CHAPTER III.

"They du say Swan Day's gun off for good!" said Cely Temple, as she

returned from the store, with a Dutch-oven in her hand, which she had

purchased,--"an' to th' East Injees!"

"I want to know!" rejoined Mrs. Fox.

"I know some'll be sorry!" continued Cely, while Dorcas diligently

stirred a five-pail kettle of apple-sauce, that hung stewing over the

low fire.

Mrs. Fox looked up quickly at her daughter, but Dorcas continued

quietly stirring, and without turning round.

"Mahala Dorr, I guess," said she.

"Wall, M'hala'll be, an' so'll others," answered Cely, prudently.

"But I expect likely Swan'll do well, ef he don't die. They say the

atemuspere is pison there!--especially for dark-complected folks."

To this hopeful remark Mrs. Fox rejoined, that "old Miss Day come

herself from a warm country, and 't was likely her son would settle

there for good, and enjoy his health there better than what he would

here."

"He'll look out well for Number One, anyhow!" said Cely, lifting the

lid of the Dutch-oven from the fire.

Dorcas shot an angry glance at the apple-sauce.

Nothing further passed on the subject, and Dorcas somehow felt, as she

stirred, as if Swan were already a long, long way off,--as if the ship

had sailed, and would stay sailed, like an enchanted ship, hovering

on the horizon, and never come near enough for the passengers to be

distinguished,--or else, maybe, go up into the clouds, and rest there

with all its masts and spars distinct against the rose-mist, as she

had read of once in a book of travels,--or, perhaps, even be inverted,

and stand there on its head, as it were, always: but everything must

be upside down, of course, in China. Already the thought of Swan Day

had mingled with the mists of the past. The outline became indefinite,

and softened into a golden splendor, that belonged no more to her, but

was essentially of another hemisphere. He had by this time cut loose

from home and country. Whether a hundred, or a hundred thousand miles,

it mattered not. Since she could not grasp the idea, the distance was

as good as infinite to her.

This, you see, is not exactly coquetry. But events drifted her.

When supper was over, and Dinah had gone to sleep, and Cely to visit

the neighbors, as usual, Dorcas shyly approached the subject which

occupied her thoughts, by getting the little box of jewelry, and

looking at it. Her mother called her from the kitchen, out of which

the bed-room opened.

"Does mother want me?" asked Dorcas, turning round, with the box in

her hand.

"No, no matter," answered the mother; and, possibly with an intuitive

feeling of what was in her daughter's thought, she went into the

bed-room, and looked with her at the pin and ring of Aunt Dorcas.

"Was it--was it a long time, mother,--I mean, before he came back?"

said Dorcas.

"Who? Captain Waterhouse? Bless you! they was as good as merried for

ten year, an' he was goin' all the time, an' then, jest at the last

minute, to be 'racked! It's 'most always so, when people goes to sea,"

added she, in a plaintive tone.

Dorcas meditated; she looked wistfully at her mother.

"It's a pretty pin,--dreadful pretty round the edge."

"Yes, 't is! I expect likely them's di'mon's. 'T was made over in

foreign parts. He was goin' to bring his picter, too, from there. But

he's lost and gone! Your Aunt Dorcas never had no more suitors after

that, and she kind o' gin in, and never had no sperits."

Dorcas's eyes filled, and she closed the box.

Henry Mowers would not come to the Fox farm till the next Sunday

night. That was as much settled as the new moon. So Dorcas had the

whole week to herself, to be thoroughly unhappy in,--all the more so,

a thousand times more so, for being utterly incapable of saying or

seeing why. An instinctive delicacy kept her from showing to any

of the family that she was even depressed; and her voice was heard

steadily warbling one of Wesley's hymns, or "Wolfe's Address to his

Army," in clear, brilliant tones, that rang up-stairs and down. The

general impression of distance and water associated her absent lover

with all that was heroic and romantic in song; for of novels she knew

nothing,--the Colonel's library being limited, in the imaginative

line, to a torn copy of the "Iliad," which had been left at the house

by a travelling cobbler.

However, romance is before all rules, and shapes its own adventures.

The beauty of Swan Day, which, dark and slight as it was, gleamed with

a power for Dorcas's eye and heart before which Buonarotti's

would have been only pale stone forever,--that beauty dwelt in her

imagination and memory, as only first romantic impressions can.

Distance canonized him, enthroned him, glorified him. And when she

thought of his setting forth so boldly, so bravely, to tread the

wide water, to tempt the hot sun, the foreign exposure, the perpetual

dangers of heathen countries, for her unworthy sake, all that was

tenderest, most grateful, in her now first wakened nature, rose up in

distressful tumult, and agitated the depths that are in all women's

souls.

If there had been anybody to whom she could confide the sad wrenching

of her spirit, any one who would have cleared her vision, and taught

her to look on "this picture and on this," she might not have been so

puzzled between her two Hyperions. But as it was, it was a sorrowful

struggle. One had the advantage of distance and imagination,--one of

presence, and of the magnetism of eye and lip.

"I am a wicked, wicked girl!" said she, as she stood before the glass,

and loosened the locks that fell like sunshine over her shoulders. But

this confession, with true New-England reticence, was uttered only to

one listener,--herself.

Then, she recalled, for it was Monday night once more, the frank and

noble nature of Henry: how he had not asked her to promise him, but

seemed to take for granted her truth and faith; how he had looked so

fondly, so clearly into her eyes, not for what he might find there,

but to show the transparent goodness and sincerity of his own; and

how he had told her of all his plans and hopes, of his wish and her

father's intention that they should be married that very fall; how

little he had said of his own overflowing affection, only that "he had

never thought of anybody else." Dorcas only felt, without putting the

sense into language, that in this life-boat there was safety. But

then had she not sent her heart on a venture in the other,--that other

which even now was tossing on the waves of a future, full-freighted

with hope, and faith in her truth?

She opened the little box again, and looked at the ring and painted

pin. How sorrowfully she looked at them now, seen through tears of

conscious experience! How mournful seemed the ground hair, and

the tints woven of so many broken hopes, sad thoughts, and wrecked

expectations! the hair, kissed so many times in the weary years of

waiting, and then wept over in the drearier desolation, when the sight

could only bring thoughts of the salt waves dashing amongst it in the

deep sea! What a life that had been of poor Aunt Dorcas! Then came

across her busy thought the words of her mother,--"It's 'most always

so!"

Swan sailed very far away, in these tearful reveries, and took hope

and life with him.

When the next Sunday evening came, and the next, and the next,--and

when Dorcas had ceased to say, blushing and smiling,--"Don't, Henry!

you know I should make such a poor kind of a wife for you! and your

mother wouldn't think anything of me!"--and when, Henry had had an

offer to go to Western New York, where there were nobody knew how many

beautiful girls, all waiting to pounce on the tall, fine-looking

young farmer,--when Colonel Fox forgot he was a deacon, and swore

that Dorcas was undeserving of such a happy lot as was offered to

her,--when the tears, and the reveries, and the pictures of far-away

lands, and the hopes that might wither with long years of waiting,

were all merged and effaced in the healthy happiness of the

present,--Dorcas dried her tears, and applied herself diligently to

building up her flaxen _trousseau_, and smothered in her heart the

image of dark and brilliant beauty that had for a time occupied it.

"She waited--a long time!--years--and years!" murmured Dorcas,

sorrowfully, as she looked at the pin and ring, which in her mind were

associated strongly with only one person,--and that one hereafter to

be dead to her. As soon as events clearly defined her duties, Dorcas

had no further questions with herself. If the box had been Pandora's,

not the less resolutely would she have shut it forever, and so crushed

the hope that it could never have leaped out.

So, with choking tears, and throbbing pulses, she followed many

brilliant fancies and hopes to their last resting-place. Henceforth

her path was open and clear, her duties defined, and with daily

occupation of hand and thought she strove to displace all that had

ever made her other than the cheerful and busy Dorcas. For the last

time, she closed and put away the box.

* * * * *

THRENODY.

[Among the imprinted papers of the author of "Charles Auchester" and

"Counterparts" was found this poem, addressed to a father on the death

of a favorite son, whose noble disposition and intellectual gifts were

all enlisted on the side of suffering humanity.]

O mourner by the ever-mourning deep,

Full as the sea of tears! imperial heart,

King in thy sorrow over all who weep!

O wrestler with the darkness set apart

In clouds of woe whose lightnings are the throb

Of thy fast-flashing pulses! pause to hear

The lullabies of many an alien sob,

A storm of alien sighs,--so far! so near!

Oh that our vigils with thy gentle dead

Could charm thee from thy night-long agonies,

Could steep thy brain in slumber mild, and shed

Elysian dreams upon thy closing eyes!

In vain! all vain!--'tis yet the feast of tears;

Sorrow for sorrow is the only spell;

Nor wanders yet to melt in unspent years

The wringing murmur of our fresh farewell!

Thousands bereft strew wide the ashes dim;

Rich hearts, poor hands, the lovely, the unlearned,

Bemoan the angel of the age in him,

A star unto its starlight strength returned,

The City of Delights hath lost its gem,

The Sea the changeful glance so like its own,

Genius the darling of her diadem,

Whose smile made moonlight round her awful throne.

