SHELLEY S LETTERS 
 

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 SELECT LETTERS OF 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
The vignette, representing Shelley's house at Great Marlow 
 before the late alterations, is from a water-colour 
 draiuing by Dina Williams, daughter of Shelley's friend 
 Edward Williams, given to the Editor by J. Bertrand 
 Payne, Esq., and probably made about 1840. 
 
SELECT LETTERS OF 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 RICHARD GARNETT 
 
 I. ox DON 
 KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH, ^ CO 
 
 %rDr:<-<r,xxx(j. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The publication of a book in the series of which 
 this little volume forms part, implies a claim on 
 its behalf to a perfection of form, as well as an 
 attradiveness of subjed, entitling it to the rank of 
 a recognised English classic. This pretension can 
 rarely be advanced in favour of familiar letters, 
 written in haste for the information or entertain- 
 ment of private friends. Such letters are frequently 
 among the most delightful of literary compositions, 
 but the stamp of absolute literary perfedion is rarely 
 impressed upon them. 
 
 The exceptions to this rule, in English literature 
 at least, occur principally in the epistolary litera- 
 ture of the eighteenth century. Pope and Gray, 
 artificial in their poetry, were not less artificial in 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 their correspondence; but while in the former 
 department of composition they strove to display 
 their art, in the latter their no less successful 
 endeavour was to conceal it. Together with 
 Cowper and Walpole, they achieved the feat of 
 imparting a literary value to ordinary topics by 
 studious elaboration and precise nicety of expres- 
 sion, without at the same time sacrificing the 
 familiar ease without which letters become rhe- 
 torical exercises. Such an achievement demanded 
 more leisure and less absorbing emotion than fell 
 to the lot of the succeeding age. 
 
 In the nineteenth century, accordingly, this 
 artificial style of epistolary composition fell into 
 disuse ; letter-writing ceased to be an art among 
 men of culture, and became more of the earnest 
 pradical thing which it had always been among 
 men of business. It was now to be seen whether 
 this gain in simplicity and sincerity was consistent 
 with a high standard of epistolary polish. That 
 age possessed many poets infinitely superior in 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 genius to Cowper and Gray ; but would their un- 
 premeditated utterances, from a literary point of 
 view, compare with the artifice of their prede- 
 cessors ? The answer is not doubtful. Byron, 
 Scott, and Keats are excellent letter- writers, but 
 their letters are far from possessing the classical 
 impress which they communicated to their poetry. 
 Much less is this the case with Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Southey, or Landor. If that age had 
 any master of epistolary composition among its 
 wonderful poets, it was Shelley: Shelley or none. 
 Was Shelley such a master? The examples in 
 this little volume will enable every one to judge 
 for himself. Meanwhile the reader may be fairly 
 asked to assume the fad as at least probable upon 
 the testimony of an eminent modern critic, very 
 refined indeed ; fastidiously *' jealous of dead 
 leaves in the bay-wreath crown ; " and, as will 
 be seen, in most cases indisposed to dance to 
 Shelley's piping. Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the 
 preface to his *' Seledions from Byron's Poetry," 
 
 A 3 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 *' doubts whether Shelley's delightful Essays and 
 Letters, which deserve to be far more read than 
 they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of 
 time better, and finally come to stand higher, than 
 his poetry." This remarkable and, under present 
 circumstances, highly seasonable deliverance will 
 be weighed by those to whose lot it may fall to 
 determine Mr. Arnold's own place as a critic ; but 
 need not be the subjed of discussion here. 
 
 It will be sufficient to observe that, as a matter 
 of fad, the general estimate of Shelley's prose 
 will always conform nearly to the general estimate 
 of his poetry. There is no such solution of con- 
 tinuity between the two as exists in the case of 
 his illustrious contemporaries. Byron, for instance, 
 writes verse like a poet, and prose like a man of 
 the world. Shelley's letters are essentially and 
 unmistakably the production of a poet, and compare 
 with other celebrated letters precisely as his poems 
 compare with other poetry. They do not, any 
 more than his metrical compositions, represent every 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 kind of excellence ; but, like the latter, they have 
 a high, rare, and peculiar excellence of their own. 
 They have not the frankness of Byron's, the 
 urbanity of Gray's, or the piquancy of Horace 
 Walpole's. These merits, admirable as they are, 
 are not charaderistically poetical ; the poet who 
 displays them must for the time divest himself of 
 his distindive charader as a poet; and of this 
 Shelley was incapable. The peculiar virtue of his 
 epistles is to express the mind of the poet as 
 perfedly as Macaulay's express the mind of the 
 man of letters, or Wellington's the mind of the 
 general. Leaving disputable opinions out of ac- 
 count, and taking a comprehensive view of their 
 general scope and spirit, they may be defined as a 
 representation of the manner in which the poet, 
 as such, contemplates life and nature ; and a very 
 great part of the pleasure to be derived from them 
 is the observation of their intimate correspondence 
 with the deliberate poetical achievement upon 
 which they are an undesigned commentary. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 They prove that Shelley's ideal world was a real 
 world to Shelley himself; and contain nothing 
 to suggest that the man habitually lived on a 
 lower level than the author. 
 
 Most of the qualities of a good letter-writer 
 were combined in Shelley, and Fortune also 
 favoured the development of his genius in this 
 direction . Such a writer must love his occupa- 
 tion for its own sake, irrespective of the quality 
 of his correspondent. He must be genial and 
 expansive, and not take the pen in hand with 
 a misgiving that he may be wasting his time. It 
 is even more important that he should be free 
 from egotism, and capable, even while he writes 
 about himself, of merging his own affairs in 
 general interests and sympathies. Shelley com- 
 plies with both these requisites in an unusual 
 degree. It is further necessary that the writer 
 should, as Mr. Arnold expresses it, have laid hold 
 of the right subjeCl-matter ; and here again Shelley 
 was fortunate. Fate had made him a sojourner 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 in a land where the works of man vie with the 
 works of nature ; where the description of inani- 
 mate beauty may be relieved by constant reference 
 to the productions of human genius, and nature 
 and art alike are endeared to the cultivated ob- 
 server or reader by a thousand associations and 
 recolledions. 
 
 A person gifted like Shelley could not write ill 
 where Byron and De Stael had written well ; but 
 the truest charm of his letters is, after all, rather 
 moral than literary. It is not so much the elo- 
 quence of the didion as the genuineness of the 
 informing enthusiasm, the effusiveness of an opu- 
 lent soul delighting in giving, and eager to impart 
 the pleasure it has received. When not writing 
 on Italy, Shelley is still most commonly fortunate 
 in the subje(5i: of his letter, which derives interest 
 either from something in the charader or situa- 
 tion of the person to whom it is addressed, or 
 from its reference to some adventure, or opinion, 
 or production of his own. He is armed against 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 triviality by never writing without a legitimate 
 motive. He was by no means a regular or 
 systematic correspondent, and before taking the 
 pen in hand required the visitation of an emer- 
 gency or an impulse. But such didates of the 
 spirit were frequent, and affeded him Hke the im- 
 pulses that prompt to poetical composition : nor 
 was the pro dud less distindly an emanation of 
 the intelled and the heart. 
 
 Such passages as the description of the Pro- 
 testant cemetery (p. 8i of this colledion), or the 
 subtle interweaving of pleasurable feeling with 
 even sweeter sadness in the last paragraph of the 
 last letter Shelley wrote (p. 221), are lyrics in 
 everything but strudure. The former, indeed, has 
 been expanded into a magnificent passage of the 
 *' Adonais ;" and although to compare its sweet, 
 brief note with the multitudinous harmonies of 
 the elegy is, with Mr. Arnold's leave, like com- 
 paring the hymn of Pan to the hymn of Apollo, 
 its music is not less truly poetry. . 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 The main purpose of a seledion adapted to the 
 principle of a miniature Hbrary of masterpieces 
 must be to reproduce whatever is most choice in 
 the general body of Shelley's correspondence; an 
 objed involving the reprodudion of nearly all 
 the descriptions of ItaUan scenery and works of 
 art addressed to Peacock, and those later letters, 
 principally to Gisborne, which, if only by fitful 
 glimpses, reveal a subtlety of mental introspedion 
 more exceptional than any brilliancy of word- 
 painting. The former exhibit his powers of sus- 
 tained eloquence in prose composition at their 
 highest ; the latter represent the development of 
 his prose style, corresponding with that of his 
 later lyrics, in the diredion of intensity and trans- 
 parency. The letters to Leigh Hunt and Horace 
 Smith, less interesting psychologically, are still too 
 important to be omitted, and the same remark 
 apphes to the six early letters to Miss Kitchener, 
 seleded, by the kind permission of the possessor, 
 Mr. H. J. Slack, from a much more extensive 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 colledion. It cannot be expeded that these juve- 
 nile effusions should be worthy of the maturer 
 Shelley ; they fall, indeed, far short of the stand- 
 ard which should, as a rule, be maintained in a 
 seledion like the present. They serve, neverthe- 
 less, as an appropriate prologue, displaying Shelley 
 from the first in the charader which, although 
 with more dignity and modesty than his inexpe- 
 rience at that time permitted, he consistently 
 supported to the last ; while their biographical 
 value is very considerable. Shelley's account of 
 his marriage indicates what germs of estrangement 
 lurked from the first in that ill-starred union ; his 
 appreciation of Southey is honourable to both ; 
 and his exposition of his religious opinions shows 
 that Mr. Hogg was not wrong in calling ** Queen 
 Mab " a Platonic poem, and makes it more unac- 
 countable than ever how he should, even in the 
 midst of his youthful ferment, have fancied him- 
 self an atheist. A very few passages from these 
 letters have been printed in the late Mr. Mac- 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 Carthy's interesting volume on ''Shelley's Early 
 Life" (1872). 
 
 The remainder of the Kitchener set of letters 
 chiefly relate to Shelley's expedition to Ireland, 
 an adventure so episodical that reference to it 
 may well be omitted from a seledion aiming 
 before all things at harmonious completeness. 
 The seventh letter, addressed to Mr. Hogg, was 
 first printed by Mr. Forman, and though intrinsi- 
 cally unimportant, is in point of style and feeling 
 a valuable link between the Kitchener letters and 
 the letters from Italy. The latter are chiefly 
 seleded from those first published in Mrs. Shelley's 
 edition of Shelley's prose works (1840), now out 
 of print, and only accessible in the handsome 
 but costly edition of Mr. Forman. A few, how- 
 ever, have been added from the "Shelley Memo- 
 rials " and the supplementary colledion published 
 by Mr. Peacock in Fraser*s Magazine, Two are 
 entirely new: the deeply interesting account of 
 little Allegra in her convent (No. XXXIX.), and the 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 letter to Horace Smith (No. XL VII.), recovered by 
 Mr. Forman's diligence from the Antipodes, and 
 now published for the first time by his permission. 
 The total number of letters printed in Mr. 
 Forman's edition is a hundred and twenty-seven, 
 and forty or fifty more might be added from 
 the "Shelley Memorials" and Mr. Hogg's bio- 
 graphy ; those derived from the latter source, 
 however, with two or three remarkable excep- 
 tions, would hardly be worth reprinting. The 
 present seledion contains fifty-three, or be- 
 tween a third and a fourth of the whole, and 
 includes nearly all those of any especial length or 
 elaboration. The numerous curtailments which will 
 be remarked follow in some instances the original 
 editions, but have generally been made with delibe- 
 rate reference to the charader of this series of publi- 
 cations as a repository of choice things, and choice 
 things only. With Shelley, indeed, distindion is 
 the rule, commonplace the exception ; it has, 
 nevertheless — bearing in mind that the purpose of 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 this publication is not biographical but literary — 
 been found desirable to omit numerous passages 
 of merely personal interest. The text has never 
 been tampered with, or the freedom of Shelley's 
 utterance restrained, even when he touches upon 
 religious subjeds. To leave this side of his mind 
 in obscurity would be unfair both to him and his 
 readers; nor is there anything in the expression 
 of his sentiments that can reasonably cause offence. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley's dramatic and circumstantial ac- 
 count of Shelley's death and the attendant occur- 
 rences was first published complete by Mr. Forman 
 in Macmillan's Maga:(ine for June, 1880. Some 
 extrads had been given by the present Editor in 
 the Fortnightly Review for June, 1878. It will be 
 seen that his obligations both to Mr. Forman and 
 to Mr. Slack are very considerable, and he is 
 no less indebted to the generous aid of Mr. 
 W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 R. GARNETT. 
 
 April 14, 1882. 
 
SHELLEY^S LETTERS 
 I 
 
 To Miss Kitchener . 
 
 Mr. Strickland's, Blah St., York. 
 [Saturday, 26 Odoher, 18 11?] 
 
 I hesitate not a moment to write to you : rare 
 though it be in this existence, communion with 
 you can unite mental benefit with pure gratifica- 
 tion. I will explain, however, the circumstances 
 which caused my marriage : these must certainly 
 have caused much conjedure in your mind. Some 
 time ago, when my sister was at Mrs. Fenning's 
 school, she contraded an intimacy with Harriet. 
 At that period I attentively watched over my 
 sister, designing if possible, to add her to the list 
 of the good, the disinterested, the free. I desired 
 therefore to investigate Harriet's character ; for 
 which purpose I called on her, requested to 
 
 B 
 
2 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 correspond with her, designing that her advance- 
 ment should keep pace with, and possibly accelerate, 
 that of my sister. Her ready and frank acceptance 
 of my proposal pleased me ; aiid, though with 
 ideas the remotest to those which have led to this 
 conclusion of our intimacy, I continued to cor- 
 respond with her for some time. The frequency 
 of her letters became greater during my stay in 
 Wales. I answered them : they became interesting. 
 They contained complaints of the irrational con- 
 dud of her relatives, and the misery of living where 
 she could love no one. Suicide was with her a 
 favourite theme, and her total uselessness was 
 urged as its defence. This I admitted supposing 
 she could prove her inutility, and that she was 
 powerless. Her letters became more and more 
 gloomy. At length one assumed a tone of such 
 despair as induced me to quit Wales precipitately. 
 I arrived in London. I was shocked at observing 
 the alteration of her looks. Little did I divine its 
 cause : she had become violently attached to 
 me, and feared that I should not return her 
 attachment. Prejudice made the confession pain- 
 ful. It was impossible to avoid being much 
 affeded ; I promised to unite my fate to her's. 
 I stayed in London several days, during which 
 she recovered her spirits. I had promised at her 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 3 
 
 bidding to come again to London. They en- 
 deavoured to compel her to return to a school 
 where malice and pride embittered every hour : 
 she wrote to me. I came to London, I proposed 
 marriage, for the reasons which I have given 
 you, and she complied. Blame me if thou wilt, 
 dearest friend, for still thou art dearest to me : 
 yet pity even this error, if thou blamest me. If 
 Harriet be not, at sixteen, all that you are at a 
 more advanced age, assist me to mould a really 
 noble soul into all that can make its nobleness 
 useful and lovely. Lovely it is now, or I am 
 the weakest slave to error. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
II 
 
 To Miss Hitchener. 
 
 Chesnut Cottage, Keswick. 
 [Thursday, ii November, 1811.] 
 
 What is love or friendship? Is it something 
 material — a ball, an apple, a plaything — which 
 must be taken from one and given to another? 
 Is it capable of no extension, no communication ? 
 Lord Kaimes defines love to be a particularization 
 of the general passion. But this is the love of 
 sensation, of sentiment — the absurdest of absurd 
 varieties : it is the love of pleasure, not the love 
 of happiness. The one is a love which is self- 
 centred, self-devoted, self-interested : it desires its 
 own interest ; it is the parent of jealousy. Its 
 objed is the plaything which it desires to mono- 
 polize. Selfishness, monopoly, is its very soul ; 
 and to communicate to others part of this love 
 were to destroy its essence, to annihilate this chain 
 of straw. But love, the love which we worship 
 — virtue, heaven, disinterestedness — in a word 
 Friendship — which has as much to do with the 
 senses as with yonder mountains ; that which 
 seeks the good of all, — the good of its obje6l 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 5 
 
 first, not because that objed is a minister to its 
 pleasures, not merely because it even contributes 
 to its happiness, but because it is really worthy, 
 because it has powers, sensibilities, is capable of 
 abstrading self, and loving virtue for virtue's own 
 loveliness — desiring the happiness of others, not 
 from the obligation of fearing hell or desiring 
 heaven, but for pure, simple, unsophisticated 
 virtue. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
Ill 
 
 To Miss Kitchener. 
 
 Keswick, Cumberland. 
 [Sunday, 24. November, 18 11.] 
 
 You talk of a future state : '* is not this imagi- 
 nation" you ask *' a proof of it'*? To me it 
 appears so, to me everything proves it. But what 
 we earnestly desire we are very much prejudiced 
 in favour of. It seems to me that everything lives 
 again. What is the soul? Look at yonder 
 flower. The blast of the north sweeps it from 
 the earth; it withers beneath the breath of the 
 destroyer. Yet that flower hath a soul : for what 
 is soul but that which makes an organized being 
 to be what it is, without which it would not be 
 so ? On this hypothesis must not that (the soul) 
 without which a flower cannot be a flower exist, 
 when the earthly flower hath perished ? Yet 
 where does it exist — in what state of being? 
 Have not flowers also some end which nature 
 destines their being able to answer? Doubtless, 
 it ill becomes us to deny this, because we cannot 
 certainly discover it ; since so many analogies 
 seem to favour the probability of this hypothesis. 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 7 
 
 I will say, then, that all nature is animated ; that 
 microscopic vision, as it has discovered to us 
 millions of animated beings whose pursuits and 
 passions are as eagerly followed as our own, so 
 might it, if extended, find that nature itself was 
 but a mass of organized animation. Perhaps the 
 animative intelleQ; of all this is in a constant rota- 
 tion of change : perhaps a future state is no other 
 than a different mode of terrestrial existence to 
 which we have fitted ourselves in this mode. 
 
 Is there any probability in this supposition ? On 
 this plan, congenial souls must meet ; because, 
 having fitted themselves for nearly the same mode 
 of being, they cannot fail to be mar each other. 
 Free-will must give energy to this infinite mass of 
 being, and thereby constitute virtue. If our change 
 be in this mortal life, do not fear that we shall be 
 among the grovelling souls of heroes, aristocrats, 
 and commerciaUsts. Adieu. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
IV 
 
 To Miss Kitchener. 
 
 Keswick [Sunday, ij December, iSii], 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 You will before now have my last letter. 
 I have felt the distrustful recurrences of the post- 
 office which you felt when no answer to all your 
 letters came. I have regretted that visit to Grey- 
 stoke, because this delay must have given you 
 uneasiness. 
 
 I have since heard from Captain P[ilfold]. His 
 letter contains the account of a meditated proposal, 
 on the part of my father and grandfather, to make 
 my income immediately larger than the former's, 
 in case I will consent to entail the estate on my 
 eldest son, and, in default of issue, on my brother. 
 Silly dotards ! do they think I can be thus bribed 
 and ground into an ad of such contemptible in- 
 justice and inutility ? that I will forswear my 
 principles in consideration of 2000/. a year ? that 
 the goodwill I could thus purchase, or the ill-will 
 I could thus overbear, would recompense me for 
 the loss of self-esteem, of conscious reditude? 
 And with what face can they make me a proposal 
 so insultingly hateful ? Dare one of them pro- 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 9 
 
 pose such a condition to my face — to the face of 
 any virtuous man— and not sink into nothing at 
 his disdain? That I should entail 120,000/. of 
 command over labour, of power to remit this, to 
 employ it for beneficent purposes, on one whom 
 I know not — who might, instead of being the 
 benefador of mankind, be its bane, or use this, 
 for the worst purposes, which the real delegates 
 of my chance-given property might convert into a 
 most useful instrument of benevolence ! No ! this 
 you will not susped me of. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
V 
 
 To Miss Kitchener. 
 
 Keswick [Thursday, 26 December, 18 ii]. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 I have delayed writing for two days that 
 my letters might not succeed each other so closely 
 as one day. I have also been much engaged in 
 talking with Southey. You may conjecture that 
 a man must possess high and estimable qualities 
 if, with the prejudices of such total difference 
 from my sentiments, I can regard him great 
 and worthy. In fad, Southey is an advocate of 
 liberty and equality. He looks forward to a state 
 when all shall be perfected, and matter become 
 subjeded to the omnipotence of mind. But he is 
 now an advocate for existing establishments. He 
 says he designs his three statues in Kehama to 
 be contemplated with republican feelings, but not 
 in this age. Southey hates the Irish : he speaks 
 against Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary 
 Reform. In all these things we differ, and our 
 differences were the subjed of along conversation. 
 Southey calls himself ^a Christian : but he does 
 not believe that the Evangelists were inspired, he 
 rejeds the Trinity, and thinks that Jesus Christ 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS xi 
 
 stood precisely in the same relation to God as him- 
 self. Yet he calls himself a Christian. Now, if 
 ever there was a definition of a Deist, I think it 
 could never be clearer than this confession of 
 faith. But Southey, though far from being a man 
 of great reasoning powers, is a great man. He 
 has all that characterises the poet ; great eloquence, 
 though obstinacy in opinion, which arguments are 
 the last things that can shake. He is a man of 
 virtue. He will never beUe what he thinks, his 
 professions are in compatibility with his pradice. 
 More of him another time. 
 
 With Calvert, the man whom I mentioned to 
 you in that pygmy letter, we have now become 
 acquainted. He knows everything that relates to 
 my family and to myself; my expulsion from 
 Oxford, the opinions that caused it, are no secrets 
 to him. We first met Southey at his house. He 
 has been very kind to us. The rent of our cottage 
 was two guineas and a half a week with linen 
 provided ; he has made the proprietor lower it 
 to one guinea, and has lent us linen himself. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
VI 
 
 To Miss Kitchener. 
 
 Keswick [Thursday, 2 January, 18 12], 
 
 I have lately had some conversation with Southey 
 which has eHcited my true opinions of God. He 
 says I ought not to call myself an atheist, since 
 in reality I believe that the Universe is God. I 
 tell him I believe that " God " is another signifi- 
 cation for '* the Universe." I then explain : — I 
 think reason and analogy seem to countenance 
 the opinion that life is infinite ; that, as the soul 
 which now animates this frame was once the 
 vivifying principle of the infinitely lowest link in 
 the chain of existence, so is it ultimately destined 
 to attain to the highest ; that everything is anima- 
 tion (as explained in my last letter), and in conse- 
 quence, being infinite, we can never arrive at its 
 termination. How, on this hypothesis, are we 
 to arrive at a First Cause ? — Southey admits and 
 believes this. Can he be a Christian ? Can God 
 be three ? Southey agrees in my idea of Deity — 
 the mass of infinite intelligence. I, you, and he, 
 are constituent parts of the immeasurable whole. 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS i} 
 
 What is now to be thought of Jesus Christ's 
 divinity ? 
 
 Southey is no believer in original sin ; he thinks 
 that which appears to be a taint of our nature is 
 in efFed the result of unnatural political institu- 
 tions. There we agree. He thinks the prejudices 
 of education, and sinister influences of political 
 institutions adequate to account for all the speci- 
 mens of vice which have fallen within his obser- 
 vation. 
 
 You talk of Montgomery. We all sympathize 
 with him, and often think and converse of him. 
 I am going to write to him to-day. His story 
 is a terrible one, it is briefly this — His father 
 and mother were Moravian missionaries. They 
 left this country to convert the Ihdians : they 
 were young, enthusiastic, and excellent. The In- 
 dians savagely murdered them. Montgomery was 
 then quite a child ; but the impression of the event 
 never wore away. When he grew up he became 
 a disbeliever of Christianity, having very much 
 such principles as a virtuous enquirer for truth. 
 In the mean time he loved an apparently amiable 
 female ; he was about to marry her. Having 
 some affairs in the West Indies, he went to settle 
 them before his marriage. On his return to 
 
14 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 Sheffield, he actually met the marriage procession 
 of this woman, who had in the mean time chosen 
 another love. He became melancholy mad ; the 
 horrible events of his life preyed upon his mind. 
 He was shocked at having forsaken a faith for 
 which a father and mother whom he loved had 
 suffered martyrdom. The contest between his 
 reason and his faith was destroying. He is now 
 a Methodist. Will not this tale account for the 
 melancholy and religious cast of his poetry? 
 This is what Southey told me, word for word. 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 Southey says I am not an Atheist, but a 
 Pantheist. 
 
VII 
 To Thomas Jefferson Hogg. 
 
 Bishopsgate [Windsor Forest, September j 181$]. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 Your letter has lain by me for the last 
 week, reproaching me every day. I found it on 
 my return from a water excursion on the Thames, 
 the particulars of which will have been recounted 
 in another letter. The exercise and dissipation of 
 mind attached to such an expedition have pro- 
 duced so favourable an effed on my health, that 
 my habitual dejedion and irritability have almost 
 deserted me, and I can devote six hours in the 
 day to study without difficulty. I have been 
 engaged lately in the commencement of several 
 literary plans, which, if my present temper of 
 mind endures, I shall probably complete in the 
 winter. I have consequently deserted Cicero, or 
 proceed but slowly with his philosophic dialogues. 
 I have read the oration for the poet Archias, and 
 am only disappointed with its brevity. 
 
 I have been induced by one of the subjeds 
 which I am now pursuing to consult Bayle. I 
 think he betrays an obliquity of understanding 
 and coarseness of feeling. I have also read the 
 
i6 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 four first books of Lucan's *' Pharsalia," a poem 
 as it appears to me of wonderful genius and 
 transcending Virgil. Mary has finished the $th 
 book of the Aeneid, and her progress in Latin 
 is such as to satisfy my best expedations. 
 
 The east wind — the wind of autumn — is abroad, 
 and even now the leaves of the forest are shat- 
 tered at every gust. When may we exped you ? 
 September is almost passed and Od:ober the month 
 of your promised return is at hand, when we 
 shall be happy to welcome you again to our fire- 
 side. 
 
 No events, as you know, disturb our tranquillity. 
 
 Adieu. 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
VIII 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Geneva, ly July, 1816. 
 My opinion of turning to one spot of 
 earth and calling it our home, and of the excel- 
 lencies and usefulness of the sentiments arising out 
 of this attachment, has at length produced in me 
 the resolution of acquiring this possession. 
 
 You are the only man who has sufficient regard 
 for me to take an interest in the fulfilment of this 
 design, and whose tastes conform sufficiently to 
 mine to engage me to confide the execution of it 
 to your discretion. 
 
 I do not trouble you with apologies for giving 
 you this commission. I require only rural exer- 
 tions, walks, and circuitous wanderings, some 
 slight negotiations about the letting of a house, 
 the superintendence of a disorderly garden, some 
 palings to be mended, some books to be removed 
 and set up. 
 
 I wish you would get all my books and all 
 my furniture from Bishopsgate, and all other 
 effeds appertaining to me. I have written to 
 
 to secure all that belongs to me there to 
 
 c 
 
i8 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 you. I have written also to Longdill to give up 
 possession of the house on the 3rd of August. 
 
 When you have possessed yourself of all my 
 affairs, I wish you to look out for a home for me 
 and Mary and William, and the kitten who is 
 now en pension. I wish you to get an unfur- 
 nished house, with as good a garden as may be, 
 near Windsor Forest, and take a lease of it for 
 fourteen or twenty-one years. The house must 
 not be too small. I wish the situation to re- 
 semble as nearly as possible that of Bishopsgate, 
 and should think that Sunning Hill or Winkfield 
 Plain, or the neighbourhood of Virginia Water, 
 would afford some possibilities. 
 
 My present intention is to return to England, 
 and to make that most excellent of nations my 
 perpetual resting place. I think it is extremely 
 probable that we shall return next spring, perhaps 
 before, perhaps after, but certainly we shall return. 
 
 On the motives and on the consequences of 
 this journey, I reserve much explanation for some 
 future winter walk or summer expedition. This 
 much alone is certain, that before we return we 
 shall have seen, and felt and heard, a multipHcity 
 of things which will haunt our talk and make us 
 a little better worth knowing than we were before 
 our departure. 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 19 
 
 If possible, we think of descending the Danube 
 in a boat, of visiting Constantinople and Athens, 
 then Rome and the Tuscan cities, and returning 
 by the South of France, always following great 
 rivers, the Danube, the Po, the Rhone, and the 
 Garonne : rivers are not like roads, the work of 
 the hands of man ; they imitate mind, which 
 wanders at will over pathless deserts, and flows 
 through Nature's loveliest recesses, which are in- 
 accessible to anything besides. They have the 
 viler advantage also of affording a cheaper mode 
 of conveyance. 
 
 This Eastern scheme is one which has just 
 seized on our imaginations. I fear that the detail 
 of execution will destroy it, as all other wild and 
 beautiful visions ; but at all events you will hear 
 from us wherever we are, and to whatever adven- 
 tures destiny enforces us. 
 
 Tell me in return all English news. What has 
 become of my poem? I hope it has already 
 sheltered itself in the bosom of its mother. Obli- 
 vion, from whose embraces no one could have been 
 so barbarous as to tear it except me. Tell me 
 of the political state of England. Its literature, of 
 which when I speak Coleridge is in my thoughts 
 — yourself lastly, — your own employments, your 
 historical labours. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 I had written thus far when your letter to 
 Mary, dated the 8th, arrived. What you say of 
 Bishopsgate of course modifies that part of this 
 letter which relates to it. I confess I did not 
 learn the destined ruin without some pain, but it 
 is well for me perhaps that a situation requiring 
 so large an expense should be placed beyond our 
 hopes. 
 
 You must shelter my roofless Penates ; dedicate 
 some new temple to them, and perform the func- 
 tions of a priest in my absence. They are 
 innocent deities, and their worship neither san- 
 guinary nor absurd. Leave Mammon and Jehovah 
 to those who delight in wickedness and slavery — 
 their altars are stained with blood, or polluted 
 with gold, the price of blood. But the shrines of 
 the Penates are good wood fires, or window 
 frames intertwined with creeping plants; their 
 hymns are the purring of kittens, the hissing of 
 kettles, the long talks over the past and dead, 
 the laugh of children, the warm wind of summer 
 filling the quiet house, and the pehing storm of 
 winter struggling in vain for entrance. In talking 
 of the Penates, will you not liken me to Julius 
 Caesar dedicating a temple to Liberty ? 
 
 As I have said in the former part of my letter, 
 I trust entirely to your discretion on the subjed 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 21 
 
 of a house. Certainly the Forest engages my 
 preference, because of the sylvan nature of the 
 place, and the beasts with which it is filled. But 
 I am not insensible to the beauties of the Thames, 
 and any extraordinary eligibility of situation you 
 mention in your letter would overbalance our 
 habitual affedion for the neighbourhood of Bishops- 
 gate. Its proximity to the spot you have chosen 
 is an argument with us in favour of the Thames. 
 Recoiled, however, we are now choosing a fixed, 
 settled eternal home, and as such its internal 
 qualities will affed us more constantly than those 
 which consist in the surrounding scenery, which, 
 whatever it may be at first, will shortly be no 
 more than the colours with which our own 
 habits shall invest it. 
 
 I am glad that circumstances do not permit the 
 choice to be my own. I shall abide by yours as 
 others abide by the necessity of their birth. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
IX 
 
 To William Godwin. 
 
 Marlcfw, ii December, iSiy. 
 I have read and considered all that you say 
 about my general powers, and the particular in- 
 stance of the poem in which I have attempted to 
 develope them. Nothing can be more satisfadory 
 to me than the interest which your admonitions 
 express. But I think you are mistaken in some 
 points with regard to the peculiar nature of my 
 powers, whatever be their amount. I listened 
 with deference and self-suspicion to your censures 
 of Laon and Cythna ; but the produdions of 
 mine which you commend hold a very low place 
 in my own esteem, and this reassured me in 
 some degree at least. The poem was produced 
 by a series of thoughts which filled my mind 
 with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm. I 
 felt the precariousness of my life, and I resolved 
 in this book to leave some record of myself. 
 Much of what the volume contains was written 
 with the same feeling, as real, though not so 
 prophetic, as the communications of a dying man. 
 I never presumed, indeed, to consider it anything 
 approaching to faultless; but, when I considered 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 23 
 
 contemporary produdions of the same apparent 
 pretensions, I will own that I was filled with 
 confidence. I felt that in many respeds it was 
 a genuine pidure of my own mind ; I felt that 
 the sentiments were true, not assumed, and in 
 this have I long believed, that my power consists 
 in sympatliy, and that part of imagination which 
 relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am 
 formed, if for anything not in common with the 
 herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and re- 
 mote distindions of feeling, whether relative to 
 external nature or the living beings which sur- 
 round us, and to communicate the conceptions 
 which result from considering either the moral 
 or the material universe as a whole . . . Yet, 
 after all, I cannot but be conscious, in much of 
 what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity 
 which is the attribute and accompaniment of 
 power. This feeling alone would make your 
 most kind and wise admonitions on the subjed 
 of the economy of intelledual force valuable to 
 me : and if I Hve, or if I see any trust in coming 
 years, doubt not but that I shall do something, 
 whatever it may be, which a serious and earnest 
 estimate of my powers will suggest to me, and 
 which will be in every resped accommodated to 
 their utmost Umits. 
 
X 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Milan, 20 April j 18 18. 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I had no conception that the distance 
 between us, measured by time in respe6l of 
 letters, was so great. I have but just received 
 yours dated the 2nd, and when you will receive 
 mine written from this city, somewhat later than 
 the same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to 
 hear that you have been obliged to remain at 
 Marlow ; a certain degree of society being almost 
 a necessity of life, particularly as we are not to 
 see you this summer in Italy. But this, I sup- 
 pose, must be as it is. I often revisit Marlow in 
 thought. The curse of this life is that whatever 
 is once known can never be unknown. You 
 inhabit a spot, which before you inhabit it, is as 
 indifferent to you as any other spot upon earth, 
 and when, persuaded by some necessity, you 
 think to leave it, you leave it not ; it clings to 
 you, and with memories of things, which in your 
 experience of them, gave no such promise, re- 
 venges your desertion. Time flows on, places 
 are changed; friends who were with us are no 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 25 
 
 longer with us ; yet what has been seems yet to 
 be, but barren and stripped of Hfe. See, I have 
 sent you a study for Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Since I last wrote to you we have been to 
 Como, looking for a house. This lake exceeds 
 anything I ever beheld in beauty, with the ex- 
 ception of the Arbutus Islands in Killarney. It is 
 long and narrow, and has the appearance of a 
 mighty river winding among the mountains and 
 forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a 
 trad of country called the Tremezina, and saw 
 the various aspeds presented by that part of the 
 lake. The mountains between Como and that 
 village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered 
 on high with chestnut forests, the eating chest- 
 nuts on which the inhabitants of the country sub- 
 sist in time of scarcity, which sometimes descend 
 to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with 
 their hoary branches. But usually the immediate 
 border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, 
 and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and 
 olives, which grow in the crevices of the rocks, 
 and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep 
 glens, which are filled with the flashing light of 
 the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I 
 cannot name, grow there also. On high, the 
 towers of village churches are seen white among 
 
26 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 the dark forests. Beyond, on the opposite shore, 
 which faces the south, the mountains descend 
 less precipitously to the lake, and although they 
 are much higher, and some covered with perpetual 
 snow, there intervenes between them and the lake 
 a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts 
 opening to the other, such as I should fancy the 
 abysses of Ida or Parnassus. Here are plantations 
 of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, which are 
 now so loaded with fruit that there is more 
 fruit than leaves ; and vineyards. This shore of 
 the lake is one continued village, and the Milanese 
 nobility have their villas here. The union of 
 culture and the untameable profusion and loveli- 
 ness of nature is here so close that the line where 
 they are divided can hardly be discovered. But 
 the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana, so 
 called from a fountain which ebbs and flows 
 every three hours, described by the younger Pliny, 
 which is in the courtyard. This house, which 
 was once a magnificent palace, and is now half 
 in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is 
 built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the 
 lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a 
 semicircular precipice, overshadowed by profound 
 forests of chestnut. The scene from the colonnade 
 is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS vj 
 
 lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the 
 mountain, and immediately over you are clusters 
 of cypress-trees of an astonishing height, which 
 seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among 
 the clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of 
 immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a 
 thousand channels to the lake. On the other side 
 is seen the blue extent of the lake and the moun- 
 tains, speckled with sails and spires. The apart- 
 ments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill 
 furnished and antique. The terraces, which over- 
 look the lake, and condud under the shade of 
 such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet 
 of Pythian, are most delightful. We stayed at 
 Como two days, and have now returned to Milan, 
 waiting the issue of our negotiation about a 
 house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, 
 and its mountains are seen from the cathedral. 
 
