EPILOGUE.
After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on Shelley the
narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto by one commanding
reason. Shelley’s life and his poetry are indissolubly connected. He acted
what he thought and felt, with a directness rare among his brethren of the
poet’s craft; while his verse, with the exception of _The Cenci_,
expressed little but the animating thoughts and aspirations of his life.
That life, moreover, was “a miracle of thirty years,” so crowded with
striking incident and varied experience that, as he said himself, he had
already lived longer than his father and ought to be reckoned with the men
of ninety. Through all vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, and
died, like one whom the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic story,
young, despite grey hairs and suffering. His life has, therefore, to be
told, in order that his life-work may be rightly valued: for, great as
that was, he, the man, was somehow greater; and noble as it truly is, the
memory of himself is nobler.
To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passionate for
truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned it. The
anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just here. The
right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary morality: in
his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, he overshot the mark
of prudence. The blending in him of a pure and earnest purpose with moral
and social theories that could not but have proved pernicious to mankind
at large, produced at times an almost grotesque mixture in his actions no
less than in his verse. We cannot, therefore, wonder that society, while
he lived, felt the necessity of asserting itself against him. But now that
he has passed into the company of the great dead, and time has softened
down the asperities of popular judgment, we are able to learn the real
lesson of his life and writings. That is not to be sought in any of his
doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his resolute loyalty to an
unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolent ideal. It is this which
constitutes his supreme importance for us English at the present time.
Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, and we belong to a race in which
men who follow them so single-heartedly are not common.
As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English literature--a
quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which severe critics
of other nations think we lack. Byron’s daring is in a different region:
his elemental worldliness and pungent satire do not liberate our energies,
or cheer us with new hopes and splendid vistas. Wordsworth, the very
antithesis to Shelley in his reverent accord with institutions, suits our
meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, and braces us by
healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But in Wordsworth
there is none of Shelley’s magnetism. What remains of permanent value in
Coleridge’s poetry--such work as _Christabel_, the _Ancient Mariner_, or
_Kubla Khan_--is a product of pure artistic fancy, tempered by the
author’s mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he was, loved Nature
with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for him a mistress rather than
a Diotima; nor did he share the prophetic fire which burns in Shelley’s
verse, quite apart from the direct enunciation of his favourite tenets. In
none of Shelley’s greatest contemporaries was the lyrical faculty so
paramount; and whether we consider his minor songs, his odes, or his more
complicated choral dramas, we acknowledge that he was the loftiest and the
most spontaneous singer of our language. In range of power he was also
conspicuous above the rest. Not only did he write the best lyrics, but the
best tragedy, the best translations, and the best familiar poems of his
century. As a satirist and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some
of his admirers do; and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those
in which he puts forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom
in all its myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor
rhetoric.
While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached in
swiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, had faults
from which the men with whom I have compared him were more free. The most
prominent of these are haste, incoherence, verbal carelessness,
incompleteness, a want of narrative force, and a weak hold on objective
realities. Even his warmest admirers, if they are sincere critics, will
concede that his verse, taken altogether, is marked by inequality. In his
eager self-abandonment to inspiration, he produced much that is
unsatisfying simply because it is not ripe. There was no defect of power
in him, but a defect of patience; and the final word to be pronounced in
estimating the larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not only
was the poet young; but the fruit of his young mind had been plucked
before it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not care
enough for common things to present them with artistic fulness. He was
intolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with the roundness that we
find in Goethe’s work. He flew at the grand, the spacious, the sublime;
and did not always succeed in realizing for his readers what he had
imagined. A certain want of faith in his own powers, fostered by the
extraordinary discouragement under which he had to write, prevented him
from finishing what he began, or from giving that ultimate form of
perfection to his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces like the
_Ode to the West Wind_. When a poem was ready, he had it hastily printed,
and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurred to interrupt
his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of these defects, if we may
use this word at all to indicate our sense that Shelley might by care have
been made equal to his highest self, were in a great measure the
correlative of his chief quality--the ideality, of which I have already
spoken, he composed with all his faculties, mental, emotional, and
physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of intense fervour,
striving to attain one object, the truest and most passionate investiture
for the thoughts which had inflamed his ever-quick imagination. The result
is that his finest work has more the stamp of something natural and
elemental--the wind, the sea, the depth of air--than of a mere artistic
product. Plato would have said: the Muses filled this man with sacred
madness, and, when he wrote, he was no longer in his own control. There
was, moreover, ever-present in his nature an effort, an aspiration after a
better than the best this world can show, which prompted him to blend the
choicest products of his thought and fancy with the fairest images
borrowed from the earth on which he lived. He never willingly composed
except under the impulse to body forth a vision of the love and light and
life which was the spirit of the power he worshipped. This persistent
upward striving, this earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety
of soul and purity of inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his
poems. But it cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic
art should be always found in them. They have something of the waywardness
and negligence of nature, something of the _asymmetreia_ we admire in the
earlier creations of Greek architecture. That Shelley, acute critic and
profound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and show himself
an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly proved by _The
Cenci_ and by _Adonais_. The reason why he did not always observe this
method will be understood by those who have studied his _Defence of
Poetry_, and learned to sympathize with his impassioned theory of art.
Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice to
Shelley’s life or poetry. The materials for the former are almost
overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meet
in love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him and
baffling the most eager seeker for the truth.[34] Through the turbid
atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible to discern the whole
personality of the man. By careful comparison and refined manipulation of
the biographical treasures at our disposal, a fair portrait of Shelley
might still be set before the reader with the accuracy of a finished
picture. [That labour of exquisite art and of devoted love still remains
to be accomplished, though in the meantime Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s Memoir is
a most valuable instalment.] Shelley in his lifetime bound those who knew
him with a chain of loyal affection, impressing observers so essentially
different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams,
with the conviction that he was the gentlest, purest, bravest, and most
spiritual being they had ever met. The same conviction is forced upon his
biographer. During his four last years this most loveable of men was
becoming gradually riper, wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The
imperfections of his youth were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge
was expanding, his character mellowing, and his genius growing daily
stronger. Without losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned
by experience into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of
twenty-nine, he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement,
ready to unfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when
life at last seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and
happiness, death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the
product of his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived
them into something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end.
If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of waste
excited in us by Shelley’s premature absorption into the mystery of the
unknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own _Alastor_:--
Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o’ the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.
It is a woe “too deep for tears,” when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans.
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
APPENDIX.
(_To replace pages 79-83 in text._)
That Shelley, early in 1814, had formed no intention of abandoning his
wife is certain; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March (eight
days after the letter I have just quoted) at St. George’s, Hanover Square.
This ratification of the Scotch marriage was no doubt meant to place the
legitimacy of a possible heir beyond all question. Yet, if we may base
conjecture upon “Stanzas, April, 1814,” which undoubtedly refer to his
relations with the Boinville family, it seems that in the very month after
this new ceremony Shelley found the difficulties of his wedded life
intolerable. He had not, however, lost his affection for Harriet. He still
sought to recover her confidence and kindness. In spite of his wife’s
apparent coldness and want of intellectual sympathy, in spite of his own
increasing alienation from the atmosphere in which she now lived, he still
approached her with the feelings of a suitor and a lover. This is proved
beyond all doubt by the pathetic stanzas “To Harriet: May, 1814,” which
have only recently been published. I may add that these verses exist in
Harriet’s own autograph, whence I infer that she, on her side, was not
indifferent to the emotion they express.[35] Shelley begins with this
apostrophe:
Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul;
Thy gentle words are drops of balm
In life’s too bitter bowl.
He then immediately adds that his cruellest grief is to have known and
lost “those choicest blessings”; Harriet is proving by her coldness that
she repays his most devoted love with scorn. Nevertheless he will appeal
to her better nature:
Be thou, then, one among mankind
Whose heart is harder not for state,
Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
Amid a world of hate;
And by a slight endurance seal
A fellow-being’s lasting weal.
The next stanza paints a moving picture of his own wretchedness, and
beseeches her, before it is too late, to avert the calamity of an open
rupture:
In mercy let him not endure
The misery of a fatal cure.
She has been yielding to false counsels and obeying the impulse of
feelings which represent not her real and nobler, but her artificial and
lower self:
O trust for once no erring guide!
Bid the remorseless feeling flee;
’Tis malice, ’tis revenge, ’tis pride,
’Tis anything but thee;
O deign a nobler pride to prove,
And pity if thou canst not love.
Whatever opinion the student of Shelley’s history may form regarding his
previous and his subsequent conduct, due weight must always be given to
the accent of sincerity, of pleading sorrow, of ingenuous
self-humiliation, in these touching lines. It must also be remembered that
Harriet, although she treasured them and copied them in her own
handwriting, apparently turned a deaf ear to their appeal, and that it was
not until several weeks of solitude and misery had passed that Shelley
finally sought the “fatal cure” of separation by flinging himself into the
arms of Mary Godwin.
We may now affirm with confidence that in the winter and spring of 1814 an
estrangement had gradually been growing up between Shelley and Harriet.
Her more commonplace nature, subsiding into worldliness, began to weary
of his enthusiasms, which at the same epoch expanded somewhat unhealthily
under the influences of the Boinville family. That intimacy brought into
painful prominence whatever was jarring and repugnant to him in his home.
While divided in this way between domesticity which had become
distasteful, and the society of friends with whom he found scope for his
most romantic outpourings of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and
passionately in love with Godwin’s daughter, Mary. He made her
acquaintance first perhaps in May or at the beginning of June. Peacock,
who lived on terms of the closest familiarity with him at this period,
must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming nature of the new
attachment:--“Nothing that I ever read in tale or history could present a
more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable
passion, than that under which I found him labouring when, at his request,
I went up from the country to call on him in London. Between his old
feelings towards Harriet, _from whom he was not then separated_, and his
new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his
speech, the state of a mind ‘suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature
of an insurrection.’ His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress
disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and said, ‘I never part
from this.’”
