[From _Blackwood's Magazine_, September, 1820]
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND"
Whatever may be the difference of men's opinions concerning the measure
of Mr. Shelley's poetical power, there is one point in regard to which
all must be agreed, and that is his Audacity. In the old days of the
exulting genius of Greece, Aeschylus dared two things which astonished
all men, and which still astonish them--to exalt contemporary men into
the personages of majestic tragedies--and to call down and embody into
tragedy, without degradation, the elemental spirits of nature and the
deeper essences of Divinity. We scarcely know whether to consider the
_Persians_ or the _Prometheus Bound_ as the most extraordinary display
of what has always been esteemed the most audacious spirit that ever
expressed its workings in poetry. But what shall we say of the young
English poet who has now attempted, not only a flight as high as the
highest of Aeschylus, but the very flight of that father of tragedy--who
has dared once more to dramatise Prometheus--and, most wonderful of all,
to dramatise the _deliverance_ of Prometheus--which is known to have
formed the subject of a lost tragedy of Aeschylus no ways inferior in
mystic elevation to that of the [Greek: Desmotaes].
Although a fragment of that perished master-piece be still extant in the
Latin version of Attius--it is quite impossible to conjecture what were
the personages introduced in the tragedy of Aeschylus, or by what train
of passions and events he was able to sustain himself on the height of
that awful scene with which his surviving _Prometheus_ terminates. It is
impossible, however, after reading what is left of that famous
trilogy,[1] to suspect that the Greek poet symbolized any thing whatever
by the person of Prometheus, except the native strength of human
intellect itself--its strength of endurance above all others--its
sublime power of patience. STRENGTH and FORCE are the two agents who
appear on this darkened theatre to bind the too benevolent Titan--_Wit_
and _Treachery_, under the forms of Mercury and Oceanus, endeavour to
prevail upon him to make himself free by giving up his dreadful secret;--
but _Strength_ and _Force_, and _Wit_ and _Treason_, are all alike
powerless to overcome the resolution of that suffering divinity, or to
win from him any acknowledgment of the new tyrant of the skies. Such was
this simple and sublime allegory in the hands of Aeschylus. As to what
had been the original purpose of the framers of the allegory, that is a
very different question, and would carry us back into the most hidden
places of the history of mythology. No one, however, who compares the
mythological systems of different races and countries, can fail to
observe the frequent occurrence of certain great leading Ideas and
leading Symbolisations of ideas too--which Christians are taught to
contemplate with a knowledge that is the knowledge of reverence. Such,
among others, are unquestionably the ideas of an Incarnate Divinity
suffering on account of mankind--conferring benefits on mankind at the
expense of his own suffering;--the general idea of vicarious atonement
itself--and the idea of the dignity of suffering as an exertion of
intellectual might--all of which may be found, more or less obscurely
shadowed forth, in the original [Greek: Mythos] of Prometheus the Titan,
the enemy of the successful rebel and usurper Jove. We might have also
mentioned the idea of a _deliverer_, waited for patiently through ages
of darkness, and at least arriving in the person of the child of Io--
but, in truth, there is no pleasure, and would be little propriety, in
seeking to explain all this at greater length, considering, what we
cannot consider without deepest pain, the very different views which
have been taken of the original allegory by Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley.
[1] There was another and an earlier play of Aeschylus, Prometheus the
Fire-Stealer, which is commonly supposed to have made part of the
series; but the best critics, we think, are of opinion, that that
was entirely a satirical piece.
It would be highly absurd to deny, that this gentleman has manifested
very extraordinary powers of language and imagination in his treatment
of the allegory, however grossly and miserably he may have tried to
pervert its purpose and meaning. But of this more anon. In the meantime,
what can be more deserving of reprobation than the course which he is
allowing his intellect to take, and that too at the very time when he
ought to be laying the foundations of a lasting and honourable name.
There is no occasion for going round about the bush to hint what the
poet himself has so unblushingly and sinfully blazoned forth in every
part of his production. With him, it is quite evident that the Jupiter
whose downfall has been predicted by Prometheus, means nothing more than
Religion in general, that is, every human system of religious belief;
and that, with the fall of this, he considers it perfectly necessary (as
indeed we also believe, though with far different feelings) that every
system of human government also should give way and perish. The patience
of the contemplative spirit in Prometheus is to be followed by the
daring of the active demagorgon, at whose touch all "old thrones" are at
once and for ever to be cast down into the dust. It appears too plainly,
from the luscious pictures with which his play terminates, that Mr.
Shelley looks forward to an unusual relaxation of all moral _rules_--or
rather, indeed, to the extinction of all moral feelings, except that of
a certain mysterious indefinable _kindliness_, as the natural and
necessary result of the overthrow of all civil government and religious
belief. It appears, still more wonderfully, that he contemplates this
state of things as the ideal SUMMUM BONUM. In short, it is quite
impossible that there should exist a more pestiferous mixture of
blasphemy, sedition, and sensuality, than is visible in the whole
structure and strain of this poem--which, nevertheless, and
notwithstanding all the detestation its principles excite, must and will
be considered by all that read it attentively, as abounding in poetical
beauties of the highest order--as presenting many specimens not easily
to be surpassed, of the moral sublime of eloquence--as overflowing with
pathos, and most magnificent in description. Where can be found a
spectacle more worthy of sorrow than such a man performing and glorying
in the performance of such things? His evil ambition,--from all he has
yet written, but most of all, from what he has last and best written,
his _Prometheus_,--appears to be no other, than that of attaining the
highest place among those poets,--enemies, not friends, of their
species, who, as a great and virtuous poet has well said (putting evil
consequence close after evil cause).