Timothy Shelley, of Castle Goring, in the county of Sussex) was born at
Field Place, near Horsham, in that county, on the 4th of August, 1792.
Ushered into the world in the midst of wealth and fashion, with all the
advantages of family distinction, the future of Shelley's life appeared
a bright one; but the sunshine of the morning only served to render
the darkness which came over his noontide more dark, and to make poor
Shelley still more susceptible of the hardships he had to encounter.
First educated at Eton, his spirit there manifested itself by an
unflinching opposition to the fagging system, and by revolt against the
severe discipline of the school; in his "Revolt of Islam" Shelley has
thus portrayed his feeling:--
"I do remember well the hour which burst
My 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 school-room 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,
And 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 tyrannize
Without reproach or check.'"
.....
And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that ray tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn, but from that secret store
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind."
From Eton, Shelley went to Oxford, and while there he, scarce at the age
of eighteen, published a volume of political rhymes, entitled "Margaret
Nicholson's Remains," the said Margaret being a woman who tried to
assassinate George III. He also wrote a pamphlet in defence of Atheism.
A copy of this pamphlet he caused to be sent to the head of each of the
colleges in Oxford, with a challenge to discuss and answer.--The answer
to this was the edict which expelled Shelley from Oxford, and at the
same time placed a wide chasm between him and his family. This breach
was still further widened in the following year by his marriage, at the
age of nineteen, with a beautiful girl named Westbrook. Although Miss
Westbrook was respectfully connected, Shelley's aristocratic family
regarded this as a _mesalliance_, and withdrew his pecuniary allowance;
and had it not been for the bride's father, who allowed the young couple
£200 a year, they would have been reduced to actual poverty. This was an
unfortunate marriage for both. After having two children, disagreements
arose, and Shelley was separated from his wife. She (like all beautiful
women) was soon attacked by the busy tongue of slander, and, unable to
bear the world's taunts, committed suicide by throwing herself into a
pond, just four years from the date of their marriage. Shelley, on this
account, suffered much misery and misrepresentation, and this misery was
much increased by his family, who applied to the Court of Chancery, and
obtained a decree, by which Shelley was deprived of the custody of
his children, on the ground of his Atheism. The same spirit even now
pervades the Shelley family, and scarce a copy of his poems can be found
in the neighborhood of his birth-place. Shelley afterwards contracted
a second marriage with the daughter of Godwin, the author of "Caleb
Williams," and Mary Wollstonecroft (who died in giving birth to
Shelley's wife), and for sometime the poet resided at Marlow in
Buckinghamshire, where he composed the "Revolt of Islam;" and it is
a strong proof of the reality of Shelley's poetical pleadings for the
oppressed amongst the human race, that he was indefatigable in his
attentions to the poor cottagers of his neighborhood; and that he
suffered severely from an attack of opthalmia, which was originated
in one of his benevolent visits. Nearly the first of Shelley's poems was
his "Queen Mab," in which (having in vain struggled to devote himself
to metaphysics apart from poetry), he blended his metaphysical
speculation with his poetical aspirations. The following quotations
are taken from that poem, in which his wonderful command of language is
well shown:--
"There's not one atom of yon earth
But once was living man;
Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flowed in human veins;
And from the burning plains
Where Lybian monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou canst not find one spot
Whereon no city stood.
How strange is human pride!
I tell thee that those living things,
To whom the fragile blade of grass,
That springeth in the morn
And perishes ere noon.
In an unbounded world;
I tell thee that those viewless beings.
Whose mansion is the smallest particle
Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel, and live, like man:
That their affections and antipathies,
Like his, produce the laws
Ruling their mortal state;
And the minutest throb.
That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.
.....
How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing,
How swift the step of reason's firmer tread,
How calm and sweet the victories of life.
How terrorless the triumph of the grave!
How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,
Vain his loud threat and impotent his frown!
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!
