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Keats was the martyr of poetry, but Shelley was the martyr of opinion.
Keats dared to write in a new vein, to disregard all the old canons of
criticism, to pour out his heart, and all his fancies, in that way only
which seemed naturally to belong to them, and this was cause enough to
bring down upon him the vengeance of all the rule-and-line men of
literature. But besides this, Keats kept suspicious company. Hunt and
Shelley were notorious Radicals; and Hunt and Shelley were his friends.
"Tell me what company you keep, and I will tell you what you are," is an
old proverb, and was, in John Keats' case, most promptly applied. But
Shelley was perhaps the most daring, as he was the most splendid
offender of modern times. Born of a good family, educated in the highest
schools of orthodoxy, it was to the public, which looked for a new
champion of the old state of things, a most exasperating circumstance
that, in his very teens, he should set all these expectations, and all
the prospects of his own worldly advantage, at defiance, and boldly
avow himself the champion of atheism. The fact is every way to be
deplored. It became the source of blight and misery to himself through
his whole life. It alienated his friends and family; it occasioned an
excitement of fiery bigotry and party wrath, which, in their united
virulence, were poured upon his head, and, destroying the sale of his
works, greatly dispirited him, and so diminished the amount, and
perhaps, in no slight degree, the joyous and buoyant spirit of what he
did write. Who shall say, wonderful as are the works of Shelley, all
accomplished amid ill health and the bitterest persecutions, before the
age of thirty, and most of them before the age of twenty-six, what he
would have produced had he written with the encouraging feeling of a
generous public with him? And when we regard the whole affair
impartially, it was the public which was really the greatest offender
after all. On the part of Shelley, it was a rash and boyish action. It
was the act of a really fine and noble spirit led away, and so far led
wrong, by its impetuous indignation against popular delusions and
impositions. He was not the first man, nor will he be the last, whom the
spirit of a virtuous zeal precipitates into an offense against virtue
itself. In him it was meant to be no such thing. He was honest as he was
zealous, and the world ought to have respected his honesty, if it could
not his opinions. It should have endeavored to show him, by calm and
sound reason, that he was wrong as to the existence of a God, and by its
charity and forbearance, that Christianity was true. There can be little
doubt what effect a wise conduct like this would have had on a nature
like his. As it was, spite of all the outrageous cries of infidel,
blasphemer, and atheistic wretch with which he was pursued, time showed
a wonderful change in his opinions on these matters.
The world should have recollected that it professed to be a Christian
world, and it should not have let the spirit and conduct of the infidel
put it to shame by its superior liberality and goodness. Our Savior
nowhere preached or commanded persecution, but to bless those who curse
us, and do good to those who hate us and despitefully use us. The world
did not do thus: it left poor Shelley to show this conduct to it. Christ
left a glorious example to all time--why is the Christian world blind to
it? He declared a glorious doctrine on the treatment of unbelievers--why
is the world deaf to it? He declared that he was come to seek and save
that which was lost, and to die for the conversion of those who mocked
and denied him. He nowhere left us the whip, the gag, or the sword of
extermination. He brought no such things with him out of heaven, but the
great corrector--patience; the great weapon--charity. When his disciples
ran and called upon him to silence those who performed miracles, and yet
did not follow him, he gave a reply which never should be forgotten
while the sun rises and sets: "Let them alone; ye know not what manner
of spirit ye are of."
It was Shelley who showed the spirit of the Christian, and the so-called
Christian world the spirit of the infidel. It _was_ infidel. It did not
trust to the sublime toleration of Christ, but fell to the dark, bitter
paganism of curses and hatred.
There was another particular, too, which the virtuous world should here
bear in mind. It was priestcraft, which had so disguised Christianity
with the trappings of gentile-ism that it had reduced it to the level of
a pagan system. It had introduced so much mummery, so many pagan fables,
so many false doctrines, that it had taught thousands and millions, and
does still, to confound it with the selfish impostures of heathenism
itself. No man who does not go much among the people can tell the extent
to which infidelity, and even atheism, has spread among them from this
cause. They see the great and groaning oppressions which are done under
the sun, and which endure from age to age, and they begin to doubt a
Providence which can permit this. They see the selfish arts, the pride
and luxury of pastors, and the misery of the many, and they say, these
men do not believe what they teach--they know it to be a fable. When our
countrymen travel into Catholic countries, and see millions of deluded
wretches streaming up from all quarters to adore the so-called coat of
Christ at Metz, or to have a cross touched with the Virgin Mary's
chemise, the swaddling clothes, and the grave-clothes of Jesus, hoisted
aloft in the Cathedral of Aix la Chapelle, they say, what is this
Christianity but old paganism under another name? These are the things
which make infidels. These are the men who, by their impious greed
mocking God and man at once, under the garb of teachers, stab religion
to the heart, murder faith, strangle charity, and spread moral death
from end to end of Christendom. These are they against whom the holy
anger of the zealous should be turned. The mocking devils in the
tabernacle, who, for the bread and wine of the hour, scatter perdition
through descending centuries. These are the men and things who convert
the most beautiful spirits into apostles of unbelief--who make Shelleys,
ay, and far worse men.
Shelley, indeed, was a good and noble creature. He had, spite of his
skepticism, clearly and luminously stamped on his front the highest
marks of a Christian; for the grand distinction appointed by Christ
was--love. Shelley was a Christian spite of himself. We learn from all
who knew him that the Bible was his most favorite book. He venerated the
character of Christ, and no man more fully carried out his precepts. His
delight was to do good, to comfort and assist the poor. It was his zeal
for truth and for the good of mankind which led him, in his indignation
against those who oppressed them and imposed upon them, to leap too far
in his attack on those enemies, and pass the borders which divide truth
from error. For his conscientious opinion he sacrificed ease, honor, the
world's esteem, fortune, and friendship. Never was there so generous a
friend, so truly and purely poetical a nature. Others are poets in
their books and closets; the poet's soul in him was the spirit of all
hours and all occasions. His conduct to his friend Hunt was a
magnificent example of this. Mr. Hunt himself tells us that he at once
presented him with fourteen hundred pounds to free him from
embarrassments, and he meant to do more, an intention which his son has
nobly remembered. Where are the censorious zealots who can show like
deeds? "He was," says Mr. Hunt, "pious toward his friends, toward the
whole human race, toward the meanest insect of the forest. He did
himself an injustice with the public in using the popular name of the
Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified it solely with the vulgar
and tyrannical notions of a God, made after the worst human fashion, and
did not sufficiently reflect that it was often used by a juster devotion
to express a sense of the great Mover of the universe."
