SHELLEY.

Whatever opinion may be held with regard to the relative position

occupied by Shelley as a poet, it will be granted by most of those who

have studied his writings, that they are of such an individual and

original kind, that he can neither be hidden in the shade, nor lost in

the brightness, of any other poet. No idea of his works could be

conveyed by instituting a comparison, for he does not sufficiently

resemble any other among English writers to make such a comparison

possible.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in the

county of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. He was the son of Timothy

Shelley, Esq., and grandson of Sir Bysshe Shelley, the first baronet.

His ancestors had long been large landed proprietors in Sussex.

As a child his habits were noticeable. He was especially fond of

rambling by moonlight, of inventing wonderful tales, of occupying

himself with strange, and sometimes dangerous, amusements. At the age of

thirteen he went to Eton. In this little world, that determined

opposition to whatever appeared to him an invasion of human rights and

liberty, which was afterwards the animating principle of most of his

writings, was first roused in the mind of Shelley. Were we not aware of

far keener distress which he afterwards endured from yet greater

injustice, we might suppose that the sufferings he had to bear from

placing himself in opposition to the custom of the school, by refusing

to fag, had made him morbidly sensitive on the point of liberty. At a

time, however, when freedom of speech, as indicating freedom of thought,

was especially obnoxious to established authorities; when no allowance

could be made on the score of youth, still less on that of individual

peculiarity, Shelley became a student at Oxford. He was then eighteen.

Devoted to metaphysical speculation, and especially fond of logical

discussion, he, in his first year, printed and distributed among the

authorities and members of his college a pamphlet, if that can be called

a pamphlet which consisted only of two pages, in which he opposed the

usual arguments for the existence of a Deity; arguments which, perhaps,

the most ardent believers have equally considered inconclusive. Whether

Shelley wrote this pamphlet as an embodiment of his own opinions, or

merely as a logical confutation of certain arguments, the mode of

procedure adopted with him was certainly not one which necessarily

resulted from the position of those to whose care the education of his

opinions was entrusted. Without waiting to be assured that he was the

author, and satisfying themselves with his refusal to answer when

questioned as to the authorship, they handed him his sentence of

expulsion, which had been already drawn up in due form.

About this time Shelley wrote, or commenced writing, _Queen Mab_, a poem

which he never published, although he distributed copies among his

friends. In after years he had such a low opinion of it in every

respect, that he regretted having printed it at all; and when an edition

of it was published without his consent, he applied to the Court of

Chancery for an injunction to suppress it.

Shelley’s opinions in politics and theology, which he appears to have

been far more anxious to maintain than was consistent with the peace of

the household, were peculiarly obnoxious to his father, a man as

different from his son as it is possible to conceive; and his expulsion

from Oxford was soon followed by exile from his home. He went to London,

where, through his sisters, who were at school in the neighbourhood, he

made the acquaintence of Harriet West brook, whom he eloped with and

married, when he was nineteen and she sixteen years of age. It seems

doubtful whether the attachment between them was more than the result of

the reception accorded by the enthusiasm of the girl to the enthusiasm

of the youth, manifesting itself in wild talk about human rights, and

equally wild plans for their recovery and security. However this may be,

the result was unfortunate. They wandered about England, Scotland, and

Ireland, with frequent and sudden change of residence, for rather more

than two years. During this time Shelley gained the friendship of some

of the most eminent men of the age, of whom the one who exercised the

most influence upon his character and future history was William Godwin,

whose instructions and expostulations tended to reduce to solidity and

form the vague and extravagant opinions and projects of the youthful

reformer. Shortly after the commencement of the third year of their

married life, an estrangement of feeling, which had been gradually

widening between them, resulted in the final separation of the poet and

his wife. We are not informed as to the causes of this estrangement,

further than that it seems to have been owing, in a considerable degree,

to the influence of an elder sister of Mrs. Shelley, who domineered over

her, and whose presence became at last absolutely hateful to Shelley.

