If in the year 1820, any respectable, well-educated Englishman had
been asked: "Who is Shelley?" he would undoubtedly, if he could answer
the question at all, have replied: "He is said to be a bad poet with
shocking principles and a worse than doubtful character. The _Quarterly
Review_, which is not given to defamation, says that he himself is
distinguished by 'low pride, cold selfishness, and unmanly cruelty'
and his poetry by its frequent and total want of meaning.' He has
lately published a poem called _Prometheus Unbound_, the verse of which
the same review calls 'drivelling prose run mad.' And the press is
unanimous in this opinion. The _Literary Gazette_ writes that, if it
were not assured to the contrary, it would take it for granted that
the author of _Prometheus Unbound_ was a lunatic--as his principles
are ludicrously wicked, and his poetry is a mélange of nonsense,
cockneyism, poverty, and pedantry. It calls the work in question 'the
stupid trash of this delirious dreamer.'"
And it is quite possible that our Englishman would have added, in an
undertone: "There are very bad reports in circulation about Shelley.
The _Literary Gazette_, which is always specially severe on the enemies
of religion, hints at incest. It declares that 'to such a man it would
be a matter of perfect indifference to rob a confiding father of his
daughters, and incestuously to live with all the branches of a family
whose morals were ruined by the damned sophistry of the seducer.'
These expressions may be too strong, but it is hardly credible that
they are entirely undeserved; for _Blackwood's Magazine_, the only
periodical which has been at all favourable to Shelley, writes of
his _Prometheus_; 'It seems impossible that there can exist a more
pestiferous mixture of blasphemy, sedition, and sensuality.' And you
may possibly have heard Theodore Hook's witty saying: '_Prometheus
Unbound_--it is well named: who would bind it?'"
And if, two years later, when this harshly reviewed poet was already
dead, the same curious inquirer had applied to the publisher for
information as to the saleableness of the fiercely attacked works,
the latter would quite certainly have complained of them as a bad
business speculation, and told his questioner that, during Shelley's
lifetime, not a hundred copies of any of his works, except _Queen Mab_
and _The Cenci_, had been sold, and that, as far as _Adonais_ and
_Epipsychidion_ were concerned, ten would be nearer the number.
If any one were to ask now: Who was Shelley? what a different answer
would be given! But to-day there is no one in England who would ask.
It was on the 4th of August 1792 that England's greatest lyric poet
was born. On the same day on which, in Paris, the leaders of the
Revolution--Santerre, Camille Desmoulins, and others--were meeting in
a house on the Boulevards to make the arrangements which resulted, a
few days later, in the fall of monarchy in France, there came into
the world at Field Place, in the English county of Sussex, a pretty
little boy with deep blue eyes, whose life was to be of greater and
more enduring significance in the emancipation of the human mind than
all that happened in France in August 1792. Not quite thirty years
later his name--Percy Bysshe Shelley--was carved upon the stone in the
Protestant cemetery in Rome under which his ashes lie; and below the
name are engraved the words: _Cor cordium_.
_Cor cordium_, heart of hearts--such was the simple inscription in
which Shelley's young wife summed up his character; and they are the
truest, profoundest words she could have chosen.
[Illustration: P. B. SHELLEY]
The Shelleys are an ancient and honourable family. The poet's father,
Sir Timothy Shelley, was a wealthy landowner. He was a narrow-minded
man, a supporter of the existing, for the simple reason that it
existed. But revolt against rule and convention was hereditary in
Shelley's family, as wildness and violence of temper were in Byron's.
Percy's grandfather, a strange, restless man, eloped with two of his
three wives; and two of his daughters in their turn eloped. Of these
incidents we are reminded by similar occurrences in the life of the
grandson--just as many an action of Byron's reminds us of the sum
of untamed and reckless passionateness which was his indisputable
inheritance from father and mother. Unconventionality, revolt against
hard and fast rule, was, however, but an outward and comparatively
unimportant part of Shelley's character and life. It was only a sign of
the alert receptivity and the keen sensitiveness, the early development
of which strikes every student of his biographies. At school, ill-used
himself, he rebels against the ill-treatment to which, according to the
prevalent English custom, the weaker and younger boys were subjected
by the older boys, and in this case also by the masters. Shelley seems
to have been in a very special manner the victim of this species of
brutality, just as he was in later life of many other species; there
was a natural antipathy between him and everything base and stupid and
foul, and he never entered into a compromise with any one or any thing
of this nature.
We gain a distinct idea of what his impressions were on his entrance
into life, from a fragment found after his death upon a scrap of
paper:--
"Alas! this is not what I thought life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass,
Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others."
