Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 3

That Sh.e.l.ley early in 1814 had no intention of leaving his wife, is probable; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, eight days after his impa.s.sioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, Hanover Square.

Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the Scotch marriage was no doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a possible heir beyond all question. Yet it seems, if we may found conjecture on "Stanzas, April, 1814," that in the very month after this new ceremony Sh.e.l.ley found the difficulties of his wedded life insuperable, and that he was already making up his mind to part from Harriet. About the middle of June the separation actually occurred--not by mutual consent, so far as any published doc.u.ments throw light on the matter, but rather by Sh.e.l.ley's sudden abandonment of his wife and child. (Leigh Hunt, Autobiography page 236, and Medwin, however, both a.s.sert that it was by mutual consent. The whole question must be studied in Peac.o.c.k and in Garnett, Relics of Sh.e.l.ly, page 147.) For a short while Harriet was left in ignorance of his abode, and with a very insufficient sum of money at her disposal. She placed herself under the protection of her father, retired to Bath, and about the beginning of July received a letter from Sh.e.l.ley, who was thenceforth solicitous for her welfare, keeping up a correspondence with her, supplying her with funds, and by no means shrinking from personal communications.

That Sh.e.l.ley must bear the responsibility of this separation seems to me quite clear. His justification is to be found in his avowed opinions on the subject of love and marriage--opinions which Harriet knew well and professed to share, and of which he had recently made ample confession in the notes to "Queen Mab". The world will still agree with Lord Eldon in regarding those opinions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon the poet's character; but it would be unfair, while condemning them as frankly as he professed them, to blame him also because he did not conform to the opposite code of morals, for which he frequently expressed extreme abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, as the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the Sh.e.l.ley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, that doc.u.ments are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's conduct in this matter. It is therefore but just to await their publication before p.r.o.nouncing a decided judgment. Meanwhile there remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after leaving Harriet, Sh.e.l.ley departed from London with Mary G.o.dwin, who had consented to share his fortunes. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand of her who was destined to be his companion for life, may best be told in Lady Sh.e.l.ley's words:--

"His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on G.o.dwin's daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear Sh.e.l.ley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past--how he had suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had done battle for the fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the remaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both redeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of "Political Justice", and of the "Rights of Woman", had been educated, spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was one among the many inst.i.tutions which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved--by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate--these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was therefore natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her love."

Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Sh.e.l.ley's second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formed another connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, 1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. The distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no immediate connexion between Sh.e.l.ley's abandonment of his wife and her suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as Hogg, who is no adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded; and it may be permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time unhappy in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and cut the knot of life and all its troubles.

So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painful period in Sh.e.l.ley's life as it occurred, without extenuation and without condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such insistence by Lady Sh.e.l.ley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, it is impossible that the poet should not bear the reproach of heartlessness and inconstancy in this the gravest of all human relations. Such, however, is my belief in the essential goodness of his character, after allowing, as we must do, for the operation of his peculiar principles upon his conduct, that I for my own part am willing to suspend my judgment till the time arrives for his vindication. The language used by Lady Sh.e.l.ley and Mr.

Garnett justify us in expecting that that vindication will be as startling as complete. If it is not, they, as pleading for him, will have overshot the mark of prudence.

On the 28th of July Sh.e.l.ley left London with Mary G.o.dwin, who up to this date had remained beneath her father's roof. There was some secrecy in their departure, because they were accompanied by Miss Clairmont, whose mother disapproved of her forming a third in the party. Having made their way to Dover, they crossed the Channel in an open boat, and went at once to Paris. Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intending to perform the journey across France on foot. Sh.e.l.ley, however, sprained his ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In this conveyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neufchatel.

Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their residence; and here Sh.e.l.ley began his romantic tale of "The a.s.sa.s.sins", a portion of which is printed in his prose works. Want of money compelled them soon to think of turning their steps homeward; and the back journey was performed upon the Reuss and Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a bad pa.s.sage, on the 13th of September. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's "History of a Six Week's Tour" relates the details of this trip, which was of great importance in forming Sh.e.l.ley's taste, and in supplying him with the scenery of river, rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilized in "Alastor".

