LATER WORKS.
The writing of these novels, with other literary work we must refer
to, passed over the many years of Mrs. Shelley's life until 1837, and
saved her from the ennui of a quiet life in London with few friends.
Certainly in Mary's case there had been a reason for the neglect of
"Society," which at times she bitterly deplored; and as she had little
other than intellectual and amiable qualities to recommend her for
many years, she was naturally not sought after by the more successful
of her contemporaries. There are instances even of her being cruelly
mortified by marked rudeness at some receptions she attended; in one
case years later, when her fidelity to her husband and his memory
might have appeased the sternest moralist. During these early years,
which she writes of afterwards as years of privation which caused her
to shed many bitter tears at the time, though they were frequently
gilded by imagination, Mrs. Shelley was cheered by seeing her son grow
up entirely to her satisfaction, passing through the child's stage and
the school-boy's at Harrow, from which place he proceeded to
Cambridge; and many and substantially happy years must have been
passed, during which Claire was not forgotten. Poor Claire, who passed
through much severe servitude, from which Mary would fain have spared
her, as she wrote once to Mr. Trelawny that this was one of her chief
reasons for wishing for independence; but "Old Time," or "Eternity,"
as she called Sir Timothy, who certainly had no reason to claim her
affection, was long in passing; and though a small allowance before
1831 of three hundred pounds a year had increased to four hundred
pounds a year when her only child reached his majority in 1841, for
this, on Sir Timothy's death, she had to repay thirteen thousand
pounds. It had enabled her to make a tour in Germany with her son; of
this journey we will speak after referring to her _Lives of Eminent
Literary Men_.
These lives, written for _Lardner's Cyclopedia_, and published in
1835, are a most interesting series of biographies written by a woman
who could appreciate the poet's character, and enter into the
injustices and sorrows from which few poets have been exempt. They
show careful study, her knowledge of various countries gives local
colour to her descriptions, and her love of poetry makes her an
admirable critic. She is said to have written all the Italian and
Spanish lives with the exception of Galileo and Tasso; and certainly
her writing contrasts most favourably with the life of Tasso, to
whomever this may have been assigned. Mary was much disappointed at
not having this particular sketch to write.
To her life of Dante she affixes Byron's lines from _The Prophecy of
Dante_--
'Tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be racked
In life; to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone.
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims, come from climes where they have known
The name of him who now is but a name,
Spread his, by him unheard, unheeded fame.
Mary felt how these beautiful lines were appropriate to more than one
poet. Freedom from affectation, and a genuine love of her subject,
make her biographies most readable, and for the ordinary reader there
is a fund of information. The next life--that of Petrarch--is equally
attractive; in fact, there is little that can exceed the interest of
lives of these immortal beings when written--with the comprehension
here displayed. Even the complicated history of the period is made
clear, and the poet, whose tortures came from the heart, is as
feelingly touched on as he who suffered from the political factions of
the Bianchi and the Neri, and who felt the steepness of other's stairs
and the salt savour of other's bread. Petrarch's banishment through
love is not less feelingly described, and we are taken to the life and
the homes of the time in the living descriptions given by Mary. One
passage ought in fairness to be given to show her enthusiastic
understanding and appreciation of the poet she writes of:--
Dante, as hath been already intimated, is the hero of his own poem;
and the Divina Commedia is the only example of an attempt triumphantly
achieved, and placed beyond the reach of scorn or neglect, wherein
from beginning to end the author discourses concerning himself
individually. Had this been done in any other way than the
consummately simple, delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has
adopted, the whole would have been insufferable egotism, disgusting
coxcombry, or oppressive dulness. Whereas, this personal identity is
the charm, the strength, the soul of the book; he lives, he breathes,
he moves through it; his pulse beats or stands still, his eye kindles
or fades, his cheek grows pale with horror, colours with shame, or
burns with indignation; we hear his voice, his step, in every page; we
see his shape by the flame of hell; his shadow in the land where
there is no _other_ shadow (_Purgatoria_) and his countenance
gaining angelic elevation from "colloquy sublime" with glorified
intelligence in the paradise above. Nor does he ever go out of his
natural character. He is, indeed, the lover from infancy of Beatrice,
the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant soldier
in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of
Guelphs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the
school of theology, the melancholy exile wandering from court to
court, depending for bread and shelter on petty princes who knew not
his worth, except as a splendid captive in their train; and above all,
he is the poet anticipating his own assured renown (though not
obtrusively so), and dispensing at his will honour or infamy to
others, whom he need but to name, and the sound must be heard to the
end of time and echoed from all regions of the globe. Dante in his
vision is Dante as he lived, as he died, and as he expected to live in
both worlds beyond death--an immortal spirit in the one, an
unforgotten poet in the other.