Those elfin steps their music moves no more

Beneath light domes to tune the festal train,

Nor at the moony eves along the shore

To brim with fairy forms that wizard brain.

Cold rocks, wild winds, and ever-changing waves,

Sad rains that fret the sea and drown the day,

We hail,--well pleased that stricken Autumn raves,

Though not with Winter shall our griefs decay.

On lurid mornings, when the lustrous sea

Is violet-shadowed from the warm blue air,

When the dark grasses brighten over thee,

And the winged sunbeams flutter golden there,--

Then to the wild green slope, thy chosen rest,

The blossoms of our spirits we will bring,

(Again a babe upon thy mother's breast,

An infant seed of the eternal Spring,)--

Thoughts bright and dark as violets in their dew,

Unfading memories of a smile more sweet

Than perfume of pale roses, hopes that strew

Ethereal lilies on those silent feet

The ghost of Pain haunts not that garden-land

Where Passion's phantom is so softly laid;

But Charity beside that earth doth stand,

Most lovely left of all, thy sister-shade.

Her baby-loves like trembling snowdrops lean

Above thy calm hands and thy quiet head,

When morn is fair, or noonday's glory keen

Or the white star-fire glistens on thy bed.

Her eyes of heaven upon thy slumbers brood,

Her watch is o'er thy pillow, and her breath

Tells every breeze that stirs thy solitude

How thou didst earn that rest on earth called Death,--

Earned in such quickening youth and brilliant years!

For us too early, not too soon for thee!--

So may we rest, when Death shall dry our tears,

Till everlasting Morning makes us free!

THE UTILITY AND THE FUTILITY OF APHORISMS.

The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of

observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom,

the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the

largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest

compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot

in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and

protective proverbs. For instance, with what relishing force such

sayings as the following touch the evil resident in indolence and

delay!--"An unemployed mind is the Devil's workshop"; "The industrious

tortoise wins the race from the lagging eagle"; "When God says,

To-day, the Devil says, To-morrow." In like manner, another cluster

of adages depict the certainty of the detection and punishment of

crime:--"Murder will out"; "Justice has feet of wool, but hands of

iron"; "God's mills grind slow, but they grind sure." So in relation

to every marked exposure of our life, there will be found in the

records of the common thought of mankind a set of deprecating

aphorisms.

The laconic compactness of these utterances, their constant

applicability, the pungent patness with which they hit some fact of

experience, principle of human nature, or phenomenon of life, the ease

with which their racy sense may be apprehended and remembered, give

them a powerful charm for the popular fancy. Accordingly, a multitude

of proverbs are afloat in the writings and in the mouths of every

civilized people. Groups of national proverbs exist in most of the

languages of the world, each family of apothegms revealing the

chief traits of the people who gave them birth. In these collective

expressions of national mind, we can recognize--if so incomplete a

characterization may be ventured--the indrawn meditativeness of the

Hindu, the fiery imagination of the Arab, the devout and prudential

understanding of the Hebrew, the æsthetic subtilty of the Greek,

the legal breadth and sensual recklessness of the Roman, the martial

frenzy of the Goth, the chivalric and dark pride of the Spaniard,

the treacherous blood of the Italian, the mercurial vanity of the

Frenchman, the blunt realism of the Englishman.

It is obvious enough that the masses of moral statements or standing

exhortations composing the aphorisms of a language cannot mix in the

daily minds of men without deep cause and effect. It will be worth our

while to inquire into the bearings of this matter; for, though many a

gatherer has carried his basket through these diamond districts of the

mind, we do not remember that any one has sharply examined the value

of the treasures so often displayed, set forth the methods of their

influence and its qualifications, and determined the respective limits

of their use and their worthlessness. Undertaking this task, we must,

in the outset, divide aphorisms into the two classes of proverbs

and maxims, plebeian perceptions and aristocratic conclusions, moral

axioms and philosophic rules. This distinction may easily be made

clear, and will prove useful.

Popular proverbs are national, or cosmopolitan, and they are

anonymous,--rising from among the multitude, and floating on their

breath. They are generalizations of the average observation of a

people. Undoubtedly, as a general thing, each one was first struck

out by some superior mind. But usually this happened so early that

the name of the author is lost. Proverbs--as the etymology hints--are

words held before the common mind, words in front of the public. Wise

maxims, on the contrary, are individual, may more commonly be traced

to their origin in the writings of some renowned author, and are

more limited in their audience. They are the results of comprehensive

insight, the ripened products of searching meditation, the weighty

utterances of weighty minds. The proverb, "A burnt child dreads the

fire," flies over all climes and alights on every tongue. The maxim,

"All true life begins with renunciation," appeals to comparatively

few, and tarries only in prepared and thoughtful minds. Proverbs

are often mere statements of facts, barren truisms, too obvious to

instruct our thought, affect our feeling, or in any way change our

conduct, though the accuracy with which the arrow is shot fixes our

attention. Notice a few examples of this sort:--"A friend in need is

a friend indeed"; "Many a little makes a mickle"; "Anger is a brief

madness"; "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Such

affirmations are too general and obvious to be provocative awakeners

of original reflection, sentiment, or will. Maxims, on the other hand,

instead of being general descriptions or condensed common-places, are

usually definite directions, discriminative exhortations. Notice such

specimens as these:--"Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take

care of themselves"; "When angry, count ten before you speak"; "Do the

duty nearest your hand, and the next will already have grown clearer";

"Remember that a thing begun is half done." Proverbs, then, are

results of observation, often affirmations of quite evident facts,

as, "Necessity is the mother of invention," or, "Who follows the

river will arrive at the sea." Maxims, in distinction, are results

of reflection. They are experience generalized into rules for the

guidance of action, as, "Think twice before you speak once," or,

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will

not depart from it." Proverbs are statical; maxims are dynamic. Those

are wisdom embalmed; these wisdom vitalized. The former are literary

fodder; the latter are literary pemmican.

The commonest application of proverbs is as mental economics,

_substitutes for thought_. They are constantly employed by the

ordinary sort of persons as provisions to avoid spiritual exertion,

artifices to dispose of a matter with the smallest amount of

intellectual trouble, as when one ends a controversy with the adage,

"Least said, soonest mended." The majority of people desire to get

along with the least possible expenditure of thinking. To many a

hard-headed laborer, five minutes of girded and continuous thinking

are more exhaustive than a whole day of muscular toil. No fact is more

familiar than that illiterate minds are furnished with an abundance of

trite sayings which they readily cite on all occasions. They thus

hit, or at least fancy they hit, the principle which applies to the

exigency, without the trouble of extemporaneously thinking it out

for themselves on the spot. Such saws as, "The pot must not call the

kettle black," "One swallow does not make a Spring," "Nought is never

in danger," "Out of sight, out of mind," often give employment to an

otherwise freightless tongue, and serve as excusing makeshifts for a

mind incompetent, from ignorance, indolence, or fatigue, to discharge

the duty of furnishing its own thought and expression for the

occasion.

Proverbs are more frequently used as _explanations_ than as _guides_

of conduct, as the reason why we _have_ acted in a certain manner than

as a reason why we _should_ act so. "Look before you leap," is usually

said _after_ we have leaped. When a miserly man refuses to give

anything in behalf of some distant object, his refusal is not prompted

by the remembrance of the proverb, "Charity begins at home"; but the

stingy propensity first stirs in the man and actuates him, and then he

expresses his motive, or evades the true issue, by quoting the selfish

old saw ever ready at his hand. In such cases the axiom is not the

forerunning cause of the action, but its justifying explanation.

Sometimes, undeniably, an applicable proverb coming to mind does

influence a man and decide his conduct. Coming at the right moment, in

the wavering of his will, it suggests the principle which determines

him, lends the needful balance of impulse for which he waited. An old

proverb, indorsed by the usage of generations, strikes on the ear like

a voice falling from the heights of antiquity; it is clothed with

a kind of authority. Doubtless many a poor boy has received a sound

flogging which he would have escaped, had not his father happened

to recall the somewhat cruel and questionable aphorism of Solomon,

currently abbreviated into "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

When Charles IX. was hesitating as to the enactment of the Saint

Bartholomew Massacre, his bigoted mother, infuriated with sectarian

hate, whispered in his ear, "Clemency is sometimes cruelty, and

cruelty clemency,"--and the fatal decree was sealed. But such

instances are exceptional, and partly deceptive, too. Man is usually

governed by his own passions, his own circumstances, or his own

reason, not by any verbal propositions. And when an apt and timely

adage seems to determine him, it is, for the most part, because

it acts upon responsive feelings preëxistent in him and already

struggling to express themselves. And thus, upon the whole, it is

to be concluded that proverbs are the children of Epimetheus, or

afterthought, rather than of Prometheus, or forethought. They are

rather products than producers,--intellectual forms rather than

intellectual forces. The prevalent notion of their influence is a

huge and singular error. One of our wisest authors, himself a great

aphorist, says,--"Proverbs are the sanctuaries of the intuitions." But

the intuitions, for the very reason that they are intuitive, need no

advisory guidance, and admit of no verbal help.

