Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect
edition of Shelley's Poems. These being at last happily removed, I
hasten to fulfil an important duty,--that of giving the productions of a
sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and of,
at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as they
sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I abstain from any
remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as the
passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time
to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No
account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality
in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I
further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action
committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as he
only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the
firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would
stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary.
Whatever faults he had ought to find extenuation among his fellows,
since they prove him to be human; without them, the exalted nature of
his soul would have raised him into something divine.
The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley
were,--First, a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his
intercourse with warm affection and helpful sympathy. The other, the
eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the cause of human
happiness and improvement; and the fervent eloquence with which he
discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by its happy
abundance, and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic
ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate life of its misery and its
evil was the ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every power
of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. He looked on political
freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of mankind; and thus
any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an exultation more
intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage.
Those who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and
unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and it must be difficult of
comprehension to the younger generation rising around, since they cannot
remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were
regarded some few years ago, nor the persecutions to which they were
exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the state of feeling
inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; and believing firmly
in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a
nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put
its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of
those systems from which he had himself suffered. Many advantages
attended his birth; he spurned them all when balanced with what he
considered his duties. He was generous to imprudence, devoted to
heroism.
These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for
human weal; the resolution firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit, the
glad triumph in good; the determination not to despair;--such were the
features that marked those of his works which he regarded with most
complacency, as sustained by a lofty subject and useful aim.
In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes,--the
purely imaginative, and those which sprang from the emotions of his
heart. Among the former may be classed the "Witch of Atlas", "Adonais",
and his latest composition, left imperfect, the "Triumph of Life". In
the first of these particularly he gave the reins to his fancy, and
luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that sense of
mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life--a
clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form--a
curious and metaphysical anatomy of human passion and perception.
The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once
to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of love;
others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments inspired by
natural objects. Shelley's conception of love was exalted, absorbing,
allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and warmed by
earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in verse. Yet
he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except when highly
idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had cast aside
unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had lost him.
Others, as for instance "Rosalind and Helen" and "Lines written among
the Euganean Hills", I found among his papers by chance; and with some
difficulty urged him to complete them. There are others, such as the
"Ode to the Skylark and The Cloud", which, in the opinion of many
critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions.
They were written as his mind prompted: listening to the carolling of
the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it
sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames.
No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His
extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual
pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of
outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is,
among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet,
and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain;
to escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy
when he sheltered himself, from the influence of human sympathies, in
the wildest regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too
brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and
this is a taste shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims
exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity; but few of us
understand or sympathize with the endeavour to ally the love of abstract
beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the to agathon kai to kalon of
the Socratic philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this,
Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and
the ideal than in the special and tangible. This did not result from
imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made
Plato his study. He then translated his "Symposium" and his "Ion"; and
the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than
Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own
poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself
(as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use
beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his
verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to
his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the
same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he
has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from
those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he
considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached.
There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent
to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined with his
nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever expressed in
sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or
more forcible emotions of the soul.
A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: 'You are still very young, and in
certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you
are so.' It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have
got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this
knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such
inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his
nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not
add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by
the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to
ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of
susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a
man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and
forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability,
or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the
stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more
experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I
die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, 'I have
lived to be older than my father.' The weight of thought and feeling
burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame,
while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated
countenance and brilliant eyes.
He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over
mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the
ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his
country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles.
His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though
late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the
liberty he so fondly loved.
He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never
been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort
and benefit--to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of
genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once attached
to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as
wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation to know
that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and now
exists where we hope one day to join him;--although the intolerant, in
their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can
judge the heart, never rejected him.
In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the
origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers
which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect than
it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest
recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my
knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I
have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go.
In other respects I am indeed incompetent: but I feel the importance of
the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavour to fulfil it
in a manner he would himself approve; and hope, in this publication, to
lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley's genius, his
sufferings, and his virtues:--
Se al seguir son tarda,
Forse avverra che 'l bel nome gentile
Consacrero con questa stanca penna.