The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty; but on the 6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became the next heir to the baronetcy and the family estates, and an arrangement was made with his father by right of which he received an allowance of 1000 pounds a year.

A portion of his income was immediately set apart for Harriet. The winter was pa.s.sed in London, where Sh.e.l.ley walked a hospital, in order, it is said, to acquire some medical knowledge that might be of service to the poor he visited. His own health at this period was very bad. A physician whom he consulted p.r.o.nounced that he was rapidly sinking under pulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. The consumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for the next three years he had no doubt that he was destined to an early death. In 1818, however, all danger of phthisis pa.s.sed away; and during the rest of his short life he only suffered from spasms and violent pains in the side, which baffled the physicians, but, though they caused him extreme anguish, did not menace any vital organ. To the subject of his health it will be necessary to return at a later period of this biography. For the present it is enough to remember that his physical condition was such as to justify his own expectation of death at no distant time. (See Letter to G.o.dwin in Sh.e.l.ley's Memorials, page 78.)

Fond as ever of wandering, Sh.e.l.ley set out in the early summer for a tour with Mary. They visited Devons.h.i.+re and Clifton, and then settled in a house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. The summer was further broken by a water excursion up the Thames to its source, in the company of Mr. Peac.o.c.k and Charles Clairmont. Peac.o.c.k traces the poet's taste for boating, which afterwards became a pa.s.sion with him, to this excursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us that Sh.e.l.ley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he enjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W.S. Halliday, a far better authority than Medwin, a.s.serts positively that he never saw Sh.e.l.ley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that he practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fond of boats and every kind of water--river, sea, lake, or ca.n.a.l--he never learned to swim. Peac.o.c.k also notices his habit of floating paper boats, and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on occasions when Sh.e.l.ley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion.

On their return from this river journey, Sh.e.l.ley began the poem of "Alastor", haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor Forest, and drawing from that n.o.ble scenery his inspiration. It was printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year. Not only was "Alastor" the first serious poem published by Sh.e.l.ley; but it was also the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in certain pa.s.sages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, is such as only Sh.e.l.ley could have produced.

"Alastor" is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim into desert places; and Sh.e.l.ley, prompted by Peac.o.c.k, chose it for the t.i.tle of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls. Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great autobiographical value. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley affirms that it was written under the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its sublime descriptions. All that Sh.e.l.ley had observed of natural beauty--in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest--is presented to us in a series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion. But the deeper meaning of "Alastor" is to be found, not in the thought of death nor in the poet's recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St.

Augustine placed upon its t.i.tle page, and in the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", composed about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to a.s.suage the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing for some mortal realization of his love. "Alastor", like "Epipsychidion," reveals the mistake which Sh.e.l.ley made in thinking that the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form: while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that such realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written by Sh.e.l.ley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal."

But this Sh.e.l.ley discovered only with "the years that bring the philosophic mind," and when he was upon the very verge of his untimely death.

The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of "Alastor". It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideal love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet's heart:--

At length upon the lone Chorasmian sh.o.r.e He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-sh.o.r.e. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.

It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main.

His eyes pursued its flight:--"Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the l.u.s.tre of their own fond joy.

And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpa.s.sing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.

For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed, Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

William, the eldest son of Sh.e.l.ley and Mary G.o.dwin, was born on the 24th of January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together, accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. They reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Sh.e.l.ley had not yet made Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab", with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no great distance from each other, pa.s.sing their days upon the lake in a boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. Miss Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This fact has to be mentioned by Sh.e.l.ley's biographer, because Allegra afterwards became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of what was pa.s.sing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from the mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Sh.e.l.ley during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friends.h.i.+p was to become one of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influence of Byron upon Sh.e.l.ley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron's genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible opinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame with Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he erroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive.

Sh.e.l.ley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to n.o.bler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtle intellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much as he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Sh.e.l.ley was not blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has left us of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice and Ravenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to Italy, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet been pa.s.sed upon his brother poet's character. It is clear that he never found in Byron a perfect friend, and that he had not accepted him as one with whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling and conduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Sh.e.l.ley the purest nature he had ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all that is fine, high-minded, and n.o.ble, and he acted up to this ideal even to the very letter."

Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva in their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie. On this occasion Sh.e.l.ley was in imminent danger of death from drowning. His one anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peac.o.c.k, was lest Byron should attempt to save him at the risk of his own life. Byron described him as "bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, that Sh.e.l.ley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness.

He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly be said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursion was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in his letters to Peac.o.c.k, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the element of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words which record the experiences of his two journeys in Switzerland and France:--"I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the pa.s.sions which rise and spread, and sink and change amongst a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds."

On their return to the lake, the Sh.e.l.leys found M.G. Lewis established with Byron. This addition to the circle introduced much conversation about apparitions, and each member of the party undertook to produce a ghost story. Polidori's "Vampyre" and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's "Frankenstein" were the only durable results of their determination. But an incident occurred which is of some importance in the history of Sh.e.l.ley's psychological condition. Toward midnight on the 18th of July, Byron recited the lines in "Christabel" about the lady's breast; when Sh.e.l.ley suddenly started up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen a vision of a woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he was writing notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his "Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley informs us that the mere effort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period of his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts.

Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful vividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature as Sh.e.l.ley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain episodes of his biography. The strange story, for example, told by Peac.o.c.k about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a subjective energy. (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98.)

On their return to England in September, Sh.e.l.ley took a cottage at Great Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peac.o.c.k. While it was being prepared for the reception of his family, he stayed at Bath, and there heard of Harriet's suicide. The life that once was dearest to him, had ended thus in misery, desertion, want. The mother of his two children, abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven from her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with circ.u.mstance. However Sh.e.l.ley may have felt that his conscience was free from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and feeling for which she was not qualified, and that had it not been for him and his opinions, she might have lived a happy woman in some common walk of life. One of his biographers a.s.serts that "he continued to be haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, which pursued him like an Orestes," and even Trelawny, who knew him only in the last months of his life, said that the impression of that dreadful moment was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelings in some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817 (Forman, 3 148.); and though he did not often speak of Harriet, Peac.o.c.k has recorded one memorable occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to a friend. (Fraser, January, 1860, page 102.)

Sh.e.l.ley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation in the society of Leigh Hunt. The friends.h.i.+p extended to him by that excellent man at this season of his trouble may perhaps count for something with those who are inclined to judge him harshly. Two important events followed immediately upon the tragedy. The first was Sh.e.l.ley's marriage with Mary G.o.dwin on the 30th of December, 1816. Whether Sh.e.l.ley would have taken this step except under strong pressure from without, appears to me very doubtful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the most resolutely bent on confirming his theories by his practice; and in this instance there was no valid reason why he should not act up to principles professed in common by himself and the partner of his fortunes, no less than by her father and mother. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that he yielded to arguments; and these arguments must have been urged by G.o.dwin, who had never treated him with cordiality since he left England in 1816. G.o.dwin, though overrated in his generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Sh.e.l.ley, was a man whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. His conduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of a self-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed when Sh.e.l.ley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradiction with his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified in concluding that he worried Sh.e.l.ley, the one enthusiastic and thorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite of his disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmise that G.o.dwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bear the name of a future baronet.

The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was inst.i.tuted; at the conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Sh.e.l.ley of his son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in "Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children were placed in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance with principles diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Sh.e.l.ley's income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thus sternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim, to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own impulsiveness, his reckless a.s.sumption of the heaviest responsibilities, his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the world's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pa.s.s--to the suicide of the woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspring whom he loved.

Sh.e.l.ley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we may learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or h.e.l.lenic story. His life was a tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of erring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of justice as established in the daily sanct.i.ties of human life; and now he had to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated like the dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be a rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial of his moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had been granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the enn.o.bling spectacle of one who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter fruits, into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rect.i.tude of Sh.e.l.ley's over-daring nature and the circ.u.mstances of ordinary existence, which makes his history so tragic; and we may justly wonder whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did not apply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own fortunes.

CHAPTER 5.

LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY.

Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his children, and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and with the cloud of what he thought swift-coming death above his head, Sh.e.l.ley worked steadily, during the summer of 1817, upon his poem of "Laon and Cythna".

