Z\)c Camelot CI 
 
 Edited" by Ernest Rhy 
 
Essays and Letters 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST RHYS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1887. 
 
s^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 MIXED ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS— page 
 
 A Defence of Poetry ,...,. i 
 A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancients, relative to the 
 subject of Love ..... 
 
 On the Symposium ; or, Preface to the Banquet of Plato 
 On Love . ..... 
 
 The Coliseum ..... 
 
 On the Punishment of Death . . 
 
 On Life . . , . . 
 
 On a Future State . . . . . 
 
 Essay on Christianity ..... 
 
 Speculations on Metaphysics . . . 
 
 Speculations on Morals .... 
 
 The Age of Pericles . . . . . 
 
 On the Revival of Literatuire .... 
 
 Review of Hogg's Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff 
 The Assassins ..... 
 
 LETTERS 
 Appendix 
 
 41 
 49 
 51 
 54 
 64 
 71 
 76 
 
 ^Z 
 "3 
 122 
 136 
 146 
 149 
 159 
 180 
 379 
 
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." 
 
 [Inscription upon Shelley's Grave at Rome.] 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
 T is impossible to turn to Shelley's prose with 
 the untroubled interest and judgment that we 
 summon in the case of most authors, especially 
 those who are only, or mainly, prose-writers. 
 Shelley's mark as a poet, in the narrower sense, 
 that is, of a writer of verse, is so well-known, that almost every- 
 one who turns to his prose will bring to it a set opinion, implying 
 more or less of enthusiasm or uninterest, or even perhaps 
 antagonism, based upon the already familiar grounds of his 
 verse and the story of his life. The first interest of the 
 book will therefore be a relative one, to be referred to pre- 
 vious ideas of its author's genius and personality ; and know- 
 ing what warmth of discussion these have constantly called 
 forth, it will be well for us to approach any new signs of their 
 quality, such as are offered here, in the urbanest and most 
 reasonable temper we can bring to bear. Fortunately, judged 
 for themselves alone, these prose-writings of Shelley are not 
 hard to judge. Their literary setting is so perfect and 
 delightful, that, if they had no other interest, they could not 
 fail to be sought at last simply for artistic quality, and placed 
 high among masterpieces of style accordingly. But the interest 
 they bear is higher still, and having regard to it we should be 
 mistaken in not profiting by the zest already created in us by the 
 poet's grace for anything further coming from him and helping 
 to interpret the fine and deep secrets of his nature. 
 
X SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 These secrets, as we think them over, easily resolve them- 
 selves into one, the secret of Shelley's personal fascination for 
 so many of us, in especial at a certain period of our growth. It 
 would be useless to try and account very exactly for so subtle 
 an influence. The ideal atmosphere that fills the poems, that 
 seems to linger in the very collocation of their syllables, affects 
 us, we hardly know how or why, and creates the feeling which 
 is more than any reasoned theory of appreciation. Against this 
 feeling, once created, with its chivalrous faith and boundless 
 enthusiasm, scientific analysis, equally with matter-of-fact de- 
 traction, is powerless. It is a feeling akin to all that is ideal 
 and heroic in us when the hopes of youth most irradiate the 
 surroundings and direction of life. 
 
 •• The world's great age begins anew, 
 
 The golden years return. 
 The earth doth like a snake renew 
 
 Her winter weeds outworn. 
 Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam 
 Like wrecks of a dissolving dream." 
 
 In this music we have its very tone and echo. Vague it 
 may be, but most magical and strong nevertheless, and of 
 the ideal enterprise it inspires, Shelley is the spirit incarnate. 
 He inhabits with a princely if somewhat translunar splendour a 
 tower of his own on the mount of vision which is peculiarly 
 dedicated to his century. There we have known how to 
 picture him, gazing out upon what ideal vistas of the land of 
 promise, imagined after the half-realised accounts of the Italy he 
 loved. There, with him in spirit, looking out with his eyes, we 
 have seen the mystic vision of the future, as in a sunset whose 
 cloud-veil unclosing a moment has permitted a glimpse of per- 
 fect radiance within. That glimpse, once caught, leavee for 
 ever afterwards a restless longing to fully see what was so 
 nearly revealed; for within, we felt, were it but throughly 
 penetrated, lay the secret of the great progression through space 
 and time, in which the stars move so serenely, and men with 
 such tragic endeavour and disruption. It is the old story 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xl 
 
 of the Quest of the Grail, and many another since ; and 
 its glimpse of the perfect, and its after-longing and spiritual 
 unrest, are all centred in the feeling which is associated with 
 the very name of Shelley. So much of this feeling as it is well 
 for us to keep, perhaps, in a world that is material as well as 
 ideal, these Essays and Letters will help to embody and make 
 sure. The proof they give of their author's humanity is a 
 capital antidote to anything extreme in our worship of him as 
 an accession to the saints. So, having before endangered his 
 right fame by hailing him as of the gods, we shall establish him 
 more surely now, let us hope, by discovering how thoroughly, in 
 virtue and default, he was a man. 
 
 The ideal Shelley has long been known to us, and lately we 
 have been presented with a so-called "Real Shelley," for 
 counterblast, as much painted as ever was the first, seeing that it 
 has only been a matter of painting black what was before a 
 somewhat too unrelieved white. This method of disillusioning 
 is highly characteristic of the downright British temper of mind, 
 which does so like to deal absolute judgments ; but it is 
 peculiarly inapplicable in the case of a nature like Shelley's. 
 The same method applied to a series of heroes and poets of 
 much more definite quality than his could not fail to utterly 
 destroy all right knowledge and love of them. Conceive the 
 aspect of, let us suggest, Sir Philip Sidney, or to be bolder. Saint 
 Francis of Assisi, or others more spiritually eminent still, under 
 such malevolent treatment. The judgment upon Shelley, in truth, 
 will always be very much a matter of standpoint. Those to 
 whom the conventionalities are more than the ideal principles of 
 which they are the often worn-out clothes, will necessarily fail 
 in sympathy for such a nature as his, with its insistent relation 
 of everything to the ideal, in a way, let it be admitted, a little 
 oblivious apparently, at times, to the warm touch of human 
 dependency. But the growth of humanity in his nature was as 
 strong and sure as his literary growth ; there is an intimate 
 relation between the two in all true natures. It may well be, 
 therefore, that the Essays and Letters in which this is so clearly 
 shewn may form an opening to appreciation by those who from 
 
xii SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 one cause or another have not been hitherto greatly attracted 
 by the poet or his writings. Studying the simpler evidence of 
 prose, they will find that neither angels nor evil spirits claim 
 him away from the difficult human mean, where he existed with 
 our everyday susceptibilities, only heightened and modified by 
 the poet's ten-fold greater liability to the drawings of pleasure 
 and of pain. The real " Real Shelley," neither selfish dreamer 
 nor untempted saint, but one like ourselves, with added qualities 
 of genius which bear their appointed defects, is clearly seen in a 
 hundred passages of his letters ; and how much more interest- 
 ing in this reality of broad sunshine than, as often before shown, 
 under haze of moonshine or eldritch smoke. 
 
 Here is scarcely the place and time, however, for lengthy 
 analysis of Shelley's life and individuality. This has already 
 been admirably done in memoirs by Mrs. Shelley and Lady 
 Shelley, by Mr. William M. Rossetti and Mr. J. Addington 
 Symonds, and in quite a number of shorter essays by other 
 writers, with one or the other of which we are all well familiar. 
 It will be best perhaps, then, to touch only upon one or two 
 points which have special significance in the light of these prose 
 writings, and having so far rested a claim for Shelley's fund of 
 everyday humanity, we ought first of all to turn to the broad 
 basis of his character. One of the first things that occur to us 
 in reading the Letters, one laid stress upon by several writers, is 
 their absolute consistency with the poetry formally prepared by 
 Shelley with an eye to the public during his lifetime. This is 
 most .important, for it touches upon the question of Shelley's 
 main sincerity, which, called in question, has formed the turning 
 point of more than one elaborated attack upon him. But in his 
 prose we are taken behind the scenes of his poet's theatre 
 to find, wonderful to tell, that all there really is what it artis- 
 tically gave itself out to be. The corroboration by the letters of 
 his deliberate verse utterance is indeed remarkable, and a 
 sufficient argument in itself for Shelley's utter thoroughness 
 and honesty of purpose. For, as another poet, whose 
 dignified loyalty to Shelley through a long life must have been 
 cause enough in itself for belief to many, has conclusively 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xiii 
 
 asked : — " How shall we help believing in him when we find 
 even his carnal speech to agree faithfully with the tone and 
 rhythm of his most oracular utterances ? " With this quality is 
 closely allied another which did more than anything to wreck 
 the happiness of Shelley's life, his " egregious practical energy," 
 as it has been well called by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. We all 
 know how disastrously it resulted, lacking the higher prudence 
 which could alone make such a tendency nobly valuable ; but at 
 the same time it is by no means a common or a base quality, the 
 unhalting readiness to act out one's theories, and Shelley had 
 this innocent courage of his opinions with a vengeance. Point 
 out a great idea or a crying need to him, and as soon as he felt 
 sure of it, he would rush off at once, with a quite comical 
 urgency, to apply it. If, however, it proves a certain greenness^ it 
 is a greenness that sometimes ripens into gold. At any rate it is 
 quite incompatible with any such inherent deceptiveness as the 
 writer of " The Real Shelley " has imputed to him. A touch 
 more of that dissimulative concern for the world's opinion which 
 often passes for prudence, and gives an aspect of virtue to what 
 is merely social astuteness, would have saved him from many 
 false and dishonourable indictments, such as those which wrung 
 a cry from him in a memorable letter to his wife : — " My 
 greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society* 
 I would retire with you and our child to a solitary island in the 
 sea, would build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood-gates 
 of the world." 
 
 Revelations of the motives and interests of Shelley's life 
 naturally abound in the Letters, and after having read them in 
 conjunction with the poems, it seems to me impossible that any- 
 one should turn away with anything but a profound belief in 
 their writer's inherent nobility and truth of inspiration. But if 
 this is to be so for the unbeliever, how are they to be envied 
 who bring to the book their first enthusiasm unaltered. A 
 more delightful literary experience can scarcely be conceived, 
 I think, than that of this book, while the music of Shelley's song 
 is still fresh in the ears, filling one with quick desire to know more 
 of " the king of beauty and fancy," as Trelawney charmingly 
 
XIV SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 called him. Impatiently foregoing the order of the book, and 
 turning first to the Letters to get the spirit and atmosphere of 
 Shelley's surroundings at one time and another, we could not 
 fail to be fascinated by the glimpses afforded of the year of 
 marvels which saw the birth of the Prometheus Unbound and 
 other great poems, showing how ideally environed the poet's 
 days then were. We can choose almost at random from the 
 letters of that time ; here is a passage from one, written from 
 Rome towards the end of March, when the Prometheus Unbound 
 was in process of composition : — 
 
 " I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian 
 evening, and return by star or moonlight, through this scene. 
 The elms are just budding, and the warm spring winds bring 
 unknown odours, all sweet from the country. I see the radiant 
 Orion through the mighty columns ot the temple of Concord, 
 and the mellow fading light softens down the modern buildings 
 of the capitol, the only ones that interfere with the sublime 
 desolation of the scene. On the steps of the capitol itself stand 
 two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each with his horse, 
 finely executed, though far inferior to those oi Monte Cavallo, 
 the cast of one of which you know we saw together in London. 
 This walk is close to our lodging, and this is my evening walk." 
 
 While we are at Rome with Shelley in the spirit, one other 
 passage we must take, describing the burying-place which 
 received all that remained of him after the death's ordeal of fire 
 and water some three years later, and which by that time, too, 
 held the body of Keats. He begins in the same paragraph by 
 speaking of Rome as " a city, as it were, of the dead, or rather 
 of those who cannot die, and who survive the puny generations 
 which inhabit and pass over the spot which they have made 
 sacred to eternity;" and then, after describing the fields and the, 
 " grassy lanes and copses winding among the ruins," and the 
 gardens of the palaces, and the " great green hill, lonely and 
 bare, which overhangs the Tiber," he writes : — 
 
 " The English burying-place is a green slope near the walls, 
 under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the most 
 beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the sun 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xv 
 
 shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with 
 the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among 
 the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of 
 Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, 
 and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people 
 who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the 
 sleep they seem to sleep." 
 
 With this passage may well be placed those two well-known 
 verses of the Adonais^ describing the same scene : — 
 
 •* Go thou to Rome, — at once the paradise, 
 
 The grave, the city, and the wilderness ; 
 And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 
 
 And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 
 
 The bones of desolation's nakedness, 
 Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 
 Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 
 
 And grey walls moulder round, on which dull time 
 
 Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
 And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime. 
 
 Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
 
 This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
 Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath 
 
 A field is spread, on which a newer band 
 Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death, 
 Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath." 
 
 One is tempted to go on endlessly, quoting and discussing 
 the beauty and fascination of the Letters, embodying so 
 n^uch as they do of all things true and lovely. Of the 
 changing interests of travel they are in especial full, and 
 these in a land whose interests are so irresistible, and 
 with a little band of travellers whose wayside adventures 
 and excitements are so touched by the thought of the 
 noble creations in poetry that they helped to form. 
 Without troubling ourselves much about possible reproaches 
 
xvi SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 of "word-painting," satisfied that the art of writing is 
 the handmaiden of all the other arts, who while she 
 retains the naivetd and modesty that are peculiarly her 
 own cannot get far astray, we shall not fail to follow with 
 delight those excursions immortally associated now with Venice 
 and Florence and Rome and Naples, the plains of Lombardy, 
 the Euganean Hills, and many another region of the " Paradise 
 of Exiles." In all the list of poets' friends and lovers, there 
 never was, surely, correspondent so favoured- as Peacock, to 
 receive as he did, often in the enhancing contrasted dullness of 
 the Indian House, these letters from Italy. What a glimpse is 
 this to be received by post in a London office, malodorous with 
 coal-smoke and foolscap! — Shelley is describing a journey 
 through the Apennines, towards Salerno, when, after a day of 
 rain, storm, and tempest, amid the mountains, they catch sight 
 of the sea, illumined by the sudden burst of sunset between 
 the orange and lemon groves of a lovely village:— "A burst of 
 the declining sunlight illumined it," he writes. " The road led 
 along the brink of the precipice towards Salerno. Nothing 
 could be more glorious than the scene. The immense 
 mountains covered with the rare and divine vegetation of this 
 climate, with many-folding vales, and deep, dark recesses, 
 which the fancy scarcely could penetrate, descended from their 
 many summits precipitously to the sea. Before us was Salerno, 
 built into a declining plain, between the mountains and the sea. 
 Beyond, the other shore of sky-cleaving mountains, then dim 
 with the mist of tempest. Underneath, from the base of the 
 precipice where the road conducted, rocky promontories jutted 
 into the sea, covered with olive and ilex woods, or with the 
 ruined battlements of some Norman or Saracen fortress. We 
 slept at Salerno, and the next morning before daybreak pro- 
 ceeded to Posidonia. The night had been tempestuous, and 
 our way lay by the sea-sand. It was utterly dark, except when 
 the long line of wave burst, with a sound like thunder, beneath 
 the starless sky, and cast up a kind of mist of cold white 
 lustre. When morning came, we found ourselves travelling in 
 a wide desert plain, perpetually interrupted by wild irregular 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xvii 
 
 glens, and bounded on all sides by the Apennines and the 
 sea." 
 
 If the sketches of human life and character in the Letters 
 are, as one might expect, knowing Shelley's comparative 
 lack of closer sympathy with average human personality, 
 and the greater abundance in a land like Italy of Nature's 
 interest, less frequent than his sketches of Nature, they are 
 nevertheless full of charm. Glimpses of Byron and of the 
 others who helped to form the Shelley circle at different 
 times abound; and with such variety of character as Byron, 
 Leigh Hunt, the Gisbornes, the Williams's, Emilia Viviani, 
 and others, afford, it would be strange, indeed, if we were not 
 interested, apart from the vivid reflection of Shelley's irradiat- 
 ing consciousness. We think of that unusual little society, 
 stationed on the lonely shores of the Mediterranean and the 
 Adriatic, where the voices of Nature are apparent at all times, 
 with curious imagination now of those days of memorable 
 association, — days often as trivially or greatly troubled, how- 
 ever, as many others which in memory are only bright. Still 
 more interesting are the occasional little descriptions of Shelley 
 himself at his poet's work, so characteristic, many of them, 
 of the maker of "Prometheus" and the "Witch of Atlas." 
 Here is one such account, written to Peacock from Livorno : — 
 " I have a study here in a tower, something like Scythrop's, 
 where I am just beginning to recover the faculties of reading 
 and writing. . . . From my tower I see the sea, with its 
 islands, Gorgona, Capraja, Elba, and Corsica, on one side, and 
 the Apennines on the other." The letter from which this is 
 quoted is dated July 6th, 1819, and by turning to the one follow- 
 ing, we get an exact account of the hours of every day at that 
 time — a time, be it recalled, when Shelley's genius was on every 
 side splendidly active, advancing yet again into the social and 
 political field, as well as daringly further into that of poetry. 
 And sd throughout we find the Letters a most delightful and 
 luminous commentary upon the poetry ; we see in them the 
 poems in the making, lit up by a hundred glimpses of the 
 * unique life out of which the poems grew, and we turn from them 
 
 b 
 
xviii SHELLEY'S PROSE, 
 
 with a larger apprehension altogether of their writer. On the 
 purely literary side, we shall only be able to appraise Shelley 
 with complete critical appraisal, with a view to his practice in 
 verse and prose, when his writings of both kinds have been 
 paralleled and compared, as was suggested by the Rev. 
 Stopford Brooke, in his eloquent address at the inaugural 
 meeting of the Shelley Society. 
 
 Sooner or later, in reading the Letters, some significant 
 reference or other to poetic aims is sure to recall the wish to 
 know more fully what Shelley's theory of poetry really was, and 
 in this we have the singular good fortune to be in possession of 
 exact evidence in the essay on "The Defence of Poetry," which 
 presents us with so imposing a statement of the poetic ideal. 
 After searching through all Shelley's utterances about life and 
 thought, and their expression in forms of poetry, on coming 
 to their epitome in this essay, we soon find that their real basis 
 is of the simplest, one that it needs no careful knowledge of 
 metaphysics to comprehend, being indeed nothing more or 
 less than Love itself. Upon this simple basis, however, 
 he built a philosophical superstructure, that, as time went 
 on, promised, had he only lived, to form a very elaborate 
 and noble temple of thought. Whether it would have ever 
 reached completion is another matter ; the main scheme 
 of it was fairly clear to him, but he recognised, if somewhat 
 tardily, the insufficiency of the materials and the powers at our 
 command, and his poet's instinct would probably have warned 
 him in time from binding himself to any final statement of 
 matters infinite, whose expression must always be a progressive 
 one. As for poetry, which Shelley regarded as the natural 
 voice of our deepest insight into the ideas with which philosophy 
 concerns itself, his treatment in the " Defence " is wonderfully 
 lucid and perspicuous, especially for one hovering on the dan- 
 gerous edge of metaphysics as he does. His whole standpoint 
 is admirably expressed in the following passage from the essay 
 by Robert Browning, already quoted from, which forms an 
 incomparable prelude to the Essays and Letters. Taking Shelley 
 as a type of the subjective poet, the passage dilates : — " He, gifted 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xix 
 
 like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and 
 man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much 
 with reference to the many below as to the one above him, 
 the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their 
 absolute truth — an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially 
 attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what 
 God sees — the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly 
 on the Divine Hand — it is towards these that he struggles. 
 Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the 
 primal elements of humanity, he has to do ; and he digs where 
 he stands, — preferring to seek them in his own soul as the 
 nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the in- 
 tuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak." The 
 exact terms of this exposition Shelley himself might have 
 questioned, but it states his position nevertheless very perfectly. 
 Poetry was to him anything but a plaything, even the divine 
 plaything that it was to Heine, according to a famous con- 
 fession of that sublime cynic in the vein of which Byron, the 
 opposite pole in this to Shelley, is our most famous exponent ; 
 and it was certainly anything but an indifferent alternative to 
 other unconventional social exercises, or fashionable or un- 
 fashionable pastimes. To Shelley it was the voice of a 
 religion, an instrument which responded to the eternal verities, 
 making harmony for the dull ear of man out of all apparent 
 discords. " A poem," he cries, " is the very image of life 
 expressed in its eternal truth," and his " Defence of Poetry" is 
 throughout imbued with a spirit of passionate belief in the poet's 
 transcendent functions. Using the differentiation, enforced by 
 Ruskin, of the terms cesthetic and theoretic^ Shelley was not at 
 all content to consider things aesthetically only, and according to 
 sensuous impress and gratification ; he was determinedly theo- 
 retic all through. When things of beauty seized his imagination 
 it was consciously as images of the everlasting principle of 
 beauty and the perfect harmony which lie behind, though of 
 course he was too true a poet to vaguely abandon the poet's 
 safeguards of the concrete. Examples of this theoretic relating 
 of his subject-matter abound even in his poetry, and this essay 
 
XX SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 is completely interpenetrated with its spirit. Nor need it matter 
 greatly that Shelley never reached any dogmatic position as 
 to the ultimate of these relations ; it is enough that he ideally 
 recognised this ultimate, even if he did not do so categorically. 
 In this profound religious way he keeps returning again and 
 again to exclaim upon the high origin and destiny of his 
 subject : — " Poetry is indeed something divine," he insists, " it is 
 at once the centre and circumference of knowledge ; it is that 
 which comprehends all science, and that to which all science 
 must be referred. It is at the same time the root and the 
 blossom of all other systems of thought ; it is that from which 
 all spring, and that which adorns all ; and that which, if 
 blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the 
 barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions 
 of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and 
 bloom of all things ; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose 
 to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and 
 splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and 
 corruption." We have but to continue with citations from 
 the immediately succeeding paragraphs to for ever convert, 
 surely, all who disbelieve in the high function of poetry. We 
 gain from them, too, an incidental account of the mysterious 
 coming of inspiration, which naturally relates itself to the pro- 
 cesses of imagination in Shelley's own mind. " We are aware," 
 he says, " of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling some- 
 times associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our 
 own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing 
 unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression ; 
 so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot 
 but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its 
 object. It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature 
 through our own ; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over 
 the seas which the coming calm erases, and whose traces 
 remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it." The 
 first part of this passage suggests what has always seemed to 
 me one of the most characteristic episodes in Shelley's life, as 
 related by Mrs. Shelley — his solitary excursion to Monte San 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xxi 
 
 Pellegrino in the August of 1820, returning to reproduce the 
 atmosphere and ideal essence of the days of this pilgrimage in 
 " The Witch of Atlas," — characteristic outcome 1 exquisite 
 mouse of fancy brought forth by what mountain of Shelleyan 
 imagination 1 
 
 Proceeding through the rest of the Essays in the light of the 
 Defence of Poetry^ it is not needed to examine them here in 
 exact detail ; their connection with the different sides of 
 Shelley's genius and literary development are readily seen. 
 The Discourse on Athenian life and manners, in especial relation 
 to the subject of Love, which unfortunately breaks off at the 
 point of entering upon the most interesting part of its subject, is 
 yet very significant in its bearing upon Shelley's Hellenic 
 sympathies. How much we have lost by his having left it a 
 fragment we can only guess ruefully when we remember the 
 impassioned utterance in praise of love by Agathon and his 
 comrades, with the judicial deliverance by Socrates that follows, 
 in Y\2Xq}s Symposium^ to which Shelley's Discourse was intended 
 to form an introduction. Shelley's beautiful translation of the 
 Symposium it is intended to issue in a volume of Plato in the 
 present series, and it has therefore been omitted here, albeit 
 somewhat unwillingly, to make way for more of his original 
 writings. The immense stimulus that Plato gave to Shelley we 
 are reminded of again and again in the Essays and Letters, and 
 it must be kept in mind constantly in estimating either prose or 
 verse. Shelley's devotion to Plato was unwavering from the 
 day when he first began to read the Dialogues. Hogg, in 
 describing the poet's Oxford days, tells some exquisite anecdotes 
 of his enthusiastic Platonism, notably one, most comic, of an 
 attempt, when crossing a bridge one day, to elicit from a baby, 
 lifted from the arms of its startled mother, direct evidence about 
 a state of pre-existence. To the end Plato continued to 
 exercise Shelley as greatly, if to less eccentric result. 
 Corroborated by Berkeley and other idealists, Plato taught him 
 how to reconcile beauty and goodness, the aesthetic and the 
 moral sides of life, and so in great part formed the basis for the 
 Shelleyan religion. This is therefore, in many ways, the most 
 
xxii SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 considerable influence in all Shelley's history, accounting for 
 much that would else be very perplexing. 
 
 The remaining essays have each their own significance, 
 throwing new light in one way and another, which is simply and 
 clearly indicated as a rule by their titles. In some respects 
 it is no doubt best to study them in the order of their pro- 
 duction by Shelley. We come to understand then the evolution 
 of the more perfected Shelley of the later years, and are able 
 to trace the steps of his literary advance. Want of space 
 again has prevented the inclusion of most of the earlier 
 polemical writings, which, however, are not likely to be his 
 latest memorial, and enough is included in the Appendix to 
 enable judgment of their general worth. Some excerpts, of 
 special interest in this present political crisis, are given from 
 the Irish Address of 1812, so touched with curious 
 associations of the excitable boyish liberator who went 
 over with such charming faith to conquer a nation by love 
 and its transcendental heroics. The Declaration of Rights^ 
 which shows a remarkable advance upon the two Irish pamphlets, 
 from the beneficial restraints of the condensation necessary for 
 such a manifesto, is given in full. The famous Letter to Lord 
 Ellenborough is also given complete, and in this, which 
 admirably displays all the qualities and faults of Shelley's 
 early prose, we first recognise the capable mastery of expression 
 which its author afterwards attained. The Necessity of Atheism^ 
 The Refutation of Deism^ and the Vegetarian pamphlet, slightly 
 interesting in themselves, are embodied in the notes to Queen 
 Mab^ which can be referred to in almost any edition of the 
 poems, and they are therefore omitted here. The other early 
 political papers are of too occasional a nature to be of much 
 general interest. With the early fragment of romance entitled 
 The Assassins we reach another side of Shelley altogether, and 
 it is peculiarly interesting, Mr. H. Buxton Forman has told us, 
 as showing behind its melodramatic crudity in certain portions 
 a marked advance in human sympathy upon the merely intellec- 
 tual enthusiasms that underlie the previous juvenilia. In it we 
 detect, too, the achievement, afterwards confirmed in the Coliseum 
 
SHELLEY'S PROSE. xxiii 
 
 fragment, of that imaginative atmosphere without which 
 romance utterly fails — that atmosphere of which Hawthorne so 
 knew the secret. And turning at this point to consider the 
 whole excellence of Shelley's prose style, there is something, it 
 seems to me, in its impalpable, individual charm, which, with a 
 hundred differences, is more like Hawthorne than anyone else. 
 Seeing how in his prose Shelley almost entirely dispensed with 
 the glittering equipment of metaphor and parti-coloured, teeming 
 fancy that he wore in his verse exploits, it is wonderful that in his 
 very plainest prose this exquisite individual flavour is almost as 
 distinct as in The Sensitive Plant or Prometheus Unbound. 
 While always touched with this facile, limpid, Shelleyan native 
 quality, the prose at its best is of true classic excellence,— easily 
 capable, lucid, reasoned, vigorous, unaffected ; and at its worst 
 fails chiefly from indefiniteness and consequent diffuseness of 
 expression ; never, except perhaps here and there in the very 
 early writings, from graver lack of taste or rightness of utter- 
 ance. For examples of its varied excellence, in the expression 
 of quite different subjects, besides many such passages as have 
 already been given from the Letters and the Defence of Poetry^ 
 the best of the notes upon the Sculpture of the age of Pericles, 
 and the Essay on Christianity can be turned to. About the two 
 last-mentioned writings, one might wish to say a further word 
 with reference to Shelley's ideas upon fine-art and religion, but 
 in the case of religion enough has perhaps already been said, 
 and in the other, if it is remembered that Shelley lived at a day 
 when art-primers and magazines did not abound to supply 
 everybody with ready-made admirations and ecstasies, it will 
 be seen that there is nothing very damning in the fact that he 
 admired the melodrama of Salvator Rosa's, and somewhat 
 depreciated the noble tragedy of Michael Angelo's art. 
 
 The arrangement of the Essays in this volume is in the main 
 that adopted by Mrs. Shelley in her first edition of the Essays 
 and Letters from Abroad^ while of course there is much that 
 has been added since that time, of which the latest is the review 
 of Hogg's Alexy Haimatoff. This review, which was dis- 
 covered by Professor Dowden two or three years ago in an 
 
xxiv SHELLEY'S PROSE. 
 
 old magazine — The Critical Review — is given here in preference 
 to Shelley's other better known reviews, as, for instance, those 
 on Frankenstein and Godwin's Mandeville. There are certain 
 other omissions which the scope of a volume such as this has 
 made unavoidable, both in the Essays and the Letters, but, even 
 as it is, this collection of the prose is by far the completest that 
 has yet been brought, like the poems, within multitudinous 
 reach, and there is enough and to spare to give a perfect idea 
 of this side of Shelley's genius. Taken with the other side, of 
 his verse, we have the high record of a noble life, noble even in 
 its imperfections, which ended, let us remember, almost before 
 it was mature, and which we must believe in, if not on the 
 internal evidence that this record contains, at any rate on the 
 testimony of so many and such opposites natures, from Byron 
 to Henri Beyle, who, having known him, have borne witness to 
 the beauty and nobility of his character. In this way the best 
 of these prose-writings may be trusted to continue into time, 
 not, I imagine, as has been said with authority, outlasting their 
 author's verse, but, the prose with the verse, continuing as the 
 incomparable representation of one of those difficultly ideal 
 natures which, while the years go on, will always draw men 
 impelled by the same ideal desires and defeated by the same 
 errors. 
 
 ERNEST RHYS. 
 
 [Note. — The thanks of the editor of this volume are here 
 heartily given to all who have helped to make this edition of 
 Shelley's Prose so far perfect, whether by permission to use 
 copyright matter, as has been so freely granted by Sir Percy 
 F. Shelley, Bart., or by literary aid and suggestion, received 
 in various ways, from, first and foremost, the Shelley Society 
 generally, and then from many of its members individually, 
 including Mr. H. Buxton Forman, Dr. Furnivall, Dr. Garnett, 
 Mr. William Bell Scott, and Mr. Thomas J. Wise. Of these 
 Mr. Wise must be further specially mentioned for the unselfish 
 assistance rendered by him in procuring scarce Shelleyana for 
 the preparation of copy.] 
 
MIXED ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CCORDING to one mode of regarding those two 
 classes of mental action, which are called reason 
 and imagination, the former may be considered 
 as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought 
 to another, however produced , and the latter, as mind 
 acting upon those thoughts so as to colour them with its 
 own light, and composing from them, as from elements, 
 other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle 
 of its own integrity. The one is the to ttolclv, or the 
 principle of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms 
 which are common to universal nature and existence itself; 
 the other is the to Aoyi^etr, or principle of analysis, and its 
 action regards the relations of things simply as relations ; 
 considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the 
 algebraical representations which conduct to certain general 
 results. Reason is the enumeration of qualities already 
 
2 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 known ; imagination is the perception of the value of those 
 quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason 
 respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of 
 things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the 
 agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the 
 substance. 
 
 Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be " the 
 expression of the imagination : " and poetry is connate with 
 the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a 
 series of external and internal impressions are driven, like 
 the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an ^olian 
 lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing 
 melody. But there is a principle within the human being, 
 and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts other- 
 wise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but 
 harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or 
 motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. 
 It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the 
 motions of that which strikes them, in a determined propor- 
 tion of sound ; even as the musician can accommodate his 
 voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself 
 will express its delight by its voice and motions ; and every 
 inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation 
 to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions 
 which awakened it ; it will be the reflected image of that 
 impression ; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the 
 wind has died away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in 
 its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong 
 also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the 
 objects which delight a child, these expressions are, what 
 poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is 
 to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions 
 produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 3 
 
 manner ; and language and gesture, together with plastic or 
 pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect 
 of those objects, and of his apprehension of them. Man in 
 society, with all his passions and his pleasures, next 
 becomes the object of the passions and pleasures of man ; 
 an additional class of emotions produces an augmented 
 treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the 
 imitative arts, become at once the representation and the 
 medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the 
 statue, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, 
 or those laws from which, as from its elements, society 
 results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that 
 two human beings co-exist ; the future is contained within 
 the present, a;a the plant within the seed; and equality, 
 diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the 
 principles alone capable of affording the motives according 
 to which the will of a social being is determined to action, 
 inasmuch as he is social ; and constitute pleasure in sensa- 
 tion, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, 
 and love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in 
 the infancy of society, observe a certain order in their 
 words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the 
 impressions represented by them, all expression being sub- 
 ject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us 
 dismiss those more general considerations which might 
 involve an inquiry into the principles of society itself, and 
 restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is 
 expressed upon its forms. 
 
 In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and 
 imitate natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all 
 others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men 
 observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the 
 motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the 
 
4 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 combinations of language, in the series of their imitations 
 of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm 
 belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, 
 from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser 
 and purer pleasure than from any other : the sense of an 
 approximation to this order has been called taste by 
 modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art, observes 
 an order which approximates more or less closely to that 
 from which this highest delight results : but the diversity 
 is not sufficiently marked, as that its gradations should be 
 sensible, except in those instances where the predominance 
 of this faculty of approximation to the beautiful (for so we 
 may be permitted to name the relation between this highest 
 pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it 
 exists in excess are poets, in the most universal sense of 
 the word ; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in 
 which they express the influence of society or nature upon 
 their own minds, communicates itself to others, and gathers 
 a sort of reduplication from that community. Their 
 language is vitally metaphorical ; that is, it marks the 
 before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates 
 their apprehension, until the words which represent them, 
 become, through time, signs for portions or classes of 
 thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts ; and then 
 if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associa- 
 tions which have been thus disorganised, language will be 
 dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse. 
 These similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord 
 Bacon to be " the same footsteps of nature impressed upon 
 the various subjects of the world " * — and he considers the 
 faculty which perceives them as the storehouse of axioms 
 common to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every 
 • De Augment. Scient., cap. 1, lib. ill. 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY, 5 
 
 author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is 
 poetry ; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the 
 beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, 
 subsisting, first between existence and perception, and 
 secondly between perception and expression. Every 
 original language near to its source is in itself the chaos 
 of a cyclic poem : the copiousness of lexicography and the 
 distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and 
 are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of 
 poetry. 
 
 But poets, or those who imagine and express this 
 indestructible order, are not only the authors of language 
 and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, 
 and painting : they are the institutors of laws, and the 
 founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of 
 life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity 
 with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension 
 of the agencies of the invisible world which is called 
 religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or 
 susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face 
 of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of 
 the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in 
 the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets : a 
 poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. 
 For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and 
 discovers those laws according to which present things 
 ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the 
 present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and 
 the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be 
 prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can 
 foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of 
 events : such is the pretence of superstition, which would 
 make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy 
 
6 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, 
 the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his con- 
 ceptions, time and place and number are not. Tho 
 grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and 
 the difference of persons, and the distinction of place, are 
 convertible with respect to the highest poetry without 
 injuring it as poetry ; and the choruses of j3Eschylus, and 
 the book of Job, and Dante's Paradise, would afford, more 
 than any other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits 
 of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of 
 sculpture, painting, and music are illustrations still more 
 decisive. 
 
 Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of 
 action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry ; 
 they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which 
 considers the effect as a synonyme of the cause. But 
 poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrange- 
 ments of language, and especially metrical language, which 
 are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is cur- 
 tained within the invisible nature of man. And this 
 springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more 
 direct representation of the actions and passions of our 
 internal being, and is susceptible of more various and deli- 
 cate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is 
 more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of 
 which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily pro- 
 duced by the imagination, and has relation to thoughts 
 alone ; but all other materials, instruments, and conditions 
 of art have relations among each other, which limit and 
 interpose between conception and expression. The former 
 is as a mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which 
 enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communi- 
 cation. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 7 
 
 musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great 
 masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of 
 those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of 
 their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the 
 restricted sense of the term ; as two .performers of equal 
 skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. 
 The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as 
 their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets 
 in the restricted sense ; but it can scarcely be a question, 
 whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of 
 the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together 
 with that which belonged to them in their higher character 
 of poets, any excess will remain. 
 
 We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the 
 limits of that art which is the most familiar and the most 
 perfect expression of the faculty itself. It is necessary, 
 however, to make the circle still narrower, and to deter- 
 mine the distinction between measured and unmeasured 
 language ; for the popular division into prose and verse is 
 inadmissible in accurate philosophy. 
 
 Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between 
 each other and towards that which they represent, and a 
 perception of the order of those relations has always been 
 found connected with a perception of the order of the 
 relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has 
 ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence 
 of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is 
 scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its 
 influence, than the words themselves, without reference to 
 that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation; it 
 were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might 
 discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as 
 seek to transfuse from one language into another the 
 
8 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 creations of a poet The plant must spring again from its 
 seed, or it will bear no jBiower — and this is the burthen of 
 the curse of Babel. 
 
 An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of 
 harmony in the language of poetical minds, together with 
 its relation to music, produced metre, or a certain system 
 of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is by 
 no means essential that a poet should accommodate his 
 language to this traditional form, so that the harmony, 
 which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed 
 convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in 
 such composition as includes much action : but every great 
 poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his 
 predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versifica- 
 tion. The distinction between poets and prose writers is a 
 vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and 
 poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet — 
 the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of 
 hia 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 harmony 
 in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forebore to 
 invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, 
 under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. 
 Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but 
 with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.* His lan- 
 guage has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the 
 sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his 
 philosophy satisfies the intellect ; it is a strain which dis- 
 tends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader's 
 mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the 
 universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. 
 
 * See the Filum Labyrintlii, and the Essay on Death particularly. 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY, 9 
 
 All the authors of revolutions in opinion are not only 
 necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their 
 words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images 
 which participate in the life of truth ; but as their periods 
 are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves 
 the elements of verse ; being the echo of the eternal music. 
 Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed traditional 
 forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their 
 subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth 
 of things, than those who have omitted that form. Shake- 
 speare, Dante, and Milton (to confine ourselves to modern 
 writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest power. 
 
 A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal 
 truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, 
 that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no 
 other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and 
 effect ; the other is the creation of actions according to the 
 unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the 
 mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other 
 minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite 
 period of time, and a certain combination of events which 
 can never again recur ; the other is universal, and contains 
 within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or 
 actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. 
 Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of 
 particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest 
 them, augments that of poetry, and for ever develops new 
 and wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it 
 contains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of 
 just history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story of 
 particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts 
 that which should be beautiful : poetry is a mirror which 
 makes beautiful that which is distorted. 
 
lo ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the 
 composition as a whole being a poem. A single sentence 
 may be considered as a whole, though it may be found in 
 the midst of a series of unassimilated portions ; a single 
 word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought. 
 And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, 
 Livy, were poets ; and although the plan of these writers, 
 especially that of Livy, restrained them from developing 
 this faculty in its highest degree, they made copious and 
 ample amends for their subjection, by filling all the 
 interstices of their subjects with living images. 
 
 Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, 
 let us proceed to estimate its effects upon society. 
 
 Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure : all spirits on 
 which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which 
 is mingled with its delight. In the infancy .of the world, 
 neither poets themselves nor their auditors are fully aware 
 of the excellence of poetry : for it acts in a divine and un- 
 apprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness ; and 
 it is reserved for future generations to contemplate and 
 measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and 
 splendour of their union. Even in modern times, no living 
 poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which 
 sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all 
 time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impanneled 
 by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. 
 A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to 
 cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds ; his auditors are 
 as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, 
 who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not 
 whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contempo- 
 raries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the 
 elements of that social system which is the column upon 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY, 11 
 
 which all succeeding civilisation has reposed. Homer em- 
 bodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character ; 
 nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were 
 awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, 
 Hector, and Ulysses : the truth and beauty of friendship, 
 patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were 
 unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations : the 
 sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and 
 enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely imper- 
 sonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from 
 imitation they identified themselves with the objects of 
 their admiration. Nor let it be objected, that these 
 characters are remote from moral perfection, and that they 
 can by no means be considered as edifying patterns for 
 general imitation. Every epoch, under names more or less 
 specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the 
 naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age ; and 
 Self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown evil, before 
 which luxury and satiety lie prostrate. But a poet con- 
 siders the vices of his contemporaries as the temporary 
 dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which 
 cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their 
 beauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to 
 wear them around his soul, as he may the ancient armour or 
 the modern uniform around his body ; whilst it is easy to 
 conceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of 
 the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its acci- 
 dental 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. A majestic 
 form and graceful motions will express themselves through 
 the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of 
 the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their 
 
12 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 conceptions in its naked truth and splendour ; and it is 
 doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not 
 necessary to temper this planetary music for mortal ears. 
 
 The whole objection, however, of the immorality of 
 poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which 
 poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man. 
 Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has 
 created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of 
 civil and domestic life : nor is it for want of admirable 
 doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and 
 deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetry acts in 
 another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the 
 mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand 
 unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the 
 veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes 
 familiar objects be as if they were not familiar ; it repro- 
 duces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed 
 in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of 
 those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of 
 that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over 
 all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great 
 secret of morals is love ; or a going out of our nature, and 
 an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which 
 exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, 
 to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and compre- 
 hensively ; he must put himself in the place of another and 
 of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his species 
 must become his own. The great instrument of moral good 
 is the imagination ; and poetry administers to the effect by 
 acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference 
 of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever 
 new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimil- 
 ating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 13 
 
 new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves 
 fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the 
 organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as 
 exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do 
 ill to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, 
 which are usually those of his place and time, in his 
 poetical creations, which participate in neither. By this 
 assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect, 
 in which perhaps after all he might acquit himself but 
 imperfectly, he would resign a glory in a participation 
 in the cause. There was little danger that Homer, or any 
 of the eternal poets, should have so far misunderstood 
 themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest 
 dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though 
 great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, 
 have frequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of 
 their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the 
 degree in which they compel us to advert to this 
 purpose. 
 
 Homer and the cyc.ic poets were followed at a certain 
 interval by the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who 
 flourished contemporaneously with all that is most perfect 
 in the kindred expressions of the poetical faculty ; archi- 
 tecture, painting, music, the dance, sculpture, philosophy, 
 and we may add, the forms of civil life. For although the 
 scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many 
 imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and 
 Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of 
 modern Europe ; yet never at any other period has so much 
 energy, beauty, and virtue been developed ; never was 
 blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined and 
 rendered subject to the will of man, or that will less 
 repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as 
 
14 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. 
 Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we 
 records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of 
 the divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in 
 action, or in language, which has rendered this epoch memor- 
 able above all others, and the storehouse of examples to 
 everlasting time. For written poetry existed at that 
 epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is an idle 
 inquiry to demand which gave and which received the 
 light, which all, as from a common focus, have scattered 
 over the darkest periods of succeeding time. We know no 
 more of cause and effect than a constant conjunction of 
 events : poetry is ever found to co-exist with whatever 
 other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of 
 man. I appeal to what has already been established to 
 distinguish between the cause and the effect. 
 
 It was at the period here adverted to, that the drama 
 had its birth ; and however a succeeding writer may have 
 equalled or surpassed those few great specimens of the 
 Athenian drama which have been preserved to us, it is 
 indisputable that the art itself never was understood or 
 practised according to the true philosophy of it, as at 
 Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, 
 music, painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to 
 produce a common effect in the representation of the highest 
 idealisms of passion and of power ; each division in the art 
 was made perfect in its kind by artists of the most con- 
 summate skill, and was disciplined into a beautiful proportion 
 and unity one towards the other. On the modern stage a 
 few only of the elements capable of expressing the image of 
 the poet's conception are employed at once. We have 
 tragedy without music and dancing; and music and 
 dancing without the highest impersonations of which they 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 15 
 
 are the fit accompaniment, and both without religion and 
 solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been usually- 
 banished from the stage. Our system of divesting the 
 actor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions 
 appropriated to his dramatic character might be moulded 
 into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favour- 
 able only to a partial and inharmonious effect ; it is fit for 
 nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be 
 directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The 
 modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though 
 liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an 
 extension of the dramatic circle ; but the comedy should 
 be as in King Lear, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is 
 perhaps the intervention of this principle which determines 
 the balance in favour of King Lear against the CEdipus 
 Tyrannus or the Agamemnon, or, if you will, the trilogies 
 with which they are connected ; unless the intense power of 
 the choral poetry, especially that of the latter, should be 
 considered as restoring the equilibrium. King Lear, if it 
 can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most 
 perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world ; 
 in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was 
 subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama 
 which has prevailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his 
 religious Autos, has attempted to fulfil some of the high 
 conditions of dramatic representation neglected by 
 Shakespeare ; such as the establishing a relation between 
 the drama and religion, and the accommodating them to 
 music and dancing; but he omits the observation of 
 conditions still more important, and more is lost than 
 gained by the substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever- 
 repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the living 
 impersonations of the truth of human passion. 
 
i6 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 But I digress. — The connection of scenic exhibitions with 
 the improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has 
 been universally recognised ; in other words, the presence 
 or absence of poetry in its most. perfect and universal form 
 has been found to be connected with good and evil in 
 conduct or habit. The corruption which has been imputed 
 to the drama as an effect, begins, when the poetry employed 
 in its constitution ends : I appeal to the history of manners 
 V whether the periods of the growth of the one and the 
 '^ decline of the other have not corresponded with an 
 exactness equal to any example of moral cause and 
 effect. 
 
 The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have 
 approached to its perfection, ever co-existed with the 
 moral and intellectual greatness of the age. The tragedies 
 of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which the spectator 
 beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance, 
 stript of all but that ideal perfection and energy which 
 every one feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, 
 admires, and would become. The imagination is enlarged 
 by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty, that 
 they distend in their conception the capacity of that 
 by which they are conceived ; the good affections are 
 strengthened by pity, indignation, terror and sorrow ; and 
 an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this 
 high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life : even 
 crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by 
 being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathom- 
 able agencies of nature ; error is thus divested of its 
 wilfulness ; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of 
 their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is 
 little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self- 
 knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 17 
 
 can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles. 
 The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is 
 as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the 
 brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces 
 them from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and 
 touches them with majesty and beauty, and multiplies all 
 that it reflects, and endows it with the power of propagating 
 its like wherever it may fall. 
 
 But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama 
 sympathises with that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold 
 imitation of the form of the great masterpieces of antiquity, 
 divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the kindred 
 arts ; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak 
 attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer con- 
 siders as moral truths ; and which are usually no more than 
 specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness, with which 
 the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. 
 Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. 
 Addison's " Oato " is a specimen of the one ; and would it 
 were not superfluous to cite examples of the other 1 To 
 such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry 
 is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes 
 the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe 
 that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative 
 in a singular degree ; they afiect sentiment and passion, 
 which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice 
 and appetite. The period in our own history of the 
 grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles ' 
 II., when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed 
 to be expressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly 
 power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illumin- ^/^^ 
 ating an age unworthy of him. |At such periods the >,./lU 
 calculating principle pervades all the forms of dramatic 
 
 83 
 
IB ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them 
 Comedy loses its ideal universality : wit suceeds to humour ; 
 •we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of 
 pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to 
 sympathetic merriment ; we hardly laugh, but we smile. 
 Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine 
 beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, 
 more active if less disgusting : it is a monster for which the 
 corruption of society for ever brings forth new food, which 
 it devours in secret. 
 
 The drama being that form under which a greater 
 number of modes of expression of poetry are susceptible of 
 being combined than any other, the connexion of poetry 
 and social good is more observable in the drama than in 
 whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the 
 highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded 
 with the highest dramatic excellence ; and that the corrup- 
 tion or the extinction of the drama in a j nation where it 
 has once flourished, is a mark of | a corruption of manners, 
 and J an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of 
 social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political institutions, 
 that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise 
 capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And 
 this is true with respect to poetry in its most extended 
 sense : all language, institution and form, require not only 
 to be produced but to be sustained : the office and character 
 of a poet participates in the divine nature as regards 
 providence, no less than as regards creation. 
 
 Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance 
 first of the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were 
 so many symbols of the extinction or suspension of the 
 creative faculty in Greece. The bucolic writers, who found 
 patronage under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt, 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY, 19 
 
 were the latest representatives of its most glorious reign. 
 Their poetry is intensely melodious ; like the odour of the 
 tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of 
 sweetness ; whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a 
 meadowrgale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the 
 flowers of the field, and adds /a quickening and harmonising 
 spirit of its own which endows the sense with a power of 
 sustaining its extreme delight. The bucolic and erotic 
 delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness 
 in statuary, music/ and the kindred arts, and even in 
 manners and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to 
 which I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty itself, or 
 any misapplication of it, to which this want of harmony is 
 to be imputed. An equal sensibility to the influence of 
 the senses and the afiections is to be found in the writings 
 of Homer and Sophocles: the former, especially, has 
 clothed sensual and pathetic images with irresistible 
 attractions. Their superiority over these succeeding 
 writers consists in the presence of those thoughts which 
 belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not in the 
 absence of those which are connected with the external : 
 their incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the 
 union of all. It is not what the erotic poets have, but what 
 they have not, in which their imperfection consists. It is 
 not inasmuch as they were poets, but inasmuch as they were 
 not poets, that they can be considered with any plausibility 
 as connected with the corruption of their age. Had that 
 corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility 
 to pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which is imputed 
 to them as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would 
 have been achieved. For the end of social corruption is to 
 destroy all sensibility to pleasure ; and, therefore, it is 
 corruption. It begins at the imagination and the intellect 
 
20 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a paralysing 
 venom, through the affections into the very appetites; until 
 \^. all become a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. 
 
 At the approach of such a period, poetry ever addresses 
 itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, 
 and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astrsea, depart- 
 ing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all the 
 pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever 
 still the light of life ; the source of whatever of beautiful 
 or generous or true can have place in an evil time. It will 
 readily be confessed that those among the luxurious citizens 
 of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted with the 
 poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than 
 the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly 
 Jiavfi destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry 
 rtJUL 'J I can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never 
 been entirely disjoined, which descending through the 
 t^ minds of many men is attached to those great minds, 
 r» JW|5 ) whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent 
 gjp>_ -^ forth, which at once connects, animates/ and sustains the 
 life of all.'" It is the faculty which contains within itself 
 > «^ Ik. » jthe seeds at once of its own and of social renovation. [ And 
 i<A ^u . ilet us not circumscribe the effects of the bucolic and 
 erotic poetry within the limits of the sensibility of those to 
 whom it was addressed. They may have perceived the 
 ^^ '■" beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments 
 Vv'*^ _ and isolated portions : those who are more finely organised, 
 ( or, bom in a happier age, may recognise them as episodes 
 i to that great poem, which all poets, like the co-operating 
 , thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the 
 beginning of the world. 
 
 The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place 
 in anfaent Home ; but the actions and forms of its social 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 2i 
 
 life never seem to have been perfectly saturated with the 
 poetical element. The Romans appear to have considered 
 the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the selectest forms 
 of manners and of nature, and to have abstained from 
 creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or archi- \ 
 tecture, anything which might bear a particular relation 
 to their own condition, whilst it should bear a general one ' M^ 
 to the universal constitution of the world. But we judge 
 from partial evidence, and we judge perhaps partially. 
 Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have 
 been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Yirgil in a very 
 high sense, a creator. The chosen delicacy of expressions 
 of the latter, are as a mist of light which conceal from us ^" 
 the intense and exceeding truth of his conceptions of 
 nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, 
 Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of the 
 Virgilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. 
 The institutions also, and the religion of E-ome, were less 
 poetical Uiat those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid 
 than the substance. Hence (Joetry in Rome seemed to j'/~l • 
 follow, rather than accompany, the perfection of political 
 and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in ""^ 
 its institutions ; for whatever of beautiful, true, and 
 majestic, they contained, could have sprung only from the 
 faculty which creates the order in which they consist. The 
 life of Camillus, the death of Regulus ; the expectation of 
 the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious -^ 
 Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with 
 Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the 
 consequences of a refined calculation of the probable 
 personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order 
 in the shpws of life, to those who were at once the poets Hxc' 
 and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination 
 
39 ESS A VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 /^.v '^«^ 
 
 C 
 
 '■y^*^*^ J beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself 
 L^ according to its own idea ; the consequence was empire, and 
 \tf,)K the reward ever^^living fame. These things are not the less 
 
 poetry, quia carent vate sacro. They are the episodes of 
 that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories 
 of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills 
 the theatre of everlasting generations with their 
 harmony. 
 
 At length the ancient system of religion and manners 
 
 ') had fulfilled the circle of its revolutions. And the world 
 
 would have fallen into utter anarchy and darkness, but 
 
 that there were found poets among the authors of the 
 
 Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion, 
 
 who created forms of opinion and action never before 
 
 conceived ; which, copied into the imaginations of men, 
 
 became as generals to the bewildered armies of their 
 
 ifl4Mui^i/>^ thoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to touch 
 
 ' "" * upon the evil produced by these systems : except that we 
 
 / protest, on the ground of the principles already estab- 
 
 i^.A..r,J I lished, that no portion of it can be attributed to the poetry 
 
 they contain. 
 
 (/(^liXoyH It is probable that the ' poetry of Moses, Job, David, 
 
 Solomon, and Isaiah had produced a great effect upon the 
 
 mind of Jesus and his disciples. The scattered fragments 
 
 preserved to us by the biographers of this extraordinary 
 
 person, are all instinct with the most vivid poetry. But 
 
 his doctrines seem to have been quickly distorted. At 
 
 a certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions 
 
 '7(,jl'«»*j' founded upon those promulgated by him, the three forms 
 
 ijrkhd^^ i'\into which Plato had distributed the faculties of mind 
 
 ^^ *i^*^'7/uiiclerwent a sort of apotheosis, and became the object of 
 
 the worship of the civilised world. Here it is to be 
 
 confessed that " Light seems to thicken," and 
 
 d^^ii^ 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 33 
 
 " The crow makes wing to the rooky wood, 
 Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, 
 And night's black agents to their preys do rouse." 
 
 But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust 
 and blood of this fierce chaos ! how the world, as from a 
 resurrection, balancing itself on the golden wings of know- 
 ledge and of hope, has reassumed its yet unwearied flight 
 into the heaven of time. Listen to the music, unheard by 
 outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible 
 wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength and 
 swiftness. 
 
 The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the 
 mythology and institutions of the Celtic conquerors of the 
 Roman empire, outlived the darkness and the convulsions 
 connected with their growth and victory, and blended 
 themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is 
 an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the 
 Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic 
 nations. Whatever of evil their agencies may have con- 
 tained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle, 
 connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. 
 Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had 
 become insensible and selfish : their own will had become 
 feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves 
 of the will of others : lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, 
 characteris.ed a race amongst whom no one was to be found 
 capable of creating in form, language, or institution. The 
 moral anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to 
 be charged upon any class of events immediately connected 
 with them, and those events are most entitled to our appro- 
 bation which could dissolve it most expeditiously. It is 
 unfortunate for those who cannot distinguish words from 
 
24 ESS A VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 thoughts, that many of these anomalies have been 
 incorporated into our popular religion. 
 
 It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of 
 the poetry of the Christian and thivalric systems began to 
 manifest themselves. The principle of equality had been 
 discovered and applied by Plato in his Republic, as the 
 theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials of 
 pleasure and of power produced by the common skill and 
 labour of human beings ought to be distributed among 
 them. The limitations of this rule were asserted by him to 
 be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the utility 
 to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines of Timreus 
 and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system 
 of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, 
 and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged 
 the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to 
 mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became 
 the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the 
 poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of 
 the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the 
 south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing 
 in their mythology and institutions. The result was a 
 sum of the action and reaction of all the causes included 
 in it ; for it may be assumed as a maxim that no nation 
 or religion can supersede any other without 'incorporat-[ 
 ing into itself a portion of that which it supersedes* 
 ^ Tuo abolition of personal and domestic slavery, and the 
 
 O^ ' emancipation of women from a great part of the degrad- 
 ing restraints of antiquity, were among the consequences 
 of these events. 
 
 rJ t'j'Ml The abolition of personal slavery is : the basis of the 
 highest political hope that it can enter into the mind of 
 man to conceive. The freedom of women produced the 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 25 
 
 poetry of sexual love. Love became a religion, the idols of 
 whose worship were ever present. It was as if the statues 
 of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and 
 motion, and had walked forth among their worshippers \ so 
 that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a diviner 
 world. The familiar appearance and proceedings of life 
 became wonderful and heavenly,' and a paradise was created 
 as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself 
 is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was 
 the instrument of their art : " Galeotto fu il libro, e chi 
 lo scrisse." The Provengal Trouveurs, or inventors, pre- 
 ceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal 
 the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in 
 the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without 
 becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate : 
 it were superfluous to explain how the gentleness and the 
 elevation of mind connected with these sacred emotions can 
 render men more amiable, moi?e generous and wise, and lift 
 them out of the^duU vapours of the little world of self. 
 Dante understood the secret things of love even more than 
 Petrarch. His Yita Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of 
 purity of sentiment and language : it is the idealised his- 
 tory of that period, and those intervals of his life which 
 were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in 
 Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her love- 
 liness, by /which as by steps he feigns himself to have 
 ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most 
 glorious imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics Ct 
 have justly reversed the judgment of the vulgar, and the 
 order of the great acts of the " Divine Drama," in the 
 measure of the admiration which they accord to the Hell, 
 Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn ^ 
 
 of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in C-^-j^ 
 
IttClHt 
 
 26 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Plato alone of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a 
 
 chorus of the greatest writers of the renovated world ; and 
 
 the music has penetrated the caverns of society, and its 
 
 ♦ < • / echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and superstition 
 
 ^jx-«/t- -^t successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakspeare, Spenser 
 
 jy/j^r^ Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own agC; 
 
 have celebrated the dominion of love, planting as it were 
 trophies in the human mind of that sublimest victory ovei 
 sensuality and force. The true relation borne to each othei 
 by the sexes into which human kind is distributed, has 
 become less misunderstood ; and if the error which con 
 founded diversity with inequality of the powers of the twc 
 sexes has been partially recognised in the opinions and 
 institutions of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit tc 
 
 'vfi>At^ hA^** the worship of which chivalry was the law, and poets th( 
 
 jlK^7 prophets. 
 
 The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge 
 thrown over the stream of time, which unites the moderr 
 and ancient ifirbrld. The distorted notions of invisible 
 things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealised, are 
 merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets 
 walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is i 
 difficult question to determine how far they were conscious 
 of the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds 
 between their own creeds and that of the people. Dante 
 at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it bj 
 placing Riphseus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus, ir 
 Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his dis 
 tribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton's poerr 
 contains within itself a philosophical refutation of thai 
 gystem, of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, i\ 
 has been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the 
 energy and magnificence of the character of Satan aj 
 
.YH^''' ' 
 
 c4^- 
 
 3 ,1 i^ 
 
 -4 DEFENCE OF POETRY. 27 
 
 expressed in "Paradise Lost." It is a mistake to suppose 
 that he could ever have been intended for the popular per- 
 sonification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and 
 a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest 
 anguish on an enemy, these things are evil ; and, although 
 venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; 
 although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one 
 subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in 
 the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far 
 superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose 
 which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity 
 and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted 
 triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, 
 not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of 
 a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of 
 exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so 
 far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be 
 a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue 
 to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a 
 direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the 
 supremacy of Milton's genius. He mingled as it were the 
 elements of human nature as colours upon a single pallet, 
 and arranged them in the composition of his great picture 
 according to the laws of epic truth ; that is, according 
 to the laws of that principle by which a series of actions 
 of the external universe and of intelligent and ethical 
 beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding 
 generations of mankind. The Divina Gommedia and 
 Paradise Lost have conferred upon modern mythology a 
 systematic form ; and when change and time shall have 
 added one more superstition to the mass of those which 
 have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators 
 will be learnedly employed in elucidating the religion of 
 
V) 
 
 28 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 ancestral Europe, only not utterly forgotten because it will 
 have been stamped with the eternity of genius. 
 
 Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet : 
 that is, the second poet, the series of whose creations bore 
 a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and 
 sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of 
 the ages which followed it; developing itself in correspond- 
 ence with their development. For Lucretius had, limed the 
 wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world ; 
 and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his genius, had 
 afiected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created 
 anew all that he copied ; and none among the flock of 
 mock-birds, though their notes were sweet, Apollonius 
 Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, / Nonnus, Lucan, Statins, or 
 Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of 
 epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For if the 
 title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the ^neid, 
 still less can it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the 
 Gerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen. 
 / Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the 
 antient religion of the civilised world ; and its spirit exists 
 in their poetry probably in the same proportion as its forms 
 survived in the unreformed worship of modern Europe. 
 The one preceded and the other followed the Reformation 
 at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious 
 reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness 
 and acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures of papal 
 usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced 
 Europe ; he created a language/ in itself music and persua- 
 sion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was 
 theicongregator of those great spirits who presided over the 
 resurrection of learning ; the Lucifer of that starry flock 
 which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican 
 
/^ M DEFENCE OF POETRY. 29 \ 
 
 Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted 
 world. His very words are instinct with spirit ; each is as y 
 a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought ; and ' -^ / 
 many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and preg- 
 nant with the lightning which has yet found no conductor. 
 All high poetry is infinite j it is as the first acorn, which 
 contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be un- ; > 
 drawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never 
 exposed. A great poem is a fountain for ever overflowing 
 with the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one ' 
 
 person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence 
 . which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another 
 and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever 
 developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived 
 delight. )C 
 
 The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, 
 Petrarch, and Boccaccio, was characterised by a revival 
 CiH^loi painting, sculpture, ' and architecture. Chaucer caught 
 -1 / the sacred inspiration, ' and the superstructure of English 
 literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention. 
 But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical 
 ^J history of poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough 
 ' to have pointed out the efiects of poets, in the large and /'^<fe//i 
 true sense of the word, upon their own and all succeeding J 
 
 times. 
 
 But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown 
 to reasoners and mechanists, on another plea. It is 
 admitted that the exercise of the imagination is most 
 delightful, but it is alleged that that of reason is more ^/ 
 useful. Let us examine as the grounds of this distinction <^- 
 what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a 
 general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive 
 and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it 
 
15 ^-<r £"^5^ KS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 acquiesces, i There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, 
 universal, and permanent ; the other transitory and par- 
 ticular. Utility may either express the means of producing 
 the former or the latter. In the former sense, whatever 
 strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagina- 
 tion, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower 
 meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining it 
 to express that which banishes the importunity of the 
 w.ants of our animal nature, the surrounding men with 
 security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of 
 superstition, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual 
 forbearance among men as may consist with the motives of 
 personal advantage. 
 
 Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited 
 sense, have their appointed office in society. They follow 
 the footsteps of poets, and copy the sketches of their 
 creations into the book of common life. They make space, 
 and give time. Their exertions are of the highest value, so 
 long as they confine their administration of the concerns of 
 the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to 
 the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross 
 superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French 
 writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon 
 the imaginations of m^n. Whilst the mechanist abridges, 
 and the political economist combines labour, let thera 
 beware that their speculations, for want of correspondence 
 with those first principles which belong to the imagination, 
 do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate 
 at once the extremes of luxury and want. They have/ 
 exemplified the saying, " To him that hath, more shall be 
 given ; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath 
 shall be taken away." The rich have become richer, and 
 the poor have become poorer ; and the vessel of the state is 
 
 fi^. 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 31 
 
 driven between the Scylla and Oharybdis of anarchy and 4 [nCve^vtvO 
 despotism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from 
 an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty. 
 
 It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense ; 
 the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. 
 For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the con- 
 stitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is 
 frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior 
 portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair 
 itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation 
 to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction 
 depends on this principle ; tragedy delights by aflfording 
 a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the 
 source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the 
 sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter 
 than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, 
 " It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the 
 house of mirth." Not that this highest species of pleasure 
 is necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and 
 friendship, the ecstacy of the admiration of nature, the joy 
 of the^ perception and still more of the creation of poetry, is 
 often wholly unalloyed- 
 
 The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest 
 sense is true utility. Those who produce and preserve this 
 pleasure are poets or poetical philosophers. 
 
 The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Yoltaire, 
 Rousseau,* and their disciples, in favour of oppressed and 
 deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. 
 Yet it is easy to calculate the degree of moral and 
 intellectual improvement which the world would have 
 exhibited, had they never lived. A ^little more nonsense ;,;'*' "^"^^ ^*^ 
 
 * Although Rousseau has beea-^ua-dassedrhe was essentially a 
 J^oet. The others, even Voltaire, were more reasoners. _ 
 
32 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. ' 
 
 would have been talked for a century or two ; and perhaj 
 a few more men/ women- and children burnt as heretic 
 We might not at this moment have been congratulatin 
 each other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spaii 
 But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would ha\ 
 [a^^i been the ^' moral condition of the world if neither Dant 
 Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ohaucer, Shakspeare, Calderon, Lor 
 Bacon, nor Milton,/ had ever existed ; if E-aphael an 
 
 Michael Angelo had never been born ; if the Hebre 
 poetry had never been translated ; if a revival of the stud 
 of Greek literature had never taken place; if no mom 
 ments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to m 
 and if the poetry of the religion of the anlbient world ha 
 been extinguished together with its belief. The hum a 
 mind could never, except by the intervention of the; 
 excitements, have been awakened to the invention of tl 
 grosser sciences, and that application of analytical/ reasoi 
 ing to the aberrations of society, which it is now attemptc 
 to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive ar 
 creative faculty itself; 
 
 We have more moral, political, and historical wisdo: 
 than we know how to reduce into practice ; we have moi 
 scientific and economical knowledge than can be accor 
 modated to the just distribution of the produce which 
 multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought is co 
 cealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating pr 
 cesses. There is no want of knowledge respecting what 
 wisest and best in morals, government, and political econom 
 or at least, what is wiser and better than what men no 
 practise and endure. But wo let " / dare not wait upon 
 wouldf like the poor cat in the adage." We want tl 
 creative faculty to imagine that which wo know ; we wai 
 the generous impulse to act that which we imagine ; \ 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 33 
 
 ivant the poetry of life : our calculations have outrun con- 
 3eption ; we have eaten more than we can digest. The 
 cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits 
 )f the empire of man over the external world, has, for want 
 )f the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those 
 )f the internal world ; and man, having enslaved the 
 elements, remains himself a slave. To what but a cultiva- 
 ion of the mechanical arts in a degree disproportioned to 
 ihe presence of the creative faculty, which is the basis of all 
 i:nowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention for 
 ibridging and combining labour, to the exasperation of the 
 nequality of mankind % From what other cause has it 
 irisen that the discoveries which should have lightened, 
 lave added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam \ 
 Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which /jiioney is the 
 i^isible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world. 
 
 The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one 
 t creates new materials pf knowledge, and power, and 
 pleasure ; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to 
 reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm 
 md order which may be called the beautiful and the good, 
 rhe cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than 
 it periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculat- 
 ng principle; the accumulation of the materials of external 
 ife exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them 
 :o the internal laws of human nature. The body has then 
 3ecome too unwieldy for that which animates it. 
 
 Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the 
 centre and circumference of knowledge ; it is that which 
 comprehends all science, and that to which all science must 
 be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom 
 ■yi all other systems of thought ; it is that from which all 
 spring, and that which adorns all ; and that which, if 
 
 Wa 
 
34 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 blighted,' denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds froi 
 
 the barren world the nourishment and the succession of th 
 
 f ■ scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummat 
 
 ^ surface and bloom of all things ; it is as the odour and th 
 
 colour of the rose to the texture of the elements whic 
 
 p, compose it, as the form and /splendour of unfaded beauty t 
 
 the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtu* 
 
 love, patriotism, friendship — what were the scenery of thi 
 
 beautiful liniverse which we inhabit ; what were our cor 
 
 ^ solations on this side of the grave-^and what were ou 
 
 aspirations beyond it, if j^oetry did not ascend to brin 
 
 jtCiC^itot? light and fire from those eternal regions where the/ow 
 
 * ifiJilJL winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar ? Poetr 
 
 fjt^ Uf^ ^is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according t 
 
 oJtLt.fr*^'^ ^ l^^^ determination of the will. A man cannot say, " I wi 
 
 tL ki^jil Ip^^^V^^^ poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it 
 
 L^ r J for the mind in creation is as a fading coal/ which sora 
 
 n^^^ invisible influence, like an inconstant windj awakens t 
 
 ' r ^ transitory brightness j this power arises from within, lik 
 
 ^^ the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it i 
 
 fi^jMniJ^j developed, and the conscious portions of our natures ar 
 
 unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Coul 
 
 this influence be durable in its original purity and force, i 
 
 is impossible to predict the greatness of the results ; hw 
 
 IH^^ when composition begins/f inspiration is already on th 
 
 decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever bee 
 
 communicated to the world is probably /a feeble shadow c 
 
 the original conception^ of the i»oet. I appeal to th 
 
 '!^*il5^' great^**! poets of the present day, whether it jus' not an errc 
 
 to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced b 
 
 labour and study. The toil and the delay recommende 
 
 by critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than 
 
 careful observation of the inspired moments, and a 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 35 
 
 artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions 
 
 by the intertexture of conventional expressions ; a necessity 
 
 only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty 
 
 itself/ for Milton conceived the -*♦ Paradise Lost" as a 
 
 whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own 
 
 authority also for the muse having " dictated " to him the 
 
 " unpremeditated songj[' And let this be an answer to 
 
 those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of 
 
 the first line of the " Orlando Furioso.** / Compositions so '' 
 
 produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This 
 
 instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still more 
 
 observable in the plastic and pictorial arts ; a great statue 
 
 or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in -) 7 
 
 the mother's womb ; and the very mind which directs the 
 
 hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for 
 
 the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process. 
 
 Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of 
 the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent 
 visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with 
 place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, 
 and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but 
 elevating and delightful beyond all expression : so that 
 even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot 
 but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its 
 object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner 
 nature through our own ; but its footsteps are like those of / 
 
 'a wind over tfee/sea, which the coming calm erases, and ^/ 
 whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sands which ^ 
 paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are 
 experienced principally by those of the most delicate sen- 
 sibility and the most enlarged imagination ; and the state 
 of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. 
 The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship 
 
36 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 f^H^f is essentially linked with uaeh emotions ; and whilst thej 
 / last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe, 
 Poets /are not only subject to these j experiences as spirits 
 of the most refined organisation, but they can colour al' 
 that they combine with the evanescent hues of this etherea' 
 world ; a word, ja trait in the representation of a scene or a 
 passion will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, ir 
 those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleep 
 ing, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus 
 makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful/ in t\u 
 world ; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which hauni 
 the interlunations of life, and veiling them/ or in language 
 or in form/ sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweel 
 news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide 
 — abide, because there is no portal of expression from the 
 caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe 
 of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations ol 
 the divinity in /man. 
 
 Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the 
 beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty 
 to that which is most deformed ; it marries exultation anc 
 horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change ; it subdue; 
 to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things. Ii 
 transmutes all that it touches, and every form movinf 
 within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrou! 
 sympathy^ to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes 
 its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters 
 which flow from death through life ; it strips the veil o 
 familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked anc 
 sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms. 
 
 All things exist as they are perceived : at least ir 
 relation to the percipient. " The mind is its own fplace 
 and of itself can make a l!j*caven of nell, a hell of Jfeaven.' 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 37 
 
 But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected 
 
 to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether 
 
 it spreads its own figured curtainy or withdraws life's dark 
 
 veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for 
 
 us a being within our -being. It makes us the inhabitants 
 
 of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It 
 
 reproduces the common Universe of which we are portions 
 
 and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the 
 
 iilm of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of . ;■ 
 
 our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, 
 
 and to imagine that \7hich we know. It creates anew the 
 
 universe, after it i has been annihilated in our minds by the 
 
 recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It >^ 
 
 justifies tibe bold and true words of Tass-o — Non merita vi 
 
 nome di creator e, se non Iddio ed il Poeta. 
 
 A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest 
 wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally 
 to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most 
 illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged 
 to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of 
 human life be comparable to that of a poet That he is 
 the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a 
 poet, is equally incontrovertible : the greatest ^oets have / f^*i>' 
 been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consum- 
 mate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of 
 their lives, the most fortunate of men : and the exceptions, 
 as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a ' 
 
 high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to 
 confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment 
 stoop to the arbitration of popular breath, and usurping 
 and uniting in our own persons the incompatible characters 
 of accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us decide 
 without trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives 
 
38 
 
 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 Jl 
 
 'oU 
 
 of those who are " there sitting where we dare not soar,' 
 are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a 
 drunkard, that Yirgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a 
 coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a 
 peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a 
 poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our 
 subject to cite living poets, but cfosterity has done ample 
 justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors 
 have been weighed and found to have been dust in the 
 balance ; if their sins **'were as scarlet, they are*now white 
 as snow ;"' they have been washed in the blood of the 
 mediator and redeemer/Time. Observe in what a ludicrous 
 chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been 
 confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and 
 poets; consider how little is, as it appears — or appears, as it is; 
 look to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged. 
 ,j , Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from 
 logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active 
 powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence ha^e 
 no necessary connection with ihe consciousness or will. It 
 is presumptuous to determine that these are the necessary 
 conditions of all mental causation, when mental effects are 
 experienced unsusceptible of being referred to them. TJie 
 frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to 
 suppose, may produce in the mind ay habit of order and 
 / harmony correlative with its own nature and with its effects 
 
 upon other minds. But in the intervals of inspiration, and 
 they may be frequent without being durable, aipoet becomes 
 a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the 
 influences under which others habitually live. But as he is 
 more delicately organised than other men, and /sensible to 
 pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a 
 degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue 
 
 .;u^v. 
 
 7 
 
 /<< 
 
 7 
 
 ^ ^4Ui} ^JU^ 
 
A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 39 . 
 
 the other with an ardour proportioned to this difference. 
 And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he 
 neglects to observe the circumstances under which these 
 objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised 
 themselves in one another's garments. 
 
 But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and 
 thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions 
 purely evil, have never formed any portion of the popular 
 imputations on the lives of poets. ^ .. 
 
 I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth Cry\tcf^J 
 to set down these remarks according to the order in which 
 they were suggested to my mind, by a consideration of the 
 subject itself, instead of observing - the formality of a 
 polemical reply ; but if the view which they contain be - 
 
 just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the ^^^^f^i'^ 
 arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first / 
 division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what ^^ /" 
 should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent^ . f^*^^ 
 writers who quarrel with certain versifiers ; I confess myself, 
 like them, unwilling to be stunned by the Theseids of the 
 hoarse Oodri of the day." Bavius and Msevius undoubtedly 
 are, as they ever were, insufierable persons, But it belongs 
 to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound. 
 
 The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in 
 its elements and principles ; and it has been shown, as well -O / 
 as the narrow limits assigned them would permit, that what / 
 is called poetry, in a restricted sense, has a common source ' 
 with all other forms of order and of beauty, according to 
 which the materials of human life are susceptible of being 
 arranged, and which is poetry in an universal sense. 
 
 The second part /will have for its object an application of 'i- \Via^ 
 these principles to the present state of the cultivation of Tfc#.v«AAbJ 
 poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealise the modern 
 
 J 
 
40 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 /^ forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into £ 
 subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty. Foi 
 the literature of England, an energetic development o: 
 which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and fre( 
 development of the national -will, has arisen as it were fron 
 a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy whicl 
 would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will b( 
 a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we liv( 
 among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond com 
 parison any who have appeared since the last nationa 
 struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing 
 herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of i 
 great people to work a beneficial change in opinion o] 
 institution, is poetry. At such periods there is an accumu 
 lation of the power of communicating and receiving intens< 
 and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature 
 The persons in whom this power resides, may oftei?/ as fai 
 as regards many portions of their nature, have litth 
 apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of whicl 
 they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny am 
 abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the,^ower which ii 
 ^b seated on the throne of their own soul. It is impossible t< 
 
 read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of th( 
 present day without being startled with the electric lif< 
 which burns within their words. They measure the cir 
 cumference and sound the depths of human nature with s 
 comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they ar( 
 themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at iti 
 manifestations ; for it is less their spirit than the spirit o 
 the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehendec 
 inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows whicl 
 futurity casts upon the present ; the words which expresi 
 what they understand not; the trumpets which sing t( 
 
ON THE MANNERS OF THE ANCIENTS. 41 
 
 battle, and feel not what they inspire ; the influence which 
 is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged 
 legislators of the world. 
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THE MANNERS OF THE ANCIENTS, RELATIVE TO 
 THE SUBJECT OF LOVE. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. ■**■ 
 
 The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles 
 and the death of Aristotle, is undoubtedly, whether con- 
 sidered in itself or with reference to the effects which it has 
 produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilised man, 
 the most memorable in the history of the world. What 
 was the combination of moral and political circumstances 
 which produced so unparelleled a progress during that 
 period in literature and the arts; — why that progress, so 
 rapid and so sustained, so soon received a 'check, and 
 became retrograde, — are problems left to the wonder and 
 conjecture of posterity. The wrecks and fragments of 
 those €ubtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine 
 statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection 
 of the whole. Their very language — a type of the 
 understandings of which it was the creation and the 
 image — in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in 
 copiousness, excels every other language of the western 
 world. Their sculptures are such as we, in our presump- 
 tion, assume to be the models of ideal truth and beauty, 
 
 * This Essay was intended to be a commentary on tlie Symposium, 
 or Banquet of Plato, but it breaks off at the moment when the main 
 subject is about to be discussed. 
 
42 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 and to which no artist of modern times can produce forms 
 in any degree comparable. Their paintings, according to 
 Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and harmony ; 
 and some even were powerfully pathetic, so as to awaken, 
 like tender music or tragic poetry, the most overwhelming 
 emotions. We are accustomed to conceive the painters of 
 the sixteenth century, as those who have brought their art 
 to the highest perfection, probably because none of the 
 ancient paintings have been preserved. For all the 
 inventive arts maintain, as it were, a sympathetic con- 
 nexion between each other, being no more than various 
 expressions of one internal power, modified by difierent 
 circumstances, either of an individual, or of society ; and 
 the paintings of that period would probably bear the same 
 relation as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all 
 succeeding ones. Of their music we know little ; but the 
 efiects which it is said to have produced, whether they be 
 attributed to the skill of the composer, or the sensibility of 
 his audience, are far more powerful than any which we 
 experience from the music of our own times; and if, 
 indeed, the melody of their compositions were more tender 
 and delicate, and inspiring, than the melodies of some 
 modern European nations, their superiority in this art 
 must have been something wonderful, and wholly beyond 
 conception. 
 
 Their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not 
 so disproportionate a rank, in the comparison. Perhaps 
 Shakspeare, from the variety and comprehension of his 
 genius, is to be considered, on the whole, as the greatest 
 individual mind, of which we have specimens remaining. 
 Perhaps Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness 
 and energy than any that are to be found in the ancient 
 literature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has been discovered 
 
ON THE MANNERS OF THE ANCIENTS. 43 
 
 in the fragments of the Greek lyric poets equivalent to the 
 sublime and chivalric sensibility of Petrarch. — But, as a 
 poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakspeare 
 in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the 
 satisfying completeness of his images, their exact fitness to 
 the illustration, and to that to which they belong. Nor 
 could Dante, deficient in conduct, plan, nature, variety, and 
 temperance, have been brought into comparison with these 
 men, but for those fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit, 
 which alone could tempt any one to embark in the misty 
 ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction. 
 