 This cathedral is a most astonishing work of 
 art. It is built of white marble, and cut into 
 pinnacles of immense height, and the utmost 
 delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculp- 
 ture. The effed of it, piercing the solid blue 
 with those groups of dazzling spires, reheved by 
 the serene depth of this Italian heaven, or by 
 moonlight when the stars seem gathered among 
 those clustered shapes, is beyond anything I had 
 
28 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 imagined architedure capable of producing. The 
 interior, though very sublime, is of a more earthly 
 charader, and with its stained glass and massy 
 granite columns overloaded with antique figures, 
 and the silver lamps that burn for ever under the 
 canopy of black cloth beside the brazen altar and 
 the marble fretwork of the dome, give it the 
 asped of some gorgeous sepulchre. There is one 
 soHtary spot among those aisles, behind the altar, 
 where the light of day is dim and yellow under 
 the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, 
 and read Dante there. 
 
 I have devoted this summer, and indeed the 
 next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the 
 subjed of Tasso's madness, which I find upon in- 
 spection is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic 
 and poetical. But, you will say, I have no 
 dramatic talent ; very true, in a certain sense ; 
 but I have taken the resolution to see what kind 
 of a tragedy a person without dramatic talent 
 could write. It shall be better morality than 
 Fazio, and better poetry than Bertram, at least. 
 You tell me nothing of Rhodo daphne, a book 
 from which, I confess, I expeded extraordinary 
 success. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XI 
 To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Leghorn, Bagni di Lucca. 
 10 July, 1818. 
 You cannot know, as some friends in 
 England do, to whom my silence is still more 
 inexcusable, that this silence is no proof of for- 
 getfulness or negled. 
 
 I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I 
 shall be happy to see you again, and renew our 
 delightful walks, until the desire or the duty of 
 seeing new things hurries us away. We have 
 spent a month here in our accustomed solitude, 
 with the exception of one night at the Casino ; 
 and the choice society of all ages, which I took 
 care to pack up in a large trunk before we left 
 England, have revisited us here. I am employed 
 just now, having little better to do, in translating 
 into my faint and inefficient periods, the divine 
 eloquence of Plato's Symposium ; only as an 
 exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some idea of 
 the manners and feelings of the Athenians — so 
 different on many subjeds from that of any other 
 community that ever existed. 
 
 We have almost finished Ariosto — who is enter- 
 
50 SHELLEYS LETTERS 
 
 taining and graceful, and sometimes a poet. For- 
 give me, worshippers of a more equal and tolerant 
 divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me less than 
 you. Where is the gentle seriousness, the deli- 
 cate sensibility, the calm and sustained energy, 
 without which true greatness cannot be ? He is 
 so cruel, too, in his descriptions ; his most prized 
 virtues are vices almost without disguise. He 
 constantly vindicates and embellishes revenge in 
 its grossest form ; the most deadly superstition 
 that ever infested the world. How different from 
 the tender and solemn enthusiasm of Petrarch — 
 or even the delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, 
 though somewhat obscured by an assumed and 
 artificial style I 
 
 We read a good deal here — and we read little 
 in Livorno. We have ridden, Mary and I, once 
 only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on the top 
 of the mountains ; the road, winding through 
 forests and over torrents, and on the verge of 
 green ravines, affords scenery magnificently fine. 
 I cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though 
 vainly, come and see. I take great delight in 
 watching the changes of the atmosphere here, and 
 the growth of the thunder showers with which 
 the noon is often overshadowed, and which break 
 and fade away towards evening into flocks of 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 51 
 
 delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading fast 
 away ; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises 
 majestically over the rift in the forest-covered 
 mountains to the south, and the pale summer 
 lightning which is spread out every night, at 
 intervals, over the sky. . . . 
 
 With the sentiment of impatience until we see 
 you again in the autumn, 
 
 I am yours most sincerely, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
XII 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca, 2$ July, 18 18. 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I received on the same day your letters 
 marked five and six, the one directed to Pisa, and 
 the other to Livorno, and I can assure you they 
 are most welcome visitors. 
 
 Our life here is as unvaried by any external 
 events as if we were at Marlow, where a sail up 
 the river or a journey to London makes an epoch. 
 Since I last wrote to you, I have ridden over to 
 Lucca, once with Claire, and once alone ; and 
 we have been over to the Casino, where I cannot 
 say there is an5nhing remarkable, the women 
 being far removed from anything which the most 
 liberal annotator could interpret into beauty or 
 grace, and apparently possessing no intellectual 
 excellencies to compensate the deficiency. I assure 
 you it is well that it is so, for these dances, espe- 
 cially the waltz, are so exquisitely beautiful that 
 it would be a little dangerous to the newly un- 
 frozen senses and imaginations of us migrators 
 from the neighbourhood of the Pole. As it is — 
 except in the dark — there could be no peril. The 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 35 
 
 atmosphere here, unlike that of the rest of Italy, is 
 diversified with clouds, which grow in the middle 
 of the day, and sometimes bring thunder and 
 hghtning, and hail about the size of a pigeon's 
 egg, and decrease towards the evening, leaving 
 only those finely woven webs of vapour which 
 we see in English skies, and flocks of fleecy and 
 slowly-moving clouds, which all vanish before 
 sunset ; and the nights are for ever serene, and we 
 see a star in the east at sunset — I think it is 
 Jupiter — almost as fine as Venus was last summer; 
 but it wants a certain silver and aerial radiance, 
 and soft yet piercing splendour, which belongs, I 
 suppose, to the latter planet by virtue of its at 
 once divine and female nature. I have forgotten 
 to ask the ladies if Jupiter produces on them the 
 same effed. I take great delight in watching the 
 changes of the atmosphere. In the evening Mary 
 and I often take a ride, for horses are cheap in 
 this country. In the middle of the day, I bathe 
 in a pool or fountain, formed in the middle of 
 the forests by a torrent. It is surrounded on all 
 sides by precipitous rocks, and th^waterfall of the 
 stream which forms it falls into it on one side 
 with perpetual dashing. Close to it, on the top 
 of the rocks, are alders, and, above, the great 
 chestnut trees, whose long and pointed leaves 
 
 D 
 
34 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 pierce the deep blue sky in strong relief. The 
 water of this pool, which, to venture an un- 
 rhythmical paraphrase, is ** sixteen feet long and 
 ten feet wide," is as transparent as the air, so that 
 the stones and sand at the bottom seem, as it were, 
 trembling in the light of noonday. It is exceed- 
 ingly cold also. My custom is to undress and sit 
 on the rocks, reading Herodotus, until the perspi- 
 ration has subsided, and then to leap from the 
 edge of the rock into this fountain — a pradice in 
 the hot weather exceedingly refreshing. This tor- 
 rent is composed, as it were, of ? succession of 
 pools and waterfalls, up which I sometimes amuse 
 myself by climbing when I bathe, and receiving 
 the spray over all my body, whilst I clamber up 
 the moist crags with difficulty. 
 
 I have lately found myself totally incapable of 
 original composition. I have employed my morn- 
 ings, therefore, in translating the Symposium, 
 which I accomplished in ten days. Mary is now 
 transcribing it, and I am writing a prefatory essay. 
 I have been reading scarcely anything but Greek, 
 and a little Italian poetry with Mary. We have 
 finished Ariosto together — a thing I could not have 
 done again alone. 
 
 "Frankenstein" seems to have been well re- 
 
SHELLEYS LETTERS 5$ 
 
 ceived, for although the unfriendly criticism of the 
 '* Quarterly" is an evil for it, yet it proves that 
 it is read in some considerable degree, and it 
 would be difficult for them, with any appearance 
 of fairness, to deny it merit altogether. Their 
 notice of me, and their exposure of their true 
 motives for not noticing my book, show how 
 well understood an hostility must subsist between 
 me and them. 
 
 The news of the result of the eledions, espe- 
 cially that of the metropolis, is highly inspiriting. 
 I received a letter, of two days later date, with 
 yours, which announced the unfortunate termina- 
 tion of that of Westmoreland. I wish you had 
 sent me some of the overflowing villany of those 
 apostates. What a pitiful wretch that Words- 
 worth : that such a man should be such a poet 1 
 I can compare him with no one but Simonides, 
 that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the 
 same time the most natural and tender of lyric 
 poets. 
 
 What pleasure would it have given me if the 
 wings of imagination could have divided the space 
 which divides us, and I could have been of your 
 party ! I have seen nothing so beautiful as Virginia 
 Water in its kind, and my thoughts for ever cling 
 
 D 2 
 
36 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 to Windsor Forest, and the copses of Marlow, like 
 the clouds which hang upon the woods of the 
 mountains, low trailing, and though they pass 
 away, leave their best dew when they themselves 
 have faded. 
 
XIII 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca, i6 August, 1818, 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 No new event has been added to my life 
 since I wrote last, at least none which might 
 not have taken place as well on the banks of the 
 Thames as on those of the Serchio. I projed 
 soon a short excursion, of a week or so, to some 
 of the neighbouring cities, and on the loth of 
 September we leave this place for Florence, when 
 I shall at least be able to tell you of some things 
 which you cannot see from your windows. 
 
 I have finished, by taking advantage of a few 
 days of inspiration — which the Camcenae have 
 been lately very backward in conceding — the little 
 poem I began sending to the press in London. 
 Oilier will send you the proofs. Its strudure is 
 slight and aery ; its subjed ideal. The metre 
 corresponds with the spirit of the poem, and 
 varies with the flow of the feeling. I have trans- 
 lated, and Mary has transcribed, the Symposium, as 
 well as my poem, and I am proceeding to employ 
 myself on a discourse upon the subjed of which 
 the Symposium treats, considering the subjed 
 
38 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 with reference to the difference of sentiments 
 respeding it existing between the Greeks and 
 modern nations, a subjed to be handled with 
 that delicate caution which either I cannot or I 
 will not practise in other matters, but which here 
 I acknowledge to be necessary. Not that I have 
 any serious thought of publishing either this dis- 
 course or the Symposium — at least till I return to 
 England — when we may discuss the propriety 
 of it. 
 
 * * Nightmare Abbey " finished ! Well, what is in 
 it ? What is it ? You are as secret as if the 
 priest of Ceres had didated its sacred pages. 
 However, I suppose I shall see in time, when my 
 second parcel arrives. My first is yet absent. By 
 what conveyance did you send it ? 
 
 Pray, are you yet cured of your nympholepsy ? 
 'Tis a sweet disease, but one as obstinate and 
 dangerous as any, even when the nymph is a 
 Poliad. Whether such should be the case or not, 
 I hope your nympholeptic tale is not abandoned. 
 The subjed, if treated with a due spice of bacchic 
 fury, and interwoven with the manners and feel- 
 ings of those divine people, who, in their very 
 errors, are the mirrors, as it were, in which all 
 that is delicate and graceful contemplates itself, is 
 perhaps equal to any. What a wonderful passage 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 39 
 
 there is in Phaedrus — the beginning, I think, of 
 one of the speeches of Socrates — in praise of 
 poetic madness, and in definition of what poetry 
 is, and how a man becomes a poet ! Every man 
 who Hves in this age and desires to write poetry, 
 ought, as a preservative against the false and 
 narrow systems of criticism which every poetical 
 empiric vents, to impress himself with this sen- 
 tence, if he would be numbered among those to 
 whom may apply this proud, though sublime, 
 expression of Tasso; ** Non c 'e in mondo chi 
 merita nome di Creatore, che Dio ed il poeta." 
 
 The weather has been brilliantly fine, and now, 
 among these mountains, the autumnal air is be- 
 coming less hot, especially in the mornings and 
 evenings. The chestnut woods are now inex- 
 pressibly beautiful, for the chestnuts have become 
 large, and add a new richness to the full foliage. 
 We see here Jupiter in the east, and Venus, I 
 believe, as the evening star, diredly after sunset. 
 
 More and better in my next. Mary and Claire 
 desire their kind remembrances. 
 
 Most faithfully your friend, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
XIV 
 
 To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca, Florence. 
 Thursday, ii o'clock [20 August, 1818]. . 
 
 Dearest Mary, 
 
 We have been delayed in this city four 
 hours for the Austrian minister's passport, but 
 are now on the point of setting out with a 
 vetturino, who engages to take us on the third 
 day to Padua, that is, we shall only sleep three 
 nights on the road. Yesterday's journey, per- 
 formed in a one-horse cabriolet, almost without 
 springs, over a rough road, was excessively fati- 
 guing. Claire suffered most from it, for, as to 
 myself, there are occasions in which fatigue seems 
 a useful medicine, as I have felt no pain in my 
 side — a most delightful respite — since I left you. 
 The country was various and exceedingly beauti- 
 ful. Sometimes there were those low cultivated 
 lands, with their vine festoons, and large bunches 
 of grapes just becoming purple, at others we 
 passed between high mountains, crowned with 
 some of the most majestic Gothic ruins I ever 
 saw, which frowned from the bare precipices, or 
 were half seen among the olive copses. As we 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTEkS 41 
 
 approached Florence, the country became culti- 
 vated to a very high degree ; the plain v^as filled 
 with the most beautiful villas, and as far as the 
 eye could reach the mountains were covered with 
 them, for the plains are bounded on all sides by 
 blue and misty mountains. The vines are here 
 trailed on low trellises of reeds interwoven into 
 crosses to support them, and the grapes, now 
 almost ripe, are exceedingly abundant. You every- 
 where meet those teams of beautiful white oxen, 
 which are now labouring the little vine-divided 
 fields with their Virgilian ploughs and carts. 
 Florence itself, that is the Lung' Arno, for I have 
 seen no more, I think is the most beautiful city I 
 have yet seen. It is surrounded with cultivated 
 hills, and from the bridge which crosses the broad 
 channel of the Arno the view is the most ani- 
 mated and elegant I ever saw. You see three or 
 four bridges apparently supported by Corinthian 
 pillars, and the white sails of the boats, relieved 
 by the deep green of the forest, which comes to 
 the water's edge, and the sloping hills covered 
 with bright villas on every side. Domes and 
 steeples rise on all sides, and fhe cleanliness is 
 remarkably great. On the other side there are 
 the foldings of the vale of Arno above, first the 
 hills of olive and vine, then the chestnut woods, 
 
42 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 and then the blue and misty pine forests, which 
 invest the aerial Apennines, that fade in the dis- 
 tance. I have seldom seen a city so lovely at first 
 sight as Florence. 
 
 We shall travel hence within a few hours, with 
 the speed of the post, since the distance is 190 
 miles, and we are to do it in three days, besides 
 the half day, which is somewhat more than sixty 
 miles a day. We have now got a comfortable 
 carriage and two mules, and, thanks to Paolo, 
 have made a very decent bargain, comprising 
 everything, to Padua. I should say we had 
 delightful fruit for breakfast — figs, very fine, and 
 peaches, unfortunately gathered before they were 
 ripe, whose smell was like what one fancies of 
 the wakening of paradise flowers. 
 
 Well, my dearest Mary, are you very lonely? 
 Tell me truth, my sweetest, do you ever cry ? I 
 shall hear from you once at Venice, and once on 
 my return here. If you love me, you will keep up 
 your spirits, and, at all events, tell me truth about 
 it, for, I assure jou, I am not of a disposition to 
 be flattered by your sorrow, though I should be 
 by your cheerfulness, and, above all, by seeing 
 such fruits of my absence as were produced when 
 we were at Geneva. What acquaintances have 
 you made ? I might have travelled to Padua with 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 4$ 
 
 a German, who had just come from Rome, and 
 had scarce recovered from a malaria fever, caught 
 in the Pontine Marshes a week or two since ; 
 and I conceded to Claire's entreaties, and to your 
 absent suggestions, and omitted the opportunity, 
 although I have no great faith in such species of 
 contagion. It is not very hot, not at all too much 
 so for my sensations, and the only thing that 
 incommodes me are the gnats at night, who roar 
 like so many humming tops in one's ear, and I 
 do not always find zanzariere. How is Will- 
 mouse and little Clara ? They must be kissed for 
 me, and you must particularly remember to speak 
 my name to William, and see that he does not 
 quite forget me before I return. Adieu, my 
 dearest girl, I think that we shall soon meet. I 
 shall write again from Venice. Adieu, dear 
 Mary ! 
 
 I have been reading the ** Noble Kinsmen," in 
 which, with the exception of that lovely scene to 
 which you added so much grace in reading to me, 
 I have been disappointed. The jailor's daughter 
 is a poor imitation, and deformed. The whole 
 story wants moral discrimination and modesty. 
 I do not believe Shakespeare wrote a word of it. 
 
XV 
 
 To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca, Venice. 
 Sunday morning [2^ August, 181S]. 
 My dearest Mary, 
 
 We arrived here last night at twelve o'clock, 
 and it is now before breakfast the next morning. 
 I can, of course, tell you nothing of the future, 
 and though I shall not close this letter till post 
 time, yet I do not know exadly when that is. 
 Yet, if you are very impatient, look along the 
 letter and you will see another date, when I may 
 have something to relate 
 
 We came from Padua hither in a gondola, and 
 the gondoliere, among other things, without any 
 hint on my part, began talking of Lord Byron. 
 He said he was a giovinetto Inglese^ with a nonie 
 stravagante, who lived very luxuriously, and spent 
 great sums of money. This man, it seems, was 
 one of Lord Byron's gondolieri. No sooner had we 
 arrived at the inn than the waiter began talking 
 about him — said that he frequented Mrs. Hoppner's 
 conversazioni very much. 
 
 Our journey from Florence to Padua contained 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 4S 
 
 nothing which may not be related another time. 
 At Padua, as I said, we took a gondola, and left 
 it at three o'clock. These gondolas are the most 
 convenient and beautiful boats in the world. 
 They are finely carpeted and furnished with black 
 and painted black. The couches upon which you 
 lean are extraordinarily soft, and are so disposed 
 as to be the most comfortable to those who lean 
 or sit. The windows have at will either Venetian 
 plate-glass flowered, or Venetian blinds, or blinds 
 of black cloth to shut out the light. The weather 
 here is extremely cold ; indeed, sometimes very 
 painfully so, and yesterday it began to rain. We 
 passed the Laguna in the middle of the night in a 
 most violent storm of wind, rain and Hghtning. 
 It was very curious to observe the elements above 
 in a state of such tremendous convulsions, and 
 the surface of the water almost calm ; for these 
 lagunas, though five miles broad — a space enough 
 in a storm to sink any gondola — are so shallow 
 that the boatmen drive the boat along with a 
 pole. The sea- water, furiously agitated by the 
 wind, shone with sparkles like stars. Venice, 
 now hidden and now disclosed by the driving 
 rain, shone dimly with its lights. We were all 
 this while safe and comfortable, except that Claire 
 
46 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 was now and then a little frightened in our cabin. 
 Well, adieu, dearest : I shall, as Miss Byron says, 
 resume the pen in the evening. . . . 
 
 At three o'clock I called on Lord Byron ; he 
 was delighted to see me, and our first conversa- 
 tion of course consisted in the objed of my 
 visit. . . . 
 
 Well, my dear Mary, this talk went off, for I 
 did not see in that moment how I could urge it 
 further, and I thought that at least many points 
 were gained in the willingness and good humour 
 of our discussion. So he took me in his gondola 
 — much against my will, for I wanted to return to 
 Claire at the Hoppners' — across the Laguna to a 
 long sandy island, which defends Venice from the 
 Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his 
 horses waiting for us, and we rode along the 
 sands of the sea talking. Our conversation con- 
 sisted in the history of his wounded feeUngs, and 
 questions as to my affairs, and great professions 
 of friendship and regard for me. He said that if 
 he had been in England at the time of the 
 chancery affair, he would have moved heaven 
 and earth to have prevented such a decision. We 
 talked of literary matters — his fourth Canto, which 
 he says is very good, and, indeed, repeated some 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 47 
 
 stanzas of great energy to me — when we returned 
 to his palace. . . . 
 
 Do you know, dearest, how this letter was 
 written ? By scraps and patches, and interrupted 
 every minute. The gondola is now come to take 
 us up to Fusina. Este is a little place, and the 
 house found without difficulty. I shall count four 
 days for this letter : one day for packing, four 
 for coming here, and on the ninth or tenth day 
 we shall meet. 
 
 I am too late for the post, but I send an ex- 
 press to overtake it. Enclosed is an order for 
 50/. If you knew all that I had to do ! 
 
 Dearest love, be well, be happy ; come to me, 
 and confide in your own constant and affedionate 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and don*t 
 let William forget me. Clara cannot recoiled 
 me. 
 
XVI 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Este, [8 October, iSi8.] 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I have not written to you, I think, for six 
 weeks, but I have often felt that I had many 
 things to say ; but I have not been without events 
 to disturb and distraft me, amongst which is the 
 death of my Httle girl. She died of a disorder 
 peculiar to the climate. We have all had bad 
 spirits enough, and I, in addition, bad health. I 
 intend to be better soon ; there is no malady, 
 bodily or mental, which does not either kill or is 
 killed. 
 
 We left the baths of Lucca, I think, the day 
 after I wrote to you, on a visit to Venice, partly 
 for the sake of seeing the city. We made a very 
 delightful acquaintance there with a Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hoppner, the gentleman an Englishman, and 
 the lady a Swissesse, mild and beautiful, and un- 
 prejudiced, in the best sense of the word. The 
 kind attentions of these people made our short 
 stay at Venice very pleasant. I saw Lord Byron, 
 and really hardly knew him again : he is changed 
 into the liveliest and happiest-looking man I ever 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 49 
 
 met. He read me the first canto of his " Don 
 Juan," a thing in the style of *' Beppo," but infi- 
 nitely better, and dedicated to Southey in ten or a 
 dozen stanzas, more like a mixture of wormwood 
 and verdigris than satire. Venice is a wonder- 
 fully fine city. The approach to it over the 
 Laguna, with its domes and turrets glittering in a 
 long line over the blue waves, is one of the finest 
 architedural delusions in the world. It seems to 
 have, and literally it has, its foundations in the 
 sea. The silent streets are paved with water, and 
 you hear nothing but the dashing of the oars, 
 and the occasional cries of the gondolieri. I heard 
 nothing of Tasso. The gondolas themselves are 
 things of a most romantic and piduresque appear- 
 ance ; I can only compare them to moths, of 
 which a coffin might have been the chrysalis. 
 They are hung with black, and painted black, and 
 carpeted with grey; they curl at the prow and 
 stern, and at the former there is a nondescript 
 beak of shining steel, which glitters at the end of 
 its long black mass. 
 
 The Doge's palace, with its library, is a fine 
 monument of aristocratic power. I saw the dun- 
 geons, where these scoundrels used to torment 
 their vidims. They are of three kinds, one adjoin- 
 ing the place of trial, where the prisoners destined 
 
$o SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 to immediate execution were kept. I could not 
 descend to them, because the day on which I 
 visited it was festa. Another under the leads of 
 the palace, where the sufferers were roasted to 
 death or madness by the ardours of an Italian 
 sun ; and others, called the Pozzi — or wells, deep 
 underneath, and communicating with those on 
 the roof by secret passages — where the prisoners 
 were confined sometimes half up to their middles 
 in stinking water. When the French came here 
 they found only one old man in the dungeons, 
 and he could not speak. But Venice, which was 
 once a tyrant, is now the next worse thing, a 
 slave ; for, in fact, it ceased to be free, or worth 
 our regret as a nation, from the moment that the 
 oligarchy usurped the rights of the people ; yet, 
 I do not imagine that it was ever so degraded as 
 it has been since the French, and especially the 
 Austrian yoke. The Austrians take sixty per cent, 
 in taxes, and impose free quarters on the inhabi- 
 tants. A horde of German soldiers, as vicious 
 and more disgusting than the Venetians them- 
 selves, insult these miserable people. I had no 
 conception of the excess to which avarice, 
 cowardice, superstition, ignorance, passionless 
 lust, and all the inexpressible brutalities which 
 degrade human nature, could be carried, until I 
 had passed a few days at Venice. 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 51 
 
 We have been living this last month near the 
 little town from which I date this letter, in a very 
 pleasant villa which has been lent to us, and we 
 are now on the point of proceeding to Florence, 
 Rome, and Naples, at which last city we shall 
 spend the winter, and return northwards in the 
 spring. Behind us here are the Euganean Hills, 
 not so beautiful as those of the Bagni di Lucca, 
 with Arqua, where Petrarch's house and tomb 
 are religiously preserved and visited. At the end 
 of our garden is an extensive gothic castle, now 
 the habitation of owls and bats, where the Medici 
 family resided before they came to Florence. We 
 see before us the wide flat plains of Lombardy, in 
 which we see the sun and moon rise and set, and 
 the evening star, and all the golden magnificence 
 of autumnal clouds. But I reserve wonder for 
 Naples. 
 
 I have been writing, and indeed have just 
 finished the first act of, a lyric and classical 
 drama, to be called *' Prometheus Unbound." 
 Will you tell me what there is in Cicero about a 
 drama supposed to have been written by Aeschylus 
 under this title ? 
 
 I ought to say that I have just read Malthus 
 in a French translation. Malthus is a very clever 
 man, and the world would be a great gainer if it 
 
 £ 2 
 
S2 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 would seriously take his lessons into considera- 
 tion, if it were capable of attending seriously to 
 anything but mischief — but what on earth does 
 he mean by some of his inferences ! 
 
 Yours ever faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XVII 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Ferrara, 8 November, 1818. 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 We left Este yesterday on our journey to- 
 wards Naples. The roads were particularly bad ; 
 we have, therefore, accomplished only two days' 
 journey, of eighteen and twenty-four miles each, 
 and you may imagine that our horses must be 
 tolerably good ones, to drag our carriage, with 
 five people and heavy luggage, through deep and 
 clayey roads. The roads are, however, good 
 during the rest of the way. 
 
 The country is flat, but intersected by lines of 
 wood, trellised with vines, whose broad leaves 
 are now stamped with the redness of their decay. 
 Every here and there one sees people employed 
 in agricultural labours, and the plough, the harrow, 
 or the cart, drawn by long teams of milk-white 
 or dove-coloured oxen of immense size and ex- 
 quisite beauty. This, indeed, might be the country 
 of Pasiphaes. In one farmyard I was shown 
 sixty-three of these lovely oxen, tied to their stalls, 
 in excellent condition. A farmyard in this part of 
 Italy is somewhat different from one in England. 
 
54 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 First, the house, which is large and high, with 
 strange-looking unpainted window-shutters, gene- 
 rally dosed, and dreary beyond conception. The 
 farmyard and out-buildings, however, are usually in 
 the neatest order. The threshing-floor is not under 
 cover, but like that described in the ** Georgics," 
 usually flattened by a broken column, and neither 
 the mole, nor the toad, nor the ant, can find 
 on its area a crevice for their dwelling. Around 
 it, at this season, are piled the stacks of the 
 leaves and stalks of Indian corn, which has lately 
 been threshed and dried upon its surface. At 
 a little distance are vast heaps of many-coloured 
 zucche or pumpkins, some of enormous size, piled 
 as winter food for the hogs. There are turkeys, 
 too, and fowls wandering about, and two or 
 three dogs, who bark with a sharp hylactism. 
 The people who are occupied with the care of 
 these things seem neither ill-clothed nor ill-fed, 
 and the blunt incivility of their manners has an 
 English air with it, very discouraging to those 
 who are accustomed to the impudent and polished 
 lying of the inhabitants of the cities. I should 
 judge the agricultural resources of this country 
 to be immense, since it can wear so flourishing 
 an appearance, in spite of the enormous dis- 
 couragements which the various tyranny of the 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 55 
 
 governments inflicts on it. I ought to say that one 
 
 of the farms belongs to a Jew banker at Venice — 
 
 another Shylock. We arrived late at the inn 
 
 where I now write ; it was once the palace of a 
 
 Venetian nobleman, and is now an excellent inn. 
 
 To-morrow we are going to see the sights of 
 
 Ferrara. 
 
 p November. 
 
 We have had heavy rain and thunder all night, 
 and the former still continuing, we went in the 
 carriage about the town. We went first to look 
 at the cathedral, but the beggars very soon made 
 us sound a retreat ; so, whether, as it is said, 
 there is a copy of a pidure of Michael Angelo 
 there or no, I cannot tell. At the public library 
 we were more successful. This is, indeed, a 
 magnificent establishment, containing, as they say, 
 160,000 volumes. We saw some illuminated 
 manuscripts of church music, with the verses of 
 the Psalms interlined between the square notes, 
 each of which consisted of the most delicate 
 tracery, in colours inconceivably vivid. They be- 
 longed to the neighbouring convent of Certosa, 
 and are three or four hundred years old, but their 
 hues are as fresh as if they had been executed 
 yesterday. The tomb of Ariosto occupies one end 
 of the largest saloon of which the Hbrary is com- 
 
5€ SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 posed ; it is formed of various marbles, sur- 
 mounted by an expressive bust of the poet, and 
 subscribed with a few Latin verses, in a less 
 miserable taste than those usually employed for 
 similar purposes. But the most interesting exhibi- 
 tions here are the writings, &c., of Ariosto and 
 Tasso, which are preserved, and were concealed 
 from the undistinguishing depredations of the 
 French with pious care. There is the arm-chair 
 of Ariosto, an old plain wooden piece of furniture, 
 the hard seat of which was once occupied by — 
 but has now survived — its cushion, as it has its 
 master. I could fancy Ariosto sitting in it, and 
 the satires in his own handwriting, which they 
 unfold beside it, and the old bronze inkstand, 
 loaded with figures, which belonged also to him, 
 assist the willing delusion. This inkstand has an 
 antique, rather than an ancient appearance. Three 
 nymphs lean forth from the circumference, and 
 on the top of the lid stands a Cupid, winged and 
 looking up, with a torch in one hand, his bow 
 in the other, and his quiver beside him. A 
 medal was bound round the skeleton of Ariosto, 
 with his likeness impressed upon it. I cannot 
 say I think it had much native expression, but 
 perhaps the artist was in fault. On the reverse 
 is a hand, cutting, with a pair of scissors, the 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 57 
 
 tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass, 
 with this legend, pro bono malum. What this 
 reverse of the boasted Christian maxim means, or 
 how it applies to Ariosto, either as a satirist or a 
 serious writer, I cannot exadly tell. The cicerone 
 attempted to explain, and it is to his commen- 
 tary that my bewildering is probably due — if, 
 indeed, the meaning be very plain, as is possibly 
 the case. 
 
 There is here a manuscript of the entire '' Geru- 
 salemme Liberata," written by Tasso's own hand ; 
 a manuscript of some poems, written in iprison, 
 to the Duke Alfonso ; and the satires of Ariosto, 
 written also by his own hand ; and the *' Pastor 
 Fido" of Guarini. The **Gerusalemme," though 
 it had evidently been copied and recopied, is in- 
 terUned, particularly towards the end, with nume- 
 rous corredions. The handwriting of Ariosto is 
 a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, 
 as I should say, a strong and keen but circum- 
 scribed energy of mind ; that of Tasso is large, 
 free, and flowing, except that there is a checked 
 expression in the midst of its flow, which brings 
 the letters into a smaller compass than one ex- 
 peded from the beginning of the word. It is 
 the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, ex- 
 ceeding at times its own depth, and admonished 
 
' 58 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 to return by the chillness of the waters of oblivion 
 striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I 
 always seek in what I see the manifestation of 
 something beyond the present and tangible objed ; 
 and as we do not agree in p'hysiognomy, so we 
 may not agree now. But my business is to relate 
 my own sensations, and not to attempt to inspire 
 others with them. Some of the MSS. of Tasso 
 were sonnets to his persecutor, which contain a 
 great deal of what is called flattery. If Alfonso's 
 ghost were asked how he felt those praises now, 
 I wonder what he would say. But to me there 
 is much more to pity than to condemn in these 
 entreaties and praises of Tasso. It is as a bigot 
 prays to and praises his God, whom he knows to 
 be the most remorseless, capricious, and inflexible 
 of tyrants, but whom he knows also to be omni- 
 potent. Tasso's situation was widely different 
 from that of any persecuted being of the present 
 day, for from the depth of dungeons, public 
 opinion might now at length be awakened to an 
 echo that would startle the oppressor. But then 
 there was no hope. There is something irre- 
 sistibly pathetic to me in the sight of Tasso's own 
 handwriting, moulding expressions of adulation 
 and entreaty to a deaf and stupid tyrant, in an 
 age when the most heroic virtue would have 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 59 
 
 exposed its possessor to hopeless persecution, and 
 — such is the alliance between virtue and genius — 
 which unoffending genius could not escape. 
 
 We went afterwards to see his prison in the 
 hospital of Sant' Anna, and I enclose you a piece 
 of wood of the very door which for seven years 
 and three months divided this glorious being 
 from the air and the light which had nourished 
 in him those influences which he has communi- 
 cated, through his poetry, to thousands. The 
 dungeon is low and dark, and, when I say that 
 it is really a very decent dungeon, I speak as one 
 who has seen the prisons in the Doge's palace at 
 Venice. But it is a horrible abode for the coarsest 
 and meanest thing that ever wore the shape of 
 man, much more for one of delicate suscepti- 
 biUties and elevated fancies. It is low, and has 
 a grated window, and being sunk some feet 
 below the level of the earth, is full of unwhole- 
 some damps. In the darkest corner is a mark in 
 the wall, where the chains were rivetted which 
 bound him hand and foot. After some time, at 
 the instance of some cardinal his friend, the duke 
 allowed his vidim a fireplace ; the mark where it 
 was walled up yet remains. 
 
