
if right, of equally unstinted praise — in
neither event is there any sound basis for
the apologetic theory, which, by its vague
and vacillating attempt to reconcile the
irreconcilable, has made an enigma out
of a personality which is singularly
intelligible and clear.

And if this is true of Shelley's bio-
graphers, much more is it true of his
critics. Why is it that so many dis-
tinguished and learned men, from
Carlyle and Ruskin to Kingsley and
Matthew Arnold, who have undertaken
to enlighten the world concerning
Shelley, have failed so grotesquely that
even the efforts of the Quarterly Re-
viewers seem successful by comparison ?
Simply because, with every intention to

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 17

be just, they were devoid of that sym-
pathy with the objects of Shelley's
vision which is absolutely essential to
a right understanding of the meaning
of his life. Wanting this sympathy,
they have seen only chaos and indecision
in a career which was remarkable for
its pertinacious directness of aim, and
have heard only what Carlyle described
as " inarticulate wail," in the clearest
trumpet-call that ever poet sounded ;
9.nd having thus created, out of the
dust of their own minds, a mythical
personage every whit as unreal as
the ''Real Shelley" of Mr. Cordy
JeafFreson, they have proceeded to
express their virtuous astonishment
at the perplexing and contradictory
nature of this phantom of their own
imagining.

i8 Shelley's Principles,

Mr Walter Bagehot,* for example,
was so amazed at the perversities of
Shelley's intellect, as viewed from the
Bagehottian standpoint, that he set
him down as actuated by mere impulse
rather than by a reasoning faculty.

Mr. Leslie Stephen, t again, having
no sympathy with revolutionary ideas,
will not allow Shelley credit for even
average powers of thought, finding "the
crude incoherence of his whole system
too obvious to require exposition," and
asserting that '' that which is really
admirable is not the vision itself, but
the pathetic sentiment caused by
Shelley's faint recognition of its obstin-
ate insubstantiality."

Even Mr. J. A. Symonds, whose

* " Estimates of some Englishmen," 1858.
f *' Godwin and Shelley," Cornhill^ vol 39.

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism, ig

delightful monograph is valued by all
Shelley students, has been misled by
the same social prejudice, when he
states that " the blending in him of a
pure and earnest purpose with moral
and social theories that could not but
have proved pernicious to mankind at
large, produced at times an almost
grotesque mixture in his actions no less
than in his verse." But how if these
theories should not be proved so per-
nicious as Mr. Symonds confidently
assumes them to be ? And, in that case
what becomes of the '* grotesque
mixture " in Shelley's actions and char-
acter ?

In this connection it may be per-
tinent to quote some highly suggestive
lines on Shelley which deserve to be far
more widely known.

20 Shelley's Principles.

Holy aad mighty Poet of the Spirit

That broods and breathes along the Universe !

In the least portion of whose starry verse

Is the great breath the sphered heavens inherit,

No human song is eloquent as thine ;

For, by a reasonmg instinct all divine,

Thou feel'st the soul of things ; and thereof singing,

With all the madness of a skylark, springing

From earth to heaven, the intenseness of thy strain,

Like the lark's music all around us ringing,

Laps us in God's own heart, and we regain

Our primal life ethereal ! Men profane

Blaspheme thee; I have heard thee Dreamer styled —

I've mused upon their wakefulness — and smiled.

Thomas Wade's " Poems and Sonnets, 1835.

The fact is, the exponents of the
apologetic theory, while doing honour
to Shelley's poetical genius and exalted
enthusiasm, have altogether underrated
the keenness of his intellectual insight
into the vexed problems of modern
times. Being accustomed, by the
force of class tradition, to ignore the
Shelleyan ideals — that is, the fountain-

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 21

head of the poet's singing — as chimerical
fancies derived at second-hand from
the fanatics of the French Revolution,
they have inevitably failed to enter
into the spirit of his song. His book
of prophecy lies open before them, but
must remain in great part unintelligible,
until sympathy, the sole clue to the
understanding of a new gospel, shall
enable their eyes to decipher the
cryptogram of those revolutionary
pages, which, once mastered, will put
an end to the idle talk about the
incoherence of Shelley's message and
the hallucinations of his brain.

Without at all forgetting the great
literary services that have been rendered
to Shelley's writings during the past
quarter-century, I venture to doubt
whether he can be fully appreciated,

22 Shelley's Principles,

even as a poet, under the present form
of society, unless by those (and scarcely
even by those) who look for the changes
which he looked for, and desire to
hasten that bloodless revolution which
was at once the theme and the inspira-
tion of his poetical masterpieces. As
the number of such reformers increases,
and it is increasing very sensibly at the
the present time, the apologetic view
of Shelley, that kindly but unscientific
product of a confused transitional
period, will gradually pass away, and
in its place we shall have the new, the
appreciative estimate, which will honour
England's greatest lyric poet, not on
the absurd ground that he sang beauti-
fully and pathetically on behalf of a
thoroughly foolish and pernicious theory,
but because, seeing clearly that the

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 23

current forms of religion and morals
would have to be revolutionised, he
expressed that conviction, which each
succeeding year is proving to be a true
conviction, in words of consummate
tenderness and power.