But when we turn from the aphoristic proverbs of the people to

the aphoristic maxims of the wise, a deep distinction and contrast

confront us. These, so far from being evasions of effort or

substitutes for thought, are direct stimulants to thought, provocative

summonses to more earnest mental application. Seneca says, "Wouldst

thou subject all things to thyself? Subject thyself to reason." A

modern writer says, "They are not kings who have thrones, but they who

know how to govern." Now any one meeting these maxims, if they have

any effect on him, will be set a-thinking to discover the principle

contained in them. He will feel that there is a profound significance

in them; and his curiosity will be awakened, his intellect fired, to

find out the grounds and bearings of the law they denote. In this way

the words of the wise are goads to prick and urge the faculties of

inferior minds. Pointed expressions of the experience of the sovereign

masters of life and the world impel feebler and less agile natures to

follow the tracks of light and emulate the choice examples set before

them, with swifter movements and with richer results than they could

ever have attained, if not thus encouraged. Proverbial axioms flourish

copiously in the idiomatic ground and vernacular climate of unlearned,

undisciplined, unreflective minds, as thistles on the highway where

every ass may gather them. But precious maxims, those "short sentences

drawn from a long experience," as Cervantes calls them, are found

mostly in the writings of the greatest geniuses, Solomon, Aristotle,

Shakspeare, Bacon, Goethe, Richter, Emerson: and they appeal

comparatively but to a select class of minds, kindred in some degree

to those that originated them.

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius,

a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which

first created it. In order to secure genuine profit here, the disciple

must for himself repeat the processes of the teacher, reach the same

conclusion, see the same truth. Wisdom cannot be mechanically taken,

but must be spiritually assimilated,--cannot be put on as a coat or

hat, used as a hammer or a sling, but must be intelligently grasped,

digested, and organized into the mental structure and habits. The

truth of this is at once so palpable and so important that it has

found embodiment in numerous proverbs known to almost every one: "An

ounce of mother-wit is worth a pound of school-wit"; "A pennyweight of

your own wit is worth a ton of other people's"; "Who cannot work out

his salvation by heart will never do it by book."

For the reason just indicated, we think the common estimate of

the actual influence of even the costliest preceptive sayings is

monstrously exaggerated. That an aphorism should really be of use, it

must virtually be reproduced by the faculties of your own soul. But

the mental energy and acquirement which thus recreate it in a great

degree supersede the necessity of it, render it an expression not of

a guidance you need from without, but of an insight and force already

working within. Your character determines what maxims you will select

or create far more than the maxims you choose or make determine what

your character will be. Herbart says, "Characters with ruling plans

are energetic; characters with ruling maxims are virtuous." This is

true, since a continuous plan subsidizes the forces that would without

it run to waste, and a deliberately chosen authority girds and guides

the soul from perilous dallying and dissipation. Nevertheless, it is

not so much that characters are energetic or virtuous because they

have ruling plans or maxims as it is that they have ruling plans or

maxims because they are energetic or virtuous. Say to a penurious,

hard, grumpy man, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Will

you thus make him liberal, sympathetic, affable? No, his character

will neutralize your precept, as vinegar receiving the sunshine into

its bosom becomes more sour. Some persons seem to imagine that a wise

maxim is a sort of fairy's wand, one touch of which will transform the

loaded panniers of a donkey into the fiery wings of a Pegasus. Surely,

it is a great error. Trench says, with an amusing _naïveté_, "There is

scarcely a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed,

but some proverb, _had we known and attended to its lesson_, might

have saved us from it." The two comprehensive conditions, "had we

known and attended to its lesson," are discharging conductors, that

empty the sentence of all proper meaning, and leave only a rank of

hollow words behind. He might as well say, "Had we never been tempted,

we had never fallen,--had we possessed all wisdom, we had never

committed an error," The best maxim that ever was made cannot directly

impart or create knowledge or virtue or spiritual force. It can only

give a voice to those qualities where they already exist, and so set

in motion a strengthening interchange of action and reaction. Though a

fool's mouth be stuffed with proverbs, he still remains as much a fool

as before. He is past preaching to who does not care to mend. As the

brave Schiller affirms, "Heaven and earth fight in vain against a

dunce." Eternal contact with nutritious wisdom can teach no lesson,

nor profit at all one who has not a coöperative and assimilative

mind. The anchor is always in the sea, but it never learns to swim.

Philosophic precepts address the reason; but the springs of motive and

regeneration are in the sentiments. To attempt the reformation of

a bad man by means of fine aphorisms is as hopeless as to bombard

a fortress with diamonds, or to strive to exhilarate the brain by

pelting the forehead with grapes.

And yet, notwithstanding these large limitations and abatements, it

is not to be denied that both proverbs and maxims, when habitually

recalled, generally have some effect, often are strongly influential,

and may, by a faithful observance of the conditions, be made extremely

efficacious. What, then, are the conditions of deriving profit from

the contemplation of aphorisms? How can we make their futility end,

their utility begin? The first, ever indispensable condition is fresh

discrimination. There are false, cynical, mean, devilish aphorisms, as

well as sound and worthy ones. Each style of character, kind and grade

of experience breathes itself out in corresponding expressions. "Self

is the man"; "Look out for Number One"; "Devil take the hindmost";

"One for me is as good as two for you"; "Every man has his price";

"Draw the snake from its hole by another man's hand"; "Vengeance is

a feast fit for the gods." The fact that such infernal sentiments are

proverbs must be no excuse for not trampling them out of sight with

disgust and scorn. Discrimination is needed not only to reject bad

sayings, but also to correct incomplete or extravagant ones. The

maxim, "Never judge by appearances," must be modified, because in

reality appearances are all that we have to judge from. Its true

rendering is, "Judge cautiously, for appearances are often deceptive."

A proverb is almost always partial, presenting one aspect of the

matter,--or excessive, making no allowance for exceptions. Here

independent insight is requisite, that we may not err. As a general

thing, aphorisms are particular truths put into forms of universality,

and they must be severely scrutinized, lest a mere characteristic

of the individual be mistaken for a normal faculty of the race. For

instance, it is said, "A reconciled friend is an enemy in disguise."

Not always, by any means; it depends greatly on the character of

the man, "Forewarned is forearmed." Generally this is true, but not

invariably; as sometimes a man, by being forewarned of danger, is

unnerved with terror, and undone. So the two maxims, "Never abandon

a certainty for an uncertainty," "Nothing venture, nothing have,"

destroy each other. Whether you shall give up the one bird in the hand

and try for the two in the bush depends on the relative worth of the

one and the two, and the probabilities of success in the trial.

No abstract maxim can help solve that problem: it requires living

intelligence. To follow a foreign rule empirically will often be to

fare as the monkey fared, who, undertaking to shave, as he had seen

his master do, gashed his face and paws. Fearful incisions of the soul

will he get who accepts unqualifyingly the class of impulsive proverbs

with their enormously overdrawn inferences: such as that of David,

when he said in his haste, "All men are liars"; or that of Moore,

when he said in his song, "The world is all a fleeting show, for man's

illusion given"; or that maxim of Schopenhauer, so full of deadly

misanthropy and melancholy that one would gladly turn his back on a

world in which he believed such a rule necessary, "Love no one, hate

no one, is the first half of all worldly wisdom; say nothing, believe

nothing, is the other half."

The first condition of a profitable use of maxims being a thorough

mastery of the rule proposed, with its limits, the next condition

is an accurate self-knowledge. Know yourself, your weaknesses, your

aptitudes, your exposures, your gifts and strength, in order that you

may know what to seek or avoid, what to cherish or spurn, what to spur

or curb, what to fortify or assail. For example, if your head is made

of butter, it is clear that it will not do for you to be a baker. If

you are a coward, you must not volunteer to lead a forlorn hope. The

advantage of self-knowledge is that it enables us to prescribe for

ourselves the contemplation of such principles and motives as we

need. If our thought is narrow and our fancy cold, we should study the

maxims that instruct,--as, "Joys are wings, sorrows are spurs." If

our heart is faint and our will weak, we should study the maxims that

inspire,--as, "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."

The instructive maxim opens a vista of truth to the intellect, as when

Goethe said, "A man need not be an architect in order to live in a

house." The inspiring maxim strikes a martial chord in the soul,

as when Alexander said to his Greeks, shrinking at the sight of

the multitudinous host of Persians, "One butcher does not fear many

sheep." The evil of self-ignorance is, that it permits men to choose

as their favorite and guiding maxims those adages which express and

foster their already rampant propensities, leaving their drooping

deficiencies to pine and cramp in neglect. The miser pampers his

avarice by repeating a hundred times a day, "A penny saved is a penny

gained": as if that were the maxim _he_ needed! The spend-thrift

comforts and confirms himself in his prodigality by saying, "God

loveth a cheerful giver": as if that were not precisely the saying

he ought never to recall! Audacity and arrogance constantly say to

themselves, "Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold." Timidity and

distrust are ever whispering, "Be not too bold." Thus what would be

one man's meat proves another man's poison; whereas, were it rightly

distributed, both would be nourished into healthy development. The

over-reckless should restrain himself by remembering that "Fools

rush in where angels fear to tread." The over-cautious should animate

himself with the reflection that "The coward dies a thousand deaths,

the brave man only one." A man who, with deep self-knowledge,

carefully chooses and perseveringly applies maxims adapted to check

his excess and arouse his defect may derive unspeakable profit from

them.

