The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources Part 12

Notwithstanding all its shortcomings radicalism fulfils a very useful purpose in society. It keeps before our eyes the ideal. "It emphasizes the moral over the material; man over property. Its prominence in society insures progress and gives promise that ideals shall not perish; that hope shall not wane, and that society shall long for perfection and peace, without which longing no progress is possible."[206] Radicalism emphasizes the ideal; conservatism the real. Out of the two springs progress. "One is the moving power; the other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail without which society would make no progress; the other the ballast without which there would be small safety in a tempest."[207]

It is strange that the experience of centuries has not taught men to be more tolerant towards the radical. We see how blind was the generation behind us in resisting the obvious reforms which it was asked to approve; yet it never enters our heads to suspect that the next generation will consider as obvious reforms what we consider subversive proposals, and will wonder at our stupidity in having offered any resistance to them.

Sh.e.l.ley was a "sentimental" rather than a "philosophical"[208] radical.

He inflamed wills rather than enlightened minds. He roused men to action instead of solving difficult problems.

Man is influenced more by his emotions than by his intellect and hence the importance of the position which the sentimental radical holds in the history of society. If the radical arouses helpful emotions the amount of good he does is incalculable, so too is the amount of harm an unwise radical is responsible for.

The emotions which Sh.e.l.ley's poetry arouse are on the whole helpful. True a few of the details of one or two of his works should be condemned, but these usually serve to bring out the main idea of the work which is always an inspiring one. n.o.body thinks of condemning "Lear" because of the vileness of Goneril. If we would interpret any writer's meaning and message the first thing to attend to is to regard the work "as a whole bearing on life as a whole." Doing this we will grasp what is central, and at the same time will appreciate the true value of all details. Francis Thompson does not believe that any one ever had his faith shaken through reading Sh.e.l.ley. He knows, too, only of three pa.s.sages to which exception might be taken from a moral point of view. Sh.e.l.ley extolled Justice, Freedom and Equality; and he denounced tyranny and injustice. His poetry should inspire men to be more charitable and tolerant, to seek less after wealth and the applause of the world, to sympathize more and more with suffering humanity, to return good for evil and to pursue the common good of all with more zeal and enthusiasm.

One or more of the faculties of every poet are more highly developed than those of ordinary people. In some cases it is the senses; in others the imagination. Tennyson and Wordsworth are good examples of the first cla.s.s.

They note and describe shades of color--in flowers, in the sky--the music of waters, and a hundred other things that escape the notice of common mortals. In Sh.e.l.ley it is his imagination, his faculty for feeling the sufferings of others that is abnormal. He sees a woman afflicted with elephantiasis, and straightway imagines that he himself has the same disease. Sh.e.l.ley keenly feels the misery around him, gives expression to that feeling, and castigates the causes of that misery.

Sh.e.l.ley's poetry exercises our imagination, takes us away from ourselves and makes us think about our neighbors. The great trouble with the world today is that men think only about themselves, their own wants and their own joys. If we were made to feel the sufferings of the poor one-half of the evils of society would be eliminated. Anything then that brings home to us the evils of society is a blessing. "Every grade of culture," writes Dr. Kerby, "has its own spirit of fellows.h.i.+p, its own code, understanding and secrets. Hence it is that the imagination has a supreme role in the neighborly relations of men. As social processes unite men in imagination, they supply the basis of concord, service and trust.... Reason may talk of social solidarity, and economic or sociological a.n.a.lysis may show us how intimately all men are united; the catechism may appeal to intellect and tell us that mankind of every description is our neighbor. But only they have entrance to our hearts to whom imagination gives the pa.s.sport; only they are neighbors whom imagination accepts and embraces."[209] The work of reconstructing human brotherhood is in a great measure the work of the imagination.

The objection may be raised here that although Sh.e.l.ley's imagination was very strong, still he was guilty of great wrong to Harriet. In reply one may say that the imagination is only one-half the mould which forms the perfect man. The other half is made up of reason and revealed religion.

Where these two parts of the mind are found together we get great men.

They exist side by side in the saints. A man may know all about ascetical theology, or all about his profession, but if he has not imagination he will always be a plodder. To come more directly to our difficulty, Sh.e.l.ley had the motive power of imagination and the guiding force of reason, but not that of revealed religion. The result was that he went off at a tangent when he dealt with matrimony. His case should be a convincing argument to women at least that Christianity is necessary for the happiness and well-being of mankind. In so far as Sh.e.l.ley's imagination was guided by the light of reason, he was a saint. Trelawny says that Sh.e.l.ley stinted himself to bare necessities, and then often lavished the money saved by unprecedented self-denial on selfish fellows who denied themselves nothing.

Some of Sh.e.l.ley's poetry is calculated to arouse one's anger and hatred of wrong. A people who are dest.i.tute of these emotions are fit subjects for the yoke. As long as there are men ready to take advantage of another's weakness; as long as there are selfish men who will advance themselves at the expense of others, so long will it be necessary to keep alive in men the spirit of hatred of injustice.