This new method of Shelley criticism
is not merely in prospect, but has
already commenced. It was heralded
by James Thomson's remarkable article
contributed to the National Reformer in
i860, and by the memoir which Mr. W.
M. Rossetti prefixed to his edition of
the poems ten years later — a strong
and sensible piece of writing which
deserves the gratitude of all who believe
in the ultimate recognition of Shelley's
true greatness. I do not mean to imply
that Mr. Rossetti necessarily subscribed
to the bulk of Shelley's social opinions;

24 Shelley's Principles,

but his memoir was, as far as I know,
the first considerable contribution to
Shelleyan hterature in which not the
poetry only, but the conceptions that
determined the poetry, were treated
with due seriousness, and without a
word of that infelicitous extenuation
or apology which strikes so false a note
in so many other essays. As to the
valuable critical work, done in late
years by Mr. Rossetti, Mr. Forman,
Dr. Garnett, Professor Dowden, Mr.
Stopford Brooke and others, it may
truly be said to have been largely
instrumental in preparing the way for a
better understanding of Shelley in his
ethical as well as his literary capacity.
So, too, of much that has been done
by the Shelley Society ; for though I do
not insinuate that the members of that

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism, 25

very reputable body are deliberate
abettors of Shelley's revolutionary doc-
trines, I have yet in mind the remark
made by Mr. H. M. Stanley to one of
the Society's officers. '' You are a
funny people, you Shelleyites," said
the famous explorer, with a perspicacity
which suggests that Livingstone and
Emin are not the only persons who
have been found out by him, "you are
playing, — at a safe distance yourselves,
maybe — with fire. In spreading Shelley
you are indirectly helping to stir up the
great socialist question, the great ques-
tion of the needs, and wants and wishes
of unhappy men ; the one question which
bids fair to swamp you all for a bit."
Precisely so. The fuller appreciation
of Shelley's character, will be found to
keep pace with the progress of social

26 Shelley's Principles,

reform, or if you will, of social revolu-
tion.

In saying this, I wish to guard myself
at the outset against the charge of
'' idolatry" which is generally brought
against those whose opinion of a great
writer happens to be in advance of
the popular estimate. To assert that
the Shelleyan creed is nobler and saner
than the so-called morality which it
is destined to replace does not imply a
belief that it is itself a perfect creed, or
that it will not ultimately be succeeded
by something still better. But ninety-
nine out of a hundred of the objections
at present made against the doctrines of
Shelley are quite beside the mark, sim-
ply because they are the result, not of a
clear-eyed, large-minded survey of those
doctrines, but of narrow and prejudiced

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 27

environments. It may sound para-
doxical, but it is a fact that a new idea
must be appreciated before it can be
criticised — you must know what a man
means and feels, in other words you
must sympathise with him, before you
will comprehend either the merits or the
defects of his system.

The object of this essay is not to
attribute to Shelley an impossible per-
fection, but to point out that, so far
from being the pitiable compound of im-
pulsive benevolence and crack-brained
fanaticism which his apologists have
represented him to be, he was a pioneer
of a definite intellectual and social
movement, which, whether right or
wrong, is steadily advancing in interest
and importance. *' The devotees of
some of Shelley's pet theories," com-

28 Shelley's Principles,

plains Mr. Leslie Stephen, apparently
without at all perceiving the signi-
ficance of his remark, *' have become
much noisier than they were when the
excellent Godwin ruled his little clique."
True ; and the inference seems to be
that Shelle3''s vision was a good deal
more penetrating than that of some of
his most intolerant and self-satisfied
critics.

Do we claim, then, it is sometimes
asked, that Shelley was an ''original'*
thinker ? Certainly not — in that sense
which implies the contribution of brand-
new ideas to philosophy or ethics.
Shelley's social views, as everyone
knows, were largely drawn from
Rousseau and the French school, from
Tom Paine, William Godwin, and Mary
Wollstonecraft. But while borrowing

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism, 29

freely, he could also freely assimilate
and vitalize ; and it has been well said
of him than ''he was Paine and Godwin,
with a large heart added.'' This is an
addition which amounts to little less
than a new creation, for, as a stroll
through our Universities will show, it
is unfortunately rare to find the perfect
balance and conjunction of intellect
and feeling. There is an originality in
the selection and treatment, as well as
in the promulgation, of ideas, and this
faculty — this " reasoning instinct all
divine" — Shelley possessed in an emi-
nent degree. He intuitively grasped
and assimilated those democratic con-
ceptions which were destined to survive
the violence of tyrannical oppression
and the slower but more searching
ordeal of time ; and if his ethical creed

30 Shelley's Principles.

be compared with that of the other poets
and thinkers of his age, in the Hght of
the history of the past half-century, it is
not Shelley who will be found deficient
in sagacity and foresight.

But though inspired by these philo-
sophical ideas, Shelley was by nature
and temperament essentially a poet.
He was the poet-prophet of the great
humanitarian revival (in his own words,
" the most unfailing herald, companion,
and follower of the awakening of a great
people to work a beneficial change in
opinion or institution, is poetry"), and
as he sang of the future rather than of
the present, and of a distant future
rather than of a near one, there is oi
necessity a vagueness in many of his
poetical utterances, though this is for-
tunately to a great extent corrected and

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism. 31

counterbalanced by the clearness of his
prose essays. An attempt is sometimes
made to discount the effect of his writings
on the score of his youthfulness ; he had
not time, it is said, to mature his own
thoughts, much less to instruct those ot
other people. This objection, however,
can hardly be taken very seriously, for,
in the first place, opinions must stand
or fall by their intrinsic worth and not
by the age of their advocate ; and
secondly, as Shelley himself said to
Trelawny, *' the mind of man, his brain,
and nerves, are a truer index of his age
than the calendar."

