I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I shall be happy to see you

again, and renew our delightful walks, until the desire or the duty of

seeing new things hurries us away. We have spent a month here in our

accustomed solitude, with the exception of one night at the Casino; and

the choice society of all ages, which I took care to pack up in a large

trunk before we left England, have revisited us here. I am employed

just now, having little better to do, in translating into my fainting

and inefficient periods, the divine eloquence of Plato’s Symposium;

only as an exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some idea of the manners

and feelings of the Athenians--so different on many subjects from that

of any other community that ever existed.

We have almost finished Ariosto--who is entertaining and graceful,

and _sometimes_ a poet. Forgive me, worshippers of a more equal and

tolerant divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me less than you.

Where is the gentle seriousness, the delicate sensibility, the calm

and sustained energy, without which true greatness cannot be? He is

so cruel, too, in his descriptions; his most prized virtues are vices

almost without disguise. He constantly vindicates and embellishes

revenge in its grossest form; the most deadly superstition that ever

infested the world. How different from the tender and solemn enthusiasm

of Petrarch--or even the delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, though

somewhat obscured by an assumed and artificial style.

We read a good deal here--and we read little in Livorno. We have

ridden, Mary and I, once only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on

the top of the mountains: the road, winding through forests, and

over torrents, and on the verge of green ravines, affords scenery

magnificently fine. I cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though

vainly, come and see. I take great delight in watching the changes of

the atmosphere here, and the growth of the thunder showers with which

the noon is often overshadowed, and which break and fade away towards

evening into flocks of delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away

fast; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically over the

rift in the forest-covered mountains to the south, and the pale summer

lightning which is spread out every night, at intervals, over the

sky. No doubt Providence has contrived these things, that, when the

fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl may see her way home.

Remember me kindly to the Machinista.

With the sentiment of impatience until we see you again in the autumn,

I am, yours most sincerely,

P. B. Shelley.

TO WILLIAM GODWIN.

_Bagni di Lucca, July 25th, 1818._

My dear Godwin,

We have, as yet, seen nothing of Italy which marks it to us as the

habitation of departed greatness. The serene sky, the magnificent

scenery, the delightful productions of the climate, are known to us,

indeed, as the same with those which the ancients enjoyed. But Rome and

Naples--even Florence, are yet to see; and if we were to write you at

present a history of our impressions, it would give you no idea that we

lived in Italy.

I am exceedingly delighted with the plan you propose of a book,

illustrating the character of our calumniated republicans. It is

precisely the subject for Mary, and I imagine, that, but for the

fear of being excited to refer to books not within her reach, she

would attempt to begin it here, and order the works you notice. I am

unfortunately little skilled in English history, and the interest which

it excites in me is so feeble, that I find it a duty to attain merely

to that general knowledge of it which is indispensable.

Mary has just finished Ariosto with me, and, indeed, has attained a

very competent knowledge of Italian. She is now reading Livy. I have

been constantly occupied in literature, but have written little--except

some translations from Plato, in which I exercised myself, in the

despair of producing anything original. The Symposium of Plato seems

to me one of the most valuable pieces of all antiquity, whether we

consider the intrinsic merit of the composition, or the light which it

throws on the inmost state of manners and opinions among the ancient

Greeks. I have occupied myself in translating this, and it has excited

me to attempt an Essay upon the cause of some differences in sentiment

between the Ancients and Moderns, with respect to the subject of the

dialogue.

Two things give us pleasure in your last letters,--the resumption of

Malthus, and the favourable turn of the general election. If Ministers

do not find some means, totally inconceivable to me, of plunging the

nation in war, do you imagine that they can subsist? Peace is all that

a country, in the present state of England, seems to require, to afford

it tranquillity and leisure for attempting some remedy not to the

universal evils of all constituted society, but to the peculiar system

of misrule under which those evils have been exasperated now. I wish

that I had health or spirits that would enable me to enter into public

affairs, or that I could find words to express all that I feel and know.

The modern Italians seem a miserable people, without sensibility,

or imagination, or understanding. Their outside is polished, and an

intercourse with them seems to proceed with much facility, though it

ends in nothing, and produces nothing. The women are particularly

empty, and though possessed of the same kind of superficial grace,

are devoid of every cultivation and refinement. They have a ball at

the Casino here every Sunday, which we attend--but neither Mary nor

C---- dance. I do not know whether they refrain from philosophy or

protestantism.

I hear that poor Mary’s book is attacked most violently in the

Quarterly Review. We have heard some praise of it, and among others, an

article of Walter Scott’s in Blackwood’s Magazine.

If you should have anything to send us--and, I assure you, anything

relating to England is interesting to us--commit it to the care of

Ollier the bookseller, or P***--they send me a parcel every quarter.

My health is, I think, better, and, I imagine, continues to improve;

but I still have busy thoughts and dispiriting cares, which I would

shake off--and it is now summer.----A thousand good wishes to yourself

and your undertakings.

Ever most affectionately yours,

P. B. S.

TO MRS. SHELLEY

(BAGNI DI LUCCA).

_Florence, Thursday, 11 o’clock._ (_20th August, 1818._)

Dearest Mary,

We have been delayed in this city four hours, for the Austrian

minister’s passport, but are now on the point of setting out with a

vetturino, who engages to take us on the third day to Padua; that is,

we shall only sleep three nights on the road. * * * * * Yesterday’s

journey, performed in a one-horse cabriolet, almost without springs,

over a rough road, was excessively fatiguing. *** suffered most from

it; for, as to myself, there are occasions in which fatigue seems a

useful medicine, as I have felt no pain in my side--a most delightful

respite--since I left you. The country was various and exceedingly

beautiful. Sometimes there were those low cultivated lands, with their

vine festoons, and large bunches of grapes just becoming purple--at

others we passed between high mountains, crowned with some of the

most majestic Gothic ruins I ever saw, which frowned from the bare

precipices, or were half seen among the olive copses. As we approached

Florence, the country became cultivated to a very high degree, the

plain was filled with the most beautiful villas, and, as far as the eye

could reach, the mountains were covered with them; for the plains are

bounded on all sides by blue and misty mountains. The vines are here

trailed on low trellises of reeds interwoven into crosses to support

them, and the grapes, now almost ripe, are exceedingly abundant. You

everywhere meet those teams of beautiful white oxen, which are now

labouring the little vine-divided fields with their Virgilian ploughs

and carts. Florence itself, that is the Lung’ Arno (for I have seen

no more), I think is the most beautiful city I have yet seen. It is

surrounded with cultivated hills, and from the bridge which crosses the

broad channel of the Arno, the view is the most animated and elegant

I ever saw. You see three or four bridges, one apparently supported

by Corinthian pillars, and the white sails of the boats, relieved by

the deep green of the forest, which comes to the water’s edge, and

the sloping hills covered with bright villas on every side. Domes and

steeples rise on all sides, and the cleanliness is remarkably great. On

the other side there are the foldings of the Vale of Arno above; first

the hills of olive and vine, then the chesnut woods, and then the blue

and misty pine forests, which invest the aerial Apennines, that fade

in the distance. I have seldom seen a city so lovely at first sight as

Florence.

We shall travel hence within a few hours, with the speed of the post,

since the distance is 190 miles, and we are to do it in three days,

besides the half day, which is somewhat more than sixty miles a day.

We have now got a comfortable carriage and two mules, and, thanks to

Paolo, have made a very decent bargain, comprising everything, to

Padua. I should say we had delightful fruit for breakfast,--figs, very

fine--and peaches, unfortunately gathered before they were ripe, whose

smell was like what one fancies of the wakening of Paradise flowers.

Well, my dearest Mary, are you very lonely? Tell me truth, my sweetest,

do you ever cry? I shall hear from you once at Venice, and once on

my return here. If you love me you will keep up your spirits--and,

at all events, tell me truth about it; for, I assure you, I am not

of a disposition to be flattered by your sorrow, though I should be

by your cheerfulness; and, above all, by seeing such fruits of my

absence as were produced when we were at Geneva. What acquaintances

have you made? I might have travelled to Padua with a German, who had

just come from Rome, and had scarce recovered from a malaria fever,

caught in the Pontine Marshes, a week or two since; and I conceded

to ***’s entreaties--and to _your_ absent suggestions, and omitted

the opportunity, although I have no great faith in such species

of contagion. It is not very hot--not at all too much so for my

sensations, and the only thing that incommodes me are the gnats at

night, who roar like so many humming tops in one’s ear--and I do not

always find zanzariere. How is Willmouse and little Clara? They must

be kissed for me--and you must particularly remember to speak my name

to William, and see that he does not quite forget me before I return.

Adieu--my dearest girl, I think that we shall soon meet. I shall write

again from Venice. Adieu, dear Mary!

I have been reading the “Noble Kinsmen,” in which, with the exception

of that lovely scene, to which you added so much grace in reading

to me, I have been disappointed. The Jailor’s Daughter is a poor

imitation, and deformed. The whole story wants moral discrimination and

modesty. I do not believe Shakespeare wrote a word of it.

TO MRS. SHELLEY

(BAGNI DI LUCCA).

_Venice, Sunday morning._

(_August 23rd, 1818._)

My dearest Mary,

We arrived here last night at twelve o’clock, and it is now before

breakfast the next morning. I can, of course, tell you nothing of the

future; and though I shall not close this letter till post time, yet

I do not know exactly when that is. Yet, if you are very impatient,

look along the letter and you will see another date, when I may have

something to relate.

I came from Padua hither in a gondola, and the gondoliere, among other

things, without any hint on my part, began talking of Lord Byron. He

said he was a _giovinotto Inglese_, with a _nome stravagante_, who

lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of money. This man, it

seems, was one of Lord Byron’s gondolieri. No sooner had we arrived

at the inn, than the waiter began talking about him--said, that he

frequented Mrs. H.’s _conversazioni_ very much.

Our journey from Florence to Padua contained nothing which may not

be related another time. At Padua, as I said, we took a gondola--and

left it at three o’clock. These gondolas are the most beautiful and

convenient boats in the world. They are finely carpeted and furnished

with black, and painted black. The couches on which you lean are

extraordinarily soft, and are so disposed as to be the most comfortable

to those who lean or sit. The windows have at will either venetian

plate-glass flowered, or venetian blinds, or blinds of black cloth

to shut out the light. The weather here is extremely cold--indeed,

sometimes very painfully so, and yesterday it began to rain. We passed

the laguna in the middle of the night in a most violent storm of wind,

rain, and lightning. It was very curious to observe the elements above

in a state of such tremendous convulsion, and the surface of the water

almost calm; for these lagunas, though five miles broad, a space enough

in a storm to sink a gondola, are so shallow that the boatmen drive the

boat along with a pole. The sea-water, furiously agitated by the wind,

shone with sparkles like stars. Venice, now hidden and now disclosed by

the driving rain, shone dimly with its lights. We were all this while

safe and comfortable. Well, adieu, dearest: I shall, as Miss Byron

says,[16] resume the pen in the evening.

* * * * *

_Sunday Night, 5 o’clock in the Morning._

Well, I will try to relate everything in its order.