Mary Godwin was then a girl of sixteen, “fair and fair-haired, pale
indeed, and with a piercing look,” to quote Hogg’s description of her, as
she first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. With her
freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, her acute
intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, Mary Godwin was
naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than the good Harriet, however
beautiful. How he plighted his new troth, and won the hand of her who was
destined to be his companion for life, may best be told in Lady Shelley’s
words:--
“His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of
genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin’s
daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear
Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one
eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother’s grave, Bysshe, in
burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past--how he had
suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he
hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had
done battle for their fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms
to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, and
linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the remaining
portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both redeemed.
The theories in which the daughter of the authors of _Political Justice_,
and of the _Rights of Woman_, had been educated, spared her from any
conflict between her duty and her affection. For she was the child of
parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was
one among the many institutions which a new era in the history of mankind
was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved--by the writings of
her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate--these doctrines had been
rendered familiar to her mind. It was therefore natural that she should
listen to the dictates of her own heart, and willingly unite her fate with
one who was so worthy of her love.”
The separation from Harriet, which actually took place about the middle of
July, was not arranged by mutual consent, as some authorities assert, so
much as by Shelley’s deliberate repudiation of his partner. Yet she must
be held to some degree responsible for bringing about the catastrophe by
her own imprudent behaviour. At an uncertain date in the summer she went
to Bath, leaving her husband in London or its neighbourhood. Although he
was now becoming convinced that their union could not be prolonged, he
continued to correspond with her regularly until early in July. A silence
of four days then alarmed her so much that she wrote upon the 6th in great
anxiety to Mr. Hookham, begging to be informed of Shelley’s doings. On the
14th they met again at his request in London. What passed on this occasion
is not known; but it seems tolerably certain that he informed her of his
firm resolve to part from her. On the 28th of that month he departed
secretly for the Continent with Mary Godwin, who had consented to share
his fortunes. It must be added that he passed through a crisis of intense
suffering and excitement, bordering on madness, before he finally
determined to exchange the refrigerated and uncongenial Harriet for the
impassioned and sympathetic Mary.
That Shelley has to bear the burden of this act of separation from his
first wife seems quite clear; nor can I discover anything to justify his
conduct, according to the commonly received opinions of the world, except
incompatibility of aims and interests in 1814 between him and the woman he
so recklessly married in 1811. His own peculiar justification is to be
found in his avowed opinions on the subject of marriage--opinions which
Harriet knew well and professed to share, and of which he had recently
made ample confession in the notes to _Queen Mab_. Men and women in
general, those whom Shelley was wont to style “the vulgar,” will still
agree with Lord Eldon in regarding those opinions as dangerous to society.
But it would be unfair, while condemning them as frankly as Shelley
professed them, to blame him also because he did not conform to the
opposite code of morals, for which he frequently expressed extreme
abhorrence, and which he stigmatized, however wrongly, as the source of
the worst social vices.
What is left of Harriet’s history may be briefly told. She remained in
correspondence with her husband, who showed himself always anxious for her
material and moral welfare. At Bath, upon the 30th of November, 1814, she
gave birth to Shelley’s second child, Charles Bysshe, who eventually died
in 1826. She seems to have formed other connexions at a later date, which
proved unfortunate; and on the 9th of November (?) 1816, she committed
suicide by drowning in the Serpentine. It should be added that, until just
before the end, she continued to live under her father’s protection. The
distance of time between July, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new ties
formed by Harriet in the interval, prove that there was no immediate
relation between Shelley’s abandonment of his wife and her suicide. She
had always entertained the thought of self-destruction, as Hogg, who is no
adverse witness in her case, has amply recorded. It may, indeed, be
permitted us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time unhappy
in her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and cut the
knot of life and all its troubles.
So far as this is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most painful
episode in Shelley’s life as I conceive it to have occurred, without
extenuation and without condemnation. But one important point connected
with the chief incident still remains to be examined in detail.
Mr. Dowden says: “From an assurance that she (Harriet) had ceased to love
him, Shelley had passed to a conviction that she had given her heart to
another, and had linked her life to his.”[36] This statement he repeats
without qualification: “He had left her, believing she was unfaithful to
him.”[37] The documents which Mr. Dowden quotes to establish Shelley’s
belief in Harriet’s unfaithfulness before the separation are three in
number.[38] First, a letter from Shelley to his second wife, dated January
11, 1817. Secondly, a letter from Godwin to Mr. W. T. Baxter, dated May
12, 1817. Thirdly, a note appended by Miss Clairmont to transcripts from
her mother’s letters, made some time after 1832. I have enumerated these
in chronological order, because their greater or less remoteness from the
year 1814 considerably affects their value as evidence regarding Shelley’s
belief at that period.
