the mechanism of Shelley's great poem; great it is, for the marvel of
its lyrical excellence is fortunately independent of the conceptions
of life and human nature which it is intended to set forth. If all the
complex organisation which has slowly evolved itself in the course of
history, the expression of which is civilisation, order, coherence,
and co-operation in the different departments of life, is to be set
down as an unmitigated evil, the fruit of downright imposture, all
history becomes unintelligible. Man, potentially perfectible, has
always been the sport of what seems to be a malignant and dark power
of utterly inexplicable origin and character. Shelley, we are told,
could not bear to read history. The explanation offered is that he
was too much shocked by the perpetual record of misery, tyranny, and
crime. A man who can see nothing else in history is obviously a very
inefficient historian. Godwin tells us that he had learnt from Swift's
bitter misanthropy the truth that all political institutions are
hopelessly corrupt. A fusion of the satirist's view, that all which
is is bad, with the enthusiast's view, that all which will be will
be perfect, just expresses Shelley's peculiar mixture of optimism and
pessimism. When we try to translate this into a philosophical view or
a poetical representation of the world, the consequence is inevitably
perplexing.
Thus Shelley tells us in the preface to the 'Prometheus' that he could
not accept the view, adopted by Æschylus, of a final reconciliation
between Jupiter and his victim. He was 'averse from a catastrophe
so feeble as that of reconciling the champion with the oppressor of
mankind.' He cannot be content with the intimate mixture of good and
evil which is presented in the world as we know it. He must have
absolute good on one side, contrasted with absolute evil on the
other. But it would seem—as far as one is justified in attaching any
precise meaning to poetical symbols—that the fitting catastrophe to
the world's drama must be in some sense a reconciliation between
Prometheus and Jupiter; or, in other words, between the reason and the
blind forces by which it is opposed. The ultimate good must be not
the annihilation of all the conditions of human life, but the slow
conquest of nature by the adaptation of the life to its conditions.
We learn to rule nature, as it is generally expressed, by learning to
obey it. Any such view, however, is uncongenial to Shelley, though
he might have derived it from Bacon, one of the professed objects of
his veneration. The result of his own view is that the catastrophe of
the drama is utterly inexplicable and mysterious. Who are Jupiter and
Demogorgon? Why, when Demogorgon appears in the car of the Hours, and
tells Jupiter that the time is come, and that they are both to dwell
together in darkness henceforth, does Jupiter immediately give up
with a cry of Ai! Ai! and descend (as one cannot help irreverently
suggesting) as through a theatrical trapdoor? Dealing with such high
matters, and penetrating to the very ultimate mystery of the universe,
we must of course be prepared for surprising inversions. A mysterious
blind destiny is at the bottom of everything, according to Shelley,
and of course it may at any moment crush the whole existing order
in utter annihilation. And yet, it is impossible not to feel that
here, too, we have still the same incoherence which was shown more
crudely in 'Queen Mab.' The absolute destruction of all law, and of
law not merely in the sense of human law, but of the laws in virtue
of which the stars run their course and the frame of the universe
is bound together, is the end to which we are to look forward. It
will come when it will come; for it is impossible to join on such a
catastrophe to any of the phenomenal series of events, of which alone
we can obtain any kind of knowledge. The actual world, it is plain,
is regarded as a hideous nightmare. The evil dream will dissolve and
break up when something awakes us from our mysterious sleep; but that
something, whatever it may be, must of course be outside the dream,
and not a consummation worked out by the dream itself. We expect a
catastrophe, not an evolution. And, finally, when the dream dissolves,
when the 'painted veil' called life is drawn aside, what will be left?
Some answer—and a remarkable answer—is given by Shelley. But first
we may say one word in reference to a point already touched. The
entire dissolution of all existing laws was part of Shelley's, as of
Godwin's, programme. The amazing calmness with which the philosopher
summarily disposes of marriage in a cursory paragraph or two, as
(in the words of the old story) a fond thing, foolishly invented
and repugnant to the plain teaching of reason, is one of the most
grotesque crudities of his book. This doctrine has to be taken into
account both in judging of Shelley's character and considering some of
his poetical work. It is, of course, frequently noticed in extenuation
or aggravation of the most serious imputation upon his character.
