CHAPTER VI--CONCLUSION 125

Weakness of the Radical, of Shelley--Strength of the Radical,

of Shelley.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 139

BIOGRAPHY 143

THE RADICALISM OF SHELLEY AND ITS SOURCES[1]

BY DANIEL J. MCDONALD, PH.D.

INTRODUCTION

The following study of the development of the religious and political

views of Shelley is made with the view to help one in forming a true

estimate of his work and character.

That there is a real difficulty in estimating correctly the life and works

of Shelley no one acquainted with the varied judgments passed upon him

will deny. Professor Trent claims that there is not a more perplexing and

irritating subject for study than Shelley.[2] By some our poet is regarded

as an angel, a model of perfection; by others he is looked upon as "a rare

prodigy of crime and pollution whose look even might infect." Mr.

Swinburne calls him "the master singer of our modern poets," but neither

Wordsworth nor Keats could appreciate his poetry. W. M. Rossetti, in an

article on Shelley in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,

writes as follows: "In his own day an alien in the world of mind and

invention, and in our day scarcely yet a denizen of it, he appears

destined to become in the long vista of years an informing presence in the

innermost shrine of human thought." Matthew Arnold, on the other hand, in

one of his last essays, writes: "But let no one suppose that a want of

humor and a self-delusion such as Shelley's have no effect upon a man's

poetry. The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and

Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane either." Views so entirely

different, coming as they do from such eminent critics are surely

perplexing. Nevertheless, there seems to be a light which can illuminate

this difficulty, render intelligible his life and works, and help us to

form a just estimate of them. This light is a comprehension of the

influence which inspired him in all he did and all he wrote--in a word, a

comprehension of his radicalism. A great deal of the difficulty connected

with the study of Shelley arises from ignorance concerning radicalism

itself. I shall therefore begin by giving a short description of its

nature and function.

To many, radicalism is suggestive only of revolution and destruction. In

their eyes it is the spouse of disorder and the mother of tyranny. Its

devotees are wild-eyed fanatics, and in its train are found social

outcasts and the scum of humanity. To others, radicalism presents a

totally different aspect. These admit that it has been unfortunate in the

quality of many of its adherents, but at the same time they claim that it

has proven itself the mainspring of progress in every sphere of human

activity. It is depicted as the cause of all the reforms achieved in

society. Without it old ideas and principles would always prevail, and

stagnation would result. "Conservative politicians," says Leslie Stephen,

"owe more than they know to the thinkers (radicals) who keep alive a faith

which renders the world tolerable and puts arbitrary rulers under some

moral stress of responsibility."[3]

Although radicalism is a disposition found in every period of history,

still the word itself is of comparatively recent origin. It first came

into vogue about the year 1797, when Fox and Horne Tooke joined forces to

bring about a "radical reform." In this epithet one finds the idea of

going to the roots of a question, which was characteristic of eighteenth

century philosophy. Then the expression seems to have disappeared for a

time. In July, 1809, a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ says: "It cannot

be doubted that there is at the moment ... a very general desire for a

more 'radical' reform than would be effected by a mere change of

ministry."[4] It was not until 1817, however, that the adjective "radical"

began to be used substantively. On August 18, 1817, Cartwright wrote to T.

Northmore: "The crisis, in my judgment, is very favorable for effecting an

union with the _radicals_, of the better among the Whigs, and I am

meditating on means to promote it." In 1820 Bentham wrote a pamphlet

entitled _Radicalism Not Dangerous_, and in this work he uses the word

"radicalists" instead of "radicals."

For a long time the word "radical" was a term of reproach. Sir Fowell

Buxton, speaking of the Radicals, says he was persuaded that their object

was "the subversion of religion and of the constitution."

Since that time a radical has come to mean any root-and-branch reformer;

and radicalism itself may be defined as a tendency to abolish existing

institutions or principles. As soon as either of these seems to have

outlived its usefulness, radicalism will clamor for its suppression.

Discontent, then, is a source of radicalism. This, however, is of a dual

nature--discontent with conditions and discontent with institutions or

principles. Many conservatives indulge in the former, only radicals in the

latter. Again radicalism is not a mere "tearing up by the roots," as the

word is commonly interpreted, but is rather, as Philips Brooks writes, "a

getting down to the root of things and planting institutions anew on just

principles. An enlightened radicalism has regard for righteousness and

good government, and will resist all enslavement to old forms and

traditions, and will set them aside unless it shall appear that any of

these have a radically just and defensible reason for their existence and

continuance."

Radicalism thrives where conditions are favorable to a change in ideals.

It aims to establish new institutions or to propagate new principles, and

this presupposes new ideals. As the habits of a man tend to correspond to

his ideals, so too the institutions of a nation conform in a broad way to

its ideals. In England during the Middle Ages the institutions of the

country were strongly influenced by the religious ideal; later on, when

the nation's ideal became national glory, they assumed a political

character; and now they reflect the dominant influence which the economic

ideal has exerted during the past century. The ideals of a people than are

bound to undergo changes, and these are sometimes, though not always, for

a nation's good. They are developed in the main by an increase in

knowledge and by industrial change. Institutions, however, do not keep

pace with this advance in ideals; and as a consequence discontent results

and radicalism is born.

Moreover, institutions are never an adequate expression of the ideal. "Men

are never as good as the goodness they know. Institutions reveal the same

truth. The margin between what society knows and what it is" makes

radicalism possible. In his introduction to _The Revolt of Islam_, Shelley

expresses the same thought: "The French Revolution may be considered as

one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilized

mankind produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge

existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political

institutions." The greater that this defect of correspondence becomes, the

more intense will be the radicalism that inevitably ensues.

Radicals want a change. The extent of this change differentiates them

fairly well among themselves. Some would completely sweep away every

existing institution. Thus Shelley thought the great victory would be won

if he could exterminate kings and priests at a blow.

Let the axe

Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall[5]

Others would be content with changes of a far less radical character.

Burke, in his early life, was the most moderate of these. At a time when

the British constitution was sorely in need of reform he said concerning

it: "Never will I cut it in pieces and put it in the kettle of any

magician in order to boil it with the puddle of their compounds into youth

and vigor; on the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders; I will

nurse its venerable age and with lenient arts extend a parent's breath."

Between these two extremes many different degrees of radicalism obtain. In

his _Ecce, Convertimur ad Gentes_, Arnold writes: "For twenty years I have

felt convinced that for the progress of our civilization here in England

three things were above all necessary: a reduction of those immense

inequalities of condition and property among us of which our land system

is the cause, a genuine municipal system, and public schools for the

middle class."

A just appreciation of the radicalism of Shelley's poetry is impossible

without a knowledge of the function of radicalism, and so it must be

considered a little more in detail.

An attempt to abolish an institution is sure to encounter the opposition

of those whose interests are bound up with that institution. The good that

it has accomplished in the past is sufficient warrant for defending it

against the onslaught of its assailants. _Le bien c'est l'ennemi du

mieux._ No matter how inadequate the institution in question may now be,

it will still be championed by the great majority; and were it not for the

radicals' enthusiasm and faith in their cause their opposition would be in

vain. As a witty exponent of homespun philosophy expresses it: "Most

people would rather be comfortable than be right." They may see that a

change is needed, but they hold on to the old order of things as long as

possible. Long before 1789 the French nobility realized that they should

give up their claims to exemption from taxation, yet they retained them

all until forced to relinquish them. Had the "privileges" been less

conservative, the Revolution would never have occurred. It may be said

then that radicalism is born of conservatism. Without it might would be

right, and anything like justice would be well-nigh impossible.

Another factor in the development of radicalism is the inertia of mind and

will of a great many people. Most persons are not easily induced to

undertake anything that requires some exertion. They prefer to sit back

and let others bear the burdens of the day and its heat. A good example of

this is the indifference shown by the French Catholics towards the

oppressive legislation of their rulers. Fortunately, however, in those

countries where free scope is given to the individual, and where liberty

of speech is firmly established, there will always be found some who are

ever ready to take the initiative in demanding a change. Their radicalism

tends to counteract the influence of this sleeping sickness. It holds up

to men the ideal, and inflames them with a desire of attaining it.

Again, the emotions do not move as fast as the intellect. They will cling

to their objects long after the intellect has counselled otherwise.

A man convinced against his will

Is of the same opinion still.[6]

Radicalism presents to men an ideal state where everybody is bright and

free and happy; and thus helps to detach the affections from beliefs and

institutions which are no longer helpful. The emotions may not adhere to

the radicals' scheme, but they are at least freed from their old bondage

and can embrace the reforms of the less conservative. The influence that

radicalism exerts in this way is a very powerful one. Everybody knows

Carlyle's famous outburst of rhetoric bearing on this point: "There was

once a man called Jean Jacques Rousseau. He wrote a book called _The

Social Contract_. It was a theory and nothing but a theory. The French

nobles laughed at the theory, and their skins went to bind the second

edition of the book."

The strength of radicalism lies in the fact that it is poetical and

philosophical. Through philosophy it makes its influence felt on a

country's leaders, through poetry on the citizens themselves. Andrew

Fletcher, of Saltown, has said: "Let me write a country's songs, and I

don't care who makes its laws." The poet and the radical are brothers.

Both live on abstractions. As soon as they particularize their mission

fails; the one ceases to be a poet and the other a radical. In his

admirable essay on Shelley, Francis Thompson tells clergymen that "poetry

is the preacher to men of the earthly as you of the Heavenly Fairness."

According to Saint-Beuve "the function of art is to disengage the elements

of beauty, to escape from the mere frightful reality." Substitute

radicalism for poetry and art in these quotations and they would still be

true. Emerson calls the poets "liberating gods." The ancient bards had for

the title of their order: "Those who are free throughout the world." "They

are free and they make free." This is exactly what one would write about

radicals. Poetry and radicalism then go hand in hand. When radicalism is

in the ascendant, poetry will throb with the feverish energy of the

people. It will not only be more abundant, but it will show more of real

life--the stuff of which literature is made. In conservative times

questions concerning life do not agitate men's minds to any great extent.

People take things as they find them. Set men a thinking, however, place

new ideals before them, and then you get a Shakespeare and a Milton or a

galaxy of sparkling gems such as scintillated in the dawn of the

nineteenth century.

We find then two tendencies which always exist in any progressive

society--radicalism and conservatism. Both have appeared in connection

with every phase of thought and human activity. Either, as Emerson has

said, is a good half but an impossible whole. One is too impetuous, the

other is too wary. The one rushes blindly into the future, the other

clings too much to the past. There is constant warfare between the two for

the mastery. In a progressive community neither of them is in the

ascendant for any length of time. A period of radicalism is inevitably

followed by one of conservatism and _vice versa_. The pendulum swings to

one extreme and then back again to the other. As long as human nature will

be what it is, our institutions will be defective, and change will be the

order of the day. This no doubt results in progress, which Goethe has

compared to a movement in a spiral direction.