It must be borne in mind that Harriet committed suicide in November, 1816,
and very soon after this event the Westbrook family began a suit in
Chancery with the object of depriving Shelley of the custody of his two
children by her. On the 11th of January, 1817, then, Shelley wrote to
Mary: “I learn just now from Godwin that he has evidence that Harriet was
unfaithful to me _four months_ before I left England with you. If we can
succeed in establishing this, our connexion will receive an additional
sanction, and plea be overborne.”[39] As a matter of fact, when the
pleadings began, he did not establish this, nor did he allude to the
matter in the memorandum he drew up of his case.[40] Godwin writes upon
the 12th of May: “The late Mrs. Shelley has turned out to be a woman of
great levity. I know from unquestionable authority, wholly unconnected
with Shelley (though I cannot with propriety be quoted for this), that she
had proved herself unfaithful to her husband before their separation.” On
the strength of these two passages, the pith and kernel of which is that
Godwin, some months after Harriet’s death, credited a tale told him by an
unknown person, which he repeated to Shelley, we are asked to suppose that
Shelley in July, 1814, two and a half years earlier, was convinced of
Harriet’s infidelity. But Miss Clairmont has still to be heard. She,
writing at some uncertain date subsequently to 1832, and therefore at
least eighteen years after the separation, recorded that: “He (Shelley)
succeeded in persuading her (Mary) by declaring that Harriet did not
really care for him; that she was in love with a Major Ryan; and the child
she would have was certainly not his. This Mary told me herself, adding
that this justified his having another attachment.” When we come to
examine Miss Clairmont’s reminiscences, we find them untrustworthy in so
many instances that her evidence carries no weight.[41] In the second
place it is unquestioned and unquestionable that Shelley firmly believed
the second child he had by Harriet to be his own. He announced the boy’s
birth to his friends, had him named Charles Bysshe, used him in his
efforts to raise money, and passionately claimed him when Harriet’s
relatives refused to give him up. Yet we are invited to accept the
memorandum of an inaccurate woman, penned at least eighteen years after
the event, and including one palpable and serious misstatement, as proof
that Shelley judged his first wife unfaithful before he eloped with Mary.
No one contends that Harriet actually broke her marriage vow before the
separation. What Professor Dowden asks us to believe is that _Shelley
thought_ she was untrue to him at that period. Miss Clairmont’s evidence
I reject as valueless. At the most she only reports something which
Shelley is supposed to have said to Mary with the object of persuading her
to elope with him, and which his subsequent conduct with regard to his son
Charles Bysshe contradicted. The true inference to be drawn from Shelley’s
and Godwin’s far more important letters in 1817 is that it was not until
the latter date that the suspicion of Harriet’s guilt before the
separation arose. This suspicion did not, however, harden into certainty,
nor was it found capable of verification; else why did not Shelley use the
fact, as he proposed, in order to strengthen his case against the
Westbrooks? I admit that his letter to Southey in 1820 supports the view
that, having once begun to entertain the suspicion, he never afterwards
abandoned it.[42]
If now we turn to contemporary records between the dates, June, 1814, and
May, 1815 (at which time Harriet disappears from our ken), we find no
intimation either in Mary’s or Miss Clairmont’s diary, or in Shelley’s
words and writings, or in the conduct of the Shelley-Godwin set, that
Harriet was believed to have broken faith so early with her husband. When
Shelley in the summer of 1814 sought to lower her in the eyes of Mary
Godwin, he did so by hinting that she only cared for his money and his
prospects.[43] Mary talks about her “insulting selfishness,” calls her
“nasty woman,” and exhibits a good deal of resentment at Shelley’s welcome
to his son and heir by her (December 6, 1814).[44] The pained reiteration
of the words _wife_ in her diary on this occasion proves how bitterly she
felt her own position as _mistress_. Shelley invited Harriet to establish
herself in the neighbourhood of Mary and himself. She was visited in
London by the whole party. But while they continued upon awkward terms of
half familiarity and mutual irritation, nothing by word or act implied a
knowledge of her previous infidelity. What is further to the point is that
Mrs. Shelley, in her novel of _Lodore_, which Professor Dowden rightly
judges to be a history of Shelley’s relation to Harriet, painted a wife’s
gradual alienation from her husband without hinting at misconduct.[45]
In conclusion, I am bound to express my opinion that nothing now produced
from the Shelley archives very materially alters the view of the case at
which sane and cautious critics arrived before these were placed in the
hands of his last biographer. We ought, moreover, to remember that
Shelley, of all men, would have most resented anything like an appeal to
popular opinions regarding the marriage tie. His firm conviction was that
when affection ceased between a married couple, or when new loves had
irrevocably superseded old ones, the connexion ought to be broken. In his
own case he felt that Harriet’s emotion towards him had changed, while an
irresistible passion for another woman had suddenly sprung up in his
heart. Upon these grounds, after undergoing a terrible contention of the
soul, he forced on the separation to which his first wife unwillingly
submitted.
INDEX.