* * * * *

At three o’clock I called on Lord Byron: he was delighted to see me.

He took me in his gondola across the laguna to a long sandy island,

which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we

found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the

sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded

feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of

friendship and regard for me. He said, that if he had been in England

at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and

earth to have prevented such a decision. We talked of literary

matters, his Fourth Canto, which, he says, is very good, and indeed

repeated some stanzas of great energy to me. When we returned to his

palace--which,

(_The letter is here torn._)

The Hoppners are the most amiable people I ever knew. They are much

attached to each other, and have a nice little boy, seven months old.

Mr. H. paints beautifully, and this excursion, which he has just put

off, was an expedition to the Julian Alps, in this neighbourhood--for

the sake of sketching, to procure winter employment. He has only a

fortnight’s leisure, and he has sacrificed two days of it to strangers

whom he never saw before. Mrs. H. has hazel eyes and sweet looks.

(_Paper torn._)

Well, but the time presses, I am now going to the banker’s to send

you money for the journey, which I shall address to you at Florence,

Post-office. Pray come instantly to Este, where I shall be waiting in

the utmost anxiety for your arrival. You can pack up directly you get

this letter, and employ the next day on that. The day after, get up at

four o’clock, and go post to Lucca, where you will arrive at six. Then

take a vetturino for Florence to arrive the same evening. From Florence

to Este is three days’ vetturino journey--and you could not, I think,

do it quicker by the post. Make Paolo take you to good inns, as we

found very bad ones, and pray avoid the Tre Mori at Bologna, _perche

vi sono cose inespressibili nei letti_. I do not think you can, but

_try_ to get from Florence to Bologna in one day. Do not take the post,

for it is not much faster, and very expensive. I have been obliged to

decide on all these things without you: I have done for the best--and,

my own beloved Mary, you must soon come and scold me if I have done

wrong, and kiss me if I have done right--for, I am sure, I do not know

which--and it is only the event that can show. We shall at least be

saved the trouble of introduction, and have formed acquaintance with a

lady who is so good, so beautiful, so angelically mild, that were she

as wise too, she would be quite a ***. Her eyes are like a reflection

of yours. Her manners are like yours when you know and like a person.

Do you know, dearest, how this letter was written? By scraps and

patches, and interrupted every minute. The gondola is now come to take

me to the banker’s. Este is a little place, and the house found without

difficulty. I shall count four days for this letter: one day for

packing, four for coming here--and on the ninth or tenth day we shall

meet.

I am too late for the post--but I send an express to overtake it.

Enclosed is an order for fifty pounds. If you knew all that I had to

do!--

Dearest love, be well, be happy, come to me--confide in your own

constant and affectionate,

P. B. S.

Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and do not let William forget me.

Clara cannot recollect me.

[16] _i.e._, Harriet Byron, in Richardson’s novel of _Sir Charles

Grandison_.--Ed.

TO MRS. SHELLEY

(_I Cappuccini--Este_).

_Padua, mezzogiorno._

(_Sept. 22, 1818._)

My best Mary,

I found at Mount Selice a favourable opportunity for going to Venice,

where I shall try to make some arrangement for you and little Ca.[17]

to come for some days, and shall meet you, if I do not write anything

in the mean time, at Padua, on Thursday morning. C. says she is obliged

to come to see the Medico, whom we missed this morning, and who has

appointed as the only hour at which he can be at leisure--half-past

eight in the morning. You must, therefore, arrange matters so that you

should come to the Stella d’Oro a little before that hour--a thing to

be accomplished only by setting out at half-past three in the morning.

You will by this means arrive at Venice very early in the day, and

avoid the heat, which might be bad for the babe, and take the time,

when she would at least sleep great part of the time. C. will return

with the return carriage, and I shall meet you, or send to you at Padua.

Meanwhile remember Charles the First--and do you be prepared to bring

at least _some_ of Myrra translated; bring the book also with you, and

the sheets of “Prometheus Unbound,” which you will find numbered from

one to twenty-six on the table of the pavilion. My poor little Clara,

how is she to-day? Indeed I am somewhat uneasy about her, and though I

feel secure that there is no danger, it would be very comfortable to

have some reasonable person’s opinion about her. The Medico at Padua is

certainly a man in great practice, but I confess he does not satisfy me.

Am I not like a wild swan to be gone so suddenly? But, in fact, to set

off alone to Venice required an exertion. I felt myself capable of

making it, and I knew that you desired it. What will not be--if so it

is destined--the lonely journey through that wide, cold France? But we

shall see.

Adieu, my dearest love--remember Charles I. and Myrra. I have been

already imagining how you will conduct some scenes. The second volume

of “St Leon” begins with this proud and true sentiment--“There is

nothing which the human mind can conceive, which it may not execute.”

Shakespeare was only a human being.

Adieu till Thursday. Your ever affectionate

P. B. S.

[17] Clara, born at Marlow, Sept. 3, 1817.--Ed.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Este, October 8, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

I have not written to you, I think, for six weeks. But I have been

on the point of writing many times, and have often felt that I had

many things to say. But I have not been without events to disturb and

distract me, amongst which is the death of my little girl. She died of

a disorder peculiar to the climate. We have all had bad spirits enough,

and I, in addition, bad health. I _intend_ to be better soon: there is

no malady, bodily or mental, which does not either kill or is killed.

We left the Baths of Lucca, I think, the day after I wrote to you--on

a visit to Venice--partly for the sake of seeing the city. We made a

very delightful acquaintance there with a Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, the

gentleman an Englishman, and the lady a Swissesse, mild and beautiful,

and unprejudiced, in the best sense of the word. The kind attentions

of these people made our short stay at Venice very pleasant. I saw

Lord Byron, and really hardly knew him again; he is changed into the

liveliest and happiest-looking man I ever met. He read me the first

canto of his “Don Juan”--a thing in the style of Beppo, but infinitely

better, and dedicated to Southey, in ten or a dozen stanzas, more

like a mixture of wormwood and verdigris than satire. Venice is a

wonderfully fine city. The approach to it over the laguna, with its

domes and turrets glittering in a long line over the blue waves, is

one of the finest architectural delusions in the world. It seems to

have--and literally it has--its foundations in the sea. The silent

streets are paved with water, and you hear nothing but the dashing of

the oars, and the occasional cries of the gondolieri. I heard nothing

of Tasso. The gondolas themselves are things of a most romantic and

picturesque appearance; I can only compare them to moths of which a

coffin might have been the chrysalis. They are hung with black, and

painted black, and carpeted with grey; they curl at the prow and stern,

and at the former there is a nondescript beak of shining steel, which

glitters at the end of its long black mass.

The Doge’s palace, with its library, is a fine monument of aristocratic

power. I saw the dungeons, where these scoundrels used to torment

their victims. They are of three kinds--one adjoining the place of

trial, where the prisoners destined to immediate execution were kept.

I could not descend into them, because the day on which I visited it,

was festa. Another under the leads of the palace, where the sufferers

were roasted to death or madness by the ardours of an Italian sun: and

others called the Pozzi--or wells, deep underneath, and communicating

with those on the roof by secret passages--where the prisoners were

confined sometimes half up to their middles in stinking water. When

the French came here, they found only one old man in the dungeons, and

he could not speak. But Venice, which was once a tyrant, is now the

next worse thing, a slave; for in fact it ceased to be free, or worth

our regret as a nation, from the moment that the oligarchy usurped

the rights of the people. Yet, I do not imagine that it was ever so

degraded as it has been since the French, and especially the Austrian

yoke. The Austrians take sixty per cent. in taxes, and impose free

quarters on the inhabitants. A horde of German soldiers, as vicious and

more disgusting than the Venetians themselves, insult these miserable

people. I had no conception of the excess to which avarice, cowardice,

superstition, ignorance, passionless lust, and all the inexpressible

brutalities which degrade human nature, could be carried, until I had

passed a few days at Venice.

We have been living this last month near the little town from which

I date this letter, in a very pleasant villa which has been lent to

us, and we are now on the point of proceeding to Florence, Rome, and

Naples--at which last city we shall spend the winter, and return

northwards in the spring. Behind us here are the Euganean hills, not so

beautiful as those of the Bagni di Lucca, with Arquà, where Petrarch’s

house and tomb are religiously preserved and visited. At the end of our

garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the habitation of owls and

bats, where the Medici family resided before they came to Florence. We

see before us the wide flat plains of Lombardy, in which we see the

sun and moon rise and set, and the evening star, and all the golden

magnificence of autumnal clouds. But I reserve wonder for Naples.

I have been writing--and indeed have just finished the first act of a

lyric and classical drama, to be called “Prometheus Unbound.” Will you

tell me what there is in Cicero about a drama supposed to have been

written by Æschylus under this title?

I ought to say that I have just read Malthus in a French translation.

Malthus is a very clever man, and the world would be a great gainer

if it would seriously take his lessons into consideration, if it were

capable of attending seriously to anything but mischief--but what on

earth does he mean by some of his inferences?

Yours ever faithfully,

P. B. S.

I will write again from Rome and Florence--in better spirits, and to

more agreeable purpose, I hope. You saw those beautiful stanzas in the

fourth canto[18] about the Nymph Egeria. Well, I did not whisper a word

about nympholepsy: I hope you acquit me--and I hope you will not carry

delicacy so far as to let this suppress anything nympholeptic.

[18] Of _Childe Harold_.--Ed.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Ferrara, Nov. 8th, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

We left Este yesterday on our journey towards Naples. The roads were

particularly bad; we have, therefore, accomplished only two days’

journey, of eighteen and twenty-four miles each, and you may imagine

that our horses must be tolerably good ones, to drag our carriage, with

five people and heavy luggage, through deep and clayey roads. The roads

are, however, good during the rest of the way.

The country is flat, but intersected by lines of wood, trellised with

vines, whose broad leaves are now stamped with the redness of their

decay. Every here and there one sees people employed in agricultural

labours, and the plough, the harrow, or the cart, drawn by long teams

of milk-white or dove-coloured oxen of immense size and exquisite

beauty. This, indeed, might be the country of Pasiphaes. In one

farm-yard I was shown sixty-three of these lovely oxen, tied to their

stalls, in excellent condition. A farm-yard in this part of Italy

is somewhat different from one in England. First, the house, which

is large and high, with strange-looking unpainted window-shutters,

generally closed, and dreary beyond conception. The farm-yard and

out-buildings, however, are usually in the neatest order. The

threshing-floor is not under cover, but like that described in the

Georgics, usually flattened by a broken column, and neither the mole,

nor the toad, nor the ant, can find on its area a crevice for their

dwelling. Around it, at this season, are piled the stacks of the leaves

and stalks of Indian corn, which has lately been threshed and dried

upon its surface. At a little distance are vast heaps of many-coloured

zucchi or pumpkins, some of enormous size, piled as winter food for

the hogs. There are turkeys, too, and fowls wandering about, and two

or three dogs, who bark with a sharp hylactism. The people who are

occupied with the care of these things seem neither ill-clothed nor

ill-fed, and the blunt incivility of their manners has an English air

with it, very discouraging to those who are accustomed to the impudent

and polished lying of the inhabitants of the cities. I should judge the

agricultural resources of this country to be immense, since it can wear

so flourishing an appearance, in spite of the enormous discouragements

which the various tyranny of the governments inflicts on it. I ought to

say that one of the farms belongs to a Jew banker at Venice, another

Shylock.--We arrived late at the inn where I now write; it was once the

palace of a Venetian nobleman, and is now an excellent inn. To-morrow

we are going to see the sights of Ferrara.