I shall speak in this essay of Shelley^s
views as a whole, and I may here paren-
thetically remark that I do not propose
to follow Mr. Buxton Forman's ex-
ample of relegating Queen Mab to the

32 Shelley's Principles,

juvenilia^ as if it were unworthy of the
serious attention of Shelley students,
I am, of course, aware, that it is in
many ways a crude and ill-considered
performance, but its defects lie
far more in the style than in the
conception — to repeat what Shelley
said of it in later years, " the
matter is good, but the treatment is
not equal." The views expressed in
Queen Mab on religious and social
topics are practically the same as
those held by Shelley to the last day
of his life, and, as Mr. Forman himself
tells us, "the poem and its notes
have played a considerable part in
the growth of free-thought in England
and America, especially among the
working classes"; for both of which
reasons it seems to me that Queen

Three Stages of Shelley Criticism, 33

Mab will always maintain an honour-
able place in the record of its author's
achievements.

III. — Shelley's Principles.

ET us now proceed to consider
how far Shelley's principles
have anticipated those of a
later date, and with what justice he
may be called a forerunner of the
cause of intellectual and social freedom.
The enormous progress made by free-
thought during the seventy years that
have passed since Shelley's death
would in itself be sufficient refutation,
if any were needed, of the assertion
that he wrecked his judgment and
good fame by his deliberate adoption
of atheistic principles. He was from
34

Shelley's Principles. 35

first to last an '* atheist," in the special
sense that he denied the existence of
the personal deity of the theologians ;
though it is important to note, that, as
he himself says in the preface to Laon
and Cythnaj the object of his attack was
'' the erroneous and degrading idea
which men have conceived of a Supreme
Being, but not the Supreme Being
itself" — it was not the presence, but the
absence of spirituality in the established
creed that made Shelley an unbeliever.*

* I regard Shelley's early " atheism " and later
*' pantheism " as simply the negative and the
affirmative sides of the same progressive but un-
changmg life-creed. In his earlier years, his dispo-
sition was towards a vehement denial of a theology
which he never ceased to detest ; in his maturer
years, he made more frequent reference to the
great World Spirit whom he had from the first
believed in. He grew wiser in the exercise of his
religious faith, but the faith was the same through-
out; there was progression, but no essential
change.

36 Shelley's Principles.

For holding and publishing these
views, he was ostracised and insulted ;
and now the same views are held as a
matter of course by a vast number,
probably a vast majority, of earnest
and thoughtful men, the only difference
being that the colourless title of
** agnosticism " has been substituted
for the more expressive word which
Shelley with characteristic ardour,
** took up and wore as a gauntlet."

It is the habit of Shelley's apologetic
admirers to minimise the fact of his
departure from the orthodox faith, and
even to suggest that, had he lived
longer, he might, by some unexplained
process of reasoning, have found him-
self at one with Christianity, perhaps,
according to Nathaniel Hawthorne's
ironical suggestion, to the extent of

Shelley^ s Principles. 37

taking holy orders, and being " inducted
to a small country living in the gift
of the lord chancellor." * The new
criticism bluntly declares that this idea
is nonsensical ; and recognising that
Shelley's belief, whether for good or ill,
was in direct antagonism to established
religion, points further to the fact that
the verdict of time, so far as it has yet
been delivered, is strongly in favour of
free-thought which Shelley so strenu-
ously asserted.

But the religious question, it may be
said, no longer occupies its former
dominant position ; it is round soci-
ology, no less than theology, that the

*It is gravely stated, in Mr. H. B. Cotterill's
"Introduction to the Study of Poetry," 1882, that
Shelley " saw the beauty of true Christianity, and
accepted the gospel of Christ as the one true
gospel."

38 Shelley's Principles.

battle of freedom has now to be fought
and won. It is generally recognised
that two of the most momentous social
problems which will press for solution
in the coming century are the condition
of the working classes and the emanci-
pation of women ; and the supreme
proof of the shrewdness of Shelley's
instinct is that he, alone among the
poets of his era, strongly emphasised
these two questions, anticipating in
his conclusions the general principles,
if not the particular methods, of the
policy to which modern reformers
incline.

It is true that like Godwin, and
indeed like all contemporary thinkers,
with the possible exception of Robert
Owen, he was unable to grasp the full
significance, in its bearing on social

Shelley's Principles. 39

questions, of the great industrial devel-
opment which the introduction of
machinery has brought about ; we can-
not expect from Shelley an accurate
knowledge of an economic change
which in his time could be only very
imperfectly understood. But that he
had a singularly clear perception of the
cardinal fact by which the relations of
labour and capital are characterised —
the fact that the poor workers support
the lazy rich, and that industry is taxed
for the maintenance of idleness — is
obvious from many passages in his
writings.

Here, jfor example, is a reference
to the land-question, which states the
case with admirable incisiveness and
vigour. *' English reformers exclaim
against sinecures, but the true pension-

40 Shelley's Principles.

list is the rent-roll of the landed pro-
prietors." And again, of the extortions
of the fund-holders, those nouveaux
riches whose heartless vulgarity Shelley
more than once condemns: '*I put
the thing in its simplest and most
intelligible shape. The labourer, he
that tills the ground and manufactures
cloth, is the man who has to provide,
out ot 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."

Nor, while thus pointing out the
actual dependence of the so-called
independent classes, did Shelley evade
the consideration that he too, the scion
of a wealthy house, was a debtor in like

Shelley's Principles. 41

manner ; he "shuddered to think " that
the roof which covered him and the bed
on which he slept were provided from
the same source.