 But, omitting the comparison of individual minds, which 
 can afford no general inference, how superior was the spirit 
 and system of their poetry to that of any other period. So 
 that, had any other genius equal in other respects to the 
 greatest that ever enlightened the world, arisen in that 
 age, he would have been superior to all, from this circum- 
 stance alone — that his conceptions would have assumed a 
 more harmonious and perfect form. For it is worthy of 
 observation, that whatever the poets of that age produced 
 is as harmonious and perfect as possible. If a drama, for 
 instance, were the composition of a person of inferior talent, 
 it was still homogeneous and free from inequalities ; it was 
 a whole, consistent with itself. The compositions of great 
 minds bore throughout the sustained stamp of their great- 
 ness. In the poetry of succeeding ages the expectations 
 are often exalted on Icarean wings, and fall, too much dis- 
 appointed to give a memory and a name to the oblivious 
 pool in which they fell. 
 
 In physical knowledge Aristotle and Theophrastus had 
 already — no doubt assisted by the labours of those of their 
 predecessors whom they criticise — made advances worthy 
 of the maturity of science. The astonishing invention of 
 
44 JSSSA VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 geometry, that series of discoveries which have enabled 
 man to command the elements and foresee future events, 
 before the subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have 
 opened as it were the doors of the mysteries of nature, had 
 already been brought to great perfection. Metaphysics, the 
 science of man's intimate nature, and logic, or the grammar 
 and elementary principles of that science, received from the 
 latter philosophers of the Periclean age a firm basis. All 
 our more exact philosophy is built upon the labours of these 
 great men, and many of the words which we employ in 
 metaphysical distinctions were invented by them to give 
 accuracy and system to their reasonings. The science of 
 morals, or the voluntary conduct of men in relation to 
 themselves or others, dates from this epoch. How inex- 
 pressibly bolder and more pure were the doctrines of those 
 great men, in comparison with the timid maxims which 
 prevail in the writings of the most esteemed modern 
 moralists. They were such as Phocion, and Epaminondas, 
 and Timoleon, who formed themselves on their influence, 
 were to the wretched heroes of our own age. 
 
 Their political and religious institutions are more difficult 
 to bring into comparison with those of other times. A 
 summary idea may be formed of the worth of any political 
 and religious system, by observing the comparative degree 
 of happiness and of intellect produced under its influence. 
 And whilst many institutions and opinions, which in 
 ancient Greece were obstacles to the improvement of the 
 human race, have been abolished among modern nations, 
 how many pernicious superstitions and new contrivances of 
 misrule, and unheard-of complications of public mischief, 
 have not been invented among them by the ever-watchful 
 spirit of avarice and tyranny. 
 
 The modem nations of the civilised world owe the 
 
ON THE MANNERS OF THE ANCIENTS. 45 
 
 progress which they have made — as well in those physical 
 sciences in which they have already excelled their masters, 
 as in the moral and intellectual inquiries, in which, with 
 all the advantage of the experience of the latter, it can 
 scarcely be said that they have yet equalled them, — to 
 what is called the revival of learning ; that is, the study of 
 the writers of the age which preceded and immediately 
 followed the government of Pericles, or of subsequent 
 writers, who were, so to speak, the rivers flowing from 
 those immortal fountains. And though there seems to be a 
 principle in the modern world, which, should circumstances 
 analogous to those which modelled the intellectual resources 
 of the age to which we refer, into so harmonious a propor- 
 tion, again arise, would arrest and perpetuate them, and 
 consign their results to a more equal, extensive, and lasting 
 improvement of the condition of man — though justice and 
 the true meaning of human society are, if not more accu- 
 rately, more generally understood; though perhaps men 
 know more, and therefore are more, as a mass, yet this 
 principle has never been called into action, and requires 
 indeed a universal and almost appalling change in the 
 system of existing things. The study of modern history is 
 the study of kings, financiers, statesmen, and priests. The 
 history of ancient Greece is the study of legislators, philo- 
 sophers, and poets ; it is the history of men, compared with 
 the history of titles. What the Greeks were, was a reality, 
 not a promise. And what we are and hope to be, is 
 derived, as it were, from the influence and inspiration of 
 these glorious generations. 
 
 Whatever tends to afford a further illustration of the 
 manners and opinions of those to whom we owe so much, 
 and who were, perhaps, on the whole, the most perfect 
 specimens of humanity of whom we have authentic record. 
 
46 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 were infinitely valuable. Let us see their errors, their 
 weaknesses, their daily actions, their familiar conversation, 
 and catch the tone of their society. When we discover 
 how far the most admirable community ever framed, was 
 removed from that perfection to which human society is 
 impelled by some active power within each bosom, to aspire, 
 how great ought to be our hopes, how resolute our struggles. 
 For the Greeks of the Periclean age were widely different 
 from us. It is to be lamented that no modern writer has 
 hitherto dared to show them precisely as they were. 
 Barth^lemi cannot be denied the praise of industry and 
 system; but he never forgets that he is a Christian and a 
 Frenchman. Wieland, in his delightful novels, makes 
 indeed a very tolerable Pagan, but cherishes too many 
 political prejudices, and refrains from diminishing the 
 interest of his romances by painting sentiments in which 
 no European of modern times can possibly sympathise. 
 There is no book which shows the Greeks precisely as they 
 were ; they seem all written for children, with the caution 
 that no practice or sentiment, highly inconsistent with our 
 present manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners 
 should receive outrage and violation. But there are many 
 to whom the Greek language is inaccessible, who ought not 
 to be excluded by this prudery from possessing an exact 
 and comprehensive conception of the history of man ; for 
 there is no knowledge concerning what man has been and 
 may be, from partaking of which a person can depart, 
 without becoming in some degree more philosophical, 
 tolerant, and just. 
 
 One of the chief distinctions between the manners of 
 ancient Greece and modern Europe consisted in the regula- 
 tions and the sentiments respecting sexual intercourse. 
 Whether this difference arises from some imperfect 
 
ON THE MANNERS OF THE ANCIENTS. 47 
 
 influence of the doctrines of Jesus Christ, who alleges the 
 absolute and unconditional equality of all human beings, or 
 from the institutions of chivalry, or from a certain funda- 
 mental difference of physical nature existing in the Celts, 
 or from a combination of all or any of these causes, acting 
 on each other, is a question worthy of voluminous investiga- 
 tion. The fact is, that the modern Europeans have in this 
 circumstance, and in the abolition of slavery, made an 
 improvement the most decisive in the regulation of human 
 society ; and all the virtue and the wisdom of the 
 Periclean age arose under other institutions, in spite of the 
 diminution which personal slavery and the inferiority of 
 women, recognised by law and opinion, must have produced 
 in the delicacy, the strength, the comprehensiveness, and 
 the accuracy of their conceptions, in moral, political, and 
 metaphysical science, and perhaps in every other art and 
 science. 
 
 The women, thus degraded, became such as it was 
 expected they would become. They possessed, except with 
 extraordinary exceptions, the habits and the qualities of 
 slaves. They were probably not extremely beautiful ; at 
 least there was no such disproportion in the attractions of 
 the external form between the female and male sex among 
 the Greeks, as exists among the modern Europeans. They 
 were certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual loveli- 
 ness with which the acquisition of knowledge and the 
 cultivation of sentiment animates, as with another life of 
 overpowering grace, the lineaments and the gestures of 
 every form which they inhabit. Their eyes could not have 
 been deep and intricate from the workings of the mind, 
 and could have entangled no heart in soul-enwoven 
 labyrinths. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks were 
 
48 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 deprived of its legitimate object, they were incapable of 
 sentimental love, and that this passion is the mere child of 
 chivalry and the literature of modern times. This object, or 
 its archetype, forever exists in the mind, which selects among 
 those who resemble it, that which most resembles it ; and 
 instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect image, 
 in the same manner as the imagination moulds and 
 completes the shapes in clouds, or in the fire, into the 
 resemblances of whatever form, animal, building, etc., 
 happens to be present to it. Man is in his wildest state a 
 social being : a certain degree of civilisation and refine- 
 ment ever produces the want of sympathies still more 
 intimate and complete ; and the gratification of the senses 
 is no longer all that is sought in sexual connection. It 
 soon becomes a very small part of that profound and 
 complicated sentiment, which we call love, which is rather 
 the universal thirst for a communion not merely of the 
 senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative, 
 and sensitive ; and which, when individualised, becomes an 
 imperious necessity, only to be satisfied by the complete or 
 partial, actual or supposed, fulfilment of its claims. This 
 want grows more powerful in proportion to the develop- 
 ment which our nature receives from civilisation ; for man 
 never ceases to be a social being. The sexual impulse, 
 which is only one, and often a small party of those claims, 
 serves, from its obvious and external nature, as a kind of 
 type or expression of the rest, a common basis, an acknow- 
 ledged and visible link. Still it is a claim which even 
 derives a strength not its own from the accessory 
 circumstances which surround it, and one which our nature 
 thirsts to satisfy. To estimate this, observe the degree of 
 intensity and durability of the love of the male towards the 
 female in animals and savages ; and acknowledge all the 
 
ON THE SYMPOSIUM. 49 
 
 duration and intensity observable in the love of civilised 
 beings beyond that of savages to be produced from other 
 causes. In the susceptibility of the external senses there is 
 probably no important difference. 
 
 Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the 
 human race, received the highest cultivation and refine- 
 ment ; whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were 
 educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all 
 that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the 
 condition of savages. The gradations in the society of man 
 present us with a slow improvement in this respect. The 
 Roman women held a higher consideration in society, and 
 were esteemed almost as the equal partners with their 
 husbands in the regulation of domestic economy and the 
 education of their children. The practices and customs of 
 modern Europe are essentially different from and incom- 
 parably less pernicious than either, however remote from 
 what an enlightened mind cannot fail to desire as the future 
 destiny of human beings. 
 
 ON THE SYMPOSIUM, 
 
 OR, PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 The dialogue entitled " The Banquet," was selected by 
 the translator as the most beautiful and perfect among all 
 the works of Plato.* He despairs of having communicated 
 to the English language any portion of the surpassing graces 
 
 * The Republic, though replete with considerable errors of specula- 
 tion, is, indeed, the greatest repository of important truths of all the 
 works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is the longest. He first, 
 and perhaps Jast, maintained that a state ought to be governed, not 
 
 85 
 
50 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 of the composition, or having done more than present an 
 imperfect shadow of the language and the sentiment of this 
 astonishing production. 
 
 Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek philo- 
 sophers, and from, or, rather, perhaps through him, his 
 master Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of moral 
 and metaphysical knowledge, on which a long series and an 
 incalculable variety of popular superstitions have sheltered 
 their absurdities from the slow contempt of mankind. 
 Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic, with 
 the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendour 
 and harmony of his periods into one irresistible stream of 
 musical impressions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as 
 in a breathless career. His language is that of an immortal 
 spirit, rather than a man. Lord Bacon is, perhaps, the only 
 writer, who, in these particulars, can be compared with him : 
 his imitator, Cicero, sinks in the comparison into an ape 
 mocking the gestures of a man. His views into the nature 
 of mind and existence are often obscure, only because they 
 are profound ; and though his theories respecting the 
 government of the world, and the elementary laws of 
 moral action, are not always correct, yet there is scarcely 
 any of his treatises which do not, however stained by 
 puerile sophisms, contain the most remarkable intuitions 
 into all that can be the subject of the human mind. His 
 excellence consists especially in intuition, and it is this 
 faculty which raises him far above Aristotle, whose genius, 
 though vivid and various, is obscure in comparison with 
 that of Plato. 
 
 by the wealthiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but by 
 the wisest; the method of selecting such rulers, and the laws by which 
 such a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of the 
 moral freedom and refinement of the people. 
 
ON LOVE. 51 
 
 The dialogue entitled " The Banquet," is called EpojrcKos, 
 or a Discussion upon Love, and is supposed to have taten 
 place at the house of Agathon, at one of a series of 
 festivals given by that poet, on the occasion of his gaining 
 the prize of tragedy at the Dionysiaca. The account of the 
 debate of this occasion is supposed to have been given by 
 Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many years after it had 
 taken place, to a companion who was curious to hear it. 
 This Apollodorus appears, both from the style in which he 
 is represented in this piece, as well as from a passage in the 
 Phsedon, to have been a person of an impassioned and 
 enthusiastic disposition; to borrow an image from the 
 Italian Painters, he seems to have been the St. John of 
 the Socratic group. The drama (for so the lively dis- 
 tinction of character and the various and well-wrought 
 circumstances of the story almost entitle it to be called) 
 begins by Socrates persuading Aristodemus to sup at 
 Agathon's, uninvited. The whole of this introduction 
 affords the most lively conception of refined Athenian 
 manners. 
 
 [unfinished.] 
 
 ON LOVE. 
 
 What is love % Ask him who lives, what is life ^ ask him 
 who adores, what is God % 
 
 I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor 
 even thine, whom I now address. I see that in some 
 external attributes they resemble me, but when, misled 
 by that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something 
 in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have 
 
Si ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and 
 savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded 
 me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval 
 between us, and to a greater distance have the points of 
 sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill fitted to 
 sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its 
 tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have 
 found only repulse and disappointment. 
 
 Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful 
 attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope 
 beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts 
 the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all 
 things that are, a community with what we experience 
 within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood j 
 if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain 
 were born anew within another's ; if we feel, we would that 
 another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams 
 of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into 
 our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips 
 quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This 
 is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects 
 not only man with man, but with everything which exists. 
 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. It is probably in correspondence 
 with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom 
 of its mother; this propensity develops itself with the 
 development of our nature. 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 or lovely that we are 
 capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. 
 Not only the portrait of our external being, but an 
 
ON LOVE, S3 
 
 assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is 
 composed ; * a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms 
 of purity and brightness; a soul within our 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. The discovery of its antitype ; the 
 meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimat- 
 ing our own ; an imagination which should enter into and 
 seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we 
 have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret ; with a frame 
 whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung 
 to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate 
 with the vibrations of our own ; and of a combination of all 
 these in such proportion as the type within demands ; this 
 is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends : 
 and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to 
 arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of 
 which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it 
 rules. Hence 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, and 
 the waters, and the sTsy. 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 
 rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceiv- 
 able 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 
 
 * These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are 
 BO— No help ! 
 
54 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 alone. Sterne says that, if he were in a desert, he would 
 love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, 
 man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet 
 survives is the mere husk of what once he was. 
 
 THE COLISEUM. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 At the hour of noon, on the feast of the Passover, an old 
 man, accompanied by a girl, apparently his daughter, 
 entered the Coliseum at Rome. They immediately passed 
 through the Arena, and seeking a solitary chasm among the 
 arches of the southern part of the ruin, selected a fallen 
 column for their seat, and clasping each other's hands, sate 
 as in silent contemplation of the scene. But the eyes of 
 the girl were fixed upon her father's lips, and his counten- 
 ance, sublime and sweet, but motionless as some Praxitelean 
 image of the greatest of poets, filled the silent air with 
 smiles, not reflected from external forms. 
 
 It was the great feast of the Resurrection, and the whole 
 native population of Rome, together with all the foreigners 
 who flock from all parts of the earth to contemplate its 
 celebration, were assembled round the Vatican. The most 
 awful religion of the world went forth surrounded by 
 emblazonry of mortal greatness, and mankind had assembled 
 to wonder at and worship the creations of their own power. 
 No straggler was to be met with in the streets and grassy 
 lanes which led to the Coliseum. The father and daughter 
 had sought this spot immediately on their arrival. 
 
 A figure, only visible at Rome in night or solitude, and 
 then only to be seen amid the desolated temples of the 
 
THE COLISEUM. 55 
 
 Forum, or gliding among the weed-grown galleries of the 
 Coliseum, crossed their path. His form, which, though 
 emaciated, displayed the elementary outlines of exquisite 
 grace, was enveloped in an ancient chlamys, which half 
 concealed his face ; his snow-white feet were fitted with 
 ivory sandals, delicately sculptured in the likeness of two 
 female figures, whose wings met upon the heel, and whose 
 eager and half-divided lips seemed quivering to meet. It 
 was a face, once seen, never to be forgotten. The mouth 
 and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and 
 impassioned tenderness of the statues of Antinous; but 
 instead of the efieminate sullenness of the eye, and the 
 narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of 
 profound and piercing thought; the brow was clear and 
 open, and his eyes deep, like two wells of crystalline 
 water which reflect the all-beholding heavens. Over 
 all was spread a timid expression of womanish tender- 
 ness and hesitation, which contrasted, yet intermingled 
 strangely, with the abstracted and fearless character that 
 predominated in his form and gestures. 
 
 He avoided, in an extraordinary degree, all communica- 
 tion with the Italians, whose language he seemed scarcely 
 to understand, but was occasionally seen to converse with 
 some accomplished foreigner, whose gestures and appearance 
 might attract him amid his solemn haunts. He spoke Latin, 
 and especially Greek, with fluency, and with a peculiar but 
 sweet accent ; he had apparently acquired a knowledge of 
 the northern languages of Europe. There was - no circum- 
 stance connected with him that gave the least intimation of 
 his country, his origin, or his occupation. His dress was 
 strange, but splendid and solemn. He was forever alone. 
 The literati of Rome thought him a curiosity, but there was 
 something in his manner unintelligible but impressive. 
 
56 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 which awed their obtrusions into distance and silence. The 
 countrymen, whose path he rarely crossed, returning by 
 starlight from their market at Campo Vaccine, called him, 
 with that strange mixture of religious and historical ideas 
 so common in Italy, 11 Diavolo di Bruto. 
 
 Such was the figure which interrupted the contemplations, 
 if they were so engaged, of the strangers, by addressing 
 them in the clear, and exact, but unidiomatic phrases of 
 their native language : — " Strangers, you are two ; behold 
 the third in this great city, to whom alone the spectacle of 
 these mighty ruins is more delightful than the mockeries of 
 a superstition which destroyed them." 
 
 " I see nothing," said the old man. 
 
 « What do you here, then f' 
 
 ' I listen to the sweet singing of the birds, and the sound 
 of my daughter's breathing composes me like the soft 
 murmur of water — and I feel the sun warm wind — and this 
 is pleasant to me." 
 
 "Wretched old man, know you not that these are the 
 ruins of the Coliseum ? " 
 
 " Alas 1 stranger," said the girl, in a voice like mournful 
 music, " speak not so — he is blind." 
 
 The stranger's eyes were suddenly filled with tears, and 
 the lines of his countenance became relaxed. " Blind % " he 
 exclaimed, in a tone of suffering, which was more than an 
 apology ; and seated himself apart on a flight of shattered 
 and mossy stairs which wound up among the labyrinths of 
 the ruin. 
 
 " My sweet Helen," said the old man, " you did not tell 
 me that this was the Coliseum ? " 
 
 "How should I tell you, dearest father, what I knew 
 not? I was on the point of inquiring the way to that 
 building, when we entered th|s circle of ruins^ and, until 
 
THE COLISEUM. 57 
 
 the stranger accosted us, I remained silent, subdued by the 
 greatness of what I see." 
 
 " It is your custom, sweetest child, to describe to me the 
 objects that give you delight. You array them in the soft 
 radiance of your words, and whilst you speak I only feel 
 the infirmity which holds me in such dear dependence, as 
 a blessing. Why have you been silent now I" 
 
 "I know not — first the wonder and pleasure of the 
 sight, then the words of the stranger, and then thinking on 
 what he had said, and how he had looked — and now, 
 beloved father, your own words." 
 
 " Well, tell me now, what do you see ? " 
 
 "I see a great circle of arches built upon arches, and 
 shattered stones lie around, that once made a part of the 
 solid wall. In the crevices, and on the vaulted roofs, grow 
 a multitude of shrubs, the wild olive and the myrtle — and 
 intricate brambles, and entangled weeds and plants I never 
 saw before. The stones are immensely massive, and they 
 jut out one from the other. There are terrible rifts in the 
 wall, and broad windows through which you see the blue 
 heaven. There seems to be more than a thousand arches, 
 some ruined, some entire, and they are all immensely high 
 and wide. Some are shattered, and stand forth in great 
 heaps, and the underwood is tufted on their crumbling 
 summits. Around us lie enormous columns, shattered and 
 shapeless — and fragments of capitals and cornice, fretted 
 with delicate sculptures." 
 
 " It is open to the blue sky % " said the old man. 
 
 " Yes. We see the liquid death of heaven above through 
 the rifts and the windows ; and the flowers, and the weeds, 
 and the grass and creeping moss are nourished by its 
 unforbidden rain. The blue sky is above — the wide, 
 ]3right, blue sky — it flows through the great rents on high, 
 
58 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 and through the bare boughs of the marble-rooted fig-tree, 
 and through the leaves and flowers of the weeds, even to 
 the dark arcades beneath. I see — I feel its clear and 
 piercing beams fill the universe, and impregnate the joy- 
 inspiring wind with life and light, and casting the veil of 
 its splendour over all things — even me. Yes, and through 
 the highest rift the noonday waning moon is hanging, as it 
 were, out of the solid sky, and this shows that the 
 atmosphere has all the clearness which it rejoices me that 
 you feel." 
 
 " What else see you 1 " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Nothing?" 
 
 " Only the bright-green mossy ground, speckled by tufts 
 of dewy clover-grass that run into the interstices of the 
 shattered arches, and round the isolated pinnacles of the 
 ruin." 
 
 "Like the lawny dells of soft short grass which wind 
 among the pine forests and precipices in the Alps of 
 Savoy?" 
 
 " Indeed, father, your eye has a vision more serene than 
 mine." 
 
 "And the great wrecked arches, the shattered masses of 
 precipitous ruin, overgrown with the younglings of the 
 forest, and more like chasms rent by an earthquake among 
 the mountains, than like the vestige of what was human 
 workmanship — what are they ? " 
 
 " Things awe-inspiring and wonderful." 
 
 "Are they not caverns such as the untamed elephant 
 might choose, amid the Indian wilderness, wherein to hide 
 her cubs ? such as, were the sea to overflow the earth, the 
 mightiest monsters of the deep would change into their 
 spacious chambers ? " 
 
THE COLISEUM. 59 
 
 "Father, your words image forth what I would have 
 expressed, but alas ! could not." 
 
 "I hear the rustling of leaves, and the sound of waters, — 
 but it does not rain, — like the fast drops of a fountain 
 among woods." 
 
 "It falls from among the heaps of ruin over our heads — 
 it is, I suppose, the water collected in the rifts by the 
 showers." 
 
 " A nursling of man's art, abandoned by his care, and 
 transformed by the enchantment of Nature into a likeness 
 of her own creations, and destined to partake their immor- 
 tality ! Changed into a mountain cloven with woody dells, 
 which overhang its labyrinthine glades, and shattered into 
 toppling precipices. Even the clouds, intercepted by its 
 craggy summit, feed its eternal fountains with their rain. 
 By the column on which I sit, I should judge that it had 
 once been crowned by a temple or a theatre, and that on 
 sacred days the multitude wound up its craggy path to 
 
 spectacle or the sacrifice It was such itself ! * Helen, 
 
 what sound of wings is that % " 
 
 " It is the wild pigeons returning to their young. Do you 
 not hear the murmur of those that are brooding in their nests." 
 
 " Ay, it is the language of their happiness. They are as 
 
 * Nor does a recollection of the use to which it may have been 
 destined interfere with these emotions. Time has thrown its purple 
 shadow athwart this scene, and no more is visible than the broad and 
 everlasting character of human strength and genius, that pledge of all 
 that is to be admirable and lovely in ages yet to come. Solemn temples, 
 where the senate of the world assembled, palaces, triumphal arches, 
 and cloud-surrounded columns, loaded with the sculptured annals of 
 conquest and domination — what actions and deliberations have they 
 been destined to enclose and commemorate ? Superstitious rites, which 
 in their mildest form, outrage reason, and obscure the moral sense 
 of mankind; schemes for wide-extonded murder, and devastation, 
 
6o ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 happy as we are, child, but in a different manner. They 
 know not the sensations which this ruin excites within us. 
 Yet it is pleasure to them to inhabit it ; and the succession 
 of its forms as they pass, is connected with associations in 
 their minds, sacred to them, as these to us. The internal 
 nature of each being is surrounded by a circle, not to be 
 surmounted by his fellows ; and it is this repulsion which 
 constitutes the misfortune of the condition of life. But 
 there is a circle which comprehends, as well as one which 
 mutually excludes, all things which feel. And, with respect 
 to man, his public and his private happiness consists 
 in diminishing the circumference which includes those 
 resembling himself, until they become one with him, and he 
 with them. It is because we enter into the meditations, 
 designs, and destinies of something beyond ourselves, that 
 the contemplation of the ruins of human power excites an 
 elevating sense of awfulness and beauty. It is therefore 
 that the ocean, the glacier, the cataract, the tempest, the 
 volcano, have each a spirit which animates the extremities 
 of our frame with tingling joy. It is therefore that the 
 singing of birds, and the motion of leaves, the sensation 
 of the odorous earth beneath, and the freshness of the 
 living wind around, is sweet. And this is Love. This is 
 the religion of eternity, whose votaries have been exiled 
 
 and misrule, and servitude ; and, lastly, these schemes brought to 
 their tremendous consummations, and a human being returning in 
 the midst of festival and solemn joy, with thousands and thousands of 
 his enslaved and desolated species chained behind his chariot, exhibit- 
 ing, as titles to renown, the labour of ages, and the admired creations 
 of genius, overthrown by the brutal force, which was placed as a 
 sword within his hand, and, — contemplation fearful and abhorred 1 — 
 he himself, a being capable of the gentlest and best emotions, inspired 
 with the persuasion that he has done a virtuous deed I We do not 
 forget these things. . . . 
 
THE COLISEUM. 6i 
 
 from among the multitude of mankind. O Power ! " cried 
 the old man, lifting his sightless eyes towards the undazzling 
 sun, " thou which interpenetratest all things ; and without 
 which this glorious world were a blind and formless chaos, 
 Love, Author of Good, God, King, Father ! Friend of these 
 thy worshippers ! Two solitary hearts invoke thee, may 
 they be divided never ! If the contentions of mankind 
 have been their misery ; if to give and seek that happiness 
 which thou art, has been their choice and destiny ; if in the 
 contemplation of these majestic records of the power of 
 their kind, they see the shadow and the prophecy of that 
 which thou mayst have decreed that he should become ; if 
 the justice, the liberty, the loveliness, the truth, which are 
 thy footsteps, have been sought by them, divide them not ! 
 It is thine to unite, to eternise ; to make outlive the limits 
 of the grave those who have left among the living, 
 memorials of thee. When this frame shall be senseless 
 dust, may the hopes, and the desires, and the delights 
 which animate it now, never be extinguished in my child ; 
 even as, if she were borne into the tomb, my memory 
 would be the written monument of all her nameless 
 excellencies ! " 
 
 The old man's countenance and gestures, radiant with 
 the inspiration of his words, sunk, as he ceased, into more 
 than its accustomed calmness, for he heard his daughter's 
 sobs, and remembered that he had spoken of death. — " My 
 father, how can I outlive you?" said Helen, 
 
 "Do not let us talk of death," said the old man, suddenly 
 changing his tone. " Heraclitus, indeed, died at my age, 
 and if I had so sour a disposition, there might be some 
 danger. But Democritus reached a hundred-and-twenty, 
 by the mere dint of a joyous and unconquerable mind. He 
 only died at last, because he had no gentle and beloved 
 
62 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 ministering spirit, like my Helen, for whom it would have 
 been his delight to live. You remember his gay old sister 
 requested him to put off starving himself to death until she 
 had returned from the festival of Ceres; alleging, that it 
 would spoil her holiday if he refused to comply, as it was 
 not permitted to appear in the procession immediately after 
 the death of a relation ; and how good-temperedly the sage 
 acceded to her request." 
 
 The old man could not see his daughter's grateful smile, 
 but he felt the pressure of her hand by which it was 
 expressed. — "In truth," he continued, "that mystery, 
 death, is a change which neither for ourselves nor for 
 others is the just object of hope or fear. We know not if 
 it be good or evil, we only know, it is. The old, the young, 
 may alike die ; no time, no place, no age, no foresight, 
 exempts us from death, and the chance of death. We have 
 no knowledge, if death be a state of sensation, of any 
 precaution that can make those sensations fortunate, if the 
 existing series of events shall not produce that effect. 
 Think not of death, or think of it as something common to 
 us all. It has happened," said he, with a deep and 
 suffering voice, " that men have buried their children." 
 
 " Alas ! then, dearest father, how I pity you. Let us 
 speak no more." 
 
 They arose to depart from the Coliseum, but the figure 
 which had first accosted them interposed itself : — " Lady," 
 he said, " if grief be an expiation of error, I have grieved 
 deeply for the words which I spoke to your companion. 
 The men who anciently inhabited this spot, and those from 
 whom they learned their wisdom, respected infirmity and 
 age. If I have rashly violated that venerable form, at once 
 majestic and defenceless, may I be forgiven ? " 
 
 " It gives me pain to sco how much your mistake afflicts 
 
THE COLISEUM, 63 
 
 you," she said; "if you can forget, doubt not that we 
 forgive." 
 
 " You thought me one of those who are blind in spirit," 
 said the old man, " and who deserve, if any human being 
 can deserve, contempt and blame. Assuredly, contem- 
 plating this monument as I do, though in the mirror of my 
 daughter's mind, I am filled with astonishment and delight; 
 the spirit of departed generations seems to animate my 
 limbs, and circulate through all the fibres of my frame. 
 Stranger, if I have expressed what you have ever felt, let 
 us know ieach other more." 
 
 "The sound of your voice, and the harmony of your 
 thoughts, are delightful to me," said the youth, " and it is 
 a pleasure to see any form which expresses so much beauty 
 and goodness as your daughter's ; if you reward me for my 
 rudeness, by allowing me to know you, my error is already 
 expiated, and you remember my ill words no more. I live 
 a solitary life, and it is rare that I encounter any stranger 
 with whom it is pleasant to talk ; besides, their meditations, 
 even though they be learned, do not always agree with 
 mine; and, though I can pardon this difference, they 
 cannot. Nor have I ever explained the cause of the dress 
 I wear, and the difference which I perceive between my 
 language and manners, and those with whom I have inter- 
 course. Not but that it is painful to me to live without 
 communion with intelligent and affectionate beings. You 
 are such, I feel." 
 
 ^ 
 
64 ESS A VS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 
 
 A FIIAGMENT. 
 
 The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose 
 and support, at the approach of a period of great political 
 change, is the abolition of the punishment of death. 
 
 It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atone- 
 ment, expiation, are rules and motives, so far from 
 deserving a place in any enlightened system of political 
 life, that they are the chief sources of a prodigious class of 
 miseries in the domestic circles of society. It is clear that 
 however the spirit of legislation may appear to frame 
 institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it has 
 hitherto, in those cases which are termed criminal, done 
 little more than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a portion 
 of it; and afforded a compromise between that which is 
 ^ best ; — the inficting of no evil upon a sensitive being, 
 mk without a decisively beneficial result in which he should at 
 least participate : and that which is worst ; that he should 
 be put to torture for the amusement of those whom he may 
 have injured, or may seem to have injured. 
 
 Omitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire 
 what Death is; that punishment which is applied as a 
 measure of transgressions of indefinite shades of distinction, 
 so soon as they shall have passed that degree and colour of 
 enormity, with which it is supposed no inferior infliction is 
 commensurate. 
 
 And first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or 
 a reward, or whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can 
 take upon himself to assert. That that within us which 
 thinks and feels, continues to think and feel after the 
 
ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 65 
 
 dissolution of the body, has been the almost universal 
 opinion of mankind, and the accurate philosophy of what 
 I may be permitted to term the modern Academy, by 
 showing the prodigious depth and extent of our ignorance 
 respecting the causes and nature of sensation, renders 
 probable the affirmative of a proposition, the negative of 
 which it is so difficult to conceive, and the popular argu- 
 ments against which, derived from what is called the atomic 
 system, are proved to be applicable only to the relation 
 which one object bears to another, as apprehended by the 
 mind, and not to existence itself, or the nature of that 
 essence which is the medium and receptacle of objects 
 
 The popular system of religion suggests the idea that the 
 mind, after death, will be painfully or pleasurably affected 
 according to its determinations during life. However ridicu- 
 lous and pernicious we must admit the vulgar accessories of 
 this creed to be, there is a certain analogy, not wholly absurd* 
 between the consequences resulting to an individual during 
 life from the virtuous or vicious, prudent or imprudent, 
 conduct of his external actions, to those consequences 
 which are conjectured to ensue from the discipline and 
 order of his internal thoughts, as affecting his condition in 
 a future state. They omit, indeed, to calculate upon the 
 accidents of disease, and temperament, and organisation, and 
 circumstance, together with the multitude of independent 
 agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the 
 happiness of individuals, and produce determinations of the 
 will, and modify the judgment, so as to produce effects the 
 most opposite in natures considerably similar. These are 
 those operations in the order of the whole of nature, 
 tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty end, 
 to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate ; 
 nor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future state they 
 
 86 
 
66 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 should become suddenly exempt from that subordination. 
 The philosopher is unable to determine whether our exist- 
 ence in a previous state has affected our present condition, 
 and abstains from deciding whether our present condition 
 will affect us in that which may be future. That, if we 
 continue to exist, the manner of our existence will be such 
 as no inference nor conjectures, afforded by a considera- 
 tion of our earthly experience, can elucidate, is sufficiently 
 obvious. The opinion that the vital principle within us, in 
 whatever mode it may continue to exist, must lose that 
 consciousness of definite and individual being which now 
 characterises it, and become a unit in the vast sum of 
 action and of thought which disposes and animates the 
 universe, and is called God, seems to belong to that class of 
 opinion which has been designated as indifferent. 
 
 To compel a person to know all that can be known by 
 the dead, concerning that which the living fear, hope, or 
 forget; to plunge him into the pleasure or pain which 
 ™ there awaits him ; to punish or reward him in a manner 
 and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible by us ; 
 to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good 
 and evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every 
 form of individual existence, is to inflict on him the doom 
 of death. 
 
 A certain degree of pain and terror usually accompany 
 the infliction of death. This degree is infinitely varied by 
 the infinite variety in the temperament and opinions of the 
 sufferers. As a measure of punishment, strictly so con- 
 sidered, and as an exhibition, which, by its known effects 
 on the sensibility of the sufferer, is intended to intimidate 
 the spectators from incurring a similar liability, it is 
 singularly inadequate. 
 
 Firstly, — Persons of energetic character, in whom, as in 
 
 € 
 
,^ ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 67 
 
 ■*'*lnen who suffer for political crimes, there is a large mixture 
 of enterprise, and fortitude, and disinterestedness, and the 
 elements, though misguided and disarranged, by which the 
 strength and happiness of a nation might have been 
 cemented, die in such a manner, as to make death appear 
 not evil, but good. The death of what is called a traitor, 
 that is, a person who, from whatever motive, would abolish 
 the government of the day, is as often a triumphant exhibi- 
 tion of suffering virtue, as the warning of a culprit. The 
 multitude, instead of departing with a panic-stricken 
 approbation of the laws which exhibited such a spectacle, 
 are inspired with pity, admiration and sympathy ; and the 
 most generous among them feel an emulation to be the 
 authors of such flattering emotions, as they experience 
 stirring in their bosoms. Impressed by what they see and 
 feel, they make no distinction between the motives which 
 incited the criminals to the actions for which they suffer, 
 or the heroic courage with which they turned into good 
 that which their judges awarded to them as evil, or the 
 purpose itself of those actions, though that purpose may 
 happen to be eminently pernicious. The laws in this case 
 lose that sympathy, which it ought to be their chief object 
 to secure, and in a participation of which consists their 
 chief strength in maintaining those sanctions by which the 
 parts of the social union are bound together, so as to 
 product, as nearly as possible, the ends for which it is 
 instituted. 
 
 Secondly, — Persons of energetic character, in communi- 
 ties not modelled with philosophical skill to turn all the 
 energies which they contain to the purposes of common 
 good, are prone also to fall into the temptation of under- 
 taking, and are peculiarly fitted for despising the perils 
 attendant upon consummating, the most enormous crimes. 
 
68 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Murder, rapes, extensive schemes of plunder, are the actions 
 of persons belonging to this class ; and death is the penalty 
 of conviction. But the coarseness of organisation, peculiar 
 to men capable of committing acts wholly selfish, is usually 
 found to be associated with a proportionate insensibility to 
 fear or pain. Their sufferings communicate to those of the 
 spectators, who may be liable to the commission of similar 
 crimes, a sense of the lightness of that event, when closely 
 examined, which, at a distance, as uneducated persons are 
 accustomed to do, probably they regarded with horror. 
 But a great majority of the spectators are so bound up in 
 the interests and the habits of social union that no tempta- 
 tion would be sufficiently strong to induce them to a 
 commission of the enormities to which this penalty is 
 assigned. The more powerful, and the richer among 
 them — and a numerous class of little tradesmen are richer 
 and more powerful than those who are employed by them, 
 and the employer, in general, bears this relation to the 
 employed — regard their own wrongs as, in some degree, 
 avenged, and their own rights secured by this punishment, 
 inflicted as the penalty of whatever crime. In cases of 
 murder or mutilation, this feeling is almost universal. In 
 those, therefore, whom this exhibition does not awaken to 
 the sympathy which extenuates crime and discredits the 
 law which restrains it, it produces feelings more directly at 
 war with the genuine purposes of political society. It 
 excites those emotions which it is the chief object of civilis- 
 ation to extinguish for ever, and in the extinction of which 
 alone there can be any hope of better institutions than 
 those under which men now misgovern one another. Men 
 feel that their revenge is gratified, and that their security 
 is established by the extinction and the sufferings of beings, 
 in most respects resembling themselves ; and their daily 
 
ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 69 
 
 occupations constraining them to a precise form in all their 
 thoughts, they come to connect inseparably the idea of their 
 own advantage with that of the death and torture of others. 
 It is manifest that the object of sane polity is directly the 
 reverse ; and that laws founded upon reason should 
 accustom the gross vulgar to associate their ideas of security 
 and of interest with the reformation, and the strict restraint, 
 for that purpose alone, of those who might invade it. 
 
 The passion of revenge is originally nothing more than an 
 habitual perception of the ideas of the sufferings of the 
 person who inflicts an injury, as connected, as they are in 
 a savage state, or in such portions of society as are yet 
 undisciplined to civilisation, with security that that injury 
 will not be repeated in future. This feeling, engrafted 
 upon superstition and confirmed by habit, at last loses 
 sight of the only object for which it may be supposed to 
 have been implanted, and becomes a passion and a duty to 
 be pursued and fulfilled, even to the destruction of those 
 ends to which it originally tended. The other passions, 
 both good and evil. Avarice, E-emorse, Love, Patriotism, 
 present a similar appearance ; and to this principle of the 
 mind over-shooting the mark at which it aims, we owe all 
 that is eminently base or excellent in human nature ; in 
 providing for the nutriment or the extinction of which, 
 consists the true art of the legislator.* 
 
 Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of punish 
 ment in general, in a degree which the reformation and the 
 
 * The savage and the illiterate are but faintly aware of the distinc- 
 tion between the future and the past ; they make actions belonging to 
 periods so distinct, the subjects of similar feelings ; they live only in 
 the present, or in the past, as it is present. It is in this that the 
 philosopher excels one of the many ; it is this which distinguishes the 
 doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism ; and that determina- 
 tion of the will, bv which it is the active source of future events, from 
 
70 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 restraint of those who transgress the laws does not render 
 indispensable, and none more than death, confirms all the 
 inhuman and unsocial impulses of men. It is almost a 
 proverbial remark, that those nations in which the penal 
 code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished 
 from all others by the rarity of crime. But the example is 
 to be admitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument 
 is afibrded by a consideration of the universal connection of 
 ferocity of manners, and a contempt of social ties, with the 
 contempt of human life. Governments which derive their 
 institutions from the existence of circumstances of barbarism 
 and violence, with some rare exceptions, perhaps, are bloody 
 in proportion as they are despotic, and form the manners 
 of their subjects to a sympathy with their own spirit. 
 