To do this with full success, however, he must have a discriminating

knowledge of the circumstances as well as of the rule, and of himself.

"Circumstances alter cases." What applies happily in one exigency may

be perfectly absurd or ruinous in a different situation. The mule,

loaded with salt, waded through a brook, and, as the salt melted,

the burden grew light. The ass, loaded with wool, tried the same

experiment; but the wool, saturated with water, was twice as heavy as

before. So the Satyr, in Æsop's fable, asked the man coming in from

the cold, "Why he blew on his fingers?" and was told, "To warm them."

Soon after he asked, "Why he blew in his soup?" and was told, "To

cool it." Whereupon he rushed on the man with a club and slew him as a

liar. The ramifications of truth in varying emergencies are infinitely

subtile and complicated, and often demand the very nicest care

in distinguishing. Good advice, when empirically taken and rashly

followed, is as an eye in the hand, sure to be put out the first thing

on trying to use it. "Advice costs nothing and is good for nothing,"

it is often said. But that depends on the quality of the advice, on

the circumstances, and on what kind of persons impart and receive the

counsel. Advice given with earnestness and wisdom, and applied with

docility and discrimination, may cost a great deal and be invaluable.

Competence and aptness, or folly and heedlessness, make a world of

difference. The great difficulty in regard to the fruitfulness of

advice is the universal readiness to impart, the usual unwillingness

to accept it. We give advice by the bucket, take it by the grain. For

these reasons the world is yet surfeited with precept and starving for

example: and the applicability is by no means exhausted of the

fable of Brabrius, who tells how when an old crab said to her child,

"Awkward one, walk not so crookedly!" he replied, "Mother, walk you

straight, I will watch and follow." Verbal wisdom would direct us;

exemplified wisdom draws us.

The first danger, then, from aphorisms is, that they may enable us

to evade, instead of helping us to fulfil, the duty of meeting and

solving for ourselves each mental exigency as it arises. In such a

case, educative discipline and growth are forfeited. The other danger

from them is, that they may be applied mechanically, without a just

understanding of them, and thus that grievous mistakes may be made.

Their genuine use is to excite our own minds to master the principles

which their authors have set forth in them. Fresh honesty of personal

thought, aspiration, and patience, is the spiritual talisman wherewith

alone we can vivify truisms into truths, and transmute noble maxims

into flesh and blood, nay, into immortal mind. The master-thinkers aid

us to do this by the quickening power of their suggestions,--the great

critic not only giving his readers direction, but also helping them to

eyesight.

To traverse the works of some authors is like going through a

carefully arranged herbarium, where every specimen is lifeless,

shrivelled, dusty, crumbling to the touch. The writings of genuine men

of genius are like a conservatory, where every plant of thought and

sentiment, whether indigenous or exotic, is alive, full of bloom and

fragrance, the sap at work in its veins. Verbal statements which are

petrifactions of wisdom can neither stimulate nor nourish; but verbal

statements which are vital concentrations of wisdom do both. He

has learned one of the most important lessons in human life who

understands adequately the difference between formal perception and

organic experience, contrasting the futility of detached and deathly

proverbs with the utility of nutritious and electrical maxims.

A mechanical teacher crowds the ear with mummified precepts and

exhortations; an inspired teacher brings surcharged examples and

rules into contact with the mind. The distinction is world-wide and

inexhaustible.

* * * * *

SHELLEY.

BY ONE WHO KNEW HIM.

If photography had existed during the lifetime of Shelley, it alone

would have sufficed to correct many a misconception of his character

founded upon imperfect portraiture; and even the most boyish

recollections of him, matter-of-fact as they are, may help to solve

the problem upon which many minds have been engaged without yet

having finished the work. For Shelley still remains before the

world misconceived because misdescribed; and if society is

gradually clearing its ideas of the man, it is not only because

the preconceptions of that multitudinous authority are themselves

gradually drifting away, but also because substantial facts are slowly

coming into view. Their development has been hindered by obstacles

which will be understood when I have proceeded a little farther, and

even within the compass of this brief sketch I hope that I shall be

able to make readers on both sides of the Atlantic work their own way

a little closer to the truth.

Shelley is still regarded by the majority, either as a victim of

persecution, or a rebel against authority, or both,--his friends

probably inclining to hold him up as a philosopher-patriot, whose

resistance to intellectual oppression placed him in the condition of

a martyr and robbed him of his fair share of life. My own earliest

memory presents him very much in that aspect. I first recall him

pale and slender, worn with anxiety, openly alluding to the marks of

premature age in his own aspect, bursting with aspirations against

tyranny of all kinds, and yielding to fits of dreadful despondency

under sufferings inflicted by the dignitaries of the land at the

instance of his own family. The circumstances by which he was

surrounded contributed to this guise of martyrdom.

My own earliest recollections began in prison, where my father[A]

was incarcerated for critical remarks which at the present day would

scarcely attract attention, and which were put forth in no impulse of

personal hostility, but under the strongest sense of duty, with the

desire to vindicate the constitutional freedom of England against the

perverted control of faction and the influences of a corrupt court. At

that time my father was accounted a man prone to mutiny against "the

powers that be," although his political opinions belonged to a class

which would now be regarded as too moderate for popular liberalism.

He has been censured for literary affectation and for personal

improvidence, but only by those who do not understand the real

elements of his character. The leading ideas of his mind were,

first, earnest duty to his country at any cost to himself; next, the

sacrifice of any ordinary consideration to personal affection and

friendship; and lastly, the cultivation of "the ideal," especially as

it is developed in imaginative literature. His life was passed in an

absolute devotion to these three principles. A one-sided frankness has

blazoned to the world the sacrifices which he accepted from friends,

but has whispered nothing of the more than commensurate sacrifices

made on his side; and the simplicity that rendered him the creature of

the library in which he lived entered into the expression of all his

thoughts and feelings.

[Footnote A: Leigh Hunt.]

Although I can remember some of the most eminent men who visited us

in prison, Shelley I cannot; but I can well recall my father's

description of the young stranger who came to him breathing the

classic thoughts of college, ardent with aspirations for the

emancipation of man from intellectual slavery, and endowed by Nature

with an aspect truly "angelic."

In the interval before his next visit to us, Shelley had passed

through the first serious passion of his youth, had married Harriet

Westbrooke, had become the father of two children, and had thus to all

appearance secured the transmission of the estates strictly entailed

with the baronetcy,--but had also been exiled from his family-home,

as well as from college, for his revolutionary and infidel principles,

had gone through a course of domestic disappointment, had separated

from his wife, and was threatened with the removal of his children,

on the ground of the impious and "immoral" training to which they were

destined under his guardianship. He came to our house for support and

consolation; he found in it a home for his intellect as well as for

his feelings, and he was as strictly a part of the family as any of

our blood-relations, for he came and went at pleasure. I can remember

that I performed his bidding equally with that of my father; and as to

personal deference or regard, the only distinction which my memory

can discover is, that I found in Shelley a companion whom I better

understood, and whose country rambles I was more pleased to share. For

this there were many reasons, and amongst them that Shelley entered

more unreservedly into the sports and even the thoughts of children.

I had probably awakened interest in him, not only because I was my

father's eldest child, but still more because I had already begun to

read with great avidity, and with an especial sense of imaginative

wonders and horrors; and, familiarized with the conversation amongst

literary men, I had really been able to understand something of his

position, insomuch that no doubt he saw the intense interest I took in

himself and his sufferings.

The emotions that he underwent were but too manifest in the

unconcealed anxiety and the eager recital of newly awakened hopes,

with intervals of the deepest depression. He suffered also from

physical causes, which I then only in part understood. This suffering

was traced to the attack made upon him at Tanyralt, in Wales, when, on

the night of February the 26th, 1813, some man who had been prowling

about the house in which he lived first fired at him through the

window, and then entered the room, escaping when the man-servant was

called in by the tumult and the screams of Mrs. Shelley. The whole

incident has been doubted,--why, I can hardly understand, unless the

reason is that some of the conjectures in which Mrs. Shelley indulged

were over-imaginative. She mentions by name a political opponent who

had said that "he would drive them out of the country." My own weak

recollections point to reasons more personal. But what I do know is,

that Shelley himself ascribed the injury from which he suffered to

a pressure of the assassin's knee upon him in the struggle. The

complaint was of long standing; the attacks were alarmingly severe,

and the seizure very sudden. I can remember one day at Hampstead: it

was soon after breakfast, and Shelley sat reading, when he suddenly

threw up his book and hands, and fell back, the chair sliding sharply

from under him, and he poured forth shrieks, loud and continuous,

stamping his feet madly on the ground. My father rushed to him, and,

while the women looked out for the usual remedies of cold water and

hand-rubbing, applied a strong pressure to his side, kneading it with

his hands; and the patient seemed gradually to be relieved by that

process. This happened about the time when he was most anxious for the

result of the trial which was to deprive him of his children. In

the intervals he sought relief in reading, in conversation,--which

especially turned upon classic literature,--in freedom of thought and

action, and in play with the children of the house. I can remember

well one day when we were both for some long time engaged in gambols,

broken off by my terror at his screwing up his long and curling

hair into a horn, and approaching me with rampant paws and frightful

gestures as some imaginative monster.

