SHELLEY 
 
 THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 By 
 A. CLUTTON-BROCK 
 
PAULINE FORE MOFFITT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY 
 
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 /9JS 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
SHELLEY 
 From the fainting by Miss A»ielia Curran in the National Portrait Gallery 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 BY 
 
 A. CLUTTON-BROCK 
 
 WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST 
 EDITION 
 
 I HAVE said what I owe to Professor Dowden's 
 " Life of Shelley " in my Introduction. I 
 am also indebted to Mr. W. M. Rossetti's Memoir, 
 to Mr. Buxton Forman for his edition of Shelley's 
 Prose Works, to Mrs. Marshall for her " Life of 
 Mary Shelley," and to Mr. Bertram Dobell for his 
 edition of " Shelley's Letters to Miss Hitchener." 
 I have taken the text of the Poems from the excel- 
 lent edition published by the Clarendon Press and 
 edited by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson. My other 
 obligations are so many that I cannot even remem- 
 ber them all. So I here make a general if unsatis- 
 factory acknowledgment of them. I have also to 
 thank the Editor of the New Quarterly for allow- 
 ing me to incorporate part of an article which 
 was published in that magazine in my chapter 
 on M Prometheus Unbound." 
 
 A. CLUTTON-BROCK 
 June 10, igog 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
 
 EDITION 
 
 EDWARD THOMAS, reviewing this book when 
 it was first published, said that I had offered 
 much posthumous advice to Shelley. The phrase 
 pleased me then ; and, now that I am twelve 
 years older and, I hope, wiser, I am less ready to 
 offer advice, even to the living. I have therefore 
 admitted the justice of Thomas' criticism by 
 cutting out of this edition most of those passages 
 which provoked it. It is shorter and, I think, 
 better than the first. 
 
 At the end of an Introduction which is now 
 omitted, I said that I would rather be unjust to 
 Shelley myself than set others against him by my 
 own partiality. I wrote the book in a state of 
 reaction against the partisanship of biographers, 
 and also against the notion, common then and not 
 uncommon now, that Shelley was polygamous be- 
 cause he was a great poet, and that the polygam- 
 ous have a better chance of being great poets than 
 the monogamous. But such reactions, though 
 they may make a book amusing or irritating at 
 the moment, are likely to carry a writer beyond 
 the truth. The swing of the pendulum is a move- 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 ment useful in clocks but not in the human mind ; 
 and to write justly on any subject it is necessary 
 to forget what fools, other fools, have said about 
 it. I will confess now that I wished to irritate 
 a certain kind of person ; and the reviews con- 
 vinced me that I had succeeded. There was one 
 reviewer who worshipped Shelley because he was 
 a vegetarian. He was so passionately humane 
 himself that he needed a God who had explicitly 
 condemned animal sacrifice, and it seemed to 
 him that I had blasphemed against his Deity. 
 He therefore took two fragments, which in my 
 book were separated by several pages of print, 
 made one sentence of them which resembled 
 nothing I had ever said or meant to say, and quoted 
 it indignantly against me. Only moral indignation 
 could have tempted so good a man into such 
 immorality ; but I have noticed, in the case of 
 Shelley himself, of this reviewer, and of others, 
 that vegetarians are not so mild as one might 
 expect from their diet. Shelley indeed was, I 
 think, fiercer than I have depicted him. Most 
 people get their idea of his appearance, and even 
 of his character, from Miss Curran's portrait ; 
 but Peacock said that Leisman's portrait of him- 
 self in the Uhizi was more like Shelley ; and it has 
 no likeness to Miss Curran's picture. In expres- 
 sion, it is fierce, eager and troubled, resembling 
 rather the Shelley described by Trelawny than 
 the Shelley of legend. Mr. Laurence Binyon 
 complained that I had said too little of Shelley's 
 
 vii 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 eloquence ; and his complaint was just. Those 
 who knew Shelley well were struck by it. He 
 habitually spoke with imperious vehemence, and 
 even Byron was silent before him. He had, in 
 fact, a strong and even violent character which 
 expressed itself in action and in speech. His 
 gentleness was kept for the humble and meek ; for 
 he was, as Trelawny said, a natural gentleman. 
 
 I may also have insisted too much on Shelley's 
 growing wisdom. I have cut out most of the 
 passages in which I did so ; for it seems to me now, 
 that, as his powers increased, he became more, 
 not less, unfitted for this life. Mr. Hewlett thinks 
 that he was longing for death at the end of his 
 life because he had fallen out of love with Mary 
 and into love with Jane Williams ; but his growing 
 unhappiness had, I think, a deeper and more 
 permanent cause. He found himself less and less 
 able to be in love with any actual human being or 
 content with any actual circumstances. He was 
 " borne darkly, fearfully afar " ; and the accident 
 of his death cut the knot which he would never 
 have been able to untie. 
 
 But, apart from these errors of judgment, it 
 does not now seem to me that I have related the 
 facts of his life unfairly or with any misplaced 
 emphasis ; and from those facts the reader can 
 form his own conclusions. 
 
 A. CLUTTON-BROCK 
 
 GODALMING 
 1922 
 
 viii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I Childhood and Boyhood . 
 
 II Oxford ..... 
 
 III Shelley's First Marriage 
 
 IV "Queen Mab ". 
 V The Break with Harriet 
 
 VI " Alastor " 
 
 VII The Swiss Tour and the Death of 
 
 Harriet .... 
 
 VIII " The Revolt of Islam " and other 
 
 Works .... 
 
 IX The Departure to Italy. 
 
 X " Prometheus Unbound " and " The 
 Cenci " .... 
 
 XI " The Witch of Atlas " and " Epipsy 
 chidion " . . , . 
 
 XII " The Defence of Poetry " and Shel 
 ley's /Esthetics . 
 
 XIII " Adonais " and " Hellas " . 
 
 XIV The Last Year 
 
 Conclusion .... 
 
 Index ..... 
 
 ix 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 15 
 
 33 
 84 
 
 91 
 117 
 
 126 
 
 154 
 
 171 
 
 194 
 225 
 
 251 
 
 260 
 
 279 
 
 307 
 315 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Shelley ..... Frontispiece 
 
 From the Painting by Miss Amelia Curran in 
 the National Portrait Gallery 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Field Place ...... 6 
 
 From an Etching by Arthur Evershed 
 
 Reproduced from Shelley's Prose Works by kind 
 permission of H. Buxton Forman, Esq. 
 
 Casa Magni, San Terenzo . . . .288 
 
 From an Etching by Arthur Evershed after 
 the Water-colour by Henry Roderick New- 
 man 
 
 Reproduced from Shelley's Prose Works by 
 kind permission of H. Buxton Forman, Esq. 
 
 Shelley's Grave ..... 306 
 
 From an Engraving by W. B. Scott 
 
 Reproduced from Shelley's Poetical Works by 
 kind permission of H. Buxton Forman, Esq. 
 
 XI 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 IT has often been said that Shelley came of a stock 
 of commonplace country gentlemen. This 
 is not true. Our knowledge of the family is 
 small, but the few facts we know about Timothy 
 Shelley, his father, and Bysshe, his grandfather, 
 prove that they were odd, if not remarkable. 
 Bysshe Shelley was born in America in 1731, 
 where, according to Medwin, 1 the poet's cousin, 
 he began life as a quack doctor. If that is so, 
 he must have given up the trade very soon ; for 
 at the age of twenty-one he was in England, where 
 he ran away at once with an heiress, to whom 
 he is said to have been married by the Parson of 
 the Fleet. His first wife died young, and after a 
 decent interval he ran away with another heiress, 
 whom he also survived. Fortunate, like Austria, 
 in his marriages, he became a very rich man, and 
 in 1806 was made a baronet for his services to the 
 
 1 Medwin is not to be trusted either for facts or for 
 judgment. 
 
 1 I 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Whigs. Medwin tells us that he was a remarkably 
 
 handsome man, fully six feet high, and with a 
 
 noble and aristocratic bearing, but adds that 
 
 " his life was unredeemed by one good action." 
 
 Shelley wrote of him in 1812 : " He is a complete 
 
 Atheist, and builds all his hopes on annihilation. 
 
 He has acted very ill to three wives. 1 He is a 
 
 bad man. I never had any respect for him. I 
 
 always regarded him as a curse on society. I shall 
 
 not grieve at his death ; I will not wear mourning. 
 
 I will not attend his funeral. I shall think of 
 
 his departure as that of a hard-hearted reprobate." 
 
 But the very lady to whom this was written was 
 
 then the sister of Shelley's soul and afterwards a 
 
 brown demon. 
 
 It may be only the misfortune of Sir Bysshe 
 
 that we know no good of him. He was a man 
 
 about whom legends would gather easily. He 
 
 spent £80,000 upon building Castle Goring in 
 
 Sussex, but lived himself in a miserly way in a 
 
 cottage at Horsham with one servant to wait on 
 
 him. He would often sit in the taproom of an 
 
 inn, not drinking, but talking politics. He had a 
 
 liking for Shelley and paid for the printing of some 
 
 of his childish writings. But he disliked his own 
 
 son Timothy, and would swear at him whenever 
 
 Timothy came to visit him in his cottage. Indeed 
 
 Hogg says that Shelley learnt to curse his father 
 
 from his grandfather. When Sir Bysshe died in 
 
 1815, bank-notes to the amount of £10,000 were 
 
 1 There is a vague story of a first wife in America. 
 
 2 
 
CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 found in his room, some in his books, some in 
 the folds of his sofa, some sewn into the lining of 
 his dressing-gown. We know nothing about him 
 except his oddities, so that he seems more like a 
 character in an artificial comedy than a real man. 
 Timothy Shelley, the poet's father, was born in 
 1753, so that he was sixty-two when he succeeded 
 to the baronetcy and the large fortune which Sir 
 Bysshe had increased by saving. It appears that 
 he got no good from his father beyond money 
 and the title in his old age, and that Shelley got 
 little good from him. He seems to have had a 
 better heart and a worse understanding than 
 Sir Bysshe. He was at University College, Oxford, 
 and then made the Grand Tour, from which he 
 brought back, according to Medwin, " a smatter- 
 ing of French, and a bad picture of an eruption 
 of Vesuvius." His letters show that he had little 
 education and no natural power of expressing 
 himself in words. Yet he professed to be a dis- 
 ciple of Chesterfield and La Rochefoucauld, and 
 had " a certain air, miscalled that of the old 
 school, which he could put off and on as occasion 
 served." Medwin says that he once told Shelley 
 ' he would provide for as many natural children 
 as he chose to get, but that he would never forgive 
 his making a mesalliance." All who have written 
 about him insist upon his unfitness to be the 
 father of Shelley, but Shelley would have been 
 a difficult son for a sage. Timothy seems to have 
 tried to do his duty by his son, but he had no 
 
 3 . 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 idea how to do it ; and he could never induce his 
 son, or probably anyone else, to take him seriously. 
 No doubt he amused those over whom he had 
 no power. To his son he seemed a mere nuisance. 
 Shelley, from an early age, was fastidious about 
 manners and appearance ; and his father was 
 absurd in both. Shelley could love no one whom 
 he did not think perfect ; and his father's imper- 
 fections were obvious. Shelley, like a clever 
 girl, expected every one to be consistent ; and 
 his father had no consistency. He would pro- 
 fess the most liberal opinions and then play the 
 tyrant in trifles. He thought himself an esprit 
 fort, but was afraid of the world. To Shelley he 
 seemed morally, intellectually, and aesthetically 
 contemptible, a symbol of all that irrational 
 authority against which it was his duty to rebel. 
 Shelley's moral sense was precociously and 
 morbidly developed. He was too much in love 
 with abstract perfection to make any allowances for 
 the concrete imperfection of his father ; and since 
 he turned every one he knew into a character of 
 romance, he turned his father, who was unfitted 
 for the part, into a villain of melodrama. 
 
 Little is known of Shelley's mother. She was 
 a Miss Pilfold of Effingham in Surrey, and married 
 Timothy in 1791. She is said to have been beauti- 
 ful in her youth. She had better abilities than 
 her husband, but no taste for literature. Shelley 
 called her mild and tolerant, but narrow-minded. 
 She wished him to be a sportsman, and would 
 
 4 
 
CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 send him out with a keeper to fish or shoot. The 
 keeper did the necessary slaughter, while Shelley 
 read a book. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, the eldest child of the 
 marriage, was born on August 4, 1792. The rest 
 of the family consisted of five daughters, one of 
 whom died in infancy, and another son, John, who 
 was born in 1806, and lived to the age of sixty. 
 While Bysshe Shelley lived in a cottage at Hor- 
 sham, his son Timothy inhabited Field Place, in 
 the parish of Warnham, about two miles away. 
 Here Shelley was born and spent his childhood. 
 The house, built in the eighteenth century, has 
 some dignity. Not far away is St. Leonard's 
 Forest, still a wild place, with the legend of a 
 serpent that moved upon feet and was three 
 yards long. In the garden of Field Place there 
 was a real snake of unusual size that was said to 
 have outlived several generations of men. Shelley 
 often spoke of it ; and it was perhaps the origin of 
 his liking for serpents, though the curse laid upon 
 them in Genesis would account for that. 
 
 We get most of the stories of Shelley's childhood 
 from his sister Hellen. They might be told of 
 any clever child without arousing expectation of 
 genius. It is clear that he began early to live in 
 a romance of his own, as unlike real life as he 
 could make it. Many children do this ; but 
 boys usually sacrifice it to reality when they go 
 to a private school ; girls, when they marry, if 
 not before. 
 
 5 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Shelley's life of romance did not end with school. 
 Indeed it thickened about him as he grew up, 
 and all facts were moulded and coloured to suit 
 it. At first, of course, it was all invention. He 
 would take his little sisters on his knee and tell 
 them wonderful and dreadful stories. He said 
 that a closed garret under the roof was inhabited 
 by an alchemist with a long beard, and that a 
 great tortoise lived in Warnham Pond and made 
 any strange noise that might be heard. He 
 would dress himself and his sisters up to represent 
 fiends or spirits. Like many clever children he 
 would describe events which had never happened. 
 Once he gave minute details of a visit he had paid 
 to some ladies, and it was discovered almost at 
 once to be all an invention. He was fond, as in 
 later years, of any kind of make-believe and mystifi- 
 cation. Once he was discovered setting out dis- 
 guised as a countryman with a truss of hay, 
 which he was going to take to a young lady at 
 Horsham, that she might have some hay tea for 
 her chilblains. Once he called on a neighbour 
 and asked in the Sussex dialect to be employed 
 as a gamekeeper's boy. The neighbour engaged 
 him, whereupon he betrayed himself by bursting 
 into laughter. 
 
 He was affectionate to every one except his 
 father. His sister Margaret remembered how he 
 came back from school once in term time to be 
 nursed of an illness, and how he kissed her through 
 a pane of glass in the dining-room window. It 
 
 6 
 
FIELD I'LACE 
 From an etching by Arthur Evershed 
 
CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 is both pleasant and sad to hear these simple 
 stories of the childhood of one who lost his home 
 so early, and was a wanderer all the days of his life. 
 At six years old Shelley began to learn Latin of a 
 Welsh clergyman. At ten he was sent as a boarder 
 to Sion House Academy at Isleworth, where he 
 found his second cousin and future biographer, 
 Thomas Medwin, who was some years older than 
 himself. Medwin gives us a conventional account 
 of the schooldays of a poet. With the other boys, 
 he says, Shelley passed for a strange, unsocial 
 being, but he himself very easily learned to pene- 
 trate into this soul sublime. Another fellow- 
 pupil remembered Shelley as " like a girl in boy's 
 clothes, fighting with open hands, and rolling on 
 the floor when flogged, not from the pain, but 
 from a sense of indignity." The Headmaster 
 was a Doctor Greenlaw, a Scot, "not wanting in 
 good qualities, but very capricious in his temper." 
 He did not like Shelley, because Shelley would 
 not laugh at his jokes. It was at Sion House 
 that Shelley first got a taste for the romantic tales 
 of Anne Radcliffe and other writers of the same 
 kind, who were then very popular. After reading 
 them he had fearful dreams, and walked in his 
 sleep, for which he was punished. He also became 
 precociously sentimental. At the age of eleven 
 or twelve he would talk with a friend of the ladies 
 with whom they were in love. " I remember," 
 he said afterwards, " that our practice was to 
 confirm each other in the everlasting fidelity in 
 
 7 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 which we had bound ourselves towards them, 
 and towards each other. I recollect thinking my 
 friend exquisitely beautiful. Every night, when 
 we parted to go to bed, we kissed each other like 
 children, as we still were," This pretty passage 
 seems to prove that Shelley never went through 
 the ordinary prosaic stage of boyhood. On the 
 one hand, he had the vague dreams of a youth ; 
 on the other, the delicate simplicity of a child. 
 In many things he was more like a girl than a boy. 
 
 It was also at Sion House that he got his first 
 enthusiasm for science, from hearing some lectures 
 on chemistry and astronomy. He was " delighted 
 at the idea of a plurality of worlds." He looked 
 at Saturn through a telescope, and, unlike most 
 astronomers, found in its atmosphere " an irre- 
 fragable proof of its being inhabited like our 
 globe." He was " enchanted with the idea that 
 we, as spirits, should make the grand tour through 
 the heavens." 
 
 When, in 1804, he went to Eton at the age of 
 twelve, he was as little fitted for a public school 
 as any boy well could be. He was known as mad 
 Shelley, and is said to have led a rebellion of 
 small boys against fagging. He was called ' the 
 Atheist," and this, according to Hogg, was an 
 official title given to him, not because he did not 
 believe in God, but because he was a daring rebel. 
 He was once the principal in a fight, and walked 
 about beforehand reciting lines from Homer ; 
 but they brought him no luck, for he was easily 
 
 8 
 
CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 defeated. He would not play games, and was 
 sometimes " baited like a maddened bull." Yet 
 Mary Shelley says that he formed several sincere 
 friendships at Eton, and that, although disliked 
 by the masters and hated by older boys, he was 
 admired by his equals. His lessons are said to 
 have been child's-play to him, though his Latin 
 verses were full of false quantities. He made 
 violent and dangerous experiments in chemistry, 
 and bought a galvanic battery which his tutor 
 once laid hold of, receiving a shock which flung him 
 back against the wall. He would send up fire 
 balloons, and tried to draw lightning from the 
 skies with an electric kite. Altogether he must 
 have got some pleasure from his schooldays. 
 
 At Eton he made the acquaintance of a Dr. 
 Lind, who had some reputation as a surgeon and 
 physician, though, like Shelley, he was inclined 
 to violent experiments. Shelley said afterwards 
 that he was exactly what an old man ought to be, 
 free, calm-spirited, full of benevolence and even 
 of youthful ardour. Shelley also had a wild story 
 to the effect that once when he was recovering 
 from a brain fever, the proper complaint for a hero 
 of romance, a servant overheard his father planning 
 to send him to a private madhouse. The servant 
 told Shelley of this design as he lay in bed. His 
 horror was beyond words, but he had one hope. 
 
 He sent an express to Dr. Lind, who came to 
 him at once, and dared his father to execute his 
 purpose. " His menaces had the desired effect." 
 
 9 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Hogg thinks the story was a delusion produced 
 by the fever. It took less than a fever to produce 
 romantic delusions in Shelley's mind. This one 
 is only worth mentioning because his father 
 appeared in it as a melodramatic villain. 
 
 There is no doubt that Lind left a deep impres- 
 sion on Shelley's memory. Bagehot remarks 
 that Shelley seems to have distrusted old men and 
 was apt to make them wicked in his poems. The 
 exceptions are the Hermit in "The Revolt of 
 Islam," and Zonoras, the friend of Prince Athanase. 
 Dr. Lind was the model for both, though they 
 do not give us a very lively idea of him. 
 
 There are several recollections of his boyhood 
 in the poetry of his later years ; and from two of 
 these it appears that he twice experienced some 
 kind of religious conversion, in which the signifi- 
 cance of reality and the purpose of his life seemed 
 to be suddenly made clear to him. We cannot 
 tell how far these were heightened in the telling 
 or in his own remembrance of them. Most real 
 things were heightened or abased in Shelley's mind. 
 But they shall be given in his own words. 
 
 In the Dedication to " The Revolt of Islam " he 
 wrote : — 
 
 "I do remember well the hour which burst 
 My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn it was, 
 When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, 
 
 And wept, I knew not why ; until there rose 
 From the near schoolroom, voices, that, alas ! 
 
 Were but one echo from a world of woes — 
 
 The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 
 
 10 
 
CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 And then I clasped my hands and looked around — 
 But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 
 
 Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground, 
 So, without shame, I spake : — ' I will be wise, 
 And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
 
 Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
 The selfish and the strong still tyrannise 
 
 Without reproach or check.' I then controlled 
 
 My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and cold." 
 
 In the " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty " there is 
 
 this passage : — 
 
 " While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
 Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, 
 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
 Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
 I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed ; 
 
 I was not heard — I saw them not — 
 
 When musing deeply on the lot 
 Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 
 
 All vital things that wake to bring 
 
 News of birds and blossoming, — 
 
 Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
 I shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! 
 
 I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
 
 To thee and thine — have I not kept the vow ? 
 With beating heart, and streaming eyes, even now 
 I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 
 Each from his voiceless grave ; they have in visioned 
 bowers 
 
 Of studious zeal or love's delight 
 Outwatched with me the envious night — 
 They knew that never joy illumed my brow 
 
 Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
 This world from its dark slavery, 
 That thou — O awful Loveliness, 
 Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express." 
 
 Both of these passages are vague — they were 
 written before Shelley learned to express himself 
 
 n 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 precisely. But he describes in them the two great 
 and lasting passions of his life as clearly as he was 
 then able to see them. First there was the definite 
 passion for reforming the world ; and then, far 
 stronger, there was the passion for a perfection 
 that should give a simultaneous delight to all the 
 parts of man's nature, moral, intellectual, and 
 sensuous, in which all conflicts should be reconciled 
 and " music and moonlight and feeling ' should 
 be one. The " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty ' 
 was written when Shelley had become a Platonist ; 
 and we may well believe, with Professor Dowden, 
 that it was Plato who purified his mind of those 
 superstitions which wrought upon his nerves 
 rather than upon his imagination. The romance 
 of ideas took the place of the romance of fiends, 
 and ghosts, and churchyards. All through his 
 life he was troubled with nerves, and his passion 
 for perfection when overstrained was apt to turn 
 into terror. But he seldom indulged his terrors, 
 or made literary capital of them, like Poe or Bed- 
 does. The beauty to which he dedicated himself 
 was indeed intellectual, to be courted by all the 
 powers of the mind and apprehended by the exer- 
 cise, not the sacrifice, of reason. 
 
 Shelley began to write very early in life ; but 
 his early works have no merit except fluency, 
 and are not even imitations of good models. In 
 the early part of 1810 he induced a publisher to 
 accept a romance called " Zastrozzi," and even, 
 it is said, to give him £40 for it. It is a rigmarole 
 
 12 
 
CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 of passionate words and phrases, much more diffi- 
 cult to read than it can have been to write. It 
 has been said that falsity is the peculiar quality 
 of romantic literature ; and certainly the chief 
 aim of the inferior romantic writer was to get 
 away from all experience, to describe a world that 
 never had been and never could be, made up of 
 scenery and arbitrary passions. This world, 
 as represented in the works of Anne Radcliffe 
 and Monk Lewis, delighted Shelley because he had 
 never known anything like it. Thus when he set 
 to work to imitate these writers he fastened upon 
 what was most unreal in them. Anne Radcliffe 
 had some imagination. Lewis had, at least, some 
 mechanism, and could tell a coherent story even 
 in the Ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair 
 Imogene. Shelley, at this time, had neither. It 
 was enough for him that his characters should 
 be convulsed with passion or melting with sensi- 
 bility. What they did or why they did it mattered 
 nothing, provided there was no routine in their 
 lives and nothing familiar in their surroundings. 
 He had already contrived to fall in love when he 
 wrote " Zastrozzi." He had known his cousin 
 Harriet Grove from a child. She was beautiful 
 and about his own age. In the summer of 1810 
 she was staying at Field Place with her parents, 
 and Shelley's passion for her was then plain to 
 every one. Neither family was opposed to it, 
 nor apparently was Harriet. They were never 
 engaged, but corresponded together ; and Harriet 
 
 13 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 at first was not shocked by Shelley's opinions 
 about religion, which he now took great pleasure 
 in expressing, particularly in his correspondence 
 with ladies. Having got his own idea of what 
 the world ought to be almost as easily as a baby 
 gets its appetite, he found that the Christian 
 religion did not fall in with that idea, and deter- 
 mined to destroy it with a light heart. Just as 
 evangelical lovers of a later generation wrote 
 religious love-letters, so he wrote sceptical love- 
 letters, and, as he had a tenderness for many ladies, 
 he tried to convert them all ; and many of them 
 enjoyed the process without taking it very seriously. 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER II 
 OXFORD 
 
 SHELLEY became an undergraduate of Univer- 
 sity College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas Term 
 of 1810. He went there because it was his father's 
 college. His father accompanied him and intro- 
 duced him to Slatter, the bookseller, who had just 
 set up in business. " My son has a literary turn," 
 he said, " do, pray, indulge him in his printing 
 freaks." Very soon after the beginning of term 
 Shelley made the acquaintance of Thomas Jeffer- 
 son Hogg, an undergraduate of the same college 
 and his senior by a couple of terms. Hitherto we 
 have had to depend upon scraps of information 
 about Shelley. Now he becomes as clear to us 
 as a character in a good novel. Hogg's Life of 
 Shelley has many faults. It is not to be trusted 
 on matters of fact, yet, with Trelawny's Recollec- 
 tions, it is the most valuable book that has ever 
 been written on Shelley. Hogg's sins, which are 
 many, may be forgiven him, because he loved 
 Shelley much, and because he had the wit to see 
 through all Shelley's absurdities that he was a 
 divine poet, though he had not yet written any 
 divine poetry. He cannot have remembered his 
 
 15 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 conversations with Shelley as exactly as he has 
 reported them ; but the speeches which he puts 
 into Shelley's mouth are so consistent with each 
 other and with other accounts of Shelley's conver- 
 sation that we may assume them to have the truth 
 of a sketch from memory by a good painter, in 
 which only irrelevant details are forgotten, and 
 facts are emphasized, not perverted. Thanks to 
 Hogg and Trelawny, we know Shelley better 
 than any other of our great poets. 
 
 Shelley and Hogg first met at dinner in Hall. 
 Shelley looked very young, even among the fresh- 
 men. His figure was slight and fragile, though 
 his bones were large and strong. He was tall, 
 but stooped. His clothes were well cut, but 
 crumpled and unbrushed. His gestures were 
 sometimes awkward and violent, but sometimes 
 very graceful. His complexion was delicate, 
 but sunburnt and freckled. His head and features 
 were very small, his hair long and bushy, and he 
 would rub it with his hands and pass his fingers 
 through it in the agonies of anxious thought, so 
 that it was always rough. His face had an air 
 of profound religious veneration. His voice was 
 very shrill, harsh, and discordant, a fact which 
 other writers confirm, though some say that it 
 was pleasant when not strained by excitement. 
 Shelley and Hogg fell at once into a dispute about 
 modern German and Italian literature, Shelley 
 being for the Germans, Hogg for the Italians. 
 They went to Hogg's room to continue the discus- 
 
 16 
 
OXFORD 
 
 sion, and when they got there Shelley said calmly 
 that he knew no German or Italian. Hogg con- 
 fessed that he was in the same case, and Shelley 
 dismissed the subject with the remark that it 
 was of no importance, as polite letters were but 
 vain trifling. It was better to investigate things 
 themselves through the physical sciences, and 
 especially through chemistry. Then he went off to 
 a lecture, but returned disappointed. " The man 
 talked about stones," he said, " nothing but stones 
 — and so dryly. It was wonderfully tiresome — 
 and stones are not interesting things in themselves." 
 The next day Hogg went to see Shelley in his 
 rooms at two o'clock, where he found him under 
 the impression that it was about ten or eleven. 
 The rooms had been newly papered, painted, and 
 furnished ; but already they were in indescribable 
 confusion. Books, boots, papers, philosophical 
 instruments, clothes, pistols, crockery, ammuni- 
 tion, and phials innumerable, with money, stock- 
 ings, prints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were 
 scattered everywhere. The tables and carpet 
 were already stained with large spots of various 
 hues. An electrical machine, an air-pump, a 
 galvanic trough, a solar microscope and large 
 glass jars and receivers were mixed up with the 
 rest of the litter. A handsome razor had been 
 used as a knife. Two piles of books supported 
 a pair of tongs, and these upheld a glass retort 
 above an Argand-lamp. Soon the liquor in 
 the vessel boiled over with evil-smelling fumes. 
 
 17 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Shelley seized the glass and dashed it in pieces 
 among the ashes under the grate. Then he 
 showed Hogg his various instruments, and spoke 
 of his design to make a combination of many 
 electric kites that would draw down from the sky 
 an immense volume of electricity, which, being 
 directed to some point, would produce the most 
 stupendous results. Soon after he forgot his 
 contempt of polite letters and spoke of poetry with 
 glowing zeal. Hogg and Shelley at once became 
 close friends and spent a great part of the day 
 together. 
 
 The teaching at Oxford was still, almost as list- 
 less as Gibbon found it. An undergraduate might 
 learn something if he chose, but no one tried to 
 make him learn anything. Probably Shelley 
 would have refused to learn anything under com- 
 pulsion ; but he had already a passion for know- 
 ledge which he communicated to Hogg, and they 
 read much together from books of their own 
 choice. Hogg did not catch Shelley's enthusiasm 
 for science. Shelley's chemical experiments 
 seemed to him to promise nothing but disaster. 
 He had burnt a large hole in the carpet, in which 
 he caught his foot whenever he crossed the room ; 
 and there was some danger that he would poison 
 himself, since he would use his teacups as crucibles. 
 
 About six in the evening Shelley usually became 
 drowsy. He would then lie down stretched upon 
 a rug before the fire, like a cat, with his little 
 round head exposed to the fiercest heat. Some- 
 
 18 
 
OXFORD 
 
 times Hogg interposed some kind of screen, but 
 Shelley would generally roll in his sleep to the 
 place where the heat was greatest. About ten 
 he would suddenly start up, and, rubbing his 
 eyes and passing his fingers swiftly through his 
 hair, would begin to argue or recite verses with an 
 energy and rapidity that were often painful to 
 witness. The friends often went walks together, 
 when Shelley would take a pair of pistols and fire 
 at a mark, as he did in later years with Byron 
 in Italy. But he was so careless with the pistols 
 that Hogg would often secretly abstract the 
 powder-flasks or the bullets before they started. 
 Shelley liked to fling heavy stones into a pond, 
 and when they splashed would speculate on the 
 science of acoustics, and the valuable discoveries 
 that might be made about it. He was already fond 
 of making paper-boats, but had not yet the skill 
 in that art which he afterwards acquired. 
 
 He was happy at Oxford and wished he could 
 stay there six or seven years, for he had so much to 
 learn. He delighted in the privacy he could secure 
 by " sporting his oak." " The oak is such a 
 blessing," he exclaimed, clasping his hands, and 
 repeated the remark slowly and in a solemn tone. 
 " The oak goes far towards making this spot a 
 paradise." He found the Dons, so far as he 
 encountered them at all, to be very dull men. 
 " A little man sent for me this morning and told 
 me that I must read. ' You must read,' he said 
 many times in his small voice. ' You must read 
 
 19 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Prometheus Vinctus, ami Demosthenes de Corona, 
 and Euclid.' ' Must I read Euclid ? ' I asked 
 sorrowfully. ' Yes, certainly ; and you must begin 
 Aristotle's " Ethics." ' This he repeated so often 
 that I was quite tired ; and at last I said : ' Must 
 I care about Aristotle ? What if I do not mind 
 about Aristotle ? ' I then left him, for he seemed 
 to be in great perplexity." 
 
 Hogg tells us, however, that he took to the 
 scholastic logic very kindly, and seized its distinc- 
 tions with his usual quickness. Indeed he had 
 an athletic mind from the first, and enjoyed hard 
 thinking as much as any metaphysician, provided 
 it was about abstractions. There is a great deal 
 of hard thinking in his most rapturous poetry, 
 and more intellectual power in his images than in 
 those of any other poet of his time. He was 
 impatient of facts and details when they inter- 
 fered with the process of his thought, but not 
 because he could not grasp them. Some of his 
 letters to Godwin prove that he understood busi- 
 ness matters far better than that philosopher. 
 A solicitor might have written them if he had had 
 Shelley's powers of expression ; and they should 
 be read by those who suppose that only dull men 
 can understand dull things. He read Hume's 
 Essays, and could be tempted away from any 
 pursuit by Locke's " Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing." Hogg thinks that he took up the 
 sceptical philosophy because of the advantage it 
 game him in argument. No doubt he enjoyed 
 
 20 
 
OXFORD 
 
 the game for its own sake ; but his destructive 
 instinct was not quite aimless, like a puppy's. 
 Like many men with a great power of faith, he 
 had to make his own beliefs for himself ; and the 
 first step in this process was to rid his mind of the 
 beliefs of others. The sceptical philosophers were 
 for a time heroes and deliverers to him ; just as 
 the cold Brutus was a hero to the Jacobins. 
 
 Yet even at this time, Hogg tells us, a listener 
 to some of Shelley's glowing discourses would have 
 hailed a young Platonist, "breathing forth the 
 ideal Philosophy, and in his pursuit of the intellec- 
 tual world entirely overlooking the material, or 
 noticing it only to contemn it." His first know- 
 ledge of Plato he got from Dacier's translation of 
 some of the Dialogues, and from an English version 
 of that translation. He was never weary of 
 listening to passages from the " Phaedo," and he 
 was vehemently excited by the doctrine that all 
 our knowledge consists of reminiscences of what 
 we knew in a former life. According to Hogg, he 
 once questioned a baby in arms, as being likely 
 to have clear memories of its last life, and insisted 
 that it could speak of these things if it chose. 
 Hogg could not interest him in jurisprudence, and 
 his mind revolted from mathematics. He would 
 not lay himself out to admire the buildings of Ox- 
 ford, although he often betrayed pleasure in them 
 when he happened to notice them. His taste in 
 art was sentimental and capricious all his life : 
 and, like a philosopher of the eighteenth century, 
 
 21 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 he was apt to despise the great churches of the 
 Middle Ages as relics of superstition. He had no 
 historic sense about anything, least of all about 
 art ; and was no nearer to discovering the Middle 
 Ages than Voltaire himself. To him they were 
 scarcely even romantic. He had none of Blake's 
 intuition of the significance of their art ; not a 
 glimmering of the fact that we have lost some 
 secrets which they knew by instinct. For him 
 between the end of the ancient world and the 
 Renaissance there was a long period of darkness 
 in which men only made mistakes. 
 
 To Hogg it seemed that in no one was the moral 
 sense ever more completely developed than in 
 Shelley ; in no being was the perception of right 
 and wrong more acute. It has been remarked, 
 on the other hand, that he had no sense of guilt 
 when he did wrong. The fact is that his mind 
 was often in conflict with external things, never 
 with itself. He never passed out of that first stage 
 which Wordsworth describes in his " Ode to 
 Duty ' - 
 
 " When love is an unerring light, 
 And joy its own security." 
 
 For him joy was always the test, as it would be 
 no doubt in heaven ; and he saw no reason why 
 we should not turn earth into heaven. 
 
 There is no need to insist upon the fact that he 
 had a good heart. A hundred stories prove it. 
 Hogg speaks of his exquisite sensibility and his 
 sympathy with all suffering. Nor was he a 
 
 22 
 
OXFORD 
 
 mere sentimentalist who satisfied his conscience 
 with fine feelings. He would put himself to any 
 trouble to help the distressed, and he took a noble 
 joy in such trouble, a joy such as few of us can 
 understand. Yet it might be said of him, as it 
 was said of some one else, that he was born too 
 good ever to become a saint. He had a facility 
 in virtue like the facility of Raphael in art ; and 
 there were moral dangers in that facility. 
 
 For the Christmas vacation Shelley went to 
 Field Place and Hogg to Buckinghamshire. Shel- 
 ley wrote long letters to Hogg, and these reveal 
 his state of mind more clearly even than Hogg's 
 narrative. They are like the letters of a heroine 
 of romance, and show Shelley in the full enjoy- 
 ment of a number of romantic troubles. Not only 
 was he in love, but a publisher, by name Stock- 
 dale, had warned his father when in London of 
 his dangerous opinions and also of the evil influ- 
 ence of Hogg. Thereupon Timothy Shelley wrote 
 a letter to his son which caused him the most 
 exquisite apprehension. He was in the midst 
 of treasons. " There is now need of all my art," 
 he writes to Hogg ; "I must resort to deception. 
 I am surrounded, environed by dangers, to which 
 compared the devils who besieged St. Antony 
 were all inefficient." He burns with impatience 
 for the moment of the dissolution of intolerance, 
 and swears on the altar of perjured love to revenge 
 himself on the hated cause of this effect. There 
 
 23 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 lowers a terrific tempest, but he stands, as it 
 were, on a Pharos, and smiles exultingly at the 
 vain beating of the billows below. Here there is 
 an allusion to another trouble. The parents of 
 Harriet Grove had also become uneasy about his 
 religious opinions ; and Harriet herself, whether 
 or no she sighed as a lover, consented as a daughter 
 to their desire that she should go no further with 
 him. 
 
 Yet he was not out of conceit with love, but 
 wished Hogg to contract a passion for his sister 
 Elizabeth, whom Hogg had never seen. He could 
 not invite Hogg to Field Place, so he continued 
 to write to him long, delirious, young-lady-like 
 letters ; and Hogg wrote to Elizabeth, whose 
 intellect Shelley did not wish to awaken too 
 powerfully, and to whom therefore he did not com- 
 municate all his own speculations. " The uncon- 
 genial jollities of Christmas " increased his sense 
 of his momentous woe. ' ' When you are compelled 
 to contribute to the merriment of others, when 
 you are compelled to live under the severest of 
 restraints, concealment of feelings pregnant enough 
 in themselves, how terrible is your lot ! I am 
 learning abstraction, but I fear that my proficiency 
 will be but trifling." It was not so much love 
 itself as the circumstances of love that enthralled 
 him ; and it was, of course, only right and proper 
 that they should be adverse. Nothing could be 
 more in keeping with his ideas of himself and the 
 world than that he should be rejected for his 
 
 24 
 
OXFORD 
 
 opinions and asked to desert his dearest friend. 
 Hogg preached some kind of resignation to him, 
 but he replied : " Considering matters in a philo- 
 sophical light it evidently appears (if it is not 
 treason to speak thus coolly on a subject so deliri- 
 ously ecstatic) that we were not destined for misery. 
 What then shall happiness arise from ? Can we 
 hesitate ? Love, dear Love ; and though every 
 mental faculty is bewildered by this agony, which 
 is in this life its too constant attendant, still 
 is not that very agony to be preferred to the most 
 thrilling sensualities of epicurism ? " 
 
 In his next letter, written the next day, he is in 
 a philosophic mood. " The word ' God ' has been 
 and will continue to be the source of numberless 
 errors until it is erased from the nomenclature 
 of philosophy." But still, he thinks, the leaf of a 
 tree and the meanest insects on which we trample 
 are conclusive arguments that some vast intellect 
 animates infinity. Like Hamlet he asks questions 
 about suicide. " I slept with a loaded pistol and 
 some poison last night, but did not die." " Can 
 the dead feel ; dawns any day-beam on the night 
 of dissolution ? " In another letter he talks 
 again of Harriet Grove. ''When in her natural 
 character her spirits are good, her conversation 
 animated, and she is almost in consequence 
 ignorant of the refinements in love which can 
 only be attained by solitary reflexion." 
 
 Shelley always kept this idea of love as a state 
 of mind to be cultivated for its own sake and 
 
 25 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 almost independent of its object. Love, as he 
 conceived it, did not mean action, but ecstasy. 
 It was like the religion of eremites, but unfortun- 
 ately not so free of material results as that religion. 
 He could never understand why society has found 
 it necessary to put restraints upon love. He 
 thought of it as a condition of being at which 
 every one should aim, and which should be 
 renewed, whenever necessary, by fresh incite- 
 ments. Meanwhile Harriet Grove was lost to 
 him for ever. He had seen her, or tried to see 
 her, but without result. He breaks into verse 
 as much about stern warriors, and dread tyrants, 
 and millions of blood-reeking victims, as about 
 Harriet. Then he turns again to discussing ultim- 
 ate reality. He defines soul as " the most supreme 
 superior, and distinguished abstract appendage 
 to the nature of anything." But he seems to 
 feel that something is wanting in the definition, 
 for he says that his head is rather dizzy, " on 
 account of not taking rest and a slight attack of 
 typhus." He had spent most of the night pacing 
 a churchyard. 
 
 Five days later he tells Hogg that Harriet Grove 
 is married — " married to a clod of earth." It was 
 a pity that Locksley Hall was not yet written for 
 him to quote. * ■ She will become as insensible 
 herself," he cries. " All those fine capabilities 
 will moulder ! " But he does not tell this news 
 until he has written at some length about Hogg's 
 relations with Elizabeth ; and having told it in a 
 
 26 
 
 
OXFORD 
 
 few words, he passes to other matters. "My 
 mother," he says, " fancies I want to make a 
 deistical coterie of all my little sisters : how laugh- 
 able ! " Then follows a poem by Elizabeth, just 
 as good as Shelley's own poems of the same date. 
 Hogg appears to have thought it strange that 
 Shelley's poetry had so little to do with Harriet. 
 So he explains : " If it neither has allusion to the 
 sentiments which rationally might be supposed to 
 possess me, or to those which my situation might 
 awaken, it is another proof of that egotising vari- 
 ability, whilst I shudder to reflect how much I am 
 in its power. To you I dare represent myself 
 as I am ! Wretched to the last degree." 
 
 He returned to Oxford enraged with intolerance. 
 This was the nearest he got to practical politics. 
 The Duke of Norfolk, "The Jockey," who was a 
 friend of the family and a chief of the Whigs, had 
 told him that politics were the proper career for a 
 young man of ability, and he went several times 
 with his father to the House of Commons ; but it 
 did not stir his imagination. " What creatures did 
 I see there ! " he exclaimed. " What faces — what 
 an expression of countenance ! — what wretched 
 beings." Instead of preparing himself to represent 
 a pocket borough, he began to take an interest in 
 oppressed individuals. There was a man named 
 Browne who, rightly or wrongly, had been ordered 
 to resign from the navy. He wrote a book about 
 Sweden, and Shelley, believing he had been 
 unjustly treated, agreed to purchase the copy- 
 
 27 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 right of it. Just before he was expelled from 
 Oxford, he put his name to a bond for £800. 
 So did the publisher, and since Shelley had no 
 access to his father's fortune the publisher had to 
 pay. Leigh Hunt had lately been acquitted on a 
 charge of seditious libel. The trial had been 
 costly, and Shelley wrote to him to propose "a 
 scheme of mutual safety and mutual indemnification 
 for men of public spirit and principle." It is not 
 known whether Hunt answered this letter, he 
 certainly did not yet make Shelley's acquaintance. 
 Meanwhile the Dons probably got to know of 
 Shelley's opinions, since he made no concealment 
 of them. He must have been conspicuous any- 
 where, with his long hair, his strange habits, his 
 beautiful countenance, and his high screaming 
 voice. No doubt the Dons were curious about 
 him from the first ; and their curiosity would soon 
 turn to anger and apprehension. They would 
 be glad of a chance to make an example of him ; 
 and he soon gave them one. There has been some 
 dispute about the origin of the famous pamphlet 
 on "The Necessity of Atheism." Hogg tells us 
 that Shelley had a habit of writing to people he 
 had never seen, often to divines, enclosing a short 
 abstract of the doctrines of Hume, and saying that it 
 was a little tract which he had accidentally met with 
 and which appeared to him quite unanswerable. 
 He would give an assumed name, and an address 
 in London. If he elicited an answer he would fall 
 upon the unwary disputant and break his bones. 
 
 28 
 
OXFORD 
 
 Hogg's account of these transactions is not quite 
 clear. But it seems that Shelley began with 
 written arguments, and gradually evolved a tract, 
 which he printed and which ended with a Q.E.D. 
 One of his correspondents seems to have supposed 
 he was a doubting curate, and addressed him as 
 
 the Reverend . Early in his second term 
 
 Shelley resolved to publish his tract under the title 
 
 "The Necessity of Atheism." It was issued 
 
 anonymously, and in the preface Shelley called 
 
 himself, " Thro' deficiency of proof an Atheist." 
 
 He is said to have strewn the counter of Messrs. 
 
 Slatter & Munday's shop with copies, and to have 
 
 told the shopman to sell them as fast as he could at 
 
 sixpence each. The sale was soon checked by a 
 
 Don of New College, who, after looking at the tract, 
 
 asked to see the principals, and induced them to 
 
 burn the remaining copies. They sent for Shelley 
 
 and remonstrated with him. He told them that 
 
 he had sent a copy to all the bishops, to the Vice- 
 
 Chancellor, and to all the heads of Colleges, with a 
 
 letter in his own hand, signed Jeremiah Stukeley. 
 
 It was some days before the pamphlet was brought 
 
 home to him ; but on the morning of Lady Day 
 
 he rushed into his rooms, where Hogg was waiting 
 
 for him, and cried, "I am expelled." Then he 
 
 told Hogg that he had been sent for to the Common 
 
 Room, where he found the master and some of the 
 
 fellows of the college. The master produced a 
 
 copy of the pamphlet, and asked if he had written 
 
 it, speaking in " a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone." 
 
 29 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Shelley asked why he put the question. No answer 
 was given ; but the master loudly and angrily 
 repeated, "Are you the author of this book ? " 
 " If I can judge of your manner," Shelley said, 
 " you are resolved to punish me, if I should ac- 
 knowledge that it is my work. If you can prove 
 that it is, produce your evidence ; it is neither 
 just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case 
 and for such a purpose. Such proceedings would 
 become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in 
 a free country." " Do you choose to deny that 
 this is your composition ? " the master reiterated 
 in the same rude and angry voice. Shelley finally 
 refused to answer any questions, whereupon the 
 master said furiously, " Then you are expelled ; 
 and I desire you will quit this college early to-mor- 
 row morning at the latest." One of the fellows 
 took up two papers and handed one of them to 
 Shelley. It was a sentence of expulsion drawn up 
 in due form under the seal of the college. Having 
 told his story, Shelley sat on the sofa repeating 
 with convulsive vehemence the words, " Expelled, 
 expelled." Thereupon Hogg wrote a short note 
 to the master and fellows briefly expressing his 
 sorrow at their treatment of Shelley, and his hope 
 that they would reconsider their sentence. In 
 an instant the porter summoned him before the 
 master, who asked him whether he too had written 
 the pamphlet. Hogg " submissively " pointed out 
 to him the unfairness of the question, and refused 
 to answer it. Thereupon the master told him 
 
 30 
 
OXFORD 
 
 to return and consider whether he would persist 
 in his refusal. He had scarcely left the room when 
 he was recalled. The master again asked him 
 whether he admitted or denied having written 
 the pamphlet. He again refused to answer, and 
 the master cried, "Then you are expelled." A 
 document like that given to Shelley was put in his 
 hand, and he was commanded to quit the college 
 the next day at an early hour. 
 
 After they had passed their sentence the Dons 
 seem to have felt some compunction about it. 
 But Hogg and Shelley gave no signs of the sub- 
 mission which, perhaps, was expected and hoped 
 of them. As they were leaving the next morning, 
 Hogg was told that if Shelley would ask permission 
 of the master to stay for a short period, it would 
 probably be granted. Both refused to ask any 
 favour, and at eight o'clock in the morning they 
 started in the coach for London. 
 
 It is not very wonderful that in the general state 
 of opinion at that time Shelley should have been 
 expelled for his pamphlet. Undergraduates were 
 not sent to the University to write pamphlets 
 on the necessity of atheism, and at that date they 
 were all supposed to be members of the Church 
 of England. It must be remembered, too, that 
 atheism was associated in the minds of the ortho- 
 dox with the horrors of the French Revolution, 
 and that there was a real fear that these horrors 
 might be repeated in England if the contagion of 
 the revolutionary doctrines spread. No doubt 
 
 3i 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 the Dons regarded the expulsion of Shelley as a 
 sanitary measure, and included Hogg in it as an 
 infected object. Their manner of proceeding, if 
 it has not been misrepresented, was unnecessarily 
 fierce. They might have attempted to reason 
 with Shelley. They might have remembered that 
 they had made no efforts to prevent him from 
 falling into error. We may assume that they 
 had not done their duty by him, and they ought 
 to have asked themselves whether his offence was 
 not the result of their neglect. The expulsion of 
 Hogg was quite arbitrary. If they knew that 
 Shelley had written the pamphlet, they had no 
 evidence that Hogg had any hand in it, and it 
 was clearly unjust to punish him for refusing to 
 answer a question which they had no reason to 
 put. No doubt they were severe because they 
 were frightened. They wished to make an example, 
 and, as usual in such cases, made a mistake. 
 
 32 
 
CHAPTER III 
 SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 IT is significant that Shelley should not have 
 gone home in his trouble. Other boys in 
 the same case might have avoided their parents 
 from cowardice. But Shelley was afraid of no 
 one, least of all his parents. He went to London 
 partly, no doubt, from a desire for adventure, 
 partly because he would only have been wearied 
 by his father's reproaches. He had already learnt 
 to live a life of his own, in which his parents had 
 no part. He was already estranged from them, 
 not by a quarrel that might have been made up, 
 but by a more fatal and permanent incompatibility 
 for which no one deserved much blame. 
 
 Their first night Shelley and Hogg put up at a 
 coffee-house. The next day they looked for lodg- 
 ings, and Shelley was difficult to please. One 
 pleasant set he would not take because a man 
 in the street cried " Mackerel " and " Mussels." 
 He clapped his hands to his ears and rushed 
 wildly out of doors. At another he fell in dudgeon 
 with the maid's nose. At another he took umbrage 
 at the voice of the mistress. At last they came 
 to Poland Street. The name reminded Shelley 
 
 3 33 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 of Thaddeus of Warsaw and Freedom. So he 
 determined to lodge there. They found some 
 rooms to let, one of them with a trellised paper, and 
 vines with huge clusters of grapes, green and pur- 
 ple, on the trellis. Shelley was delighted. He went 
 up to the wall and touched it. " We must stay 
 here. Stay for ever ! " he cried. Whenever a 
 place took his fancy, he vowed to stay there for 
 ever. A bedroom had the same paper, and Shelley 
 took this. He asked whether grapes really grew 
 in that manner anywhere, and said they would 
 soon go and see them, in which case, Hogg 
 pointed out, they could not stay in these lodgings 
 for ever. When they were settled in the lodgings 
 they took long walks together, and went to Wands- 
 worth, where some of Shelley's sisters were at 
 school. Hogg tells us how, when they came to 
 the gate of the school, they saw a little girl, eight 
 or ten years old, scampering about. Shelley 
 screamed with delight, " Oh ! there is little Hellen." 
 Meanwhile Shelley's father had to be reckoned 
 with. He was determined that the friends should 
 be parted. He would not have Hogg at Field 
 Place, and wrote to him to that effect as soon as he 
 heard of the expulsion. " The invitation, my son 
 wrote me word, that you would accept to spend 
 the Easter vacation at Field Place — I am sorry to 
 say the late occurrence at University College must 
 of necessity preclude me that pleasure, as I shall 
 have to bear up against the affliction that such a 
 business has occasioned." He seems to have 
 
 34 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 been always incoherent both in his speech and his 
 letters. He also wrote to Hogg's father about the 
 two boys, saying, " I have endeavoured to part 
 them by directing my son to return home, and also 
 giving the same advice to your son ; and backed 
 by that opinion by men of rank and influence, 
 therefore I would suggest to you to come to Lon- 
 don and try our joint endeavours for that purpose." 
 To this letter there is the following postscript : — 
 
 " Sir James Graham tells me there are several 
 of the name, therefore into whose ver's hands 
 this comes, will have the goodness to find out the 
 right person." 
 
 At the same time he wrote to Shelley, beginning 
 ' My dear boy," and saying, " The disgrace which 
 hangs over you is most serious, and though I have 
 felt as a father, and sympathized in the misfortune 
 which your criminal opinions and improper acts 
 have begot, yet, you must know, that I have a 
 duty to perform to my own character, as well as 
 to your young brother and sisters. Above all, my 
 feelings as a Christian require from me a decided 
 and firm conduct towards you." 
 
 " If you shall require aid or assistance from me," 
 he continues, " or any protection, you must pledge 
 yourself to me — 
 
 "First. To go immediately to Field Place, 
 and to abstain from all communication with Mr. 
 Hogg for some considerable time. 
 
 " Second. That you shall place yourself under 
 the care and society of such gentleman as I shall 
 
 35 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 appoint, and attend to his instructions and direc- 
 tions he shall give." 
 
 And he concludes — 
 
 " These terms are so necessary to your well- 
 being, and to the value which I cannot but entertain, 
 that you may abandon your errors and present 
 unjustifiable and wicked opinions, that I am 
 resolved to withdraw myself from you, and leave 
 you to the punishment and misery that belongs 
 to the wicked pursuit of an opinion so diabolical 
 and wicked as that which you have dared to declare 
 if you shall not accept my proposals." 
 
 Shelley replied thus : — 
 
 " My dear Father, — As you do me the honour 
 of requesting to hear the determination of my 
 mind as the basis of your future actions, I feel it 
 my duty, although it gives me pain to wound 
 * the sense of duty to your own character, to that 
 of your family, and your feelings as a Christian,' 
 decidedly to refuse my assent to both the proposals 
 in your letter, and to affirm that similar refusals 
 will always be the fate of similar requests. With 
 many thanks for your great kindness — I remain 
 your affectionate, dutiful son, 
 
 " Percy B. Shelley " 
 
 If Timothy Shelley had been a wise man he 
 would have gone to see his son and Hogg and tried 
 to understand something of his son's state of mind, 
 of Hogg's character, and of the relations between 
 
 36 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 them, before making any proposals or demands. 
 
 But he was not a wise man, and, even when he 
 meant well, usually acted as mischievously as if 
 he meant ill. He wrote again to Hogg's father 
 urging him to get his " young man home." " They 
 want to get into professions together. If possible 
 they must be parted, for such monstrous opinions 
 that occupy their thoughts are by no means in 
 their favour." 
 
 " Paley's ' Natural Theology ' I shall recom- 
 mend my young man to read ; it is extremely 
 applicable. I shall read it with him. A father 
 so employed must impress his mind more sensibly 
 than a stranger." 
 
 " I understand you have more children. God 
 grant they may turn out well, and this young man 
 see his error." 
 
 Feeling that he must do something, yet not 
 knowing what to do, Timothy went to see his 
 solicitor. " I consider it right," he said, " to put 
 my business into Mr. W.'s hands, to guard my 
 honour and character in case of any prosecutions 
 in the courts, and to direct my son to do what was 
 right in the first instance, so he will now." He 
 was surprised to find that Hogg's father was not 
 much concerned about the affair. " Mr. Hogg," he 
 exclaimed, " must be deceived. Indeed, what right 
 have these opinionated youngsters to do any such 
 thing ? Undutiful and disrespectful to a degree ! " 
 
 Shelley had written to Hogg's father protesting 
 that Hogg was not the original corrupter of his 
 
 37 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 principles as Timothy Shelley supposed. Hogg 
 knew nothing of this at the time, and was much 
 touched when he discovered it years afterwards. 
 Shelley, he says, had many underhand ways, but 
 his secrets were hidden "through modesty, 
 delicacy, generosity, refinement of soul, through 
 a dislike to be praised and thanked for noble, 
 disinterested, high-minded deeds." 
 
 Shelley and his father were not yet utterly 
 estranged. One Sunday Shelley took Hogg to 
 dine with his father at an hotel. Hogg was kindly 
 received ; but presently Mr. Shelley began to 
 talk in an odd, inconsequent manner ; scolding, 
 crying, swearing and weeping. After dinner, 
 when Shelley had gone out of the room on some 
 errand, his father addressed Hogg thus : — 
 
 " You are a very different person, sir, from 
 what I expected to find ; you are a nice, moderate, 
 reasonable, pleasant gentleman. Tell me what 
 you think I ought to do with my poor boy." Hogg 
 suggested marriage. But Timothy was sure that 
 if he told Bysshe to marry a girl, he would refuse 
 directly. Hogg agreed, but thought he might be 
 brought into contact with some young lady who 
 would make him a suitable wife. They drank 
 port, and Timothy Shelley began to talk loudly. 
 He said he was highly respected in the House of 
 Commons, and by the Speaker in particular, who told 
 him that they could not get on without him. He 
 was also greatly beloved in Sussex, and an excellent 
 magistrate. He asserted that there was certainly 
 
 38 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 a God. " You have no doubt on the subject, sir, 
 have you ? " he asked. Hogg had none ; but Mr. 
 Shelley persisted, " If you have, I can prove it to 
 you in a moment.' ' He drew out a sheet of paper 
 and began to read. Shelley, who had returned, 
 listened attentively, and after a while said, " I 
 have heard this argument before." Hogg recog- 
 nized the argument as Paley's, and Timothy 
 Shelley acknowledged the fact. " I copied them 
 out of Palley's book this morning myself," he said, 
 " but Palley had them originally from me ; almost 
 everything in Palley's book he had from me." 
 When they parted Timothy Shelley shook hands 
 with Hogg, and said, " Tell me the truth, I am 
 not such a bad fellow after all, am I." 
 