This action and reaction is reflected in the literature of a nation. No

matter what definition of literature we may accept, whether it be Newman's

personal use of language, Swinburne's imagination and harmony, or Matthew

Arnold's criticism of life, it will always be found that literature is a

crystallization of the ideals of the age. This is true both of poetry and

of prose. The poet is not an isolated individual. On the contrary, he is

peculiarly sensitive to the influences which surround him. He is the

revealer and the awakener of these influences. "And the poet listens and

he hears; and he looks and he sees; and he bends lower and lower and he

weeps; and then growing with a strange growth, drawing from all the

darkness about him his own transfiguration, he stands erect, terrible and

tender, above all those wretched ones--those of high place as well as

those of low, with flaming eyes."[7]

CHAPTER I

EARLY INFLUENCES

The intensity of one's radicalism depends on the extent to which the

institutions of a country cause one suffering and disappointment. Shelley

says in Julian and Maddalo:

Most wretched men

Are cradled into poetry by wrong,

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

A description of Shelley's radicalism then must take account of all the

circumstances that tended to make him dissatisfied with existing

institutions. Some of these circumstances may seem trifling, but then it

must be remembered that events which appear insignificant sometimes have

far-reaching effects. Pascal remarked once that the whole aspect of the

world would be different if Cleopatra's nose had been a little shorter.

The history of Shelley's life is a series of incidents which tended to

make him radical. He never had a chance to be anything else. No sooner

would he be brought in contact with conservative influences than something

would happen to push him again on the high road of revolt. Even were he

temperamentally conservative (and Hogg says that "his feelings and

behavior were in many respects highly aristocratical"), the experiences

that he underwent were of such a nature as to inevitably lead him into

radicalism.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, in the county of Sussex, on

Saturday, the 4th of August, 1792. His family was an ancient and honorable

one whose history extends back to the days of the Crusades. His

grandfather, Bysshe Shelley, born in America, accumulated a large fortune,

married two heiresses, and in 1806 received a baronetcy. In his old age he

became whimsical, greedy, and sullen. He was a skeptic hoping for nothing

better than annihilation at the end of life.[8] With regard to the poet's

father, it is very difficult to form a just estimate. There is no doubt

that Shelley enthusiasts decried the father too much in their efforts to

canonize the son. It would indeed be strange to find any father at that

time who would be capable of giving our poet that guidance and training

which his nature demanded. It was a time when might was right, when the

rod held a large place in the formation of a boy's character. We must not

be too severe then on the father if he was unacquainted with the proper

way of dealing with his erratic son. No one who has read Jeafferson's life

of the poet will say that Bysshe treated his son too harshly. It was his

judgment rather than his heart that was at fault. Medwin remarks that all

he brought back from Europe was a smattering of French and a bad picture

of an eruption of Vesuvius.

It is to his mother that Shelley owes his beauty and his good nature. He

said that she was mild and tolerant, but narrow-minded. Very few

references to the home of his boyhood are made in his poetry; and this

leads us to believe that neither his father nor his mother had much

influence over him.

In his childhood he seems to have had the day dreams and reveries that

Wordsworth had. "Let us recollect our sensations as children," Shelley

writes, in the _Essay on Life_, "What a distinct and intense apprehension

had we of the world and of ourselves!... We less habitually distinguished

all that we saw and felt from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to

constitute one mass. There are some persons who in this respect are always

children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie feel as if

their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe or as if the

surrounding universe were absorbed into their being." In Book II of the

_Prelude_ Wordsworth gives expression to a similar experience:

Oft in these moments such a holy calm

Would overspread my soul that bodily eyes

Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw

Appeared like something in myself--a dream

A prospect in the mind.

Shelley from the very beginning delighted in giving free scope to his

imagination. In the garret of the house at Field Place he imagined there

was an alchemist old and grey pondering over magic tomes. The "Great Old

Snake" and the "Great Tortoise" were other wondrous creatures of his

imagination that lived out of doors. He used to entertain his sisters

with weird stories about hobgoblins and ghosts; and even got them to

dress themselves so as to represent fiends and spirits. In the _Hymn to

Intellectual Beauty_ he writes:

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts and sped

Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing,

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

He was attached to the occult sciences and sometimes watched whole nights

for ghosts. Once he described minutely a visit which he said he had paid

to some neighbors, and it was discovered soon afterwards that the whole

story was a fabrication.

At ten years of age he was sent to Sion House Academy, Isleworth, where he

met his cousin and future biographer, Thomas Medwin. The other boys,

Medwin tells us, considered him strange and unsocial. It was at this

school that Shelley first became acquainted with the romantic novels of

Anne Radcliffe and the other novelists of the School of Terror. Here too

he became greatly interested in chemistry and astronomy. The idea of a

plurality of worlds, through which we "should make the grand tour,"

enchanted him. Thus we see that he began very early to live in the unreal

and the wonderful.

In 1804 he went to Eton, and there he was known as "Mad Shelley" and

"Shelley the Atheist." The word "atheist" here does not mean one who

denies the existence of God. According to Hogg, it was a term given to

those who distinguished themselves for their opposition to the authorities

of the school. The title must have fallen into disuse shortly after

Shelley's time, as Professor Dowdon failed to find at Eton any trace of

this peculiar usage of the word. Here he became interested in physical

experiments and carried them on at unseasonable hours. For this he was

frequently reprimanded by his superiors, but he proved to be very

untractable.

At Eton Shelley became acquainted with Dr. Lind, whom he immortalized as a

hermit in _The Revolt of Islam_ and as Zonoras in _Prince Athanase_. It

was Dr. Lind, according to Hogg, who gave Shelley his first lessons in

French philosophism. Jeafferson says that he taught Shelley to curse his

superiors and to write letters to unsuspecting persons to trip them up

with catch questions and then laugh at them.[9]

An event occurred in the summer of 1810 which had considerable influence

in developing the radicalism of Shelley. He had known and loved his

cousin. Harriet Grove, from childhood, and during the vacation of this

year asked her to be his wife. Harriet's family, however, became alarmed

at his atheistical tendencies and made her give up all communications with

him. This angered him very much, and made him declaim against what he

considered to be bigotry and intolerance. In a letter to Hogg, December

20, 1810, he writes: "O! I burn with impatience for the moment of the

dissolution of intolerance; it has injured me. I swear on the altar of

perjured love to revenge myself, on the hated cause of the effect; which

even now I can scarcely help deploring.... Adieu! Down with bigotry! Down

with intolerance! In this endeavour your most sincere friend will join his

every power, his every feeble resource. Adieu!" And in a letter of January

3, 1811: "She is no longer mine! She abhors me as a skeptic as what she

was before! Oh, bigotry! When I pardon this last, this severest of thy

persecutions, may Heaven (if there be wrath in Heaven) blast me!" These

ravings show Shelley to have been nervous, hysterical, and supersensitive.

The breaking of this engagement with Harriet made such an impression on

him as to convince him that he should combat all those influences which

caused the rupture. The story of Shelley's life might have been an

entirely different one had he been allowed to marry Harriet Grove. Man is

a stubborn animal. Once he takes up a certain side, opposition merely

serves to strengthen his convictions and make him fight all the harder. If

Shelley's willfulness had been ignored instead of opposed, I have no doubt

that he would have seen things in their proper light and would never have

been the rabid radical that he became. An Etonian called once on Shelley

in Oxford and asked him if he meant to be an atheist there too. "No!" he

answered, "certainly not. There is no motive for it; they are very civil

to us here; it is not like Eton."[10] It is Medwin's conviction that

Shelley never completely overcame his love for Harriet. Hogg notes that as

late as 1813 Shelley loved to play a simple air that Harriet taught him.

In the _Epipsychidion_ he refers to her thus: "And one was true--Oh! why

not true to me?" Love was to Shelley what religion is to the ascetic. He

could not understand why one should put obstacles in the way of anyone in

love, and so he thinks himself in duty bound to fight everything that

supports this hated intolerance. This led him to wage war against religion

itself.

Shelley entered University College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas term of

1810. It was unfortunate for him that conditions at the university were as

deplorable as they were. He did not find there the intellectual food that

his mind needed, and no doubt his sensitive soul was scandalized by what

it felt. Intellectual life there was dull. Mark Pattison[11] says Oxford

was nothing more than a grammar school, the college tutors were a little

inferior to public school directors, and they obtained their positions

through favoritism and not through merit. Copleston, a defender of the

university against the attacks of the _Edinburgh Review_, admitted that

only extreme incapacity or flagrant idleness would prevent a student from

obtaining his degree at the end of his course. Fynes Clinton, in his

_Autobiography_, tells us that Greek studies at Christ Church were very

much neglected. During his seven years of residence grammar, syntax,

prosody were never mentioned. Students rarely attended lectures. Much of

their time was passed in hunting, drinking, and every kind of debauchery.

"At boarding schools of every description," writes Mrs. Wollstonecraft,

"the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice.

Besides, in great schools, what can be more prejudicial to the moral

character than the system of tyranny and abject slavery which is

established among the boys, to say nothing of the slavery to forms, which

makes religion worse than a farce? For what good can be expected from the

youth who receives the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to avoid forfeiting

half-a-guinea, which he probably afterwards spends in some sensual

manner?"[12] Such was the atmosphere in which Shelley was placed, and it

is little wonder that it hastened the growth of the seeds of discontent

and revolt which had been already implanted in his soul.

Misfortune still pursued Shelley. Had he formed friendships at Oxford with

men of sober intellect, the whole course of his life might have been

changed. Unfortunately he soon found a kindred spirit in the cynic Hogg.

This friend of Shelley gives us minute details of the poet's life there.

He thinks that Shelley took up skeptical philosophy because of the

advantage it gave him in argument. _Hume's Essays_ was a favorite book

with Shelley, and he was always ready to put forward in argument its

doctrines. It may seem strange that this cold skeptical philosophy

appealed to such an imaginative poet as Shelley; but destruction, as Hogg

remarks, so that it be on a grand scale, may sometimes prove hardly less

inspiring than creation. "The feat of the magician who, by the touch of

his wand, could cause the great pyramid to dissolve into the air would be

as surprising as the achievement of him who by the same rod could

instantly raise a similar mass in any chosen spot."

On September 18, 1810, Stockdale offered for sale a volume of poetry by

Shelley entitled "_Original Poetry_: by Victor and Cazire." The book was

not out long when it was discovered that many of the poems were stolen

property--a fraud on the public and an infringement of at least one

writer's copyright. The book was at once withdrawn and suppressed. Some

doubt exists as to the name of the person who cooperated with Shelley in

producing this book. Shelley enthusiasts say that Shelley was the

unsuspicious victim of an unworthy coadjutor. Jeafferson is of the opinion

that Shelley was fully conscious of the fraud that was being done. This

biographer maintains that Shelley was an inveterate liar.