 The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public 
 execution, but rather a self -applauding superiority, and a 
 sense of gratified indignation, are surely excited to the 
 most inauspicious emotions. The first reflection of such a 
 one is the sense of his own internal and actual worth, as 
 preferable to that of the victim, whom circumstances have 
 led to destruction. The meanest wretch is impressed with 
 a sense of his own comparative merit. He is one of those 
 on whom the tower of Siloam fell not — he is such a one as 
 Jesus Christ found not in all Samaria, who, in his own soul, 
 throws the first stone at the woman taken in adultery. The 
 
 that liberty or indifference, to which the abstract liability of irre- 
 mediable actions is attached, according to the notions of the vulgar. 
 
 This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge j 
 the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past ; 
 provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources of evil. 
 The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in 
 future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy, 
 are the sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the 
 words cited have arisen. 
 
ON LIFE. 71 
 
 popular religion of the country takes its designation from 
 that illustrious person whose beautiful sentiment I have 
 quoted. Any one who has stript from the doctrines of this 
 person the veil of familiarity, will perceive how adverse 
 their spirit is to feelings of this nature. 
 
 ON LIFE. 
 
 Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are 
 and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity 
 obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck 
 with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but 
 it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, 
 the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported 
 them ; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and 
 of political systems to life ? What are the revolutions of 
 the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the 
 elements of which it is composed, compared with life? 
 What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this 
 inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, 
 compared with life % Life, the great miracle, we admire 
 not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are 
 thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so cer- 
 tain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which 
 would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that 
 which is its object. 
 
 If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely 
 conceived in his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, 
 and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in 
 words, or upon canvas, the spectacle now afibrded by the 
 nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of 
 
72 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he 
 imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, 
 and the rivers ; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety 
 of the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the 
 colours which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the 
 hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not 
 before existing, truly we should have been astonished, and 
 it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a 
 man, "Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il 
 Poeta." But now these things are looked on with little 
 wonder, and to be conscious of them with intense delight 
 is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined 
 and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not 
 for them. It is thus with Life — that which includes all. 
 
 What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or 
 without our will, and we employ words to express them. 
 We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our 
 infancy remembered but in fragments ; we live on, and in 
 living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to 
 think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being ! 
 Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to our- 
 selves, and this is much. For what are we 1 Whence do 
 we come ? and whither do we go ? Is birth the commence- 
 ment, is death the conclusion of our being 1 What is birth 
 and death? 
 
 The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view 
 of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in 
 fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combina- 
 tions has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the 
 painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that i 
 am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the 
 conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing 
 exists but as it is perceive^. 
 
ON LIFE, 73 
 
 "It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, 
 and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced 
 that the solid universe of external things is "such stuff as 
 dreams are made of." The shocking absurdities of the 
 popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal conse- 
 quences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning 
 the source of all things, had early conducted me to materi- 
 alism. This materialism is a seducing system to young 
 and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and 
 dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with 
 such a view of things as it afforded; man is a being of 
 high aspirations, "looking both before and after," whose 
 "thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance 
 with transience and decay ; incapable of imagining to him- 
 self annihilation ; existing but in the future and the past ; 
 being, not what he is, but what he has been and shall be. 
 Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a 
 spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolu- 
 tion. This is the character of all life and being. Each is 
 at once the centre and the circumference ; the point to 
 which all things are referred, and the line in which all 
 things are contained. Such contemplations as these, 
 materialism and the popular philosophy of mind and 
 matter alike forbid ; they are only consistent with the 
 intellectual system. 
 
 It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of 
 arguments sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, 
 whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects can be conceived 
 to address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement 
 of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir William 
 Drummond's Academical Questions. After such an 
 exposition, it would be idle to translate into other words 
 what could only lose its energy and fitness by the change. 
 
74 JSSSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Examined point by point, and word by word, the most 
 discriminating intellects have been able to discern no train 
 of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does not 
 conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated. 
 
 What follows from the admission 1 It establishes no 
 new truth, it gives us no additional insight into our hidden 
 nature, neither its action nor itself. Philosophy, impatient 
 as it may be to build, has much work yet remaining, as 
 pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. It makes one step 
 towards this object; it destroys error, and the roots of 
 error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the 
 reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. 
 It reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have 
 acted, but for the misuse of words and signs, the instru- 
 ments of its own creation. By signs, I would be under- 
 stood in a wide sense, including what is properly meant by 
 that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter 
 sense, almost all familiar objects are signs, standing, not for 
 themselves, but for others in their capacity of suggest- 
 ing one thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. 
 Our whole life is thus an education of error. 
 
 Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a 
 distinct and intense apprehension had we of the world and 
 of ourselves ! Many of the circumstances of social life 
 were then important to us which are now no longer so. 
 But that is not the point of comparison on which I mean 
 to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that we 
 saw and felt, from our ourselves. They seemed as it were 
 to constitute one mass. There are some persons who, in 
 this respect, are always children. Those who are subject 
 to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were 
 dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the 
 surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. 
 
ON LIFE. 75 
 
 They are conscious of no distinction. And these are states 
 which precede, or accompany, or follow an unusually 
 intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up 
 this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical 
 and habitual agents. Thus feelings and then reasonings are 
 the combined result of a multitude of entangled thoughts, 
 and of a series of what are called impressions, planted by 
 reiteration. 
 
 The view of life presented by the most refined deductions 
 of the intellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing 
 exists but as it is perceived. The difference is merely 
 nominal between those two classes of thought, which are 
 vulgarly distinguished by the names of ideas and of 
 external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, 
 the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that 
 which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is 
 likewise found to be a delusion. The words /, you^ they, 
 are not signs of any actual difference subsisting between 
 the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but are merely 
 marks employed to denote the different modifications of the 
 one mind. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the 
 monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write 
 and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. 
 The words /, and youy and they are grammatical devices 
 invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the 
 intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It 
 is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle 
 a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy 
 has conducted us. We are on that verge where words 
 abandon us, and what wonder if we grow dizzy to look 
 down the dark abyss of how little we know. 
 
 The relations of things remciin unchanged, by whatever 
 
76 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 system. By the word things is to be understood any 
 object of thought, that is any thought upon -which any 
 other thought is employed, with an apprehension of 
 distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged ; 
 and such is the material of our knowledge. 
 
 What is the cause of life ? that is, how was it produced, 
 or what agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon 
 life ? All recorded generations of mankind have wearily 
 busied themselves in inventing answers to this question ; 
 and the result has been, — Religion. Yet, that the basis of 
 all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, 
 mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any 
 experience of its properties, and beyond that experience 
 how vain is argument ! cannot create, it can only perceive. 
 It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a word 
 expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard 
 to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to 
 be related to each other. If any one desires to 
 know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy employs 
 itself upon this great question, they need only impartially 
 reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop them- 
 selves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the 
 cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind. 
 
 ON A FUTURE STATE. 
 
 It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of 
 human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to 
 live after death, — that apparent termination of all the 
 functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has 
 mankind been contented with supposing that species oi 
 
ON A FUTURE STATE. 77 
 
 existence which some philosophers have asserted ; namely, 
 the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of 
 a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the 
 minutest particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. 
 They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, 
 which they have distinguished from the objects of it, under 
 the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, 
 less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the 
 body is resolved into its elements, the principle which 
 animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some 
 philosophers — and those to whom we are indebted for the 
 most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose, on 
 the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of 
 certain combinations among the particles of its objects; 
 and those among them who believe that we live after death, 
 recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which 
 shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material 
 combinations to dissipate and be absorbed into other 
 forms. 
 
 Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other 
 have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavour to 
 discover what we ought to think on a question of such 
 momentous interest. Let us analyse the ideas and feelings 
 which constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully 
 establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. 
 Let us bring the question to the test of experience and 
 fact j and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire 
 extent, what light we derive from a sustained and com- 
 prehensive view of its component parts, which may enable 
 us to assert, with certainty, that we do or do not live after 
 death. 
 
 The examination of this subject requires that it should be 
 stript of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the 
 
78 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a 
 future state of rewards and punishments, are totally foreign 
 to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a 
 Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from 
 that circumstance in favour of a future state. It has been 
 asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be 
 numbered among the attributes of the Deity, he will 
 undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, 
 and that he will make every sensitive being, who does not 
 deserve punishment, happy for ever. But this view of the 
 subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to 
 develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot 
 which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, 
 on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which 
 regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither 
 intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to 
 suppose at the same time, that the animating power 
 survives the body which it has animated, oy laws as 
 independent of any supernatural agent as those through 
 which it first became united with it. ' Nor, if a future state 
 be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of 
 punishment or reward. 
 
 By the word death, we express that condition in which 
 natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that 
 which they were. We no longer hear them speak, nor see 
 them move. If they have sensations and apprehensions, we 
 no longer participate in them. We know no more than 
 that those external organs, and all that fine texture of mate- 
 rial frame, without which we have no experience that life 
 or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. 
 The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain 
 period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is 
 that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose 
 
I 
 
 ON A FUTURE STATE. 79 
 
 shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common 
 observer is struck with dejection at the spectacle. He 
 contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that 
 the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is 
 prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded 
 him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear ; whose 
 touch met his like sweet and subtle fire; whose aspect 
 spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot 
 meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, and the 
 intellectual operations dependent on them have perished 
 with their sources. How can a corpse see or feci ? its eyes 
 are eaten out, and its heart is black and without motion. 
 What intercourse can two heaps of putrid clay and crumb- 
 ling bones hold together % When you can discover where 
 the fresh colours of the faded flower abide, or the music of 
 the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the 
 anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, 
 though the popular religion often prevents him from 
 confessing them even to himself. 
 
 The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations 
 common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes 
 that hesees with more certainty that it is attended with 
 the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes 
 the mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, 
 and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory 
 changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of 
 the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle ; drunken- 
 ness and disease will either temporarily or permanently 
 derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish 
 the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age 
 the mind gradually withers ; and as it grew and was 
 strengthened with the body, so does it together with the 
 body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing 
 
So ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 evidences that so soon as the organs of the body are sub- 
 jected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and 
 perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable 
 that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no 
 more than the relation between certain parts of that 
 infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is 
 composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts 
 change their position with regard to each other. Thus 
 colour, and sound, and taste, and odour exist only rela- 
 tively. But let thought be considered as some peculiar sub- 
 stance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation 
 of living beings. Why should that substance be assumed 
 to be something essentially distinct from all others, and 
 exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other 
 substance is exempt ? It differs, indeed, from all other sub- 
 stances, as electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the 
 constituent parts of air and earth, severally differ from all 
 others. Each of these is subject to change and to decay 
 and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference 
 between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which 
 exists between life, or thought, and fire. The difference 
 between the two former was never alleged as an argument 
 for the eternal permanence of either, in that form under 
 which they first might offer themselves to our notice. "Why 
 should the difference between the two latter substances be 
 an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and 
 not the other, when the existence of both has arrived at 
 their apparent termination % To say that fire exists with- 
 out manifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light, 
 heat, etc., or that the principle of life exists without 
 consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, 
 by an awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of 
 the dispute. To say that the principle of life way exist in 
 
ON A FUTURE STATE. 8l 
 
 distribution among various forms, is to assert what cannot 
 be proved to be either true or false, but which, wero it true, 
 annihilates all hope of existence after death, in any sense 
 in which that event can belong to the hopes and fears of 
 men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and vital 
 principle differs in the most marked and essential manner 
 from all other known substances ; that they have all some 
 resemblance between themselves which it in no degree 
 participates. . In what manner can this concession be made 
 an argument for its imperishability ? All that we see or 
 know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ 
 indeed from anything else. But that it survives that 
 period, beyond which we have no experience of its 
 existence, such distinction and dissimilarity affords no 
 shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could 
 have led us to conjecture or imagine. 
 
 Have we existed before birth ? It is difficult to conceive 
 the possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle 
 of each animal and plant, a power which converts the 
 substances by which it is surrounded into a substance 
 homogeneous with itself. That is, the relations between 
 certain elementary particles of matter undergo a change, 
 and submit to new combinations. For when we use the 
 words principle^ power, cause, etc., we mean to express no 
 real being, but only to class under those terms a certain 
 series of co-existing phenomena; but let it be supposed that 
 this principle is a certain substance which escapes the 
 observation of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly 
 may he ; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege 
 the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does 
 it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs 
 on which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, 
 apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can 
 
 87 
 
82 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 communicate? If we have not existed before birth ; if, at 
 the period when the parts of our nature on which thought 
 and life depend, seem to be woven together, they are woven 
 together ; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have 
 existed before that period at which our existence apparently 
 commences, then there are no grounds for supposition 
 that we shall continue to exist after our existence has appa- 
 rently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, 
 the same will take place with regard to us, individually 
 considered, after death, as had place befo re our birth. 
 
 It is said that it is possible that we should continue to 
 exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. 
 This is a most unreasonable presumption. It casts on the 
 adherents of annihilation the burthen of proving the 
 negative of a question, the affirmative of which is not 
 supported by a single argument, and which, by its very 
 nature, lies beyond the experience of the human under- 
 standing. It is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any 
 proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, just not 
 so absurd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy 
 refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into the 
 wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly 
 vindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should 
 be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or 
 exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or 
 irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. 
 They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be 
 persuaded. 
 
 This desire to be for ever as we are ; the reluctance to a 
 violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all 
 the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, 
 is, indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to 
 the opinions of a future state. 
 
FSSA Y ON CHRISTIANITY. 83 
 
 ESSAY ON CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 The Being who has influenced in the most memorable 
 manner the opinions and the fortunes of the human species, 
 is Jesus Christ. At this day, his name is connected with 
 the devotional feelings of two hundred millions of the 
 race of man. The institutions of the most civilized portion 
 of the globe derive their authority from the sanction of 
 his doctrines ; he is the hero, the God, of our popular 
 religion. His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid 
 effect of his unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness 
 and benignity, the devoted love borne to him by 
 his adherents, suggested a persuasion to them that he 
 was something divine. The supernatural events which the 
 historians of this wonderful man subsequently asserted to 
 have been connected with every gradation of his career, 
 established the opinion. 
 
 His death is said to have been accompanied by an 
 accumulation of tremendous prodigies. Utter darkness fell 
 upon the earth, blotting the noonday sun ; dead bodies, 
 arising from their graves, walked through the public streets, 
 and an earthquake shook the astonished city, rending the 
 rocks of the surrounding mountains. The philosopher 
 may attribute the application of these events to the death 
 of a reformer, or the events themselves to a visitation of 
 that universal Pan who 
 
 The thoughts which the word " God " suggests to the 
 human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human 
 minds themselves. The Stoic, the Platonist, and the 
 Epicurean, the Polytheist, the Dualist, and the Trinitarian, 
 differ infinitely in their conceptions of its meaning. They 
 
84 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 agree only in considering it the most awful and most 
 venerable of names, as a common term devised to express 
 all of mystery, or majesty, or power, which the invisible 
 world contains. And not only has every sect distinct 
 conceptions of the application of this name, but scarcely two 
 individuals of the same sect, who exercise in any degree 
 the freedom of their judgment, or yield themselves with 
 any candour of feeling to the influences of the visible 
 world, find perfect coincidence of opinion to exist between 
 them. It is [interesting] to inquire in what acceptation 
 Jesus Christ employed this term. 
 
 We may conceive his mind to have been predisposed on 
 this subject to adopt the opinions of his countrymen. Every 
 human being is indebted for a multitude of his sentiments 
 to the religion of his early years. Jesus Christ probably 
 [studied] the historians of his country with the ardour of a 
 spirit seeking after truth. They were undoubtedly the 
 companions of his childish years, the food and nutriment 
 and materials of his youthful meditations. The sublime 
 dramatic poem entitled Job had familiarized his imagination 
 with the boldest imagery afforded by the human mind and 
 the material world. Ecclesiastes had diffused a serious- 
 ness and solemnity over the frame of his spirit, glowing 
 with youthful hope, and [had] made audible to his listening 
 heart 
 
 " The still, sad music of humanity, 
 
 Not harsh or grating, but of ample power 
 
 To chasten and subdue." 
 
 He had contemplated this name as having been profanely 
 perverted to the sanctioning of the most enormous and 
 abominable crimes. We can distinctly trace, in the tissue 
 of his doctrines, the persuasion that God is some universal 
 Being, differing from man and the mind of man. According 
 
ESS A V ON CHRISTIANITY. 85 
 
 to Jesus Christ, God is neither the Jupiter, who sends 
 rain upon the earth ; nor the Venus, through whom all 
 living things are produced ; nor the Vulcan, who presides 
 over the terrestrial element of fire ; nor the Vesta, that 
 preserves the light which is enshrined in the sun and moon 
 and stars. He is neither the Proteus nor the Pan of the 
 material world. But the word God, according to the 
 acceptation of Jesus Christ, unites all the attributes which 
 these denominations contain, and is the [interpoint] and 
 overruling Spirit of all the energy and wisdom included 
 within the circle of existing things. It is important to 
 observe that the author of the Christian system had a 
 conception widely differing from the gross imaginations of 
 the vulgar relatively to the ruling Power of the universe. 
 He everywhere represents this Power as something 
 mysteriously and inimitably pervading the frame of 
 things. Nor do his doctrines practically assume any 
 proposition which they theoretically deny. They do not 
 represent God as a limitless and inconceivable mystery ; 
 affirming, at the same time, his existence as a Being subject 
 to passion and capable 
 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
 Blessed are those who have preserved internal sanctity of 
 soul ; who are conscious of no secret deceit ; who are the 
 same in act as they are in desire ; who conceal no thought, 
 no tendencies of thought, from their own conscience ; who 
 are faithful and sincere witnesses, before the tribunal 
 of their own judgments, of all that passes within their 
 mind. Such as these shall see God. What 1 after death, 
 shall their awakened eyes behold the King of Heaven? 
 Shall they stand in awe before the golden throne on which 
 He sits, and gaze upon the venerable countenance of the 
 
86 ESSA VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 paternal Monarch ? Is this the reward of the virtuous and 
 the pure ? These are the idle dreams of the visionary, or 
 the pernicious representations of impostors, who have 
 fabricated from the very materials of ^Yisdom a cloak 
 for their own dwarfish or imbecile conceptions. 
 
 Jesus Christ has said no more than the most excellent 
 philosophers have felt and expressed — that virtue is its 
 own reward. It is true that such an expression as he has 
 used was prompted by the energy of genius, and was 
 the overflowing enthusiasm of a poet ; but it is not 
 the less literally true [because] clearly repugnant to the 
 mistaken conceptions of the multitude. God, it has been 
 asserted, was contemplated by Jesus Christ as every poet 
 and every philosopher must have contemplated that 
 mysterious principle. He considered that venerable word 
 to express the overruling Spirit of the collective energy of 
 the moral and material world. He affirms, therefore, no 
 more than that a simple, sincere mind is the indispensable 
 requisite of true science and true happiness. He affirms 
 that a being of pure and gentle habits will not fail, in 
 every thought, in every object of every thought, to be 
 aware of benignant visitings from the invisible energies by 
 which he is surrounded. 
 
 Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and 
 licence, may go forth to the fields and to the woods, 
 inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, or 
 catching from the odours and sounds of Autumn some 
 diviner mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the 
 softened heart. Whosoever is no deceiver or destroyer of 
 his fellow-men — no liar, no flatterer, no murderer — may 
 walk among his species, deriving, from the communion 
 with all which they contain of beautiful or of majestic, 
 some intercourse with the Universal God. Whosoever has 
 
ESSAY ON CHRISTIANITY, 87 
 
 ^S maintained with his own heart the strictest correspondence 
 of confidence, who dares to examine and to estimate every 
 imagination which suggests itself to his mind — whosoever 
 is that which he designs to become, and only aspires to that 
 which the divinity of his own nature shall consider and 
 approve — he has already seen God. 
 
 We live and move and think; but we are not the 
 creators of our own origin and existence. We are not the 
 arbiters of every motion of our own complicated nature ; 
 we are not the masters of our own imaginations and moods 
 of mental being. There is a Power by which we are 
 surrounded, like the atmosphere in which some motionless 
 lyre is suspended, which visits with its breath our silent 
 chords at will. 
 
 Our most imperial and stupendous qualities — those on 
 which the majesty and the power of humanity is erected — 
 are, relatively to the inferior portion of its mechanism, 
 active and imperial; but they are the passive slaves of 
 some higher and more omnipotent Power. This Power is 
 God ; and those who have seen God have, in the period of 
 their purer and more perfect nature, been harmonized by 
 their own will to so exquisite [a] consentaneity of power as 
 to give forth divinest melody, when the breath of universal 
 being sweeps over their frame. That those who are pure 
 in heart shall see God, and that virtue is its own reward, 
 may be considered as equivalent assertions. The former 
 of these propositions is a metaphorical repetition of the 
 latter. The advocates of literal interpretation have been 
 the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose 
 nature they profess to venerate. Thucydides, in particular, 
 affords a number of instances calculated 
 
 Tacitus says, that the Jews held God to be something 
 
88 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 eternal and supreme, neither subject to change nor to 
 decay; therefore, they permit no statues in their cities 
 or their temples. The universal Being can only be 
 described or defined by negatives which deny his subjection 
 to the laws of all inferior existences. Where indefiniteness 
 ends idolatry and anthropomorphism begin. God is, as 
 Lucan has expressed, 
 
 " Quocunque vides, quodcunque moveris, 
 Et coelum et virtus." 
 
 The doctrine of what some fanatics have termed "a 
 peculiar Providence " — that is, of some power beyond and 
 superior to that which ordinarily guides the operations of 
 the Universe, interfering to punish the vicious and reward 
 the virtuous — is explicitly denied by Jesus Christ. The 
 absurd and execrable doctrine of vengeance, in all its 
 shapes^ seems to have been contemplated by this great 
 moralist with the profoundest disapprobation ; nor would 
 he permit the most venerable of names to be perverted into 
 a sanction for the meanest and most contemptible propen- 
 sities incident to the nature of man. " Love your enemies' 
 bless those who curse you, that ye may be the sons of your 
 Heavenly Father, who makes the sun to shine on the good 
 and on the evil, and the rain to fall on the just and unjust." 
 How monstrous a calumny have not impostors dared to 
 advance against the mild and gentle author of this just 
 sentiment, and against the whole tenor of his doctrines and 
 his life, overflowing with benevolence and forbearance and 
 compassion 1 They have represented him asserting that 
 the Omnipotent God — that merciful and benignant Power 
 who scatters equally upon the beautiful earth all the 
 elements of security and happiness— whose influences are 
 distributed to all whose natures admit of a participation in 
 
ESSA Y ON CHRISTIANITY, 89 
 
 them — who sends to the weak and vicious creatures of his 
 will all the benefits which they are capable of sharing — that 
 this God has devised a scheme whereby the body shall live 
 after its apparent dissolution, and be rendered capable of 
 indefinite torture. He is said to have compared the agonies 
 which the vicious shall then endure to the excruciations of 
 a living body bound among the flames, and being consumed 
 sinew by sinew, and bone by bone. 
 
 And this is to be done, not because it is supposed (and 
 the supposition would be sufficiently detestable) that the 
 moral nature of the sufferer would be improved by his 
 tortures — it is done because it is just to be done. My 
 neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an 
 injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in 
 return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned 
 his whole resources of persuasions to oppose. " Love your 
 enemy, bless those who curse you : " such, he says, is the 
 practice of God, and such must ye imitate if ye would be 
 the children of God. 
 
 Jesus Christ would hardly have cited, as an example of 
 all that is gentle and beneficent and compassionate, a 
 Being who shall deliberately scheme to inflict on a large 
 portion of the human race tortures indescribably intense 
 and indefinitely protracted: who shall inflict them, 
 too, without any mistake as to the true nature of pain 
 — without any view to future good — merely because it 
 is just. 
 
 This, and no other, is justice : — to consider, under all 
 the circumstances and consequences of a particular case, 
 how the greatest quantity and purest quality of happiness 
 will ensue from any action ; [this] is to be just, and there 
 is no other justice. The distinction between justice and 
 mercy was first imagined in the courts of tyranny. Man- 
 
90 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 kind receive every relaxation of their tyranny as a 
 circumstance of grace or favour. 
 
 Such was the clemency of Julius Csesar, who, having 
 achieved by a series of treachery and bloodshed the ruin of 
 the liberties of his country, receives the fame of mercy 
 because, possessing the power to slay the noblest men of 
 Rome, he restrained his sanguinary soul, arrogating to 
 himself as a merit an abstinence from actions which if he 
 had committed, he would only have added one other 
 atrocity to his deeds. His assassins understood justice 
 better. They saw the most virtuous and civilised com- 
 munity of mankind under the most insolent dominion 
 of one wicked man; and they murdered him. They 
 destroyed the usurper of the liberties of their countrymen, 
 not because they hated him, not because they would 
 revenge the wrongs which they had sustained (Brutus, it is 
 said, was his most familiar friend ; most of the conspirators 
 were habituated to domestic intercourse with the man whom 
 they destroyed) : it was in affection, inextinguishable love 
 for all that is venerable and dear to the human heart, in the 
 names of Country, Liberty, and Virtue ; it was in a serious 
 and solemn and reluctant mood, that these holy patriots 
 murdered their father and their friend. They would have 
 spared his violent death, if he could have deposited the 
 rights which he had assumed. His own selfish and narrow 
 nature necessitated the sacrifices they made. They 
 required that he should change all those habits which 
 debauchery and bloodshed had twined around the fibres of 
 his inmost frame of thought; that he should participate 
 with them and with his country those privileges which, 
 having corrupted by assuming to himself, he would no 
 longer value. They would have sacrificed their lives if 
 they could have made him worthy of the sacrifice. Such 
 
ESS A Y ON CHRIS TIANITY. g i 
 
 are the feelings which Jesus Christ asserts to belong to the 
 ruling Power of the world. He desireth not the death of a 
 sinner : he makes the sun to shine upon the just and unjust. 
 The nature of a narrow and malevolent spirit is so 
 essentially incompatible with happiness as to render it 
 inaccessible to the influences of the benignant God. All 
 that his own perverse propensities will permit him to 
 receive, that God abundantly pours forth upon him. If 
 there is the slightest overbalance of happiness, which can 
 be allotted to the most atrocious offender, consistently with 
 the nature of things, that is rigidly made his portion by the 
 ever-watchful Power of God. In every case, the human 
 mind enjoys the utmost pleasure which it is capable of 
 enjoying. God is represented by Jesus Christ as the 
 Power from which, and through which, the streams of all 
 that is excellent and delightful flow ; the Power which 
 models, as they pass, all the elements of this mixed 
 universe to the purest and most perfect shape which it 
 belongs to their nature to assume. Jesus Christ attributes 
 to this Power the faculty of Will. How far such a 
 doctrine, in its ordinary sense, may be philosophically 
 true, or how far Jesus Christ intentionally availed himself 
 of a metaphor easily understood, is foreign to the subject 
 to consider. This much is certain, that Jesus Christ 
 represents God as the fountain of all goodness, the eternal 
 enemy of pain and evil, the uniform and unchanging 
 motive of the salutary operations of the material world. 
 The supposition that this cause is excited to action by 
 some principle analogous to the human will, adds weight to 
 the persuasion that it is foreign to its beneficent nature to 
 inflict the slightest pain. According to Jesus Christ, and 
 according to the indisputable facts of the case, some evil 
 spirit has dominion in this imperfect world. But there 
 
92 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 will come a time when the human mind shall be visited 
 exclusively by the influences of the benignant Power. Men 
 shall die, and their bodies shall rot under the ground; 
 all the organs through which their knowledge and their 
 feelings have flowed, or in which they have originated, 
 shall assume other forms, and become ministrant to pur- 
 poses the most foreign from their former tendencies. 
 There is a time when we shall neither be heard or be seen 
 by the multitude of beings like ourselves by whom we 
 have been so long surrounded. They shall go to graves ; 
 where then ? 
 
 It appears that we moulder to a heap of senseless dust ; 
 to a few worms, that arise and perish, like ourselves. 
 Jesus Christ asserts that these appearances are fallacious, 
 and that a gloomy and cold imagination alone suggests the 
 conception that thought can cease to be. Another and a 
 more extensive state of being, rather than the complete 
 extinction of being, will follow from that mysterious change 
 which we call Death. There shall be no misery, no pain, 
 no fear. The empire of evil spirits extends not beyond the 
 boundaries of the grave. The unobscured irradiations 
 from the fountain-fire of all goodness shall reveal all that 
 is mysterious and unintelligible, until the mutual communi- 
 cations of knowledge and of happiness throughout all 
 thinking natures constitute a harmony of good that ever 
 varies and never ends. 
 
 This is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the 
 Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits 
 in the fulness of its power the universal frame of things. 
 Human life, with all its unreal ills and transitory hopes, is 
 as a dream, which departs before the dawn, leaving no 
 trace of its evanescent hues. All that it contains of pure 
 or of divine visits the passive mind in some serenest mood. 
 
ESS A V ON CHRISTIANITY. 93 
 
 Most holy are the feelings through which our fellow-beings 
 are rendered dear and [venerable] to the heart. The 
 remembrance of their sweetness, and the completion of the 
 hopes which they [excite], constitute, when we awaken 
 from the sleep of life, the fulfilment of the prophecies of its 
 most majestic and beautiful visions. 
 
 We die, says Jesus Christ ; and, when we awaken from 
 the languor of disease, the glories and the happiness of 
 Paradise are around us. All evil and pain have ceased for 
 ever. Our happiness also corresponds with, and is adapted 
 to, the nature of what is most excellent in our being. We 
 see God, and we see that he is good. How delightful a 
 picture, even if it be not true ! How magnificent is the 
 conception which this bold theory suggests to the con- 
 templation, even if it be no more than the imagination of 
 some sublimest and most holy poet, who, impressed with 
 the loveliness and majesty of his own nature, is impatient 
 and discontented with the narrow limits which this im- 
 perfect life and the dark grave have assigned for ever as 
 his melancholy portion. It is not to be believed that Hell, 
 or punishment, was the conception of this daring mind. It 
 is not to be believed that the most prominent group of this 
 picture, which is framed so heart-moving and lovely — the 
 accomplishment of all human hope, the extinction of all 
 morbid fear and anguish — would consist of millions of 
 sensitive beings enduring, in every variety of torture which 
 Omniscient vengeance could invent, immortal agony. 
 
 Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic 
 fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved man- 
 kind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employ- 
 ing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to 
 waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community 
 of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand 
 
94 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel 
 within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the 
 restless spirit of desolation. Pain had been inflicted ; 
 therefore, pain should be inflicted in return. Retaliation 
 of injuries is the only remedy which can be applied to 
 violence, because it teaches the injurer the true nature of 
 his own conduct, and operates as a warning against its 
 repetition. Nor must the same measure of calamity be 
 returned as was received. If a man borrows a certain sum 
 from me, he is bound to repay that sum. Shall no more be 
 required of the enemy who destroys my reputation, or 
 ravages my fields ? It is just that he should suffer ten 
 times the loss which he has inflicted, that the legitimate 
 consequences of his deed may never be obliterated from his 
 remembrance, and that others may clearly discern and feel 
 the danger of invading the peace of human society. Such 
 reasonings, and the impetuous feelings arising from them, 
 have armed nation against nation, family against family, 
 man against man. 
 
 An Athenian soldier, in the Ionian army which had 
 assembled for the purpose of vindicating the liberty of the 
 Asiatic Greeks, accidentally set fire to Sardis. The city, 
 being composed of combustible materials, was burned to 
 the ground. The Persians believed that this circumstance 
 of aggression made it their duty to retaliate on Athens. 
 They assembled successive expeditions on the most exten- 
 sive scale. Every nation of the East was united to ruin 
 the Grecian States. Athens was burned to the ground, the 
 whole territory laid waste, and every living thing which 
 it contained [destroyed]. After suffering and inflicting 
 incalculable mischiefs, they desisted from their purpose only 
 when they became impotent to effect it. The desire of 
 revenge for the aggression of Persia outlived, among the 
 
ESSA V ON CHRISTIANITY. 95 
 
 Greeks, that love of liberty which had been their most 
 glorious distinction among the nations of mankind ; and 
 Alexander became the instrument of its completion. The 
 mischiefs attendant on this consummation of fruitless ruin 
 are too manifold and too tremendous to be related. If all 
 the thought which had been expended on the construction 
 of engines of agony and death — the modes of aggression 
 and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of 
 those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed 
 multitudes could neither be led nor governed — had been 
 employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real 
 empire of man, how different would have been the present 
 situation of human society I how different the state of 
 knowledge in physical and moral science, upon which the 
 power and happiness of mankind essentially depend ! 
 What nation has the example of the desolation of Attica 
 by Mardonius and Xerxes, or the extinction of the Persian 
 empire by Alexander of Macedon, restrained from outrage? 
 Was not the pretext of this latter system of spoliation 
 derived immediately from the former? Had revenge in 
 this instance any other effect than to increase, instead of 
 diminishing, the mass of malice and evil already existing 
 in the world ? 
 
 The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from 
 every example which can be brought forward. Not only 
 Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect 
 of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition. 
 Legislation is, in one point of view, to be considered as an 
 attempt to provide against the excesses of this deplorable 
 mistake. It professes to assign the penalty of all private 
 injuries, and denies to individuals the right of vindicating 
 their proper cause. This end is certainly not attained 
 without some accommodation to the propensities which it 
 
96 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 desires to destroy. Still, it recognises no principle but the 
 production of the greatest eventual good with the least 
 immediate injury ; and regards the torture, or the death, of 
 any human being as unjust, of whatever mischief he may 
 have been the author, so that the result shall not more than 
 compensate for the immediate pain. 
 
 Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation 
 the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with 
 the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have 
 not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character 
 analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, 
 mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — 
 resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the 
 perfection of the mind on which it is impressed. Thus, 
 that nation which has arrived at the highest step in the 
 scale of moral progression will believe most purely in that 
 God, the knowledge of whose real attributes is considered 
 as the firmest basis of the true religion. The reason of the 
 belief of each individual, also, will be so far regulated by 
 his conceptions of what is good. Thus, the conceptions 
 which any nation or individual entertains of the God of its 
 popular worship may be inferred from their own actions 
 and opinions, which are the subjects of their approbation 
 among their fellow-men. Jesus Ohrist instructed his dis- 
 ciples to be perfect, as their Father in Heaven is perfect, 
 declaring at the same time his belief that human perfection 
 requires the refraining from revenge and retribution in any 
 of its various shapes. 
 
 The perfection of the human and the divine character is 
 thus asserted to be the same. Man, by resembling God, 
 fulfils most accurately the tendencies of his nature : and 
 God comprehends within himself all that constitutes human 
 perfection. Thus, God is a model through which the 
 
ESS A y ON CHRISTIANITY. 97 
 
 excellence of man is to be estimated, whilst the abstract 
 perfection of the human character is the type of the actual 
 perfection of the divine. It is not to be believed that a 
 person of such comprehensive views as Jesus Christ could 
 have fallen into so manifest a contradiction as to assert that 
 men would be tortured after death by that Being whose 
 character is held up as a model to human kind, because he 
 is incapable of malevolence and revenge. All the argu- 
 ments which have been brought forward to justify 
 retribution fail, when retribution is destined neither to 
 operate as an example to other agents, nor to the offender 
 himself. How feeble such reasoning is to be considered, 
 has been already shown ; but it is the character of an evil 
 Daemon to consign the beings whom he has endowed with 
 sensation to unprofitable anguish. The peculiar circum- 
 stances attendant on the conception of God casting sinners 
 to burn in Hell for ever, combine to render that conception 
 the most perfect specimen of the greatest imaginable crime. 
 Jesus Christ represented God as the principle of all good, 
 the source of all happiness, the wise and benevolent Creator 
 and Preserver of all living things. But the interpreters of his 
 doctrines have confounded the good and the evil principle. 
 They observe the emanations of their universal natures to 
 be inextricably entangled in the world, and, trembling 
 before the power of the cause of all things, addressed to it 
 such flattery as is acceptable to the ministers of human 
 tyranny, attributing love and wisdom to those energies 
 which they felt to be exerted indifferently for the purposes 
 of benefit and calamity. 
 
 Jesus Christ expressly asserts that distinction between 
 the good and evil principle which it has been the practice 
 of all theologians to confound. How far his doctrines, or 
 their interpretation, may be true, it would scarcely have 
 
98 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 been worth while to inquire, if the one did not afford an 
 example and an incentive to the attainment of true virtue, 
 whilst the other holds out a sanction and apology for every 
 species of mean and cruel vice. 
 
 It cannot be precisely ascertained in what degree Jesus 
 Christ accommodated his doctrines to the opinions of his 
 auditors; or in what degree he really said all that he is 
 related to have said. He has left no written record of 
 himself, and we are compelled to judge from the imperfect 
 and obscure information which his biographers (persona 
 certainly of very undisciplined and undiscriminating minds) 
 have transmitted to posterity. These writers (our only 
 guides) impute sentiments to Jesus Christ which flatly 
 contradict each other. They represent him as narrow, 
 superstitious, and exquisitely vindictive and malicious. 
 They insert, in the midst of a strain of impassioned 
 eloquence or sagest exhortations, a sentiment only remark- 
 able for its naked and drivelling folly. But it is not 
 difficult to distinguish the inventions by which these 
 historians have filled up the interstices of tradition, or 
 corrupted the simplicity of truth, from the real character of 
 their rude amazement. They have left sufficiently clear 
 indications of the genuine character of Jesus Christ to 
 rescue it for ever from the imputations cast upon it by 
 their ignorance and fanaticism. We discover that he is 
 the enemy of oppression and of falsehood ; that he is the 
 advocate of equal justice ; that he is neither disposed to 
 sanction bloodshed nor deceit ; under whatsoever pretences 
 their practice may be vindicated. We discover that he 
 was a man of weak and majestic demeanour, calm in 
 danger ; of natural and simple thought and habits ; beloved 
 to adoration by his adherents ; unmoved, solemn, and 
 
ESSA V ON CtiRiSTlANlTV. 99 
 
 It is utterly incredible that this man said, that if you 
 hate your enemy, you would find it to your account to 
 return him good for evil, since, by such a temporary 
 oblivion of vengeance, you would heap coals of fire on his 
 head. Where such contradictions occur, a favourable con- 
 struction is warranted by the general innocence of manners 
 and comprehensiveness of views which he is represented 
 to possess. The rule of criticism to be adopted in judging 
 of the life, actions, and words of a man who has acted any 
 conspicuous part in the revolutions of the world, should not 
 be narrow. We ought to form a general image of his 
 character and of his doctrines, and refer to this whole the 
 distinct portions of actions and speech by which they are 
 diversified. It is not here asserted that no contradictions 
 are to be admitted to have taken place in the system 
 of Jesus Christ, between doctrines promulgated in different 
 states of feeling or information, or even such as are implied 
 in the enunciation of a scheme of thought, various and 
 obscure through its immensity and depth. It is not 
 asserted that no degree of human indignation ever hurried 
 him, beyond the limits which his calmer mood had placed, 
 to disapprobation against vice and folly Those deviations 
 from the history of his life are alone to be vindicated, 
 which represent his own essential character in contradiction 
 with itself. 
 
 Every human mind has what Bacon calls its " idola 
 speeds " — peculiar images which reside in the inner cave of 
 thought. These constitute the essential and distinctive 
 character of every human being ; to which every action and 
 every word have intimate relation ; and by which, in 
 depicting a character, the genuineness and meaning of 
 these words and actions are to be determined. Every 
 fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent 
 
loo ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that 
 is valuable in this mortal world. History, to gain any 
 credit, must contain some truth, and that truth shall thus 
 be made a sufficient indication of prejudice and deceit. 
 