His wife returned to her father’s house; where, apparently about three

years after, she committed suicide. There seems to have been no

immediate connection between this act and any conduct of Shelley. One of

his biographers informs us, that while they were living happily

together, suicide was with Mrs. Shelley a favourite subject of

speculation and conversation.

Shortly after his first wife’s death, Shelley married the daughter of

William Godwin. He had lived with her almost from the date of the

separation, during which time they had twice visited Switzerland. In the

following year (1817), it was decreed in Chancery that Shelley was not a

proper person to take charge of his two children by his first wife, who

had lived with her till her death. The bill was filed in Chancery by

their grandfather, Mr. Westbrook. The effects of this proceeding upon

Shelley may be easily imagined. Perhaps he never recovered from them,

for they were not of a nature to pass away. During this year he resided

at Marlow, and wrote _The Revolt of Islam_, besides portions of other

poems; and the next year he left England, not to return. The state of

his health, for he had appeared to be in a consumption for some time,

and the fear lest his son, by his second wife, should be taken from him,

combined to induce him to take refuge in Italy from both impending

evils. At Lucca he began his _Prometheus_, and wrote _Julian and

Maddalo_. He moved from place to place in Italy, as he had done in his

own country. Their two children dying, they were for a time left

childless; but the loss of these grieved Shelley less than that of his

eldest two, who were taken from him by the hand of man. In 1819, Shelley

finished his _Prometheus Unbound_, writing the greater part at Rome, and

completing it at Florence. In this year also he wrote his tragedy, _The

Cenci_, which attracted more attention during his lifetime than any

other of his works. The _Ode to a Skylark_ was written at Leghorn in the

spring of 1820; and in August of the same year, the _Witch of Atlas_ was

written, near Pisa. In the following year Shelley and Byron met at Pisa.

They were a good deal together; but their friendship, although real,

does not appear to have been of a very profound nature; for though

unlikeness be one of the necessary elements of friendship, there are

kinds of unlikeness which will not harmonize. During all this time, he

was not only maligned by unknown enemies, and abused by anonymous

writers, but attempts of other kinds are said to have been made to

render his life as uncomfortable as possible. There are grounds,

however, for doubting whether Shelley was not subject to a kind of

monomania upon this and similar points. In 1821, he wrote his _Adonais_,

a monody on the death of Keats. Part of this poem had its origin in the

mistaken notion, that the illness and death of Keats were caused by a

brutal criticism of his _Endymion_, which appeared in the _Quarterly

Review_. The last verse of the _Adonais_ seems almost prophetic of his

own end. Passionately fond of boating, he and a friend of his, Mr.

Williams, united in constructing a boat of a peculiar build, a very fast

sailer, but difficult to manage. On the 8th of July, 1822, Shelley and

his friend Williams sailed from Leghorn for Lerici, on the Bay of

Spezia, near which lay his home for the time. A sudden squall came on,

and their boat disappeared. The bodies of the two friends were cast on

shore; and, according to quarantine regulations, were burned to ashes.

Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Mr. Trelawney were present when the body of

Shelley was burned; so that his ashes were saved, and buried in the

Protestant burial-ground at Rome, near the grave of Keats, whose body

had been laid there in the spring of the preceding year. _Cor Cordium_

were the words inscribed by his widow on the tomb of the poet.

The character of Shelley has been sadly maligned. Whatever faults he may

have committed against society, they were not the result of sensuality.