The weight of his exterminating curse,
How light! and his affected charity,
To suit the pressure of the changing times,
What palpable deceit!--but for thy aid,
Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,
Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,
And heaven with slaves!
Thou taintest all thou look'st upon!--The stare,
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
Were gods to the distempered playfulness
Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,
The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea,
All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly,
Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon
Her worshipper. Then thou becam'st a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies: every shape,
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls;
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
The genii of the elements, the powers
That give a shape to nature's varied works,
Had life and place in the corrupt belief
Of thy blind heart--yet still thy youthful hands
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain;
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride.
Their everlasting and unchanging laws
Reproached thine ignorance.
Awhile thou stood'st
Baffled and gloomy; then thou did'st sum up
The elements of all that thou did'st know.
The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,
The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,
The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,
And all their causes, to an abstract point,
Converging, thou did'st bend, and called it God;
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
The merciful, and the avenging God!
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits
High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,
Even like an earthly king: and whose dread work,
Hell gapes forever for the unhappy slaves
Of fate, whom he created in his sport,
To triumph in their torments when they fell!
Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke
Of his revenge ascended up to Heaven,
Blotting the constellations: and the cries
Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence,
And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths,
Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
And thou did'st laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel
Felt cold in her torn entrails!
Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;
But age crept on: one God would not suffice
For senile puerility; thou fram'dst
A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut
Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,
That still consumed thy being, even when
Thou heard'st the step of fate:--that flames might light
Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks
Of parents dying on the pile that burned
To light their children to thy paths, the roar
Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,
Might sate thy hungry ear
Even on the bed of death!
But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
Unhonored and unpitied, but by those
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
That long has lowered above the ruined world."
Speaking of the Atheist's martyrdom in answer to the spirit of "Ianthe,"
Shelley makes his fairy say:--
"There is no God!
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,
His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;
Let every part depending on the chain
That links it to the whole, point to the hand
That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls
In silent eloquence unfold its store
Of argument. Infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation;
The exterminate spirit it contains
Is nature's only God: but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance.
The name of God
Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
Himself the creature of his worshippers,
Whose names and attributes and passions change,
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, Goa, or Lord,
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines.
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
For desolation's watch-word; whether hosts
Stain his death-blushing chariot wheels, as on
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
Or countless partners of his powers divide
His tyranny to weakness: or the smoke
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
In honor of his name; or, last and worst,
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house."
"Ianthe's" spirit, however, asks still further, and the ghost of
Ahasuerus having been summoned, the question is repeated, "Is there a
God?"
"_Ahasuerus_.--Is there a God? ay, an Almighty God,
And vengeful as Almighty! Once his voice
Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound,
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrannous omnipotence: whose souls
No honest indignation ever urged
To elevated daring, to one deed
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked
With human blood, and hideous moans rung
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
Had raised him to his eminence in power,
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,
And confidant of the all-knowing one.
These were Jehovah's words:
"From an eternity of idleness,
God, awoke: in seven days toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man.
I placed him in a paradise, and there
Planted the tree of evil, so that he
Might eat and perish, and my soul procure
Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,
Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
All misery to my fame. The race of men,
Chosen to my honor, with impunity,
May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops
Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,
And make my name be dreaded through the land.
Yet ever burning flame and ceaseless woe
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,--even all
Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge
Which you, to men, call justice, of their God."
The murderer's brow
Quivered with horror.
God omnipotent!
Is there no mercy? must our punishment
Be endless? will long ages roll away,
And see no 'term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made
In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
Mercy becomes the powerful--be but just:
O God! repent and save.
"One way remains!
I will beget a son, and he shall bear
The sins of all the world: he shall arise
In an unnoticed corner of the earth,
And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
The universal crime; so that the few
On whom my grace descends, those who are marked
As vessels to the honor of their God,
May credit this strange sacrifice, and save
Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping, grave.
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal.
These in a gulph of anguish and of flame
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly.
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,
My honor, and the justice of their doom.
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
Of purity, with radiant genius bright,
Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?