Six months were spent in this task. "The poem," to borrow Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's words, "was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished for peculiar beauty." Whenever Sh.e.l.ley could, he composed in the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and the Baths of Caracalla were the birthplace of "Prometheus". "The Cenci" was written on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The Cascine of Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, and the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of his loveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", was transferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia.

If "Alastor" had expressed one side of Sh.e.l.ley's nature, his devotion to Ideal Beauty, "Laon and Cythna" was in a far profounder sense representative of its author. All his previous experiences and all his aspirations--his pa.s.sionate belief in friends.h.i.+p, his principle of the equality of women with men, his demand for bloodless revolution, his confidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, his doctrine of free love, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious intolerance and tyranny--are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos of this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and sister, not because he believed in the desirability of incest, but because he wished to throw a glove down to society, and to attack the intolerance of custom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells us that it was his purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers "a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind;" to ill.u.s.trate "the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and to celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world."

The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that are Sh.e.l.ley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to freedom at the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph of the good cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the martyrdom of the hero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing victim. It is full of thrilling incidents and lovely pictures; yet the tale is the least part of the poem; and few readers have probably been able either to sympathize with its visionary characters, or to follow the narrative without weariness. As in the case of other poems by Sh.e.l.ley--especially those in which he attempted to tell a story, for which kind of art his genius was not well suited--the central motive of "Laon and Cythna" is surrounded by so radiant a photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it is difficult to fix our gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of splendour. Yet no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the lovely fifth, without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here tried the full strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was by no means recognized when "Laon and Cythna" first appeared before the public. Hooted down, derided, stigmatized, and howled at, it only served to intensify the prejudice with which the author of "Queen Mab" had come to be regarded.

I have spoken of this poem under its first name of "Laon and Cythna". A certain number of copies were issued with this t.i.tle (How many copies were put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have been many more than the traditional three; for when I was a boy at Harrow, I picked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for the price of 2 s.h.i.+llings and 6 pence a piece.); but the publisher, Ollier, not without reason dreaded the effect the book would make; he therefore induced Sh.e.l.ley to alter the relations.h.i.+p between the hero and his bride, and issued the old sheets with certain cancelled pages under the t.i.tle of "Revolt of Islam". It was published in January, 1818. While still resident at Marlow, Sh.e.l.ley began two autobiographical poems--the one "Prince Athanase," which he abandoned as too introspective and morbidly self-a.n.a.lytical, the other, "Rosalind and Helen", which he finished afterwards in Italy. Of the second of these compositions he entertained a poor opinion; nor will it bear comparison with his best work. To his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of Lionel, drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the man he would have wished to be. The poet in "Alastor", Laon in the "Revolt of Islam", Lionel in "Rosalind and Helen", and Prince Athanase, are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in the tone and scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. Later on in life, Sh.e.l.ley outgrew this preoccupation with his idealized self, and directed his genius to more objective themes. Yet the autobiographic tendency, as befitted a poet of the highest lyric type, remained to the end a powerful characteristic.

Before quitting the first period of Sh.e.l.ley's development, it may be well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative poetry which characterized it; and since it is difficult to detach a single pa.s.sage from the continuous stanzas of "Laon and Cythna", I have chosen the lines in "Rosalind and Helen" which describe young Lionel:

To Lionel, Though of great wealth and lineage high, Yet through those dungeon walls there came Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!

And as the meteor's midnight flame Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth Flashed on his visionary youth, And filled him, not with love, but faith.

And hope, and courage mute in death; For love and life in him were twins, Born at one birth: in every other First life, then love its course begins, Though they be children of one mother; And so through this dark world they fleet Divided, till in death they meet: But he loved all things ever. Then He past amid the strife of men, And stood at the throne of armed power Pleading for a world of woe: Secure as one on a rock-built tower O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, 'Mid the pa.s.sions wild of human kind He stood, like a spirit calming them; For, it was said, his words could find Like music the lulled crowd, and stem That torrent of unquiet dream, Which mortals truth and reason deem, But IS revenge and fear and pride.

Joyous he was; and hope and peace On all who heard him did abide, Raining like dew from his sweet talk, As where the evening star may walk Along the brink of the gloomy seas, Liquid mists of splendour quiver.