One of his biographers, who was his companion at Oxford, and who does

not seem inclined to do him _more_ than justice, asserts that while

there his conduct was immaculate. The whole picture he gives of the

youth, makes it easy to believe this. To discuss the moral question

involved in one part of his history would be out of place here; but even

on the supposition that a man’s conduct is altogether inexcusable in

individual instances, there is the more need that nothing but the truth

should be said concerning that, and other portions thereof. And whatever

society may have thought itself justified in making subject of

reprobation, it must be remembered that Shelley was under less

obligation to society than most men. Yet his heart seemed full of love

to his kind; and the distress which the oppression of others caused him,

was the source of much of that wild denunciation which exposed him to

the contempt and hatred of those who were rendered uncomfortable by his

unsparing and indiscriminate anathemas. In private, he was beloved by

all who knew him; a steady, generous, self-denying friend, not only to

those who moved in his own circle, but to all who were brought within

the reach of any aid he could bestow. To the poor he was a true and

laborious benefactor. That man must have been good to whom the heart of

his widow returns with such earnest devotion and thankfulness in the

recollection of the past, and such fond hope for the future, as are

manifested by Mrs. Shelley in those extracts from her private journal

given us by Lady Shelley.

As regards his religious opinions, one of the thoughts which most

strongly suggest themselves is,--how ill he must have been instructed in

the principles of Christianity! He says himself in a letter to Godwin,

“I have known no tutor or adviser (_not excepting my father_) from whose

lessons and suggestions I have not recoiled with disgust.” So far is he

from being an opponent of Christianity properly so called, that one can

hardly help feeling what a Christian he would have been, could he but

have seen Christianity in any other way than through the traditional and

practical misrepresentations of it which surrounded him. All his attacks

on Christianity are, in reality, directed against evils to which the

true doctrines of Christianity are more opposed than those of Shelley

could possibly be. How far he was excusable in giving the name of

Christianity to what he might have seen to be only a miserable

perversion of it, is another question, and one which hardly admits of

discussion here. It was in the _name_ of Christianity, however, that the

worst injuries of which he had to complain were inflicted upon him.

Coming out of the cathedral at Pisa one day, [Footnote: From _Shelley

Memorials_, edited by Lady Shelley, which the writer of this paper has

principally followed in regard to the external facts of Shelley’s

history.] Shelley warmly assented to a remark of Leigh Hunt, “that a

divine religion might be found out, if charity were really made the

principle of it instead of faith.” Surely the founders of Christianity,

even when they magnified faith, intended thereby a spiritual condition,

of which the central principle is coincident with charity. Shelley’s own

feelings towards others, as judged from his poetry, seem to be tinctured

with the very essence of Christianity. [Footnote: His _Essay on

Christianity_ is full of noble views, some of which are held at the

present day by some of the most earnest believers. At what time of his

life it was written we are not informed; but it seems such as would

insure his acceptance with any company of intelligent and devout

Unitarians.] He did not, at one time at least, believe that we could

know the source of our being; and seemed to take it as a self-evident

truth, that the Creator could not be like the creature. But it is unjust

to fix upon any utterance of opinion, and regard it as the religion of a

man who died in his thirtieth year, and whose habits of thinking were

such, that his opinions must have been in a state of constant change.

Coleridge says in a letter: “His (Shelley’s) discussions, tending

towards atheism of a certain sort, would not have scared _me;_ for _me_

it would have been a semitransparent larva, soon to be sloughed, and

through which I should have seen the true _image_--the final

metamorphosis. Besides, I have ever thought that sort of atheism the

next best religion to Christianity; nor does the better faith I have

learned from Paul and John interfere with the cordial reverence I feel

for Benedict Spinoza.”

Shelley’s favourite study was metaphysics. The more impulse there is in

any direction, the more education and experience are necessary to

balance that impulse: one cannot help thinking that Shelley’s _taste_

for exercises of this kind was developed more rapidly than the

corresponding _power_. His favourite physical studies were chemistry and

electricity. With these he occupied himself from his childhood;

apparently, however, with more delight in the experiments themselves,

than interest in the general conclusions to be arrived at by means of

them. In the embodiment of his metaphysical ideas in poetry, the

influence of these studies seems to show itself; for he uses forms which

appeal more to the outer senses than to the inward eye; and his similes

belong to the realm of the fancy, rather than the imagination: they lack

_vital_ resemblance. Logic had considerable attractions for him. To

geometry and mathematics he was quite indifferent. One of his

biographers states that “he was neglectful of flowers,” because he had

no interest in botany; but one who derived such full delight from the

contemplation of their external forms, could hardly be expected to feel

very strongly the impulse to dissect them. He derived exceeding pleasure

from Greek literature, especially from the works of Plato.