 At the entrance of the Liceo, where the library 
 is, we were met by a penitent j his form was 
 
60 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 completely enveloped in ghost-like drapery of 
 white flannel ; his bare feet were sandalled, and 
 there was a kind of network visor drawn over his 
 eyes, so as entirely to conceal his face. I imagine 
 that this man had been adjudged to suffer this 
 penance for some crime known only to himself 
 and his confessor, and this kind of exhibition is a 
 striking instance of the power of the Catholic 
 superstition over the human mind. He passed, 
 rattling his wooden box for charity. 
 
 Adieu. You will hear from me again before I 
 arrive at Naples. 
 
 Yours ever sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XVIII 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Bologna, Monday, 9 November, 1818. 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I have seen a quantity of things here — 
 churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pidures ; 
 and my brain is at this moment Hke a portfolio of 
 an archited, or a print-shop, or a common-place 
 book. I will try to recoiled something of what I 
 have seen ; for indeed it requires, if it will obey, 
 an ad of volition. First we went to the cathe- 
 dral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a 
 kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, loaded 
 with sculptures, and supported on four marble 
 columns. We went then to a palace — I am sure 
 I forget the name of it — where we saw a large 
 gallery of pidures. Of course, in a pidure-gallery 
 you see three hundred pidures you forget for one 
 you remember. I remember, however, an interesting 
 pidure by Guido of the *' Rape of Proserpine," in 
 which Proserpine casts back her languid and half- 
 unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flow^ers she had 
 left ungathered in the fields of Enna. There was 
 an exquisitely executed piece of Correggio, about 
 four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet 
 
6a , . SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the devil 
 who was bound in that style — but who can make 
 anything of four saints ? For what can they be sup- 
 posed to be about ? There was one painting, indeed, 
 by this master, *' Christ beatified," inexpressibly 
 fine. It is a half figure, seated on a massof clouds, 
 tinged with an aetherial, rose-like lustre ; the arms 
 are expanded ; the whole frame seems dilated 
 with expression ; the countenance is heavy, as it 
 were, with the rapture of the spirit ; the lips 
 parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath of 
 intense but regulated passion ; the eyes are calm 
 and benignant ; the whole features harmonized 
 in majesty and sweetness. The hair is parted on 
 the forehead, and falls in heavy locks on each 
 side. It is motionless, but seems as if the faintest 
 breath would move it. The colouring, I suppose, 
 must be very good, if I could remark and under- 
 stand it. The sky is of a pale aerial orange, like 
 the tints of latest sunset ; it does not seem painted 
 around and beyond the figure, but everything 
 seems to have absorbed and to have been pene- 
 trated by its hues. I do not think we saw any 
 other of Correggio, but this specimen gives me a 
 very exalted idea of his powers. 
 
 We went to see heaven knows how many 
 more palaces — Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 65 
 
 If you want Italian names for any purpose, here 
 they are ; I should be glad of them if I was 
 writing a novel. I saw many more of Guido. 
 One a Samson drinking water out of an ass's jaw- 
 bone, in the midst of the slaughtered Philistines. 
 Why he is supposed to do this, God, who gave 
 him this jaw-bone, alone knows — but certain it is 
 that the painting is a very fine one. The figure 
 of Samson stands in strong relief in the fore- 
 ground, coloured, as it were, in the hues of 
 human life, and full of strength and elegance. 
 Round him lie the Philistines in all the attitudes 
 of death. One prone, with the slight convulsion 
 of pain just passing from his forehead, whilst on 
 his hps and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. 
 Another leaning on his arm, with his hand, 
 white and motionless, hanging out beyond. In 
 the distance, more dead bodies ; and, still further 
 beyond, the blue sea and the blue mountains, and 
 one white and tranquil sail. 
 
 There is a ** Murder of the Innocents," also by 
 Guido, finely coloured, with much fine expres- 
 sion—but the subjed is very horrible, and it 
 seemed deficient in strength — at least, you require 
 the highest ideal energy, the most poetical and 
 exalted conception of the subjed, to reconcile you 
 to such a contemplation. There was a '* Jesus 
 
64 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 Christ crucified " by the same, very fine. One gets 
 tired, indeed, whatever may be the conception 
 and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous 
 and agonized form for ever exhibited in one pre- 
 scriptive attitude of torture. But the Magdalen, 
 cHnging to the cross with the look of passive and 
 gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright 
 flaxen hair, and the figure of St. John, with his 
 looks uplifted in passionate compassion ; his hands 
 clasped, and his fingers twisting themselves to- 
 gether, as it were, with involuntary anguish ; his 
 feet almost writhing up from the ground with 
 the same sympathy; and the whole of this 
 arrayed in colours of a diviner nature, yet most 
 like nature's self— of the contemplation of this 
 one would never weary. 
 
 There was a *' Fortune," too, of Guido ; a 
 piece of mere beauty. There was the figure of 
 Fortune on a globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, 
 and Love was trying to catch her back by the hair, 
 and her face was half turned towards him ; her 
 long chestnut hair was floating in the stream of 
 the wind, and threw its shadow over her fair fore- 
 head. Her hazel eyes were fixed on her pursuer 
 with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light 
 smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which 
 arrayed her delicate limbs were aetherial and warm. 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 65 
 
 But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the 
 pidures of Guido which I saw was a *' Madonna 
 Lattante." She is leaning over her child, and the 
 maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are 
 shadowed forth on her soft and gentle counten- 
 ance, and in her simple and affedionate gestures. 
 There is what an unfeeling observer would call a 
 dullness in the expression of her face ; her eyes 
 are almost closed ; her lip depressed ; there is a 
 serious, and even a heavy relaxation, as it were, 
 of all the muscles which are called into adion by 
 ordinary emotions ; but it is only as if the spirit 
 of love, almost insupportable from its intensity, 
 were brooding over, and weighing down the soul, 
 or whatever it is, without which the material 
 frame is inanimate and inexpressive. 
 
 There is another painter here, called Frances- 
 chini, a Bolognese, who, though certainly very 
 inferior to Guido, is yet a person of excellent 
 powers. One entire church, that of Santa 
 Catarina, is covered by his works. I do not 
 know whether any of his pidures have ever been 
 seen in England. His colouring is less warm than 
 that of Guido, but nothing can be more clear and 
 delicate ; it is as if he could have dipped his pencil 
 in the hues of some serenest and star-shining twi- 
 light. His forms have the same delicacy and 
 
 F 
 
66 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 aerial loveliness ; their eyes are all bright with 
 innocence and love ; their lips scarce divided by 
 some gentle and sweet emotion. His winged 
 children are the loveliest ideal beings ever created 
 by the human mind. These are generally, 
 whether in the capacity of cherubim or Cupid, 
 accessories to the rest of the pidure ; and the 
 underplot of their lovely and infantine play is 
 something almost pathetic, from the excess of its 
 unpretending beauty. One of the best of his 
 pieces is an Annunciation, of the Virgin ; the angel 
 is beaming in beauty ; the Virgin, soft, retiring, 
 and simple. 
 
 We saw, besides, one pidure of Raphael — St. 
 Cecilia ; this is in another and higher style ; you 
 forget that it is a pidure as you look at it ; and 
 yet it is most unlike any of those things which 
 we call reality. It is one of the inspired and ideal 
 kind, and seems to have been conceived and 
 executed in a similar state of feeling to that 
 which produced among the ancients those perfed 
 specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the 
 baffling models of succeeding generations. There 
 is an unity and a perfedion in it of an incom- 
 municable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, 
 seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her 
 image in the painter's mind ; her deep, dark, 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 67 
 
 eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung 
 back from her forehead — she holds an organ in 
 her hands — her countenance, as it were, calmed 
 by the depth of its passion and rapture, and pene- 
 trated throughout with the warm and radiant 
 light of life. She is listening to the music of 
 heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, 
 for the four figures that surround her evidently 
 point, by their attitudes, towards her ; particularly 
 St. John, who, with a tender yet impassioned 
 gesture, bends his countenance towards her, 
 languid with the depth of his emotion. At her 
 feet lie various instruments of music, broken and 
 unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak ; it 
 eclipses Nature, yet it has all her truth and softness. 
 We saw some pidures of Domenichino, Car- 
 racci, Albano, Guercino, Elisabetta Sirani. The 
 two former — remember I do not pretend to taste 
 — I cannot admire. Of the latter, there are some 
 beautiful Madonnas. There are several of Guer- 
 cino, which they said were very fine. I dare say 
 they were, for the strength and complication of 
 his figures made my head turn round. One, 
 indeed, was certainly powerful. It was the 
 representation of the founder of the Carthusians 
 exercising his austerities in the desert, with a 
 youth as his attendant, kneeling beside him at an 
 
 F 2 
 
68 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 altar ; on another altar stood a skull and a cruci- 
 fix ; and around were the rocks and the trees of 
 the wilderness. I never saw such a figure as 
 this fellow. His face was wrinkled like a dried 
 snake's skin, and drawn in long hard lines ; his 
 very hands were wrinkled. He looked like an 
 animated mummy. He was clothed in a loose 
 dress of death-coloured flannel, such as you might 
 fancy a shroud might be after it had wrapt a 
 corpse a month or two. It had a yellow, putre- 
 fied, ghastly hue, which it cast on all the objeds 
 around, so that the hands and face of the Car- 
 thusian and his companion were jaundiced by this 
 sepulchral gUmmer. Why write books against 
 religion, when we may hang up such pidures? 
 But the world either will not or cannot see. The 
 gloomy effe(5t of this was softened, and at the 
 same time, its sublimity diminished, by the figure 
 of the Virgin and child in the sky, looking down 
 with admiration on the monk, and a beautiful 
 flying figure of an angel. 
 
 Enough of pidures. I saw the place where 
 Guido and his mistress, Elisabetta Sirani, were 
 buried. This lady was poisoned at the age of 
 twenty-six, by another lover, a rejeded one, of 
 course. Our guide said she was very ugly, and 
 that we might see her portrait to-morrow. 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 69 
 
 Well, good-night for the present. ** To-morrow 
 
 to fresh fields and pastures new." 
 
 Noveniber 10. 
 
 To-day we first went to see those divine pic- 
 tures of Raphael and Guido again, and then rode 
 up the mountains, behind this city, to visit a 
 chapel dedicated to the Madonna. It made me 
 melancholy to see that they had been varnishing 
 and restoring some of these pidures, and that 
 even some had been pierced by French bayonets. 
 These are the symptoms of the mortality of man ; 
 and perhaps few of his works are more evanescent 
 than paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness 
 for twenty centuries. The Apollo and the Venus 
 are as they were. But books are perhaps the 
 only produdions of man coeval with the human 
 race. Sophocles and Shakespeare can be pro- 
 duced and reproduced for ever. But how eva- 
 nescent are paintings, and must necessarily be ! 
 Those of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, and 
 perhaps they bore the same relation to Homer 
 and iEschylus that those of Guido and Raphael 
 bear to Dante and Petrarch. There is one refuge 
 from the despondency of this contemplation. The 
 material part, indeed, of their works must perish. 
 But they survive in the mind of man, and the 
 remembrances conneded with them are trans- 
 
j-o SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 mitted from generation to generation. The poet 
 embodies them in his creations. The systems of 
 philosophers are modelled to gentleness by their 
 contemplation ; opinion, that legislator, is infeded 
 with their influence ; men become better and 
 wiser ; and the unseen seeds are perhaps thus 
 sown, which shall produce a plant more excellent 
 even than that from which they fell. But all this 
 might as well be said or thought at Marlow as 
 Bologna. . , . 
 
 Yours ever most sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XIX 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Rome, 20 November, 1818. 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 Behold me in the capital of the vanished 
 world ! But I have seen nothing except St. Peter's 
 and the Vatican, overlooking the city in the midst 
 of distance, and the Dogana where they took us to 
 have our luggage examined, which is built between 
 the ruins- of a temple to Antoninus Pius. The 
 Corinthian columns rise over the dwindled palaces 
 of the modern town, and the wrought cornice is 
 changed on one side, as it were, to masses of 
 wave-worn precipice, which overhang you, far, 
 far on high. 
 
 I take the advantage of this rainy evening, and 
 before Rome has effaced all other recoUedions, to 
 endeavour to recall the vanished scenes through 
 which we have passed. We left Bologna, I for- 
 get on what day, and passing by Rimini, Fano, 
 and Foligno, along the Via Flaminia and Terni, 
 have arrived at Rome after ten days' some#hat 
 tedious, but most interesting journey. The most 
 remarkable things we saw were the Roman ex- 
 cavations in the rock, and the great waterfall of 
 
72 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 Terni. Of course you have heard that there are 
 a Roman bridge and a triumphal arch at Rimini, 
 and in what excellent taste they are built. The 
 bridge is not unlike the Strand bridge, but more 
 bold in proportion, and of course infinitely smaller. 
 From Fano we left the coast of the Adriatic, and 
 entered the Apennines, following the course of 
 the Metaurus, the banks of which were the scene 
 of the defeat of Asdrubal : and it is said, you can 
 refer to the book, that Livy has given a very 
 exad and animated description of it. I forget all 
 about it, but shall look as soon as our boxes are 
 opened. Following the river, the vale contrads, 
 the banks of the river become steep and rocky, 
 the forests of oak and ilex, which overhang its 
 emerald-coloured stream, cling to their abrupt 
 precipices. About four miles from Fossombrone, 
 the river forces for itself a passage between the 
 walls and toppling precipices of the loftiest Apen- 
 nines, which are here rifted to their base, and 
 undermined by the narrow and tumultuous torrent. 
 It was a cloudy morning, and we had no concep- 
 tion of the scene that awaited us. Suddenly the 
 lowfclouds were struck by the clear north wind, 
 and like curtains of the finest gauze, removed one 
 by one, were drawn from before the mountain, 
 whose heaven-cleaving pinnacles and black crags 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 73 
 
 overhanging one another stood at length defined 
 in the light of day. The road runs parallel to 
 the river, at a considerable height, and is carried 
 through the mountain by a vaulted cavern. The 
 marks of the chisel of the legionaries of the 
 Roman consul are yet evident. 
 
 We passed on day after day, until we came to 
 Spoleto, I think the most romantic city I ever 
 saw. There is here an aquedud of astonishing 
 elevation, which unites two rocky mountains ; 
 there is a path of a torrent below, whitening the 
 green dell with its broad and barren track of 
 stones, and above there is a castle, apparently of 
 great strength and tremendous magnitude, which 
 overhangs the city, and whose marble bastions 
 are perpendicular with the precipice. I never saw 
 a more impressive pidure, in which the shapes 
 of nature are of the grandest order, but over 
 which the creations of man, sublime from their 
 antiquity and greatness, seem to predominate. 
 The castle was built by Belisarius or Narses, I 
 forget which, but was of that epoch. 
 
 From Spoleto we went to Terni, and saw the 
 catarad of the Velino. The glaciers of Montan- 
 vert and the source of the Arveiron is the grandest 
 spedacle I ever saw. This is the second. Ima- 
 gine a river sixty feet in breadth, with a vast 
 
74 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 volume of waters, the outlet of a great lake 
 among the higher mountains, falling 300 feet 
 into a sightless gulf of snow-white vapour, which 
 bursts up for ever and for ever from a circle of 
 black crags, and thence leaping downwards, ma- 
 king five or six other cataracts, each fifty or a 
 hundred feet high, which exhibit, on a smaller 
 scale, and with beautiful and sublime variety, the 
 same appearances. But words — and far less could 
 painting — will not express it. Stand upon the 
 brink of the platform of cliff which is diredly 
 opposite ; you see the ever-moving water stream 
 down. It comes in thick and tawny folds, flak- 
 ing off like solid snow gliding down a mountain. 
 It does not seem hollow within, but without it 
 is unequal, like the folding of Hnen thrown care- 
 lessly down ; your eye follows it, and it is lost 
 below, not in the black rocks which gird it 
 around, but in its own foam and spray in the 
 cloudlike vapours boiling up from below, which 
 is not like rain, nor mist, nor spray, nor foam, but 
 water, in a shape wholly unlike anything I ever 
 saw before. It is as white as snow, but thick 
 and impenetrable to the eye. The very imagina- 
 tion is bewildered in it. A thunder comes up 
 from the abyss wonderful to hear; for, though it 
 ever sounds, it is never the same, but, modulated 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 75 
 
 by the changing motion, rises and falls inter- 
 mittingly; we passed half an hour in one spot 
 looking at.it, and thought but a few minutes had 
 gone by. The surrounding scenery is in its kind 
 the loveliest and most sublime that can be con- 
 ceived. In our first walk we passed through some 
 olive groves of large and ancient trees, whose 
 hoary and twisted trunks leaned in all diredions. 
 We then crossed a path of orange trees by the 
 riverside, laden with their golden fruit, and came 
 to a forest of ilex of a large size, whose ever- 
 green and acorn-bearing boughs were intertwined 
 over our winding path. Around, hemming in 
 the narrow vale, were pinnacles of lofty moun- 
 tains of p3n:amidical rock clothed with all ever- 
 green plants and trees ; the vast pine, whose 
 feathery foliage trembled in the blue air, the ilex, 
 that ancestral inhabitant of these mountains, the 
 arbutus with its crimson-coloured fruit and glitter- 
 ing leaves. After an hour's walk we came beneath 
 the catarad of Terni, within the distance of half a 
 mile ; nearer you cannot approach, for the Nar, 
 which has here its confluence with the VeHno, 
 bars the passage. We then crossed the river 
 formed by this confluence, over a narrow natural 
 bridge of rock, and saw the catarad from the 
 platform I first mentioned. We think of spending 
 
76 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 some time next year near this waterfall. The inn 
 is very bad, or we should have stayed there 
 longer. 
 
 We came from Terni last night to a place called 
 Nepi, and to-day arrived at Rome across the much 
 belied Campagna di Roma, a place I confess in- 
 finitely to my taste. It is a flattering pidure of 
 Bagshot Heath, But then there are Apennines 
 on one side and Rome and St. Peter's on the 
 other, and it is interseded by perpetual dells 
 clothed with arbutus and ilex. Adieu. 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XX 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Naples, 22 December, 1818. 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I have received a letter from you here, 
 dated November ist; you see the reciprocation of 
 letters from the term of our travels is more slow. 
 I entirely agree with what you say about **Childe 
 Harold." The spirit in which it is written is, if 
 insane, the most wicked and mischievous insanity 
 that ever was given forth. It is a kind of obsti- 
 nate and self-willed folly in which he hardens 
 himself. I remonstrated with him in vain on the 
 tone of mind from which such a view of things 
 alone arises. For its real root is very different 
 from its apparent one. Nothing can be less 
 sublime than the true source of these expressions 
 of contempt and desperation. The fad is that first, 
 the Italian women with whom he associates are 
 perhaps the most contemptible of all who exist 
 under the moon, the most ignorant, the most 
 disgusting, the most bigoted ; countesses smell so 
 strongly of garlic, that an ordinary Englishman 
 cannot approach them. Well, L. B. is familiar 
 with the lowest sort of these women, the people 
 
78 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He asso- 
 ciates with wretches who seem almost to have 
 lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do 
 not scruple to avow pradices, which are not only 
 not named, but I believe seldom even conceived 
 in England. He says he disapproves, but he 
 endures. He is heartily and deeply discontented 
 with himself; and contemplating in the distorted 
 mirror of his own thoughts the nature and the 
 destiny of man, what can he behold but objeds of 
 contempt and despair? But that he is a great 
 poet, I think the Address to Ocean proves. And 
 he has a certain degree of candour while you talk 
 to him, but unfortunately it does not outlast your 
 departure. No, I do not doubt, and for his sake, 
 I ought to hope, that his present career must end 
 soon in some violent circumstance. 
 
 Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins 
 of Rome, the Vatican, St. Peter's, and all the 
 miracles of ancient and modern art contained in 
 that majestic city. The impression of it exceeds 
 anything I have experienced in my travels. We 
 stayed there only a week, intending to return at 
 the end of February, and devote two or three 
 months to its mines of inexhaustible contempla- 
 tion, to which period I refer you for a minute 
 account of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 79 
 
 of the Coliseum every day. The Coliseum is 
 unlike any work of human hands I ever saw be- 
 fore. It is of enormous height and circuit, and 
 arches built of massy stones are piled on one an- 
 other, and jut into the blue air shattered into the 
 forms of overhanging rocks. It has been changed 
 by lime into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky 
 hills overgrown by the wild oUve, the myrtle, 
 and the fig-tree, and threaded by little paths which 
 wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable 
 galleries : the copse-wood overshadows you as you 
 wander through its labyrinths, and the wild weeds 
 of this climate of flowers bloom under your feet. 
 The arena is covered with grass, and pierces, like 
 the skirts of a natural plain, the chasms of the 
 broken arches around. But a small part of the 
 exterior circumference remains; it is exquisitely 
 light and beautiful, and the effed of the perfedion 
 of its architedure, adorned with ranges of Corin- 
 thian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice, is such 
 as to diminish the effed of its greatness. The 
 interior is all ruin. I can scarcely believe that 
 when encrusted with Dorian marble and orna- 
 mented by columns of Egyptian granite, its effied 
 could have been so sublime and so impressive as 
 in its present state. It is open to the sky, and it 
 was the clear and sunny weather of the end of 
 
go SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 November in this climate when we visited it, day 
 after day. 
 
 Near it is the Arch of Constantine, or rather 
 the Arch of Trajan ; for the servile and avaricious 
 senate of degraded Rome ordered that the monu- 
 ment of his predecessor should be demoHshed in 
 order to dedicate one to the Christian reptile, who 
 had crept among the blood of his murdered family 
 to the supreme .power. It is exquisitely beautiful 
 and perfed. The Forum is a plain in the midst 
 -of Rome, a kind of desert full of heaps of stones 
 and pits, and though so near the habitations of 
 men, is the most desolate place you can conceive. 
 The ruins of temples stand in and around it, 
 shattered columns and ranges of others complete, 
 supporting cornices of exquisite workmanship, and 
 vast vaults of shattered domes distind with regular 
 compartments, once filled with sculptures of ivory 
 or brass. The temples of Jupiter, and Concord, 
 and Peace, and the Sun, and the Moon, and Vesta, 
 are all within a short distance of this spot. Behold 
 the wrecks of what a great nation once dedicated 
 to the abstractions of the mind ! Rome is a city, 
 as it were, of the dead, or rather of those who 
 cannot die, and who survive the puny generations 
 which inhabit and pass over the spot which they 
 have made sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 8i 
 
 in the first enthusiasm of your recognition of an- 
 cient time, you see nothing of the Italians. The 
 nature of the city assists the delusion, for its vast 
 and antique walls describe a circumference of six- 
 teen miles, and thus the population is thinly 
 scattered over this space, nearly as great as Lon- 
 don. Wide wild fields are enclosed within it, and 
 there are lanes and copses winding among the 
 ruins, and a great green hill, lonely and bare, 
 which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the 
 modern palaces are like wild woods of cedar and 
 cypress and pine, and the negleded walks are 
 overgrown with weeds. The English burying 
 place is a green slope near the walls, under the 
 pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the 
 most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. 
 To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh 
 when we first visited it, with the autumnal dews, 
 and hear the whispering of the wind among the 
 leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb 
 of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the 
 sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly 
 of women and young people who were buried 
 there, one might, if one were to die, desire the 
 sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human 
 mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy 
 and oblivion. 
 
8a SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 I have told you little about Rome ; but I reserve 
 the Pantheon, and St. Peter's, and the Vatican, and 
 Raphael, for my return. About a fortnight ago 
 I left Rome, and Mary and Claire followed in three 
 days, for it was necessary to procure lodgings here 
 without alighting at an inn. From my peculiar 
 mode of travelling I saw little of the country, but 
 could just observe that the wild beauty of the 
 scenery and the barbarous ferocity of the in- 
 habitants progressively increased. On entering 
 Naples, the first circumstance that engaged my 
 attention was an assassination. A youth ran out 
 of a shop, pursued by a woman with a bludgeon, 
 and a man armed with a knife. The man over- 
 took him, and with one blow in the neck laid him 
 dead in the road. On my expressing the emo- 
 tions of horror and indignation which I felt, a 
 Calabrian priest, who travelled with me, laughed 
 heartily, and attempted to quiz me, as what the 
 English call a flat. I never felt such an inclina- 
 tion to beat any one. Heaven knows I have 
 little power. But he saw that I looked extremely 
 displeased, and was silent. This same man, a 
 fellow of gigantic strength and stature, had ex- 
 pressed the most frantic terror of robbers on the 
 road : he cried at the sight of my pistol, and it had 
 been with great difficulty that the joint exertions 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 83 
 
 of myself and the vetturino had quieted his 
 hysterics. 
 
 But external nature in these delightful regions 
 contrasts with and compensates for the deformity 
 and degradation of humanity. We have a lodging 
 divided from the sea by the Royal Gardens, and 
 from our windows we see perpetually the blue 
 waters of the bay, for ever changing, for ever the 
 same, and encompassed by the mountainous island 
 of Capreae, the lofty peaks which overhang Sa- 
 lerno, and the woody hill of Posilipo, whose pro- 
 montories hide from us Misenum and the lofty isle 
 Inarime, which, with its divided summit, forms 
 the opposite horn of the bay. From the pleasant 
 walks of the garden we see Vesuvius ; a smoke by 
 day and a fire by night is seen upon its summit, 
 and the glassy sea often refleds its light or shadow. 
 The climate is deHcious. We sit without a fire, 
 with the windows open, and have almost all the 
 produdions of an English summer. The weather 
 is usually like what Wordsworth calls ** the first 
 fine day of March ; " sometimes very much 
 warmer, though perhaps it wants that ** each 
 minute sweeter than before," which gives an 
 intoxicating sweetness to the awakening of the 
 earth from its winter's sleep in England. We have 
 made two excursions, one to Baiae, and one to 
 
 G 2 
 
84 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 Vesuvius, and we propose to visit, successively, 
 the islands, Paestum, Pompeii, and Beneventum. 
 
 We set off an hour after sunrise one radiant 
 morning in a little boat ; there was not a cloud in 
 the sky, nor a wave upon the sea, which was so 
 translucent that you could see the hollow caverns 
 clothed with the glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves 
 and branches of those deUcate v/eeds that pave the 
 unequal bottom of the water. As noon approached, 
 the heat, and especially the light, became intense. 
 We passed Posilipo, and came first to the eastern 
 point of the Bay of Puzzoli, which is within the 
 great Bay of Naples, and which again encloses 
 that of Baiae. Here are lofty rocks and craggy 
 islets, with arches and portals of precipice standing 
 in the sea, and enormous caverns, which echoed 
 faintly with the murmur of the languid tide. This 
 is called La Scuola di VirgiHo. We then went 
 direftly across to the promontory of Misenum, 
 leaving the precipitous island of Nisida on the 
 right. Here we were conduced to see the Mare 
 Morto, and the Elysian Fields ; the spot on which 
 Virgil places the scenery of the sixth Aeneid. 
 Though extremely beautiful, as a lake, and woody 
 hills, and this divine sky must make it, I confess 
 my disappointment. The guide showed us an 
 antique cemetery, where the niches used for 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 85 
 
 placing the cinerary urns of the dead yet remain. 
 We then coasted the Bay of Baiae to the left, in 
 which we saw many piduresque and interesting 
 ruins ; but I have to remark that we never dis- 
 embarked but we were disappointed, while from 
 the boat the effed of the scenery was inexpressibly 
 delightful. The colours of the water and the air 
 breathe over all things here the radiance of their 
 own beauty. After passing the Bay of Baiae, and 
 observing the ruins of its antique grandeur stand- 
 ing like rocks in the transparent sea under our 
 boat, we landed to visit Lake Avernus. We passed 
 through the cavern of the' sibyl, not Virgil's 
 sibyl, which pierces one of the hills which cir- 
 cumscribe the lake, and came to a calm and lovely 
 basin of water surrounded by dark woody hills 
 and profoundly solitary. Some vast ruins of the 
 temple of Pluto stand on a lawny hill on 
 one side of it, and are reflected in its windless 
 mirror. It is far more beautiful than the Elysian 
 Fields, but there are all the materials for beauty in 
 the latter, and the Avernus was once a chasm of 
 deadly and pestilential vapours. About half a mile 
 from Avernus, a high hill called Monte Novo was 
 thrown up by volcanic fire. 
 
 Passing onward we came to PozzoH, the ancient 
 Dicaearchea, where there are the columns remaining 
 
86 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 of a temple to Serapis, and the wreck of an 
 enormous amphitheatre, changed, like the Coli- 
 seum, into a natural hill of the overteeming vege- 
 tation. Here also is the Solfatara, of which there 
 is a poetical description in the '* Civil War" of Pe- 
 tronius, beginning *' Est locus," and in which the 
 verses of the poet are infinitely finer than what he 
 describes, for it is not a very curious place. After 
 seeing these things we returned by moonlight to 
 Naples in our boat. What colours there were in 
 the sky, what radiance in the evening star, and 
 how the moon was encompassed by a light 
 unknown to our regions ! 
 
 Our next excursion was to Vesuvius. We went 
 to Resina in a carriage, where Mary and I 
 mounted mules, and Claire was carried in a chair 
 on the shoulders of four men, much like a mem- 
 ber of Parliament after he has gained his ele6lion, 
 and looking, with less reason, quite as frightened. 
 So we arrived at the hermitage of San Salvador, 
 where an old hermit, belted with rope, set forth 
 the plates for our refreshment. 
 
 Vesuvius is, after the glaciers, the most impres- 
 sive exhibition of the energies of nature I ever 
 saw. It has not the immeasurable greatness, the 
 overpowering magnificence, nor, above all, the 
 radiant beauty of the glaciers ; but it has all their 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 87 
 
 charader of tremendous and irresistible strength. 
 From Resina to the hermitage you wind up the 
 mountain, and cross a vast stream of hardened 
 lava, which is an adual image of the waves of the 
 sea, changed into hard block by enchantment. 
 The lines of the boiling flood seem to hang in the 
 air, and it is difficult to believe that the billows 
 which seem hurrying down upon you are not 
 adually in motion. This plain was once a sea of 
 liquid fire. From the hermitage we crossed an- 
 other vast stream of lava, and then went on foot 
 up the cone. This is the only part of the ascent 
 in which there is any difficulty, and that difficulty 
 has been much exaggerated. It is composed of 
 rocks of lava and declivities of ashes ; by ascend- 
 ing the former, and descending the latter, there is 
 very little fatigue. On the summit is a kind of 
 irregular plain, the most horrible chaos that can 
 be imagined ; riven into ghastly chasms, and 
 heaped up with tumuli of great stones and cinders, 
 and enormous rocks blackened and calcined, which 
 had been thrown from the volcano upon one an- 
 other in terrible confusion. In the midst stands 
 the conical hill, from which volumes of smoke 
 and fountains of liquid fire, are rolled forth 
 for ever. The mountain is at present in a slight 
 state of eruption ; and a thick heavy white smoke 
 
88 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 is perpetually rolled out, interrupted by enormous 
 columns of an impenetrable black bituminous va- . 
 pour, which is hurled up, fold after fold, into the 
 sky with a deep hollow sound, and fiery stones 
 are rained down from its darkness, and a black 
 shower of ashes fell even where we sat. The lava, 
 like the glacier, creeps on perpetually, with a 
 crackling sound as of suppressed fire. There are 
 several springs of lava ; and in one place it gushes 
 precipitously over a high crag, rolling down the 
 half-molten rocks, and its own overhanging waves: 
 a catarad of quivering fire. We approached the 
 extremity of one of the rivers of lava ; it is about 
 twenty feet in breadth and ten in height; and 
 as the incUned plane was not rapid, its motion 
 was very slow. We saw the masses of its dark 
 exterior surface detach themselves as it moved, 
 and betray the depth of the liquid flame. In the 
 day the fire is but slightly seen ; you only observe 
 a tremulous motion in the air, and streams and 
 fountains of white sulphurous smoke. 
 
 At length we saw the sun sink between Capreae 
 and Inarime, and, as the darkness increased, the 
 effed of the fire became more beautiful. We were, 
 as it were, surrounded by streams and catarads of 
 the red and radiant fire ; and in the midst, from 
 the column of bituminous smoke shot up into the 
 
SHELLEYS LETTERS 89 
 
 air, fell the vast masses of rock, white with the 
 light of their intense heat, leaving behind them 
 through the dark vapour trains of splendour. We 
 descended by torch-light, and I should Have en- 
 joyed the scenery on my return, but they con- 
 ducted me, I know not how, to the hermitage in 
 a state of intense bodily suffering, the worst effed 
 of which was spoiling the pleasure of Mary and 
 Claire. Our guides on the occasion were complete 
 savages. You have no idea of the horrible cries 
 which they suddenly utter^ no one knows why, the 
 clamour, the vociferation, the tumult. Claire in 
 her palanquin suffered most from it ; and when I 
 had gone on before they threatened to leave her 
 in the middle of the road, which they would have 
 done had not my Italian servant promised them a 
 beating, after which they became quiet. Nothing, 
 however, can be more piduresque than the gestures 
 and the physiognomies of these savage people. 
 And when, in the darkness of night, they unex- 
 pededly begin to sing in chorus some fragments of 
 their wild but sweet national music, the effed is 
 exceedingly fine. 
 
 Since I wrote this I have seen the Museum of 
 this city. Such statues ! There is a Venus ; an 
 ideal shape of the most winning loveliness. A 
 Bacchus, more sublime than any living being. A 
 
90 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 Satyr making love to a youth, in which the ex- 
 pressed Hfe of the sculpture, and the inconceivable 
 beauty of the form of the youth, overcome one's 
 repugnance to the subjed. There are multitudes 
 of wonderfully fine statues found in Herculaneum 
 and Pompeii. "We are going to see Pompeii the 
 first day that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum 
 is almost filled up ; no more excavations are made ; 
 the King bought the ground and built a palace 
 upon it. 
 
 You don't see much of Hunt. I wish you could 
 contrive to see him when you go to town, and 
 ask him what he means to answer to Lord Byron's 
 invitation. He has now an opportunity, if he 
 Hkes, of seeing Italy. What do you think of 
 joining his party, and paying us a visit next year ; 
 I mean as soon as the reign of winter is dissolved? 
 Write to me your thoughts upon this. I cannot 
 express to you the pleasure it would give me to 
 welcome such a party. 
 