The same generous, enthusiastic spirit was the living and glowing
principle of his poetry. With an imagination capable of soaring into the
highest and most ethereal regions, and drawing thence most gorgeous
colors, and most sublime, spiritual, and beautiful imagery, he preached
love and tenderness to the whole family of man, except to tyrants and
impostors. For liberty of every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge,
and truth, and kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance
of the union of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he
erred, the world took ample vengeance upon him for it; while he
conferred, in return, his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a
species of heresy to mention his name in society; that is passing fast
away. It was next said that he never could become popular, and therefore
the mischief he could do was limited. He _is_ become popular, and the
good that he is likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him:
though we may wonder at it, they comprehend him--at least so far as the
principles of freedom and progress are concerned; and in these he will
not lead them astray. He is the herald of advance, and every year must
fix him more widely and firmly in men's hearts. How truly does he
describe himself and his mission in Laon, the poet of the Revolt of
Islam:
"Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
And from the lore of bards and sages old,
From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create,
Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,
Have I collected language to unfold
Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore
Doctrines of human power my words have told;
They have been heard, and men aspire to more
Than they have ever gained, or ever lost of yore.
"In secret chambers parents read, and weep,
My writings to their babes, no longer blind;
And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,
And vows of faith each to the other bind;
And marriageable maidens, who have pined
With love, till life seemed melting through their look,
A warmer zeal, a nobler hope now find;
And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,
Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain brook.
"Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds
Abound for fearless love, and the pure law
Of mild equality and peace succeeds
To faiths which long had held the world in awe,
Bloody, and false, and cold: as whirlpools draw
All wrecks of ocean to their chasm, the sway
Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw
This hope, compels all spirits to obey,
Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array."
This extraordinary man, and most purely poetic genius of his age--this
great and fearless, and yet benign apostle of freedom, whose influence
on succeeding ages it is impossible to calculate, or calculating,
perhaps, to overrate, mixed, it is true, with a skeptical leaven deeply
to be deplored, was a descendant of a true poetic line, that of Sir
Philip Sidney. He was born at Field Place, in Sussex, on the 4th of
August, 1792. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., of
Castle Goring in that county; and his son, Percy Florence Shelley, now
bears the family title. His family connections belonged to the Whig
aristocrats of the House of Commons; and Mr. Hunt has, in the
circumstances of such birth and connection, hit, perhaps, upon the fact
which solves the mystery of a mind like Shelley's rushing into the
extreme course he did. "To a man of genius," he observes, "endowed with
a metaphysical acuteness to discern truth and falsehood, and a strong
sensibility to give way to his sense of it, such an origin, however
respectable in the ordinary point of view, was not the very luckiest
that could have happened for the purpose of keeping him within ordinary
bounds. With what feelings is truth to open its eyes upon this world,
among the most respectable of our mere party gentry? Among licensed
contradictions of all sorts? Among the Christian's doctrines, and the
worldly practices? Among fox-hunters and their chaplains? Among
beneficed loungers, noli-episcoparian bishops, rakish old gentlemen, and
more startling young ones, who are old in the folly of _knowingness_? In
short, among all those professed demands of what is right and noble,
mixed with real inculcations of what is wrong and full of hypocrisy? * *
* Mr. Shelley began to think at a very early age, and to think, too, of
these anomalies. He saw that at every step in life some compromise was
expected between the truth which he was told he was not to violate, and
a coloring and a double meaning of it, which forced him upon the
violation."
This is, no doubt, the great secret of both the noble resolve of Shelley
to burst at once loose from this conventional labyrinth, and of the
length to which the impetus of his effort carried him. He saw that truth
and falsehood were so intimately mixed in all the education, life, and
purposes of the class by which he was surrounded, that he suspected the
same mixture in every thing; and the very effort necessary to clear
himself of this state of things, plunged him into the natural result of
rejecting indiscriminately, in the case of Christianity, the grain with
the chaff. At every school to which he was sent, he found the same
system existing. Education was molded to a great national plan--to a
future support of a church and a party. The noble heart of the boy
rebelled against this sacrifice of truth to interest, and, I believe, at
every school to which he went, showed a firm resolve never to bend to
it. He was brought up for the first seven or eight years in the
retirement of Field Place with his sisters, receiving the same education
as they; and hence, it is stated, he never showed the least taste for
the sports or amusements of boys. Captain Medwin tells us that it was
not Eton, but Sion House, Brentford, to which he alludes in his
introductory stanzas to the Revolt of Islam, where he says,
"There rose
From the near school-room voices that, alas!
Were but an echo from a world of woes,
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes."
Captain Medwin, who is a relative, was Shelley's schoolfellow there, and
says, "this place was a perfect hell to Shelley. His pure and virgin
mind was shocked by the language and manners of his new companions; but,
though forced to be _with_ them, he was not _of_ them. Methinks I see
him now, pacing with rapid strides a favorite and remote spot of the
play-ground, generally alone, and where, he says, he formed these
resolutions:
'To be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check.'
"Tyranny," continues Captain Medwin, "generally produces tyranny in
common minds; not so with Shelley. Doubtless much of his hatred of
oppression may be attributed to what he saw and suffered at this
school; and so odious was the recollection of the place to both of us,
that we never made it a subject of conversation in after life. He was,
as a schoolboy, exceedingly shy, bashful, and reserved; indeed, though
peculiarly gentle, and elegant, and refined in his manners, he never
entirely got rid of his diffidence; and who would have wished he should?
With the character of true genius, he was ever modest, humble, and
prepared to acknowledge merit wherever he found it, without any desire
to shine himself by making a foil of others."
Yet it was this gentle and shy boy, who had so early resolved to be
"just, and free, and mild," that was roused by his sense of truth, and
his abhorrence of oppression, to make the most bold and determined stand
against unjust and degrading customs, however sanctioned by time, place,
or persons. At Eton, whither he went at the age of thirteen, he rose up
stoutly in opposition to the system of fagging. He organized a
conspiracy against it, and for a time compelled it to pause. While thus
resisting school tyranny, he was reading deeply of German romances and
poetry; and to Bürger's Leonora, and the ghost stories and legends of
the Black Forest, has been traced his fondness for the romantic, the
marvelous, and the mystic. His mind was rapidly unfolding, and to the
high pitch of his moral nature and aims, these stanzas from the
Dedication to the Revolt of Islam bear touching testimony:
"Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first
The clouds that wrap this world from youth did pass.
I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-day it was
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
From the near school-room voices that, alas!
Were but an echo from a world of woes,
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
"And then I clasped my hands, and looked around--
But none was near to mark my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground.
So without shame I spoke, 'I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check.' I then controlled
My tears; my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
"And from that hour did I with earnest thought
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that my tyrant knew or taught
I cared to learn; but from that secret store
Wrought linked armor for my soul before
It might walk forth to war among mankind."