It was at this time that the incident happened which has been

mentioned by my father. A poor woman had been attending her son before

a criminal court in London. As they were returning home at night,

fatigue and anxiety so overcame her that she fell on the ground in

convulsions, where she was found by Shelley. He appealed to a very

opulent person, who lived on the top of the hill, asking admission for

the woman into the house, or the use of the carriage, which had just

set the family down at the door. The stranger was repulsed with

the cold remark that impostors swarmed everywhere, and that his own

conduct was "extraordinary." The good Samaritan, whom the Christian

would not help, warned the uncharitable man that such treatment of the

poor is sometimes chastised by hard treatment of the rich in days

of trouble; and I heard Shelley describe the manner in which the

gentleman retreated into his mansion, exclaiming, "God bless me, Sir!

dear me, Sir!" In the account of the occurrence given by my father,

he has omitted to mention that Shelley and the woman's son, who had

already carried her a considerable way up the main hill of Hampstead,

brought her on from the inhospitable mansion to our house in their

arms; and I believe, that, the son's strength failing, for some way

down the hill into the Vale of Health Shelley carried her on his back.

I cannot help contrasting this action of the wanderer with the careful

self-regard of another friend who often came to see us, though I do

not remember that any of us were ever inside his doors. He was, I

believe, for some time actually a pensioner on Shelley's generosity,

though he ultimately rose to be comparatively wealthy. One night, when

he had been visiting us, he was in trouble because no person had been

sent from a tavern at the top of the hill to light him up the pathway

across the heath. That same self-caring gentleman afterwards became

one of the apologists who most powerfully contributed to mislead

public opinion in regard to his benefactor.

Shelley often called me for a long ramble on the heath, or into

regions which I then thought far distant; and I went with him rather

than with my father, because he walked faster, and talked with

me while he walked, instead of being lost in his own thoughts and

conversing only at intervals. A love of wandering seemed to possess

him in the most literal sense; his rambles appeared to be without

design, or any limit but my fatigue; and when I was "done up,"

he carried me home in his arms, on his shoulder, or pickback. Our

communion was not always concord; as I have intimated, he took a

pleasure in frightening me, though I never really lost my confidence

in his protection, if he would only drop the fantastic aspects that

he delighted to assume. Sometimes, but much more rarely, he teased me

with exasperating banter; and, inheriting from some of my progenitors

a vindictive temper, I once retaliated severely. We were in the

sitting-room with my father and some others, while I was tortured. The

chancery-suit was just then approaching its most critical point, and,

to inflict the cruellest stroke I could think of, I looked him in the

face, and expressed a hope that he would be beaten in the trial and

have his children taken from him. I was sitting on his knee, and as

I spoke, he let himself fall listlessly back in his chair, without

attempting to conceal the shock I had given him. But presently he

folded his arms round me and kissed me; and I perfectly understood

that he saw how sorry I was, and was as anxious as I was to be friends

again. It was not very long after that we were playing with paper

boats on the pond in the Vale of Health, watching the way in which the

wind carried some of them over, or swamped most of them before they

had surmounted many billows; and Shelley then playfully said how

much he should like it, if we could get into one of the boats and be

shipwrecked,--it was a death he should like better than any other.

After the death of Harriet, Shelley's life entirely changed; and I

think I shall be able to show in the sequel that the change was far

greater than any of his biographers, except perhaps one who was most

likely to know, have acknowledged. Conventional form and Shelley are

almost incompatible ideas; as his admirable wife has said of him, "He

lived to idealize reality,--to ally the love of abstract truth, and

adoration of abstract good, with the living sympathies. And long as he

did this without injury to others, he had the reverse of any respect

for the dictates of orthodoxy or convention." As soon, therefore,

as the obstacle to a second marriage was removed, he and Mary

Wollstonecraft Godwin were regularly joined in matrimony, and retired

to Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. A brief year Shelley passed in

the position of a country-gentleman on a small scale. His abode was

a rough house in the village, with a garden at the back and nothing

beyond but the country. Close to the house there was a small

pleasure-ground, with a mound at the farther end of the lawn slightly

inclosing the view. Behind the mound there was a kitchen-garden, not

unintermixed with flowers and ornamental vegetation; and farther still

was a piece of ground traversed by a lane deeply excavated in the

chalk soil. At that time Shelley had a thousand a year allowed to

him by his father; but although he was in no respect the unreckoning,

wasteful person that many have represented him to be, such a sum must

have been insufficient for the mode in which he lived. His family

comprised himself, Mary, William their eldest son, and Claire

Claremont,--the daughter of Godwin's second wife, and therefore

the half-sister of Mary Shelley,--a girl of great ability, strong

feelings, lively temper, and, though not regularly handsome, of

brilliant appearance. They kept three servants, if not a fourth

assistant: a cook; Élise, a Swiss _gouvernante_ for the child; and

Harry, a man who did the work of gardener and man-servant in general.

He kept something like open house; for while I was there with my

father and mother, there also came, for a short time, several other

friends, some of whom stopped for more than a passing visit. He played

the Lord Bountiful among his humbler neighbors, not only helping them

with money or money's-worth, but also advising them in sickness; for

he had made some study of medicine, in part, I suspect, to be the more

useful.

I have already intimated that he had assisted certain of his

companions; and I am convinced that these circumstances contributed to

the resolution which Shelley formed to leave England for Italy in

the year 1818, although he then ascribed his doing so to the score of

health,--or rather, as he said, of life. He then believed himself

to be laboring under a tendency to consumption, not without medical

warnings to that effect, although there were strong reasons for

doubting the validity of the belief, which was based upon less precise

grounds before the introduction of auscultation and the careful

examinations of our day. It was, however, characteristic of Shelley

to rest his actions upon the dominant motive; so that, if several

inducements operated to the same end, he absolutely discarded the

minor considerations, and acted solely upon the grand one. I can well

remember, that, when other persons urged upon him cumulative reasons

for any course of action, whether in politics, or morality, or

trifling personal matters of the day, he indignantly cast aside all

such makeweights, and insisted upon the one sufficient motive. I

mention this the more explicitly because the opposite course is the

most common, and some who did not sympathize with his concentration

of purpose afterwards imputed the suppression of all but one, out of

several apparent motives, to reserve, or even to a want of candor.

The accusation was first made by some of Shelley's false

friends,--creatures who gathered round him to get what they could, and

afterwards made a market of their connection, to his disadvantage. But

I was shocked to find a sanction for the notion under the hand of one

of Shelley's first and most faithful friends, and I discovered it,

too, when death had barred me from the opportunity of controverting

the mistake. It was easily accounted for. The writer to whom I allude

was himself a person whose scrupulous conscience and strong mistrust

of his own judgment, unless supported on every side, induced him to

accumulate and to avow as many motives as possible for each single

act. He could scarcely understand or believe the existence of a

mind which, although powerful and comprehensive in its grasp, should

nevertheless deliberately set aside all motives but one, and actually

proceed upon that exclusive ground without regard to the others.

Both Shelley and his friends seem to have underrated his strength, and

one little incident will illustrate my meaning. He kept no horse or

carriage; but in accordance with his ruling passion he had a boat on

the river of sufficient size to carry a numerous party. It was made

both for sailing and rowing; and I can remember being one of an

expedition which went some distance up the Thames, when Shelley

himself towed the boat on the return home, while I walked, by his

side. His health had very much improved with the change that had

taken place in his mode of life, his more settled condition, and the

abatement of anxiety, with the absolute removal of some of its causes.

I am well aware that he _had_ suffered severely, and that he continued

to be haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly

imaginative, which pursued him like an Orestes. He frequently talked

on such subjects; but it has always appeared to me that those who

have reported what he said have been guilty of a singular confusion in

their interpretations. As I proceed, you will find that certain facts

in his life have never yet been distinctly related, and I have a

strong reason for believing that some circumstances of which I became

accidentally aware were never disclosed at all, except to Mary; while

in her writings I can trace allusions to them, that remind me of

passages in ancient authors,--in Ovid, for instance,--which would have

been absolutely unintelligible, except for accidental references. In

spite, however, of the rude trials to which his constitution had

been subjected, and of new symptoms supposed to indicate pulmonary

weakness, there was a marked improvement in his aspect since he had

visited London. He still had that ultra-youthful figure that partook

the traits of the hobbledehoy, arrived at man's stature, but not yet

possessing the full manly proportions. His extremities were large, his

limbs long, his face small, and his thorax very partially developed,

especially in girth. An habitual eagerness of mood, thrusting forward

his face, made him stoop, with sunken chest and rounded shoulders; and

this was even more apparent in the easy costume of the country than

in London dress. But in his countenance there was life instead of

weariness; melancholy more often yielded to alternations of bright

thoughts; and paleness had given way to a certain freshness of color,

with something like roses in the cheeks. Notwithstanding the sense of

weakness in the chest, which attacked him on any sudden effort,

his power of exertion was considerable. Once, returning from a long

excursion, and entering the house by the back way, up a precipitous,

though not perpendicular bank, the women of the party had to be

helped; and Shelley was the most active in rendering that assistance.