"About this time," says Stockdale, "not merely slight hints but constant

allusions, personally and by letters, ... rendered me extremely uneasy

respecting Mr. Shelley's religious, or indeed irreligious, sentiments."

Shelley's father too was worrying at this time about his son's loss of

faith. He may have received the first intimation of his son's speculations

from a criticism in _The Critical Review_ of another work of Shelley's,

_Zastrozzi_, in which the unknown author was condemned as an offender

against morality and a corrupter of youth. The irate father wrote to his

son and severely reprimanded him for his conduct.

In a letter to Hogg, Shelley says: "My father wrote to me, and I am now

surrounded, environed by dangers, to which compared the devils who

besieged St. Anthony were all inefficient. They attack me for my

detestable principles. I am reckoned an outcast, yet I defy them, and

laugh at their ineffectual efforts, etc." And in another letter: "My

mother imagines me to be on the highroad to Pandemonium; she fancies I

want to make a deistical coterie of my little sisters. How laughable!"

Shelley imagines the whole world is against him. He feels very keenly his

isolation. He says his "soul was bursting." There is a relief though. "I

slept with a loaded pistol and some poison last night, but did not die."

Shelley thought he was called upon to come to the aid of all those in

distress. We find him at this time aiding aspiring authors, and defending

traitorous politicians. An Irish journalist, Peter Finnerty, was condemned

for libel and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail.

Shelley contributed to a subscription list in aid of Finnerty and also

wrote a poem entitled _A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things_

to help on the cause. Leigh and John Hunt, who defended Finnerty in _The

Examiner_, were tried for seditious libel and acquitted. Shelley rejoiced

over their triumph, and wrote the following letter to Leigh Hunt

congratulating him and proposing a scheme for the mutual defense of all

friends of "rational liberty."

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD,

_March 2, 1811_.

SIR:--Permit me, although a stranger, to offer my sincerest

congratulations on the occasion of that triumph so highly to be

prized by men of liberality; permit me also to submit to your

consideration, as one of the most fearless enlighteners of the public

mind at the present time, a scheme of mutual safety and mutual

indemnification for men of public spirit and principle, which, if

carried into effect, would evidently be productive of incalculable

advantages.

The ultimate intention of my aim is to induce a meeting of such

enlightened, unprejudiced members of the community ... and to form a

methodical society, which should be organized so as to resist the

coalition of the enemies of liberty.... It has been for the want of

societies of this nature that corruption has attained the height at

which we behold it; nor can any of us bear in mind the very great

influence which, some years since, was gained by _Illuminism_,

without considering that a society of equal extent might establish

rational liberty on as firm a basis as that which would have

supported the visionary schemes of a completely equalized

community.... On account of the responsibility to which my residence

in this university subjects me, I, of course, dare not publicly avow

all that I think; but the time will come when I hope that my every

endeavor, insufficient as they may be, will be directed to the

advancement of liberty.

Your most obedient servant,

P. B. SHELLEY.

One of the books read by Shelley at this time was the Abbe Barruel's

_Memoires pour servir a l'histoire du Jacobinisme_, which contains an

account of the Society of Illuminists. The remarkable success of this

society in propagating free thought and revolutionary principles evidently

inspired Shelley to attempt the formation of a similar society in England.

His proposals, though, fell on deaf ears, and it is probable that Leigh

Hunt did not even acknowledge the receipt of Shelley's letter.

In February, 1811, a small pamphlet, _The Necessity of Atheism_, which was

written by Shelley, was published anonymously. According to Hogg, Shelley

had a custom of writing to divines and engaging them in controversy on the

existence of God. _The Necessity of Atheism_ is merely an elaboration of

the arguments of these letters. The masters and some of the fellows of

Oxford sent for Shelley and asked him if he were the author of the work.

He replied that they should produce their evidence, if they could prove he

wrote it, and not question him because it was neither just nor lawful to

interrogate him in such a case and for such a purpose. Shelley refused to

answer their questions and was given one day in which to leave the

college. His friend Hogg shared the same fate for the same reason. Shelley

never received any admonition nor hint that his speculations were

improper. Hogg says "there can be no reasonable doubt that he would at

once have acceded to whatever had been proposed to him by authority."[13]

Every kind of disorder was tolerated at the university, and Shelley and

Hogg had no suspicion that their metaphysical speculations were considered

so much worse than drunkenness and immorality. If the sentence was not

unjust, it was at least needlessly harsh. Shelley felt the sting of this

disgrace very keenly, and it did much to embitter him against all kinds of

authority.

Shelley and Hogg proceeded to London after their expulsion and obtained

rooms in Poland Street. The name reminded Shelley of Kosciusko and

Freedom. Timothy Shelley wrote to his son, commanding him to abstain from

all communication with Hogg and place himself "under the care and society

of such gentlemen as he should appoint" under pain of being deprived of

all pecuniary aid. Shelley refused to comply with these proposals. Toward

the middle of April Hogg left London to settle down to his legal training

in York.

It was about this time that Shelley became acquainted with Harriet

Westbrook. She wrote him from London that she was wretchedly unhappy, that

she was about to be forced to go to school, and wanted to know if it would

be wrong to put an end to her miserable life. Another letter from her soon

followed, in which she threw herself upon his protection and proposed to

fly with him. Shelley hastened to London, and after the delay of a few

weeks eloped with Harriet to Edinburgh, where they were married on August

28, 1811. Shelley agreed to go through the ceremony of matrimony to save

his wife from the social disgrace that would otherwise fall upon her.

Writing to Miss Hitchener on March 14, 1812, Harriet says: "I thought if I

married anyone it should be a clergyman. Strange idea this, was it not?

But being brought up in the Christian religion, 'twas this first gave rise

to it. You may conceive with what horror I first heard that Percy was an

atheist; at least so it was given out at Clapham. At first I did not

comprehend the meaning of the word; therefore when it was explained I was

truly petrified.... I little thought of the rectitude of these principles

and when I wrote to him I used to try to shake them--making sure he was in

the wrong, and that myself was right.... Now, however, this is entirely

done away with, and my soul is no longer shackled with such idle fears."

This would indicate that he spent more time proselytizing Harriet than in

making love to her.

It has been said that Harriet's sister, Elizabeth, managed the whole

affair, and that the marriage was brought about through her successful

plotting.[14] After spending five weeks in Edinburgh, Shelley, Harriet,

and Hogg went to York. They were joined there by Elizabeth, who henceforth

ruled over Shelley's household with a stern hand. She is partly

responsible for the estrangement of Shelley and his wife.

During all this time Shelley was in need of money, and shortly after their

arrival at York went south to induce his father to provide them with the

means of living. While he was absent Hogg tried to seduce Harriet. Shelley

sought an explanation from Hogg, and pardoned him "fully and freely."

Shelley's account of the affair in a letter to Miss Hitchener savors much

of Godwinism. "I desired to know fully the account of this affair. I heard

it from him and I believe he was sincere. All I can recollect of that

terrible day was that I pardoned him--fully, freely pardoned him; that I

would still be a friend to him and hoped soon to convince him how lovely

virtue was; that his crime, not himself, was the object of my detestation;

that I value a human being not for what it has been but for what it is;

that I hoped the time would come when he would regard this horrible error

with as much disgust as I did."[15]

Early in November, Shelley, his wife, and Eliza left York suddenly for

Keswick. Shelley's father and grandfather feared that the poet would

parcel out the family estate to soulmates, and so they proposed to allow

him L2,000 a year if he would consent to entail the property on his eldest

son, and in default of issue, on his brother. The proposition was

indignantly rejected. He considered that kinship bore that relation to

reason which a band of straw does to fire. "I am led to love a being not

because it stands in the physical relation of blood to me but because I

discern an intellectual relationship."

Early in 1812 Shelley started a correspondence with William Godwin, to

whom he was then a stranger. In his first letter he writes: "The name of

Godwin has been used to excite in me feelings of reverence and admiration.

I have been accustomed to consider him a luminary too dazzling for the

darkness which surrounds him. From the earliest period of my knowledge of

his principles I have ardently desired to share, on the footing of

intimacy, that intellect which I have delighted to contemplate in its

emanations."

Godwin's influence with the revolutionists of this time was great.

Coleridge and Southey were his ardent disciples for a time. "Throw aside

your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a student, "and read Godwin

on necessity." This philosopher seemed to provide them with a simple,

comprehensive code of morality, which gave unlimited freedom to the

reason, and justice as complete as possible to the individual.

In February, 1812, the Shelleys went to Dublin to help on the cause of

moral and intellectual reform. He published there an "Address to the Irish

People" which he had written during his stay at Keswick. Shelley's mission

was moral and educational rather than political. He advocated Catholic

Emancipation and the Repeal of the Union; but he thought that he should

first of all strive to dispel bigotry and intolerance--"to awaken a noble

nation from the lethargy of despair."[16] What Irishmen needed most of all

were knowledge, sobriety, peace, benevolence--in a word, virtue and

wisdom. "When you have these things," he said, "you may defy the tyrant."

It is not surprising that his mission turned out to be a fiasco. Godwin

wrote Shelley several letters in which he tried to convince him that his

pamphlets and Association would stir up strife and rebellion. "Shelley,"

he writes, "you are preparing a scene of blood." The poet accordingly

withdrew his pamphlets from circulation and quitted Ireland.

Shelley then crossed over to Wales, and after a short residence at

Nangwillt settled at Lynmouth. Elizabeth Hitchener, "the sister of his

soul,"[17] joined them there. The poet first met her at Cuckfield while

visiting his uncle, Captain Pilfold. She was a schoolmistress, professing

very liberal opinions and possessing "a tongue of energy and an eye of

fire." Everybody that Shelley admired seemed to him perfect, while those

whom he disliked were fiends. Their correspondence, which extends over a

period of more than a year, gives us a good picture of the workings of

Shelley's mind during this time. They all moved to London in November. It

was not to be expected that a combination of even such disinterested,

enlightened superior mortals as these could last long. Elizabeth's

influence over Shelley soon began to wane. His dislike for her was

equalled only by his former extravagant praise. She was no longer his

angel, but was now known as the "Brown Demon." "She is," he writes, "an

artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my

astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste was never so

great as after living four months with her as an inmate. What would hell

be were such a woman in heaven?" Miss Hitchener took her leave of the

Shelleys and again became a schoolmistress.

Shelley and his family spent some time in Wales and Dublin and then

returned again to London in April, 1813.

It was about this time that he finished _Queen Mab_. On February 19, 1813,

Shelley wrote to Hookham, his publisher: "You will receive _Queen Mab_

with the other poems; I think that the whole should form one volume."