 In April Hogg left London. He had made up 
 his mind to be a barrister, and was to enter a 
 conveyancer's chambers at York, where Shelley 
 hoped to join him in June. Meanwhile Shelley 
 stayed alone in his lodgings, "a bright-eyed, rest- 
 less fox amid sour grapes." He was soon started 
 upon a new and dangerous romance. On April 
 n, 1811, he writes to Hogg, " Miss Westbrook 
 has this moment called on me with her sister." 
 The younger Miss Westbrook, Harriet, was a 
 fellow-pupil with Shelley's sisters at the school at 
 Wandsworth. Her father, John Westbrook, had 
 retired from keeping a coffee-house or tavern. 
 At this time she was not yet sixteen. Hogg tells 
 us that she was both beautiful and delightful ; 
 rosy, brown-haired, light-footed, sweet-voiced, 
 
 39 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and sweet-tempered. Shelley got to know her 
 well in this way. His father refused to give him 
 any money until he made his submission. His 
 sisters wished to help him, and sent him little 
 gifts of money by Harriet, who often went home, 
 and who therefore had more freedom. The eldest 
 Miss Westbrook, Eliza, who was thirty years old, 
 seems to have planned a match from the first with 
 a natural ambition. Harriet gave an account 
 of her first impressions of Shelley in a letter 
 written after her marriage. When a child, she 
 says, she admired the red-coats, though at the 
 same time she " used to declare never to marry 
 one. This was not so much on account of their 
 vices as from the idea of their being killed. I 
 thought, if I married anyone, it should be a 
 clergyman. Strange idea this, was it not ? but 
 being brought up in the Christian religion, 'twas 
 this first gave rise to it. You may conceive with 
 what horror I first heard that Percy was an Atheist ; 
 at least it was so given out at Clapham. ... I 
 was truly petrified. I wondered how he could 
 live a moment professing such principles, and 
 solemnly declared he should never change mine. 
 I little thought of the rectitude of those principles, 
 and when I wrote to him, I used to try to shake 
 them, making sure that he was in the wrong, and 
 that myself was right." 
 
 Thus they had a delightful subject of conversa- 
 tion. Harriet regarded Shelley, no doubt, as a 
 fallen angel, and Shelley enjoyed nothing so much 
 
 40 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 as undermining the faith of ladies. But in this 
 case he had some misgivings. " It is perhaps 
 scarcely doing her a kindness — it is perhaps in- 
 ducing positive unhappiness — to point out to her 
 a road which leads to perfection, the attain- 
 ment of which, perhaps, does not repay the 
 difficulties of progress." He does not speak of 
 her like a lover : " My little friend Harriet W. 
 is gone to her prison-house (his name for the 
 school). ... I went with her sister to Miss H.'s, 
 and walked about Clapham Common with them 
 for two hours. The youngest is a most amiable 
 girl ; the eldest is really conceited, but very 
 condescending. I took the sacrament with her 
 on Sunday." That he should have done this no 
 doubt gave Eliza hopes, and she began to force 
 the pace. Soon after Shelley writes that his poor 
 little friend had been ill. " Her sister sent for me 
 the other night. I found her on a couch, pale. 
 Her father is civil to me, very strangely. The 
 sister is too civil by half. She began talking about 
 I' A monr. I philosophised, and the youngest said she 
 had such a headache that she could not bear conver- 
 sation. Her sister then went away, and I stayed 
 till half-past twelve." Then follows an outburst 
 against someone or something not named, but 
 probably intolerance. "Yes! the fiend, the wretch, 
 shall fall. Harriet will do for one of the crushers, 
 and the eldest (Emily), with some taming, will do 
 too." Her name was Eliza, and Shelley never 
 succeeded in taming her. 
 
 4i 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 There follows a poem about a lion and a lama. 
 Shelley is the lama : — 
 
 " For in vain from the grasp of the bigot I flee, 
 The most tenderly loved of my soul 
 Are slaves to his hated control. 
 He pursues me, he blasts me ! 'Tis in vain that I fly : 
 What remains, but to curse him ; — to curse him and die ? " 
 
 It was the comic opera rhythms of Pope's " Ode 
 for St. Cecilia's Day," the violent jingle with 
 which unlyrical poets insist that they are writing 
 lyrical poetry. It was some years before Shelley 
 began to make a music out of the sense of his 
 words. 
 
 Writing a few days later he appears to be still 
 thinking of Harriet Grove. " She talks of duty to 
 her father. And this is your amiable religion." It 
 was arranged after a good deal of negotiation 
 that his father should allow him £200 a year, so 
 that he seemed to himself to be rich. He was 
 spending most of his time at the Westbrooks, and 
 had been too hasty in criticizing the character of 
 Eliza. 
 
 On May 15 he wrote from Field Place. He had 
 been reconciled to his father through the good 
 services of his uncle, Captain Pilfold. He found 
 that his sister Elizabeth had become, not only 
 intolerant, but worldly and frivolous. No doubt 
 the poor girl wished to enjoy life and not to be her 
 brother's proselyte or the wife of his friend, whom 
 she had never seen and took to be mad. But, as 
 a matter of fact, Shelley had taken a violent pre- 
 
 42 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 judice against the institution of marriage and seems 
 to have wished Elizabeth and Hogg to dispense 
 with it. Elizabeth declined. " Matrimony," he 
 told Hogg a month later, "is the subject of her 
 constant and pointed panegyric." 
 
 But still Hogg must be in love with Elizabeth, 
 and Shelley wished him to pay a secret visit to 
 Field Place, where he should only walk out at 
 midnight for fear of discovery. But from the 
 window he would be able to look at Elizabeth. 
 Hogg did not come, but appears to have main- 
 tained that Elizabeth was still perfection, which 
 Shelley took for the infatuation of a lover. 
 
 Meanwhile he made an acquaintance of some 
 importance to himself and still more to his bio- 
 graphers. Elizabeth Hitchener was a spinster 
 of twenty-eight, and kept a girls' school at Hirst- 
 pierpoint. She was introduced to Shelley by 
 Captain Pilfold while Shelley was on a visit to him 
 at Cuckfield. She appears to have been a good 
 woman with opinions rather beyond her intelligence . 
 There was something in her, we cannot tell what, 
 that excited the enthusiasm of Shelley to a wonder- 
 ful pitch. He was not more in love with her than 
 with other women ; he appears in one of his 
 letters to agree with her that she is not handsome, 
 but tells her that she has " a tongue of energy and 
 an eye of fire." Her part in their friendship was 
 quite disinterested, if not wisely conducted. 
 She made a fatal mistake when she went to live 
 with Shelley and his wife ; but she did not know 
 
 43 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 the world as Madame Meek, the benefactress and 
 correspondent of Tchaikovsky, knew it. That 
 strange lady, who seems to have come out of one 
 of Turgenief's novels, was determined that her 
 romance should be only on paper. She would 
 not have it whispered that she gave Tchaikovsky 
 money because she loved him. Therefore she 
 never saw him, and they talked to each other only 
 in letters. Even so their friendship came to an 
 end ; but not so soon as the friendship of Miss 
 Hitchener and Shelley. Shelley was never aware 
 of his own capacity for disillusionment. He 
 thought he would enjoy talking to Miss Hitchener 
 as much as writing to her, and that she would 
 remain the " sister of his soul " when she shared 
 his fireside. Luckily they corresponded for about 
 a year before this happened, and his letters to her 
 have lately been published. 1 The first of them 
 was written on June 5, 181 1, at Field Place ; and 
 they give us valuable information about the state 
 of his mind during a momentous year of his life. 
 Mr. Dobell, in his introduction to them, says 
 that they read like the novels, fashionable at that 
 time, that were all written in letters. This is true, 
 and no doubt Shelley felt as if he were living in a 
 novel when he wrote them. He was the hero of 
 his own romance and Miss Hitchener served for his 
 confidante. He had an unlimited amount of 
 sensibility for every experience, and when nothing 
 happened he made portentous events out of noth- 
 1 By Mr. Bertram Dobell, who has also edited them. 
 
 44 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 ing. He mystified the simplest facts ; saw pro- 
 digies of virtue or vice in the most ordinary people ; 
 and generally exulted in the sense that he was 
 making history. 
 
 He had only met Miss Hitchener once when he 
 began to take an interest in her mind. In his 
 first letter to her he expresses his usual wish to 
 argue about religion. " If, secure of your own 
 orthodoxy, you would attempt my proselytism, 
 believe me, I should be most happy to subject 
 myself to the danger." Truth is his God, he says, 
 and his time is totally vacant for a polemical 
 correspondence. Christianity is passion and Deism 
 reason. Therefore he is a deist. Certainly his 
 Deism makes no appeal to the passions. His 
 God is " merely a synonym for the existing power 
 of existence." 
 
 The earlier letters are very ceremonious. One 
 would suppose that Shelley, like his father, was a 
 disciple of Chesterfield. " Do not speak any 
 more of my time thrown away, or you will compel 
 me, in my own defence, to say things which, 
 although they could not share in the nature, 
 would participate in the appearance, of a com- 
 pliment." He admits that there is some delicacy 
 in their relations. " I see the impropriety of 
 dining with you — even of calling upon you. I 
 shall not willingly, however, give up the friend- 
 ship and correspondence of one whom, however 
 superior to me, my arrogance calls an equal." 
 Here we have a hint of the reason why he was so 
 
 45 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 ceremonious with her. She was aware and spoke 
 of the difference in their social positions. Shelley, 
 as Hogg and Trelawny both insist, was a man of 
 beautiful natural manners, and he quieted her 
 uneasiness thus : "I am inferior to you, in every- 
 thing but the equality of friendship." His expres- 
 sions of admiration grow warmer as the correspond- 
 ence proceeds. One would think, if it were any- 
 one but Shelley, that he must be in love. Indeed 
 he dares to say that he loves her, but adds, " Nor 
 do I risk the possibility of that degrading and 
 contemptible interpretation of the sacred word ; 
 nor do I risk the supposition that the lump of 
 organised matter which enshrines thy soul 
 excites the love which that soul alone dare claim. 
 Henceforth will I be yours — yours with truth, 
 sincerity, and unreserve." Miss Hitchener knew, 
 no doubt, that in using this dangerous language 
 he was bidding defiance to the passions, for when 
 he used it he was a bridegroom. 
 
 Already before he went to Field Place, Hogg 
 seems to have warned him against the designs of 
 Eliza, for Shelley wrote to him in May, 1811 : "I 
 cannot so deeply see into the influences of action 
 as to come to this odd conclusion, which you 
 observed in the matter of Miss Westbrook." Two 
 months later he is still " more than usual calm " 
 about Harriet. " Your jokes on Harriet West- 
 brook amuse me. It is a common error for people 
 to fancy others in their own situation, but if I 
 know anything about love, I am not in love." 
 
 46 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 Unfortunately Harriet was. To put her in love was 
 probably the easiest part of Eliza's task. There 
 is no reason to suppose that Harriet was designing. 
 Very likely Eliza told her that Shelley was dying 
 for love of her. Certainly, if Eliza arranged 
 matters, she did so skilfully. Shelley was always 
 glad to believe that anyone was persecuted, and 
 to rush in as a deliverer. The Miss Westbrooks 
 told him that their father, of whose domestic 
 discipline we cannot judge, was a tyrant. He 
 wished Harriet to go back to school and she did 
 not wish to go. She wrote to Shelley appealing 
 for his help. He gives an account of the matter 
 in a letter written to Miss Hitchener some months 
 later. He was staying in Wales when Harriet 
 first began to complain of her father's cruelty. 
 " Suicide was her favourite theme, and her total 
 uselessness urged as its defence. . . . 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 the cause. She had 
 become violently attached to me, and feared that 
 I should not return her attachment. Prejudice 
 made the confession painful. It was impossible 
 to avoid being much affected. I promised to 
 unite my fate to hers. I stayed in London 
 several days, during which she recovered her 
 spirits. I had promised at her bidding to come 
 again to London. They endeavoured to make 
 
 47 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 her return to a school where malice and pride 
 embittered every hour. She wrote to me. I 
 came to London. I proposed marriage, for 
 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 the error if thou 
 blamest me." This letter has a curious likeness 
 to the letter which Tchaikovsky wrote to Madame 
 Meek announcing his engagement, though it was 
 not quite so prophetic of future unhappiness. 
 Just after Harriet had confessed her love to him, 
 Shelley wrote to Hogg : 4 ' How flattering a 
 distinction ! I am thinking of ten million things 
 at once. What have I said ? I declare quite 
 ludicrous ! I advised her to resist. She wrote to 
 say that resistance was useless, but that she 
 would fly with me, and threw herself on my 
 protection. We shall have £200 a year. When 
 we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon 
 Love. Gratitude and admiration all demand 
 that I should love her for every Soon afterward 
 he confessed to Hogg that he was embarrassed 
 and melancholy. " I never was so fit for calm 
 argument as now. This, I fear, more resembles 
 excited action than inspired passion." 
 
 In contriving the marriage he had the help 
 of his cousin, Charles Grove. He arranged with 
 Harriet that he should meet her at a coffee-house 
 in Mount Street early in the morning about August 
 24. The exact date is uncertain. There he and 
 his cousin had breakfast. Afterwards Harriet 
 
 48 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 appeared, and they all three drove off to the inn 
 from which the coach started. There they had 
 to wait till evening ; and then set off for Edin- 
 burgh, where they were married on August 28. 
 
 It was all fatally easy ; and there is a curious 
 irony in the fact that Shelley, who had often 
 argued against marriage, never came so near to 
 reducing it to an absurdity as when he, a boy of 
 nineteen, found it possible to tie himself to a girl 
 of sixteen, because he wished to preserve her from 
 being sent back to school. But to the contention 
 that marriage is made too easy, it may be answered 
 that its consummation is even easier. 
 
 The bride and bridegroom were at once in 
 straits for money. Timothy Shelley wrote to 
 Hogg's father saying that his son had withdrawn 
 himself from his protection and set off for Scotland 
 with a young female. He would give Shelley no 
 money, and Mr. Westbrook followed suit. But 
 Shelley was never much troubled by want of 
 money. He got some from his good-natured 
 uncle Pilfold, who said that it was all very well 
 to be confoundedly angry, but that to stop the 
 supplies was a great deal too bad. In the relations 
 between Shelley and his wife there were at first 
 no threats of future disaster. He seems to have 
 been quite easy with her, if not in any ecstasy 
 of happiness. In a few days Hogg joined them 
 at Edinburgh, and saw Harriet for the first time. 
 He says that she was " radiant with youth, health, 
 and beauty." Shelley hailed him with delight, 
 
 4 49 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and said they must never part again. He got a 
 bedroom in the same house with them and had 
 plenty of opportunity for observing Harriet 
 His account of her is very favourable. She was 
 not stupid, or silly, or ill-tempered, or tactless, 
 and she was well educated for her age and sex 
 and social position. 
 
 " I have seldom, if ever," says Hogg, " met 
 with a girl who had read so much as she had." 
 Her favourite reading was moral tales, and she 
 read aloud incessantly. She never ceased of her 
 own accord, but only on some interruption. If 
 anyone entered the room she stopped, but began 
 again the moment he left. She also read very 
 well, with a clear, distinct, and agreeable voice. 
 And it was as pleasant to look at her as to listen 
 to her, for " she was always pretty, always bright, 
 always blooming ; smart, usually plain in her 
 neatness ; without a spot, without a wrinkle, not 
 a hair out of place. The ladies said of her that 
 she always looked as if she had just that moment 
 stepped out of a glass case." 
 
 Shelley sometimes went to sleep while she read, 
 and then she would call him an inattentive wretch. 
 There is no doubt that she tried to be a good wife 
 to him, and was one, though her housekeeping 
 was not good. But he, who would make his 
 dinner off a loaf of bread in the street, was not 
 troubled by that. She adopted his ideas and even 
 his ways of speech. If she liked a place she would 
 say, like him, that she would stay there for ever. 
 
 50 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 One peculiarity Harriet had. Shelley, in a letter 
 to Miss Hitchener, told how she had threatened 
 to commit suicide. This was not the only time 
 that she spoke of it. She would ask Hogg whether 
 he had ever thought of destroying himself. " She 
 often discoursed of her purpose of killing herself 
 some day or other, and at great length, in a calm, 
 resolute manner. . . . She spoke of self-murder 
 serenely before strangers . . . and she looked 
 so calm, so tranquil, so blooming, and so hand- 
 some, that the astonished guests smiled." 
 
 Shelley, Harriet and Hogg stayed five weeks in 
 Edinburgh, and then they went to York. When 
 they reached York, Shelley felt that he must get 
 some money somehow ; so he determined to see his 
 father. " I have written frequently to this thought- 
 less man," he told Miss Hitchener, "and am now 
 determined to visit him, to try the force of truth." 
 
 On October 19 he was at Cuckfield staying with 
 his uncle Pilfold, and there he saw Miss Hitchener. 
 It is uncertain whether he saw his father, but he 
 got no money from him, and even his mother was 
 against him. While he was in Sussex two cala- 
 mities happened. Eliza Westbrook joined Harriet 
 at York, and Hogg attempted to seduce Harriet. 
 Shelley was apt to imagine strange things and to 
 magnify what he did not imagine ; but his accounts 
 of Hogg's treachery seem to prove that it was 
 real. 1 He tells Miss Hitchener about it in a 
 
 1 I have some doubts myself ; but will not enlarge this 
 book with a discussion on a matter of no great importance. 
 
 51 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 series of letters written after he had returned to 
 York, and it is clear that he was much distressed, 
 though he got some romantic excitement out of 
 his distress. Harriet behaved very well through- 
 out, and Shelley was pleased and touched by her 
 behaviour. She had been heroic in her resistance 
 to the " resistless and pathetic eloquence of Hogg, 
 in whom, alas ! virtue had lost one of its defenders 
 and vice had gained a proselyte." Shelley par- 
 doned Hogg " freely, fully and completely," and 
 there was no open rupture in their friendship ; 
 but Shelley had the sense to see that they could 
 no longer live together. 
 
 Without saying anything to Hogg they left 
 York suddenly for Keswick, a place chosen by 
 Harriet and Eliza, who controlled Harriet's choice 
 in most things. She had good reason to dislike 
 Hogg and we need not believe all that he says 
 against her ; but it is clear that she was tiresome 
 and unwise, and it was unfortunate that Shelley 
 did not flee with his wife from her, as he had fled 
 from Hogg. Hogg tells us that she was very 
 plain, though Harriet thought her beautiful ; her 
 face scarred with smallpox and the colour of rice 
 boiled in dirty water. Her eyes were dark, but 
 dull ; her hair black and glossy, but coarse ; and 
 she spent a great part of the day brushing it. But 
 this may have been an excuse to leave the bride 
 and bridegroom together. Unfortunately when 
 she was with them she did mischief. She had 
 always managed Harriet and could not break 
 
 52 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 herself off the habit, even if she tried. After the 
 fashion of that time she assumed that Harriet's 
 health was delicate, and began to talk of her nerves. 
 Whenever it was proposed that anything should 
 be done, she would cry, " Good gracious, what 
 would Miss Warne say ? " Miss Warne was a 
 friend of Eliza's, and a kind of Mrs. Harris, though 
 with a real existence, a silent authority always 
 quoted in support of Eliza's wishes. Shelley at 
 first tried to make the best of her. " She is," he 
 told Miss Hitchener, " a woman rather superior 
 to the generality. She is prejudiced ; but her 
 prejudices I do not consider unvanquishable. 
 Indeed I have already conquered some of them." 
 Yet he did not make it plain that he meant to be 
 master in his own house, and that Eliza was only 
 a visitor. He was always ready to impose on 
 himself and others burdens too heavy to be borne, 
 and he never knew how to get rid of them. 
 
 At Keswick Shelley took a small furnished 
 house called Chesnut Cottage, with a view of Der- 
 wentwater and Bassenthwaite. He corresponded 
 lavishly with Miss Hitchener and did not break off 
 communication with Hogg. 
 
 He still thinks marriage " an evil of immense 
 and extensive magnitude " ; but with unexpected 
 sagacity he sees that a previous reformation in 
 himself — and that a general and a great one — is 
 requisite before it may be remedied. He wishes 
 there was no difference of sex. " These detestable 
 
 53 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 distinctions will surely be abolished in a future 
 state of being." He conjectures that his friend- 
 ship with Miss Hitchener may have begun in a 
 former existence. "The creation of the soul at 
 birth is a thing I do not like." He heard from 
 Captain Pilfold that his father and grandfather 
 intended to propose to him that, if he would 
 consent to entail the estate on his eldest son, he 
 should receive an allowance of £2,000 a year. The 
 very suggestion that for a bribe he would be 
 prepared to "entail £120,000 of command over 
 labour, of power to remit this, to employ it for 
 beneficent purposes," on one whom he did not 
 know, filled him with indignation. Those who 
 cannot be bribed into an act of dishonesty are not 
 rare ; but Shelley was not asked to do anything 
 that most honest men would consider wrong ; and 
 his refusal, at a time when he had very little money, 
 proves that a scrupulous conscience was not a 
 mere luxury to him. 
 
 On December 13 Shelley wrote to his father 
 a conciliatory letter. He had the sincerest wish, 
 he said, "of being again on those terms with 
 you which existed some time since," though he 
 could make no promise of concealing his opinions 
 in political or religious matters. 
 
 Timothy Shelley answered in the same spirit. 
 Meanwhile Mr. Westbrook agreed to allow Harriet 
 £200 a year, and Timothy promised the same sum 
 to Shelley. But he added that he did it to prevent 
 him from cheating strangers. In spite of many 
 
 54 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 attempts and negotiations, the father and son 
 could not be friends. No doubt Timothy resented 
 Shelley's airs of moral superiority, and took this 
 opportunity of letting him know that he was no 
 better than he should be. 
 
 At Keswick Shelley made the acquaintance of 
 Southey, whom he was anxious to know. Before 
 he met him, he determined to reproach him for 
 his tergiversation. Once bigotry, tyranny, and 
 law had been hateful to him ; but now the con- 
 stitution of England was " inflated with the prosti- 
 tuted exertions of his pen." However, they got 
 on well enough at their first meeting. Shelley 
 found that Southey was still an advocate of liberty 
 and equality, looking forward to " a state when 
 all shall be perfected, and matter become subjected 
 to the omnipotence of mind/' But for the present 
 he was an advocate for existing establishments 
 and against Catholic emancipation and parlia- 
 mentary reform. Shelley differed from him, of 
 course, but found him a great man and a man of 
 virtue, though without great reasoning powers. 
 Southey took kindly to Shelley. "There is a 
 man at Keswick," he wrote to a friend, " who acts 
 upon me as my own ghost would do. He is just 
 what I was in 1794. ... He has come to the 
 fittest physician in the world. At present he has 
 got to the Pantheistic stage of Philosophy ; and 
 in the course of a week, I expect he will be a 
 Berkeleyan, for I have put him upon a course of 
 Berkeley. ... I tell him that all the difference 
 
 55 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 between us is that he is nineteen, and I am thirty- 
 seven." 
 
 Southey held that ' ' expediency ought to be 
 made the ground of politics, but not of morals." 
 Shelley urged that " the most fatal error that ever 
 happened in the world was the separation of 
 political and ethical science," that " politics were 
 morals comprehensively enforced." But Southey 
 had " a very happy knack, when truth goes against 
 him, of saying, ' Oh, when you are as old as I am, 
 you will think like me.' " Shelley, who could 
 not understand the fears of Southey, was not sure 
 that he was " quite uninfluenced by venality." 
 " His writings solely support a numerous family. 
 His sweet children are such amiable creatures that 
 I almost forgive what I suspect. His wife is very 
 stupid. Mrs. Coleridge is worse." Shelley did 
 not meet Coleridge, and Coleridge afterwards 
 regretted it, thinking he might have been of more 
 use to Shelley than Southey was. Shelley was 
 less and less able to put up with Southey's opinions. 
 He is " corrupted by the world, contaminated by 
 custom." He called George IV the best monarch 
 that ever adorned a throne. So his conversation 
 lost its charm ; " except it be the charm of horror 
 at so hateful a prostitution of talents." 
 
 At the same time Shelley made the acquaint- 
 ance, by letter, of a man who was to have a great 
 influence upon his mind and fate. He had read 
 Godwin's " Political Justice " at Eton, and it had 
 come to be almost a Bible to him. William 
 
 56 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 Godwin was a man of strange character. He had 
 an honest intellect, but his mind was gradually 
 corrupted by his incapacity to live upon his own 
 income, and by incessant borrowing. He specu- 
 lated with the abstract coldness, but without the 
 wit, of a French philosopher of the eighteenth 
 century. He was, indeed, the representative of 
 French philosophy in England. His " Political 
 Justice " encouraged revolutionaries in England, 
 but he was not a revolutionary himself. The 
 French Revolution had frightened him, but it 
 did not make his opinions reactionary. It only 
 caused him to shrink from putting them in 
 practice. 
 
 Shelley had supposed that Godwin was dead. 
 He now discovered that he was alive, and in 
 January, 1812, wrote to him a long and fervent 
 letter. "I had enrolled your name," he wrote, 
 "in the list of the honourable dead. I had felt 
 regret that the glory of your being had passed 
 from this earth of ours. It is not so. You still 
 live, and I firmly believe are still planning the 
 welfare of humankind." He himself, he says, is 
 young and ardent in the cause of philanthropy 
 and truth. His course has been short but eventful. 
 He has seen much of human prejudice, suffered 
 much from human persecution. "Is it strange 
 that, defying prejudice as I have done, I should 
 outstep the limits of custom's prescription, and 
 endeavour to make my desire useful by a friend- 
 ship with William Godwin ? " Godwin answered, 
 
 57 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 complaining that the generalizing character of his 
 letter rendered it deficient in interest, and that 
 Shelley was not yet an individual to him. Shelley 
 was naturally well pleased to give information 
 about himself, and his next letter contained a 
 short but romantic autobiography, beginning 
 with his differences with his father. " I was 
 required to love because it was my duty to love ; 
 it is scarcely necessary to remark that coercion 
 obviated its own intention." He had published 
 " Zastrozzi " and "St. Irvyne," he says, before 
 the age of seventeen. He would send them to 
 poor Godwin, though " quite uncharacteristic of 
 me as I now am." " Political Justice " had cured 
 him of romance. He rose from its perusal a wiser 
 and a better man, finding that this universe of ours 
 was enough to excite the interests of the heart, 
 enough to employ the discussions of reason. No 
 sooner had he formed his principles than he was 
 anxious to disseminate their benefits. As a result 
 he had been twice expelled from Eton, but recalled 
 by the interference of his father. When he went 
 to Oxford he found Oxonian society insipid. He 
 could not descend to common life. "The sublime 
 interest of poetry, lofty and exalted achievements, 
 the proselytism of the world, the equalisation 
 of its inhabitants, were to me the soul of my 
 soul." 
 
 Two statements in this letter, one trivial, the 
 other more important, are certainly untrue. 
 Shelley did not publish his two romances before 
 
 58 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 he was seventeen, nor was he either once or twice 
 expelled from Eton. At least there is no evidence 
 in support of this statement. 
 
 Godwin replied, advising him to make it up with 
 his father, and to learn more before he set out to 
 reform the world. This produced another long 
 letter from Shelley full of delight that Godwin 
 should be his friend and adviser, the moderator 
 of his enthusiasm, the personal exciter and 
 strengthener of his virtuous habits. He had 
 known no tutor or adviser (not excepting his 
 father) from whose lessons and suggestions he had 
 not recoiled with disgust. He was not angry with 
 his father, but desired a reconciliation, though 
 not at the price of a renunciation of his opinions. 
 Yet he had never loved his father — " it was not 
 from hardness of heart, for I have loved and do 
 love warmly." 
 
 Godwin had told him that, being yet a scholar, 
 he ought to have no intolerable itch to become 
 a teacher. Shelley replied humbly to this, " I 
 hope in the course of our communication to acquire 
 that sobriety of spirit which is the characteristic 
 of true heroism." He would not again crudely 
 obtrude the question of atheism on the world. 
 But he wished at the same time to improve his 
 own powers and to diffuse true and virtuous 
 principles. In fact, not even Godwin could 
 induce him to give up writing and publishing what 
 he wrote. At the end of this letter, which is 
 dated January 16, 1812, he says that he is setting 
 
 59 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 off for Dublin in a few days. There were several 
 reasons for this change. In the first place, he 
 was getting tired of Keswick. "Though the 
 face of the country is lovely," he wrote to Miss 
 Hitchener, " the people are detestable. The 
 manufacturers, with their contamination, have 
 crept into the peaceful vale, and deformed the 
 loveliness of nature with human taint. The 
 debauched servants of the great families who 
 resort contribute to the total extinction of mor- 
 ality." Soon after he says, " We have now serious 
 thoughts of immediately going to Ireland. . . . 
 I am now writing an address to the poor Irish 
 Catholics." It was to be cheaply printed in large 
 sheets to be stuck about the walls of Dublin. So 
 he was drawn to Ireland by that desire to reform 
 the world against which Godwin had so vainly 
 warned him. 
 
 Miss Hitchener must come with them. " If 
 two hearts, panting for the happiness and liberty 
 of mankind, were joined by union and proximity, 
 as they are by friendship and sympathy," what 
 might they not do ? Harriet and Eliza longed to 
 see her. But had she any idea of marrying ? 
 He would answer the question for her. She had 
 not. Therefore she must come to live with them ; 
 for Harriet was above the meanness of jealousy. 
 He enclosed a poem about the devil, and insisted 
 that he believed in the immortality of the soul, 
 though he could not tell her why in a letter, at 
 least not clearly. He would get Godwin's opinion 
 
 60 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 on the question as soon as he could. Harriet also 
 wrote to Miss Hitchener, like a good girl, echoing 
 Shelley's wish that she would come with them 
 and also his sentiments. " How do I every day 
 hate the foolish customs of society that shackle 
 all our projects I " In the same letter she alludes 
 to a mysterious attack that was said to have been 
 made on Shelley on January 19. The story is 
 that Shelley, hearing a noise about seven o'clock 
 in the evening, went to his cottage door, and on 
 opening it received a blow which struck him 
 senseless. 1 The assailants fled and were never 
 found. People in the place thought Shelley had 
 imagined the assault. He himself made light of it 
 in writing to Miss Hitchener. No doubt it was 
 either a symptom or a cause of his desire to leave 
 Keswick. Miss Hitchener would not come with 
 them to Ireland, because she had to look after 
 some American pupils. But Shelley meant to go 
 to Wales after Ireland, and there he intended she 
 should join them. " I shall try to domesticate 
 in some antique feudal castle whose mouldering 
 turrets are fit emblems of decaying inequality and 
 oppression. . . . Perhaps you will bring the dear 
 little Americans and my mother, Mrs. Adams (a 
 lady whom Miss Hitchener called the mother of her 
 soul and in whose maternity Shelley was therefore 
 determined to share). Perhaps Godwin will 
 come. I shall try to induce him." 
 
 1 This account of the matter was got by Professor Dowden 
 from the Cumberland Pacquet of January 28, 1812. 
 
 6l 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Miss Hitchener was afraid of scandal ; but, said 
 Shelley, "let us attempt to form this Paradise 
 and defy the destroyers. Calm, consistent reason- 
 ing will defeat the most terrible." And then they 
 would inspire each other. " How consummate 
 then might not our publications be." Harriet 
 also wrote again, just like Shelley, but a very 
 pretty letter. " I know I am much younger than 
 yourself and that your judgment is much superior 
 to mine. . . . Yet if you knew how ardent we 
 are to have you near us I am sure you would 
 comply." Like a good wife Harriet was ready to 
 outdo Shelley himself in her ardour for Ireland. 
 " I am Irish ; I claim kinship with them. I have 
 done with the English. I have witnessed too 
 much of John Bull, and I am ashamed of him." 
 Then she goes on to speak of Eliza. " I did think, 
 before I was acquainted with you (she had never 
 seen Miss Hitchener), that she was the best and 
 most superior woman in the world." She ends : 
 " There seems to be sad work in Ireland ; but I 
 hope Percy will escape all prosecutions." 
 
 Shelley went to Ireland with the intention of 
 preaching a vague gospel of virtue, wisdom, toler- 
 ance, and benevolence to a wretched, ignorant, 
 distracted people. Before he started Godwin 
 reproved him for his presumption ; he told Shelley 
 that early authorship was detrimental to the cause 
 of general happiness. Shelley bestowed deep and 
 disinterested thought on the subject, but could not 
 agree with him. Therefore he had prepared an 
 
 62 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 address to the Catholics of Ireland, " consisting of 
 the benevolent and tolerant deductions of philo- 
 sophy reduced to the simplest language and 
 attempting to convey to the vulgar mind senti- 
 ments of universal philanthropy." 
 
 At the beginning of February, 1812, Shelley, 
 Harriet, and Eliza left Keswick for Dublin. They 
 had a rough journey, and reached Dublin on 
 February 12. On the way Shelley found time to 
 write a long letter to Miss Hitchener. He ended 
 by asking what she was to be called when she came 
 to live with them. " Eliza's name is ' Eliza,' 
 and ' Miss Hitchener ' is too long, too broad, and 
 too deep." Miss Hitchener answered that she 
 would like to be called Portia, and Harriet gently 
 protested. "I do not like the name you have 
 taken : but mind, only the name. You are fully 
 worthy of it ; but being a name so much out of the 
 common way, it excites so much curiosity in the 
 mind of the hearer. This is my only reason for 
 not liking it. I had thought it would have been 
 one more common and more pleasing to the ear." 
 Two days after their arrival Shelley wrote a long 
 letter to Miss Hitchener, in which his ardour 
 carried him from prose into blank verse. Here is a 
 passage on Time : " Proceed, thou giant, conquer- 
 ing and to conquer ! March on thy lonely way ! 
 The nations fall beneath thy noiseless footstep : 
 pyramids, that for millenniums have defied the 
 blast and laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush 
 to nought," etc. The news of the establishment 
 
 63 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 of a republic in Mexico incites him to undisguised 
 
 verse : — 
 
 "Cotopaxi, 1 let the sound 
 
 Through thy sister mountains ring, 
 Till each valley smile around 
 At the blissful welcoming." 
 
 Before Shelley's address was finished he was 
 writing another to follow it, "with downright 
 proposals for instituting associations for bettering 
 the conditions of humankind. . . . Oh, that I 
 may be a successful apostle of this true religion, 
 the religion of philanthropy ! At all events I will 
 have a debating society and see what will grow out 
 of that. This is the crisis for the attempt." Eliza 
 was set to collect passages from the works of Tom 
 Paine. These were to be published but were not 
 likely to excite the enthusiasm of Irish Catholics. 
 
 Eliza also " keeps our common stock of money, 
 for safety, in some hole or corner of her dress, 
 but we are not all dependent on her though she 
 gives it out as we want it." But money is of no 
 account. " Let us," he cries, " mingle our identi- 
 ties inseparably, and burst upon tyrants with the 
 accumulated impetuosity of our acquirements and 
 resolutions." 
 
 The address burst upon them on February 25. 
 Shelley's effort to write in the simplest language 
 improved his style, but his matter was not cal- 
 culated to please or interest the Irish. " I seek 
 
 1 He credits Cotopaxi with an ardour as disinterested as 
 his own. A volcano in Ecuador was not likely to take 
 much interest in a revolution in Mexico. 
 
 64 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 your confidence," he says, " not that I may betray 
 it, but that I may teach you to be happy, and wise, 
 and good." He then warns them against priest- 
 craft. They are to take care that, whilst one 
 tyranny is destroyed, another more fierce and 
 terrible does not spring up. " Take care of smooth- 
 faced impostors, who talk indeed of freedom, 
 but who will cheat you into slavery." The address 
 is long, and concludes with the statement that 
 the writer has come to Ireland " to spare no pains 
 where expenditure may purchase your real benefit." 
 Writing to Godwin, Shelley explained that he 
 used expenditure here in a moral sense. Some 
 Irishmen, it is said, preferred to take the word in 
 its ordinary meaning. 
 
 Writing to Miss Hitchener on February 27, 
 Shelley said that 400 copies of the address had been 
 distributed and had created a sensation of 
 wonder in Dublin. " I stand at the balcony 
 of our window and watch till I see a man who 
 looks likely : I throw a book to him." Harriet 
 adds : "I'm sure you would laugh were you to see 
 us give the pamphlets. We throw them out of 
 window and give them to men that we pass in 
 the streets. For myself I am ready to die of 
 laughter when it is done, and Percy looks so grave. 
 Yesterday we put one into a woman's hood of a 
 cloak. She knew nothing of it and we passed 
 her. I could hardly get on, my muscles were so 
 irritated." 
 
 Shelley had in his mind a plan for proselytizing 
 5 65 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 the young men at Dublin College. " Those who 
 are not entirely given up to the grossness of dis- 
 sipation are perhaps reclaimable." He soon fell 
 out of conceit with the Irish. " Good principles 
 are scarce here," he complained. ' The public 
 papers are either oppositionist or ministerial. 
 One is as contemptible and narrow as the other. 
 I wish I could change this. I, of course, am 
 hated by both these parties. ... I have met with 
 some waverers between Christianity and Deism. 
 I shall attempt to make them reject all the bad 
 and take all the good of the Jewish books. I have 
 often thought that the moral sayings of Jesus 
 Christ might be very useful, if selected from the 
 mystery and immorality which surrounds them ; 
 it is a little work I have in contemplation." 
 
 On February 28 he went to a meeting on Catholic 
 Emancipation and spoke for more than an hour 
 after O'Connell. He was cheered when he said that 
 he blushed for England, but hissed when he spoke 
 of religion, though he did so in terms of respect. 
 
 The proposals for an association of philan- 
 thropists to accomplish the regeneration of Ireland 
 appeared on March 2. Its immediate objects 
 were stated to be Catholic Emancipation and the 
 Repeal of the Union. Shelley did not think that 
 Catholic Emancipation would do much for the 
 liberty and happiness of the Irish, but he was 
 inimical to all disqualifications for opinion. Also 
 he hears the teeth of the palsied beldame, Super- 
 stition, chatter, which naturally gives him pleasure. 
 
 66 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 Most of the proposals are very vague. They 
 contain many lofty sentiments, but do not urge 
 the doing of anything in particular. The members 
 of the association are to employ the same means 
 that he employs, and he would like those who are 
 favourably inclined towards his project to com- 
 municate personally with him. 
 
 But he was growing more and more discouraged, 
 and longed to be with Miss Hitchener and Peace. 
 His association proceeds but slowly, and he fears 
 it will not be established. Prejudices are so 
 violent that more hate him as a freethinker than 
 love him as a votary of freedom. 
 
 On March 4 Godwin wrote him a long letter 
 protesting against his design of forming an associa- 
 tion. " If I may be allowed to understand my 
 book on ' Political Justice,' its pervading principle 
 is that association is a most ill-chosen and ill- 
 qualified mode of endeavouring to promote the poli- 
 tical happiness of mankind." "Does it not follow 
 that you have read my writings very slightly ? " 
 
 Godwin then states very clearly the chief de- 
 fect in Shelley's understanding, a defect which he 
 got from the cold yet daring philosophers of 
 the eighteenth century. " One principle that I 
 believe is wanting in you, and all our too-fervent 
 and impetuous reformers, is the thought that 
 almost every institution or form of society is good 
 in its place, and in the period of time to which 
 it belongs." Shelley had no historical sense. He 
 never understood that all the institutions which he 
 
 67 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 hated had been made by men of the same nature 
 as those whom he wished to deliver from such 
 institutions. 
 
 Godwin also told him that he did well to write 
 much, but not to publish yet. " It is beautiful 
 to correct our errors, to make each day a comment 
 on the last, and to grow perpetually wiser ; but 
 all this need not be done before the public." The 
 letter ended with a pleasant rebuke. "To des- 
 cend from great things to small, I can perceive 
 that you are already infected with the air of that 
 country. Your letter with its enclosures cost me, 
 by post, £1 is. 8d. ; and you say that you send 
 it in this way to save expense." 
 
 Shelley replied with meek impenitence. He 
 knows that he is vain ; but he believes that the 
 line of conduct he is now pursuing will produce a 
 preponderance of good. He has not read God- 
 win's writings slightly ; but " Political Justice " 
 had been published in 1793, and men had not ceased 
 to fight, nor had vice or misery vanished from the 
 earth. From this he infers that the discussion, 
 reading, inquiry, and perpetual communication, 
 which Godwin recommended in that book, will 
 not avail to improve the lot of mankind. Hence 
 his project for a Philanthropic Association. His 
 address was designed to operate on the Irish mob, 
 and to awaken a moral sense in them. " Might not 
 an unadorned display of moral truth, suited to 
 their comprehensions, produce the best effects." 
 
 Godwin feared that Shelley would bring calami- 
 
 68 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 ties on himself and the Irish people. " Shelley," 
 he wrote, " you are preparing a scene of blood ! " 
 But Godwin took this adventure too seriously. 
 Shelley talked to the Irish about things of which 
 they knew and cared nothing, and they paid no 
 heed to him. It was not likely that the arguments 
 of an English boy would cause them to desert 
 their national and persecuted faith. "I do not 
 like Lord Fingal, or any of the Catholic aristocracy," 
 Shelley wrote to Miss Hitchener. Nor did he like 
 Curran when he came to know him ; for Curran, 
 when he should have been talking of reason and 
 tolerance and freedom, only made jokes. " I 
 may not possess sufficient taste to relish humour," 
 Shelley wrote to Godwin, " or his incessant comi- 
 cality may weary that which I possess." He never 
 had a sense of humour, for that is the result of a 
 joyful sense of the imperfection of this life ; and 
 Shelley to the end of his days remained impatient 
 of everything imperfect. It was in Ireland that he 
 first became a vegetarian ; and that, together with 
 an Irish servant he took back with him across 
 the Channel, was the chief result of his visit. 
 
 He, Harriet, and Eliza left Dublin for Holyhead 
 on April 4, 1812. On April 18 he wrote to Miss 
 Hitchener from Rhayader in Radnorshire, where 
 he had stayed the summer before. He was going 
 to take a house with two hundred acres of arable 
 land, and hoped to pay the rent by farming. " The 
 end of June," he said, ". is the time fixed for our 
 meeting. Oh that the hours which divide that 
 
 69 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 time from the present may roll fast ! " He proposes 
 that she should bring her father with her, and that 
 he should manage the farm. It appears that about 
 this time some scandal was talked about Shelley 
 and Miss Hitchener, to whom Mrs. Pilfold had 
 mentioned it. "It raises a smile of bitterness at 
 the world," he wrote to his Portia, " when I think 
 on the only possible report which Mrs. Pilfold can 
 have treated you with. What will she have 
 recourse to next. / unfaithful to my Harriet ! 
 You a female Hogg ! Common sense should 
 laugh such an idea to scorn, if indignation would 
 wait till it could be looked upon ! " 
 
 " I have much to talk to you of," he says to 
 Miss Hitchener, "innate passions, God, Christian- 
 ity, etc., when we meet. Would not ' co-existent 
 with our organisation ' be a more correct phrase for 
 passions than ' innate ' ? I think I can prove to you 
 that our God is the same." Alas, passions do not 
 become less dangerous, even if we say that they are 
 co-existent with our organization instead of innate. 
 
 They were not to meet at Rhayader, for Shelley 
 could not find the required security for the pur- 
 chase money of the estate. He wrote there a 
 poem of some length and more merit, perhaps, 
 than any of his earlier verses, in which he exulted 
 in his present happiness compared with his grief of 
 
 a year ago. 
 
 " How do I feel my happiness ? 
 I cannot tell, but they may guess 
 Whose every gloomy feeling gone, 
 Friendship and passion feel alone." 
 
 70 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 The construction here is confused, but the lan- 
 guage is simple ; and the metre is already handled 
 with some promise of his future triumphs in it. 
 But the poem, like another written a few months 
 later, is mainly interesting because it proves him 
 to have been still quite happy with Harriet and 
 indeed thoroughly in love with her. 
 
 They went from Rhayader to Lynmouth, then 
 perhaps the most beautiful place in England. 
 There they took a cottage, and there, at last, 
 in July, 1812, Miss Hitchener came to live with 
 them ; but they called her Bessie, not Portia. 
 
 With her Shelley used to set little watertight 
 boxes, containing his " Declaration of Rights," 
 sailing in the sea. The declaration contained 
 his political creed in thirty-one articles. He also 
 attached it to fire balloons, which he set off in the 
 evening. Thus he was able to give simultaneous 
 pleasure both to the child and the revolutionary 
 in himself. At Lynmouth also he was writing 
 " Queen Mab," the first of his works in which 
 there is any promise of a great poet. " The 
 Past, the Present, and the Future," he wrote, 
 " are the grand and comprehensive topics of this 
 poem. I have not yet half-exhausted the second 
 of them." 
 
 In August Shelley's Irish servant, Dan Healey, 
 was arrested for posting the Declaration of Rights 
 about Barnstaple, and was fined £200. Shelley 
 could not raise the money, and in default of pay- 
 ment Healey was sent to prison for six months. 
 
 7i 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 The Mayor of Barnstaple wrote to the Home 
 Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, about Shelley, and it 
 was decided that he should be watched but not 
 prosecuted. Shelley, having made what provision 
 he could for his servant in gaol, left Lynmouth 
 suddenly and went to Tremadoc on the coast of 
 Carnarvonshire. The unfortunate Godwin, who 
 had been pressed to pay him a visit, took him at 
 his word, and after a slow and unpleasant journey 
 from Bristol by sea, arrived at Lynmouth to 
 find Shelley and his family departed. All his 
 life he had this habit of making sudden flights 
 from places where he had vowed to live for ever. 
 When he found another eternal abode his books, 
 Hogg tells us, were at once dispatched thither, 
 " but with so wild a precipitance and^such head- 
 long hurry that ancients and moderns alike missed 
 their way." Tremadoc was a little town on land 
 that had been lately reclaimed from the sea by a 
 Mr. Madock and took its name from him. He 
 had the design to recover more land by building a 
 great embankment nearly a mile long across the 
 estuary which there runs in from the coast. This 
 was almost finished when Shelley came there in 
 September, 1812, but there were engineering diffi- 
 culties over the last piece, and Mr. Madock was 
 running short of money. Shelley took his house, 
 Tanyrallt, which was beautifully placed above 
 the valley. "The rent," he said, "is large; 
 but it is an object with us that they allow it to 
 remain unpaid till I am of age." The embank- 
 
 72 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 ment, as a piece of scientific philanthropy, roused 
 him to enthusiasm. He tried to raise money in the 
 neighbourhood, promised £100 himself, and early 
 in October went with his three companions to 
 London mainly with the object of raising more 
 money. In London he met Godwin for the first 
 time, and saw much of him. It is not known 
 whether he also saw Godwin's daughter, Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. Hogg was now in London and 
 the pupil of a Special Pleader in the Middle Temple. 
 He had known nothing of Shelley's movements, 
 and it was a complete surprise to him when Shelley 
 rushed into his room one evening early in Novem- 
 ber. He looked "as he had always looked, wild, 
 intellectual, unearthly ; like a spirit that had 
 just descended from the sky ; like a demon risen 
 at that moment out of the ground." The next day 
 Hogg went to see them all at their hotel. Shelley 
 did not say a word about Ireland, but was full of 
 the Tremadoc project. He had no success with 
 it. " In Sussex," he wrote to Madock's agent, " I 
 meet with no encouragement. They are a parcel 
 of cold, selfish, calculating animals, who seem to 
 have no other aim or business on earth but to eat, 
 drink and sleep ; but in the meanwhile my fervid 
 hopes, my ardent desires, my unremitting personal 
 exertions (so far as my health will allow) are all 
 engaged in that cause, which I will desert but 
 with my life." One cannot see why the Sussex 
 people should have spent money on this Welsh 
 embankment ; but whatever interested Shelley at 
 
 73 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 the moment seemed to him the most important 
 matter in the world. He had already lost his 
 enthusiasm for Miss Hitchener. Hogg's account 
 of the matter is that " at first she possessed some 
 influence over the young couple, but the charming 
 Eliza would not tolerate any influence but her 
 own. She had worked upon Harriet's feelings, 
 and the good Harriet had succeeded in making 
 his former favourite odious to Bysshe." No doubt 
 also the angel of the letters ceased to appear an 
 angel in the house. It would have been impossible 
 for her, whatever her virtues, to live up to Shelley's 
 opinion of her. We know no harm of Miss 
 Hitchener. Hogg says that she had a prim, formal, 
 didactic manner and speech. No doubt Shelley in 
 four months of close intercourse found her a bore ; 
 and a bore very soon became a fiend incarnate to 
 him. We do not know all the stages of the affair, 
 but it was determined in London that Miss Hitchener 
 should go. Hogg tells us that he went to see 
 them one Sunday morning, and that Miss Hitchener 
 was to go that evening. Shelley was engaged. 
 Harriet had a headache ; so Hogg was condemned 
 to take the two spinsters out for a walk. He went 
 into St. James's Park with a lady on each arm. 
 They quarrelled with each other across him. 
 " The lovely Eliza attacked the foe with haughty 
 contempt ; the bearded preceptress defended her- 
 self and offended her enemy with meek contumacy. 
 But after a while the quarrel ceased and Miss 
 Hitchener talked to Hogg about the rights of 
 
 74 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 woman. This was a favourite subject with her 
 and she wrote a poem on it beginning — 
 
 " All, all are men — women and all ! " 
 
 which Shelley would recite years afterwards and 
 which even he found amusing. 
 
 They returned to the house and the day passed 
 tranquilly. At tea Hogg turned the conversation 
 again to the rights of woman. " The Goddess 
 of Reason began incontinently to lecture with 
 fluency and animation. Presently Bysshe quitted 
 his chair and came and stood before her, listening 
 with attention, and looking enthusiastic, as if 
 his former interest had in some measure revived. 
 The sisters eyed him with manifest displeasure, as 
 a person holding treasonable communication with a 
 public enemy." She took her leave, Hogg says, 
 ' ' freely, quietly, and civilly." In December Shelley 
 wrote of her to Hogg in these terms : — 
 
 " The Brown Demon, as we call our late tor- 
 mentor and schoolmistress, must receive her stipend. 
 I pay it with a heavy heart and an unwilling hand ; 
 but it must be so. She was deprived, by our 
 misjudging haste, of a situation where she was 
 going on smoothly : and now she says that her 
 reputation is gone, her health ruined, her peace 
 of mind destroyed by my barbarity ; a complete 
 victim to all the woes mental and bodily that 
 heroine ever suffered. This is not all fact, but 
 certainly she is embarrassed and poor, and we 
 being in some degree the cause, we ought to obviate 
 
 75 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 it. She is an artful, superficial, ugly, herma- 
 phroditical beast of a woman, and my astonish- 
 ment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste 
 was never so great as after living four months 
 with her as an inmate. What would Hell be were 
 such a woman in Heaven ? " 
 
 Thus it appears that Shelley was just to her in 
 action but not in thought. He saw that he had 
 been a fool for thinking her an angel, but not that 
 his disgust for her was a mere reaction from his 
 former raptures. In that disgust he indulged 
 himself without restraint according to his habit. 
 And he was as ready to imagine her a melodramatic 
 villain as if she had been his father. "She is a 
 woman of desperate views and dreadful passions," 
 he said, " but of cool and undeviating revenge." 
 She was, of course, nothing of the kind. She seems 
 to have remembered Shelley with kindness. She 
 became a schoolmistress again and found success 
 in the calling which she ought never to have left. 
 
 Shelley returned to Wales on November 13. 
 There was much distress at Tremadoc that winter 
 and he was active among the poor, " visiting them 
 in their humble abodes and supplying them with 
 food, raiment, and fuel." But he was growing 
 tired of Wales. "It is the last stronghold," he 
 wrote, "of the most vulgar and commonplace 
 prejudices of aristocracy. Lawyers of unexampled 
 villainy rule and grind the poor, whilst they cheat 
 the rich. . . . The poor are as abject as slaves, 
 and the rich as tyrannical as bashaws." The 
 
 76 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 embankment business began to irk him. " I 
 have been teased to death for the last fortnight," 
 he wrote to Hogg. "... I allude to the embank- 
 ment affairs, in which 1 thoughtlessly engaged ; 
 for when I come home to Harriet I am the happiest 
 of the happy." In the same letter he says that 
 
 ' Queen Mab " has gone on but slowly, but i? 
 nearly finished. " They have teased me out of all 
 poetry." He was not anxious now for a recon 
 ciliation with his family. " I question if intimacy 
 with my relations would add at all to our tran- 
 quillity. They would be plotting and playing 
 the devil, or showing us to some people who 
 would do so ; or they would be dull ; or they 
 would take stupid likes or dislikes ; and they 
 certainly might cramp our liberty of movement.' ' 
 He was very indignant at the sentence passed 
 upon Leigh Hunt for his famous libel upon the 
 Prince Regent. "He wrote to me," says Hunt, 
 
 'making me a princely offer." But Hunt would 
 take no money from his friends and sympathizers. 
 Shelley discussed politics in his letters to Hogg. 
 " Perhaps you will say that my Republicanism 
 is proud ; it certainly is far removed from pot-house 
 democracy, and knows with what a smile to hear 
 the servile applauses of an inconsistent mob. 
 But though its cheeks could feel without a blush 
 the hand of insult strike, its soul would shrink 
 neither from the scaffold nor the stake, nor from 
 those deeds and habits which are obnoxious to 
 slaves in power." His love of mankind in the 
 
 77 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 abstract caused him to dislike most individual 
 men because they did not love each other. 
 
 Shelley left Tremadoc because of an outrage 
 as doubtful and mysterious as that which befell 
 him at Keswick. Harriet's story is that on the 
 night of February 26, when they had been in bed 
 about half an hour, Shelley heard a noise below. 
 He went downstairs with two pistols, which he 
 had loaded that night expecting to have occasion for 
 them. He heard footsteps and followed them from 
 one room, to another. Then a man fired at him 
 but missed. Shelley fired in reply, but there was 
 only a flash in the pan. The man then knocked 
 Shelley down. In the struggle Shelley fired his 
 second pistol which, he thought, wounded the 
 man in the shoulder, for he uttered a shriek and 
 cried, " By God, I will be revenged. I will mur- 
 der your wife and will ravish your sister." He 
 then fled. The household assembled in the 
 parlour, where they waited for two hours. They 
 then returned to bed, all except Shelley and 
 his Irish man-servant, who stayed up. Three 
 hours later Harriet heard another report. She 
 ran downstairs and saw that Shelley's flannel 
 gown and the window-curtain had been shot 
 through. Shelley had sent the servant to see what 
 o'clock it was. While he was alone a man thrust 
 his arm through the glass of the window and fired 
 at him. Shelley's pistol again failed to go off. He 
 then struck at the man with an old sword which 
 he found in the house. The man tried to get the 
 
 7» 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 sword from him ; but fled as the servant returned, 
 and nothing more was seen or heard of him. 
 
 There has been some controversy as to whether 
 Shelley imagined the whole attack. A man, 
 Harriet says, in the neighbourhood, told the 
 tradespeople " that it was a tale of Shelley's to 
 impose upon them, that he might leave the country 
 without paying his bills. This they believed, and 
 none of them attempted to do anything towards 
 his discovery." But there is no doubt that 
 Shelley himself was in a distracted state the 
 next morning. He thought he saw a man's 
 face in the drawing-room window and shot the 
 glass to shivers. He thought he saw a ghost or 
 devil leaning against a tree and made a sketch of 
 it. Then he set fire to a wood to burn the 
 apparition. Poor Miss Hitchener has been sus- 
 pected of the outrage and also the Irish servant ; 
 Dut the last suspicion seems as groundless as the 
 first. The fact that Shelley went to bed with 
 loaded pistols shows that he expected some kind 
 of attack, and Harriet gives no reason for his 
 expectation. He was therefore in a state of appre- 
 hension, and it took very little to make him 
 imagine a great deal. The result of the affair 
 was a flight to Ireland the next day. Why they 
 went there we do not know. They reached Dublin 
 on March 9, but did not stay there long. Poor 
 Hogg had been asked to stay with them in Wales, 
 now he was asked to go to Dublin. He did so, and 
 found them flown to Killarney. Shelley heard of 
 
 79 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 his arrival and flew back to Dublin, but before he 
 got there Hogg had returned to London. Shelley 
 determined to follow him, and he and Harriet 
 reached London early in April, 1813. They had 
 left Eliza at Killarney in charge of Shelley's 
 library, and Hogg tells us that he " was evidently 
 weary of angelic guardianship, and exulted with 
 malicious pleasure that he had firmly planted her 
 at last. He made no secret of his satisfaction, 
 but often gave vent to his feelings with his accus- 
 tomed frankness and energy. The good Harriet 
 smiled in silence and looked very sly." 
 
 They were still quite happy together and Harriet 
 was now with child. Soon Eliza returned. Hogg 
 was uncertain whether she lived constantly with 
 them. '• It seemed rather that she went and came 
 in a hushed, mystical manner." Harriet was in 
 good health and spirits, but Eliza deplored the 
 state of her nerves. They stayed at an hotel in 
 Albemarle Street, and afterwards in lodgings. 
 