* * * * *

_Nov. 9._

We have had heavy rain and thunder all night; and the former still

continuing, we went in the carriage about the town. We went first

to look at the cathedral, but the beggars very soon made us sound a

retreat; so, whether, as it is said, there is a copy of a picture of

Michael Angelo there or no, I cannot tell. At the public library we

were more successful. This is, indeed, a magnificent establishment,

containing, as they say, 160,000 volumes. We saw some illuminated

manuscripts of church music, with the verses of the psalms interlined

between the square notes, each of which consisted of the most

delicate tracery, in colours inconceivably vivid. They belonged to

the neighbouring convent of Certolda, and are three or four hundred

years old; but their hues are as fresh as if they had been executed

yesterday. The tomb of Ariosto occupies one end of the largest saloon

of which the library is composed; it is formed of various marbles,

surmounted by an expressive bust of the poet, and subscribed with a

few Latin verses, in a less miserable taste than those usually employed

for similar purposes. But the most interesting exhibitions here, are

the writings, &c., of Ariosto and Tasso, which are preserved, and

were concealed from the undistinguishing depredations of the French

with pious care. There is the arm-chair of Ariosto, an old plain

wooden piece of furniture, the hard seat of which was once occupied

by, but has now survived its cushion, as it has its master. I could

fancy Ariosto sitting in it; and the satires in his own handwriting

which they unfold beside it, and the old bronze inkstand, loaded with

figures, which belonged also to him, assists the willing delusion.

This inkstand has an antique, rather than an ancient appearance. Three

nymphs lean forth from the circumference, and on the top of the lid

stands a cupid, winged and looking up, with a torch in one hand, his

bow in the other, and his quiver beside him. A medal was bound round

the skeleton of Ariosto, with his likeness impressed upon it. I cannot

say I think it had much native expression, but, perhaps, the artist was

in fault. On the reverse is a hand, cutting with a pair of scissors the

tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass, with this legend--_Pro

bono malum_. What this reverse of the boasted Christian maxim means, or

how it applies to Ariosto, either as a satirist or a serious writer, I

cannot exactly tell. The cicerone attempted to explain, and it is to

his commentary that my bewildering is probably due--if, indeed, the

meaning be very plain, as is possibly the case.

There is here a manuscript of the entire Gerusalemme Liberata, written

by Tasso’s own hand; a manuscript of some poems, written in prison,

to the Duke Alfonso; and the satires of Ariosto, written also by his

own hand; and the Pastor Fido of Guarini. The Gerusalemme, though it

had evidently been copied and recopied, is interlined, particularly

towards the end, with numerous corrections. The handwriting of Ariosto

is a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say,

a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind; that of Tasso is

large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked expression

in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into a smaller

compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. It is the

symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own

depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of

oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek

in what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and

tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not

agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to

attempt to inspire others with them. Some of the MSS. of Tasso were

sonnets to his persecutor, which contain a great deal of what is called

flattery. If Alfonso’s ghost were asked how he felt those praises now,

I wonder what he would say. But to me there is much more to pity than

to condemn in these entreaties and praises of Tasso. It is as a bigot

prays to and praises his god, whom he knows to be the most remorseless,

capricious, and inflexible of tyrants, but whom he knows also to be

omnipotent. Tasso’s situation was widely different from that of any

persecuted being of the present day; for, from the depth of dungeons,

public opinion might now at length be awakened to an echo that would

startle the oppressor. But then there was no hope. There is something

irresistibly pathetic to me in the sight of Tasso’s own handwriting,

moulding expressions of adulation and entreaty to a deaf and stupid

tyrant, in an age when the most heroic virtue would have exposed its

possessor to hopeless persecution, and--such is the alliance between

virtue and genius--which unoffending genius could not escape.

We went afterwards to see his prison in the hospital of Sant’ Anna, and

I enclose you a piece of the wood of the very door, which for seven

years and three months divided this glorious being from the air and

the light which had nourished in him those influences which he has

communicated, through his poetry, to thousands. The dungeon is low and

dark, and, when I say that it is really a very decent dungeon, I speak

as one who has seen the prisons in the Doge’s palace of Venice. But

it is a horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest thing that ever

wore the shape of man, much more for one of delicate susceptibilities

and elevated fancies. It is low, and has a grated window, and being

sunk some feet below the level of the earth, is full of unwholesome

damps. In the darkest corner is a mark in the wall where the chains

were rivetted, which bound him hand and foot. After some time, at the

instance of some Cardinal, his friend, the Duke allowed his victim a

fireplace; the mark where it was walled up yet remains.

At the entrance of the Liceo, where the library is, we were met by a

penitent; his form was completely enveloped in a ghost-like drapery

of white flannel; his bare feet were sandalled; and there was a kind

of net-work visor drawn over his eyes, so as entirely to conceal his

face. I imagine that this man had been adjudged to suffer this penance

for some crime known only to himself and his confessor, and this kind

of exhibition is a striking instance of the power of the Catholic

superstition over the human mind. He passed, rattling his wooden box

for charity.

Adieu.--You will hear from me again before I arrive at Naples.

Yours, ever sincerely,

P. B. S.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Bologna, Monday, Nov. 9th, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

I have seen a quantity of things here--churches, palaces, statues,

fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a

portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place book. I

will try to recollect something of what I have seen; for, indeed, it

requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, we went to the

cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine,

or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on

four marble columns. We went then to a palace--I am sure I forget the

name of it--where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in

a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one

you remember. I remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido,

of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back her languid

and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left

ungathered in the fields of Enna. There was an exquisitely executed

piece of Correggio, about four saints, one of whom seemed to have a

pet dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the devil who was bound

in that style--but who can make anything of four saints? For what can

they be supposed to be about? There was one painting, indeed, by this

master, Christ beatified, inexpressibly fine. It is a half figure,

seated on a mass of clouds, tinged with an ethereal, rose-like lustre;

the arms are expanded; the whole frame seems dilated with expression;

the countenance is heavy, as it were, with the weight of the rapture

of the spirit; the lips parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath

of intense but regulated passion; the eyes are calm and benignant;

the whole features harmonised in majesty and sweetness. The hair is

parted on the forehead, and falls in heavy locks on each side. It

is motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath would move it.

The colouring, I suppose, must be very good, if I could remark and

understand it. The sky is of a pale aerial orange, like the tints of

latest sunset; it does not seem painted around and beyond the figure,

but everything seems to have absorbed, and to have been penetrated

by its hues. I do not think we saw any other of Correggio, but this

specimen gives me a very exalted idea of his powers.

We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,

Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any purpose,

here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing a novel. I

saw many more of Guido. One, a Samson drinking water out of an ass’s

jaw-bone, in the midst of the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is

supposed to do this, God, who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows--but

certain it is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure of

Samson stands in strong relief in the foreground, coloured, as it were,

in the hues of human life, and full of strength and elegance. Round him

lie the Philistines in all the attitudes of death. One prone, with the

slight convulsion of pain just passing from his forehead, whilst on

his lips and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. Another leaning on his

arm, with his hand, white and motionless, hanging out beyond. In the

distance, more dead bodies; and, still further beyond, the blue sea and

the blue mountains, and one white and tranquil sail.

There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido, finely coloured,

with much fine expression--but the subject is very horrible, and it

seemed deficient in strength--at least, you require the highest ideal

energy, the most poetical and exalted conception of the subject,

to reconcile you to such a contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ

crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever

may be the conception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous

and agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of

torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross, with the look of

passive and gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair,

and the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in passionate

compassion; his hands clasped, and his fingers twisting themselves

together, as it were, with involuntary anguish; his feet almost

writhing up from the ground with the same sympathy; and the whole of

this arrayed in colours of a diviner nature, yet most like nature’s

self. Of the contemplation of this one would never weary.

There was a “Fortune” too, of Guido; a piece of mere beauty. There was

the figure of Fortune on a globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, and Love

was trying to catch her back by the hair, and her face was half turned

towards him; her long chesnut hair was floating in the stream of the

wind, and threw its shadow over her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were

fixed on her pursuer, with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light

smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which arrayed her delicate

limbs were ethereal and warm.

But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the pictures of Guido which

I saw, was a Madonna Lattante. She is leaning over her child, and the

maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are shadowed forth on

her soft and gentle countenance, and in her simple and affectionate

gestures--there is what an unfeeling observer would call a dulness

in the expression of her face; her eyes are almost closed; her lip

depressed; there is a serious, and even a heavy relaxation, as it were,

of all the muscles which are called into action by ordinary emotions;

but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost insupportable from its

intensity, were brooding over and weighing down the soul, or whatever

it is, without which the material frame is inanimate and inexpressive.

There is another painter here, called Franceschini, a Bolognese, who,

though certainly very inferior to Guido, is yet a person of excellent

powers. One entire church, that of Santa Catarina, is covered by his

works. I do not know whether any of his pictures have ever been seen in

England. His colouring is less warm than that of Guido, but nothing can

be more clear and delicate, it is as if he could have dipped his pencil

in the hues of some serenest and star-shining twilight. His forms have

the same delicacy and aerial loveliness; their eyes are all bright

with innocence and love; their lips scarce divided by some gentle and

sweet emotion. His winged children are the loveliest ideal beings ever

created by the human mind. These are generally, whether in the capacity

of Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the picture; and

the underplot of their lovely and infantine play is something almost

pathetic, from the excess of its unpretending beauty. One of the best

of his pieces is an Annunciation of the Virgin; the Angel is beaming in

beauty; the Virgin, soft, retiring, and simple.

We saw besides one picture of Raphael--St. Cecilia: this is in another

and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it;

and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality.

It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived

and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among

the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are

the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a

perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St.

Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the

painter’s mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chesnut

hair flung back from her forehead--she holds an organ in her hands--her

countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and

rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of

life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has

just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently

point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who,

with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards

her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her feet lie various

instruments of music, broken and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not

speak; it eclipses nature, yet it has all her truth and softness.

We saw some pictures of Domenichino, Carracci, Albano, Guercino,

Elisabetta Sirani. The two former, remember, I do not pretend to

taste--I cannot admire. Of the latter there are some beautiful

Madonnas. There are several of Guercino, which they said were very

fine. I dare say they were, for the strength and complication of his

figures made my head turn round. One, indeed, was certainly powerful.