You feel this is written from the heart of the woman who herself felt
as she wrote. We would fain go through her different biographies,
tracing her feelings, her appreciation, and poetic enthusiasm
throughout, but that is impossible. She takes us through Boccaccio's
life, and, as by the reflection of a sunset from a mirror, we are
warmed with the glow and mirth from distant and long-past times in
Italy. One feels through her works the innate delicacy of her mind.
Through Boccaccio's life, as through all the others, the history of
the times and the noteworthy facts concerning the poets are brought
forward--such as the sums of money Boccaccio spent, though poor, to
promote the study of Greek, so long before the taking of
Constantinople by the Turks. In the friendship of Petrarch and
Boccaccio, she shows how great souls can love, and makes you love them
in return, and you feel the riches of the meetings of such people,
these dictators of mankind--not of a faction-tossed country or
continent. How paltry do the triumphs of conquerors which end with the
night, the feasts of princes which leave still hungry, appear beside
the triumphs of intellect, the symposium of souls.
After Boccaccio, Mary rapidly ran over the careers of Lorenzo de'
Medici, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Politian, and the Pulci,
exhibiting again, after the lapse of a century, the study in Italy of
the Greek language. The story of the truly great prince with his
circle of poet friends, one of whom, Politian, died of a broken heart
at the death of his beloved patron, is well told. From these she
passes on to the followers of the romantic style begun by Pulci, Cieco
da Ferrara, Burchiello, Bojardo; then Berni, born at the end of the
fifteenth century, who carried on or recast Bojardo's _Orlando
Innamorato_, which was followed by Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_,
the delight of Italy. In Ariosto's life Mary, as ever, delights in
showing the filial affection and fine traits of the poet's nature.
She quotes his lines--
Our mother's years with pity fill my heart,
For without infamy she could not be
By all of us at once forsaken.
But with these commendations she strongly denounces the profligacy of
his writing as presumably of his life. She says: "An author may not be
answerable to posterity for the evil of his mortal life; but for the
profligacy of that life which he lives through after ages,
contaminating by irrepressible and incurable infection the minds of
others, he is amenable even in his grave."
Through the intricacies of Machiavelli Mary's clear head and
conscientious treatment lead the reader till light appears to gleam.
The many-sided character of the man comes out, the difficulties of the
time he wrote in, while advising Princes how to act in times of
danger, and so admonishing the people how to resist. Did he not
foresee tyranny worked out and resistance complete, and his own
favourite republic succeeding to the death of tyrants? One remark of
Mary's with regard to the time when Machiavelli considered himself
most neglected is worth recording: "He bitterly laments the inaction
of his life, and expresses an ardent desire to be employed. Meanwhile
he created occupation for himself, and it is one of the lessons that
we may derive from becoming acquainted with the feelings and actions
of celebrated men, to learn that this very period during which
Machiavelli repined at the neglect of his contemporaries, and the
tranquillity of his life, was that during which his fame took root,
and which brought his name down to us. He occupied his leisure in
writing those works which have occasioned his immortality."