Medwin says that he commenced this work in the autumn of 1809. "After his

expulsion he reverted to his _Queen Mab_ commenced a year and a half

before, and converted what was a mere imaginative poem into a systematic

attack on the institutions of society." What was it that induced him to

make the change? There is no doubt but it was his experience of the misery

and suffering around him that prompted him to attack society as he did.

Radicalism, as has already been shown, springs from discontent. The worse

existing conditions are, the more pronounced will be the radicalism that

usually arises. Conditions--moral, political and social--during the latter

half of the eighteenth century were very bad indeed. In his inimitable

sketches of the four Georges, Thackeray asserts that the dissoluteness of

the nation was awful. He depicts the lives of its princes, courtiers, men

of rank and fashion as idle, profligate, and criminal. "Around a young

king himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety lived a court

society as dissolute as our country ever knew." Education was sadly

neglected. In Richardson's _Sir Charles Grandison_, published 1753,

Charlotte gives an account of her two lovers. One of them is an ideal

specimen of the young nobility and is represented as spelling pretty well

for a lord. In Ireland, the colonies, and even in England itself,

oppression was well-nigh intolerable. Byron's _Age of Bronze_ contains a

good description of the way in which the landlords treated their tenants.

The changes that followed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution caused

untold suffering. The spread of machinery destroyed the old domestic

industries of spinning and weaving, and many were consequently deprived of

their most important source of subsistence. Children took up the places of

the master craftsmen; and the amount of misery that this substitution

entailed to both children and craftsmen is almost incredible.[18] Politics

was rotten to the core. Even the great commoner, William Pitt, has been

convicted by Macaulay, of sacrificing his principles without any scruple

whatever. The political corruption started by Walpole was organized into a

system. Every man had his price. "Politicians are mere jobbers; officers

are gamblers and bullies; the clergy are contemned and are contemptible;

low spirits and nervous disorders have notoriously increased, until the

people are no longer capable of self-defense."[19] In their struggle with

the Stuarts the people were completely victorious; but it soon became

apparent that they had simply substituted one evil for another. The

despotism exercised by the Stuarts was now practiced by the Dodingtons and

the Winningtons. Burke observes: "The distempers of monarchy were the

great subjects of apprehension and redress in the last century. In this

the distempers of Parliament."

The House of Commons was not responsible to anybody; and its members

showed very little consideration for their constituents. Persons who were

not acceptable to the ruling party were often fined and imprisoned without

due process of law. It is little wonder then that Godwin, Shelley, and

others declaimed against all forms of government. They were acquainted

only with the Parliament of the Georges and the oligarchy of the Stuarts,

and the one was as bad as the other.

The national debt was trebled in the space of twenty years, thus imposing

heavy sacrifices on all. There was an income-tax of two shillings on a

pound sterling; but the taxes which caused the most suffering to the poor

were the indirect taxes on wheat, shoes, salt, etc. In 1815 a law was

passed prohibiting the importation of wheat for less than eighty shillings

the quarter.[20] No doubt the wealth of the country became very great

through the development of new resources, but it was distributed among the

few and gave no relief to the common people.

The poor laws were working astounding evils. With wheat at a given price,

the minimum on which a man with wife and one child could subsist was

settled; and whenever the family earnings fell below the estimated

minimum, the deficiency was to be made up from the rates. In this way the

path to pauperism was made so easy and agreeable that a large portion of

the laboring classes drifted along it. This system set a premium on

improvidence if not on vice. The inevitable effect was that wages fell as

doles increased, that paupers so pensioned were preferred by the farmers

to independent laborers, because their labor was cheaper, and that

independent laborers, failing to get work except at wages forced down to a

minimum, were constantly falling into the ranks of pauperism. It was not

until 1834 that "a new poor law" was enacted which eliminated these

evils.[21]

From one end of the kingdom to the other the prisons were a standing

disgrace to civilization. Imprisonment from whatever cause it might be

imposed meant consignment to a living tomb. Jails were pesthouses, in

which a disease, akin to our modern typhus, flourished often in epidemic

form. They were mostly private institutions leased out to ruthless,

rapacious keepers who used every menace and extortion to wring money out

of the wretched beings committed to their care. Prisons were dark because

their managers objected to pay the window tax. Pauper prisoners were

nearly starved, for there was no regular allowance of food. Howard's

crusade against prison mismanagement produced tangible results, but after

his death the cause of prison reform soon dropped, the old evils revived,

and at the beginning of the nineteenth century were everywhere

visible.[22]

The Church of England, it appears, had become an object of contempt. No

doubt Selwyn's _Dr. Warner_ is a distorted picture of the clergymen of the

time; yet there is reason to believe that Anglican parsons were not very

much concerned with the salvation of souls. "The Church had become a vast

machine for the promotion of her own officers. How admirable an investment

is Religion! Such is the burden of their pleading!"

Some of the conventionalities of the age were so absurd as to engender

sooner or later a spirit of revolt. Servants said "your honor" and "your

worship" at every moment: tradesmen stood hat in hand as the gentlemen

passed by: chaplains said grace and retired before the pudding. "In the

days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt's

under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr. Pitt, in

his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II; and when George III

spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of

reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and

so great the distinction of rank."[23] Not to use hair powder was an

unpardonable offence. Southey and Savage Landor were among the first to

appear with their hair in _statu naturali_ and this action of theirs

produced an extraordinary sensation.

_Caleb Williams_, written by William Godwin in 1793, is a severe

indictment of the customs and institutions of England. "Things as they

are," is the subtitle of the work, and on that account an outline of the

work will supplement the review of society already given. "_Caleb

Williams_," writes Professor Dowden, "is the one novel of the days of

revolution embodying the new doctrine of the time which can be said to

survive."[24]

In the first preface to _Caleb Williams_ Godwin says that the story is "a

study and delineation of things passing in the moral world. Its object is

to show that the spirit and character of the Government intrudes itself

into every rank of society." "Accordingly," he writes, "it was proposed in

the invention of the following work to comprehend, as far as the

progressive nature of a single story would allow, a general review of the

modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the

destroyer of man."

Caleb Williams shortly after the death of his father, became secretary of

Ferdinand Falkland, a country squire living in a remote county of England.

Mr. Falkland's mode of living was very recluse and solitary. He avoided

men and did not seem to have any friends in whom he confided. He scarcely

ever smiled, and his manners plainly showed that he was troubled and

unhappy. He was considerate to others, but he never showed a disposition

to lay aside the stateliness and reserve which he assumed. Sometimes he

was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical, and would even lose entirely his

self-possession.

Mr. Collins, Falkland's steward, tells Williams that their master was not

always thus, that he was once the gayest of the gay. In response to

Caleb's entreaties, Collins unfolds as much as he knows of their master's

history. He tells him that Mr. Falkland spent several years abroad and

distinguished himself wherever he went by deeds of gallantry and virtue.

At length he returned to England with the intention of spending the rest

of his days on his estate. His nearest neighbor, Barnabas Tyrrel, was

insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his inferiors and insolent to his

equals. On account of his wealth, strength, and copiousness of speech he

was regarded with admiration by some, but with awe by all. The arrival of

Mr. Falkland threatened to deprive Tyrrel of his authority and commanding

position in the community. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival

with hatred and aversion. The dignity, affability, and kindness of Mr.

Falkland were the subject of everybody's praise, and all this was an

insupportable torment to Tyrrel.

Emily Melville, Tyrrel's cousin, who lived with him, falls in love with

Falkland and consequently incurs her patron's displeasure. He resolved to

impose an uncouth, boorish youth on her as a husband. She is imprisoned in

her room for refusing, and is saved from a diabolical plot to ruin her

through the timely assistance of Falkland. While still delirious and

suffering from the ill-treatment of her persecutor. Emily was arrested and

cast into prison by Tyrrel for a debt contracted for board and lodging

during the last fourteen years. Death liberated her soon afterwards from

the persecutions of her cousin.

One of Tyrrel's tenants, Mr. Hawkins, incurred his master's displeasure,

and he and his family were turned out of house and home. The laws and

customs of the country are used to oppress the victims. Tenants must be

kept in their places. The presumption is that they are in the wrong, and

so the unscrupulous Tyrrel had no difficulty in imprisoning the son.

Shelley says: "That in questions of property there is a vague but most

effective favoritism in courts of law, and, among lawyers, against the

poor to the advantage of the rich--against the tenant in favour of the

landlord--against the creditor in favour of the debtor." (Prose. Vol. II,

p. 326.) Falkland remonstrated with Tyrrel for this piece of injustice,

but this served only to increase Tyrrel's hatred of him. At length the

crisis came. Tyrrel is driven out of a rural assembly by Falkland. He

returned soon afterwards, struck Falkland, felled him to the earth, and

kicked him in the presence of all. Falkland was disgraced, and to him

disgrace was worse than death. "He was too deeply pervaded with the idle

and groundless romances of chivalry ever to forget the situation,

humiliating and dishonourable according to his idea, in which he had been

placed upon this occasion. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged

along the floor! Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not to

be endured." Next morning Mr. Tyrrel was found dead in the street, having

been murdered at a short distance from the assembly-house. That day marked

the beginning of that melancholy which pursued Falkland in after years.

The public disgrace and chastisement that had been imposed upon him were

not the whole of the mischief that happened to the unfortunate Falkland.

It was rumored that he was the murderer of his antagonist. He was examined

by the neighboring magistrates and acquitted. It was absurd to imagine

that a man of such integrity should commit such an atrocious crime.

Suspicion then fell on the Hawkinses. They were tried, condemned, and

afterwards executed. From thenceforward the habits of Falkland became

totally different. He now became a rigid recluse. Everybody respected him

because of his benevolence, but his stately coldness and reserve made it

impossible for those about him to regard him with the familiarity of

affection.

Caleb Williams turned all these particulars over and over in his mind and

began to suspect that Falkland was the real murderer of Tyrrel. His

curiosity became an overpowering passion which was ultimately the cause of

all his misfortunes. Falkland realizes that his secretary is convinced of

his guilt, so he determines to silence him forever. He calls Williams into

his room and confesses his guilt to him. Falkland said that he allowed the

innocent Hawkinses to die because he could not sacrifice his fame. He

would leave behind him a spotless and illustrious name even should it be

at the expense of the death and misery of others. He then told Caleb that

if ever an unguarded word escaped from his lips he would pay for it by his

death or worse. This secret was a constant source of torment to Williams.

Every trifling incident made Falkland suspicious and consequently

increased the misery of his secretary. At length Caleb flees, but is taken

back, falsely accused of theft, and cast into prison. In all this Falkland

contrives to manage things so as to increase his reputation for

benevolence. Williams is made to appear an ungrateful wretch. The

impotence of the law to secure justice to the weak is only equalled by the

wretchedness of the prisons to which they are condemned. "Thank God,"

exclaims the Englishman, "we have no Bastile! Thank God with us no man can

be punished without a crime!" "Unthinking wretch!" writes Godwin, "Is

that a country of liberty, where thousands languish in dungeons and

fetters? Go, go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons.