His very gestures touch'd to tears The unpersuaded tyrant, never So moved before: his presence stung The torturers with their victim's pain, And none knew how; and through their ears, The subtle witchcraft of his tongue Unlocked the hearts of those who keep Gold, the world's bond of slavery.

Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see One sow what he could never reap: For he is rich, they said, and young, And might drink from the depths of luxury.

If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd The champion of a trampled creed: If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned 'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, Those who would sit near Power must toil; And such, there sitting, all may see.

During the year he spent at Marlow, Sh.e.l.ley was a frequent visitor at Leigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and the brothers Smith, authors of "Rejected Addresses". Hunt's recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and Peac.o.c.k fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing the manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: "He rose early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job." Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, in her note on the "Revolt of Islam", confirms this account of his Bible studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style may be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the Gospels. "His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes on that point." We have only to read Sh.e.l.ley's "Essay on Christianity", in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to a sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed by many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on the subject. It is certain that, as Christianity pa.s.ses beyond its mediaeval phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more approximate to Sh.e.l.ley's exposition. Here and here only is a vital faith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructible because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of divers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Sh.e.l.ley of all men a clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but it was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to its Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and superst.i.tion, which in his opinion had r.e.t.a.r.ded the growth of free inst.i.tutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, he distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their Lord if he returned to earth.

That Sh.e.l.ley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To help the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he cheerfully discharged. "His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He inquired personally into the circ.u.mstances of his pet.i.tioners, visited the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, whom he a.s.sisted with small sums to make up their accounts." At Marlow, the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his energies; and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical ill.u.s.tration of Christ's parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called poor that Sh.e.l.ley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to his friends. Peac.o.c.k received from him an annual allowance of 100 pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and he discharged debts of G.o.dwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds.

In his pamphlet on "Putting Reform to the Vote", he offered to subscribe 100 pounds for the purpose of founding an a.s.sociation; and we have already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500 pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied; and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out of which 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will be understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that he was in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raising funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters of expenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, this heir of the richest baronet in Suss.e.x ill.u.s.trated by his own conduct those principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity which formed his political and social creed.

A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless sentence of Leigh Hunt's. "He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus." Fancy Sh.e.l.ley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of "Laon and Cythna", between the Apollo of the Belvedere and Venus de' Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother and Allegra, lived as Sh.e.l.ley's guests; and here Clara Sh.e.l.ley was born on the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Sh.e.l.ley suffered from a severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, that the Chancellor might lay his vulture's talons on the children of his second marriage, were the motives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of 1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric "The billows on the beach.") He never returned. Four years only of life were left to him--years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts.

It was on the 11th of March that the Sh.e.l.leys took their departure with Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, and after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and Rome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Sh.e.l.ley's letters to Peac.o.c.k form the invaluable record of this period of his existence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of descriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged with colour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of Italy, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate in observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated grace, combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a style at once familiar and elevated. That Sh.e.l.ley's sensibility to art was not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enough in many pa.s.sages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in his comments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works of antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the people made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, the spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous critic's verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were s.p.a.ce for a long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, 1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently characteristic pa.s.sage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:--

"The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circ.u.mscribed energy of mind; that of Ta.s.so is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into a smaller compa.s.s than one expected from the beginning of the word.

It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek in what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to attempt to inspire others with them."

In the middle of August, Sh.e.l.ley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in a thunderstorm. "Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of this excursion--a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti as the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatment of ordinary things." The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, ranks among Sh.e.l.ley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of Byron's life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of the sunset and the island of San Lazzaro:--

Oh!

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers Of cities they encircle!--it was ours To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola.

As those who pause on some delightful way, Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the sh.o.r.e, Paved with the image of the sky. The h.o.a.r And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared Between the east and west; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep west into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills. They were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seem from Lido through the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-- And then, as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade,"

Said my companion, "I will show you soon A better station." So o'er the lagune We glided; and from that funereal bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

I was about to speak, when--"We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row.

"Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell."

I looked, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island, such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile,-- A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,-- We could just hear its coa.r.s.e and iron tongue: The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled In strong and black relief--"What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"-- Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour, Those who may cross the water hear that bell, Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers."

It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar quotations from Sh.e.l.ley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":--