 Shelley had made friends with a vegetarian 
 family named Newton, and through them with 
 Mrs. Newton's sister, a Mrs. Boinville, the widow 
 of a French emigre. Mrs. Boinville, he said 
 years afterwards, seemed to him the most admir- 
 able specimen of a human being he had ever seen. 
 He soon had a rapturous friendship with her and 
 met many strange people at her home. She 
 and the Newtons were what we should now call 
 " cranks," and Shelley always liked cranks at 
 first, though he tired of them quickly. But they 
 
 80 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 were no doubt charming cranks, and kind to 
 Shelley with a sentimental, motherly kindness. 
 Hogg saw much of Shelley at this time and tells 
 us a good deal of his ways of life. How he would 
 make his meals in the street, buying a loaf and a 
 few pudding raisins when he felt hungry, and 
 eating them as he walked along. How he would 
 make little bread pellets and flick them at people 
 whom he met on his walks, hitting them usually 
 on the nose. How, though he and Harriet were 
 both vegetarians, they would provide a bad meat 
 meal for Hogg ; for Shelley, if asked to order 
 dinner, would say, " Ask Harriet," and Harriet 
 would say, "Whatever you please." But some- 
 times there was no meat and Harriet would 
 tell Shelley to buy a shilling's worth of penny 
 buns. He would then rush off with incredible 
 alacrity and return in an instant stumbling and 
 tumbling upstairs with the bag of buns open at 
 the top in his hand. He would not wear a great- 
 coat in the coldest weather and went bareheaded 
 as much as possible. Yet he was very fanciful 
 about his health. When he coughed he would 
 declare that he broke blood-vessels and spat blood ; 
 but this was all fancy. Hogg's story of his 
 elephantiasis illusion might be dismissed as an in- 
 vention if it were not confirmed by other evidence. 
 Hogg tells us that once in a crowded stage-coach 
 Shelley sat opposite an old woman with very 
 thick legs. He took it into his head that she had 
 the elephantiasis and that he had caught it from 
 6 81 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 her. He talked to his female friends about his 
 symptoms and consulted a surgeon, who told 
 him that he had not got it and could not have it. 
 But he would not be convinced. He was per- 
 petually examining his skin and the skin of others. 
 Mrs. Newton's daughter remembered that one 
 day as he was sitting in an arm-chair talking to 
 her father and mother he suddenly slipped down 
 to the ground twisting about like an eel. They 
 asked him what was the matter and he replied 
 in an impressive tone, " I have the elephantiasis." 
 Thomas Love Peacock, whom Shelley had prob- 
 ably first met in Wales the year before and who 
 now saw a good deal of him, says that he was 
 continually on the watch for symptoms of the 
 disease. " He would draw the skin of his own 
 hands, arms, and neck very tight, and if he dis- 
 covered any deviation from smoothness he would 
 seize the person next to him and endeavour by a 
 corresponding pressure to see if any corresponding 
 deviation existed. He often startled young ladies 
 at an evening party by this singular process, 
 which was as instantaneous as a flash of lightning." 
 Hogg tells us that he was always a great favourite 
 with ladies. They found his conversation enchant- 
 ing, and he would keep them up to all hours with 
 it, for he took no note of time. It was always dim- 
 cult to catch him, and when he was caught 
 and " turned over to the ladies with, Behold your 
 king ! to be caressed, courted, admired and flat- 
 tered, the King of beauty and fancy would too 
 
 82 
 
SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE 
 
 commonly bolt. . . . Unobserved and almost 
 magically he vanished." He reminded Hogg of 
 the goat which is said to vanish for one hour of 
 the twenty-four and to spend it in the Shades. 
 Hogg told him this legend, and it pleased him so 
 much that when he met a goat he would ask it 
 with penetrating glances, " What news from 
 Hades?" 
 
 A lady once remarked to Hogg that Shelley would 
 make terrible havoc if he were at all rakish. He 
 never was rakish, but he made havoc for all that, 
 through not knowing himself and the nature of 
 his own passions. But at this time he was still as 
 innocent in act as in mind and no one had any 
 reason to suspect him. 
 
 In June, 1813, Harriet was delivered of a healthy 
 girl, who was named Ianthe, like the heroine of 
 " Queen Mab." In July they went to Bracknell 
 in Berkshire to be near Mrs. Boinville ; and there 
 they were in the midst of vegetarians. In Septem- 
 ber Shelley wrote a sonnet to Ianthe in which 
 he spoke tenderly of Harriet, and they were still 
 happy together. After some wanderings they 
 returned to London in December. In the first 
 months of 1814 Shelley was often staying at 
 Bracknell with Mrs. Boinville and reading Italian 
 poetry with her and her daughter, Mrs. Turner. 
 Some doubt seems to have been raised about the 
 validity of Shelley's Scotch marriage during 
 his minority. So on March 24 he and Harriet 
 were married again in London. 
 
 83 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 " QUEEN MAB " 
 
 SHELLEY probably began "Queen Mab " 
 at Lynmouth in 1812, though fragments of 
 verse written before that time are said to be con- 
 tained in it. It was sent to the printers in the 
 spring of 1813. Two hundred and fifty copies of 
 it were printed and about seventy of these were 
 privately distributed in the summer. It was 
 never published in the ordinary way. Shelley 
 revised parts of it and the first two sections thus 
 revised were published in 1816, with " Alastor," 
 under the title of the " Daemon of the World." 
 No more of this revised version was published 
 until 1876. 
 
 " Queen Mab " is the first of Shelley's works 
 which shows any promise of his future greatness. 
 The musical opening is the best-known part of it, 
 and this has given it more reputation than it 
 deserves. The whole poem is not worth reading 
 for its own sake ; but it should be read by those 
 who wish to understand the nature and growth 
 of Shelley's mind. I shall treat it rather as a 
 document than as a work of art. 
 
 While writing " Queen Mab ' Shelley said : 
 
 84 
 
"QUEEN MAB" 
 
 "The Past, the Present, and the Future are the 
 grand and comprehensive topics of the poem." 
 The subject of " Queen Mab " is really the same 
 as the subject of " Prometheus Unbound " : the 
 past and present misery of mankind and their 
 future regeneration. The motto of " Queen Mab " 
 is Ecrasez V infante, and in Religion is the source 
 of all evil, like Jupiter in ' ' Prometheus. ' ' Religion 
 is to be superseded by the spirit ot Nature, as 
 Jupiter by Demogorgon in the later poem ; while 
 the Prometheus of " Queen Mab " is Ahasuerus, 
 the Wandering Jew, about whom Shelley had 
 already written both in verse and prose, and who 
 is introduced, perhaps, so that he may deliver 
 some of these earlier verses. 
 
 Shelley's main ideas and emotions changed 
 but little in the course of his life. Growth and 
 experience only gave him a greater power of 
 expressing them. From first to last his mind was 
 filled with a fierce impatience of our present 
 imperfection and a vast desire and hope for a 
 perfection to be. He always conceived of our 
 imperfection, not as a process of growth, but as 
 something imposed upon us by a malignant 
 external power, upon the fall of which we should 
 all at once become perfect. 
 
 In " Prometheus " he dramatized his ideas 
 of evil and good and made shadowy persons of 
 them. In " Queen Mab " they are still mere ab- 
 stractions, quite inadequate, of course, to account 
 for themselves and narrow with the narrowness 
 
 85 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 of a merely destructive philosophy. Even Shelley, 
 if he had lived in another age, would scarcely 
 have tried to make a poem out of material so 
 vast and vague ; but he began to write at a time 
 when the Romantic Revolution in poetry had 
 destroyed all the literary traditions and conven- 
 tions of the eighteenth century, while he himself 
 was still content with its abstractions. He took 
 all the romantic liberties, but had not got the 
 romantic love of concrete things. There was 
 nothing but his own inclination to suggest either 
 a particular subject or a particular treatment to 
 him, and by nature he was inclined to the extreme 
 of vagueness in both. He had two main desires, 
 one of the senses, the other of the soul ; and the 
 one so instantly suggested the other that he could 
 not distinguish between them. To him a beautiful 
 woman was the symbol of them illennium, and the 
 millennium meant the society of beautiful women. 
 Thus " Queen Mab " begins with a description 
 of Ianthe, a beautiful girl, asleep and watched over 
 by her lover. 1 While she sleeps the Fairy Queen, 
 Mab, appears to her in a chariot : — 
 
 "Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air; 
 Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, 
 And stop obedient to the reins of light." 
 
 1 His name is Henry, but we are not told this until 
 Ianthe wakes up in the last lines of the poem. In the 
 " Daemon of the World " Shelley names him at the begin- 
 ning, thinking, no doubt, that we are not likely to be 
 interested in his name just when we have done with him 
 and Ianthe. 
 
 86 
 
"QUEEN MAB" 
 
 Queen Mab descends from the chariot and 
 addresses Ianthe : — 
 
 ..." Soul of Ianthe, thou 
 Judged alone worthy of the envied boon, 
 That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits 
 Those who have struggled, and with resolute will 
 Vanquished Earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains, 
 The icy chains of custom, and have shone 
 The day-stars of their age ; Soul of Ianthe ! 
 
 Awake ! Arise ! " 
 
 We are given no particulars of Ianthe 's heroic 
 conduct, but have to take all her virtues on trust 
 as Shelley himself took the virtues of so many 
 ladies who charmed him in the course of his life 
 and who were, for a time, symbols to him of all 
 virtue and wisdom and delight. The soul of 
 Ianthe quits her body and travels away with Mab 
 in the magic car. There are descriptions of the 
 journey too vague to make much mark upon the 
 mind, but, like the vapours of an incantation, 
 promising clearer shapes of beauty in the future. 
 They come to the ruins of Palmyra and to Jeru- 
 salem, which gives Mab an opportunity for a 
 speech against the religion of the Jews. On other 
 pretexts she talks against kings, against war, and 
 against commerce. She has grown serious since 
 Mercutio knew her, and prefers sermons to practical 
 jokes. She gives a dismal account of the world 
 as it is ; and Ianthe asks whether there is any 
 hope for it. Mab replies that there is. At present 
 falsehood triumphs in religion. Religion is the 
 cause of all this evil and must be superseded 
 
 8 7 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 by the Spirit of Nature, " all-sufficing power." 
 " There is no God ! " she cries triumphantly, and 
 summons up the spirit of Ahasuerus, the Wander- 
 ing Jew, who contradicts her, painting a horrid 
 picture of Jehovah and giving a new and heroic 
 account of his own offence. 
 
 Ianthe is now to see the beautiful future, and 
 this is the best part of the poem. We are not 
 told, of course, how it is to come about, except 
 that Religion is to fall before the Spirit of Nature 
 as Jupiter falls before Demogorgon in " Prome- 
 theus." The result in both cases is a universal 
 harmony. Not only man but all nature becomes 
 kind and good. No tempest vexs the sea. The 
 deserts change to woods and cornfields ; and 
 where tigers once ate lambs, the daisy-spangled 
 lawn smiles : — 
 
 " To see a babe before his mother's door, 
 Sharing his morning meal 
 With the green and golden basilisk 
 That comes to lick his feet." 
 
 One of the most beautiful passages in English 
 poetry is that in " Prometheus " which describes 
 two halcyons, after the regeneration, feeding upon 
 nightshade berries without harm. In " Queen 
 Mab," too, we are told that — 
 
 " Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane 
 Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows." 
 
 But what a difference there is between the dull 
 and moralizing statement of the first poem and 
 the vivid incidents of the second. 
 
 88 
 
" QUEEN MAB " 
 
 The best lines in " Queen Mab " are those in 
 which Shelley tells us how passion and reason 
 are at one : — 
 
 " Reason was free ; and wild though Passion went 
 Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads, 
 Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers, 
 Yet like the bee returning to her queen, 
 She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, 
 Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, 
 No longer trembling at the broken rod." 
 
 At the end of the poem, and after an eloquent 
 passage proclaiming the immortality of the soul, 
 Queen Mab takes Ianthe back to her lover. Her 
 soul and body were united : — 
 
 " She looked around in wonder, and beheld 
 Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, 
 Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love, 
 And the bright beaming stars 
 That through the casement shone." 
 
 " Queen Mab " is written partly in blank verse, 
 partly in that irregular rhymeless verse which 
 Shelley got from Southey. In the versification 
 there is a great advance upon all his former poetry 
 and sometimes more than a promise of his future 
 music. He had freed himself of his rocking- 
 horse rhythms, and seldom relapsed into them 
 afterwards. 
 
 At this period he had not learnt to combine 
 reason with passion in his art any more than in 
 his life. He knew this himself and therefore 
 added a prose commentary of notes to his poem. 
 Some of these are mere rhetoric. Others are 
 
 8 9 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 closely reasoned and prove that he had already a 
 trained and masculine intellect. There is some 
 rhetoric in the note on wealth ; but it exposes 
 very clearly the still persisting fallacy that luxury 
 is "good for trade," and points out that money 
 is a good only when distributed with some approach 
 to equality, and a cause of impoverishment when 
 collected in a few hands. We are all supposed 
 to know this now ; and it was not a new discovery 
 even in Shelley's time, but now, as then, most 
 prosperous people are content to ignore it. Shelley 
 saw what danger there was in the accumulation 
 of money, saw that it was the chief danger that 
 threatened his country ; and in this he was more 
 sagacious at the age of twenty-one than many 
 statesmen of experience. 
 
 90 
 

 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 f" "^HERE has been much controversy about 
 * the rights and wrongs of Shelley's estrange- 
 ment from Harriet and flight with Mary Godwin. 
 I shall deal with the disputed points only so far 
 as they seem to me to concern Shelley's character. 
 We do not know enough to come to very certain 
 conclusions about the matter, and opposite con- 
 clusions have been based upon the facts we do 
 know. 
 
 Since Shelley married Harriet again in March, 
 1814, he cannot then have designed to separate 
 from her. Yet only a week before he had written 
 a letter to Hogg which proves that he was no 
 longer happy with her. " I have been staying 
 with Mrs. B(oinville) for the last month. I have 
 escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and 
 friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude 
 of myself. . . . My heart sinks at the view of 
 that necessity, which will quickly divide me from 
 the delightful tranquillity of this happy home — 
 for it has become my home. ... I have sunk 
 into a premature old age of exhaustion, which 
 
 9i 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 renders me dead to everything but the unenviable 
 capacity of indulging the vanity of hope, and a 
 terrible susceptibility to objects of disgust and 
 hatred. 
 
 " Eliza is still with us — not here ! — but will be 
 with me when the infinite malice of destiny forces 
 me to depart. I am now but little inclined to 
 contest this point. I certainly hate her with all 
 my heart and soul. It is a sight which awakens 
 an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, 
 to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I 
 may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. 
 I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking 
 the overflow of my unbounded abhorrence for 
 this miserable wretch. But she is no more than 
 a blind and loathsome worm that cannot see to 
 sting." 
 
 Then he quotes a stanza he has written, which, 
 he says, has no meaning : — 
 
 " Thy dewy looks sink in my breast ; 
 Thy gentle words stir poison there ; 
 Thou hast disturbed the only rest 
 That was the portion of despair ! 
 Subdued to Duty's hard control, 
 I could have borne my wayward lot : 
 The chains that bind this ruined soul 
 Had cankered then, but crushed it not." 
 
 Soon afterwards, moved by the same trouble, the 
 first real and bitter trouble he had ever known, 
 he wrote the first of his poems in which his genius 
 was clear : — 
 
 92 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 " Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, 
 
 Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even : 
 Away ! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, 
 And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights 
 of Heaven. 
 Pause not ! the time is past ! Every voice cries, 
 ' Away ! ' 
 Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle 
 mood : 
 Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat 
 thy stay : 
 Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. 
 
 Away, away ! to thy sad and silent home ; 
 Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth ; 
 Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, 
 And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. 
 The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around 
 thine head, 
 The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy 
 feet : 
 But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that 
 binds the dead, 
 Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou 
 and peace, may meet. 
 
 The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, 
 For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the 
 deep ; 
 Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows : 
 Whatever moves or toils or grieves hath its appointed 
 sleep. 
 Thou in the grave shalt rest : — Yet, till the phantoms flee 
 Which that house and heath and garden made dear to 
 thee e'erwhile, 
 Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are 
 not free 
 From the music of two voices and the light of one 
 sweet smile." 
 
 This is unlike the poetry of any other poet. 
 Some of the language is still conventional and 
 
 93 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 sentimental in meaning ; but the music trembles 
 and starts and rushes with misgiving and desire. 
 It expresses the conflict in Shelley's mind, the 
 bewildered ardour of youth that has lost its old 
 object and dare not fasten on a new one ; the 
 impatient hunger for a delight that seems to be 
 gone from life, and the despairing effort to accept 
 life without it. 
 
 In May he wrote a poem to Harriet in which he 
 speaks as if he had lost her love and only wished 
 to regain it : — 
 
 " Thy look of love has power to calm 
 
 The stormiest passion of my soul ; 
 
 Thy gentle words are drops of balm 
 
 In life's too bitter bowl ; 
 No grief is mine, but that alone 
 These choicest blessings I have known. 
 
 Harriet ! if all who long to live 
 In the warm sunshine of thine eye, 
 
 That price beyond all pain must give, — 
 Beneath thy scorn to die ; 
 
 Then hear thy chosen own too late 
 
 His heart most worthy of thy hate. 
 
 Be thou, then, one among mankind 
 Whose heart is harder not for state, 
 
 Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind, 
 Amid a world of hate ; 
 
 And by a slight endurance seal 
 
 A fellow-being's lasting weal. 
 
 For pale with anguish is his cheek, 
 
 His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim ; 
 
 Thy name is struggling ere he speak, 
 Weak is each trembling limb ; 
 
 In mercy let him not endure 
 
 The misery of a fatal cure. 
 
 94 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 Oh, trust for once no erring guide ! 
 
 Bid the remorseless feeling flee ; 
 'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride, 
 
 'Tis anything but thee ; 
 Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove 
 And pity if thou canst not love." 
 
 This poem seems to have more artifice than the 
 last, but it may be taken to prove that Shelley was 
 still loving or trying to love his wife, while fearing 
 that she had ceased to love him. There are 
 other words of his recorded to the same effect, and 
 we may take it that the fear passed into a belief. 
 But what grounds there were for it, or what 
 excuse, or by what means or stages they became 
 estranged from each other, we can only conjecture, 
 and that from slight materials. Harriet did not 
 feed her child, and Peacock says : "I have often 
 thought that if Harriet had nursed her own child, 
 and if the sister had not lived with them, the link 
 of their married life would not have been so 
 readily broken." Hogg tells us that Harriet lost 
 her intellectual interests and became very fond 
 of dress. Professor Dowden suggests that mother- 
 hood produced a natural change and development 
 in her character which dismayed Shelley. This is 
 likely enough. She was a school-girl when she 
 married and ready to be as much like a Shelley in 
 petticoats as she could. But when she became a 
 mother she became a woman with her own tastes 
 and thoughts different from his, and with a desire 
 to live her own life. If that was so, Shelley would 
 find that his wife was a different person from what 
 
 95 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 he had supposed, and not what he had bargained 
 for. This change is the danger of all very early 
 marriages ; but it was peculiarly dangerous in this 
 case, because Shelley was exacting to those whom 
 he loved. He could not be content with placid 
 affection from his wife. She must feel like him 
 and think like him ; kindle when he kindled, and 
 hate when he hated. It is likely enough that 
 Harriet, while still loving him, began to take his 
 ardours for granted and not very seriously ; to 
 betray absence of mind when he declaimed ; to 
 think more of the baby and her own clothes than 
 of his poetry. Any difficulty between them must 
 have been aggravated by the presence of Eliza, a 
 woman who meant well perhaps, but who had 
 nothing in common with Shelley and was deter- 
 mined not to lose her power over Harriet. Of 
 course Shelley ought to have got rid of her long 
 before ; but he had no common- sense in such 
 matters, and no contrivance in getting rid of 
 burdens that he could not bear. Eliza stayed on 
 until he loathed the sight of her, and Harriet had 
 not wit enough to see her own danger, or enter- 
 prise enough to put an end to it. She and Shelley 
 were just the couple to drift on without ever 
 speaking plain words to each other or facing the 
 situation together. It was no use for him to say 
 what he felt in verse, for she would think of verse 
 as a game which he played and not as a means of 
 telling the truth. Harriet was not a poet, and we 
 know nothing of what she felt during the process 
 
 9 6 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 of estrangement ; but it is likely that she suffered 
 as much as Shelley, though blindly and dumbly. 
 In April Eliza seems to have left them ; but 
 matters did not mend. We know nothing for 
 certain of what passed between them, but at the 
 beginning of July Harriet was in Bath, and 
 Shelley in London. From this fact it has been 
 concluded that there was some kind of formal 
 separation between them. It seems to be certain 
 that they did not separate by mutual consent, 
 and that Harriet was opposed to a separation ; 
 indeed a letter of hers, which I shall quote, goes 
 to prove that she did not regard their separation 
 as either final or formal. 
 
 But while she was in Bath a new and imminent 
 danger was threatening their married life. 
 
 Shelley, though in want of money himself, was 
 trying to find money for Godwin, who was always 
 in straits. Thus he often went to see Godwin at 
 his house in Skinner Street, and there he met Mary, 
 Godwin's daughter by Mary Wollstonecraft, his 
 first wife. Mary Godwin was then sixteen. She 
 was less beautiful than Harriet, but had many 
 charms, and an understanding far beyond Harriet's. 
 Shelley may have tried not to fall in love with her, 
 but he did fall in love with her, and she with him, 
 pitying him no doubt for troubles which he did 
 not hide from her. It seems probable that he 
 told her that Harriet had been unfaithful to him 
 and that he was not the father of a child with 
 which she was then pregnant. Afterwards he 
 7 97 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 owned himself mistaken about the child, but he 
 persisted in his belief that Harriet had been 
 unfaithful. The only authority for this belief 
 appears to be a statement made by Godwin in a 
 letter after her death. "The late Mrs. Shelley," 
 said Godwin, "turns out to have been a woman 
 of great levity. I know from unquestionable 
 authority, wholly unconnected with Shelley 
 (though I cannot with propriety be quoted for 
 this), that she had proved herself unfaithful to 
 her husband before their separation." This does 
 not amount to much, and against it we have the 
 expressed conviction of Peacock that " her con- 
 duct as a wife was as pure, as true, as absolutely 
 faultless as that of any who for such conduct was 
 held most in honour." We have also the state- 
 ment of Trelawny that he was " assured by the 
 evidence of the few friends who know both Shelley 
 and his wife — Hookham, who kept the great library 
 in Bond Street, Jefferson Hogg, Peacock, and one 
 of the Godwins — that Harriet was perfectly 
 innocent of all offence." 
 
 Indeed it seems to be doubtful whether Shelley 
 himself felt any certainty of Harriet's guilt before 
 his flight with Mary ; whether it was more than 
 fancy to which he sometimes gave way. 
 
 Peacock tells us that he saw Shelley when he was 
 full of his new passion for Mary, and that then 
 Shelley said to him, " Every one who knows me 
 must know that the partner of my life should be one 
 who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. 
 
 9 8 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 Harriet is a noble animal, but she can do neither." 
 Peacock then said, "It always appeared to me 
 that you were very fond of Harriet " ; and Shelley, 
 without affirming or denying this, answered, " But 
 you did not know how I hated her sister." Pro- 
 fessor Dowden remarks that "it is evident that 
 Shelley did not confide to Peacock the complete 
 story of his alienation from Harriet." But it is 
 strange that, if Shelley had so strong a reason for 
 ceasing to love Harriet, he should give another 
 and much weaker one. It seems more likely 
 that he knew Peacock would ridicule his fancy of 
 Harriet's unfaithfulness and therefore said nothing 
 of it. We have to remember that he was always 
 subject to delusions both about persons and 
 places. When he wished to leave a place where 
 he had sworn to live for ever, he would find there 
 was some danger to his life there ; and so, now 
 that he was drawn away from Harriet, he may 
 have found the same process of delusion that she 
 was unfaithful to him. I do not suggest that he 
 consciously invented the theory of her unfaith- 
 fulness to suit his own purposes ; but his mind 
 offered no resistance to fancies when they swarmed 
 in to encourage his prejudices or desires. He had 
 fancies against his father and against Miss 
 Hitchener ; and now that he had fallen in love 
 with Mary, it was likely enough that he should 
 have fancies against Harriet, which at one moment 
 he thought to be true and at another knew to be 
 false. If he had been convinced of her unfaith- 
 
 99 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 fulness he would surely have ceased all friendship 
 with her, strange as his ideas were about sexual 
 relations. But so far from breaking with her he 
 wrote to her frequently, as the following letter 
 from Harriet to Hookham, Shelley's publisher, 
 proves. It is dated July 7, 1814 : — 
 
 " You will greatly oblige me by giving the 
 enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, 
 but it is now four days since I have heard from 
 him, which to me is an age. Will you write by 
 return of post, and tell me what has become of 
 him, as I always fancy something dreadful has 
 happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell 
 me that he is well I shall not come to London ; 
 but if I do not hear from you or him I shall 
 certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful 
 state of suspense." 
 
 This is not the letter of a woman who has ceased 
 to love her husband or who is formally separated 
 from him. It reads as if she were afraid of his 
 infidelity, not conscious of her own. 
 
 Shelley by now was deep in love with Mary and 
 she with him. She is not to be blamed, I think, 
 for allowing herself to fall in love with a married 
 man. Her father and her mother had lived 
 together before they married, and Shelley could 
 quote Godwin as an authority for his own ideas 
 about the marriage tie. If Shelley told her that 
 his wife had been unfaithful to him, she would 
 
 100 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 consider, no doubt, that he was free to love 
 and be loved by another woman. And then 
 Shelley was the disciple and would-be benefactor 
 of her father. He was the most wonderful youth 
 in England and seemed the most unfortunate, 
 speaking like an angel exiled from his native 
 heaven. We do not know much of the progress 
 of their passion, but Hogg tells us how he first 
 saw them meet. He and Shelley called on God- 
 win on June 8. They found that Godwin was 
 out, and Shelley began to walk impatiently about 
 the room. " The door was partially and softly 
 opened. A thrilling voice called ' Shelley.' A 
 thrilling voice answered, ' Mary ! ' And he darted 
 out of the room, like an arrow -from the bow of the 
 far-shooting king. A very young female, fair and 
 fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, 
 wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in 
 London at that time, had called him out of the 
 room. . . . Her quietness certainly struck me, 
 possibly also, for I am not quite sure on this point, 
 her paleness and piercing look." 
 
 On July 7, the day on which Hookham received 
 the letter from Harriet which I have quoted, 
 Godwin appears to have got a suspicion, perhaps 
 from Hookham, that Shelley and Mary were too 
 fond of each other. He talked to Mary and 
 wrote to Shelley. The result of which was that 
 Shelley ceased to come to his house, and that 
 Mary made up her mind she could not be his, 
 though she would never cease to love him. But 
 
 101 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Shelley was only spurred to immediate action. 
 He wrote to Harriet asking her to come to London, 
 and she came on July 14. Then he seems to have 
 proposed a separation, to which, as she told 
 Peacock, she would not agree. She, expecting to 
 be delivered of a child in five months, was made 
 ill by the shock. Eliza nursed her and Shelley 
 was constantly with her, showing kindness. His 
 idea, apparently, was that by a mixture of kind- 
 ness and reason he might induce her to consent 
 to his new passion. At least that is Peacock's 
 account of the matter ; and it is confirmed by a 
 letter which Shelley wrote to her after his flight 
 with Mary and which I shall quote in due course. 
 Indeed from that letter he would seem to have 
 persuaded himself, or half-persuaded himself, 
 that she did consent ; and he took legal steps to 
 settle money on her before his flight. She, on 
 the contrary, believed that he was drawn away 
 from her by a passing fancy and by the arts of 
 Mary, and that he would come back to her. She 
 thought that Mary's chief attraction was her 
 mother's name. For this reason she probably 
 seemed to Shelley more complaisant than she was ; 
 and so gave him an excuse for believing, what he 
 wished to believe, that her opposition to a separa- 
 tion was not serious. She seems to have persisted 
 in her hope that he would come back to her for 
 some time after his flight with Mary, and had 
 many interviews with him. It was only by slow 
 degrees that she found she had lost him altogether. 
 
 102 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 We do not know what was the result of that 
 discovery upon her mind. We can only judge, 
 and that doubtfully, by the dreadful and obscure 
 event. 
 
 It has been assumed that Harriet was no wife 
 for him, even if she was faithful to him. But 
 that was not the view of Peacock, who knew them 
 both well, and who had no grudge against Shelley. 
 He says of Harriet that " She was fond of her 
 husband, and accommodated herself in every way 
 to his tastes. If they mixed in society, she 
 adorned it ; if they lived in retirement, she was 
 satisfied ; if they travelled, she enjoyed the change 
 of scene." She was not a woman of genius, but 
 genius would be indeed a misfortune if it made a 
 man incapable of living with any woman who 
 did not possess it ; and as a matter of fact we 
 know that Shelley was never passionately in love 
 with Harriet, and yet lived happily with her for 
 two years. 
 
 Shelley and Mary did not cease to meet because 
 he came no longer to Godwin's house. He knew 
 that she was in the habit of visiting her mother's 
 grave, and went there to see her. Mary Godwin, 
 in her father's words, was singularly bold, some- 
 what imperious, and active of mind. Her desire 
 of knowledge was great, and her perseverance in 
 everything she undertook almost invincible. She 
 was now to show her boldness. 
 
 They determined to fly together on July 28, 
 1814. Mary left her father's house about four in 
 
 103 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 the morning. Jane Clair mont, the daughter of 
 the second Mrs. Godwin by her first marriage, 
 came with her. They met Shelley at the corner 
 of Hatton Garden, where he was waiting for them 
 with a post-chaise, watching, as he said, until the 
 lightning and the stars became pale. According 
 to Jane Clairmont's own account, she had no idea 
 when she went out with Mary that a flight was 
 intended, and was persuaded at the last moment 
 to share that flight ; but her stories are not to 
 be trusted. Whatever reasons Shelley and Mary 
 had for taking her with them, they then began a 
 connection that was to be an incessant trouble to 
 them both, and particularly to Mary. No doubt 
 Jane, who was quite reckless, enjoyed the romance. 
 They reached Dover before four and set off for 
 Calais in a small boat at about six on a beautiful 
 evening, as they did not dare to wait for the 
 packet. Mary was seasick and lay in Shelley's 
 arms through the night. A strong contrary wind 
 sprang up, so that they were in some danger. 
 They reached Calais about sunrise. Their luggage 
 had been left to come over in the packet. With it 
 arrived Mrs. Godwin, who tried to persuade Jane 
 to come back with her ; but Jane after some 
 wavering refused. That night they slept at 
 Boulogne and then set out in a cabriolet for Paris, 
 which they reached on August 2. Shelley was 
 expecting money from Hookham, the publisher ; 
 instead he got " a cold, stupid letter," saying that 
 Mrs. Boinville's family were reduced to the utmost 
 
 104 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 misery by the distant chance of their being called 
 upon in the course of a year to pay £40 for him. 
 Shelley himself was so little troubled by the 
 thought that he might have to pay money in the 
 future, and so ready to enter into engagements 
 for anybody, that he could not understand such 
 anxieties in others. Besides he was lost in the 
 egotism of his love and wanted money at once 
 himself ; so poor Mrs. Boinville, although the 
 most perfect of women, seemed now a mere 
 irrelevant nuisance to him. He sold his watch 
 and chain for eight napoleons. He was dis- 
 appointed by the interior of Notre Dame, and in 
 the Louvre found a picture of the Deluge terribly 
 impressive. Mary, however, felt as if " our love 
 would alone suffice to resist the invasions of 
 calamity. She rested on my bosom, and seemed 
 even indifferent to take sufficient food for the 
 sustenance of life." 
 
 At last, on August 7, Shelley got a remittance 
 of £60. They determined to walk to Uri in 
 Switzerland ; and the next morning Shelley went 
 to the ass market to buy an ass that should carry 
 their luggage and Mary, if she were not strong 
 enough to walk. Napoleon had abdicated only 
 a few months before, and France was still unsettled 
 after the invasion and the disbanding of the army. 
 They were told that the ladies would certainly 
 be carried off ; but they paid no heed. They 
 set off for Charenton on the evening of August 8, 
 but found the ass useless. At Charenton they 
 
 105 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 sold it, and bought a mule, with which they set 
 out the next morning on their long journey ; Shelley 
 leading the mule on which rode Mary in a black 
 silk dress, while Jane, also in a black silk dress, 
 walked behind and, when she was tired, would 
 succeed Mary on the mule. They were not 
 molested, but when they reached the seat of the 
 war found ruin everywhere, and in one place 
 could get no milk because the Cossacks had taken 
 all the cows. On the fifth day Shelley sprained 
 his ankle and had to ride. That night they 
 reached Troyes, where Shelley wrote the following 
 letter to Harriet : — 
 
 " My dearest Harriet, — I write to you from 
 this detestable town ; I write to show that I do 
 not forget you ; I write to urge you to come to 
 Switzerland, where you will at last find one firm 
 and constant friend to whom your interests will 
 be always dear, by whom your feelings will never 
 wilfully be injured. From none can you expect 
 this but from me — all else are either unfeeling 
 or selfish, or have beloved friends of their own, as 
 Mrs. Boinville, to whom their attention and 
 affection is confined. 
 
 " I will write at length from Neufchatel, or you 
 direct your letters, ' d'etre laisse a la Bureau de 
 Poste Neufchatel ' until you hear again. We have 
 journeyed from Paris on foot, with a mule to 
 carry our baggage ; and Mary, who has not been 
 sufficiently well to walk, fears the fatigue of 
 
 106 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 walking. We passed through a fertile country, 
 neither interesting from the character of its 
 inhabitants nor the beauty of the scenery. We 
 came 120 miles in four days ; the last two days 
 we passed over the country that was the seat of 
 war. I cannot describe to you the frightful 
 desolation of this scene ; village after village 
 entirely ruined and burned, the white ruins tower- 
 ing in innumerable forms of destruction among 
 the beautiful trees. The inhabitants were fam- 
 ished ; families once independent now beg their 
 bread in this wretched country ; no provisions ; no 
 accommodation ; filth, misery, and famine every- 
 where (you will see nothing of this on your route 
 to Geneva). I must remark to you, that dreadful 
 as these calamities are, I can scarcely pity the 
 inhabitants ; they are the most unamiable, in- 
 hospitable, and unaccommodating of the human 
 race. We go by some carriage from this town to 
 Neufchatel, because I have strained my leg and 
 am unable to walk. I hope to be recovered by 
 that time ; but on our last day's journey I was 
 perfectly unable to walk. Mary resigned the 
 mule to me. Our walk has been, excepting this, 
 sufficiently agreeable ; we have met none of the 
 robbers they prophesied at Paris. You shall 
 know our adventures more detailed, if I do not 
 hear at Neufchatel that I am soon to have the 
 pleasure of communicating to you in person, and 
 of welcoming you to some sweet retreat I will 
 procure for you among the mountains. I have 
 
 107 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 written to Peacock to superintend money affairs ; he 
 is expensive, inconsiderate, and cold, but surely not 
 utterly perfidious and unfriendly, and unmindful 
 of our kindness to him ; besides, interest will 
 secure his attention to these things. I wish you 
 to bring with you the two deeds which Tahourdin 
 has to prepare for you, as also a copy of the 
 settlement. Do not part with any of your money. 
 But what shall be done about the books ? You 
 can consult on the spot. With love to my sweet 
 little Ianthe, ever most affectionately yours, S. 
 " I write in great haste ; we depart directly." 
 
 It appears from this letter that Shelley had 
 quite persuaded himself that things were as he 
 wished them to be ; that Harriet was reconciled 
 to his behaviour, and that he was still her firm 
 and constant friend, doing the best for her that 
 could be done in the circumstances. 
 
 On August 18 they reached Pontarlier, and next 
 day came to Neufchatel, where Shelley got some 
 more money. On August 23 they were at Briinnen, 
 where they took two rooms in a chateau, engaging 
 them for six months at a guinea a month. Finding 
 that the chateau was very uncomfortable, and 
 that they had only £28 to last to December, they 
 suddenly made up their minds to return to England 
 at once, by water ; Shelley no doubt forgetting 
 that he had invited Harriet to come to Switzerland. 
 At 7 a.m. on August 27 they set off in a boat for 
 Lucerne. From there they went on the Reuss to 
 
 108 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 Bale, and thence down the Rhine to Cologne, 
 from which place they drove to Rotterdam. They 
 were in London on September 13, but not before 
 they had run short of money. 
 
 Godwin would have nothing to do with them, 
 except that he took all the money from Shelley 
 that he could get. His position was this — since 
 he was Shelley's debtor and hoped to increase his 
 debt, he could not forgive him and Mary, lest he 
 should be suspected of doing so for a bribe . Shelley 
 himself was in great straits for money and remained 
 so for some months. When he went to his banker 
 he found that all his money had been drawn by 
 Harriet. According to Jane, he then went to 
 Harriet for money and got £20 from her, together 
 with some natural reproaches. It seems that the 
 poor woman still expected that he would come 
 back to her. Mary's Journal in October notes 
 that " a good-humoured letter " had been received 
 from Harriet. Then came a rumour that Harriet 
 had been plotting to have Godwin arrested for 
 debt. On November 30 Harriet was delivered of 
 a boy, an eight-months child. Shelley did not 
 hear of it for a week. On December 6 there is 
 this entry in Mary's Diary : " A letter from Hook- 
 ham to say that Harriet has been brought to bed 
 of a son and heir. Shelley writes a number of 
 circular letters of this event which ought to be 
 ushered in with ringing of bells, &c, for it is the 
 son of his wife. A letter from Harriet confirming 
 the news, in a letter from a deserted wife ! ! and 
 
 109 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 telling us he has been born a week." Shelley saw 
 Harriet the next day, but they quarrelled. The 
 baby was named Charles Bysshe. On December 
 20 Harriet threatened legal proceedings. On 
 January 2, 1815, Mary's Diary contains this note : 
 " Harriet sends her creditors here ; nasty woman. 
 Now we must change our lodgings." Shelley 
 continued to see Harriet at intervals for some 
 months at least, but then lost sight of her. The 
 last interview we hear of was on April 22, 1815. 
 
 Those who are inclined to think of Shelley's 
 desertion of his first wife as a romantic event, or 
 a symptom of his genius, or a heroic protest against 
 the tyranny of convention, or anything else that 
 it was not, should give attention to the squalid 
 incidents of his life at this time, when he was 
 getting money from the wife he had deserted, and 
 trying to persuade her and himself that he had 
 not deserted her, dodging bailiffs, and haggling 
 with money-lenders. 
 
 The passages from Mary's Journal which I 
 have quoted, prove that even she was so wrought 
 upon that she wrote bitterly and meanly of the 
 woman she had wronged. 
 
 Jane Clairmont was still living with the Shelleys. 
 At this time she called herself Clara ; afterwards 
 Clare or Claire. She soon became a nuisance to 
 Mary and even to Shelley ; though he always took 
 a sentimental interest in her, which often troubled 
 his wife. Clara was a girl who might have been 
 
 no 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 happy and useful and healthy in her mind if she 
 had married a kind and sensible husband and 
 borne him children ; nothing could be worse for 
 her than to live with Shelley and Mary. She 
 was hysterical and full of wild ambitions, no 
 doubt because she needed to marry. She thought 
 of herself as the centre of the universe ; and in 
 that household she was only a third person 
 with no function to perform. There was a 
 romantic rumour that Godwin or his wife designed 
 to shut her up in a convent. Therefore Shelley 
 must protect her from tyranny and teach her 
 Greek. Very soon Mary began to fret at his 
 interest in her. There is an entry in her Diary 
 for December 6, 1814 : " Very unwell. Shelley 
 and Clara walk out, as usual, to heaps of places." 
 Mary was already with child, and no doubt wished 
 for Shelley's companionship when she could not 
 go out. She got little of the tranquillity that she 
 needed. In October she only saw Shelley at short 
 interviews, for he was hiding from bailiffs, and 
 she had to content herself with frequent and 
 rapturous letters. " It seems as if you alone," 
 he wrote, "could shield me from impurity and 
 vice. If I were absent from you long I should 
 shudder with horror at myself ; my understanding 
 becomes undisciplined without you. I believe I 
 must become in Mary's hands what Harriet was in 
 mine. Yet how differently disposed — how devoted 
 and affectionate, how, beyond measure, reverenc- 
 ing and adoring the intelligence that governs me!" 
 
 in 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 A few days before this there is an entry in his 
 Journal from which it appears that he was noticing 
 his own weakness and making up his mind not 
 to waste his emotions on other women besides 
 Mary : — 
 
 " Jane's insensibility and incapacity for the 
 slightest degree of friendship. The feelings occa- 
 sioned by this discovery prevent me from main- 
 taining any measure in security. This highly 
 incorrect ; subversion of the first principles of 
 true philosophy ; characters, particularly those 
 which are unformed, may change. Beware of 
 weakly giving way to trivial sympathies. Content 
 yourself with one great affection — with a single 
 mighty hope ; let the rest of mankind be the 
 subjects of your benevolence, your justice, and, 
 as human beings, of your sensibility ; but, as you 
 value many hours of peace, never suffer more than 
 one even to approach the hallowed circle." 
 
 On this occasion it would appear that Clara 
 had seemed to want more than friendship and 
 had startled Shelley into a sense of the danger of 
 spiritual flirtations. She was hysterical, and after 
 sitting up late with Shelley until they were both 
 overwrought, had burst in upon him with the 
 story that her pillow had been supernaturally 
 removed from her bed to a chair. Shelley took the 
 story quite seriously and they sat by the fire " at 
 intervals engaged in awful conversation relative to 
 the nature of these mysteries." At dawn Jane 
 saw something dreadful in Shelley's expression, 
 
 112 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 and fell into convulsions, shrieking and writhing 
 on the floor. Soon even Shelley saw that she was 
 playing hysterical tricks and made this entry in 
 his Journal : " The next morning the chimney 
 board in Jane's room is found to have walked 
 leisurely into the middle of the room, accompanied 
 by the pillow, who, being very sleepy, tried to get 
 into bed again, but fell down on his back." 
 
 Yet the poor Jane was making some efforts to 
 behave well. She quarrelled with Shelley, but 
 saw that he was patient and kind with her. Here 
 is an extract from her Diary : — 
 
 " Shelley comes into my room and thinks he 
 was to blame, but I don't. How I like good, 
 kind, explaining people ! " 
 
 In this troubled time Shelley was paying for 
 past follies, and learning from what he suffered 
 and the effort to do better. He saw how much 
 he needed tranquillity to practise his art. Pea- 
 cock tells us that once when he had been quoting 
 Wordsworth he suddenly asked, " Do you think 
 Wordsworth could have written such poetry if 
 he ever had dealings with money-lenders ? " He 
 was learning that a man of genius must waste a 
 great part of his genius unless he orders his life 
 well. He needs to practise a wise economy as 
 much as a man of business. 
 
 On January 6, 1815, Sir Bysshe Shelley died, 
 aged eighty-three. Shelley went to Field Place 
 to hear the will read. He was refused admittance ; 
 8 113 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 so he sat by the door and read " Comus." There 
 were certain estates settled on him the reversion 
 of which it was possible for his father to purchase 
 from him at once. Timothy was eager to do this, 
 because he wished to keep the family property 
 together and he feared that Shelley would dissipate 
 it. He wished his younger son John to be his heir ; 
 and he had long been engaged in futile negotiations 
 with Shelley to this end. Now that there were 
 some estates which might be secured to John 
 he was ready to pay for the chance of securing 
 them. Thus in June, 1815, he agreed to pay Shelley 
 an income of £1,000 a year and about £5,000 down 
 for his debts, which included £1,000 promised 
 to Godwin. Shelley at once sent Harriet £200 ; 
 and appears to have made her an allowance of 
 £200 a year. As she still had the same sum from 
 her father, she was now in no want of money. 
 
 In February Mary was delivered of a seven- 
 months child, a girl. No doubt the premature 
 birth was the result of worry and anxiety. The 
 child died on March 6, and Mary grieved much 
 for it, and fretted at the continual presence of 
 Clara. In May Clara was got rid of for a time 
 and there is a note in Mary's Journal : "I begin 
 a new journal with our regeneration." Clara 
 went to Lynmouth. In July Shelley was looking 
 for a house in South Devon and Mary was at 
 Clifton. From a letter she wrote on July 27 we 
 can learn of her anxieties about Shelley and of her 
 way of managing him. She thinks they have 
 
 114 
 
THE BREAK WITH HARRIET 
 
 been apart too long. " We ought not to be 
 absent any longer ; indeed we ought not. I am 
 not happy at it." " You will say, shall we neglect 
 taking a house — a dear home ? No, my love, I 
 would not for worlds give up that ; but I know 
 what seeking for a house is, and, trust me, it is a 
 very, very long job, too long for one love to under- 
 take in the absence of the other. Dearest, I 
 know how it will be ; we shall both of us be put 
 off, day after day, with the hopes of the success 
 of the next day's search, for I am frightened to 
 think how long." 
 
 Then comes this passage : — 
 
 " Pray, is Clara with you ? for I have inquired 
 several times, and no letters ; but, seriously, it 
 would not in the least surprise me (if you have 
 written to her from London, and let her know 
 that you are without me) that she should have 
 taken some such freak." 
 
 We do not know whether Clara was with him, 
 but he was soon with Mary and took a house, not 
 in Devonshire, but at Bishopsgate, close to Windsor 
 Forest. Here he conceived the project of rowing 
 far up the Thames ; and at the end of August 
 started with Mary, Peacock, and Clara's brother 
 Charles. They rowed for ten days, as far as they 
 could. Shelley had the idea of entering a canal 
 at Lechlade and so passing to the Severn and 
 tracking that river also to its source. But even 
 this idea did not content him ; he would go by 
 canals and rivers from North Wales to Durham 
 
 115 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and the Lakes, then to the Tweed and on to the 
 Forth and the Falls of Clyde. But the commis- 
 sioners would not let them through the Severn 
 Canal for less than £20 ; so that he had to fancy 
 and describe all these river wanderings in " Alas- 
 tor." 
 
 The " Lines on Lechlade Churchyard " were the 
 result of this expedition. They are the earliest 
 example of Shelley's power of generalized yet vivid 
 description. He could convey an impression by 
 the quality rather than the sense of his language, 
 as Constable, in his sketches, by the quality of 
 his paint. 
 
 ' ' Thou too, aerial Pile, whose pinnacles 
 
 Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, 
 
 Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, 
 
 Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, 
 
 Around whose lessening and invisible height 
 
 Gather among the stars the clouds of night." 
 
 When he returned to Bishopsgate he wrote 
 " Alastor," the first of his longer poems that should 
 be read for its own sake. It was published in 
 March, 1816. In January Mary had given birth 
 to a boy, who was christened William, after 
 Godwin. 
 
 116 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 " ALASTOR " 
 
 TN his preface to "Alastor" Shelley says that 
 ■*■ "it represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings 
 and adventurous genius led forth by an imagina- 
 tion inflamed and purified through familiarity with 
 all that is excellent and majestic, to the contempla- 
 tion of the universe. ... So long as it is possible 
 for his desire to point towards objects thus infinite 
 and unmeasured he is joyous, and tranquil, and 
 self-possessed. But the period arrives when 
 these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at 
 length suddenly awakened and thirsts for inter- 
 course with an intelligence similar to itself. He 
 images to himself the Being whom he loves. . . . 
 The vision in which he embodies his own imagina- 
 tions unites all of wonderful or wise or beautiful, 
 which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could 
 depicture. . . . He seeks in vain for a prototype 
 of his conception. Blasted by disappointment, 
 he descends to an untimely grave." 
 
 Yet his fate, Shelley considers, is more desirable 
 than the fate of those who are "deluded by no 
 generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of 
 doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious super- 
 
 117 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 stition, loving nothing on this earth and cherishing 
 no hopes beyond." These " have their appor- 
 tioned curse. . . . They are morally dead. They 
 are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor 
 citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their 
 country." His conclusion, not expressed in the 
 poem itself, is that to attempt to live without 
 human sympathy is fatal for men whether high 
 or low minded. " Those who love not their fellow- 
 beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their 
 old age a miserable grave." No doubt he began 
 to be aware of a lack of human sympathy in him- 
 self, and to see that loving humanity at large is 
 not the same thing as loving particular human 
 beings. 
 
 But in his poem he is still only concerned with 
 the youth who seeks for the ideal in the form of 
 a perfect woman. He is, of course, a poet, and 
 drawn, in an abstract style, from Shelley himself 
 and his own experience. Shelley's mind was full 
 of his voyages on the Reuss, the Rhine, and the 
 Thames. Therefore the poet makes a long river 
 voyage. 
 
 In the course of his wanderings he comes to the 
 Vale of Cashmere and there, while he slept — 
 
 " A vision on his sleep 
 There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 
 Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid 
 Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. 
 Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 
 Heard in the calm of thought. 
 
 • • « • • « • 
 
 118 
 
" ALASTOR " 
 
 Sudden she rose, 
 As if her heart impatiently endured 
 Its bursting burthen : at the sound he turned, 
 And saw by the warm light of their own life 
 Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil 
 Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, 
 Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, 
 Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips 
 Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. 
 His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess 
 Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled 
 His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet 
 Her panting bosom: . . . she drew back a while, 
 Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, 
 With frantic gesture and short breathless cry 
 Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. 
 Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night 
 Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep, 
 Like a dark flood suspended in its course, 
 Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain." 
 
 When he awoke to the cold light of morning 
 he found he had been fooled by a dream ; and 
 the rest of the poem describes his wanderings in 
 search of that fleeting shade, and his death, foiled 
 in the wilderness. By the lone Chorasmian shore 
 he embarks in a shallop and is carried far over 
 the sea to the foot of the Caucasus. Then a whirl- 
 pool carries him through a cavern into a stream 
 among the mountains and through many wonderful 
 places wonderfully described. At last, in a moun- 
 tain solitude, he dies, gazing at the moon, and 
 just as she sinks behind the hills. 
 
 The poem contains 750 lines of blank verse, and 
 I give this bald abstract of it only to show the 
 character of its theme. Keats took the same 
 
 119 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 theme for his "Belle Dame sans Merci," but his 
 poem is all concentration and conscious and 
 triumphant art. Shelley's is all diffusion, and 
 he shows but little art in the management of it. 
 The event for Keats is everything and every word 
 is concerned with it. Shelley almost loses it in 
 description, much of it irrelevant. In fact, his 
 poem really has two subjects. There is the vision 
 and the wild quest for the reality ending in death ; 
 and there is the description of mountain and river 
 scenery. Of course there is an attempt to make 
 the descriptions part of the quest ; but there can 
 be no doubt that they come in because Shelley 
 had enjoyed his river voyages. This vague and 
 divided purpose is a besetting weakness of the 
 romantic poets, who were all apt to start upon a 
 long poem without knowing what they would make 
 of it, and to use it as an excuse for saying whatever 
 they wanted to say. 
 
 " Alastor " is meant to be a narrative poem, 
 but it has not enough incident for its length, and 
 constantly tends to become lyrical. Therefore 
 it is remembered not for the impression made 
 by the whole story, for that is vague and weak, 
 but for separate lyrical passages. 
 
 No doubt "Alastor" expresses a reaction in 
 Shelley's mind from that old confidence of his that 
 the ideal is attainable in this world. He, like 
 other youths, had hoped that love would bring 
 him all imaginable delight ; but from the first 
 he had combined and confused his dream of love 
 
 120 
 
" ALASTOR " 
 
 with dreams of the millennium. Whenever he saw 
 a beautiful girl he thought of her as an agent for 
 accomplishing the millennium, and of the millen- 
 nium itself as a kind of Paradise of inspired houris. 
 There was something noble in this association of 
 ideas. Shelley was not content only with the idea 
 of his own happiness ; he wanted the universe 
 to share his raptures. But there was also some- 
 thing enervating and dangerous ; and now he had 
 begun to see the danger and to be dismayed by it. 
 In " Alastor " Shelley seems indeed to be beat- 
 ing his wings in the void, an angel without a 
 heaven, and suddenly aware that there is no home 
 for him in the universe, and no future except 
 to tower into nothingness until his wings fail and 
 his heart breaks. This notion of his own fate, 
 which is the main theme of " Alastor," came back 
 to him again and again in after years, often cutting 
 short his inspiration with a fall as swift and beau- 
 tiful as its rise. But behind the despair of a great 
 poet there is always an unconscious faith without 
 which he could make no music. For if he were 
 utterly given up to despair he could say nothing ; 
 and that is why beauty justifies the wildest lamenta- 
 tions of Shelley. Whatever the sense of the words 
 may be there is hope and even triumph in that 
 emotion which the music communicates : — 
 
 " Art and eloquence, 
 And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain 
 To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. 
 It is a woe ' too deep for tears,' when all 
 Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, 
 
 121 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
 Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, 
 The passionate tumult of a clinging hope ; 
 But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
 Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 
 Birth and the grave, that are not as they were." 
 
 These are the closing lines of " Alastor," and 
 they sound with a music then new to the world, 
 a music not quite sure of itself or what it means, 
 but already clear and irresistible. A prose para- 
 phrase of these lines, however close to the sense, 
 would misrepresent them, for it would fail to 
 express just what gives them value, the delight of 
 a great poet in what his reason, for the moment, 
 tells him to despair of. 
 
 Already in "Alastor" Shelley showed himself 
 a greater master of blank verse than any other 
 poet of the time. He was the only one of the 
 romantic poets who wrote blank verse that was 
 quite original and yet never prosaic. He made 
 it swifter and more lyrical than it ever had been 
 before, distinguishing it from prose without any 
 contortions of language. In the blank verse of 
 " Alastor " we can see here and there the influence 
 of Wordsworth, of Milton, and of Shakespeare ; 
 but it is not a mere patchwork of styles. He uses 
 the manner of each poet for his own purposes and 
 subject to his own inspiration. Here is a Miltonic 
 passage : — 
 
 "Where the secret caves 
 Rugged and dark, winding among the springs 
 Of fire and poison, inaccessible 
 To avarice or pride, their starry domes 
 
 122 
 
(t 
 
 ALASTOR " 
 
 Of diamond and of gold expand above 
 Numberless and immeasurable halls, 
 Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 
 Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite." 
 
 Here is one that recalls Shakespeare at the begin- 
 ning : — 
 
 " Heartless things 
 Are done and said i' the world, and many worms 
 And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth 
 From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 
 In vesper low or joyous orison, 
 Lifts still its solemn voice." 
 
 But after a line or two it becomes half Milton, 
 half pure Shelley. The influence of Wordsworth 
 is more general, and shows itself not so much in any 
 tricks of language as in ideas and in the use of 
 blank verse to express them. Shelley had come 
 by his Wordsworthian ideas easily enough, and 
 he expressed them easily and fluently. Thus 
 nothing is said in the poem that advances the his- 
 tory of the human mind, like some passages in the 
 "Excursion" and the "Prelude." But Shelley 
 already knew, better than Wordsworth ever 
 knew, the difference between poetry and prose. 
 His weaker passages are not flat, like Wordsworth's, 
 but vague and empty ; and all through the poem 
 there is an impetus of continual emotion which 
 we never find in Wordsworth's blank verse. That 
 impetus quickens all Shelley's best poetry and 
 compensates for its lack of weight and richness. 
 There has survived a prose fragment on Love 
 which Shelley probably wrote about the same 
 time as " Alastor," and which tells us more than 
 
 123 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 most of his prose works about his most instinctive 
 and persistent ideas. He says that, when he has 
 thought to unburthen his inmost soul to other men, 
 he has found his language misunderstood like one 
 in a distant and savage land. Everywhere he has 
 sought sympathy and found only repulse and 
 disappointment. " We are born into the world, 
 and there is something within us which, from the 
 instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its 
 likeness. . . . We dimly see within our intellectual 
 nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, 
 yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, 
 the ideal prototype of everything excellent and 
 lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belong- 
 ing to the nature of man ... a soul within our 
 own soul that describes a circle around its proper 
 Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not 
 overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, 
 thirsting that they should resemble or correspond 
 with it." And he goes on to say that what love 
 aims at is the discovery of another soul in perfect 
 correspondence with this one. The fragment 
 ends with a passage upon the love of nature : — 
 " In solitude or in that deserted state when we 
 are surrounded by human beings and yet they 
 sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, the 
 grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of 
 the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there 
 is then found a secret correspondence with our 
 heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, 
 and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rust- 
 
 124 
 
" ALASTOR 
 
 »j 
 
 ling of the reeds beside them, which by their 
 inconceivable relation to something within the 
 soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless 
 rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness 
 to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, 
 or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone." 
 We might take this for a piece of mere rhetoric 
 if it were not by the author of " The Cloud." From 
 that and other poems we know that Shelley was 
 speaking the truth about himself, though not in 
 his own true language, when he wrote it, and as 
 it is true that he could love the beauty of the 
 earth and sky as other men can love human 
 beauty and could see the same virtue and signifi- 
 cance in it, so it is also true that he was aware of an 
 ideal in himself, a soul within his soul, by which 
 he measured all things and with which he aspired 
 to master the universe, to shatter it to bits, and 
 then remould it nearer to his heart's desire. It 
 was in the strength and persistence of this ideal 
 passion that he varied from the kindly race of 
 men, seeming to live for some great end of his 
 own, and in no way to be subject to the laws that 
 connect men with other living things. At least he 
 was scarcely aware of his own body, except when 
 it troubled him with pain, or of any carnal mixture 
 in his passions. He hated the flesh like a puritan ; 
 but instead of mortifying it, he ignored its existence, 
 and glorified love, not as a natural function, but 
 as if it were an inspiration and produced children 
 as poetry and music are produced. 
 
