* On August 4, 1892, the centenary of Shelley's birth was
celebrated at Horsham, where it is intended to found a
Shelley Library, if not a Shelley Museum. The celebrants
were a motley collection. They were all concealing the
poet's principles and paying honor to a bogus Shelley. A
more honest celebration took place in the evening at the
Hall of Science, Old-street, London, E.C. Six or seven
hundred people were addressed by Dr. Furnivall, Gr. B. Shaw,
and G. W. Foote; and every pointed reference to Shelley's
religious, social, and political heresy was enthusiastically
applauded.
Charles Darwin, the Newton of biology, was an Agnostic--which is only a
respectable synonym for an Atheist. The more he looked for God the
less he could find him. Yet the corpse of this great "infidel" lies in
Westminster Abbey, We need not wonder, therefore, that Christians and
even parsons are on the Shelley Centenary committee, or that Mr.
Edmund Gosse was chosen to officiate as high pontiff at the Horsham
celebration. Mr. Gosse is a young man with a promising past--to borrow a
witticism from Heine. In the old _Examiner_ days he hung about the army
of revolt. Since then he has become a bit of a Philistine, though he
still affects a superior air, and retains a pretty way of turning a
sentence. The selection of such a man to pronounce the eulogy on Shelley
was in keeping with the whole proceedings at Horsham, where everybody
was lauding a "bogus Shelley," as Mr. Shaw remarked at the Hall of
Science celebration.
Mr. Gosse was good enough to tell the Horsham celebrants that "it
was not the poet who was attacked" in Shelley's case, but "the
revolutionist, the enemy of kings and priests, the extravagant
and paradoxical humanitarian." Mr. Gosse generously called this an
"intelligent aversion," and in another sense than his it undoubtedly was
so. The classes, interests, and abuses that were threatened by Shelley's
principles, acted with the intelligence of self-preservation. They gave
him an ill name and would gladly have hung him. Yes, it was, beyond all
doubt, an "intelligent aversion." Byron only dallied with the false and
foolish beliefs of his age, but Shelley meant mischief. This accounts
for the hatred shown towards him by orthodoxy and privilege.
Mr. Gosse himself appears to have an "intelligent aversion" to Shelley's
_principles_. He professes a great admiration for Shelley's _poetry_;
but he regards it as a sort of beautiful landscape, which has no other
purpose than gratifying the aesthetic taste of the spectator. For the
poet's _teaching_ he feels or affects a lofty contempt. Shelley the
singer was a marvel of delicacy and power; but Shelley the thinker was
at best a callow enthusiast. Had he lived as long as Mr. Gosse,
and moved in the same dignified society, he would have acquired an
"intelligent aversion" to the indiscretions of his youthful passion for
reforming the world; but fate decided otherwise, and he is unfortunate
enough to be the subject of Mr. Gosse's admonitions.
Shelley lived like a Spartan; a hunk of bread and a jug of water, dashed
perhaps with milk, served him as a dinner. His income was spent on the
poor, on struggling men of genius, and on necessitous friends. Now
as the world goes, this is simply asinine; and Mr. Gosse plays to the
Philistine gallery by sneering at Shelley's vegetarianism, and playfully
describing him as an "eater of buns and raisins." It was also lamented
by Mr. Gosse that Shelley, as a "hater of kings," had an attraction for
"revolutionists," a set of persons with whom Mr. Gosse would have no
sort of dealings except through the policeman. "Social anarchists,"
likewise, gathered "around the husband of Godwin's daughter"--a pregnant
denunciation, though it leaves us in doubt whether Shelley, Godwin, or
Mary was the anarch, or all three of them together; while the "husband"
seems to imply that getting married was one of the gravest of Shelley's
offences.
But the worst of all is to come: "Those to whom the restraints of
religion were hateful marshalled themselves under the banner of the
youth who had rashly styled himself as an Atheist, forgetful of the
fact that All his best writings attest that, whatever name he might
call himself, he, more than any other poet of the age, saw God in
everything."
We beg to tell Mr. Gosse that he is libellous and impertinent. He knows
little or nothing of Atheists if he thinks they are only repelled by the
"restraints of religion." They have restraints of their own, quite as
numerous and imperative as those of any religionist who fears his God.
What is more, they have incentives which religion weakens. Mr. Gosse is
perhaps in a state of ignorance on this matter. He probably speaks of
the moral condition of Atheists as a famous American humorist proposed
to lecture on science, with an imagination untrammeled by the least
acquaintance with the subject.
So much (it is quite enough) for the libel; and now for the
impertinence. Mr. Gosse pretends to know Shelley's mind better than
he knew it himself. Shelley called himself an Atheist; that is
indisputable; but he did so "rashly." He was mistaken about his own
opinions; he knew a great many things, but he was ignorant of himself.
But the omniscient Mr. Gosse was born (or _was_ he born?) to rectify
the poet's blunder, and assure the world that he was a Theist without
knowing it--in fact, a really God-intoxicated person.