This war began in earnest at Oxford. He had left Eton, it is understood,
before the usual time, and in consequence of his resistance to the
practices which he there found inconsistent with his ideas of
self-respect: what was to be hoped from Oxford? The contest into which
he soon fell with the principal of University College on theological and
metaphysical questions, quickly led to his expulsion. No circumstance in
his history has made so much noise as this; on it turned the whole
character of his destiny. He was expelled on a charge of atheism. In the
New Monthly Magazine for 1833 is given "The History of Shelley's
Expulsion from Oxford." From this account, nothing could have been more
barbarous, unfeeling, and tyrannical than the conduct of the principal
on this occasion. It appears that Shelley and some of his companions had
indulged themselves in puzzling the logicians. They had made a careful
analysis of Locke on the Human Understanding, and Hume's Essays,
particularly the latter, as was customary with those who read the
Ethics, and other treatises of Aristotle, for their degrees. They
printed a syllabus of these, and challenged, not only the heads of
houses, but others, to answer them. "It was," says the writer, "never
offered for sale; it was not addressed to the general reader, but to
the metaphysician alone; and it was so short that it only designed to
point out the line of argument. It was, in truth, a general issue; a
compendious denial of every allegation, in order to put the whole case
in proof. It was a formal mode of saying, You offer so and so--then
prove it; and thus was it understood by his more candid and intelligent
correspondents. As it was shorter, so it was plainer, and, perhaps, in
order to provoke discussion, a little bolder than Hume's Essays, a book
which occupies a conspicuous place in the library of every student. The
doctrine, if it deserve the name, was precisely similar; the necessary
and inevitable consequence of Locke's philosophy, and of the theory that
all knowledge is from without. I will not admit your conclusions, his
opponent might say; then you must deny those of Hume; I deny them; but
you must deny those of Locke also; and we will go back together to
Plato. Such was the usual course of argument; sometimes, however, he
rested on mere denial, holding his adversary to strict proof, and
deriving strength from his weakness. The young Platonist argued thus
negatively through the love of argument, and because he found a noble
joy in the fierce shock of contending minds. He loved truth, and sought
it every where, and at all hazards, frankly and boldly, like a man who
deserved to find it; but he also dearly loved victory in debate, and
warm debate for its own sake. Never was there a more unexceptionable
disputant. He was eager beyond the most ardent, but never angry and
never personal; he was the only arguer I ever knew who drew every
argument from the nature of the thing, and who never could be provoked
to descend to personal contentions."--_P. 25 of Part II._
This is a very different thing to the foul and offensive statement put
forth to the world, that Shelley avowedly, with his name, put forth a
pamphlet on atheism, challenging the whole bench of bishops to refute
it, for the sake and from the mere love of atheism. Not less disgraceful
was the manner of his expulsion. He was suspected of this pamphlet; it
is said that "a pert, meddling tutor of a college of inferior note, a
man of an insalubrious and inauspicious aspect," had secretly denounced
him to the master as the author of it; and that, for this piece of
treason, he was, as he hoped, speedily enriched with the most splendid
benefices, and finally made a bishop! The master himself is described by
a third party "as a man possessing no more intellect or erudition than
that famous ram, since translated to the stars, through grasping whose
tail less fervently than was expedient, the sister of Phryxus formerly
found a watery grave, and gave her name to the broad Hellespont." He
adds, "I thank God I have never seen that man since; he is gone to his
bed, and there let him sleep. While he lived he ate freely of the
scholar's bread, and drank freely of his cup; and he was sustained
throughout the whole term of his existence, wholly and most nobly, by
those sacred funds that were consecrated by our pious forefathers to the
advancement of learning. If the vengeance of the all-patient and
long-contemned God can ever be roused, it will surely be by some such
sacrilege!"
But let us see in what manner this swollen Boeotian ox dealt with this
ardent yet gentle stripling of seventeen--for, let it be remembered, he
was only of that age--and let us first see what was the condition of the
University at that time, in which it was made a mortal offense in a
young and zealous spirit to dispute metaphysical points.
"Whether such disputations," says the writer in the New Monthly, "were
decorous or profitable, may be perhaps doubtful; there can be no doubt,
however, since the sweet gentleness of Shelley was easily and instantly
swayed by the mild influences of friendly admonition, that had even the
least dignified of his elders suggested the propriety of pursuing his
metaphysical inquiries with less ardor, his obedience would have been
prompt and perfect. Not only had all salutary studies been long
neglected at Oxford at that time, and all wholesome discipline fallen
into decay, but the splendid endowments of the University were grossly
abused. The resident authorities of the college were, too often, men of
the lowest origin; of mean and sordid souls; destitute of every literary
attainment except that brief and narrow course of reading by which the
degree was attained; the vulgar sons of vulgar fathers; without
liberality, and wanting the manners and sympathies of gentlemen. A total
neglect of all learning, an unseemly turbulence, the most monstrous
irregularities, open and habitual drunkenness, vice, and violence, were
tolerated or encouraged, with the basest sycophancy, that the prospect
of perpetual licentiousness might fill the colleges with young men of
fortune. Whenever the rarely-exercised power of coercion was exercised,
it demonstrated the utter incapacity of our unworthy rulers, by
coarseness, ignorance, and injustice. If a few gentlemen were admitted
to fellowships, they were always absent; they were not persons of
literary pretensions, or distinguished by scholarship, and they had no
share in the government of the college."--P. 26.
It is fitting that the world should know out of what a sty, and by what
swine, Shelley was expelled from Oxford. It seems that any crime or
licentiousness might be practiced--nay, was encouraged--so that no
question of learning was provokingly pushed forward that might show the
ignorance, and thus wound the brutal pride of the fellows. Let us now
see the manner in which it was done.
"As the term was drawing to a close, and a great part of the books we
were reading together still remained unfinished, we had agreed to
increase our exertions, and to meet at an early hour. It was a fine
spring morning, on Lady Day, in the year 1811, when I went to Shelley's
rooms: he was absent; but before I had collected our books he rushed in.
He was terribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened. 'I am
expelled,' he said, as soon as he had recovered himself a little, 'I am
expelled! I was sent for suddenly a few minutes ago; I went to the
common room, where I found our master, and two or three of the fellows.
The master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and asked me if I
were the author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. I
begged to be informed for what purpose they put the question. No answer
was given; but the master loudly and angrily repeated, "Are you the
author of this book?" "If I can judge from your manner," I said, "you
are resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it is my work. If
you can prove that it is, produce your evidence; it is neither just nor
lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such a purpose. Such
proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a
free country." "Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?"
the master reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.'