It was the representation of the founder of the Carthusians exercising

his austerities in the desert, with a youth as his attendant, kneeling

beside him at an altar: on another altar stood a skull and a crucifix;

and around were the rocks and the trees of the wilderness. I never

saw such a figure as this fellow. His face was wrinkled like a dried

snake’s skin, and drawn in long hard lines: his very hands were

wrinkled. He looked like an animated mummy. He was clothed in a loose

dress of death-coloured flannel, such as you might fancy a shroud

might be, after it had wrapt a corpse a month or two. It had a yellow,

putrefied, ghastly hue, which it cast on all the objects around, so

that the hands and face of the Carthusian and his companion were

jaundiced by this sepulchral glimmer. Why write books against religion,

when we may hang up such pictures? But the world either will not or

cannot see. The gloomy effect of this was softened, and, at the same

time, its sublimity diminished, by the figure of the Virgin and Child

in the sky, looking down with admiration on the monk, and a beautiful

flying figure of an angel.

Enough of pictures. I saw the place where Guido and his mistress,

Elisabetta Sirani, were buried. This lady was poisoned at the age of

twenty-six, by another lover, a rejected one, of course. Our guide said

she was very ugly, and that we might see her portrait to-morrow.

Well, good-night, for the present. “To-morrow to fresh fields and

pastures new.”

* * * * *

_Nov. 10._

To-day we first went to see those divine pictures of Raffael and

Guido again, and then rode up the mountains, behind this city, to

visit a chapel dedicated to the Madonna. It made me melancholy to see

that they had been varnishing and restoring some of these pictures,

and that even some had been pierced by the French bayonets. These

are symptoms of the mortality of man; and, perhaps, few of his works

are more evanescent than paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness

for twenty centuries--the Apollo and the Venus are as they were. But

books are perhaps the only productions of man coeval with the human

race. Sophocles and Shakespeare can be produced and reproduced for

ever. But how evanescent are paintings, and must necessarily be. Those

of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, and perhaps they bore the same

relation to Homer and Æschylus, that those of Guido and Raffael bear

to Dante and Petrarch. There is one refuge from the despondency of

this contemplation. The material part, indeed, of their works must

perish, but they survive in the mind of man, and the remembrances

connected with them are transmitted from generation to generation.

The poet embodies them in his creations; the systems of philosophers

are modelled to gentleness by their contemplation; opinion, that

legislator, is infected with their influence; men become better and

wiser; and the unseen seeds are perhaps thus sown, which shall produce

a plant more excellent even than that from which they fell. But all

this might as well be said or thought at Marlow as Bologna.

The chapel of the Madonna is a very pretty Corinthian building--very

beautiful, indeed. It commands a fine view of these fertile plains,

the many-folded Apennines, and the city. I have just returned from a

moonlight walk through Bologna. It is a city of colonnades, and the

effect of moonlight is strikingly picturesque. There are two towers

here--one 400 feet high--ugly things, built of brick, which lean both

different ways; and with the delusion of moonlight shadows, you might

almost fancy that the city is rocked by an earthquake. They say they

were built so on purpose; but I observe in all the plain of Lombardy

the church towers lean.

Adieu.--God grant you patience to read this long letter, and courage to

support the expectation of the next. Pray part them from the _Cobbetts_

on your breakfast table--they may fight it out in your mind.

Yours ever, most sincerely,

P. B. S.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Rome, November 20th, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

Behold me in the capital of the vanished world. But I have seen nothing

except St. Peter’s and the Vatican, overlooking the city in the mist

of distance, and the Dogana, where they took us to have our luggage

examined, which is built between the ruins of a temple to Antoninus

Pius. The Corinthian columns rise over the dwindled palaces of the

modern town, and the wrought cornice is changed on one side, as it

were, to masses of wave-worn precipice, which overhang you, far, far

on high.

I take advantage of this rainy evening, and before Rome has effaced

all other recollections, to endeavour to recall the vanished scenes

through which we have passed. We left Bologna, I forget on what day,

and passing by Rimini, Fano, and Foligno, along the Via Flaminia and

Terni, have arrived at Rome after ten days’ somewhat tedious, but most

interesting, journey. The most remarkable things we saw were the Roman

excavations in the rock, and the great waterfall of Terni. Of course

you have heard that there are a Roman bridge and a triumphal arch at

Rimini, and in what excellent taste they are built. The bridge is not

unlike the Strand bridge, but more bold in proportion, and of course

infinitely smaller. From Fano we left the coast of the Adriatic, and

entered the Apennines, following the course of the Metaurus, the banks

of which were the scene of the defeat of Asdrubal: and it is said (you

can refer to the book) that Livy has given a very exact and animated

description of it. I forget all about it, but shall look as soon as

our boxes are opened. Following the river, the vale contracts, the

banks of the river become steep and rocky, the forests of oak and ilex

which overhang its emerald-coloured stream, cling to their abrupt

precipices. About four miles from Fossombrone, the river forces for

itself a passage between the walls and toppling precipices of the

loftiest Apennines, which are here rifted to their base, and undermined

by the narrow and tumultuous torrent. It was a cloudy morning, and we

had no conception of the scene that awaited us. Suddenly the low clouds

were struck by the clear north wind, and like curtains of the finest

gauze, removed one by one, were drawn from before the mountain, whose

heaven-cleaving pinnacles and black crags overhanging one another,

stood at length defined in the light of day. The road runs parallel

to the river, at a considerable height, and is carried through

the mountain by a vaulted cavern. The marks of the chisel of the

legionaries of the Roman Consul are yet evident.

We passed on day after day, until we came to Spoleto, I think the most

romantic city I ever saw. There is here an aqueduct of astonishing

elevation, which unites two rocky mountains,--there is the path of

a torrent below, whitening the green dell with its broad and barren

track of stones, and above there is a castle, apparently of great

strength and of tremendous magnitude, which overhangs the city, and

whose marble bastions are perpendicular with the precipice. I never saw

a more impressive picture; in which the shapes of nature are of the

grandest order, but over which the creations of man, sublime from their

antiquity and greatness, seem to predominate. The castle was built by

Belisarius or Narses, I forget which, but was of that epoch.

From Spoleto we went to Terni, and saw the cataract of the Velino. The

glaciers of Montanvert and the source of the Arveiron is the grandest

spectacle I ever saw. This is the second. Imagine a river sixty feet

in breadth, with a vast volume of waters, the outlet of a great lake

among the higher mountains, falling 300 feet into a sightless gulf

of snow-white vapour, which bursts up for ever and for ever from a

circle of black crags, and thence leaping downwards, makes five or six

other cataracts, each fifty or a hundred feet high, which exhibit,

on a smaller scale, and with beautiful and sublime variety, the same

appearances. But words (and far less could painting) will not express

it. Stand upon the brink of the platform of cliff, which is directly

opposite. You see the ever-moving water stream down. It comes in thick

and tawny folds, flaking off like solid snow gliding down a mountain.

It does not seem hollow within, but without it is unequal, like the

folding of linen thrown carelessly down; your eye follows it, and it

is lost below; not in the black rocks which gird it around, but in its

own foam and spray, in the cloud-like vapours boiling up from below,

which is not like rain, nor mist, nor spray, nor foam, but water, in

a shape wholly unlike anything I ever saw before. It is as white as

snow, but thick and impenetrable to the eye. The very imagination is

bewildered in it. A thunder comes up from the abyss wonderful to hear;

for, though it ever sounds, it is never the same, but, modulated by

the changing motion, rises and falls intermittingly; we passed half

an hour in one spot looking at it, and thought but a few minutes had

gone by. The surrounding scenery is, in its kind, the loveliest and

most sublime that can be conceived. In our first walk we passed through

some olive groves, of large and ancient trees, whose hoary and twisted

trunks leaned in all directions. We then crossed a path of orange trees

by the river side, laden with their golden fruit, and came to a forest

of ilex of a large size, whose evergreen and acorn-bearing boughs were

intertwined over our winding path. Around, hemming in the narrow vale,

were pinnacles of lofty mountains of pyramidical rock clothed with

all evergreen plants and trees; the vast pine whose feathery foliage

trembled in the blue air, the ilex, that ancestral inhabitant of these

mountains, the arbutus with its crimson-coloured fruit and glittering

leaves. After an hour’s walk, we came beneath the cataract of Terni,

within the distance of half a mile; nearer you cannot approach, for

the Nar, which has here its confluence with the Velino, bars the

passage. We then crossed the river formed by this confluence, over a

narrow natural bridge of rock, and saw the cataract from the platform

I first mentioned. We think of spending some time next year near this

waterfall. The inn is very bad, or we should have stayed there longer.

We came from Terni last night to a place called Nepi, and to-day

arrived at Rome across the much-belied Campagna di Roma, a place I

confess infinitely to my taste. It is a flattering picture of Bagshot

Heath. But then there are the Apennines on one side, and Rome and St.

Peter’s on the other, and it is intersected by perpetual dells clothed

with arbutus and ilex.

Adieu--very faithfully yours,

P. B. S.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Naples, December 22, 1818._

My dear Peacock

I have received a letter from you here, dated November 1st; you see the

reciprocation of letters from the term of our travels is more slow.

I entirely agree with what you say about _Childe Harold_. The spirit

in which it is written is, if insane, the most wicked and mischievous

insanity that ever was given forth. It is a kind of obstinate and

self-willed folly, in which he hardens himself. I remonstrated with

him in vain on the tone of mind from which such a view of things alone

arises. For its real root is very different from its apparent one.

Nothing can be less sublime than the true source of these expressions

of contempt and desperation. The fact is, that first, the Italian women

with whom he associates, are perhaps the most contemptible of all who

exist under the moon--the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most

bigoted; * * * * an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well,

Lord Byron is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the people

his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associates with wretches who

seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do

not scruple to avow practices, which are not only not named, but I

believe seldom even conceived in England. He says he disapproves, but

he endures. He is heartily and deeply discontented with himself; and

contemplating in the distorted mirror of his own thoughts the nature

and the destiny of man, what can he behold but objects of contempt and

despair? But that he is a great poet, I think the address to Ocean

proves. And he has a certain degree of candour while you talk to him,

but unfortunately it does not outlast your departure. No, I do not

doubt, and, for his sake, I ought to hope, that his present career must

end soon in some violent circumstance.

Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins of Rome, the Vatican,

St. Peter’s, and all the miracles of ancient and modern art contained

in that majestic city. The impression of it exceeds anything I have

ever experienced in my travels. We stayed there only a week, intending

to return at the end of February, and devote two or three months to

its mines of inexhaustible contemplation, to which period I refer you

for a minute account of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins of the

Coliseum every day. The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I

ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the arches

built of massy stones are piled on one another, and jut into the blue

air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks. It has been changed

by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by

the wild olive, the myrtle, and the fig-tree, and threaded by little

paths, which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries:

the copse-wood overshadows you as you wander through its labyrinths,

and the wild weeds of this climate of flowers bloom under your feet.

The arena is covered with grass, and pierces, like the skirts of a

natural plain, the chasms of the broken arches around. But a small

part of the exterior circumference remains--it is exquisitely light

and beautiful; and the effect of the perfection of its architecture,

adorned with ranges of Corinthian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice,

is such, as to diminish the effect of its greatness. The interior

is all ruin. I can scarcely believe that when encrusted with Dorian

marble and ornamented by columns of Egyptian granite its effect could

have been so sublime and so impressive as in its present state. It is

open to the sky, and it was the clear and sunny weather of the end of

November in this climate when we visited it, day after day.