We see, therefore, that Shelley was
well aware that pauperism is no spora-
dic, unaccountable phenomenon, but
the necessary and logical counterpart
of wealth, and that the footsteps of
luxury are forever dogged by the grim
nemesis of destitution. Never perhaps
has this terrible truth been more power-
fully stated than in the description of
the court masque in Charles the First.

'* Ay, there they are —
Nobles, and sons ot nobles, patentees,
Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows.
Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,
Who toil not, neither do they spin — unless

42 Shelley's Principles.

It be the webs they catch poor rogue? withal.
Here is the surfeit which to them who earn
The niggard wages ot the earth, scarce leaves
The tithe that will support them till they crawl
Back to its cold hard bosom. Here is health
Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,
Waste by lank famine, wealth by squalid want,
And England's sm by England's punishment."

The question whether Shelley was,
or was not, a "socialist," is one that
scarcely admits of any definite conclu-
sion, since there is no universally ac-
cepted definition of what socialism
means. It may be urged, on the one
hand, that he cannot be given a title
which did not come into use till some
years after his death, and which is now
often restricted — unwisely, perhaps —
to the acceptance of a purely economic
formula of which he knew nothing.
Shelley, like Godwin, was a communist
rather than socialist ; and though he by

Shelley's Principles. 43

no means shared Godwin's extreme
repugnance to legislative action, he still
laid far more stress on moral and intel-
lectual improvement than on the inter-
vention of the State. On the other
hand, if the term socialism be inter-
preted in a wider sense, it may fairly
be made to include such a pioneer as
Shelley, who was certainly a socialist
in spirit, if not in the letter.

An interesting saying of Karl Marx's —
true of Shelley, though unjust to Byron
— has been recorded in this connection.
^' The real difference between Byron
and Shelley is this: those who under-
stand them and love them rejoice that
Byron died at thirty-six, because if he
had lived he would have become a
reactionary bourgeois ; they grieve that
Shelley died at twenty-nine, because

44 Shelley's Principles,

he was essentially a revolutionist, and
he would always have been one of the
advanced guard of socialism."*

Shelley's views on the woman ques-
tion are too well known to need more
than a brief reference; it is sufficient
for my purpose to point out that they
are practically identical with those now
held by advanced thinkers. There is
plenty of evidence in Laon and Cythna
that Shelley recognised and deplored
the social subjection of woman, and the
evil consequences that result therefrom
to the other sex and to humanity in
general. **Can man be free," he asks,
"if woman be a slave ? " And again :

Woman ! — She is his slave, she has become
A thing I weep to speak — the child of scorn,
The outcast of a desolated home.

* " Shelley and Socialism," by Edward and
Eleanor Marx Aveling, To- Day, April, 1888.

Shelley's Principles, 45

Falsehood and fear and toil, like waves, have worn
Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn
As calm decks the false ocean : well ye know
What woman is, for none of woman born
Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,
Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressor
flow.

It perhaps has not been as widely
noticed as it deserves to be, that in the
character of Cythna, as drawn in this
poem, Shelley has created a type.
Cythna is the first idealisation in litera-
ture ot the revolutionary woman — swift
and fearless, tender and pitying ; above
all, the free, confident, equal companion
of intellectual and socialised man.

The compulsion of the marriage-bond,
which in Shelley's opinion militates
against that free and natural relation
of the sexes which he so strongly
approved, is explicitly condemned in
the well-known Notes to Queen Mab, on

46 Shelley's Principles.

the ground that, as the very essence of
love is freedom of choice, society is not
justified in imposing this restriction on
the judgment of the individual. That
Shelley's views remained unchanged to
the end may be gathered from the
kindred, but maturer, passage ofEpipsy-
chidiouj which makes one regret that he
did not deal more directly and fully with
this subject in his later life, though it is
easy to surmise the personal and private
reasons that would then have withheld
him.

As it is, the Shelleyan advocacy of
free love has been much misrepresented,
being often absurdly identified, whether
through ignorance or prejudice, with a
heartless libertinism to which it is
utterly alien. The essence of Shelley's
belief was that, unless human passion

Shelley's Principles. 47

is to be debased and brutalised, the
spiritual and higher elements of love
must always be present ; for this reason
he condemned the stereotyped and love-
less institution of marriage, but he did
not stultify his own contention by sanc-
tioning an equally dull and loveless
sensuality.

On this point it is worth while to
note what he says in a short prose essay,
written soon after Queen Mab — the
review of his friend Hogg's novel, Prince
Alexy Haimatoff. ''The author," says
Shelley, ''appears to deem the loveless
intercourse of brutal appetite a venial
offence against delicacy and virtue !
He asserts that a transient connection
with a cultivated female may contribute
to form the heart without essentially
vitiating the sensibilities. It is our

48 Shelley's Principles.

duty to protest against so pernicious
and disgusting an opinion. No man
can rise pure from the poisonous em-
braces of a prostitute, or sinless from the
desolated hopes of a confiding heart."
1 purposely abstain, in'this essay, from
touching on what has been called " the
Harriet problem," not because I am
at all indisposed to '' chatter about
Shelley," but because I am here speak-
ing less of the story of his life than of
the principles to which his life was
devoted. ^^' But I must, in passing, make

* It is very instructive to note the exact period at
which our orthodox critics conceived their present
marked distaste for what they have styled " the
Harriet problem" and " chatter about Shelley."
They had no scruple whatever, during half-a-century
of vilification, in utilising, on every possible oppor-
tunity, a false and calumnious story as a means of
blackening bhelley's name; but when once it began
to appear that the facts might wear another aspect,
and that the "chatter" would henceforth not be

Shelley's Principles. 49

a brief protest against the extraordinary
plea put forward by a well-known novel-
ist, ostensibly on behalf of the fair fame
of Shelley, though I doubt if his worst
enemy has ever said anything which he
would have more strenuously resented —
I refer to Ouida's contention * that the
possession of genius releases a man
from the ordinary claims of morality.