"Shelley complained much of his violent and ungentleman-like deportment,
saying, 'I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well
know what vulgar insolence is; but I never met with such unworthy
treatment. I told him calmly, but firmly, that I was resolved not to
answer any questions respecting the publication on the table.' 'Then,'
said he, furiously, 'you are expelled, and I desire you will quit the
college early to-morrow morning, at the latest.'"
A regular sentence of expulsion, ready drawn up in due form, was handed
to him, under the seal of the college. So monstrous and illegal did the
outrage seem to one of Shelley's fellow-students, that he immediately
wrote a remonstrance to the master and fellows against it, declaring
that he himself, or any one else in that college, might just as well be
treated in the same manner. The consequence was, that he was immediately
treated in the same manner. He was called before this tribunal. "The
angry and troubled air," he says, in a statement to the writer of the
article, "of men assembled to commit injustice, according to established
forms, was new to me; but a native instinct told me, as soon as I
entered the room, that it was an affair of party; that whatever could
conciliate the favor of patrons was to be done without scruple, and
whatever could tend to prevent preferment was to be brushed away without
remorse." The same question was put to him; he refused to answer it, and
he was also expelled with the same summary violence. Thus were Shelley
and another youth of eighteen expelled and branded for life with the
stigma of atheism, to serve the sordid ends of those greedy
preferment-seeking fellows. They were expelled simply because they
refused to criminate themselves, and the boast of a virtuous zeal
against atheism was trumpeted abroad, which soon raised one man to a
bishopric, and others, no doubt, to what they wanted. So are sacrificed
the rare spirits of the earth for the worldly benefit of the hogs of
Epicurus. If all the youths were treated thus brutally at that age, when
doubts beset almost every man, and more especially the earnest and
inquiring, what would become of our finest and noblest characters? When
men begin to study the grounds of theology, they must study, too, what
is advanced by the opposers. The consequence is at once, that all that
has been received as fact by unquestioning boyhood, falls to the ground,
and they have to begin again, and test, through doubts and anxieties,
and amid the menaces of despair, all the evidence on which our faith is
built. Seize on any one of these inquirers at this peculiar crisis, and
expel him for atheism, and, if he be a man of quick feelings and a high
spirit, you will pretty certainly make him that for which you have
stigmatized him. His pride will unite with his doubts to fix him, to
petrify him, as it were, into incurable unbelief. It would be a brutal
and murderous procedure. Such procedure had the worst effect on Shelley.
The consequences were a sort of repudiation of him by his father and
family, who had built the highest worldly hopes on his talents. There
was a fierce hue and cry set up after him in the world, and the very
next year saw him sit down and write Queen Mab. The actions of this
portion of his life are the least defensible of any portion of it. He
seemed restless, unhappy, and put into a more antagonistic temperament
by his public expulsion from college, which he felt more deeply than was
natural to him, or could have arisen had he been treated differently. At
this period he made his first unfortunate marriage with a young woman of
humble station, and, as it proved, of very uncongenial mind. They
separated, and in her distress she some time afterward drowned herself.
Differing as I do most widely from Shelley, both in his ideas regarding
Christianity and marriage, it is but just to say that they who knew him
best, and his second wife, the celebrated daughter of celebrated
parents, Godwin and Mary Wolstoncroft, most emphatically assert their
assurances that "in all he did, at the time of doing it, he believed
himself justified to his conscience, while the various ills of poverty,
and the loss of friends, brought home to him the sad realities of life."
My opinion is, that at this period the state of excitement into which so
gross an outrage on his sensitive nature had thrown him, is to be
regarded as the most palliating cause of any thing in Shelley which was
not in perfect harmony with the general tone of his benign spirit. For
his errors at this period, though they never could be run into by
Shelley willfully, and with a consciousness of error, he suffered deeply
and severely. One of his biographers says, "Nobody could lament the
catastrophe of his wife's death more bitterly than he did. For a time it
tore his being to pieces."
For about two years after his wife's death he seemed to be wandering
about in quest of rest, and not finding it. He was at one time at the
Lakes on a pilgrimage to Southey, which, when Coleridge heard of, he
said, "Why did he not come to me? I should have understood him." Most
true. He was in London, and No. 90 Great Russell-street, oddly enough
kept by a person named Godwin, and in Mabledon Place, a corner house
next to Hastings-street, are known as lodgings of his. He was also in
Dublin, and in North Wales, where, in the absence of his landlord, Mr.
Maddocks, an extraordinary tide menacing his embankment against the sea,
Shelley put his name at the head of a subscription paper for £500, and,
carrying it round the neighborhood, raised a sum sufficient to prevent
this truly Roman work being destroyed. In 1814 he made a tour on the
Continent, visiting France, Switzerland, the Reuss, and the Rhine, the
magnificent scenery of which produced the most striking effects on his
mind. In 1815 he made a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire, and
then renting a house on Bishopsgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor
Forest, he spent the summer months in ruminating over the scenes he had
visited, and produced there his poem of Alastor, or the Spirit of
Solitude. The next year he again visited the Continent. He was now
married to Mary Wolstoncroft Godwin, who accompanied him. They fixed
their residence for a time on the banks of the Lake of Geneva.
Here Shelley and Lord Byron first met; they had corresponded before, but
here began that friendship which contributed so palpably to the
purification and elevation of tone in the higher poetry of Byron. They
seemed equally pleased with each other. Byron was occupying the Villa
Diodati; a name connected with Milton, and, perhaps, one of the noble
poet's reasons for choosing it as a residence. Shelley engaged one just
below it, in a most sequestered spot. There was no access to it in a
carriage; it stood only separated from the lake by a small garden, much
overgrown by trees, and a pathway through the vineyard of Diodati
communicated with it. The two poets entered deeply into poetical
disquisition. Nothing could be more opposite than their natures and
their poetic tendencies. Shelley was all imagination; Byron had a strong
tendency to the actual, or to that which must tell upon the general
mind: Shelley was purely spiritual; Byron had much of the world in him:
Shelley was all generosity; Byron, with a great show of it, had a
tremendous dash of the selfish. Still, they had many things in common.
They were fond of boating and pistol-shooting; they were persecuted by
public opinion; they had broken from all bonds of ordinary faith, and
were free in discussion and speculation, as the birds were in their
flight over their heads. They rowed together round the lake, and were
very near being lost in a storm upon it. They visited together Meillerie
and Clarens; and the effect of the scenery on Shelley, with the Nouvelle
Heloise in his hand, was entrancing. He visited, also, Lausanne, and
while walking in the Acacia Walk belonging to Gibbon's house, he could
not help saying, "Gibbon had a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never
felt more inclination to rail at the prejudices which clung to such a
thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire,
compel me to a contrast between Rousseau and Gibbon." His lines on the
Bridge of Arve and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty were written at this
time.