 125 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SWISS TOUR AND THE DEATH 
 OF HARRIET 
 
 GODWIN was still troubling Shelley with his 
 righteous indignation and his demands 
 for money. He insisted that there should be 
 only business communications between them. He 
 would take cheques, but they must not be made 
 payable to him. This scruple was not so pedantic 
 as it seemed, for there was a report that he had 
 sold Mary and Claire to Shelley, each for a good 
 round sum. At that time the orthodox were 
 ready to believe anything of the unorthodox. 
 Morality, religion, and the British Constitution 
 must stand or fall together ; and anyone who was 
 against one of them in any particular was against 
 all three in everything. 
 
 Shelley was very patient with Godwin, less 
 perhaps because he had run away with his daughter 
 than because Godwin was the author of " Political 
 Justice " ; and he wrote him business letters 
 explaining with lucidity and precision the com- 
 plicated state of his own affairs and the difficulty 
 which he found in helping him. But at last God- 
 win provoked him to anger, and he wrote : " Do 
 not talk of forgiveness again to me, for my blood 
 
 126 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 boils in my veins, and my gall rises against all that 
 bear the human form, when I think of what I, 
 their benefactor and ardent lover, have endured of 
 enmity and contempt from you and all mankind." 
 
 This feeling of his, that he meant well by all the 
 world and that the world repaid him with enmity 
 and contempt, was the chief reason, perhaps, why 
 he determined to go abroad early in 1816. No 
 doubt Mary was made to feel the irregularity of 
 her position at every turn. They had few friends 
 in England and might make more abroad, where 
 they could also live more cheaply. But Peacock 
 tells us that Shelley in this case, as when he 
 left Keswick and Tremadoc, said that he was 
 threatened by a mysterious peril, and in this case, 
 as in the others, Peacock thought that the peril was 
 the effect rather than the cause of his desire to go. 
 
 Peacock tells us that he would discuss the truth 
 of his own fancies with freedom and calmness, 
 "with the good temper and good feeling which 
 never forsook him in conversation with his friends. 
 There was an evident anxiety for acquiescence, 
 but a quiet and gentle toleration of dissent. A 
 personal discussion, however interesting to him- 
 self, was carried on with the same calmness as if 
 it related to the most abstract question in meta- 
 physics. Indeed, one of the great charms of 
 intercourse with him was the perfect good 
 humour and openness to conviction with which he 
 responded to opinions opposed to his own." 
 
 In May, 1816, Shelley, Mary, and Claire started 
 
 127 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 for Geneva. Claire had reasons unknown to the 
 other two for going with them. She had wished 
 to become an actress, and had called on Byron 
 with the idea of getting an engagement at Drury 
 Lane through his influence. Byron had seduced 
 her, probably without much resistance on her 
 part, for she, like Mary, had not been brought up 
 to consider that marriage was an important addi- 
 tion to love. Byron also had started for Geneva, 
 and she hoped to meet him there again. The 
 party went to the Hotel d'Angleterre at Secheron, 
 a suburb of Geneva. Byron arrived at the same 
 hotel on May 25. He and Shelley had never met 
 before ; but Shelley had already a great admiration 
 of his poetry. From the first he only half admired 
 him as a man. " Lord Byron," he wrote to Pea- 
 cock at the beginning of their acquaintance, "is 
 an exceedingly interesting person ; and, as such, 
 is it not to be regretted that he is a slave to the 
 vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad 
 as the winds ? " To the end of his life he was 
 half fascinated and half revolted by Byron, just as 
 we now are half fascinated and half revolted by 
 what we know of him. Byron and Shelley had 
 this much in common, that they were both rebels 
 and outcasts, and also this, that neither of them 
 had another friend so nearly equal to himself in 
 intellect and genius. Shelley had never met a 
 man as great as Byron, and Byron had never 
 been intimate with a man as great as Shelley. 
 They could talk on equal terms, with the cer- 
 
 128 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 tainty that neither would be too dull to under- 
 stand the other. Shelley always thought too 
 highly of Byron's poetry ; and Byron, probably, 
 always thought too meanly of Shelley's ; but 
 each could see that the other was a great man. 
 Byron was drawn to Shelley because, suspicious 
 as he was, he could trust him better than he could 
 trust himself. Other men might seek his acquaint- 
 ance because he was the most famous poet in the 
 world and because they wanted to share some of 
 his notoriety if they could not share his fame. 
 Shelley, he knew, wanted to get nothing from him 
 or through him. He said, after Shelley's death, 
 that he was the best and least selfish man he had 
 ever known ; and even in Shelley's lifetime he, 
 the most capricious and slanderous of men, seldom 
 said a word against him. The two poets disagreed 
 in many things. Shelley's opinions were as con- 
 stant as Byron's were inconstant ; and often 
 Byron would dispute with Shelley for the fun of 
 it. Shelley was always in earnest, even when he 
 would have been wiser to trifle ; Byron would 
 trifle or pretend to trifle over the most serious 
 matters. Shelley's nature was extraordinarily 
 simple ; Byron's extraordinarily complex. Shel- 
 ley could have explained the purpose of his life on 
 a half-sheet of notepaper. Byron would have 
 sworn that his life had no purpose ; he was an 
 experimentalist without much system in his 
 experiments. But Shelley seems to have been 
 born with a consistent set of opinions ready 
 9 129 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 made, upon which experience had little effect. 
 Shelley was scarcely conscious of his body at all. 
 He conceived of himself as a pure spirit and sought 
 everywhere for a spirit with a purpose like his 
 own through all the irrelevant matter of the 
 world. Byron was perfectly conscious of his body 
 and would often let the flesh master him, using 
 his mind only to heighten its pleasures and living 
 like a sophisticated animal. Like most great 
 men who are at war with themselves, he showed 
 the fullness of his powers in a war with what he 
 hated outside himself. The thwarted and embit- 
 tered nobility of his mind expressed itself in 
 invective. He would not trust himself, like 
 Shelley, to spin dreams of what men ought to 
 be ; yet there was an ideal implied in his indig- 
 nation against them for what they were. And 
 Shelley saw this and forgave and admired him 
 for it. It seemed to him that Byron, if he laughed 
 sometimes at the angels, was always against the 
 devils, and never the willing slave of the evil prin- 
 ciple which he thought of as tyrannizing over 
 man. Shelley was very like those ecclesiastics 
 to whom heresy is the sin of the devil and far less 
 pardonable than all the sins of the flesh. He 
 considered that Wordsworth had fallen into 
 heresy and called him a pitiful wretch. Byron 
 might talk wildly, but he did not support Tory 
 candidates for parliament. He might sometimes 
 even seem to have a leaning to superstition ; 
 but that was a mere weakness of the flesh, like 
 
 130 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 his vulgar amours. He was not for the Church of 
 England and the British Constitution at all costs. 
 He always hated Castlereagh as well as Shelley 
 himself, and was far happier in his abuse of him. 
 Shelley and Byron soon became intimate, and 
 shared a boat together in which they spent many 
 evenings on the lake. The Shelleys and Claire 
 moved to a cottage about two miles from Geneva, 
 and Byron went to the villa Diodati close by. 
 In June they made a voyage round the lake, in 
 the course of which Byron wrote the " Prisoner 
 of Chillon." Soon after the voyage was over 
 Shelley began to pine for home. Though always 
 restless he was always desiring a fixed abode, 
 and hoping to find a home where he could live 
 for ever. Peacock gives a material explanation 
 of his restlessness. In his own house, wherever 
 it was, he says, Shelley was always a vegetarian, 
 and fell out of health in consequence. When 
 he travelled he would eat meat for convenience, 
 and imputed his better health and spirits, not to 
 the meat, but to the travelling. At one moment he 
 wrote to Peacock with delight of " the hissing of 
 kettles, the long talks over the past and dead, 
 the laugh of children, the warm winds of summer 
 filling the quiet house, and the pelting storm of 
 winter struggling in vain for entrance." At 
 another he formed adventurous projects of de- 
 scending the Danube in a boat, of visiting Con- 
 stantinople and Athens, then Rome and the 
 Tuscan cities, and returning by the South of 
 
 131 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 France, always following great rivers ; the Danube, 
 the Po, the Rhine, and the Garonne. Meanwhile 
 he went with Mary and Claire to Chamouni, as 
 a result of which he wrote his poem " Mont 
 Blanc," and collected seeds of rare Alpine plants 
 to grow in an English garden. But the culture 
 of Alpine plants was not understood then, and 
 Shelley, so far as I know, did not become the first 
 English rock-gardener. He called his poem on 
 Mont Blanc an undisciplined overflowing of the 
 soul ; and this is a just description of it. The 
 ideas fade into each other too fast for the reader 
 to grasp them. The poet's imagination is still 
 vague and wandering, and his purpose is not yet 
 clear even to himself. He is under the influence 
 of Wordsworth ; the opening is like a noble passage 
 of Wordsworth, but it has not his imaginative 
 precision. Shelley seems to be taking a flying shot 
 at a fine idea and we cannot be quite sure whether 
 he has hit or missed it. 
 
 " The everlasting universe of things 
 Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 
 Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting gloom — 
 Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 
 The source of human thought its tribute brings 
 Of waters, — with a sound but half its own, 
 Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 
 In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 
 Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
 Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 
 Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves." 
 
 Shelley was not yet the myth-maker he after- 
 wards became, when clouds and the sun and wind 
 
 132 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 and stars were living things to him, and he could 
 write of them as other poets write of men and 
 women. He was still inciting his imagination 
 with metaphysics, and not quite sure whether 
 the wonders of the earth and sky were interesting 
 for their own sake or for what the human mind 
 put into them. 
 
 He was metaphysical also in the " Hymn to 
 Intellectual Beauty " which was written about 
 this time, and from which I have already quoted 
 an autobiographical passage. In this poem he 
 tries to explain the universe and himself to himself. 
 It is a philosophic confession of faith, a little 
 too vague and abstract, in spite of its eloquence, 
 to be a masterpiece of poetry. 
 
 The blank verse poem called "The Sunset," 
 which was written before he left England, is remark- 
 able for a detailed passage of description : — 
 
 " He walked along the pathway of a field 
 Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, 
 But to the west was open to the sky. 
 There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold 
 Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points 
 Of the far level grass and nodding flowers 
 And the old dandelion's hoary beard, 
 And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay 
 On the brown massy woods — And in the east 
 The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose 
 Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, 
 While the faint stars were gathering overhead." 
 
 This is a study in the manner of Coleridge and 
 was probably written as an exercise in observa- 
 tion and expression. William Morris said, rather 
 
 133 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 hastily, that Shelley had no eyes. He certainly 
 took little pleasure as a rule in minute observation. 
 Yet his impressions of nature are often vivid. 
 He seems to have taken them in with all his 
 senses, not with the eye alone ; and to have felt 
 a life in things beyond what his senses could dis- 
 cover to him. And this life he reveals to us 
 not only in the sense of his words, but in the very 
 music of his verse, just as Beethoven reveals it in 
 his " Pastoral Symphony." 
 
 Besides the poems I have mentioned Shelley 
 wrote but little verse in 1816. Indeed it was 
 his most barren year since he had begun to write 
 real poetry, and he never knew a year so barren 
 again. But it was remarkable for the production 
 of Mary's " Frankenstein," a work that got more 
 immediate fame than any poem of her husband's, 
 and is still remembered for its title and its monster 
 even if it is not often read. It was the result 
 of a conversation about ghosts and horrors after 
 which Shelley suddenly ran shrieking out of the 
 room. He said that he was looking at Mary and 
 thought of a woman he had heard of who had 
 eyes instead of nipples to her breasts. This took 
 possession of his mind and horrified him. When 
 he was recovered Byron proposed that each of 
 the party should write a ghost story. Shelley kept 
 pressing Mary to do this, and at last one night she 
 hit upon the idea of Frankenstein and his Monster. 
 
 The Shelleys and Claire started for England 
 on August 28 and reached Portsmouth on Septem- 
 
 134 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 ber g. Thence Shelley went to London to do 
 business and find a house in the country, and Mary 
 went with her children and Claire to Bath. At some 
 time, probably on the journey home, the Shelley s 
 had discovered that Claire was with child by 
 Byron. They were not indignant at Byron's con- 
 duct. Probably, as Professor Dowden suggests, 
 they supposed that Byron loved her. They were 
 soon to find that he disliked her and had treated 
 her as a mere instrument of his pleasure. Perhaps 
 Shelley felt that his conduct and doctrines were 
 responsible to some extent for Claire's seduction. 
 He certainly was as kind a friend to her as any 
 woman ever had ; and, though Mary sometimes 
 thought him more affectionate than he need be, 
 there is no reason to believe a word of the scandals 
 that were spread about them. 
 
 Claire wished to conceal her pregnancy from God- 
 win and her mother. At Bath she was known as 
 Mrs. Clairmont, and soon Shelley, after staying 
 with Peacock at Marlow, also came to Bath. In 
 October they were horrified by the suicide of 
 Fanny Imlay, the half-sister of Mary, which was 
 probably the result of melancholia and not of 
 love for Shelley, as Mrs. Godwin asserted. Mrs. 
 Godwin, not unnaturally, disliked Shelley, and 
 was apt to impute all calamities to him. He 
 tried to be civil to her ; but said that when he 
 was obliged to dine with her he would " lean back 
 in his chair and languish into hate " ; so that she 
 probably saw some artifice in his civilities. 
 
 135 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 While Shelley was at Bath his " Alastor " was 
 reviewed by Leigh Hunt in the Examiner, together 
 with poems by Keats and John Hamilton Rey- 
 nolds. Hunt called Shelley a very striking and 
 original thinker. They had met before, but now 
 they became friends. Hunt was not a trustworthy 
 critic, but if he sometimes took geese for swans 
 he seldom fell into the far worse error of taking 
 swans for geese. He saw that Keats and Shelley 
 were great poets, when scarcely anyone else had the 
 wit to see this. He was justly reproached with 
 being the head of the Cockney school, for he wrote 
 about the country as if he had just discovered 
 it in a day's outing ; and no doubt he encouraged 
 Keats in his early Cockneyfications. But Keats 
 outgrew these and Shelley never caught them. 
 He was used to the country from childhood and 
 was too full of high purposes to babble of green 
 fields. Indeed his defect was the other way. His 
 purpose was apt to make him impatient of detail, 
 and his earlier poetry is empty where Keats's 
 is clogged. He learned nothing either good or 
 bad from Leigh Hunt, and never had any connec- 
 tion with the Cockney school. He was drawn to 
 Leigh Hunt mainly because Hunt was a liberal and 
 a great enemy of injustice and prejudice. Unfor- 
 tunately Hunt, like Godwin and other reformers 
 whom Shelley admired, was constantly in want 
 of money, and had no idea what to do with it 
 when he got it. He got a good deal out of Shelley ; 
 but Shelley always gave so delicately and patiently 
 
 136 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 that his debtors never became his enemies, and he 
 was an eager benefactor of Hunt to the end of his 
 life. In December, 1816, he went to stay with 
 Hunt at Hampstead. When he returned to 
 Bath he received, on December 15, a letter from 
 Hookham the publisher, telling him that Harriet 
 had drowned herself in the Serpentine. We do 
 not know when Shelley had last seen Harriet or 
 heard from her. She had been corresponding 
 with Peacock at the end of June, and seems then 
 to have been in want of money, although she had 
 £400 a year. In November Shelley was trying to 
 find her and without success. She was living 
 with her father and sister until a short time before 
 her death ; but she is said to have become the 
 mistress of some man who deserted her, and to 
 have been turned out of her father's home. She 
 certainly left it and went to live in Queen Street, 
 Brompton, while her children were sent to a 
 clergyman in Warwick. On the night of Novem- 
 ber 9, when she had been a very short time in her 
 new home, she went out and drowned herself 
 in the Serpentine. Her body was not found until 
 December 10. 
 
 We know very little of her history after Shelley 
 had left her, so little that it would be useless to 
 speculate about it. We cannot say how far 
 Shelley was responsible for her suicide, or how 
 far it was her own fault. The fact that she was 
 always talking about suicide, even in her happiest 
 days, makes it possible that she may have drowned 
 
 137 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 herself without first suffering any very great agony 
 of mind. But Shelley was certainly too ready 
 to absolve himself of any responsibility for her 
 death. He went up to London as soon as he heard 
 of it and from thence wrote a letter to Mary 
 which contained the following passages : — 
 
 " I have spent a day, my beloved, of somewhat 
 agonising sensations, such as the contemplation of 
 vice and folly and hard-heartedness, exceeding all 
 conception, must produce. Leigh Hunt has been 
 with me all day, and his delicate and tender 
 attentions to me, his kind speeches of you, have 
 sustained me against the weight of the horror of 
 this event. 
 
 " The children I have not got. I have seen 
 Longdill, who recommends proceeding with the 
 utmost caution and resoluteness. He seems 
 interested. I told him I was under contract of 
 marriage to you, and he said that, in such event, 
 all pretence to detain the children would cease. 
 Hunt said very delicately that this would be 
 soothing intelligence to you. Yes, my only hope, 
 my darling love, this will be one among the in- 
 numerable benefits which you will have bestowed 
 upon me, and which will still be inferior in value 
 to the greatest of benefits — yourself. It is through 
 you that I can entertain without despair the 
 recollection of the horrors of unutterable villainy 
 that led to this dark, dreadful death. . . . Every- 
 thing tends to prove, however, that beyond the 
 shock of so hideous a catastrophe having fallen 
 
 138 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 on a human being once so nearly connected with 
 me, there would in any case have been little to 
 regret. Hookham, Longdill, every one does me 
 full justice ; bears testimony to the upright spirit 
 and liberality of my conduct to her. There is 
 but one voice in condemnation of the detestable 
 Westbrooks. If they should dare to bring it 
 before Chancery a scene of such fearful horror 
 would be unfolded as would cover them with 
 scorn and shame. . . . Remember my poor babes, 
 Ianthe and Charles. How tender and dear a 
 mother they will find in you — darling William, 
 too! My eyes overflow with tears. To-morrow 
 I will write again." 
 
 Thus it appears that Shelley had made up his 
 mind very quickly and easily that the Westbrooks 
 were altogether responsible for Harriet's death. 
 How far they were we cannot tell ; but in the 
 Chancery suit for the possession of the children, 
 which ensued, they were not covered with scorn 
 and shame, as he confidently foretold ; indeed 
 nothing seems to have come out to their discredit. 
 Eliza Westbrook in an affidavit referred to a 
 letter which Shelley wrote to her after Harriet's 
 death in which he spoke of Mary as the lady whose 
 union with him she, Eliza, might excusably regard 
 as the cause of her sister's ruin. He would scarcely 
 have written thus if he had felt sure that Eliza 
 herself and her father were the villains he made 
 them out to be in this letter ; yet there is no 
 doubt that he was deeply moved by Harriet's 
 
 139 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 death. The shock of it, like the shock of a railway 
 accident, took time to show all its effects. Pea- 
 cock and Leigh Hunt were sure that he suffered 
 from it greatly. There are poems and snatches of 
 poetry, written in 1816 and 1817, and even later, 
 that seem to be wild with the horror of death. 
 The first of these, of uncertain date, seems to 
 refer directly to Harriet : — 
 
 " The moon made thy lips pale, beloved — 
 
 The wind made thy bosom chill — 
 
 The night did shed on thy dear head 
 
 Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie 
 
 Where the bitter breath of the naked sky 
 
 Might visit thee at will." 
 
 Here is another, dated by Mrs. Shelley November 
 5, 1817 :— 
 
 " That time is dead for ever, child ! 
 Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ! 
 
 We look on the past 
 
 And stare aghast 
 At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, 
 Of hopes which thou and I beguiled 
 
 To death on life's dark river." 
 
 This is more vague, but it seems to be full of 
 half-formed thoughts of Harriet and her end. 
 Again, there is this verse from a poem called 
 "The Past," and written in 1818 : — 
 
 " Forget the dead, the past ? Oh, yet 
 There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, 
 Memories that make the heart a tomb, 
 Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 
 
 And with ghastly whispers tell 
 
 That joy, once lost, is pain." 
 
 140 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 Other poems and passages of poetry go to 
 prove that from this time forward Shelley's mind 
 was haunted by ghosts as it never had been before, 
 and subject to a real pain which made him think 
 of his old imaginary pains as disguised pleasures. 
 This was the end of his confident, unknowing 
 youth. In his heart of hearts he could no longer 
 think of himself as an innocent being free to 
 make his own Paradise. The past had hold of 
 him, and would not let him do what he would with 
 the present or the future. He was not, like some 
 men, burdened by a sense of his own sin or inces- 
 santly troubled by a desire to expiate it. He 
 never had that kind of religion which makes a 
 man feel that he is in debt, for his own misdoings, 
 to the holy Author of life. His religion was 
 concerned, like the religion of Crashaw, only 
 with visions of a heaven which seemed to him to 
 be his due, since he had conceived it. The religious 
 passion in him was imperfect because it took no 
 account of evil in himself, and only revolted 
 against evil in others as an inexplicable perversity. 
 Like Lucifer, son of the morning, he would not 
 disown himself. What he had been he still was 
 and had a right to be. 
 
 Shelley had a strong desire to be a father at 
 last to his children by Harriet. But the West- 
 brooks contested his right to them ; and mean- 
 while he determined to prove his faithfulness to 
 Mary by an immediate marriage. They were 
 married in London on December 30, 1816, after a 
 
 141 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 reconciliation with Godwin. Shelley, writing to 
 Claire, speaks of " the ceremony so magical in its 
 effects," and says that Godwin has shown the most 
 polished and courteous attentions to himself and 
 to Mary. 
 
 The children were in the care of a clergyman 
 at Warwick. In January they filed, through 
 their grandfather, John Westbrook, a bill of 
 complaint to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon, 
 in which they stated that Shelley had deserted 
 his wife to cohabit with Mary, and that ever 
 since the desertion they had been in the custody 
 of John and Eliza Westbrook ; also that Shelley 
 avowed himself an atheist, and in " Queen Mab ' 
 and other works had expressed his atheism blas- 
 phemously. They asked for an injunction against 
 Shelley that he might not take possession of them, 
 and that they might be placed under the protec- 
 tion of the Court of Chancery. 
 
 Shelley in his answer stated, among other things, 
 that Harriet and he had separated by mutual 
 consent, and that he had not deserted her ; that 
 he was very anxious to have the children under 
 his own care, but left them with his wife at her 
 urgent entreaty ; and that, if since her death 
 they had been under the protection of John West- 
 brook and Eliza, it was not with his consent. 
 
 The case was argued at great length, and Lord 
 Eldon gave his judgment, on March 27, against 
 Shelley, on the grounds both of his opinions and 
 of his conduct. He granted an injunction and 
 
 142 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 ordered a Master in Chancery to consider the 
 question of the children's maintenance and 
 education, and to suggest a suitable person to take 
 care of them. There was some wrangling about 
 this matter ; but it was finally determined that 
 they should be committed to the care of a Dr. 
 Hume, of Hanwell, and that Shelley and the 
 Westbrooks might visit them twelve times in the 
 year. 
 
 The judgment filled Shelley with grief, appre- 
 hension and rage. His children were was good as 
 dead to him ; and he had fears, which proved 
 baseless, that his child by Mary would also be 
 taken from him, and that he himself would be 
 prosecuted for atheism and blasphemy. He 
 expressed his rage fiercely enough in a poem of 
 sixteen stanzas, addressed to the Lord Chancellor, 
 whom he hated for his opinions as well as for his 
 judgment in this particular case : — 
 
 " By thy complicity with lust and hate, 
 Thy thirst for tears— thy hunger after gold ; 
 The ready frauds which ever on thee wait, 
 The servile arts in which thou art grown old. 
 
 By all the hate which checks a father's love, 
 By all the scorn which kills a father's care — 
 By those most impious hands which dared remove 
 Nature's high bonds — by thee — and by despair — 
 
 Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, 
 And cry, 'My children are no longer mine — 
 The blood within those veins may be mine own, 
 But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine ; — ' 
 
 143 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 I curse thee — though I hate thee not — O slave ! 
 If thou could'st quench the earth-consuming Hell 
 Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave 
 This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well ! " 
 
 On January 12, 1817, Claire was delivered of 
 a daughter, afterwards called Allegra. While 
 Shelley was in London, occupied with his case, 
 he made many new acquaintances and among 
 them Keats. Shelley and Keats never became 
 great friends. They were very different in genius 
 and character ; and Keats, a man of humble 
 birth and resolute independence, was anxious not 
 to be thought a parasite of Shelley. He knew 
 that Shelley was in the habit of giving money to 
 his poorer friends, and he wished neither to be, 
 nor to be thought, a pensioner of any man. No 
 one could think less of distinctions of birth than 
 Shelley ; but he liked his friends to share his 
 enthusiasms, and often chose them rather recklessly 
 because they were of his own way of thinking. 
 Keats was not. At this time of his short life he 
 was almost narrow in his devotion to his art. 
 Rightly and necessarily he was passing through a 
 stage of growth in which he thought nothing in 
 the world so important as making good verses. 
 Shelley never passed through that stage and never 
 was a pure artist. He always thought more of 
 what he wanted to say than of his manner of saying 
 it ; and he advanced in his art more through the 
 general growth of his mind, the increasing clearness 
 of his ideas and strength of his emotions, than 
 
 144 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 through any deliberate training. It was always 
 subject that impelled him to write poetry ; and 
 he was always more or less at the mercy of his 
 subject. When it mastered him he produced a 
 masterpiece. When it did not he became vague 
 and irrelevant. Keats at this time was casting 
 about for subjects that he might exercise his art 
 upon them. "Endymion" is a mass of irrele- 
 vancies ; but these are often its greatest beauties. 
 Shelley is usually at his worst when irrelevant. 
 Thus the two poets did not understand each 
 other. Keats thought that Shelley was not 
 enough of an artist, that he composed too hastily 
 to learn much from the exercise of composition. 
 " An artist," he wrote to Shelley some years later, 
 when Shelley had sent him "The Cenci," "must 
 serve mammon ; he must have ' self-concentra- 
 tion ' — selfishness, perhaps. You, I am sure, will 
 forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might 
 curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, 
 and load every rift of your subject with ore." 
 
 Strange as it may seem, Shelley, the author of 
 " Adonais," did not care much for any of Keats's 
 poetry except " Hyperion." " His other poems," 
 he wrote to Peacock, " are worth little," and though 
 the " Hyperion " volume contained " Lamia " and 
 the great "Odes," he said that but for "Hyperion," 
 it was insignificant enough. He seems to have 
 thought that Keats had great genius, but possessed 
 a wrong method of " system and mannerism." 
 
 Shelley also met Hazlitt, who did not like him. 
 
 145 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 He seemed to Hazlitt to be the slave of generalities, 
 and by them blinded to all the diversity and 
 character and richness of life. Hazlitt despised 
 him as a kind of revolutionary puritan, for whom 
 ginger was never hot in the mouth and who would 
 clear the world of all cakes and ale ; he seems to 
 have had no notion of Shelley's genius. There is 
 an essay on ''Paradox and Common Sense" in 
 his " Table-Talk," written about 1821, which con- 
 tains a description of Shelley far more damaging, 
 because nearer to the truth, than the hysterical 
 abuse of the Quarterly Review. 
 
 " The author of ' Prometheus Unbound,' " he 
 says, " has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a 
 maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, 
 which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is 
 sanguine complexioned and shrill voiced. As is 
 often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts 
 there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina 
 which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. 
 His bending, flexible form appears to take no 
 strong hold of things, does not grapple with the 
 world about him, but slides from it like a river — 
 
 * And in its liquid texture mortal wound 
 Receives no more than can the fluid air.' 
 
 " The shock of accident, the weight of authority, 
 make no impression on his opinions, which retire 
 like a feather, or rise from the encounter unhurt 
 through their own buoyancy. He is clogged by no 
 dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, 
 no rooted prejudices, by nothing that belongs to 
 
 146 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and 
 habit, but is drawn up by irresistible levity to the 
 regions of mere speculation and fancy, to the 
 sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit 
 floats in ' seas of pearl and clouds of amber.' 
 There is no caput mortuum of worn-out thread- 
 bare experience to serve as ballast to his mind ; 
 it is all volatile, intellectual salt-of-tartar, that 
 refuses to combine its evanescent, inflammable 
 essence with anything solid or anything lasting. 
 Bubbles are to him the only realities : touch them 
 and they vanish. Curiosity is the only proper 
 category of his mind, and, though a man in know- 
 ledge, he is a child in feeling. Hence he puts 
 everything into a metaphysical crucible to judge 
 of it himself and exhibit it to others as a subject of 
 interesting experiment, without first making it 
 over to the ordeal of his common sense or trying 
 it on his heart. This faculty of speculating at 
 random on all questions may in its overgrown 
 and uninformed state do much mischief without 
 intending it, like an overgrown child with the 
 power of a man. Mr. Shelley has been accused 
 of vanity ; I think he is chargeable with extreme 
 levity, but this levity is so great that I do not 
 believe he is sensible of its consequences. He 
 strives to overturn all established creeds and 
 systems ; but this is in him an effect of constitu- 
 tion. He runs before the most extravagant 
 opinions ; but this is because he is held back by 
 none of the merely mechanical checks of sympathy 
 
 147 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and habit. He tampers with all sorts of obnoxious 
 subjects ; but it is less because he is gratified 
 with the rankness of the taint than captivated 
 with the intellectual phosphoric light they emit. 
 It would seem that he wishes not so much to 
 convince or inform as to shock the public by the 
 tenor of his productions ; but I suspect he is more 
 intent upon startling himself with his electrical 
 experiments in morals and philosophy, and though 
 they may scorch other people, they are to him 
 harmless amusements — the coruscations of an 
 Aurora Borealis, that ' play round the head but 
 do not reach the heart.' Still, I could wish that 
 he would put a stop to the incessant, alarming 
 whirl of his voltaic battery. With his zeal, his 
 talent, and his fancy, he would do more good and 
 less harm if he were to give up his wilder theories, 
 and if he took less pleasure in feeling his heart 
 flutter in unison with the panic-struck appre- 
 hensions of his readers." 
 
 There are some strange errors in this description. 
 Shelley, so far from being mastered by curiosity, 
 had so little that his genius suffered from the want 
 of it. He certainly did not wish to experiment 
 on himself or the world to see what would come of 
 it. The danger with him was that he was always 
 too sure what would happen if he had his way. 
 He may have talked sometimes to shock. Haydon, 
 the painter, tells us that he once began a conver- 
 sation at table with the words, "As for that 
 detestable religion, the Christian " — but he was 
 
 148 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 usually far too much in earnest when he wrote 
 to think of shocking people. Nor was he cap- 
 tivated by the intellectual phosphoric light of 
 obnoxious subjects. He was indeed one of the 
 pure to whom all things are pure, and was always 
 as free from any kind of prurience, even intellec- 
 tual, as a healthy girl. But, these mistakes apart, 
 the description would seem quite just to anyone 
 who had no belief in the reality of those ideals 
 upon which Shelley's mind was set, and which it 
 was the main purpose of his poetry to express. 
 If there is no reality in them, no glory somewhere 
 in the universe, either existing or to be, which 
 Shelley at the height of his inspiration did, how- 
 ever imperfectly, comprehend and represent to 
 us, then indeed the better part of his life was only 
 absurd or heroic error, and the most extreme beau- 
 ties of his poetry were mere caprices of fancy with 
 nothing but irrational beauty to recommend them. 
 Thornton Hunt, the son of Leigh Hunt, who 
 was a child at this time, tells a touching story 
 of Shelley's anxiety about lis Chancery suit. 
 Shelley would often play with him, and once, 
 teasing him, provoked him to say that he hoped 
 that he would lose the suit and have his children 
 taken from him. " I was sitting on his knee," 
 says Hunt, " and as I spoke he let himself fall 
 listlessly back in his chair, without attempting to 
 conceal the shock I had given him. But presently 
 he folded his arms round me and kissed me ; and I 
 perfectly understood that he saw how sorry I was, 
 
 149 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and was as anxious as I was to be friends again." 
 Leigh Hunt has a story of how Shelley found a 
 sick woman in the snow at Hampstead one winter's 
 night and carried her from door to door, being 
 refused admission at one after another. At last 
 he saw a carriage drive up to a house and an 
 elderly man get out of it. He seized his oppor- 
 tunity and told his story, but the man refused his 
 help. " Impostors swarm everywhere," he said, 
 " the thing cannot be done. Sir, your conduct 
 is extraordinary." " Sir," answered Shelley, " I 
 am sorry to say that your conduct is extraordinary ; 
 and if my own seems to amaze you, I will tell you 
 something which may amaze you a little more, 
 and, I hope, will frighten you. It is such men as 
 you who madden the spirits and the patience of 
 the poor and wretched ; and if ever a convulsion 
 comes in this country (which is very probable), 
 recollect what I tell you. You will have your 
 house, that you refuse to put this miserable woman 
 into, burnt over your head." The man only 
 exclaimed, " God bless me, sir ; dear me, sir," 
 and hurried into his house. Hunt gave the poor 
 woman shelter ; and he and Shelley tended her, 
 with the help of a doctor, so that she recovered. 
 In February, 1817, the Shelleys went to live at 
 Marlow, taking a house of some size called Albion 
 House. Claire, with her child, came to live with 
 them. The child, which at present was called 
 Alba, was given out to be the daughter of a friend 
 in London, and Claire became once more Miss 
 
 150 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 Clairmont. The summer of 1817 was hot, and 
 Shelley's health prospered. He would often walk 
 from Marlow to London with Peacock, thirty-two 
 miles in a day, and without seeming tired at the 
 end. " Delicate and fragile as he appeared," 
 says Peacock, "he had great muscular strength." 
 Professor Dowden quotes a description of him at 
 this time from a letter written by a Miss Rose to 
 Lady Shelley. " He was the most interesting figure 
 I ever saw ; his eyes like a deer's, bright but rather 
 wild ; his white throat unfettered ; his slender, 
 but to me almost faultless shape ; his brown long 
 coat with curling lambs' wool collar and cuffs, in 
 fact his whole appearance, are as fresh in my 
 recollection as an occurrence of yesterday. . . . 
 Sometimes he was rather fantastically arrayed. 
 On his head would be a wreath of what in Marlow 
 we call ' Old man's Beard ' and wild flowers 
 intermixed ; at these times he seemed quite 
 absorbed, and he dashed along regardless of all 
 he met or passed." He must have looked like 
 Dionysus — not in his revels, but when wandering 
 alone among the mountains in a spiritual rapture 
 not induced by wine. We are reminded of his 
 own description of himself in " Adonais " : — 
 
 " His head was bound with pansies overblown, 
 And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 
 
 And a light spear, topped with a cypress cone, 
 Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew 
 Yet dripping with the fresh noonday dew, 
 
 Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
 
 Shook the weak hand that grasped it " 
 
 151 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 It is natural to think of flowers in connection 
 
 with him. Three different writers, in describing 
 
 him, have compared him to a flower or a plant 
 
 that — to quote again from his description of 
 
 himself — 
 
 " Can scarce uplift 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour." 
 
 Medwin says that " He looked like an elegant 
 and slender flower whose head drooped from being 
 surcharged with rain." A writer in the Edinburgh 
 Review (1824) says that " His form, graceful and 
 slender, drooped like a flower in the breeze," and 
 P. G. Patmore spoke of his figure as bending to 
 the earth " like a plant that had been deprived of 
 its natural air," and compared him to a flower 
 that has been kept from the light of day. 
 
 Towards the end of 1817 Shelley was again in 
 poor health. In September he went to see a doctor 
 in London, and the doctor recommended rest and 
 change of air. Shelley was eager to go to Italy, 
 but Mary doubted whether they could afford it, 
 although she was very anxious to get rid of Claire's 
 child, and indeed of Claire, if that were possible ; 
 for people had made up their minds that the child 
 was Claire's, and had begun to wonder whether 
 Shelley was the father of it. Mary was delivered 
 of a girl, named Clara, on September 2 ; and in her 
 weakness she was troubled with many anxieties 
 while Shelley was away in London. 
 
 Shelley had vague ideas of raising money, and 
 talked about post-obits. " These things," wrote 
 
 152 
 
THE DEATH OF HARRIET 
 
 Mary, " as you well know, are affairs of wonderful 
 length, and, if you must complete one before you 
 settle on going to Italy, Alba's departure ought 
 certainly not to be delayed." " You have adver- 
 tised the house," she continues, "but have you 
 given Madocks any orders about how to answer 
 the applicants ? And have you yet settled for 
 Italy or the sea ? And do you know how to get 
 money to convey us there, and to buy the things 
 that will be absolutely necessary before our 
 departure ? " 
 
 Shelley replied that they must go to Italy on 
 every ground. He has borrowed £250, and could 
 get £250 more from the same friend. As to the 
 house, he wrote, " Let us look the truth boldly in 
 the face. We gave, we will say, £1,200 for the 
 house. Well, we can get, if we like, £60 a year 
 for the bare walls, and sell the furniture so as to 
 realise £75 for every £100. This is losing scarcely 
 anything, especially if we consider it in fact only 
 so much money borrowed on post-obits, which in 
 fact is cheaper than ever before." This does not 
 sound very reassuring ; but luckily Mary was not 
 a mistress of finance, and very likely she was 
 reassured. At any rate they settled to go to 
 Italy, though they did not start until March n, 
 1818. 
 
 153 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" AND OTHER 
 
 WORKS 
 
 NO doubt Shelley's bad health in the autumn 
 of 1817 was partly caused by overwork, 
 for in that year he had written as much poetry as 
 would take ten years in the life of a less impetuous 
 writer. "The Revolt of Islam" was begun in 
 April, and finished on September 23. It is in 
 twelve cantos, and contains nearly five thousand 
 lines. In the summer Shelley was also writing 
 " Rosalind and Helen," which he finished in Italy 
 the next year. In the autumn and winter he 
 produced the fragment " Prince Athanase," but 
 probably revised it in Italy. "The Revolt of 
 Islam " was published on January 10, 1818 ; 
 " Rosalind and Helen," with the " Lines written 
 among the Euganean Hills," in 1819 ; and " Prince 
 Athanase," in the " Posthumous Poems," in 1824. 
 I will deal with all three works now. 
 
 "The Revolt of Islam" is intended to be a 
 revolutionary epic. In his preface to it Shelley 
 proclaimed his moral purpose. He sought, he 
 said, " to enlist the harmony of metrical language, 
 the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid 
 
 154 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 and subtle transitions of human passion, all those 
 elements which essentially compose a poem, in 
 the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality." 
 " For this purpose," he writes, " I have chosen a 
 story of human passion, in its most universal 
 character, diversified with moving and romantic 
 adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all 
 artificial opinions or institutions, to the common 
 sympathies of every human breast." He adds 
 that the poem is narrative, not didactic ; but 
 proceeds to give a long list of the lessons it is 
 designed to teach. He then speaks to the sources 
 from which the materials for the imagery of the 
 poem have been drawn. 
 
 " I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and 
 lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been 
 a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed 
 down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and 
 set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed 
 night and day down a rapid stream among moun- 
 tains. I have seen populous cities, and have 
 watched the passions, which rise and spread, and 
 sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes 
 of men. I have seen the theatre of the more 
 visible ravages of tyranny and war ; cities and 
 villages reduced to scattered groups of black and 
 roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting 
 famished upon their desolated thresholds." In 
 this preface too he separates himself from poets, 
 like Wordsworth, who seemed to him too quick 
 despairers of the future of man, because of the 
 
 155 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 disappointments of the French Revolution. " The 
 panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized 
 upon all classes of men during the excesses con- 
 sequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually- 
 giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed 
 that whole generations of mankind ought to consign 
 themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance 
 and misery, because a nation of men who had been 
 dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of 
 conducting themselves with the wisdom and 
 tranquillity of freemen so soon as some of their 
 fetters were partially loosened." 
 
 When he wrote this Shelley was wiser than 
 Wordsworth, who, after his disappointment over 
 the Revolution, became a complete reactionary in 
 politics. But then Shelley was a babe in arms 
 during the Terror, and had never gone through 
 the bitter experience of Wordsworth. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley tells us that Shelley composed the 
 poem in his boat as it floated under the beech- 
 groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the 
 neighbouring country. It is written in Spenserian 
 stanzas, a measure which Shelley thought inex- 
 pressibly beautiful, and which he adopted not 
 because he considered it " a finer model of poetical 
 harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare 
 and Milton, but because in the latter there is no 
 shelter for mediocrity.' ' In this he was wise. 
 The poem is difficult to read as it is ; in blank 
 verse it would probably have been impossible. 
 It cannot be called mediocre. Only a man of 
 
 156 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 genius could have written it ; but Shelley was 
 not born a story-teller, and he had not taken much 
 pains to become one. The characters are mere 
 abstractions, and one never wonders what will 
 happen to them. 
 
 The story does not begin until the second canto. 
 The first contains an account of a fight in the air 
 between an eagle and a snake, at the end of which 
 the eagle flies away and the snake falls into the 
 sea. On the shore there sits a woman, " beautiful 
 as morning," who speaks to the wounded snake 
 in its own tongue, and calls it to her. She addresses 
 the narrator and asks him if he will dare to go 
 ' a voyage divine and strange " with her and the 
 serpent. They set off in a " boat of rare device." 
 She tells him that the eagle is the spirit of evil 
 who had changed the spirit of good into a snake, 
 and had then afflicted the earth with all its evils. 
 But the war between the snake and the eagle 
 still continues, and — 
 
 " The Victor Fiend, 
 Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears 
 His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend 
 An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end." 
 
 Then she tells her own story. How she had 
 been moved by the French Revolution to sweet 
 madness, and how in a dream she saw a winged 
 youth, who told her that a spirit loved her, and 
 asked her how she would prove her worth. How 
 she went to Paris and " braved death for liberty 
 and truth," and how she was still sustained by the 
 
 157 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 spirit when her ' ' hopes had lost the glory of their 
 youth." The vessel proceeds swifter and swifter 
 until they come to a wonderful temple, ' ' girt by 
 green isles." There — 
 
 " Sate on many a sapphire throne, 
 The great, who had departed from mankind." 
 
 The woman shrieks and vanishes, and there 
 appears upon a throne, until now vacant, a form 
 " fairer than tongue can speak or thought may 
 frame." Then the narrator hears a voice — 
 
 " Thou must a listener be 
 This day — two mighty spirits now return, 
 
 Like birds of calm, from the world's raging sea, 
 They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn ; 
 A tale of human power — despair not — list and learn." 
 
 Then appear Laon and Cythna, the hero and 
 heroine of the poem. 
 
 In this strange introduction Shelley shows an 
 utter contempt or ignorance of the story-teller's 
 art. The reader is perplexed at the outset, and 
 his patience exhausted before the hero and heroine 
 appear. Shelley tries to make a myth ; but its 
 significance is lost in descriptions, wonderful but 
 vague. The introduction lacks substance, and 
 there is the same fault all through the poem. 
 
 Laon was born ' ' in Argolis beside the echoing 
 sea," and there fretted against the tyranny of the 
 Turk and resolved to destroy it. Cythna was an 
 orphan who lived with his parents, his sole associate, 
 and the sharer of his hopes. She is carried away 
 
 158 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 by the Turks, and Laon kills three of them. He 
 is bound to a column, on a rock above the town, 
 and there left to die of thirst and hunger. But he 
 is delivered by a hermit, drawn from Shelley's 
 early friend, Doctor Lind, and taken away by 
 sea to a tower of stone, where he remains for 
 seven years while the hermit nurses him out of 
 madness. Then the hermit tells him that " the 
 tyrants in the Golden City tremble," for a maiden, 
 who is of course Cythna, walks through it " veiled 
 in virtue's adamantine eloquence," and has cast 
 a spell over slaves and tyrants alike. A great 
 host has assembled in the plain beneath the city's 
 wall, and is trying to persuade the tryant's guards 
 to desert him with words of human love. The her- 
 mit exhorts Laon to go among them and uplift 
 his charmed voice. Laon goes, and reaches the 
 plain at the moment when the guards of the 
 tyrant have made a treacherous attack upon the 
 patriot hosts. All is confusion ; but, at the cry 
 of Laon, " in sudden panic those false murderers 
 fled." Laon, with his eloquence, prevents a 
 
 massacre — 
 
 " And all 
 
 Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide 
 
 Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall 
 In a strange land, round one whom they might call 
 
 Their friend, their chief, their father." 
 
 They enter the city amid universal joy and find 
 the fallen tyrant, who is spared through Laon's 
 intercession and taken to " a home for his repose 
 assigned." There follows a great festival of free- 
 
 159 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 dom round a vast altar, which " the devotion of 
 millions in one night created." Upon an ivory 
 throne sat a veiled woman, Cythna, or, as she was 
 now called, Laone. Here we should expect a 
 joyful meeting between her and Laon, but Shelley 
 disappoints us of it. He will give us no human 
 interest ; but only a long ode from Cythna about 
 freedom, which, in spite of many beauties, cannot 
 be read without impatience, especially when 
 Cythna, after beginning a stanza magnificently, 
 proceeds to preach vegetarianism — 
 
 " My brethren, we are free. The fruits are glowing 
 Beneath the stars, and the night winds are flowing 
 O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming — 
 Never again may blood of bird or beast 
 Stain with its venomous stream a human feast, 
 To the pure skies in accusation streaming." 
 
 One need have no quarrel with vegetarians to see 
 that after the first three lines it falls from poetry 
 to rhetoric. The joy of the people does not last 
 long. That very night the tyrant treacherously 
 attacks them. Laon and a band of brothers 
 gathered round him make a desperate stand, but 
 all are killed except him, and he is overpowered ; 
 when suddenly a black Tartarian horse of giant 
 frame comes trampling over the dead, Cythna 
 riding it and waving a sword, like an angel robed 
 in white. The enemy flee. She tells Laon to 
 mount, and they gallop away over the plain and 
 come to a marble ruin on a mountain. Cythna 
 explains her intervention thus — 
 
 1 60 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 " Friend, thy bands were losing 
 The battle, as I stood before the king 
 
 In bonds. I burst them thus, and swiftly choosing 
 The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring 
 Upon his horse, and swift as on the whirlwind's wing, 
 
 Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer, 
 And we are here." 
 
 Where all is improbable, there is no need of 
 explanations that only heighten improbability. 
 Laon and Cythna forget public disasters in love, 
 and Shelley forgets rhetoric in poetry — 
 
 u Was it one moment that confounded thus 
 
 All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one 
 Unutterable power, which shielded us 
 
 Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone 
 
 Into a wide and wild oblivion 
 Of tumult and of tenderness ? or now 
 
 Had ages, such as make the sun and moon, 
 The seasons, and mankind their changes know, 
 Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below ? " 
 
 They pass two days without eating, and then 
 Laon rides away in search of food. He comes to 
 a ravaged village, of which there is a horrible 
 description, and there meets a madwoman who 
 shows him three piles of loaves, round which she 
 had set in state a ring of cold, stiff babes. Laon 
 takes some of the bread back to Cythna, and 
 Cythna then tells him her story ; how she had 
 been subject to the violence of the tyrant, and 
 then taken by an Aethiopian diver to a cave over 
 the sea. There she had had a baby, of which 
 Laon seems to have been the father, and which 
 11 161 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 was taken away by the diver. Then her cave 
 was destroyed by an earthquake, and she rescued 
 by a ship, the crew of which were engaged in kid- 
 napping women for the Turk. Cythna by her 
 eloquence persuades them to set all the women 
 free, and they come to Constantinople, where 
 Cythna walks free from shame or fear, encompassed 
 by the toilworn mariners and happy maidens. 
 She then preaches freedom, and neither priest- 
 craft nor bribery avail against her. The rest 
 Laon knows. 
 
 But meanwhile all the tyrants of the earth had 
 gathered to help their brother tyrant. Famine 
 and plague follow massacre ; and a priest says 
 that the plague will not be stayed until a huge 
 altar is built and Laon and Cythna burnt upon 
 it. The altar is prepared and a great reward 
 offered for them. A stranger appears before the 
 tyrant's throne, and says that he will betray 
 Laon if only Cythna may be allowed to go to 
 America. 
 
 " Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth 
 Are worshipped." 
 
 Shelley seems to have forgotten that there were 
 slaves in the United States. The tyrant and the 
 senate agree to the stranger's terms, and he tells 
 them that he is Laon himself. He is placed upon 
 the altar to be burned, when suddenly Cythna 
 appears upon her Tartarian steed. The tyrant has 
 scruples about breaking his oath, but the priest 
 
 162 
 
u 
 
 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 none ; so Cythna is set on the pyre beside Laon, 
 and they perish in the flames. But the story 
 does not end here. Shelley carries it beyond the 
 grave, so that he may the more completely express 
 his dreams of a more perfect state of being. Laon 
 and Cythna wake reclining — 
 
 " On the waved and golden sand 
 Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined 
 With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind 
 Breathed divine odour." 
 
 A boat approaches them with Cythna's child in 
 it, now a plumed seraph. They are all carried 
 in the " divine canoe " down a mighty stream, 
 " between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven," 
 for three days and nights to a lake — 
 
 " Motionless resting on the lake awhile, 
 
 I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear 
 
 Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle, 
 And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere 
 Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear 
 
 The temple of the spirit ; on the sound 
 
 Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near, 
 
 Like the swift moon this glorious earth around, 
 
 The charmed boat approached, and there its haven 
 found." 
 
 So the poem ends. I have given this account 
 of its story because none of my readers is likely to 
 know it, and because in its very absurdity it shows 
 the character of Shelley's mind, and the manner 
 in which his genius developed. " The Revolt of 
 Islam " is immature in everything except the 
 
 163 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 versification. Shelley is already a master of the 
 Spenserian stanza, which in "The Revolt of 
 Islam" moves more swiftly than the "Faerie 
 Queene," and has a richer and more complicated 
 music. Whatever he wants to say he can say 
 already with ease, and in the language proper to 
 poetry ; but there are two problems in the art of 
 composition. A writer must not only be able to 
 express himself ; he must also know how to catch 
 and hold the attention of his public. Shelley 
 wrote " The Revolt of Islam " only to express 
 himself, and without any thought of his public, 
 for he had none. Throughout his life he suffered 
 from the lack of that training which an artist can 
 only get from addressing a public competent to 
 judge of his art. 
 
 It has been said that Shelley's poetry is too 
 poetical, and certainly " The Revolt of Islam " 
 is too poetical for a narrative poem ; that is to 
 say, the story is smothered by the poetry and 
 sacrificed to the poet's tastes. Since he delighted 
 in describing voyages, the poem is full of them ; 
 and they are introduced, not because they are 
 probable, but that he may have the pleasure of 
 describing them. In a story there should be 
 some relation of cause and effect, otherwise it 
 will not hold together. In " The Revolt of Islam " 
 there is none. Events occur as Shelley chooses. 
 They have no connection with each other or with 
 the characters. Therefore they do not hold our 
 attention. As for the hero and heroine, they are 
 
 164 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 mere mouthpieces of the poet, expressing his 
 opinions at length and on any pretext. A great 
 narrative poem, like a great poetic play, has a 
 cumulative power. The further we read in it 
 the more we are moved by its poetry, for the 
 sense of its heightened reality grows upon us with 
 our interest in the characters and in the succession 
 of events. In " The Revolt of Islam " there is no 
 cumulative power, for it grows the more unreal 
 the further we read in it. The emotions expressed 
 in it seem to be causeless, since we can take no 
 interest in the story which is supposed to excite 
 them, or in the characters who are supposed to 
 feel them. And at the same time we cannot 
 enjoy the lyrical passages as we enjoy isolated 
 lyrics, because they can only be explained by 
 reference to the unreal and obscure story, whereas 
 an isolated lyric explains itself or needs no ex- 
 planation. They also lack the concentration of 
 an isolated lyric, and are mixed up with rhetoric 
 and attempts at narrative. Thus there is a vast 
 deal of beautiful poetry lost and wasted in " The 
 Revolt of Islam," as in most of the longer poems 
 of the romantic movement. Sometimes the 
 reader comes upon a magical line or two, such 
 as — 
 
 "Oh, what a might 
 Of human thought was cradled in that night," 
 
 or — 
 
 " While far Orion o'er the waves did walk 
 That flow among the isles." 
 
 165 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Sometimes upon whole stanzas of extreme 
 beauty — 
 
 '* I sate beside the steersman then, and gazing 
 
 Upon the west, cried, ' Spread the sails ! Behold ! 
 
 The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing 
 Over the mountains yet ; the city of gold 
 Yon cape alone does from the sight withhold ; 
 
 The stream is fleet — the north breathes steadily 
 Beneath the stars, they tremble with the cold ! 
 
 Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea ! 
 
 Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny I 
 
 » >» 
 
 Or this one, in which Laon thinks Cythna 
 dead — 
 
 44 What then was I ? She slumbered with the dead. 
 
 Glory and joy and peace had come and gone. 
 Doth the cloud perish when the beams are fled 
 
 Which steeped its skirts in gold ? or, dark and lone, 
 
 Doth it not through the paths of night unknown, 
 On outspread wings of its own wind upborne, 
 
 Pour rain upon the earth ? The stars are shown. 
 When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn 
 Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn." 
 
 But these passages delight as much apart from 
 their context as in it. They prove that Shelley 
 was a poet, but not that he was a great artist. 
 
 There is one circumstance in the history of the 
 poem which deserves mention as an instance of 
 the recklessness with which Shelley still revolted 
 against the soundest opinions upon sexual matters, 
 if only they were commonly held. He had got 
 it into his head that incest was not wrong, and 
 was resolved to express this strange opinion in his 
 poem. He therefore made Laon and Cythna 
 
 166 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 brother and sister. His publisher Oilier, did not 
 discover this until a few copies of it had been 
 already issued (Peacock says only three). He then 
 refused to publish it unless the cause of offence 
 was removed. Shelley at first protested. " The 
 public respect talent," he wrote, "and a large 
 portion of them are already undeceived with 
 regard to the prejudices which my book attacks." 
 He was strangely ignorant of public opinion. 
 But Oilier pointed out that only a few alterations 
 and excisions would be needed, and Shelley con- 
 sented to make them. The first title of the poem 
 was " Laon and Cythna," and this, in the expur- 
 gated version, was changed to "The Revolt of 
 Islam." 
 
 " Prince Athanase " was never finished ; and 
 what there is of it does not show much advance 
 upon " Alastor." Mrs. Shelley tells us that it 
 was to have much the same subject as that poem. 
 Athanase seeks through the world the One whom 
 he may love. He goes on a voyage, of course, 
 and on the ship meets a lady who seems to him to 
 be all that he desires. But he is deceived in her. 
 She deserts him and he pines away and dies. 
 " On his death-bed, the lady who can really reply 
 to his soul comes and kisses his lips." In what 
 we have of the poem very little happens. The 
 old man Zonoras, the friend of Athanase, is very 
 like the hermit in " The Revolt of Islam," and like 
 him, is drawn from Doctor Lind. Shelley in a 
 note said, " The author was pursuing a fuller 
 
 167 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 development of the ideal character of Athanase, 
 when it struck him that, in an attempt at extreme 
 refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be 
 betrayed into the assuming a morbid character." 
 
 One feels that Shelley could not have made 
 Athanase do anything. These phantoms of his 
 own mind can never act ; they can only feel, and 
 he has no skill in inventing causes for their emo- 
 tions. " Athanase " is written in terza rima, a 
 difficult metre which Shelley was fond of, and 
 which already he handled with great skill. It 
 contains some good lines ; but the subject was 
 one which Shelley had already exhausted. Per- 
 haps that was the real reason why he did not 
 finish it. 
 
 Shelley himself thought little of " Rosalind and 
 Helen " and only finished it to please Mary. Its 
 ideas are very like those of " The Revolt of Islam "; 
 but it is more concerned with some of Shelley's 
 own particular grievances. Rosalind and Helen 
 meet on the shores of Lake Como. They had 
 been friends in girlhood ; but Rosalind had broken 
 off her friendship with Helen, because Helen had 
 lived unmarried with a man named Lionel. 
 Rosalind, however, had learnt charity through 
 her own sorrows. As she stood on the altar stair 
 with the man she loved, her father, returned from 
 a distant land, interrupted the marriage, crying 
 that the bridegroom was her brother. Afterwards 
 she had made a loveless marriage with a rich man 
 who turned out a cruel tyrant, and, dying, left a 
 
 168 
 
"THE REVOLT OF ISLAM" 
 
 will in which he accused her falsely of infidelity 
 and atheism, and gave instructions that, if she 
 tried to see her children, they should inherit none 
 of his money. Helen's lover, Lionel, had been a 
 poet and revolutionary. There is nothing but 
 the difference of name and circumstances to 
 distinguish him from Laon. The disappointment 
 of his revolutionary hopes, and the deceit of a 
 woman he had loved, threw him into a decline ; 
 but he got new happiness from his love for Helen. 
 However, the ministers of misrule seized upon 
 and bore his chained limbs to a dreary tower 
 because he had blasphemed against their gods. 
 Helen dwelt beside the prison gate, and soon his 
 foes released Lionel from penitence or fear. But 
 Lionel was a dying man. They went together to 
 Lionel's home, beside the hoary western sea. In 
 a temple, built by Lionel's mother, Helen played 
 to him on his mother's harp. He was drawn to 
 her embrace, and died in her arms. Lionel left 
 her great wealth in his will. But she was bereft 
 of it all by the ready lies of the law. 
 