He wrought for his soul, he tells us, "a linked armour of calm
steadfastness." But passionate indignation had preceded this mood of
quiet resistance; and the soul which he armed with steadfastness was
too enthusiastic and ardent not to lay plans of attack behind its
defences.
In the introduction to the _Revolt of Islam_, he recalls "the hour
which burst his spirit's sleep":--
"A fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose
From the near schoolroom voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes--
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
And then I clasped my hands, and looked around:
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground.
So, without shame, I spake: 'I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise
Without reproach or check.' I then controlled
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold."
The generation which was born at the same time and under the same
planet as the first French Republic was precocious in its criticism
of all traditional beliefs and conventions. Shelley, who at school
saw tyranny and feigned piety attendant on one another, and who
became acquainted at a very early age with the writings of the French
Encyclopædists and of Hume, Godwin, and other English freethinkers,
brooded deeply, long before he was grown up, on the history, the
destiny, and the errors of the human race. His thoughts were the
thoughts of an immature youth, but their spirit was the spirit of
liberty, as understood by the eighteenth century.
What his comrades remembered about him in later years was his defiant
attitude towards authority, more particularly a habit he had of
"cursing his father and the king." He went among the boys by the
name of "mad Shelley," and "Shelley the atheist." Thus early was the
opprobrious word applied to him which was to be coupled with his name
all his life, and serve as a pretext for abuse and defamation.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon those events in Shelley's life of which
every one who has heard his name has at least a superficial knowledge.
We need merely recall to mind the fact that, as the undergraduate of
eighteen, he had the curious habit of writing down his heresies on
such subjects as God, government, and society, in the form of letters,
which he sent to people personally unknown to him, with the request
that they would refute his theories and provide him with the proofs
against his arguments which he himself was unable to find; that, out
of these letters, which consisted chiefly of extracts from the works
of Hume and the French materialists, grew a little anonymous pamphlet
(no longer in existence) which was entitled _The Necessity of Atheism_
and ended with a Q.E.D.; and that Shelley, in the childish hope of
exercising a reforming influence on the spirit of his age, sent a copy
of this pamphlet to the Bench of Bishops. What followed is equally well
known. Shelley, denounced as the author, was not only expelled from the
University, but from his father's house.
No one nowadays considers that any serious scientific conviction,
in whatever manner it may be expressed, should bring disgrace and
punishment upon its exponent; and Shelley's punishment appears to
us doubly unreasonable when we discover that in his pamphlet (the
substance of which he reprinted in the notes to _Queen Mab_) he is no
more an atheist than, for example, our Oersted[1] is in his well-known
work, _The Spirit in Nature_. He has not yet arrived at any logical
and consistent theory of life; he is only clear on the one main point,
that he is not, and never can become, an adherent of any so-called
revealed religion. The materialistic impressions received from the
books he has read are blent in his mind with the ardent pantheism which
distinguished him to the last. When Trelawny asked him in 1822, the
year in which he died: Why do you call yourself an atheist? Shelley
replied: "I used the name to express my abhorrence of superstition;
I took up the word, as a knight took up the gauntlet, in defiance of
injustice."
Shelley had grown up tall and slight, narrow-chested, his features
small and not regular except the mouth, which was beautiful, clever,
and fascinating; there was a feminine and almost seraphic look in the
eyes, and the whole face was distinguished by an infinite play of
expression. He sometimes looked the age he was--nineteen, sometimes as
if he were forty. In the course of the ten remaining years of his life
he became more manly in appearance, but still often struck people as
boyish and feminine looking--witness Trelawny's surprise at his first
meeting with Shelley: "Was it possible this mild-looking beardless
boy could be the veritable monster at war with all the world, and
denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a
Satanic school?" His countenance assumed every expression--earnest,
joyful, touchingly sorrowful, listlessly weary; but what it suggested
most frequently in later years was promptitude and decision. He often
expressed in his face the feeling he put into words in his poem _To
Edward Williams_:
"Of hatred I am proud,--with scorn content;
Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
Itself indifferent."
To all this we may add, employing words used by a friend of his youth,
that he looked "preternaturally intelligent"; and that Mulready, a
distinguished painter of the day, said it was simply impossible to
paint Shelley's portrait--he was "too beautiful."
It is, then, as a youth of this nature--excitable as a poet, brave as
a hero, gentle as a woman, blushing and shy as a young girl, swift and
light as Shakespeare's Ariel--that we must think of Shelley going out
and in among his friends. Mrs. Williams said of him: "He comes and goes
like a spirit, no one knows when or where."
His health was extremely delicate all his life, and would probably have
given way altogether if he had not rigidly adhered to the simplest
diet. About 1812 he adopted vegetarianism, with doubtful benefit.