Witness their unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their

governors, the misery of their inmates! After that show me the man

shameless enough to triumph, and say 'England has no Bastile!' Is there

any charge so frivolous, upon which men are not consigned to those

detested abodes? Is there any villainy that is not practiced by justices

and prosecutors, etc.?"

Williams tries to escape from prison and is caught in the attempt. He was

then treated more cruelly than ever. He made another attempt to escape and

was successful. The rest of the novel is taken up with an account of all

that Williams suffered in his endeavors to keep out of the reach of the

law. He falls in with a band of outlaws whose rude natural virtues are

contrasted with the meanness and corruption of the officers of the law. He

is at last caught, but Falkland, to make himself appear magnanimous, does

not press the charge against Williams. Instead he persecutes Caleb by

poisoning people's minds against him. Everywhere Caleb goes he is followed

by an emissary of Falkland who contrives to convince people that Williams

is an ungrateful scoundrel. He can stand the persecution no longer and so

determines to accuse Falkland of the murder of Tyrrel. Williams does this

in a way to carry conviction to his hearers. Falkland finally breaks down,

throws himself into Williams' arms, saying, "All my prospects are

concluded. All that I most ardently desired is forever frustrated. I have

spent a life of the basest cruelty to cover one act of momentary vice, and

to protect myself against the prejudice of my species.... And now (turning

to the magistrates) do with me as you please. If, however, you wish to

punish me, you must be speedy in your justice; for, as reputation was the

blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that death and infamy must seize me

together." He survived this event but three days. "A nobler spirit than

Falkland's," Godwin writes, "lived not among the sons of men. Thy

intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned with a

godlike ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in the

corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from

which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. Falkland! thou enteredst

upon thy career with the purest and most laudable intentions. But thou

imbibest the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth; and the base and

low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to thy native seats, operated

with this poison to hurry thee into madness...." All these evils flow from

Falkland's standard of morals--and his is the aristocratic, traditional

one. He is the victim of the false ideal of chivalry. The errors of

Falkland, Shelley writes, "sprang from a high though perverted conception

of human nature, from a powerful sympathy with his species and from a

temper, which led him to believe that the very reputation of excellence

should walk among mankind unquestioned and unassailed."

Protests against this condition of affairs were not wanting, it is true,

but they did not influence men to any great extent. Cowper, for example,

criticizes most severely the luxury and vices of his age.

Rank abundance breeds

In gross and pampered cities, sloth and lust

And wantonness and gluttonous excess.

He deplores the corruption in church and state, and pleads for a return to

religion. In the _Progress of Error_ he pictures Occidius as

A cassock'd huntsman and a fiddling priest.

Himself a wanderer from the narrow way,

His silly sheep, what wonder if they stray.

Although he lashes the follies of his time in _The Task_, _Table Talk_,

and _Expostulation_, still he does not attack the institutions of his

country with the vehemence characteristic of later writers. His poems are

a mild expression of the revolutionary spirit that was then gathering

strength.

At a very early age Shelley showed signs of hatred for existing

institutions. These became more pronounced as he grew older, until they

finally blazed forth in _Queen Mab_ in 1813. This poem is considered by

some to be merely a declamatory pamphlet in verse. Shelley himself

described it at one time as "villainous trash." Like a true radical he

gathers up all the evils of society, its crimes, misery, and oppression,

and feels them so keenly that he makes them part of his own being. This

collected lightning he discharged in one awful flash in _Queen Mab_.

The first two parts of this poem bear a striking resemblance to Volney's

_Les Ruines_.[25] In _Queen Mab_ a fairy descends and takes up Ianthe's

soul to heaven that she may see how to accomplish the great end for which

she lives, and that she may taste that peace which in the end all life

will share. Ianthe merited this boon because she vanquished earth's pride

and meanness and burst "the icy chains of custom." Volney's traveler is

likewise disengaged from his body and conveyed to the upper regions by a

Genius. Many consolations await him there as a reward for his

unselfishness and desires for the happiness of mankind. The earth is

plainly visible to both Volney's traveler and Shelley's spirit, Ianthe,

and its thronging thousands seem like an ant-hill's citizens. Volney's

traveler sees but a few remains of the hundred cities which once

flourished in Syria. All this destruction was caused by cupidity. In the

same way the Spirit of Ianthe finds that from England's fertile fields to

the burning plains where Libyan monsters dwell--

Thou canst not find one spot

Whereon no city stood.--_Canto II._

Ianthe thanks the fairy for this vision of the past and says that from it

she will glean a warning for the future

So that man

May profit by his errors and derive

Experience from his folly.

Volney's traveler wonders that past experience has not taught mankind a

lesson, and that destruction is not a thing of the past. The Spirit, in

_Queen Mab_, is shown the miserable life that kings live. They have no

peace of mind; even their "slumbers are but varied agonies." They are

heartless wretches whose ears are deaf to the shrieks of penury. The

fairy says that kings and parasites arose--

From vice, black loathsome vice:

From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong.

This is somewhat stronger than Volney's dictum that paternal tyranny laid

the foundations of political despotism. Canto IV of _Queen Mab_ contains a

description of the horrors of war. In _Les Ruines_ there is an account of

the war between Russia and Turkey. Both attribute this horrible evil to

cupidity, "the daughter and companion of ignorance." Volney's traveler is

then vouchsafed a glimpse of the "new age" when Equality, Liberty, and

Justice will reign supreme. The final chapters of _Les Ruines_ describe a

disputation between the doctors of different religions, which ends in

convincing the people that all religions are false. The ministers of the

various sects contradict and refute one another, opposing revelations to

revelations and miracles to miracles, until they render it evident that

they are all deceived or deceivers. Man himself is to blame for having

been duped. Religion exists because man is superstitious and tolerates the

imposition of priests. "Thus, agitated by their own passions, men, whether

in their individual capacity, or as collective bodies, always rapacious

and improvident passing from tyranny to slavery, from pride to abjectness,

from presumption to despair, have been themselves the eternal instruments

of their misfortunes."[26] In the notes to _Queen Mab_, Shelley says that

as ignorance of nature gave birth to gods the knowledge of nature is

calculated to destroy them.

But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;

Thou art descending to the darksome grave

Unhonored and unpitied, but by those

Whose pride is passing by like thine.

And sheds like thine a glare that fades before the sun

Of Truth, and shines but in the dreadful night

That long has lowered above the ruined world.[27]

The third part of _Queen Mab_ contains a glowing picture of the Golden

Age--of the world as it will be, when reason will be the sole guide of

men. For this Shelley is indebted mainly to Godwin's _Political Justice_.

For his denunciation of the professions Shelley is indebted to the Essay

on "Trades and Professions" in Godwin's _Enquirer_. With regard to

commerce, Godwin says that the introduction of barter and sale into

society was followed by vice and misery. "Barter and sale being once

introduced, the invention of a circulating medium in the precious metals

gave solidity to the evil, and afforded a field upon which for the

rapacity and selfishness of man to develop all their refinements."[28]

Shelley says:

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness

The signet of its all-enslaving power

Upon a shining ore, and called it gold.[29]

Godwin expresses his opinion of merchants as follows: "There is no being

on the face of the earth with a heart more thoroughly purged from every

remnant of the weakness of benevolence and sympathy."[30]

And Shelley writes:

Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade

No solitary virtue dares to spring.

Shelley says that soldiers--

... are the hired bravos who defend

The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear:

These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,

The refuse of society, the dregs

Of all that is most vile, etc.

His note on this passage was taken bodily from Essay V of Godwin's

_Enquirer_. With regard to clergymen, Shelley expresses his opinion thus:

Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites

Without a hope, a passion, or a love

Who, through a life of luxury and lies

Have crept by flattery to the seats of power

Support the system whence their honors flow

Godwin's verdict is not so severe. "Clergymen," he says, "are timid in

enquiry, prejudiced in opinion, cold, formal, the slave of what other men

may think of them, rude, dictatorial, impatient of contradiction, harsh in

their censures, and illiberal in their judgments."

_Queen Mab_ then is a fierce diatribe against existing institutions. It

contains very little constructive philosophy. What value has it for

mankind? Does it serve any purpose apart from giving pleasure to the

aesthetic faculties? It assuredly does. It awakens the social conscience.

The first step for the sinner on the road to conversion is to try to

realize the sinful state of his soul. The same is true of a nation in need

of reform. Unless its shortcomings are vividly brought home to it,

reformation will never take place. To do this was and still is the work of

_Queen Mab_. It laid bare the weaknesses of State and Church; it

engendered the spirit of compassion and thus paved the way for reform.

CHAPTER II

VIEWS ON MARRIAGE AND LOVE

In September, 1813, Shelley wrote a sonnet, already quoted, to Ianthe, his

first child, in which he says that the babe was dear to him not only for

its own sweet sake, but for the mother's, and that the mother had grown

dearer to him for the babe's. Hogg informs us, however, that about this

time the ardor of Shelley's affection for his wife was beginning to cool.

It is scarcely correct to speak of the ardor of his affection, for it may

be doubted that he ever loved Harriet very ardently. If he had been

seriously in love with his wife, he would not have written Miss Hitchener

two months after his marriage that he loved her "more than any relation,"

and that she was the sister of his soul.[31] However this may be, it is

certain that in 1814 Shelley and his wife did not get along well together.

Harriet was beautiful and amiable, and adopted in a somewhat parrot-like

manner the views of her husband. As she grew older she no doubt developed

tastes more in keeping with the conventions of that society which Shelley

detested. Professor Dowden suggests that motherhood produced in her

character a change that did not harmonize with her husband's idealism. She

was no longer an ardent schoolgirl, but a woman who has found out that one

must grapple with the realities of life in some way more practical than

the one hitherto followed. Her sister urged her to look for the style and

elegance suitable to the wife of a prospective baronet. This was repugnant

to Shelley's republican simplicity. "I have often thought," Peacock

writes, "that, if Harriet had nursed her own child, and if the sister had

not lived with them, the link of their married life would not have been so

readily broken." Harriet sympathized less and less with her husband's

aspirations, and as a consequence Shelley turned to other women for the

encouragement and inspiration which he once got from his wife. He spent

too much of his time in the company of the Newtons, Boinvilles, and

Turners to render possible the retention of his wife's affections. On

March 16, 1814, Shelley wrote a letter to Hogg, which plainly shows that

he found no happiness in his home. "I have been staying with Mrs.