The idea is quite foreign to the whole
spirit of Shelley's writings. He claimed
no special exemption from the estab-

entirely one-sided, these precious moralists were
smitten with a sudden naive aversion for the very
controversy which they had themselves provoked!
I would now suggest to them that if they are indeed
so weary of ' ' the Harriet question '' (and no one will
deny that Shelley has been the subject of unneces-
sary, as well as necessary, contention), the remedy
is in their own hands. Let them cease to calum-
niate ; and we shall cease to explain. ''■Que messieurs
Us assassins y commencent."

* North American Review, Feb. i8go.

50 Shelley's Principles,

lished code of ethics, but directly chal-
lenged that code as an obsolete and in
fact immoral piece of superstition.
He may have been right, or he may
have been wrong in this opinion, but
his standpoint is a quite unmistakable
one, and therein lies the only possible
justification of his conduct. And for
every person who held such views at
the beginning of the century, there are
a hundred who hold them now.

Shelley's socialistic sympathies have
already been mentioned ; a word must
now be said of his not less remarkable
insight into those matters where, to
quote his own expression, *' every man
possesses the power to legislate for
himself." His communism, like that of
Godwin and other anarchist writers, was
mingled with a very strong measure of

Shelley's Principles. 51

intellectual individualism^ ; he believed
that self-reform must precede, or at any
rate accompany, all legislative enact-
ments. ''Reform yourselves" is the
chief lesson enforced in the Address to the
Irish People, and in the Essay on Chris-
tianity the failure of the early Christian
communism is attributed to the lack of
a sufficient moral improvement.

The modes of self-reform which
Shelley most persistently advocated may
be summed up in the word simplicity ;
his healthy natural instincts towards
pure food and fresh air, together with
his keen sense of the serfdom which
luxury inflicts on its drudges, made

* I advisedly write intellectual to distinguish it
from the other, the commercial *' individualism,"
which consists in sacrificing all true individuality of
character in the dead level of industrial competi-
tion.

52 Shelley's Principles,

him look with distaste on many of
the so-called comforts of civilization.
** Decrease your physical wants," he
says, 'Mearn to live, so far as nourish-
men and shelter are concerned, like the
beasts of the forest and the birds of the
air ; ye will need not to complain that
other individuals of your species are
surrounded by the diseases of luxury
and the vices of subserviency and
oppression.

Himself a bread-eater and water-
drinker, with a strong tendency in all
respects to a frugal and hardy way of
living, he instinctively felt the rightness
of that gospel of simplicity of which
Rosseau had been a prophet, and saw
what Thoreau has since demonstrated
with greater insistence, that a com-
plexity of artificial comforts is not a

Shelley's Principles. 53

necessary accompaniment of intellectual
refinement. *' Your physical wants,"
says Shelley, '' are few, whilst those of
your mind and heart cannot be num-
bered or described, from their multitude
and complication. To secure the gratifi-
cation of the former, ye have made your-
selves the bondslaves of each other."

Last, but not least, among these
Shelleyan principles which may claim
to have been strengthened and not
negatived by time, are his humanitarian
views, which include and underlie
the rest. The crowning word both of
his communism and individualism
is Love, which is again and again
inculcated in his writings as the one
supreme remedy for human suffering,
the charm without which all else is
unavailing and unprofitable.

54 Shelley's Principles.

To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot,
To own all sympathies and outrage none,
And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,
Until life's sunny day is quite gone down,
To sit and smile with joy, or, not alone.
To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of woe ;
To live as if to love and live were one —
This is not faith or law, nor those who bow
Tothrones on heaven or earth such destiny may
know."

^'To live as if to love and live were
one" — that is a true summary of Shel-
ley's ethics. In accordance with this
spirit of unremitting gentleness, he de-
plored the many acts of ferocious bar-
barism which disgraced (and in great
measure still disgrace) our boasted civil-
ization—the savagery of modern warfare,
the scarcely less savage competition of
commerce, the inhumanities of our
penal code, and the legalised murder
known as capital punishment. He also
followed Godwin in deprecating all

Shelley's Principles. 55

insurrectionary violence, and repeatedly
inveighed against the wickedness of
retaliation. " In recommending a great
and important change in the spirit
which animates the social institutions
of mankind," thus he writes in the
preface to Laon and Cythna, " I have
avoided all flattery to those violent and
mahgnant passions which are ever
on the watch to mingle with and to
alloy the most beneficial innovations.
There is no quarter given to Revenge
or Envy, or Prejudice. Love is cele-
brated everywhere as the sole law which
should govern the moral world."