A short life of Guicciardini follows; then Mrs. Shelley comes to the
congenial subject of Vittoria Colonna, the noble widow of the Marquis
of Pescara, the dear friend in her latter years of Michael Angelo, the
woman whose writings, accomplishments, and virtues have made her the
pride of Italy. With her Mary Shelley gives a few of the long list of
names of women who won fame in Italy from their intellect:--the
beautiful daughter of a professor, who lectured behind a veil in
Petrarch's time; the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici, Ippolita Sforza;
Alessandra Scala; Isotta of Padua; Bianca d'Este; Damigella Torella;
Cassandra Fedele. We next pass to the life of Guarini, and missing
Tasso, whose life Mary Shelley did not write, we come to Chiabrera,
who tried to introduce the form of Greek poetry into Italian. Tassoni,
Marini, Filicaja are agreeable, but shortly touched on. Then
Metastasio is reached, whose youthful genius as an _improvisatore
early gained him applause, which was followed up by his successful
writing of three-act dramas for the opera, and a subsequent calm and
prosperous life at Vienna, under the successive protection of the
Emperor Charles VI., Maria Theresa, and Joseph II. The contrast of the
even prosperity of Metastasio's life with that of some of the great
poets is striking. Next Goldoni claims attention, whose comedies of
Italian manners throw much light upon the frivolous life in society
before the French Revolution, his own career adding to the pictures of
the time. Then Alfieri's varied life-story is well told, his sad
period of youth, when taken from his mother to suffer much educational
and other neglect, the difficulties he passed through owing to his
Piedmontese origin and consequent ignorance of the pure Italian
language. She closes the modern Italian poets with Monti and Ugo
Foscolo, whose sad life in London is exhibited.
Mary's studies in Spanish enabled her to treat equally well the poets
of Spain and of Portugal. Her introduction is a good essay on the
poetry and poets of Spain, and some of the translations, which are her
own, are very happily given. The poetic impulse in Spain is traced
from the Iberians through the Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and the early
unknown Spanish poets, among whom there were many fine examples. She
leads us to Boscan at the commencement of the sixteenth century.
Boscan seems to have been one of those rare beings, a poet endowed
with all the favours of fortune, including contentment and happiness.
His friends Garcilaso di Vega and Mendoza aided greatly in the
formation of Spanish poetry, all three having studied the Italian
school and Petrarch. This century, rich in poets, gives us also Luis
de Leon, Herrera, Saade Miranda, Jorge de Montemayor, Castillejo, the
dramatists; and Ercilla, the soldier poet, who, in the expedition for
the conquest of Peru went to Arauco, and wrote the poem named
_Araucana_. From him we pass to one of the great men of all time,
Cervantes, to one who understood the workings of the human heart, and
was so much raised above the common level as to be neglected in the
magnitude of his own work. Originally of noble family, and having
served his country in war, losing his left hand at the battle of
Lepanto, he received no recognition of his services after his return
from a cruel captivity among the Moors. Instead of reward, Cervantes
seems to have met with every indignity that could be devised by the
multitudes of pigmies to lower a great man, were that possible. Mary,
as ever, rises with her subject. She remarks:--"It is certainly
curious that in those days when it was considered part of a noble's
duties to protect and patronise men of letters, Cervantes should have
been thus passed over; and thus while his book was passing through
Europe with admiration, Cervantes remained poor and neglected. So does
the world frequently honour its greatest, as if jealous of the renown
to which they can never attain."
From Cervantes we pass on to Lope de Vega, of whose thousand dramas
what remains? and yet what honours and fortune were showered upon him
during his life! A more even balance of qualities enabled him to write
entertaining plays, and to flatter the weakness of those in power.
From Gongora and Quevedo Mary passes to Calderon, whom she justly
considers the master of Spanish poetry. She deplores the little that
is known of his life, and that after him the fine period of Spanish
literature declines, owing to the tyranny and misrule which were
crushing and destroying the spirit and intellect of Spain; for,
unfortunately, art and poetry require not only the artist and the
poet, but congenial atmosphere to survive in.
Writing for this Cyclopædia was evidently very apposite work for Mrs.
Shelley. She wrote also for it lives of some of the French poets. Some
stories were also written. In these she was less happy, as likewise in
her novel, _Perkin Warbeck_, a pallid imitation of Walter Scott,
which does not call for any special comment.
Shortly after her father's death, Mrs. Shelley wrote from 14 North
Bank, Regent's Park, to Moxon, wishing to arrange with him about the
publication of Godwin's autobiography, letters, &c. But some ten years
later we find her still expressing the wish to do some work of the
kind as a solemn duty if her health would permit. Probably the very
numerous notes which Mrs. Shelley made about her father and his
surroundings were towards this object.
Mrs. Shelley's health caused her at times considerable trouble from
this period onwards. Harrow had not suited her, and in 1839 she moved
to Putney; and the next year, 1840, she was able to make the tour
above mentioned, which we cannot do better than refer to at once.