He was of a consumptive habit and subject to nervous and spasmodic
attacks, which were sometimes so violent that he rolled on the floor
in agony, and had recourse to opium to dull the pain; when he had his
worst attacks he would not let the opium bottle out of his hand. When
he was visiting the London hospitals and studying medicine with the aim
of being able to assist the poor, he himself became seriously ill, and
an eminent physician prophesied that he would die of consumption. But
his lungs completely righted themselves some years later. In 1817, in
attending some of the poor in their cottages, he caught a bad attack
of ophthalmia; and he had a relapse of the same malady at the end of
the year, and another in 1821, each time severe enough to prevent his
reading.
The lofty philanthropy which to him was a religion, demanded many
offerings. He displayed it wherever he went. When he was living at
Marlow, in anything but affluent circumstances, he made all the poor of
the neighbourhood his pensioners; they came to his house every week for
their allowances, and he went to them when they were kept at home by
sickness. One day he appeared barefooted at the house of a neighbour;
he had given away his shoes to a poor woman. Of his own accord, almost
immediately after his expulsion from Oxford, he gave up, for the
benefit of his sisters, his claim to the greater part of his father's
estate. At the time when he was enjoying an income of about £1000 a
year, he spent most of it in assisting others, especially poor men of
letters, whose debts he paid, and to whom he showed generosity almost
unjustifiable in a man of his means.
The story of his first marriage is as follows. Exaggerated and mistaken
chivalry led him at the age of nineteen to elope with a schoolgirl of
sixteen, named Harriet Westbrook, who was very much in love with him,
and had complained bitterly to him of her father's ill-treatment of her
(he had forbidden her to love Shelley, and tried to compel her to go
to school!). Shelley, after various meetings with her, made his plans,
carried her off to Scotland, and married her in Edinburgh. The censure
of public opinion fell most severely on the poet for this behaviour;
but W. M. Rossetti's remark is very much to the point, namely, that
it would be interesting to know "what percentage of faultlessly
Christian young heirs of opulent baronets would have acted like the
atheist Shelley, and married a retired hotel-keeper's daughter offering
herself as a mistress." The hasty union, contracted without any proper
consideration, proved an unhappy one; and it was dissolved when, in
1814, Shelley made the acquaintance of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, then
in her seventeenth year, and was inspired by her with an irresistible
passion. Mary Godwin, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the first
famous pleader for the emancipation of woman, and of William Godwin,
the free-thinking author of the works which had had such an influence
on Shelley in his earliest youth, gave him her love frankly and freely,
and in so doing acted strictly according to her own code of right. The
young couple's theories of marriage, which were too ideal not to be
regarded as vile by the vile, were also too impracticable. Although
in their eyes mutual love alone, and not any ecclesiastical or civil
formality, constituted the sacred marriage tie, they nevertheless for
practical reasons, and especially for the sake of their children, went
through the customary marriage ceremony in 1816, after the suicide of
Shelley's first wife. Before this they had been twice abroad, first on
a short tour, great part of which was taken on foot, and then for a
longer period of travel, during which they met Byron. Shelley's name
was, accordingly, coupled with Byron's, and the English press attacked
them both with the utmost fury, going so far as to put a shameful
interpretation on their noble and manly friendship.
Southey found occasion for a perfect explosion of abuse in the
circumstance, insignificant and harmless enough, that Shelley had
written in the album kept for visitors at the Chartreuse at Montanvert
in the valley of Chamounix, below a number of pious platitudes about
"Nature and Nature's God," a misspelled line in Greek hexameter said:
εἰμι φιλάνθρωπος δημωκράτικός τ' ἄθεός τε[2]
PERCY B. SHELLEY.
The well-known outburst against Lord Byron, which has been already
touched on, has this utterance as its point of departure.
Such is, given in a few words, the overture to Shelley's life and
poetry.
_Cor cordium_ was his rightful appellation--for what he understood and
felt was the innermost heart of things, their soul and spirit; and the
feelings to which he gave expression were those inmost feelings, for
which words seem too coarse, and which find vent only in music or in
such verse as his, which is musical as richly harmonised melodies.
The suppressed melancholy of Shelley's lyrics sometimes reminds us of
Shakespeare. The little spinning song in _The Cenci_, for example,
recalls Amiens' song in _As You like It_ or the songs of Desdemona and
Ophelia.
But where Shelley is most himself he surpasses Shakespeare in delicacy;
and there is no other poet with whom he can be compared; no one
surpasses him. The short poems of 1821 and 1822 are, one may venture to
say, the most exquisite in the English language.