Boinville for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that

friendship and philosophy combine, from the dismaying solitude of

myself.... I have sunk into a premature old age of exhaustion.... Eliza is

still with us--not here!--but (with his wife) ... I certainly hate her

with all my heart and soul." Shelley's second marriage in St. George's

Church, on March 22, does not throw any light on the relations that

existed between himself and his wife. They celebrated this second ceremony

simply to dispel all doubts concerning the validity of the first one in

Edinburgh. On April 18, Mrs. Boinville wrote to Hogg that Shelley was at

her house, that Harriet had gone to town (presumably to her father's), and

that Eliza was living at Southampton. J. C. Jeafferson says that it was

Shelley who deserted Harriet and not Harriet, Shelley. According to this

biographer, Shelley left her at Binfield on May 18, 1814.[32] Shelley

still hoped to regain his wife's love, and in some verses inscribed, "To

Harriet, 1814," he appeals pathetically for her affection. Harriet had

become cold and proud, and refused to meet his advances toward a

reconciliation. Her pride, Shelley believed, was incompatible with virtue.

When he found that he had "clasped a shadow," his anguish, owing to his

great sensitiveness, was extreme. Other men put up with their wives'

imperfections, and why could not Shelley have done the same? It must be

remembered, though, that these men have other interests to occupy their

thoughts, and other friends to give them the sympathy and love denied them

at home. This was not the case with Shelley. He had few friends and many

enemies. It should not surprise us then to find him snatching at the first

vision "which promised him the longed-for boon of human love." This vision

appeared to him in the person of Mary Godwin.

A letter from Harriet to Hookham, dated July 7, shows that she was anxious

to be with her husband again. But the time for reconciliation had passed.

Whenever Shelley hated or loved anybody, he did so intensely. Everybody

was either an angel or a devil; and Harriet had ceased to be an angel.

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." Dowden says Shelley

persuaded himself that Harriet was false to him and had given her heart to

a Mr. Ryan. There is no ground for the charge of unfaithfulness, as

Peacock, Thornton Hunt, and Trelawny bear testimony concerning her

innocence.

Shelley believed that Harriet had ceased to love him, and that he was

consequently free to contract a union with another. He puts forth this

doctrine in the notes to _Queen Mab_. "A husband and wife ought to

continue so long united as they love each other.... There is nothing

immoral in this separation.... The conviction that wedlock is indissoluble

holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse....

Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage." He considered

marriage a useless institution, and expressed this view in _St. Irvyne_.

"Say, Eloise, do not you think it an insult to two souls, united to each

other in the irrefragable covenants of love and congeniality, to promise

in the sight of a Being whom they know not, that fidelity which is certain

otherwise." He does not think that promiscuous intercourse will follow the

abolition of marriage. Love, and not money, honors, or convenience will be

the bond of these unions when marriage is abolished, and this will result

in more faithfulness than obtains at present. "The parties having acted

upon selection are not likely to forget this selection when the interview

is over."[33] In his review of Hogg's _Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff_,

Shelley regards with horror the recommendation of the tutor to Alexy to

indulge in promiscuous intercourse. "It is our duty to protest against so

pernicious and disgusting an opinion." In a letter to Hogg, written after

the latter's attempt to seduce Harriet, we find the following: "But do not

love one (Harriet) who can not return it, who if she could, ought to

stiffle her desire to do so. Love is not a whirlwind that is

unvanquishable."

Shelley's views on marriage agree with those of Godwin. They both looked

on marriage as a human institution, and consequently thought it might be

modified or abolished entirely. They considered happiness man's highest

good, and unhappiness man's only evil. Vows and promises are immoral

because the thing promised may prove at any time detrimental to one's

happiness. For this reason husband and wife should not bind themselves to

live always together. This doctrine appealed to Shelley because it agreed

with his views on freedom and his passion for opposing the traditions of

society.

Heretofore it has been found convenient to lay the blame for all the

radical views of Shelley at the door of Godwin. In the case of those on

marriage a good deal of the blame must be borne by Sir James Lawrence.

In a letter to Lawrence, dated August 17, 1812, Shelley writes: "Your

_Empire of the Naires_, which I read this spring, succeeded in making me a

perfect convert to its doctrines. I then retained no doubts of the evils

of marriage--Mrs. Wollstonecraft reasons too well for that--but I had been

dull enough not to perceive the greatest argument against it, until

developed in the Naires, prostitution both legal and illegal." Hogg says

that Shelley and his young friends read Lawrence's tale with delight.[34]

This work, intended to vindicate the rights of women, is a plea for free

love. It pictures the Kingdom of the Naires as a Paradise of Love, where

neither jealousy nor envy, quarreling nor hatred, have any place.

Infanticide and the sufferings that follow in the wake of illicit

intercourse are there unknown. "It would be unjust to conclude," Lawrence

writes, "that every voluntary union would be short-lived." He claims that,

although constancy is no merit in itself, still it obtains in the Kingdom

of the Naires to a greater extent than in Europe. "Know ye not that though

constancy is no merit it is a source of happiness; and that though

inconstancy is no crime, it is no blessing much less a boast."[35] There

is some resemblance between this and the following from Shelley's _Notes

to Queen Mab_: "Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself independently of

the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in

proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object

of its indiscreet choice." In another place Lawrence writes: "Two hearts

whom love with its loadstone has touched, will stick together, nought will

tear asunder. But soon as the magnetic power has ceased, say, why should

wedlock link in iron fetters, superfluous even when they are not

vexatious, those bodies which the soul of love has left?"[36] In the notes

to _Queen Mab_ we read--"A husband and wife ought to continue so long

united as they love each other; any law which should bind them to

cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a

most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration."[37] "Among

the Naires there are neither courtesans nor virgins, for the two extremes

are equally unnatural and equally detrimental to the state. Love there

shuns not the light of the sun, nor is it, as in Europe, degraded as a

vice, nor allied to infamy and guilt."

Shelley lived at a time when the marriage ideal was not held in high

repute. Lawrence describes many kinds of abominable travesties of

marriage. In Persia, to silence the scruples of the lustful, "they have

contrived contracts of enjoyment (for it would be wicked to call them

contracts of marriage) for very short periods of time; these are formally

signed and countersigned, and many priests gain their livelihood by giving

their benediction to this orthodox prostitution."[38] Marriage was a mere

formality for a great many. In France, Montesquieu writes, "a husband, who

would wish to keep his wife to himself, would be considered a disturber of

the public happiness, and as a madman who would monopolise the light of

the sun. He who loves his own wife, is one who is not agreeable enough to

gain the affections of any other man's wife, who takes advantage of a law

to make amends for his own want of amiability; and who contributes, as far

as lies in his power, to overturn a tacit convention, that is conducive to

the happiness of both sexes."[39] In England conditions were no better. A

husband might consort with as many women as he chose and his wife could

get no redress. In Italy and Spain, the inhabitants, "too fond of liberty

to respect the duties of marriage and too attached to their names to

suffer their extinction, require only representatives, and not sons as

their heirs. It is a pity that the Naire system is not known to them; but

cicesbeism is a palliative to marriage and an ingenious compromise between

family pride and natural independence, and it is better to be inconsistent

and happy than unhappy and rational."[40]

In no country of Europe is the marriage vow kept. Why not then, argued

Shelley, abolish this institution which makes hypocrites of men? "Marriage

is the tomb of love.... Two lovers only meet when in good humor, or when

resolved to be so; a married couple think themselves entitled to torment

each other with their ill-humors. When a lover presents a trifle to his

beloved, she receives it with smiles; when a husband makes a present to

his wife, which indeed happens seldom enough, he runs the risk of being

told that he has no taste, or that she could have bought it cheaper."[41]

_The Empire of the Naires_ is not so much an exposition of the free-love

system of the Naires as a grossly distorted and exaggerated picture of the

miseries that follow from the present system of regulating the relations

between the sexes in the different countries of the world. Lawrence draws

horrible pictures of misery, degradation, and even murder that are a

consequence of our opinions on love and marriage. "Whenever women are

treated like slaves," he writes, "they act like slaves with artifice and

hypocricy."[42] Shelley affirms that "the present system of constraint

does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites of open

enemies."[43]

Lawrence attributes the social evil to the existing code of morality. If a

girl falls, she is driven from her home, and the only road then open to

her is that which leads to the brothel. "Prostitution," says Shelley, "is

the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women

for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite

are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. Society

avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation."[44]

It does not seem that Shelley made much use of the plot or rather of the

different incidents of the _Empire of the Naires_. However, it may not be

amiss to indicate the slight resemblance that exists between the story of

Margaret Montgomery and that of Rosalind in _Rosalind and Helen_.

Rosalind loves a young man whom she is about to marry. On the day fixed

for the wedding, her father returns from a distant land to die, and

informs them that Rosalind and her lover are brother and sister.

Hold, hold!

He cried! I tell thee 'tis her brother!

Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod

Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold;

I am now weak and pale, and old:

We were once dear to one another,

I and that corpse! Thou art our child!

Her betrothed falls dead on the receipt of this news. Rosalind marries

another who uses her very cruelly, perhaps because she gives birth to an

illegitimate child. Her husband dies, and his will, because she was

adulterous,

Imported, that if e'er again

I sought my children to behold

Or in my birthplace did remain

Beyond three days, whose hours were told,

They should inherit naught:

In _The Naires_ Margaret Montgomery and James Forbes had known and loved

each other from childhood. Shortly before the time set for their wedding,

James' father sent a letter to Margaret's father breaking off the marriage

in the most positive terms. The latter's pride was inflamed, and a quarrel

ensued in which Forbes was mortally wounded. The dying man sent for

Margaret and told her that she and her lover are sister and brother, that

he and not Montgomery was her father, and hence her mother's and his

opposition to the marriage. Margaret is enceinte, and her reputed father

turns her out of doors. Her lover is killed in Naples. A friend sends

Margaret some money during her stay in London. Shelley makes Rosalind, who

has been dispossessed too, receive some money from an old servant.

Rosalind and Margaret are separated from their life-long friends who

know--

What to the evil world is due

And therefore sternly did refuse

to link themselves with the infamy of ones so lost as their sinning

sisters. In both cases common misery reunites them and their friends

again.

In May or June, 1814, Shelley became acquainted with Mary Godwin. Her

father described her as being "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and

active in mind; her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in

everything she undertakes almost invincible." She was brought up in an

atmosphere of free thought, having spent most of her girlhood with Mr.

Baxter, a faithful disciple of Godwin. Shelley and Mary had many

sympathies in common, and it is not surprising to find them soon falling

in love with each other.

Peacock tells us that Shelley at this time was in agony. On the one hand

he was tormented by his desire to treat Harriet rightly, and on the other

by his passion for Mary. Passion won the day, and on July 28 Shelley

eloped with Mary to the Continent. He tried to ease his conscience by

offering Harriet his friendship and protection. He wrote her from the

Continent and urged her to join himself and Mary in Switzerland. He

assured her that she would find in him a firm, constant friend to whom her

interests would be always dear.