 " But let me think not of the scorn, 
 Which from the meanest I have borne, 
 When for my child's beloved sake, 
 I mixed with slaves to vindicate 
 The very laws themselves do make." 
 
 Here Shelley was thinking of his own experience 
 with Lord Eldon, and he was thinking of it when 
 he described Rosalind as separated from her 
 children on a false charge of adultery and atheism. 
 
 169 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Rosalind's estrangement from Helen was taken 
 from the experience of Mary, who had lost a friend 
 of her girlhood for the same reason. 
 
 The poem is a kind of tract in verse, and it is no 
 easier to turn a tract into good poetry when its 
 moral is unorthodox than when it is orthodox. 
 It is written in a curious mixture of narrative 
 and dialogue, and in irregular rhyming verse. 
 The more irregular parts are much influenced by 
 " Christabel." Shelley was right to think little 
 of " Rosalind and Helen." The task of writing 
 it may have given him disgust for didactic poetry, 
 to which his genius was quite unsuited." From this 
 time he seldom wasted his powers upon it, and 
 they grew with wonderful rapidity. We may 
 consider " Rosalind and Helen " as the last of his 
 immature poems, or, at any rate, the last that 
 cannot be taken seriously. It was finished in 
 August, 1818, and, in September, he began 
 "Prometheus Unbound." 
 
 170 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 SHELLEY, Mary, and Claire, with their children, 
 left England on March n, 1818, Shelley 
 never to return. 
 
 As they went through the Mont Cenis Pass, 
 Shelley sang — 
 
 " How Heaven neglected is by men, 
 
 And gods are hung upon every tree ! 
 But not the more for loss of them 
 Shall this fair world unhappy be." 
 
 He said that the mountains were God's corps de 
 ballet, and that the Jungfrau was Mademoiselle 
 Milanie. They reached Turin on March 31, and 
 Milan on April 4. They wished to live on Lake 
 Como ; and saw " a very nice house, but out of 
 repair, with an excellent garden, but full of ser- 
 pents." It is a wonder that Shelley did not take 
 it at once. From Milan Claire's daughter was 
 sent to Byron, at Venice. He had taken a strong 
 dislike to Claire, whom he had never loved, and 
 was resolved that she should not keep the child. 
 Claire parted with her daughter because, otherwise, 
 she feared that Byron would do nothing for the 
 child, and it had no prospects except from him. 
 
 171 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Byron, in taking the child from her mother, sinned 
 against nature, and made his sin worse by defend- 
 ing it with odious cant. Shelley appears to have 
 advised Claire not to give up the child. During 
 the rest of its short life he did all he could for it 
 and for Claire. She suffered cruelly, and had no 
 rest from anxiety and longing until it was dead. 
 
 On May i they left Milan for Leghorn, where 
 they went to see a Mrs. Gisborne who was an old 
 friend of Godwin, and had taken care of Mary in 
 her motherless infancy. Her husband, John 
 Gisborne, was described by Shelley as " a man 
 who knows I cannot tell how many languages, and 
 has read almost all the books you can think of ; 
 but all that they contain seems to be to his mind 
 what water is to a sieve." Mr. Gisborne's nose 
 he described as quite Slawkenbergian. "It weighs 
 on the imagination to look at it. It is that sort of 
 nose which transforms all the g's its bearer utters 
 into k's. It is a nose once seen never to be for- 
 gotten, and which requires the utmost stretch of 
 Christian charity to forgive. I, you know, have 
 a little turn-up nose ; Hogg has a large hook one ; 
 but add them both together, square them, cube 
 them, you will have but a faint idea of the nose to 
 which I refer." Shelley's notion of fun was always 
 quite primitive ; but, when he got hold of a joke, 
 like a high-spirited child he did not quickly let go 
 of it. 
 
 They stayed about a month in Leghorn, and 
 on June u, 1818, went to the Baths of Lucca, 
 
 172 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 where they took a house. There, in the heat of 
 the day, Shelley would bathe in a pool under a 
 waterfall deep in a wood. He could write little 
 poetry at this time ; no doubt his mind was 
 exhausted after the " Revolt of Islam," but he 
 made his free and eloquent translation of the 
 " Banquet of Plato." After this was done he 
 finished " Rosalind and Helen," but rather as a 
 task than because he was moved to complete it. 
 Meanwhile Claire was fretting about her child, 
 for they had bad accounts of Byron's way of life 
 in Venice. She persuaded Shelley to go with her 
 to Venice that he might intercede with Byron, 
 and they set out together in August, leaving Mary 
 behind. They reached Venice on August 22. The 
 child, now called Allegra, was with Mrs. Hoppner, 
 the wife of the English Consul at Venice, who had 
 offered to take care of her. Therefore they went 
 to call on Mrs. Hoppner their first morning in 
 Venice. They found her very kind, but she gave 
 a bad account of Byron's way of living. Mrs. 
 Hoppner, being a good woman, naturally sym- 
 pathized with Claire's desire to have her child, 
 and they discussed the best manner of approaching 
 Byron. Since Byron had declared that if Claire 
 came to Venice he would leave at once, it was 
 decided that he should be told that she was at 
 Padua. Shelley went to see him at three in the 
 afternoon. Byron received him well, and offered 
 to let the child go to Claire to Padua for a week. 
 He then took Shelley out in his gondola, though 
 
 173 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Shelley was anxious to get back with his news to 
 Claire. They went to the Lido, and there rode 
 on the sands. Byron had taken a villa called I 
 Cappucini, at Este, among the Euganean Hills, and 
 thinking that Mary and her children were with 
 Claire at Padua, he offered to lend it to them for a 
 time, and to send Allegra to Claire there. Shelley 
 accepted the offer, and wrote to Mary asking her 
 to come with the children to Este. " I have 
 done for the best," he said, " and, my own beloved 
 Mary, you must soon come and scold me if I have 
 done wrong, and kiss me if I have done right." 
 It was rash to take the two children across Italy 
 at that hot season, but Mary set off on the last 
 day of August. The baby Claire was teething, 
 and, when they reached Este, was dangerously 
 ill with dysentery. She continued to ail for some 
 weeks, and there was no good doctor at Este, so 
 they took her to Venice on September 24. The 
 child grew worse and worse. They reached 
 Venice at about five o'clock, but the child died 
 soon after. The Hoppners took them to their 
 house, and Mary did not give way to her grief ; 
 but this was the second child she had lost, and 
 she was soon to lose a third. They went up to 
 Byron's villa early in October. There they had 
 a beautiful view over the plain of Lombardy, 
 with the Apennines in the far distance. They 
 were all sad, and Shelley was ailing ; but it was 
 now that he began to write the poems upon which 
 his fame is established. 
 
 174 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 The best passages in the ' ' Lines written among 
 the Euganean Hills " are those in which he speaks 
 of Venice, which seemed to him a dead city, or 
 worse than dead, with all her mouldering beauty 
 enslaved by the Austrians. She will be a less 
 drear ruin, he thinks, when she is deserted — 
 
 " And all is in its ancient state, 
 Save where many a palace gate 
 With green sea-flowers overgrown 
 Like a rock of ocean's own, 
 Topples o'er the abandoned sea 
 As the tides change sullenly. 
 The fisher on his watery way 
 Wandering at the close of day, 
 Will spread his sail and seize his oar 
 Till he pass the gloomy shore, 
 Lest thy dead should, from their sleep, 
 Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 
 Lead a rapid masque of death 
 Over the waters of his path." 
 
 The poem expresses a mood of grief, complicated 
 and enriched by delight in the strange and half- 
 unreal beauties of Italy. These beauties seem to 
 belong to a land where no grief ought to be, and 
 fill the poet with the desire for a state of mind 
 accordant with them. At the end his longing 
 for an earthly Paradise expresses itself, as so 
 often in his poetry — 
 
 " Other flowering isles must be 
 In the sea of life and agony : 
 Other spirits float and flee 
 O'er that gulf : even now, perhaps, 
 On some rock the wild wave wraps, 
 With folded wings they waiting sit 
 For my bark, to pilot it 
 
 175 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 To some calm and blooming cove, 
 
 Where for me, and those I love, 
 
 May a windless bower be built, 
 
 Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 
 
 In a dell 'mid lawny hills, 
 
 Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 
 
 And soft sunshine, and the sound 
 
 Of old forests echoing round, 
 
 And the light and smell divine 
 
 Of all flowers that breathe and shine." 
 
 The poem would be the better for more con- 
 centration and purpose. Shelley had not yet 
 learnt, as Keats advised him, to load every rift 
 with ore. But he had never before written with 
 such precision and simplicity of language, or in 
 so long a poem kept himself free from mere 
 rhetoric. 
 
 Shelley and Mary returned to Venice on October 
 12, and Shelley was shocked at what he saw of 
 Byron's profligacy. They were back at Este on 
 October 24. The poem "Julian and Maddalo," 
 written, perhaps, between his two first visits to 
 Venice, is another advance upon his earlier work. 
 He took the subject partly out of his own 
 experience. The best of it is a record of his 
 impressions of Venice, and of conversations 
 between himself and Byron. But impressions 
 and conversations strung together do not make 
 a coherent poem, and Shelley could not find a 
 subject to which they were naturally relevant 
 and subordinate. After a wonderful description 
 of a sunset seen from the Lido, we have some 
 eloquent conversations between Byron and 
 
 176 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 Shelley ; and these lead up to the account of a 
 maniac, in a madhouse upon an island, whom 
 they visit. He is one of Shelley's conventional 
 heroes, like the youth in "Alastor," and Laon, 
 and Lionel. He had held Shelley's opinions, had 
 lost all his wealth, and had been driven mad by 
 the faithlessness of a lady who came with him 
 from France. Two hundred lines of the poem 
 are taken up with his speech, which contains 
 many beauties, but is vague and incoherent. No 
 doubt a madman's speech would be vague and 
 incoherent, but that is a reason why it should not 
 be versified at length. And he does not speak 
 like a madman, but like a young poet crossed in 
 love and out of conceit with life. 
 
 Thus " Julian and Maddalo " is a formless 
 work, but particular passages deserve the praise 
 they have received. When Shelley writes out 
 of his own experience he shows a new power of 
 being, familiar but not prosaic. In his introduction 
 he says that the more serious conversation of 
 Count Maddalo (Byron) " is a sort of intoxica- 
 tion ; men are held by it as by a spell." In the 
 poem he gives us snatches of this conversation 
 glorified by his own art, but not emptied of char- 
 acter and reality. They have heard the bell in 
 the madhouse tower calling the lunatics to prayer, 
 and Julian, who is Shelley himself, says— 
 
 " ' As much skill as need to pray 
 In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they 
 To their stern Maker. . . .' " 
 
 12 I77 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Byron lives for us in what follows : — 
 
 " « Oh, ho ! 
 You talk as in years past,' said Maddalo. 
 ' Tis strange men change not. You were ever still 
 Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, 
 A wolf for the meek lambs — if you can't swim, 
 Beware of Providence.' I looked on him, 
 But the gay smile had faded from his eye. 
 1 And such,' he cried, ' is our mortality, 
 And this must be the emblem and the sign 
 Of what should be eternal and divine ! 
 And like that black and dreary bell the soul, 
 Hung in an heaven-illumined tower, must toll 
 Our thoughts and our desires to meet below 
 Round the rent heart, and pray — as madmen do ; 
 For what ? they know not, — till the night of death, 
 As sunset that strange vision, severeth 
 Our memory from itself, and us from all 
 We sought, and yet were baffled.' " 
 
 The poem gives us Shelley's impressions of 
 Byron and Venice, and it proves that he was able 
 to record such impressions vividly and swiftly. 
 The versification is very original and skilful. The 
 sense overflows the couplets as in the Elizabethan 
 and Jacobean poets, but it seldom rambles on or 
 loses itself in helpless mazes after the manner of 
 the Caroline heroic poems and " Endymion." 
 Shelley now began to show a new power of writing 
 tersely, of saying things easy to remember ; and 
 this poem contains one of the few familiar quota- 
 tions that came from his works : — 
 
 11 Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 
 
 178 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 Shelley had been full of the idea of " Prometheus 
 Unbound " ever since he came to Italy, and at 
 Este he began it. The first act was written there 
 in September and October. At the beginning 
 of November the Shelleys decided to go south 
 for the winter, and " Prometheus " was not 
 continued till the spring. They reached Rome 
 on November 20, but only stayed there a week. 
 Shelley was most impressed by the Coliseum, and 
 began a romance about it, eloquent but vague, 
 which he never finished. It is written as if it 
 ought to be in verse, like most of Shelley's more 
 imaginative prose. On November 27 Shelley 
 went to Naples alone to get lodgings ; the others 
 followed the next day. At Naples they had 
 trouble with an Italian servant, Paolo Foggi, who 
 robbed them and seduced their son's nurse, Elise. 
 Mary, who had learned, perhaps, from her own 
 experience and Claire's that freedom might be 
 harder for women than marriage itself, behaved 
 in this emergency like a British matron and had 
 them married at the English Church before she 
 dismissed them. The man afterwards tried to 
 blackmail Shelley with a threat of lying charges, 
 and his slanders were a great trouble to both 
 Shelley and Mary, as we shall see. Mrs. Shelley 
 tells us that at Naples Shelley suffered much both 
 from bad health and from melancholy. This 
 melancholy was expressed in the first of his shorter 
 poems, which is commonly considered a master- 
 piece, the " Stanzas written in dejection near 
 
 179 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Naples." What interests us in these stanzas, 
 and in other poems of the same character, is the 
 conflict between melancholy and delight, and the 
 troubled music that comes of it. If melancholy 
 were unopposed and unmixed there could be no 
 music, for no one could express such melancholy 
 in music. There must be some delight in the 
 expression of whatever is expressed in terms of 
 beauty. 
 
 " Yet now despair itself is mild, 
 
 Even as the winds and waters are ; 
 
 I could lie down like a tired child, 
 And weep away the life of care 
 
 Which I have borne and yet must bear." 
 
 Here the sense is all melancholy, but not 
 the sound ; and the sound of poetry expresses an 
 emotion which may, almost unknown to the poet, 
 be in conflict with the sense. 
 
 About this time Shelley wrote two fragments 
 of poems, " The Woodman and the Nightingale," 
 and " Mazenghi," in which, so far as they go, the 
 story is a mere pretext for descriptions, and which 
 were abandoned, perhaps, because he lost interest 
 in them when he had described what he wanted 
 to describe. A passage about the nightingale's 
 song reminds one of the long-drawn raptures of 
 Crashaw and Swinburne : — 
 
 " The folded roses and the violets pale 
 
 Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss 
 Of heaven with all its planets ; the dull ear 
 Of the night-cradled earth ; the loneliness 
 
 180 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 Of the circumfluous waters, — every sphere 
 
 And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, 
 
 And every wind of the mute atmosphere, 
 
 And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, 
 And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, 
 And every silver moth fresh from the grave 
 
 Which is its cradle — ever from below 
 Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far, 
 To be consumed within the purest glow 
 
 Of one serene and unapproached star, 
 As if it were a lamp of earthly light, 
 Unconscious, as some human lovers are, 
 
 Itself how low, how high beyond all height 
 
 The heaven where it would perish ! — and every form 
 
 That worshipped in the temple of the night 
 
 Was awed into delight, and by the charm 
 
 Girt as with an interminable zone, 
 
 Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm 
 
 Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion 
 Out of their dreams." 
 
 " Mazenghi " is the beginning of a story of a 
 Florentine exile. There is nothing to prove that 
 Shelley would have made anything of it. But 
 it contains a most fanciful description of the exile's 
 doings at the edge of a poisonous marsh : — 
 
 " And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night 
 Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet ; 
 And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright, 
 
 In many entangled figures quaint and sweet, 
 To some enchanted music they would dance — 
 Until they vanished at the first moon-glance." 
 
 181 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Both here and in the nightingale poem Shelley is 
 beginning to express that sense, which he possessed 
 beyond all poets, of a humanity in all beautiful 
 things, as if they felt the significance of their 
 own beauty and through that beauty were 
 communicating with each other and with him. 
 For him, indeed, the upper air and the whole 
 universe burst into life, and seemed as full of 
 significance as a beautiful human being seems to 
 the rest of us. 
 
 On February 28, 1819, the whole party left 
 Naples for Rome, which they reached on March 5. 
 Shelley now began to make a serious study of 
 pictures and sculpture. Great artists are often 
 poor judges of another art, and there is nothing 
 remarkable in Shelley's criticisms. He thought 
 that Michelangelo had no temperance, no modesty, 
 no feeling for the just boundaries of art ; and, 
 strangest of all, no sense of beauty, for which 
 reason hell and death were his real sphere. He had 
 the admiration of his time for Guido Reni ; but if 
 he saw more in Guido's art than there really is, 
 we probably see less. Wonder has been expressed 
 at his admiration for Salvator Rosa, but Salvator 
 is often admirable. There have been preserved 
 some notes of his on sculpture in Rome and Flor- 
 ence. These consist mostly of descriptions, often 
 very precise and minute. The most interesting 
 is a note headed " An Accouchement ; a bas- 
 relief," which is a very close description of the 
 Tornabuoni relief in the Bargello at Florence, 
 
 182 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 attributed, probably wrongly, to Verrocchio. 
 Shelley was merely amused by the naivete* 
 of the relief, which is supposed to represent 
 the death of Lucrezia Tornabuoni in child-birth ; 
 and describes it with some humour. He does not 
 know what the subject may be. " What they 
 are all wailing at," he says, " I don't know ; 
 whether the lady is dying, or the father has 
 ordered the child to be exposed : but if the mother 
 be not dead, such a tumult would kill a woman 
 in the straw in these days." The other relief, 
 representing the presentation of the child to the 
 widower, seemed to Shelley " altogether an 
 admirable piece, quite in the spirit of the comedies 
 of Terence." Yet it is meant to be, and is, a 
 pathetic scene. Shelley was used to find pathos 
 only in the works of a later school ; but he noticed 
 the realism of this more archaic art, and was enough 
 interested in it to describe it minutely. He was 
 disgusted with Michelangelo's Bacchus. " Its 
 countenance is the most revolting mistake of the 
 spirit and meaning of Bacchus. It looks drunken, 
 brutal, and narrow-minded, and has an expression 
 of dissoluteness the most revolting. ... It is 
 altogether without unity, as was the idea of the 
 deity of Bacchus in the conception of a Catholic. 
 On the other hand, considered merely as a piece 
 of workmanship, it has great merits. ... As a 
 representation of the Greek deity of Bacchus it 
 wants everything." The Bacchus is a very 
 wonderful work, but it represents him as the god 
 
 183 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 of wine, a child of the earth drowsed with its 
 richness. To Shelley he was pure spirit, just as 
 the earth itself in his poetry loses its heaviness 
 and substance and seems almost as unsubstantial 
 as the clouds. 
 
 Shelley's son, William, was not suited by the 
 heat of Italy. On June 2 he was taken ill with a 
 gastric attack, and, on June 7, he died. This 
 was the third child Mary had lost, and none 
 remained to her. She was again pregnant, but 
 therefore only suffered more. This calamity made 
 an end of her youth, and she never recovered the 
 spirits and confidence of youth. 
 
 Shelley, too, suffered much from the loss of his 
 child. But he had his art, for he was born to be a 
 poet. Mary was born to be a mother, and for a 
 time her occupation seemed to be gone. Shelley 
 could soothe his grief with beautiful fancies. It 
 was some little consolation to him that the child 
 should be buried in that flowery English cemetery 
 that had pleased him when he first went to Rome. 
 
 " Where art thou, my gentle child ? 
 
 Let me think thy spirit feeds, 
 With its life intense and mild, 
 
 The love of living leaves and weeds 
 Among these tombs and ruins wild ; 
 
 Let me think that through low seeds 
 Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, 
 Into their hues and scents may pass 
 
 A portion " 
 
 The poem breaks off there, perhaps because his 
 loss pressed it upon his mind and cut it off from 
 
 184 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 all escape into fancies. There are other frag- 
 ments written this year about the child's death ; 
 and two in which he laments the manner in which 
 Mary was secluded from him by her grief : — 
 
 " My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, 
 And left me in this dreary world alone ? 
 Thy form is here indeed — a lovely one — 
 But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road 
 That leads to sorrow's most obscure abode ; 
 Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair, 
 
 Where 
 For thine own sake I cannot follow thee." 
 
 It was an evil time for both of them, but most 
 evil for Mary. Real life is very different from our 
 sentimental notions of it. We should expect a 
 divine poet, the kindest of men, and his wife, the 
 best of women, to be drawn more closely together 
 by the loss of their only son. But a divine poet 
 has a great work to do ; no grief can long distract 
 him from that ; and he looks to his wife to help 
 him in it. Nothing, however, for a while can 
 distract her from her grief. She cannot give him 
 that help which he has learnt to expect from her. 
 All the wife in her is lost in the mother's longing. 
 Therefore their loss estranges them instead of 
 bringing them together ; and not through their 
 own fault so much as through the different laws 
 of their being. But in November a son was born 
 to Mary, and nature again became her friend. 
 " Poor Mary begins (for the first time)," Shelley 
 wrote, " to look a little consoled, for we have spent, 
 as you may imagine, a miserable five months." 
 
 185 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 A few days after the death of William they had 
 left Rome for Leghorn, no doubt that Mary might 
 have the companionship of Mrs. Gisborne. They 
 took a villa outside Leghorn for three months. 
 At this time Shelley considered " Prometheus 
 Unbound " to be finished in three acts. The last 
 act, which he wrote a few months later, was an 
 after- thought. But his mind was not exhausted 
 by that act of creation. In the spring of 1818 he 
 had read a manuscript account of the story of 
 Beatrice Cenci, and, when he went to Rome, he 
 was ready to find all that he looked for in the 
 famous picture which is supposed to be a portrait 
 of her and the work of Guido Reni. " There is 
 a fixed and pale composure upon the features," 
 he wrote. " She seems sad and stricken down in 
 spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened 
 by the patience of gentleness." 
 
 He also discovered that " the story of the Cenci 
 was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian 
 society without awakening a deep and breathless 
 interest," On May 14 he had begun to write a 
 tragedy on the subject. He now continued it at 
 Leghorn. The rough draft of the play was finished 
 on August 8. The fair copy was made before the 
 end of the month, and an edition of 250 copies 
 was printed at Leghorn for the sake of cheapness. 
 The books were sent to England, and published 
 by Oilier in the spring of 1820. " The Cenci " 
 had a larger sale than any other of Shelley's 
 works except, perhaps, " Queen Mab," and went 
 
 186 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 into a second edition, which was printed in Eng- 
 land, in 1 82 1. 
 
 On September 30 the Shelleys left Leghorn 
 for Florence, and reached Florence on October 2. 
 At this time Shelley wrote the first of those lyrics 
 which, by almost universal consent, have made 
 him the greatest English lyrical poet. The " Ode 
 to the West Wind" "was conceived and chiefly 
 written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near 
 Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous 
 wind . . . was collecting the vapours which pour 
 down the autumnal rains. They began ... at 
 sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, 
 attended by that magnificent thunder and light- 
 ning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.' ' 
 
 Those who cannot by any power of art be 
 wrought upon to share, even for a moment, Shelley's 
 delighted sense of the significance of natural 
 forces, will find in the " Ode to the West Wind " 
 itself only a swarm of fancies swept along in a 
 stream of entrancing music. It has been said 
 that Shelley was a myth-maker. His myths were 
 not to him mere caprices of fancy. They expressed 
 by the only means which human language provides 
 for the expression of such things, that sense, which 
 he possessed, of a more intense reality in nature 
 than is felt by other men. 
 
 To most of us, the forces of nature have but 
 reality. To many, especially in modern times, 
 they seem to be mechanical ; and even when they 
 manifest themselves in beauty, there are some who 
 
 187 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 enjoy that beauty only with the senses and without 
 any notion that it has more significance than a 
 display of fireworks. But for Shelley these forces 
 had as much reality as human beings have for 
 most of us, and he found the same kind of intense 
 significance in their manifestations of beauty 
 that we find in the beauty of human beings or 
 of great works of art. The nature of this signifi- 
 cance he could not explain ; but he could express 
 it with enormous power in his art, and with a pre- 
 cision of statement which seems miraculous when 
 the nature of his subject matter is considered. 
 Shelley's poetry is often called vague, and his 
 weaker poems are vaguer than they need be. But 
 his finest lyrics are more lucid and exact than any 
 other poetry of the same kind. There is this 
 difference between Shelley and primitive myth- 
 makers — that they seem to have thought of the 
 forces of nature as disguised beings more powerful 
 than themselves but still in all essentials human, or 
 else as manifestations of the power of such beings. 
 But to Shelley the west wind was still a wind, 
 and the cloud a cloud, however intense a reality 
 they might have for him. In his poetry they 
 keep their own character and do not take on 
 human attributes, though their own qualities may 
 be expressed in imagery taken from human beings. 
 When he addresses the west wind thus — 
 
 " Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 
 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 
 
 188 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread 
 On the blue surface of thine aery surge, 
 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 
 
 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 
 
 Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 
 
 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 
 
 Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 
 Vaulted with all thy congregated might 
 
 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 
 
 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : oh, hear ! " 
 
 Then we are not wrought upon to feel anything 
 human in the wind's power ; but, if we are sus- 
 ceptible to Shelley's magic, we are filled with a 
 new sense of the life and significance and reality 
 of nature. Notice, too, that Shelley gives us no 
 picture here. The poem is scarcely more fit to be 
 illustrated than a piece of music ; and it is much 
 nearer to music than to painting, being so full of 
 sound and motion. Yet it gives us a more vivid 
 sense of experience than we could get from any 
 pictorial description. The metre, which is terza 
 rima divided into short periods, is managed with 
 complete mastery. No one has ever made the 
 ordinary heroic line move so swiftly as Shelley, 
 and here, as the lines rush through a complicated 
 system of rhymes, they express the irresistible 
 power of the wind ; and the music of each period 
 is varied as if with sudden changes of instruments 
 in an orchestra. After the diverse and clashing 
 
 189 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 sounds of the period I have quoted, there follows 
 one that opens like a new theme played upon 
 violins — 
 
 " Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 
 
 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay." 
 
 The beautiful " Indian Senerade " also belongs 
 to this time. We cannot doubt that Shelley 
 meant to imitate Moore in it. He thought 
 Moore a better poet than himself. If Mozart's 
 " Don Giovanni " had been composed in imitation 
 of Rossini, the result would not have been more 
 surprising. But genius can get its inspiration 
 from inferior art as well as from nature, and 
 Shelley, trying to sing like Moore, sang like him- 
 self instead. 
 
 Mary Shelley tells us that Shelley at this time 
 had the idea of publishing a series of poems 
 adapted expressly to commemorate the wrongs 
 of the people. " He believed that a clash between 
 the two classes of society was inevitable, and he 
 eagerly ranged himself on the people ' s side . ' ' The 
 year before he had called Wordsworth " a pitiful 
 wretch " in a letter to Peacock, and he was deter- 
 mined that all the poets should not seem indifferent 
 to the dreadful condition of the English poor. 
 Now he feared lest anarchy should be " the last 
 flash before despotism." There was, indeed, a 
 danger that England would submit to the most 
 
 190 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 ignominious of all despotisms, that of a plutocracy. 
 Shelley saw this while Wordsworth and Scott, in 
 their honest but sentimental Toryism, did not. 
 The poems which Shelley wrote at this time to 
 express his political opinions may appear to us 
 exaggerated, but we are too young to know what 
 England was like in 1819. Then it was not 
 absurd to speak of the " death-white shore of 
 Albion, free no more," for the English people 
 seemed to be falling into an economic slavery 
 worse than any political oppression, and the British 
 Constitution had been corrupted into a mockery 
 of itself. Shelley speaks of this economic slavery 
 in his " Song to the Men of England," and one 
 verse at least is direct and strong : — 
 
 " The seed ye sow, another reaps ; 
 The wealth ye find, another keeps ; 
 The robes ye weave, another wears ; 
 The arms ye forge, another bears." 
 
 The longest of these political poems is the 
 " Masque of Anarchy." Shelley wrote it on 
 hearing the news of the Manchester massacre. 
 It is, Mrs. Shelley says, in a more popular tone 
 than usual ; but, though the language is simple, 
 it is too full of generalities for a popular 
 audience. 
 
 In October he wrote " Peter Bell the Third "— 
 more a satire on Wordsworth than a parody of 
 his poem. Shelley was angry with Wordsworth 
 because he had become a reactionary in politics. 
 
 191 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Mrs. Shelley tells us that no man admired Words- 
 worth's poetry more, but he thought that a poet 
 who lost all the high hopes of his youth must be 
 infected with dullness. 
 
 " Peter Bell the Third " is too long, but it is by 
 far the most interesting of Shelley's lighter poems. 
 The idea is good, and some of the verses have a 
 curious wit, as in this account of Wordsworth's 
 attitude towards nature : — 
 
 " But from the first 'twas Peter's drift 
 To be a kind of moral eunuch : 
 He touched the hem of nature's shift, 
 
 Felt faint, — and never dared uplift 
 The closest, all-concealing tunic. 
 
 She laughed the while, with an arch smile, 
 
 And kissed him with a sister's kiss, 
 And said — ' My best Diogenes, 
 I love you well — but, if you please, 
 Tempt not again my deepest bliss.' " 
 
 Shelley apparently had the idea that Words- 
 worth now only wrote well when inspired by 
 Coleridge. Under his influence, he says, Words- 
 worth produced poetry — 
 
 " Like gentle rains, on the dry plains, 
 
 Making that green which late was gray, 
 Or like the sudden moon, that stains 
 Some gloomy chamber's window-panes 
 With a broad light like day." 
 
 Here is a description of the hostile review of 
 Wordsworth's poetry, which is drawn from real 
 reviews of Shelley's own : — 
 
 192 
 
THE DEPARTURE TO ITALY 
 
 "By that last book of yours we think 
 
 You've double-damned yourself to scorn ; 
 We warned you whilst yet on the brink 
 You stood. From your black name will shrink 
 The babe that is unborn." 
 
 The last remark had actually been made by 
 a reviewer about Shelley ; but he was always 
 indifferent to such abuse. 
 
 In December, 1819, Shelley began a prose work, 
 called "A Philosophical View of Reform." The 
 unfinished first draft of this has been preserved. 
 Shelley saw that England was in danger of falling 
 under the tyranny of a plutocracy. The National 
 Debt seemed to him the great symbol of that 
 tyranny. It was indeed true that rich men who 
 had profited by the war had lent some of their 
 profits to the Government for the purpose of 
 carrying on the war, and that the interest on their 
 loans was now being paid directly or indirectly 
 by multitudes whom the war had impoverished. 
 Shelley had a vague scheme for lessening the 
 burden of the National Debt on the many and 
 its profit to the few. There can be little doubt 
 that if he had lived now he would have been a 
 Socialist, and probably a Fabian, for in political 
 matters he was not a violent revolutionary. He 
 was still opposed to Universal Suffrage and thought 
 vote by ballot too mechanical. He was doubtful 
 about Woman's Suffrage. 
 
 At the end of 1819 he wrote the last act of 
 "Prometheus Unbound," and I will now say 
 what I have to say of that work and " The Cenci." 
 
 13 193 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 " PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " AND 
 "THE CENCI" 
 
 IN " Prometheus Unbound " Shelley attempted 
 to make one of the great poems of the world. 
 It is the most ambitious poem of the Romantic 
 Movement, and one of the most ambitious that 
 ever was written. The very vastness of the 
 poet's ambition produced beauties that could not 
 have been in a humbler and more perfect work ; 
 but no poet, however great his genius, can achieve 
 a masterpiece in the highest kind of poetry unless 
 all circumstances conspire to favour him. Cir- 
 cumstances did not favour the romantic poets so 
 much as to allow any one of them to produce one 
 of the great poems of the world. Both the epic 
 and the dramatic forms were dead when the 
 Romantic Movement began ; no efforts availed 
 to bring them to life again, nor was any new form 
 of poetry created in which all the romantic ideas 
 and emotions could find a complete and coherent 
 expression. Forms of this kind are imposed upon 
 the poet rather than created by him, and they are 
 imposed by a public that regards poetry as one 
 of the ordinary pleasures of life. We may suppose 
 
 194 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 that listening to epic poetry was such a pleasure 
 to the audience of Homer. The later Greeks 
 and the Elizabethans certainly enjoyed poetry in 
 their plays, while, at the same time, they expected 
 those plays to interest and excite them. Thus 
 Homer and ^Eschylus and Shakespeare were 
 popular entertainers as well as great poets, and 
 a task was imposed upon them by their public 
 besides the task which they chose to make for 
 themselves. But no such task was imposed upon 
 the romantic poets, nor could they create a popular 
 demand for any of the great forms of poetry. It 
 is true that the narrative poems of Scott and 
 Byron had a large sale ; but nothing great was 
 developed out of them, and Scott soon turned to 
 prose, while Byron in "Don Juan " used poetry 
 to make game of itself, just as Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 sometimes uses the drama to make game of itself. 
 Other romantic poets had higher ambitions, and 
 tried to adapt the epic or the drama to their own 
 purposes. But there was no purpose outside 
 themselves to direct their adaptations. When 
 Wordsworth started to write the " Excursion " 
 or the " Prelude " he had no one to please but 
 himself, no difficulties to overcome except those 
 which he chose to make. He had to set his own 
 problem, and, naturally, he set one that was too 
 easy. He was not subject to that external con- 
 straint by which alone the great forms of art can 
 be developed ; and so the " Prelude " and the 
 ' Excursion " are formless, their beauties casual 
 
 195 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and disconnected, their inspiration at the mercy 
 of the poet's whims. 
 
 So it was with Shelley when he wrote " The 
 Revolt of Islam," and it is wonderful that, when 
 only a year later he wrote " Prometheus," he 
 should have produced a poem so much better in 
 form. For the difficulties of " Prometheus " 
 were enormous. The subject is one that would 
 not suit any form of poetry that has ever been 
 devised, and when Shelley treated it as a lyrical 
 drama he only did so because all other forms 
 were clearly impossible. His purpose was to 
 express his sense of the present evil conditions of 
 the universe, to represent a sudden miraculous 
 change in that condition, and finally to sing the 
 glory of the universe thus transformed. He had 
 learnt too much about his art to treat this 
 subject as he had treated it in " Queen Mab." 
 He had done with sermonizing fairies and magic 
 tours through the past and future. He saw that 
 he must express it in a myth ; but, since there 
 was no existing myth that suited his purpose, 
 he had to make one for himself. The two chief 
 characters in his myth have familiar names ; but 
 the story, as he tells it, is mainly his own invention. 
 iEschylus, besides his " Prometheus Bound," wrote 
 a lost play upon the liberation of Prometheus ; 
 but, as Shelley says in his preface, " the ' Pro- 
 metheus Unbound ' of iEschylus supposed the 
 reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the 
 price of the disclosure of the danger threatened 
 
 196 
 
" PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " 
 
 to his empire by the consummation of his marriage 
 with Thetis." This story would not have suited 
 Shelley's purpose at all. " I was averse," he 
 says, " from a catastrophe so feeble as that of 
 reconciling the champion with the oppressor of 
 mankind. The moral interest of the fable . . . 
 would be annihilated if we could conceive of 
 Prometheus as unsaying his high language, and 
 quailing before his successful and prefidious 
 adversary." 
 
 Shelley compares his Prometheus to the Satan 
 of " Paradise Lost " ; but he deliberately makes 
 his arch-rebel his hero, gives him all the virtues, 
 and ends the poem with his triumph. Thus his 
 myth is of a new kind, and made to express the 
 new ideas of an age of revolution. But men can 
 form new ideas of the universe much more quickly 
 than they can make new myths to express them ; 
 and for a poet not only to treat a myth in poetry, 
 but also to invent the myth itself, is a task of 
 almost insuperable difficulty. The great myths 
 express, not one man's experience of life, but the 
 experience of multitudes and generations. Shel- 
 ley's myth expressed only his own rather limited 
 experience and his own peculiar ideas, which 
 were not so much the result as the cause of that 
 experience. He seems to have been born with 
 an overpowering desire for perfection, and an 
 idea of it by which he tested all real things and 
 found them wanting. It was never his object to 
 reconcile himself to reality. Reality seemed to 
 
 197 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 him to suffer from an organic disease of which it 
 must be miraculously cured before he could 
 consent to it. This idea of things he expressed 
 in his myth. Prometheus represents all that is 
 good in suffering humanity ; Jupiter the tyrannous 
 and external evil by which humanity is oppressed. 
 Jupiter is suddenly and mysteriously overthrown, 
 and Prometheus is freed. At once the universe 
 is cured of its disease, and all things rejoice in 
 common. This myth does not express any 
 general conception of the nature of things ; for 
 the great mass of men, however little they may 
 think about the order of the universe, have a 
 sense that evil is in the nature of man and to some 
 extent his own fault, not imposed upon him by 
 a celestial tyrant. Now men will accept a myth 
 which expresses their own conception of the 
 universe, even if it explains nothing. But they 
 are not likely to accept one which is contrary to 
 their own conception, unless it not only expresses 
 but explains. Shelley's myth, of course, explains 
 nothing. How could it ? He assumes the 
 wickedness of Jupiter and the goodness of 
 Prometheus. But Jupiter's wickedness has no 
 motive, and his overthrow is causeless. Some- 
 thing happens in the middle of the play ; but 
 Shelley cannot tell us what it is, because he does 
 not know. Demogorgon appears and descends 
 with Jupiter into the abyss ; but we do not learn 
 why he appears or how he contrives the fall of 
 Jupiter, or even who he is, except that he is 
 
 198 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 Eternity and the child of Jupiter, as Jupiter of 
 Saturn. 
 
 The names of Jupiter and Prometheus are 
 familiar to us, but we are not accustomed to 
 think of them as personifications of evil and good. 
 Therefore Shelley could make little or no use of 
 whatever tradition had gathered round them, 
 and he was forced to insist always upon the 
 qualities with which he had chosen to invest 
 them. Here he was at a great disadvantage com- 
 pared with Milton, who, in " Paradise Lost," was 
 not bound to be for ever describing the wicked- 
 ness of Satan since that was taken for granted, and 
 who could therefore insist rather upon his ruined 
 splendour and perverse courage. Shelley's Jupiter 
 had to be wicked or nothing ; and he has no 
 qualities except wickedness. 
 
 But Shelley knew nothing about wickedness. 
 To him it was an arbitrary mystery. Therefore 
 he was quite content to represent it as arbitrarily 
 overthrown. In his simple, passionate view of life 
 something must happen, sooner or later, to change 
 the nature of things. Like an early Christian, 
 he looked forward to the millennium ; but not 
 being one of an expectant community, nor living 
 in an age of creative faith, he had to make his 
 vision of the millennium out of his own single 
 imagination. There were no widespread rumours 
 or prophecies, no general confidence, to which he 
 could appeal. Even the most visionary appeals 
 of his time were made to men to emancipate 
 
 199 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 themselves by revolutions of their own contriving. 
 Shelley's intellect could concern itself with political 
 processes, but his imagination could not be fired 
 by them ; that was drawn into a desire for perfec- 
 tion and a sudden supernatural abolition of all 
 evil, and it rushed past all consideration of the 
 means by which this could come about to a 
 contemplation of perfection itself. Indeed, his 
 imagination, naturally religious, was logical in 
 its disregard of the means of deliverance. Since 
 he conceived of evil as imposed on man by a 
 supernatural tyranny, a supernatural revolution 
 was necessary for his deliverance. 
 
 In the first act Prometheus is discovered bound 
 to a precipice in the Indian Caucasus. There 
 are no events except that the curse is repeated 
 which long ago Prometheus had uttered against 
 Jupiter, and which now, purified by suffering, he 
 would recall ; also that Mercury, with the Furies, 
 comes to Prometheus, asks him to tell his secret 
 and make submission to Jupiter, and, when he 
 refuses, sets the Furies loose upon him. The 
 Furies torture him with tales of how all the good in 
 the world is perverted to evil ; and then give place 
 to a chorus of Spirits "whose homes are the dim 
 caves of human thought," and who sing of what 
 in human life is prophetic of the good that is 
 to be. 
 
 In the second act there is still less action. 
 Prometheus does not appear at all. The chief 
 characters are Asia and Panthea, who, with a 
 
 200 
 
44 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " 
 
 third, lone, are described in the Dramatis Persona 
 as Oceanides. It is difficult to distinguish between 
 them, except that Asia is the lover of Prometheus, 
 and mourns for him in exile in a vale in the Indian 
 Caucasus, where the first scene of the second act 
 takes place. To her comes Panthea and tells of 
 a dream in which she had seen Prometheus trans- 
 formed by love, and in which he had murmured 
 Asia's name. Asia looks into the eyes of Panthea, 
 and sees in them Prometheus transformed as in 
 Panthea' s dream. Then another dream of hers 
 appears, which she had forgotten, and calls on 
 them to follow it. The dream passes into Pan- 
 thea's mind and then into Asia's. In it — 
 
 " A wind arose among the pines ; it shook 
 The clinging music from their boughs, and then 
 Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, 
 Were heard : O, follow, follow, follow me!" 
 
 They hear echoes crying " Follow, follow," 
 and pursue them, passing into a forest inter- 
 mingled with rocks and caverns. Here the 
 second scene of the act takes place, with wonderful 
 songs of Spirits, and with a dialogue between 
 two young fauns about the nature of those Spirits. 
 Following the echo Asia and Panthea come to the 
 cave of Demogorgon, which they enter, summoned 
 by a song of Spirits. There they see — 
 
 " A mighty darkness 
 Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom 
 Dart round, as light from the meridian sun, 
 Ungazed upon and shapeless ; neither limb. 
 Nor form, nor outline." 
 
 201 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 This is Demogorgon, and, in answer to their 
 questions, he tells them that God made the 
 living world and all that it contains. They ask 
 him "who made terror, madness, crime, remorse? ' 
 And he answers, " He reigns." " Jove is the 
 supreme of living things." And yet " All Spirits 
 are enslaved that serve things evil." Therefore 
 Jove miist be a slave. When they ask who is his 
 master, Demogorgon replies — 
 
 " If the abysm 
 Could vomit forth its secrets. . . . But a voice 
 Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless ; 
 For what would it avail to bid thee gaze 
 On the revolving world ? What to bid speak 
 Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change ? To these 
 All things are subject but eternal Love." 
 
 Asia then asks when the destined hour of the 
 deliverance of Prometheus will come. Demo- 
 gorgon shows her the Hours, wild-eyed charioteers 
 driving rainbow-winged steeds. There is one 
 Spirit with a dreadful countenance. Asia asks 
 what it is, and it replies — 
 
 " I am the shadow of a destiny- 
 More dread than is my aspect : ere yon planet 
 Has set, the darkness which ascends with me 
 Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne." 
 
 The Spirit ascends his chariot, and drives off 
 among the stars, "blackening the night." 
 
 Another Spirit appears with " the dove-like 
 eyes of hope," and, for chariot, an ivory shell 
 
 202 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 inlaid with crimson fire. He carries Asia and 
 Panthea away with him, and the next scene finds 
 them on the top of a snowy mountain. The 
 Spirit tells them that the sun will not rise till 
 noon. Apollo is held in heaven by wonder, and 
 light is flowing from Asia. Panthea looks at her, 
 and sees that she is changed. 
 
 " I scarce endure 
 The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change 
 Is working in the elements, which suffer 
 Thy presence thus unveiled." 
 
 Then a voice is heard in the air singing that 
 most wonderful song, " Life of Life, thy lips 
 enkindle ! " And Asia replies with the lyric, 
 " My soul is an enchanted boat." So the act 
 ends. 
 
 The third act opens in Heaven. Jupiter is 
 seated on his throne. He exults in his secure 
 omnipotence. Hitherto only the soul of man has 
 rebelled against it. But now he has begotten a 
 strange wonder — 
 
 ' ' Who waits but till the destined hour arrive, 
 Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne 
 The dreadful might of ever-living limbs 
 Which clothed that awful Spirit unbeheld, 
 To redescend and trample out the spark." 
 
 This is his child by Thetis, whose incarnation 
 he now expects. The car of the Hours approaches, 
 and he hails its approach with cries of victory. 
 But there descends from it Demogorgon himself. 
 
 203 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Jupiter asks him what he is, and he replies — 
 
 " Eternity. Demand no direr name. 
 Descend, and follow me down the abyss. 
 I am thy child as thou wert Saturn's child ; 
 Mightier than thee : and we must dwell together 
 Henceforth in darkness." 
 
 Jupiter, after a brief defiance, cries for mercy ; 
 but in vain, and the two together — 
 
 " Sink on the wide waves of ruin, 
 Even as a vulture and a snake outspent 
 Drop, twisted in inextricable fight, 
 Into a shoreless sea." 
 
 In the next scene there is a short dialogue 
 between Apollo and Ocean, in which Apollo tells 
 of the fall of Jupiter, and Ocean, in beautiful 
 lines, says that she will no longer be vexed with 
 tempests. In the third scene Prometheus is 
 unbound by Hercules in the presence of Asia, 
 Panthea, lone, the Earth and other Spirits. 
 Prometheus tells how he will spend his happiness 
 with Asia, and orders the Spirit of the Hour to 
 travel round the world in her car, sounding the 
 music of deliverance. The Earth says that 
 henceforth all her children shall live in happiness 
 together — 
 
 " Night-folded flowers 
 Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose : 
 And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather 
 Strength for the coming day and all its joy : 
 And death shall be the last embrace of her 
 Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother 
 Folding her child, says ' Leave me not again.' ' 
 
 204 
 
II 
 
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 Asia asks whether the dead cease to love and 
 move, and breathe and speak. The Earth says 
 it would avail not to reply — 
 
 " Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 
 But to the uncommunicating dead. 
 Death is the veil which those who live call life : 
 They sleep, and it is lifted." 
 
 Then the Earth tells them of a cave where there 
 is a temple built by men who became mad, inhaling 
 the madness of the Earth herself in the evil time. 
 Now that madness is past, and a Spirit shall 
 guide them to the cave. The Spirit appears in 
 the likeness of a winged child, and in the fourth 
 scene Prometheus, Asia, Panthea, lone, and the 
 Spirit of the Earth are in front of the cave. Pan- 
 thea tells how the Spirit of the Earth, in the time 
 before the tyranny of Jupiter, had loved Asia — 
 
 " And with her 
 It made its childish confidence, and told her 
 All it had known or seen, for it saw much, 
 Yet idly reasoned what it saw." 
 
 The Spirit of the Earth now joyfully returns 
 to Asia, and tells of the wonderful change that 
 has come over the world. Then the Spirit of the 
 Hour enters and tells of the same change, and 
 how thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons 
 now stand, not overthrown, but unregarded. 
 
 So the act ends. The fourth act was an after- 
 thought. Shelley wrote it, no doubt, that he 
 might have full scope for expressing the rapture 
 
 205 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 of the delivered universe. It is like the finale of a 
 symphony, with variety of form but none of emo- 
 tion, except what comes from contrasting present 
 good with past evil. There is a long duet between 
 the Earth and the Moon, each echoing the delight 
 of the other ; and at the end of it Demogorgon 
 addresses them both, and all the stars, and the 
 happy dead, and the elemental genii — 
 
 " Who have homes 
 From man's high mind even to the central stone 
 Of sullen lead ; from Heaven's star-fretted domes 
 To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on." 
 
 And all beasts and birds, and leaves and buds, 
 and the lightning and wind, and last of all — 
 
 " Man who wert once a despot and a slave ; 
 A dupe and a deceiver ; a decay ; 
 A traveller from the cradle to the grave 
 
 Through the dim night of this immortal day." 
 
 His addresses end the poem with the praise of 
 Prometheus. 
 
 This short account of " Prometheus Unbound " 
 will show how Shelley was often hard put to it to 
 make anything happen at all. There is only one 
 great event, namely, the fall of Jupiter, and that is 
 causeless ; nor are we made to understand how 
 or why it produces the effects which come of it. 
 Apart from this there is movement but not action. 
 The characters drift about in magic cars or led 
 by Echoes and Spirits. And most of them are so 
 abstract that we do not even know who they 
 
 206 
 
" PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " 
 
 are or what relation they bear to each other. 
 There is no explanation of Asia, Panthea, and 
 lone except that they are sister Oceanides and 
 that Asia loves Prometheus. Even the significance 
 of their names is obscure. Then there are Earth 
 and Ocean and the Spirits of the Earth and of the 
 Moon ; and, since the Earth herself is personified, 
 it is difficult to find a distinction between her and 
 the Spirit of the Earth. These characters are 
 uninteresting in themselves because they tell us 
 nothing about themselves, and because Shelley 
 seems to know nothing about them. 
 
 There are episodes that seem to be mere pretexts 
 for lyrical poetry, such as that in the first and 
 second scenes of the second act, when Asia and 
 Panthea are led by echoes to the cave of Demo- 
 gorgon, and choruses of Spirits sing wonderful songs 
 about their way. And when they find Demogorgon 
 and question him about the nature of the universe, 
 he of course can tell them no more than Shelley 
 knows, so that little comes of their visit. Through- 
 out the poem there are attempts to explain things, 
 which only leave the reader bewildered and un- 
 satisfied, like the same attempts in " Paradise 
 Lost." Poets, like other writers, must fail when 
 they try to tell us what they do not know them- 
 selves. 
 
 Shelley lacked, more than most poets, that 
 kind of knowledge which is needed for the repre- 
 sentation of action ; and whatever action there is 
 in " Prometheus " belongs to a state of being about 
 
 207 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 which no man could know anything. We cannot 
 therefore regard the poem as a drama ; and the 
 question arises whether it has any form at all, or 
 whether the plot is only a pretext for a number 
 of separate poems. Now the great value of form 
 in a work of art is that it gives cumulative power 
 to all the parts and details of that work. They 
 are not there for their own sakes but in the accom- 
 plishment of a purpose outside them, and their 
 beauties please us the more as we see them in 
 relation to that purpose. Therefore, before we 
 dogmatize about the lack of form in " Prome- 
 theus," we must consider whether the poem has 
 any cumulative power ; and no one, I think, can 
 read it without seeing that it has. This cumu- 
 lative power does not come from the action, but 
 from the emotion which the characters and the 
 plot are a mere machinery for expressing. 
 
 Shelley himself called the poem a lyrical drama, 
 and it is, in fact, one extended and diversified 
 lyric, uttered now by one singer, now by another, 
 and now by choruses. And as in a lyric of ordinary 
 length we have to assume, or to gather from slight 
 suggestions, the cause of the emotion expressed, 
 so in " Prometheus " we have really to assume the 
 action and the circumstances which are pretexts 
 for the expression of emotion. 
 
 There is always a tendency in the poetic drama 
 to become lyrical, to concern itself more with 
 emotional effects than with the action that causes 
 them ; and the more lyrical a drama becomes, 
 
 208 
 
" PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " 
 
 the nearer it approaches to music, and particularly 
 to the symphony. V Prometheus " is nearer to 
 music than any other drama I know, and in form 
 it is nearer to symphony than to drama. In a 
 symphony we often hear one movement expressing 
 trouble and desire, followed by another expressing 
 attainment and delight, without, of course, any 
 expression of the means by which desire is accom- 
 plished. Yet the movements are related to each 
 other, because the same desire which is expressed 
 in one is accomplished in the other. There is, in 
 fact, a unity and a cumulative power of emotion ; 
 and there seems to me to be the same unity 
 and cumulative power in "Prometheus." Being 
 poetry and not music, it is, of course, to be judged 
 as poetry.; and, as I have tried to show, it fails to 
 solve some of the problems peculiar to that art, 
 or at least, to the form of that art in which it 
 is written. 
 
 But Shelley was a great innovator in poetry. 
 He brought it nearer to music than it had ever 
 been brought before, nearer to a complete fusion 
 of emotion and idea. And innovators are sure 
 to have trouble with their machinery, especially 
 when they are young and inexperienced. The 
 machinery of " Prometheus " belongs to the past, 
 and Shelley could only adapt it very imperfectly 
 to his purpose. That purpose was to present 
 idea and emotion all in one. He was not content 
 with lyrical poetry of pure emotion ; more than 
 any other poet he was moved to emotion by ideas, 
 T 4 209 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 and that is the reason why his emotions were so 
 persistent and needed a long poem for their 
 expression. Other poets have been moved to 
 different emotions by particular events and experi- 
 ences, and have expressed them either in short 
 lyrics or in incidental passages of drama or 
 narrative. Thought and experience and the 
 spectacle of the universe all continually aroused the 
 same emotion in Shelley, because he was always 
 possessed by the same ideal. All emotions are 
 caused by a comparison of the real with the ideal, 
 and are delightful when the real seems to harmonize 
 with the ideal, and painful when there is a discord 
 between them. In Shelley's mind ideals were 
 always predominant and always the same, inces- 
 santly compared with the real, and incessantly 
 producing the same emotion through that 
 comparison. He was like an angel strayed on to 
 the earth, and by all experience provoked to 
 contrast his present state with his past. He has 
 been called a visionary, but he was not one of 
 those visionaries who shut themselves up with 
 their own ideal away from reality. He was 
 always in fierce conflict with a great part of 
 reality, and out of that conflict came the experience 
 and emotion which he expressed in " Prometheus." 
 The central idea of " Prometheus " — that the 
 world is sick of an organic disease, and can only 
 be cured by a miracle — has been expressed in 
 many religions. But the notion that this disease 
 is the result of a celestial tyranny — and that not 
 
 210 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 man alone, but everything in the universe, suffers 
 from it — is peculiar to Shelley, and the result of 
 his extreme idealism. He could accept nothing 
 as it is ; he could not reconcile himself to the fact 
 that there are poisonous plants. Therefore when 
 Jupiter falls, and the great change comes over the 
 universe, the Spirit of the Earth tells how — 
 
 " O'er a lake 
 Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined, 
 I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward 
 And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries, 
 With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay 
 Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky." 
 
 It was not enough that there should be a sweet 
 peal of music at midnight, and all the people should 
 come into the streets transfigured with a new 
 beauty ; there must also be no more poison in night- 
 shade berries, and no more tempests on the sea. 
 
 But his passion for perfection expressed itself 
 also in another idea of greater intellectual value, 
 namely, that the highest beauties and excellences 
 of this life are prophetic of a nobler state of being. 
 In this idea he was nearer to an understanding of the 
 promise of universal imperfection ; for it is through 
 the universality of imperfection, and the infinite 
 variety in the quality of all things which it implies, 
 that we are continually led to compare the better 
 with the worse, and to aim at the better. The 
 finest things are, indeed, prophetic to us of what 
 all life may some day be. Thus, when the Furies 
 have tortured Prometheus by revealing to him 
 
 211 
 
SHELLEY : THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 how the highest hopes come to nought and good 
 is perverted into evil, how the French Revolution 
 became the Terror, and how men have persecuted 
 in the name of Christ, the Earth to comfort him 
 summons — 
 
 " Those subtle and fair Spirits, 
 Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, 
 And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 
 Its world-surrounding ether. They behold 
 Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass, 
 The future." 
 
 The first Spirit comes on a trumpet's blast, and 
 tells of the soul of love triumphing over all the 
 confused sounds of battle. The second comes 
 from a shipwreck — 
 
 " On the sigh 
 Of one who gave an enemy 
 His plank, then plunged aside to die." 
 
 The third comes borne by a dream from a sage's 
 bed. And the fourth sings, perhaps, the most 
 beautiful song that Shelley ever made : — 
 
 " On a poet's lips I slept 
 Dreaming like a love-adept 
 In the sound his breathing kept ; 
 Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 
 But feeds on the aereal kisses 
 Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 
 He will watch from dawn to gloom 
 The lake-reflected sun illume 
 The yellow bees in the ivy bloom, 
 Nor heed nor see, what things they be ; 
 But from these create he can 
 Forms more real than living man, 
 Nurslings of immortality." 
 
 212 
 
" PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " 
 
 Here Shelley speaks for himself and out of his 
 own experience, showing us how beautiful things 
 were indeed to him prophetic of a nobler life 
 because of their beauty, and how he could trans- 
 form that beauty into the music of his verse, 
 so that nothing of what he had seen remained in 
 it except beauty. " Prometheus " is an attempt 
 to treat the whole universe in this way, and 
 consists entirely of transformations and rejections, 
 all made according to one persistent ideal. 
 
 Needless to say, Shelley is happier when he 
 transforms than when he rejects. He could not 
 make poetry out of the conflict and mixture of 
 good and evil in our nature. But he treats of 
 pure beauty with a tranquillity new in his poetry, 
 and not to be found in any other English poet 
 except Milton. Here is a passage in which Ocean 
 speaks after the fall of Jupiter has given her 
 eternal calm : — 
 
 " The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it 
 With azure calm out of the emerald urns 
 Which stand for ever full beside my throne. 
 Behold the Nereids under the green sea, 
 Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream, 
 Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair 
 With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, 
 Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy." 
 