Many are called, but few I will elect.
Do thou my bidding, Moses!"
In his poem of "Rosalind and Helen," the poet indulges in the following
prophecy, which he puts in the mouth of Helen:--
"Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells;
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity."
Beside the poems mentioned, Shelley wrote "The Cenci," "Alastor,"
"Prometheus Unbound," and many others, including a beautiful little ode
to a "Skylark," and the well-known "Sensitive Plant."
Shelley was a true and noble man--no poet was ever warmed by a more
genuine and unforced aspiration.--De Quincey says, "Shelley would, from
his earliest manhood, have sacrificed all that he possessed for any
comprehensive purpose of good for the race of man. He dismissed all
insults and injuries from his memory. He was the sincerest and most
truthful of human creatures.
"If he denounced marriage as a vicious institution, _that_ was but
another phase of the partial lunacy which affected him: for to no man
were purity and fidelity more essential elements in the idea of real
love. Again, De Quincey speaks of Shelley's "fearlessness, his gracious
nature, his truth, his purity from all flesh-liness of appetite, his
freedom from vanity, his diffusive love and tenderness." This testimony
is worth much, the more especially when we remember that it is from the
pen of Thomas de Quincey, who, while truthfully acknowledging the man,
hesitates not to use polished irony, rough wit, and covert sneering,
when dealing with the man's uttered thinkings.
"That Shelley understood the true mission of a poet, and the true nature
of poetry, will appear from the following extract from one of his prose
essays:--"Poetry," he says, "is the record of the best and happiest
moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent
visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place
and person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising
unforeseen, and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond
all expression. Poets are not only subject to these experiences, as
spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all they
combine with the evanescent lines of this ethereal world; a word,
a trait in the representation of a scene or passion will touch the
enchanted cord, and reanimate in those who have ever experienced these
emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry
thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world;
it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations
of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth
among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom
their sisters abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression
from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of
things."
Shelley's beautiful imagery and idealistic drapery is sometimes so
accumulated in his poems, that it is difficult to follow him in his
thinkings. In his verse he wishes to stand high as a philosophical
reasoner, and this, together with his devotion to the cause, which even
men of De Quincey's stamp call "Insolent Infidelity," has prevented
Shelley from becoming so popular as he might have been.
Shelley lived a life of strife, passed his boyhood and youth in
struggling to be free--misunderstood and misinterpreted: and when at
last in his manhood happier circumstances were gathering around him,
a blast of wind came, and the waves of the sea washed away one who was
really and truly "a man and a poet."
On Monday. July 8th, 1822, being then in his 29th year, Shelley was
returning from Leghorn to his home at Lerici, in a schooner-rigged boat
of his own, with one friend and an English servant; when the boat had
reached about four miles from the shore, the storm suddenly rose, and
the wind suddenly shifted. From excessive smoothness, all at once the
sea was foaming, and breaking, and getting up in a heavy swell. The
boat is supposed to have filled to leeward, and (carry-ins: two tons of
ballast) to have sunk instantaneously--all on board were drowned. The
body of Shelley was washed on shore eight days afterwards, near Via
Reggio, in an advanced state of decomposition, and was therefore burned
on a funeral pyre in the presence of Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Mr.
Trelawney, and a Captain Shenley.
Thus died Shelley in the mid day of life, and ere the warm sun of that
mid-day could dispel the clouds that had gathered round the morning of
his career. The following comparison made between the personal
appearance of Shelley and of Byron, by Gilfillan, has been called by De
Quincey "an eloquent parallel," and we therefore conclude the present
number by quoting it:--
"In the forehead and head of Byron there is more massive power and
breadth: Shelley has a smooth, arched, spiritual expression; wrinkle
there seems none on his brow; it is as if perpetual youth had there
dropped its freshness. Byron's eye seems the focus of pride and lust:
Shelley's is mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing you through
the mist of his own idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and
sensuality steps his full large lips. The lower features of Shelley's
face are frail, feminine, flexible.--Byron's head is turned upwards
as if having risen proudly above his contemporaries, he were daring
to claim kindred, or demand a contest with a superior order of beings.