Near it is the arch of Constantine, or rather the arch of Trajan; for

the servile and avaricious senate of degraded Rome ordered that the

monument of his predecessor should be demolished in order to dedicate

one to the Christian reptile, who had crept among the blood of his

murdered family to the supreme power. It is exquisitely beautiful and

perfect. The Forum is a plain in the midst of Rome, a kind of desert

full of heaps of stones and pits, and though so near the habitations

of men, is the most desolate place you can conceive. The ruins of

temples stand in and around it, shattered columns and ranges of others

complete, supporting cornices of exquisite workmanship, and vast

vaults of shattered domes distinct with regular compartments, once

filled with sculptures of ivory or brass. The temples of Jupiter, and

Concord, and Peace, and the Sun, and the Moon, and Vesta, are all

within a short distance of this spot. Behold the wrecks of what a

great nation once dedicated to the abstractions of the mind! Rome is a

city, as it were, of the dead, or rather of those who cannot die, and

who survive the puny generations which inhabit and pass over the spot

which they have made sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least in the first

enthusiasm of your recognition of ancient time, you see nothing of the

Italians. The nature of the city assists the delusion, for its vast

and antique walls describe a circumference of sixteen miles, and thus

the population is thinly scattered over this space, nearly as great as

London. Wide wild fields are enclosed within it, and there are grassy

lanes and copses winding among the ruins, and a great green hill,

lonely and bare, which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern

palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, and pine, and the

neglected walks are overgrown with weeds. The English burying-place is

a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and

is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To

see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited

it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among

the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and

the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the

tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried there, one

might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is

the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion.

I have told you little about Rome; but I reserve the Pantheon, and St.

Peter’s, and the Vatican, and Raphael, for my return. About a fortnight

ago I left Rome, and Mary and C---- followed in three days, for it was

necessary to procure lodgings here without alighting at an inn. From my

peculiar mode of travelling I saw little of the country, but could just

observe that the wild beauty of the scenery and the barbarous ferocity

of the inhabitants progressively increased. On entering Naples, the

first circumstance that engaged my attention was an assassination. A

youth ran out of a shop, pursued by a woman with a bludgeon, and a man

armed with a knife. The man overtook him, and with one blow in the neck

laid him dead in the road. On my expressing the emotions of horror and

indignation which I felt, a Calabrian priest, who travelled with me,

laughed heartily, and attempted to quiz me, as what the English call a

flat. I never felt such an inclination to beat any one. Heaven knows I

have little power, but he saw that I looked extremely displeased, and

was silent. This same man, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature,

had expressed the most frantic terror of robbers on the road; he cried

at the sight of my pistol, and it had been with great difficulty

that the joint exertions of myself and the vetturino had quieted his

hysterics.

But external nature in these delightful regions contrasts with and

compensates for the deformity and degradation of humanity. We have a

lodging divided from the sea by the royal gardens, and from our windows

we see perpetually the blue waters of the bay, forever changing, yet

forever the same, and encompassed by the mountainous island of Capreæ,

the lofty peaks which overhang Salerno, and the woody hill of Posilipo,

whose promontories hide from us Misenum and the lofty isle Inarime,[19]

which, with its divided summit, forms the opposite horn of the bay.

From the pleasant walks of the garden we see Vesuvius; a smoke by day

and a fire by night is seen upon its summit, and the glassy sea often

reflects its light or shadow. The climate is delicious. We sit without

a fire, with the windows open, and have almost all the productions of

an English summer. The weather is usually like what Wordsworth calls

“the first fine day of March;” sometimes very much warmer, though

perhaps it wants that “each minute sweeter than before,” which gives an

intoxicating sweetness to the awakening of the earth from its winter’s

sleep in England. We have made two excursions, one to Baiæ and one to

Vesuvius, and we propose to visit, successively, the islands, Pæstum,

Pompeii, and Beneventum.

We set off an hour after sunrise one radiant morning in a little boat;

there was not a cloud in the sky, nor a wave upon the sea, which was

so translucent that you could see the hollow caverns clothed with the

glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves and branches of those delicate weeds

that pave the unequal bottom of the water. As noon approached, the

heat, and especially the light, became intense. We passed Posilipo, and

came first to the eastern point of the bay of Puzzoli, which is within

the great bay of Naples, and which again encloses that of Baiæ. Here

are lofty rocks and craggy islets, with arches and portals of precipice

standing in the sea, and enormous caverns, which echoed faintly with

the murmur of the languid tide. This is called La Scuola di Virgilio.

We then went directly across to the promontory of Misenum, leaving the

precipitous island of Nisida on the right. Here we were conducted to

see the Mare Morto, and the Elysian fields; the spot on which Virgil

places the scenery of the Sixth Æneid, Though extremely beautiful, as

a lake, and woody hills, and this divine sky must make it, I confess

my disappointment. The guide showed us an antique cemetery, where the

niches used for placing the cinerary urns of the dead yet remain.

We then coasted the bay of Baiæ to the left, in which we saw many

picturesque and interesting ruins; but I have to remark that we never

disembarked but we were disappointed--while from the boat the effect

of the scenery was inexpressibly delightful. The colours of the water

and the air breathe over all things here the radiance of their own

beauty. After passing the bay of Baiæ, and observing the ruins of its

antique grandeur standing like rocks in the transparent sea under our

boat, we landed to visit lake Avernus. We passed through the cavern of

the Sibyl (not Virgil’s Sibyl), which pierces one of the hills which

circumscribe the lake, and came to a calm and lovely basin of water,

surrounded by dark woody hills, and profoundly solitary. Some vast

ruins of the temple of Pluto stand on a lawny hill on one side of it,

and are reflected in its windless mirror. It is far more beautiful

than the Elysian fields--but there are all the materials for beauty in

the latter, and the Avernus was once a chasm of deadly and pestilential

vapours. About half a mile from Avernus, a high hill, called Monte

Novo, was thrown up by volcanic fire.

Passing onward we came to Pozzoli, the ancient Dicæarchea, where there

are the columns remaining of a temple to Serapis, and the wreck of

an enormous amphitheatre, changed, like the Coliseum, into a natural

hill of the overteeming vegetation. Here also is the Solfatara, of

which there is a poetical description in the Civil War of Petronius,

beginning--“Est locus,”[20] and in which the verses of the poet are

infinitely finer than what he describes, for it is not a very curious

place. After seeing these things we returned by moonlight to Naples

in our boat. What colours there were in the sky, what radiance in the

evening star, and how the moon was encompassed by a light unknown to

our regions!

Our next excursion was to Vesuvius. We went to Resina in a carriage,

where Mary and I mounted mules, and C---- was carried in a chair on

the shoulders of four men, much like a member of parliament after

he has gained his election, and looking, with less reason, quite as

frightened. So we arrived at the hermitage of San Salvador, where an

old hermit, belted with rope, set forth the plates for our refreshment.

Vesuvius is, after the glaciers, the most impressive exhibition

of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has not the immeasurable

greatness, the overpowering magnificence, nor, above all, the radiant

beauty of the glaciers; but it has all their character of tremendous

and irresistible strength. From Resina to the hermitage you wind up

the mountain, and cross a vast stream of hardened lava, which is an

actual image of the waves of the sea, changed into hard black stone by

enchantment. The lines of the boiling flood seem to hang in the air;

and it is difficult to believe that the billows which seem hurrying

down upon you are not actually in motion. This plain was once a sea of

liquid fire. From the hermitage we crossed another vast stream of lava,

and then went on foot up the cone--this is the only part of the ascent

in which there is any difficulty, and that difficulty has been much

exaggerated. It is composed of rocks of lava, and declivities of ashes;

by ascending the former and descending the latter, there is very little

fatigue. On the summit is a kind of irregular plain, the most horrible

chaos that can be imagined; riven into ghastly chasms, and heaped up

with tumuli of great stones and cinders, and enormous rocks blackened

and calcined, which had been thrown from the volcano upon one another

in terrible confusion. In the midst stands the conical hill from which

volumes of smoke, and the fountains of liquid fire, are rolled forth

forever. The mountain is at present in a slight state of eruption; and

a thick heavy white smoke is perpetually rolled out, interrupted by

enormous columns of an impenetrable black bituminous vapour, which is

hurled up, fold after fold, into the sky with a deep hollow sound, and

fiery stones are rained down from its darkness, and a black shower of

ashes fell even where we sat. The lava, like the glacier, creeps on

perpetually, with a crackling sound as of suppressed fire. There are

several springs of lava; and in one place it gushes precipitously over

a high crag, rolling down the half-molten rocks and its own overhanging

waves; a cataract of quivering fire. We approached the extremity of one

of the rivers of lava; it is about twenty feet in breadth and ten in

height; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, its motion was very

slow. We saw the masses of its dark exterior surface detach themselves

as it moved, and betray the depth of the liquid flame. In the day the

fire is but slightly seen; you only observe a tremulous motion in the

air, and streams and fountains of white sulphurous smoke.

At length we saw the sun sink between Capreæ and Inarime, and, as the

darkness increased, the effect of the fire became more beautiful. We

were, as it were, surrounded by streams and cataracts of the red and

radiant fire; and in the midst, from the column of bituminous smoke

shot up into the air, fell the vast masses of rock, white with the

light of their intense heat, leaving behind them through the dark

vapour trains of splendour. We descended by torch-light, and I should

have enjoyed the scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I know

not how, to the hermitage in a state of intense bodily suffering, the

worst effect of which was spoiling the pleasure of Mary and C----.

Our guides on the occasion were complete savages. You have no idea of

the horrible cries which they suddenly utter, no one knows why, the

clamour, the vociferation, the tumult. C---- in her palanquin suffered

most from it; and when I had gone on before, they threatened to leave

her in the middle of the road, which they would have done had not

my Italian servant promised them a beating, after which they became

quiet. Nothing, however, can be more picturesque than the gestures and

the physiognomies of these savage people. And when, in the darkness

of night, they unexpectedly begin to sing in chorus some fragments of

their wild but sweet national music, the effect is exceedingly fine.

Since I wrote this I have seen the museum of this city. Such statues!

There is a Venus; an ideal shape of the most winning loveliness. A

Bacchus, more sublime than any living being. A Satyr, making love

to a youth, in which the expressed life of the sculpture, and

the inconceivable beauty of the form of the youth, overcome one’s

repugnance to the subject. There are multitudes of wonderfully fine

statues found in Herculaneum and Pompeii. We are going to see Pompeii

the first day that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum is almost filled

up; no more excavations are made; the king bought the ground and built

a palace upon it.

You don’t see much of Hunt. I wish you could contrive to see him when

you go to town, and ask him what he means to answer to Lord Byron’s

invitation. He has now an opportunity, if he likes, of seeing Italy.