_Adonais_, 130, 143;
Shelley’s own criticism of, 144, 153, 180, 186;
quotations from, 145-151
_Address to the Irish People_, 59;
purpose of, 60, 61;
quotations from, 61
_Age of Reason_ (Paine’s), 66
_Alastor_, 84;
Shelley’s first serious poem, 85;
its autobiographical value, 86;
quotations from, 87, 153;
self-portraiture in, 98;
last lines quoted, 187-188
_Anamnesis_, doctrine of, its stronghold upon Shelley’s imagination,
27-28
_Ancient Mariner, The_, allusion to, 183
Ariosto, Shelley’s first acquaintance with, 72, 111, 112
Aristotle, 29
_Assassins, The_, 83
Bacon, 151
Bagni di Lucca, 103, 105
Ballantyne, Messrs. (publishers), 19
Bath, Harriet Shelley at, 80, 82, 192, 193
Baxter, Mr. W. T., 194
Berkeley, 117
Bernardo (in _The Cenci_), 127
Bethel, Mr., Shelley’s tutor at Eton, 12
Bisham, beech-groves of, 95
Bishopsgate Heath, 85
Blake, William (artist), 126
Boccaccio, Shelley’s remarks on, 111
Boinville, Mrs., 76 _et seq._, 189, 191
Boscombe, 180
Bracknell (in Berkshire), 76, 77
Brentford, 8
Browne, Miss Felicia (afterwards Mrs. Hemans), 34
Brunnen (on Lake Lucerne), 83
Buffon (zoologist), 52
Byron, Lord, 26;
joins Shelley at Geneva, 88;
accident off rocks of Meillerie, 89;
his description of Shelley, 109, 131, 157, 161, 162, 164;
visited by Shelley, 166
Calderon, 112;
Shelley’s translations from, 113, 164
Campbell, Thomas, 19, 130
Caracalla, Baths of, 95, 104, 118
Castlereagh, Lord, 58
Catholic Emancipation, 58, 60, 62
_Cenci, The_, 74, 95, 120, 121, 126 _et seq._, 182, 186
Chamouni, 90
Clairmont, Charles, 76, 85
Clairmont, Claire, 76, 83, 88, 103, 157, 194 _et seq._
Clapham Common, 45
Clifton, 85
Coleridge, 55, 117, 183
Dante, 111, 113, 138
_Declaration of Rights_, 64 _et seq._
_Defence of Poetry_, 112, 113, 117, 137, 186;
quotation from, 114-116
De Quincey, 56
_Don Juan_ (Shelley’s boat), 167
Eaton, D. J. (printer), 66
Edinburgh, 51-53, 76
_Edinburgh Journal_, 19
Edwards, Mr. (Shelley’s first tutor), 6
Eldon, Lord, 81, 93, 130, 193
_Epipsychidion_, 86, 136, 138, 141 _et seq._, 158;
quotations from, 139-140
_Essay on a Future State_, 117, 152
_Essay on Christianity_, 100, 117
_Essay on the Punishment of Death_, 117
Este, 95, 107
Eton, 12 _et seq._
Fenning, Mrs., 46
Field Place, 3, 6 _et seq._, 14, 17, 37, 47, 77
Florence, 95, 108, 119, 130
France, 83, 90
_Frankenstein_ (Mrs. Shelley’s story), 90
_Fraser’s Magazine_, 19, 91 note, 92 note
Garnett, Mr. Richard, 80 note, 81, 83, 121, 130 note, 143, 169, 186 note
_Gebir_ (Landor’s), 33
Geneva, 88;
Lake of, 89
Gisborne, Mr., 112, 121, 136
Gisborne, Mrs., 110, 112, 119
Godwin, Mary, 76, 79 _et seq._, 85, 88;
marriage with Shelley, 93, 190 _et seq._
Godwin, William, 21, 49 note, 56 _et seq._, 67, 76, 77, 85 note, 93,
107, 110, 191, 194, 195
Goodall, Dr., 12
Great Marlow, 92
Greystoke, 56
Grove, Harriet, 18, 20, 21, 47
Grove, Mr. C. H. (Shelley’s cousin), 51
Guiccioli, Countess, 157
_Hellas_, 154;
quotation from, 156-157
Hemans, Mrs. _See_ Browne, Miss F.