Shelley's is half bent, in reverence and humility, before some vast
vision seen by his own eye alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover
its retreat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent and
pervading expression of Byron's countenance. Sorrow, softened and shaded
away by hope and habit, lies like a 'holier day' of still moonshine upon
that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at the age of nineteen,
you see the unnatural age of premature passion; his hair is young, his
dress is youthful, but his face is old. In Shelley you see the eternal
child, none the less that his hair is grey, and that sorrow seems half
his immortality."
"I."
CLAUD ARIAN HELVETIUS.
If France, at the present day, has not reason to be proud of its
"leading man," it has in former times produced those minds that shed
lustre upon the country, and who, by their literature, add immortality
to its renown. During the eighteenth century, when religious persecution
and intolerance were rampant throughout Europe, France furnished men to
check oppression and expose superstition, while others followed to
lay the foundation of excellence and greatness in the examination and
cultivation of its true source--the mind. Heivetius sought to direct
men's attention to self-examination, and to show how many disputes might
be avoided if each person understood _what_ he was disputing about.
"Helvetius on the Mind" is a work that ought to be read widely, and
studied attentively, especially by "rising young men," as it is one of
those _Secular_ works too rarely found among our literature.
Claud Arian Helvetius was born in Paris in the year 1715. After his
preparatory studies, he was sent to the College of Louis le Grand,
having for his tutor the famous Poree, who bestowed additional attention
upon Heivetius, perceiving in him great talent and genius. Early in life
Heivetius formed the friendship of some of the leading minds of France,
Montesquieu being his intimate friend. Voltaire, too, sought his
correspondence when at the age of twenty-three, calling him his "Young
Apollo," and his "Son of Parnassus." The first literary attempts of
Helvetius consisted of poetry--"Epistles on Happiness," which appeared
as a posthumous production, with the "lavish commendations" of Voltaire.
After ten years' thought and study Helvetius in 1758, published a
work entitled "De L'Esprit," which brought upon him a great amount of
persecution. The Parliament of Paris condemned it, and Helvetius was
removed from the office he held of "Maitre d'Hotel to the Queen."
Voltaire remarks:--"it is a little extraordinary that they should have
persecuted, disgraced, and harassed, a much respected philosopher of our
days, the innocent, the good Helvetius, for having said that if men
had been without hands they could not have built houses, or worked in
tapestry. Apparently those who have condemned this proposition, have a
secret for cutting stones and wood, and for sewing with the feet.... I
have no doubt that they will soon condemn to the galleys the first who
shall have the insolence to say, that a man cannot think without his
head; for, some bachelor will tell him, the soul is a pure spirit, the
head is nothing but matter: God can place the soul in the nails, as well
as in the skull, therefore I proscribe you as impious."
During the persecution raised against him, Helvetius visited England in
1764. In 1765 he visited Prussia, being well received by Frederick,
in whose place he lodged. Voltaire strongly advised Helvetius to leave
France in these words:--"In your place, I should not hesitate a moment
to sell all that I have in France; there are some excellent estates in
my neighborhood, and there you might cultivate in peace the arts you
love." About this period Hume became acquainted with Helvetius, whom
he styles, in writing to Dr. Robertson, "a very fine genius and worthy
man." In 1765, Helvetius returned from Prussia, and retired to his
estate at Vore. The sight of misery much affected him; and when
relieving distress, he enjoined strict secrecy. Sometimes, when told he
relieved those undeserving his aid, he would say, "If I were a king I
would correct them, but as I am only rich and they are poor, I do my
duty in relieving them." An attack of gout in the head and stomach
terminated his life in December, 1771, in the fifty-sixth year of his
age.
In "De L'Esprit, or, Essays on the Mind," chap. I.. Helvetius makes the
following remarks on the "Mind considered in itself":--