 "With respect to the miracles which these biographers 
 have related, I have already declined to enter into any 
 discussion on their nature or their existence. The sup 
 position of their falsehood or their truth would modify in 
 no degree the hues of the picture which is attempted to be 
 delineated. To judge truly of the moral and philosophical 
 character of Socrates, it is not necessary to determine the 
 question of the familiar Spirit which [it] is supposed that 
 he believed to attend on him. The power of the human 
 mind, relatively to intercourse with or dominion over the 
 invisible world, is doubtless an interesting theme of dis- 
 cussion ; but the connection of the instance of Jesus Christ 
 with the established religion of the country in which I 
 write, renders it dangerous to subject oneself to the imputa- 
 tion of introducing new Gods or abolishing old ones ; nor 
 is the duty of mutual forbearance sufficiently understood to 
 render it certain that the metaphysician and the moralist, 
 even though he carefully sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, 
 may not receive something analogous to the bowl of hem- 
 lock for the reward of his labours. Much, however, of 
 what his [Christ's] biographers have asserted is not to be 
 rejected merely because inferences inconsistent with the 
 general spirit of his system are to be adduced from its 
 admission. Jesus Christ did what every other reformer 
 who has produced any considerable effect upon the world has 
 done. He accommodated his doctrines to the preposses- 
 sions of those whom he addressed. He used a language 
 for this view sufficiently familiar to our comprehensions. 
 He said — However new or strange my doctrines may 
 
ESSA V ON CHRISTIANITY. loi 
 
 appear to you, they are in fact only the restoration and 
 re-establishment of those original institutions and ancient 
 customs of your own law and religion. The constitutions 
 of your faith and policy, although perfect in their origin, 
 have become corrupt and altered, and have fallen into 
 decay. I profess to restore them to their pristine authority 
 and splendour. " Think not that I am come to destroy the 
 Law and the Prophets. I am come not to destroy, but to 
 fulfil. Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or 
 one tittle shall in nowise pass away from the Law, till 
 all be fulfilled." Thus, like a skilful orator (see Cicero, 
 De Orator e)^ he secures the prejudices of his auditors, and 
 induces them, by his professions of sympathy with their 
 feelings, to enter with a willing mind into the exposition of 
 his own. The art of persuasion differs from that of reason- 
 ing ; and it is of no small moment, to the success even of a 
 true cause, that the judges who are to determine on its 
 merits should be free from those national and religious 
 predilections which render the multitude both deaf and 
 blind. 
 
 Let not this practice oe considered as an unworthy 
 artifice. It were best for the cause of reason that mankind 
 should acknowledge no authority but its own ; but it is 
 useful, to a certain extent, that they should not consider 
 those institutions which they have been habituated to 
 reverence as opposing an obstacle to its admission. All 
 reformers have been compelled to practice this mis- 
 representation of their own true feelings and opinions. It 
 is deeply to be lamented that a word should ever issue from 
 human lips which contains the minutest alloy of dissimula- 
 tion, or simulation, or hyprocrisy, or exaggeration, or 
 anything but the precise and rigid image which is present 
 to the mind, and which ought to dictate the expression. 
 
I02 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 But the practice of utter sincerity towards other men 
 would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of 
 practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth 
 cannot be communicated until it is perceived. The interests, 
 therefore, of truth require that an orator should, as far as 
 possible, produce in his hearers that state of mind on which 
 alone his exhortations could fairly be contemplated and 
 examined. 
 
 Having produced this favourable disposition of mind, 
 Jesus Christ proceeds to qualify, and finally to abrogate, 
 the system of the Jewish law. He descants upon its 
 insufficiency as a code of moral conduct, which it professed 
 to be, and absolutely selects the law of retaliation as an 
 instance of the absurdity and immorality of its institutions. 
 The conclusion of the speech is in a strain of the most 
 daring and most impassionate speculation. He seems 
 emboldened by the success of his exculpation to the 
 multitude, to declare in public the utmost singularity of his 
 faith. He tramples upon all received opinions, on all the 
 cherished luxuries and superstitions of mankind. He bids 
 them cast aside the claims of custom and blind faith by 
 which they have been encompassed from the very cradle of 
 their being, and receive the imitator and minister of the 
 Universal God. 
 
 Equality op Mankind. 
 
 " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
 chosen me to preach the gospel to the poor : He hath sent 
 me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the 
 captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at 
 liberty them that are bruised." (Luke, ch. iv., ver. 18.) 
 This is an enunciation of all that Plato and Diogenes have 
 speculated upon the equality of mankind. They saw that 
 
ESS A V ON CHRISTIANITY. 103 
 
 the great majority of the human species were reduced to 
 the situation of squalid ignorance and moral imbecility, for 
 the purpose of purveying for the luxury of a few, and 
 contributing to the satisfaction of their thirst for power. 
 Too mean-spirited and too feeble in resolve to attempt the 
 conquest of their own evil passions and of the difficulties of 
 the material world, men sought dominion over their fellow- 
 men, as an easy method to gain that apparent majesty and 
 power which the instinct of their nature requires. Plato 
 wrote the scheme of a republic, in which law should watch 
 over the equal distribution of the external instruments of 
 unequal power — honours, property etc. Diogenes devised 
 a nobler and a more worthier system of opposition to the 
 system of the slave and tyrant. He said : " It is in the 
 power of each individual to level the inequality which is 
 the topic of the complaint of mankind. Let him be aware 
 of his own worth, and the station which he occupies in the 
 scale of moral beings. Diamonds and gold, palaces and 
 sceptres, derive their value from the opinion of mankind. 
 The only sumptuary law which can be imposed on the use 
 and fabrication of these instruments of mischief and deceit, 
 these symbols of successful injustice, is the law of opinion. 
 Every man possesses the power, in this respect, to legislate 
 for himself. Let him be well aware of his own worth and 
 moral dignity. Let him yield in meek reverence to any 
 wiser or worthier than he, so long as he accords no 
 veneration to the splendour of his apparel, the luxury of his 
 food, the multitude of his flatterers and slaves. It is 
 because, mankind, ye value and seek the empty pageantry 
 of wealth and social power, that ye are enslaved to its 
 possessions. Decrease your physical wants ; learn to live, 
 so far as nourishment and shelter are concerned, like the 
 beast of the forest and the birds of the air ; ye will need 
 
I04 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 not to complain, that other individuals of your species are 
 surrounded by the diseases of luxury and the vices of 
 subserviency and oppression." With all those who are 
 truly wise, there will be an entire community, not only of 
 thoughts and feelings, but also of external possessions. 
 Insomuch, therefore, as ye live [wisely], ye may enjoy the 
 community of whatsoever benefits arise from the inventions 
 of civilized life. They are of value only for purposes of 
 mental power ; they are of value only as they are capable 
 of being shared and applied to the common advantage of 
 philosophy 3 and if there be no love among men, whatever 
 institutions they may frame must be subservient to the 
 same purpose — ^to the continuance of inequality. If there 
 be no love among men, it is best that he who sees through 
 the hollowness of their professions should fly from their 
 society, and suffice to his own soul. In wisdom, he will 
 thus lose nothing ; in power, he will gain everything. In 
 proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the 
 community of property and power. Among true and real 
 friends, all is common ; and, were ignorance and envy and 
 superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be 
 friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that 
 which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions 
 which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, 
 families, and religions, are only general names, expressing 
 the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly 
 consider their fellow-men. I love my country ; I love the 
 city in which I was born, my parents, my wife, and the 
 children of my care ; and to this city, this woman, and this 
 nation it is incumbent on me to do all the benefit in my 
 power. To what do these distinctions point, but to an 
 evident denial of the duty which humanity imposes on 
 you, of doing every possible good to every individual, under 
 
ESSAY ON CHRISTIANITY, 105 
 
 whatever denomination he may be comprehended, to whom 
 you have the power of doing it ? You ought to love all 
 mankind ; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought 
 not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but 
 to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the 
 feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the 
 distinctions of property and power will vanish ; nor are 
 they to be abolished without substituting something 
 equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall 
 acknowledge an entire community of rights. 
 
 But, as the shades of night are dispelled by the faintest 
 glimmerings of dawn, so shall the minutest progress of the 
 benevolent feelings disperse, in some degree, the gloom 
 of tyranny, and [curb the] ministers of mutual suspicion 
 and abhorrence. Your physical wants are few, whilst 
 those of your mind and heart cannot be numbered or 
 described, from their multitude and complication. To 
 secure the gratification of the former, you have made 
 yourselves the bond-slaves of each other. 
 
 They have cultivated these meaner wants to so great an 
 excess as to judge nothing so valuable or desirable [as] 
 what relates to their gratification. Hence has arisen a 
 system of passions which loses sight of the end they were 
 originally awakened to attain. Fame, power, and gold, are 
 loved for their own sakes — are worshipped with a blind, 
 habitual idolatry. The pageantry of empire, and the fame 
 of irresistible might, are contemplated by the possessor 
 with unmeaning complacency, without a retrospect to the 
 properties which first made him consider them of value. It 
 is from the cultivation of the most contemptible properties 
 of human nature that discord and torpor and indifference, 
 by which the moral universe is disordered, essentially 
 depend. So long as these are the ties by which human 
 
io6 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 society is connected, let it not be admitted that they are 
 fragile. 
 
 Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he 
 must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he 
 must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its 
 excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they 
 really are. He will discover the wisdom of universal 
 love; he will feel the meanness and the injustice of 
 sacrificing the reason and the liberty of his fellow-men 
 to the indulgence of his physical appetites, and becom- 
 ing a party to their degradation by the consummation of 
 his own. 
 
 Such, with those differences only incidental to the age 
 and state of society in which they were promulgated, appear 
 to have been the doctrines of Jesus Christ. It is not too 
 much to assert that they have been the doctrines of every 
 just and compassionate mind that ever speculated on the 
 social nature of man. The dogma of the equality of man- 
 kind has been advocated, with various success, in different 
 ages of the world. It was imperfectly understood, but a 
 kind of instinct in its favour influenced considerably the 
 practice of ancient Greece and Home. Attempts to 
 establish usages founded on this dogma have been made in 
 modern Europe, in several instances, since the revival of 
 literature and the arts. Rousseau has vindicated this 
 opinion with all the eloquence of sincere and earnest faith ; 
 and is, perhaps, the philosopher among the moderns who, in 
 the structure of his feelings and understanding, resembles 
 most nearly the mysterious sage of Judea. It is impossible 
 to read those passionate words in which Jesus Christ 
 upbraids the pusillanimity and sensuality of mankind, 
 without being strongly reminded of the more connected 
 and systematic enthusiasm of Rousseau. " No man," 
 
ESS A V ON CHRISTIANITY. 107 
 
 Bays Jesus Christ, " can serve two masters. Take, there- 
 fore, no thought for to-morrow, for the morrow shall 
 take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the 
 day is the evil "^thereof." If we would profit by the 
 wisdom of a sublime and poetical mind, we must beware of 
 the vulgar error of interpreting literally every expression it 
 employs. Nothing can well be more remote from truth 
 than the literal and strict construction of such expressions 
 as Jesus Christ delivers, or than [to imagine that] it were 
 best for man that he should abandon all his acquirements 
 in physical and intellectual science, and depend on the 
 spontaneous productions of nature for his subsistence. 
 Nothing is more obviously false than that the remedy for 
 the inequality among men consists in their return to the 
 condition of savages and beasts. Philosophy will never be 
 understood if we approach the study of its mysteries with 
 BO narrow and illiberal conceptions of its universality. 
 Rousseau certainly did not mean to persuade the immense 
 population of his country to abandon all the arts of life, 
 destroy their habitations and their temples, and become the 
 inhabitants of the woods. He addressed the most 
 enlightened of his compatriots, and endeavoured to 
 persuade them to set the example of a pure and simple life, 
 by placing in the strongest point of view his conceptions of 
 the calamitous and diseased aspect which, overgrown as it 
 is with the vices of sensuality and selfishness, is exhibited 
 by civilized society. Nor can it be believed that Jesus 
 Christ endeavoured to prevail on the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem neither to till their fields, nor to frame a shelter 
 against the sky, nor to provide food for the morrow. He 
 simply exposes, with the passionate rhetoric of enthusiastic 
 love towards all human beings, the miseries and mischiefs 
 of that system which makes all things subservient to the 
 
lo8 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 subsistence of the material frame of man. He warns them 
 that no man can serve two masters — God and Mammon ; 
 that it is impossible at once to be high-minded and just and 
 wise, and to comply with the accustomed forms of human 
 society, seek power, wealth, or empire, either from the 
 idolatry of habit, or as the direct instruments of sensual 
 gratification. He instructs them that clothing and food 
 and shelter are not, as they suppose, the true end of human 
 life, but only certain means, to be valued in proportion to 
 their subserviency to that end. These means it is right of 
 every human being to possess, and that in the same degree. 
 In this respect, the fowls of the air and the lilies of 
 the field are examples for the imitation of mankind. They 
 are clothed and fed by the Universal God. Permit, there- 
 fore, the Spirit of this benignant Principle to visit your 
 intellectual frame, or, in other words, become just and pure. 
 When you understand the degree of attention which the 
 requisitions of your physical nature demand, you will 
 perceive how little labour suffices for their satisfaction. 
 Your heavenly Father knoweth you have need of these 
 things. The universal Harmony, or Reason, which makes 
 your passive frame of thought its dwelling, in proportion to 
 the purity and majesty of its nature will instruct you, if ye 
 are willing to attain that exalted condition, in what 
 manner to possess all the objects necessary for 
 your material subsistence. All men are [impelled] to 
 become thus pure and happy. All men are called to 
 participate in the community of Nature's gifts. The man 
 who has fewest bodily wants approaches nearest to the 
 Divine Nature. Satisfy these wants at the cheapest rate, 
 and expend the remaining energies of your nature in the 
 attainment of virtue and knowledge. The mighty frame 
 pf the wonderful and lovely world 19 the food of your 
 
ESS A Y ON CHRISTIANITY, 109 
 
 contemplation, and living beings who resemble your 
 own nature, and are bound to you by similarity of sensa- 
 tions, are destined to be the nutriment of your affection ; 
 united, they are the consummation of the widest hopes your 
 mind can contain. Ye can expend thus no labour on 
 mechanism consecrated to luxury and pride. How abun- 
 dant will not be your progress in all that truly ennobles 
 and extends human nature ! By rendering yourselves thus 
 worthy, ye will be as free in your imaginations as the swift 
 and many-coloured fowls of the air, and as beautiful in pur* 
 simplicity as the lilies of the field. In proportion as man- 
 kind becomes wise — yes, in exact proportion to that 
 wisdom — should be the extinction of the unequal system 
 under which they now subsist. Government is, in fact, 
 the mere badge of their depravity. They are so little aware 
 of the inestimable benefits of mutual love as to indulge, 
 without thought, and almost without motive, in the worst 
 excesses of selfishness and malice. Hence, without gradu- 
 ating human society into a scale of empire and subjection, 
 its very existence has become impossible. It is necessary 
 that universal .benevolence should supersede the regula- 
 tions of precedent and prescription, before these regulations 
 can safely be abolished. Meanwhile, their very subsistence 
 depends on the system of injustice and violence which they 
 have been devised to palliate. They suppose men endowed 
 with the power of deliberating and determining for their 
 equals ; whilst these men, as frail and as ignorant as the 
 multitude whom they rule, possess, as a practical conse- 
 quence of this power, the right which they of necessity 
 exercise to prevent (together with their own) the physical 
 and moral and intellectual nature of all mankind. 
 
 It is the object of wisdom to equalize the distinctions on 
 which this power depends, by exhibiting in their proper 
 
no ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 worthlessness the objects, a contention concerning wKich 
 renders its existence a necessary evil. The evil, in fact, 
 is virtually abolished wherever justice is practised ; and it 
 is abolished in precise proportion to the prevalence of true 
 virtue. 
 
 The whole frame of human things is infected by an 
 insidious poison. Hence it is that man is blind in his 
 understanding, corrupt in his moral sense, and diseased in 
 his physical functions. The wisest and most sublime of 
 the ancient poets saw this truth, and embodied their con- 
 ception of its value in retrospect to the earliest ages of 
 mankind. They represented equality as the reign of Saturn, 
 and taught that mankind had gradually degenerated from 
 the virtue which enabled them to enjoy or maintain this 
 happy state. Their doctrine was philosophically false. 
 Later and more correct observations have instructed us 
 that uncivilized man is the most pernicious and miserable 
 of beings, and that the violence and injustice, which are the 
 genuine indications of real inequality, obtain in the society 
 of these beings without palliation. Their imaginations of a 
 happier state of human society were referred, in truth, to 
 the Saturnian period ; they ministered, indeed, to thoughts 
 of despondency and sorrow. But they were the children 
 of airy hope — the prophets and parents of man's futurity. 
 Man was once as a wild beast ; he has become a moralist, a 
 metaphysician, a poet, and an astronomer. Lucretius or 
 Yirgil might have referred the comparison to themselves j 
 and, as a proof of the progress of the nature of man, 
 challenged a comparison with the cannibals of Scythia.* 
 The experience of the ages which have intervened between 
 the present period and that in which Jesus Christ taught, 
 tends to prove his doctrine, and to illustrate theirs. There 
 * Jesus Christ foresaw what the poets retrospectively imagined. 
 
ESS A Y ON CHRIS TIANITY. 1 1 1 
 
 is more equality because there is more justice, and there is 
 more justice because there is more universal knowledge. 
 
 To the accomplishment of such mighty hopes were the 
 views of Jesus Christ extended ; such did he believe to be 
 the tendency of his doctrines — the abolition of artificial 
 distinctions among mankind, so far as the love which it 
 becomes all human beings to bear towards each other, and 
 the knowledge of truth from which that love will never fail 
 to be produced, avail to their destruction. A young man 
 came to Jesus Christ, struck by the miraculous dignity and 
 simplicity of his character, and attracted by the words 
 of power which he uttered. He demanded to be considered 
 as one of the followers of his creed. " Sell all that thou 
 hast," replied the philosopher; "give it to the poor, and 
 follow me." But the young man had large possessions, and 
 he went away sorrowing. 
 
 The system of equality was attempted, after Jesus 
 Christ's death, to be carried into efiect by his followers. 
 " They that believed had all things in common ; they sold 
 their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as 
 every man had need ; and they continued daily with one 
 accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to 
 house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of 
 heart." (Acts, ch. ii.) 
 
 The practical application of the doctrines of strict justice 
 to a state of society established in its contempt, was such 
 as might have been expected. After the transitory glow of 
 enthusiasm had faded from the minds of men, precedent and 
 habit resumed their empire ; they broke like a universal 
 deluge on one shrinking and solitary island. Men to 
 whom birth had allotted ample possession, looked with 
 complacency on sumptuous apartments and luxurious food, 
 and those ceremonials of delusive majesty which surround 
 
112 ESSA VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 the throne of power and the court of wealth. Men from 
 whom these things were withheld by their condition, began 
 again to gaze with stupid envy on pernicious splendour ; 
 and, by desiring the false greatness of another's state, to 
 sacrifice the intrinsic dignity of their own. The dema- 
 gogues of the infant republic of the Christian sect, attaining, 
 through eloquence or artifice, to influence amongst its 
 members, first violated (under the pretence of watching 
 over their integrity) the institutions established for the 
 common and equal benefit of all. These demagogues 
 artfully silenced the voice of the moral sense among 
 them by engaging them to attend, not so much to the 
 cultivation of a virtuous and happy life in this mortal 
 scene, as to the attainment of a fortunate condition after 
 death ; not so much to the consideration of those means 
 by which the state of man is adorned and improved, as an 
 inquiry into the secrets of the connexion between God and 
 the world — things which, they well knew, were not to be 
 explained, or even to be conceived. The system of equality 
 which they established necessarily fell to the ground, 
 because it is a system that must result from, rather than 
 precede, the moral improvement of human kind. It was a 
 circumstance of no moment that the first adherents of the 
 system of Jesus Christ cast their property into a common 
 stock. The same degree of real community of property 
 could have subsisted without this formality, which served 
 only to extend a temptation of dishonesty to the treasurers 
 of so considerable a patrimony. Every man, in proportion 
 to his virtue, considers himself, with respect to the great 
 community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of 
 their interests in the property which he chances to possess. 
 Every man. in proportion to his wisdom, sees the manner 
 in which it is his duty to employ the resources which the 
 
SPECULA TIONS ON METAPHYSICS. \ t3 
 
 consent of mankind has intrusted to his discretion. Such 
 is the [annihilation] of the unjust inequality of powers and 
 conditions existing in the world; and so gradually and 
 inevitably is the progress of equality accommodated to the 
 progress of wisdom and of virtue among mankind. 
 
 Meanwhile, some benefit has not failed to flow from the 
 imperfect attempts which have been made to erect a system 
 of equal rights to property and power upon the basis of 
 arbitrary institutions. They have undoubtedly, in every 
 case, from the instability of their formation, failed. Still, 
 they constitute a record of those epochs at which a true 
 sense of justice suggested itself to the understandings of 
 men, so that they consented to forego all the cherished 
 delights of luxury, all the habitual gratifications arising out 
 of the possession or the expectation of power, all the 
 superstitions with which the accumulated authority of ages 
 had made them dear and venerable. They are so many 
 trophies erected in the enemy's land, to mark the limits of 
 the victorious progress of truth and justice. 
 
 [the rest is wanting.] 
 
 SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 
 
 I. THE MIND. 
 
 I. It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think 
 of nothing which we have not perceived. When I say that 
 we can think of nothing, I mean, we can imagine nothing, 
 we can reason of nothing. The most astonishing combina- 
 tions of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and mathe- 
 ^Kmatics, are no other than combinations which the intellect 
 
 m 
 
1 14 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 makes of sensations according to its own laws. A catalogue 
 of all the thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible 
 modifications, is a cyclopedic history of the universe. 
 
 But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various 
 planets of this and other solar systems ; and the existence 
 of a Power bearing the same relation to all that we perceive 
 and are, as what we call a cause does to what we call effect, 
 were never subjects of sensation, and yet the laws of mind 
 almost universally suggest, according to the various dis- 
 position of each, a conjecture, a persuasion, or a conviction 
 of their existence. The reply is simple ; these thoughts are 
 also to be included in the catalogue of existence ; they are 
 modes in which thoughts are combined ; the objection only 
 adds force to the conclusion, that beyond the limits of 
 perception and thought nothing can exist. 
 
 Thoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what you will, 
 differ from each other, not in kind, but in force. It has 
 commonly been supposed that those distinct thoughts which 
 affect a number of persons, at regular intervals, during the 
 passage of a multitude of other thoughts, which are called 
 real, or external objects, are totally different in kind from 
 those which affect only a few persons, and which recur at 
 irregular intervals, and are usually more obscure and 
 indistinct, such as hallucinations, dreams, and the ideas of 
 madness. No essential distinction between any one of these 
 ideas, or any class of them, is founded on a correct observa- 
 tion of the nature of things, but merely on a consideration 
 of what thoughts are most invariably subservient to the 
 security and happiness of life ; and if nothing more were 
 expressed by the distinction, the philosopher might safely 
 accommodate his language to that of the vulgar. But they 
 pretend to assert an essential difference, which has no 
 foundation in truth, and which suggests a narrow and false 
 
SPECULA TIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 1 1 5 
 
 conception of universal nature, the parent of the most fatal 
 errors in speculation. A specific difierence between every 
 thought of the mind, is, indeed, a necessary consequence of 
 that law by which it perceives diversity and number ; but a 
 generic and essential difference is wholly arbitrary. The 
 principle of the agreement and similarity of all thoughts, is, 
 that they are all thoughts ; the principle of their disagree- 
 ment consists in the variety and irregularity of the occasions 
 on which they arise in the mind. That in which they agree, 
 to that in which they differ, is as everything to nothing. 
 Important distinctions, of various degrees of force, indeed, 
 are to be established between them, if they were, as they 
 may be, subjects of ethical and oeconomical discussion ; but 
 that is a question altogether distinct. 
 
 By considering all knowledge as bounded by perception, 
 whose operations may be indefinitely combined, we arrive at 
 a conception of Nature inexpressibly more magnificent, 
 simple and true, than accords with the ordinary systems of 
 complicated and partial consideration. Nor does a con- 
 templation of the universe, in this comprehensive and 
 synthetical view, exclude the subtlest analysis of its 
 modifications and parts. 
 
 1 
 
 A scale might be formed, graduated according to the 
 degrees of a combined ratio of intensity, duration, con- 
 nection, periods of recurrence, and utility, which would be 
 the standard, according to which all ideas might be measured, 
 and an uninterrupted chain of nicely shadowed distinctions 
 would be observed, from the faintest impression on the 
 senses, to the most distinct combination of those impressions ; 
 from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass of 
 knowledge which, including our own nature, constitutes 
 what we call the universe. 
 
Ii6 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 We are intuitively conscious of our own existence, and of 
 that connection in the train of our successive ideas, which 
 we term our identity. We are conscious also of the exist- 
 ence of other minds; but not intuitively. Our evidence, 
 with respect to the existence of other minds, is founded upon 
 a very complicated relation of ideas, which it is foreign to 
 the purpose of this treatise to anatomise. The basis of this 
 relation is, undoubtedly, a periodical recurrence of masses of 
 ideas, which our voluntary determinations have, in one 
 peculiar direction, no power to circumscribe or to arrest, and 
 against the recurrence of which they can only imperfectly 
 provide. The irresistible laws of thought constrain us to 
 believe that the precise limits of our actual ideas are not the 
 actual limits of possible ideas ; the law, according to which 
 these deductions are drawn, is called analogy ; and this is 
 the foundation of all our inferences, from one idea to another, 
 inasmuch as they resemble each other. 
 
 We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own 
 shape, and in shapes more or less analogous to our own. 
 These are perpetually changing the mode of their existence 
 relatively to us. To express the varieties of these modes, 
 we say, we move, they move ; and as this motion is continual, 
 though not uniform, we express our conception of the 
 diversities of its course by — it has been, it is, it shall be. 
 These diversities are events or objects, and are essential, 
 considered relatively to human identity, for the existence of 
 the human mind. For if the inequalities, produced by 
 what has been termed the operations of the external universe, 
 were levelled by the perception of our being, uniting, 
 and filling up their interstices, motion and mensuration. 
 
SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 117 
 
 and time, and space ; the elements of the human mind 
 being thus abstracted, sensation and imagination cease. 
 Mind cannot be considered pure. 
 
 II. — WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL 
 METHODS OF CONSIDERING THEM. 
 
 We do not attend sufficiently to what passes within 
 ourselves. We combine words, combined a thousand times 
 before. In our minds we assume entire opinions ; and in 
 the expression of those opinions, entire phrases, when we 
 would philosophise. Our whole style of expression and 
 sentiment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms. Our 
 words are dead, our thoughts are cold and borrowed. 
 
 Let us contemplate facts; let us, in the great study of 
 ourselves, resolutely compel the mind to a rigid consideration 
 of itself. We are not content with conjecture, and 
 inductions, and syllogisms, in sciences regarding external 
 objects. As in these, let us also, in considering the 
 phenomena of mind, severely collect those facts which cannot 
 be disputed. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspicuous 
 advantage over every other science, that each student, by 
 attentively referring to his own mind, may ascertain the 
 authorities upon which any assertions regarding it are 
 supported. There can thus be no deception, we ourselves 
 being the depositories of the evidence of the subject which 
 we consider. 
 
 Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry concerning 
 those things belonging to, or connected with, the internal 
 nature of man. 
 
 It is said that mind produces motion ; and it might as 
 well have been said, that motion produces mind. 
 
1 1 8 ESS A VS AND FRA GMENTS, 
 
 III. — DIFFICULTY OF ANALYZING THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 If it were possible that a person should give a faithful 
 history of his being, from the earliest epochs of his 
 recollection, a picture would be presented such as the world 
 has never contemplated before. A mirror would be held up 
 to all men in which they might behold their own recollections, 
 and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and fears, — 
 all that they dare not, or that daring and desiring, they 
 could not expose to the open eyes of day. But thought can 
 with difficulty visit the intricate and winding chambers 
 which it inhabits. It is like a river whose rapid and 
 perpetual stream flows outward ; — like one in dread who 
 speeds through the recesses of some haunted pile, 
 and dares not look behind. The caverns of the mind are 
 obscure, and shadowy ; or pervaded with a lustre, 
 beautifully bright indeed, but shining not beyond their 
 portals. If it were possible to be where we have been, 
 vitally and indeed — if, at the moment of our presence there, 
 we could define the results of our experience — if the passage 
 from sensation to reflection — from a state of passive per- 
 ception to voluntary contemplation, were not so dizzying and 
 so tumultuous, this attempt would be less difficult. 
 
 IV. — HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON. 
 
 Most of the errors of philosophers have arisen from con- 
 sidering the human being in a point of view too detailed 
 and circumscribed. He is not a moral and an intellectual, 
 — but also, and pre-eminently, an imaginative being. His 
 own mind is his law ; his own mind is all things to him. 
 If we would arrive at any knowledge which should be 
 serviceable from the practical conclusions to which it leads, 
 we ought to consider the mind of man and the universe as 
 
SPECULA TIONS ON ME TAPHYSICS, 1 19 
 
 the great whole on which to exercise our speculations. 
 Here, above all, verbal disputes ought to be laid aside, 
 though this has long been their chosen field of battle. It 
 imports little to inquire whether thought be distinct from 
 the objects of thought. The use of the words external and 
 internal^ as applied to the establishment of this distinction, 
 has been the symbol and the source of much dispute. This 
 is merely an affair of words, and as the dispute deserves, to 
 say, that when speaking of the objects of thought, we 
 indeed only describe one of the forms of thought — or 
 that, speaking of thought, we only apprehend one of the 
 operations of the universal system of beings. 
 
 V. — CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS, AS 
 CONNECTING SLEEPING AND WAKING. 
 
 1. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as faithfully as 
 possible a relation of the events of sleep. 
 
 And first I am bound to present a faithful picture of my 
 own peculiar nature relatively to sleep. I do not doubt 
 that were every individual to imitate me, it would be found 
 that among many circumstances peculiar to their individual 
 nature, a sufficiently general resemblance would be found to 
 prove the connection existing between those peculiarities 
 and the most universal phenomena. I shall employ caution, 
 indeed, as to the facts which I state, that they contain 
 nothing false or exaggerated. But they contain no more 
 than certain elucidations of my own nature ; concerning the 
 degree in which it resembles, or differs from, that of others, 
 I am by no means accurately aware. It is sufficient, 
 however, to caution the reader against drawing general 
 inferences from particular* instances. 
 
I20 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 I omit the general instances of delusion in fever or 
 delirium, as well as mere dreams considered in themselves. 
 A delineation of this subject, however inexhaustible and 
 interesting, is to be passed over. 
 
 What is the connection of sleeping and of waking ? 
 
 2. I distinctly remember dreaming three several times, 
 between intervals of two or more years, the same precise 
 dream. It was not so much what is ordinarily called a 
 dream ; the single image, unconnected with all other images, 
 of a youth who was educated at the same school with 
 myself, presented itself in sleep. Even now, after the 
 lapse of many years, I can never hear the name of this 
 youth, without the three places where I dreamed of him 
 presenting themselves distinctly to my mind. 
 
 3. In dreams, images acquire associations peculiar to 
 dreaming ; so that the idea of a particular house, when it 
 recurs a second time in dreams, will have relation with the 
 idea of the same house, in the first time, of a nature 
 entirely different from that which the house excites, when 
 seen or thought of in relation to waking ideas. 
 
 4. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccount- 
 able connection of which with the obscure parts of my own 
 nature, I have been irresistibly impressed. I have beheld 
 a scene which has produced no unusual effect on my 
 thoughts. After the lapse of many years I have dreamed 
 of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it has haunted 
 my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity of an object 
 connected with human affections. I have visited this 
 scene again. Neither the dream could be dissociated from 
 the landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor 
 
SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 121 
 
 feelings, such as neither singly could have awakened, from 
 both. But the most remarkable event of this nature, which 
 ever occurred to me, happened five years ago at Oxford. 
 I was walking with a friend, in the neighbourhood of that 
 city, engaged in earnest and interesting conversation. "We 
 suddenly turned the corner of a lane, and the view, which 
 its high banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself. 
 The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one among 
 many plashy meadows, enclosed with stone walls; the 
 irregular and broken ground, between the wall and the 
 road on which we stood ; a long low hill behind the wind- 
 mill, and a grey covering of uniform cloud spread over the 
 evening sky. It was that season when the last leaf had 
 just fallen from the scant and stunted ash. The scene 
 surely was a common scene ; the season and the hour little 
 calculated to kindle lawless thought ; it was a tame unin- 
 teresting assemblage of objects, such as would drive the 
 imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the 
 evening fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. 
 The efiect which it produced on me was not such as could 
 have been expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen 
 that exact scene in some dream of long * 
 
 * H&re 1 was obliged to leave off, overcome hy thrilling horror. This 
 remark closes this fragment, which was written in 1815. I remember 
 well his coming to me from writing it, pale and agitated, to seek 
 refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it excited. No man, 
 as these fragments prove, had such keen sensations as Shelley. His 
 nervous temperament was wound up by the delicacy of his health to 
 an intense degree of sensibility, and while his active mind pondered 
 for ever upon, and drew conclusions from his sensations, his reveries 
 increased their vivacity, till they mingled with, and made one with 
 thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, even to physical 
 pain. — M, S. 
 
122 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 
 
 I.— PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS. 
 
 That great science which regards nature and the 
 operations of the human mind, is popularly divided into 
 morals and metaphysics. The latter relates to a just 
 classification, and the assignment of distinct names to its 
 ideas ; the former regards simply the determination of that 
 arrangement of them which produces the greatest and most 
 solid happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral 
 action, is that action which, when considered in all its acces- 
 sories and consequences, is fitted to produce the highest 
 pleasure to the greatest number of sensitive beings. The 
 laws according to which all pleasure, since it cannot be 
 equally felt by all sensitive beings, ought to be distributed 
 by a voluntary agent, are reserved for a separate chapter. 
 
 The design of this little treatise is restricted to the 
 development of the elementary principles of morals. As far 
 as regards that purpose, metaphysical science will be 
 treated merely so far as a source of negative truth ; whilst 
 morality will be considered as a science, respecting which 
 we can arrive at positive conclusions. 
 
 The misguided imaginations of men have rendered the 
 ascertaining of what is not true^ the principal direct service 
 which metaphysical science can bestow upon moral science. 
 Moral science itself is the doctrine of the voluntary actions 
 of man, as a sentient and social being. These actions 
 depend on the thoughts in his mind. But there is a mass 
 of popular opinion, from which the most enlightened persons 
 are seldom wholly free, into the truth or falsehood of which 
 it is incumbent on us to inquire, before we can arrive at 
 any firm conclusions as to the conduct which we ought to 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 123 
 
 pursue in the regulation of our own minds, or towards our 
 fellow-beings; or before we can ascertain the elementary 
 laws, according to which these thoughts, from which these 
 actions flow, are originally combined. 
 
 The object of the forms according to which human society 
 is administered, is the happiness of the individuals com- 
 posing the communities which they regard, and these forms 
 are perfect or imperfect in proportion to the degree in 
 which they promote this end. 
 
 This object is not merely the quantity of happiness 
 enjoyed by individuals as sensitive beings, but the mode in 
 which it should be distributed among them as social beings. 
 It is not enough, if such a coincidence can be conceived as 
 possible, that one person or class of persons should enjoy the 
 highest happiness, whilst another is sufiering a dispropor- 
 tionate degree of misery. It is necessary that the happi- 
 ness produced by the common efforts, and preserved by the 
 common care, should be distributed according to the just 
 claims of each individual ; if not, although the quantity 
 produced should be the same, the end of society would 
 remain unfulfilled. The object is in a compound proportion 
 to the quantity of happiness produced, and the corres- 
 pondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the 
 elementary feelings of man as a social being. 
 
 The disposition in an individual to promote this object is 
 called virtue ; and the two constituent parts of virtue, 
 benevolence and justice, are correlative with these two 
 great portions of the only true object of all voluntary 
 actions of a human being. Benevolence is the desire to be 
 the author of good, and justice the apprehension of the 
 manner in which good ought to be done. 
 
 Justice and benevolence result from the elementary laws 
 of the human mind. 
 
124 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OP VIRTUE. 
 
 Sect. 1. General View of the Nature and Objects of Virtue.— 2. The 
 Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded on the Elementary 
 Principles of Mind. — 3. The Laws which flow from the nature of 
 Mind regulating the application of those principles to human 
 actions. — 4, Virtue, a possible attribute of man. 
 
 We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings like our- 
 selves, upon whose happiness most of our actions exert some 
 obvious and decisive influence. 
 
 The regulation of this influence is the object of moral 
 science. 
 
 We know that we are susceptible of receiving painful or 
 pleasurable impressions of greater or less intensity and 
 duration. That is called good which produces pleasure -^ 
 that is called evil which produces pain. These are general 
 names applicable to every class of causes, from which an 
 overbalance of pain or pleasure may result. But when a 
 human being is the active instrument of generating or 
 diff'using happiness, the principle through which it is 
 most effectually instrumental to that purpose, is called 
 virtua And benevolence, or the desire to be the author of 
 good, united with justice, or an apprehension of the manner 
 in which that good is to be done, constitutes virtue. 
 
 But, wherefore should a man be benevolent and just? 
 The immediate emotions of his nature, especially in its 
 most inartificial state, prompt him to inflict pain, and to 
 arrogate dominion. He desires to heap superfluities to his 
 own store, although others perish with famine. He is pro- 
 pelled to guard against the smallest invasion of his own 
 liberty, though he reduces others to a condition of the most 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 125 
 
 pitiless servitude. He is revengeful, proud and selfish. 
 Wherefore should he curb these propensities % 
 
 It is inquired, for what reason a human being should 
 engage in procuring the happiness, or refrain from pro- 
 ducing the pain of another ^ When a reason is required to 
 prove the necessity of adopting any system of conduct, 
 what is it that the objector demands % He requires proof of 
 that system of conduct being such as will most effectually 
 promote the happiness of mankind. To demonstrate 
 this, is to render a moral reason. Such is the object of 
 Virtue. 
 
 A common sophism, which, like many others, depends on 
 the abuse of a metaphorical expression to a literal purpose, 
 has produced much of the confusion which has involved the 
 theory of morals. It is said that no person is bound to be 
 just or kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail to incur some 
 penalty. Duty is obligation. There can be no obligation 
 without an obliger. Virtue is a law, to which it is the will 
 of the lawgiver that we should conform ; which will we 
 should in no manner be bound to obey, unless some dread- 
 ful punishment were attached to disobedience. This is the 
 philosophy of slavery and superstition. 
 
 In fact, no person can be hound or obliged^ without some 
 power preceding to bind and oblige. If I observe a man 
 bound hand and foot, I know that some one bound him. 
 But if I observe him returning self-satisfied from the 
 performance of some action, by which he has been the 
 willing author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that the 
 anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of heavenly 
 reward, has constrained him to such an act.* 
 
 * A leaf of manuscript is wanting here, manifestly treating of self- 
 love and disinterestedness. — M. S. 
 
126 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 It remains to be stated in what manner the sensations 
 which constitute the basis of virtue originate in the human 
 mind ; what are the laws which it receives there ; how far 
 the principles of mind allow it to be an attribute of a 
 human being; and, lastly, what is the probability of 
 persuading mankind to adopt it as a universal and 
 systematic motive of conduct. 
 
 BENEVOLENCE. 
 
 Theke is a class of emotions which we instinctively 
 avoid. A human being, such as is man considered in his 
 origin, a child a month old, has a very imperfect conscious- 
 ness of the existence of other natures resembling itself. 
 All the energies of its being are directed to the extinction 
 of the pains with which it is perpetually assailed. At 
 length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures 
 susceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is very late 
 before children attain to this knowledge. If a child 
 observes, without emotion, its nurse or its mother suffering 
 acute pain, it is attributable rather to ignorance than 
 insensibility. So soon as the accents and gestures, 
 significant of pain, are referred to the feelings which they 
 express, they awaken in the mind of the beholder a desire 
 that they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be 
 evil for its own sake, without any other necessary reference 
 to the mind by which its existence is perceived, than such 
 as is indispensable to its perception. The tendencies of our 
 original sensations, indeed, all have for their object the 
 preservation of our individual being. But these are 
 passive and unconscious. In proportion as the mind 
 acquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies 
 becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 127 
 
 beast, is selfish, because its mind is incapable of receiving 
 an accurate intimation of the nature of pain as existing in 
 beings resembling itself. The inhabitant of a highly- 
 civilised community will more acutely sympathise with the 
 sufierings and enjoyments of others, than the inhabitant of 
 a society of a less degree of civilisation. He who shall 
 have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with 
 the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually 
 sympathise more than one engaged in the less refined 
 functions of manual labour. Every one has experience of 
 the fact, that to sympathise with the sufferings of another, 
 is to enjoy a transitory oblivion of his own. 
 