While passing judgment on Shelley one should not forget that he simply put

into practice those doctrines which he believed to be true. Neither

Shelley nor Mary thought they were inflicting any wrong on Harriet as long

as they offered her their friendship and protection.

In September, 1814, Shelley, Mary and Jane Clairmont, Mary's half-sister,

settled in London. About this time he was troubled a great deal with money

embarrassments and was in continual hiding from the bailiffs. Toward the

end of the year he read "the tale of Godwin's American disciple in

romance, Charles Brockden Brown."[45] "Brown's four novels," says Peacock,

"Schiller's Robbers, and Goethe's Faust, were of all the works with which

he was familiar those which took the deepest root in Shelley's mind and

had the strongest influence in the formation of his character."

Brown's most important novel, _Wieland_, is a gruesome tale in which the

horrors portrayed owe their existence to the errors of the sufferers.

Wieland, a very religious man, is deceived by an unscrupulous

ventriloquist who persuades him that a voice from heaven bids him

sacrifice the life of his wife and four children. "If Wieland had framed

juster notions of moral duty, and of the divine attributes; or if he had

been gifted with ordinary equanimity or foresight, the double tongued

deceiver would have been baffled and repelled." This is the doctrine of

Shelley; he believed that the evils of society were man's own creation.

Ye princes of the earth, ye sit aghast

Amid the ruin which yourselves have made.

Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast,

And sprang from sleep.[46]

Brown's views on love are almost as radical as those of Godwin. Wieland's

sister is in love with Pleyel, and is anxious to act in such a way as to

give him hope and at the same time not to appear too forward. "Time was,"

she says, "when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable

solicitude from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of

shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred

in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would have

maintained their place in my heart had not my portion been set in misery.

My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we

ought not to disclose it is criminal to harbor."[47] Shelley's ideal woman

would hold the same views. He writes:

And women too, frank, beautiful and kind ...

... From custom's evil taint exempt and pure

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,

Looking emotions once they feared to feel.

And changed to all which once they dared not be

Yet, being now, made earth like heaven.

In May, 1816, Shelley, accompanied by Mary and Jane Clairmont, started for

Italy. It is probable that the undesirable state of Shelley's health,

together with the constant begging of Godwin, determined them to leave

England. J. C. Jeafferson maintains that Miss Clairmont persuaded Shelley

to accompany her to Geneva, where she was to meet Lord Byron. It is quite

certain though that Mary and Shelley were ignorant of Byron's intrigue

with Miss Clairmont. The most that can be said is that Jane's

solicitations may have hastened their departure.

In September, 1816, the Shelleys returned to London. About a month

afterwards news reached them that Fanny Imlay (Mary's half-sister) had

committed suicide. It is said that love for Shelley drove her to despair.

In December Shelley was seeking for Harriet, of whom he had lost trace

some time previously. On December 10, her body was found in the

Serpentine. Very little is known of the life she led after her separation

from Shelley. Rumor had it that she drank heavily and became the mistress

of a soldier, who deserted her.

It may be that "in all Shelley did, he, at the time of doing it, believed

himself justified to his own conscience," but surely that conscience is

warped which finds no cause for remorse in Shelley's treatment of his

first wife. No one can view his self-complacency and assumption of

righteousness at this time without feelings of detestation. On the day he

heard the news of his wife's suicide he wrote to Mary: "Everything tends

to prove, however, that beyond the shock of so hideous a catastrophe

having fallen on a human being once so nearly connected with me, there

would in any case, have been little to regret." "Little to regret" save

the shock to his nerves. What about the suffering of the poor woman that

forced her to commit such a terrible deed?

Shelley claimed his children from the Westbrooks, but the claim was

denied. The children were committed to the care of a Dr. Hume, of Hanwell.

Lord Eldon gave his judgment against Shelley on the ground that Shelley's

opinions led to immoral conduct. Shelley gave vent to his rage in sixteen

vitriolic stanzas, which he addressed to the Lord Chancellor.

During his residence at Marlow on the Thames in 1817, Shelley wrote _The

Revolt of Islam_, which was first published under the title _Laon and

Cythna_. In its first form it contained violent attacks on theism and

Christianity; and the hero and heroine were brother and sister. Ollier

refused to publish it unless everything indicating such a relationship

were removed, and Shelley reluctantly consented to make the necessary

alterations.

_The Revolt of Islam_ opens with an allegorical myth in which the strife

between a serpent and an eagle--good and evil--is described. While the

poet sympathizes with the snake, a mysterious woman (Asia in Prometheus

Unbound) suddenly appears and conducts him to heaven. There he meets Laon

and Cythna who recount the sufferings which made them worthy of this

heavenly place. First of all, Laon tells about his love for Cythna, who is

described as a shape of brightness moving upon the earth. She mourned with

him over the servitude--

In which the half of humankind were mewed,

Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,

She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food

To the hyena lust, who, among graves,

Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony raves.[48]

Cythna determines to make all good and just. By the force of kindness she

will "disenchant the captives," and "then millions of slaves shall leap in

joy as the benumbing cramp of ages shall leave their limbs." The happiness

of the lovers was rudely interrupted. Cythna is taken away by the

emissaries of the tyrant Othman; and Laon, who killed three of the king's

slaves while defending her, is cast into prison. A hermit sets him free,

conveys him to an island, and supports him there for seven years. During

all of this time Laon's mind is deranged. He recovers, however, and then

they both embark to help overthrow the tyrant Othman. The revolutionists

are successful principally because of the influence of their leader, who

is a woman, Laone. Such is the strength of her quiet words that none dare

harm her. Tyrants send their armed slaves to quell--

Her power, they, even like a thundergust

Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell

Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.[49]

Some of the revolutionists demand that Othman be put to death for his

crimes. Laon interposes and tells them that if their hearts are tried in

the true love of freedom they should cease to dread this one poor lonely

man. Here is Godwin's doctrine again:

The chastened will

Of virtue sees that justice is the light

Of love, and not revenge and terror and despite.[50]

That same night the tyrant with the aid of a foreign army treacherously

attacks the revolutionists. In the midst of the carnage

A black Tartarian horse of giant frame

Comes trampling o'er the dead; the living bleed

Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed

On which like to an angel robed in white

Sate one waving a sword.[51]

Needless to say, this is Cythna who comes to rescue Laon. They both flee

to a lonely ruin where they recount to each other the stories of their

sufferings. Cythna tells that she was carried to a submarine cavern by

order of the tyrant, and that she was fed there by an eagle. She became a

mother, and was comforted for a while by the caresses of her child until

it mysteriously disappeared. An earthquake changed the position of the

cavern, and Cythna is rescued by some passing sailors. She is taken to the

city of Othman, where she leads the revolutionists as described in the

previous cantos. Want and pestilence follow in the wake of massacre, and

cause awful misery. An Iberian priest in whose breast "hate and guile lie

watchful" says that God will not stay the plague until a pyre is built and

Laon and Cythna burned upon it. An immense reward is offered for their

capture. The person who brings them both alive shall espouse the princess

and reign with the king. A stranger comes to the tyrant's court and tells

them that they themselves have made all the desolation which they bewail.

However, he cannot expect them to change their ways so he promises to

betray Laon if they will only allow Cythna to go to America. The tyrant

agrees to the stranger's terms, who then tells them that he is Laon

himself. He is placed upon the altar, and as the torches are about to be

applied to it Cythna appears on her Tartarian steed. The priest urges his

comrades to seize her, but the king has scruples about breaking his

promise. She is set on the pyre, however, and both perish in the flames.

They wake reclining--

On the waved and golden sand

Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined

With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind

Breathed divine odour.[52]

A boat approaches them with an angel (Cythna's child) in it. They are all

carried in this "curved shell of hollow pearl" to a haven of rest and joy.

This disconnected story serves as a vehicle to convey exhortations

regarding liberty and justice. Thus, during the voyage from the cavern to

Othman's city, Cythna delivers an address to the sailors which contains

some of the best passages in the poem. She tells them for example:

To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot,

To own all sympathies, and outrage none,

And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,

Until life's sunny day is quite gone down,

To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone

To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of woe;

To live as if to love and live were one;

This is not faith or law, nor those who bow

To thrones on Heaven or Earth such destiny may know.[53]

The poem aims at kindling a virtuous enthusiasm for the doctrines of

liberty and equal rights to all. "It is a series of pictures illustrating

the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence" and

the regeneration of humanity. Laon is the expression of ideal devotion to

the happiness of mankind; and Cythna is a type of the new woman, "the

free, equal, fearless companion of man." The poem depicts "the awakening

of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of

moral dignity and freedom; the tranquillity of successful patriotism and

the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy." It

concludes by showing that the triumph of oppression is temporary and a

sure pledge of its inevitable fall.

So much attention is here given to _The Revolt of Islam_ because of the

influence on it of a love story--_The Missionary_, by Miss Owenson--an

influence which up to the present has escaped the notice of Shelley

students.[54] In a letter to Hogg, dated June 27, 1811, Shelley writes

"the only thing that has interested me, if I except your letters, has been

one novel. It is Miss Owenson's _Missionary_, an Indian tale; will you

read it? It is really a divine thing; Luxima, the Indian, is an angel.

What a pity we cannot incorporate these creatures of fancy; the very

thoughts of them thrill the soul! Since I have read this book, I have read

no other."[55] This tale is a very striking one, and it is not strange

that Shelley made its philosophy his own. The descriptions are so vivid,

the tale so simple, and the experiences recorded apparently so true, that

it takes a maturer mind than Shelley's to lay bare the fallacies of the

work and to unmask its half truths. No outline of the story can give an

idea of its strength. In the beginning of the seventeenth century Hilarion

Count d'Acugna of the royal house of Braganza joins the Franciscans, and

on account of his zeal and piety is known as "the man without a fault." He

is full of zeal for the salvation of souls and goes to India to convert

pagans to Christianity. "Devoted to a higher communion his soul only

stooped from heaven to earth, to relieve the sufferings he pitied, or to

correct the errors he condemned; to substitute peace for animosity ... to

watch, to pray, to fast, to suffer for all. Such was the occupation of a

life, active as it was sinless." Passages like the above serve as sugar

coating for the following: "Hitherto the life of the young monk resembled

the pure and holy dream of saintly slumbers, for it was still a dream;

splendid indeed, but unsubstantial, dead to all those ties which

constitute at once the charm and the anxiety of existence, which agitate

while they bless the life of man, the spring of human affection lay

untouched within his bosom and the faculty of human reason unused within

his mind.... Yet these feelings though unexercised were not extinct; they

betrayed their existence even in the torpid life he had chosen, etc." The

missionary spends some time at Lahore studying the dialects of Upper India

under the tutelage of a Pundit. During his stay there the Guru of Cashmere

comes to Lahore for the ceremony of Upaseyda. He is accompanied by his

beautiful and accomplished granddaughter, Luxima, the Prophetess and

Brachmachira of Cashmere.