What do you think of joining his party, and paying us a visit next

year; I mean as soon as the reign of winter is dissolved? Write to me

your thoughts upon this. I cannot express to you the pleasure it would

give me to welcome such a party.

I have depression enough of spirits and not good health, though I

believe the warm air of Naples does me good. We see absolutely no one

here.

Adieu, my dear Peacock,

affectionately your friend,

P. B. S.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] The ancient name of Ischia.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]

[20]

Est locus exciso penitus demersus hiatu, Parthenopem inter, magnæque

Dicarchidos arva, Cocytia perfusus aqua, nam spiritus, extra Qui furit,

effusus funesto spargitur æstu, &c. Petronii Arbitri _Satyricon_.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Naples, Jan. 26th, 1819._

My dear Peacock,

Your two letters arrived within a few days of each other, one being

directed to Naples, and the other to Livorno. They are more welcome

visitors to me than mine can be to you. I writing as from sepulchres,

you from the habitations of men yet unburied; though the sexton,

Castlereagh, after having dug their grave, stands with his spade in

his hand, evidently doubting whether he will not be forced to occupy

it himself. Your news about the bank-note trials is excellent good.

Do I not recognise in it the influence of Cobbett? You don’t tell me

what occupies Parliament. I know you will laugh at my demand, and

assure me that it is indifferent. Your pamphlet I want exceedingly to

see. Your calculations in the letter are clear, but require much oral

explanation. You know I am an infernal arithmetician. If none but me

had contemplated “lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra,” the world

would yet have doubted whether they were many hundred feet higher than

the mountain tops.

In my accounts of pictures and things, I am more pleased to interest

you than the many; and this is fortunate, because, in the first place,

I have no idea of attempting the latter, and if I did attempt it, I

should assuredly fail. A perception of the beautiful characterizes

those who differ from ordinary men, and those who can perceive it would

not buy enough to pay the printer. Besides, I keep no journal, and the

only records of my voyage will be the letters I send you. The bodily

fatigue of standing for hours in galleries exhausts me; I believe

that I don’t see half that I ought, on that account. And, then, we

know nobody, and the common Italians are so sullen and stupid, it’s

impossible to get information from them. At Rome, where the people seem

superior to any in Italy, I cannot fail to stumble on something more.

O, if I had health, and strength, and equal spirits, what boundless

intellectual improvement might I not gather in this wonderful country!

At present I write little else but poetry, and little of that. My

first act of Prometheus is complete, and I think you would like it. I

consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science, and if

I were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter, for I can conceive

a great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing

the contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me

is such an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to

amuse myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into

the scale of that balance, which the Giant of Arthegall holds.

Since you last heard from me, we have been to see Pompeii, and are

waiting now for the return of spring weather, to visit, first,

Pæstum, and then the islands; after which we shall return to Rome.

I was astonished at the remains of this city; I had no conception

of anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea of the mode of its

destruction was this:--First, an earthquake shattered it, and unroofed

almost all its temples, and split its columns; then a rain of light,

small pumice-stones fell; then torrents of boiling water, mixed with

ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, from which the

city was excavated, is now covered by thick woods, and you see the

tombs and the theatres, the temples and the houses, surrounded by the

uninhabited wilderness. We entered the town from the side towards the

sea, and first saw two theatres; one more magnificent than the other,

strewn with the ruins of the white marble which formed their seats and

cornices, wrought with deep, bold sculpture. In the front, between

the stage and the seats, is the circular space, occasionally occupied

by the chorus. The stage is very narrow, but long, and divided from

this space by a narrow enclosure parallel to it, I suppose for the

orchestra. On each side are the consuls’ boxes, and below, in the

theatre at Herculaneum, were found two equestrian statues of admirable

workmanship, occupying the same place as the great bronze lamps did at

Drury Lane. The smallest of the theatres is said to have been comic,

though I should doubt. From both you see, as you sit on the seats, a

prospect of the most wonderful beauty.

You then pass through the ancient streets; they are very narrow, and

the houses rather small, but all constructed on an admirable plan,

especially for this climate. The rooms are built round a court, or

sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. In the midst is

a fountain, sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted

columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes

wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures,

and more or less beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant.

There were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to

decorate the royal museums. Little winged figures, and small ornaments

of exquisite elegance, yet remain. There is an ideal life in the

forms of these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, though most

are evidently the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if, from

the atmosphere of mental beauty which surrounded them, every human

being caught a splendour not his own. In one house you see how the

bed-rooms were managed;--a small sofa was built up, where the cushions

were placed; two pictures, one representing Diana and Endymion, the

other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber; and a little niche, which

contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor is composed of a rich

mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and porphyry; it looks

to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns, whose entablatures

strew the floor of the portico they supported. The houses have only one

story, and the apartments, though not large, are very lofty. A great

advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our cities. The public

buildings, whose ruins are now forests as it were of white fluted

columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with sculptures,

were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This was the

excellence of the ancients. Their private expenses were comparatively

moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of Pompeii is

elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful specimens of art, but

small. But their public buildings are everywhere marked by the bold

and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In the little town

of Pompeii, (it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants,) it is

wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of their public buildings.

Another advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious

scenery around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of

the Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeians could

contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise

high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an

atmosphere of golden vapour, between Inarime and Misenum.

We next saw the temples. Of the temple of Æsculapius little remains but

an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales

of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, was found in the cell. The

temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted

columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for

statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the

most exquisite proportion; its panels are adorned with figures in bas

relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most delicate and

perfect that can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects, executed

by a Greek artist, who has harmonized all the unnatural extravagances

of the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his

country’s genius. They scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and

their wind-uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. The temple in

the midst, raised on a high platform, and approached by steps, was

decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum

at Portici. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a

pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of white stucco, so white

that it dazzles you to look at it.

Thence through other porticos and labyrinths of walls and columns, (for

I cannot hope to detail everything to you,) we came to the Forum. This

is a large square, surrounded by lofty porticos of fluted columns,

some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The

temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the

Hall of Public Justice, with their forests of lofty columns, surround

the Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size, (for, whether

they supported equestrian statues, or were the altars of the temple

of Venus, before which they stand, the guide could not tell,) occupy

the lower end of the Forum. At the upper end, supported on an elevated

platform, stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its

portico we sat, and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and

medlars, (sorry fare, you will say,) and rested to eat. Here was a

magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous shafts of

the sunshining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple heaven

of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its line the dark

lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and tinged

towards their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was

one small green island. To the right was Capreæ, Inarime, Prochyta,

and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth

volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes

darted into the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the

wind. Between Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm,

was seen the main line of the loftiest Apennines, to the east. The day

was radiant and warm. Every now and then we heard the subterranean

thunder of Vesuvius; its distant deep peals seemed to shake the very

air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames, with the sullen

and tremendous sound. This scene was what the Greeks beheld (Pompeii,

you know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony with nature; and the

interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, as it were, to

admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to

visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was Athens? What

scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the temples

of Hercules, and Theseus, and the Winds? The islands and the Ægean sea,

the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and Olympus, and the

darkness of the Bœotian forests interspersed?

From the Forum we went to another public place; a triangular portico,

half inclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge

of the hill overlooking the sea. Δ That black point is the temple. In

the apex of the triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and before the

altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. Returning

hence, and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of

the city. The walls are of enormous strength, and inclose a space of

three miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate are built the

tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding-places for that

which must decay, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They

are of marble, radiantly white; and two, especially beautiful, are

loaded with exquisite bas reliefs. On the stucco-wall that incloses

them are little emblematic figures of a relief exceedingly low, of dead

and dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending

in groups in some funeral office. The higher reliefs represent, one a

nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one. Within the cell

stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that

paintings were found within; which are now, as has been everything

moveable in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal museums.

These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods

surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved

road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver

and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the

step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings

of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble,

the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them,

contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were

living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.

I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of great magnitude, though

much inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks were

such great poets; and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for

the harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all

their works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external

nature, and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their

theatres were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, the

ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery,

admitted the light and wind; the odour and the freshness of the country

penetrated the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; and the

flying clouds, the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above. O, but for

that series of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest

of the world; but for the Christian religion, which put the finishing

stroke on the ancient system; but for those changes that conducted

Athens to its ruin,--to what an eminence might not humanity have

arrived!

In a short time I hope to tell you something of the museum of this city.

You see how ill I follow the maxim of Horace, at least in its literal

sense: “nil admirari”--which I should say, “prope res est una”--to

prevent there ever being anything admirable in the world. Fortunately

Plato is of my opinion; and I had rather err with Plato than be right

with Horace.

At this moment I have received your letter indicating that you are

removing to London. I am very much interested in the subject of this

change, and beg you would write me all the particulars of it. You

will be able now to give me perhaps a closer insight into the politics

of the times than was permitted you at Marlow. Of H---- I have a very

slight opinion. There are rumours here of a revolution in Spain. A ship

came in twelve days from Catalonia, and brought a report that the king

was massacred; that eighteen thousand insurgents surrounded Madrid;

but that before the popular party gained head enough seven thousand

were murdered by the inquisition. Perhaps you know all by this time.

The old king of Spain is dead here. Cobbett is a fine ὑμενοποιος--does

his influence increase or diminish? What a pity that so powerful a

genius should be combined with the most odious moral qualities.

We have reports here of a change in the English ministry--to what does

it amount? for, besides my national interest in it, I am on the watch

to vindicate my most sacred rights, invaded by the chancery court.

I suppose now we shall not see you in Italy this spring, whether Hunt

comes or not. It’s probable I shall hear nothing from him for some

months, particularly if he does not come. Give me _ses nouvelles_.

I am under an English surgeon here, who says I have a disease of the

liver, which he will cure. We keep horses, as this kind of exercise

is absolutely essential to my health. Elise[21] has just married our

Italian servant, and has quitted us; the man was a great rascal, and

cheated enormously: this event was very much against our advice.

I have scarcely been out since I wrote last.

Adieu! yours most faithfully,

P. B. S.

[21] A Swiss girl whom we had engaged as nursery-maid two years before,

at Geneva.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Rome, March 23d, 1819._

My dear Peacock,

I wrote to you the day before our departure from Naples. We came by

slow journeys, with our own horses, to Rome, resting one day at Mola

di Gaeta, at the inn called Villa di Cicerone, from being built on

the ruins of his Villa, whose immense substructions overhang the sea,

and are scattered among the orange-groves. Nothing can be lovelier

than the scene from the terraces of the inn. On one side precipitous

mountains, whose bases slope into an inclined plane of olive and

orange-copses--the latter forming, as it were, an emerald sky of

leaves, starred with innumerable globes of their ripening fruit, whose

rich splendour contrasted with the deep green foliage; on the other

the sea--bounded on one side by the antique town of Gaeta, and the

other by what appears to be an island, the promontory of Circe. From

Gaeta to Terracina the whole scenery is of the most sublime character.