 The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, 
 of perceiving and abhorring evil, however remote from the 
 immediate sphere of sensations with which that individual 
 mind is conversant. Imagination or mind employed in 
 prophetically imaging forth its objects, is that faculty of 
 human nature on which every gradation of its progress, 
 nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain or 
 pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to consist 
 entirely in prospect. The only distinction between the 
 selfish man and the virtuous man is, that the imagination of 
 the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst that of 
 the latter embraces a comprehensive circumstance. In this 
 sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be inseparable, 
 and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of 
 ignorance and mistake ; it is the portion of unreflecting 
 infancy, and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil 
 occupations have blunted or rendered torpid ; disinterested 
 benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, 
 and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add 
 ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability to the social 
 state of man. Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of 
 
128 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 civilised life : a creation of the human mind ; or, rather, a 
 combination which it has made, according to elementary 
 rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by 
 the relations established between man and man. 
 
 All the theories which have refined and exalted 
 humanity, or those which have been devised as alleviations 
 of its mistakes and evils, have been based upon the 
 elementary emotions of disinterestedness, which we feel to 
 constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism, as it 
 existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been 
 supposed, a calculation of personal advantages. When 
 Mutius Scsevola thrust his hand into the burning coals, and 
 Regulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis sustained the 
 rack silently, in the torments of which she knew that she 
 would speedily perish, rather than betray the conspirators 
 to the tyrant ;* these illustrious persons certainly made a 
 small estimate of their private interest. If it be said that 
 they sought posthumous fame ; instances are not wanting 
 in history which prove that men have even defied infamy 
 for the sake of good. But there is a great error in 
 the world with respect to the selfishness of fame. It is 
 certainly possible that a person should seek distinction as a 
 medium of personal gratification. But the love of fame is 
 frequently no more than a desire that the feelings of others 
 should confirm, illustrate, and sympathise with, our own. 
 In this respect it is allied with all that draws us out 
 of ourselves. It is the "last infirmity of noble minds." 
 Chivalry was likewise founded on the theory of self- 
 sacrifice. Love possesses so extraordinary a power over the 
 human heart, only because disinterestedness is united with 
 the natural propensities. These propensities themselves 
 are comparatively impotent in cases where the imagination 
 * Tacitus. 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 129 
 
 of pleasure to be given, as well as to be received, does not 
 enter into the account. Let it not be objected that 
 patriotism, and chivalry, and sentimental love, have been 
 the fountains of enormous mischief. They are cited only 
 to establish the proposition that, according to the 
 elementary principles of mind, man is capable of desiring 
 and pursuing good for its own sake. 
 
 JUSTICE. 
 
 The benevolent propensities are thus inherent in the 
 human mind. "We are impelled to seek the happiness of 
 others. We experience a satisfaction in being the authors 
 of that happiness. Everything that lives is open to 
 impressions of pleasure and pain. We are led by our 
 benevolent propensities to regard every human being indif- 
 ferently with whom we come in contact. They have 
 preference only with respect to those who offer themselves 
 most obviously to our notice. Human beings are indis- 
 criminating and blind ; they will avoid inflicting pain, 
 though that pain should be attended with eventual benefit ; 
 they will seek to confer pleasure without calculating the 
 mischief that may result. They benefit one at the expense 
 of many. 
 
 There is a sentiment in the human mind that regulates 
 benevolence in its application as a principle of action. This 
 is the sense of justice. Justice, as well as benevolence, is 
 an elementary law of human nature. It is through this 
 principle that men are impelled to distribute any means of 
 pleasure which benevolence may suggest the communication 
 of to others, in equal portions among an equal number of 
 applicants. If ten men are shipwrecked on a desert island, 
 they distribute whatever subsistence may remain to them, 
 
 90 
 
I30 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 into equal portions among themselves. If six of them 
 conspire to deprive the remaining four of their share, their 
 conduct is termed unjust. 
 
 The existence of pain has been shown to be a circum- 
 stance which the human mind regards with dissatisfaction, 
 and of which it desires the cessation. It is equally accord- 
 ing to its nature to desire that the advantages to be enjoyed 
 by a limited number of persons should be enjoyed equally 
 by all. This proposition is supported by the evidence of 
 indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of a number 
 of persons being made the victims of the enjoyments of 
 one, and he who would appeal in favour of any system 
 which might produce such an evil to the primary emotions 
 of our nature, would have nothing to reply. Let two 
 persons, equally strangers, make application for some 
 benefit in the possession of a third to bestow, and to which 
 he feels that they have an equal claim. They are both 
 sensitive beings ; pleasure and pain affect them alike. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 It is foreign to the general scope of this little Treatise to 
 encumber a simple argument by controverting any of the 
 trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two ; 
 the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, 
 the prolific cause and eflfect of religious error, which it 
 seems useful to refute. 
 
 First, it is inquired, "Wherefore should a man be 
 benevolent and just?" The answer has been given in the 
 preceding chapter. 
 
 If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the 
 happiness of mankind, he demands a mathematical or 
 metaphysical reason for a moral action. The absurdity of 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS, 131 
 
 this scepticism is more apparent, but not less real than 
 the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical or meta- 
 physical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that 
 all the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human 
 actions are necessarily determined by motives, until it 
 could be proved that these radii and these actions uniformly 
 tended to the production of the greatest general good, 
 who would not wonder at the unreasonable and capricious 
 association of his ideas ? 
 
 The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at 
 this advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from 
 entering into a controversy with those reasoners, if such 
 there are, who would claim an exemption from its decrees 
 in favour of anyone among those diversified systems of 
 obscure opinion respecting morals, which, under the name 
 of religions, have in various ages and countries prevailed 
 among mankind. Besides that if, as these reasoners have 
 pretended, eternal torture or happiness will ensue as the 
 consequence of certain actions, we should be no nearer the 
 possession of a standard to determine what actions were 
 right and wrong, even if this pretended revelation, which is 
 by no means the case, had furnished us with a complete 
 catalogue of them. The character of actions as virtuous or 
 vicious would by no means be determined alone by the 
 personal advantage or disadvantage of each moral agent 
 individually considered. Indeed, an action is often 
 virtuous in proportion to the greatness of the personal 
 calamity which the author willingly draws upon himself by 
 daring to perform it. It is because an action produces an 
 overbalance of pleasure or pain to the greatest number of 
 sentient beings, and not merely because its consequences are 
 beneficial or injurious to the author of that action, that it 
 is good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a 
 
132 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 tendency to pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it 
 consists in the motive rather than in the consequences of 
 an action. A person who should labour for the happiness 
 of mankind lest he should be tormented eternally in Hell, 
 would, with reference to that motive, possess as little claim 
 to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture, im- 
 prison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural 
 consequence of such principles, for the sake of the 
 enjoyments of Heaven. 
 
 My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me 
 to perform or to refrain from a particular action ; indicat- 
 ing a certain arbitrary penalty in the event of disobedience 
 within his power to inflict. My action, if modified by his 
 menaces, can in no degree participate in virtue. He has 
 afforded me no criterion as to what is right or wrong. A 
 king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation 
 affixing any penalty to any particular action, but that 
 is not immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing 
 is more evident than that the epithet of virtue is inap- 
 plicable to the refraining from that action on account of 
 the evil arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself 
 beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not refraining 
 from it, but in firmly defying the personal consequences 
 attached to its performance. 
 
 Some usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the 
 whole globe to his power ; he might possess new and 
 unheard-of resources for enduing his punishments with the 
 most terrible attributes of pain. The torments of his 
 victims might be intense in their degree, and protracted to 
 an infinite duration. Still the "will of the lawgiver" would 
 afford no surer criterion as to what actions were right or 
 wrong. It would only increase the possible virtue of those 
 who refuse to become the instruments of his tyranny, 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 133 
 
 II.— MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFER- 
 ENCE, NOT THE RESEMBLANCE, OP PERSONS. 
 
 The internal influence, derived from the constitution of 
 the mind from which they flow, produces that peculiar 
 modification of actions, which makes them intrinsically 
 good or evil. 
 
 To attain an apprehension of the importance of this dis- 
 tinction, let us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some 
 metropolis. Consider the multitude of human beings who 
 inhabit it, and survey, in thought, the actions of the several 
 classes into which they are divided. Their obvious actions 
 are apparently uniform: the stability of human society 
 seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity of the 
 conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves, 
 and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain 
 hour, and applies himself to the task enjoined him. The 
 functionaries of government and law are regularly employed 
 in their offices and courts. The trader holds a train of 
 conduct from which he never deviates. The ministers of 
 religion employ an accustomed language, and maintain a 
 decent and equable regard. The army is drawn forth, the 
 motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to 
 be ; the general commands, and his words are echoed from 
 troop to troop. The domestic actions of men are, for the 
 most part, undistinguishable one from the other, at a 
 superficial glance. The actions which are classed under the 
 general appellation of marriage, education, friendship, etc., 
 are perpetually going on, and to a superficial glance, are 
 similar one to the other. 
 
 But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be 
 stripped of this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In 
 truth, no one action has, when considered in its whole 
 
134 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 extent, any essential resemblance with any other. Each 
 individual, who composes the vast multitude which we 
 have been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind, 
 which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions 
 remain uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its 
 peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the 
 lives of other men, in detail, it is most unlike ; and the 
 more subdivided the actions become ; that is, the more 
 they enter into that class which have a vital influence on 
 the happiness of others and his own, so much the more are 
 they distinct from those of other men. 
 
 "Those little, nameless, unremembered acts 
 
 Of kindness and of love, " 
 
 as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a 
 look, a word — or less — the very refraining from some faint 
 and most evanescent expression of countenance ; these flow 
 from a profounder source than the series of our habitual 
 conduct, which, it has been already said, derives its origin 
 from without. These are the actions, and such as these, 
 which make human life what it is, and are the fountains of 
 all the good and evil with which its entire surface is so 
 widely and impartially overspread ; and though they are 
 called minute, they are called so in compliance with the 
 blindness of those who cannot estimate their importance. 
 It is in the due appreciating the general effects of their 
 peculiarities, and in cultivating the habit of acquiring 
 decisive knowledge respecting the tendencies arising out of 
 them in particular cases, that the most important part of 
 moral science consists. The deepest abyss of these vast and 
 multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we should visit. 
 This is the difference between social and individual man. 
 Not that this distinction is to be considered definite, or 
 
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 135 
 
 characteristic of one human being as compared with another, 
 it denotes rather two classes of agency, common in a degree 
 to every human being. None is exempt, indeed, from that 
 species of influence which affects, as it were, the surface of 
 his being, and gives the specific outline to his conduct. 
 Almost all that is ostensible submits to that legislature 
 created by the general representation of the past feelings of 
 mankind — imperfect as it is from a variety of causes, as it 
 exists in the government, the religion, and domestic habits. 
 Those who do not nominally, yet actually, submit to the 
 same power. The external features of their conduct, indeed, 
 can no more escape it, than the clouds can escape from the 
 stream of the wind ; and his opinion, which he often hopes 
 he has dispassionately secured from all contagion of pre- 
 judice and vulgarity, would be found, on examination, to be 
 the inevitable excrescence of the very usages from which 
 he vehemently dissents. Internally all is conducted other- 
 wise; the efficiency, the essence, the vitality of actions, 
 derives its colour from what is no ways contributed to from 
 any external source. Like the plant, which while it derives 
 the accident of its size and shape from the soil in which it 
 springs, and is cankered, or distorted, or inflated, yet 
 retains those qualities which essentially divide it from all 
 others ; so that hemlock continues to be poison, and the 
 violet does not cease to emit its odour in whatever soil it 
 may grow. 
 
 We consider our own nature too superficially. We look 
 on all that in ourselves with which we can discover a resem- 
 blance in others; and consider those resemblances as the 
 materials of moral knowledge. It is in the differences that 
 it actually consists. 
 
136 ESS A ys AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 THE AGE OF PERICLES: 
 
 WITH CRITICAL NOTICES OP THE SCULPTURE IN THE 
 FLORENCE GALLERY. 
 
 The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles 
 and the death of Aristotle, is undoubtedly, whether con- 
 sidered in itself, or with reference to the effects which it 
 produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, 
 the most memorable in the history of the world. What 
 was the combination of moral and political circumstances 
 which produced so unparalleled a progress during that 
 period in literature and the arts ; — why that progress, so 
 rapid and so sustained, so soon received a check, and 
 became retrograde, — are problems left to the wonder and 
 conjecture of posterity. The wrecks and fragments of 
 those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine 
 statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection 
 of the whole. Their very language, — a type of the under- 
 standing, of which it was the creation and the image, — in 
 variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, 
 excels every other language of the western world. Their 
 sculptures are such as, in our perception, assume to be the 
 models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which, no artist of 
 modern times can produce forms in any degree comparable. 
 Their paintings, according to Pausanias, were full of 
 delicacy and harmony ; and some were powerfully pathetic, 
 so as to awaken, like tender music or tragic poetry, the 
 most overwhelming emotions. We are accustomed to con- 
 sider the painters of the sixteenth century as those who 
 have brought this art to the highest perfection, probably 
 because none of the ancient pictures have been preserved. 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 137 
 
 All the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a sympathetic 
 connexion between each other, being no more than various 
 expressions of one internal power, modified by different 
 circumstances, either of an individual, or of society. 
 
 The paintings of that period would probably bear the 
 same relation as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to 
 all successive ones. Of their music we know little ; but 
 the effects which it is said to have produced, whether they 
 be attributed to the skill of the composer, or the sensibility 
 of his audience, were far more powerful than any which we 
 experience from the music of our times ; and if, indeed, the 
 melody of their compositions were more tender, and delicate, 
 and inspiring, than the melodies of some modern European 
 nations, their progress in this art must have been some- 
 thing wonderful, and wholly beyond conception. Their 
 poetry seems to maintain a high, though not so dispropor- 
 tionate a rank, in comparison. Perhaps Shakespeare, from 
 the variety and comprehension of his genius, is to be con- 
 sidered as the greatest individual mind, of which we have 
 specimens remaining ; — perhaps Dante created imaginations 
 of greater loveliness and beauty than any that are to be 
 found in the ancient literature of Greece ; — perhaps nothing 
 has been discovered in the fragments of the Greek lyric 
 poets equivalent to the sublime and chivalrous sensibility of 
 Petrarch: — but, as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged 
 to excel Shakespeare in the truth and harmony, the 
 sustained grandeur, and satisfying completeness of his 
 images, their exact fitness to the illustration, and to that 
 which they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient in conduct, 
 plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have been brought 
 into comparison, but for the fortunate isles, laden with 
 golden fruit, which alone could tempt any one to embark in 
 the misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction. 
 
tsS MSSA YS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 ON THE NIOBB. 
 
 Op all the remains to us of Greek antiquity, this figure is 
 perhaps the most consummate personification of loveliness, 
 with regard to its countenance, as that of the Yenus of the 
 Tribune is with regard to its entire form of woman. It is 
 colossal ; the size adds to its value ; because it allows to the 
 spectator the choice of a greater number of points of view, 
 and afibrds him a more analytical one, in which to catch a 
 greater number of the infinite modes of expression, of which 
 any form approaching ideal beauty is necessarily composed. 
 It is the figure of a mother in the act of sheltering, from 
 some divine and inevitable peril, the last, we may imagine, 
 of her surviving children. 
 
 The little creature, terrified, as we may conceive, at the 
 strange destruction of all its kindred, has fled to its mother, 
 and is hiding its head in the folds of her robe, and casting 
 back one arm, as in a passionate appeal for defence, where 
 it never before could have been sought in vain. She is 
 clothed in a thin tunic of delicate woof ; and her hair is 
 fastened on her head into a knot, probably by that mother 
 whose care will never fasten it again. Niobe is enveloped 
 in profuse drapery, a portion of which the left hand has 
 gathered up, and is in the act of extending it over the child 
 in the instinct of shielding her from what reason knows to 
 be inevitable. The right (as the restorer has properly 
 imagined,) is drawing up her daughter to her : and with 
 that instinctive gesture, and by its gentle pressure, is 
 encouraging the child to believe that it can give security. 
 The countenance of Niobe is the consummation of feminine 
 majesty and loveliness, beyond which the imagination 
 scarcely doubts that it can conceive anything. 
 
 That masterpiece of the poetic harmony of marble 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. t39 
 
 expresses other feelings. There is embodied a sense of 
 the inevitable and rapid destiny which is consummating 
 around her, as if it were already over. It seems as if 
 despair and beauty had combined, and produced nothing 
 but the sublimity of grief. As the motions of the form 
 expressed the instinctive sense of the possibility of protect- 
 ing the child, and the accustomed and affectionate assurance 
 that she would find an asylum within her arms, so reason 
 and imagination speak in the countenance the certainty 
 that no mortal defence is of avail. There is no terror in 
 the countenance, only grief — deep, remediless grief. There 
 is no anger : — of what avail is indignation against what is 
 known to be omnipotent? There is no selfish shrinking 
 from personal pain — there is no panic at supernatural 
 agency — there is no adverting to herself as herself : the 
 calamity is mightier than to leave scope for such emotions. 
 
 Everything is swallowed up in sorrow : she is all tears : 
 her countenance, in assured expectation of the arrow 
 piercing its last victim in her embrace, is fixed on her 
 omnipotent enemy. The pathetic beauty of the expression 
 of her tender, and inexhaustible, and unquenchable despair, 
 is beyond the effect of sculpture. As soon as the arrow 
 shall pierce her last tie upon earth, the fable that she was 
 turned into stone, or dissolved into a fountain of tears, will 
 be but a feeble emblem of the sadness of hopelessness, in 
 which the few and evil years of her remaining life, we feel, 
 must flow away. 
 
 It is difficult to speak of the beauty of the countenance, 
 or to make intelligible in words, from what such astonishing 
 loveliness results. 
 
 The head, resting somewhat backward upon the full and 
 flowing contour of the neck, is as in the act of watching an 
 event momently to arrive, The hair is delicately divided 
 
I40 ESS A VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 on the forehead, and a gentle beauty gleams from the 
 broad and clear forehead, over which its strings are drawn. 
 The face is of an oval fulness, and the features conceived 
 with the daring of a sense of power. In this respect it 
 resembles the careless majesty which Nature stamps upon 
 the rare masterpieces of her creation, harmonizing them as 
 it were from the harmony of the spirit within. Yet all this 
 not only consists with, but is the cause of the subtlest deli- 
 cacy of clear and tender beauty — the expression at once of 
 innocence and sublimity of soul — of purity and strength — 
 of all that which touches the most removed and divine of 
 the chords that make music in our thoughts — of that which 
 shakes with astonishment even the most superficial. 
 
 THE MINERVA. 
 
 The head is of the highest beauty. It has a close helmet, 
 from which the hair, delicately parted on the forehead, half 
 escapes. The attitude gives entire effect to the perfect 
 form of the neck, and to that full and beautiful moulding 
 of the lower part of the face and mouth, which is in living 
 beings the seat of the expression of a simplicity and integ- 
 rity of nature. Her face, upraised to heaven, is animated 
 with a profound, sweet, and impassioned melancholy, with 
 an earnest, and fervid, and disinterested pleading against 
 some vast and inevitable wrong. It is the joy and poetry 
 of sorrow making grief beautiful, and giving it that name- 
 less feeling which, from the imperfection of language, we 
 call pain, but which is not all pain, though a feeling which 
 makes not only its possessor, but the spectator of it, prefer 
 it to what is called pleasure, in which all is not pleasure. 
 It is difficult to think that this head, though of the highest 
 ideal beauty, is the head of Minerva, although the attributes 
 and attitude of the lower part of the statue certainly suggest 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 141 
 
 that idea. The Greeks rarely, in their representations of 
 the characters of their gods, — unless we call the poetic 
 enthusiasm of Apollo a mortal passion, — expressed the 
 disturbance of human feeling; and here is deep and im- 
 passioned grief animating a divine countenance. It is, 
 indeed, divine. Wisdom (which Minerva may be supposed 
 to emblem,) is pleading earnestly with Power, — and 
 invested with the expression of that grief, because it must 
 ever plead so vainly. The drapery of the statue, the gentle 
 beauty of the feet, and the grace of the attitude, are what 
 may be seen in many other statues belonging to that 
 astonishing era which produced it : such a countenance is 
 seen in few. 
 
 This statue happens to be placed on a pedestal, the 
 subject of whose reliefs is in a spirit wholly the reverse. 
 It was probably an altar to Bacchus — possibly a funeral 
 urn. Under the festoons of fruits and flowers that grace 
 the pedestal, the corners of which are ornamented with the 
 skulls of goats, are sculptured some figures of Maenads 
 under the inspiration of the god. Nothing can be con- 
 ceived more wild and terrible than their gestures, touching, 
 as they do, the verge of distortion, into which their fine 
 limbs and lovely forms are thrown. There is nothing, how- 
 ever, that exceeds the possibility of nature, though it 
 borders on its utmost line. 
 
 The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by drunken- 
 ness, producing something beyond insanity, seems to have 
 caught them in its whirlwinds, and to bear them over the 
 earth, as the rapid volutions of a tempest have the ever- 
 changing trunk of a waterspout, or as the torrent of a 
 mountain river whirls the autumnal leaves resistlessly 
 along in its full eddies. The hair, loose and floating, seems 
 caught in the tempest of their own tumultuous motion; 
 
142 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 their heads are thrown back, leaning with a strange 
 delirium upon their necks, and looking up to heaven, 
 whilst they totter and stumble even in the energy of their 
 tempestuous dance. 
 
 One represents Agave with the head of Pentheus in one 
 Land, and in the other a great knife ; a second has a spear 
 with its pine cone, which was the Thyrsus; and another 
 dances with mad voluptuousness; the fourth is beating a 
 kind of tambourine. 
 
 This was indeed a monstrous superstition, even in 
 Greece, where it was alone capable of combining ideal 
 beauty and poetical and abstract enthusiasm with the wild 
 errors from which it sprung. In Rome it had a more 
 familiar, wicked, and dry appearance ; it was not suited to 
 the severe and exact apprehensions of the Romans, and 
 their strict morals were violated by it, and sustained a 
 deep injury, little analogous to its effects upon the Greeks, 
 who turned all things — superstition, prejudice, murder, 
 madness — to beauty. 
 
 ON THE VENUS CALLED ANADYOMINE. 
 
 She has just issued from the bath, and yet is animated 
 with the enjoyment of it. 
 
 She seems all soft and mild enjoyment, and the curved 
 lines of her fine limbs flow into each other with a never- 
 ending sinuosity of sweetness. Her face expresses a 
 breathless, yet passive and innocent voluptuousness, free 
 from affectation. Her lips, without the sublimity of lofty 
 and impetuous passion, the grandeur of enthusiastic imagina- 
 tion of the Apollo of the Capitol, or the union of both, 
 like the Apollo Belvidere, have the tenderness of arch, yet 
 pure and affectionate desire, and the mode in which the 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 143 
 
 ends of the mouth are drawn in, yet lifted or half-opened, 
 with the smile that for ever circles round them, and the 
 tremulous curve into which they are wrought by inex- 
 tinguishable desire, and the tongue lying against the lower 
 lip, as in the listlessness of passive joy, express love, 
 still love. 
 
 Her eyes seem heavy and swimming with pleasure, and 
 her small forehead fades on both sides into that sweet 
 swelling and thin declension of the bone over the eye, in 
 the mode which expresses simple and tender feelings. 
 
 The neck is full, and panting as with the aspiration 
 of delight, and flows with gentle curves into her perfect 
 form. 
 
 Her form is indeed perfect. She is half-sitting and half- 
 rising from a shell, and the fulness of her limbs, and their 
 complete roundness and perfection, do not diminish the 
 vital energy with which they seem to be animated. The 
 position of the arms, which are lovely beyond imagination, 
 is natural, unaffected, and easy. This, perhaps, is the finest 
 personification of Venus, the deity of superficial desire, in 
 all antique statuary. Her pointed and pear-like person, 
 ever virgin, and her attitude modesty itself. 
 
 A BAS-RELIEF. 
 
 Probably the sides of a Sarcophagus. 
 
 The lady is lying on a couch, supported by a young woman, 
 and looking extremely exhausted ; her dishevelled hair is 
 floating about her shoulder, and she is half- covered with 
 drapery that falls on the couch. 
 
 Her tunic is exactly like a chemise, only the sleeves are 
 longer, coming half way down the upper part of the arm. 
 An old wrinkled woman, with a cloak over her head, and 
 
144 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 an enormously sagacious look, has a most professional 
 appearance, and is taking hold of her arm gently with one 
 hand, and with the other is supporting it. I think she is 
 feeling her pulse. At the side of the couch sits a woman 
 as in grief, holding her head in her hands. At the bottom 
 of the bed is another matron tearing her hair, and in the 
 act of screaming out most violently, which she seems, how- 
 ever, by the rest of her gestures, to do with the utmost 
 deliberation, as having come to the resolution, that it was a 
 correct thing to do so. Behind her is a gossip of the most 
 ludicrous ugliness, crying, I suppose, or praying, for her 
 arms are crossed upon her neck. There is also a fifth 
 setting up a wail. To the left of the couch a nurse is 
 sitting on the ground dandling the child in her arms, and 
 wholly occupied in so doing. The infant is swaddled. 
 Behind her is a female who appears to be in the act 
 of rushing in with dishevelled hair and violent gesture, and 
 in one hand brandishing a whip or a thunder-bolt. This is 
 probably some emblematic person, the messenger of death, 
 or a fury, whose personification would be a key to the 
 whole. What they are all wailing at, I know not ; whether 
 the lady is dying, or the father has directed 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 compartment, in the second scene of the drama, 
 tells the story of the presentation of the child to its father. 
 An old man has it in his arms, and with professional and 
 mysterious officiousness is holding it out to the father. The 
 father, a middle-aged and very respectable-looking man, 
 perhaps not long married, is looking with the admiration 
 of a bachelor on his first child, and perhaps thinking, that 
 he was once such a strange little creature himself. His 
 hands are clasped, and he is gathering up between his arms 
 
THE AGE OF PERICLES. 145 
 
 the folds of his cloak, an emblem of his gathering up all his 
 faculties to understand the tale the gossip is bringing. 
 
 An old man is standing beside him, probably his father, 
 with some curiosity, and much tenderness in his looks. 
 Around are collected a host of his relations, of whom the 
 youngest, a handsome girl, seems the least concerned. It is 
 altogether an admirable piece, quite in the spirit of the 
 comedies of Terence.* 
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S BACCHUS. 
 
 The countenance of this figure is a most revolting mistake 
 of the spirit and meaning of Bacchus. It looks drunken, 
 brutal, narrow-minded, and has an expression of 
 dissoluteness the most revolting. The lower part of the 
 figure is stiff, and the manner in which the shoulders are 
 united to the breast, and the neck to the head, abundantly 
 inharmonious. 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 only as a piece of 
 workmanship, it has many merits. The arms are executed 
 in a style of the most perfect and manly beauty. The body 
 is conceived with great energy, and the manner in which 
 the lines mingle into each other, of the highest boldness and 
 truth. It wants unity as a work of art — as a representation 
 of Bacchus it wants everything. 
 
 A JUNO. 
 
 A STATUE of great merit. The countenance expresses a 
 stern and unquestioned severity of dominion, with a certain 
 sadness. The lips are beautiful — susceptible of expressing 
 scorn — but not without sweetness. With fine lips a person 
 
 * This bas-relief is not antique. It is of the Cinquecento. 
 
 9^ 
 
146 ESS A VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 is never wholly bad, and they never belong to the expression 
 of emotions wholly selfish — lips being the seat of imagina- 
 tion. The drapery is finely conceived, and the manner in 
 which the act of throwing back one leg is expressed, in the 
 diverging folds of the drapery of the left breast fading in 
 bold yet graduated lines into a skirt, as it descends from 
 the left shoulder, is admirably imagined. 
 
 AN APOLLO, 
 
 with serpents twining round a wreath of laurel on which 
 the quiver is suspended. It probably was, when complete, 
 magnificently beautiful. The restorer of the head and 
 arms, following the indication of the muscles of the right 
 side, has lifted the arm, as in triumph, at the success of an 
 arrow, imagining to imitate the Lycian Apollo in that, so 
 finely described by Apollonius Rhodius, when the dazzling 
 radiance of his beautiful limbs shone over the dark Euxine. 
 The action, energy, and godlike animation of these limbs 
 speak a spirit which seems as if it could not be consumed. 
 
 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 
 
 In the fifteenth century of the Christian era, a new and 
 extraordinary event roused Europe from her lethargic 
 state, and paved the way to her present greatness. The 
 writings of Dante in the thirteenth, and of Petrarch in the 
 fourteenth, were the bright luminaries which had afibrded 
 glimmerings of literary knowledge to the almost benighted 
 traveller toiling up the hill of Fame. But on the taking of 
 Constantinople, a new and sudden light appeared : the 
 dark clouds of ignorance rolled into distance, and Europe 
 
ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 147 
 
 was inundated by learned monks, and still more by the 
 quantity of learned manuscripts which they brought with 
 them from the scene of devastation. The Turks settled 
 themselves in Constantinople, where they adopted nothing 
 but the vicious habits of the Greeks : they neglected even 
 the small remains of its ancient learning, which, filtered 
 and degenerated as it was by the absurd mixture of Pagan 
 and Christian philosophy, proved, on its retirement to 
 Europe, the spark which spread gradually and successfully 
 the light of knowledge over the world. 
 
 Italy, France, and England — for Germany still remained 
 many centuries less civilised than the surrounding countries 
 — swarmed with monks and cloisters. Superstition, of 
 whatever kind, whether earthly or divine, has hitherto been 
 the weight which clogged man to earth, and prevented his 
 genius from soaring aloft amid its native skies. The enter- 
 prises, and the eflfects of the human mind, are something 
 more than stupendous : the works of nature are material 
 and tangible : we have a half insight into their kind, and 
 in many instances we predict their effects with certainty. 
 But mind seems to govern the world without visible or 
 substantial means. Its birth is unknown ; its action and 
 influence unperceived ; and its being seems eternal. To 
 the mind both humane and philosophical, there cannot exist 
 a greater subject of grief than the reflection of how much 
 superstition has retarded the progress of intellect, and 
 consequently the happiness of man. 
 
 The monks in their cloisters were engaged in trifling and 
 ridiculous disputes : they contented themselves with 
 teaching the dogmas of their religion, and rushed impa- 
 tiently forth to the colleges and halls, where they disputed 
 with an acrimony and meanness little befitting the 
 resemblance of their pretended holiness. But the situation 
 
148 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 of a monk is a situation the most unnatural that bigotry, 
 proud in the invention of cruelty, could conceive ; and 
 their vices may be pardoned as resulting from the wills and 
 devices of a few proud and selfish bishops, who enslaved the 
 world that they might live at ease. 
 
 The disputes of the schools were mostly scholastical ; it 
 was the discussion of words, and had no relation to 
 morality. Morality, — the great means and end of man, — 
 was contained, as they affirmed, in the extent of a few 
 hundred pages of a certain book, which others have since 
 contended were but scraps of martyrs' last dying words, 
 collected together and imposed on the world. In the 
 refinements of the scholastic philosophy, the world seemed 
 in danger of losing the little real wisdom that still remained 
 as her portion ; and the only valuable part of their disputes 
 was such as tended to develop the system of the Peripatetic 
 Philosophers. Plato, the wisest, the profoundest, and 
 Epicurus, the most humane and gentle among the ancients, 
 were entirely neglected by them. Plato interfered with 
 their peculiar mode of thinking concerning heavenly matters ; 
 and Epicurus, maintaining the rights of man to pleasure 
 and happiness, would have afibrded a seducing contrast to 
 their dark and miserable code of morals. It has been 
 asserted, that these holy men solaced their lighter moments 
 in a contraband worship of Epicurus and profaned the 
 philosophy which maintained the rights of all by a selfish 
 indulgence of the rights of a few. Thus it is : the laws of 
 nature are invariable, and man sets them aside that he may 
 have the pleasure of travelling through a labyrinth in 
 search of them again. 
 
 Pleasure, in an open and innocent garb, by some strange 
 process of reasoning, is called vice ; yet man (so closely is 
 he linked to the chains of necessity — so irresistibly is he 
 
MEMOIRS OF PRINCE ALEXY HAIMATOFF. 149 
 
 impelled to fulfil the end of his being,) must seek her 
 at whatever price : he becomes a hypocrite, and braves 
 damnation with all its pains. 
 
 Grecian literature, — the finest the world has ever pro- 
 duced, — was at length restored : its form and mode we 
 obtained from the manuscripts which the ravages of time, 
 of the Goths, and of the still more savage Turks, had 
 spared. The burning of the library at Alexandria was an 
 evil of importance. This library is said to have contained 
 volumes of the choicest Greek authors. 
 
 REVIEW OF HOGG'S MEMOIRS OF 
 PRINCE ALEXY HAIMATOFF, 
 
 [Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff. Translated from the original 
 Latin MSS. under the immediate inspection of the Prince. By 
 John Beown, Esq. Pp. 236. 12mo. Hookham, 1814,] 
 
 Is the sufiirage of mankind the legitimate criterion of 
 intellectual energy 1 Are complaints of the aspirants to 
 literary fame to be considered as the honourable disappoint- 
 ment of neglected genius, or the sickly impatience of a 
 dreamer miserably self deceived 1 the most illustrious 
 ornaments of the annals of the human race, have been 
 stigmatised by the contempt and abhorrence of entire com- 
 munities of man; but this injustice arose out of some 
 temporary superstition, some partial interest, some national 
 doctrine : a glorious redemption awaited their remembrance. 
 There is indeed, nothing sO remarkable in the contempt of 
 the ignorant for the enlightened : the vulgar pride of folly, 
 delights to triumph upon mind. This is an intelligible 
 
ISO ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 process : the infancy [infamy 1] or ingloriousness that can be 
 thus explained, detracts nothing from the beauty of virtue 
 or the sublimity of genius. But what does utter obscurity 
 express 1 if the public do not advert even in censure to a 
 performance, has that performance already received its 
 condemnation % 
 
 The result of this controversy is important to the 
 ingenuous critic. His labours are indeed, miserably worth- 
 less, if their objects may invariably be attained before their 
 application. He should know the limits of his prerogative. 
 He should not be ignorant, whether it is his duty to 
 promulgate the decisions of others, or to cultivate his taste 
 and judgment that he may be enabled to render a reason 
 for his own. 
 
 Circumstances the least connected with intellectual 
 nature have contributed, for a certain period, to retain in 
 obscurity, the most memorable specimens of human genius. 
 The author re[f]rains perhaps from introducing his pro- 
 duction to the world with all the pomp of empirical 
 bibliopolism. A sudden tide in the affairs of men may 
 make the neglect or contradiction of some insignificant 
 doctrine, a badge of obscurity and discredit : those even 
 who are exempt from the action of these absurd predilec- 
 tions, are necessarily in an indirect manner affected by 
 their influence. It is perhaps the product of an imagination 
 daring and undisciplined : the majority of readers ignorant 
 and disdaining toleration refuse to pardon a neglect of 
 common rules; their canons of criticism are carelessly 
 infringed, it is less religious than a charity sermon, less 
 methodical and cold than a French tragedy, where all the 
 unities are preserved : no excellencies, where prudish cant 
 and dull regularity are absent, can preserve it from the 
 contempt and abhorrence of the multitude. It is evidently 
 
MEMOIRS OF PRINCE ALEXY HAIMATOFF. 151 
 
 not difl&cult to imagine an instance in which the most 
 elevated genius shall be recompensed with neglect. 
 Mediocrity alone seems unvaryingly to escape rebuke and 
 obloquy, it accom[m]odates its attempts to the spirit of 
 the age, which has produced it, and adopts with mimic 
 eflfrontery the cant of the day and hour for which alone it 
 lives. 
 
 We think that " the Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haima- 
 toff" deserves to be regarded as an example of the fact, by 
 the frequency of which criticism is vindicated from the 
 imputation of futility and impertinence. We do not 
 hesitate to consider this fiction, as the product of a bold 
 and original mind. We hardly remember even [ever ?] to 
 have seen surpassed the subtle delicacy of imagination, by 
 which the manifest distinctions of character, and form are 
 seized and pictured in colours, that almost make nature 
 more beautiful than herself. The vulgar observe no resem- 
 blances or discrepancies, but such as are gross and glaring. 
 The science of mind to which history, poetry, biography 
 serve as the materials, consists in the discernment of shades 
 and distinctions where the unenlightened discover nothing 
 but a shapeless and unmeaning mass. The faculty for this 
 discernment distinguishes genius from dulness. There are 
 passages in the production before us, which afford instances 
 of just and rapid intuition belonging only to intelligences 
 that possess this faculty in no ordinary degree. As a com- 
 position the book is far from faultless. Its abruptness and 
 angularities do not appear to have received the slightest 
 polish or correction. The author has written with fervour 
 but has disdained to revise at leisure. These errors are the 
 errors of youth and genius and the fervid impatience of 
 sensibilities impetuously disburthening their fulness. The 
 author is proudly negligent of connecting the incidents of 
 
152 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 his tale. It appears more like the recorded day dream of a 
 poet, not unvisited by the sublimest and most lovely visions, 
 than the tissue of a romance skilfully interwoven for the 
 purpose of maintaining the interest of the reader, and con- 
 ducting his sympathies by dramatic gradations to the denoue- 
 ment. It is, what it professes to be, a memoir, not a novel. 
 Yet its claims to the former appellation are established, 
 only by the impatience and inexperience of the author, 
 who, possessing in an eminent degree, the higher qualifica- 
 tions of a novelist, we had almost said a poet, has neglected 
 the number by which that success would probably have 
 been secured, which, in this instance, merit[s] of a far 
 nobler stamp, have unfortunately failed to acquire. Prince 
 Alexy is by no means an unnatural, although no common 
 character. We think we can discern his counterpart in 
 Alfieri's* delineation of himself. The same propensities, the 
 same ardent devotion to his purposes, the same chivalric 
 and unproductive attachment to unbounded liberty, charac- 
 terizes both. We are inclined to doubt whether the author 
 has not attributed to his hero, the doctrines of universal 
 philanthropy in a spirit of profound and almost unsearch- 
 able irony : at least he appears biassed by no peculiar 
 principles, and it were perhaps an insoluble inquiry whether 
 any, and if any, what moral truth he designed to illustrate 
 by his tale. Bruhle, the tutor of Alexy, is a character 
 delineated with consummate skill ; the power of intelli- 
 gence and virtue over external deficiencies is forcibly 
 exemplified. The calmness, patience and magnanimity of 
 this singular man, are truly rare and admirable : his dis- 
 interestedness, his equanimity, his irresistible gentleness 
 form a finished and delightful portrait. But we cannot 
 regard hia commendation to his pupil to indulge iu 
 * 4lfi^n'a in the original. 
 
MEMOIRS OF PRINCE A LEX YH AIM A TOFF. 153 
 
 promiscuous concubinage without horror and detestation. 
 The author appears to deem the loveless intercourse of brutal 
 appetite, a venial offence against delicacy and virtue ! he 
 asserts that a transient connection with a cultivated female 
 may contribute to form the heart without essentially 
 vitiating the sensibilities. It is our duty to protest 
 against so pernicious and disgusting an opinion. No man 
 can rise pure from the poisonous embraces of a prostitute, 
 or sinless from the desolated hopes of a confiding heart. 
 Whatever may be the claims of chastity, whatever the 
 advantages of simple and pure affections, these ties, these 
 benefits are of equal obligation to either sex.* Domestic 
 relations depend for their integrity upon a complete reci- 
 procity of duties. But the author himself has in the 
 adventure of the sultana, Debesh-Sheptuti afforded a most 
 impressive and tremendous allegory of the cold blooded and 
 malignant selfishness of sensuality. 
 