 I have depression enough of spirits and not good 
 health, though I believe the warm air of Naples 
 does me good. We see absolutely no one here. 
 Adieu, my dear Peacock, 
 
 Affedionately your friend, 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXI 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Naples, 26 January, 18 ip. 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 Your two letters arrived within a few days 
 of each other, one being direded to Naples, and the 
 other to Livorno. They are more welcome visi- 
 tors to me than mine can be to you — I writing as 
 from sepulchres, you from the habitations of men 
 yet unburied ; though the sexton, Castlereagh, 
 after having dug their grave, stands with his spade 
 in his hand, evidently doubting whether he will 
 not be forced to occupy it himself. Your news 
 about the bank-note trials is excellent good. Do 
 I not recognize in it the influence of Cobbett? 
 You don't tell me what occupies Parliament ? I 
 know you will laugh at my demand, and assure 
 me that it is indifferent. Your pamphlet I want ex- 
 ceedingly to see. Your calculations in the letter are 
 clear, but require much oral explanation. You know 
 I am an infernal arithmetician. If none but me had 
 contemplated ** lucentemque globum lunae, Tita- 
 niaque astra," the world would yet have doubted 
 whether they were many hundred feet higher than 
 the mountain tops. 
 
92 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 In my accounts of pi(^ures and things, I am 
 more pleased to interest you than the many ; and 
 this is fortunate, because, in the first place I have 
 no idea of attempting the latter, and if I did 
 attempt it, I should assuredly fail. A perception 
 of the beautiful charaderizes those who differ 
 from ordinary men, and those who can perceive 
 it would not buy enough to pay the printer. Be- 
 sides, I keep no journal, and the only records of 
 my voyage will be letters I send to you. The 
 bodily fatigue of standing for hours in galleries 
 exhausts me : I believe that I don't see half what 
 I ought, on that account. And then we know 
 nobody, and the common Italians are so sullen 
 and stupid, it's impossible to get information from 
 them. At Rome, where the people seem superior 
 to any in Italy, I cannot fail to stumble on some- 
 thing more. O, if I had health, and strength, 
 and equal spirits, what boundless intellectual im- 
 provement might I not gather in this wonderful 
 country ! At present I write little else but poetry, 
 and little of that. My first ad of " Prometheus " 
 is complete, and I think you would like it. I con- 
 sider poetry very subordinate to moral and politi- 
 cal science, and if I were well, certainly I would 
 aspire to the latter, for I can conceive a great 
 work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 95 
 
 harmonizing the contending creeds by which man- 
 kind have been ruled. Far from me is such an 
 attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my 
 fancy, to amuse myself, and perhaps some others, 
 and cast what weight I can into the scale of that 
 balance which the giant of Arthegall holds. 
 
 Since you last heard from me we have been to 
 see Pompeii, and are waiting now for the return 
 of spring weather, to visit, first, Paestum, and 
 then the islands ; after which we shall return to 
 Rome. I was astonished at the remains of this 
 city ; I had no idea of anything so perfed yet re- 
 maining. My idea of the mode of its destrudion 
 was this : — First, an earthquake shattered it, and 
 unroofed almost all its temples, and spht its co- 
 lumns ; then a rain of light, small pumice-stones 
 fell ; then torrents of boihng water, mixed with 
 ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide flat hill, 
 from which the city was excavated, is now co- 
 vered by thick woods, and you see the tombs and 
 the theatres, the temples and the houses, sur- 
 rounded by the uninhabited wilderness. We 
 entered the town from the side towards the sea, 
 and first saw two theatres, one more magnificent 
 than the other, strewn with the ruins of the white 
 marble which formed their seats and cornices, 
 wrought with deep, bold sculpture. In the front. 
 
94 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 between the stage and the seats, is the circular 
 space occasionally occupied by the chorus. The 
 stage is very narrow, but long, and divided from 
 this space by a narrow enclosure parallel to it, I 
 suppose for the orchestra. On each side are the 
 consuls' boxes, and below, in the theatre at Her- 
 culaneum, were found two equestrian statues of 
 admirable workmanship, occupying the same 
 place as the great bronze lamps did at Drury Lane. 
 The smallest of the theatres is said to have been 
 comic, though I should doubt. From both you 
 see, as you sit on the seats, a prosped of the most 
 wonderful beauty. 
 
 You then pass through the ancient streets ; they 
 are very narrow and the houses rather small, but 
 all construfted on an admirable plan, especially 
 for this climate. The rooms are built round a 
 court, or sometimes two, according to the extent 
 of the house. In the midst is a fountain, some- 
 times surrounded with a portico, supported on 
 fluted columns of white stucco ; the floor is paved 
 with mosaic, sometimes wrought in imitation of 
 vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and more 
 or less beautiful, according to the rank of the 
 inhabitant. There were paintings on all, but most 
 of them have been removed to decorate the royal 
 museums. Little winged figures, and small orna- 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 95 
 
 ments of exquisite elegance yet remain. There is 
 an ideal life in the forms of these paintings of an 
 incomparable loveliness, though most are evidently 
 the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if, from 
 the atmosphere of mental beauty which surrounded 
 them, every human being caught a splendour not 
 his own. In one house you see how the bed- 
 rooms were managed ; — a small sofa was built 
 up, where the cushions were placed ; two pidures, 
 one representing Diana and Endymion, the other 
 Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber ; and a 
 little niche, which contains the statue of a domestic 
 god. The floor is composed of a rich mosaic of 
 the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and porphyry ; 
 it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white 
 columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of 
 the portico they supported. The houses have 
 only one story, and the apartments, though not 
 large, are very lofty. A great advantage results 
 from this, wholly unknown in our cities. The 
 public buildings, whose ruins are now forests as 
 it were of white fluted columns, and which then 
 supported entablatures loaded with sculptures, 
 were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. 
 This was the excellence of the ancients. Their 
 private expenses were comparatively moderate ; 
 the dwelling of one of the chief senators of Pom- 
 
96 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 peii is elegant indeed, and adorned with most 
 beautiful specimens of art, but small. But their 
 public buildings are everywhere marked by the 
 bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnifi- 
 cence. In the little town of Pompeii — it con- 
 tained about twenty thousand inhabitants — it is 
 wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of 
 their public buildings. Another advantage, too, 
 is that, in the present case, the glorious scenery 
 around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inha- 
 bitants of the Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, 
 the ancient Pompeians could contemplate the 
 clouds and the lamps of heaven ; could see the 
 moon rise high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set 
 in the sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of 
 golden vapour, between Inarime and Misenum. 
 
 We next saw the temples. Of the temple of 
 Aesculapius little remains but an altar of black 
 stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales 
 of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, was found 
 in the cell. The temple of Isis is more perfect. 
 It is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, 
 and in the area around it are two altars, and 
 many ceppi for statues ; and a little chapel of 
 white stucco, as hard as stone, of the most exqui- 
 site proportion ; its panels are adorned with figures 
 in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of a workman- 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 97 
 
 ship the most delicate and perfeft that can be 
 conceived. They are Egyptian subjeds, executed 
 by a Greek artist, who has harmonised all the 
 unnatural extravagances of the original conception 
 into the supernatural loveliness of his country's 
 genius. They scarcely touch the ground with 
 their feet, and their wind-uplifted robes seem in 
 the place of wings. The temple in the midst, 
 raised on a high platform, and approached by 
 steps, was decorated with exquisite paintings, some 
 of which we saw in the museum at Portici. It is 
 small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a 
 pavement of mosaic and fluted Ionic columns of 
 white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look 
 at it. 
 
 Thence through other porticos and labyrinths 
 of walls and columns, for I cannot hope to detail 
 everything to you, we came to the Forum. This 
 is a large square surrounded by lofty porticos of 
 fluted columns, some broken, some entire, their 
 entablatures strewed under them. The temple of 
 Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the tribu- 
 nal, and the hall of public justice, with their 
 forests of lofty columns, surround the Forum. Two 
 pedestals or altars of an enormous size — for, whe- 
 ther they supported equestrian statues, or were the 
 altars of the temple of Venus, before which they 
 
 H 
 
98 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 stand, the guide could not tell—occupy the lower 
 end of the Forum. At the upper end, supported 
 on an elevated platform, stands the temple of Ju- 
 piter. Under the colonnade of its portico we sate, 
 and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, 
 and medlars — sorry fare, you will say — and rested 
 to eat. Here was a magnificent spedacle. Above 
 and between the multitudinous shafts of the sun- 
 shining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the 
 purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, 
 as it were, on its line the dark lofty mountains of 
 Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and tinged 
 towards their summits with streaks of new-fallen 
 snow. Between was one small green island. To 
 the right was Capreae, Inarime, Prochyta, and 
 Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Ve- 
 suvius, rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, 
 whose foam-like column was sometimes darted 
 into the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks 
 along the wind. Between Vesuvius and the nearer 
 mountains, as through a chasm, was seen the 
 main line of the loftiest Apennines to the east. 
 The day was radiant and warm. Every now and 
 then we heard subterranean thunder of Vesuvius ; 
 its distant deep peals seemed to shake the very air 
 and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames, 
 with the sullen and tremendous sound. This 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 99 
 
 scene was what the Greeks beheld ; Pompeii, you 
 know, was a Greek city. They Hved in harmony 
 with nature ; and the interstices of their incom- 
 parable columns were portals, as it were, to admit 
 the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious 
 universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such 
 was Pompeii, what was Athens ? What scene was 
 exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and 
 the temples of Hercules, and Theseus, and the 
 Winds? the islands and the Aegean sea, the 
 mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus 
 and Olympus, and the darkness of the Boeotian 
 forests interspersed ? 
 
 From the Forum we went to another pubHc 
 place ; a triangular portico, half inclosing the 
 ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on 
 the edgQ of the hill overlooking the sea. That 
 black point is the temple. In the apex of the 
 triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and 
 before the altar once stood the statue of the 
 builder of the portico. Returning hence, and 
 following the consular road, we came to the 
 eastern gate of the city. The walls are of 
 enormous strength and inclose a space of three 
 miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate 
 are built the tombs. How unlike ours ! They 
 seem not so much hiding places of that which 
 
 H 2 
 
loo SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 must decay, as voluptuous chambers for immortal 
 spirits. They are of marble, radiamly white; and 
 two, especially beautiful, are loaded with exquisite 
 bas-reliefs. On the stucco- wall that incloses them 
 are little emblematic figures of a relief exceedingly 
 low, of dead and dying animals, and little winged 
 genii, and female forms bending in groups in some 
 funeral office. The higher reliefs represent, one 
 a nautical subjed, and the other a bacchanalian 
 one. Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, 
 sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that 
 paintings were found within ; which are now, as 
 has been everything moveable in Pompeii, re- 
 moved, and scattered about in royal museums. 
 These tombs were the most impressive things of 
 all. The wild woods surround them on either 
 side; and along the broad stones of the paved 
 road which divided them, you hear the late leaves 
 of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the 
 inconstant wind, as it were, like the step of ghosts. 
 The radiance and magnificence of these dweUings 
 of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely 
 finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative 
 life of the figures which adorn them, contrast 
 strangely with the simplicity of the houses of 
 those who were living when Vesuvius over- 
 whelmed them. 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS loi 
 
 I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of 
 great magnitude, though much inferior to the 
 Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks 
 were such great poets : and, above all, I can ac- 
 count, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, 
 the perfedion, the uniform excellence, of all their 
 works of art. They lived in a perpetual com- 
 merce with external nature, and nourished them- 
 selves upon its forms. Their theatres were all open 
 to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, 
 the ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof 
 of interwoven tracery, admitted the light and 
 wind ; the odour and the freshness of the country 
 penetrated the cities. Their temples were mostly 
 upaithric ; and the flying clouds, the stars, or the 
 deep sky, were seen above. O, but for that series 
 of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman 
 conquest of the world ; but for the Christian reli- 
 gion, which put the finishing stroke on the ancient 
 system ; but for those changes that conduded 
 Athens to its ruin, — to what an eminence might 
 not humanity have arrived ! 
 
 Adieu ! yours most faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXII 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Naples, 2$ February J i8ip. 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I am much interested to hear of your 
 progress in the objed of your removal to London, 
 especially as I hear from Horace Smith of the 
 advantages attending it. There is no person in 
 the world who would more sincerely rejoice in 
 any good fortune that might befall you than I 
 should. 
 
 We are on the point of quitting Naples for 
 Rome. The scenery which surrounds this city is 
 more delightful than any within the immediate 
 reach of civilized man. I don't think I have men- 
 tioned to you the Lago d'Agnano and the Caccia 
 d'Ischieri, and I have since seen what obscures 
 those lovely forms in my memory. They are both 
 the craters of extinguished volcanos, and nature 
 has thrown forth forests of oak and ilex, and 
 spread mossy lawns and clear lakes over the dead 
 or sleeping fire. The first is a scene of a wider 
 and milder character, with soft sloping, wooded 
 hills, and grassy declivities decHning to the lake, 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 103 
 
 and cultivated plains of vines woven upon poplar- 
 trees, bounded by the theatre of hills. Innumer- 
 able wild water-birds, quite tame, inhabit this 
 place. The other is a royal chace, is surrounded 
 by steep and lofty hills, and only accessible through 
 a wide gate of massy oak, from the vestibule of 
 which the spedacle of precipitous hills, hemming 
 in a narrow and circular vale, is suddenly disclosed. 
 The hills are covered with thick woods of ilex, 
 myrtle, and laurustinus ; the polished leaves of the 
 ilex, as they wave in their multitudes under the 
 partial blasts which rush through the chasms of 
 the vale, glitter above the dark masses of foliage 
 below, like the white foam of waves upon the 
 deep blue sea. The plain so surrounded is at 
 most three miles in circumference. It is occupied 
 partly by a lake, with bold shores wooded by ever- 
 greens, and interrupted by a sylvan promontory 
 of the wild forest whose mossy boughs overhang 
 its expanse, of a silent and purple darkness, like 
 an Italian midnight ; and partly by the forest itself, 
 of all gigantic trees, but the oak especially, whose 
 jagged boughs, now leafless, are hoary with thick 
 lichens, and loaded with the massy and deep 
 foHage of the ivy. The effed of the dark emi- 
 nences that surround this plain, seen through the 
 boughs, is of an enchanting solemnity. There we 
 
104 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 saw in one instance wild boars and a deer, and 
 in another, a spedacle little suited to the antique 
 and Latonian nature of the place — King Ferdinand 
 in a winter enclosure, watching to shoot wild 
 boars. The underwood was principally evergreen, 
 all lovely kinds of fern and furze ; the cytisus, a 
 delicate kind of furze, with a pretty yellow blos- 
 som, the myrtle, and the myrica. The willow- 
 trees had just begun to put forth their green and 
 golden buds, and gleamed like points of lambent 
 fire along the wintry forest. The Grotto del Cane, 
 too, we saw, because other people see it ; but 
 would not allow the dog to be exhibited in torture 
 for our curiosity. The poor little animals stood 
 moving their tails in a slow and dismal manner, 
 as if perfectly resigned to their condition, a cur- 
 like emblem of voluntary servitude. The effed of 
 the vapour, which extinguishes a torch, is to cause 
 suffocation at last, through a process which makes 
 the lungs feel as if they were torn by sharp 
 points within. So a surgeon told us, who tried 
 the experiment on himself. 
 
 There was a Greek city, sixty miles to the south 
 of Naples, called Posidonia, now Pesto, where 
 there still subsist three temples of Etruscan archi- 
 tedure, still perfect. From this city we have just 
 returned. The weather was most unfavourable for 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 105 
 
 our expedition. After two months of cloudless 
 serenity, it began raining cats and dogs. The first 
 night we slept at Salerno, a large city situate in 
 the recess of a deep bay ; surrounded with stupen- 
 dous mountains of the same name. A few miles 
 from Torre del Greco we entered on the pass of 
 the mountains, which is a line dividing the 
 isthmus of those enormous piles of rock which 
 compose the southern boundary of the Bay of 
 Naples, and the northern one of that of Salerno. 
 On one side is a lofty conical hill, crowned with 
 the turrets of a ruined castle, and out into plat- 
 forms for cultivation — at least every ravine and 
 g~ien, whose precipitous sides admitted of other 
 vegetation but that of the rock-rooted ilex : on the 
 other the aetherial snowy crags of an immense 
 mountain, whose terrible lineaments were at inter- 
 vals concealed or disclosed by volumes of dense 
 clouds rolling under the tempest. Half a mile 
 from this spot, between orange and lemon groves 
 of a lovely village, suspended as it were on an 
 amphitheatral precipice, whose golden globes con- 
 trasted with the white walls and dark green leaves 
 which they almost outnumbered, shone the sea. 
 A burst of the declining sunlight illumined it. The 
 road led along the brink of the precipice, towards 
 Salerno. Nothing could be more glorious than 
 
io6 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 the scene. The immense mountains covered with 
 the rare and divine vegetation of this cHmate, with 
 many-folding vales, and deep dark recesses, which 
 the fancy scarcely could penetrate, descended from 
 their snowy summits precipitously to the sea. 
 Before us was Salerno, built into a declining plain, 
 between the mountains and the sea. Beyond, the 
 other shore of sky-cleaving mountains, then dim 
 with the mist of tempest. Underneath, from the 
 base of the precipice where the road conduced, 
 rocky promontories jutted into the sea, covered 
 with olive and ilex woods, or with the ruined 
 battlements of some Roman or Saracenic fortress. 
 We slept at Salerno, and the next morning, before 
 daybreak, proceeded to Posidonia. The night had 
 been tempestuous, and our way lay by the sea 
 sand. It was utterly dark, except when the long 
 line of wave burst, with a sound like thunder, 
 beneath the starless sky, and cast up a kind of 
 mist of cold white lustre. When morning came, 
 we found ourselves travelling in a wide desert 
 plain, perpetually interrupted by wild irregular 
 glens, and bounded on all sides by the Apennines 
 and the sea. Sometimes it was covered with 
 forest, sometimes dotted with underwood, or mere 
 tufts of fern and furze, and the wintry dry tendrils 
 of creeping plants. I have never, but in the Alps, 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 107 
 
 seen an amphitheatre of mountains so magnificent. 
 After travelling fifteen miles, we came to a river, 
 the bridge of which had been broken, and which 
 was so swollen that the ferry would not take the 
 carriage across. We had, therefore, to walk seven 
 miles of a muddy road, which led to the ancient 
 city across the desolate Maremma. The air was 
 scented with the sweet smell of violets of an extra- 
 ordinary size and beauty. At length we saw the 
 sublime and massy colonnades, skirting the horizon 
 of the wilderness. We entered by the ancient 
 gate, which is now no more than a chasm in the 
 rock-like wall. Deeply sunk in the ground beside 
 it were the ruins of a sepulchre, which the ancients 
 were in the habit of building beside the public 
 way. The first temple, which is the smallest, con- 
 sists of an outer range of columns, quite perfed, 
 and supporting a perfed architrave and two shat- 
 tered frontispieces. The proportions are extremely 
 massy, and the archite(5lure entirely unornamented 
 and simple. These columns do not seem more 
 than forty feet high, but the perfed proportions 
 diminish the apprehension of their magnitude ; it 
 seems as if inequality and irregularity of form 
 were requisite to force on us the relative idea of 
 greatness. The scene from between the columns 
 of the temple consists on one side of the sea, to 
 
io8 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 which the gentler hill on which it is built slopes ; 
 and on the other of the grand amphitheatre of the 
 loftiest Apennines, dark purple mountains, crowned 
 with snow, and intersected here and there by long 
 bars of hard and leaden-coloured cloud. The effed 
 of the jagged outline of mountains, through groups 
 of enormous columns on one side, and on the 
 other the level horizon of the sea, is inexpressibly 
 grand. The second temple is much larger, and 
 also more perfed. Beside the outer range of co- 
 lumns, it contains an interior range of column 
 above column, and the ruins of a wall which was 
 the screen of the PenetraHa. With little diversity 
 of ornament, the order of architecture is similar to 
 that of the first temple. The columns in all are 
 fluted, and built of a porous volcanic stone, which 
 time has dyed with a rich and yellow colour. The 
 columns are one-third larger, and, like that of the 
 first, diminish from the base to the capital, so that, 
 but for the chastening effed of their admirable 
 proportions, their magnitude would, from the de- 
 lusion of perspective, seem greater, not less, than 
 it is ; though perhaps we ought to say, not that 
 this symmetry diminishes your apprehension of 
 their magnitude, but that it overpowers the idea 
 of relative greatness, by estabhshing within itself a 
 system of relations destructive of your idea of its 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 109 
 
 relation with other objeds, on which our ideas of 
 size depend. The third temple is what they call 
 a basilica; three columns alone remain of the 
 interior range ; the exterior is perfed, but that the 
 cornice and frieze in many places have fallen. 
 This temple covers more ground than either of the 
 others, but its columns are of an intermediate 
 magnitude between those of the second and the 
 first. 
 
 We only contemplated these sublime monuments 
 for two hours, and of course could only bring 
 away so imperfed a conception of them as is the 
 shadow of some half-remembered dream. 
 
 The royal colledion of paintings in this city is 
 sufficiently miserable. Perhaps the most remark- 
 able is the original studio by Michael Angelo, of 
 the *' Day of Judgment," which is painted in 
 fresco on the Sixtine Chapel of the Vatican. It is 
 there so defaced as to be wholly indistinguishable. 
 I cannot but think the genius of this artist over- 
 rated. He has not only no temperance, no mo- 
 desty, no feeHng for the just boundaries of art — 
 and in these respeds any admirable genius may 
 err — but has no sense of beauty, and to want this 
 is to want the sense of the creative power of 
 mind. What is terror without a contrast with, 
 and a connexion with, loveliness? How well 
 
no SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 Dante understood this secret, Dante, with whom 
 this artist has been so presumptuously compared ! 
 What a thing his *' Moses" is; how distorted 
 from all that is natural and majestic, only less 
 monstrous and detestable than its historical pro- 
 totype. In the pidure to which I allude, God is 
 leaning out of heaven, as it were eagerly enjoying 
 the final scene of the infernal tragedy He set the 
 universe to ad. The Holy Ghost, in the shape 
 of a dove, is under him. Under the Holy Ghost 
 stands Jesus Christ, in an attitude of haranguing 
 the assembly. This figure, which his subjed, or 
 rather the view which it became him to take of it, 
 ought to have modelled of a calm, severe, awe- 
 inspiring majesty, terrible, yet lovely,- is in the 
 attitude of a commonplace resentment. On one 
 side of this figure are the eled ; on the other, the 
 host of heaven ; they ought to have been what the 
 Christians called glorified bodies, floating onwards 
 with that everlasting light (I speak in the spirit of 
 their faith) which had consumed their mortal veil. 
 They are in fad very ordinary people. Below is 
 the ideal purgatory, I imagine, in mid-air, in the 
 shape of spirits, some of whom demons are 
 dragging down, others falling as it were by their 
 own weight, others half suspended in that Maho- 
 met-coffin kind of attitude which most moderate 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS xii 
 
 Christians, I believe, exped to assume. Every 
 step towards hell approximates to the region of 
 the artist's exclusive power. There is great ima- 
 gination in many of the situations of these unfor- 
 tunate spirits. But hell and death are his real 
 sphere. The bottom of the pidure is divided by 
 a lofty rock, in which there is a cavern whose 
 entrance is thronged by devils, some coming in 
 with spirits, some going out for prey. The blood- 
 red light of the fiery abyss glows through their 
 dark forms. On one side are the devils in all 
 hideous forms, struggling with the damned, who 
 have received their sentence at the Redeemer's 
 throne, and chained in all forms of agony by 
 knotted serpents, and writhing on the crags in all 
 variety of torture. On the other, are the dead 
 coming out of their graves, horrible forms. Such 
 is the famous ** Day of Judgment" of Michael 
 Angelo ; a kind of *' Titus Andronicus " in painting, 
 but the author surely no Shakspeare. The other 
 paintings are one or two of Raphael or his pupils, 
 very sweet and lovely : a *' Danae," of Titian, a 
 pidure, the softest and most voluptuous form, 
 with languid and uplifted eyes, and warm yet 
 passive limbs; a '* Maddalena," by Guido, with 
 dark-brown hair, and dark-brown eyes, and an 
 earnest, soft, melancholy look ; and some excel- 
 
112 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 lent pidures, in point of execution, by Annibal 
 Carracci. None others worth a second look. Of 
 the gallery of statues I cannot speak. They require 
 a volume, not a letter. Still less, what can I do 
 at Rome ? 
 
 Most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXIII 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Rome, 2^rd March i8ip. 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I wrote to you the day before our departure 
 from Naples. We came by slow journeys, with 
 our own horses, to Rome, resting one day at 
 Mola di Gaeta, at the inn called Villa di Cicerone, 
 from being built on the ruins of his villa, whose 
 immense substrudions overhang the sea, and are 
 scattered among the orange-groves. Nothing can 
 be lovelier than the scene from the terraces of 
 the inn. On one side precipitous mountains, 
 whose bases slope into an inclined plane of olive 
 and orange-copses, the latter forming, as it were, 
 an emerald sky of leaves, starred with innumer- 
 able globes of their ripening fruit, whose rich 
 splendour contrasted with the deep green foliage ; 
 on the other the sea, bounded on one side by the 
 antique town of Gaeta, and on the other by what 
 appears to be an island, the promontory of Circe. 
 From Gaeta to Terracina the whole scenery is of 
 the most sublime charader. At Terracina preci- 
 pitous conical crags of immense height shoot into 
 the sky and overhang the sea. At Albano we 
 
 I 
 
114 SHELLEY S LETTERS 
 
 arrived again in sight of Rome. Arches after 
 arches in unending lines stretching across the 
 uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined lines 
 of the mountains seen between them ; masses of 
 nameless ruin standing like rocks out of the plain ; 
 and the plain itself, with its billowy and unequal 
 surface, announced the neighbourhood of Rome. 
 And what shall I say to you about Rome ? If I 
 speak of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones 
 piled upon stones, which are the sepulchres of 
 the fame of those who once arrayed them with 
 the beauty which has faded, will you believe 
 me insensible to the vital, the almost breathing 
 creations of genius yet subsisting in their per- 
 fection ? What has become, you will ask, of 
 the Apollo, the Gladiator, or the Venus of the 
 Capitol? What of the Apollo di Belvedere, the 
 Laocoon ? What of Raphael and Guido ? These 
 things are best spoken of when the mind has 
 drunk in the spirit of their forms ; and little in- 
 deed caij I, who must devote no more than a few 
 months to the contemplation of them, hope to 
 know or feel of their profound beauty ? 
 
 I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its 
 impressions on me on my first visit to this city. 
 The next most considerable relic of antiquity, 
 considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Cara- 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 115 
 
 calla. These consist of six enormous chambers, 
 above 200 feet in height, and each inclosing a 
 vast space like that of a field. There are, in 
 addition, a number of towers and labyrinthine 
 recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild 
 growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any de- 
 solation more sublime and lovely. The perpen- 
 dicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines 
 filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick 
 twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stones. 
 At every step the aerial pinnacles of shattered 
 stone group into new combinations of effed, and 
 tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the dis- 
 tant mountains change their asped to one tra- 
 velling rapidly along the plain. The perpen- 
 dicular walls resemble nothing more than that 
 cliff of Bisham Wood, that is overgrown with 
 wood, and yet is stony and precipitous. You 
 know the one I mean ; not the chalk-pit, but 
 the spot that has the pretty copse of fir-trees and 
 privet-bushes at its base, and where Hogg and I 
 scrambled up, and you, to my infinite discontent, 
 would go home. These walls surround green 
 and level spaces of lawn, on which some elms 
 have grown, and which are interspersed towards 
 their skirts by masses of the fallen ruin, over- 
 twined with the broad leaves of the creeping 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 SHELLEY S LETTERS 
 
 weeds. The blue sky canopies it, and is as the 
 everlasting roof of these enormous halls. 
 
 But the most interesting effed remains. In 
 one of the buttresses, that supports an immense 
 and lofty arch, which ** bridges the very winds 
 of heaven," are the crumbling remains of an an- 
 tique winding staircase, whose sides are open in 
 many places to the precipice. This you ascend, 
 and arrive on the summit of these piles. There 
 grow on every side thick entangled wildernesses 
 of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the 
 flowering laurustinus, whose white blossoms are 
 just developed, the wild fig, and a thousand 
 nameless plants sown by the wandering winds; 
 these woods are interseded on every side by 
 paths, like sheep-tracks through the copse-wood 
 of steep mountains, which wind to every part of 
 the immense lab}Tinth. From the midst rise 
 those pinnacles and masses, themselves like moun- 
 tains, which have been seen from below. In one 
 place you wind along a narrow strip of weed- 
 grown ruin, on one side is the immensity of 
 earth and sky, on the other a narrow chasm, 
 which is bounded by an arch of enormous size, 
 fringed by the many-coloured foliage and blos- 
 soms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyra- 
 mid, overgrown like itself with the all-prevailing 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 117 
 
 vegetation. Around arise other crags and other 
 peaks, all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast 
 desolation softened down, by the undecaying in- 
 vestiture of nature. Come to Rome. It is a 
 scene by which expression is overpowered ; which 
 words cannot convey. Still further, winding up 
 one half of the shattered pyramids, by the path 
 through the blooming copse-wood, you come to 
 a little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild 
 shrubs ; it is overgrown with anemones, wall- 
 flowers, and violets, whose stalks pierce the 
 starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers, whose 
 names I know not, and which scatter through 
 the air the divinest odour, which, as you recline 
 under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations 
 of voluptuous faintness, like the combinations of 
 sweet music. The paths still wind on, threading 
 the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, other 
 lawns, and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, 
 and terrific chasms. When I tell you that these 
 ruins cover several acres, and that the paths above 
 penetrate at least half their extent, your imagina- 
 tion will fill up all that I am unable to express of 
 this astonishing scene. 
 
 I speak of these things not in the order in 
 which I visited them, but in that of the impres- 
 sion which they made on me, or perhaps chance 
 
ri8 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 dire<9:s. The ruins of the ancient Forum are so 
 far fortunate that they have not been walled up 
 in the modern city. They stand in an open, 
 lonesome place, bounded on one side by the 
 modern city, and the other by the Palatine 
 Mount, covered with shapeless masses of ruin. 
 The tourists tell you all about these things, and 
 I am afraid of stumbling on their language when 
 I enumerate what is so well known. There re- 
 main eight granite columns of the Ionic order, 
 with the entablature of the Temple of Concord, 
 founded by Camillus. I fear that the immense 
 expense demanded by these columns forbids us 
 to hope that they are the remains of any edifice 
 dedicated by that most perfed and virtuous of 
 men. It is supposed to have been repaired under 
 the Eastern emperors; alas, what a contrast of 
 recoUedions ! Near them stand three Corinthian 
 fluted columns, which supported the angle of a 
 temple ; the architrave and entablature are worked 
 with delicate sculpture. Beyond, to the south, is 
 another solitary column ; and still more distant, 
 three more, supporting the wreck of an entabla- 
 ture. Descending from the Capitol to the Forum, 
 is the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus, less 
 perfed than that of Constantine, though from its 
 proportions and magnitude a most impressive 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 119 
 
 monument. That of Constantine, or rather of 
 Titus — for the relief and sculpture, and even the 
 colossal images of Dacian captives, were torn by 
 a decree of the Senate from an arch dedicated to 
 the latter, to adorn that of this stupid and wicked 
 monster, Constantine, one of whose chief merits 
 consists in establishing a religion, the destroyer of 
 those arts which would have rendered so base a 
 spoliation unnecessary — is the most perfed. It 
 is an admirable work of art. It is built of the 
 finest marble, and the outline of the reliefs is in 
 many parts as perfed as if just finished. Four 
 Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side, 
 a bold entablature, whose bases are loaded with 
 reliefs of captives in every attitude of humiliation 
 and slavery. The compartments above express 
 in bolder relief the enjoyment of success — the 
 conqueror on his throne or in his chariot, or 
 nodding over the crushed multitudes, who writhe 
 under his horses' hoofs — as those below express 
 the torture and abjedness of defeat. There are 
 three arches whose roofs are panelled with fret- 
 work, and their sides adorned with similar reliefs. 
 The keystone of these arches is supported each 
 by two winged figures of Victory, whose hair 
 floats on the wind of their own speed, and whose 
 arms are outstretched, bearing trophies, as if im- 
 
lap SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 patient to meet. They look, as it were, borne 
 from the subjed extremities of the earth, on the 
 breath which is the exhalation of that battle and 
 desolation, which it is their mission to comme- 
 morate. Never were monuments so completely 
 fitted to the purpose for which they were de- 
 signed, of expressing that mixture of energy and 
 error which is called a triumph. 
 
 I walk forth in the purple and golden light of 
 an Italian evening, and return by starlight or 
 moonlight, through this scene. The elms are 
 just budding, and the warm spring winds bring 
 unknown odours, all sweet, from the country. 
 I see the radiant Orion through the mighty 
 columns of the Temple of Concord, and the 
 mellow fading light softens down the modern 
 buildings of the Capitol, the only ones that in- 
 terfere with the sublime desolation of the scene. 
 On the steps of the Capitol itself, stand two co- 
 lossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each with his 
 horse, finely executed, though far inferior to those 
 of Monte Cavallo, the cast of one of which you 
 know we saw together in London. This walk 
 is close to our lodging, and this is my evening 
 walk. 
 
 What shall I say of the modern city ? Rome 
 is yet the capital of the world. It is a city of 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 121 
 
 palaces and temples more glorious than those 
 which any other city contains, and of ruins more 
 glorious than they. Seen from any of the emi- 
 nences that surround it, it exhibits domes beyond 
 domes, and palaces, and colonnades interminably, 
 even to the horizon ; interspersed with patches of 
 desert, and mighty ruins which stand girt by 
 their own desolation, in the midst of the fanes of 
 living religions, and the habitations of living men, 
 in sublime loneliness. St. Peter's is, as you have 
 heard, the loftiest building in Europe. Externally 
 it is inferior in architedural beauty to St. Paul's, 
 though not wholly devoid of it ; internally it 
 exhibits littleness on a large scale, and is in every 
 resped opposed to antique taste. You know my 
 propensity to admire ; and I tried to persuade 
 myself out of this opinion, in vain ; the more I 
 see of the interior of St. Peter's the less impres- 
 sion as a whole does it produce on me. I can- 
 not even think it lofty, though its dome is con- 
 siderably higher than any hill within fifty miles 
 of London; and when one refleds, it is an 
 astonishing monument of the daring energy of 
 man. Its colonnade is wonderfully fine, and 
 there are two fountains, which rise in spire-like 
 columns of water to an immense height in the 
 sky, and falling on the porphyry vases from which 
 
122 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 they spring, fill the whole air with a radiant 
 mist, which at noon is thronged with innumer- 
 able rainbows. In the midst stands an obelisk. 
 In front is the palace-like facade of St. Peter's, 
 certainly magnificent ; and there is produced on 
 the whole, an architectural combination unequalled 
 in the world. But the dome of the temple is 
 concealed, except at a very great distance, by 
 the facade and the inferior part of the building, 
 and that diabolical contrivance they call an attic. 
 