The poets and Mrs. Shelley were constantly together, out in the air amid
that sublime scenery in fine weather, and in the evenings at each
other's houses; and during a week of rain, they horrified themselves
with German ghost-stories, and gave a mutual challenge to write each one
of their own. To this we owe the Vampire, which was, on its first
appearance, attributed to Lord Byron, but was, in reality, written by
his vain satellite of a physician, Polidori. Byron wrote a story called
The Marriage of Belphegor, which was to narrate the circumstances of his
own--as he was now smarting under a recent refusal of his wife to live
with him; but on hearing from England that Lady Byron was ill, with an
impulse that did him honor, he thrust it into the fire. What Shelley did
does not appear, but the production of Mrs. Shelley was Frankenstein.
On his return to England in the autumn of that year, he had to endure
the misery of his two children being taken from him by the Court of
Chancery, on the ground of his disbelief of revealed religion, and the
authorship of Queen Mab, a work published without his consent. It was at
this period that he went to live at Great Marlowe, in Buckinghamshire.
Mrs. Shelley says, "Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this
town being at no great distance from London, and its neighborhood to the
Thames. The poem of the Revolt of Islam was written in his boat, as it
floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the
neighboring country, which is distinguished for its peculiar beauty. The
chalk-hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys
clothed with beech. The wilder portion of the country is rendered
beautiful by exuberant vegetation, and the cultivated part is
particularly fertile. With all this wealth of nature, which, either in
the form of gentlemen's parks, or soil dedicated to agriculture,
flourishes around, Marlowe was inhabited--I hope it is altered now--by a
very poor population. The women are lace-makers, and lose their health
by sedentary labor, for which they are very ill paid. The poor-laws
ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just
above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The change
produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with
them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what
alleviation he could. In winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a
severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the cottages. I
mention these things--for this minute and active sympathy with his
fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations, and
stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race."
Shelley does not seem to have had any acquaintance at Marlowe or in the
neighborhood; it was simply the charm of the country and the river which
attracted him; but his friend Mr. Peacock, of the India House, was
residing there at the time, either drawn there by Shelley, or Shelley
by him. Marlowe stands in a fine open valley, on the banks of the
Thames. The river here is beautiful, running bankful through the most
beautiful meadows, level as a bowling green, of the richest verdure, and
of a fine, ample, airy extent. Beyond the river these meadows are
bounded by steep hills clothed with noble woods, and a more charming
scene for boating can not be imagined. The grass and flowers on the
river margin overhang and dip lovingly into the waters, which, from
running over a chalk bottom, are as transparent nearly as the air
itself; and at the various turns of the river new features of beauty
salute you. Impending woods, which invite you to land and stroll away
into them; solitary valleys, where house or man is not seen; and then,
again, cultivated farms, and hills covered with flocks. No wonder that
Shelley was all summer floating upon this fine river, and luxuriating in
the composition of his splendid poem. A little below the town stands the
village of Little Marlowe, with its gray church, and old manor-house,
called Bisham Abbey, amid its fine trees; and around, a lovely scene of
the softly flowing, beautiful river, the level meads, and the hills and
woods. On the other side of the town, the country is of that clear,
bright aspect, with its tillage farms and isolated clumps of beech on
swelling hills, which always marks a chalk district. The town itself is
small, and intensely quiet. The houses are low and clean-looking, as if
no smoke ever fell on them from the pure diaphanous air. It consists of
three principal streets, something in the shape of the letter T, with
some smaller ones. In passing along it, you would not suspect it of that
intense poverty which Mrs. Shelley speaks of, though, from the wretched
depression of the hand-lace weaving, it may exist. The houses have a
neat miniature look, and the people look cheerful, healthy, and the
women of a very agreeable expression of countenance.
Such was the spot where Shelley resided eight-and-twenty years ago. His
house was in the main street--a long stuccoed dwelling, of that species
of nondescript architecture which once was thought Gothic, because it
had pointed windows and battlements. It must have been then a spacious
and a very pleasant residence. It is now, as is the lot of most places
in which poets have lived, desolated and desecrated. It is divided into
three tenements, a school, a private house, and a pot-house. I entered
the latter, and with a strange feeling. In a large room with a boarded
floor, and which had probably been Shelley's dining-room, was a sort of
bar partitioned off, and a number of visitors were drinking on benches
along the walls, which still bore traces, amid disfigurement and stains,
of former taste. The garden behind had evidently been extensive, and
very pleasant. There were remains of fine evergreen trees, and of a
mound on which grew some deciduous cypresses, where had evidently stood
a summer-house. This was gone. The garden was divided into as many
portions as there were now tenants, and all evidences of care had
vanished from it. Along the side of it, however, lay a fine open meadow,
and the eye ran across this to some sweetly wooded hills. It was a
melancholy thing to go back to the time when Shelley and his wife and
friends walked in this garden, enjoying it and its surrounding quiet
scenery, and to reflect what had been the subsequent fate of it and him.
Among the poor of the town the remembrance of his benevolence and
unassuming kindness had still chroniclers; but from the other classes
little could be learned, and that not what the memory of such a man
deserves. One old shopkeeper, not far from his house, remembered him,
and "hoped his children did not take after him." "Why?" "Oh! he was a
very bad man!" "Indeed! what bad actions did he do?" "Oh! I beg your
pardon! he did no bad actions that I ever heard of, but, on the
contrary, he was uncommonly good to the poor; but then--" "But then,
what?" "Why, he did not believe in the devil!" Such are the fruits of
bigot teaching. Christ says, "By their _fruits_ shall ye know" men; but
those calling themselves his followers say, "No;" no matter what good
fruits men produce, they are all doomed to perdition if they cast a
single aspersion on that very favorite personage, Satan. I begged the
poor man, of whom I found Shelley bought no groceries, to at least leave
Shelley to the judgment of his God and of Christ, who came to seek and
to save all that were lost; and to believe those great assurances of the
Gospel, that the prodigal, when he had committed all kind of crimes,
found not only a pacified, but a fond father; that he that hath not
charity is as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and that he that
loveth intensely, though he may think very erroneously, will stand a
very fair chance with the Father of love himself.