While others were content to accomplish the feat for one, he, I think,

helped three up the bank, sliding in a half-sitting posture when he

returned to fetch a new charge. I well remember his shooting past me

in a cloud of chalk-dust, as I was slowly climbing up. He had a fit

of panting after it, but he made light of the exertion. I can also

recollect, that, although he frequently preferred to steer rather than

to put forth his strength, yet, if it were necessary, he would take

an oar, and could stick to his seat for any time against any force of

current or of wind, not only without complaining, but without being

compelled to give in until the set task was accomplished, though it

should involve some miles of hard pulling. These facts indicate the

amount of "grit" that lay under the outward appearance of weakness and

excitable nerves.

Shelley's fulness of vitality did not at that time seem to be shared

by the partner of his life. Mary's intellectual powers had already

been manifested. He must to some extent have known the force of her

affection, and the tenderness of her nature; but it is remarkable that

her youth was not the period of her greatest beauty, and certainly at

that date she did not do justice to herself either in her aspect or in

the tone of her conversation. She was singularly pale. With a figure

that needed to be set off, she was careless in her dress; and the

decision of purpose which ultimately gained her the playful title of

"Wilful Woman" then appeared, at least in society, principally in the

negative form,--her temper being easily crossed, and her resentments

taking a somewhat querulous and peevish tone. Both of the pair were

still young, and their ideas of education were adverse to the

received doctrines of the day, rather than substantive; and their

own principles in this matter were exemplified somewhat perversely by

little William. Even at that early age the child called forth frequent

and poignant remonstrances from his _gouvernante_, and occasionally

drew perplexed exclamations or desponding looks from his father, who

took the child's little perversities seriously to heart, and sometimes

vented his embarrassment in generalized remarks on human nature.

Some years elapsed between the night when I saw Shelley pack up his

pistols--which he allowed me to examine--for his departure for

the South, and the moment when, after our own arrival in Italy, my

attention was again called to his presence by the shrill sound of

his voice, as he rushed into my father's arms, which he did with an

impetuousness and a fervor scarcely to be imagined by any who did

not know the intensity of his feelings and the deep nature of his

affection for that friend. I remember his crying out that he was "so

_inexpressibly_ delighted!--you cannot think how _inexpressibly_ happy

it makes me!"

The history of Shelley's brief visit to Pisa has been related by many,

and is, I believe, told in his published letters; but it appears to me

that those who have recounted it have in some respects fallen short.

Excepting Mary Shelley, the best-informed spoke too soon after the

event. Shelley's own letters are slightly misleading, from a very

intelligible cause. After he had encouraged, if he did not suggest,

the enterprise of "The Liberal,"--and I believe it would be nearly

impossible for any one of the three men interested in that venture to

ascertain exactly who was its author,--his mind misgave him. He knew

my father's necessities and his childish capacities for business. With

a keen sense of the power displayed in "Don Juan," and even in more

melodramatic works, Shelley had acquired a full knowledge of the

singularly licentious training from which Byron had then scarcely

emerged, and of the vacillating caprice which enfeebled all his

actions. His own ability to grapple with practical affairs was very

great; but he himself had scarcely formed a sufficient estimate of it.

Determined to maintain a thorough equality and freedom with the noble

bard in their social relations, he shrank from any position which

might raise in Byron's jealous and unstable mind the idea that he was

under pressure; yet he was anxious to prevent disappointment for Leigh

Hunt. He dreaded failure, and resolved that he would do his best to

prevent it; and yet again he scarcely anticipated success.

As early as the end of 1818, he described the way in which Byron spent

his life, after he had been partly exiled, partly emancipated from the

ordinary restraints of society. At that time, "the Italian women were

the most contemptible of all who existed under the moon,--an ordinary

Englishman could not approach them"; "but," writes Shelley, "Lord

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

his _gondolieri_ pick up in the streets." Byron's curiosity, indeed,

tempted him to learn something of vice in its most revolting aspects.

"He has," writes Shelley, "a certain degree of candor, while you talk

to him, but unfortunately it does not outlast your departure." I am

sure that before 1821 Byron had risen in his friend's estimation, or

the "Liberal" scheme would never have been contemplated; and there

were excellent reasons for the change. It is only by degrees that men

have learned to appreciate at once the extraordinary nature and force

of Byron's genius and the equally monstrous and marvellous nature

of the evil training by which he was "dragged up." In the midst

of extravagant license he gained experiences which might have

extinguished his mind, but which, as they did not have that effect,

added to his resources. In the process some of his personal qualities

as a companion suffered severely. Very few grown men have been so

extravagantly sensitive to personal approbation; and he was anxious

to conciliate the liking of all who approached him, however foreign

to his own set, however humble, or however insignificant. He was as

mistrustful as a greedy child. He could be extravagant, but he was not

open-handed; and yet he would give up what he coveted for himself,

if he were urged by those whose esteem he desired to win. Now, of

all persons who came near him, Shelley was the one that combined the

greatest number of qualities calculated to influence a creature like

Byron. He was of gentle blood; he was as resolute as he was able to

maintain what is popularly called an independent position; he was

truly sincere; and his way of life displayed a purity which Byron

admired, though he fell from it so lamentably. On the other hand,

Shelley was at odds with society on the very same questions of morals;

he possessed all the philosophy for understanding the complicated

perplexities of aberrant genius; did actually make allowances for

Byron; estimated his powers more accurately, and therefore more

highly, than any other person who came near him; and thus commanded at

once his sympathies, his ambition, and his confidence. Everybody

knows that in the interval between 1818 and the date of his death at

Missolonghi, Byron's discipline of life had undergone a marked

and beneficial change, and many agencies have been mentioned as

contributing to that result, but I am sure that no one was so

all-sufficient as the personal association with Shelley. Nothing of

this is gainsaid by the fact that the greater part of this improvement

was displayed after Shelley's death. Change of scene, intercourse with

others, opportunities for acting upon his new principles, all helped,

together, probably, with the graver sense of counsel bequeathed by

the friend whom he had lost. Certain it is that Byron never mentioned

Shelley in my hearing without a peculiarly emphatic manner. I know

that to more than one person he performed acts of kindness and

friendly aid as tributes to the memory of Shelley; and if any action

were urged upon him as worthy of his own genius and dignity, nothing

clenched the appeal like the name of Shelley. But if you will for a

moment compare the characters of the two men,--if you will contrast

the large self-sacrifice of the one with the self-indulgence of the

other, the independence of the one with the craving of the other for

approval, the absolute trust in human hope and goodness of Shelley

with the _blasé_ cynicism of Byron, I think two conclusions must

instantly strike you,--first, that Shelley must have possessed almost

unequalled power of influence over those who surrounded him, and,

secondly, that Byron himself must have been a much better man, or

possessing much more in common with Shelley than society or some of

his most intellectual companions at all imagined. Part of the facts

bearing upon the subject have come out since the death of both. My own

attention was drawn to the point by the striking discord between the

way in which other people speak of their relations and the manner of

Shelley and Byron towards each other, and especially Byron's way in

speaking of Shelley. It is not probable that Shelley formed to himself

any such idea of his own power; yet you will find hints at it in his

letters, you will see, curious traces of it in the letters of others,

and nothing else will fully explain the change in Byron's life.

Moreover, it reconciles the apparent inconsistencies of Shelley's

reservations in talking about Byron with his manifest and practical

confidence in the result of their joint working.

When I met Shelley again in Italy, it was easy to see that a grand

change had come over his appearance and condition. The Southern

climate had suited him, and the boat which caused his death had in the

mean while been instrumental in developing his life. His retirement

from painful personal conflict had given him greater ease; intercourse

with Mary had made his life better; and, not to overlook one important

fact, he had _grown_ since he left England. For physiologists attest

the truth, that growth continues throughout human existence, even

until after decay begins; and Shelley's constitution was of that

kind--strong in some of its developments, slow in others--which needed

longer time than many to arrive at its full proportions. For instance,

in the interval since I had seen him his chest had manifestly become

of a larger girth. I am speaking only upon distant recollection; but

I should judge it to have been three or four inches larger round, or

perhaps more. His voice was stronger, his manner more confident

and downright, and, although not less emphatic, yet decidedly less

impulsively changeful. I can recall his reading from an ancient

author, translating as he went, a passage about the making of the

first man; and I remember it from the subject and from the easy

flow of his translation, but chiefly from the air of strength and

cheerfulness which I noticed in his voice and manner. In nothing,

however, does Shelley appear to me to have been so misdescribed as

in the outward man,--partly, as usual, from overstatement of

peculiarities, and partly because each artist has painted the portrait

from his own favorite view. Many, through exaggeration, or imperfect

knowledge, have equally misconstrued his moral character, and have

omitted to report the real conduct of his understanding as he advanced

towards "the middle of the way of life."