Several little peculiarities in Shelley’s tastes are worth mentioning,

because, although in themselves insignificant, they seem to correspond

with the nature of his poetry. Perhaps the most prominent of these was

his passion for boat-sailing. He could not pass any piece of water

without launching upon it a number of boats, constructed from what paper

he could find in his pockets. The fly-leaves of the books he was in the

way of carrying with him, for he was constantly reading, often went to

this end. He would watch the fate of these boats with the utmost

interest, till they sank or reached the opposite side. He was just as

fond of real boating, and that frequently of a dangerous kind; but it is

characteristic of him, that all the boats he describes in his poems are

of a fairy, fantastic sort, barely related to the boats which battle

with earthly winds and waves. Pistol-shooting was also a favourite

amusement. Fireworks, too, gave him great delight. Some of his habits

were likewise peculiar. He was remarkably abstemious, preferring bread

and raisins to anything else in the way of eating, and very seldom

drinking anything stronger than water. Honey was a favourite luxury with

him. While at college, his biographer Hogg says he was in the habit,

during the evening, of going to sleep on the rug, close to a blazing

fire, heat seeming never to have other than a beneficial effect upon

him. After sleeping some hours, he would awake perfectly restored, and

continue actively occupied till far into the morning. His whole

movements are represented as rapid, hurried, and uncertain. He would

appear and disappear suddenly and unexpectedly; forget appointments;

burst into wild laughter, heedless of his situation, whenever anything

struck him as peculiarly ludicrous. His changes of residence were most

numerous, and frequently made with so much haste that whole little

libraries were left behind, and often lost. He was very fond of

children, and used to make humorous efforts to induce them to disclose

to him the still-remembered secrets of their pre-existence. He seemed to

have a peculiar attraction towards mystery, and was ready to believe in

a hidden secret, where no one else would have thought of one. His room,

while he was at college, was in a state of indescribable confusion. Not

only were all sorts of personal necessaries mingled with books and

philosophical instruments, but things belonging to one department of

service were not unfrequently pressed into the slavery of another. He

dressed well but carelessly. In person he was tall, slender, and

stooping; awkward in gait, but in manners a thorough gentleman. His

complexion was delicate; his head, face, and features, remarkably small;

the last not very regular, but in expression, both intellectual and

moral, wonderfully beautiful. His eyes were deep blue, “of a wild,

strange beauty;” his forehead high and white; his hair dark brown,

curling, long, and bushy. His appearance in later life is described as

singularly combining the appearances of premature age and prolonged

youth.