_History of a Six Weeks’ Tour_ (Mrs. Shelley’s), 84
Hitchener, Miss Eliza, 47, 65
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 7, 9, 14-16, 21, 22;
his description of Shelley at Oxford, 23 _et seq._, 33, 37, 43 _et
seq._, 67, 68, 71 _et seq._, 82, 85, 100, 108, 131, 161, 186 note,
187, 193
Homer, 74, 112;
Shelley’s translations from, 113
Hookham, Mr. T., 71, 192
Horsham, 3, 17, 20, 56
Hume, 27, 35
Hunt, Leigh, 34, 80 note, 92, 100 _et seq._, 109, 121, 128, 136, 157,
176, 179, 180, 187
_Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_, 16, 86, 87, 123
Imlay, Fanny, 76, 77, 107
_Invocation to Night_, the, quotation from, 159-160
Ireland, Shelley in, 58, 59, 63, 64
Italy, 103, 109, 110, 169
_Julian and Maddalo_, quotations from, 105-106, 132
Kant, 68, 117
Keats, 100, 130, 143, 145, 146;
description of his resting-place by Shelley, 148-149
Keswick, 55, 56, 58
_Laon and Cythna_, 8, 9, 17, 90, 95;
present title, _The Revolt of Islam_, 97, 98, 103, 122
Leghorn, 74, 95, 119, 131, 176 _et seq._
Lerici, 131, 154, 168, 177
Letters, extracts from Shelley’s, 48, 50, 54 _et seq._, 65, 69, 78, 104,
110, 112, 116, 118, 128, 129, 130, 135-136, 141, 143, 159
_Letter to Lord Ellenborough_, 66, 67
_Letter to Maria Gisborne_, 15, 132;
quotation from, 133-134
Lewis, Monk, 19, 20, 90
Lind, Dr., 17, 34, 44
_Lines written among Euganean Hills_, 107
Locke, 27, 35
_Lodore_ (Mrs. Shelley’s novel), 196
London, 37, 43, 47, 48, 50, 68, 72, 76, 81, 83, 92, 107, 108, 191, 192
_Masque of Anarchy_, 120
Matthews (the comedian), 19
Medwin, Captain, his description of Shelley, 8, 10-11, 19, 80 note, 85;
relates incidents in Shelley’s life, 107-108, 134-135
Meillerie, scene of shipwreck, 89
Milton, his influence on Shelley, 86
Moore, 144-145
Naples, 103, 107, 108, 110
_Necessity of Atheism, The_, 35, 40, 57
Nicholson, Peg, 34
Norfolk, Duke of, 3, 5, 18, 29, 56, 68
North Wales, 47, 66, 68
_Ode to a Skylark_, 132
_Ode to Liberty_, 132, 153
_Ode to Naples_, 132
_Ode to the West Wind_, 119, 120, 185
_Original Poetry_, by Victor and Cazire, 20, 34
Oxford, 15, 17;
University College, 21;
Shelley dismissed from, 36
Paine, Thomas, 66
Paris, 83
Peacock, Mr., 71, 75, 77, 79, 85 _et seq._, 103, 113, 114, 116, 118,
128, 180, 186 note, 187, 191
Penshurst, 4
_Peter Bell the Third_, 120
Petrarch, 72, 111
Pilfold, Captain, 47, 51
Pilfold, Charles, 3
Pilfold, Elizabeth, 3
Pisa, 95, 103, 108, 131, 138, 154 _et seq._, 165, 168, 176-178
Plato, 27, 68, 100, 112, 113, 138, 151, 165, 176, 185
_Political Justice_ (W. Godwin’s), 56, 57, 82, 192
_Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_, 34
_Prince Athanase_, 17, 97, 98
_Prometheus Unbound_, 95, 107, 117 note, 118 _et seq._, 128, 129, 136,
144;
quotation from, 125, 126
_Proposal for an Association_, 62, 64
_Proposals for putting Reform to the Vote_, 63
_Quarterly Review_, 130, 135, 143, 144
_Queen Mab_, 18, 56, 69, 70, 76, 81, 88, 97, 193
Radcliffe, Mrs., 19
Ravenna, 89, 108, 157
_Refutation of Deism_, 77
_Rejected Addresses_ (Smith’s), 100
Retzsch (engraver), 113
_Revolt of Islam, The_ (_Laon and Cythna_), 8, 9, 17, 90, 95, 97, 98,
103, 122
Roberts, Captain, 167
Rome, 24, 103, 110, 118, 143, 178, 180
_Rosalind and Helen_, 98
Rossetti, Mr. W. M., 44, 48, 66, 187
Ryan, Major, 195
_Sensitive Plant, The_, 132;
quotations from, 152-153
Shelley, Sir Bysshe, 3, 4, 53
Shelley, Charles Bysshe (second son), 193, 195, 196
Shelley, Elizabeth, 3, 19, 20, 47
Shelley, Harriet, 52, 59, 60, 64, 65, 72, 76, 78;
deserted by Shelley, 79, 80, 81;
commits suicide, 82, 190, 197
Shelley, Hellen, 3, 6, 45
Shelley, Ianthe Eliza, 75
Shelley, John, 3
Shelley, Lady, 66 note, 81, 83, 180, 186 note, 191
Shelley, Margaret, 3
Shelley, Mary, 79, 111, 112, 154, 158
Shelley, Mr., 53
Shelley, Mrs. (second wife), 12, 13, 73, 74, 84, 86, 95, 100, 102,
108-110, 117, 118, 132, 159, 161, 180, 196
Shelley, Miss, 14, 19
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 2;
birth of, 3;
position, 4, 5;
relations with father, 6;
sent to Sion House, Brentford, 8;
subject to sleep-walking, 8;
distaste for school games, 8;
goes to Eton (1804), 12;
life there, 12-13, 15;
experiments in chemistry and electricity, 14;
his taste for science, 14-15;
farewell supper at Eton, 16;
attachment to Harriet Grove, 18;
yearns for fame and publicity, 19;
finishes _Zastrozzi_, 19;
his literary productions, 19-21;
enters University College, Oxford, as Leicester Scholar (1810), 21;
friendship with Hogg, 22-33;
genesis of _Posthumous Fragments_, 34;
correspondence with distinguished persons, 34;
his favourite authors, 35;
antagonistic to Christianity, 35;
publication of _The Necessity of Atheism_, 35;
his expulsion from Oxford with Hogg, 36, 37, 38;