 The efied of the Pantheon is totally the reverse 
 of that of St. Peter's. Though not a fourth part 
 of the size, it is, as it were, the visible image of 
 the universe ; in the perfedion of its proportions, 
 as when you regard the unmeasured dome of 
 heaven, the idea of magnitude is swallowed up 
 and lost. It is open to the sky, and its wide 
 dome is lighted by the ever-changing illumination 
 of the air. The clouds of noon fly over it, and 
 at night the keen stars are seen through the azure 
 darkness, hanging immoveably, or driving after 
 the driving moon among the clouds. We visited 
 it by moonlight ; it is supported by sixteen 
 columns, fluted and Corinthian, of a certain 
 rare and beautiful yellow marble, exquisitely 
 polished, called here Giallo Antico. Above these 
 are the niches for the statues of the twelve gods. 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 125 
 
 This is the only defed of this sublime temple; 
 there ought to have been no interval between the 
 commencement of the dome and the cornice, 
 supported by the columns. Thus there would 
 have been no diversion from the magnificent 
 simpUcity of its form. This improvement is 
 alone wanting to have completed the unity of 
 the idea. 
 
 The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, 
 magnificent combinations of art, such as alone 
 it were worth coming to see. That in the 
 Piazza Navona, a large square, is composed of 
 enormous fragments of rock, piled on each 
 other, and penetrated as by caverns. This mass 
 supports an Egyptian obelisk of immense height ; 
 on the four corners of the rock recline, in 
 different attitudes, colossal figures representing 
 the four divisions of the globe. The water bursts 
 from the crevices beneath them. They are 
 sculptured with great spirit ; one impatiently 
 tearing a veil from his eyes ; another with his 
 hands stretched upwards. The Fontana di Trevi 
 is the most celebrated, and is rather a waterfall 
 than a fountain ; gushing out from masses of 
 rock, with a gigantic figure of Neptune ; and 
 below are two river gods, checking two winged 
 horses, struggHng up from among the rocks and 
 
124 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 waters. The whole is not ill-conceived nor 
 executed; but you know not how delicate the 
 imagination becomes by dieting with antiquity 
 day after day. The only things that sustain the 
 comparison are Raphael, Guido, and Salvator 
 Rosa. 
 
 The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the 
 group formed by the statues, obelisk, and the 
 fountain, is, however, the most admirable of all. 
 From the Piazza Quirinale, or rather Monte 
 Cavallo, you see the boundless ocean of domes, 
 spires, and columns which is the city Rome. On 
 a pedestal of white marble rises an obelisk of red 
 granite, piercing the blue sky. Before it is a vast 
 basin of porphyry, in the midst of which rises a 
 column of the purest water, which colleds into 
 itself all the overhanging colours of the sky, and 
 breaks them into a thousand prismatic hues and 
 graduated shadows ; they fall together with its 
 dashing water-drops into the outer basin. The 
 elevated situation of this basin produces, I 
 imagine, this effed of colour on each side. On an 
 elevated pedestal stand the statues of Castor and 
 Pollux, each in the ad of taming his horse, which 
 are said, but I believe wholly without authority, 
 to be the work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These 
 figures combine the irresistible energy with the 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 12s 
 
 sublime and the perfed loveliness supposed to 
 have belonged to their divine nature. The reins 
 no longer exist, but the position of their hands 
 and the sustained and calm command of their 
 regard seem to require no mechanical aid to 
 enforce obedience. The countenances at so great 
 a height are scarcely visible, and I have a better 
 idea of that of which we saw a cast together in 
 London, than of the other. But the sublime and 
 living majesty of their limbs and mien, the nervous 
 and fiery animation of the horses they restrain, 
 seen in the blue sky of Italy, and overlooking the 
 city of Rome, surrounded by the light and the 
 music of that crystalline fountain, no cast can 
 communicate. 
 
 These figures were found at the Baths of Con- 
 stantine, but, of course, are of remote antiquity. 
 I do not acquiesce however in the practice of 
 attributing to Phidias, or Praxiteles, or Scopas, or 
 some great master, any admirable work that may 
 be found. We find little of what remained, and 
 perhaps the works of these were such as greatly 
 surpassed all that we conceive of most perfed and 
 admirable in what little has escaped the deluge. 
 If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks, 
 our masters and creators, the gods whom we 
 should worship, pardon me. 
 
126 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 I have said what I feel without entering into 
 any critical discussions of the ruins of Rome, and 
 the mere outside of this inexhaustible mine of 
 thought and feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, and 
 Forsyth will tell all the shew-knowledge about it, 
 **the common stuff of the earth." By-the-bye, 
 Forsyth is worth reading as I judge from a 
 chapter or two I have seen. I cannot get the book 
 here. 
 
 I ought to have observed that the central arch 
 of the triumphal arch of Titus yet subsists, more 
 perfed in its proportions, they say, than any of 
 a later date. This I did not remark. The 
 figures of Victory, with unfolded wings, and each 
 spurning back a globe with outstretched feet, are, 
 perhaps, more beautiful than those on either of 
 the others. Their lips are parted : a delicate 
 mode of indicating the fervour of their desire to 
 arrive at the destined resting-place, and to express 
 the eager respiration of their speed. Indeed, so 
 essential to beauty were the forms expressive of 
 the exercise of the imagination and the aife<5lions 
 considered by Greek artists, that no ideal figure 
 of antiquity, not destined to some representation 
 diredly exclusive of such a charader, is to be 
 found with closed lips. Within this arch are two 
 panelled alto relievos, one representing a train of 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 127 
 
 people bearing in procession the instruments of 
 Jewish worship, among which is the holy candle- 
 stick with seven branches ; on the other, Titus 
 standing in a quadriga, with a winged Victory. 
 The grouping of the horses, and the beauty, 
 correctness, and energy of their delineation, is 
 remarkable, though they are much destroyed. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXIV 
 To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Livorno, 2^1)} Sept. 1819, 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 We are now on the point of leaving this 
 place for Florence, where we have taken pleasant 
 apartments for six months, which brings us to the 
 1st of April; the season at which new flowers 
 and new thoughts spring forth upon the earth 
 and in the mind. What is then our destination 
 is yet undecided. I have not yet seen Florence, 
 except as one sees the outside of the streets ; but 
 its physiognomy indicates it to be a city, which, 
 though the ghost of a republic, yet possesses 
 most amiable qualities. I wish you could meet 
 us there in the spring, and we would try to 
 muster up a ** Lieta Brigata," which leaving 
 behind them the pestilence of remembered mis- 
 fortunes, might ad over again the pleasures of 
 the interlocutors in Boccaccio. I have been lately 
 reading this most divine writer. He is in a high 
 sense of the word a poet, and his language has 
 the rhythm and harmony of verse. I think him 
 not equal certainly either to Dante or Petrarch, 
 but far superior to Tasso and Ariosto, the children 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 129 
 
 of a later and of a colder day. I consider the three 
 first as the productions of the vigour of the 
 infancy of a new nation, as rivulets from the 
 same spring as that which fed the greatness of 
 the republics of Florence and Pisa, and which 
 checked the influence of the German Emperors ; 
 and from which, through obscurer channels, 
 Raphael and Michael Angelo drew the light and 
 the harmony of their inspiration. When the 
 second-rate poets of Italy wrote, the corrupting 
 blight of tyranny was already hanging on every 
 bud of genius. Energy and simplicity and unity 
 of idea were no more. In vain do we seek in the 
 finest passages of Ariosto and Tasso, any expres- 
 sion which at all approaches in this resped to 
 those of Dante and Petrarch. How much do I 
 admire Boccaccio ! What descriptions of nature 
 are those in his little introdu6lions to every new 
 day ! It is the morning of life, stripped of that 
 mist of famiharity which makes it obscure to us. 
 Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep 
 sense of the fair ideal of human life, considered 
 in its social relations. His more serious theories 
 of love agree especially with mine. He often 
 expresses things lightly too, which have serious 
 meanings of a very beautiful kind. He is a 
 moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, 
 
 K 
 
I30 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of 
 morals. Do you remember one little remark, or 
 rather maxim of his, which might do some good 
 to the common narrow-minded conceptions of 
 love, **Bocca baciata non perde ventura ; anzi 
 rinnuova, come fa la luna ? " 
 
 We exped Mary to be confined towards the 
 end of Odober. The birth of a child will prob- 
 ably retrieve her from some part of her present 
 melancholy depression. 
 
 It w^ould give me much pleasure to know 
 Mr. Lloyd. Do you know, when I was in 
 Cumberland, I got Southey to borrow a copy of 
 Berkeley frofti him, and I remember observing 
 some pencil notes in it, probably written by 
 Lloyd, which I thought particularly acute. One, 
 especially, struck me as being the assertion of a 
 dodrine, of which even then I had long been 
 persuaded, and on which I had founded much of 
 my persuasions, as regarded the imagined cause 
 of the universe, ** Mind cannot create, it can only 
 perceive." Ask him if he remembers having 
 written it. Of Lamb you know my opinion, and 
 you can bear witness to the regret which I felt, 
 when I learned that the calumny of an enemy had 
 deprived me of his society whilst in England. 
 Oilier told me that the *' Qjiarterly '* are going to 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 131 
 
 review me. I suppose it will be a pretty . . ., 
 and as I am acquiring a taste for humour and 
 drollery, I confess I am curious to see it. I have 
 sent my " Prometheus Unbound " to Peacock ; 
 if you ask him for it he will show it you. I 
 think it will please you. 
 
 Whilst I went to Florence, Mary wrote, but I 
 did not see her letter. Well, good bye. Next 
 Monday I shall write to you from Florence. Love 
 to all. 
 
 Most affedionately your friend, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 K 2 
 
XXV 
 To John Gisborne. 
 
 Florence, i6th November, i8ig. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I envy you the first reading of Theocritus. 
 Were not the Greeks a glorious people ? What is 
 there, as Job says of the Leviathan, like unto 
 them ? If the army of Nicias had not been de- 
 feated under the walls of Syracuse; if the 
 Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance 
 betv/een Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to 
 the Greek colonies in the south of Italy, Rome 
 might have been all that its intelledual condition 
 entitled it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror of 
 Greece ; the Macedonian power would never 
 have attained to the didatorship of the civilised 
 states of the world. Who knows whether, under 
 the steady progress which philosophy and social 
 institutions would have made — for, in the age to 
 which I refer, their progress was most rapid and 
 secure — among a people of the mostperfed physical 
 organisation, whether the Christian religion would 
 have arisen, or the barbarians have overwhelmed 
 the wrecks of civilisation which had survived the 
 conquest and tyranny of the Romans ? What, then, 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 133 
 
 should we have been ? As it is, all of us who are 
 worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearn- 
 ing the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our 
 youth. We are stuffed full of prejudices; and 
 our natural passions are so managed, that if we 
 restrain them we grow intolerant and precise, 
 because we restrain them not according to reason, 
 but according to error ; and if we do not restrain 
 them we do all sorts of mischief to ourselves and 
 others. Our imagination and understanding are 
 alike subjeded to rules the most absurd ; so much 
 for Theocritus and the Greeks. * * * 
 
 Most faithfully your obliged, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXVI 
 
 To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Florence, November, i8ip. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 Two letters, botlr bearing date Od. 20, 
 arrive on the same day : — one is always glad of 
 twins. 
 
 We hear of a box arrived at Genoa with books 
 and clothes ; it must be yours. Meanwhile the 
 babe is wrapt in flannel petticoats, and we get on 
 with him as we can. He is small, healthy and 
 pretty. Mary is recovering rapidly. Marianne, I 
 hope, is quite well. 
 
 You do not tell me whether you have received 
 my lines on the Manchester affair. They are of 
 the exoteric species, and are meant, not for the 
 "Indicator," but the *' Examiner." I would send 
 for the former, if you like, some letters on such 
 subjeds of art as suggest themselves in Italy- 
 Perhaps I will, at a venture, send you a specimen 
 of what I mean next post. I enclose you in this 
 a piece for the ** Examiner," or let it share the 
 fate, whatever that fate may be, of the " Mask of 
 Anarchy." 
 
 I am sorry to near that you have employed 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 135 
 
 yourself in translating the '* Aminta," though I 
 doubt not it will be a just and beautiful transla- 
 tion. You ought to write Amintas. You ought 
 to exercise your fancy in the perpetual creation of 
 new forms of gentleness and beauty. 
 
 With resped to translation, even I will not be 
 seduced by it ; although the Greek plays, and 
 some of the ideal dramas of Calderon, with which 
 I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and 
 delight, become acquainted, are perpetually tempt- 
 ing me to throw over their perfed and glowing 
 forms the grey veil of my own words. And you 
 know me too well to susped that I refrain from 
 a belief that what I could substitute for them 
 would deserve the regret which yours would, 
 if suppressed. I have confidence in my moral 
 sense alone ; but that is a kind of originality. I 
 have only translated the ** Cyclops" of Euripides 
 when I could absolutely do nothing else, and the 
 *' Symposium " of Plato, which is the delight and 
 astonishment of all who read it : — I mean the 
 original, or so much of the original as is seen in 
 my translation, not the translation itself. 
 
 * * Hi * * * 
 
 I think I have had an accession of strength 
 since my residence in Italy, though the disease 
 
156 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 itself in the side, whatever it may be, is not 
 subdued. Some day we shall all return from 
 Italy. I fear that in England things will be 
 carried violently by the rulers, and they will not 
 have learned to yield in time to the spirit of the 
 age. The great thing to do is to hold the balance 
 between popular impatience and tyrannical obsti- 
 nacy ; to inculcate with fervour both the right 
 of resistance and the duty of forbearence. You 
 know my principles incite me to take all the 
 good I can get in politics, for ever aspiring to 
 something more. I am one of those whom 
 nothing will fully satisfy, but who are ready to be 
 partially satisfied in all that is practicable . We 
 shall see. 
 
 Give Bessy a thousand thanks from me for 
 writing out in that pretty neat hand your kind 
 and powerful defence. Ask what she would like 
 best from Italian land. We mean to bring you 
 all something; and Mary and I have been 
 wondering what it shall be. Do you, each of you, 
 
 choose. 
 
 ^c ♦ * ♦ » ♦ 
 
 Adieu, my dear Friend, 
 
 Yours affedionately ever, 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXVII 
 To Edmund Ollier. 
 
 Pisa, 14th May, 1820. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I reply to your letter by return of post, 
 to confirm what I said in a former letter resped- 
 ing a new edition of the **Cenci," which ought, 
 by all means, to be instantly urged forward. 
 
 I see by your account that I have been greatly 
 mistaken in my calculations of the profit of my 
 writings. As to the trifle due to me, it may as 
 well remain in your hands. 
 
 As to the printing of the ** Prometheus," be it 
 as you will. But, in this case, I shall repose on 
 trust in your care respeding the corredion of the 
 press ; especially in the lyrical parts, where a 
 minute error would be of much consequence. 
 Mr. Gisborne will revise it ; he heard it recited, 
 and will therefore more readily seize any error. 
 
 If I had even intended to publish ** Julian and 
 Maddalo " with my name, yet I would not print 
 it with ** Prometheus." It would not harmonize. 
 It is an attempt in a different style, in which I am 
 not yet sure of myself, a sermo pedestrts way of 
 treating human nature, quite opposed to the 
 
158 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 idealisms of that drama. If you print *' Julian and 
 Maddalo," I wish it to be printed in some un- 
 ostentatious form, accompanied with the frag- 
 ment of ** Athanase," and exadly in the manner in 
 which I sent it ; and I particularly desire that my 
 name may not be annexed to the first edition of 
 it, in any case. 
 
 If "Peter Bell" be printed — you can best judge if 
 it will sell or no, and there would be no other 
 reason for printing such a trifle — attend, I pray 
 you, particularly to completely concealing the 
 author ; and for Emma read Betty, as the name 
 of Peter's sister. Emma, I recoiled:, is the real 
 name of a sister of a great poet who might be 
 mistaken for Peter. I ought to say that I send 
 you poems in a few posts, to print at the end of 
 *' Prometheus," better fitted for that purpose than 
 any in your possession. 
 
 Keats, I hope, is going to show himself a great 
 poet ; like the sun to burst through the clouds, 
 which, though dyed in the finest colours of the 
 air, obscured his rising. The Gisbornes will 
 bring me from you copies of whatever may be 
 published when they leave England. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
XXVIII 
 To Thomas Med win. 
 
 Pisa, 20th July, 1820. 
 
 My dear Medwin, 
 
 I wrote to you a day or two ago at Geneva. 
 I have since received your letter from the moun- 
 tains. How much I envy you, or rather how 
 much I sympathize in the delights of your 
 wandering ! I have a passion for such expedi- 
 tions, although partly the capriciousness of my 
 health, and partly the want of the incitement of 
 a companion, keep me at home. I see the 
 mountains, the sky, and the trees from my 
 windows, and recoiled, as an old man does the 
 mistress of his youth, the raptures of a more 
 famiUar intercourse, but without his regrets, for 
 their forms are yet living in my mind. I hope 
 you will not pass Tuscany, leaving your promised 
 visit unpaid. I leave it to you to make the projed 
 of taking up your abode with such an animal of 
 the other world as I am, agreeable to your friend ; 
 but Mrs. Shelley unites with me in assuring both 
 yourself and him that, whatever else may be 
 found deficient, a sincere welcome is at least in 
 waiting for you. 
 
X40 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 I am delighted with your approbation of my 
 ** Cenci," and am encouraged to wish to present 
 you with ** Prometheus Unbound," a drama also, 
 but a composition of a totally different character. 
 I do not know if it be wise to affed variety in 
 compositions, or whether the attempt to excel in 
 many ways does not debar from excellence in one 
 particular kind. '* Prometheus Unbound " is in the 
 merest spirit of ideal poetry, and not, as the name 
 would indicate, a mere imitation of the Greek 
 drama ; nor, indeed, if I have been successful, is it 
 an imitation of anything. But you will judge. I 
 hear it is just printed, and I probably shall receive 
 copies from England before I see you. Your 
 objedion to the **Cenci,"as to the introdudion of 
 the name of God, is good, inasmuch as the play 
 is addressed to a Protestant people ; but we 
 Catholics speak eternally and familiarly of the first 
 person of the Trinity, and, amongst us, religion 
 is more interwoven with, and is less extraneous 
 to, the system of ordinary life. As to Cenci's 
 curse, I know not whether I can defend it or no. 
 I wish I may be able ; and, as it often happens 
 respeding the worst part of an author's work, it 
 is a particular favourite with me. I prided myself, 
 as since your approbation I hope that I had just 
 cause to do, upon the two concluding lines of 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 141 
 
 the play. I confess I cannot approve of the 
 squeamishness which excludes the exhibition of 
 such subje(5ls from the scene, a squeamishness, 
 the produce, as I firmly believe, of a lower tone 
 of the public mind, and foreign to the majestic 
 and confident wisdom of the golden age of our 
 country. What think you of my boldness? I 
 mean to write a play, in the spirit of human 
 nature, without prejudice or passion, entitled 
 ** Charles the First." So vanity intoxicates people ; 
 but let those few who praise my verses, and in 
 whose approbation I take so much delight, answer 
 for the sin. 
 
 I wonder what in the world the Queen has 
 done. . . . What silly stuff is this to employ a 
 great nation about. I wish the King and the 
 Queen, like Punch and his wife, would fight out 
 their disputes in person. . . . 
 
 Your affedionate friend, 
 P. B.S. 
 
XXIX 
 To John Keats. 
 
 Fisa, 2ph July, 1820. 
 
 My dear Keats, 
 
 I hear with great pain the dangerous 
 accident you have undergone, and Mr. Gisborne, 
 who gives me the account of it, adds that you 
 continue to wear a consumptive appearance. 
 This consumption is a disease particularly fond of 
 people who write such good verses as you have 
 done, and with the assistance of an English 
 winter it can often indulge its seledion. I do not 
 think that young and amiable poets are bound to 
 gratify its taste ; they have entered into no bond 
 with the Muses to that efFe<5l. But seriously, 
 for I am joking on what I am very anxious about, 
 I think you would do well to pass the winter in 
 Italy and avoid so tremendous an accident, and 
 if you think it as necessary as I do, so long as 
 you continue to find Pisa or its neighbourhood 
 agreeable to you, Mrs. Shelley unites with myself 
 in urging the request that you would take up 
 your residence with us. You might come by sea 
 to Leghorn (France is not worth seeing, and the 
 sea is particularly good for weak lungs), which is 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 143 
 
 within a few miles of us. You ought, at all 
 events, to see Italy, and your health, which I 
 suggest as a motive, may be an excuse to you. I 
 spare declamation about the statues, and paintings, 
 and ruins, and what is a greater piece of forbear- 
 ance, about the mountains and streams, the fields, 
 the colours of the sky, and the sky itself. 
 
 I have lately read your **Endymion" again, and 
 even with a new sense of the treasure of poetry 
 it contains, though treasures poured forth with 
 indistind profusion. This people in general will 
 not endure, and that is the cause of the compara- 
 tively few copies which have been sold. I feel 
 persuaded that you are capable of the greatest 
 things, so you but will. I always tell Oilier to 
 send you copies of my books. ** Prometheus 
 Unbound " I imagine you will receive nearly at the 
 same time with this letter. The ** Cenci" I hope 
 you have already received, it was studiously com- 
 posed in a different style. 
 
 " Below the good how far I but far above the great I ** 
 
 In poetry I have sought to avoid system and 
 mannerism. I wish those who excel me in 
 genius would pursue the same plan. 
 
 Whether you remain in England, or journey 
 
144 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 to Italy, believe that you carry with you my 
 anxious wishes for your health, happiness, and 
 success wherever you are, or whatever you 
 undertake, and that I am, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 - P. B. Shelley. 
 
XXX 
 
 To The Editor of the ** Quarterly Review." 
 
 Sir, 
 
 Should you cast your eye on the signature 
 of this letter before you read the contents, you 
 might imagine that they related to a slanderous 
 paper which appeared in your Review some time 
 since. I never notice anonymous attacks. The 
 wretch who wrote it has doubtless the additional 
 reward of a consciousness of his motives, besides 
 the thirty guineas a sheet or whatever it is that 
 you pay him. Of course you cannot be answer- 
 able for aU the writings which you edit, and I 
 certainly bear you no ill-will for having edited 
 the abuse to which I allude — indeed, I was too 
 much amused by being compared to Pharaoh, not 
 readily to forgive editor, printer, publisher, stitcher, 
 or any one, except the despicable writer, conneded 
 with something so exquisitely entertaining. 
 Seriously speaking, I am not in the habit of 
 permitting myself to be disturbed by what is said 
 or written of me, though, I dare say, I may be 
 condemned sometimes justly enough. But I feel 
 in respeft to the writer in question, that ** I am 
 there sitting, where he durst not soar." 
 
 L 
 
146 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 The case is different with the unfortunate sub j eft 
 of this letter, the author of ** Endymion," to whose 
 feeUngs and situation I entreat you to allow me 
 to call your attention. I write considerably in the 
 dark; but if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, 
 I am persuaded that in an appeal to his humanity 
 and justice, he will acknowledge the ** fas ab hoste 
 doceri." I am aware that the first duty of a 
 reviewer is, towards the public, and I am willing 
 to confess that the ** Endymion " is a poem con- 
 siderably defedive, and that, perhaps, it deserved as 
 much censure as the pages of your Review record 
 against it ; but, not to mention that there is a 
 certain contemptuousness of phraseology from 
 which it is difficult for a critic to abstain, in the 
 review of ** Endymion," I do not think that the 
 writer has given it its due praise. Surely the poem, 
 with all its faults, is a very remarkable produc- 
 tion for a man of Keats's age, and the promise of 
 ultimate excellence is such as has rarely been 
 afforded even by such as have afterwards attained 
 high literary eminence. Look at Book II. line 833, 
 &c., and then Book III. line 113 to 120; read 
 down that page, and then again from line 193. 
 I could cite many other passages, to convince you 
 that it deserved milder usage. Why it should 
 have been reviewed at all, excepting for the purpose 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 147 
 
 of bringing its excellencies into notice, I cannot 
 conceive, for it was very little read, and there was 
 no danger that it should become a model to the 
 age of that false taste, with which I confess that 
 it is replenished. 
 
 Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state 
 of mind by this review, which, I am persuaded, 
 was not written with any intention of producing 
 the efFed, to which it has, at least, greatly con- 
 tributed, of embittering his existence, and indu- 
 cing a disease from which there are now but faint 
 hopes of his recovery. The first effeds are 
 described to me to have resembled insanity, and it 
 was by assiduous watching that he was restrained 
 from effeding purposes of suicide. The agony 
 of his sufferings at length produced the rupture 
 of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and the usual 
 process of consumption appears to have begun. 
 He is coming to pay me a visit in Italy ; but I 
 fear that unless his mind can be kept tranquil, 
 little is to be hoped from the mere influence of 
 climate. 
 
 But let me not extort anything from your pity. 
 I have just seen a second volume, published by 
 him evidently in careless despair. I have desired 
 my bookseller to send you a copy, and allow me 
 to solicit your especial attention to the fragment 
 
 L 2 
 
148 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 of a poem entitled *' Hyperion," the composition 
 of which was checked by the review in question. 
 The great proportion of this piece is surely in the 
 very highest style of poetry. I speak impartially, 
 for the canons of taste to which Keats has con- 
 formed in his other compositions are the very 
 reverse of my own. I leave you to judge for 
 yourself : it would be an insult to you to suppose 
 that from motives however honourable you would 
 lend yourself to a deception of the public. 
 
XXXI 
 
 To John Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa, Oggi, November 1820. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I send you the *' Phaedon " and Tacitus. I 
 congratulate you on your conquest of the *' Iliad." 
 You must have been astonished at the perpetually 
 increasing magnificence of the last seven books. 
 Homer there truly begins to be himself. The 
 battle of the Scamander, the funeral of Patroclus, 
 and the high and solemn close of the whole 
 bloody tale in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow, 
 are wrought in a manner incomparable with any- 
 thing of the same kind. The ** Odyssey" is sweet, 
 but there is nothing like this. 
 
 I am bathing myself in the light and odour of 
 the flowery and starry Autos. I have read them 
 all more than once. Henry wall tell you how 
 much I am in love with Pacchiani. I suffer from 
 my disease considerably. Henry will also tell 
 you how much, and how whimsically, he alarmed 
 me last night. 
 
 My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Gisborne, 
 and best wishes for your health and happiness. 
 Faithfully yours, P. B. S. 
 
 I have a new Calderon coming from Paris. 
 
XXXII 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Pisa, i^th February, 1821. 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 The last letter I received from you, nearly 
 four months from the date thereof, reached me 
 by the boxes which the Gisbornes sent by sea. I 
 am happy to learn that you continue in good 
 external and internal preservation. I received at 
 the same time your printed denunciations against 
 general, and your written ones against particular, 
 poetry ; and I agree with you as decidedly in the 
 latter as I differ in the former. The man whose 
 critical gall is not stirred up by such ottava rimas 
 
 as 's may safely be conjedured to possess no 
 
 gall at all. The world is pale with the sickness of 
 such stuif. At the same time, your anathemas 
 against poetry itself excited me to a sacred rage, 
 or cacoethes scrthendi of vindicating the insulted 
 Muses. I had the greatest possible desire to 
 break a lance with you, within the lists of a 
 magazine, in honour of my mistress Urania ; but 
 God willed that I should be too lazy, and wrested 
 the vi6lory from your hope : since first having 
 unhorsed poetry, and the universal sense of the 
 wisest in all ages, an easy conquest would have 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 151 
 
 remained to you in me, the knight of the shield 
 of shadow and the lance of gossamere. Besides, I 
 was at that moment reading Plato's *' Ion," which 
 I recommend you to reconsider. Perhaps in the 
 comparison of Platonic and Malthusian doctrines, 
 the *' mavis errare " of Cicero is a justifiable argu- 
 ment ; but I have a whole quiver of arguments on 
 such a subjed. 
 
 Have you seen Godwin's answer to the apostle 
 of the rich? And what do you think of it? It 
 has not yet reached me, nor has your box, of 
 which I am in daily expedation. 
 
 We are now in the crisis and point of expecta- 
 tion in Italy. The Neapolitan and Austrian 
 armies are rapidly approaching each other, and 
 every day the news of a battle may be expefted. 
 The former have advanced into the ecclesiastical 
 states, and taken hostages from Rome to assure 
 themselves of the neutrality of that power, and 
 appear determined to try their strength in open 
 battle. I need not tell you how little chance there 
 is that the new and undisciplined levies of Naples 
 should stand against a superior force of veteran 
 troops. But the birth of liberty in nations abounds 
 in examples of a reversal of the ordinary laws of 
 calculation : the defeat of the Austrians would be 
 the signal of insurredion throughout all Italy. 
 
152 SHELLEY S LETTERS 
 
 I am devising literary plans of some magnitude. 
 But nothing is more difficult and unwelcome than 
 to write without a confidence of finding readers ; 
 and if my play of the ** Cenci " found none or 
 few, I despair of ever producing anything that 
 shall merit them. 
 
 Among your anathemas of the modern attempts 
 in poetry, do you include Keats's "Hyperion"? 
 I think it very fine. His other poems are worth 
 little ; but if the " Hyperion" be not grand poetry, 
 none has been produced by our contemporaries. 
 
 I suppose you are writing nothing but Indian 
 laws, &c. I have but a faint idea of your occupa- 
 tion ; but I suppose it has much to do with pen 
 and ink. 
 
 Mary desires to be kindly remembered to you; 
 and I remain, my dear Peacock, 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
Ck^dt^ 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 To Ebmund Ollier. 
 
 Fisa, i6th Feb., 1821, 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I send you three poems, ** Ode to Naples," a 
 sonnet, and a longer piece, entitled **Epipsychi- 
 dion." The two former are my own ; and you 
 will be so obliging as to take the first opportunity of 
 publishing according to your own discretion. 
 
 The longer poem, I desire, should not be con- 
 sidered as my own ; indeed, in a certain sense, 
 it is a production of a portion of me already dead ; 
 in this sense the advertisement is no fidion. 
 It is to be pubhshed simply for the esoteric few ; 
 and I make its author a secret, to avoid the 
 malignity of those who turn sweet food into 
 poison ; transforming all they touch into the 
 corruption of their own natures. My wish with 
 respeft to it is, that it should be printed imme- 
 diately in the simplest form, and merely one 
 hundred copies : those who are capable of judging 
 and feeling rightly with resped to a composition 
 of so abstruse a nature, certainly do not arrive at 
 that number— among those, at least, who would 
 ever be excited to read an obscure and anonymous 
 
154 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 produdion ; and it would give me no pleasure 
 that the vulgar should read it. If you have any 
 bookselling reason against publishing so small a 
 number as a hundred, merely distribute copies 
 among those to whom you think the poetry would 
 afford any pleasure, and send me, as soon as you 
 can, a copy by the post. I have written it so as to 
 give very little trouble, I hope, to the printer, or to 
 the person who revises. I should be much obliged 
 to you if you would take this office on yourself. 
 
 Is there any expedation of a second edition of the 
 ** Revolt of Islam " ? I have many corrections to 
 make in it, and one part will be wholly remodelled. 
 I am employed in high and new designs in verse ; 
 but they are the labours of years, perhaps. 
 
 We exped here every day the news of a battle 
 between the armies of Austria and Naples. The 
 latter have advanced upon Rome ; and the first 
 affair will probably take place in the ecclesiastical 
 states. You may imagine the expe(5lation of all 
 here. 
 
 Pray send me news of my intelledual children. 
 For *' Prometheus," I exped and desire no great 
 sale. The ** Cenci" ought to have been popular. 
 I remain, dear Sir, 
 
 Your very obedient servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
XXXIV 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Pisa, 2 1st March, 1821, 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I despatch by this post the first part of an 
 essay intended to consist of three parts, which I de- 
 sign for an antidote to your ** Four Ages of Poetry." 
 You will see that I have taken a more general 
 view of what is poetry than you have, and will 
 perhaps agree with several of my positions with- 
 out considering your own touched. But read and 
 judge ; and do not let us imitate the great founders 
 of the piduresque. Price and Payne Knight, who, 
 like two ill-trained beagles, began snarling at each 
 other when they could not catch the hare. 
 
 I hear the welcome news of a box from England 
 announced by Mr. 'Gisborne. How much new 
 poetry does it contain ? The Bavii and Maevii of 
 the day are very fertile ; and I wish those who 
 honour me with boxes would read and inwardly 
 digest your **Four Ages of Poetry;" for I had 
 much rather, for my own private reading, receive 
 political, geological, and moral treatises than this 
 stuff in terza, ottava, and tremillesima rima 
 whose earthly baseness has attracted the lightning 
 
156 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 of your undiscriminating censure upon the temple 
 of immortal song. . . . 
 
 Do you see much of Hogg now? And the 
 Boinvilles and Coulson? Hunt I suppose not. 
 And are you occupied as much as ever ? We are 
 surrounded here in Pisa by revolutionary volcanoes, 
 which, as yet, give more light than heat ; the 
 lava has reached Tuscany. But the news in the 
 papers will tell you far more than it is prudent 
 for me to say ; and for this once I will observe 
 your rule of poHtical silence. The Austrians wish 
 that the Neapolitans and Piedmontese would do 
 the same. 
 
 We have seen a few more people than usual 
 this winter, and have made a very interesting 
 acquaintance with a Greek prince, perfedly 
 acquainted with ancient literature, and full of 
 enthusiasm for the liberties and improvement of his 
 country. Mary has been a Greek student for several 
 months, and is reading ** Antigone" with our. 
 turbaned friend, who, in return, is taught EngHsh. 
 Claire has passed the Carnival at Florence, and 
 has been preternaturally gay. I have had a severe 
 ophthalmia, and have read or written little this 
 winter ; and have made acquaintance in an obscure 
 convent with the only Italian for whom I ever 
 felt any interest. 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 157 
 
 I want you to do something for me : that is, 
 to get me two pounds' worth of Tassie's gems, in 
 Leicester Square, the prettiest, according to your 
 taste ; among them the head of Alexander ; and 
 to get me two seals engraved and set, one smaller, 
 and the other handsomer ; the device a dove with 
 outspread wings, and this motto round it : 
 
 fiavris cifx* €aB\<av aycovoov. 
 
 Mary desires her best regards ; and I remain, 
 my dear Peacock, ever most sincerely yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXXV 
 
 To Mr. a:nid Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Bagni, i^th July, 1821, 
 
 My dearest Friends, 
 
 I am fully repaid for the painful emotions 
 from which such verses of my poem sprung, by 
 your sympathy and approbation, which is all the 
 reward I exped, as much as I desire. It is not 
 for me to judge whether, in the high praise your 
 feelings assign me, you are right or wrong. The 
 poet and the man are two different natures ; 
 though they exist together, they may be uncon- 
 scious of each other, and incapable of deciding 
 on each other's powers and efforts by any reflex 
 aft. The decision of the cause, whether or no 
 I am a poet, is removed from the present time to 
 the hour when our posterity shall assemble ; but 
 the court is a very severe one, and I fear that 
 the verdidwill be, ** guilty, death ! " 
 
 I shall be with you on the first summons. I 
 hope that the time you have reserved for us, 
 ** this bank and shoal of time," is not so short as 
 you once talked of. 
 