 Macaulay said that Shelley possessed some of 
 the highest qualities of the great ancient writers ; 
 and it is true that at his best he is rather a classical 
 than a romantic poet, that he simplifies and 
 concentrates like no other poet of his time, that 
 
 213 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 his music is divinely clear rather than rich. In 
 his preface to " Prometheus " he says that his 
 imagery "will be found in many instances to 
 have been drawn from the operations of the 
 human mind or from those external actions by 
 which they are expressed," and that in this he 
 follows the example of the Greek poets. There 
 is a fine example of this in the third scene of the 
 second act, where he speaks of — 
 
 " The sun-awakened avalanche, whose mass. 
 Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there 
 Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds 
 As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 
 Is loosened, and the nations echo round, 
 Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now." 
 
 But he carries the process much farther in those 
 passages where he imparts humanity to natural 
 forces in metaphor so instinctive that it seems to 
 be direct statement — 
 
 " The pale stars are gone ! 
 For the sun, their swift shepherd, 
 To their folds them compelling, 
 In the depths of the dawn, 
 Hastes in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee 
 Beyond his blue dwelling, 
 As fawns flee the leopard." 
 
 This has been quoted as an instance of 
 Shelley's myth-making power ; and it was indeed 
 natural to him to make myths, because the life 
 of nature seemed to him as real and intense as the 
 life of man, and he almost made friends with the 
 sun and the stars, and the winds, and the clouds, 
 
 214 
 
u 
 
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 as some men made friends with wild animals. 
 But as he seems to impart humanity to the forces 
 of nature, so also, at his heights of inspiration, 
 he can write of his personifications as if they were 
 natural things like the sun or the clouds. All the 
 scenery described in " Prometheus " is not mere 
 surplusage. Prometheus seems to belong to it 
 and to have grown out of it ; and often the 
 characters of the poem seem to be fading away 
 like mists among its forests and mountains, or to 
 be only the voices of nature made articulate. And 
 at the highest point of his inspiration, when a 
 voice in the air sings the miraculous song, " Life of 
 Life," he imagines a being that seems to be ideal- 
 ized from nature almost as much as from man : — 
 
 " Child of light, thy limbs are burning 
 Through the vest which seems to hide them ; 
 As the radiant lines of morning 
 Through the clouds ere they divide them ; 
 And this atmosphere divinest 
 Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest." 
 
 This is sung when the universe is close on its 
 regeneration, and the imagination of Shelley seems 
 to be pained by the intensity of its effort to leap 
 at a bound from the imperfect reality to the 
 perfect ideal. He was always apt to empty the 
 universe of everything except himself and the 
 ideal ; and when he had done this he was filled 
 with the fright of loneliness, and thought of him- 
 self as drawn to the ideal like a moth to a candle 
 out of the empty night, as one who had travelled 
 
 215 
 
SHELLEY : THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 too far and high for a man still subject to the laws 
 of this life, and as likely to perish like the first 
 adventurer into an unknown world : — 
 
 " Lamp of earth, where'er thou movest 
 Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 
 And the souls of whom thou lovest 
 Walk upon the winds with lightness, 
 Till they fail, as I am failing, 
 Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing." 
 
 In the last act of pure rejoicing the characters 
 seem to be voices of nature more than ever before. 
 Shelley has very little notion what mankind will 
 do in their millennium. He had not, like William 
 Morris, imagined a Utopia in which men should 
 enjoy their daily work. Prometheus, as soon as he 
 is released, describes a cave — 
 
 " All overgrown with trailing odorous plants, 
 Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers. 
 And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain 
 Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound." 
 
 Here he will retire with the Oceanides, and here, 
 he says, like Lear with Cordelia — 
 
 " We will sit and talk of time and change, 
 As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged. 
 What can hide man from mutability ? 
 And if ye sigh, then I will smile ; and thou, 
 lone, shalt chant fragments of sea-music, 
 Until I weep, when ye shall smile away 
 The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed. 
 We will entangle buds and flowers and beams 
 Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make 
 Strange combinations out of common things, 
 Like human babes in their brief innocence." 
 
 2l6 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 It is beautiful ; but we must assume that ennui 
 had accompanied Jupiter down to the abyss. 
 
 It is a significant fact that the poorest part of 
 the last act is the chorus of Spirits "from the 
 mind of human kind." Their rejoicing seems to 
 be forced, and their music sometimes mechanical. 
 Even the long duet between the Earth and the 
 Moon grows most beautiful when the Earth forgets 
 all about her human inhabitants, and when the 
 Moon makes a myth about herself. She feels life 
 coming back to her, and describes it so that her 
 very atmosphere seems to quicken : — 
 
 " Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, 
 And living shapes upon my bosom move : 
 
 Music is in the sea and air, 
 
 Winged clouds soar here and there, 
 Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of." 
 
 After her last wild outburst of song the Earth 
 answers — 
 
 " Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight 
 Falls on me like thy clear and tender light 
 Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night, 
 Through isles for ever calm." 
 
 This is like the music of Mozart, in which the 
 divine beauty of delight is enhanced by remem- 
 brance of pain ; and no poet or musician — not 
 even Shelley, or Mozart himself — can come 
 nearer to Heaven than this, or give us light 
 without the foil of darkness, or joy without the 
 memory of sorrow. But the rapture of Shelley 
 
 217 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 does not move us to tears, like the rapture of 
 Mozart, because there seems to be less of human 
 experience in it. There is no masterpiece in 
 another art which reminds one so much of the 
 last act of " Prometheus Unbound " as the two 
 great frescoes of Correggio. His rejoicing angels 
 seem to be as much untouched by human experience 
 as Shelley's rejoicing voices, and his " Young 
 Apostle " might be Shelley's triumphant " Pro- 
 metheus." Both Correggio and Shelley in their 
 raptures escaped from reality. Shelley tried to 
 compose a drama with neither death nor marriage 
 for its end, nor any solution short of universal 
 felicity ; and of course he failed. For drama 
 proceeds by action, and he could conceive of no 
 action that would produce universal felicity. 
 But, by the intensity of his effort to represent it, 
 he produced beauties beyond the reach of artists 
 who attempt the possible. Success would have 
 meant a work emptied of all reality, a mere 
 abstraction, like a perfect circle. In his failure 
 he expressed that very conflict which he tried to 
 transcend ; and it is curious that in the last 
 stanzas of the poem he seems to recognize this, 
 and to make an exultant submission to the laws 
 of reality : — 
 
 " To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ; 
 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 
 
 To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
 To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 
 Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent ; 
 
 2l8 
 
(i 
 
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
 
 Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free ; 
 
 This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory." 
 
 Wonder has been expressed that Shelley should 
 in the same year have produced two works so 
 unlike each other as " Prometheus Unbound " 
 and "The Cenci." It was certainly a great feat, 
 but rather of energy than of versatility ; for they 
 are more alike than one might suppose. True, 
 the subject of " Prometheus " is a myth invented 
 by the poet, and the subject of "The Cenci" is 
 a story of real life. But in each a fearful wrong 
 is inflicted upon a virtuous being by a tyrant of 
 inexplicable wickedness. Count Cenci is only 
 Jupiter in another set of circumstances, and 
 Beatrice only Prometheus. The end is different, 
 like the circumstances ; but there is the same 
 conception of evil, and the same blind revolt 
 against it. In " The Cenci " Shelley does not try 
 to escape from reality ; but he represents it, as in 
 the first part of " Prometheus," as suffering from 
 an organic disease which could only be cured by 
 a miracle. The difference is that in " The Cenci " 
 the miracle does not happen. 
 
 The story of the play is very simple. Count 
 Cenci, a monster of wickedness, hates all his 
 children. He exults in the death of two of his 
 sons and violates his daughter, rather because he 
 wishes to do her an intolerable wrong than from 
 incestuous desire. She resolves to have him 
 murdered, and hires two bravoes to murder him. 
 
 219 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 The papal legate arrives, just after the Count's 
 death, and the bravoes are discovered. One of 
 them dies fighting ; the other is captured, and, 
 under torture, confesses that the murder had been 
 commissioned by Beatrice. The Pope will not 
 pardon her, in spite of her wrongs, because, being 
 an old man, he has a peculiar fear of parricide, 
 and because Count Cenci had been in the habit 
 of paying vast sums for the pardon of his mis- 
 deeds. The play ends just before the execution of 
 Beatrice. 
 
 Shelley himself says that the story of " The 
 Cenci " is fearful and monstrous, and that any- 
 thing like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would 
 be insupportable. In a letter to Peacock he 
 compares it with the story of " (Edipus." But 
 there is this difference between the two, that the 
 incest of u (Edipus " is an event that happened 
 before the "(Edipus Tyrannus " begins. The 
 incest of Count Cenci is the central event of the 
 play. The incest of (Edipus was committed in 
 ignorance ; it has, therefore, nothing to do with 
 his character ; and we are not expected to take 
 any interest in it, but only in the results of its 
 discovery. Thus the same objection does not 
 apply to it as to the incest of Count Cenci, namely, 
 that it is an action which cannot be dramatically 
 treated. There is no attempt to treat it drama- 
 tically in the " (Edipus Tyrannus," because it 
 belongs to the past. But in "The Cenci" it 
 belongs to the present, and is the chief act of the 
 
 220 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 villain, the act upon which the whole play turns. 
 Shelley says in his preface that " Such a story, 
 if told so as to present to the reader all the feelings 
 of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, 
 their confidences and misgivings, their various 
 interests, passions, and opinions, acting upon, and 
 with each other, yet all conspiring to one tremen- 
 dous end, would be as a light to make apparent 
 some of the most dark and secret caverns of the 
 human heart." Yet he has chosen a story which 
 he cannot tell in such a way. He must and does 
 leave all the motives of Count Cenci obscure, and 
 also most of the effects of his crime upon Beatrice. 
 He can, indeed, only hint darkly at the nature 
 of that crime. In fact, the central event of the play 
 is disguised in eloquent verse, just like the central 
 event of "Prometheus"; and for the same 
 reason, namely, that the poet knows nothing 
 about it. 
 
 Shelley, as I have said, did not understand 
 wickedness at all. Therefore he was not fit to 
 write a play about it. He chose a piece of 
 inexplicable wickedness for his subject just 
 because of this lack of understanding. What 
 interested him was not the nature and causes of 
 that wickedness, but merely its enormity ; for 
 that seemed to him typical of the present condi- 
 tion of the universe. His Count Cenci has no 
 feeling that he is out of harmony with God. 
 Indeed, he speaks of God as if he were the Jupiter 
 of " Prometheus Unbound " : — 
 
 221 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 " My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign 
 Into the hands of Him who wielded it ; 
 Be it for its own punishment or theirs, 
 He will not ask it of me till the lash 
 Be broken in its last and deepest wound ; 
 Until its hate be all inflicted." 
 
 And again — 
 
 "I do not feel as if I were a man, 
 But like a fiend appointed to chastise 
 The offences of some unremembered world." 
 
 In fact, he expresses, not the real workings of a 
 wicked mind, but Shelley's view of wickedness — 
 as something imposed upon the world by a super- 
 natural tyranny. He is the willing servant of 
 the tyrant, while the good are all rebels against 
 him. He delights in crime for its own sake, as 
 if it were the satisfaction of desire, and, when 
 about to commit crime, speaks like Troilus just 
 before he is admitted to Cressida : — 
 
 u My blood is running up and down my veins ; 
 A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle. 
 I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe ; 
 My heart is beating with an expectation 
 Of horrid joy." 
 
 When a poet writes of what he hates, but does 
 not understand, he falls naturally into rhetoric. 
 " The Cenci," therefore, consists mainly of rhetoric. 
 It has been called the finest English tragedy of 
 modern times ; and it certainly is the finest 
 Elizabethan tragedy of modern times. For 
 Elizabethan tragedy, except at its highest moments, 
 
 222 
 
tc 
 
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 
 
 was rhetorical, and Shelley reproduced Eliza- 
 bethan rhetoric with extraordinary ease and 
 skill. But Elizabethan tragedy had been dead 
 for nearly two hundred years when he tried to 
 write it, and he could not bring it to life again. 
 The Elizabethan rhetoric was often an ornate and 
 elaborate expression of what real men and women 
 would say or think in the circumstances contrived 
 by the dramatist. But Shelley's rhetoric, though 
 more beautiful perhaps than any except Shake- 
 speare's, has usually no relation to reality. " The 
 Cenci " is a wonderful tour deforce, but we cannot 
 believe in anything that happens in it. Indeed, 
 it is far more unreal than " Prometheus " ; for in 
 ' Prometheus " Shelley was frequently expressing 
 his own emotion and experience, but in " The 
 Cenci" seldom. He said that he had "avoided 
 with great care, in writing this play, the intro- 
 duction of what is commonly called mere poetry " ; 
 and it is true that he attends to business through- 
 out. But it is a business he does not understand ; 
 and his characters talk about that business as if 
 they were observing it like eloquent but inexperi- 
 enced poets, not as if they were actors in it. In 
 the trial scene Beatrice reminds us of Vittoria 
 Corombona in the trial scene of Webster's " White 
 Devil," and very likely Shelley also remembered 
 Webster when he wrote it. Webster is very 
 rhetorical ; but his Vittoria is a real woman, 
 and speaks like one through all disguises of 
 rhetoric : — 
 
 223 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 " Turn up my faults, I pray, and you shall find 
 That beauty, and gay clothes, a merry heart, 
 And a good stomach to a feast are all, 
 All the poor crimes that you can charge me with. 
 In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies ; 
 The sport would be more noble." 
 
 Beatrice talks finer poetry, and argues with 
 great skill and spirit, but she might be an eloquent 
 advocate in another's cause. There is no char- 
 acter in what she says, and, therefore, it is not 
 interesting because she says it. Her speech about 
 death is almost as beautiful as the famous speech 
 of Claudio in " Measure for Measure." But the 
 first part of it might be made by anyone who was 
 young and about to die ; and the second part, 
 when she fears lest she shall meet her father's 
 spirit beyond the grave, is a mere expression of 
 Shelley's sense of the omnipotence of evil : — 
 
 " For was he not alone omnipotent 
 On earth and ever present ? Even though dead, 
 Does not his spirit live in all that breathe, 
 And work for me and mine still the same ruin, 
 Scorn, pain, despair ? " 
 
 In fact "The Cenci " seems to me to prove 
 rather Shelley's power of writing brilliantly on 
 any subject than his dramatic capacity. 
 
 224 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 "THE WITCH OF ATLAS" AND 
 " EPIPSYCHIDION " 
 
 OHELLEY found that the climate of Florence 
 ^ did not suit his health. Therefore he went 
 with Mary and Claire to Pisa at the end of January, 
 1820, travelling by boat up the Arno as far as 
 Empoli. They lived quietly at Pisa ; the place 
 suited Shelley better than Florence, and he got 
 some benefit from the skill of an eminent doctor, 
 by name Vacca. In March Shelley wrote the 
 " Sensitive Plant," a poem of pure fancy and 
 description, full of beautiful verses, but with a 
 theme too slight for its length. It is written in 
 anapaests (or triple time), and Shelley's mastery 
 of the metre is uncertain. Indeed, no English 
 poet had managed triple time perfectly, at least 
 in serious verse, before William Morris and Swin- 
 burne. Shelley often falls into the mechanical 
 see-saw of the eighteenth century, as in the opening 
 lines : — 
 
 " A sensitive plant in a garden grew, 
 And the light winds fed it with silver dew." 
 
 This versification is most beautiful when the 
 metre comes nearest to being iambic : — 
 15 225 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 " Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 
 And starry river-buds glimmered by." 
 
 These two lines might be followed by pure 
 iambics without incongruity. Many of the most 
 anapaestic verses cannot be read without gabbling, 
 and, in the conclusion, Shelley seems to subside 
 into iambics with relief. 1 
 
 Medwin has a story that, while at Pisa, Shelley 
 went one day to ask for letters at the post-office, 
 when an Englishman, hearing his name, turned 
 on him, and saying, " What, are you that damned 
 atheist Shelley ? " knocked him down. The man 
 went away to Genoa, whither Shelley followed 
 him, according to Medwin, but could hear no more 
 of him. Peacock thinks the whole affair was one 
 of Shelley's delusions. Medwin says that the 
 Englishman's rage was produced by the abuse 
 of " The Revolt of Islam " in the Quarterly Review. 
 In June, 1820, the Shelleys and Claire went to 
 Leghorn, where the Gisbornes lent them their 
 house, Casa Ricci. Claire was in great anxiety 
 about her child, as Byron was living with the 
 Countess Guiccioli. She entreated Byron to allow 
 the child to visit her, but he would not. Shelley 
 also wrote to Byron, pleading for Claire. " Poor 
 thing," he said, " she is very unhappy and in 
 bad health, and she ought to be treated with as 
 much indulgence as possible. The weak and the 
 
 1 1 use the terms iambic and anapsestic without intend- 
 ing to commit myself to any theory of English metre, and 
 only because they are the best I can find for my purpose 
 
 226 
 
" THE WITCH OF ATLAS " 
 
 foolish are in this respect like kings — they can do 
 no wrong." This last sentence might be quoted 
 to show that in Shelley there was indeed an anima 
 naturaliter Christiana. Her anxiety made Claire 
 more difficult than usual, and she was constantly 
 quarrelling with Mary. 
 
 " Heigh-ho ! the Claire and the Ma 
 Find something to fight about every day," 
 
 she wrote in her journal. At Leghorn Shelley 
 wrote his " Letter to Maria Gisborne," his best 
 piece of familiar verse. Mrs. Gisborne was in 
 London, and Shelley described to her the famous 
 men she was to see. He still has a few admiring 
 generalities for Godwin — or at least for his past. 
 
 ' ; You will see 
 That which was Godwin, greater none than he 
 Though fallen — and fallen on evil times — to stand 
 Among the spirits of our age and land, 
 Before the dread tribunal of to come, 
 The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.' 
 
 But the best description is of Coleridge, whom 
 Shelley did not know : — 
 
 " You will see Coleridge ; he who sits obscure 
 In the exceeding lustre and the pure 
 Intense irradiation of a mind, 
 Which, with its own internal lightning blind, 
 Flags wearily through darkness and despair — 
 A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, 
 A hooded eagle among blinking owls." 
 
 In this poem Shelley competes with the poets 
 of the eighteenth century on their own ground 
 and in their own metre. In some things he sur- 
 
 227 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 passes and in others falls short of them. Since 
 he does not confine the sense within the limits 
 of the couplet, his verse runs more freely and 
 naturally than theirs. He seems to be writing 
 a real letter, and not a mere pretext for verse- 
 making. He has none of the mechanical antitheses 
 which the strict heroic couplet encouraged even 
 in its greatest master, Pope. And at the same 
 time he can rise into pure poetry without effort 
 or incongruity, because he puts on no airs of 
 worldly wisdom, and because his verse is flexible 
 enough for all purposes. 
 
 Shelley had heard that Southey was the author 
 of the virulent article upon "The Revolt of 
 Islam " in the Quarterly Review. It was really 
 by John Taylor Coleridge. He had treated the 
 article with the contempt which it deserved, 
 making childish and elaborate fun of it in a letter 
 to Oilier. "There is one very droll thing in the 
 Quarterly," he wrote. " They say that ' my 
 chariot wheels are broken.' Heaven forbid ! 
 My chariot, you may tell them, was built by one 
 of the best makers in Bond Street, and it has 
 gone several thousand miles in perfect security. 
 What a comical thing it would be to make the 
 following advertisement : ' A report having pre- 
 vailed, in consequence of some insinuations in 
 the Quarterly Review, that Mr. Shelley's chariot- 
 wheels are broken, Mr. Charteris, of Bond Street, 
 begs to assure the public that they, having carried 
 him through Italy, France, and Switzerland, still 
 
 228 
 
THE WITCH OF ATLAS 
 
 >J 
 
 continue in excellent repair.' ' But he was 
 angry with Southey, and wished to have it out 
 with him. Therefore he wrote, in June, asking 
 Southey to assure him that he had not written 
 the article. This Southey, no doubt to Shelley's 
 surprise, was able to do. He had never, he said, 
 mentioned Shelley's name in any of his writings, 
 and had read nothing of Shelley's since " Alastor." 
 But he was determined to improve the occasion. 
 "The specimens," he wrote, "which I happen 
 to have seen in reviews and newspapers have 
 confirmed my opinion that your powers for poetry 
 are of a high order ; but the manner in which 
 those powers have been employed is such as to 
 prevent me from feeling any desire to see more 
 of productions so monstrous in their kind and 
 pernicious in their tendency." With conscious 
 rectitude he exclaimed that he could not think 
 of Shelley without the deepest compassion. He 
 had said once that the great difference between 
 them was that Shelley was nineteen and he him- 
 self eight-and-thirty. " Would that the difference 
 were no greater now." In fact he wrote as if 
 he were a British matron addressing a girl who 
 had lost her virtue. " Opinions are to be judged 
 by their effects, and what has been the fruit of 
 yours ? Do they enable you to look backward 
 with complacency or forward with hope ? . . . 
 Have they not brought immediate misery upon 
 others, and guilt, which is all but irremediable, 
 on yourself ? ' Southey was a good man, but 
 
 229 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 too much aware of his own virtue ; and the 
 natural pleasure which he took in saying nasty 
 things was heightened by his belief that he said 
 them for Shelley's good. Shelley's reply ought 
 to have lessened his pleasure. " Even when 
 recommending Christianity," he wrote, " you 
 cannot forbear breathing out defiance against 
 the express words of Christ." " You are such a 
 pure one as Jesus Christ found not in all Judaea to 
 throw the first stone." 
 
 Then follows a passage in which Shelley seems 
 to imply that he could have got a divorce from 
 Harriet if he had chosen. 1 If that was what he 
 meant, he must have been still firmly persuaded 
 of Harriet's unfaithfulness. 
 
 "You say," he continues, "that you judge of 
 opinions by their fruits ; so do I, but by their 
 remote and permanent fruits — such fruits of rash 
 judgment as Christianity seems to have produced 
 in you. The immediate fruits of all new opinions 
 are indeed calamity to their promulgators and 
 professors ; but we see the end of nothing ; and 
 it is in acting well, in contempt of present advan- 
 tage, that virtue consists." Southey had hoped 
 that Shelley might be brought to a better mind 
 by his wretched state of health, which he had 
 mentioned in his first letter, and Shelley therefore 
 ended with this P.S. : "I ought not to omit that 
 
 1 Professor Dowden suggests that this is the meaning of 
 an obscure sentence, and it seems to me that it can have 
 no other. 
 
 230 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 I have had sickness enough, and that at this 
 moment I have so severe a pain in my side that I 
 can hardly write. All this is of no account in 
 favour of what you or anyone else calls Chris- 
 tianity ; surely it would be better to wish me 
 health and healthful sensations. I hope the 
 chickens will not come home to roost." This 
 last remark, Professor Dowden points out, is an 
 allusion to the motto of " The Curse of Kehama." 
 " Curses are like young chickens, they always 
 come home to roost." Southey wrote another 
 letter in the same strain as his first, and so the 
 correspondence ended. . 
 
 At the beginning of August, Shelley and his 
 family left Leghorn because of the heat, and went 
 to a village, San Giuliano di Pisa, about four 
 miles from Pisa and at the foot of the mountains. 
 Climbing alone to the top of Monte san Pellegrino, 
 Shelley conceived the idea of the " Witch of 
 Atlas," and wrote the poem, 670 lines, in three 
 days. Mary wished that he would increase his 
 popularity by adopting subjects that would more 
 suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in 
 the abstract and dreamy spirit of the " Witch of 
 Atlas." She believed that " he would obtain a 
 greater mastery over his own powers, and greater 
 happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned 
 his endeavours." Shelley wrote an introduction, 
 addressed to her, " on her objecting " to the 
 following poem upon the score of its containing 
 no human interest : — 
 
 231 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 " How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten 
 
 (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review. 
 
 That you condemn these verses I have written, 
 Because they tell no story, false or true ? 
 
 What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, 
 May it not leap and play as grown cats do, 
 
 Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time, 
 
 Content thee with a visionary rhyme." 
 
 There can be no doubt, I think, that Mary 
 gave good advice ; and that Shelley, when he 
 wrote poems like the " Witch of Atlas," was rather 
 spending his powers than training them, like a 
 young painter of great facility who makes pictures 
 out of his own head instead of studying nature. 
 It is full of beautiful verses that would seem twice 
 as beautiful if they were related to any main 
 theme ; but the Witch herself is a faint abstrac- 
 tion, and does nothing except spin mist and store 
 magic treasures in her cave — visions and odours 
 and liquors that would give glorious dreams, and 
 scrolls that would teach men to live " harmonious 
 as the sacred stars above." The nymphs and 
 oreads and naiads wish to live for ever in the light 
 of her presence ; but she will not have this, for she 
 is immortal and they are mortal : — 
 
 " Oh, ask not me 
 To love you till your little race is run ; 
 
 I cannot die as ye must — over me 
 Your leaves shall glance— the streams in which ye dwell 
 Shall be my paths henceforth, and so, farewell ! " 
 
 She had, of course, a boat, which Vulcan had 
 made to be a chariot for the star of Venus : — 
 
 232 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 " But it was found too feeble to be fraught 
 
 With all the ardours in that sphere which are, 
 And so she sold it, and Apollo bought 
 
 And gave it to this daughter : from a car 
 Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat 
 Which ever upon mortal stream did float." 
 
 She kneaded fire and snow together into a living 
 image, winged and sexless, and put it at the prow 
 of the boat ; and taking the rudder herself, set 
 off on a voyage, like Alastor, down the mountain 
 streams : — 
 
 " And ever as she went, the image lay 
 
 With folded wings and unawakened eyes." 
 
 But, when she wished to go up-stream, she called 
 
 " Hermaphroditus," and it would awake and 
 
 use its ethereal vans for oars. A great part of 
 
 the poem is taken up with a descriptiom of her 
 
 wanderings on the water and among the clouds, 
 
 how — 
 
 " She would often climb 
 The steepest ladder of the crudded rack 
 
 Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, 
 And like Arion on the dolphin's back 
 
 Ride singing through the shoreless air." 
 
 But her choicest sport was to visit Egypt in 
 the night, gliding down the Nile, and to look at 
 mortals asleep : — 
 
 " To those she saw most beautiful, she gave 
 Strange panacea in a crystal bowl. 
 They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, 
 And lived thenceforward as if some control 
 
 233 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Mightier than life, were in them ; and the grave 
 Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul, 
 Was as a green and overarching bower 
 Lit by the gems of many a starry flower." 
 
 The poem becomes faintly satirical towards 
 the end, telling how the Witch — 
 
 " Would write strange dreams upon the brain 
 Of those who were less beautiful, and make 
 
 All harsh and crooked purposes more vain 
 Than in the desert is the serpent's wake 
 
 Which the sand covers." 
 
 Then — 
 
 " The priests would write an explanation full, 
 Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, 
 
 How the god Apis really was a bull 
 
 And nothing more ; and bid the herald stick 
 
 The same against the temple doors, and pull 
 The old cant down." 
 
 And the king would set an ape on his throne, 
 and the soldiers dream they were blacksmiths 
 and beat their swords into ploughshares. The 
 Witch also furthered what is commonly known 
 as " free love." 
 
 " And timid lovers who had been so coy, 
 
 They hardly knew whether they loved or not, 
 Would rise out of their rest and take sweet joy, 
 
 To the fulfilment of their inmost thought ; 
 And when next day the maiden and the boy 
 
 Met one another, both, like sinners caught, 
 Blushed at the thing which each believed was done 
 
 Only in fancy — till the tenth moon shone." 
 
 234 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 But no harm came of it all, for the Witch — 
 
 " Would let them take no ill : 
 Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, 
 The Witch found one, and so they took their fill 
 Of happiness in marriage warm and kind." 
 
 The poem is indeed an escape from reality. 
 Here Shelley writes as Correggio painted Io and 
 Antiope and Danae ; and indeed many great 
 artists have delighted to represent youthful 
 passion freed by different devices from all the 
 restraints of circumstance. There is the device 
 of the love potion in the story of Tristram and 
 Iseult, and the device of a secret marriage, which 
 is mere machinery, in " Romeo and Juliet " ; and 
 all the devices of Greek mythology. Puritans 
 hate these devices ; but so long as they are used 
 for purposes of beauty they do no harm, for the 
 beauty of art casts out nastiness from the minds 
 of all except those who find nastiness everywhere. 
 Some critics have found deep meanings in the 
 "Witch of Atlas." It seems to me one of those 
 poems in which Shelley wrote about all the things 
 that pleased him most, and of which the subject 
 was a mere pretext for doing so. 
 
 To this year belong the two long odes to 
 "Liberty" and to "Naples"; the first written 
 in the spring, when he heard of the Spanish Rebel- 
 lion, the second in August, when a Constitution 
 was granted to Naples. The " Ode to Liberty " 
 is in nineteen regular stanzas of fifteen lines each, 
 and describes the evil state of the world before 
 
 235 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 the birth of liberty ; and how liberty was born 
 in Athens, and lived a while in Rome but deserted 
 it, and was unknown for a thousand years until 
 the time of Alfred and the rising of the cities in 
 sacred Italy. The rest of the ode is for the most 
 part mere rhetoric, until the last scene, in which 
 Shelley describes the sudden end of his inspira- 
 tion : — 
 
 " The solemn harmony 
 Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing 
 
 To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn ; 
 Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging 
 Its path across the thunder-smoke of dawn, 
 Sinks headlong through the aereal golden light 
 On the heavy sounding plain, 
 When the bolt has pierced its brain ; 
 As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their rain ; 
 As a far taper fades with fading night, 
 
 As a brief insect dies with dying day, 
 My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, 
 Drooped ; o'er it closed the echoes far away 
 Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, 
 As waves which lately paved his watery way 
 Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play." 
 
 Shelley often describes himself as sinking thus 
 suddenly from a heaven of song, as if he felt that 
 all his attempts to escape from the reality that 
 he hated must be as vain as rebellion against 
 the attraction of gravity. The passage I have 
 quoted shows the mastery with which he handled 
 his elaborate stanza. In this poem Shelley 
 revived and developed a kind of poetry which 
 Crashaw had first made, and which we may call 
 orchestral rather than lyrical. It has been still 
 
 236 
 
tt 
 
 THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 further developed by Swinburne in many odes. 
 It is a magnificent means of expression, but it 
 still waits for an English Pindar to manage it 
 perfectly. Even the finest examples of it, of 
 which Shelley's " Ode to Liberty " is certainly 
 one, remind one of those modern symphonic 
 poems in which the orchestration is apt to over- 
 power the subject matter. There is too much 
 imagery in the " Ode to Liberty/' and versifica- 
 tion too swift and rich, not only for the thought 
 but for the emotion. The poem is prolonged by 
 device after device without development of the 
 theme. There is much more variety and con- 
 tinuity of music than in Gray's odes, but the same 
 eloquent irrelevancies which seem to be a chronic 
 vice in this kind of poetry. Thus Shelley, having 
 told how liberty fled from Rome, proceeds to ask : — 
 
 " From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, 
 Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, 
 Or utmost islet inaccessible, 
 
 Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, 
 Teaching the woods and waves and desert rocks, 
 And every Naiad's ice-cold urn, 
 To talk in echoes sad and stern, 
 Of that sublimest love which man had dared unlearn ? ' ' 
 
 This question bears no relation to reality. 
 Because the poet has personified Liberty, he 
 thinks it necessary to conjecture where she was 
 when men had lost all knowledge of her. The 
 conjecture that she taught the woods and waves 
 to talk of her loss is as meaningless as any frigid 
 fancy of the eighteenth century. 
 
 237 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 The " Ode to Naples " is made up of answering 
 epodes, strophes, and antistrophes. It matters 
 little that they are not arranged on any classical 
 plan. The poem has the same beauties and defects 
 as the " Ode to Liberty." The first two epodes 
 are taken up with a brilliant but irrelevant descrip- 
 tion of Pompeii, influenced no doubt by the same 
 kind of descriptions in " Childe Harold." Then 
 follows an address to Naples : — 
 
 " Naples, thou Heart of men which ever pantest 
 Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven ! 
 Elysian city, which to calm enchantest 
 The mutinous air and sea." 
 
 And then some vague and splendid rhetoric, in 
 the course of which the chief cities of Italy are 
 enumerated. The first epode returns with a 
 glorious opening : — 
 
 " Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms 
 Arrayed against the ever-living Gods ? 
 The crash and darkness of a thousand storms 
 Bursting their inaccessible abodes 
 
 Of crags and thunder-clouds ? " 
 
 But the poem does not become more definite 
 after these splendid generalities, as the reader 
 naturally expects it to do. We hear of the Anarchs 
 of the North and their legions, but soon their 
 misdeeds are lost in imagery and the poem ends 
 in vague good wishes. 
 
 It is when we compare these longer poems with 
 the best of Shelley's shorter lyrics that we are 
 
 238 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 least satisfied with them. In the year 1820 he 
 wrote "The Cloud," "The Skylark," " Arethusa," 
 the " Song of Proserpine," the " Hymn of Apollo " 
 and the "Hymn of Pan," "The Question" and 
 the " Two Spirits." Indeed it was his chief 
 year for lyrics, and some of them are events in 
 the history of the human mind. That personifi- 
 cation which in the " Ode to Liberty " is a rhetori- 
 cal device seems in " The Cloud " to be a simple 
 telling of the truth. For the cloud was a living 
 creature to Shelley, one of those Spirits with whose 
 music he filled " Prometheus Unbound," and he 
 makes it live for us through all its phases and 
 travels. We know nothing of his Witch of Atlas, 
 but we are familiar with clouds and can be inter- 
 ested in their history when it is told so as to make 
 a new romance of the sky and one that gives a 
 new significance to all its changes. " The Cloud ' 
 is not mere phantasy, but transfigured fact ; 
 fact emotionally apprehended by the poet, and 
 so rendered into music : — 
 
 " I am the daughter of Earth and Water, 
 
 And the nursling of the Sky ; 
 I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 
 
 I change, but I cannot die. 
 For after the rain when with never a stain, 
 
 The pavilion of Heaven is bare, 
 And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, 
 
 Build up the blue dome of air, 
 I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 
 
 And out of the caverns of rain, 
 Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb. 
 
 I arise and unbuild it again." 
 
 239 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Here Shelley is making a new kind of myth, 
 one that expresses exact knowledge and not 
 primitive fancy. It is a myth in which the 
 world seems to be emptied of human beings, or 
 in which they are too small to be visible. But, 
 for compensation, the life of the forces of nature 
 becomes more intense and beautiful, and it is free 
 from all our hatreds and griefs. There are some 
 to whom even "The Cloud" will seem a mere 
 exercise of fancy ; but others are persuaded, by 
 the beauty of its music, to feel that it is prophetic 
 of a finer state of being, in which we shall all 
 understand and delight in the processes of nature 
 as Shelley delighted in them. 
 
 In the " Hymn of Pan " Shelley made an old 
 myth his own. It is nearer to pure music than 
 any of his lyrics, and yet full of sense. No English 
 poet has ever rilled verse with changes so delicate 
 and expressive. The poem sounds as airy as a 
 song from " The Tempest," yet it is as lucid and 
 complete as any poem in the Greek anthology. 
 
 In August Shelley wrote " Swellfoot the Tyrant/' 
 a dull dramatic satire on the English enthusiasm 
 for Queen Caroline, who seemed to him a poor 
 kind of heroine. It was published, but immedi- 
 ately suppressed under threat of a prosecution. 
 
 In the diary of Claire there is an entry dated 
 November 29, 1820, recording a visit to the Convent 
 of St. Anna and the beautiful Teresa Viviani. 
 This is the first we hear of a curious episode in 
 Shelley's life. At Pisa the Shelley s made the 
 
 240 
 
It 
 
 THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 acquaintance of Francesco Pacchiani, a professor 
 of physics at Pisa University, an able and witty 
 man with little reputation for morals or honesty. 
 The Shelleys were amused by him ; but he dis- 
 gusted Shelley by telling a dirty story, and " would 
 make one believe," Mary says, "that he attracts 
 the great as a milk-pail does flies on a summer 
 morning." Shelley compared his eloquence to 
 that of Coleridge. Pacchiani, who was in some 
 kind of orders, was confessor to the Vivianis, a 
 noble family of Pisa, and had been tutor to Count 
 Viviani's two daughters. The count had married 
 a second wife much younger than himself. She 
 contrived, fearing that the daughters might be 
 her rivals with her lover, that they should be 
 placed in separate convents. The elder of them, 
 Teresa Emilia, had been for two years in the Con- 
 vent of St. Anna. Her father wanted to marry 
 her, if possible, to some one who would not exact 
 a dowry. Pacchiani gave the Shelleys an eloquent 
 account of her beauty, said that she pined like a 
 bird in a cage, for the convent was a miserable 
 place ; and that she was made for love. Shelley 
 took fire at the thought of a beautiful and oppressed 
 maiden. After the first visit paid to her in her 
 convent by Mary and Claire, the Shelleys saw her 
 often. The convent discipline cannot have been 
 very strict. Medwin tells us that her profuse 
 black hair was tied in a knot after the manner of 
 a Greek muse in the Florence Gallery, that her 
 brow was as fair as the marble, and her height 
 16 241 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 about the same as that of the antique. Her 
 features, too, possessed almost a Grecian contour, 
 the nose and forehead making a straight line. 
 Her cheek was pale as marble owing to her con- 
 finement, or perhaps to thought ; but her eyes 
 had a sleepy voluptuousness. Mrs. Shelley also 
 thought her beautiful, but found her most agree- 
 able when silent. This was not the case with 
 Shelley, who admired her mind as much as her 
 body. Her parents had told her that she was to 
 marry a man she had never seen, a younger son who 
 would live with his mother. But she had already 
 known love, and more than once ; for she always 
 prayed to a saint of the same name as her lover, 
 and, when she changed her lover, changed her 
 saint. Soon she was writing letters to Mary and 
 to Shelley. On December 10 she already calls 
 Shelley her dear brother, and Claire is teaching 
 her English. Shelley is to call her sister, and she 
 embraces her very dear and beautiful sister Mary. 
 She implores her sensibile Percy to take every 
 care of his health. Soon Shelley became an 
 angelica creatura, and even, it is said, an adorato 
 sposo. It appears from a letter of hers, dated 
 December 12, that Shelley is engaging himself to 
 effect her liberation. " I leave the how to you who 
 have that wisdom and experience in which I am 
 wanting." She asks God to pardon her mother, 
 but loves her still and wishes her every good. 
 Shelley had said that her liberation might perhaps 
 divide them ; but she will seek him everywhere, 
 
 242 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 even to the uttermost boundaries of the world. 
 She can never love anything or person so much as 
 his family ; for in it are included all that can exist 
 of beautiful, virtuous, amiable, sensibile, and learned 
 in the world. Writing to Mary, she complains 
 that Mary seems a little cold sometimes ; but 
 Shelley has told her that this apparent coldness 
 is only the ash that covers an affectionate heart. 
 In another letter she exclaims, " You have much 
 talent, my Mary, which, together with your 
 virtue and your excellent heart, makes you one 
 of the loveliest of God's or nature's creatures." 
 Claire had told her part of Shelley's history. 
 "His many misfortunes, his unjust persecutions, 
 and his firm and innate virtue in the midst of these 
 terrible and unmerited sorrows, filled my heart 
 with admiration and affection, and made me 
 think, and perhaps not untruly, that he is not a 
 human creature ; he has only a human exterior, 
 but the interior is all divine. The Being of all 
 beings has doubtless sent him to earth to accredit 
 virtue, and to give an exact image of Himself." 
 She could hardly have gone further in the way 
 of praise than this ; and one may wonder whether 
 she had any notion that Shelley was really a 
 divine poet, and capable of handing her name down 
 to posterity, or whether she was merely trying to 
 make herself agreeable. 
 
 Shelley told her, it appears, that in friendship 
 
 everything must be in common ; and she exclaims, 
 
 ' Few, indeed, very few, are those who know this 
 
 243 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 sublime and sweet divinity ; but we know it, and 
 that is enough." " Mary," she complains, " does 
 not write to me. Is it possible that she loves me 
 less than the others do ? " 
 
 Then she begs Shelley to come no more to the 
 convent. Her parents wish her to see no one. 
 But in a few days she will be delivered from this 
 odious prison, and then will be permitted to enjoy 
 his amiable and virtuous society. Meanwhile 
 she must drink to the last drop the bitter cup of 
 sorrows. 
 
 The end of the story is given by Mary, with 
 some gusto, in a letter written in the spring of 
 1822 : " Emilia has married Biondi ; we hear 
 that she leads him and his mother (to use a vul- 
 garism) a devil of a life." 
 
 Shelley himself, speaking of his ' ' Epipsychidion," 
 the poem which Emilia inspired, wrote also in 
 1822 that he could not look at it. "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 
 idealised 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." 
 
 He also said : '" Epipsychidion ' is a mystery ; 
 
 244 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 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 expect any- 
 thing human or earthly from me." Thus he was 
 aware of his natural tendency to escape from reality, 
 and probably encouraged it for the purposes of his 
 art. " Epipsychidion " reminds one of the most 
 ecstatic poems of the seventeenth century, the 
 "Anniversaries" of Donne or the sacred rhap- 
 sodies of Crashaw. There are passages in it 
 which recall Donne's casuistry about love, not 
 only in the matter but in the form, so much that 
 one is inclined to believe Shelley must have read 
 Donne. 
 
 Here is an instance : — * 
 
 " Mind from its object differs most in this : 
 Evil from good, misery from happiness ; 
 The baser from the nobler ; the impure 
 And frail, from what is clear and must endure. 
 If you divide suffering and dross, you may 
 Diminish till it is consumed away ; 
 If you divide pleasure and love and thought, 
 Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not 
 How much, while any yet remains unshared, 
 Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared." 
 
 And here is another very Donnish couplet : — 
 
 " True love in this differs from gold and clay, 
 That to divide is not to take away." 
 
 1 I do not know of any mention by Shelley of Donne in 
 any of his letters or other writings ; but Leigh Hunt, in 
 one of his letters to Shelley, asks him whether he has ever 
 read Donne. 
 
 245 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 All these lines are written in a homelier language 
 than Shelley was wont to use, and some cancelled 
 passages of the poem seem to prove that he began 
 to write it with a half-satirical intention which he 
 cast off as he was drawn more and more into 
 rhapsody. Here is one of them : — 
 
 " If I were one whom the loud world held wise, 
 I should disdain to quote authorities 
 In commendation of this kind of love : 
 Why there is first the God in heaven above, 
 Who wrote a book called Nature, 'tis to be 
 Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly ; 
 And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of grace, 
 And Jesus Christ himself, did never cease 
 To urge all living things to love each other, 
 And to forget their mutual faults, and smother 
 The Devil of disunion in their souls." 
 
 Here Shelley is inclined to be naughty ; but 
 no doubt he saw it was dangerous to talk about 
 nature in connection with anything so unnatural 
 as the sterile passion which he was trying to 
 glorify. 
 
 In the poem itself there is one passage written 
 in this strain : — 
 
 " I never was attached to that great sect 
 Whose doctrine is, that each one shall select 
 Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, 
 And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend 
 To cold oblivion, though it is in the code 
 Of modern morals, and the beaten road 
 Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, 
 Who travel to their home among the dead 
 By the broad highway of the world, and so, 
 With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, 
 The dreariest and the longest journey go." 
 
 246 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 Here he seems to tell us that he is, like many 
 men, naturally polygamous. 
 
 There are three fragmentary drafts of the preface 
 in existence, and in one of these he describes his 
 hero as " accompanied by a lady supposed to be 
 his wife, and an effeminate-looking youth to 
 whom he showed an attachment so singular as 
 to give rise to the suspicion that she was a woman. 
 At his death this suspicion was confirmed." He 
 also says that it was his hero's intention to retire 
 to one of the Sporades and there " to dedicate 
 the remainder of his life to undisturbed intercourse 
 with his companions." Among the cancelled 
 fragments of the poem is one connected with 
 this cancelled preface : — 
 
 " And as to friend or mistress, 'tis a form ; 
 Perhaps I wish you were one. Some declare 
 You a familiar spirit, as you are ; 
 Others with a more inhuman 
 
 Hint that, though not my wife, you are a woman. 
 What is the colour of your eyes and hair ? 
 Why, if you were a lady, it were fair 
 The world should know — but, as I am afraid, 
 The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed ; 
 And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble 
 Over all sorts of scandals, hear them mumble 
 Their litany of curses — some guess right, 
 And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite." 
 
 All this goes to prove that Shelley was in a 
 fantastic mood when he started to write " Epipsy- 
 chidion," and gradually worked himself into one 
 of complete seriousness, dropping the fiction of 
 the lady disguised as a youth, the polygamous 
 
 247 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 intentions of the hero, and those passages which 
 were obviously written to annoy the orthodox. 
 I say that he worked himself into this mood 
 because the rapture of the poem seems to me to 
 be increased and prolonged by art. Shelley, 
 with his mastery of verse, and his stock of images 
 gathered from all the objects and ideas in which 
 he took delight, found it as easy, as if he were a 
 musician, to spin out his raptures ; and indeed 
 the poem reminds one of a virtuoso piece written 
 for the violin by a great composer. Such pieces 
 entrance us when a great virtuoso plays them, 
 and " Epipsychidion " can entrance a reader who 
 is in the right mood for it. But more than most 
 poems it is at the mercy of the reader's moods, 
 and its music will not lull to sleep the reason of 
 many readers who have lost their youth. It is 
 well enough when Shelley tells us of the being 
 whom his spirit met — 
 
 '* In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 
 Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 
 Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves 
 Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
 Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 
 Paved her light steps ; — on an imagined shore, 
 Under the gray beak of some promontory 
 She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, 
 That I beheld her not. In solitudes 
 Her voice came to me through the whispering winds, 
 And from the fountains and the odours deep 
 Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep 
 Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, 
 Breathed but of her to the enamoured air ; 
 
 248 
 
"THE WITCH OF ATLAS" 
 
 And from the breezes whether low or loud, 
 And from the rain of every passing cloud, 
 And from the singing of the summer-birds, 
 And from all sounds, all silence. In the words 
 Of antique verse and high romance, — in form, 
 Sound, colour, — in whatever checks that storm 
 Which with the shattered present chokes the past ; 
 And in that best philosophy, whose taste 
 Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom 
 As glorious as a fiery martyrdom." 
 
 The last three lines startle one with their like- 
 ness to the rhapsodies of Crashaw, though express- 
 ing a creed that seems so different from his. But 
 it is natural to the purely lyrical poet in youth, 
 whatever his creed may be, to think that this 
 life would be a cold hell unless it were warmed 
 with his desires. There is the same emotion in 
 Crashaw' s poems about St. Theresa as in " Epipsy- 
 chidion." Both poets talk about fiery martyrdom, 
 and in both we can enjoy the expression of what 
 is a real passion for perfection, a real experience 
 that we have all shared to some extent in our 
 youth. But we cannot, most of us, follow Shelley 
 in his Platonics any more than his wife could 
 follow him : — 
 
 " The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. 
 To whatso'er of dull mortality 
 Is mine, remain a vestal sister still ; 
 To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, 
 Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united 
 Even as a bride, delighting and delighted." 
 
 For we do not believe in such unions, either in 
 fact or as belonging to a just ideal. The poem 
 
 249 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 ends, of course, with the promise of a voyage 
 to an isle under Ionian skies : — 
 
 " Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise." 
 
 And this line might describe the whole poem. 
 It is as beautiful as a Paradise that has been 
 wrecked over and over again by experience ; 
 so that we cannot believe it would be secure in 
 any possible state of being, and our imaginations 
 will not consent to entertain it. 
 
 250 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 "THE DEFENCE OF POETRY" AND 
 SHELLEY'S AESTHETICS 
 
 SHELLEY had scarcely finished " Epipsychi- 
 dion ' ' when he was provoked by an article 
 of Peacock's called, " The Four Ages of Poetry," 
 to write his own " Defence of Poetry." The 
 main purpose of Peacock's article was to prove 
 that poetry had become obsolete, and he tried 
 to prove it by an attack upon the poets of his own 
 time. There is some casual truth in his argument, 
 but more systematic perversity. Poetry begins, 
 he says, with an Age of Iron, in which poets sing 
 rude songs about the rapine of the heroes of their 
 own time. 1 Then follows the Age of Gold, which 
 finds its materials in the Age of Iron and romanti- 
 cizes that age and its heroes ; then the Age of 
 Silver, which is imitative in epic and original in 
 
 1 No doubt Peacock was thinking of this kind of poetry 
 when he wrote his famous verses : — 
 
 " The mountain sheep are sweeter, 
 But the valley sheep are fatter." 
 
 It has no resemblance to any primitive poetry that [ ever 
 read, and his account of such poetry was mainly invented 
 to suit his theory. 
 
 251 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 comic, didactic, and satiric poetry ; and lastly 
 the Age of Brass, which rejects the polish and learn- 
 ing of the Age of Silver, and tries to revive the 
 spontaneity of the Age of Gold. 
 
 Homer and Shakespeare represent the Age of 
 Gold ; the poets of the Augustan age and the 
 English eighteenth century, the Age of Silver ; 
 the poets of the decline of the Roman Empire 
 and the modern romantics, the Age of Brass. 
 The best part of the essay is the attack on these 
 romantics, and on the Lake Poets in particular. 
 These poets, says Peacock, hold that the way to 
 bring poetical genius to perfection is to cultivate 
 poetical impressions exclusively. Such impres- 
 sions can only be received among natural scenes 
 for all that is artificial is anti-poetical. The 
 mountains are natural, therefore they will live 
 among the mountains, " passing the whole day 
 in the innocent and amiable occupation of going 
 up and down hill, receiving poetical impressions, 
 and communicating them in immortal verse to 
 admiring generations." Here Peacock does touch 
 the weakness of the romantic poets ; for they are 
 apt to specialize too much, not in the practise of 
 their art — for all artists must do that — but in 
 their way of living. The main defect of all modern 
 art is that it concerns itself too much with effects 
 and too little with causes, too much with emotions 
 and too little with what arouses them. Hence 
 its tendency to be irrational, and to rely upon the 
 least rational cause of emotions, namely, associa- 
 
 252 
 
.. 
 
 THE DEFENCE OF POETRY" 
 
 tions. Thus there was some truth in Peacock's 
 description of the romantic poetry as " A modern 
 antique compound of frippery and barbarism, 
 in which the puling sentimentality of the present 
 time is grafted upon the misrepresented rugged- 
 ness of the past." But from the faults of modern 
 poetry he proceeded to argue that all poetry is 
 obsolete. "A poet in our times," he says, "is a 
 semi-barbarian in a civilised community. He 
 lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, 
 feelings, associations, are all with barbarous 
 manners, obsolete customs, and exploded super- 
 stitions." " The highest inspirations of poetry 
 can never make a philosopher, nor a statesman, 
 nor in any class of life a useful or rational man." 
 Assuming that poetry gives pleasure, he says 
 that we have enough of it already, and that 
 it can now be only cultivated to the neglect of 
 some branch of useful study. 
 
 Peacock's attack upon poetry seemed novel 
 when he made it, though it was really of the same 
 nature as the attacks when Sidney answered in 
 his " Apology for Poetry " ; and Shelley's Defence 
 is very like Sidney's Apology. 
 
 Shelley's purpose was to answer utilitarian 
 objections to poetry ; and his answer has this 
 defect, that he judges it too much himself by 
 utilitarian standards. He does not make a 
 clear distinction between art and the rest of man's 
 activities, because he does not seem to have grasped 
 the fact that art is and must be the expression of 
 
 253 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 emotion. He is very near to grasping it when, 
 at the beginning of his essay, he says that " Reason 
 is the enumeration of quantities already known ; 
 imagination is the perception of the value of these 
 quantities, both separately and as a whole." For 
 emotions are the test of the values of things, and 
 the artist, in expressing his emotions, expresses 
 and communicates his sense of values. Shelley 
 does not seem to have thoroughly grasped the 
 fact that the form of verse is not a mere ornament 
 but an added means of expression, for he says that 
 the distinction between poets and prose writers 
 is a vulgar error. "Plato," he tells us, "was 
 essentially a poet — the truth and splendour of 
 his imagery, and the melody of his language, are 
 the most intense that it is possible to conceive. 
 He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, 
 and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a har- 
 mony in thoughts divested of shape and action, 
 and he forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm 
 which would include, under determinate forms, 
 the varied pauses of his style." But Plato wrote 
 in prose because his main purpose was to reason, 
 and whatever emotion he expressed was subsidiary 
 to that purpose. Shelley will have it that every 
 great writer is a poet. " All the great historians," 
 he says, " Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets," 
 because their works contain poetic passages. 
 But he adds that " the plan of these writers, 
 especially that of Livy, restrained them from 
 developing this faculty in its highest degree." 
 
 254 
 
l( 
 
 THE DEFENCE OF POETRY" 
 
 That is to say, their main purpose was not poetical, 
 and, therefore, they wrote prose. 
 
 Shelley, like Coleridge, insists that " Poetry 
 is ever accompanied with pleasure," and that 
 " all spirits on which it falls open themselves 
 to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its 
 delight." There is some danger in the argument 
 that poetry sweetens wisdom, as jam sweetens 
 powder ; for it will not cover much beautiful 
 poetry, and it will not cover music at all, unless 
 we use wisdom in some new and vague sense. 
 Shelley is on surer ground when he tells us more 
 particularly, in an eloquent passage, how poetry 
 works upon the mind of man for good. How it 
 puts us in love with things by quickening our 
 imaginations, for, without imagination, we cannot 
 love well. " Poetry," he says, " strengthens the 
 faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of 
 man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens 
 a limb." 
 
 " The Defence of Poetry " contains many other 
 eloquent passages, and some reasoning that is 
 both subtle and profound. But there is no clear 
 statement of first principles in it. Shelley seems 
 to be wavering between the old aesthetics and the 
 new. At one time he claims for poetry a utility 
 apart from its beauty ; at another he seems to 
 hold that beauty has its own justification and 
 utility. Thus his argument is not quite continuous, 
 and sometimes he gives us only eloquence when 
 we are expecting the conclusion of an argument. 
 
 255 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 In this, as in other controversial works, he seems 
 often to write rather for those who do not need 
 convincing than for those who do. He had a 
 great power of close reasoning ; but when he 
 wrote prose, like many poets in the same case, he 
 could not rid his mind of poetic habits. He forgot 
 that his main purpose was to reason, and fell to 
 expressing his emotions as if he were writing 
 poetry. Matthew Arnold, in one of those fits of 
 perversity to which the best critics are liable, 
 spoke of Shelley's prose works and of his letters 
 as if he valued them more than his verse. It is 
 not likely that, but for his verse, his prose would 
 ever be read now ; for, though it is fluent and 
 ingenious, it has one fatal defect — it lacks char- 
 acter. In his prose Shelley expressed only his 
 opinions, not himself and his own experience. 
 His character and his experience are of a kind 
 that could only be expressed in verse, for both 
 were made up mainly of emotions. He was more 
 extremely a poet, perhaps, than any man that 
 ever lived, because life to him was all emotion ; 
 and when he was not experiencing emotion, the 
 higher faculties of his mind were not employed. 
 His very reason only worked at its fullest power 
 when it was fired by emotion, and his greatest 
 intellectual feats were performed in lyrical poetry. 
 He could not subordinate emotion to reason, and 
 therefore he was never in that state of mind when 
 strong emotion is controlled by stronger reason, 
 which produces the greatest prose. This exces- 
 
 256 
 
"THE DEFENCE OF POETRY" 
 
 sive predominance of emotion in his mind caused 
 him to be wanting in curiosity. He was but little 
 interested in things or people for their own sake. 
 He judged everything according to his own ideals, 
 and never allowed those ideals to be affected by 
 facts. Thus he could not understand the interest 
 of other poets in circumstance and character ; 
 and in his " Defence of Poetry " he gives an 
 ingenious explanation of this interest. He is 
 discussing the reason why poets have represented 
 character remote from moral perfection, and he 
 says that '•' A poet considers the vices of his con- 
 temporaries as the temporary dress in which his 
 creations must be arrayed, and which cover with- 
 out concealing the eternal proportions of their 
 beauty." V Few poets of the highest class have 
 chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions 
 in its naked truth and splendour ; and it is doubt- 
 ful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be 
 not necessary to temper this planetary music 
 for mortal ears." Here he has advanced beyond 
 the neo-classic theory that nothing should be 
 represented in art which is not beautiful or noble 
 in itself according to neo-classic standards of 
 nobility and beauty. But he still falls short of any 
 theory that will justify the art which delights in 
 the representation of character for its own sake, 
 or will explain why that art is beautiful. Artists 
 such as Shakespeare or Rembrandt do not use the 
 alloy of costume, habit, etc., so as to temper their 
 planetary music to mortal ears, but because they 
 17 257 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 are profoundly interested in all the imperfection 
 of this life, and because the promise of that 
 imperfection moves them to deep emotion. 
 Shelley himself seems almost to grasp this fact 
 when he says that " The beauty of the internal 
 nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental 
 vesture but that the spirit of its form shall com- 
 municate itself to the very disguise, and indicate 
 the shape it hides from the manner in which it is 
 worn." 
 