At Terracina precipitous conical crags of immense height shoot into

the sky and overhang the sea. At Albano we arrived again in sight of

Rome. Arches after arches in unending lines stretching across the

uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined line of the mountains seen

between them; masses of nameless ruin standing like rocks out of the

plain; and the plain itself, with its billowy and unequal surface,

announced the neighbourhood of Rome. And what shall I say to you of

Rome? If I speak of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones piled upon

stones, which are the sepulchres of the fame of those who once arrayed

them with the beauty which has faded, will you believe me insensible to

the vital, the almost breathing creations of genius yet subsisting in

their perfection? What has become, you will ask, of the Apollo, the

Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol? What of the Apollo di Belvedere,

the Laocoon? What of Raffaelle and Guido? These things are best

spoken of when the mind has drunk in the spirit of their forms; and

little indeed can I, who must devote no more than a few months to the

contemplation of them, hope to know or feel of their profound beauty.

I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impressions on me on

my first visit to this city. The next most considerable relic of

antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermæ of Caracalla. These

consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each

inclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are, in addition, a

number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by

the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime

and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines

filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted

in the rifts of the stones. At every step the aerial pinnacles of

shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above

the lofty yet level walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect

to one travelling rapidly along the plain. The perpendicular walls

resemble nothing more than that cliff of Bisham wood, that is overgrown

with wood, and yet is stony and precipitous--you know the one I mean;

not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the pretty copse of fir-trees

and privet-bushes at its base, and where H * * and I scrambled up, and

you, to my infinite discontent, would go home. These walls surround

green and level spaces of lawn, on which some elms have grown, and

which are interspersed towards their skirts by masses of the fallen

ruin, overtwined with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue

sky canopies it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls.

But the most interesting effect remains. In one of the buttresses,

that supports an immense and lofty arch, which “bridges the very winds

of heaven,” are the crumbling remains of an antique winding staircase,

whose sides are open in many places to the precipice. This you ascend,

and arrive on the summit of these piles. There grow on every side thick

entangled wildernesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the

flowering laurustinus, whose white blossoms are just developed, the

wild fig, and a thousand nameless plants sown by the wandering winds.

These woods are intersected on every side by paths, like sheep tracks

through the copse-wood of steep mountains, which wind to every part of

the immense labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses,

themselves like mountains, which have been seen from below. In one

place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown ruin, on one side

is the immensity of earth and sky, on the other a narrow chasm, which

is bounded by an arch of enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured

foliage and blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid,

overgrown like itself with the all-prevailing vegetation. Around

rise other crags and other peaks, all arrayed, and the deformity of

their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying investiture of

nature. Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is overpowered;

which words cannot convey. Still further, winding up one-half of the

shattered pyramids, by the path through the blooming copse-wood, you

come to a little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild shrubs; it is

overgrown with anemones, wall-flowers, and violets, whose stalks pierce

the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers, whose names I know not,

and which scatter through the air the divinest odour, which, as you

recline under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous

faintness, like the combinations of sweet music. The paths still wind

on, threading the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, other lawns,

and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific chasms. When I

tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and that the paths above

penetrate at least half their extent, your imagination will fill up all

that I am unable to express of this astonishing scene.

I speak of these things not in the order in which I visited them, but

in that of the impression which they made on me, or perhaps chance

directs. The ruins of the ancient Forum are so far fortunate that

they have not been walled up in the modern city. They stand in an

open, lonesome place, bounded on one side by the modern city, and the

other by the Palatine Mount, covered with shapeless masses of ruin.

The tourists tell you all about these things, and I am afraid of

stumbling on their language when I enumerate what is so well known.

There remain eight granite columns of the Ionic order, with their

entablature, of the temple of Concord, founded by Camillus. I fear that

the immense expense demanded by these columns forbids us to hope that

they are the remains of any edifice dedicated by that most perfect

and virtuous of men. It is supposed to have been repaired under the

Eastern Emperors; alas, what a contrast of recollections! Near them

stand those Corinthian fluted columns, which supported the angle of

a temple; the architrave and entablature are worked with delicate

sculpture. Beyond, to the south, is another solitary column; and still

more distant, three more, supporting the wreck of an entablature.

Descending from the Capitol to the Forum, is the triumphal arch of

Septimius Severus, less perfect than that of Constantine, though from

its proportions and magnitude, a most impressive monument. That of

Constantine, or rather of Titus, (for the relief and sculpture, and

even the colossal images of Dacian captives, were torn by a decree of

the senate from an arch dedicated to the latter, to adorn that of this

stupid and wicked monster, Constantine, one of whose chief merits

consists in establishing a religion, the destroyer of those arts which

would have rendered so base a spoliation unnecessary) is the most

perfect. It is an admirable work of art. It is built of the finest

marble, and the outline of the reliefs is in many parts as perfect as

if just finished. Four Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side,

a bold entablature, whose bases are loaded with reliefs of captives

in every attitude of humiliation and slavery. The compartments above

express in bolder relief the enjoyment of success; the conqueror on

his throne, or in his chariot, or nodding over the crushed multitudes,

who writhe under his horses’ hoofs, as those below express the torture

and abjectness of defeat. There are three arches, whose roofs are

panelled with fretwork, and their sides adorned with similar reliefs.

The keystone of these arches is supported each by two winged figures of

Victory, whose hair floats on the wind of their own speed, and whose

arms are outstretched, bearing trophies, as if impatient to meet. They

look, as it were, borne from the subject extremities of the earth, on

the breath which is the exhalation of that battle and desolation, which

it is their mission to commemorate. Never were monuments so completely

fitted to the purpose for which they were designed, of expressing that

mixture of energy and error which is called a triumph.

I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian evening, and

return by star or moonlight, through this scene. The elms are just

budding, and the warm spring winds bring unknown odours, all sweet,

from the country. I see the radiant Orion through the mighty columns

of the temple of Concord, and the mellow fading light softens down the

modern buildings of the Capitol, the only ones that interfere with the

sublime desolation of the scene. On the steps of the Capitol itself,

stand two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each with his horse,

finely executed, though far inferior to those of Monte Cavallo, the

cast of one of which you know we saw together in London. This walk is

close to our lodging, and this is my evening walk.

What shall I say of the modern city? Rome is yet the capital of the

world. It is a city of palaces and temples, more glorious than those

which any other city contains, and of ruins more glorious than they.

Seen from any of the eminences that surround it, it exhibits domes

beyond domes, and palaces, and colonnades interminably, even to the

horizon; interspersed with patches of desert, and mighty ruins which

stand girt by their own desolation, in the midst of the fanes of living

religions and the habitations of living men, in sublime loneliness.

St. Peter’s is, as you have heard, the loftiest building in Europe.

Externally it is inferior in architectural beauty to St. Paul’s, though

not wholly devoid of it; internally it exhibits littleness on a large

scale, and is in every respect opposed to antique taste. You know

my propensity to admire; and I tried to persuade myself out of this

opinion--in vain; the more I see of the interior of St. Peter’s, the

less impression as a whole does it produce on me. I cannot even think

it lofty, though its dome is considerably higher than any hill within

fifty miles of London; and when one reflects, it is an astonishing

monument of the daring energy of man. Its colonnade is wonderfully

fine, and there are two fountains, which rise in spire-like columns

of water to an immense height in the sky, and falling on the porphyry

vases from which they spring, fill the whole air with a radiant mist,

which at noon is thronged with innumerable rainbows. In the midst

stands an obelisk. In front is the palace-like façade of St Peter’s,

certainly magnificent; and there is produced, on the whole, an

architectural combination unequalled in the world. But the dome of the

temple is concealed, except at a very great distance, by the façade

and the inferior part of the building, and that diabolical contrivance

they call an attic.

The effect of the Pantheon is totally the reverse of that of St.

Peter’s. Though not a fourth part of the size, it is, as it were, the

visible image of the universe; in the perfection of its proportions, as

when you regard the unmeasured dome of heaven, the idea of magnitude

is swallowed up and lost. It is open to the sky, and its wide dome

is lighted by the ever-changing illumination of the air. The clouds

of noon fly over it, and at night the keen stars are seen through

the azure darkness, hanging immoveably, or driving after the driving

moon among the clouds. We visited it by moonlight; it is supported by

sixteen columns, fluted and Corinthian, of a certain rare and beautiful

yellow marble, exquisitely polished, called here _giallo antico_.

Above these are the niches for the statues of the twelve gods. This

is the only defect of this sublime temple; there ought to have been

no interval between the commencement of the dome and the cornice,

supported by the columns. Thus there would have been no diversion from

the magnificent simplicity of its form. This improvement is alone

wanting to have completed the unity of the idea.

The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, magnificent combinations of

art, such as alone it were worth coming to see. That in the Piazza

Navona, a large square, is composed of enormous fragments of rock,

piled on each other, and penetrated, as by caverns. This mass supports

an Egyptian obelisk of immense height. On the four corners of the rock

recline, in different attitudes, colossal figures representing the four

divisions of the globe. The water bursts from the crevices beneath

them. They are sculptured with great spirit; one impatiently tearing

a veil from his eyes; another with his hands stretched upwards. The

Fontana di Trevi is the most celebrated, and is rather a waterfall

than a fountain; gushing out from masses of rock, with a gigantic

figure of Neptune; and below are two river gods, checking two winged

horses, struggling up from among the rocks and waters. The whole is

not ill-conceived nor executed; but you know not how delicate the

imagination becomes by dieting with antiquity day after day. The only

things that sustain the comparison are Raphael, Guido, and Salvator

Rosa.

The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group formed by the

statues, obelisk and the fountain, is, however, the most admirable

of all. From the Piazza Quirinale, or rather Monte Cavallo, you see

the boundless ocean of domes, spires, and columns, which is the City,

Rome. On a pedestal of white marble rises an obelisk of red granite,

piercing the blue sky. Before it is a vast basin of porphyry, in the

midst of which rises a column of the purest water, which collects into

itself all the overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks them into a

thousand prismatic hues and graduated shadows--they fall together with

its dashing water-drops into the outer basin. The elevated situation of

this fountain produces, I imagine, this effect of colour. On each side,

on an elevated pedestal, stand the statues of Castor and Pollux, each

in the act of taming his horse, which are said, but I believe wholly

without authority, to be the work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These

figures combine the irresistible energy with the sublime and perfect

loveliness supposed to have belonged to their divine nature. The reins

no longer exist, but the position of their hands and the sustained and

calm command of their regard, seem to require no mechanical aid to

enforce obedience. The countenances at so great a height are scarcely

visible, and I have a better idea of that of which we saw a cast

together in London, than of the other. But the sublime and living

majesty of their limbs and mien, the nervous and fiery animation of the

horses they restrain, seen in the blue sky of Italy, and overlooking

the city of Rome, surrounded by the light and the music of that

crystalline fountain, no cast can communicate.

These figures were found at the Baths of Constantine, but, of course,

are of remote antiquity. I do not acquiesce, however, in the practice

of attributing to Phidias, or Praxiteles, or Scopas, or some great

master, any admirable work that may be found. We find little of what

remained, and perhaps the works of these were such as greatly surpassed

all that we conceive of most perfect and admirable in what little has

escaped the _deluge_. If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks,

our masters, and creators, the gods whom we should worship,--pardon me.