 In haste, most affe(5tionately yours, 
 P. B. S. 
 
XXXVI 
 
 To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Ravenna, ytb August, 182 1. 
 My dearest Mary, 
 
 I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat 
 up talking with Lord Byron until five this morn- 
 ing. I then went to sleep, and now awake at 
 eleven, and having despatched my breakfast as 
 quick as possible, mean to devote the interval till 
 twelve, when the post departs, to you. 
 
 Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted to 
 see me. He has in fa(El completely recovered his 
 health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that 
 which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort 
 of liaison with Contessa GuiccioH, who is now at 
 Florence, and seems from hei* letters to be a very 
 amiable woman. She is waiting there until some- 
 thing suitable shall be decided as to their emigra- 
 tion to Switzerland or stay in Italy ; which is yet 
 undetermined on either side. She was compelled to 
 escape from the Papal territory in great haste, as 
 measures had already been taken to place her in 
 a convent, where she would have been unre- 
 lentingly confined for life. The oppression of the 
 marriage contrad, as existing in the laws and 
 
i6o SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, 
 is far severer than that of England. I tremble 
 to think of what poor Emilia is destined to. 
 
 Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself in 
 Venice : his state of debility was such that he 
 was unable to digest any food, he was consumed 
 by hedic fever, and would speedily have perished, 
 but for this attachment, which has reclaimed him 
 from the excesses into which he threw himself 
 from carelessness and pride, rather than taste. 
 Poor fellow ! He is now quite well, and immersed 
 in politics and literature. He has given me a 
 number of the most interesting details on the 
 former subjed, but we will not speak of them in 
 a letter. Fletcher is here ; and as if, Hke a shadow, 
 he waxed and waned with the substance of his 
 master, Fletcher also has recovered his good looks, 
 and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a 
 fresh harvest of flaxen locks has put forth. 
 
 We talked a great deal of poetry and such 
 matters last night ; and as usual differed, and I 
 think more than ever. He affeds to patronize a 
 system of criticism fit for the produdion of 
 mediocrity, and although all his fine poems and 
 passages have been produced in defiance of this 
 system, yet I recognise the pernicious effeds of 
 it in the *'Doge of Venice ;" and it will cramp and 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS i6i 
 
 limit his future efforts however great they may be, 
 unless he gets rid of it. I have read only parts of 
 it, or rather he himself read them to me, and 
 gave me the plan of the whole. 
 
XXXVII 
 To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Friday, loth August, 182 1. 
 We ride out in the evening, through the 
 pine forests which divide this city from the sea. 
 Our way of life is this, and I have accommodated 
 myself to it without much difficulty : — Lord Byron 
 gets up at two, breakfasts ; we talk, read, &c., until 
 six ; then we ride, and dine at eight ; and after 
 dinner sit talking till four or five in the morning. I 
 get up at twelve, and am now devoting the 
 interval between my rising and his, to you. 
 
 Lord Byron is greatly improved in every resped 
 — in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, 
 in happiness. The connexion with La Guiccioli 
 has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives 
 with considerable splendour, but within his income, 
 which is now about 4000/. a year, 1000/. of which 
 he devotes to purposes of charity. He has had 
 mischievous passions, but these he seems to have 
 subdued, and he is becoming, what he should be, 
 a virtuous man. The interest which he took in 
 the politics of Italy, and the adions he performed 
 in consequence of it, are subjects not fit to be 
 written, but are such as will delight and surprise 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS 165 
 
 you. He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, 
 a place, indeed, little fitted for him : the gossip 
 and the cabals of those anglicized coteries would 
 torment him, as they did before, and might 
 exasperate him to a relapse of libertinism, which 
 he says he plunged into not from taste, but 
 despair. La Guiccioli and her brother, who is Lord 
 Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces perfedly 
 in her connexion with him, wish to go to Switzer- 
 land ; as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty of 
 the pleasure of travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tus- 
 cany or Lucca, and is trying to persuade them to 
 adopt his views. He has made me write a long 
 letter to her to engage her to remain, an odd thing 
 enough for an utter stranger to write on subjeds 
 of the utmost delicacy to his friend's mistress. 
 But it seems destined that I am always to have 
 some adive part in everybody's affairs whom I 
 approach. I have set down in lame Italian the 
 strongest reasons I can think of against the Swiss 
 emigration ; to tell you truth, I should be very 
 glad to accept, as my fee, his establishment in 
 Tuscany. Ravenna is a miserable place ; the 
 people are barbarous and wild, and their language 
 the most infernal patois that you can imagine. 
 He would be, in every resped, better among the 
 Tuscans. . . . 
 
i64 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 He has read to me one of the unpublished 
 cantos of " Don Juan,'* which is astonishingly 
 fine. It sets him not only above, but far above, 
 all the poets of the day, every word has the stamp 
 of immortality. I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, 
 as well I may, and there is no other with whom 
 it is worth contending. This canto is in the 
 style, but totally, and sustained with incredible 
 ease and power, like the end of the second canto. 
 There is not a word which the most rigid 
 assertor of the dignity of human nature could 
 desire to be cancelled. It fulfils, in a certain 
 degree, what I have long preached of producing, 
 something wholly new and relative to the age, 
 and yet surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, 
 but I think I see the trace of my earnest exhorta- 
 tions to him to create something wholly new. 
 He has finished his Life up to the present time, 
 and given it to Moore, with liberty for Moore to 
 sell it at the best price he can get, with condition 
 that the bookseller shall publish it after his death. 
 Moore has sold it to Murray for two thousand 
 pounds. I wish I had been in time to have 
 interceded for a part of it for poor Hunt. I have 
 spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a dired 
 view of demanding a contribution ; and, though 
 I am sure that if asked it would not be refused, 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 165 
 
 yet there is something in me that makes it 
 impossible. Lord Byron and I are excellent 
 friends, and were I reduced to poverty, or were 
 I a writer who had no claims to an higher 
 station than I possess, or did I possess an higher 
 than I deserve, we should appear in all things as 
 such, and I would freely ask him any favour. 
 Such is not now the case. The daemon of 
 mistrust and pride lurks between two persons in 
 our situation, poisoning the freedom of our inter- 
 course. This is a tax and a heavy one, which 
 we must pay for being human. I think the fault 
 is not on my side, nor is it likely, I being the 
 weaker. I hope that in the next world these 
 things will be better managed. What is passing 
 in the heart of another rarely escapes the observa- 
 tion of one who is a strid anatomist of his own. 
 
 Write to me at Florence, w^here I shall remain 
 a day at least, and send me letters, or news of 
 letters. How is my little darling ? And how are 
 you, and how do you get on with your book ? 
 Be severe in your corrections, and exped severity 
 from me, your sincere admirer. I flatter myself 
 you have composed something unequalled in its 
 kind, and that, not content with the honours of 
 your birth and your hereditary aristocracy, you 
 will add still higher renown to your name. 
 
i66 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 Expe<5^ me at the end of my appointed time. I 
 do not think I shall be detained. Is Claire with 
 you, or is she coming? Have you heard anything 
 of my poor Emilia, from whom I got a letter the 
 day of my departure, saying that her marriage was 
 deferred for a very short time, on account of the ill- 
 ness of her sposo. How are the Williamses, and 
 Williams especially ? Give my kindest love to them. 
 
 Lord Byron has here splendid apartments in the 
 palace of his mistress's husband, who is one of 
 the richest men in Italy. She is divorced, with an 
 allowance of 1200 crowns a year, a miserable 
 pittance from a man who has 120,000 a year. 
 Here are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and 
 ten horses, all of whom, except the horses, walk 
 about the house like the masters of it. Tita the 
 Venetian is here, and operates as my valet ; a fine 
 fellow, with a prodigious black beard, and who 
 has stabbed two or three people, and is the most 
 good-natured looking fellow I ever saw. 
 
 We have good rumours of the Greeks here, 
 and a Russian war. I hardly wish the Russians 
 to take any part in it. My maxim is with 
 Aeschylus : — 
 
 TO Bv(r(T€^€5 
 
 fiera jxev TrXfiova riKTciy 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 167 
 
 There is a Greek exercise for you. How should 
 slaves produce anything but tyranny, even as the 
 seed produces the plant ? 
 
 Adieu, dear Mary, • 
 Yours afFedionately, 
 S. 
 
XXXVIII 
 - To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Ravenna, [loth August j 182 1.] 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I received your last letter just as I was 
 setting off from the Bagni on a visit to Lord 
 Byron at this place. Many thanks for all your 
 kind attention to my accursed affairs. . . . 
 
 I have sent you by the Gisbornes a copy of the 
 elegy on Keats. The subjed, I know, will not 
 please you ; but the composition of the poetry, 
 and the taste in which it is written I do not 
 think bad. You and the enlightened public will 
 judge. Lord Byron is in excellent cue both of 
 health and spirits. He has got rid of all those 
 melancholy and degrading habits which he indulged 
 at Venice. He lives with one woman, a lady of 
 rank here, to whom he is attached, and who is 
 attached to him, and is in every resped an 
 altered man. He has written three more cantos 
 of '^ Don Juan." I have yet only heard the 
 fifth, and I think that every word of it is pregnant 
 with immortality. I have not seen his late plays, 
 except *^ Marino Faliero," which is very well, but 
 not so transcendently fine as the ** Don Juan." 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 169 
 
 Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up— quite 
 contrary to my usual custom, but one must sleep 
 or die, like Southey's sea-snake in Kehama — at 
 twelve. After breakfast, we sit talking till six. 
 From six till eight we gallop through the pine 
 forests which divide Ravenna from the sea ; we 
 then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping 
 till six in the morning. I don't suppose this will 
 kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try 
 it longer. Lord B.'s establishment consists, besides 
 servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, five 
 cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon ; and all these, 
 except the horses, walk about the house, which 
 every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated 
 quarrels, as if they were the masters of it. Lord B. 
 thinks you wrote a pamphlet signed ** John Bull ;" 
 he says he knew it by the style resembling 
 ** Melincourt," of which he is a great admirer. I 
 read it, and assured him that it could not possibly 
 be yours. I write nothing, and probably shall 
 write no more. It offends me to see my name 
 classed among those who have no name. If I 
 cannot be something better, I had rather be 
 nothing. . . . and the accursed cause to the down- 
 fall of which I dedicated what powers I may have 
 had, flourishes like a cedar and covers England 
 with its boughs. My motive was never the infirm 
 
tyo SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 desire of fame ; and if I should continue an 
 author, I feel that I should desire it. This cup 
 is justly given to one only of an age; indeed, 
 participation would make it worthless ; and un- 
 fortunate they who seek it and find it not. 
 
 I congratulate you, I hope I ought to do so, 
 on your expeded stranger. He is introduced into 
 a rough world. My regards to Hogg, and Coulsoh 
 if you see him. 
 
 Ever most faithfully yours, 
 P. B. S. 
 
 After I have sealed my letter, I find that my 
 enumeration of the animals in this Circaean palace 
 was defedive, and that in a material point. I 
 have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, 
 two guinea-hens, and an Egyptian crane. I 
 wonder who all these animals were, before they 
 were changed into these shapes. 
 
XXXIX 
 
 To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Ravenna, i^th Aug., 1821, 
 
 « f 3)> ♦ ♦ ♦ 
 
 I went the other day to see Allegra at her 
 convent, and stayed with her about three hours. 
 She is grown tall and slight for her age, and her 
 face is somewhat altered. The traits have become 
 more delicate, and she is much paler, probably 
 from the effed of improper food. She yet retains 
 the beauty of her deep blue eyes and of her mouth, 
 but she has a contemplative seriousness which, 
 mixed with her excessive vivacity, which has 
 not yet deserted her, has a very peculiar effed 
 in a child. She is under very strid discipline, 
 as may be observed from the immediate obedience 
 she accords to the will of her attendants. This 
 seems contrary to her nature, but I do not think 
 it has been obtained at the expense of much 
 severity. Her hair, scarcely darker than it was, 
 is beautifully profuse, and hangs in large curls on 
 her neck. She was prettily dressed in white 
 muslin, and an apron of black silk, with trousers. 
 Her light and airy figure and her graceful motions 
 were a striking contrast to the other children there. 
 
172 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 She seemed a thing of a finer and a higher order. 
 At first she was very shy, but after a little caress- 
 ing, and especially after I had given her a gold 
 chain which I had bought at Ravenna for her, 
 she grew more familiar, and led me all over the 
 garden, and all over the convent, running and 
 skipping so fast that I could hardly keep up with 
 her. She showed me her little bed, and the chair 
 where she sat at dinner, and the carozzina in 
 which she and her favourite companions drew 
 each other along a walk in the garden. I had 
 brought her a basket of sweetmeats, and before 
 eating any of them she gave her companions and 
 each of the nuns a portion. This is not much 
 like the old Allegra. I asked her what I should 
 say from her to her mamma, and she said : — 
 " Che mi manda un bacio e un bel vestituro." 
 ** E come vuoi il vestituro sia fatto ? " 
 ** Tutto di seta e d' oro," was her reply. 
 Her predominant foible seems the love of dis- 
 tindion and vanity, and this is a plant which 
 produces good or evil, according to the gardener's 
 skill. I then asked her what I should say to papa ? 
 ** Che venga farmi un visitino e che porta seco la 
 fnamminay Before I went away she made me 
 run all over the convent, like a mad thing. The 
 nuns, who were half in bed, were ordered to hide 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 173 
 
 themselves, and on returning Allegra began ring- 
 ing the bell which calls the nuns to assemble. 
 The tocsin of the convent sounded, and it re- 
 quired all the efforts of the Prioress to prevent the 
 spouses of God from rendering themselves, dressed 
 or undressed, to the accustomed signal. Nobody 
 scolded her for these scappature, so I suppose she 
 is well treated, so far as temper is concerned. 
 Her intelled is not much cultivated. She knows 
 certain ora'^ioni by heart, and talks and dreams of 
 Paradiso and all sorts of things, and has a 
 prodigious list of saints, and is always talking of 
 the Bambino. This will do her no harm, but the 
 idea of bringing up so sweet a creature in the 
 midst of such trash till sixteen ! 
 
XL 
 To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Pisa, 26th August J 1821. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 Since I last wrote to you, I have been on 
 a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. The result of 
 this visit was a determination on his part to come 
 and live at Pisa ; and I have taicen the finest 
 palace on the Lung' Arno for him. But the 
 material part of my visit consists in a message 
 which he desires me to give you, and which I 
 think ought to add to your determination, for such 
 a one I hope you have formed, of restoring your 
 shattered health and spirits by a migration to these 
 ** regions mild of calm and serene air." 
 
 He proposes that you should come and go shares 
 with him and me in a periodical work, to be con- 
 duced here ; in which each of the contrading 
 parties should publish all their original composi- 
 tions, and share the profits. He proposed it to 
 Moore, but for some reason it was never brought 
 to bear. There can be no doubt that the profits 
 of any scheme in which you and Lord Byron 
 engage, must, from various, yet co-operating 
 reasons, be very great. As for myself, I am, for 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 17$ 
 
 the present, only a sort of link between you and 
 him, until you can know each other and effeduate 
 the arrangement; since, to intrust you with a 
 secret which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord 
 B3n*on, nothing would induce me to share in the 
 profits, and still less in the borrowed splendour of 
 such a partnership. You and he, in different 
 manners, would be equal, and would bring, in a 
 different manner, but in the same proportion, 
 equal stocks of reputation and success. Do not let 
 my frankness with you, nor my belief that you 
 deserve it more than Lord Byron, have the effect 
 of deterring you from assuming a station in modern 
 literature, which the universal voice of my con- 
 temporaries forbids me either to stoop or to aspire 
 to. I am, and I desire to be, nothing. 
 
 I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in send- 
 ing a remittance for your journey ; because there 
 are men, however excellent, from whom we would 
 never receive an obligation, in the worldly sense 
 of the word ; and I am as jealous for my friend 
 as for myself. I, as you know, have it not : but 
 I suppose that at last I shall make up an impudent 
 face, and ask Horace Smith to add to the many 
 obligations he has conferred on me. I know I 
 need only ask. 
 
 I think I have never told you how very much 
 
tjS SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 I like your ** Amyntas ; " it almost reconciles me 
 to translations. In another sense, I still demur. 
 You might have written another such poem as 
 the ** Nymphs," with no great access of effort. I 
 am full of thoughts and plans, and should do 
 something if the feeble and irritable frame which 
 incloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy 
 that then I should do great things. Before this 
 you will have seen ** Adonais." Lord Byron, I 
 suppose from modesty on account of his being 
 mentioned in it, did not say a word of " Adonais,'* 
 though he was loud in his praise of ** Prome- 
 theus : " and, what you will not agree with him 
 in, censure of the ** Cenci." Certainly, if 
 ** Marino Faliero " is a drama, the *' Cenci" is 
 not : but that between ourselves. Lord Byron is 
 reformed, as far as gallantry goes, and lives with 
 a beautiful and sentimental Italian lady, who is as 
 much attached to him as may be. I trust greatly 
 to his intercourse with you, for his creed to be- 
 come as pure as he thinks his condud is. He has 
 many generous and exalted qualities, but the 
 canker of aristocracy wants to be cut out. 
 
XLI 
 ^anit^ To Edmund Ollier. 
 
 Pisa, 2$th September, 1821. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 It will give me great pleasure if I can 
 arrange the affair of Mrs. Shelley's novel with 
 you to her and your satisfadion. She has a specific 
 purpose in the sum which she instruded me to 
 require ; and, although this purpose could not be 
 answered without ready money, yet I should find 
 means to answer her wishes in that point, if you 
 could make it convenient to pay one-third at 
 Christmas, and give bills for the other two-thirds 
 at twelve and eighteen months. It would give 
 me peculiar satisfaction that you, rather than any 
 other person, should be the publisher of this 
 work ; it is the produd of no slight labour, and 
 I flatter myself, of no common talent. I doubt 
 not it will give no less credit than it will receive 
 from your names. I trust you know me too well 
 to believe that my judgment deliberately given in 
 testimony of the value of any produdion is in- 
 fluenced by motives of interest or partiality. 
 
 The romance is called '' Castruccio, Prince of 
 Lucca," and is founded, not upon the novel of 
 
 K 
 
178 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 Macchiavelli under that name, which substitutes 
 a childish fidion for the far more romantic truth 
 of history, but upon the aflual story of his life. 
 He was a person who, from an exile and an ad- 
 venturer, after having served in the wars of Eng- 
 land and Flanders in the reign of our Edward the 
 Second, returned to his native city, and, liberating 
 it from its tyrants, became himself its tyrant, and 
 died in the full splendour of his dominion, which 
 he had extended over the half of Tuscany. He 
 was a little Napoleon, and, with a dukedom in* 
 stead of an empire for his theatre, brought upon 
 the same all the passions and the errors of his 
 antitype. The chief interest of the romance rests 
 upon Euthanasia, his betrothed bride, whose love 
 for him is only equalled by her enthusiasm for 
 the liberty of the republic of Florence, which is 
 in some sort her country, and for that of Italy, 
 to which Castruccio is a devoted enemy, being an 
 ally of the party of the Emperor. This charader 
 is a masterpiece ; and the key-stone of the drama, 
 which is built up with admirable art, is the con- 
 flict between these passions and these principles. 
 Euthanasia, the last survivor of a noble house, is 
 a feudal countess, and her castle is the scene of 
 the exhibition of the knightly manners of the 
 time. The charader of Beatrice, the prophetess, 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 179 
 
 can only be done justice to in the very language 
 of the author. I know nothing in Walter Scott's 
 novels which at all approaches to the beauty and 
 the sublimity of this — creation, I may say, for it 
 is perfectly original; and, although founded upon 
 the ideas and manners of the age which is repre- 
 sented, is wholly without a similitude in any fic- 
 tion I ever read. Beatrice is in love with Cas- 
 truccio, and dies ; for the romance, although 
 interspersed with much lighter matter, is deeply 
 tragic, and the shades darken and gather as the 
 catastrophe approaches. All the manners, cus- 
 toms, opinions of the age are introduced ; the 
 superstitions, the heresies, and the religious per- 
 secutions are displayed ; the minutest circumstance 
 of Italian manners in that age is not omitted; and 
 the whole seems to me to constitute a living and 
 moving pidure of an age almost forgotten. The 
 author visited the scenery which she describes in 
 person ; and one or two of the inferior charaders 
 are drawn from her own observation of the 
 Italians, for the national character shows itself 
 still in certain instances under the same forms 
 as it wore in the time of Dante. The novel 
 consists, as I told you before, of three volumes, 
 each at least equal to one of the *' Tales of my 
 Landlord," and they will be very soon ready to 
 
 N 2 
 
j8o SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 be sent. In case you should accept the present 
 offer, I will make one observation which I con- 
 sider of essential importance. It ought to be 
 printed in half- volumes at a time, and sent to 
 the author for her last corredions by the post. 
 It may be printed on thin paper like that of this 
 letter, and the expense shall fall upon me. Lord 
 Byron has his works sent in this manner ; and 
 no person, who has either fame to lose or money 
 to win, ought to publish in any other manner. 
 
 By-the-bye, how do I stand with regard to 
 these two great objeds of human pursuit ? I 
 once sought something nobler and better than 
 either ; but I might as well have reached at the 
 moon, and now, finding that I have grasped the 
 air, I should not be sorry to know what sub- 
 stantial sum, especially of the former, is in your 
 hands on my account. The gods have made the 
 reviewers the almoners of this worldly dross, and 
 I think I must write an ode to flatter them to 
 give me some ; if I would not that they put me 
 off with a bill on posterity, which when my 
 ghost shall present, the answer wiU be "No 
 effeds.** 
 
 *' Charles the First" is conceived, but not born. 
 Unless I am sure of making something good the 
 play will not be written. Pride, that ruined 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS i8i 
 
 Satan, will kill '' Charles the First," for his mid- 
 wife would only be less than him whom thunder 
 has made greater. I am full of great plans ; and, 
 if I should tell you them, I should add to the 
 list of these riddles. 
 
 I have not seen Mr. Proder's ** Mirandola." 
 Send it to me in the box, and pray send me the 
 box immediately. It is of the utmost consequence ; 
 and, as you are so obliging as to say you will not 
 negled my commissions, pray send this without 
 delay. I hope it is sent, indeed, and that you 
 have recoUeded to send me several copies of 
 ** Prometheus," the *' Revolt of Islam," and the 
 **Cenci," &c., as I requested you. Is there any 
 chance of a second edition of the *' Revolt of 
 Islam " ? I could materially improve that poem 
 on revision. The ** Adonais," in spite of its mys- 
 ticism, is the least imperfed of my compositions, 
 and, as the image of my regret and honour for 
 poor Keats, I wish it to be so. I shall write to 
 you, probably, by next post on the subjed of 
 that poem, and should have sent the promised 
 criticism for the second edition had I not mis- 
 laid, and in vain sought for, the volume that 
 contains ** Hyperion." Pray give me notice 
 against what time you want the second part 
 of my ** Defence of Poetry." I give you this 
 
i82 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 ** Defence," and you may do what you will 
 with it. 
 
 Pray give me an immediate answer about the 
 novel. 
 
 I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 Your very obliged servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 I ought to tell you that the novel has not the 
 smallest tindlure of any peculiar theories in 
 politics or religion. 
 
XLII 
 To John Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa, 22nd October , 182 1, 
 
 My dear Gisborne, 
 
 At length the post brings a welcome letter 
 from you, and I am pleased to be assured of 
 your health and safe arrival. I exped with 
 interest and anxiety the intelligence of your 
 progress in England, and how far the advantages 
 there compensate the loss of Italy. I hear from 
 Hunt that he is determined on emigration, and if 
 I thought the letter would arrive in time, should 
 beg you to suggest some advice to him. But 
 you ought to be incapable of forgiving me the 
 fad of depriving England of what it must lose 
 when Hunt departs. 
 
 Did I tell you that Lord Byron comes to settle 
 at Pisa, and that he has a plan of writing a 
 periodical work in conjundion with Hunt ? His 
 house, Madame FeHchi's, is already taken and 
 fitted up for him, and he has been expeded every 
 day these six weeks. La Guiccioli, who awaits 
 him impatiently, is a very pretty, sentimental, 
 innocent Italian, who has sacrificed an immense 
 fortune for the sake of Lord Byron, and who, if 
 
l84 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 I know anything of my friend, will hereafter have 
 plenty of leisure and opportunity to repent her 
 rashness. Lord Byron is, however, quite cured 
 of his gross habits, as far as habits ; the perverse 
 ideas on which they were formed are not yet eradi- 
 cated. 
 
 We have furnished a house at Pisa, and mean 
 to make it our head-quarters. I shall get all my 
 books out, and entrench myself like a spider in 
 a web. If you can assist Peacock in sending 
 them to Leghorn, you would do me an especial 
 favour ; but do not buy me Calderon, ** Faust," 
 or Kant, as Horace Smith proposes to send them 
 me from Paris, where I suppose you had not 
 time to procure them. Any other books you or 
 Henry think would accord with my design, Oilier 
 will furnish you with. 
 
 I should like very much to hear what is said of 
 my **Adonais," and you would oblige me by 
 cutting out, or making Oilier cut out, any re- 
 spedable criticism on it, and sending it me ; you 
 know I do not mind a crown or two in postage. 
 The **Epipsychidion" is a mystery; as to real 
 flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal 
 in those articles ; you might as well go to a gin- 
 shop for a leg of mutton as exped anything 
 human or earthly from me. I desired Oilier 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 185 
 
 not to circulate this piece except to the <tvv€toi, 
 and even they, it seems, are inclined to approxi- 
 mate me to the circle of a servant girl and her 
 sweetheart. But I intend to write a symposium 
 of my own to set all this right. 
 
 I am just finishing a dramatic poem called 
 " Hellas," upon the contest now raging in Greece, 
 a sort of imitation of the '* Persae " of Aeschylus, 
 full of lyrical poetry. I try to be what I might 
 have been, but am not successful. I find that— I 
 dare say I shall quote wrong, — 
 
 *' Den herrlichsten, den sich der Geist empfangt, 
 Drangt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an." 
 
 The * * Edinburgh Review " lies. Godwin's answer 
 to Malthus is vidorious and decisive ; and that it 
 should not be generally acknowledged as such, is 
 full evidence of the influence of successful evil 
 and tyranny. What Godwin is, compared to 
 Plato and Lord Bacon, we well know ; but com- 
 pared with these miserable sciolists, he is a vulture 
 to a worm. 
 
 I read the Greek dramatists and Plato for ever. 
 You are rightabout "Antigone ;" how sublime a 
 picture of a woman ! and what think you of the 
 choruses, and especially of the lyrical complaints 
 of the godlike vidim ? and the menaces of Tire- 
 
z86 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 sias and their rapid fulfilment ? Some of us have, 
 in a prior existence, been in love with an Anti- 
 gone, and that makes us find no full content in 
 any mortal tie. As to books, I advise you to 
 live near the British Museum and read there. I 
 have read, since I saw you, the ** Jungfrau von 
 Orleans" of Schiller, a fine play if the fifth ad 
 did not fall off. Some Greeks, escaped from the 
 defeat in Wallachia, have passed through Pisa to 
 re-embark at Leghorn for the Morea ; and the 
 Tuscan Government allowed them, during their 
 stay and passage, three lire each per day and 
 their lodging ; that is good. Remember me and 
 Mary most kindly to Mrs. Gisborne [and Henry, 
 and believe me, 
 
 Yours most affedionately, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
XLIII 
 To Joseph Severn. 
 
 Pisa, 29th November, 182 1. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I send you the elegy on poor Keats, and 
 I wish it were better worth your acceptance. 
 You will see, by the preface, that it was written 
 before I could obtain any particular account of 
 his last moments ; all that I still know was 
 communicated to me by a friend who had derived 
 his information from Colonel Finch ; I have ven- 
 tured to express, as I felt, the resped and admi- 
 ration which your condud towards him demands. 
 
 In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats 
 never was, nor ever will be, a popular poet ; 
 and the total negled and obscurity in which the 
 astonishing remnants of his mind still lie, was 
 hardly to be dissipated by a writer who, however 
 he may differ from Keats in more important 
 qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental 
 one, a want of popularity. 
 
 I have little hope, therefore, that the poem I 
 send you will excite any attention, nor do I feel 
 assured that a critical notice of his writings would 
 find a single reader. But for these considerations, 
 
i88 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 it had been my intention to have collefted the 
 remnants of his compositions, and to have pub- 
 lished them with a life and criticism. Has he 
 left any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, 
 and in whose possession are they ? Perhaps you 
 would oblige me by information on this point. 
 
 Many thanks for the pidure you promise me : 
 I shall consider it among the most sacred relics of 
 the past. 
 
 For my part, I little expeded, when I last saw 
 Keats at my friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should 
 survive him. 
 
 Should you ever pass through Pisa I hope to 
 have the pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivat- 
 ing an acquaintance into something pleasant, begun 
 under such melancholy auspices. 
 
 Accept, my dear Sir, the assurance of my sin- 
 cere esteem, and believe me. 
 
 Your most sincere and faithful servant, 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
,' ' XLIV 
 
 To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Pisa, January \^ii, 1822]. 
 
 My dear Peacock, 
 
 I am still at Pisa, where I have at length 
 fitted up some rooms at the top of a lofty palace 
 that overlooks the city and the surrounding re- 
 gion, and have coUeded books and plants about 
 me, and established myself for some indefinite 
 time, which, if I read the future, will not be 
 short. I wish you to send my books by the 
 very first opportunity, and I expert in them a 
 great augmentation of comfort. Lord Byron is 
 established here, and we are constant companions. 
 No small relief this, after the dreary solitude of 
 the understanding and the imagination in which 
 we passed the first years of our expatriation, 
 yoked to all sorts of miseries and discomforts. 
 
 Of course you have seen his last volume, and 
 if you before thought him a great poet, what is 
 your opinion now that you have read *' Cain" ? The 
 **Foscari" and **Sardanapalus" I have not seen; 
 but as they are in the style of his later writings, I 
 doubt not they are very fine. We expe£l Hunt 
 here every day, and remain in great anxiety on 
 
190 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 account of the heavy gales which he must have 
 encountered at Christmas. Lord Byron has fitted 
 up the lower apartments of his palace for him, 
 and Hunt will be agreeably surprised to find a 
 commodious lodging prepared for him after the 
 fatigues and dangers of his passage. I have been 
 long idle, and, as far as writing goes, despon- 
 dent ; but I am now engaged on * ' Charles the 
 First," and a devil of a nut it is to crack. 
 
 Mary and Clara, who is not with us just at 
 present, are well, and so is our little boy, the 
 image of poor William. We live as usual, tran- 
 quilly. I get up, or at least wake, early ; read 
 and write till two ; dine, go to Lord Byron's, and 
 ride or play at billiards as the weather permits; 
 and sacrifice the evening either to light books or 
 whoever happens to drop in. Our furniture, which 
 is very neat, cost fewer shillings than that at 
 Marlow did pounds sterling ; and our windows 
 are full of plants which turn the sunny winter 
 into spring. My health is better, my cares are 
 lighter ; and although nothing will cure the con- 
 sumption of my purse, yet it drags on a sort of 
 life in death, very like its master, and seems, like 
 Fortunatus's, always empty yet never quite ex- 
 hausted. You will have seen my ** Adonais," and 
 perhaps my ** Hellas," and I think, whatever you 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 191 
 
 may judge of the subjed, the composition of the 
 first poem will not wholly displease you. I wish 
 I had something better to do than furnish this 
 jingling food for the hunger of oblivion, called 
 verse, but I have not ; and since you give me no 
 encouragement about India, I cannot hope to 
 have. 
 
 How is your little star, and the heaven which 
 contains the milky way in which it glitters ? 
 
 Adieu. Yours ever most truly, 
 
 S. 
 
XLV 
 To John Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa, January, 1822, 
 . . . One thing I rejoice to hear, that your 
 heahh is better. So is mine ; but my mind is 
 like an overworked race-horse put into an hackney 
 coach. What think you of Lord Byron now? 
 Space wondered less at the swift and fair crea- 
 tions of God, when he grew weary of vacancy, 
 than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal 
 paradise of a decaying body. So I think, let the 
 world envy while it admires, as it may. 
 
 We have just got the etchings of '* Faust ; " the 
 painter is worthy of Goethe. The meeting of 
 him and Margaret is wonderful. It makes all 
 the pulses of my head beat, those of my heart 
 have been quiet long ago. The translations, both 
 these and in *' Blackwood," are miserable. Ask 
 Coleridge if their stupid misintelligence of the 
 deep wisdom and harmony of the author does 
 not spur him to action. You will have heard 
 of the Hunts, and of all my perplexities about 
 them. The Williamses are well ; Mrs. Williams 
 more amiable and beautiful than ever, and a sort 
 of spirit of embodied peace in the midst of our 
 circle of tempests. So much for first impressions ! 
 
XLVI 
 To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Pisa, Jan. 2$, 1822. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 I send you by return of post i$o/., within 
 30 or 40 of what I had contrived to scrape to- 
 gether. How I am to assemble the constituents 
 of such a sum again I do not at present see ; but 
 do not be disheartened, we will all put our 
 shoulders to the wheel. Let me not speak of 
 my own disappointment, which, great as it is at 
 not seeing you here, is all swallowed up in sym- 
 pathy with your present situation. Our anxiety 
 during the continuance of the succession of tem- 
 pests which one morning seemed to rain light- 
 nings into Pisa, and amongst others struck the 
 palace adjoining Lord Byron's, and turned the 
 Arno into a raging sea, was, as you may con- 
 ceive, excessive, and our first relief was your 
 letter from Ramsgate. Between the interval of 
 that and your letter of December 28, we were in 
 daily expectation of your arrival. Yesterday ar- 
 rived that dated January 6. 
 
 Lord Byron had assigned you a portion of his 
 palace, and Mary and I had occupied ourselves 
 
 o 
 
194 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 in furnishing it. Everything was already provided 
 except bedding, which could have been got in 
 a moment, and which we thought it possible you 
 might bring with you. We had hired a woman 
 cook of the country for you, who is still with 
 us. Lord Byron had kindly insisted upon paying 
 the upholsterer's bill, with that sort of unsuspeding 
 goodness which makes it infinitely difficult to ask 
 him for more. Past circumstances between Lord 
 Byron and me render it impossible that I should 
 accept any supply from him for my own use, or 
 that I should ask it for yours if the contribution 
 could be supposed in any manner to relieve me, 
 or to do what I could otherwise have done. It 
 is true that I cannot, but how is he to be assured 
 of this ? One thing strikes me as possible. I am 
 at present writing the drama of ** Charles the 
 First," a play which, if completed according to my 
 present idea, will hold a higher rank than the 
 '* Cenci " as a work of art. Would no bookseller 
 give me 150/. or 200Z. for the copyright of this 
 play? You know best how my writings sell, 
 whether at all or not : after they failed of making 
 the sort of impression on men that I expeded, I 
 have never until now thought it worth while to 
 enquire. The question is now interesting to me, 
 inasmuch as the reputation depending on their 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 195 
 
 sale might induce a bookseller to give me such a 
 sum for this play. Write to Allman, your book- 
 seller, and tell him what I tell you of ** Charles 
 the First," and do not delay a post. I have a 
 parcel of little poems also, the *' Witch of Atlas," 
 and some translations of Homer's hymns, the 
 copyright of which I must sell. I offered the 
 ** Charles the First " to Oilier, and you had better 
 write at the same time to learn his terms. Of 
 course you will not delay a post in this. 
 