"But, pray, what has become of this Mr. Shelley, then?" asked the man's
wife, who had come from an inner room. "He was drowned," I replied. "Oh!
that's just what one might have expected. Drowned! Lud-a-mercy! ay, just
what we might ha' said he'd come to. He was always on the water, always
boating, boating--never easy but when he was in that boat. Do you know
what a trick was played him by some wag?" "No." "He called his boat
'_Vaga_,' and one morning he found the name lengthened by a piece of
chalk with the word '_bond_'--_Vagabond_. There are clever fellows here
as well as in London, mind you. But Mr. Shelley was not offended. He
only laughed; for, you see, he did not believe in a devil, and so he
thought there could be nothing wrong. He used to say, when he heard of
any wickedness, 'Ah, poor people! it's only ignorance; if they knew
better, they'd do better!' Oh! what darkness and heathenry! to excuse
sin, and feel no godly jealousy against wickedness!" I found that the
crabbed creedsman had been there too long before me. My hint about
charity was thrown away, and I moved off, lest both myself and Jesus
Christ, who would not condemn even the adulteress at the desire of the
vengeful and the sensual, should be found wanting in holy indignation
too.
It was in vain that I inquired among the class of little gentry in the
place for information about Shelley; they knew nothing of any such
person. At length, after much research, and the running to and fro of
waiters from the inn, I was directed to an ancient surgeon, who had
attended almost every body for the last half century. I found him an old
man of nearly ninety. He recollected Shelley; had attended him, but knew
little about him. He was a very unsocial man, he said; kept no company
but Mr. Peacock's, and that of his boat, and was never seen in the town
but he had a book in his hand, and was reading as he went along. The old
gentleman, however, kindly sent his servant to point out Shelley's house
to me, and as I returned up the street, I saw him standing bare-headed
on the pavement before his door, in active discourse with various
neighbors. My inquiries had evidently aroused the Marlowean curiosity.
On coming up, the old gentleman inquired eagerly if I wanted to learn
more yet about Mr. Shelley--I had learned little or nothing. I replied
that I should be very happy. "Then," said he, "come in, sir, for I have
sent for a gentleman who knows all about him." I entered, and found a
tall, well-dressed man, with a very solemn aspect. "It is the squire of
the place," said I to myself. With a very solemn bow he arose, and with
very solemn bows we sat down opposite to each other. "I am happy to
hear," said I, "that you knew Mr. Shelley, and can give me some
particulars regarding his residence here." "I can, sir," he replied,
with another solemn bow. I waited to hear news, but I waited in vain.
That Mr. Shelley had lived there, and that he had long left there, and
that his house was down the street, and that he was a very extraordinary
man, he knew, and I knew; but that was all: not a word of his doings or
his sayings at Marlowe came out of the solemn brain of that large,
solemn man. But at length a degree of interest appeared to gather in
his cheeks and brighten in his eyes. "Thank God!" I exclaimed, inwardly.
"The man is slow, but it is coming now." His mouth opened, and he said,
"But pray, sir, what became of that Mr. Shelley?"
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "What! did you never hear? Did it never
reach Marlowe--but thirty miles from London--that sad story of his
death, which created a sensation throughout the civilized world?" No,
the thing had never penetrated into the Boeotian denseness of that
place! I rose up, and now bowed solemnly too. "And, pray, what family
might he leave?" asked the solemn personage, as I was hasting away. "You
will learn that," I said, still going away, "in the Baronetage, if such
a book ever reaches Marlowe."
I hastened to the inn, where my chaise was standing ready for my
departure, and was just in the act of entering it, when I heard a sort
of outcry, perceived a sort of bustle behind me, and, turning my head,
saw the tall and solemn man hasting with huge and anxious strides after
me.
"You'll excuse me, sir--you'll excuse me, I think; but I _could_ relate
to you a fact, and I think I _will_ venture to relate to you a fact
connected with the late Mr. Shelley." "Do," said I. "I think I _will_,"
replied the tall, stout man, heaving a deep sigh, and erecting himself
to his full height, far above my head, and casting a most awful glance
at the sky; "I _think_ I will--I _think_ I may venture." "It is
certainly something very sad and agonizing," I said to myself; "but I
wish he would only bring it out." "Well, then," continued he, with
another heave of his capacious chest, and another great glance at the
distant horizon, "I certainly will mention it. It was this: When Mr.
Shelley left Marlowe, he ordered all his bills to be paid,
most honorably, certainly most honorably; and they were
paid--all--except--mine! There, sir! it is out; excuse it--excuse it;
but I am glad it is out."
"What! a bill!" I exclaimed, in profoundest astonishment; "a bill! was
that all?"
"All, sir! all! every thing of the sort; every shilling, I assure you,
has been paid but my little account; and it was my fault; I don't know
how in the world I forgot to send it in."
"What!" said I, "are you not the squire here? What are you?"
"Oh, Lord! no, sir! I am no squire here! I am a tradesman! I am--in the
general way!"
"Drive on!" I said, springing into the carriage; "drive like the Dragon
of Wantley out of this place: Shelley is remembered in Marlowe because
there was one bill left unpaid!"
There again is fame. It would be a curious thing if the man who deems
himself most thoroughly and universally famous, and walks about in the
comfortable persuasion of it, could see his fame mapped upon the
country. What an odd figure it would make! A few feeble rays shooting
here and there, but all around what vast patches of unvisited country,
what unilluminated regions, what deserts of oblivion of his name!
Shelley lived, and suffered, and spent himself for mankind; and, in the
place where he last lived in England, within thirty miles of the great
metropolis of genius and knowledge, he is only remembered by a bad joke
on his boat, by his disbelief of the devil, and by a forgotten bill.
Were it not forgotten, he had been so! _Eheu! jam satis._
On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England once more. He was
never to return. His own fate and that of Byron were wonderfully alike.
The two greatest, most original, most powerful, and influential poets of
the age were driven into exile by the public feeling of their country.
They could not bring themselves to think on political questions with a
large party, nor on religious ones with a still larger; and every
species of vituperation and insult was let loose upon them. As if
charity and forbearance had been heathen qualities, and wrath and
calumny Christian virtues, the British public most loftily resolved not
to do as Christ required them--to love those who hated them and
despitefully used them--but to hate those who loved them, and had noble
virtues, though they had their errors. Their errors should have been
lamented, and their doctrines refuted as much as possible; but there is
no law, human or divine, that can release us from the law of love, and
the command of seventy times seven forgiveness of injuries. Both these
great men died in their exile of hatred; the world had its will for the
time, and the spirits of these dead outcasts must now have their will,
in their deathless volumes, to the end of time.