Now other poets have sung, before
and after, of humanity and brotherhood ;
but there is just this peculiarity about
Shelley's method of handling these
great themes. He does not, as so many

56 Shelley's Principles.

writers have done, sentimentally eulogise
these virtues in the abstract, while
shutting his eyes to the iniquities per-
petrated on ''the lower classes," which,
albeit sanctioned by respectability and
custom, render real brotherhood impos-
sible— on the contrary, he goes to the
heart of the matter, and denounces
those evils which are the most deadly
sources of cruelty and oppression. The
true rufhan was to him (I quote his own
words) ''the respectable man — the
smooth, smiling, polished villain, whom
all the city honours, whose very trade
is lies and murder ; who buys his daily
bread with the blood and tears of men."
In similar manner, when touching on
our relations with "the lower animals,"
he did not, like our modern school of
sentimentalists, prate of men's benevo-

Shelley's Principles. 57

lent feelings towards the objects of their
gluttony, and preach peace under con-
ditions where peace does not exist, but
boldly and consistently arraigned the
prime cause of animal suffering, the
removal of which must precede the
establishment of a genuine human sym-
pathy with the lower races. Those who
have knowledge of the recent progress
of vegetarianism are aware that here
too, in his condemnation of flesh-eating,
Shelley was a precursor of a vital and
growing reform. =^

Shelley's principles, as has now been
sufficiently shown, were those of a
thorough revolutionist, and it is by

* And I would suggest to those who have not any
knowledge of the food question that in writing
Shelley down a *' sentimentalist," for his " Vindica-
tion of Natural Diet." they may perhaps be writing
themselves down — something else.

58 Shelley's Principles,

principles that a man's character is best
understood; immediate pohtics are
necessarily of less permanent interest,
relating as they do to ephemeral matters
which are sooner superseded and for-
gotten. It is worth noting, however,
that in his practical politics Shelley
was very far from being swayed by that
irreconcilable fanaticism which is often
supposed to be an unfaihng character-
istic of enthusiasts, for while always^
maintaining that ** politics are only
sound when conducted on principles of
morality," he was shrewd enough to see
that half a loaf is better than no bread.
** Nothing is more idle," he says in the
Philosophical View of Reform^ ''than to
reject a limited benefit because we
cannot without great sacrifices obtain
an unlimited one." "You know," he

Shelley's Principles. 59

wrote to Leigh Hunt in i8ig, *' my
principles incite me to take all the good
I can get in politics, for ever aspiring
to something more. I am one of those
whom nothing will fully satisfy, but
who are ready to be partially satisfied
in all that is practicable."

That Shelley should, on some
subjects, have been over cautious and
moderate, may seem surprising; yet it
is a fact that he pleaded for slowness
and deliberation in cases where the ad-
vanced radical opinion of to-day would
hardly be so long-suffering. He depre-
cated the abolition of the crown and aris-
tocracy until " the public mind, through
many gradations of improvement, shall
have arrived at the maturity which can
disregard these symbols of its child-
hood." He objected to the ballot as

6o Shelley's Principles,

being too mechanical a process of voting.
He disapproved of universal suffrage and
of female suffrage as ''somewhat imma-
ture," though he intimated that he was
open to conviction on these points.

Nevertheless, the temporary expe-
dients which Shelley suggested were
sufficiently drastic, when regarded from
a purely political standpoint. ''To
abolish the national debt; to disband the
standing army ; to abolish tithes, due
regard being had to vested interests ;
to grant complete freedom to thought
and its expression ; to render justice
cheap, speedy, and secure — these
measures, Shelley believed, would
together constitute a reform which we
might accept as sufficient for a time."*

^ Professor Dowden's epitome of the Philosophical
View of Reform,

Shelley's Principles. 6i

On national questions Shelley's sym-
pathies were altogether with the party
of freedom, and this not only when the
struggle was located abroad, (most
poets and men of letters are enthusiastic
over insurrections which are comfort-
ably remote), but also when it was
nearer home, let us say in Ireland,
which is sometimes found to be a more
searching test of a true passion for
freedom. Hellas, the preface and notes
of which are scarcely less remarkable for
political insight than the poem itself for
lyrical splendour, is a proof of Shelley's
ardour in the Greek cause. ** The wise
and generous policy of England," he
writes, *' would have consisted in
establishing the independence of
Greece, and in maintaining it both
against Russia and the Turks; — but

62 Shelley's Principles.

when was the oppressor generous or
just?"

The Dublin pamphlets, immature
and almost boyish though they are
in some respects, contain some wise
forecasts ; and it is noticeable, as Mr.
J. A. Symonds says, that '' Catholic
Emancipation has since Shelley's day
been brought about by the very measure
he proposed and under the conditions
he foresaw." The Union, again, was
declared by Shelley to be a worse evil
for Ireland than even the disqualifica-
tion of Catholics ; '^ the latter," he said,
*' affects few, the former affects thou-
sands : the one disqualifies the rich from
power, the other impoverishes the pea-
sant and adds beggary to the city."

Here, too, is Shelley's opinion on
the subject of political ** criminals " ;

Shelley's Principles. 63

*' Though the Parliament of England
were to pass a thousand bills to inflict
upon those who determined to utter
their thoughts a thousand penalties, it
could not render that criminal which
was in its nature innocent before the
passing of such a bill." After nearly a
century of compulsory union and
coercive legislation, the wisdom of the
view which Shelley intuitively adopted
is being slowly and painfully recognised
by English politicians.

IV. — Shelley's Ideals.

HAVE now mentioned certain
of Shelley's revolutionary prin-
ciples which seem to be already
on the road to fulfilment, distant though
the goal may still be ; and I have
shown that, judged simply by the hard
test of history and experience, such
principles can no longer be contemptu-
ously dismissed as visionary and
unsubstantial. But what of those more
prophetic yearnings and aspirations —
those mystic ideal glimpses into the
equal and glorified humanity of the
future — which, to those who canunder-
64

Shelley's Ideals. 65

stand and sympathise with Shelley, are
the very soul of his creed ? A learned
and cultured critic has dogmatically
asserted that Shelley's " abstract im-
agination set up arbitary monstrosities
of ' equality ' and * love,' which never
will be realised among the children
of men." * But then, by the very nature
of the case, it is not to the learned and
cultured classes that Shelley's gospel
will appeal, but rather to those whose
conditions and surroundings have not
incapacitated them for that most vital
learning and only true culture — a con-
ception of the essential equality and
brotherhood of mankind.