 The evils of your remaining in England are 
 inconceivably great if you ultimately determine 
 upon Italy; and in the latter case, the best thing 
 you can do is, without waiting for the spring, to 
 set sail with the very first ship you can. Debts, 
 responsibilities, and expenses will enmesh you 
 round about if you delay, and force you back into 
 that circle from which I made a push to draw 
 you. The winter, generally, is not a bad time for 
 sailing, but only that period which you seleded, 
 and another when the year approaches to the 
 vernal equinox. You avoided, and if you must 
 still delay, will still avoid, the halcyon days of 
 the Mediterranean. There is no serious danger in 
 a cargo of gunpowder; hundreds of ships navigate 
 these eledrical seas with the freight without risk. 
 Marianne would have been benefited, and would 
 
 O 2 
 
196 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 still benefit exceedingly, by the elysian temperature 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Poor Marianne, how much I feel for her, and 
 with what anxiety I exped your news of her 
 health! Were it not for the cursed necessity of 
 finding money, all considerations would be swal- 
 lowed up in the thought of her ; and I should be 
 delighted to think that she had obtained this in- 
 terval of repose which now perplexes and annoys 
 me 
 
 Pray tell me in answer to this letter, unless you 
 answer it in person, what arrangement you have 
 made about the receipt of a regular income from 
 the profits of the '* Examiner." You ought not to 
 leave England without having the assurance of an 
 independence in this particular; as many difficul- 
 ties have presented themselves to the plan imagined 
 by Lord Byron, which I depend upon you for 
 getting rid of. And if there is time to write be- 
 fore you set off, pray tell me if Oilier has published 
 ** Hellas," and what effed was produced by 
 *'Adonais." My faculties are shaken to atoms, 
 and torpid. I can write nothing ; and if ** Adonais" 
 had no success, and excited no interest, what 
 incentive can I have to write? As to reviews, 
 don't give Gifford, or his associate Hazlitt, a stripe 
 the more for my sake. The man must be envi- 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 197 
 
 ably happy whom reviews can make miserable. I 
 have neither curiosity, interest, pain, nor pleasure 
 in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I 
 feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder 
 that they presume to write my name. I began 
 once a satire upon satire, which I meant to be 
 very severe ; it was full of small knives, in the use 
 of which pradice would have soon made me very 
 expert. 
 
XLVII 
 To Horace Smith. 
 
 Pisa, 2 ^th January, 1822. 
 My dear Smith, 
 
 I have delayed this fortnight answering your 
 kind letter because I was in treaty for a Calderon, 
 which at last I have succeeded in procuring at a 
 tolerably moderate price. All the other books you 
 mention I should be glad to have, together with 
 whatever others might fall in your way that you 
 might think interesting. 
 
 Will you not think my exadions upon your 
 kindness interminable if I ask you to execute 
 another commission for me? It is to buy a good 
 pedal harp without great ornament or any append- 
 age that would unnecessarily increase the expense 
 — but good; nor should I objed to its being 
 second-hand, if that were equally compatible with 
 its being despatched immediately. Together with 
 the harp I should wish for five or six napoleons' 
 worth of harp music, at your discretion. I do not 
 know the price of harps at Paris, but I suppose that 
 from 70 to 80 guineas would cover it, and I trust to 
 your accustomed kindness, as I want it for a pre- 
 sent, to make the immediate advance, as if I were 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 199 
 
 to delay, the grace of my compliment would be 
 lost. Do not take much trouble about it, but 
 simply take what you find, if you are so exceedingly 
 kind as to obHge me. 
 
 It had better be sent by Marseilles, through some 
 merchant or in any other manner you think best, 
 addressed to me at Messrs. Guebhard & Co., 
 merchants, Leghorn: the books may be sent 
 together with it. 
 
 Our party at Pisa is the same as when I wrote 
 last. Lord Byron unites us at a weekly dinner, 
 when my nerves are generally shaken to pieces by 
 sitting up contemplating the rest making themselves 
 vats of claret &c. till 3 o'clock in the morning. 
 We regret your absence exceedingly, and Lord 
 Byron has desired me to convey his best remem- 
 brances to you: — I imagine it is you and not your 
 brother for whom they are intended. Hunt was 
 expeded, and Lord Byron had fitted up a part of 
 his palace for his accommodation, when we hear 
 that the late violent storms had forced him to put 
 back: and that nothing could induce Marianne to 
 put to sea again. This, for many reasons that I 
 cannot now explain, has produced a chaos of per- 
 plexities The reviews and journals, they 
 
 say, continue to attack me, but I value neither 
 the fame they can give nor the fame they can 
 
200 SHELLEY S LETTERS 
 
 take away, therefore blessed be the name of the 
 reviews. 
 
 Pray, if possible, let the *'Nympholept" be in- 
 cluded in the package. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Smith, 
 
 Your most obliged and 
 
 affedionate friend, 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
XLVIII 
 To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Pisa, 2nd March, 1822. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 My last two or three letters have, I fear, 
 given you some uneasiness, or at least inflided 
 that portion of it which I felt in writing them. 
 The asped of affairs has somewhat changed since 
 the date of that in which I expressed a repugnance 
 to a continuance of intimacy with Lord Byron, 
 so close as that which now exists ; at least, it has 
 been changed so far as regards you and the intended 
 journal. He expresses again the greatest eagerness 
 to undertake it, and proceed with it, as well as the 
 greatest confidence in you as his associate. He is 
 for ever dilating upon his impatience of your 
 delay, and his disappointment at your not having 
 already arrived. He renews his expressions of 
 disregard for the opinion of those who advised him 
 against this alliance with you, and I imagine it 
 will be no very difficult task to execute that which 
 you have assigned me, to keep him in heart with 
 the projed until your arrival. Meanwhile, let my 
 last letters, as far as they regard Lord Byron, be 
 as if they had not been written. Particular circum- 
 
202 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 stances, or rather, I should say, particular dispo- 
 sitions in Lord Byron's charader, render the close 
 and exclusive intimacy with him in which I find 
 myself intolerable to me ; thus much, my best 
 friend, I will confess and confide to you. No 
 feeling of my own shall injure or interfere with 
 what is now nearest to them, your interest, and I 
 will take care to preserve the little influence I may 
 have over this Proteus in whom such strange ex- 
 tremes are reconciled, until we meet, which we 
 now must, at all events, soon do. 
 
 Lord Byron showed me your letter to him, which 
 arrived with mine yesterday. How shall I thank 
 you for your generous and deUcate defence and 
 explanation of my motives? I fear no misinter- 
 pretation from you, and from any one else I despise 
 and defy it. 
 
 So you think I can make nothing of '' Charles the 
 First." Tanto peggio. Indeed, I have written 
 nothing for this last two months ; a slight circum- 
 stance gave a new train to my ideas, and shattered 
 the fragile edifice when half built. What motives 
 have I to write? I had motives, and I thank the 
 god of my own heart they were totally different 
 from those of the other apes of humanity who 
 make mouths in the glass of the time. But what 
 are those motives now ? The only inspiration of 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 205 
 
 an ordinary kind I could descend to acknowledge 
 would be the earning 100/. for you; and that it 
 seems I cannot. 
 
 Poor Marianne, how ill she seems to have been ! 
 Give my best love to her, and tell her I hope she 
 is better, and that I know, as soon as she can 
 resolve to set sail, that she will be better. Your 
 rooms are still ready for you at Lord Byron's. I 
 am afraid they will be rather hot in the summer; 
 they were delightful winter rooms All happi- 
 ness attend you, my best friend, and believe that 
 I am watching over your interest with the vigilance 
 of painful afFedion. Mary will write next post. 
 Adieu. Yours, 
 
 S. 
 
XLIX 
 To John Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa, loth April, 1822. 
 
 My dear Gisborne, 
 
 I have received ** Hellas," which is prettily 
 printed, and with fewer mistakes than any poem 
 I have ever published. Am I to thank you for 
 the revision of the press ? or who aded as mid- 
 wife to this last of my orphans, introducing it to 
 oblivion, and me to my accustomed failure ? May 
 the cause it celebrates be more fortunate than 
 either ! Tell me how you like ** Hellas," and 
 give me your opinion freely. It was written 
 without much care, and in one of those few 
 moments of enthusiasm which now seldom visit 
 me, and which make me pay dear for their visits. 
 I know what to think of ** Adonais," but what to 
 think of those who confound it with the many 
 bad poems of the day, I know not. 
 
 I have been reading over and over again 
 *' Faust," and always with sensations which no 
 other composition excites. It deepens the gloom 
 and augments the rapidity of ideas, and would 
 therefore seem to me an unfit study for any 
 person who is a prey to the reproaches of 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 205 
 
 memory, and the delusions of an imagination 
 not to be restrained. And yet the pleasure of 
 sympathising with emotions known only to few, 
 although they derive their sole charm from 
 despair, and the scorn of the narrow good we 
 can attain in our present state, seems more than 
 to ease the pain which belongs to them. Perhaps 
 all discontent with the less, to use a Platonic 
 sophism, supposes the sense of a just claim to the 
 greater, and that we admirers of ** Faust " are on 
 the right road to paradise. Such a supposition is 
 not more absurd, and is certainly less demoniacal, 
 than that of Wordsworth, where he says — 
 
 " This earth, 
 Which is the world of all of us, and where 
 We find our happiness, or not at all.** 
 
 As if, after sixty years' suffering here, we were to 
 be roasted alive for sixty million more in hell, 
 or charitably annihilated by a coup-de-grace of 
 the bungler who brought us into existence at 
 first! 
 
 Have you read Calderon's **Magico Pro- 
 digioso"? I find a striking similarity between 
 ** Faust" and this drama, and if I were to 
 acknowledge Coleridge's distinction, should say 
 Goethe was the greatest philosopher, and Cal- 
 
206 SHELLEY S LETTERS 
 
 deron the greatest poet. Cyprian evidently fur- 
 nished the germ of *' Faust," as *' Faust "may 
 furnish the germ of other poems ; ahhough it is 
 as different from it in structure and plan as the 
 acorn from the oak. I have — imagine my pre- 
 sumption — translated several scenes from both, as 
 the basis of a paper for our journal. I am well 
 content with those from Calderon, which, in fa£l, 
 gave me very little trouble ; but those from 
 *' Faust," I feel how imperfed a representation- 
 even with all the license I assume to figure to 
 myself how Goethe would have written in 
 English — my words convey. No one but Cole- 
 ridge is capable of this work. 
 
 We have seen here a translation of some 
 scenes, and indeed the most remarkable ones, 
 accompanying those astonishing etchings which 
 have been published in England from a German 
 master. It is not bad, and faithful enough, but how 
 weak ! how incompetent to represent ** Faust ! " 
 I have only attempted the scenes omitted in this 
 translation, and would send you that of the 
 *' Walpurgisnacht," if I thought Oilier would 
 place the postage to my account. What etchings 
 those are ! I am never satiated with looking at 
 them ; and, I fear, it is the only sort of transla- 
 tion of which ** Faust" is susceptible. I never 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 207 
 
 perfedly understood the Hartz mountain scene, 
 until I saw the etching ; and then Margaret in 
 the summer-house with Faust ! The artist makes 
 one envy his happiness that he can sketch such 
 things with calmness, which I only dared look 
 upon once, and which made my brain swim 
 round only to touch the leaf on the opposite side 
 of which I knew that it was figured. Whether 
 it is that the artist has surpassed '' Faust," or that 
 the pencil surpasses language in some subjeds, I 
 know not, or that I am more affefled by a visible 
 image, but the etching certainly excited me far 
 more than the poem it illustrated. Do you 
 remember the fifty-fourth letter of the first part 
 of the '^ Nouvelle Heloise" ? Goethe, in a sub- 
 sequent scene, evidently had that letter in his 
 mind, and this etching is an idealism of it. So 
 much for the world of shadows I 
 
 What think you of Lord Byron's last volume ? 
 In my opinion it contains finer poetry than has 
 appeared in England since the publication of 
 '* Paradise Regained." ** Cain " is apocalyptic, it is 
 a revelation not before communicated to man. I 
 write nothing but by fits. I have done some of 
 *' Charles I." ; but although the poetry succeeded 
 very well, I cannot seize on the conception of the 
 subjed as a whole, and seldom now touch the 
 
2o8 SHELLETS LETTERS 
 
 canvas. You know I don't think much about 
 reviews, nor of the fame they give, nor that they 
 take away. It is absurd in any review to criticise 
 *'Adonais," and still more to pretend that the 
 verses are bad. *' Prometheus " was never in- 
 tended for more than five or six persons. 
 
 And how are you getting on ? Do your plans 
 still want success ? Do you regret Italy ? or any- 
 thing that Italy contains ? and in case of an entire 
 failure in your expedations, do you think of re- 
 turning here ? You see the first blow has been 
 made at funded property : do you intend to con- 
 fide and invite a second? You would already 
 have saved something per cent, if you had 
 invested your property in Tuscan land. The best 
 next thing would be to invest it in English, and 
 reside upon it. I tremble for the consequences, 
 to you personally, from a prolonged confidence in 
 the funds. Justice, policy, the hopes of the 
 nation and renewed institutions, demand your 
 ruin, and I for one cannot bring myself to desire 
 what is in itself desirable, till you are free. You 
 see how liberal I am of advice ; but you know 
 the motives that suggest it. What is Henry 
 about, and how are his prospers ? Tell him that 
 some adventurers are engaged upon a steam-boat 
 at Leghorn to make the trajet we projeded. I 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 209 
 
 hope he is charitable enough to pray that they may 
 
 succeed better than we did. 
 
 * * * * Hf mi 
 
 Remember me most affedionately to Mrs. Gis- 
 borne, to whom, as well as to yourself, I consider 
 that this letter is written. How is she, and how 
 are you all in health ? and pray tell me what are 
 your plans of life, and how Henry succeeds, and 
 whether he is married or not ? How can I send 
 you such small sums as you may want for 
 postages, etc.? for I do not mean to tax with my 
 unreasonable letters both your purse and your 
 patience. We go this summer to Spezzia ; but 
 dired as ever to Pisa ; Mrs. Mason will forward 
 our letters. If you see anything which you think 
 would particularly interest me, pray make Oilier 
 pay for sending it out by the post. Give my best 
 and affedionate regards to Hogg, to whom I do 
 not write at present, imagining that you will give 
 him a piece of this letter. 
 
 Ever most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
To Horace Smith. 
 
 Pisa, April ii^ 1S22. 
 
 My dear Smith, 
 
 I have, as yet, received neither the 
 ** Nympholept," nor his metaphysical com- 
 panions. Time, my lord, has a wallet on his hack, 
 and I suppose he has bagged them by the way. 
 As he has had a good deal of alms for oblivion 
 out of me, I think he might as well have favoured 
 me this once ; I have, indeed, just dropped 
 another mite into his treasury, called "Hellas," 
 which I know not how to send to you ; but I 
 dare say some fury of the Hades of authors will 
 bring one to Paris. It is a poem written on the 
 Greek cause last summer, a sort of lyrical, 
 dramatic, nondescript piece of business. 
 
 You will have heard of a row we have had 
 here, which, I dare say, will grow to a serious 
 size before it arrives at Paris. It was, in fact, a 
 trifling piece of business enough, arising from an 
 insult of a drunken dragoon, offered to one of 
 our party, and only serious, because one of Lord 
 Byron's servants wounded the fellow dangerously 
 with a pitchfork. He is now, however, recover- 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 211 
 
 ing, and the echo of the affair will be heard long 
 after the original report has ceased. 
 
 Lord B3n:on has read me one or two letters of 
 Moore to him, in which Moore speaks with great 
 kindness of me ; and, of course, I cannot but feel 
 flattered by the approbation of a man, my in- 
 feriority to whom I am proud to acknowledge. 
 Amongst other things, however, Moore, after 
 giving Lord Byron much good advice about public 
 opinion, etc., seems to deprecate my influence 
 over his mind on the subjed of religion, and to 
 attribute the tone assumed in **Cain" to my 
 suggestions. Moore cautions him against my 
 influence on this particular, with the most friendly 
 zeal ; and it is plain that his motive springs from 
 a desire of benefiting Lord Byron without degrad- 
 ing me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure 
 him that I have not the smallest influence over 
 Lord Byron in this particular, and if I had, I 
 certainly should employ it to eradicate from his 
 great mind the delusions of Christianity, which, 
 in spite of his reason, seem perpetually to recur, 
 and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness 
 and distress. *' Cain " was conceived many years 
 ago, and begun before I saw him last year at 
 Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attri- 
 bute to myself, however indiredly, any participa- 
 
 P 2 
 
212 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 tion in that immortal work ! I differ with Moore 
 in thinking Christianity useful to the world ; no 
 man of sense can think it true ; and the alliance 
 of the monstrous superstitions of the popular wor- 
 ship with the pure dodrines of the theism of such 
 men as Moore, turns to the profit of the former, 
 and but makes the latter the fountain of its own 
 pollution. I agree with him that the dodrines of 
 the French, and material philosophy are as false 
 as they are pernicious ; but still they are better 
 than Christianity, inasmuch as anarchy is better 
 than despotism ; for this reason, that the former 
 is for a season, and that the latter is eternal. My 
 admiration of the charader, no less than of the 
 genius of Moore, makes me rather wish that he 
 should not have an ill opinion of me. 
 
 Where are you this summer? For ever in 
 Paris ? For ever in France ? May I not hope to 
 see you, even for a trip, in Italy ? How is Mrs. 
 Smith ? I hope she finds the air of France pro- 
 pitious to her health, and that your little ones are 
 well .... Mine grows a fine boy, and is quite 
 well .... 
 
 I have contrived to get my musical coals at 
 Newcastle itself. My dear Smith, beHeve me, 
 Most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
LI 
 To John Gisborne. 
 
 Lerici, June j8, 1822. 
 In my doubt as to which of your most 
 imeresting letters I shall answer, I quash the 
 business one for the present, as the only part 
 of it that requires an answer requires also 
 mature consideration. In the first place I send 
 you money for postage, as I intend to indulge 
 myself in plenty of paper and no crossings. 
 Mary will write soon; at present she suffers 
 greatly from excess of weakness, produced by a 
 severe miscarriage, from which she is now slowly 
 recovering. Her situation for some hours was 
 alarming, and as she was totally destitute of medical 
 assistance I took the most decisive resolutions, and 
 by dint of making her sit in ice, I succeeded in 
 checking the hemorrhage and the fainting fits, so 
 that when the physician arrived all danger was 
 over, and he had nothing to do but to applaud me 
 for my boldness. She is now doing well, and the 
 sea-baths will soon restore her. I have written to 
 Oilier to send his account to you. The ** Adonais" 
 I wished to have had a fair chance, both because 
 it was a favourite with me, and on account of the 
 memory of Keats, who was a poet of great genius, 
 
214 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 let the classic party say what it will. *' Hellas" 
 too I liked on account of the subjed, one always 
 finds some reason or other for liking one's own 
 composition. The ** Epipsychidion" I cannot look 
 at; the person whom it celebrates was a cloud 
 instead of a Juno ; and poor Ixion starts from the 
 Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. 
 If you are curious, however, to hear what I am 
 and have been, it will tell you something thereof. 
 It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. 
 I think one is always in love with something or 
 other ; the error, and I confess it is not easy for 
 spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists 
 in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what 
 is, perhaps, eternal. 
 
 Hunt is not yet arrived, but I exped him every 
 day. I shall see little of Lord Byron, nor shall 
 I permit Hunt to form the intermediate link between 
 him and me. I detest all society — almost all, at 
 least — and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that is 
 hateful and tiresome in it. He will be half mad 
 to hear of these memoirs. As to me, you know 
 my supreme indifference to such affairs, except 
 that I must confess I am sometimes amused by the 
 ridiculous mistakes of these writers. Tell me a 
 little what they say of me besides being an atheist. 
 One thing I regret in it, I dread lest it should 
 
SHELLEY S LETTERS 215 
 
 injure Hunt's prospers in the establishment of the 
 journal, for Lord Byron is so mentally capricious 
 that the least impulse drives him from his anchor- 
 age. The Williamses are now on a visit to us, 
 and they are people who are very pleasing to me. 
 But words are hot the instruments of our inter- 
 course. I like Jane more and more, and I find 
 Williams the most amiable of companions. She 
 has a taste for music, and an elegance of form and 
 motions that compensate in some degree for the 
 lack of literary refinement. You know my gross 
 ideas of music, and will forgive me when I say 
 that I listen the whole evening on our terrace to 
 the simple melodies with excessive delight. I have 
 a boat here. It cost me 80/., and reduced me 
 to some difficulty in point of money. However, 
 it is swift and beautiful, and appears quite a vessel. 
 Williams is captain, and we drive along in this 
 delightful bay in the evening wind under the sum- 
 mer moon until earth appears another world. Jane 
 brings her guitar, and if the past and the future 
 could be obliterated, the present would content me 
 so well that I could say with Faust to the passing 
 moment, *' Remain thou, thou art so beautiful." 
 Claire is with us, and the death of her child seems 
 to have restored her to tranquillity. Her chara(^er 
 is somewhat altered. She is vivacious and talka- 
 
2i6 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 tive ; and though she teases me sometimes, I Hke 
 
 her Lord Byron, who is at Leghorn, has 
 
 fitted up a splendid vessel, a small schooner on the 
 American model, and Trelawny is to be captain. 
 How long the fiery spirit of our pirate will accommo_ 
 date itself to the caprice of the poet remains to be 
 seen 
 
 I write little now. It is impossible to compose 
 except under the strong excitement of an assurance 
 of finding sympathy in what you write. Imagine 
 Demosthenes reciting a Philippic to the waves of the 
 Atlantic. Lord Byron is in this resped fortunate. 
 He touched the chord to which a million hearts 
 responded, and the coarse music which he produced 
 to please them, discipUned him to the perfedion to 
 which he now approaches. I do not go on with 
 ' ' Charles the First." I feel too little certainty of the 
 future, and too little satisfaction with regard to the 
 past to undertake any subjed seriously and deeply. 
 I stand, as it were, upon a precipice, which I have 
 ascended with great, and cannot descend without 
 greater peril, and I am content if the heaven above 
 me is calm for the passing moment. 
 
 You don't tell me what you think of "Cain." 
 You send me the opinion of the populace, which you 
 know I do not esteem. I have read several more 
 of the plays of Calderon. " Los Dos Amantes del 
 
SHELLEY'S LETTERS 217 
 
 Cielo" is the finest, if I except one scene in the 
 "Devocion de la Cruz." I read Greek, and think 
 about writing. 
 
 I do not think much of Emma's not admiring Me- 
 tastasio ; the Nil admirari, however justly applied, 
 seems to me a bad sign in a young person. I had 
 rather a pupil of mine had conceived a frantic 
 passion for Marini himself than that she had 
 found out the critical defeds of the most deficient 
 author. When she becomes of her own accord 
 full of genuine admiration for the finest scene in 
 the **Purgatorio," or the opening of the *'Paradiso," 
 or some other negleded piece of excellence, hope 
 great things. Adieu, I must not exceed the limits 
 of my paper, however little scrupulous I seem 
 about those of your patience. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 I waited three days to get this pen mended, and 
 at last was obliged to write. 
 
LII 
 To Horace Smith. 
 
 Lerici, June 29, 1822. 
 
 My dear Smith, 
 
 Pray thank Moore for his obliging mes- 
 sage. I wish I could as easily convey my sense 
 of his genius and charader. I should have 
 written to him on the subjed of my late letter, 
 but that I doubted how far I was justified in 
 doing so ; although, indeed, Lord Byron made 
 no secret of his communication to me. It seems to 
 me that things have now arrived at such a crisis as 
 requires every man plainly to utter his sentiments 
 on the inefficiency of the existing religious, no 
 less than political systems, for restraining and 
 guiding mankind. Let us see the truth, whatever 
 that may be. The destiny of man can scarcely be so 
 degraded, that he was born only to die ; and if such 
 should be the case, delusions, especially the gross 
 and preposterous ones of the existing religion, can 
 scarcely be supposed to exalt it. If every man 
 said what he thought, it could not subsist a day. 
 But all, more or less, subdue themselves to the 
 element that surrounds them, and contribute to 
 
SHELLETS LETTERS' 219 
 
 the evils they lament by the hypocrisy that 
 springs from them. 
 
 England appears to be in a desperate condition, 
 Ireland still worse ; and no class of those who 
 subsist on the public labour will be persuaded 
 that their claims on it must be diminished. But 
 the government must content itself with less in 
 taxes, the landowner must submit to receive less 
 rent, and the fundholder a diminished interest, or 
 they will all get nothing or something worse than 
 nothing. I once thought to study these affairs, 
 and write or ad in them. I am glad that my 
 good genius said Refrain. I see little public virtue, 
 and I foresee that the contest will be one of blood 
 and gold, two elements which, however much to 
 my taste in my pockets and my veins, I have an 
 objedion to out of them. 
 
 Lord Byron continues at Leghorn, and has just 
 received from Genoa a most beautiful little yacht, 
 which he caused to be built there. He has written 
 two new cantos of ** Don Juan," but I have not 
 seen them. I have just received a letter from 
 Hunt, who has arrived at Genoa. As soon as I 
 hear that he has sailed, I shall weigh anchor in 
 my little schooner, and give him chase to Leg- 
 horn, where I must occupy myself in some 
 arrangements for him with Lord Byron. Between 
 
220 SHELLEY'S LETTERS 
 
 ourselves, I greatly fear that this alliance will not 
 succeed, for I, who could never have been regarded 
 more than the link of the two thunderbolts, can- 
 not now consent to be even that ; and how long 
 the alliance between the wren and the eagle may 
 continue, I will not prophesy. Pray do not hint 
 my doubts on the subjed to any one, as they might 
 do harm to Hunt ; and they may be groundless. 
 I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish 
 dramas, and sailing and listening to the most en- 
 chanting music. We have some friends on a visit 
 to us, and my only regret is that the summer must 
 ever pass, or that Mary has not the same pre- 
 diledion for this place that I have, which would 
 induce me never to shift my quarters. 
 Farewell, — believe me ever your 
 
 Obliged and affedionate friend, 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
LIII 
 
 To Mrs. Williams. 
 
 Pisaj July 4, 1822 . 
 
 You will probably see Williams before I can 
 disentangle myself from the affairs with which I 
 am now surrounded. I return to Leghorn to- 
 night, and shall urge him to sail with the first 
 fair wind, without expeding me. I have thus 
 the pleasure of contributing to your happiness 
 when deprived of every other, and of leaving 
 you no other subjed of regret, but the absence 
 of one scarcely worth regretting. I fear you are 
 solitary and melancholy at Villa Magni, and, in 
 the intervals of the greater and more serious 
 distress in which I am compelled to sympathize 
 here, I figure to myself the countenance which 
 has been the source of such consolation to me, 
 shadowed by a veil of sorrow. 
 
 How soon those hours passed, and how slowly 
 they return, to pass so soon again, and perhaps 
 for ever, in which we have lived together so 
 intimately and happily ! Adieu, my dearest friend. 
 I only write these lines for the pleasure of tracing 
 what will meet your eyes. Mary will tell you all 
 
 the news. 
 
 S. 
 
LETTER FROM 
 MRS. SHELLEY TO MRS. GISBORNE. 
 
 August I ^th, 1822. 
 
 I said in a letter to Peacock, my dear Mrs. 
 Gisborne, that I would send you some account of 
 the last miserable months of my disastrous life. 
 From day to day I have put this off, but I will 
 now endeavour to fulfil my design. The scene 
 of my existence is closed, and though there be 
 no pleasure in retracing the scenes that have pre- 
 ceded the event which has crushed my hopes, yet 
 there seems to be a necessity in doing so, and I 
 obey the impulse that urges me. 
 
 I wrote to you either at the end of May or the 
 beginning of June. I described to you the place 
 we were living in, our desolate house, the beauty 
 yet strangeness of the scenery, and the delight 
 Shelley took in all this : he never was in better 
 health or spirits than during this time. I was not 
 well in body or mind. My nerves were wound 
 
224 MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 up to the utmost irritation, and the sense of 
 misfortune hung over my spirits. No words can 
 tell you how I hated our house and the coun- 
 try about it. Shelley reproached me for this ; 
 his health was good, and the place was quite 
 after his own heart. What could I answer? 
 That the people were wild and hateful ; that, 
 though the country was beautiful, yet I like a 
 more countryfied place ? that there was great dif- 
 ficulty in living; that all our Tuscans would 
 leave us, and that the very jargon of these 
 Genoese was disgusting. 
 
 This was all I had to say, but no words could 
 describe my feelings ; the beauty of the woods 
 made me weep and shudder : so vehement was 
 my feeling of dislike that I used to rejoice when 
 the winds and waves permitted me to go out in 
 the boat, so that I was not obliged to take my 
 usual walk among tree-shaded paths, alleys of 
 vine-festooned trees — all that before I doated on : 
 and that now weighed on me. My only moments 
 of peace were on board that unhappy boat when, 
 lying down with my head on his knee, I shut my 
 eyes, and felt the wind and our swift motion alone. 
 
 My ill-health might account for much of this ; 
 bathing in the sea somewhat relieved me : but on 
 the 8th of June, I think it was, I was threatened 
 
MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 225 
 
 with a miscarriage, and, after a week of great ill- 
 health, on Sunday the i6th this took place at eight 
 in the morning. I was so ill that for seven hours 
 I lay nearly lifeless — kept from fainting by brandy, 
 vinegar, eau-de-Cologne, etc. At length ice was 
 brought to our solitude : it came before the doftor, 
 so Claire and Jane were afraid of using it ; but 
 Shelley overruled them, and by an unsparing ap- 
 plication of it I was restored. They all thought, 
 and so did I at one time, that I was about to 
 die. I hardly wish that I had ; my own Shelley 
 could never have lived without me, the sense of 
 eternal misfortune would have pressed too heavily 
 upon him, and what would have become of my 
 poor babe? My convalescence was slow, and 
 during it a strange occurrence happened to re- 
 tard it. 
 
 But first I must describe our house to you. 
 The floor on which we lived was thus — 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
226 MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 I is a terrajce that went the whole length of our 
 house, and was precipitous to the sea ; 2 the 
 large dining hall ; 3 a private staircase ; 4 my bed- 
 room ; 5 Mrs. Williams's bedroom ; 6 Shelley's ; 
 and 7 the entrance from the great staircase. 
 
 Now to return. As I said, Shelley was at first 
 in perfect! health, but having over-fatigued him- 
 self one day, and then the fright my illness gave 
 him, caused a return of nervous sensations, and 
 visions as bad as in his worst times. I think it 
 was the Saturday after my illness, while, yet un- 
 able to walk, I was confined to my bed. In the 
 middle of the night I was awoke by hearing him 
 scream, and come rushing into my room. I was 
 sure that he was asleep, and tried to wake him by 
 calling on him; but he continued to scream, 
 which inspired me with such a panic that I 
 jumped out of bed, and ran across the hall to 
 Mrs. Williams's room, where I fell through weak- 
 ness, though I was so frightened that I got up 
 again immediately. She let me in, and Williams 
 went to Shelley, who had been awakened by my 
 getting out of bed. He said that he had not been 
 asleep, and that it was a vision that he saw that had 
 frightened him. But as he declared that he had 
 not screamed it was certainly a dream and no 
 waking vision. 
 
MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 227 
 
 What had frightened him was this : . He dreamt 
 that, lying as he did in bed, Edward and Jane 
 came in to him ; they were in the most horrible 
 condition, their bodies lacerated, their bones 
 starting through their skin, their faces pale yet 
 stained with blood ; they could hardly walk, but 
 Edward was the weakest, and Jane was supporting 
 him. Edward said, *' Get up, Shelley, the sea is 
 flooding the house, and it is all coming down." 
 Shelley got up, he thought, and went to his window 
 that looked on the terrace and the sea, and 
 thought he saw the sea rushing in. Suddenly his 
 vision changed, and he saw the figure of himself 
 strangling me ; that had made him rush into my 
 room, yet, fearful of frightening me, he dared not 
 approach the bed, when my jumping out awoke 
 him, or, as he phrased it, caused his vision to 
 vanish. All this was frightful enough, and 
 talking it over the next morning he told me that 
 he had had many visions lately. He had seen 
 the figure of himself, which met him as he walked 
 on the terrace, and said to him, *' How long do 
 you mean to be content ? " — no very terrific words, 
 and certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. 
 
 But Shelley had often seen these figures when 
 ill ; but the strangest thing is that Mrs. Williams 
 saw him. Now Jane, although a woman of sensi- 
 
 Q. 2 
 
238 MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 bility, has not much imagination, and is not in 
 the slightest degree nervous, either in dreams or 
 otherwise. She was standing one day, the day 
 before I was taken ill, at a window that looked 
 on the terrace, with Trelawny. It was day; she 
 saw, as she thought, Shelley pass by the window, 
 as he often was then, without a coat or jacket. 
 He passed again. Now as he passed both times 
 the same way, and as from the side towards which 
 he went each time there was no way to get back 
 except past the window again, except over a wall 
 twenty feet from the ground, she was struck at 
 her seeing him pass twice thus, and looked out ; 
 and seeing him no more, she cried, ** Good God! 
 can Shelley have leapt from the wall? Where 
 can he be gone ? " ** Shelley !" said Trelawny, 
 " no Shelley has passed. What do you mean ? " 
 Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly 
 when she heard this, and it proved indeed that 
 Shelley had never been on the terrace, and was 
 far off at the time she saw him. Well, we thought 
 no more of these things, and I slowly got better. 
 Having heard from Hunt that he had sailed from 
 Genoa on Monday July ist, Shelley, Edward, and 
 Captain Roberts, the gentleman who built our boat, 
 departed in our boat for Leghorn to receive him. 
 I was then just better, had begun to crawl from 
 
MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 229 
 
 my bedroom to the terrace, but bad spirits suc- 
 ceeded to ill -health, and this departure of 
 Shelley's seemed to add insufferably to my 
 misery. I could not endure that he should go. 
 I called him back two or three times, and told 
 him that if I did not see him soon I would go 
 to Pisa with the child. I cried bitterly when he 
 went away. They went, and Jane, Claire, and 
 I remained alone with the children. I could not 
 walk out, and though I gradually gathered 
 strength, it was slowly, and my ill spirits in- 
 creased. In my letters to him I entreated him 
 to return. '*The feeling that some misfortune 
 would happen," I said, ** haunted me." I feared 
 for the child, for the idea of danger conneded 
 with him never struck me. 
 