 But even here he fails to distinguish between the 
 beauty of a work of art and the beauty of what is 
 represented in it. The artist can make a beautiful 
 work of art out of the representation of things not 
 beautiful in themselves, provided those things 
 move him to emotion and he expresses that 
 emotion in his art. Shakespeare and Rembrandt 
 could love people and things altogether imperfect 
 in themselves, and could therefore represent them 
 in terms of beauty. Shakespeare also could 
 take delight in the conflict of good and evil in 
 this life as being part of its necessary imperfection, 
 and as containing all the infinite promise of that 
 imperfection. He could therefore represent evil 
 with as much zest as good ; and he admired power 
 in evil, as, for instance, the cunning and constancy 
 of Iago, because he held power in itself to be good, 
 and to retain some of its virtue even when per- 
 verted by the imperfect conditions of this life. 
 But to Shelley power, when evilly used, was evil 
 in itself ; and he could take no disinterested 
 
 258 
 
"THE DEFENCE OF POETRY" 
 
 delight in it, but could only represent it, without 
 understanding, as a foil to good. He was so much 
 repelled by it that he could no more observe it 
 coolly than most of us could observe a man being 
 broken on the wheel. Again, Shakespeare, having 
 a joyful sense of the imperfection of this life, saw 
 promise and significance in the very follies and 
 weaknesses of mankind. Hence that good-natured 
 humour of his, which has the joy of art, and there- 
 fore the beauty of art, in its expression. But, 
 since Shelley had no joyful sense of the imperfec- 
 tion of this life, he had no humour, but only high 
 spirits. Therefore his aesthetic theory takes no 
 account of humour, except as an alloy to temper 
 planetary music. He himself condemned comedy 
 as cruel. He thought that no one could make fun 
 of follies and weaknesses without hating them or 
 despising the weak and foolish. He had a strong 
 abstract faith in mankind and the future of the 
 universe ; but it remained always abstract, and 
 based rather upon opinions than upon facts, and 
 he hated all facts that seemed to him to contra- 
 dict it. Thus he was no more fitted to write 
 prose than Correggio was fitted to paint portraits, 
 and there is the same kind of emptiness in his 
 prose, for all its facility, as in those paintings of 
 Correggio which want lyrical fire. 
 
 259 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 "ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 EARLY in 1821 Shelley made the acquaintance 
 of Edward Williams and his wife Jane, with 
 whom he was in close friendship till the end of his 
 life. Williams was a lieutenant of dragoons, now 
 on half pay, and a friend of Medwin. He had 
 first been in the navy, but " detested the tyranny 
 practised on men-of-war." He was a year or 
 two younger than Shelley, and seems to have 
 been a man of simple and charming character. 
 His wife also was charming, and played well 
 enough on the guitar to delight Shelley. Mary 
 said that she was very pretty, but wanted anima- 
 tion. Shelley appears not to have found this 
 fault in her, although he said that she was not 
 very clever. He addressed several famous poems 
 to her ; and in after years she seems to have 
 represented that she understood Shelley better 
 than Mary understood him, and even that Mary 
 vexed him with causeless jealousies. When Mary 
 discovered this there was an end of close friend- 
 ship, though no open quarrel, between them. 
 
 Keats died at Rome on February 23, and Shelley 
 was moved to indignation by the story, false but 
 
 260 
 
"ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 commonly believed, that he had been killed by 
 the article on " Endymion ' in the Quarterly 
 Review. In June he wrote " Adonais," his elegy 
 on the death of Keats. He and Keats had never 
 been close friends, and he seems to have had no 
 great admiration for any of Keats' s poems except 
 ' ' Hyperion . " In the others he found only promise. 
 But he had been eager in offers of service to Keats, 
 for he saw that Keats was a poet devoted to his 
 art ; and in ' ' Adonais ' he wrote of the glory 
 of that art, and the mystery of death, as much 
 as of Keats himself. It is no more an expression 
 of personal grief than " Lycidas " ; but this is 
 no defect, for Shelley makes no pretence in it of 
 any emotion he does not feel. He uses the classi- 
 cal machinery, as Milton used it, so that he may 
 connect his theme with the great poetic tradition 
 of the world ; so that he may represent Keats 
 as one of a long series of poets, all natives of the 
 same enchanted country and all children of the 
 same mother, Urania. 
 
 Many conventions of art have been discredited, 
 because they have been used by unimaginative 
 men to conceal their want of imagination. How 
 many painters have painted draperies rather than 
 clothes, because draperies were supposed to belong 
 to imaginative painting. How many versifiers 
 have written pastorals for the same reason. Yet 
 Raphael, when he painted draperies, knew what 
 he was about ; and so did Milton, when he wrote 
 pastorals. Each of these great artists removed 
 
 261 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 his work from the plane of immediate reality 
 because he wished to represent a state of being 
 belonging, not to a particular age, but to all 
 time ; because the peculiarities of his age were 
 not relevant to his theme. So it was with Shelley 
 when he wrote " Adonais." He was not con- 
 cerned with the fact that his poet was called John 
 Keats, that he was the son of a man who kept a 
 livery stable, or that he had been an assistant 
 in a chemist's shop. These were mere accidents 
 of his theme. The essence was the death of a 
 young poet, misunderstood by the world, and the 
 emotions which that event stirred in Shelley's 
 mind. He seems to begin the poem with a ritual 
 chant, varied and repeated through many stanzas, 
 as becomes one poet making solemn music for the 
 funeral of another. But gradually the music 
 becomes more individual, and Shelley's own pecu- 
 liar imagination expresses itself in the first pastoral 
 allusion : — 
 
 " Oh, weep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams, 
 The passion-winged ministers of thought, 
 Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 
 Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
 The love which was its music, wander not, — 
 Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, 
 But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn their 
 
 lot 
 Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 
 
 They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again." 
 
 For Shelley thoughts and emotions and the 
 voices of the earth and sky were as real as men 
 and women, and all these have the same kind 
 
 262 
 
"ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 of reality in " Adonais " as in '■ Prometheus." In 
 fact he empties some things of their particularities 
 only to make other things more real, and thus 
 his abstract method is justified. It seems natural 
 to us, with our minds quickened by Shelley's 
 music, that the inspirations of the poet should 
 mourn for him, and that their moving pomp 
 should be compared to the — 
 
 " Pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream." 
 
 Shelley, like a great composer, creates a world 
 of his own with the power of his music, in which 
 old myths seem to be new ; and there is nothing 
 frigid in the lines — 
 
 " Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 
 And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
 And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 
 Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray " ; 
 
 or in the description of Urania coming from her 
 secret Paradise to mourn over her son in his 
 death-chamber ; or in the appearance of Byron, 
 Moore, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley himself trans- 
 formed yet recognizable as mountain shepherds. 
 Shelley's description of himself is as good an 
 example as could be found of ideal poetry, for 
 it conveys a just idea of him without any state- 
 ments of actual fact : — 
 
 " 'Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
 A phantom among men ; companionless 
 As the last note of an expiring storm 
 Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
 Had gazed on nature's naked loveliness, 
 
 263 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
 With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
 And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
 Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 
 
 A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — 
 A Love in desolation masked ; — a Power 
 Girt round with weakness ; — it can scarce uplift 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
 It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
 A breaking billow ; — even whilst we speak 
 Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
 The killing sun smiles brightly ; on a cheek 
 The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. 
 
 His head was bound with pansies over-blown, 
 And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 
 And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 
 Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew 
 Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 
 Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
 Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew 
 He came the last, neglected and apart : 
 A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart." 
 
 At the fortieth stanza there is a change in the 
 poem. The pastoral convention drops away, and 
 it becomes a hymn to the glory of art and the 
 mystery of death : — 
 
 " He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
 Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 Can touch him not and torture not again." 
 
 The burden, " O, weep for Adonais," changes to — 
 
 " Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn, 
 Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
 The spirit thou lamentest is not gone." 
 
 264 
 
"ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 As to the nature of immortality Shelley is uncer- 
 tain, but he is filled with an immense hope. He 
 seems at one moment to be satisfied with a kind 
 of Pantheism ; but then his imagination makes 
 his faith stronger and clearer, and he tells us how 
 "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown," welcoming 
 their "new-admired guests" — 
 
 " Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
 
 ' Thou art become as one of us, ' they cry ; 
 
 It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
 
 Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
 
 Silent alone amid an heaven of song, 
 Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng ! " 
 
 Here Shelley makes a new kind of myth, alto- 
 gether free from all earthly circumstance, in which 
 imagery convinces us that it is fact, since it tells 
 us of new things that could only come to the 
 poet's mind or be conveyed to ours in images. 
 There follows a strange verse in which Shelley, as 
 elsewhere, seems to grow dizzy with the height 
 to which he has soared and yet to nerve himself 
 for a farther flight. 
 
 " Who mourns for Adonais ? Oh, come forth, 
 Fond wretch ! and know thyself and him aright. 
 Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth ; 
 As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
 Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
 Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 
 Even to a point within our day and night ; 
 And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink 
 
 When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink." 
 
 Here he seems to be passing beyond all imagery 
 
 265 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 in the effort to express naked thoughts that cannot 
 be clothed in words ; but imagery returns trium- 
 phantly in the famous lines — 
 
 " The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments." 
 
 This image also conveys a new truth that could 
 not be divorced from it, for it is a truth conceived 
 only by the co-operation of intellect and emotion, 
 and therefore not to be expressed except by the 
 same co-operation — that is to say, in an image. 
 The poem ends in a prophecy of Shelley's own 
 approaching fate. His mind has seen so far into 
 eternity that it can no longer be satisfied with time, 
 and is carried into the future by the momentum of 
 its inspiration — 
 
 " The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
 Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven, 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ; 
 Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." 
 
 " Adonais " seems to me the most perfect 
 poem of any length that Shelley ever wrote, 
 because in it he found the subject most suited to 
 his genius. It combines music with abstract 
 ideas as they have never been combined before or 
 
 266 
 
"ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 since. It is as perfect in form as in matter, for it 
 starts with a familiar theme, and only gradually and 
 by a natural process takes us into the unknown, 
 moving from the ancient pastoral country of 
 poetry to Shelley's own untrodden wildernesses 
 and airy heights of thought. He himself called 
 it the least imperfect of his compositions, and a 
 highly- wrought piece of art. 
 
 At the beginning of August Shelley went to 
 see Byron at Ravenna, who, under the influence 
 of the Countess Guiccioli, had now purged and 
 was living cleanly like a gentleman. Byron told 
 him that Elise, the dismissed Swiss maid, probably 
 at the instigation of her husband, had slandered 
 him grossly to the Hoppners. Her story was 
 that Shelley had got Claire with child, and had 
 then given her a violent medicine to procure 
 abortion ; that in spite of this a child had been 
 born, which Shelley had immediately sent to a 
 foundling hospital ; also that he neglected and 
 beat Mary. 
 
 He asked Mary to write a letter to the Hoppners 
 refuting the charge. Mary at once wrote a letter 
 to Mrs. Hoppner in which, after dealing with the 
 slander, she took occasion to speak of the perfect 
 confidence and affection which existed between 
 her and her husband, ending with some reproaches 
 to Mrs. Hoppner for believing such a tale about 
 Shelley and Claire, and for repeating it to Byron. 
 Byron acted badly throughout the affair. He 
 professed to the Hoppners to believe the story and 
 
 267 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 then repeated it to Shelley, although he had 
 promised Mr. Hoppner not to do so. Thus he 
 was in a difficulty when Shelley gave him Mary's 
 letter under promise that he would send it on to 
 Mrs. Hoppner. If he did this he would have to 
 confess that he had told Shelley what he had pro- 
 mised not to tell. He was not a man, as Shelley 
 said, to keep a secret good or bad ; but still 
 Shelley trusted him more than he deserved, for 
 he never sent the letter on to Mrs. Hoppner, and 
 it was found among his papers after his death. 
 The only thing that can be said for him, which is 
 not much, is that he did not destroy it. We may 
 take it that he put off the disagreeable task of 
 sending it on and making his confession to the 
 Hoppners, until it slipped out of his mind. Elise 
 afterwards wrote to Mrs. Shelley denying that 
 she had ever said anything to Mrs. Hoppner 
 against Shelley or Claire. She added that she 
 had never seen anything in the conduct of Claire 
 that could justify any insinuations against her. 
 
 Shelley could not ask favours of Byron for 
 himself, but he could ask them for another. 
 Leigh Hunt at this time was in great straits. He 
 had been very ill, and his paper, the Examiner, 
 had fallen low in circulation during his illness. 
 Mrs. Hunt wrote to Mary asking that Shelley 
 would urge her husband to come out to Italy 
 for the good of his health. At Ravenna Shelley 
 told Byron of Hunt's evil case, and Byron, in 
 one of his generous fits, proposed that Leigh 
 
 268 
 
"ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 Hunt should come to Italy and should join himself 
 and Shelley in a magazine in which all their future 
 works should be published, the profits to be shared 
 between them. Shelley refused this offer for 
 himself, thinking that his reputation would do 
 the venture no good, and that he was a writer of 
 too little fame to be a partner on equal terms with 
 the other two ; but he wrote at once to Hunt 
 to tell him of Byron's proposal. Hunt accepted 
 it with delight, not knowing that Byron's gener- 
 osity, however sincere in project, was apt to fail 
 in performance. Byron, after much wavering, 
 made up his mind to live for a while at Pisa, and 
 Shelley took the Lanfranchi Palace on the Lung' 
 Arno there for him. He came to Pisa on Novem- 
 ber i. Shelley and Mary went into lodgings 
 opposite to his palace. About this time Shelley 
 was moved, by what he read in the newspapers 
 of the War of Independence in Greece, to write 
 his lyrical drama " Hellas." He called it in the 
 preface "a mere improvise." It has the defects 
 of an improvisation in its structure, and often in 
 its execution. " The ' Persae ' of iEschylus," 
 he says, "afforded me the first model of my con- 
 ception, although the decision of the glorious 
 contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended 
 forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of 
 Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I 
 have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting 
 a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought 
 upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the 
 
 269 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and 
 visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph 
 of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of 
 civilisation and social improvement." 
 
 As a play "Hellas" is nothing. The reader 
 can take no interest in the characters or in the 
 succession of events. These are mere pretexts 
 for passages of description and meditation upon 
 human fate, or for the choruses, by two of which 
 the work is chiefly remembered. 
 
 You may read " Hellas " once to discover 
 what there is in it, but you are not likely to read 
 it again for its own sake, for it is not interesting. 
 It contains wonderful lines and passages which the 
 reader can mark as he comes upon them, so that 
 he may know where to find them again. But he 
 can enjoy them just as well without their context 
 as with it. Such are the lines : — 
 
 " Kings are like stars— they rise and set, they have 
 The worship of the world, but no repose." 
 
 Or the passage in which the home of a shadowy 
 Jew, Ahasuerus, is described : — 
 
 " He who would question him 
 Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream 
 Of ocean sleeps around those foamless isles, 
 When the young moon is westering as now, 
 And evening airs wander upon the wave ; 
 And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle, 
 Great Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow 
 Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water, 
 Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud 
 ' Ahasuerus.' " 
 
 270 
 
" ADONAIS " AND -" HELLAS " 
 
 But the two famous choruses are separate and 
 finished works of art, and they seem to me to be 
 the finest lyrics of their kind in our language. 
 
 The English lyric has two different origins, the 
 one indigenous, and the other foreign. It has 
 been developed partly out of folk-song and partly 
 under the influence of Greek or Graxo-Roman 
 models. 1 Without the folk-song origin it would 
 have been a mere academic exercise, too far 
 from common speech to have either character or 
 spontaneous melody. There is not enough of 
 the folk-song influence in the odes of Gray, and 
 still less in the Pindarics of Cowley. But a poet 
 who is a master of folk-song — that is to say, of 
 the art of making simple music out of simple 
 language — may greatly increase the power and 
 diversity of his music, and, indeed, of all his 
 means of expression, if he can submit himself 
 skilfully to the classical influence. 
 
 Folk-song is, as it were, the music of a single 
 voice. The classical lyrics are choral or even 
 orchestral. They have a great variety of music ; 
 for in them the Latin and more abstract elements 
 of our language can be freely used, and the struc- 
 ture of the sentences can be almost as elaborate 
 and diverse as in eloquent prose. They are also 
 instruments for the expression of emotions more 
 various and more intellectual, such as the emotions 
 aroused by general ideas ; and they are even 
 
 1 Of course the influence of French and Italian poetry 
 has also been strong in most periods of our literature. 
 
 271 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 capable of expressing general ideas themselves. 
 We may find the beginnings of the classical 
 lyric, perhaps, in Spenser's " Epithalamium." 
 It has been wonderfully developed by Crashaw, 
 and rises almost to its perfection in Milton's 
 "Blest Pair of Syrens." It begins to grow pedantic 
 in Dryden's odes, is degraded into vulgar non- 
 sense by Pope, rises again in the odes of Gray and 
 Collins, becomes natural in those of Wordsworth, 
 and is perfected by Shelley in the two great chor- 
 uses of "Hellas," "Worlds on worlds are rolling 
 ever," and "The world's great age begins anew." 
 The classical influence came to Spenser, to Crashaw, 
 and perhaps to Milton mainly through Italian 
 poetry. To Wordsworth it probably came through 
 Milton. To Shelley it came straight from the 
 classics, and he used it with a Greek lucidity and 
 sonority, and yet with all the native music of the 
 language, to express general ideas that had never 
 before been expressed in lyric poetry : — 
 
 " Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep 
 From one whose dreams are Paradise 
 Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, 
 And Day peers forth with her blank eyes ; 
 So fleet, so faint, so fair. 
 The Powers of earth and air 
 Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem : 
 Apollo, Pan, and Love, 
 And even Olympian Jove, 
 Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them ; 
 Our hills and seas and streams, 
 Dispeopled of their dreams. 
 Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, 
 Wailed for the golden years." 
 
 272 
 
"ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 The closing chorus is more symmetrical in its 
 form and more simple in its theme. But the 
 music has the same clearness, the same swift 
 yet stately movement : — 
 
 " A loftier Argo cleaves the main, 
 Fraught with a richer prize ; 
 Another Orpheus sings again, 
 
 And loves, and weeps, and dies. 
 A new Ulysses leaves once more 
 Calypso for his native shore." 
 
 But Shelley cannot, like Virgil, sustain his song 
 of exultant hope to the end. As in the " Ode 
 to Liberty," he towers only to sink in a sudden 
 descent as beautiful as his upward flight : — 
 
 " Oh cease ! must hate and death return ? 
 
 Cease ! must men kill and die ? 
 Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 
 
 Of bitter prophecy. 
 The world is weary of the past, 
 Oh, might it die or rest at last ! " 
 
 He tells us in a note that this final chorus is 
 " indistinct and obscure as the event of the living 
 drama whose arrival it foretells." The ardent 
 spirits of Isaiah and Virgil, " overleaping the 
 actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, 
 already saw the possible and perhaps approaching 
 state of society in which the ' lion shall lie down 
 with the Iamb ' and ' omnis feret omnia tellus.' " 
 Shelley himself had foretold such a state in his 
 "Prometheus Unbound"; but now, when he 
 was dealing with actual events, his heart failed 
 
 18 273 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 m 
 
 him. He knew that the Golden Age would not 
 come with the freedom of Greece, and therefore 
 he ended with a cry of that despondency which 
 overcame him from time to time. And yet he 
 could write to Medwin about this time in language 
 very like some famous words of Walt Whitman : 
 " My mind is at peace respecting nothing so much 
 as the constitution and mysteries of the great 
 system of things — my curiosity on this point 
 never amounts to solicitude." This peace of 
 thought he was no doubt gradually acquiring ; 
 but it had not yet become emotional peace, and 
 therefore could not yet be expressed in poetry. 
 There is little peace in the many beautiful lyrics 
 of this year. Indeed the most famous of them 
 would sound like a cry Of despair, but for its music, 
 which is triumphant in beauty : — 
 
 " O world ! O life ! O time ! 
 
 On whose last steps I climb, 
 Trembling at that where I had stood before ; 
 When will return the glory of your prime ? 
 
 No more — oh, never more ! 
 
 Out of the day and night 
 
 A joy has taken flight ; 
 Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, 
 Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 
 
 No more — oh, never more ! " 
 
 Only bad art is dreary ; all good art increases 
 our vitality, whatever its subject may be. In 
 this poem is expressed, not merely a passing 
 mood of depression, but Shelley's passionate 
 
 274 
 
(I 
 
 ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS'' 
 
 struggle with that depression and his triumph 
 over it in the act of expressing it. For the music 
 of the words expresses rather the joy which the 
 poet thinks he has lost for ever than his despair 
 at the loss of that joy, and expresses it all the 
 more keenly because he cannot for the moment 
 experience it. Another poem of this year is the 
 " Bridal Song," of which there are two versions 
 extant besides the final one. From this we may 
 conclude that Shelley spent much pains upon 
 the poem ; and it is one of the most polished 
 of all his lyrics, combining the wild music 
 of folk-song with a classical stateliness and 
 lucidity : — 
 
 " The golden gates of sleep unbar 
 
 Where strength and beauty met together, 
 Kindle their image like a star 
 In a sea of glassy weather. 
 Night, with all thy stars look down,— 
 
 Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, — 
 Never smiled the inconstant moon 
 
 On a pair so true. 
 Let eyes not see their own delight ; 
 Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight 
 Oft renew." 
 
 In this perfect union of folk-song and classical 
 music Shelley reminds us of Ben Jonson, whom 
 perhaps he took for his model and certainly sur- 
 passed. 
 
 There are certain poems written about this 
 time to Jane and Edward Williams, from which 
 we might almost suppose that Shelley had ceased to 
 
 275 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 be happy with Mary. In one he says to Jane : — l 
 
 " When I return to my cold home, you ask 
 Why I am not as I have ever been ; 
 
 You spoil me for the task 
 Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene, — 
 Of wearing on my brow the idle mask 
 Of author, great or mean, 
 In the world's carnival. I sought 
 Peace thus, and but in you I found it not." 
 
 Shelley had a strong affection for Mary ; but 
 he was used to it and to her, and he was always 
 eager for some new delight not staled by use. 
 He was not aware of the animal in himself, or 
 of the manner in which nature could use his 
 imagination to transfigure his animal instincts. 
 His mind and his body alike were always hungry 
 for passion, and, since he had dangerously idealized 
 passion and had the romantic habit of getting 
 his inspiration from it, he could not regard his 
 hunger as a mere appetite that he ought to suppress 
 in the interests both of his character and of his 
 art. It moved him to write poetry, and there- 
 fore he indulged it by writing poetry, not seeing 
 that he might have written better poetry by 
 suppressing it. 
 
 The greatest art of the world has not been 
 concerned with sexual matters ; and if it is indeed 
 
 1 The poem is addressed to Edward, but this verse 
 appears from the context to be meant for his wife. The 
 last verse but one has a remarkable likeness in sense to 
 the last verse of the Stanzas written in April, 1814, when 
 the estrangement from Harriet was just begun. 
 
 276 
 
It 
 
 ADONAIS" AND "HELLAS" 
 
 a result of sexual energy, it is a result altogether 
 transfigured by the will and the ideals of the 
 artist. The right conclusion to be drawn from 
 this theory, by those who hold it, is that sexual 
 energy, since nature has given it to us in super- 
 fluous abundance, may be used for other purposes 
 than the production of children or of works of 
 art which take the sexual instinct for their theme. 
 It may be that its superfluity, when subject to the 
 human will, is the chief force which men can 
 command for the accomplishment of their ideals ; 
 and that it becomes most effective when its original 
 purpose is changed by the human will into con- 
 formity with its ideals. 
 
 Shelley's Paradise was a place in which passion 
 would be always new and yet always perfectly 
 satisfied, still an appetite yet not subject to the 
 laws of appetite. He could not imagine any 
 means of attaining to this Paradise, for it was a 
 mere impossibility, an incongruous mixture of 
 present pleasure of the flesh with imagined delights 
 of the spirit. Therefore it was separated from the 
 world as he knew it by a gulf that his imagination 
 could not bridge, and that he could only cross 
 by an arbitrary flight of fancy. He saw that it 
 was impossible, yet would not reconcile himself to 
 its impossibility ; and he was always writing poems 
 in which he expressed both his desire for it and his 
 despair of it. Jane Williams, like Emilia Viviani, 
 appears to have aroused both the desire and the des- 
 pair ; and he expressed both in a famous poem : — 
 
 277 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 " One word is too often profaned 
 
 For me to profane it. 
 One feeling too falsely disdained 
 
 For thee to disdain it ; 
 One hope is too like despair 
 
 For prudence to smother, 
 And pity from thee is more dear 
 
 Than that from another. 
 
 I can give not what men call love, 
 
 But wilt thou accept not 
 The worship the heart lifts above 
 
 And the heavens reject not — 
 The desire of the moth for the star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow, 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow ? *' 
 
 In prose he could speak very coolly of Jane ; 
 and we must not suppose that he had any desire 
 to fly with her away from her husband and Mary, 
 even in a boat, to an Ionian Isle. But the hunger 
 for a new passion was in him, and he indulged it, 
 at any rate so far as to make verses about it. I 
 cannot but think that he might have been better 
 employed, even in the interests of his art. In 
 such poems he took the line of least resistance, 
 and was not training himself for greater tasks. 
 No one else has done this kind of thing so well, 
 but there is a futility in the idea which betrays 
 itself even in the language. The last two lines 
 would go well with the music of Balfe. 
 
 278 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE LAST YEAR 
 
 SHELLEY now saw much of Byron and Byron's 
 friends. He also made a new friend, who 
 has given us as vivid and full an account of the 
 last year of his life as Hogg of his Oxford days. 
 Edward John Trelawny, who was a year younger 
 than Shelley, had already begun to live a life of 
 adventure. He had read and admired Shelley's 
 poetry, and had heard from Medwin and Williams 
 that Shelley himself was as remarkable as his 
 works. He came to Italy, partly to shoot in the 
 Maremma, partly to see Shelley. Having ful- 
 filled his first purpose, he arrived at Pisa on January 
 14, 1822, to accomplish his second. From this 
 time he was constantly in Shelley's society, and 
 became his devoted friend. He had his faults, and 
 we cannot trust all that he says. Indeed, Byron 
 called him a liar. In some things he was capricious, 
 but not in his affection for Shelley. It is a great 
 piece of luck for Shelley's biographers that Tre- 
 lawny should, like Hogg, have had a natural 
 gift for writing, and yet should have been free 
 from Hogg's tiresome trick of talking about him- 
 self irrelevantly. The Shelley he describes is the 
 
 279 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 same man as Hogg's Shelley, except that his 
 is more mature and more delightful. Trelawny 
 has this further advantage over Hogg, that he 
 gives us Shelley in company and in contrast 
 with another man of genius. His Byron, though 
 represented with little affection, is even more 
 living than his Shelley, and attracts us in spite of 
 all his poses and follies. Trelawny makes him 
 human, and pathetic, although he seems to write 
 of him coolly and sceptically. A biographer of 
 Shelley must be tempted to quote very freely 
 from Trelawny, but, since his book is now easy to 
 buy, I shall not quote from it more than I can 
 help. 
 
 " I was pleased and surprised," Trelawny says, 
 " at Byron's passiveness and docility in listening 
 to Shelley ; but all who heard him felt the charm 
 of his simple, earnest manner." Byron, he says, 
 never talked seriously and confidentially with 
 any person but Shelley. The contrast between 
 them in society was as marked as their characters. 
 Byron was ill at ease, and affected to care only 
 for trifles. Shelley, "not thinking of himself, 
 was as much at ease as in his own home, omitting 
 no occasion of obliging those whom he came in 
 contact with, readily conversing with all or any 
 who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, 
 dress or address." 
 
 When Trelawny was telling Shelley what he 
 thought of Byron, Shelley called his wife, and 
 said : 
 
 280 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 44 Mary, Trelawny has found out Byron already. 
 How stupid we were ; how long it took us." 
 
 " That," she replied, " is because he lives with 
 the living, and we with the dead." 
 
 Although Shelley was never happy far from a 
 river or the sea, and spent much of his time in a 
 boat, he could not swim at all. Trelawny tells 
 us that once, when he was bathing in a deep pool 
 in the Arno, Shelley said mournfully, " Why 
 can't I swim ? It seems so very easy." Trelawny 
 told him that he could not swim only because 
 he thought he could not. Thereupon Shelley 
 resolved to try. He plunged in, but lay stretched 
 out at the bottom like a conger eel, making no 
 effort to save himself. Trelawny fished him out, 
 and he said, " I always find the bottom of a well, 
 and they say Truth lies there. In another minute 
 I should have found it, and you would have 
 found an empty shell. It is an easy way of getting 
 rid of the body." Trelawny remarks that "the 
 careless, not to say impatient, way in which the 
 poet bore his burden of life, caused a vague dread 
 to his family and friends that he might lose or 
 cast it away at any moment." He seems, like 
 some of the great saints, to have had no instinct 
 of self-preservation ; not from lack of vitality, 
 but because his mind was almost independent 
 of his body, so that he was in danger of parting 
 with it in a mere fit of forgetfulness as other men 
 part s/ith their umbrellas. Trelawny tells us how 
 he once left him at ten in the morning, reading 
 
 281 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 a German folio, and returned at six in the evening 
 to find him still reading the same folio. Trelawny 
 asked him to come to dinner. He said that he 
 had dined ; but Trelawny pointed to a plate 
 containing bread and cold meat that was on a 
 book-shelf, and asked him what it was. " That," 
 he answered, colouring, "why, that must be my 
 dinner. It's very foolish ; I thought I had eaten 
 it." "He seldom ate at stated periods, but only 
 when hungry — and then like the birds, if he saw 
 something edible lying about." 
 
 The Shelleys and Williamses had formed a plan 
 of going to the Bay of Spezzia together for the 
 summer of 1822. Both Shelley and Williams 
 were anxious to have a boat. Trelawny showed 
 them the model of an American schooner, and 
 it was resolved that Trelawny should write at 
 once to a friend of his at Genoa, a Captain Roberts, 
 commissioning him to build a boat for them. 
 On February 7, 1822, Shelley and Williams went 
 to Spezzia to find a house for the summer. They 
 searched all along the bay in vain, but the boat 
 was ordered and the summer visit to the sea 
 could not be given up. 
 
 Byron was urged by his friends in England 
 not to associate too much with Shelley. " To-day I 
 had another letter warning me against the snake," 1 
 he said to Trelawny. " He alone in this age of 
 humbug dares stem the current, as he did to-day 
 
 1 A nickname which Byron had given to Shelley. He 
 also called him Shiloh. 
 
 282 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 the flooded Arno in his skiff, although I could not 
 observe he made any progress. The attempt is 
 better than being swept along, as all the rest are, 
 with the filthy garbage scoured from its banks." 
 Indeed, Byron clung to Shelley for companionship, 
 and was, Mary Shelley wrote in March when there 
 were differences between them, in a terrible fright 
 lest Shelley should desert him. These differences 
 arose out of the old trouble about Claire's child, 
 Allegra. Claire believed, and with reason, that 
 Allegra could not be properly cared for in the 
 Capuchin convent, where she was being educated ; 
 and her anxieties increased when Byron left 
 Ravenna and there was no one to look after Allegra. 
 She wrote entreating Byron to let her see Allegra, 
 but he did not answer her letter. Then she formed 
 wild schemes for kidnapping Allegra, from which 
 Shelley dissuaded her. He agreed to intercede 
 with Byron, but got nothing from him ; indeed, 
 he came away from the interview in a passion, 
 saying that he could have knocked Byron down 
 with pleasure, and almost provoked to challenge 
 him to a duel. 
 
 But Shelley could not break with Byron, even 
 if after his first resentment he wished to do so, 
 lest he should injure the interests of Leigh Hunt. 
 Hunt could not get out to Italy without money. 
 He got some from Shelley, and asked Shelley to 
 get more from Byron. On January 15 Shelley 
 sent to Hunt £150 which he had scraped together. 
 Byron, he said, was disposed to be kind, and had 
 
 283 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 assigned a portion of his palace to Hunt, and had 
 paid for furnishing it " with that sort of unsuspect- 
 ing goodness which makes it infinitely difficult to 
 ask him for more." " Past circumstances," he 
 continued, " 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." Yet Shelley 
 was determined to do all he could to help the 
 helpless Hunt, and, on February 15, he wrote to 
 Byron saying that Hunt had urged him more than 
 once to ask Byron to lend him money. " My 
 answer consisted in sending him all I could spare, 
 which I have now liberally done." I do not think 
 poor Hunt's promise to pay in a given time is 
 worth very much," he continues, "but mine is 
 less subject to uncertainty, and I should be happy 
 to be responsible for any engagement he may 
 have proposed to you." Byron lent Hunt £200 
 on Shelley's bond, and Shelley did all he could 
 to keep the fickle Byron in conceit with the 
 idea of his partnership with Hunt. 
 
 But he found it more and more difficult to do 
 anything for Hunt. Hunt had been expected in 
 Italy before the end of 1821. His rooms had been 
 made ready for him and a cook hired. In March 
 Shelley was still urging him to come. Byron 
 had been wavering about the project of the journal, 
 but now he was eager for it again and impatient 
 to see Hunt. " Particular circumstances," Shelley 
 
 284 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 wrote on March 2, "or rather, I should say, 
 particular dispositions in Lord Byron's character, 
 render the close and exclusive intimacy with him 
 in which I find myself intolerable to me ; this 
 much, my best friend, I will confess and confide 
 to you. No feelings 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 extremes are reconciled." 
 
 At the beginning of 1822 Shelley set himself to 
 write a tragedy on Charles I, which he had begun 
 and laid aside in 1819. His object in writing it 
 was to make some money for Hunt, but he aban- 
 doned it in despair in June. Four scenes have 
 come down to us, and the fragment of a fifth, all 
 in an imperfect state. They contain a good deal 
 of eloquent talk, but there is no movement and 
 little character in them. Archy, the Fool, is 
 drawn after the fool in King Lear. The Queen 
 calls him shrewd and bitter, but his speeches are 
 mere academic exercises in a style that is nothing 
 if not natural. His song, " A widow bird sat 
 mourning for her love," is the best thing in the 
 whole fragment ; and it has nothing to do with the 
 play. The effort to write against the grain dulled 
 Shelley's inspiration, and he complained that he 
 could write nothing. But still he was busy trans- 
 lating, and produced some beautiful lyrics ; in 
 particular three addressed to Jane Williams, 
 " The Invitation," " The Recollection," and " With 
 
 285 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 a Guitar." Trelawny tells us how he found 
 Shelley writing the last of these in a pine forest. 
 He picked up the manuscript. " It was a fearful 
 scrawl, words smeared out with his finger, and 
 one upon the other, over and over in tiers and all 
 run together ' in most admired disorder ' ; it 
 might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh 
 overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild 
 ducks." 
 
 We must not suppose, because he often wrote 
 hastily and left uncorrected what needed correc- 
 tion, that he was not a great master of technique. 
 He was a far greater master than many careful 
 poets who give us no lines obviously imperfect, 
 and he proved his mastery more even in simple 
 metres than in difficult ones. In " The Invita- 
 tion " and " With a Guitar " he makes the metre 
 of " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso " his own, 
 lighter, swifter, and freer than it had ever been 
 before : — 
 
 " When the night is left behind 
 In the deep east, dun and blind, 
 And the blue noon is over us 
 And the multitudinous 
 Billows murmur at our feet, 
 Where the earth and ocean meet, 
 And all things seem only one 
 In the universal sun." . 
 
 Shelley wrote greater poems than these, but 
 none more spontaneous, none that communicates 
 more delight from its own happy accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 286 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 In the middle of April Claire and the Williamses 
 went to Spezzia again to look for houses. They 
 had only just gone when the Shelleys received the 
 news that Allegra had died of typhus fever. Two 
 days afterwards Claire and the Williamses returned, 
 saying they had found only one house, the Villa 
 Magni, which was on the east side of the Bay 
 of Spezzia, near the village of San Terenzo. Shel- 
 ley did not tell Claire of her loss at once ; for Byron 
 was close at hand, and she might have done any- 
 thing in her fury against him. His one idea was 
 to get her away from Pisa. Therefore he insisted 
 that Mary and Claire should go at once with 
 Trelawny to the Villa Magni, and he would have 
 their furniture taken by boat to Lerici, a small 
 town near the villa. The Williamses also must 
 come with their furniture, although there was 
 only one house for both families. He had his 
 way. On April 26 Mary, Claire, and Trelawny 
 set out. The next day Shelley and the Williamses 
 started for Lerici. The Williamses could not 
 find another house, so Shelley said that room 
 must be made for them in the Casa Magni, which 
 Mary succeeded in taking. There were great 
 difficulties with the furniture at the custom- 
 house ; but these were overcome, and they were 
 all in the Casa Magni on May 1. 
 
 Claire said she would go back to Florence at 
 once. The rest of the party were discussing what 
 should be done when she came into the room, 
 saw that something was the matter, and asked 
 
 287 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 whether Allegra was dead. Thus the news broke 
 itself to her. After a day she became tranquil, 
 and, on May 21, went to Florence. 
 
 The smaller and eastern division of the Bay of 
 Spezzia is called the Bay of Lerici. The Casa 
 Magni is in the depth of this smaller bay. Mary 
 Shelley has described the situation and country 
 for us. The sea came close up to the door, and 
 there was a steep hill behind. The bay was almost 
 landlocked. To the east was the Castle of Lerici, 
 and to the west Porto Venere. The beach was 
 enclosed by precipitous rocks, over which there 
 was only a rough footpath to Lerici. There were 
 no sands or shingle on the shore. Some fine 
 ilex and walnut trees remained in Mary's memory. 
 The whole scene, she says, was of unimaginable 
 beauty. But for various reasons she almost 
 hated the spot, even before she underwent the 
 greatest sorrow of her life in it. The natives, 
 she says, were wilder than the place. The people 
 of San Terenzo were savages who would go 
 by howling on the beach, the women dancing 
 among the waves. They had great difficulty in 
 getting even the poorest food. "Had we been 
 wrecked on an island in the South Seas, we could 
 scarcely have felt ourselves farther from civilisa- 
 tion and comfort." Besides this she was not in a 
 fit state of health to endure such a life, and was 
 troubled, perhaps, by Shelley's affection for Jane 
 Williams. However that may be, there is no 
 doubt that she was unhappy during the last 
 
 288 
 
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 < 
 
 * 
 
 z -3 
 
 w ? 
 
 Z P 
 
 < X 
 
 < 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 months of her married life, and that there was 
 some estrangement between her and Shelley, 
 which she remembered with vain bitterness after- 
 wards. 
 
 Trelawny tells us that " the Villa Magni looked 
 more like a boat- or bathing-house than a place 
 to live in. It consisted of a terrace or ground 
 floor, unpaved, and used for storing boat-gear 
 and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over 
 it, divided into a hall or saloon and four small 
 rooms, which had once been white-washed. There 
 was one chimney for cooking. . . . The only 
 good thing about it was a verandah facing the 
 sea and almost over it." The servants lived in 
 an outhouse. The house was so near the sea 
 that in a storm spray swept the verandah and 
 dashed against the windows. Both Mary and 
 Trelawny remark that it was like being in a 
 ship. 
 
 Shelley was boyishly eager for the arrival of the 
 new boat. Its design did not please Trelawny. 
 Williams had brought with him, on leaving Eng- 
 land, the sections of a boat as a model to build 
 from, designed by a naval officer. Both he and 
 Shelley insisted that their craft should be built 
 exactly on the same lines, although Captain 
 Roberts and the builder at Genoa protested. 
 "Williams," says Trelawny, "was on ordinary 
 occasions as humble-minded as Shelley, but 
 having been two or three years in the navy, 
 and then in the cavalry, he thought there was 
 l 9 289 
 
SHELLEY : THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 no vanity in his believing that he was as good 
 a judge of a boat or a horse as any man." When 
 the boat was finished, " it took two tons of iron 
 ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and 
 then she was very crank in a breeze, though not 
 deficient in beam." Trelawny sent her from 
 Genoa, under charge of two steady seamen and a 
 sailor lad, aged eighteen, named Charles Vivian. 
 Shelley only kept the boy and sent back the two 
 seamen, in spite of their caution that they were 
 needed. Williams declared the boat to be perfect, 
 and Shelley said that she passed the small craft 
 as a comet might pass the dullest planet of the 
 heavens. But she was thoroughly undermanned ; 
 for, though the boy was quick and handy, Williams 
 was over-anxious and wanted practice, and Shelley 
 worse than useless. He was set to steer, and 
 did so with a book in his hand, saying that ' he 
 could read and steer at the same time, as one was 
 mental, the other mechanical." When Williams 
 cried " Luff," he would put the helm the wrong 
 way. Then he was put in charge of the main 
 sheet. He was told to let it go, whereupon it 
 jammed and the boat became unmanageable. 
 His hat was knocked overboard, and he would 
 have followed it if Trelawny had not held him. 
 Then Williams blew him up, whereupon he " put 
 his beloved Plato in his pocket and gave his mind 
 up to fun and frolic." Trelawny told W'illiams 
 that they ought to get a Genoese sailor, accus- 
 tomed to the coast, but Williams would not hear 
 
 290 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 of it. In spite of his occasional high spirits at 
 this time, Shelley was still often occupied with 
 thoughts of death. Soon after his arrival at 
 the Casa Magni he thought he saw Allegra rise 
 naked from the sea, and clap her hands and smile 
 at him. In a letter to Trelawny, who was then 
 at Leghorn, he asked him to get some prussic 
 acid. His wish to possess it, he said, was serious, 
 and sprang from the desire of avoiding needless 
 suffering. " I need not tell you," he added, " I 
 have no intention of suicide at present, but I 
 confess it will be a comfort to me to hold in my 
 possession that Golden Key to the chamber of 
 perpetual rest." One calm sultry evening he 
 asked Jane, with her two babies, to come with 
 him in a skiff as light as a coracle which he had 
 had built. All his friends were accustomed to 
 do what Shelley wished, and Jane did so this 
 time, squatting with her children in the bottom 
 of the boat . Shelley rowed round a jutting promon- 
 tory into deep water before Jane was aware that 
 they were out of their depth. After pulling out 
 a long way, Shelley rested on his oars and sank 
 into a deep reverie. Jane, spellbound by terror, 
 for any movement would upset the boat, kept her 
 eyes upon him. She made several remarks, but 
 got no answer. ' She saw death in his eyes." 
 Suddenly he raised his head, his brow cleared, 
 his face brightened, and he exclaimed joy- 
 fully : 
 
 " Now let us together solve the great mystery." 
 
 291 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Jane, made brave and clever by the presence of 
 her babies, said in her usual cheerful voice : 
 
 " No, thank you, not now ; I should like my 
 dinner first, and so would the children." 
 
 The spell was broken, and Shelley paddled 
 back. As soon as Jane saw the sandy bottom, 
 she snatched up her babies, and clambered out 
 so hurriedly that the punt was capsized. Natur- 
 ally she vowed she would never go in a boat with 
 Shelley again. " Who can predict what he will 
 do ? " she cried. " And he casts a spell over 
 everything. You can form some notion of what 
 other people will do, as they partake of our common 
 nature — not what he will do. He is seeking after 
 what we all avoid, death. I wish we were away. 
 I shall always be in terror." 
 
 But Jane played on her guitar to him in the 
 summer evenings, and he spent the summer days 
 upon the water. She was again with child, and 
 her spirits were low. Afterwards she wrote : 
 '' No words can tell you how I hated our house 
 and the country about it. . . . The beauty of 
 the woods made me weep and shudder. . . . My 
 only moments of peace were on board that un- 
 happy boat — when, lying down with my head on 
 his knee, I shut my eyes and felt the wind and 
 our swift motion alone." In May Shelley wrote 
 to Claire that Mary still continued to suffer terribly 
 from languor and hysterical affections. Even 
 Jane, he said, pined after her own house and 
 saucepans. He thought it a pity that anyone so 
 
 292 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 pretty and amiable should be so selfish. On June 
 16, Mary, after a week of illness, suffered a severe 
 miscarriage. There was no doctor to be got ; so 
 Shelley took matters into his own hands, and, by 
 making her sit in ice, checked the haemorrhage 
 and fainting fits. She soon began to recover, 
 but still suffered much from depression. Shelley 
 seems not to have understood that no woman is 
 herself in such a case ; for, in a letter to Mr. 
 Gisborne, written on June 18, he says : "I only 
 feel the want of those who can feel, and under- 
 stand me. Whether from proximity, or the 
 continuity of domestic intercourse, Mary does not. 
 The necessity of concealing from her thoughts 
 that would pain her necessitates this perhaps. It 
 is the curse of Tantalus that a person possessing 
 such excellent powers and so pure a mind as hers 
 should not excite the sympathy indispensable to 
 their application to domestic life." Here we see 
 Shelley at his worst. In this mood he is as far 
 from his best self as these cold and pompous 
 phrases are from his poems. But there is a vast 
 difference between the best and worst of all men 
 except those who have neither vices nor virtues. 
 Mary was his wife, and he expected her to be a 
 part of himself and to share all his moods. He 
 could not always make allowances for the weak- 
 ness of the flesh in her, or for the fact that she 
 was a woman with the separate instincts and 
 purposes of her sex. It was mere selfishness in 
 Jane, he thought, that she should pine after 
 
 293 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 her own house and saucepans, when he and 
 Williams wanted to live together in a beautiful 
 wilderness. And, when Mary had no energies left 
 to share his dreams and raptures, he could not 
 see that she had her own separate and important 
 business in life, to which she was powerfully 
 drawn by nature. 
 
 In little things he must often have been a trying 
 husband, and the more trying as his wife's womanly 
 instincts grew stronger with maternity. Trelawny 
 tells us how once a visitor from Genoa was expected 
 to whom Shelley was anxious to do honour. He 
 disappeared beforehand, as usual, but under 
 promise to be back in good time, so that Mary 
 might brush his hair and smarten him up. The 
 visitor arrived, anxious to see the poet ; but not 
 the poet himself. They sat down to dinner with- 
 out him. Trelawny, who sometimes tries to make 
 a good story too good, says that some one was 
 just remarking that genius purines, and that the 
 naked statues of the Greeks are modest, when the 
 talk was interrupted by a concussion of glass and 
 crockery, and one of the ladies cried, "Oh, my 
 gracious ! " She had good reason. For there 
 was the poet, "washed, indeed, for he was just 
 out of the sea " ; but not in an evening costume, 
 nor, indeed, in any costume at all. " Small 
 fragments of sea-weed clung to his hair, and he 
 was odorous of the salt brine — he scorned encum- 
 bering himself with combs or towels." But for 
 the lady's exclamation he might not have been 
 
 294 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 seen, for he was gliding noiselessly round the two 
 sides of the saloon to his room ; and the Italian 
 maid, with accustomed tact, walked by his side, 
 carefully screening him from the company. Being 
 discovered, he thought it necessary to explain, 
 so stopping beside the lady who had cried out, he 
 said : " How can I help it ? I must go to my 
 room to get my clothes ; there is no way to get 
 to it but through this. At this hour I have always 
 found this place vacant. I have not altered my 
 hour of bathing, but you have changed yours for 
 dining." It appeared that the boat had upset 
 all his clothes into the water. 
 
 He then glided from the puddle he had made 
 on the floor to the dormitory, and reappeared in 
 a few minutes, taking his place at table, and 
 unconscious that he had done anything to offend 
 anyone. 
 
 All this time he was occupied with the last 
 of his longer poems, " The Triumph of Life," which 
 he left unfinished. There are about 540 lines of 
 it, with here and there a word or part of a line 
 wanting ; enough to show that his powers of 
 execution had never been so great, though not 
 enough for any certain judgment of the conception 
 and design. " The Triumph of Life " is written in 
 terza rima, a very difficult metre in English, but 
 handled here with wonderful mastery. Its inter- 
 woven rhymes favoured Shelley's tendency to run 
 on from one image to another until his original 
 purpose was almost lost in images. " The Triumph 
 
 295 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 of Life " is as difficult to follow as those modern 
 symphonic poems in which the themes fade into 
 each other and are obscured by the richness of the 
 orchestration. But perhaps Shelley could have 
 lessened this obscurity on revision. In the exist- 
 ing state of the poem we can only form a vague 
 notion of its theme, and we cannot tell whether 
 that theme would have proved worthy of the 
 splendid execution. The poem opens with a 
 description of sunrise, which has Miltonic state- 
 liness and many Miltonic phrases, together with 
 all the lyrical swiftness and high, keen music of 
 Shelley. Then, as he lies on the steep of a green 
 Apennine, a vision comes to him of the Triumph 
 of Life. 
 
 He sees a stream of people — 
 
 " Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, 
 
 All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know 
 Whither he went, or whence he came, or why 
 He made one of the multitude, and so 
 
 Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky 
 One of the million leaves of summer's bier ; 
 Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, 
 
 Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear, 
 
 Some flying from the thing they feared, and some 
 
 Seeking the object of another's fear." 
 
 Then — 
 
 " A cold glare, intenser than the noon, 
 But icy cold, obscured with blinding light 
 The sun, as he the stars." 
 
 296 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 And in it there appeared a chariot driven by 
 a Janus-visaged shadow, with all his four faces 
 blinded by a bandage. About this chariot a 
 captive multitude was driven, including all the 
 great and wretched of the earth — 
 
 " All but the sacred few who could not tame 
 Their spirits to the conquerors — but as soon 
 As they had touched the world with living flame, 
 
 Fled back like eagles to their native noon, 
 Or those who put aside the diadem 
 Of earthly thrones or gems. . . . 
 
 Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem, 
 
 Were neither 'mid the mighty captives seen, 
 
 Nor 'mid the ribald crowd that followed them." 
 
 I quote this fragmentary and obscure passage, 
 because it suggests to us what the development 
 of the poem might have been. Most men, Shelley 
 implies, are the slaves of life and subdued to its 
 mechanical purposes, even when they seem to 
 be the masters of the world. Only a few, such 
 as Jesus or Socrates, deliver themselves from 
 that slavery and make a purpose and desires 
 for themselves and according to their own 
 ideals. 
 
 The rest of the vision is expounded by Rousseau, 
 himself one of the captives. He points out 
 Napoleon — 
 
 " Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak, 
 That every pigrr^ kicked it as it lay." 
 
 297 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 And other " spoilers spoiled," Voltaire, Frederick, 
 Paul, Catherine, and Leopold — 
 
 " For in the battle Life and they did wage, 
 She remained conqueror. I was overcome 
 By my own heart alone, which neither age, 
 
 Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb 
 Could temper to its object." 
 
 Then he compares himself with the great bards 
 of elder time — 
 
 " Who quelled 
 
 The passions which they, sung, as by their strain 
 May be well known : their living melody 
 Tempers its own contagion to the vein 
 
 Of those who are infected with it — I 
 Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain ! 
 And so my words have seeds of misery — 
 
 Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs." 
 
 Here Shelley proves that at the end of his days 
 he was learning that the masterpieces of art 
 express mastered passion. 
 
 After this the poem loses itself more and more in 
 a long description by Rousseau of a vision, and 
 of how he came to join in the Triumph of Life. 
 Here Shelley seems to concern himself, as often 
 before, rather with the description itself than with 
 the significance of what is described. This would 
 be well enough if he were telling us of real things, 
 interesting in themselves ; but since he is telling 
 
 298 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 us of visions, whose interest is only in their 
 relation to reality, we are bewildered when we 
 cannot grasp that relation. It is doubtful whether 
 Shelley would ever have enabled us to grasp it, 
 whether the poem would have fulfilled the promise 
 which Professor Dowden finds in it. It grows no 
 clearer towards the end, but breaks off with the 
 words — 
 
 " Then, what is life ? I cried " 
 
 There were warnings and portents in the last 
 weeks of Shelley's life. He saw the figure of him- 
 self which met him as he walked on the terrace, 
 and said to him, " How long do you mean to be 
 content ? " He was also seen by Jane Williams 
 in a place where he certainly was not. On the 
 night after he was drowned a friend dreamed that 
 he came to her looking pale and melancholy. 
 She told him to sit down and eat. "I shall never 
 eat more," he said. " I have not a soldo left in 
 the world." She answered, "This is no inn. 
 You need not pay." "Perhaps," he said, "it is 
 the worse for that." Then she awoke, and falling 
 asleep again, dreamed that Shelley was dead, and 
 woke crying bitterly. The next day she mentioned 
 her dream and said she hoped all was well with 
 the Shelleys. On June 19 news came that the 
 Hunts had reached Genoa. On July 1 that they 
 had set out for Leghorn. As there was a favouring 
 breeze, Shelley determined to sail to Leghorn to 
 welcome Hunt. Williams went with him, and 
 
 299 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Mary, still weakened by her miscarriage, was full 
 of apprehensions. " I called Shelley back two 
 or three times," she wrote afterwards, " 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." This was their last parting. The boat 
 reached Leghorn that evening, and they spent 
 the night sleeping in her. The next day Shelley 
 and Hunt met in an hotel at Leghorn. Shelley 
 rushed into Hunt's arms with a cry of delight. 
 They went on to Pisa together, and saw the sights 
 of the town on July 7. Every one noticed that 
 Shelley was in better health and spirits than ever 
 before ; yet he said to Mrs. Hunt, " If I die to- 
 morrow, I have lived to be older than my father. 
 I am ninety years of age." The day before 
 Jane Williams had written a letter to him 
 which ended with these words, "Why do you 
 talk of never enjoying moments like the past. 
 Are you going to join your friend Plato, or 
 do you expect I shall do so soon ? Buona 
 notte." 
 
 On the evening of July 7, Shelley said good- 
 bye to the Hunts and drove to Leghorn. There 
 had been a long spell of hot and dry weather, 
 and the priests were praying for rain. On the 
 8th, Captain Roberts feared a tempest, and advised 
 Shelley to wait till the next day. But Williams 
 was eager to return, and the wind was favourable. 
 They sailed between 1 and 2 p.m., Trelawny, who 
 had also gone to Leghorn, watching them through 
 
 300 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 a glass. A Genoese sailor said to him that they 
 ought to have started early in the morning, and 
 that they were standing too much in-shore. The 
 boat was soon enveloped in a sea fog, and Tre- 
 lawny saw no more of her. There was not a 
 breath of air, and the heaviness of the atmosphere 
 made Trelawny sleepy. He went down into the 
 cabin of Byron's boat, in which he had come to 
 Leghorn, and fell asleep. He was roused by a 
 noise overhead, and went on deck. It was then 
 half -past six. "The sea was of the colour, and 
 looked as solid and smooth, as a sheet of lead, 
 and covered with an oily scum. . . . There was 
 a commotion in the air, as of many threatening 
 sounds coming upon us from the sea. Fishing- 
 craft and coasting vessels, under bare poles, 
 rushed by us in shoals, running foul of the ships 
 in the harbour." Suddenly a thunder-squall 
 burst right overhead. It only lasted twenty 
 minutes, and then Trelawny looked anxiously 
 seaward in the hope of seeing Shelley's boat, but 
 could not do so. 
 
 The next day Trelawny's Genoese mate pointed 
 out to him, on board a fishing-boat, an English- 
 made oar that he thought he had seen on Shelley's 
 boat. But the crew swore it was not so. On 
 the morning of the third day Trelawny rode 
 to Pisa, where he found Byron. He hoped there 
 would be a letter from the Casa Magni announcing 
 their safe arrival, but there was none. He told 
 Byron of his fears, and Byron's lip quivered and 
 
 301 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 his voice faltered as he questioned Trelawny. 
 He sent a courier to Leghorn to despatch Byron's 
 boat, the Bolivar, to cruise along the bay, and rode 
 himself towards it. At Via Reggio he heard that 
 a punt, a water-keg, and some bottles had been 
 found on the beach. He recognized them as 
 belonging to Shelley's boat. Nothing more was 
 found for some days. 
 