I have said what I feel without entering into any critical discussions

of the _ruins_ of Rome, and the mere outside of this inexhaustible

mine of thought and feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, and Forsyth, will tell

all the shew-knowledge about it--“the common stuff of the earth.”

By-the-bye, Forsyth is worth reading, as I judge from a chapter or two

I have seen. I cannot get the book here.

I ought to have observed that the central arch of the triumphal arch

of Titus yet subsists, more perfect in its proportions, they say, than

any of a later date. This I did not remark. The figures of Victory,

with unfolded wings, and each spurning back a globe with outstretched

feet, are, perhaps, more beautiful than those on either of the others.

Their lips are parted: a delicate mode of indicating the fervour of

their desire to arrive at the destined resting-place, and to express

the eager respiration of their speed. Indeed, so essential to beauty

were the forms expressive of the exercise of the imagination and the

affections considered by _Greek_ artists, that no ideal figure of

antiquity, not destined to some representation directly exclusive of

such a character, is to be found with closed lips. Within this arch are

two panelled alto relievos, one representing a train of people bearing

in procession the instruments of Jewish worship, among which is the

holy candlestick with seven branches; on the other, Titus standing in

a quadriga, with a winged Victory. The grouping of the horses, and the

beauty, correctness and energy of their delineation, is remarkable,

though they are much destroyed.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Rome, April 6th, 1819._

My dear Peacock,

I sent you yesterday a long letter, all about antique Rome, which

you had better keep for some leisure day. I received yours, and one

of Hunt’s, yesterday.--So, you know the B----s? I could not help

considering Mrs. B., when I knew her, as the most admirable specimen

of a human being I had ever seen. Nothing earthly ever appeared to me

more perfect than her character and manners. It is improbable that I

shall ever meet again the person whom I so much esteemed, and still

admire. I wish, however, that when you see her, you would tell her that

I have not forgotten her, nor any of the amiable circle once assembled

round her; and that I desire such remembrances to her, as an exile and

a _Pariah_ may be permitted to address to an acknowledged member of

the community of mankind. I hear they dined at your lodgings. But no

mention of A * * * and his wife--where were they? C * * *, though so

young when I saw her, gave indications of her mother’s excellences;

and, certainly less fascinating, is, I doubt not, equally amiable,

and more sincere. It was hardly possible for a person of the extreme

subtlety and delicacy of Mrs. B----’s understanding and affections, to

be quite sincere and constant.

I am all anxiety about your I. H. affair. There are few who will

feel more hearty satisfaction at your success, in this or any other

enterprise, than I shall. Pray let me have the earliest intelligence.

When shall I return to England? The Pythia has ascended the tripod, but

she replies not. Our present plans--and I know not what can induce us

to alter them--lead us back to Naples in a month or six weeks, where it

is almost decided that we should remain until the commencement of 1820.

You may imagine when we receive such letters as yours and Hunt’s, what

this resolution costs us--but these are not our only communications

from England. My health is materially better. My spirits not the

most brilliant in the world; but that we attribute to our solitary

situation, and, though happy, how should I be lively? We see something

of Italian society indeed. The Romans please me much, especially the

women; who, though totally devoid of every kind of information, or

culture of the imagination, or affections, or understanding--and, in

this respect, a kind of gentle savages--yet contrive to be interesting.

Their extreme innocence and _naïveté_, the freedom and gentleness of

their manners; the total absence of affectation, makes an intercourse

with them very like an intercourse with uncorrupted children, whom they

resemble in loveliness as well as simplicity. I have seen two women

in society here of the highest beauty; their brows and lips, and the

moulding of the face modelled with sculptural exactness, and the dark

luxuriance of their hair floating over their fine complexions--and the

lips--you must hear the common-places which escape from them before

they cease to be dangerous. The only inferior part are the eyes, which,

though good and gentle, want the mazy depth of colour behind colour,

with which the intellectual women of England and Germany entangle the

heart in soul-inwoven labyrinths.

This is holy week, and Rome is quite full. The Emperor of Austria is

here, and Maria Louisa is coming. On their journey through the other

cities of Italy, she was greeted with loud acclamations, and vivas of

Napoleon. Idiots and slaves! Like the frogs in the fable, because they

are discontented with the log, they call upon the stork, who devours

them. Great festas, and magnificent funzioni here--we cannot get

tickets to all. There are five thousand strangers in Rome, and only

room for five hundred, at the celebration of the famous Miserere, in

the Sistine chapel, the only thing I regret we shall not be present

at. After all, Rome is eternal, and were all that _is_ extinguished,

that which _has been_, the ruins and the sculptures, would remain, and

Raffaelle and Guido be alone regretted.

In the square of St. Peter’s there are about three hundred fettered

criminals at work, hoeing out the weeds that grow between the stones

of the pavement. Their legs are heavily ironed, and some are chained

two by two. They sit in long rows, hoeing out the weeds, dressed in

parti-coloured clothes. Near them sit or saunter, groups of soldiers,

armed with loaded muskets. The iron discord of those innumerable

chains clanks up into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted with

the musical dashing of the fountains, and the deep azure beauty of

the sky, and the magnificence of the architecture around, a conflict

of sensations allied to madness. It is the emblem of Italy--moral

degradation contrasted with the glory of nature and the arts.

We see no English society here; it is not probable that we could if we

desired it, and I am certain that we should find it insupportable. The

manners of the rich English are wholly insupportable, and they assume

pretences which they would not venture upon in their own country.--I

am yet ignorant of the event of Hobhouse’s election. I saw the last

numbers were--Lamb, 4200; and Hobhouse, 3900--14th day. There is little

hope. That mischievous Cobbett has divided and weakened the interest

of the popular party, so that the factions that prey upon our country

have been able to coalesce to its exclusion. The N----s you have not

seen. I am curious to know what kind of a girl Octavia becomes; she

promised well. Tell H---- his Melpomene is in the Vatican, and that

her attitude and drapery surpass, if possible, the graces of her

countenance.

My “Prometheus Unbound” is just finished, and in a month or two I

shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind

yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my

former attempts. By-the-bye, have you seen Ollier? I never hear from

him, and am ignorant whether some verses I sent him from Naples,

entitled, I think, “Lines on the Euganean hills,” have reached him

in safety or not. As to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but

abuse; and this is not hearty or sincere enough to amuse me. As to the

poem now printing,[22] I lay no stress on it one way or the other. The

concluding lines are natural.

I believe, my dear Peacock, that you wish us to come back to England.

How is it possible? Health, competence, tranquillity--all these Italy

permits, and England takes away. I am regarded by all who know or hear

of me, except, I think, on the whole, five individuals, as a rare

prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look even might infect. This is a

large computation, and I don’t think I could mention more than three.

Such is the spirit of the English abroad as well as at home.

Few compensate, indeed, for all the rest, and if I were _alone_ I

should laugh; or if I were rich enough to do all things, which I shall

never be. Pity me for my absence from those social enjoyments which

England might afford me, and which I know so well how to appreciate.

Still, I shall return some fine morning, out of pure weakness of heart.

My dear Peacock, most faithfully yours,

P. B. Shelley.

[22] Rosalind and Helen.

TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE

(LEGHORN).

_Rome, April 6th, 1819._

My dear Friends,

A combination of circumstances, which Mary will explain to you, leads

us back to Naples in June, or rather the end of May, where we shall

remain until the ensuing winter. We shall take a house at Portici, or

Castel a Mare, until late in the autumn.

The object of this letter is to ask you to spend this period with us.

There is no society which we have regretted or desired so much as

yours, and in our solitude the benefit of your concession would be

greater than I can express. What is a sail to Naples? It is the season

of tranquil weather and prosperous winds. If I knew the magic that lay

in any given form of words, I would employ them to persuade; but I fear

that all I can say is, as you know with truth, we desire that you would

come--we wish to see you. You came to see Mary at Lucca, directly I had

departed to Venice. It is not our custom, when we can help it, any more

than it is yours, to divide our pleasures.

What shall I say to entice you? We shall have a piano, and some books,

and--little else, beside ourselves. But what will be most inviting to

you, you will give much, though you may receive but little pleasure.

But whilst I write this with more desire than hope, yet some of that,

perhaps the project may fall into your designs. It is intolerable

to think of your being buried at Livorno. The success assured by Mr.

Reveley’s talents requires another scene. You may have decided to take

this summer to consider--and why not with us at Naples, rather than at

Livorno?

I could address, with respect to Naples, the words of Polypheme in

Theocritus, to all the friends I wish to see, and you especially:

Ἐξένθοις, Γαλάτεια, καὶ ἐξενθοῖσα λάθοιο,

Ὥσπερ ἐγὼ νῦν ᾧδε καθήμενος, οἴκαδ’ ἀπενθεῖν.

Most sincerely yours,

P. B. Shelley.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Livorno, July, 1819._

My dear Peacock,

We still remain, and shall remain nearly two months longer, at Livorno.

Our house is a melancholy one,[23] and only cheered by letters from

England. I got your note, in which you speak of three letters having

been sent to Naples, which I have written for. I have heard also from

H----, who confirms the news of your success, an intelligence most

grateful to me.

The object of the present letter is to ask a favour of you. I have

written a tragedy, on the subject of a story well known in Italy, and,

in my conception, eminently dramatic.[24] I have taken some pains to

make my play fit for representation, and those who have already seen

it judge favourably. It is written without any of the peculiar feelings

and opinions which characterise my other compositions; I having

attended simply to the impartial development of such characters, as

it is probable the persons represented really were, together with the

greatest degree of popular effect to be produced by such a development.

I send you a translation of the Italian manuscript on which my play is

founded, the chief subject of which I have touched very delicately; for

my principal doubt, as to whether it would succeed as an acting play,

hangs entirely on the question, as to whether such a thing as incest in

this shape, however treated, would be admitted on the stage. I think,

however, it will form no objection; considering, first, that the facts

are matter of history; and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which

I have treated it.

I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this attempt

of mine will succeed or no. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative

at present, founding my hopes on this, that, as a composition, it is

certainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been acted,

with the exception of “Remorse;”[25] that the interest of its plot is

incredibly greater and more real; and that there is nothing beyond

what the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand,

either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a complete

incognito, and can trust to you, that whatever else you do, you will,

at least, favour me on this point. Indeed, this is essential, deeply

essential, to its success. After it had been acted, and successfully,

(could I hope such a thing,) I would own it if I pleased, and use the

celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.

What I want you to do is, to procure for me its presentation at Covent

Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for

Miss O’Neil, and it might even seem written for her, (God forbid that

I should ever see her play it--it would tear my nerves to pieces,)

and, in all respects, it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief

male character, I confess, I should be very unwilling that any one but

Kean should play--that is impossible, and I must be contented with an

inferior actor. I think you know some of the people of that theatre,

or, at least, some one who knows them, and when you have read the play,

you may say enough perhaps to induce them not to reject it without

consideration--but of this, perhaps, if I may judge from the tragedies

which they have accepted, there is no danger at any rate.