The Pundit tells the missionary about the wonderful influence that the

Guru's granddaughter, Luxima, has over the people of the place, just as

the old man of _The Revolt of Islam_, who represents Shelley's teacher,

Dr. Lind, tells Laon about the extraordinary influence of Cythna on the

people she meets. "The Indians of the most distinguished rank drew back as

she approached lest their very breath should pollute that region of purity

her respiration consecrated, and the odour of the sacred flowers, by which

she was adorned, was inhaled with an eager devotion, as if it purified the

soul it almost seemed to penetrate." The Pundit says that "her beauty, her

enthusiasm, her graces, and her genius, alike capacitate her to propagate

and support the errors of which she herself is the victim." The old man

tells Laon that Cythna--

Paves her path with human hearts, and o'er it flings

The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

At the ceremony of Upaseyda, which the Guru holds, disputants of various

sects put forth the claims of their respective religions. "A devotee of

the Musnavi sect took the lead; he praised the mysteries of the Bhagavat,

and explained the profound allegory of the six Ragas.... A disciple of the

Vedanti school spoke of the transports of mystic love, and maintained the

existence of spirit only; while a follower of Buddha supported the

doctrine of matter, etc." The missionary takes advantage of this

opportunity to tell them about Christianity. "The impression of his

appearance was decisive, it sank at once to the soul; and he imposed

conviction on the senses, ere he made his claim on the understanding....

He ceased to speak and all was still as death. His hands were folded on

his bosom, to which his crucifix was pressed; his eyes were cast in

meekness on the earth; but the fire of his zeal still played like a ray

from heaven on his brow." This reminds one at once of Canto IX, of _The

Revolt of Islam_:

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,

Moses and Buddah, Zerdhust and Brahm and Foh,

A tumult of strange names, which never met

Before, as watchwords of a single woe,

Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw

Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl

"Our God alone is God!"--And slaughter now

Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl

A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

'Twas an Iberian priest from whom it came

A zealous man, who led the legioned west,

With words which faith and pride had stopped in flame,

To quell the unbelievers....

He ceased, and they

A space stood silent, as far, far away

The echoes of his voice among them died;

And he knelt down upon the dust, alway

Muttering the curses of his speechless pride.

There is a striking resemblance between this cowled Iberian priest and the

Iberian Franciscan of _The Missionary_.

The missionary looked to the conversion of the prophetess as the most

effectual means of accomplishing the conversion of the nation. With this

end in view he goes to Cashmere, and unexpectedly comes upon Luxima one

morning, praying at a shrine. "Silently gazing in wonder upon each other,

they stood finely opposed, the noblest specimens of the human species...;

she, like the East, lovely and luxuriant; he, like the West, lofty and

commanding; the one, radiant in all the luster, attractive in all the

softness which distinguishes her native regions; the other, towering in

all the energy, which marks his ruder latitudes." They meet again and

again, and the result is they fall in love with each other. It is

significant from the point of view of the influence of the _Missionary_

that in Alastor Shelley meets his ideal love "in the vale of Cashmire."

The way the novelist develops the progress of this sentiment, which both

the priest and the priestess had vowed to suppress, can scarcely be

surpassed. She describes how their new mode of feeling was opposed by

their ancient habits of thinking, and how their minds "struggling between

a natural bliss and a religious principle of resistance, between a

passionate sentiment and an habitual self-command, become a scene of

conflict and agitation."

Old age with its gray hair,

And wrinkled legends of unworthy things

And icy sneers is nought; it cannot dare

To burst the chains which life forever flings

On the entangled soul's aspiring wings.[56]

Luxima succumbed to the warfare. She overcame the traditions and laws by

which she was bound; and hence Shelley's great admiration for her. She

embraced Christianity less in faith than in love. She did not feel guilty

because she thought her sentiments of love were true to all life's natural

impulses. The missionary, on the other hand, must have excited in Shelley

pity for the man and hatred for the institutions which stood in the way of

their happiness. "He had not, indeed, relinquished a single principle of

his moral feeling--he had not yet vanquished a single prejudice of his

monastic education; to feel, was still with him to be weak; to love, a

crime; and to resist, perfection." Luxima is excommunicated, deprived of

caste and declared a wanderer and an outcast upon the earth. They both

elude their pursuers and join a caravan which is on its way to Tatta. On

their journey the missionary tells her that they must soon separate, as

duty demands that he continue the work of his ministry. He will see to it

that she is well cared for in a convent at Tatta. Luxima upbraids him for

his selfishness. He replies that it is not the prospect of his degradation

and humiliation which deters him from staying with her, but the thought

that by so doing he will commit a crime--break his vows. "Pity then," the

missionary says, "and yet respect him who, loving thee and virtue

equally, can never know happiness without nor with thee--who thus

condemned to suffer without ceasing submits not to his fate, but is

overpowered by its tyranny, and who alike helpless and unresigned opposes

while he suffers and repines while he endures." Continency was

unintelligible to Shelley, and he criticizes it in Canto XII as follows:

... that sudden rout

One checked who never in his mildest dreams

Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams

Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed

Had seared with blistering ice; but he misdeems

That he is wise whose wounds do only bleed

Only for self; thus thought the Iberian priest indeed

And others too thought he was wise to see

In pain and fear and hate something divine;

In love and beauty no divinity.

Shelley believed that "the worthiness of every action is to be estimated

by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce,"[57]

that the ideal of man was to love and to be loved. Luxima says: "Be that

heaven my witness that I would not for the happiness I have abandoned and

the glory I have lost, resign that desert whose perilous solitudes I share

with thee. Oh! my Father, and my friend, thou alone hast taught me to know

that the paradise of woman is the creation of her heart; that it is not

the light or air of heaven, though beaming brightness and breathing

fragrance, nor all that is loveliest in Nature's scenes, which form the

sphere of her existence and enjoyment! It is alone the presence of him she

loves; it is that mysterious sentiment of the heart which diffuses a finer

sense of life through the whole being; and which resembles, in its

singleness and simplicity, the primordial idea which in the religion of my

fathers is supposed to have preceded time and worlds, and from which all

created good has emanated."[58]

In the preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ Shelley writes that he "sought to

enlist the harmony of metrical language ... and the rapid and subtle

transitions of human passion in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive

morality." For this purpose he chose "a story of human passion in its most

universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures and

appeal, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions to the

common sympathies of every human breast. What is the _Missionary_ but "a

story of human passion appealing in contempt of all artificial opinions or

institutions to the common sympathies of every human heart?" When _The

Revolt of Islam_ first appeared, Laon and Cythna were brother and sister.

Their love like that of the missionary and priestess is considered

illicit. Not only are the motifs of both very similar, but many of the

incidents are identical. The influence of the _Missionary_ on the _Revolt_

will perhaps appear more clearly if we put these incidents in parallel

columns. In the second canto--

Laon and Cythna must part that they When the missionary tells Luxima

may spread their doctrines among that they must separate, in order

men. that he may continue the work of

his ministry, Luxima says she

Cythna says: will not long endure the agony of

separation. "Thinkest thou," she

"We part! O Laon, I must dare, exclaims, "that I shall long

nor tremble survive his loss for whom I have

To meet those looks no more! sacrificed all?"

Oh heavy stroke

Sweet brother of my soul! can I

dissemble

The agony of this thought?"

* * * * * * * *

Laon and Cythna are seized by the The missionary and Luxima are

officers of the State, and during seized by the officers of the

the struggle Laon overcomes three Inquisition, and the missionary

of the tyrant's soldiers in overcomes three soldiers in

defense of Cythna. defense of Luxima.

"--a feeble shriek "But the _feeble_ plaints of

It was a feeble shriek, faint, Luxima, who was borne away in

far, and low the arms of one of the assailants

_Arrested me_--my _mien grew _recalled to his bewildered mind_

calm and meek_-- a consciousness of their mutual

'Twas Cythna's cry." sufferings and situations."

After the overthrow of the tyrant Their fellow travelers boldly

Othman the people demand advanced to rescue the missionary

that he be put to death. and Luxima, and awaiting his

orders, asked: "Shall we throw

those men under the camels' feet

or shall we bind them to those

rocks and leave them to their

fate?"

Laon answers: "The missionary cast on them a

glance of pity and contempt and

"'What do ye seek? What fear looking round him with an air at

ye,' then I cried, once dignified and grateful, he

Suddenly starting forth, said: 'My friends, my heart is

'that ye should shed deeply touched by your generous

The blood of Othman? If your sympathy; good and grave men

hearts are tried ever unite, of whatever religion

In the true love of freedom or whatever faith they may be;

cease to dread but I belong to a religion whose

This one poor lonely man.'" spirit is to save, not to destroy;

suffer these men to live; they are

but the agents of a higher power

whose scrutiny they challenge me

to meet.'"

From his prison Laon sees a ship On the way to Goa the missionary

sailing by in which he thinks notices a covered conveyance

Cythna is imprisoned. going by in which he feels sure

Luxima is imprisoned. "He

"I knew that ship bore Cythna shuddered and for a moment the

o'er the plain heroism of virtue deserted him.

Of waters, to her blighting He doubted not that she would be

slavery sold conveyed in the same vessel with

And watched it with such him to Goa."

thoughts as must remain

untold."

Cythna is imprisoned in a cavern, Luxima is imprisoned in a convent

and her mind is deranged for a at Lahore. The exciting incidents

time. of their arrest and separation

had deranged her mind for a time.

"The fiend of madness which had

made its prey

Of my poor heart was lulled to

sleep awhile."

The part taken by Laon and Cythna The natives are on the point of

in the insurrection of the people rebelling, and Spanish authority

has already been explained. in India is on the brink of

extinction. The missionary is

Laon and Cythna are condemned to condemned to death, by the

death through the instigation of Inquisition. The morning of the

the priests. missionary's execution has

arrived.

The morning of Laon's execution

has arrived. "The secular judges had already

taken their seats on the

"And see beneath a sun-bright platform, the Grand Inquisitor

_canopy_, and the Viceroy had placed

Upon a platform level with the themselves beneath their

pile, respective _canopies_." The

The anxious Tyrant sit enthroned Christian missionary is led to

on high the pile, "_the silence which

Girt by the chieftans of the belongs to death reigned on

host. every_ side; thousands of persons

. . . . were present;... Nature was

There _was silence through the touched on the master spring of

host_ as when emotion, and betrayed in the

An earthquake trampling on some looks of the multitude feelings

populous town, of _horror_, of _pity_, and of

Has crusht ten thousand with one admiration, which the bigoted

tread, and men vigilance of an inhuman zeal

Expect the second. would in vain have sought to

. . . . suppress.

_Tumult_ was in the soul of all

beside,

Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but

those who saw

Their tranquil victim pass felt

wonder glide,

Into their brain, and became

calm with awe."