If any one would know what sort of a man this moral monster, Shelley,
was, let him read the eloquent account of him and his life at Oxford in
the New Monthly Magazine for 1832, written by one who was his friend and
companion, and who, Mrs. Shelley says, has described him most
faithfully. There we find him full of zeal for learning; most zealous in
accumulating knowledge; overflowing in kindness; indignant against all
oppression to man or to animals. Never failing to rush in on witnessing
any cruelty or hearing of any calamity, to stop the one and alleviate
the other. Full of gayety and fun as a child, sailing his paper boats on
every pool and stream, or rambling far and wide over the country in
earnest talk and deep love of all nature. He was ready to caress
children, to smile on even gipsies and beggars, to run for refreshment
for starving people by the way side, pledging even his favorite
microscope, his daily means of recreation, to assist a poor old man.
Such was the dreadful creature that must be expelled from colleges, have
his children torn from him to prevent the contamination of his virtues,
and to be hooted out of his native land. Yet, amid all the anguish that
this inflicted on him, he was ever ready still to do a sublime good, or
enter with the most boyish relish into the merest joke. Nothing can
convey a more vivid idea of the latter disposition--which is not that of
a man systematically malicious, which is the true spirit of
wickedness--than to quote a joke related to him by the writer of these
articles, and see the manner in which it was enjoyed.
"I was walking one afternoon, in the summer, on the western side of that
short street leading from Long Acre to Covent Garden, where the
passenger is earnestly invited, as a personal favor to the demandant, to
proceed straightway to Highgate or Kentish Town, and which is called, I
think, James-street. I was about to enter Covent Garden, when an Irish
laborer, whom I met bearing an empty hod, accosted me somewhat roughly,
and asked why I had run against him. I told him briefly that he was
mistaken. Whether somebody had actually pushed the man, or he only
sought to quarrel, and although he, doubtless, attended a weekly row
regularly, and the week was already drawing to a close, he was unable to
wait till Sunday for a broken head, I know not, but he discoursed for
some time with the vehemence of a man who considers himself injured or
insulted, and he concluded, being emboldened by my long silence, with a
cordial invitation just to push him again. Several persons, not very
unlike in costume, had gathered round him, and appeared to regard him
with sympathy. When he paused, I addressed him slowly and quietly, and
it should seem with great gravity, these words, as nearly as I can
recollect them: 'I have put my hand into the hamper; I have looked upon
the sacred barley; I have eaten out of the drum! I have drunk, and was
well pleased; I have said, [Greek: konx ompax], and it is finished!'
'Have you, sir?' inquired the astonished Irishman; and his ragged
friends instantly pressed round him with, 'Where is the hamper, Paddy?'
'What barley? and the like. And ladies from his own country, that is to
say, the basket-women, suddenly began to interrogate him; 'Now, I say,
Pat, where have you been drinking? What have you had?' I turned,
therefore, to the right, leaving the astounded neophyte, whom I had thus
planted, to expound the mystic words of initiation as he could to his
inquisitive companions. As I walked slowly under the piazzas, and
through the streets and courts toward the West, I marveled at the
ingenuity of Orpheus--if he were, indeed, the inventor of the Eleusinian
mysteries; that he was able to devise words that, imperfectly as I had
repeated them, and in the tattered fragment that has reached us, were
able to soothe people so savage and barbarous as those to whom I had
addressed them, and which, as the apologists for those venerable rites
affirm, were manifestly well adapted to incite persons who hear them for
the first time, however rude they may be, to ask questions. Words that
can awaken curiosity even in the sluggish intellect of a wild man, and
can open the inlet of knowledge!"
"_Konx ompax_; and it is finished!" exclaimed Shelley, crowing with
enthusiastic delight at my whimsical adventure. A thousand times, as he
strode about the house, and in his rambles out of doors, he would stop
and repeat the mystic words of initiation, but always with an energy of
manner, and a vehemence of tone and gesture, that would have prevented
the ready acceptance which a calm, passionless delivery had once
procured for them. How often would he throw down his book, clasp his
hands, and, starting from his seat, cry suddenly, with a thrilling
voice, "I have said _Konx ompax_; and it is finished!"
This child-like, this great, and greatly kind, and if men would have let
him, this light-hearted man, thus then quitted England. Like Byron, he
sought a home in Italy. He lived in various cities, and wrote there his
very finest works; among them, Prometheus Unbound; The Cenci; Hellas;
part of Rosalind and Helen; his Ode to Liberty, perhaps the very finest
ode in the language, and certainly, in its description of Athens, never
excelled in any piece of description in any language; Adonais, an elegy
on the death of Keats, and those very melancholy verses written in the
Bay of Naples. He was drowned, as is well known, by the sinking of his
boat in a squall, in the Gulf of Spezia, in the summer of 1822, at the
age of thirty.
Shelley must have enjoyed this portion of his life beyond all others,
had he been in health and spirits. He was united to a woman worthy of
him, and who could partake of all his intellectual pleasures. Children
were growing around him, and he was living in that beautiful country,
surrounded by the remains of former art and history, and under that fine
sky, pouring out from heart and brain, glorious, and impassioned, and
immortal works. But his health failed him, and the darts of calumny were
rankling in his bosom, depressing his spirits, and sapping his
constitution. I can only allow myself a few passing glances at his homes
in Italy, of which Mrs. Shelley has given us such delightful sketches in
the notes to her edition of her husband's poems.
They went direct to Milan, and visited the Lake of Como; then proceeding
to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and
back to Rome for the winter. There he chiefly wrote his Prometheus. In
1818 they were at the Baths of Lucca, where Shelley finished Rosalind
and Helen. Thence he visited Venice, and occupied a house lent him by
Lord Byron at Este. "I Capucini was a villa built on the site of a
Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious
houses. It was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill, at
the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant;
a vine-trellised walk, or pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from
the hall door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley
made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here, also, as
he mentioned in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo. A slight ravine,
with a wood in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which
stood the ruins of the ancient Castle of Este, whose dark, massive wall
gave forth an echo, and from whose ivied crevices owls and bats flitted
forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy
battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy,
bounded to the west by the far Apennines; while to the east, the horizon
was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of
mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was
something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect
commanded by our new abode."
Here they lost a little girl, and quitting the neighborhood of Venice,
they proceeded southward. Shelley was delighted beyond expression with
the scenery and antiquities of Italy. "The aspect of its nature, its
sunny sky, its majestic streams; the luxuriant vegetation of the
country, and the noble, marble-built cities, enchanted him. The first
entrance to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of ancient grandeur
that far surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of
Naples and its environs added to the impression he received of the
transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy."