his atheistical opinions, 39, 40;
settles with Hogg in London, 43;
his contempt for Paley’s _Evidences_, 44;
quarrels with his father, 44;
his poverty, 45;
helped by his sisters, 45;
visits his sisters at Clapham School, meets Harriet Westbrook, 45;
pays her frequent visits, 46;
revisits his old home, 47;
receives allowance of £200 a year, 47;
elopement and marriage with Harriet, 51;
life in George Street, Edinburgh, 52;
removes to York and resides with Hogg, 53;
arrival of Harriet’s sister Eliza, 53;
leaves York, 55;
goes to Keswick, 55;
visits Duke of Norfolk, 55;
his friendship with Godwin, 58;
sets sail for Ireland, 59;
his _Address to Irish People_ distributed, 59;
makes his debut as an orator, leaves Ireland, 64;
corresponds with Eliza Hitchener, 65;
settles at Nantgwilt, 66;
his _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_, 67;
goes to Tanyrallt, 68;
sudden flight from Tanyrallt, 70;
subject to hallucinations, 70, 71;
poverty, 71;
goes to London and takes rooms in Half-Moon Street, 72;
habits of his household, 72-73;
personal details, 73-75;
friendship with Mrs. Boinville and the Godwins, 76;
love for Mary Godwin, 79-80;
remarried to Harriet, 80;
his separation from Harriet, 80;
leaves England with Mary, 83;
return to England, 84;
walks London Hospital, 84;
commences poem of _Alastor_, 85;
birth of William Shelley, 88;
second journey to Switzerland, 88;
joined by Byron, 88;
makes tour to Lake Geneva with Byron, 89;
excursion to Chamouni, 90;
hallucinations, 91;
returns to England and lives at Great Marlow, 91-92;
hears of Harriet’s death, 92;
friendship with Leigh Hunt, 92-93;
Chancery suit _re_ Harriet’s children, 93;
works steadily at _Laon and Cythna_, 95;
meets Keats and the brothers Smith at Leigh Hunt’s house, 100;
his daily routine described, 100;
leaves England for Italy, 103;
pays visit to Lord Byron, 105;
improved health, 108;
companionship with Byron, 109;
his ideas on Italian poets, 111;
begins to study Spanish, 112;
composes _Defence of Poetry_, 113;
settles in Rome, 118;
loss of son William, 118;
removes to near Leghorn, 119;
begins and finishes _The Cenci_, 119;
removes to Florence, 119;
birth of Sir P. Florence Shelley, 119;
attitude towards his critics, 130;
removes to Pisa, 131;
his high ideal of verse composition, 137;
visits the Contessina Emilia Viviani, 138;
sympathy for her, 138;
his criticisms, 144;
at work upon _Hellas_, 154;
visits Byron at Ravenna, 157;
his affection for Jane Williams, 159;
first acquaintance with Trelawny at Pisa, 161;
accident, 165;
his daily routine, 165;
daily visit to Byron, 166;
nautical affairs, 166-167;
takes a home (Villa Magni) at Spezia, 168-169;
at Pisa with Leigh Hunt, 176;
return voyage, 177;
storm, loss of Shelley’s boat, 177;
discovery of bodies, 178;
cremation, 179-180;
burial at Rome, 180;
review of life and work, 182;
his genius, 183-186;
portrait of, 186-187
Attachment to his sisters, 6;
his love of games, 6, 7;
sensitiveness, 11;
powers of memory, 15;
personality, 25;
his voice, 25;
his moral character, 32-33;
love for mankind, 40;
his faith, 41;
his creed, 41-42;
remorse, 92;
his charity, 101, 119;
self-denial, 102;
sensibility to art, 104;
his melancholy, 107;
his self-criticism, 128;
his thoughts of death, 151-152, 154;
his mental activity, 162;
the tranquillity in his life, 169;
his nicknames, 166;
nervousness, 175;
somnambulism, 175
_Life of_, by Professor Dowden, v
Shelley, Sir Percy Florence, 3, 119
Shelley, Timothy, 3, 5, 6, 44
Shelley, William, 88, 118, 178
Sidney, Philip Charles, 4
Sion House (Shelley’s school), 6, 8, 12, 14, 18
Sophocles, 1, 165, 178
Southey, Shelley’s favourite poet whilst at Sion House, 19, 55, 196
_Speculations on Metaphysics_, 91, 117
_St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian_, 21
_Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples_, quotation from, 153-154
Stockdale, Mr. J. J. (publisher), 19, 20
_Swellfoot the Tyrant_, 120
Taafe, Mr., 164
Tasso, 72, 111, 137
_To his Genius_, 143
Trelawny, Captain, 161, 162;
description of first meeting with Shelley, 163-164;
meets Shelley in Pisan Maremma, 165 _et seq._, 186 note, 187
_Triumph of Life_ (Shelley’s last great poem), 95, 170, 171;
quotations from, 171-175
_Two Noble Kinsmen_, The (Beaumont and Fletcher’s), 112
_University Magazine_, letter on Harriet Westbrook, 48, 49
Venice, 89, 103, 107, 110
Vivian, Charles (a sailor), 167, 177, 178
Viviani, Contessina Emilia, 138, 158
_Wandering Jew_, 19
Westbrook, Mr., 93
Westbrook, Eliza, 46, 53 _et seq._, 65, 71 _et seq._
Westbrook, Harriet, 18, 45;
first acquaintance with Shelley, 46 _et seq._;
elopement with Shelley, marriage at Edinburgh, 51.