The ideal anarchism of which Shelley
IS the herald is a state of equality
founded not on the competitive or

* Walter Bagehot.

66 Shelley's Principles,

baser element of human nature, but on
the higher and ultimately more power-
ful element, which is love. ** If there
be no love among men," he says,
** whatever institutions they may frame
must be subservient to the same pur-
pose— to the continuance of inequality.
The only perfect and genuine republic
is that which comprehends every living
being." Nor is this beatified republic
of Shelley's prophecy to be confined
exclusively to the human race ; it is all
gentle and loving life, not human life
only, that is the theme of his song :

'* No longer now the winged inhabitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,
Flee from the form of man ; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreadless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror ; n:an has lost
His terrible prerogative, and stands
An equal amidst equals."

Shelley's Ideals. 67

The fact that this distant vision of a
golden age, of man "equal, unclassed,
tribeless and nationless," takes no
account of the intervening obstacles
between the actual state and the ideal,
is by no means a valid proof that the
vision is a deceptive one. The traveller
who discerns from afar the mountain-
top which is the object of his pilgrimage,
cannot correctly calculate the many
minor ridges, which, though at the
moment they make but little show in
the landscape, must be laboriously and
patiently surmounted before his ambi-
tion can be satisfied; he knows that
these difficulties are real, but he knows
that the summit is real also.

It was inevitable that Godwin and
Shelley, living before the age of evolu-
tionary science, should under-estimate

68 Shelley's Principles.

the vast scope and tenacity of heredi-
tary forces in the moral, as well as
in the physical world, and should be
over-sanguine as to the power of in-
dividual self- regeneration. But it is an
absurd error to suppose that Shelley
expected a sudden miraculous change
in the nature of man — a sort of cosmic
transformation scene, which should
usher in the final harlequinade of
humanity. It is true that in Laon and
Cythna and Prometheus Unbound he
used, as he was quite entitled to use,
the license of a poet, by concentrating
into brief compass a revolution which
must have demanded a long period for
its accomplishment, little suspecting
that his critics would attribute to him
the almost incredible folly of a literal
belief in the sudden extirpation of evil ;

Shelley's Ideals. 69

a misconception which is the more
astonishing because his utterances on
this point are sufficiently numerous
and conclusive.

In the Preface to Laon and Cythna
itself, he notes, as one of the errors of
the French Revolution which should
henceforth be avoided, an expectation
of *'such a degree of unmingled good
as it was impossible to realise," "Can
he,'* says Shelley, *' who the day before
was a trampled slave, suddenly become
liberal-minded, forbearing, and inde-
pendent ? . . . . But mankind appear
to me to be emerging from their trance.
I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gra-
dual, silent change. In that belief I
have composed the following poem.'*
And again, in the Irish pamphlet ; '* we
can expect little amendment in our own

70 Shelley's Principles.

time, and we must be content to lay
the foundation of liberty and happiness
by virtue and wisdom." And yet again,
in the Philosophical View of Reform ; **it
is no matter how slow, gradual, and
cautious be the change."

There are one or two other prevalent
misunderstandings of the Shelleyan
ideals which could never have existed
if his prose works had been read with
any sort of attention, and if critics had
taken ordinary trouble to distinguish
Shelley the lyric poet and myth-maker
from Shelley the philosopher and
essayist. It has been assumed, on the
strength of passages in Queen Mab and
elsewhere, that he literally believed in
a past golden age, from which Man,
the one outcast of Nature, had miser-
ably fallen ; whereas in the Essay on

Shelley's Ideals. 71

Christianity he expressly declares that
this notion, though ideahsed by poets,
is ** philosophically false."

** Later and more correct observa-
tions," he says, '* have instructed us
that uncivilised man is the most per-
nicious and miserable of beings, and
that the violence and injustice, which
are the genuine indications of real in-
equality, obtain in the society of these
beings without palliation. . . . Man was
once as a wild beast ; he has become a
moralist, a metaphysician, a poet, and
an astronomer." Surely, with this
passage in evidence, it should be im-
possible to misapprehend Shelley's
position on this point.

Then, again, as regards the external
origin of evil, let us beware of a too
literal interpretation of passages which

72 Shelley's Principles.

are by their very nature poetical.
Shelley delights to personify the Mani-
chsean doctrine of a good and an evil
spirit, under the forms of the serpent
and the eagle, Prometheus and Jupiter;
but we shall do him gross injustice if
we suppose him unaware of the subtle
mixture of the two elements in the
human mind — to quote his own words,
of '*that intertexture of good and evil
with which Nature seems to have
clothed every form of individual ex-
istence."

Still less is it the case, that he re-
garded kings and priests as the origi-
nators of human wretchedness, however
deliberately he might charge them with
fostering and perpetuating it. * * Govern-
ment," he distinctly says, ** is in fact
the mere badge of men's depravity.