We are told that Shelley can be entirely cleared by revelations
which have not as yet been made. That is satisfactory, and would be
still more satisfactory if we were sure that his apologists fully
appreciated the charge. According to the story as hitherto published,
we can only say that his conduct seems to indicate a flightiness and
impulsiveness inconsistent with real depth of sentiment. The complaint
is that he behaved ill to the first Mrs. Shelley, considered not as
a wife, but as a human being, and as a human being then possessing
a peculiar and special claim upon his utmost tenderness. This is
only worth saying in order to suggest the answer to a casuistical
problem which seems to puzzle his biographers. Is a man the better
or the worse because, when he breaks a moral law, he denies it to be
moral? Is he to be more or less condemned because, whilst committing
a murder, he proceeds to assert that everybody ought to commit murder
when he chooses? Without seeking to untwist all the strands of a very
pretty problem, I will simply say that, to my mind, the question
must in the last resort be simply one of fact. What we have to ask
is the quality implied by his indifference to the law? If a man acts
wrongly from benevolent feeling, misguided by some dexterous fallacy,
his error affords no presumption that he is otherwise intrinsically
bad. If, on the other hand, his indifference to the law arises from
malice, or sensuality, it must of course lower our esteem for him in
proportion, under whatever code of morality he may please to shelter
his misdoings.
In Shelley's particular case we should probably be disposed to ascribe
his moral deficiencies to the effect of crude but specious theory
upon a singularly philanthropic but abnormally impulsive mind. No
one would accuse him of any want of purity or generosity; but we
might regard him as wanting in depth and intensity of sentiment.
Allied to this moral weakness is his incapacity for either feeling
in himself or appreciating in others the force of ordinary human
passions directed to a concrete object. The only apology that can
be made for his selection of the singularly loathsome motive for
his drama is in the fact that in his hands the chief character
becomes simply an incarnation of purely intellectual wickedness; he
is a new avatar of the mysterious principle of evil which generally
appears as a priest or king; he represents the hatred to good in
the abstract rather than subservience to the lower passions. It is
easy to understand how Shelley's temperament should lead him to
undervalue the importance of the restraints which are rightly regarded
as essential to social welfare, and fall in with Godwin's tranquil
abolition of marriage as an uncomfortable fetter upon the perfect
liberty of choice. But it is also undeniable that the defect not only
makes his poetry rather unsatisfying to those coarser natures which
cannot support themselves on the chameleon's diet, but occasionally
leads to unpleasant discords. Thus, for example, the worshippers of
Shelley generally regard the 'Epipsychidion' as one of his finest
poems, and are inclined to warn off the profane vulgar as unfitted to
appreciate its beauties. It is, perhaps, less difficult to understand
than to sympathise very heartily with the sentiment by which it is
inspired. There are abundant precedents, both in religious and
purely imaginative literature, for regarding a human passion as
in some sense typifying, or identical with, the passion for ideal
perfection. So far a want of sympathy may imply a deficiency in poetic
sensibility. But I cannot believe that the 'Vita Nuova' (to which we
are referred) would have been the better if Dante had been careful to
explain that there was another lady besides Beatrice for whom he had
an almost equal devotion; nor do I think that it is the prosaic part
of us which protests when Shelley thinks it necessary to expound his
anti-matrimonial theory in the 'Epipsychidion.' Why should he tell us
that—
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
and so on; in short, that he despises the 'modern morals' which
distinctly approve of monogamy? Human love, one would say, becomes a
fitting type of a loftier emotion, in so far as it implies exclusive
devotion to its object. During this uncomfortable intrusion of a
discordant theory, we seem to be listening less to the passionate
utterance of a true poet than to the shrill tones of a conceited
propagator of flimsy crotchets, proclaiming his tenets without regard
to truth or propriety. Mrs. Shelley does not seem to have entered
into the spirit of the composition; and we can hardly wonder if she
found this little bit of argument rather a stumbling-block to her
comprehension.
To return, however, from these moral deductions to the more general
principles. It is scarcely necessary to insist at length upon the
peculiar idealism implied in Shelley's poetry. It is, of course,
the first characteristic upon which every critic must fasten. The
materials with which he works are impalpable abstractions where other
poets use concrete images. His poetry is like the subtle veil woven
by the witch of Atlas from 'threads of fleecy mists,' 'long lines
of light,' such as are kindled by the dawn and 'star-beams.' When
he speaks of natural scenery the solid earth seems to be dissolved,
and we are in presence of nothing but the shifting phantasmagoria
of cloudland, the glow of moonlight on eternal snow, or the 'golden
lightning of the setting sun.' The only earthly scenery which recalls
Shelley to a more material mind is that which one sees from a high
peak at sunrise, when the rising vapours tinged with prismatic colours
shut out all signs of human life, and we are alone with the sky and
the shadowy billows of the sea of mountains. Only in such vague
regions can Shelley find fitting symbolism for those faint emotions
suggested by the most abstract speculations, from which he alone is
able to extract an unearthly music. To insist upon this would be
waste of time. Nobody, one may say briefly, has ever expanded into an
astonishing variety of interpretation the familiar text of Shakespeare—
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little lives
Are rounded with a sleep.