From the story of his life after I first saw him, as well as from

many things that I have heard him say of his family, and the strange

recollections that he had of home, it is easy to understand the

general tenor of his early life. Through some caprice in genealogical

chemistry, in Percy the Shelley race struck out an entirely new idea:

an apparent caprice in the sequence of houses that has often been

noticed. For how often may we observe that the union of the most

remarkable intellects produces a _tertium quid_ which is the reverse

of an equivalent to the combined totals, representing only a fraction

of their qualities, and that fraction in its negative aspect; while,

on the other hand, rivulets of blood which have gained for themselves

no name upon earth may combine to form a river illustrious to the

whole world. In the latter case, not an unusual effect is that those

who are charged with the infancy of the new type in the family are

incompetent to their duty; and accordingly Shelley was regarded merely

as "a strange boy," wayward, mutinous, and to be severely chastised

into obedience. It has been said that he attracted no particular

notice at school; but this is not true. At Eton his resentment of

tyrannical authority displayed itself not only against the masters,

but against the privileges of young patricians. He refused to be

"fag"; and on one occasion he so braved the youthful public-opinion,

that, on being dared to the act by the surrounding boys, he pinned

a companion's hand to the table with a fork. According to my

recollection, the immediate provocative was that he was dared to

do it; but the incident arose out of his resistance to the seniors

amongst the scholars and to the customs of the school. It was evident

that the masters had their eye upon him. Such a youth, with a command

of language that was a born faculty and not simply acquired, _must_

have attracted very positive attention on the part of the teachers;

but it was certain, that, with the tendencies of those days, they

would have thought it discreet to say as little as possible about the

slender mutineer. It is equally well known, that, notwithstanding his

youth, religious opinions caused his expulsion from college; and when

we turn to the earliest of his writings which assumed anything like a

complete shape, we discover at once the nature of those powers

which could not have been overlooked,--we detect the genius, the

revolutionary ideas, and the extraordinary command which he had

acquired over the subject-matter of much that is taught in schools

and colleges. Amid the orthodox reaction that followed upon the French

Revolution, he was struck with the excesses to which despotic power

could be carried. He read history with sympathies for the natural

impulses and aspirations of the race, as opposed to the small circles

which comprise established authorities. He looked upon knowledge as

the means of serving, not enslaving the race. And therefore, while he

excused the crimes of the Revolution, on the score of the ignorance

in which the people had been kept, their sufferings, and the natural

revulsion against such painful down-treading, he regarded the counter

acts of authority as a treachery to wisdom itself. He says,--

"Hath Nature's soul,

That formed this world so beautiful....

And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust

With spirit, thought, and love, on Man alone,

Partial in causeless malice, wantonly

Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery?

Nature?--no!

Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower

Even in its tender bud; their influence darts

Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins

Of desolate society."

The pretension of authority to speak with a supernatural warrant

provoked him to deny the warrant itself, or the sources from which it

was said to emanate.

"Is there a God?--ay, an almighty God,

And vengeful as almighty? Once his voice

Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound,

The fiery-visaged firmament expressed

Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned

To swallow all the dauntless and the good

That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,

Girt as it was with power. None but slaves

Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work

Of tyrranous omnipotence."

To these superstitious and ambitious pretensions he traced the

corruption which disorganized society, leading it down even to the

very worst immoralities.

"All things are sold: the very light of heaven

Is venal....

Those duties which heart of human love

Should urge him to perform instinctively

Are bought and sold as in a public mart.

* * * * *

Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

Is turned to deadliest agony, old age

Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,

And youth's corrupted impulses prepare

A life of horror from the blighting bane

Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs

From unenjoying sensualism has filled

All human life with hydra-headed woes."

"Shelley," says Mary, in her note on the poem, "was eighteen when he

wrote 'Queen Mab.' He never published it. When it was written, he

had come to the decision that he was too young to be a judge of

controversies." The wife-editor refers to a series of

articles published in the "New Monthly Magazine" for 1832 by a

fellow-collegian, a warm friend of Shelley's, touching upon his

school-life, and describing the state of his mind at college. The

worst of all these biographical sketches of remarkable men is, that

delicacy, discretion, or some other euphemistically named form of

hesitancy, induces writers to suppress the incidents which supply the

very angles of the form they want to delineate; and it is especially

so in Shelley's case. I am sure, that, if Mary, or my father, or any

of those with whom Shelley conversed most thoroughly, had related some

of the more extravagant incidents of his early life exactly as they

occurred, we should better understand the tenor of his thought,--and

we should also have the most valuable complement to that part of

his intellectual progress which stands in contrast with the earlier

portion. Now, as I have said, at school Shelley was a more practical

and impracticable mutineer than his friends have generally allowed.

They have been anxious to soften his "faults"; and the consequence

is, that we miss the force of the boy's logic and the vigor of his

Catonian experiments.

Again, accident has made me aware of facts which give me to

understand, that, in passing through the usual curriculum of a college

life in all its paths, Shelley did not go scathless,--but that, in

the tampering with venal pleasures, his health was seriously, and not

transiently, injured. The effect was far greater on his mind than on

his body; and the intellectual being greater than the physical

power, the healthy reaction was greater. But that reaction was

also, especially in early youth, principally marked by horror and

antagonism. Conscientious, far beyond even the ordinary maximum

amongst ordinary men, he felt bound to denounce the mischief from

which he saw others suffer more severely than himself, since in them

there was no such reaction. I have no doubt that he himself would have

spoken even plainer language, though to me his language is perfectly

transparent, if he had not been restrained by a superstitious notion

of his own, that the true escape from the pestilent and abhorrent

brutalities which he detected around him in "real" life is found in

"the ideal" form of thought and language. Ardent and romantic, he was

eager to discover beauty "beneath" every natural aspect. Of all men

living, I am the one most bound to be aware of the inconsistency; but

you will see it reconciled a little later.

Shelley left college prone "to fall in love,"--having already, indeed,

gone through some very slight experiences of that process. In his

wanderings, in a humble position which conciliated rather than

repelled him, he met with Harriet Westbrooke, a very comely, pleasing,

and simple type of girlhood. She was at some disadvantage, under some

kind of domestic oppression; so she served at once as an object for

his disengaged affection, and a subject for his liberating theories,

and as a substratum for the idealizing process upon which he

constructed a fictitious creation of Harriet Westbrooke. His dreams

bearing but a faint and controversial resemblance to the Harriet

Westbrooke of daily life, the fictitious image prevented him from

knowing her, until the reality broke through the poetical vision only

to shock him by its inferiority or repulsiveness. As to the poor girl

herself, she never had the capacity for learning to know him. In the

sequel she proved to be the not unwilling slave of a petty domestic

intrigue,--oppression from which he would have rescued her. Married

life enabled him to discover that she was the reverse of the being

that he had fancied. They were first married in Scotland in 1811.

Shelley made acquaintance with the Godwins in 1812, before his eldest

child was born. I am not sure whether he was acquainted with Mary at

that time; but some circumstances which I cannot verify make me doubt

it. Harriet's daughter was born early in the summer of 1813, and it

was before the close of that year that the couple began to disagree.

The wife was evidently under the dominion of a relative whose

influence was injurious to her. I do not find a hint of any imputation

upon what is usually called her "fidelity"; but the relative

manifestly desired to show her power over both. It is probable that at

an early day Shelley's disposition to see "sermons in stones and good

in everything" made him think better of that interloping lady than she

deserved,--and that consequently he not only gave her encouragement,

but committed himself to something which, to Harriet's mind, justified

her deference for ill-considered advice. It is very likely that she

was counselled to extend her power over Shelley in a manner which her

own simple nature would not have suggested; but, being as foolish as

it was cunning and vulgar, such conduct could no result but that of

repelling a man like Shelley. That he acquired a detestation of the

relative is a certain fact. He must have been expecting a second child

when he formally remarried Harriet in England on the twenty-fourth of

March, 1814; and that ceremony has been mentioned by several writers

to prove the most opposite conclusions,--that Shelley was devoted to

his first wife, and that he behaved to her with the basest hypocrisy.

It proves nothing but his desire to place the hereditary rights of the

second child, who might be a boy, beyond doubt; and the precaution

was justified by the event. Before the close of the same year Harriet

returned to her father's house, and there she gave birth to a son,

Charles, who would have inherited the baronetcy, if he had not died

in 1826, after his father's death. The parting took place about the

twenty-fourth of June, 1814; and at the same time Shelley wrote a

poem, of which fragments are given in the recently published "Relics."

The verse shows, first, that Shelley was suffering severely from the

chronic conflict which he had undergone, and, secondly, that he had

found some novel comfort in the intercourse with Mary.

"To sit and curb the soul's mute rage,

Which preys upon itself alone;

To curse the life which is the cage

Of fettered grief that dares not groan,

Hiding from many a careless eye

The scorned load of agony.

"Upon my heart thy accents sweet

Of peace and pity fell like dew

On flowers half dead....

"We are not happy, sweet! our state

Is strange and full of doubt and fear;

More need of words that ills abate;--

Reserve or censure come not near

Our sacred friendship, lest there be

No solace left for thee and me."