What wonder is it that Mr. Gosse became intoxicated in turn, and soared
in a rapture of panegyric over a Shelley of his own construction? "The
period of prejudice is over," he exclaimed, "and we are gathered here
to-day under the auspices of the greatest poet our language has produced
since Shelley died, encouraged by universal public opinion and by
dignitaries of all the professions--yea, even by prelates of our
national Church." Here the preacher's intoxication became maudlin, and
there should have been an interval for soda-water.
Curiously enough, the very last page of Trelawny's _Records of Shelley
and Byron_ contains a conversation between that gallant friend of the
two poets and a "prelate of our national Church."
"Some years ago, one of the most learned of the English Bishops
questioned me regarding Shelley; he expressed both admiration and
astonishment at his learning and writings. I said to the Bishop, 'You
know he was an Atheist.' He said, 'Yes.' I answered: 'It is the key
and the distinguishing quality of all he wrote. Now that people are
beginning to distinguish men by their works, and not creeds, the
critics, to bring him into vogue, are trying to make out that Shelley
was not an Atheist, that he was rather a religious man. Would it be
right in me, or anyone who knew him, to aid or sanction such a fraud?'
The Bishop said: 'Certainly not, there is nothing righteous but truth.'
And there our conversation ended."
Trelawny's bishop was willing (outside church, and in private
conversation) to deprecate prejudice and acknowledge the supremacy of
truth; and perhaps for that reason he allowed that Shelley _was_ an
Atheist. Mr. Gosse's bishops will soon be converting him into a pillar
of the Church.
Trelawny knew Shelley a great deal better than Mr. Gosse. He enjoyed an
intimate friendship with the poet, not in his callow days, but during
the last year or two of his life, when his intellect was mature, and his
genius was pouring forth the great works that secure his immortality.
During that time Shelley professed the opinions he enunciated in _Queen
Mab_. He said that the matter of that poem was good; it was only the
treatment that was immature. Again and again he told Trelawny that he
was content to know nothing of the origin of the universe; that religion
was chiefly a means of deceiving and robbing the people; that it
fomented hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness; and that it also
fettered the intellect, deterring men from solving the problems of
individual and social life, as well as the problems of nature, out of
regard for the supposed oracles of Omniscience, which were after all the
teachings of bigoted and designing priests. Shelley called himself an
Atheist; he wrote "Atheist" after his name on a famous occasion; and
Trelawny says "he never regretted having done this."
"The principal fault I have to find," wrote Trelawny, "is that the
Shelleyan writers, being Christians themselves, seem to think that a man
of genius cannot be an Atheist, and so they strain their own faculties
to disprove what Shelley asserted from the earliest stage of his career
to the last day of his life. He ignored all religions as superstitions."
On another occasion Shelley said to Trelawny--"The knaves are the
cleverest; they profess to know everything; the fools believe them, and
so they govern the world." Which is a most sagacious observation. He
said that "Atheist!" in the mouth of orthodoxy was "a word of abuse to
stop discussion, a painted devil to frighten the foolish, a threat to
intimidate the wise and good."
Mr. Gosse may reply that Shelley's conversations with Trelawny are not
absolute evidence; that they were written down long afterwards, and that
we cannot be sure of Shelley's using the precise words attributed to
him. Very well then; be it so. Mr. Gosse has appealed to Shelley's
"writings," and to Shelley's writings we will go. True, the epithet
"best" is inserted by Mr. Gosse as a saving qualification; but we shall
disregard it, partly because "best" is a disputable adjective, but more
because _all_ Shelley's writings attest his Atheism.
Let us first go to Shelley's prose, not because it is his "best" work
(though some parts of it are exquisitely beautiful, often very powerful,
and always chaste), but because prose is less open than verse to false
conception and interpretation. In the fine fragment "On Life" he acutely
observes that "Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties,
and beyond that experience how vain is argument! cannot create, it can
only perceive." And he concludes "It is infinitely improbable that
the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind." Be it
observed, however, that Shelley does not dogmatise. He simply cannot
conceive that mind is the _basis_ of all things. The cause of life is
still obscure. "All recorded generations of mankind," Shelley says,
"have wearily-busied themselves in inventing answers to this question;
and the result has been--Religion."
Shelley's essay "On a Future State" follows the same line of reasoning
as his essay "On Life." He considers it highly probable that _thought_
is "no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely
varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which
ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their positions with
regard to each other." His conclusion is that "the desire to be for ever
as we are, the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change," which
is common to man and other living beings, is the "secret persuasion
which has given birth to the opinions of a future state."
If we turn to Shelley's published letters we shall find abundant
expressions of hostility to and contempt for religion. Those letters may
deserve the praise of Matthew Arnold or the censure of Mr. Swinburne;
but, in either case, they may be taken as honest documents, written
to all sorts of private friends, and never intended for publication.
Byron's letters were passed about freely, and largely written for
effect; Shelley's were written under ordinary conditions, and he
unbosomed himself with freedom and sincerity.