_See_ Shelley, Harriet
Westbrook, “Jew,” 46, 51, 54
Wilkie and Robinson, Messrs. (publishers), 19
Williams, Mr., 109, 154, 158 _et seq._, 176-179, 187
Williams, Mrs. (Jane), 154, 158, 159, 163, 164, 169
Windsor, 17;
Forest of, 85
_Witch of Atlas_, 132
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 76, 110
Wordsworth, 55, 56, 86, 130, 183
York, 48, 51, 53, 55
_Zastrozzi_, 16;
reviewed, 19, 21
_Zofloya the Moor_ (supposed source of _Zastrozzi_), 19
THE END.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Forman’s edition, vol. iv. p. 115.
[2] See Medwin, vol. i. p. 68.
[3] He told Trelawny that he had been attracted to Shelley simply by his
“rare talents as a scholar;” and Trelawny has recorded his opinion that
Hogg’s portrait of their friend was faithful, in spite of a total want of
sympathy with his poetic genius. This testimony is extremely valuable.
[4] It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, 1811.
[5] See Shelley’s third letter to Godwin (Hogg, ii. p. 63) for another
defence of his conduct. “We agreed,” &c.
[6] See Dowden’s Life of Shelley, vol. i. pp. 190-194.
[7] McCarthy, p. 255.
[8] It was published in Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, p. 179.
[9] Reprinted in McCarthy, p. 324.
[10] Reprinted in Lady Shelley’s Memorials, p. 29.
[11] This and the next four pages have to be rewritten since the
appearance of Professor Dowden’s Life. See Appendix.
[12] Leigh Hunt, Autob. p. 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it
was by mutual consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and
in Garnett, Relics of Shelley, p. 147.
[13] See Letter to Godwin in Shelley Memorials, p. 78.
[14] Fraser’s Magazine, Jan., 1860, p. 98.
[15] Forman, iii. 148.
[16] Fraser, Jan., 1860, p. 102.
[17] How many copies were put in circulation is not known. There must
certainly have been many more than the traditional three; for when I was a
boy at Harrow, I picked up two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol
bookshop, for the price of 2_s._ 6_d._ a piece.
[18] See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric “The billows on the
beach.”
[19] Medwin’s Life of Shelley, vol. i. 324. His date, 1814, appears from
the context to be a misprint.
[20] Note on the Revolt of Islam.
[21] Letter from Florence, Nov., 1819.
[22] See Letter to Ollier, Jan. 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, p. 135.
[23] See Mrs. Shelley’s note on the Revolt of Islam, and the whole Preface
to the Prose Works.
[24] Note on Prometheus.
[25] Note on Revolt of Islam.
[26] Forman, vol. ii. p. 181.
[27] Ibid. p. 231.
[28] Shelley Memorials, p. 121. Garnett’s Relics of Shelley, pp. 49, 190.
Collected Letters, p. 147, in Moxon’s Edition of Works in one vol. 1840.
[29] See Medwin, vol. ii. p. 172, for Shelley’s comment on the difficulty
of the poet’s art.
[30] Forman, iv. p. 95.
[31] See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, Aug. 26, 1821.
[32] “The Serpent in shut out from Paradise.”
[33] Vol. iv. p. 89.
[34] See Lady Shelley _v._ Hogg; Trelawny _v._ the Shelley family; Peacock
_v._ Lady Shelley; Garnett _v._ Peacock; Garnett _v._ Trelawny; McCarthy
_v._ Hogg, &c., &c.
[35] This poem may be read in full in Professor Dowden’s Life, vol. i. p.
413.
[36] Vol. i. p. 429.
[37] Vol. ii. p. 65.
[38] These three documents will be found in vol. ii. p. 98; vol. i. pp.
424, 425.
[39] Mr. Dowden omits the second sentence in his quotation. Vol. i. p.
426.
[40] Vol. ii. p. 88.
[41] See Mr. Dowden’s own critique of this witness in Appendix B. to vol.
ii. Compare vol. i. p. 440.
[42] Vol. i. p. 428.
[43] Vol. i. p. 415.
[44] Vol. i. p. 465.
[45] Vol. i. pp. 436-438.
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