 Meanwhile Mary and Jane were waiting for 
 their husbands at Casa Magni. The night of 
 July 8, on which the boat had set sail, was 
 tempestuous. On the ioth there was a fair wind 
 from Leghorn, and several feluccas arrived thence 
 in the evening. Williams had written that they 
 would be back by the nth at latest, and when 
 midnight came, and Mary and Jane did not see 
 the tall sails of the boat double the promontory, 
 they began to fear that their husbands had been 
 kept by illness or bad news. Jane was so uneasy 
 that she resolved to go the next day to Leghorn - 
 by boat, but it was too rough. At noon came a 
 letter from Hunt to Shelley : " Pray write to tell 
 us how you got home, for they say you had bad 
 weather after you sailed on Monday, and we are 
 anxious." Jane cried, "Then it is all over." 
 "No, my dear Jane," said Mary, "it is not all 
 over, but this suspense is dreadful." They 
 determined to go to Leghorn, and crossed to 
 Lerici. There their spirits were raised by hearing 
 that no accident was known of. From Lerici they 
 posted to Pisa. In Byron's palace the Guiccioli 
 
 302 
 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 came to meet Mary, smiling, and Mary could 
 scarcely ask, "Where is he — sapete alcuna cosa di 
 Shelley ? " They knew nothing except that he 
 had sailed on Monday. Though it was twelve at 
 night they went on at once to Leghorn, and got 
 there about two in the morning. They did not 
 know where Trelawny and Roberts were, but 
 found Roberts at six. He told them all that was 
 known. They still hoped that the boat might 
 have been blown out to sea. They sent a courier 
 from town to town along the coast to know if 
 anything had been seen or found, and at 9 a.m. 
 left Leghorn with Trelawny for home. Near Via 
 Reggio they heard of the boat and cask that had 
 been washed ashore. Still, they hoped they had 
 been thrown overboard because of the bad 
 weather. When they got home, San Terenzo 
 was illuminated for a festa. At such times the 
 natives would spend the whole night dancing on 
 the sands close to their door, " running into the 
 sea, then back again, and screaming all the time 
 one detestable air, the most detestable in the 
 world." It was July 13 when they got home, 
 five days since the boat had sailed. On the 18th 
 Trelawny left them to go to Leghorn. Towards 
 evening of the next day Mary 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." But about seven o'clock 
 he did return. The bodies had been found on the 
 shore. Shelley's body had been cast up on the 
 
 303 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 18th, near Via Reggio, Williams's on the day 
 before, three or four miles off. Trelawny recog- 
 nized Shelley by his tall, slight figure, his jacket, 
 and a volume of Sophocles in one pocket, a volume 
 of Keats' s Poems in the other. The Keats was 
 doubled back as if it had been hastily thrust away. 
 Williams was also identified beyond doubt. The 
 boy, Charles Vivian, was washed up three weeks 
 afterwards. On the 20th Trelawny took Mary 
 and Jane to Pisa to the Hunts. Mary wished 
 Shelley to be buried near his child in the cemetery 
 at Rome. But there was a difficulty because of 
 the quarantine laws. So it was determined to 
 burn the bodies. 1 Trelawny had an iron furnace 
 made at Leghorn, and laid in a stock of fuel and 
 " such things as were said to be used by Shelley's 
 much-loved Hellenes on their funeral pyres." 
 He sailed on August 13 or 14 from Leghorn in 
 Byron's boat to Via Reggio, and there made 
 arrangements for the burning. On the 15th 
 Byron and Hunt arrived. The body of Williams 
 was burnt that day, the body of Shelley on 
 the next. " The lovely and grand scenery that 
 surrounded us," says Trelawny, "so exactly 
 harmonised with Shelley's genius, that I could 
 imagine his spirit soaring over us. . . . As I 
 thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes 
 of loveliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we 
 
 1 Permission was obtained to remove them without 
 burning, and they had therefore some difficulty in getting 
 leave to burn them. 
 
 304 
 
THE LAST YEAR 
 
 were no better than a pack of wild dogs in tearing 
 out his battered and naked body from the pure 
 yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag 
 him back to the light of day." While the body 
 was burning, "more wine was poured over it 
 than he had consumed during his life. This, with 
 the oil and salt, made the yellow flames glisten 
 and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was 
 so intense that the atmosphere was tremulous 
 and heavy." Byron could not face the scene, 
 and swam off to his boat. The heart was not 
 burnt and Trelawny snatched it from the furnace, 
 burning his hand severely. He collected the ashes 
 of his friend, and took them on board the Bolivar 
 in a box. 
 
 The cemetery where Shelley's son William was 
 buried had been closed, so his ashes were buried 
 in a coffin in the new cemetery near by. Trelawny 
 did not go to Rome till the spring of the next 
 year. "When I came to examine the ground," 
 he says, " I found Shelley's grave amid a cluster 
 of others. The old Roman wall partly enclosed 
 the place, and there was a niche in the wall formed 
 by two buttresses — immediately under an ancient 
 pyramid, said to be the tomb of Caius Cestius. 
 There were no graves near it at that time. This 
 suited my taste, so I purchased the recess, and 
 sufficient space for planting a row of the Italian 
 upright cypresses." Two tombs were built in 
 the recess, and Trelawny removed Shelley's 
 ashes to one of them. It was covered with 
 20 305 
 
SHELLEY : THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 a solid stone on which this inscription was 
 placed : — 
 
 • PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 COR CORDIUM 
 NATUS IV AUG. MDCCXCII 
 OBIIT VIII JUL. MDCCCXXII 
 
 " Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange.' 
 
 306 
 
SHELLEY S GRAVE 
 From an engraving by IV. B. Scott 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 IT is easy to believe that there was a kind of 
 natural fitness in the manner and time of 
 Shelley's death. He seems to prepare us for it in 
 his own poetry, speaking of himself as if he were 
 a strange bird soaring through a few years of time, 
 and cut short in the midst of its flight and music 
 to sink headlong 
 
 " On the heavy-sounding plain 
 When the bolt has pierced its brain." 
 
 But of course he died by an evil chance just as 
 much as any city clerk killed in a railway accident. 
 Providence does not contrive matters like a nove- 
 list, so as to make a good story. There is perhaps 
 a lurking notion that, being a great poet and the 
 most extreme of all poets, Shelley was unfit to 
 live in this gross world, and that he was withdrawn 
 from it, like Elijah, as a compensation for the 
 injustice done to him when he was born into it. 
 Those who are inclined to be angry at the world's 
 indifference to great poets, should remember that 
 the poets owe their very means of expression to 
 the world. The language in which Shelley wrought 
 his miracles was not invented at a stroke by his 
 genius, but had grown slowly and painfully 
 
 307 
 
 20* 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 through the efforts of countless generations to 
 express their higher and lower wants. Without 
 it he would have been as inarticulate as a beast 
 of the field. 
 
 All great artists owe much to the world, and 
 the notion that they do not could only have arisen 
 in an age that did not understand the nature and 
 function of art. Shelley had the misfortune to 
 be born in such an age, and we must remember 
 this fact when we consider the excellences and 
 faults of his poetry. It is true that his time was 
 rich in poetry. England then had not lost its 
 vigour, as it proved both in war and peace ; but 
 the whole of Europe was bewildered by a great 
 change in the life of man, which had many causes 
 and had long been coming, but which only began 
 to reach the height of its violence at the end of 
 the eighteenth century. Its chief cause was a 
 great increase in knowledge of all kinds, and its 
 chief symptom an increase as vast in the material 
 power of mankind through mechanical inventions. 
 That power was and still is used very blindly ; and 
 Shelley lived in the midst of the anarch}/ of ideas 
 produced by its blind use, and by other results of 
 the increase of knowledge. Men then were so busy 
 with knowledge, and its application as power, 
 that they lost a great part of the wisdom which 
 had been almost an instinct to their ancestors — 
 the wisdom that knows which are the best things 
 in life too well to argue about them. One of 
 these is art, not so much the art of lonely men of 
 
 308 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 genius, but the art produced by the labour and 
 desire of a whole people. That kind of art, 
 except in music, had been dying all over Europe 
 for some time. In England it seemed to be as 
 nearly dead as it ever can be until men become 
 beasts again. But neither Shelley nor any great 
 poet or artist of his time, except Blake, had any 
 notion of what the world had lost and was losing. 
 Every one then, like most people now, thought 
 of works of art as necessarily produced by lonely 
 men of genius without any help from the world 
 and without any effort to please the world. Most 
 of the romantic poets were possessed by this 
 idea, and their poetry was the most individualist 
 poetry that ever was written by great poets. 
 The best of it is seldom concerned with the 
 relations between man and man. Even when 
 Wordsworth tried to deal with those relations, his 
 finest verses express the secret processes of a single 
 mind. Very early in life he gave up his dream of 
 a joy in widest commonalty spread, and pursued 
 rather the joy of private meditation and of sudden 
 chance impressions. Only in his sonnets did he 
 speak as the poet of a whole people, and then he 
 was mainly concerned with the great struggle in 
 which all the energies and imagination of England 
 were absorbed. 
 
 Shelley only began to write well when the 
 struggle was over, and when its evil effects were felt 
 everywhere. Unlike Wordsworth and Coleridge he 
 had no horror of the French Revolution, for he 
 
 309 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 had never, like them, experienced the disappoint- 
 ment of the Terror and that outbreak of war 
 between England and France which seemed to 
 make nonsense of the loftier hopes of man. They 
 suffered a nervous shock through this disappoint- 
 ment from which Coleridge never recovered, and 
 which made Wordsworth resolve that he would 
 never again give his heart away to hope. Shelley 
 was a baby in arms when the older poets suffered 
 their great disappointment. His nurse may have 
 tried to frighten him with the name of Bonaparte ; 
 but, as he grew up, he saw only the evils of reaction 
 against revolution. The Revolution itself was 
 for him a false dawn that gave promise of a true 
 one ; but he lived among a people to whom it 
 seemed a kind of Black Death, from which they 
 were separated only by the Channel, and with 
 which a few miscreants wished to infect them. 
 Thus, when he dreamed his dreams of nations 
 celebrating the millennium with festivals that 
 were only too like those of the first glorious 
 days of the Revolution, he knew that he must 
 seem a devil-worshipper to the great mass of his 
 own countrymen. Their imaginations were fired, 
 if at all, by the glories of the Napoleonic War, 
 which seemed to him to have reduced the victors 
 to economic slavery. Thus he could take no 
 patriotic pride in England as she was, nor could 
 he conceive of her as developing by any natural 
 or constitutional process into the ideal state of his 
 dreams. He was no revolutionary when he came 
 
 310 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 to consider particular measures, since he was by 
 nature averse from bloodshed and violence ; but 
 in those dreams to which he gave all his heart and 
 his genius, there is implied a revolution, not only 
 in the nature of man, but in the whole order of the 
 universe. Thus there was a gulf between his 
 dreams and reality that he could only traverse by 
 an arbitrary leap of his imagination. His practical 
 politics were only the result of his sense of duty, 
 and he cannot himself have ever supposed that 
 the very moderate reforms for which he pleaded 
 would even set men upon the road to that millen- 
 nium which alone would satisfy him. Nothing 
 in things as they were, or as they ever had been in 
 England, had any power to fire his imagination. 
 He could not, like William Morris, make an 
 Earthly Paradise out of the best of what he knew 
 of the Middle Ages ; for he knew next to nothing 
 of them, and what he did know he despised. Nor, 
 like Morris, could he suppose that men would be 
 happy if they could all live his life and do what he 
 did ; for there was something in all actual condi- 
 tions of life, indeed in all possible conditions of it, 
 that would balk him of the delight which he most 
 desired. That was a delight of passion without 
 reaction, of appetite freed from all the laws of 
 appetite, and at the same time of a soul supreme 
 over the body, a delight, in fact, of heaven not 
 of earth. 
 
 Thus he was a lonelier poet even than Words- 
 worth when he sang of his Paradise and of his 
 
 3" 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 grief that the world should be so unlike it ; for 
 he could not even persuade men that it was desir- 
 able, or that it would be anything but an inferno 
 of uncontrolled demons. And so his genius was 
 more and more driven into solitude, and forced 
 to sing only to itself of things which only itself 
 had conceived. Perhaps I have, in this book, 
 said too much of the evils of this solitude. There 
 is certainly something to be said on the other 
 side. For these solitary poets are, as Ben Jonson 
 said of Donne, the finest in the world for some 
 things. Their very loneliness sets them thinking 
 and feeling further than the poets who ease their 
 minds among the common thoughts and feelings 
 of mankind, so that they produce " things extreme 
 and scattering bright," and have an audacity 
 unchecked by any fear lest it shall frighten away 
 their hearers. At his best Shelley sings like an 
 angel for an audience of angels ; for, however 
 lonely, he is never an egotist, and does not talk 
 to himself about himself. He would hold com- 
 munion with men if he could, and always desired 
 to love them and be loved by them. And, from 
 his lack of this communion, he became the most 
 intimate friend of nature that ever was ; often 
 in his poetry he seems to sing to an audience of 
 mountains and winds and clouds as if they would 
 understand him better than the human beings 
 who received his music with rage or laughter. 
 His landscape poetry is not hampered by the 
 effort to make pictures out of words ; for his 
 
 312 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 imagination, being thoroughly poetic, is con- 
 cerned with the action of natural forces, not 
 merely with their appearances. For him clouds 
 and the sun and stars are as much alive as human 
 beings ; and often his human beings are only 
 little figures under a great vault of sky, whose 
 voices are scarcely heard amid the music of the 
 earth and air. In " Prometheus " the persons of 
 the myth are so like natural forces and the natural 
 forces are so articulate, that we can scarcely 
 distinguish between them. In " Adonais ' the 
 dead body of the poet and the figures of his 
 mourners drift away like clouds upon the wind 
 of inspiration that fills the close of the poem. 
 And the reader, too, must surrender his mind to 
 that wind, if he is to understand or enjoy Shelley's 
 poetry. He must not ask what is the use of it all, 
 or why it gives him no valuable information about 
 the character of men. He must have faith in it 
 as a prophecy of a nobler state of being, and as 
 the expression of emotions and ideas to which 
 men in that nobler state may some day attain. 
 But his faith must be reasonable and not given 
 to that mass of verse which Shelley wrote from the 
 mere momentum and habit of composition. The 
 indiscriminating admirers of a man of genius are 
 his worst enemies, for their open-mouthed wonder 
 soon turns to indifference and begets it. If we 
 are to keep our love of poetry into middle age we 
 must fortify it with a scientific interest ; we must 
 know that the work even of the greatest poets is 
 
 313 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 sometimes good and sometimes bad, and we must 
 try to discover when and why it is good or 
 bad. The blind admirers talk, but they do 
 not read ; they live on the memory of their 
 youthful raptures. Shelley, with his " clamorous 
 sublimities," is so much the poet of youth that he 
 is always in danger of being neglected by middle 
 age. In this book I have written about him as 
 a middle-aged man for other middle-aged men, 
 and, since I have not ceased to read him myself, 
 I hope that I may at least provoke others to 
 renew the delight of their youth by reading him 
 again. 
 
 314 
 
INDEX 
 
 Ability, Commercial, 20 
 
 Abuse of Shelley in " Quarterly 
 
 Review," 146 
 Activity among the poor at Tre- 
 
 madoc, 76 
 Acquaintance with Keats, 144 
 Acquaintance with Southey, 55 
 Adams, Mrs., 61 
 
 Address to Irish Catholics, 60, 63, 64 
 Adonais, 145, 151, 261, 262, 263, 266 
 Aeschylus, 195, 196 
 Affectionate nature, 6 
 Ahasuerus, 85, 270 
 Alastor, 177, 229 
 Alastor, Preface to, 117 
 Alastor, Reaction expressed in, 120 
 Alfred, Time of, 236 
 Allegra, 283 
 Allegra, Death of, 287 
 " An Accouchement," 182 
 Anapaestic verses, 226 n. 
 Anarchs of the North, 238 
 Anne Radcliffe, 13 
 " Anniversaries " of Donne, 245 
 Antagonism to religion, 14 
 Antiope, 235 
 
 Anxiety about Chancery suit, 149 
 A Philosophical View of Reform 
 
 (prose), 193 
 Apollo, 204 
 
 Apparent religious conversions, 10 
 Archy, the Fool, 285 
 Arethusa, 239 
 Arnold, Matthew, 256 
 Art, Taste in, 21 
 Ashes of Shelley, 305 
 Asia, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 207 
 Association, Philanthropic, 68 
 Athanase, Prince, 10 
 Atheist, The, 8 
 Attack on Shelley, 61 
 
 Bacchus, Michelangelo's, 183 
 
 Bagehot on Shelley, 10 
 
 Balfe, 278 
 
 Ballad of Alonzo the Brave and 
 
 the Fair Imogene, 13 
 Banquet of Plato, 1J3 
 Bargello at Florena, The, 182 
 
 Barnstaple, Mayor of, 72 
 
 Bath, At, 97 
 
 Beatrice, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224 
 
 Beatrice Cenci, 186 
 
 Beddoes, 12 
 
 Beethoven's " Pastoral Symphony," 
 
 134 
 Beginning to write, 12 
 Ben Jonson, 275, 312 
 " Belle Dame sans Merci " by 
 
 Keats, 120 
 Berkeley, 55 
 Bernard Shaw, 195 
 Bertram Dobell, Mr., 44 n. 
 Biondi, 244 
 
 Birth of Charles Bysshe, 109 
 Birth of Ianthe, 83 
 Birth of Shelley, 5 
 Bishopsgate, At, 115 
 Blake, 309 
 " Blest Pair of Syrens " by Milton, 
 
 272 
 Boinville, Mrs., 80, 83, 91, 104, 105 
 Boyhood, Recollections of in 
 
 poems, 10 
 Bracknell, At, 83 
 Brain fever delusion, Hogg on, 10 
 Brain fever in boyhood, 9 
 Breaking of relationship with 
 
 Harriet, 91 
 Breaking of relationship with 
 
 Harriet Grove, 24 
 Bridal Song, 275 
 Browne, 27 
 
 Burning of bodies, 304 
 Byron, 128, 171, 173, 195, 263, 267, 
 
 268, 269, 279, 280, 305 
 Byron and Shelley, 129 
 Byron as Count Maddalo, 177 
 Byron, Seduction of Claire by, 128 
 Byron's child Allegra, 173 
 Byron's " Prisoner of Chillon," 131 
 Bysshe Shelley, Death of Sir, 113 
 Bysshe Shelley, poet's grandfather, 
 
 Captain Pilford, 42, 43, 49, 51, 54 
 Captain Roberts, 282, 289, 300 
 Caroline heroic poems, 178 
 
 315 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Castlereagh, 131 
 
 Catherine and Leopold, 298 
 
 Catholic emancipation, 66 
 
 Cenci, Beatrice, 186 
 
 Chancellor, Lord, 142 
 
 Chancery suit, Anxiety about, 149 
 
 Charles Bysshe Shelley, Birth of, 
 
 109 
 Charles Clairmont, 115 
 Charles Grove, 48 
 Charles Shelley, 139 
 Charles Vivian, 290 
 Charteris, Mr., 228 
 Chemical experiments, 18 
 Chemistry, Dangerous experiments 
 
 in, 9 
 Chesnut Cottage, 53 
 Chesterfield, 45 
 " Childe Harold," 238 
 Childhood, 5 
 
 Childhood, Escapades of, 6 
 Childhood, Inventive mind in, 6 
 Childhood, Sentiment in, 7 
 Childhood, Unnatural, 8 
 Christabel, 170 
 Churches of Middle Ages, Contempt 
 
 for, 22 
 Claire, Daughter born to, 144 
 Claire's Diary, 240 
 Claire, Seduction of by Byron, 128/ 
 Clairmont, Charles, 115 
 Clairmont, Jane, 104, no 
 Clairmont, Jane, Diary of, 113 
 Classical lyric, Origins of, 272 
 Claudio, 224 
 Coleridge, 56, 133, 192, 227, 241, 
 
 255, 309. 3io 
 
 Coleridge, John Taylor, 228 
 
 Coleridge, Mrs., 56 
 
 Collins, 272 
 
 Commencement of Queen Mab, 84 
 
 Commercial ability, 20 
 
 Conflict of mind with external 
 things, 22 
 
 Constitution granted to Naples, 235 
 
 Contempt for Churches of Middle 
 Ages, 22 
 
 Contempt for father, 4 
 
 Copies of address to Irish, Distri- 
 bution of, 65 
 
 Cordelia, 216 
 
 Correggio, 218, 235, 259 
 
 Correggio's " Young Apostle," 218 
 
 Cotopaxi, 64 ». 
 
 Count Cenci, 219, 220, 221 
 
 Countess Guiccioli, 267 
 
 Count Maddalo, Byron as, 177 
 
 Count Viviani, 241 
 
 Cousin of Shelley, 48 
 
 Cowley, Pindarics of, 271 
 
 Crashaw, 141, 180, 236, 245, 249, 
 272 
 
 Cressida, 222 
 Cuckfield, 43, 51 
 Cumberland Pacquet, 61 «. 
 Curran, 69 
 
 Dacier's translation of the Dia- 
 logues, 21 
 
 DcBtnon of the World, 86 n. 
 
 Danae, 235 
 
 Dangerous experiments in chemis- 
 try, 9 
 
 Dan Healey arrested, 71 
 
 Daughter born to Claire, 144 
 
 Daughter born to Mary, 114, 152 
 
 Death of Allegra, 287 
 
 Death of baby Claire, 174 
 
 Death of Charles Vivian, 304 
 
 Death of Harriet, 137 
 
 Death of Keats, 260 
 
 Death of Shelley, 303 
 
 Death of Shelley's grandfather, 2 
 
 Death of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 113 
 
 Death of Williams, 304 
 
 Death of William Shelley, 184 
 
 Declaration of Rights, 71 
 
 Dedication to Revolt of Islam, 10 
 
 Defence of Poetry (prose), 251 
 
 Definition of soul, 26 
 
 Delight in " sporting his oak," 19 
 
 Demogorgon, 85, 88, 201, 202, 203, 
 207 
 
 Description of Mary Godwin, 101 
 
 Description of Pompeii, 238 
 
 Details of Shelley's life by Tre- 
 lawny, 280 
 
 Dispute about literature, Shelley 
 and Hogg, 16 
 
 Distaste for Miss Hitchener, 76 
 
 Distribution of copies of address to 
 Irish, 65 
 
 Dobell, Mr. Bertram, 44 n. 
 
 Doctor Greenlaw, 7 
 
 Doctor Lind, 9, 159, 167 
 
 " Don Giovanni," by Mozart, 190 
 
 " Don Juan," 195 
 
 Donne, 245 n., 312 
 
 Donne, " Anniversaries " of, 245 
 
 Dons action at Oxford in expelling 
 Shelley and Hogg, 29 
 
 Dons at Oxford, 19 
 
 Dowden, Professor, 12, 61 «., 95, 
 99, 135, 151, 230 n., 231, 299 
 
 Dryden, 272 
 
 Dublin, At, 63, 79 
 
 Duet of Earth and Moon, 206 
 
 Early authorship, Godwin on, 62 
 Earth, Spirit of the, 211 
 Earth, The, 204, 205, 207 
 Ecstasy of early married life, 49 
 Edinburgh, Marriage at, 49 
 Edinburgh Review, 152 
 
 3l6 
 
INDEX 
 
 Edward John Trelawny, 279 
 
 Edward Williams, 260, 275, 276 n. 
 
 Effect of Plato, 12 
 
 Eldon, Lord, 142, 169 
 
 Elegy on death of Keats, 261 
 
 Elephantiasis illusion, 81 
 
 Elijah, 307 
 
 Elise, 267, 268 
 
 Elizabethan poets, 178 
 
 Elizabethan rhetoric, 223 
 
 Elizabethan tragedy, 222 
 
 Elizabeth Hitchener, 43, 44, 45, 
 46, 47, 51. 63. 74 
 
 Elizabeth Shelley, 24, 27, 42, 43 
 
 Eliza's presence, Influence of, 96 
 
 Eliza Westbrook, 40, 41, 46, 47, 51, 
 52, 60, 62, 139, 142 
 
 Eliza Westbrook, Personal appear- 
 ance of, 52 
 
 Emancipation, Catholic, 66 
 
 Emilia Viviani, 277 
 
 Emily Westbrook, 41 
 
 " Endymion," Keats', 145, 178, 261 
 
 Epipsychidion, 244, 245 
 
 " Epithalamium," of Spenser, 272 
 
 Escapades of childhood, 6 
 
 Essays, Hume's, 20 
 
 Eton, 8 
 
 Examiner, 268 
 
 Examiner review of Alastor, 136 
 
 " Excursion " by Wordsworth, 123, 
 
 195 
 " Expediency," Shelley and Southey 
 
 on, 56 
 Expelled from Oxford, 29 
 Expulsion of Hogg from Oxford, 31 
 Extracts from letters (see Letters) 
 
 Faerie Queene, 164 
 
 Fanny Imlay, Suicide of, 135 
 
 Father of Shelley, 1 
 
 Father of Shelley, Life of, 3 
 
 Fingal, Lord, 69 
 
 First Enthusiasm for science, 8 
 
 Flight with Mary Godwin, 103 
 
 Foggi, Paolo, 179 
 
 Fracas at Pisa, 226 
 
 Fragmentary drafts of preface to 
 
 Epipsychidion, 247 
 France, In, 104 
 Francesco Pacchiani, 241 
 " Frankenstein," Mary's, 134 
 Frederick, 298 
 French Revolution, 57, 156, 212, 
 
 309 
 Friendships, 7, 9 
 Friendship with Newtons, 80 
 Funeral Pyres, 304 
 Furies, 200, 211 
 
 Geneva, At, 128 
 George IV, 56 
 
 Gisborne, John, 172 
 Gisborne, Mrs., 172, 186, 227 
 Gisbornes, 226 
 
 Godwin, 97, 98, 109, 136, 142, 227 
 Godwin as philosopher, 57 
 Godwin's fruitless journey, 72 
 Godwin, Innuendo against, 126 
 Godwin, Mary, 91, 97 
 Godwin, Meeting with, 73 
 Godwin, Mrs., 135 « 
 Godwin on early authorship, 62 
 Godwin's " Political Justice," 56 
 Godwin, William, 57 
 Grandfather of Shelley, 1 
 Grandfather's liking for poet, 2 
 Grandfather's marriages, 1 
 Gray, 237, 271, 272 
 Greenlaw, Doctor, 7 
 Grove, Charles, 48 
 Grove, Harriet, 13 
 Grove, Harriet, Breaking of rela- 
 tionship with, 24 
 Grove's, Harriet, marriage, 26 
 Guiccioli, Countess, 226, 267 
 Guido Reni, 182, 186 
 
 Habit of sleeping on rug, 18 
 
 Harriet, 60, 141, 230 
 
 Harriet and suicide, 51 
 
 Harriet Grove, 13 
 
 Harriet Grove, Breaking of rela- 
 tionship with, 24 
 
 Harriet Grove, In love with, 13 
 
 Harriet Grove's marriage, 26 
 
 Harriet, Re-marriage with, 83 
 
 Harriet, Second child born to, 109 
 
 Harriet's ardour for Ireland, 62 
 
 Harriet's death, 137 
 
 Harriet's reading, 50 
 
 Harriet's resistance of Hogg, 52 
 
 Harriet's threat of legal proceed- 
 ings, no 
 
 Harriet Westbrook, 39, 41, 46, 47, 
 48 
 
 Harriet Westbrook and suicide, 47 
 
 Haydon the painter, 148 
 
 Hazlitt, 145, 146 
 
 Hazlitt's description of Shelley, 146 
 
 Hazlitt's " Paradox and Common- 
 sense," 146 
 
 Hazlitt's " Table Talk," 146 
 
 Headmaster of Sion House, 7 
 
 Healey goes to prison, 71 
 
 Hellen Shelley, 5 
 
 Hellas, 269, 270, 272 
 
 Henry the lover of Ianthe, 86 n. 
 
 Hercules, 204 
 
 Hermaphroditus, 233 
 
 Hermit in Revolt of Islam, 10 
 
 Herodotus, 254 
 
 Hitchener, Elizabeth, 43, 44. 45, 46, 
 47, 5i, 63, 74. 79, 99 
 
 317 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Hitchener, Miss, as the Brown 
 
 Demon, 75 
 Hitchener, Miss, as the Goddess of 
 
 Reason, 75 
 Hitchener, Miss, Hogg on, 74 
 Hitchener, Miss, lives with the 
 
 Shelleys, 71 
 Hitchener, Miss (Portia), 63 
 Hogg, 46, 172, 279, 280 
 Hogg as a Special Pleader, 73 
 Hogg joins Shelley and Harriet at 
 
 Edinburgh, 49 
 Hogg on brain fever delusion, 10 
 Hogg on Miss Hitchener, 74 
 Hogg's attempted seduction of 
 
 Harriet, 51 
 Hogg's description of Harriet, 49 
 Hogg's fruitless journey to Dublin, 
 
 79 
 Hogg's Life of Shelley, 15 
 Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 15, 98 
 Home Secretary, 72 
 Homer, 195, 252 
 Hookham, 98, 139 
 Hookham, the publisher, 104, 137 
 Hoppner, Mr., 268 
 Hoppner, Mrs., 173, 267, 268 
 Hoppners, 267 
 Hours, The, 202 
 Hours, The Car of the, 203 
 House of Commons, Visit to, 27 
 Hymn of Apollo, 239 
 Hymn of Pan, 239, 240 
 Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 11, 12, 
 
 133 
 Hyperion," by Keats, 145, 261 
 Hunt, Leigh, 28, 136, 138, 140, 150, 
 
 245 n., 263, 268, 269, 283, 299, 
 
 300 
 Hunt, Leigh, Offer of help to, 77 
 Hunt, Leigh, Sentence on, 77 
 Hunt, Mrs., 268, 300 
 Hunt's libel on Prince Regent, 77 
 Hunt, Thornton, 149 
 Hume, Doctor, 143 
 Hume, Doctrines of, 28 
 Hume's Essays, 20 
 
 Iago, 258 
 Iambics, 226 n. 
 Ianthe, 139 
 Ianthe, Birth of, 83 
 Ianthe in Queen Mab, 86 
 Ianthe, Lover of, 86 n. 
 Ideas of evil and good in Prome- 
 theus, 85 
 77 Penseroso, 286 
 Imitation of Moore, 190 
 Imlay, Suicide of Fanny, 135 
 Indian Serenade, 190 
 Influence of Eliza's presence, 96 
 Injunction against Shelley, 142 
 
 In love with Harriet Grove, 13 
 
 Innuendo against Godwin, 126 
 
 Inscription on Shelley's grave, 306 
 
 Inventive mind in childhood, 6 
 
 Io, 235 
 
 lone, 201, 204, 205, 207 
 
 Ireland, 62 
 
 Ireland, Regeneration of, 66 
 
 Irish Catholics, Address to, 6o, 63, 
 
 64 
 Irregular rhymeless verse, 89 
 Isaiah, 273 
 Iseult, Tristram and, 235 
 
 Jacobean poets, 178 
 
 Jane Clairmont, 104, no 
 
 Jane Clairmont's Diary, 113 
 
 Jane Williams, 260, 275, 277, 285, 
 
 288, 291, 292, 300 
 Jefferson Hogg, 98 
 Jeremiah Stukeley, 29 
 Jesus Christ, Moral sayings of, 66 
 John Hamilton Reynolds, 136 
 John Westbrook, 39, 142 
 Jonson, Ben, 275, 312 
 Jove, 202 
 
 Julian and Maddalo, 176, 177 
 Julian, Shelley as, 177 
 Jupiter, 88, 196, 198, 199, 200, 203, 
 
 204, 211, 213, 217, 219, 221 
 Jupiter superseded by Demogorgon, 
 
 85 
 
 Keats, 119, 120, 136, 144, 176, 262 
 Keats, Death of, 260 
 Keats, Elegy on death of, 261 
 Keats' " Endymion," 145, 261 
 Keats' " Hyperion," 145, 261 
 Keats' " Lamia," 145 
 Keats' " Odes," 145 
 Keswick, At, 52 
 
 Knowledge of Shelley due to Hogg 
 and Trelawny, 16 
 
 " L' Allegro," 286 
 
 " Lamia," by Keats, 145 
 
 Laon and Cythna changed to The 
 
 Revolt of Islam, 167 
 Laon and Cythna in The Revolt of 
 
 Islam, 158 
 Latin Studies, 7 
 Lear, 216 
 
 Legacy under Sir Bysshe's will, 114 
 Legal proceedings threatened by 
 
 Harriet, no 
 Legends of Sir Bysshe, 2 
 Leghorn, At, 226 
 Leigh Hunt, 28, 136, 138, 140, 150, 
 
 245 n., 263, 268, 269, 283, 299, 
 
 300 
 Leigh Hunt, Sentence on, 77 
 Leopold, Catherine and, 298 
 
 318 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 Letters, Extracts from and refer- 
 ences to — 
 Godwin to Shelley, 58, 59, 67, 69 
 Harriet to — , 40 
 Harriet to Hookham, 100 
 Harriet to Miss Hitchener, 61, 62, 
 
 65 
 Hitchener, Miss, to Harriet, 63 
 Hookham to Shelley, 137 
 Hunt, Mrs., to Mary, 268 
 Keats to Shelley, 145 
 Leigh Hunt to Shelley, 302 
 Mary to — , 114, 283 
 Mary to Mrs. Hoppner, 267 
 Mary to Shelley, 152 
 Mayor of Barnstaple to Home 
 
 Secretary, yz 
 Rose, Miss, to Lady Shelley, 151 
 Shelley to — , 41, 42, 56, 185 
 Shelley to Byron, 226 
 Shelley to Claire, 142, 292 
 Shelley to Eliza Westbrook, 139 
 Shelley to Godwin, 58, 59, 65, 
 
 68,69 
 Shelley to Harriet, 106 
 Shelley's letter to his father, 36, 
 
 54 
 Shelley's letter to Hogg, 23, 43, 
 
 46, 48, 75, 77 
 Shelley to Mary, in, 138, 153, 
 
 174 
 Shelley to Medwin, 274 
 Shelley to Miss Hitchener, 45, 48, 
 
 51, 53, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 69, 70 
 Shelley to Mr. Gisborne, 293 
 Shelley to Oilier, 228 
 Shelley to Peacock, 131, 145, 190, 
 
 220 
 Shelley to Southey, 229, 230 - 
 Shelley to Trelawny, 291 
 Southey to Shelley, 229, 231 
 Teresa Emilia Viviani to — , 242 
 Teresa Emilia Viviani to Mary, 
 
 243 
 Timothy Shelley to Hogg, 35 
 Timothy Shelley to Shelley, 54 
 
 Letter to Maria Gisborne, 227 
 
 Lewis, Monk, 13 
 
 Life of Life, 215 
 
 Life of Shelley, Hogg's, 15 
 
 Life of Shelley's father, 3 
 
 Lind, Doctor, 9, 159, 167 
 
 Lines on Lechlade Churchyard, 116 
 
 Lines written among the Euganean 
 Hills, 154, 175 
 
 Living with Mary Godwin, 100 
 
 Livy, 254 
 
 Locke's Essay on the Human 
 Understanding, 20 
 
 Lodgings in London, 34 
 
 Longdill, 138, 139 
 
 Lord Chancellor, 142, 143 
 
 Lord Eldon, 142, 169 
 
 Lord Fingal, 69 
 
 Lord Sidmouth, 72 
 
 Loss of clothes when bathing, 294 
 
 Lucrezia Tornabuoni, 183 
 
 Lycidas, 261 
 
 Lynmouth, At, 71, 84 
 
 Macaulay, 213 
 
 Madame Meek, 44, 48 
 
 Madock, Mr., 72 
 
 Madocks, 153 
 
 Mad Shelley, 8 
 
 Margaret Shelley, 6 
 
 Marlow, At, 150 
 
 Marriage, First, 49 
 
 Marriage to Mary, 141 
 
 Mary, Daughter born to, 114, 152 
 
 Mary Godwin, 91, 97 
 
 Mary Godwin, Description of, 101 
 
 Mary, Marriage to, 141 
 
 Mary, Miscarriage of, 293 
 
 Mary's " Frankenstein," 134 
 
 Mary Shelley, 9, 190 
 
 Mary's Journal, 109, no, in, 114 
 
 Mary, Son born to, 116, 185 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft, 73 
 
 Master in Chancery in matter of 
 
 Shelley's children, 143 
 Masque of Anarchy, 191 
 Matthew Arnold, 256 
 Mayor of Barnstaple, 72 
 Mazenghi, 180, 181 
 " Measure for Measure," 224 
 Meek, Madame, 44, 48 
 Medwin, 1, 7, 152, 226, 241, 260, 
 
 274, 279 
 Meeting of Godwin and Shelley, 73 
 Meeting of Shelley and Hogg, 16 
 Meeting with Hazlitt, 145 
 Mercury, 200 
 Mercutio, 87 
 
 Metaphysical qualities, 133 
 Mexican Republic, 64 
 Michelangelo, 182 
 Michelangelo's Bacchus, 183 
 Milton, 122, 123, 156, 199, 213, 261, 
 
 272 
 Miltonic passage in Alastor, 122 
 Miltonic phrases in The Triumph of 
 
 Life, 296 
 Miscarriage of Mary, 293 
 Monk Lewis, 13 
 Mont Blanc, 132 
 Moon makes myth about herself, 
 
 217 
 Moore, 263 
 
 Moore, Imitation of, 190 
 Moral sayings of Jesus Christ, 66 
 Morris, William, 133, 216, 225, 311 
 Mother of Shelley, 4 
 Motto of Queen Mab, 85 
 
 319 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Mozart, 217, 218 
 
 Mozart's " Don Giovanni," 190 
 
 Myth-making power of Shelley, 214 
 
 Name to bond, 28 
 
 Naples, Constitution granted to, 235 
 
 Napoleon, 297 
 
 Natural fitness of Shelley's death, 
 
 307 
 Nature, Affectionate, 6 
 Nerves, Attack of, 79 
 Nerve troubles, 12 
 Newtons, Friendship with, 80 
 Norfolk, Duke of, 27 
 Notes to Queen Mab, 89 
 
 Ocean, 204, 213 
 
 Oceanides, 201, 216 
 
 Ocean, The, 207 
 
 Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, Pope's, 
 
 " Odes," by Keats, 145 
 
 Ode to Liberty, 235, 237, 239, 273 
 
 Ode to Naples, 235, 238 
 
 Ode to the West Wind, 187 
 
 Oedipus, 220 
 
 Oedipus Tyrannus, 220 
 
 Offer of help to Leigh Hunt, 77 
 
 Oilier the publisher, 167, 186, 228 
 
 Opinion of Dons, 19 
 
 Opposition to Universal Suffrage, 
 
 193 
 Origins of classical lyric, 272 
 Origins of English lyrics, 271 
 Out of conceit with Irish, 66 
 Outrage at Tremadoc, 78 
 Oxford, 15 
 
 Oxford, Expulsion from, 29 
 Oxford, Quality of teaching at, 18 
 
 Pacchiani, Francesco, 241 
 
 Pacquet, 61 n. 
 
 Paine, Tom, 64 
 
 " Paley's Natural Theology," 37 
 
 Palsied beldame, Superstition, 66 
 
 Panthea, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 
 
 207 
 Pantheism of Shelley, 265 
 Pantheistic stage of philosophy, 55 
 Paolo Foggi seduces the nurse Elise, 
 
 179 
 Paradise Lost, 197, 207 
 Paradise, Shelley's, 277 
 " Paradox and Commonsense," by 
 
 Hazlitt, 146 
 Parting with Miss Hitchener, 74 
 Passage on Time, 63 
 Passion for perfection, 12 
 Passions of his life, 12 
 Patmore, P. G., 151 
 Paul, 298 
 
 Paying for past follies, 113 
 
 Peacock, 98, 99, 102, 113, 115, 127, 
 131. 137, 140, 151, 226, 251, 252 
 
 Peacock on Harriet nursing her 
 child, 95 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Love, 82 
 
 " Persae " of /Eschylus, 269 
 
 Personal appearance of Eliza West- 
 brook, 52 
 
 Personal appearance of Shelley at 
 Oxford, 16 
 
 Peter Bell the Third, 191 
 
 Phaedo, 21 
 
 Philanthropic Association, 68 
 
 Philosopher, Godwin as, 57 
 
 Philosophical abstractions, 25 
 
 Pilfold, Captain, 42, 43, 49, 51, 54 
 
 Pilfold, Mrs., 70 
 
 Pindar, 237 
 
 Pindarics of Cowley, 271 
 
 Pisa, At, 225 
 
 Plan for proselytizing young men 
 at Dublin College, 66 
 
 Plato, 254, 300 
 
 Plato, Effect of, 12 
 
 Platonist, Becomes a, 12 
 
 Plutarch, 254 
 
 Poe, 12 
 
 Poems, Excerpts from — 
 A cold glare, intenser than the 
 
 noon, 296 
 All but the sacred few, 297 
 All overgrown with trailing, 216 
 A loftier Argo, 273 
 A mighty darkness, 201 
 And all is in its ancient state, 175 
 And all seemed like, 159 
 And as to friend or mistress, 247 
 And ever as she went, 233 
 And in its liquid texture, 146 
 And the marsh-meteors, 181 
 And timid lovers, 234 
 And with her it made, 205 
 Art and eloquence, 121 
 A sensitive plant in a garden, 225 
 As much skill as need to pray, 177 
 A vision on his sleep, 118 
 Away ! the moor is dark, 93 
 A wind arose among the pines, 
 
 201 
 Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 
 
 250 
 Broad water-lilies lay, 226 
 But from the first, 192 
 But it was found too feeble, 233 
 But let me think not, 169 
 By that last book, 193 
 By thy complicity, r43 
 Can scarce uplift, 152 
 Celestial coursers, 86 
 Child of light, 215 
 Cotopaxi, let the sound, 64 
 
 320 
 
INDEX 
 
 Poems, Excerpts from (continued) — 
 Eternity. Demand no direr name, 
 
 204 
 Forget the dead, the past ? 140 
 For in the battle Life, 298 
 For in vain from the grasp, 42 
 For was he not, 224 
 Friend, thy bands were losing, 
 
 161 
 From what Hyrcanian glen, 237 
 Green stalks burst forth, 217 
 Heartless things, 123 
 Hear ye the march, 238 
 He has outsoared, 264 
 He walked along the pathway, 
 
 *33 
 He who would question him, 270 
 His head was bound, 151 
 How do I feel my happiness, 70 
 How Heaven neglected is, 171 
 How, my dear]Mary, 232 
 I am the daughter, 239 
 I am the shadow of a destiny, 202 
 I do not feel as if, 222 
 I do remember well, 10 
 If I were one whom, 246 
 If the abysm, 202 
 I never was attached, 246 
 In the clear golden prime, 248 
 I sate beside the steersman, 166 
 I scarce endure, 203 
 Kings are like stars, 270 
 Lamp of earth, 216 
 Like gentle rains, 192 
 Like passion's fruit, 88 
 Lost Echo sits amid, 263 
 Man who wert once, 206 
 Midst others of less note, 263 
 Mind from its object, 245 
 Most wretched men, 178 
 Motionless resting on the lake, 163 
 Mourn not for Adonais, 264 
 My blood is running, 222 
 My brethren, we are free, 160 
 My dearest Mary, 185 
 My soul, which is a scourge, 222 
 Naples, thou Heart of men, 238 
 Night-folded flowers, 204 
 Numerous as gnats, 296 
 O'er a lake, 211 
 Oh, ask not me, 232 
 Oh cease ! must hate, 273 
 Oh ! gentle Moon, 217 
 Oh, ho ! you talk as in, 178 
 Oh, weep for Adonais, 262 
 Oh, what a might, 165 
 On a poet's lips I slept, 212 
 On the heavy-sounding plain, 307 
 On the sigh of one, 212 
 On the waved and golden sand, 
 
 163 
 One word is too often, 278 
 
 Poems, Excerpts from (continued) — 
 Other flowering isles must be, 175 
 O world ! O life ! 274 
 Pageantry of mist, 263 
 Reason was free, 89 
 Rose, robed in dazzling, 265 
 Sate on many a sapphire throne, 
 
 158 
 She looked around in wonder, 89 
 She would often climb, 233 
 Soul of Ianthe, thou, 87 
 Sudden she rose, 119 
 Swift as the radiant shapes, 272 
 That time is dead for ever, 140 
 The breath who might, 266 
 The day is come, 249 
 The everlasting universe, 132 
 The folded roses, 180 
 The golden gates of sleep, 275 
 The loud deep calls me home, 213 
 The moon made thy lips pale, 140 
 The One remains, 266 
 The pale stars are gone, 214 
 The priests would write, 234 
 The seed ye sow, 191 
 The solemn harmony, 236 
 The sun-awakened avalanche, 214 
 The Victor Fiend, 157 
 Thou art immortal, 205 
 Thou must a listener be, 158 
 Thou on whose stream, 188 
 Those subtle and fair Spirits, 212 
 Thou, too, aerial Pile, 116 
 Thou who didst waken, 190 
 Thy dewy looks, 92 
 Thy look of love has power, 94 
 To see a babe, 88 
 To suffer woes, 218 
 To those she saw most beautiful, 
 
 233 
 True love in this, 245 
 Turn up my faults, 224 
 Was it one moment, 161 
 We will sit and talk, 216 
 What then was I ? 166 
 When I return to my cold home, 
 
 276 
 When the night is left behind, 
 
 286 
 Where art thou, 184 
 Where the secret caves, 122 
 Where, though with rudest rites, 
 
 162 
 While far Orion, 165 
 While yet a boy, 1 1 
 Who have homes, 206 
 Who mourns for Adonais, 265 
 Who quelled the passions, 298 
 Whose grasp had left, 297 
 Who waits but till the destined 
 
 hour, 203 
 Would let them take no ill, 235 
 
 321 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Poems, Excerpts from (continued) — 
 Would write strange dreams, 234 
 Yet now despair itself, 180 
 You will see Coleridge, 227 
 You will see that which was 
 Godwin, 227 
 
 Poland Street, 33 
 
 Political Justice, 67 
 
 " Political Justice," Godwin's, 56, 
 58 
 
 Pompeii, Description of, 238 
 
 Pope, 228, 272 
 
 Pope's " Ode for St. Cecilia's Day," 
 42 
 
 Pope, The, 220 
 
 Portents in last week of life, 299 
 
 Portia (Miss Hitchener), 63 
 
 Posthumous Poems, 154 
 
 Preface for A lastor, 117 
 
 Prejudice against marriage, 43 
 
 " Prelude " by Wordsworth, 123, 195 
 
 Prince Athanase, 10, 154, 167 
 
 Prince Regent, Hunt's libel on, 77 
 
 " Prisoner of Chillon," by Byron, 
 
 131 
 Professor Dowden, 12, 61 n., 95, 99, 
 
 135, 151, 231, 299 
 Progress of Queen Mab, jy 
 Prometheus, 200, 202, 204, 205, 
 
 206, 207, 219, 221 
 " Prometheus Bound," by jEschy- 
 
 lus, 196 
 Prometheus, Ideas of good and evil 
 
 in, 85 
 Prometheus Unbound, 85, 170, 193, 
 
 194, 208, 213, 218, 221, 223, 
 
 239, 263, 273, 313 
 Prometheus Unbound and The 
 
 Cenci, Unlikeness of, 219 
 " Prometheus Unbound," by Als- 
 
 chylus, 196 
 Proposed entail of estate, 54 
 Proposed separation from Harriet, 
 
 102 
 Proposes marriage, 48 
 Prose fragment on Love, 123 
 Public opinion, State of, 31 
 Publishes tract, " The Necessity 
 
 of Atheism," 29 
 Purpose of The Revolt of Islam, 154 
 
 Quality of teaching at Oxford, 18 
 Quarterly Review, 226, 228, 261 
 Quarterly Review, Abuse of Shelley 
 
 in, 146 
 Queen Caroline, 240 
 Queen Mab, 71, 86, 186, 196 
 Queen Mab, Commencement of, 84 
 Queen Mab, Motto of, 85 
 Queen Mab, Progress of, 77 
 Queen Mab, Story embodied in, 87 
 Queen Mab, Topics of, 85 
 
 Radcliffe, Anne, 13 
 
 Radcliffe, Writings of Anne, 7 
 
 Raphael, 261 
 
 Reaction expressed in Alastor, 120 
 
 Recites Homer to bring luck in 
 
 boyhood fight, 8 
 Recollections of boyhood in poems, 
 
 10 
 Recollections, Trelawny's, 15 
 References to letters (see Letters) 
 Reforming the world, 12 
 Regeneration of Ireland, 66 
 Religion, Antagonism to, 14 
 Religious conversions, Apparent, 10 
 Reni, Guido, 182, 186 
 Re-marriage with Harriet, 83 
 Rembrandt, 257 
 Review of Alastor, 136 
 Revolt against opinions on sexual 
 
 matters, 166 
 Revolt of Islam, 10 
 Revolution, French, 57, 309 
 Reynolds, John Hamilton, 136 
 Rhayader, At, 69 
 Roberts, Captain, 282, 289, 300 
 Romantic Movement, 194 
 Romantic Revolution in poetry, 86 
 Romeo and Juliet, 235 
 Rosalind and Helen, 154, 168, 170, 
 
 173 
 Rosa, Salvator, 182 
 Rossini, 190 
 Rousseau, 297, 298 
 
 Salvator, Rosa, 182 
 
 Scandal about Shelley and Miss 
 
 Hitchener, 70 
 Science, First enthusiasm for, 8 
 Scott, 191, 195 
 
 Second child born to Harriet, 109 
 Seduction of Claire by Byron, 128 
 Seduction of nurse Elise by Paolo 
 
 Foggi, 179 
 Sensitive Plant, 225 
 Sentence on Leigh Hunt, 77 
 Sentiment in childhood, 7 
 Shakespeare, 122, 156, 195, 223, 
 
 252, 257, 259 
 Shakespearean passage in Alastor, 
 
 123 
 Shaw, Bernard, 195 
 Shelley and Hogg, Dispute about 
 
 literature, 16 
 Shelley and Hogg, Meeting of, 16 
 Shelley and sick woman, 150 
 Shelley and the fair sex, 82 
 Shelley as Julian, 177 
 Shelley, Attack on, 61 
 Shelley, Bagehot on, 10 
 Shelley, Charles, 139 
 Shelley, Charles Bysshe, 100 
 Shelley, Elizabeth, 24, 27, 42, 43 
 
 322 
 
INDEX 
 
 Shelley, Hellen, 5 
 
 Shelley, Margaret, 6 
 
 Shelley, Mary, 9 
 
 Shelley on " Expediency," 56 
 
 Shelley on love for his father, 59 
 
 Shelley's admiration for Words- 
 worth's poetry, 192 
 
 Shelley's birth, 5 
 
 Shelley's " broken chariot wheels," 
 228 
 
 Shelley's conception of beauty in 
 nature, 188 
 
 Shelley's contempt for his father, 4 
 
 Shelley's cousin, 48 
 
 Shelley's death, 303 
 
 Shelley's father attempts to part 
 him from Hogg, 35 
 
 Shelley's first marriage, 49 
 
 Shelley's grave, Inscription on, 306 
 
 Shelley shocked at Byron's pro- 
 fligacy, 176 
 
 Shelley, sister of, 5, 6 
 
 Shelley's Journal, 112, 113 
 
 Shelley's Jupiter, 199 
 
 Shelley's mother, 4 
 
 Shelley's nickname, 282 n. 
 
 Shelley's opinion of grandfather, 2 
 
 Shelley's Paradise, 277 
 
 Shelley's rhetoric, 223 
 
 Shelley's views on Wordsworth, 130 
 
 Shelley's warning of Irish against 
 priestcraft, 65 
 
 Shelley, Timothy, 1, 3, 34, 49 
 
 Shelley, William, 139 
 
 Sidmouth, Lord, 72 
 
 Sidney's " Apology for Poetry," 253 
 
 Sion House Academy, 7 
 
 Sir Bysshe, Legends of, 2 
 
 Sisters of Shelley, 5, 6 
 
 Slatter and Munday's sale of tracts, 
 29 
 
 Slatter the bookseller, 15 
 
 Sleeping on rug, Habit of, 18 
 
 Snake at Field Place, 5 
 
 Socrates, 297 
 
 Son born to Mary, 116, 185 
 
 Son born to Harriet, 109 
 
 Song of Proserpine, 239 
 
 Song to the Men of England, 191 
 
 Soul, Definition of, 26 
 
 Southey, 55, 228, 229, 230 
 
 Southey on " Expediency," 56' 
 
 Spanish Rebellion, 235 
 
 Spenserian stanzas of The Revolt of 
 Islam, 156 
 
 Spenser's " Epithalamium," 272 
 
 Spirit of the Earth, 205 
 
 Spirits, Chorus of, 217 
 
 Stanzas written in dejection near 
 Naples, 179 
 
 State of public opinion, 31 
 St. Irvyne, 58 
 
 Stockdale the publisher, 23 
 Story embodied in Queen Mab, 87 
 Story of Mazenghi, 181 
 Story of Prometheus Unbound, 200 
 Story of Rosalind and Helen, 168 
 Story of The Revolt of Islam, 157 
 Story of Witch of Atlas, 232 
 St. Theresa, 249 
 Studies, Latin, 7 
 Study of art, 182 
 Stukeley, Jeremiah, 29 
 Swellfoot the Tyrant, 240 
 Swinburne, 180, 225 
 Switzerland, In, 105 
 
 " Table Talk," by Hazlitt, 146 
 
 Tanyrallt, 72 
 
 Taste in art, 21 
 
 Tchaikovsky, 44, 48 
 
 Temperament of Shelley's family, 3 
 
 Tendency of poetic drama to become 
 
 lyrical, 208 
 Teresa Emilia Viviani, 241, 244 
 The Cenci, 145, 186, 193, 220, 222, 
 
 224 
 The Cenci the finest English tragedy 
 
 of modern times, 222 
 The Cloud, 125, 239, 240 
 The Curse of Kehama, 231 
 "The Four Ages of Poetry," by 
 
 Peacock, 251 
 The Invitation, 285, 286 
 " The Necessity of Atheism," 28 
 The Past, 140 
 The Question, 239 
 The Recollection, 285 
 The Revolt of Islam, 154, 164, 196, 
 
 226 
 The Skylark, 239 
 The Sunset, 133 
 The Tempest, 240 
 Thetis, 203 
 
 The Triumph of Life, 295 
 The Woodman and the Nightingale, 
 
 180 
 Thomas Jefferson Hogg, 15 
 Thomas Medwin, 7 
 Thornton Hunt, 149 
 Timothy Shelley, poet's father, 1, 
 
 3. 34, 49 
 Tom Paine, 64 
 Topics of Queen Mab, 85 
 Tornabuoni relief, 182 
 Toryism of Wordsworth and Scott, 
 
 Tragedy on Charles I begun, 285 
 Trelawny, 46, 280, 287, 300, 301 
 Trelawny, Edward John, 279 
 Trelawny's Recollections, 15 
 Tremadoc, At, 72, 76 
 Tremadoc, Outrage at, 78 
 Tristram and Iseult, 235 
 
 323 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN AND THE POET 
 
 Troilus, 222 
 Turner, Mrs., 83 
 Two Spirits, 239 
 
 University College, Oxford, 15 
 Unlikeness of Prometheus Unbound 
 
 and The Cenci, 219 
 Unnatural childhood, 8 
 Untruths in Shelley's letters, 58 
 Urania, 261, 263 
 
 Vacca, 225 
 
 Vague scheme for reduction of 
 
 National Debt, 193 
 Vegetarianism, 69, 131 
 Venus, 232 
 Verrocchio, 183 
 
 Verses written at Rhayader, 70 
 Virgil, 273 
 
 Visit to Cuckfield, 43 
 Visit to House of Commons, 27 
 Visit to Hunt, 137 
 Vittoria Corombona, 223 
 Vivian, Charles, 290 
 Vivian, Charles, Death of, 304 
 Viviani, Count, 241 
 Viviani, Teresa Emilia, 241, 244, 
 
 277 
 Voltaire, 22, 298 
 Vulcan, 232 
 
 Walt Whitman, 274 
 
 Wandering Jew, 88 
 
 Waning enthusiasm for Miss Hitch- 
 ener, 74 
 
 Warne, Miss, 53 
 
 Warning of Irish against priest- 
 craft, Shelley's, 65 
 
 Webster, 223 
 
 Westbrook, Eliza, 40, 41, 46, 47, 51, 
 
 52, 60, 62, 139, 142 
 Westbrook, Eliza, Personal appear- 
 ance of, 52 
 Westbrook, Emily, 41 
 Westbrook, Harriet, 30, 41, 46, 47, 
 
 48 
 Westbrook, John, 39, 142 
 Westbrook, Mr., 49, 54 
 Westbrooks, 139, 143 
 Westbrooks contest Shelley's rights 
 
 to children, 141 
 " White Devil," by Webster, 223 
 Whitman, Walt, 274 
 William Godwin, 57 
 William Morris, 133, 311, 279 
 Williams, 282, 289, 290, 300, 302 
 Williams, Death of, 304 
 Williams, Edward, 260, 275, 276 n. 
 Williams family, 287 
 William Shelley, 139, 184 
 Wilhams, Jane, 260, 275, 277, 285, 
 
 288, 291, 292, 300 
 With a Guitar, 285, 286 
 Witch of Atlas, 231, 235, 239 
 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 73 
 Wordsworth, 113, 122, 123, 130, 
 
 155, 156, 190, 191, 195, 272, 
 
 309, 310, 311 
 Wordsworth's " Ode to Duty," 22 
 
 Xerxes, 269 
 
 York, 51 
 
 " Zastrozzi," 12, 58 
 Zonoras, 10 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London 
 
SHELLEY: THE MAN ANr 
 
 Troilus, 222 Webster, 
 
 Turner, Mrs., 83 Westbrr 
 Two Spirits, 239 52 
 
 Westb' 
 University College, Oxford, 15 ai 
 
 Unlikeness of Prometheus Unbound West 1 
 
 and The Cenci, 219 We? 
 Unnatural childhood, 8 
 
 Untruths in Shelley's letters, 58 W 
 
 Urania, 261, 263 V 
 
 Vacca, 225 ^ 
 
 Vague scheme for reduction of 
 
 National Debt, 193 
 Vegetarianism, 69, 131 
 Venus, 232 
 Verrocchio, 183 
 
 Verses written at Rhayader, 70 
 Virgil, 273 
 
 Visit to Cuckfield, 43 
 Visit to House of Commons, 27 
 Visit to Hunt, 137 
 Vittoria Corombona, 223 
 Vivian, Charles, 290 
 Vivian, Charles, Death of, 30 
 Viviani, Count, 241 
 Viviani, Teresa Emilia, ' 
 
 277 
 Voltaire, 22, 298 
 Vulcan, 232 
 
 Walt Whitman, 27 
 Wandering Jew. ' 
 Waning enthus-" 
 
 ener, 74 
 Warne, Mi c 
 Warni** 
 
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