From one of his early letters we find that he contemplated a translation
of the _System of Nature_, which is frequently quoted in the notes
to _Queen Mob_. He couples Jehovah and Mammon together as fit for the
worship of "those who delight in wickedness and slavery." In a letter
to Henry Reveley he pictures God as delighted with his creation of the
earth, and seeing it spin round the sun; and imagines him taking out
"patents to supply all the suns in space with the same manufacture."
When the poet was informed by Oilier that a certain gentleman (it was
Archdeacon Hare) hoped he would humble his soul and "receive the spirit
into him," Shelley replied: "if you know him personally, pray ask him
from me what he means by receiving the _spirit into me_; and (if really
it is any good) how one is to get at it." He goes on to say: "I was
immeasurably amused by the quotation from Schlegel about the way in
which the popular faith is destroyed--first the Devil, then the Holy
Ghost, then God the Father. I had written a Lucianic essay to prove the
same thing." In the very year of his death, writing to John Gisborne, he
girds at the popular faith in God, and with reference to one of its most
abhorrent doctrines he exclaims--"As if, after sixty years' suffering
here, we were to be roasted alive for sixty million more in hell, or
charitably annihilated by a _coup de grâce_ of the bungler who brought
us into existence at first."--A dozen other quotations from Shelley's
letters might be given, all to pretty much the same effect, but the
foregoing must suffice.
A thorough analysis of Shelley's poetry, showing the essential Atheism
which runs through it from beginning to end, would require more space
than we have at our command. We shall therefore simply point out, by
means of instances, how indignantly or contemptuously he always refers
to religion as the great despot and impostor of mankind.
The _Revolt of Islam_ stigmatises "Faith" as "an obscene worm." The
sonnet on the Fall of Bonaparte concludes with a reference to "Bloody
Faith, the foulest birth of time." Shelley frequently conceives Faith as
serpentine and disgusting. In _Rosalind and Helen_ he writes--
Grey Power was seated
Safely on her ancestral throne;
And Faith, the Python, undefeated,
Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on
Her foul and wounded train.
In the great and splendid _Ode to Liberty_ the image undergoes a
Miltonic sublimation.
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves
Hung tyranny; beneath, sat deified
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves.
Invariably does the poet class religion and oppression
together--"Religion veils her eyes: Oppression shrinks
aghast."--"Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred
brood."--"And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne."
Mr. Herbert Spencer writes with learning and eloquence about the Power
of the Universe and the Unknowable. Shelley pricked this bubble of
speculation in the following passage:
What is that Power?
Some moonstruck sophist stood
Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown
Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood
The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,
His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown.
In one verse of the _Ode to Liberty_ the poet exclaims:
O that the free would stamp the impious name
Of ------ into the dust or write it there.
What is the omitted word? Mr. Swinburne says the only possible word
is--God. We agree with him. Anything else would be a ridiculous
anti-climax, and quite inconsistent with the powerful description of--
This foul gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm,
The axes and the rods that awe mankind.
"Pope" and "Christ" are alike impossible. With respect to "mankind" they
are but local designations. The word must be universal. It is _God_.
The glorious speech of the Spirit of the Hour, which terminates the
third Act of _Prometheus Unbound_--that superb drama of emancipate
Humanity--lumps together "Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons,"
as parts of one gigantic system of spiritual and temporal misrule. Man,
when redeemed from falsehood and evil, rejects his books "of reasoned
wrong, glozed on by ignorance"; and the veil is torn aside from all
"believed and hoped." And what is the result? Let the Spirit of the Hour
answer.
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man
Passionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them;
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
What a triumphant flight! The poet springs from earth and is speedily
away beyond sight--almost beyond conception--like an elemental thing.
But his starting-point is definite enough. Man is exempt from awe and
worship; from spiritual as well as political and social slavery; king
over himself, ruling the anarchy of his own passions. And the same idea
is sung by Demogorgon at the close of the fifth Act. The "Earth-born's
spell yawns for heaven's despotism," and "Conquest is dragged captive
through the deep."
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to re-assume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
This is the Atheism of Shelley. Man is to conquer, by love and hope and
thought and endurance, his birthright of happiness and dignity. Humanity
is to take the place of God.
It has been argued that if Shelley had lived he would have repented
the "indiscretions of his youth," and gravitated towards a more
"respectable" philosophy. Well, it is easy to prophesy; and just
as easy, and no less effectual, to meet the prophet with a flat
contradiction. "Might have been" is no better than "might not have
been." Was it not declared that Charles Bradlaugh would have become a
Christian if he had lived long enough? Was not the same asserted of John
Stuart Mill? One was nearly sixty, the other nearly seventy; and we
have to wonder what is the real age of intellectual maturity. Only a
few weeks before his death, Shelley wrote of Christianity that "no man of
sense could think it true." That was his deliberate and final judgment.
Had he lived long enough to lose his sense; had he fallen a victim to
some nervous malady, or softening of the brain; had he lingered on to
a more than ripe (a rotten) old age, in which senility may unsay the
virile words of manhood; it is conceivable that Shelley might have
become a devotee of the faith he had despised. But none of these things
did happen. What Shelley _was_ is the only object of sane discussion.
And what he was we know--an Atheist, a lover of Humanity.