The doctrine is expressed in a passage in 'Hellas,' where Ahasuerus
states this as the final result of European thought. The passage, like
so many in Shelley, shows that he had Shakespeare in his mind without
exactly copying him. The Shakespearean reference to the 'cloud-capped
towers' and 'gorgeous palaces' is echoed in the verses which conclude
with the words:—
This whole
Of suns and worlds, and men and beasts, and flowers
With all the violent and tempestuous workings
By which they have been, are, or cease to be,
Is but a vision: _all that it inherits_
Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
The future and the past are idle shadows
Of thought's eternal flight—they have no being.
Nought is but that it feels itself to be.
The italicised words point to the original in the 'Tempest;' but
Shelley proceeds to expound his theory more dogmatically than
Prospero, and we are not quite surprised when Mahmoud is puzzled
and declares that the words 'stream like a tempest of dazzling mist
through his brain.' The words represent the most characteristic effect
of Shelley as accurately as the aspect of consistent idealism to a
prosaic mind.
It need not be said how frequently the thought occurs in Shelley.
We might fix him to a metaphysical system if we interpreted him
prosaically. When in 'Prometheus' Panthea describes to Asia a
mysterious dream, suddenly Asia sees another shape pass between her
and the 'golden dew' which gleams through its substance. 'What is it?'
she asks. 'It is mine other dream,' replies Panthea. 'It disappears,'
exclaims Asia. 'It passes now into my mind,' replies Panthea. We are,
that is, in a region where dreams walk as visible as the dreamers,
and pass into or out of a mind which is indeed only a collection of
dreams. The archaic mind regarded dreams as substantial or objective
realities. In Shelley the reality is reduced to the unsubstantiality
of a dream. To the ordinary thinker, the spirit is (to speak in
materialist language) the receptacle of ideas. With Shelley, a little
further on, we find that the relation is inverted; spirits themselves
inhabit ideas; they live in the mind as in an ocean. Thought is the
ultimate reality which contains spirits and ideas and dreams, if,
rather, it is not simpler to say that everything is a dream.
The Faery-land of Spenser might be classified in our inadequate
phraseology as equally 'ideal' with Shelley's impalpable scenery.
But Spenser's allegorical figures are as visible as the actors in a
masque; and, in fact, the 'Faery Queen' is a masque in words. His
pages are a gallery of pictures, and may supply innumerable subjects
for the artist. To illustrate Shelley would be as impossible as to
paint a strain of music, unless, indeed, some of Turner's cloud
scenery may be taken as representative of his incidental descriptions.
This language frequently reminds us of metaphysical doctrines which
were unknown to Shelley in their modern shape. Nobody, perhaps, is
capable of thinking in this fashion in ordinary life; and Shelley,
with all his singular visions and hallucinations, probably took the
common-sense view of ordinary mortals in his dealings with commonplace
or facts. It is surprising enough that, even for purely poetical
purposes, he could continue this to the ordinary conceptions of object
and subject. But his familiarity with this point of view may help to
explain some of the problems as to his ultimate belief. It is plain
that he was in some sense dissatisfied with the simple scepticism of
Godwin. But he found no successor to guide his speculations. Coleridge
once regretted that Shelley had not applied to him instead of Southey,
who, in truth, was as ill qualified as a man could well be to help
a young enthusiast through the mazes of metaphysical entanglement.
It is idle to speculate upon the possible result. Shelley, if we may
judge from a passage in his epistle to Mrs. Gisborne, had no very
high opinion of Coleridge's capacity as a spiritual guide. Shelley,
in fact, in spite of his so-called mysticism, was an ardent lover
of clearness, and would have been disgusted by the haze in which
Coleridge enwrapped his revelations to mankind. But Coleridge might
possibly have introduced him to a sphere of thought in which he could
have found something congenial. One parallel may be suggested which
will perhaps help to illustrate this position.
Various passages have been quoted from Shelley's poetry to prove that
he was a theist and a believer in immortality. His real belief, it
would seem, will hardly run into any of the orthodox moulds. It is
understood as clearly as may be in the conclusion to the 'Sensitive
Plant':—
—in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we see the shadows of the dream.
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there
In truth have never passed away;
'Tis we, 'tis ours have changed; not they.