It is obvious that considerably after the date of this poem, Harriet

remained in amicable correspondence with Shelley; and not only so,

but, while she altogether abstained from opposing his new connection,

she was actually on friendly terms with Mary. It is easy to understand

how a limited nature like Harriet's should be worn out by the

exaction and impracticability of one like Shelley; for to her most

impracticable would seem his lofty and ideal requirements. On the

other hand, it is evident that Shelley regarded the unfortunate girl

with feelings of deep commiseration; and I know that he not only

pitied her, but felt strong compunctions for the share which his own

mistaken conduct at the beginning, even more than at the end, had had

in drawing her aside from what would have been her natural course in

ordinary life. Mary, I believe, clearly understood the whole case,

and felt nothing but compassion for one who was a "victim to

circumstances."

The sequel has been alluded to in several publications, but so

obscurely as to be more than unintelligible; for the reader is led to

conclusions the reverse of the fact. In the "Memorials," at page 63,

the subject is barely touched upon. I take the whole passage.

"Towards the close of 1813, estrangements, which for some time had

been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisis.

Separation ensued; and Mrs. Shelley returned to her father's house.

Here she gave birth to her second child,--a son, who died in 1826.

"The occurrences of this painful epoch in Shelley's life, and the

causes which led to them, I am spared from relating. In Mary Shelley's

own words:--'This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should

reject any coloring of the truth.'

* * * * *

"Of those remaining who were intimate with Shelley at this time, each

has given us a different version of this sad event, colored by his own

views and personal feelings. Evidently, Shelley confided to none of

these friends. We, who bear his name and are of his family, have in

our possession papers written by his own hand, which, in after-years,

may make the story of his life complete, and which few now living,

except Shelley's own children, have ever perused.

"One mistake which has gone forth to the world we feel ourselves

called upon positively to contradict. Harriet's death has sometimes

been ascribed to Shelley. This is entirely false. There was no

immediate connection whatever between her tragic end and any conduct

on the part of her husband."

At the end of the "Relics" is a memorandum entitled, "Harriet

Shelley and Mr. Thomas Love Peacock." Mr. Peacock had been writing in

"Fraser's Magazine" a series of articles on Shelley; in "Macmillan's

Magazine" for June, 1866, was an article by Mr. Richard Garnet,

entitled, "Shelley in Pall-Mall"; to this Mr. Peacock replied in

"Percy Bysshe Shelley: Supplementary Notice"; and Mr. Garnet rejoined

in the new little volume which he ha; edited. The main purpose of

this last notice is, to show that Mr. Peacock was not accurate in his

chronology or in his interpretation of the severance between Shelley

and Harriet. Alluding either to the discretion which prevented Shelley

from making a confidant of Mr. Peacock, or to his grief occasioned by

the fate of Harriet, the writer refers to "the proof which exists in a

series of letters written by Shelley at this very time to one in whom

he had confidence, and at present in possession of his family," and

then proceeds thus:--"Nothing more beautiful or characteristic ever

proceeded from his pen; and they afford the most unequivocal testimony

of the grief and horror occasioned by the tragical incident to which

they bear reference. Yet self-reproach formed no element of his

sorrow, in the midst of which he could proudly say, '------, ------,'

(mentioning two dry, unbiased men of business,) 'every one, does me

full justice, bears testimony to the uprightness and liberality of my

conduct to her.'"

In the "Memorials" and the "Relics" there is no further allusion to

the circumstances which preceded Harriet's suicide; but it appears to

me very desirable that the whole story should be brought out much more

distinctly, and I can at least show why I say so. The correspondence

in question took place in the middle of December, 1816. Shelley was

married to Mary about a fortnight later; and in the most emphatic

terms he alluded not only to the solace which he derived from the

conversation of his host, but to the manner in which my father spoke

of Mary. My own recollection goes back to the period, and I have

already testified to the state of Shelley's mind. He was just then

instituting the process to recover the children, and he caught at

an opinion that had been expressed, that, in the event of his again

becoming contracted in marriage, there would be no longer any pretence

to deprive him of the children.

Let me for a moment pause on this incident, as it establishes two

facts of some interest. In the first place, it shows some of the

grounds of the very strong and unalterable friendship which subsisted

between my father and Mary,--a friendship which stood the test of many

vicissitudes, and even of some differences of opinion; both persons

being very sensitive in feeling, quick in temper, thoroughly

outspoken, and obstinately tenacious of their own convictions.

Secondly, it corroborates what I have said with regard to the

community of spirit that Shelley found in his real wife,--the woman

who became the companion of his fortunes, of his thoughts, of his

sufferings, and of his hopes. It will be seen, that, even before

marriage with his second wife, he was counting upon Mary's help in

preventing his separation from the two children already born to him.

She was a woman uniting intellectual faculties with strong ambitions

of affection as well as intellect; and esteem thus substantially

shown, at that early age, by two such men as Percy Shelley and Leigh

Hunt, must have conveyed the deepest gratification.

Throughout these communications Shelley evinced the strong pity that

he felt for the unhappy being whom he had known. Circumstances had

come to his knowledge which had thrown considerable light upon his

relations with Harriet. There can be no doubt that one member of the

family had hoped to derive gain from the connection with himself, as a

person of rank and property. There seems also reason to suppose, that,

about the same time, Harriet's father, an aged man, became so ill that

his death might be regarded as approaching, and he had something to

leave. Poor, foolish Harriet had undoubtedly formed an attachment to

Shelley, whom she had been allowed to marry; but she had then

suffered herself to become a tool in the hands of others, and the fact

accounted for the idle way in which she importuned him to do things

repugnant to his feelings and convictions. She thus exasperated his

temper, and lost her own; they quarrelled, in the ordinary conjugal

sense, and, from all I have learned, I am induced to guess, that, when

she left him, it was not only in the indulgence of self-will, but also

in the vain hope that her retreating would induce him to follow her,

perhaps in a more obedient spirit. She sought refuge in her father's

house, where she might have expected kindness; but, as the old man

bent towards the grave, with rapid loss of faculties, he became more

severe in his treatment of the poor woman; and she was driven from the

paternal roof. This Shelley did not know at the time; nor did he until

afterwards learn the process by which she arrived at her fate.

Too late she became aware how fatal to her interests had been the

intrigues of which she had been the passive instrument; and I suspect

that she was debarred from seeking forgiveness and help partly by

false shame, and partly by the terrible adaptability of weak natures

to the condition of the society in which they find themselves. I have

said that there is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal

against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley, and I have

indicated the most probable motives of that step; but subsequently she

forfeited her claim to a return, even in the eye of the law. Shelley

had information which made him believe that she fell even to the depth

of actual prostitution. If she left him, it would appear that she

herself was deserted in turn by a man in a very humble grade of life;

and it was in consequence of this desertion that she killed herself.

The change in his personal aspect that showed itself at Marlow

appeared also in his writings,--the most typical of his works for this

period being naturally the most complete that issued from his pen, the

"Revolt of Islam." We find there identically the same doctrine that

there is in "Queen Mab,"--a systematic abhorrence of the servility

which renders man captive to power, denunciation of the love of gain

which blinds his insight and destroys his energy, of the prostitution

of religious faith, and, above all, of the slavery of womanhood. But

by this time the doctrine has more distinct in its expression, and far

more powerful in its utterance.

"Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave

A lasting chain for his own slavery;

In fear and restless care that he may live,

He toils for others, who must ever be

The joyless thralls of like captivity;

He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;

He builds the altar, that its idol's fee

May be his very blood; he is pursuing,

O blind and willing wretch! his own obscure undoing.

"Woman!--she is his slave, she has become

A thing I weep to speak,--the child of scorn,

The outcast of a desolated home.

Falsehood and fear and toil, like waves, have worn

Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,

As calm decks the false ocean. Well ye know

What woman is; for none of woman born

Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,

Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow."

The indignation against the revolting subjugation of womanhood comes

out still more distinctly in the preceding canto, where Cythna relates

the horrors to which she was subjected.

"One was she among the many there, the thralls

Of the cold tyrant's cruel lust; and they

Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;

But she was calm and sad, musing alway

On loftiest enterprise, till on a day

* * * * *

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,

Foul as in dreams' most fearful imagery

To dally with the mowing dead;--that night

All torture, fear, or horror made seem light

Which the soul dreams or knows."

The poet bears testimony to the spiritual power which rules throughout

Nature; the monster recovering his dignity while he is under the

higher influence.

"Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,

One moment to great Nature's sacred power

He bent and was no longer passionless;

But when he bade her to his secret bower

Be borne a loveless victim, and she tore

Her locks in agony, and her words of flame

And mightier looks availed not, then he bore

Again his load of slavery, and became

A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

...."When the day

Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight,

Where like a spirit in fleshly chains she lay

Struggling, aghast and pale the tyrant fled away.

"Her madness was a beam of light, a power

Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,

Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore

Which might not be withstood."

The doctrine involved in this passage is very clear, and it marks a

decided progress since the days of "Queen Mab." It will be observed

that Shelley's mind had become familiarized with the idea of a spirit

ruling throughout Nature, obedience to which constitutes human power.

Most remarkable is the passage in which the tyrant recovers his

faculties through his subjection to this spirit; because it indicates

Shelley's faithful adhesion to the universal, though oft obscurely

formed belief, that the ability to _receive_ influence is the most

exalted faculty to which human nature can attain, while the exercise

of an arbitrary power centring in self is not only debasing, but is an

actual destroyer of human faculty.