 We are incapacitated by the unconnected and vague 
 narrative from forming an analysis of the incidents, they 
 would consist indeed, simply of a catalogue of events, and 
 which, divested of the aerial tinge of genius might appear 
 trivial and common. We shall content ourselves, there- 
 fore with selecting some passages calculated to exemplify 
 the peculiar powers of the author. The following descrip- 
 tion of the simple and interesting Rosalie is in the highest 
 style of delineation : " Her hair was unusually black, she 
 truly had raven locks, the same glossiness, the same varying 
 shade, the same mixture of purple and sable for which the 
 plumage of the raven is remarkable, were found in the long 
 elastic tresses depending from her head and covering her 
 shoulders. Her complexion was dark and clear; the 
 colours which composed the brown that dyed her smooth 
 * Six In the original. 
 
154 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 skin, were so well mixed, that not one blot, not one varied 
 tinge injured its brightness, and when the blush of anima- 
 tion or of modesty flushed her cheek, the tint was so rare, 
 that could a painter have dipped his pencil in it, that 
 single shade would have rendered him immortal. The 
 bone above her eye was sharp, and beautifully curved ; 
 much as I have admired the wonderful properties of curves, 
 I am convinced that their most stupendous properties 
 collected, would fall far short of that magic line. The eye 
 brow was pencilled with extreme nicety ; in the centre it 
 consisted of the deepest shade of black, at the edges it was 
 hardly perceptible, and no man could have been hardy 
 enough to have attempted to define the precise spot at 
 which it ceased : in short the velvet drapery of the eye- 
 brow was only to be rivalled by the purple of the long 
 black eyelashes that terminated the ample curtain. 
 Rosalie's eyes were large and full; they appeared at a 
 distance uniformly dark, but upon close inspection the 
 innumerable strokes of various hues of infinite fineness and 
 endless variety drawn in concentric circles behind the 
 pellucid chrystal, filled the mind with wonder and admira- 
 tion, and could only be the work of infinite power directed 
 by infinite wisdom." 
 
 Alexy's union with Aiir-Ahebeh the Circassian slave is 
 marked by circumstances of deep pathos, and the sweetest 
 tenderness of sentiment. The description of his misery 
 and madness at her death, deserves to be remarked as 
 affording evidence of an imagination vast, profound and 
 full of energy. 
 
 " Alexy, who gained the friendship, perhaps the love of the native 
 Rosalie : the handsome HaimatoflF, the philosophic HaimatoflF, the 
 haughty Haimatoflf, HaimatoflF the gay, the witty, the accomplished, 
 the bold hunter, the friend of liberty, the chivalric lover of all that is 
 
 i 
 
MEMOIRS OF PRINCE ALEXY HAIMATOFF. 155 
 
 feminine, the hero, the enthusiast ; see him now, that is he, mark 
 him 1 he appears in the shades of evening, he stalk[s] as a spectre, he 
 has just risen from the damps of the charnel house ; see, the dews 
 still hang on his forehead. He will vanish at cock-crowing, he never 
 heard the song of the lark, nor the husy hum of men ; the sun's rays 
 never warmed him, the pale moonheam alone shews his unearthly 
 figure, which is fanned by the wing of the owl, which scarce obstructs 
 the slow flight of the droning beetle,* or of the drowsy bat Mark 
 him ! he stops, his lean arms are crossed on his bosom ; he is bowed 
 to the earth, his sunken eye gazes from its deep cavity on vacuity, as 
 the toad skulking in the corner of a sepulchre, peeps with malignity 
 through the circum[am]bient gloom. His cheek is hollow ; the 
 glowing tints of his complexion, which once resembled the autumnal 
 sunbeam on the autumnal beech, are gone, the cadaverous yellow, the 
 livid hue have usurped their place, the sable honours of his head have 
 perished, they once waved in the wind like the jetty pinions of the 
 raven, the skull is only covered by the shrivelled skin, which the rook 
 views wistfully, and calls to her young ones. His gaunt bones start 
 from his wrinkled garments, his voice is deep, hollow, sepulchral[;] it 
 is the voice which wakes the dead, he has long held converse with the 
 departed. He attempts to walk he knows not whither, his legs totter 
 under him, he falls, the boys hoot him, the dogs bark at him, he 
 hears them not, he sees them not. — Rest there, Alexy, it beseemeth 
 thee, thy bed is the grave, thy bride is the worm, yet once thou 
 stoodest erect, thy cheek was flashed with joyful ardour, thy eye 
 blazing told what thy head conceived, what thy heart felt, thy limbs 
 were vigour and activity, thy bosom expanded with pride, ambition, 
 and desire, every nerve thrilled to feel, every muscle swelled to 
 execute. 
 
 ' • Haimatoff, the blight has tainted thee, thou ample roomy web of 
 life, whereon were traced the gaudy characters, the gay embroidery of 
 pleasure, how has the moth battened on thee ; Haimatoff, how has the 
 devouring flame scorched the plains, once yellow with the harvest ! the 
 simoon, the parching breath of the desert, has swept over the laughing 
 plains, the carpet of verdure rolled away at its approach, and has bared 
 amid desolation. Thou stricken deer, thy leather coat, thy dappled 
 hide hangs loose upon thee, it was a deadly arrow, how has it wasted 
 thee, thou scathed oak, how has the red lightning drank thy sap : 
 
 * btatle in the original. 
 
156 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Haimatoff, Haimatoff, eat thy soul with vexation. Let the 
 immeasureable ocean roll between thee and pride : yon must not dwell 
 together." P. 129. 
 
 The episode of Viola is affecting, natural, and beautiful 
 We do not ever remember to have seen the unforgiving 
 fastidiousness of family honor more awfully illustrated. 
 After the death of her lover, Viola still expects that he will 
 esteem, still cherishes the delusion that he is not lost to her 
 for ever. 
 
 *' She used frequently to go to the window to look for him, or walk 
 in the Park to meet him, but without the least impatience, at his 
 delay. She learnt a new tune, or a new song to amuse him, she stood 
 behind the door to startle him as he entered, or disguised herself to 
 surprise him." 
 
 The character of Mary, deserves, we think, to be considered 
 as the only complete failure in the book. Every other 
 female whom the author has attempted to describe is 
 designated by an individuality peculiarly marked and true. 
 They constitute finished portraits of whatever is eminently 
 simple, graceful, gentle, or disgustingly atrocious and vile. 
 Mary alone is the miserable parasite of fashion, the tame 
 slave of drivelling and drunken folly, the cold hearted 
 coquette, the lying and meretricious prude. The means 
 employed to gain this worthless prize corresponds exactly 
 with its worthlessness. Sir Fulke* Hildebrand is a 
 strenuous tory, Alexy, on his arrival in England professes 
 himself inclined to the principles of the whig party, finding 
 that the Baronet had sworn that his daughter should never 
 marry a whig, he sacrifices his principles and with 
 inconceiveable effrontry thus palliates his apostacy and 
 falsehood. 
 
 * Euike in the original. 
 
MEMOIRS OF PRINCE ALEXY HAIMATOFR IS7 
 
 " The prejudices of the Baronet, were strong in proportion as they 
 were irrational. I resolved rather to humour than to thwart them. 
 I contrived to be invited to dine in company with him ; I always 
 proposed the health of the minister, I introduced politics and defended 
 the tory party in long speeches, I attended clubs and public dinners of 
 that interest. I do not know whether this conduct was justifiable ; it 
 may certainly be excused when the circumstances of my case are duly 
 considered. I would tear myself in pieces, if I suspected that I could 
 be guilty of the slightest falsehood or prevarication ; (see Lord 
 Chesterfield's letters for the courtier-like distinction between simulation 
 and dissimulation,) but there was nothing of that sort here. I was of 
 no party, consequently, I could not be accused of deserting anyone. 
 I did not defend the injustice of any body of men, I did not detract 
 from the merits of any virtuous character. I praised what was 
 laudable in the tory party, and blamed what was reprehensible in the 
 whigs : I was silent with regard to whatever was culpable in the 
 former or praiseworthy in the latter. The stratagem was innocent, 
 which injured no one, and which promoted the happiness of two 
 individuals, especially of the most amiable woman the world ever 
 knew." 
 
 An instance of more deplorable perversity of the human 
 understanding we do not recollect ever to have witnessed. 
 It almost persuades us to believe that scepticism or indiffer- 
 ence concerning certain sacred truths may occasionally pro- 
 duce a subtlety of sophism, by which the conscience of the 
 criminal may be bribed to overlook his crime. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of this strange and powerful 
 performance it must be confessed that aliquando bonus 
 dormitat Homerus. The adventure of the Eleutheri, 
 although the sketch of a profounder project, is introduced 
 and concluded with unintelligible abruptness. Bruhle dies, 
 purposely as it should seem that his pupil may renounce the 
 romantic sublimity of his nature, and that his inauspicious 
 union and prostituted character, might be exempt from the 
 censure of violated friendship. Numerous indications of 
 profound and vigorous thought are scattered over even the 
 
158 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 most negligently compacted portions of the narrative. It 
 is an unweeded garden where nightshade is interwoven with 
 sweet jessamine, and the most delicate spices of the east, 
 peep over struggling stalks of rank aiid poisonous hemlock. 
 
 In the delineation of the more evanescent feelings and 
 uncommon instances of strong and delicate passion we 
 conceive the author to have exhibited new and unparalleled 
 powers. He has noticed some peculiarities of female 
 character, with a delicacy and truth singularly exquisite. 
 "We think that the interesting subject of sexual relations 
 requires for its successful development the application of a 
 mind thus organised and endowed. Yet even here how 
 great the deficiencies ; this mind must be pure from the 
 fashionable superstitions of gallantry, must be exempt from 
 the sordid feelings which with blind idolatry worship * the 
 image and blaspheme the deity, reverence the type, and 
 degrade the realty of which it is an emblem. 
 
 "We do not hesitate to assert that the author of this 
 volume is a man of ability. His great though indisciplin- 
 able energies and fervid rapidity of conception embody f 
 scenes and situations, and | passions afibrding inexhaustible 
 food for wonder and delight. The interest is deep and 
 irresistible. A moral enchanter seems to have conjured up 
 the shapes of all that is beautiful and strange to suspend 
 the faculties in fascination and astonishment* 
 
 * Worships in the original, 
 t Embodies in the original. 
 X "And q/^ passions" in the original. 
 
THE ASSASSINS, 159 
 
 THE ASSASSINS. 
 
 A FRAGMENT OF A ROMANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Jerusalem, goaded on to resistance by the incessant 
 usurpations and insolence of Rome, leagued together its 
 discordant factions to rebel against the common enemy and 
 tyrant. Inferior to their foe in all but the unconquerable 
 hope of liberty, they surrounded their city with fortifica- 
 tions of uncommon strength, and placed in array before 
 the temple a band rendered desperate by patriotism and 
 religion. Even the women preferred to die, rather than 
 survive the ruin of their country. When the Roman army 
 approached the walls of the sacred city, its preparations, its 
 discipline, and its numbers, evinced the conviction of its 
 leader, that he had no common barbarians to subdue. At 
 the approach of the Roman army, the strangers withdrew 
 from the city. 
 
 Among the multitudes which from every nation of the 
 East had assembled at Jerusalem, was a little congregation 
 of Christians. They were remarkable neither for their 
 numbers nor their importance. They contained among 
 them neither philosophers nor poets. Acknowledging no 
 laws but those of God, they modelled their conduct towards 
 their fellow-men by the conclusions of their individual 
 judgment on the practical application of these laws. And 
 it was apparent from the simplicity and severity of their 
 manners, that this contempt for human institutions had 
 
i6o ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 produced among them a character superior in singleness 
 and sincere self-apprehension to the slavery of pagan 
 customs and the gross delusions of antiquated superstition. 
 Many of their opinions considerably resembled those of the 
 sect afterwards known by the name of Gnostics. They 
 esteemed the human understanding to be the paramount 
 rule of human conduct ; they maintained that the obscurest 
 religious truth required for its complete elucidation no 
 more than the strenuous application of the energies of 
 mind. It appeared impossible to them that any doctrine 
 could be subversive of social happiness which is not capable 
 of being confuted by arguments derived from the nature of 
 existing things. "With the devoutest submission to the law 
 of Christ, they united an intrepid spirit of inquiry as to the 
 correctest mode of acting in particular instances of conduct 
 that occur among men. Assuming the doctrines of the 
 Messiah concerning benevolence and justice for the regula- 
 tion of their actions, they could not be persuaded to 
 acknowledge that there was apparent in the divine code 
 any prescribed rule whereby, for its own sake, one action 
 rather than another, as fulfilling the will of their great 
 Master, should be preferred. 
 
 The contempt with which the magistracy and priesthood 
 regarded this obscure community of speculators, had 
 hitherto protected them from persecution. But they had 
 arrived at that precise degree of eminence and prosperity 
 which is peculiarly obnoxious to the hostility of the rich 
 and powerful. The moment of their departure from 
 Jerusalem was the crisis of their future destiny. Had they 
 continued to seek a precarious refuge in a city of the 
 Roman empire, this persecution would not have delayed to 
 impress a new character on their opinions and their 
 conduct ; narrow views, and the illiberality of sectarian 
 
THE ASSASSINS. i6i 
 
 patriotism, would not have failed speedily to obliterate 
 the magnificence and beauty of their wild and wonderful 
 condition. 
 
 Attached from principle to peace, despising and hating 
 the pleasures and the customs of the degenerate mass of 
 mankind, this unostentatious community of good and happy 
 men fled to the solitudes of Lebanon. To Arabians and 
 enthusiasts the solemnity and grandeur of these desolate 
 recesses possessed peculiar attractions. It well accorded 
 with the justice of their conceptions on the relative duties 
 of man towards his fellow in society, that they should 
 labour in unconstrained equality to dispossess the wolf and 
 the tiger of their empire, and establish on its ruins the 
 dominion of intelligence and virtue. No longer would the 
 worshippers of the God of Nature be indebted to a hundred 
 hands for the accommodation of their simple wants. No 
 longer would the poison of a diseased civilisation embrue 
 their very nutriment with pestilence. They would no 
 longer owe their very existence to the vices, the fears, and 
 the follies of mankind. Love, friendship, and philanthropy, 
 would now be the characteristic disposers of their industry. 
 It is for his mistress or his friend that the labourer 
 consecrates his toil ; others are mindful, but he is forgetful, 
 of himself. " God feeds the hungry ravens, and clothes the 
 lilies of the fields, and yet Solomon in all his glory is not 
 like to one of these." 
 
 Rome was now the shadow of her former self. The light 
 of her grandeur and loveliness had passed away. The latest 
 and the noblest of her poets and historians had foretold in 
 agony her approaching slavery and degradation. The ruins 
 of the human mind, more awful and portentous than the 
 desolation of the most solemn temples, threw a shade of 
 gloom upon her golden palaces which the brutal vulgar 
 
 92 
 
1 62 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 could not see, but which the mighty felt with inward 
 trepidation and despair. The ruins of Jerusalem lay 
 defenceless and uninhabited upon the burning sands ; none 
 visited, but in the depth of solemn awe, this accursed and 
 solitary spot. Tradition says that there was seen to linger 
 among the scorched and shattered fragments of the temple, 
 one being, whom he that saw dared not to call man, with 
 clasped hands, immoveable eyes, and a visage horribly 
 serene. Not on the will of the capricious multitude, nor 
 the constant fluctuations of the many and the weak, 
 depends the change of empires and religions. These are 
 the mere insensible elements from which a subtler intelli- 
 gence moulds its enduring statuary. They that direct the 
 changes of this mortal scene breathe the decrees of their 
 dominion from a throne of darkness and of tempest. The 
 power of man is great. 
 
 After many days of wandering, the Assassins pitched 
 their tents in the vallay of Bethzatanai. For ages had this 
 fertile valley lain concealed from the adventurous search of 
 man, among mountains of everlasting snow. The men of 
 elder days had inhabited this spot. Piles of monumental 
 marble and fragments of columns that in their integrity 
 almost seemed the work of some intelligence more sportive 
 and fantastic than the gross conceptions of mortality, lay 
 in heaps beside the lake, and were visible beneath its 
 transparent waves. The flowering orange-tree, the balsam, 
 and innumerable odoriferous shrubs, grew wild in the 
 desolated portals. The fountain tanks had overflowed ; 
 and, amid the luxuriant vegetation of their margin, the 
 yellow snake held its unmolested dwelling. Hither came 
 the tiger and the bear to contend for those once domestic 
 animals who had forgotten the secure servitude of their 
 ancestors. No sound, when the famished beast of prey 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 163 
 
 had retreated in despair from the awful desolation of this 
 place, at whose completion he had assisted, but the shrill 
 cry of the stork, and the flapping of his heavy wings from 
 the capital of the solitary column, and the scream of the 
 hungry vulture baffled of its only victim. The lore of 
 ancient wisdom was sculptured in mystic characters on the 
 rocks. The human spirit and the human hand had been 
 busy here to accomplish its profoundest miracles. It was a 
 temple dedicated to the God of knowledge and of truth. 
 The palaces of the Caliphs and the Caesars might easily 
 surpass these ruins in magnitude and sumptuousness : but 
 they were the design of tyrants and the work of slaves. 
 Piercing genius^and consummate prudence had planned and 
 executed Bethzatanai. There was deep and important 
 meaning in every lineament of its fantastic sculpture. 
 The unintelligible legend, once so beautiful and perfect, so 
 full of poetry and history, spoke, even in destruction, 
 volumes of mysterious import, and obscure significance. 
 
 But in the season of its utmost prosperity and magni- 
 ficence, art might not aspire to vie with nature in the 
 valley of Bethzatanai. All that was wonderful and lovely 
 was collected in this deep seclusion. The fluctuating ele- 
 ments seemed to have been rendered everlastingly per- 
 manent in forms of wonder and delight. The mountains of 
 Lebanon had been divided to their base to form this happy 
 valley ; on every side their icy summits darted their white 
 pinnacles into the clear blue sky, imaging, in their grotesque 
 outline, minarets, and ruined domes, and columns worn 
 with time. Far below, the silver clouds rolled their bright 
 
 I volumes in many beautiful shapes, and fed the eternal 
 springs that, spanning the dark chasms like a thousand 
 radiant rainbows, leaped into the quiet vale, then lingering 
 :— 
 
i64 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 palm, lost themselves in the lake. The immensity of these 
 precipitous mountains, with their starry pyramids of snow, 
 excluded the sun, which overtopped not, even in its 
 meridian, their overhanging rocks. But a more heavenly 
 and serener light was reflected from their icy mirrors, 
 which, piercing through the many-tinted clouds, produced 
 lights and colours of inexhaustible variety. The herbage 
 was perpetually verdant, and clothed the darkest recesses 
 of the caverns and the woods. 
 
 Nature, undisturbed, had become an enchantress in these 
 solitudes : she had collected here all that was wonderful and 
 divine from the armoury of her omnipotence. The very 
 winds breathed health and renovation, and the joyousness 
 of youthful courage. Fountains of crystalline water played 
 perpetually among the aromatic flowers, and mingled a 
 freshness with their odour. The pine boughs became 
 instruments of exquisite contrivance, among which every 
 varying breeze waked music of new and more delightful 
 melody. Meteoric shapes, more effulgent than the moonlight, 
 hung on the wandering clouds, and mixed in discordant 
 dance around the spiral fountains. Blue vapours assumed 
 strange lineaments under the rocks and among the ruins, 
 lingering like ghosts with slow and solemn step. Through 
 a dark chasm to the east, in the long perspective of a portal 
 glittering with the unnumbered riches of the subterranean 
 world, shone the broad moon, pouring in one yellow and 
 unbroken stream her horizontal beams. Nearer the icy 
 region, autumn and spring held an alternate reign. The 
 sere leaves fell and choked the sluggish brooks ; the chilling 
 fogs hung diamonds on every spray ; and in the dark cold 
 evening the howling winds made melancholy music in the 
 trees. Far above, shone the bright throne of winter, clear, 
 cold, and dazzling. Sometimes there was seen the 
 
THE ASSASSINS, 165 
 
 snow-flakes to fall before the sinking orb of the beamless 
 sun, like a shower of fiery sulphur. The cataracts, arrested 
 in their course, seemed, with their transparent columns, to 
 support the dark-browed rocks. Sometimes the icy 
 whirlwind scooped the powdery snow aloft, to mingle with 
 the hissing meteors, and scatter spangles through the rare 
 and rayless atmosphere. 
 
 Such strange scenes of chaotic confusion and harrowing 
 sublimity, surrounding and shutting in the vale, added to 
 the delights of its secure and voluptuous tranquillity. No 
 spectator could have refused to believe that some spirit of 
 great intelligence and power had hallowed these wild and 
 beautiful solitudes to a deep and solemn mystery. 
 
 The immediate effect of such a scene, suddenly presented 
 to the contemplation of mortal eyes, is seldom the subject 
 of authentic record. The coldest slave of custom cannot 
 fail to recollect some few moments in which the breath of 
 spring or the crowding clouds of sunset, with the pale moon 
 shining through their fleecy skirts, or the song of some 
 lonely bird perched on the only tree of an unfrequented 
 heath, has awakened the touch of nature. And they were 
 Arabians who entered the valley of Bethzatanai ; men who 
 idolized nature and the God of nature ; to whom love and 
 lofty thoughts, and the apprehensions of an uncorrupted 
 spirit, were sustenance and life. Thus securely excluded 
 from an abhorred world, all thought of its judgment was 
 cancelled by the rapidity of their fervid imaginations. 
 They ceased to acknowledge, or deigned not to advert to, 
 the distinctions with which the majority of base and vulgar 
 minds control the longings and struggles of the soul towards 
 its place of rest. A new and sacred fire was kindled 
 in their hearts and sparkled in their eyes. Every ges- 
 ture, every feature, the minutest action, was modelled to 
 
i66 ESSA VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 beneficence and beauty by the holy inspiration that had 
 descended on their searching spirits. The epidemic trans- 
 port communicated itself through every heart with the 
 rapidity of a blast from heaven. They were already dis- 
 embodied spirits ; they were already the inhabitants of 
 paradise. To live, to breathe, to move, was itself a 
 sensation of immeasurable transport. Every new contem- 
 plation of the condition of his nature brought to the happj 
 enthusiast an added measure of delight, and impelled to 
 every organ, where mind is united with external things, a 
 keener and more exquisite perception of all that they con- 
 tain of lovely and divine. To love, to be beloved, suddenly 
 became an insatiable famine of his nature, which the wide 
 circle of the universe, comprehending beings of such inex- 
 haustible variety and stupendous magnitude of excellence, 
 appeared too narrow and confined to satiate. 
 
 Alas, that these visitings of the spirit of life should 
 fluctuate and pass away I That the moments when the 
 human mind is commensurate with all that it can conceive 
 of excellent and powerful, should not endure with its exist- 
 ence and survive its most momentous change 1 But the 
 beauty of a vernal sunset, with its overhanging curtains of 
 empurpled cloud, is rapidly dissolved, to return at some 
 unexpected period, and spread an alleviating melancholy 
 over the dark vigils of despair. 
 
 It is true the enthusiasm of overwhelming transport 
 which had inspired every breast among the Assassins is no 
 more. The necessity of daily occupation and the ordinari- 
 ness of that human life, the burthen of which it is the 
 destiny of every human being to bear, had smothered, not 
 extinguished, that divine and eternal fire. Not the less 
 indelible and permanent were the impressions communi- 
 cated to all; not the more unalterably were the features 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 167 
 
 of their social character modelled and determined by its 
 influence. 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 Rome had fallen. Her senate-house had become a polluted 
 den of thieves and liars ; her solemn temples, the arena of 
 theological disputants, who made fire and sword the mis- 
 sionaries of their inconceivable beliefs. The city of the 
 monster Constantine, symbolizing, in the consequences of 
 its foundation, the wickedness and weakness of his succes- 
 sors, feebly imaged with declining power the substantial 
 eminence of the Roman name. Pilgrims of a new and 
 mightier faith crowded to visit the lonely ruins of 
 Jerusalem, and weep and pray before the sepulchre of the 
 Eternal God. The earth was filled with discord, tumult, 
 and ruin. The spirit of disinterested virtue had armed 
 one-half of the civilised world against the other. Mon- 
 strous and detestable creeds poisoned and blighted the 
 domestic charities. There was no appeal to natural love, 
 or ancient faith, from pride, superstition, and revenge. 
 
 Pour centuries had passed thus, terribly characterised by 
 the most calamitous revolutions. The Assassins, mean- 
 while, undisturbed by the surrounding tumult, possessed 
 and cultivated their fertile valley. The gradual operation 
 of their peculiar condition had matured and perfected the 
 singularity and excellence of their character. That cause, 
 which had ceased to act as an immediate and overpowering 
 excitement, became the unperceived law of their lives, and 
 sustenance of their natures. Their religious tenets had also 
 undergone a change, corresponding with the exalted condi- 
 tion of their moral being. The gratitude which they owed 
 to the benignant Spirit by which their limited intelligences 
 
 I 
 
168 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 had not only been created but redeemed, was less fre- 
 quently adverted to, became less the topic of comment 
 or contemplation ; not, therefore, did it cease to be their 
 presiding guardian, the guide of their inmost thoughts, the 
 tribunal of appeal for the minutest particulars of their con- 
 duct. They learned to identify this mysterious benefactor 
 with the delight that is bred among the solitary rocks, and 
 has its dwelling alike in the changing colours of the clouds 
 and the inmost recesses of the caverns. Their future also 
 no longer existed, but in the blissful tranquillity of the 
 present. Time was measured and created by the vices and 
 the miseries of men, between whom and the happy nation 
 of the Assassins, there was no analogy nor comparison. 
 Already had their eternal peace commenced. The darkness 
 had passed away from the open gates of death. 
 
 The practical results produced by their faith and condition 
 upon their external conduct were singular and memorable. 
 Excluded from the great and various community of mankind, 
 these solitudes became to them a sacred hermitage, in which 
 all formed, as it were, one being, divided against itself by 
 no contending will or factious passions. Every impulse 
 conspired to one end, and tended to a single object. Each 
 devoted his powers to the happiness of the other. Their 
 republic was the scene of the perpetual contentions of 
 benevolence; not the heartless and assumed kindness of 
 commercial man, but the genuine virtue that has a legible 
 superscription in every feature of the countenance, and 
 every motion of the frame. The perverseness and calamities 
 of those who dwelt beyond the mountains that encircled 
 their undisturbed possessions, were unknown and 
 unimagined. Little embarrassed by the complexities of 
 civilised society, they knew not to conceive any happiness 
 that can be satiated without participation, or that thirsts 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 169 
 
 not to reproduce and perpetually generate itself. The path 
 of virtue and felicity was plain and unimpeded. They 
 clearly acknowledged, in every case, that conduct to be 
 entitled to preference which would obviously produce the 
 greatest pleasure. They could not conceive an instance in 
 which it would be their duty to hesitate, in causing, at 
 whatever expense, the greatest and most unmixed delight. 
 
 Hence arose a peculiarity which only failed to germinate 
 in uncommon and momentous consequences, because the 
 Assassins had retired from the intercourse of mankind, over 
 whom other motives and principles of conduct than justice 
 and benevolence prevail. It would be a difficult matter for 
 men of such a sincere and simple faith, to estimate the final 
 results of their intentions, among the corrupt and slavish 
 multitude. They would be perplexed also in their choice of 
 the means, whereby their intentions might be fulfilled. To 
 produce immediate pain or disorder for the sake of future 
 benefit, is consonant, indeed, with the purest religion and 
 philosophy, but never fails to excite invincible repugnance 
 in the feelings of the many. Against their predilections and 
 distastes an Assassin, accidentally the inhabitant of a civil- 
 ised community, would wage unremitting hostility from 
 principle. He would find himself compelled to adopt 
 means which they would abhor, for the sake of an object 
 which they could not conceive that he should propose to 
 himself. Secure and self-enshrined in the magnificence and 
 pre-eminence of his conceptions, spotless as the light of 
 heaven, he would be the victim among men of calumny and 
 persecution. Incapable of distinguishing his motives, they 
 would rank him among the vilest and most atrocious 
 criminals. Great, beyond all comparison with them, they 
 would despise him in the presumption of their ignorance. 
 Because his spirit burned with an unquenchable passion for 
 
 I 
 
ijro ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 their welfare, they would lead him, like his illustrious 
 master, amidst scoflPs, and mockery, and insult, to the 
 remuneration of an ignominious death. 
 
 Who hesitates to destroy a venomous serpent that has 
 crept near his sleeping friend, except the man who selfishly 
 dreads lest the malignant reptile should turn his fury on 
 himself? And if the poisoner has assumed a human shape, 
 if the bane be distinguished only from the viper's venom by 
 the excess and extent of its devastation, will the saviour 
 and avenger here retract and pause entrenched behind the 
 superstition of the indefeasible divinity of man? Is the 
 human form, then, the mere badge of a prerogative for 
 unlicensed wickedness and mischief? Can the power 
 derived from the weakness of the oppressed, or the 
 ignorance of the deceived, confer the right in security to 
 tyrannise and defraud ? 
 
 The subject of regular governments, and the disciple of 
 established superstition, dares not to ask this question. For 
 the sake of the eventual benefit, he endures what he esteems 
 a transitory evil, and the moral degradation of man disquiets 
 not his patience. But the religion of an Assassin imposes 
 other virtues than endurance, when his fellow-men groan 
 under tyranny, or have become so bestial and abject that 
 they cannot feel their chains. An Assassin believes that 
 man is eminently man, and only then enjoys the preroga- 
 tives of his privileged condition, when his afiections and 
 his judgment pay tribute to the God of Nature. The 
 perverse, and vile, and vicious — what were they ? Shapes 
 of some unholy vision, moulded by the spirit of Evil, 
 which the sword of the merciful destroyer should sweep 
 from this beautiful world. Dreamy nothings ; phantasms 
 of misery and mischief, that hold their death-like state on 
 glittering thrones, and in the loathsome dens of poverty. 
 
THE ASSASSINS. I7i 
 
 No Assassin would submissively temporise with vice, and 
 in cold charity become a pander to falsehood and desolation. 
 His path through the wilderness of civilised society would 
 be marked with the blood of the oppressor and the miner. 
 The wretch, whom nations tremblingly adore, would expiate 
 in his throttling grasp a thousand licensed and venerable 
 crimes. 
 
 How many holy liars and parasites, in solemn guise, 
 would his saviour arm drag from their luxurious couches, 
 and plunge in the cold charnel, that the green and many- 
 legged monsters of the slimy grave might eat oflf at their 
 leisure the lineaments of rooted malignity and detested 
 cunning. The respectable man — the smooth, smiling, 
 polished villain, whom all the city honours ; whose very 
 trade is lies and murder ; who buys his daily bread with 
 the blood and tears of men, would feed the ravens with his 
 limbs. The Assassin would cater nobly for the eyeless 
 worms of earth, and the carrion fowls of heaven. 
 
 Yet here, religion and human love had imbued the 
 manners of those solitary people with inexpressible gentle- 
 ness and benignity. Courage and active virtue, and the 
 indignation against vice, which becomes a hurrying and 
 irresistible passion, slept like the imprisoned earthquake, or 
 the lightning shafts that hang in the golden clouds of even- 
 ing. They were innocent, but they were capable of more 
 than innocence ; for the great principles of their faith were 
 perpetually acknowledged and adverted to ; nor had they 
 forgotten, in this uninterrupted quiet, the author of their 
 felicity. 
 
 Four centuries had thus worn away without producing 
 an event. Men had died, and natural tears had been shed 
 upon their graves, in sorrow that improves the heart. 
 Those who had been united by love had gone to death 
 
 I 
 
172 £SSA VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 together, leaving to their friends the bequest of a most 
 sacred grief, and of a sadness that is allied to pleasure. 
 Babes that hung upon their mothers' breasts had become 
 men ; men had died ; and many a wild luxuriant weed 
 that overtopped the habitations of the vale, had twined its 
 roots around their disregarded bones. Their tranquil state 
 was like a summer sea, whose gentle undulations disturb 
 not the reflected stars, and break not the long still line of 
 the rainbow hues of sunrise. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Where all is thus calm, the slightest circumstance is 
 recorded and remembered. Before the sixth century had 
 expired one incident occurred, remarkable and strange. A 
 young man, named Albedir, wandering in the woods, was 
 startled by the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking up, 
 saw blood fall, drop by drop, from among the intertwined 
 boughs of a cedar. Having climbed thetree, he beheld a 
 terrible and dismaying spectacle. A naked human body 
 was impaled on the broken branch. It was maimed and 
 mangled horribly ; every limb bent and bruised into fright- 
 ful distortion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the 
 most sickening mockery of life. A monstrous snake had 
 scented its prey from among the mountains — and above 
 hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst this mass of deso- 
 lated humanity, two eyes, black and inexpressibly brilliant, 
 shone with an unearthly lustre. Beneath the blood-stained 
 eyebrows their steady rays manifested the serenity of an 
 immortal power, the collected energy of a deathless mind, 
 spell -secured from dissolution. A bitter smile of mingled 
 abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded lip — he appeared 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 173 
 
 calmly to observe and measure all around — self-possession 
 had not deserted the shattered mass of life. 
 
 The youth approached the bough on which the breathing 
 corpse was hung. As he approached, the serpent reluctantly 
 unwreathed his glittering coils, and crept towards his dark 
 and loathsome cave. The vulture, impatient of his meal, 
 fled to the mountain, that re-echoed with his hoarse 
 screams. The cedar branches creaked with their agitating 
 weight, faintly, as the dismal wind arose. All else was 
 deadly silent. 
 
 At length a voice issued from the mangled man. It 
 rattled in hoarse murmurs from his throat and lungs — his 
 words were the conclusion of some strange mysterious 
 soliloquy. They were broken, and without apparent 
 connection, completing wide intervals of inexpressible 
 conceptions. 
 
 " The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. Joy ! joy ! 
 to his tortured foe ! Triumph to the worm whom he tramples 
 under his feet ! Ha ! His suicidal hand might dare as 
 well abolish the mighty frame of things ! Delight and 
 exultation sit before the closed gates of death ! — I fear not 
 to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. Here 
 thy power may not avail ! Thou createst — 'tis mine to 
 ruin and destroy. — I was thy slave — I am thy equal, and 
 thy foe. — Thousands tremble before thy throne, who, at my 
 voice, shall dare to pluck the golden crown from thine 
 unholy head ! " He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed 
 up his words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree — he dared 
 not for dismay remove his eyes. He remained mute in the 
 perturbation of deep and creeping horror. 
 
 " Albedir ! " said the same voice, " Albedir ! in the 
 name of God, approach. He that suffered me to fall, 
 watches thee; — the gentle and merciful spirits of sweet 
 
174 ^^-S*^ VS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 human love, delight not in agony and horror. For pity's 
 sake approach, in the name of thy good God, approach, 
 Albedir 1 " The tones were mild and clear as the responses of 
 jS]olian music. They floated to Albedir's ear like the warm 
 breath of June that lingers in the lawny groves, subduing 
 all to softness. Tears of tender affection started into his 
 eyes. It was as the voice of a beloved friend. The partner 
 of his childhood, the brother of his soul, seemed to call for 
 aid, and pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He 
 resisted not the magic impulse, but advanced towards the 
 spot, and tenderly attempted to remove the wounded man. 
 He cautiously descended the tree with his wretched burthen, 
 and deposited it on the ground. 
 
 A period of strange silence intervened. Awe and cold 
 horror were slowly succeeding to the softer sensations of 
 tumultuous pity, when again he heard the silver modula- 
 tions of the same enchanting voice. " Weep not for me, 
 Albedir ! What wretch so utterly lost, but might inhale 
 peace and renovation from this paradise ! I am wounded, 
 and in pain ; but having found a refuge in this seclusion, 
 and a friend in you, I am worthier of envy than compassion. 
 Bear me to your cottage secretly : I would not disturb your 
 gentle partner by my appearance. She must love me more 
 dearly than a brother. I must be the playmate of your 
 children ; already I regard them with a father's love. My 
 arrival must not be regarded as a thing of mystery and 
 wonder. What, indeed, but that men are prone to error 
 and exaggeration, is less inexplicable, than that a stranger, 
 wandering on Lebanon, fell from the rocks into the vale ? 
 Albedir," he continued, and his deepening voice assumed 
 awful solemnity, " in return for the affection with which I 
 cherish thee and thine, thou owest this submission." 
 
 Albedir implicity submitted; not even a thought had 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 175 
 
 power to refuse its deference. He reassumed his burthen, 
 and proceeded towards the cottage. He watched until 
 Khaled should be absent, and conveyed the stranger into an 
 apartment appropriated for the reception of those who 
 occasionally visited their habitation. He desired that the 
 door should be securely fastened, and that he might not be 
 visited until the morning of the following day. 
 
 Albedir waited with impatience for the return of Khaled. 
 The unaccustomed weight of even so transitory a secret, 
 hung on his ingenuous and unpractised nature, like a blight- 
 ing, clinging curse. The stranger's accents had lulled him to 
 a trance of wild and delightful imagination. Hopes, so 
 visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no denomina- 
 tion, had spread themselves over his intellectual frame, 
 and, phantoms as they were, had modelled his being to their 
 shape. Still his mind was not exempt from the visitings of 
 disquietude and perturbation. It was a troubled stream of 
 thought, over whose fluctuating waves unsearchable fate 
 seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen alterations with an 
 inexorable hand. Albedir paced earnestly the garden of his 
 cottage, revolving every circumstance attendant on the 
 incident of the day. He re-imaged with intense thought 
 the minutest recollections of the scene. In vain — he was 
 the slave of suggestions not to be controlled. Astonish- 
 ment, horror, and awe — tumultuous sympathy, and a 
 mysterious elevation of soul, hurried away all activity of 
 judgment, and overwhelmed, with stunning force, every 
 attempt at deliberation or inquiry. 
 
 His reveries were interrupted at length by the return of 
 Khaled. She entered the cottage, that scene of undisturbed 
 repose, in the confidence that change might as soon over- 
 whelm the eternal world, as disturb this inviolable sanctuary. 
 She started to behold Albedir. Without preface or remark, 
 
176 ESS A YS AND FRAGMENTS, 
 
 he recounted with eager haste the occurrences of the day. 
 Khaled's tranquil spirit could hardly keep pace with the 
 breathless rapidity of his narration. She was bewildered 
 with staggering wonder even to hear his confused tones, 
 and behold his agitated countenance. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 On the following morning Albedir arose at sunrise, and 
 visited the stranger. He found him already risen, and 
 employed in adorning the lattice of his chamber with flowers 
 from the garden. There was something in his attitude and 
 occupation singularly expressive of his entire familiarity 
 with the scene. Albedir's habitation seemed to have been 
 his accustomed home. He addressed his host in a tone 
 of gay and affectionate welcome, such as never fails to 
 communicate by sympathy the feelings from which it flows. 
 " My friend," said he, " the balm of the dew of our vale 
 is sweet ; or is this garden the favoured spot where the 
 winds conspire to scatter the best odours they can find? 
 Come, lend me your arm awhile, I feel very weak." He 
 motioned to walk forth, but, as if unable to proceed, rested 
 on the seat beside the door. For a few moments they were 
 silent, if the interchange of cheerful and happy looks is to 
 be called silence. At last he observed a spade that rested 
 against the wall. "You have only one spade, brother," 
 said he ; " you have only one, I suppose, of any of the 
 instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too, occupies 
 a certain space which it will be necessary to enlarge. This 
 must be quickly remedied. I cannot earn my supper of 
 to-night, nor of to-morrow ; but henceforward, I do not mean 
 to eat the bread of idleness. I know that you would 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 177 
 
 willingly perform the additional labour which my nourish- 
 ment would require ; I know, also, that you would feel a 
 degree of pleasure in the fatigue arising from this employ- 
 ment, but I shall contest with you such pleasures as these, 
 and such pleasures as these alone." His eyes were somewhat 
 wan, and the tone of his voice languid as he spoke. 
 