Shelley's Ideals. 73

They are so little aware of the inestim-
able benefits of mutual love as to in-
dulge, without thought and almost
without motive, in the worst excesses
of selfishness and malice. Hence,
without graduating human society into
a scale of empire and subjection, its
very existence has become impossible."*
That Shelley had a hearty detestation
of priestcratt and kingship, as types of
intellectual and temporal despotism, is
beyond doubt ; but he was not moved
against them by any such unreasoning
antipathy as that with which he is
often accredited.

The truth is, that so far from being,
as his apologists have represented him,
at once the advocate and the victim of
certain benevolent but illusory ideas,

* Essay on Christianity.

74 Shelley's Prijtciples.

which fall to pieces the moment they
are brought into contact with the facts
of science, Shelley was well in accord
with the most advanced knowledge of
his age. The doctrine of Perfectibility
is an assertion not of a future sudden
perfection, but of the unlimited pro-
gressive tendency of mankind, and, as
such, is distinctly a scientific doctrine.
It has been excellently said* that " by
instinct, intuition, whatever we have to
call that fine faculty that feels truths
before they are put into definite shape,
Shelley was an evolutionist. He trans-
lated into his own pantheistic language
the doctrine of the eternity of matter
and the eternity of motion, of the in-
finite transformation of the different

-'' " Shelley and Socialism," by Edward and
Eleanor Marx Aveling, To-Day, April 1888.

Shelley's Ideals. 75

forms of matter into each other, with-
out any creation or destruction of either
matter or motion." It is certain that
the same testimony could not be paid,
with equal truth, to the writings of any
other poet of the first twenty years of
.this century.

V. — Conclusion and Forecast.

E have now seen what were in
fact Shelley's ideals, as con-
trasted with the imaginary
absurdities which critics have invented
for him, to the utter distortion of his
views and to their own exceeding be-
wilderment ; we have seen also how
marked has been the progress made by
these Shelleyan opinions since the time
when a contemporary reviewer pro-
nounced Prometheus Unbound, the poem
which we now begin to recognise as the
great modern epic of humanity, to be

the " stupid trash of a delirious
76

Conclusion and Forecast. 77

dreamer," and accounted for the
severity of this judgment by remarking
that it was ''for the advantage of
steding productions to discourage
counterfeits."

Shelley was heart and soul a free-
thinker ; and free-thought is now in
the ascendant wherever men think at
all. He was an advocate of free love ;
and the failure of marriage has become
a common-place of journalists and
novel-writers. He was a pioneer of
communism; and the vast spread of
socialist doctrines is the every-day
complaint of a capitalist press. He
was a humanitarian ; and humani-
tarianism, having survived the phase
of ridicule and misrepresentation, is
taking its place among the chief motive-
powers of civilised society.

78 Shelley's Principles.

Of Shelley's personal character I have
said little, and only this much shall
now be said — that the increasing in-
fluence which it has exercised on succes-
sive generations of readers tells its own
tale. If certain critics cannot under-
stand the unspeakable charm which
others have felt so keenly, a charm
which for some of us has sweetened
life and strengthened all our hopes for
mankind, they will perhaps do wisely
not to proclaim their own deficiencies
by declaring Shelley to be unintelligible.
To the sympathetic reader, Shelley's
moral nature is as little an enigma as
his writings ; to the unsympathetic it
is very enigmatical indeed ; but it does
not follow that Shelley is the party to
be commiserated on that account —
there is an alternative which the hos-

Conclusion and Forecast. 79

tile critic should introspectively ponder
before pronouncing adverse judgment
on the accused poet.

I do not of course mean to suggest
that Shelley was a faultless being (to
mention one obvious reason to the con-
trary, he was unfortunate enough to be
brought up in affluence and saved the
necessity of earning his own living), or
that it is desirable that anybody should
pay him unwilling homage. I merely
point out that his character is a typical
one — typical of certain revolutionary
conceptions by the rightness or wrong-
ness of which it will ultimately stand
or fall. The present course of events
seems to indicate the probability of the
former conclusion.

For all which reasons, is it not about
time that we finally divested ourselves

8o Shelley's Principles

of the notion of that weak, amiable,
unscientific Shelley, that brilliant but
eccentric visionary, with an exalted
enthusiasm, a genius for lyric poetry,
and a foolish aversion to priests and
kings ? The view each generation
takes of a revolutionary writer is in-
evitably formed and coloured in great
measure by the ethical and religious
convictions prevalent for the time
being. By the old-fashioned, uncom-
promising, brutal Toryism of seventy
years back, a poet like Shelley could
hardly have been regarded otherwise
than as the foe of all that is respectable,
the ''fiend-writer" to whom con-
temporary critics ascribed a super-
human malignity.

To the milder-mannered, but some-
what inconsistent and invertebrate

Conclusion and Forecast. 8i

Liberalism of the succeeding transi-
tional period, he became a grotesque
mixture of good and evil qualities ; no
longer a demon downright, but a semi-
celestial nondescript, " a beautiful but
ineffectual angel, beating in the void
his luminous wings in vain."

By the full-fledged democracy of the
socialised republic on whose threshold
we now stand, he will at length be seen
in his true human character, as the
inspired prophet of a larger, saner
morality, which will bring with it the
realisation of the equality and freedom
to which his whole life was so faithfully
and ungrudingly devoted.

And as for the years, or may be the
centuries, innumerable but not illimit-
able, that must still elapse, before the
world shall see the fulfilment of those

82

Shelley's Principles.

remoter Shelleyan ideals, of that
splendid vision of the ultimate regene-
ration of mankind — does it behove us
to be despondent ? Must we not rather
say of them, in the v^ords of Prometheus
himself,

"Perchance no thought can count them, yet they
pass."

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