The winter was spent at Naples, where they lived in utter solitude, yet
greatly enjoyed their excursions along its sunny sea or into its
beautiful environs. From Naples they returned to Rome, where they
arrived in March, 1819. Here they had the old MS. account of the story
of the Cenci put into their hands, and visited the Doria and Colonna
palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found. Her beauty
cast the reflection of its grace over her appalling story, and Shelley
conceived the subject of his masterly drama. In Rome they lost their
eldest child, a very lovely and engaging boy, and, quitting the Eternal
City, took the villa Valsovano, between Leghorn and Monte Nero, where
they resided during the summer. "Our villa," says Mrs. Shelley, "was
situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked
beneath our windows, during the heat of a very hot season; and in the
evening the water-wheel creaked as the progress of irrigation went on,
and the fire-flies flashed among the myrtle hedges; nature was bright,
sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror,
such as we had never before witnessed.
"At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often
such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only
roofed, but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide
prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The
storms that sometimes varied our day, showed themselves most
picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean. Sometimes the dark,
lurid clouds dipped toward the waves, and became water-spouts, that
churned up the waters beneath as they were chased onward, and scattered
by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it
almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his
health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he
wrote the principal part of the Cenci."
They spent part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed
several hours dayly in the Gallery, studying the works of art, and
making notes. The summer of 1820 was spent chiefly at the Baths of
Guiliano, near Pisa, where Shelley made a solitary journey on foot
during some of the hottest weather of the season to the summit of Monte
San Pelegrino, a mountain on which stands a pilgrimage chapel, much
frequented; and during this expedition he conceived the idea of The
Witch of Atlas, and immediately on his return sat down and wrote it in
three days. An overflowing of the Serchio inundated the house, and
caused them to quit San Guiliano: they returned to Pisa.
In 1821, the Spanish Revolution excited throughout Italy a similar
spirit. In Naples, Genoa, Piedmont, almost every where, the spirit of
revolt showed itself; and Shelley, still at Pisa, sympathized
enthusiastically with these movements. Then came the news of the Greek
insurrection, and the battle of Navarino, which put the climax to his
joy; and in this exultation he wrote Hellas. These circumstances seem to
have given a new life to him. He had now his new boat, and was sailing
it on the Arno. It was a pleasant summer, says Mrs. Shelley, bright in
all but Shelley's health; yet he enjoyed himself greatly. He was in high
anticipation of the arrival of Leigh Hunt; and at this juncture, the now
happy poet and his family made their last remove. Let us give the deeply
interesting picture of Shelley's last home in the words of his gifted
wife.
"The Bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and is divided by a rocky
promontory into a larger and a smaller one. The town of Lerici is
situated on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay,
which bears the name of this town, is the village of Sant Arenzo. Our
house, Casa Magni, was close to this village; the sea came up to the
door, a steep hill sheltered it behind. The proprietor of the estate was
insane; he had begun to erect a large house at the summit of the hill
behind, but his malady prevented its being finished, and it was falling
into ruin. He had, and this, to the Italians, seemed a glaring symptom
of decided madness, rooted up the olives on the hill-side, and planted
forest trees. These were mostly young; but the plantation was more in
English taste than I ever saw elsewhere in Italy. Some fine walnut and
ilex trees intermingled their dark, massy foliage, and formed groups
which still haunt my memory, as then they satiated the eye with a sense
of loveliness. The scene was, indeed, of unimaginable beauty; the blue
extent of waters, the almost land-locked bay, the near Castle of Lerici,
shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to the west; the
various forms of precipitous rocks that bound in the beach, near which
there was only a winding, rugged path toward Lerici, and none on the
other side; the tideless sea, leaving no sands nor shingle, formed a
picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's landscapes only. Sometimes
the sunshine vanished when the sirocco raged--the ponente, the wind was
called on that shore. The gales and squalls that hailed our first
arrival surrounded the bay with foam; the howling wind swept round our
exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly, so that we almost
fancied ourselves on board ship. At other times sunshine and calm
invested sea and sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven bathed the
scene in bright and ever-varying hues.
"The natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbors, of Sant
Arenzo, were more like savages than any people I ever before lived
among. Many a night they passed on the beach, singing, or, rather,
howling; the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their
feet, the men leaning against the rocks, and joining in their loud, wild
chorus. We could get no provisions nearer than Sarzana, at a distance of
three miles and a half off, with the torrent of the Margra between; and
even there the supply was deficient. Had we been wrecked on an island of
the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves further from
civilization and comfort; but where the sun shines, the latter becomes
an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among ourselves. Yet, I
confess, housekeeping became rather a toilsome task, especially as I was
suffering in my health, and could not exert myself actively."
To this wild region they had come to indulge Shelley's passion for
boating. News came of Leigh Hunt having arrived at Pisa. Shelley, and
his friend Captain Ellerker Williams, set out to welcome him, and were
on their return to Lerici when the fatal squall came on, and they went
down in a moment. The particulars of that event, and the singular scene
of the burning of the body by his friends, Byron, Hunt, Trelawney, and
Captain Shenley, have been so vividly related by Mr. Hunt as to be
familiar to every one. Shelley had gone down with the last volume of
Keats, the Lamia, &c., in his jacket pocket, where it was found open.
The bodies came on shore near Via Reggio, but had been so long in the
sea as to be much decomposed. Wood was therefore collected on the
strand, and they were burned in the old classical style. The magnificent
Bay of Spezia, says Mr. Hunt, is on the right of this spot, Leghorn on
the left, at equal distances of about twenty-two miles. The headlands
projecting boldly and far into the sea, form a deep and dangerous gulf,
with a heavy swell and a strong current generally running right into it.
So ended this extraordinary man his short, but eventful and influential
life; and his ashes were buried near his friend John Keats, under a
beautiful ruined tower in the English burial-ground at Rome. It was
remarkable, that Shelley always said that no presentiment of evil ever
came to him except as an unusual elevation of spirits. When he was last
seen, just before his embarking for his return, he was said to be in
most brilliant spirits. On the contrary, Mrs. Shelley says, "If ever
shadow of evil darkened the present hour, such was over my mind when
they went. During the whole of our stay at Lerici an intense
presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and covered this
beautiful place and genial summer with the shadow of coming misery. * *
A vague expectation of evil shook me to agony, and I could scarcely
bring myself to let them go." The very beauty of the place, she says,
seemed unearthly in its excess; the distance they were from all signs of
civilization, the sea at their feet, its murmurings or its roarings
forever in their ears, led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and,
lifting it from every-day life, caused it to be familiar with the
unreal. "Shelley," she adds, "had now, as it seemed, almost anticipated
his own destiny; and when the mind figures his skiff wrapped from sight
by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen upon the purple sea, and then
as the cloud of the tempest passed away, no sign remained of where it
had been--who but will regard as a prophecy the last stanza of the
Adonais?
'The breath, whose might I have invoked in song,
Descend upon me: my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng,
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
While burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the eternal are.'"