A fuller exposition of the thought is given in the 'Adonais;' and
some of the phrases suggest the parallel to which I refer. I have
already quoted from one of the popular works of Fichte, the 'Vocation
of Man,' a vigorous description of that state of utter scepticism,
which seems at one point to be the final goal of his idealism, as
it was that of the less elaborate form of the same doctrine which
Godwin had learnt from Berkeley. Godwin, as I have said, was content
to leave the difficulty without solution. Fichte escaped, or thought
that he escaped, by a solution which restores a meaning to much of
the orthodox language. Whether his mode of escape was satisfactory or
his final position intelligible, is of course another question. But it
is interesting to observe how closely the language in which his final
doctrine is set forth to popular readers resembles some passages in
the 'Adonais.' I will quote a few phrases which may be sufficiently
significant.
Shelley, after denouncing the unlucky 'Quarterly Reviewer' who had the
credit of extinguishing poor Keats, proceeds to find consolation in
the thought that Keats has now become
A portion of the eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life;
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And, in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings—_we_ decay
Like corpses in a charnel, fear and grief
Convulse and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
So, when Fichte has achieved his deliverance from scepticism, his
mind is closed for ever against embarrassment and perplexity, doubt,
uncertainty, grief, repentance, and desire. 'All that happens belongs
to the plan of the eternal world and is good in itself.' If there
are beings perverse enough to resist reason, he cannot be angry with
them, for they are not free agents. They are what they are, and it is
useless to be angry with 'blind and unconscious nature.' 'What they
actually are does not deserve my anger; what might deserve it they
are not, and they would not deserve it if they were. My displeasure
would strike an impalpable nonentity,' an 'invulnerable nothing,'
as Shelley puts it. They are, in short, parts of the unreal dream to
which belong grief, and hope, and fear, and desire. Death is the last
of evils, he goes on; for the hour of death is the hour of birth to
a new and more excellent life. It is, as Shelley says, waking from
a dream. And now, when we have no longer desire for earthly things,
or any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears
clothed in a more glorious form. 'The dead heavy mass, which did but
stop up space, has perished; and in its place there flows onward
with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life,
and power, and action, which issues from the original source of all
life—from thy life, O Infinite One! for all life is thy life, and only
the religious eye penetrates to the realm of true Beauty. In all the
forms that surround me I behold the reflection of my own being, broken
up into countless diversified shapes, as the morning sun, broken in a
thousand dewdrops, sparkles towards itself,' a phrase which recalls
Shelley's famous passage a little further on:—
Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
The application, indeed, is there a little different; but Shelley has
just the same thought of the disappearance of the 'dead heavy mass' of
the world of space and time. Keats, too, is translated to the 'realm
of true beauty.'
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely; he doth bear
The part, while the one spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear!
Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees, and beasts, and men, into the heaven's light.
There are important differences, as the metaphysician would point
out, between the two conceptions, and language of a similar kind
might be found in innumerable writers before and since. I only infer
that the two minds are proceeding, if one may say so, upon parallel
lines. Fichte, like Shelley, was accused of atheism, and his language
would, like Shelley's, be regarded by mere readers as an unfair
appropriation of old words to new meanings. Shelley had of course
no definite metaphysical system to set beside that of the German
philosopher; and had learnt what system he had rather from Plato than
from Kant. It may also be called significant that Fichte finds the
ultimate point of support in conscience or duty; whereas, in Shelley's
theory, duty seems to vanish, and the one ultimate reality to be
rather love or the beautiful. But it would be pedantic to attempt
the discovery of a definite system of opinion where there is really
nothing but a certain intellectual tendency. One can only say that,
somehow or other, Shelley sought comfort under his general sense that
everything is but the baseless fabric of a vision, and moreover a
very uncomfortable vision, made up of pain, grief, and the 'unrest
which men miscall delight,' in the belief, or, if belief is too strong
a word, the imagination of a transcendental and eternal world of
absolute perfection, entirely beyond the influence of 'chance, and
death, and mutability.' Intellectual beauty, to which he addresses one
of his finest poems, is the most distinct name of the power which he
worships. Thy light alone, he exclaims—
Thy light alone, like mist on mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives peace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
In presence of such speculations, the ordinary mass of mankind will
be content with declaring that the doctrine, if it can be called a
doctrine, is totally unintelligible. The ideal world is upon this
vein so hopelessly dissevered from the real, that it can give us no
consolation. If life is a dream, the dream is the basis of all we
know, and it is small comfort to proclaim its unreality. A truth
existing all by itself in a transcendental vacuum entirely unrelated
to all that we call fact, is a truth in which we can find very small
comfort. And upon this matter I have no desire to differ from the
ordinary mass of mankind. In truth, Shelley's creed means only a vague
longing, and must be passed through some more philosophical brain
before it can become a fit topic for discussion.