The only art in which his taste appears to have been developed was

poetry. Even in his poetry, taken as a whole, the artistic element is

not generally very manifest. His earliest verses (none of which are

included in his collected works) can hardly be said to be good in any

sense. He seems in these to have chosen poetry as a fitting material for

the embodiment of his ardent, hopeful, indignant thoughts and feelings,

but, provided he can say what he wants to say, does not seem to

care much about _how_ he says it. Indeed, there is too much of

this throughout his works; for if the _utterance_, instead of

the _conveyance_ of thought, were the object pursued in art, of

course not merely imperfection of language, but absolute external

unintelligibility, would be admissible. But his art constantly increases

with his sense of its necessity; so that the _Cenci_, which is the last

work of any pretension that he wrote, is decidedly the most artistic of

all. There are beautiful passages in _Queen Mab_, but it is the work of

a boy-poet; and as it was all but repudiated by himself, it is not

necessary to remark further upon it. _The Revolt of Islam_ is a poem of

twelve cantos, in the Spenserian stanza; but in all respects except the

arrangement of lines and rimes, his stanza, in common with all other

imitations of the Spenserian, has little or nothing of the spirit or

individuality of the original. The poem is dedicated to the cause of

freedom, and records the efforts, successes, defeats, and final

triumphant death of two inspired champions of liberty--a youth and

maiden. The adventures are marvellous, not intended to be within the

bounds of probability, scarcely of possibility. There are very noble

sentiments and fine passages throughout the poem. Now and then there is

grandeur. But the absence of art is too evident in the fact that the

meaning is often obscure; an obscurity not unfrequently occasioned by

the difficulty of the stanza, which is the most difficult mode of

composition in English, except the rigid sonnet. The words and forms he

employs to express thought seem sometimes mechanical devices for that

purpose, rather than an utterance which suggested itself naturally to a

mind where the thought was vitally present. The words are more a

_clothing_ for the thought than an _embodiment_ of it. They do not lie

near enough to the thing which is intended to be represented by them. It

is, however, but just to remark, that some of the obscurity is owing to

the fact, that, even with Mrs. Shelley’s superintendence, the works have

not yet been satisfactorily edited, or at least not conducted through

the press with sufficient care. [Footnote: This statement is no longer

true.]

_The Cenci_ is a very powerful tragedy, but unfitted for public

representation by the horrible nature of the historical facts upon which

it is founded. In the execution of it, however, Shelley has kept very

much nearer to nature than in any other of his works. He has rigidly

adhered to his perception of artistic propriety in respect to the

dramatic utterance. It may be doubted whether there is sufficient

difference between the modes of speech of the different actors in the

tragedy, but it is quite possible to individualize speech far too

minutely for probable nature; and in this respect, at least, Shelley has

not erred. Perhaps the action of the whole is a little hurried, and a

central moment of awful repose and fearful anticipation might add to the

force of the tragedy. The scenes also might, perhaps, have been

constructed so as to suggest more of evolution; but the central point of

horror is most powerfully and delicately handled. You see a possible

spiritual horror yet behind, more frightful than all that has gone

before. The whole drama, indeed, is constructed around, not a prominent

point, but a dim, infinitely-withdrawn, underground perspective of

dismay and agony. Perhaps it detracts a little from our interest in the

Lady Beatrice, that after all she should wish to live, and should seek

to preserve her life by a denial of her crime. She, however, evidently

justifies the denial to herself on the ground that, the deed being

absolutely right, although regarded as most criminal by her judges, the

only way to get true justice is to deny the fact, which, there being no

guilt, she might consider as only a verbal lie. Her very purity of

conscience enables her to utter this with the most absolute innocence of

look, and word, and tone. This is probably a historical fact, and

Shelley had to make the best of it. In the drama there is great

tenderness, as well as terror; but for a full effect, one feels it

desirable to be brought better acquainted with the individuals than the

drama, from its want of graduation, permits. Shelley, however, was only

six-and-twenty when he wrote it. He must have been attracted to the

subject by its embodying the concentration of tyranny, lawlessness, and

brutality in old Cenci, as opposed to, and exercised upon, an ideal

loveliness and nobleness in the person of Beatrice.

But of all Shelley’s works, the _Prometheus Unbound_ is that which

combines the greatest amount of individual power and peculiarity. There

is an airy grandeur about it, reminding one of the vast masses of cloud

scattered about in broken, yet magnificently suggestive forms, all over

the summer sky, after a thunderstorm. The fundamental ideas are grand;