The difficulty with a great many critics of Sh.e.l.ley is that they confound Sh.e.l.ley's railing at the evils of religion and governments with railing at religion and government itself. In places, it is true, he would seem to be a complete anarchist, but then allowance should be made for the sweeping generalizations that are characteristic of poetry and radicalism. Those pa.s.sages in which he would seem to condemn all religion and government should deceive no one.

No doubt it is wrong to brood too much over the misery of the world. One misses a great deal if one sees only the evil, and never sees any of the good nor experiences any of the joy of life. Extreme pessimism is as harmful as extreme optimism. The pessimism that lets in no ray of hope is a plague. Such though is not the pessimism of Sh.e.l.ley. His pictures of the evils of society are illumined by the reflection from the happier state of society that is about to come to pa.s.s.

Sh.e.l.ley would do away with government and authority. Surely, some would say, that is enough to discredit him as a thinker forever. On the contrary, it shows how far in advance of his time he was; it shows he had a good grasp of the sociological principle that the less compulsion and the more cooperation under direction there is in any state the better it is. Sh.e.l.ley never meant to say that he would here and now abolish all authority. No one saw more clearly than he that chaos would result from the removal of authority from society as at present const.i.tuted. When Sh.e.l.ley writes about freedom from authority he is picturing the ideal state where men will be just and wise. He very likely doubted that such a state was possible here below, still he thought it was inc.u.mbent on everybody to strive after this ideal. He wanted men to so perfect themselves, to so act, that laws and policemen would become less and less necessary.

Sh.e.l.ley may not have the "sense of established facts," and may be unable to offer suggestions which will work out well in practice, but he does infuse a higher and a n.o.bler conception of life into the consciousness of a people. What Wordsworth said concerning his own poems is true of the works of Sh.e.l.ley. "They will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best critical edition of Sh.e.l.ley's complete work is that by H. B.

Forman in eight volumes, London, 1880. Other useful editions of the poetical works are: Professor G. E. Woodberry's, four volumes, Boston, 1892; Professor Dowden's, one volume, London, 1900; T. Huchinson's, Oxford, 1905; and W. M. Rossetti's, three volumes, London, 1881.

For an account of the earlier publications of Sh.e.l.ley's works consult _The Sh.e.l.ley Library: an Essay in Bibliography_, by H. B. Forman.

The most comprehensive and authoritative life of Sh.e.l.ley is that by Professor Dowden in two volumes, London, 1886.

The following are the chief authorities, critical and biographical, to be consulted:

ACKERMANN, R.: (a) _Quellen zu Sh.e.l.ley's Poetischen Werken._ 1890.

(b) _Sh.e.l.ley's Epipsychidion und Adonais._ 1900.

(c) _Prometheus Unbound. Kritische textansgabe, etc._ 1908.

ALLEN, EDITH L.: _Sh.e.l.ley Day by Day._ 1910.

ALLEN, LESLIE H.: _Die Personlichkeit P. B. Sh.e.l.ley's._ 1907.

ANGELI, HELEN A.: _Sh.e.l.ley and His Friends in Italy._ 1911.

ALEXANDER, W. J.: _Select Poems of Sh.e.l.ley._

AXON, W. E.: _Sh.e.l.ley's Vegetarianism._ 1891.

BATES, E. S.: _A Study of Sh.e.l.ley's Drama._ The Cenci.

BELFAST, EARL OF: _Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century._ 1852.

BENNETT, D.: _The World's Sages, Infidels and Thinkers._ 1876.

BERNTHSEN, S.: _Der Spinozismus in Sh.e.l.ley's Weltanschauung._ 1900.

BIAZI, GUIDO: _The Last Days of P. B. Sh.e.l.ley._ 1898.

BRAILSFORD, H. N.: _Sh.e.l.ley, G.o.dwin, and Their Circle._

BROWN: _The Prometheus Unbound of Sh.e.l.ley._

BRANDES, G.: _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature._ Vol. IV.

BRANDL, SAMUEL T.: _Coleridge und die Englische Romantik._ 1886.

BROOKE, STOPFORD A.: _Studies in Poetry._ 1907.

BYRON, MAY.: _A Day with the Poet P. B. Sh.e.l.ley._ 1910.

CALVERT, G. H.: _Coleridge, Sh.e.l.ley, Goethe, Biographic Aesthetic Studies._ 1880.

CARDUCCI, G.: _Prometeo Liberato, Torino Roma._ 1894.

CHEVRILLON, T. A.: _Etudes Anglaises._ 1901.

CHIARINI, GIUSEPPE: _Ombre e Figure Saggi Critici._ 1883.

A. CLUTTON-BROCK: _Sh.e.l.ley; the Man and the Poet._ 1910.

COURTHOPE, W. J.: _The Liberal Movement in English Literature._ 1885.

CHAPMAN, E. M.: _English Literature and Religion._ 1800-1900.

CLARKE, MISS H. A.: _Prometheus Unbound._