 When Jane and Claire took their evening walk 
 I used to patrole the terrace, oppressed with 
 wretchedness, yet gazing on the most beautiful 
 scene in the world. This Gulf of Spezzia is 
 subdivided into many small bays, of which ours 
 was far the most beautiful ; the two horns of the 
 bay, so to express myself, were wood-covered 
 promontories crowned with castles. At the foot 
 of these on the furthest was Lerici, on the 
 nearest San Terenzo, Lerici being above a mile 
 by land from us, and San Terenzo about a 
 
230 MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 hundred or two yards. Trees covered the hills 
 that enclosed this bay, and their beautiful groups 
 were piduresquely contrasted with the rocks, 
 the castle, and the town. The sea lay far ex- 
 tended in front, while to the west we saw 
 the promontory and islands which formed one 
 of the extreme boundaries of the Gulf. To 
 see the sun set upon this scene, the stars shine, 
 and the moon rise, was a sight of wondrous 
 beauty ; but to me it added only to my wretched- 
 ness. I repeated to myself all that another would 
 have said to console me, and told myself the tale 
 of love, peace, and competence which I enjoyed. 
 But I answered myself by tears — did not my 
 William die ? And did I hold my Percy by a 
 firmer tenure ? Yet I thought when he, when my 
 Shelley, returns, I shall be happy. He will com- 
 fort me, if my boy be ill he will restore him and 
 encourage me. 
 
 I had a letter or two from Shelley mentioning 
 the difficulties he had in establishing the Hunts, 
 and that he was unable to fix the time of his 
 return. Thus a week passed. On Monday 8th 
 Jane had a letter from Edward, dated Saturday : 
 he said that he waited at Leghorn for Shelley, who 
 was at Pisa ; that Shelley's return was certain ; 
 '* but," he continued, *' if he should not come by 
 
MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 231 
 
 Monday, I will come in a felucca, and you may 
 exped me Tuesday evening at furthest." 
 
 This was Monday, the fatal Monday, but with 
 us it was stormy all day, and we did not at all 
 suppose that they could put to sea. At twelve 
 at night we had a thunderstorm, Tuesday it 
 rained all day and was calm — wept on their graves. 
 On Wednesday the wind was fair from Leghorn, 
 and in the evening several feluccas arrived thence. 
 One brought word that they had sailed on Monday, 
 but we did not believe them. Thursday was 
 another day of fair wind, and when twelve at 
 night came, and we did not see the tall sails of 
 the little boat double the promontory before us, 
 we began to fear, not the truth, but some illness, 
 some disagreeable news for their detention. 
 
 Jane got so uneasy, that she determined to pro- 
 ceed the next day to Leghorn in a boat to see 
 what was the matter. Friday came, and with it 
 a heavy sea and bad wind. Jane however resolved 
 to be rowed to Leghorn, since no boat could sail, 
 and busied herself in preparations. I wished her 
 to wait for letters, since Friday was letter day. 
 She would not, but the sea detained her ; the 
 swell rose so that no boat would venture out. 
 At twelve at noon our letters came ; there was 
 one from Hunt to Shelley ; it said, ** Pray write 
 
232 MRS, SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 to tell us how you got home, for they say that 
 you had bad weather after you sailed on Monday, 
 and we are anxious." The paper fell from me. I 
 trembled all over. Jane read it. ''Then it is all 
 over ! " she said. "No, my dear Jane," I cried, 
 '* it is not all over, but this suspense is dreadful. 
 Come with me, we will go to Leghorn, we will 
 post to be swift, and learn our fate." 
 
 We crossed to Lerici, despair in our hearts ; 
 they raised our spirits there by telling us that no 
 accident had been heard of, and that it must have 
 been known, etc. But still our fear was great, 
 and without resting we posted to Pisa. It must 
 have been fearful to see us — two poor, wild, 
 aghast creatures — driving, like Matilda, towards the 
 sea to learn if we were to be for ever doomed to 
 misery. I knew that Hunt was at Pisa at Lord 
 Byron's house, but I thought that Lord Byron 
 was at Leghorn. I settled that we should drive to 
 Casa Lanfranchi, that I should get out and ask the 
 fearful question of Hunt, " Do you know anything 
 of Shelley ? " On entering Pisa the idea of seeing 
 Hunt for the first time for four years under such 
 circumstances, and asking him such a question, 
 was so terrific to me, that it was with difficulty 
 that I prevented myself from going into convul- 
 sions. My struggles were dreadful. They 
 
MRS, SHELLEY S LETTER 233 
 
 knocked at the door, and some one called out 
 ** Chi ^?*' It was the Guiccioli's maid. Lord 
 Byron was in Pisa. Hunt was in bed, so I was 
 to see Lord Byron instead of him. This was a 
 great relief to me ; I staggered up stairs ; the 
 Guiccioli came to meet me smiling, while I could 
 hardly say, ** Where is he — Sapete alcuna cosa di 
 Shelley ? " They knew nothing ; he had left Pisa 
 on Sunday ; on Monday he had sailed ; there had 
 been bad weather Monday afternoon ; more they 
 knew not. 
 
 Both Lord Byron and the lady have told me since 
 that on that terrific evening I looked more like a 
 ghost than a woman ; light seemed to emanate frona 
 my features, my face was very white, I looked 
 Uke marble. Alas, I had risen almost from a bed 
 of sickness for this journey. I had travelled all 
 day ; it was now twelve at night, and we, re- 
 fusing to rest, proceeded to Leghorn — not in de- 
 spair — no, for then we must have died, but with 
 sufficient hope to keep up the agitation of the 
 spirits which was all my life. It was past two 
 in the morning when we arrived. They took 
 us to the wrong inn ; neither Trelawny or Cap- 
 tain Roberts were there, nor did we exadly know 
 where they were, so we were obliged to wait 
 until daylight. We threw ourselves drest on 
 
234 MRS. SHELLETS LETTER 
 
 our beds, and slept a little, but at six o'clock we 
 went to one or two inns to ask for one or the 
 other of these gentlemen. We found Roberts 
 at the Globe. He came down to us with a face 
 which seemed to tell us that the worst was 
 true, and here we learned all that had occurred 
 during the week they had been absent from us, 
 and under what circumstances they had departed 
 on their return. 
 
 Shelley had passed most of the time at Pisa, 
 arranging the affairs of the Hunts, and screwing 
 Lord Byron's mind to the sticking place about the 
 journal. He had found this a difficult task at first, 
 but at length he had succeeded to his heart's con- 
 tent with both points. Mrs. Mason said that she 
 saw him in better health and spirits than she had 
 ever known him, when he took leave of her Sunday 
 July yth, his face burnt by the sun, and his heart 
 light that he had succeeded in rendering the Hunts 
 tolerably comfortable. Edward had remained at 
 Leghorn. On Monday, July 8th, during the 
 morning they were employed in buying many 
 things — eatables, etc., for our solitude. There had 
 been a thunderstorm early, but about noon the 
 weather was fine, and the wind right fair for Lerici. 
 They were impatient to be gone. Roberts said, 
 *' Stay until to-morrow to see if the weather is set- 
 
MRS. SHELLEY S LETTER 235 
 
 tied ; " and Shelley might have stayed, but Edward 
 was in so great an anxiety to reach home — saying 
 they would get there in seven hours with that wind 
 — that they sailed, Shelley being in one of those 
 extravagant fits of good spirits in which you have 
 sometimes seen him. Roberts went out to the 
 end of the mole and watched them out of sight. 
 They sailed at once, and went off at the rate of 
 about seven knots. About three, Roberts, who 
 was still on the mole, saw wind coming from the 
 Gulf, or rather what the Italians call a temporale. 
 Anxious to know how the boat would weather 
 the storm, he got leave to go up the tower, and 
 with the glass discovered them about ten miles 
 out at sea, off Via Reggio ; they were taking in 
 their topsails. **The haze of the storm," he 
 said, ** hid them from me, and I saw them no 
 more. When the storm cleared I looked again, 
 fancying that I should see them on their return to 
 us, but there was no boat on the sea." 
 
 This then was all we knew, yet we did not 
 despair; they might have been driven over to 
 Corsica, and, not knowing the coast, have gone 
 God knows where. Reports favoured this belief. 
 It was even said that they had been seen in the 
 Gulf. I resolved to return with all possible 
 speed ; we sent a courier to go from tower to 
 
2$6 MRS, SHELLETS LETTER 
 
 tower along the coast to know if anything had 
 been seen or found, and at nine a.m. we quitted 
 Leghorn, stopped but one moment at Pisa, and 
 proceeded towards Lerici. When at two miles from 
 Via Reggio we rode down to that town to know 
 if they knew anything. Here our calamity first 
 began to break on us. A little boat and a water 
 cask had been found five miles off. They had 
 manufactured a piccolissima lancia of thin planks 
 stitched by a shoemaker, just to let them run on 
 shore without wetting themselves, as our boat drew 
 four feet of water. The description of that found 
 talHed with this, but then this boat was very 
 cumbersome, and in bad weather they might have 
 been easily led to throw it overboard. The cask 
 frightened me most, but the same reason might 
 in some sort be given for that. I must tell you 
 that Jane and I were not now alone. Trelawny 
 accompanied us back to our home. We journeyed 
 on and reached the Magra about half-past ten p.m. 
 I cannot describe to you what 1 felt in the first 
 moment when, fording this river, I felt the water 
 splash about our wheels. I was suffocated. I 
 gasped for breath. I thought I should have 
 gone into convulsions, and I struggled violently 
 that Jane might not perceive it. Looking down 
 the river I saw the two great lights burning at 
 
MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 237 
 
 the foce : a voice from within me seemed to cry 
 aloud, That is his grave. 
 
 After passing the river I gradually recovered. 
 Arriving at Lerici we were obliged to cross our 
 little bay in a boat. San Terenzo was illuminated 
 for a festa. What a scene ! The waving sea, 
 the scirocco wind, the lights of the town towards 
 which we rowed, and our own desolate hearts, 
 that coloured all with a shroud. We landed ; 
 nothing had been heard of them. This was Satur- 
 day, July 13, and thus we waited until Thursday, 
 July 25 th, thrown about by hope and fear. We 
 sent passengers along the coast towards Genoa 
 and to Via Reggio — nothing had been found 
 more than the lancetta. Reports were brought 
 us : we hoped ; and yet to tell you all the agony 
 we endured during those twelve days would be 
 to make you conceive a universe of pain, each 
 moment intolerable, and giving place to one still 
 worse. The people of the country too added to 
 one's discomfort ; they are like wild savages. On 
 festas the men and women and children in different 
 bands — the sexes always separate — pass the whole 
 night in dancing on the sands close to our door, 
 running into the sea, then back again, and scream- 
 ing all the time one perpetual air — the most detest- 
 able in the world. Then the scirocco perpetually 
 
238 MRS, SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 blew, and the sea for ever moaned their dirge. On 
 Thursday 25 th Trelawny left us to go to Leghorn 
 to see what was doing, or what could be done- 
 On Friday I was very ill, but as evening came on 
 I said to Jane, ''If anything had been found on 
 the coast Trelawny would have returned to let us 
 know. He has not returned, so I hope." About 
 seven o'clock p.m. he did return. All was over : 
 all was quiet now ; they had been found washed 
 on shore. Well, all this was to be endured. 
 
 Well, what more have I to say ? The next day 
 we returned to Pisa, and here we are still. Days 
 pass away, one after another, and we live thus. 
 We are all together — we shall quit Italy together. 
 Jane must proceed to London. If letters do not 
 alter my views I shall remain in Paris. Thus we 
 live, seeing the Hunts now and then. Poor Hunt 
 has suffered terribly, as you may guess. Lord 
 Byron is very kind to me, and comes with the 
 Guiccioli to see me often. To-day — this day— 
 the sun shining in the sky — they are gone to the 
 desolate sea-coast to perform the last offices to their 
 earthly remains, Hunt, Lord Byron, and Trelawny. 
 The quarantine laws would not permit us to re- 
 move them sooner, and now only on condition that 
 we burn them to ashes. That I do not dislike. 
 His rest shall be at Rome beside my child, where 
 
MRS. SHELLEY'S LETTER 239 
 
 one day I also shall join them. *' Adonais" is not 
 Keats's ; it is his own elegy. He bids you there 
 go to Rome. I have seen the spot where he now 
 lies, the sticks that mark the spot where the 
 sands cover him. He shall not be there, it is too 
 near Via Reggio. They are now about this 
 fearful office — and I live. 
 
 One more circumstance I will mention. As I 
 said, he took leave of Mrs. Mason in high spirits 
 on Sunday. *' Never," said she, *'did I see him 
 look happier than the last glance I had of his 
 countenance." On Monday he was lost ; on 
 Monday night she dreamt that she was somewhere, 
 she knew not where, and he came looking very 
 pale, and fearfully melancholy. She said to him, 
 '* You look ill, you are tired, sit down and eat." 
 '* No," he replied, *' I shall never eat more, I have 
 not a soldo left in the world." ** Nonsense," said 
 she, *' this is no inn, you need not pay." "Per- 
 haps," he answered, "it is the worse for that." 
 Then she awoke, and going to sleep again she 
 dreamt that my Percy was dead, and she awoke 
 crying bitterly, so bitterly and felt so miser- 
 able, that she said to herself, "Why, if the 
 little boy should die I should not feel it in 
 this manner." She was so struck with these 
 dreams, that she mentioned them to her ser- 
 
240 MRS, SHELLEY'S LETTER 
 
 vant the next day, saying she hoped all was well 
 with us. 
 
 Well, here is my story — the last story I shall 
 have to tell. All that might have been bright in 
 my life is now despoiled. I shall live to improve 
 myself, to take care of my child, and render my- 
 self worthy to join him. Soon my weary pilgrim- 
 age will begin. I rest now, but soon I must leave 
 Italy, and then — there is an end of all but despair. 
 Adieu ! I hope you are well and happy. I have 
 an idea that while he was at Pisa he received 
 a letter from you that I have never seen, so not 
 knowing where to dired I shall send this letter 
 to Peacock. I shall send it open ; he may be 
 glad to read it. 
 
 Yours ever truly, 
 
 Mary W. S. 
 
 Pisa, i^th August, 1822. 
 I shall probably write to you soon again. I 
 have left out a material circumstance. A fishing 
 boat saw them go down. It was about four in the 
 afternoon. They saw the boy at mast-head, when 
 baffling winds struck the sails. They had looked 
 away a moment, and looking again the boat was 
 gone. This is their story, but there is little doubt 
 that these men might have saved them, at least 
 
MRS. SHELLETS LETTER 241 
 
 Edward, who could swim. They could not, they 
 said, get near her, but three quarters of an hour 
 after passed over the spot where they had seen her. 
 They protested no wreck of her was visible, but 
 Roberts going on board their boat found several 
 spars belonging to her. Perhaps they let them 
 perish to obtain these. Trelawny thinks he can 
 get her up, since another fisherman thinks that he 
 has found the spot where she lies, having drifted 
 near shore. Trelawny does this to know perhaps 
 the cause of her wreck, but I care little about it. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 P. 10, /. 19. " Southey calls himself a Christian" etc. 
 Shelley undoubtedly misinterpreted Southey's views ; 
 it is nevertheless evident that Southey's subsequent state- 
 ment that he avoided discussion with him upon religious 
 subjeds must be received with some qualification. For 
 this statement, and for Southey's feelings towards Shelley 
 in general, see the letters between them published by Pro- 
 fessor Dowden. (Correspondence of Robert Southey with 
 Caroline Bowles.) 
 
 P. II, /. 13. " fFith Calvert:' Mr. Calvert, of Greta 
 Bank, near Keswick. He was no doubt a relation of 
 Raisley Calvert, Wordsworth's benefador, and may have 
 been the William Calvert in whose company Words- 
 worth visited the Isle of Wight in 1793. "The Duke 
 [of Norfolk] and his friends were very fond of him ; he 
 promoted all local improvements, and was a person of 
 great vigour and originality of mind." — Mr. P. H. Howard 
 in " Shelley's Early Life," by D. F. MacCarthy, pp. 137, 
 
 138. 
 
 P. 13, /. II. " You talk of Montgomery. . . . His story 
 is a terrible one:* The story here narrated seems to 
 have no other foundation than the circumstance of Mont- 
 gomery's parents, who were missionaries, having died in 
 
 R 2 
 
244 NOTES 
 
 the West Indies, within eight months of each other, of 
 diseases incident to the climate. 
 
 P. 15, /. 4. The party on this expedition consisted of 
 Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, Peacock, and Charles Clairmont, 
 the second Mrs. Godwin's son by a former marriage. 
 "Our voyage," Peacock says, "terminated at a spot 
 where the cattle stood entirely across the stream, with 
 the water scarcely covering their hoofs.'* According to 
 Charles Clairmont, Shelley wished to take the boat 
 through a canal into the Severn, and so into the heart of 
 Wales, but the heavy lock charges effedually discouraged 
 the projed. It bore fruit, however, in " Crotchet 
 Castle," where such a navigation is an incident in the 
 story. Shelley's " Lines in Lechlade Churchyard " were 
 written on this occasion. 
 
 P. 15, /. 8. " So favourable an effect on my health." 
 This improvement is attributed by Peacock to the magic 
 effect on the vegetarian of " three mutton chops, well 
 
 peppered." 
 
 P. 16, /. I. ^' Lucan*s 'Pharsalia/ a poem, as it appears to 
 me, of wonderful genius, and transcending Virgil,'* Southey 
 thought much the same: "The ill-chosen subjeds of 
 Lucan and Statins have prevented them from acquiring 
 the popularity they would otherwise have merited, yet 
 in detached parts the former is perhaps unequalled, 
 certainly unexcelled. I do not scruple to prefer Statius 
 to V'irgil." — Preface to "foan of Arc." 
 
 P. 28^ /. 14. ^^ A tragedy on the subject of Tasso's 
 madness." One scene and one song for this projeded 
 drama have been printed in Shelley's works. The fol- 
 
NOTES 245 
 
 lowing notes for intended scenes have not hitherto been 
 published: — "Scene where he reads the sonnet which he 
 wrote to Leonora to herself as composed at the request of 
 another. — His disguising himself in the habit of a shep- 
 herd, and questioning his sister in that disguise concern- 
 ing himself, and then unveiling himself. " 
 
 P. 28, at bottom. ** You tell me nothing of Rhodo- 
 daphne." *'Rhododaphne^ or The Thessalian Spell," was 
 a poem by Peacock of very considerable merit, of which 
 Shelley wrote a review, apparently intended for the 
 Examiner, but not then published. It has been printed by 
 Mr. Forman, who points out that Edgar Poe also thought 
 highly of " Rhododaphne." 
 
 P. 34, /. 3. *' To venture an unrhythmical paraphrase.'* 
 "The reference is to the third stanza of Wordsworth's 
 beautiful poem ' The Thorn,' as printed in the editions 
 current in Shelley's time." — Forman. 
 
 P. 37, /. 13. "The little poem." "Rosalind and 
 Helen." 
 
 P. 38, /. 19. *' Even when the nymph is a Poliad.'* 
 Peacock says: " I suppose I understood this at the time, 
 but I have not now the most distant recoUedion of what 
 it alludes to." 
 
 P. 58, last line. " What a wonderful passage there is 
 in Phaedrus." Thus rendered by Peacock : — "There are 
 several kinds of divine madness. That which proceeds 
 from the Muses' taking possession of a tender and un- 
 occupied soul, awakening and bacchically inspiring it 
 towards songs and other poetry, adorning myriads of 
 ancient deeds, instruds succeeding generations ; but he 
 
246 NOTES 
 
 who without this madness from the Muses, approaches 
 the poetical gates, having persuaded himself that by art 
 alone he may become sufficiently a poet, will find in the 
 end his own imperfedion, and see the poetry of his cold 
 prudence vanish into nothingness before the light of that 
 which has sprung from divine insanity." 
 
 P. 42, three lines from bottom. '^ Stcch fruits of my 
 absence.'' "Frankenstein." 
 
 P. 54, /. 7-9. " Usually flattened hy a broken column.** 
 " Area cum primis ingenti aequanda cylindro." — Virg. 
 Georg. I. 178. " Pro cylindro rotundum lapidem vel 
 columnae fragmentum memorat Palladius." Heyne's note 
 on the passage — An interesting proof of the late period of 
 
 Palladius, and of the condition of Italy in his time. 
 
 " Neither the mole, the toad, nor the ant** : 
 
 "Tum variae inludunt pestes ; saepe exiguus mus 
 Sub terris posuitque domos atque horrea fecit ; 
 Aut oculis capti fodere cubilia talpae, 
 Inventusque cavis bufo, et quae plurima terrae. 
 Monstra ferunt, populatque ingentem farris acervum 
 Curculio, atque inopi metuens formica senedae." 
 
 vv. 181-185. 
 
 P. 57, /. 4. " How it applies to Ariosto, I cannot 
 exactly tell** " The motto of this medal [by Poggini] is 
 the same as that on the medal of Ariosto by Pastorini 
 of Siena. But the meaning of the reverse design is very 
 different. Both, it is probable, refer to the quarrel be- 
 tween Ariosto and the elder Cardinal d'Este ; but one 
 takes the side of the poet, who is symbolised by the bees, 
 expelled from their home as an ungrateful return for the 
 
NOTES 247 
 
 honey which they have given ; while the other medal, 
 taking the side of Cardinal d'Este, symbolises Ariosto as 
 a serpent who stings those that have nurtured him." — 
 Guide to the Italian Medals exhibited in the British Museum, 
 by C. F. Keary. 
 
 P. 59, /. 6. *^ Seven years and three months.^' Tasso's 
 confinement in this cell, if he was confined in it at 
 all, only continued from March, 1579, ^° December, 
 1580. 
 
 P. 65, /. 17. '' Franceschini." The last painter of the 
 Bolognese school (1648-1729). 
 
 P. 73, /. 21. "The castle was built by Belisarius or 
 Narses.'' It was built by Theodoric, rebuilt by Narses, 
 restored by Cardinal Albornoz, and enlarged by Pope 
 Nicholas V. 
 
 P. 86, Z. 4. " In the ' Civil War ' of Petronius ." The 
 passage is as follows : 
 
 *'Est locus, excise penitus demersus hiatu, 
 Parthenopen inter magnaeque Dicarchidos arva, 
 Cocyta perfusus aqua ; nam spiritus extra 
 Qui furit, effusus funesto spargitur aestu. 
 Non haec autumno tellus viret, aut alit herbas 
 Cespite laetus ager ; non verno persona cantu, 
 MoUia discordi strepitu virgulta loquuntur. 
 Sed chaos, et nigro squallentia pumice saxa 
 Gaudent ferali circum tumulata cupressu." 
 
 P. 93, /. 5. *' That balance which the giant of ^rt he- 
 gall holds." "The allusion is to the * Faery Queen,' 
 book V. canto 3." — Peacock, 
 
248 NOTES 
 
 P. loo, /. 20. "Like the step of ghosts ." The same 
 comparison is made in the " Ode to the West Wind," 
 " The Sensitive Plant," and the " Ode to Naples." 
 
 P. 102, Z. 3. " Your removal to London.'* On becom- 
 ing an assistant examiner at the India House. 
 
 P. 107, /. 21. "These columns do not seem more than 
 forty feet high.'' " The height of the columns is resped- 
 ively 18 feet 6 inches, and 28 feet 5 inches and 6^ lines, 
 in the first two temples ; and 21 feet 6 inches in the 
 Basilica. This shows the justice of the remarks on the 
 difference of real and apparent magnitude." — Peacock. 
 
 P. 122, at bottom. "Above these are the niches," etc. 
 It has recently been proved that the Pantheon was 
 originally intended for a colossal hot-air bath^ and that 
 these recesses were conne6led with the apparatus. 
 
 P. 138, /. 12. "For Emma read Betty." Oilier did 
 not print " Peter Bell," and Shelley's injunction, being 
 unknown to subsequent editors, was disregarded until 
 Mr. Rossetti made the alteration in 1870. Shelley's 
 delicacy is the more commendable, as Emma Hutchinson 
 was only Wordsworth's sister-in-law. 
 
 P. 150, /. 16. " Caloethes scrihendi." "Peacock 
 printed cacoethes for caloethes, apparently not perceiving 
 Shelley's joke." — Forman. The allusion throughout is 
 to Peacock's *' Four Ages of Poetry," which called forth 
 Shelley's ''Defence.'* 
 
 P. 156, /. 16. " A Greek prince." Prince Mavro- 
 cordato, to whom "Hellas" is dedicated. — "The ojily 
 Italian." Emilia Viviani. 
 
NOTES 
 
 ^49 
 
 P. 164, /. I. ^*One of the unpublished cantos of * Don 
 Juan.' " The fifth ; see the next letter. 
 
 P. 166, /. 16. " Tita the Venetian." There is an in- 
 teresting account of Tita Falcieri in Laurie's " Sketches 
 of some distinguished Anglo-Indians," from which it 
 appears that, after the death of Byron, with whom he 
 continued to the last, he was successively in the service 
 of Hobhouse, Mr. Isaac Disraeli, and I^rd Beaconsfield, 
 who obtained for him the situation of messenger at the 
 India House. He died in 1874. He is said to have had 
 many anecdotes of Shelley, but to have been reticent 
 about Byron. Perhaps his last master's *' Venetia" owes 
 something to him. 
 
 P. 166, at bottom. " to SutrceiSes," etc. These lines 
 are from the ** Agamemnon" of Aeschylus, v. 728-30. 
 They are expanded in the well-known quatrain in 
 "Hellas": 
 
 " Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, 
 The foul cubs like their parents are ; 
 Their den is in the guilty mind. 
 And Conscience feeds them with despair." 
 
 P. 169, /. 16. *' A pamphlet signed John Bull.'* "This 
 produdion much excited Lord Byron's curiosity. In one 
 of his letters to Mr. Murray he asks, *Who the devil 
 can have done this diabolically well-written letter ? * and 
 subsequently he is found resting his suspicion on one of 
 his own most intimate personal friends." — "Works of 
 Lord Byron," 1833, vol. xv. p. 32. 
 
 P. 171, /. I. *'Allegra." The daughter of Lord 
 Byron and Miss Clairmont. 
 
250 NOTES 
 
 P. 177, /. 4. ''She has a specific purpose in the sum 
 which she instructed me to require.''* To discharge a lia- 
 bility of Godwin's. At bottom : " Castruccio, Prince of 
 
 Lucca." It was eventually published under the title of 
 "Valperga." 
 
 P. 185, /. 3. "A servant girl and her sweetheart." 
 
 An allusion to Hazlitt's *' Liber Amoris." Line 6: "A 
 
 dramatic poem called 'Hellas.'" "Th.Q title was suggested 
 by Williams, who transcribed the poem for the pressl" 
 For man. 
 
 P. 190, /. 19. " Our windows are full of plants, which 
 turn the sunny winter into spring." These unquestionably 
 inspired the " Magic Plant," and the " Zucca," written 
 about this time. 
 
 P. 191, /. 5. "Since you give me no encouragement 
 about India." " He had expressed a desire to be employed 
 politically at the court of a native prince, and I had told 
 him that such employment was restrided to the regular 
 service of the East India Company." — Peacock. 
 
 P. 192, /. 15. '* Ask Coleridge," etc. Coleridge told 
 Mrs. Gisborne that he feared a faithful translation of 
 "Faust" would not be tolerated, and that he would not 
 mutilate it. 
 
 P. 197, I. 6. "A satire upon satire" This fragment, 
 of much personal but little poetical interest, was printed 
 for the first time in Professor Dowden's edition of 
 Southey's correspondence with Caroline Bowles, and has 
 not yet been included among Shelley's works. 
 
 P. 198, at bottom. " I want it for a present." No 
 doubt to Mrs. Williams ; and it may be concluded with 
 
NOTES 251 
 
 equal certainty that the commission was not executed, 
 and that the intended harp had to be represented by the 
 guitar, bought, according to Trelawny's recoUedion, at 
 Leghorn, and immortalised in the matchless verses be- 
 ginning— 
 
 ** Ariel to Miranda — Take 
 This slave of music, for the sake 
 Of him who is the slave of thee." 
 
 This explains the hitherto obscure allusion in letter L. 
 — *' I have contrived to get my musical coals at New- 
 castle itself." 
 
 P. 208, at bottom. '^ Some adventurers are engaged upon 
 a steam-hoat at Leghorn to make the trajet we projected.*' 
 Shelley never renounced the idea. Williams notes in his 
 diary, Jan. 6, 1822 : — " After a conversation with S. 
 have serious thoughts of taking in hand a steam-yacht to 
 work between Leghorn and Genoa." 
 
 P» 209, /. 13. Mrs. Mason. Lady Mountcashel, Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's pupil, who lived at Pisa under this name. 
 
 P. 214, /. 21. ^^ He will he half mad to hear of these 
 memoirs** A worthless anonymous compilation by a 
 person named Watkins, entitled, ^' Memoirs of the Life 
 and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord Byron, with 
 Anecdotes of some of his Contemporaries." London, 
 1822. Shelley is therein designated as "Byron's chief 
 disciple." 
 
 P. 215, /. 21. " If the past and the future could be 
 . obliterated.*' 
 
253 NOTES 
 
 '* The past and future were forgot 
 
 As they had been, and would be, not." 
 
 Lines in the Bay of Lerici, 
 written nearly at this time. 
 
 P. 223. Some extrads from this letter, derived from a 
 transcript by Mr. Gisborne, were published by the editor 
 of this volume in the Fortnightly Review for June, 1878 ; 
 and the whole of it was printed from the original by 
 Mr. Forman in Macmillan's Magazine for June, 1880, and 
 subsequently republished in the fourth volume of his 
 edition of Shelley's prose works. He has adhered to the 
 MS. with scrupulous fidelity, except for some trifling 
 changes in orthography and punfbuation. A few more 
 orthographical corredions have been made in the present 
 recension, and the punduation has been recast throughout. 
 
 P. 227, /. 21. " How long do you mean to he content?" 
 See the letter to Gisborne of June 18, at p. 215 of this 
 seledion, which makes it evident that the vision was 
 inspired by Shelley's study of "Faust," and not, as pre- 
 viously stated, by a scene in Galderon. 
 
 P. 229, at bottom. '^ San Teren^o" Mrs. Shelley always 
 writes the name of the hamlet near which Shelley resided 
 Sanf Aren^o; Mr. Forman shows that according to the 
 most recent maps and the Italian post office it should be 
 San Teren^io or San Teren^o, and Mr. Alfred Austin, in a 
 letter to the Athenaum of April 29 of the present year, 
 says that this form is a corruption of Sanf Eren\o. No 
 such saint as Aren^o or Eren^o is to be found in the 
 calendar, but Teren^io or Teren^o does exist there, although 
 it may be questioned whether he ever existed anywhere 
 
NOTES 253 
 
 else. He is the patron saint of Pesaro, his festival is on 
 September 24, and there is a special office in his honour, 
 printed in 1592 and several times subsequently. The 
 legendary charader of his ads, according to which he 
 suffered martyrdom under a petty Pannonian king named 
 Dagnus, during the persecution of the Emperor Decius, 
 has been demonstrated by Annibale Giordani in his 
 treatise Di San Tereniio Martire, Pesaro, 1776. They 
 appear to be a fabrication of the thirteenth or fourteenth 
 century. The improbability of so very obscure a saint, 
 patron of a town on the Adriatic, having given name to 
 a village on the Gulf of Spezzia, may perhaps warrant the 
 conjedure that the name was originally Santo Lorenzo, 
 contraded into Santo Renzo, and corrupted into Sant' 
 Arenzo. It has been thought best on the whole to adopt 
 the orthography in the text, as being, according to Mr. 
 Austin, that at present recognised by the Italian post 
 office. 
 
 P. 23 5 . /. 16. ** The ha^e of the storm hid them from me, 
 and I saw them no more.** " It was almost dark, although 
 only half- pa St six o'clock. The sea was of the colour, 
 and looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead, and 
 covered with an oily scum. Gusts of wind swept over 
 without ruffling it, and big drops of rain fell on its 
 surface, rebounding, as if they could not penetrate it." — 
 Trelawny, " RecoUedions," p. 117. There is a wonderfully 
 prophetic anticipation of the catastrophe in Mrs. Shelley's 
 " Valperga,'* which was indeed not published until 1823, 
 but which, as appears by letters from Shelley to Horace 
 Smith and Mrs. Godwin, was completed and in Godwin's 
 hands before May, 1822. The fate of the heroine, 
 
254 NOTES 
 
 Euthanasia (the very name seems prophetic) is thus 
 described : 
 
 *' Euthanasia stepped into the boat ; its commander sat 
 beside her ; and the men took their oars ; she waved her 
 hand to her guide saying, ' Farewell, may God bless you ! ' 
 she added in a low tone, half to herself — ' They speak 
 Italian also in Sicily.' 
 
 " These were the last words she ever spoke to any one 
 who returned to tell the tale. The countryman stood 
 upon the beach ; he saw the boat moor beside the 
 vessel ; he saw its crew ascend the dark sides. The boat 
 was drawn up ; the sails were set ; and they bore out to 
 sea, receding slowly with many tacks, for the wind was 
 contrary ; the vessel faded on the sight ; and he turned 
 about and speeded to Lucca. 
 
 '^The wind changed to a more northerly diredion 
 during the night ; and the land-breeze of the morning 
 filled their sails, so that, although slowly, they dropt 
 down southward. About noon they met a Pisan vessel, 
 who bade them beware of a Genoese squadron, which was 
 cruising off Corsica : so they bore in nearer to the shore. 
 At sunset that day a fierce scirocco rose, accompanied by 
 thunder and lightning, such as is seldom seen during the 
 winter season. Presently they saw huge dark columns, 
 descending from heaven, and meeting the sea, which 
 boiled beneath ; they were borne on by the storm, and 
 scattered by the wind. The rain came down in sheets ; and 
 the hail clattered, as it fell to its grave in the ocean ; the 
 ocean was lashed into such waves that, many miles inland, 
 during the pauses of the wind, the hoarse and constant 
 murmurs of the far-off sea made the well-housed landsman 
 mutter one more prayer for those exposed to its fury. 
 
NOTES 255 
 
 " Such was the storm, as it was seen from shore. No- 
 thing more was ever known of the Sicilian vessel which 
 bore Euthanasia. It never reached its destined port, nor 
 were any of those on board ever after seen. The sentinels 
 who watched near Vado, a town on the sea beach of the 
 Maremma, found on the following day that the waves had 
 washed on shore some of the wrecks of a vessel ; they 
 picked up a few planks and a broken mast, round which, 
 tangled with some of its cordage, was a white silk hand- 
 kerchief, such a one as had bound the tresses of Euthanasia 
 the night that she had embarked, and in its knot were a 
 few golden hairs." 
 
LP.