the superstructure, in many parts, so ethereal, that one hardly knows

whether he is gazing on towers of solid masonry rendered dim and

unsubstantial by intervening vapour, or upon the golden turrets of

cloudland, themselves born of the mist which surrounds them with a halo

of glory. The beings of Greek, mythology are idealized and etherealized

by the new souls which he puts into them, making them think his thoughts

and say his words. In reading this, as in reading most of his poetry, we

feel that, unable to cope with the evils and wrongs of the world as it

and they are, he constructs a new universe, wherein he may rule

according to his will; and a good will in the main it is--good always in

intent, good generally in form and utterance. Of the wrongs which

Shelley endured from the collision and resulting conflict between his

lawless goodness and the lawful wickedness of those in authority, this

is one of the greatest,--that during the right period of pupillage, he

was driven from the place of learning, cast on his own mental resources

long before those resources were sufficient for his support, and

irritated against the purest embodiment of good by the harsh treatment

he received under its name. If that reverence which was far from wanting

to his nature, had been but presented, in the person of some guide to

his spiritual being, with an object worthy of its homage and trust, it

is probable that the yet free and noble result of Shelley’s

individuality would have been presented to the world in a form which,

while it attracted still only the few, would not have repelled the many;

at least, not by such things as were merely accidental in their

association with his earnest desires and efforts for the well-being of

humanity.

That which chiefly distinguishes Shelley from other writers is the

unequalled exuberance of his fancy. The reader, say for instance of that

fantastically brilliant poem, _The Witch of Atlas_, the work of three

days, is overwhelmed in a storm, as it were, of rainbow snow-flakes and

many-coloured lightnings, accompanied ever by “a low melodious thunder.”

The evidences of pure imagination in his writings are unfrequent as

compared with those of fancy: there are not half the instances of the

direct embodiment of idea in form, that there are of the presentation of

strange resemblances between external things.

One of the finest short specimens of Shelley’s peculiar mode is his _Ode

to the West Wind_, full of mysterious melody of thought and sound. But

of all his poems, the most popular, and deservedly so, is the _Skylark_.

Perhaps the _Cloud_ may contest it with the _Skylark_ in regard to

popular favour; but the _Cloud_, although full of beautiful words and

fantastic cloud-like images, is, after all, principally a work of the

fancy; while the _Skylark_, though even in it fancy predominates over

imagination in the visual images, forms, as a whole, a lovely, true,

individual work of art; a _lyric_ not unworthy of the _lark_, which

Mason apostrophizes as “sweet feathered lyric.” The strain of sadness

which pervades it is only enough to make the song of the lark human.

In _The Sensitive Plant_, a poem full of the peculiarities of his

genius, tending through a wilderness of fanciful beauties to a thicket

of mystical speculation, one curious idiosyncrasy is more prominent than

in any other--curious, as belonging to the poet of beauty and

loveliness: it is the tendency to be fascinated by what is ugly and

revolting, so that he cannot withdraw his thoughts from it till he has

described it in language, powerful, it is true, and poetic, when

considered as to its fitness for the desired end, but, in force of these

very excellences in the means, nearly as revolting as the objects

themselves. Associated with this is the tendency to discover strangely

unpleasant likenesses between things; which likenesses he is not content

with seeing, but seems compelled, perhaps in order to get rid of them

himself, to force upon the observation of his reader. But the admirer of

Shelley is not pleased to find that one or two passages of this nature

have been omitted in some editions of his works.

Few men have been more misunderstood or misrepresented than Shelley.

Doubtless this has in part been his own fault, as Coleridge implies when

he writes to this effect of him: that his horror of hypocrisy made him

speak in such a wild way, that Southey (who was so much a man of forms

and proprieties) was quite misled, not merely in his estimate of his

worth, but in his judgment of his character. But setting aside this

consideration altogether, and regarding him merely as a poet, Shelley

has written verse which will last as long as English literature lasts;

valuable not only from its excellence, but from the peculiarity of its

excellence. To say nothing of his noble aims and hopes, Shelley will

always be admired for his sweet melodies, lovely pictures, and wild

prophetic imaginings. His indignant remonstrances, intermingled with

grand imprecations, burst in thunder from a heart overcharged with the

love of his kind, and roused to a keener sense of all oppression by the

wrongs which sought to overwhelm himself. But as he recedes further in

time, and men are able to see more truly the proportions of the man,

they will judge, that without having gained the rank of a great

reformer, Shelley had in him that element of wide sympathy and lofty

hope for his kind which is essential both to the _birth_ and the

subsequent _making_ of the greatest of poets.