 As they were thus engaged, Khaled came towards them. 
 The stranger beckoned to her to sit beside him, and taking 
 her hands within his own, looked attentively on her mild 
 countenance. Khaled inquired if he had been refreshed 
 by sleep. He replied by a laugh of careless and 
 inoffensive glee ; and placing one of her hands within 
 Albedir's, said, "If this be sleep, here in this odorous 
 vale, where these sweet smiles encompass us, and the 
 voices of those who love are heard — if these be the visions 
 of sleep, sister, those who lie down in misery shall arise 
 lighter than the butterflies. I came from amid the tumult 
 of a world, how different from this ! I am unexpectedly 
 among you, in the midst of a scene such as my imagina- 
 tion never dared to promise. I must remain here — I 
 must not depart." Khaled, recovering from the admiration 
 and astonishment caused by the stranger's words and 
 manner, assured him of the happiness which she should 
 feel in such an addition to her society. Albedir, too, who 
 had been more deeply impressed than Khaled by the event 
 of his arrival, earnestly re-as5ured him of the ardour of the 
 affection with which he had inspired them. The stranger 
 smiled gently to hear the unaccustomed fervour of 
 sincerity which animated their address, and was rising 
 to retire, when Khaled said, " You have not yet seen our 
 children, Maimuna and Abdallah. They are by the water- 
 side, playing with their favourite snake. We have only to 
 cross yonder little wood, and wind down a path cut in the 
 k 93 
 
178 ESSA YS AND FRAGMENTS. 
 
 rock that overhangs the lake, and we shall find them beside 
 a recess which the shore makes there, and which a chasm, 
 as it were, among the rocks and woods, encloses. Do you 
 think you could walk there*?" — "To see your children, 
 Khaled ? I think I could, with the assistance of Albedir's 
 arm, and yours." — So they went through the wood of 
 ancient cypress, intermingled with the brightness of many- 
 tinted blooms, which gleamed like stars through its 
 romantic glens. They crossed the green meadow, and 
 entered among the broken chasms, beautiful as they were 
 in their investiture of odoriferous shrubs. They came at 
 last, after pursuing a path which wound through the 
 intricacies of a little wilderness, to the borders of the lake. 
 They stood on the rock which overhung it, from which 
 there was a prospect of all the miracles of nature and of 
 art which encircled and adorned its shores. The stranger 
 gazed upon it with a countenance unchanged by any 
 emotion, but, as it were, thoughtfully and contemplatingly. 
 As he gazed, Khaled ardently pressed his hand, and said, 
 in a low yet eager voice, " Look, look, lo there I " He 
 turned towards her, but her eyes were not on him. She 
 looked below — her lips were parted by the feelings which 
 possessed her soul — her breath came and went regularly 
 but inaudibly. She leaned over the precipice, and her dark 
 hair hanging beside her face, gave relief to its fine 
 lineaments, animated by such love as exceeds utterance. 
 The stranger followed her eyes, and saw that her children 
 were in the glen below ; then raising his eyes, exchanged 
 with her afiectionate looks of congratulation and delight. 
 The boy was apparently eight years, the girl about two years 
 younger. The beauty of their form and countenance was 
 something so divine and strange, as overwhelmed the senses 
 of the beholder like a delightful dream, with insupportable 
 
THE ASSASSINS. 179 
 
 ravishment. They were arrayed in a loose robe of 
 linen, through which the exquisite proportions of their form 
 appeared. Unconscious that they were observed, they did 
 not relinquish the occupation in which they were engaged. 
 They had constructed a little boat of the bark of trees, and 
 had given it sails of interwoven feathers, and launched it 
 on the water. They sate beside a white flat stone, on 
 which a small snake lay coiled, and when their work was 
 finished, they arose and called to the snake in melodious 
 tones, so that it understood their language. For it un- 
 wreathed its shining circles and crept to the boat, into 
 which no sooner had it entered, than the girl loosened the 
 band which held it to the shore, and it sailed away. Then 
 they ran round and round the little creek, clapping their 
 hands, and melodiously pouring out wild sounds, which the 
 snake seemed to answer by the restless glancing of his 
 neck. At last a breath of wind came from the shore, and 
 the boat changed its course, and was about to leave the 
 creek, which the snake perceived and leaped into the water, 
 and came to the little children's feet. The girl sang to it, 
 and it leaped into her bosom, and she crossed her fair hands 
 over it, as if to cherish it there. Then the boy answered 
 with a song, and it glided from beneath her hands and 
 crept towards him. While they were thus employed, 
 Maimuna looked up, and seeing her parents on the cliff", 
 ran to meet them up the steep path that wound around it ; 
 and Abdallah, leaving his snake, followed joyfully. 
 
 T 
 

 
 LETTERS. 
 
 I.— To Thomas Hookham, Old Bond Street. 
 
 Ly mouthy Barnstaple^ Aug. \Zth^ 1812. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Your parcel arrived last night, for which I am 
 much obliged. Before I advert to any other topic, I will 
 explain the contents of mine in which this is enclosed. In the 
 first place, I send you fifty copies of the Letter [to Lord 
 EUenborough]. I send you a copy of a work which I have 
 procured from America, and which I am exceedingly anxious 
 should be published. It developes, as you will perceive by the 
 most superficial reading, the. actual state of republicanized 
 Ireland, and appears to me, above all things, calculated to 
 remove the prejudices which have too long been cherished of 
 that oppressed country. I enclose also two pamphlets which I 
 printed and distributed whilst in Ireland some months ago (no 
 bookseller daring to publish them). They were on that account 
 attended with only partial success, and I request your opinion 
 as to the probable result of publishing them with the annexed 
 suggestions in one pamphlet, with an explanatory preface, in 
 London. They would find their way to Dublin. 
 
 You confer on me an obligation, and involve a high compli- 
 ment, by your advice. I shall, if possible, prepare a volume of 
 essays, moral and religious^ by November ; but, all my MSS. 
 now being in Dublin, and from peculiar circumstances not 
 
LETTERS. i8i 
 
 immediately obtainable, I do not know whether I can. I 
 enclose also, by way of specimen, all that I have written of a 
 little poem begun since my arrival in England. I conceive I 
 have matter enough for six more cantos. You will perceive that 
 I have not attempted to temper my constitutional enthusiasm in 
 that poem. Indeed, a poem is safe : the iron-souled Attorney- 
 General would scarcely dare to attack [it]. The Past, the 
 Present, and the Future, are the grand and comprehensive 
 topics of this poem. I have not yet half exhausted the second 
 of them.* 
 
 I shall take the liberty of retaining the two poems which you 
 have sent me (Mr. Peacock's), and only regret that my powers 
 are so circumscribed as to prevent me from becoming exten- 
 sively useful to your friend. The poems abound with a genius, 
 an information, the power and extent of which I admire, in 
 proportion as I lament the object of their application. Mr. 
 Peacock conceives that commerce is prosperity ; that the glory 
 of the British flag is the happiness of the British people ; that 
 George III,, so far from having been a warrior and a tyrant, 
 has been a patriot. To me it appears otherwise ; and I have 
 rigidly accustomed myself not to be seduced by the loveliest 
 eloquence or the sweetest strains to regard with intellectual 
 toleration that which ought not to be tolerated by those who 
 love liberty, truth, and virtue. I mean not to say that Mr. 
 Peacock does not love them ; but I mean to say that he regards 
 those means [as] instrumental to their progress, which I regard 
 [as] instrumental to their destruction. (See Genius of the 
 Thames^ pp. 24, 26, 28, 76, 98.) At the same time, I am free to 
 say that the poem appears to be far beyond mediocrity in genius 
 and versification, and the conclusion of Palmyra the finest piece 
 of poetry I ever read. I have not had time to read the 
 Philosophy of Melancholy^ and of course am only half acquainted 
 with that genius and those powers whose application I should 
 consider myself rash and impertinent in criticising, did I not 
 conceive that frankness and justice demand it. 
 
 I should esteem it as a favour if you would present the 
 enclosed letter to the Chevalier Lawrence. I have read his 
 Empire of the Nairsj nay, have it. Perfectly and decidedly do 
 I subscribe to the truth of the principles which it is designed to 
 establish. 
 
 I hope you will excuse, nay, and doubt not but you will, the 
 frankness I have used. Characters of our liberality are so 
 
 * The poem here alluded to is Queen Mab. — L. S. 
 
i82 LETTERS, 
 
 wondrous rare, that the sooner they know each other, and the 
 fbller and more complete that knowledge is, the better. 
 Dear Sir, permit me to remain. 
 Yours, very truly, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 I am about translating an old French work, professedly by 
 M. Mirabaud — not the famous one — La Systhme de la Nature. 
 Do yon know anything of it % 
 
 II.— To Thomas Hookham. 
 
 Tanyralt, Dec. 17M, 181 2. 
 
 My Dear Sir, 
 
 You will receive the Biblical Extracts * in a day 
 or two by the twopenny post. I confide them to the care of a 
 person going to London. Would not Daniel J. Eaton publish 
 them ? Could the question be asked him in any manner ? 
 
 I am also preparing a volume of minor poems, respecting 
 whose publication I shall request your judgment, both as 
 publisher and friend. A very obvious question would be — 
 Will they sell or not ? Subjoined is a list of books which 
 I wish you to send me very soon. I am determined to apply 
 myself to a study that is hateful and disgusting to my very 
 soul, but which is, above all studies, necessary for him who 
 would be listened to as a mender of antiquated abuses. I 
 mean that record of crimes and miseries, History. You see 
 that the metaphysical works to which my heart hankers are not 
 numerous in this list. One thing will you take care of for me ? 
 that those standard and respectable works on history, etc, 
 be of the cheapest possible editions. With respect to 
 metaphysical works, I am less scrupulous. 
 
 Spinoza you may or may not be able to obtain. Kant is 
 translated into Latin by some Englishman. I would prefer 
 that the Greek classics should have Latin or English versions 
 printed opposite. If not to be obtained thus, they must be 
 sent otherwise. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley is attacking Latin with considerable resolution, 
 and can already read many odes in Horace. She unites with 
 her sister and myself in best wishes to yourself and brother. 
 Your very sincere friend, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 • This work has never been published.— L. S. 
 
^^M 
 
 LETTERS. 183 
 
 III.— To Thomas Hookham. 
 
 February^ 18 13. 
 
 I am boiling with indignation at the horrible 
 injustice and tyranny of the sentence pronounced on Hunt 
 and his brother ; and it is on this subject that I write to you. 
 Surely the seal of abjectness and slavery is indelibly stamped 
 upon the character of England. 
 
 Although I do not retract in the slightest degree my wish for 
 a subscription for the widows and children of those poor men 
 hung at York, yet this ;^ 1,000 which the Hunts are sentenced to 
 pay is an affair of more consequence. Hunt is a brave, a 
 good, and an enlightened man. Surely the public, for whom 
 Hunt has done so much, will repay in part the great debt 
 of obligation which they owe the champion of their liberties 
 and virtues ; or are they dead, cold, stone-hearted, and 
 insensible — brutalized by centuries of unremitting bondage? 
 However that may be, they surely may be excited into some 
 slight acknowledgment of his merits. Whilst hundreds of 
 thousands are sent to the tyrants of Russia, he pines in 
 a dungeon, far from all that can make life desired. 
 
 Well, I am rather poor at present ; but I have £^o which 
 is not immediately wanted. Pray, begin a subscription for 
 the Hunts ; put down my name for that sum, and, when I 
 hear that you have complied with my request, I will send it 
 you.* Now, if there are any difficulties in the way of this scheme 
 of ours, for the love of liberty and virtue, overcome them. Oh ! 
 that I might wallow for one night in the Bank of England ! 
 
 Queen Mab is finished and transcribed. I am now preparing 
 the notes, which shall be long and philosophical. You will 
 receive it with the other poems. I think that the whole should 
 form one volume ; but of that we can speak hereafter. 
 
 As to the French EncyciopMie^ it is a book which I am 
 desirous — very desirous — of possessing ; and, if you could get 
 me a few months' credit (being at present rather low in cash), I 
 should very much desire to have it. 
 
 My dear sir, excuse the earnestness of the first part of my 
 letter. I feel warmly on this subject, and I flatter myself that, 
 
 * The Hunts, however, refused to accept any subscription, public 
 or private, and paid the fine entirely out of their own pockets. — L. S. 
 
 I 
 
1 84 LETTERS, 
 
 so long as your own independence and - liberty remain 
 uncompromised, you are inclined to second my desires. 
 Your very sincere friend, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 P.S. — If no other way can be devised for this subscription, 
 will you take the trouble on yourself of writing an appropriate 
 advertisement for the papers, inserting, by way of stimulant, 
 my subscription ? 
 On second thoughts, I enclose the £20. 
 
 IV.— To Thomas Jefferson Hogg. 
 
 Bishopgate^ September^ 18 15. 
 My Dear Friend, 
 
 Your letter has lain by me for the last week, 
 reproaching me every day. I found it on my return from a 
 water excursion on the Thames, the particulars of which will 
 have been recounted in another letter. The exercise and dissi- 
 pation of mind attached to such an expedition have produced so 
 favourable an effect on my health, that my habitual dejection 
 and irritability have almost deserted me, and I can devote six 
 hours in the day to study without difficulty. I have been 
 engaged lately in the commencement of several literary 
 plans, which, if my present temper of mind endures, I shall 
 probably complete in the winter. I have consequently deserted 
 Cicero, or proceed but slowly with his philosophic dialogues. I 
 have read the Oration for the poet Archias, and am only dis- 
 appointed with its brevity. 
 
 I have been induced by one of the subjects which I am now 
 pursuing to consult Bayle. I think he betrays great obliquity of 
 understanding and coarseness of feeling. I have also read the 
 four finest books of Lucan's Pharsalia — a poem, as it appears to 
 me, of wonderful genius and transcending Virgil. Mary has 
 finished the fifth book of the jtEneid^ and her progress in Latin 
 is such as to satisfy my best expectations. 
 
 The east wind— the wind of autumn — is abroad, and even 
 now the leaves of the forest are shattered at every gust. When 
 may we expect you ? September is almost passed, and October, 
 the month of your promised return, is at hand, when we shall 
 be happy to welcome you again to our fireside. 
 
 No events, as you know, disturb our tranquillity. Adieu. 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
LETTERS. 185 
 
 V. — To Thomas Love Peacock. 
 
 Hotel de Seeker on^ Geneva^ May 15, 18 16. 
 
 After a journey of ten days, we arrived at Geneva. 
 The journey, like that of life, was variegated with intermingled 
 rain and sunshine, though these many showers were to me, as 
 you know, April showers, quickly passing away, and foretelling 
 the calm brightness of summer. 
 
 The journey was in some respects exceedingly delightful, but 
 the prudential considerations arising out of the necessity of 
 preventing delay, and the continual attention to pecuniary 
 disbursements, detract terribly from the pleasure of all travelling 
 schemes. 
 
 You live by the shores of a tranquil stream, among low and 
 woody hills. You live in a free country, where you may act 
 without restraint, and possess that which you possess in 
 security ; and so long as the name of country and the selfish 
 conceptions it includes shall subsist, England, I am persuaded, is 
 the most free and the most refined. 
 
 Perhaps you have chosen wisely, but if I return and follow 
 your example, it will be no subject of regret to me that I have 
 seen other things. Surely there is much of bad and much of 
 good, there is much to disgust and much to elevate, which he 
 cannot have felt or known who has never passed the limits of his 
 native land. 
 
 So long as man is such as he now is, the experience of which 
 I speak will never teach him to despise the country of his 
 birth — far otherwise, like Wordsworth, he will never know what 
 love subsists between that and him until absence shall have 
 made its beauty more heartfelt j our poets and philosophers, our 
 mountains and our lakes, the rural lanes and fields which are so 
 especially our own, are ties which, until I become utterly 
 senseless, can never be broken asunder. 
 
 These, and the memory of them, if I never should return, these 
 and the affections of the mind, with which, having been once 
 united, [they] are inseparable, will make the name of England 
 dear to me for ever, even if I should permanently return to it 
 no more. 
 
 But I suppose you did not pay the postage of this, expecting 
 nothing but sentimental gossip, and I fear it will be long before 
 
i86 LETTERS. 
 
 I play the tourist properly, I will, however, tell you that to 
 come to Geneva we crossed the Jura branch of the Alps. 
 
 The mere difficulties of horses, high bills, postilions, and 
 cheating, lying aubergistes, you can easily conceive ; fill up that 
 part of the picture according to your own experience, and it 
 cannot fail to resemble. 
 
 The mountains of Jura exhibit scenery of wonderful sublimity. 
 Pine forests of impenetrable thickness, and untrodden, nay, 
 inaccessible expanse, spreading on every side. Sometimes 
 descending, they follow the route into the valleys, clothing the 
 precipitous rocks, and struggling with knotted roots between 
 the most barren clefts. Sometimes the road winds high into 
 the regions of frost, and there these forests become scattered, 
 and loaded with snow. 
 
 The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and stand in 
 scattered clumps over the white wilderness. Never was scene 
 more utterly desolate than that which we passed on the evening 
 of our last day's journey. 
 
 The natural silence of that uninhabited desert contrasted 
 strangely with the voices of the people who conducted us, for it 
 was necessary in this part of the mountain to take a number of 
 persons, who should assist the horses to force the chaise through 
 the snow, and prevent it from falling down the precipice. 
 
 We are now at Geneva, where, or in the neighbourhood, we 
 shall remain probably until the autumn. I may return in a 
 fortnight or three weeks, to attend to the last exertions which 
 
 L is to make for the settlement of my affairs ; of course I 
 
 shall then see you ; in the meantime it will interest me to hear 
 all that you have to tell of yourself. 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 VI.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 MEILLERIE, CLARENS, CHILLON, VEVAI, LAUSANNE. 
 
 Montalegrey near Coligni, Geneva^ July i2thy [1816.] 
 
 It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned from Vevai. 
 This journey has been on every account delightful, but most 
 especially, because then I first knew the divine beauty of 
 Rousseau's imagination, as it exhibits itself in Julie. It is 
 inconceivable what an enchantment the scene itself lends to 
 
LETTERS. 187 
 
 those delineations, from which its own most touching charm 
 arises. But I will give you an abstract of our voyage, which 
 lasted eight days, and if you have a map of Switzerland, you 
 can follow me. 
 
 We left Montalegre at half-past two on the 23rd of June. 
 The lake was calm, and after three hours of rowing we arrived at 
 Hermance, a beautiful little village, containing a ruined tower, 
 built, the villagers say, by Julius Caesar. There were three 
 other towers similar to it, which the Genevese destroyed for 
 their own fortifications in 1560. We got into the tower by a 
 kind of window. The walls are immensely solid, and the 
 stone of which it is built so hard, that it yet retained the mark 
 of chisels. The boatman said, that this tower was once three 
 times higher than it is now. There are two staircases in the 
 thickness of the walls, one of which is entirely demolished, and 
 the other half ruined, and only accessible by a ladder. The 
 town itself, now an inconsiderable village inhabited by a few 
 fishermen, was built by a queen of Burgundy, and reduced to its 
 present state by the inhabitants of Berne, who burnt and 
 ravaged everything they could find. 
 
 Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the village of 
 Herni. After looking at our lodgings, which were gloomy and 
 dirty, we walked out by the side of the lake. It was beautiful 
 to see the vast expanse of these purple and misty waters broken 
 by the craggy islets near to its slant and " beached margin." 
 There were many fish sporting in the lake, and multitudes were 
 collected close to the rocks to catch the flies which inhabited 
 them. 
 
 On returning to the village, we sat on a wall beside the lake, 
 looking at some children who were playing at a game like nine- 
 pins. The children here appeared in an extraordinary way 
 deformed and diseased. Most of them were crooked, and with 
 enlarged throats ; but one little boy had such exquisite grace in 
 his mien and motions, as I never before saw equalled in a child. 
 His countenance was beautiful for the expression with which it 
 overflowed. There was a mixture of pride and gentleness in 
 his eyes and lips, the indications of sensibility, which his educa- 
 tion will probably pervert to misery or seduce to crime ; but 
 there was more of gentleness than of pride, and it seemed that 
 the pride was tamed from its original wildness by the habitual 
 exercise of milder feelings. My companion gave him a piece of 
 money, which he took without speaking, with a sweet smile 
 of easy thankfulness, and then with an embarrassed air turned 
 to his play. All this might scarcely be ; but the imagination 
 
188 LETTERS, 
 
 surely could not forbear to breathe into the most inanimate 
 forms, some likeness of its own visions, on such a serene and 
 glowing evening, in this remote and romantic village, beside 
 the calm lake that bore us hither. 
 
 On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had 
 arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion 
 of their former disconsolate appearance. They reminded my 
 companion of Greece : it was five years, he said, since he had 
 slept in such beds. The influence of the recollections excited 
 by this circumstance on our conversation gradually faded, and I 
 retired to rest with no unpleasant sensations, thinking of our 
 journey to-morrow, and of the pleasure of recounting the little 
 adventures of it when we return. 
 
 The next morning we pa§sed Yvoire, a scattered village with 
 an ancient castle, whose houses are interspersed with trees, and 
 which stands at a little distance from Nerni, on the promontory 
 which bounds a deep bay, some miles in extent. So soon as 
 we arrived at this promontory, the lake began to assume 
 an aspect of wilder magnificence. The mountains of Savoy, 
 whose summits were bright with snow, descended in broken 
 slopes to the lake : on high, the rocks were dark with pine 
 forests, which become deeper and more immense, until the ice 
 and snow mingle with the points of naked rock that pierce the 
 blue air ; but below, groves of walnut, chestnut, and oak, with 
 openings of lawny fields, attested the milder climate. 
 
 As soon as we had passed the opposite promontory, we saw 
 the river Drance, which descends from between a chasm in the 
 mountains, and makes a plain near the lake, intersected by its 
 divided streams. Thousands of besolets, beautiful water-birds, 
 like sea-gulls, but smaller, with purple on their backs, take their 
 station on the shallows where its waters mingle with the lake. 
 As we approached Evian, the mountains descended more pre- 
 cipitously to the lake, and masses of intermingled wood and 
 rock overhung its shining spire. 
 
 We arrived at this town about seven o'clock, after a day 
 which involved more rapid changes of atmosphere than I ever 
 recollect to have observed before. The morning was cold and 
 wet ; then an easterly wind, and the clouds hard and high ; 
 then thunder showers, and wind shifting to every quarter ; then 
 a warm blast from the south, and summer clouds hanging over 
 the peaks, with bright blue sky between. About half an hour 
 after we had arrived at Evian, a few flashes of lightning came 
 from a dark cloud, directly over head, and continued after the 
 cloud had dispersed. "Diespiter per pura tonantes egit 
 
LETTERS. 189 
 
 equos : " a phenomenon which certainly had no influence on 
 me, corresponding with that which it produced on Horace. 
 
 The appearance of the inhabitants of Evian is more wretched, 
 diseased, and poor, than I ever recollect to have seen. The 
 contrast indeed between the subjects of the King of Sardinia 
 and the citizens of the independent republics of Switzerland, 
 afifords a powerful illustration of the blighting mischiefs of 
 despotism, within the space of a few miles. They have mineral 
 waters here, eaux savonneuses, they call them. In the evening 
 we had some difficulty about our passports, but so soon as the 
 syndic heard my companion's rank and name, he apologised for 
 the circumstance. The inn was good. During our voyage, on 
 the distant height of a" hill, covered with pine-forests, we saw a 
 ruined castle, which reminded me of those on the Rhine. 
 
 We left Evian on the following morning, with a wind of such 
 violence as to permit but one sail to be carried. The waves 
 also were exceedingly high, and our boat so heavily laden, that 
 there appeared to be some danger. We arrived, however, safe 
 at Meillerie, after passing with great speed mighty forests 
 which overhung the lake, and lawns of exquisite verdure, and 
 mountains with bare and icy points, which rose immediately 
 from the summit of the rocks, whose bases were echoing to the 
 waves. 
 
 We here heard that the Empress Maria Louisa had slept at 
 Meillerie — before the present inn was built, and when the 
 accommodations were those of the most wi etched village — in 
 remembrance of St. Preux. How beautiful it is to find that the 
 common sentiments of human nature can attach themselves to 
 those who are the most removed from its duties and its enjoy- 
 ments, when Genius pleads for their admission at the gate of 
 Power. To own them was becoming in the Empress, and 
 confirms the affectionate praise contained in the reg^ret of a 
 great and enlightened nation. A Bourbon dared not even to 
 have remembered Rousseau. She owed this power to that 
 democracy which her husband's dynasty outraged, and of which 
 it was, however, in some sort, the representative among the 
 nations of the earth. This little incident shows at once how 
 unfit and how impossible it is for the ancient system of opinions, 
 or for any power built upon a conspiracy to revive them, 
 permanently to subsist among mankind. We dined there, and 
 had some honey, the best I have ever tasted, the very essence 
 of the mountain flowers, and as fragrant. Probably the village 
 derives its name from this production. Meillerie is the well- 
 known scene of St. Preux's visionary exile ; but Meillerie is 
 
 I 
 
I90 LETTERS. 
 
 indeed enchanted ground, were Rousseau no magician. Groves 
 of pine, chestnut, and walnut overshadow it ; magnificent and 
 unbounded forests to which England affords no parallel. In 
 the midst of these woods are dells of lawny expanse, incon- 
 ceivably verdant, adorned with a thousand of the rarest flowers, 
 and odorous with thyme. 
 
 The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left Meillerie, 
 sailing close to the banks, whose magnificence augmented with 
 the turn of every promontory. But we congratulated ourselves 
 too soon : the wind gradually increased in violence, until it blew 
 tremendously ; and, as it came from the remotest extremity of 
 the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered the 
 whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, who 
 was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the sail at 
 a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under 
 water by the hurricane. On discovering his error, he let it 
 entirely go, and the boat for a moment refused to obey the 
 helm ; in addition, the rudder was so broken as to render the 
 management of .it very difficult ; one wave fell in, and then 
 another. My companion, an excellent swimmer, took off his 
 coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms crossed, every 
 instant expecting to be swamped. The sail was, however, again 
 held, the boat obeyed the helm, and still in imminent peril from 
 the immensity of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a 
 sheltered port, in the village of St. Gingoux. 
 
 I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of sensations, 
 among which terror entered, though but subordinately. My 
 feelings would have been less painful had I been alone ; but I 
 knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and 
 I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life 
 might have been risked to preserve mine. When we arrived at 
 St. Gingoux, the inhabitants, who stood on the shore, unaccus- 
 tomed to see a vessel as frail as ours, and fearing to venture at 
 all on such a sea, exchanged looks of wonder and congratulation 
 with our boatmen, who, as well as ourselves, were well pleased 
 to set foot on shore. 
 
 St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Meillerie ; the 
 mountains are higher, and their loftiest points of elevation 
 descend more abruptly to the lake. On high, the aerial summits 
 still cherish great depths of snow in their ravines, and in the 
 paths of their unseen torrents. One of the highest of these 
 IS called Roche de St. Julien, beneath whose pinnacles the 
 forests become deeper and more extensive ; the chestnut gives a 
 peculiarity to the scene, which is most beautiful, and will make 
 
LETTERS, 191 
 
 a picture in my memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes 
 which I have ever before visited. 
 
 As we arrived here early, we took a voiture to visit the mouth 
 of the Rhone. We went between the mountains and the lake, 
 under groves of mighty chestnut trees, beside perpetual streams, 
 which are nourished by the snows above, and form stalactites 
 on the rocks, over which they fall We saw an immense chest- 
 nut tree, which had been overthrown by the hurricane of the 
 morning. The place where the Rhone joins the lake was 
 marked by a line of tremendous breakers ; the river is as rapid 
 as when it leaves the lake, but is muddy and dark. We went 
 about a league farther on the road to La Valais, and stopped at 
 a castle called La Tour de Bouverie, which seems to be the 
 frontier of Switzerland and Savoy, as we were asked for our 
 passports, on the supposition of our proceeding to Italy. 
 
 On one side of the road was the immense Roche de St. Julien, 
 which overhung it ; through the gateway of the castle we saw 
 the snowy mountains of La Valais, clothed in clouds, and, on 
 the other side, was the willowy plain of the Rhone, in a character 
 of striking contrast with the rest of the scene, bounded by the 
 dark mountains that overhang Clarens, Vevai, and the lake that 
 rolls between. In the midst of the plain rises a little isolated 
 hill, on which the white spire of a church peeps from among the 
 tufted chestnut woods. We returned to St. Gingoux before 
 sunset, and I passed the evening in rtadmg /uUe. 
 
 As my companion rises late, I had time before breakfast, on 
 the ensuing morning, to hunt the waterfalls of the river that fall 
 into the lake of St. Gingoux. The stream is, indeed, from the 
 declivity over which it falls, only a succession of waterfalls, 
 which roar over the rocks with a perpetual sound, and suspend 
 their unceasing spray on the leaves and flowers that overhang 
 and adorn its savage banks. The path that conducted along 
 this river sometimes avoided the precipices of its shores, by 
 leading through meadows ; sometimes threaded the base of the 
 perpendicular and caverned rocks. I gathered in these meadows 
 a nosegay of such flowers as I never saw in England, and which 
 I thought more beautiful for that rarity. 
 
 On my return, after breakfast, we sailed for Clarens, deter- 
 mining first to see the three mouths of the Rhone, and then the 
 Castle of Chillon ; the day was fine, and the water calm. We 
 passed from the blue waters of the lake over the stream of the 
 Rhone, which is rapid even at a great distance from its con- 
 fluence with the lake ; the turbid waters mixed with those of the 
 lake, but mixed with them unwillingly. {See Nouvelle HUoise^ 
 
193 LETTERS. 
 
 Lettre 1 7, Part. 4). I read Julie all day ; an overflowing, as it 
 now seems, surrounded by the scenes which it has so wonder- 
 fully peopled, of sublimest genius, and more than human 
 sensibility. Meillerie, the Castle of Chillon, Clarens, the 
 mountains of La Valais and Savoy, present themselves to the 
 imagination as monuments of things that were once familiar, 
 and of beings that were once dear to it. They were created 
 indeed by one mind, but a mind so powerfully bright as to cast 
 a shade of falsehood on the records that are called reality. 
 
 We passed on to the castle of Chillon, and visited its dungeons 
 and towers. These prisons are excavated below the lake ; the 
 principal dungeon is supported by seven columns, whose 
 iDranching capitals support the roof. Close to the very walls, 
 the lake is eight hundred feet deep ; iron rings are fastened 
 to these columns, and on them were engraven a multitude of 
 names, partly those of visitors, and partly doubtless of the 
 prisoners, of whom now no memory remains, and who thus 
 beguiled a solitude which they have long ceased to feel. One 
 date was as ancient as 1670. At the commencement of the 
 Reformation, and indeed long after that period, this dungeon 
 was the receptacle of those who shook, or who denied the system 
 of idolatry, from the effects of which mankind is even now 
 slowly emerging. 
 
 Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a narrow cell, and 
 beyond it one larger and far more lofty and dark, supported 
 upon two unornamented arches. Across one of these arches 
 was a beam, now black and rotten, on which prisoners were 
 hung in secret. I never saw a monument more terrible of that 
 cold and inhuman tyranny, which it had been the delight of 
 man to exercise over man. It was indeed one of those many 
 tremendous fulfilments which render the " pernicies humani 
 generis" of the great Tacitus so solemn and irrefragable a 
 prophecy. The gendarme, who conducted us over this castle, 
 told us that there was an opening to the lake, by means of a 
 secret spring, connected with which the whole dungeon 
 might be filled with water before the prisoners could possibly 
 escape 1 
 
 We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens against a 
 heavy swell. I never felt more strongly than on landing at 
 Clarens, that the spirit of old times had deserted its once 
 cherished habitation. A thousand times, thought I, have Julia 
 and St. Preux walked on this terraced road, looking towards 
 these mountains which I now behold ; nay, treading on the 
 ground where I now tread. From the window of our lodging 
 
i 
 
 LETTERS. 193 
 
 our landlady pointed out " le bosquet de Julie." At least the 
 inhabitants of this village are impressed with an idea, that the 
 persons of that romance had actual existence. In the evening 
 we walked thither. It is, indeed, Julia's wood. The hay was 
 making under the trees ; the trees themselves were aged, but 
 vigorous, and interspersed with younger ones, which are destined 
 to be their successors, and in future years, when we are dead, to 
 afford a shade to future worshippers of nature, who love the 
 memory of that tenderness and peace of which this was the 
 imaginary abode. We walked forward among the vineyards, 
 whose narrow terraces overlook this affecting scene. Why did 
 the cold maxims of the world compel me at this moment to 
 repress the tears of melancholy transport which it would have 
 been so sweet to indulge, immeasurably, even until the 
 darkness of night had swallowed up the objects which excited 
 them. 
 
 I forgot to remark, what indeed my companion remarked to 
 me, that our danger from the storm took place precisely in the 
 spot where Julie and her lover were nearly overset, and where 
 St. Preux was tempted to plunge with her into the lake. 
 
 On the following day we went to see the castle of Clarens, a 
 square strong house, with very few windows, surrounded by a 
 double terrace that overlooks the valley, or rather the plain of 
 Clarens. The road which conducted to it wound up the steep 
 ascent through woods of walnut and chestnut. We gathered 
 roses on the terrace, in the feeling that they might be the 
 posterity of some planted by Julie's hand. We sent their dead 
 and withered leaves to the absent. 
 
 We went again to " the bosquet de Julie," and found that the 
 precise spot was now utterly obliterated, and a heap of stones 
 marked the place where the little chapel had once stood. 
 Whilst we were execrating the author of this brutal folly, our 
 guide informed us that the land belonged to the convent of St. 
 Bernard, and that this outrage had been committed by their 
 orders. I knew before, that if avarice could harden the hearts 
 of men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence far 
 more inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an isolated 
 man is sometimes restrained by shame from outraging the 
 venerable feelings arising out of the memory of genius, which 
 once made nature even lovelier than itself ; but associated man 
 holds it as the very sacrament of his union to forswear all 
 delicacy, all benevolence, all remorse ; all that is true, or 
 tender, or sublime. 
 
 We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a town more 
 
 94 
 
194 LETTERS. 
 
 beautiful in its simplicity than any I have ever seen. Its 
 market-place, a spacious square interspersed with trees, looks 
 directly upon the mountains of Savoy and La Valais, the lake, 
 and the valley of the Rhone. It was at Vevai that Rousseau 
 conceived the design oi Julie. 
 
 From Vevai we came to Ouchy, a village near Lausanne. 
 The coasts of the Pays de Vaud, though full of villages and 
 vineyards, present an aspect of tranquillity and peculiar beauty 
 which well compensates for the solitude which I am accustomed 
 to admire. The hills are very high and rocky, crowned and 
 interspersed with woods. Waterfalls echo from the cliffs, and 
 shine afar. In one place we saw the traces of two rocks of 
 immense size, which had fallen from the mountain behind. 
 One of these lodged in a room where a young woman was 
 sleeping, without injuring her. The vineyards were utterly 
 destroyed in its path, and the earth torn up. 
 
 The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We, however, 
 visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house. We were shown 
 the decayed summer-house where he finished his History, and 
 the old acacias on the terrace, from which he saw Mont Blanc, 
 after having written the last sentence. There is something 
 grand and even touching in the regret which he expresses at 
 the completion of his task. It was conceived amid the ruins of 
 the Capitol. The sudden departure of his cherished and accus- 
 tomed toil must have left him, like the death of a dear friend, 
 sad and solitary. 
 
 My companion gathered some acacia leaves to preserve in 
 remembrance of him. I refrained from doing so, fearing to 
 outrage the greater and more sacred name of Rousseau ; the 
 contemplation of whose imperishable creations had left no 
 vacancy in my heart for mortal things. Gibbon had a cold and 
 unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more inclination to rail at 
 the prejudices which cling to such a thing, than now that /u/t'e 
 and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire^ compelled me 
 to a contrast between Rousseau and Gibbon. 
 
 When we returned, in the only interval of sunshine during 
 the day, I walked on the pier which the lake was lashing with 
 its waves. A rainbow spanned the lake, or rather rested one 
 extremity of its arch upon the water, and the other at the foot 
 of the mountains of Savoy. Some white houses, I know not 
 if they were those of Meillerie, shone through the yellow fire. 
 
 On Saturday, the 30th of June, we quitted Ouchy, and after 
 two days of pleasant sailing arrived on Sunday evening at 
 Montalegre. 
 
LETTERS. 195 
 
 VII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Geneva^ July 17M, 1816. 
 
 My opinion of turning to one spot of earth and calling it our 
 home, and of the excellencies and usefulness of the sentiments 
 arising out of this attachment, has at length produced in me the 
 resolution of acquiring this possession. 
 
 You are the only man who has sufficient regard for me to 
 take an interest in the fulfilment of this design, and whose tastes 
 conform sufficiently to mine to engage me to confide the 
 execution of it to your discretion. 
 
 I do not trouble you with apologies for giving you this com- 
 mission. I require only rural exertion, walks, and circuitous 
 wanderings, some slight negotiations about the letting of a 
 house — the superintendence of a disorderly garden, some palings 
 to be mended, some books to be removed and set up. 
 
 I wish you would get all my books and all my furniture from 
 Bishopgate, and all other effects appertaining to me. I have 
 written to ... to secure all that belongs to me there to you. 
 
 I have written also to L to give up possession of the house 
 
 on the 3rd of August. 
 
 When you have possessed yourself of all my affairs, I wish 
 you to look out for a home for me and Mary and William, and 
 the kitten, who is now en pension. I wish you to get an unfur- 
 nished house, with as good a garden as may be, near Windsor 
 Forest, and take a lease of it for fourteen or twenty-one years. 
 The house must not be too small. I wish the situation to 
 resemble as nearly as possible that of Bishopgate, and should 
 think that Sunning Hill, or Winkfield Plain, or the neighbour- 
 hood of Virginia Water would afford some possibilities. 
 
 Houses are now exceedingly cheap and plentiful ; but I 
 entrust the whole of this affair entirely to your own discretion. 
 
 My present intention is to return to England, and to make 
 that most excellent of nations my perpetual resting place. I 
 think it is extremely probable that we shall return next spring — 
 perhaps before, perhaps after, but certainly we shall return. 
 
 On the motives and on the consequences of this journey, I 
 reserve much explanation for some future winter walk or sum- 
 mer expedition. This much alone is certain, that before we 
 return we shall have seen, and felt, and heard, a multiplicity of 
 things which will haunt our talk and make us a little better 
 worth knowing than we were before our departure. 
 
196 LETTERS, 
 
 If possible we think of descending the Danube in a boat, of 
 visiting Constantinople and Athens, then Rome and the Tuscan 
 cities, and returning by the south of France, always following 
 great rivers. The Danube, the Po, the Rhone, and the Garonne ; 
 rivers are not like roads, the work of the hands of man ; they 
 imitate mind, which wanders at will over pathless deserts, and 
 flows through nature's loveliest recesses, which are inaccessible 
 to anything besides. They have the viler advantage also of 
 affording a cheaper mode of conveyance. 
 
 This eastern scheme is one which has just seized on our 
 imaginations. I fear that the detail of execution will destroy it, 
 as all other wild and beautiful visions ; but at all events you 
 will hear from us wherever we are, and to whatever adventures 
 destiny enforces us. 
 
 Tell me in return all English news. What has become of my 
 poem ?* I hope it has already sheltered itself in the bosom of 
 its mother. Oblivion, from whose embraces no one could have 
 been so barbarous as to tear it except me. 
 
 Tell me of the political state of England — its literature, of 
 which when I speak Coleridge is in my thoughts ; — yourself, 
 lastly your own employments, your historical labours. 
 
 I had written thus far when your letter to Mary dated the 8th 
 arrived. What you say of Bishopgate of course modifies that 
 part of this letter which relates to it. I confess I did not learn 
 the destined ruin without some pain, but it is well for me per- 
 haps that a situation requiring so large an expense should be 
 placed beyond our hopes. 
 
 You must shelter my roofless Penates, dedicate some new 
 temple to them, and perform the functions of a priest in my 
 absence. They are innocent deities, and their worship neither 
 sanguinary nor absurd. 
 
 Leave Mammon and Jehovah to those who delight in wicked- 
 ness and slavery — their altars are stained with blood or polluted 
 with gold, the price of blood. But the shrines of the Penates 
 are good wood fires, or window frames intertwined with creep- 
 ing plants ; their hymns are the purring of kittens, the hissing 
 of kettles ; the long talks over the past and dead, the laugh of 
 children, the warm wind of summer filling the quiet house, and 
 the pelting storm of winter struggling in vain for entrance. Jn 
 talkmg of the Penates, will you not liken me to Julius Caesar 
 dedicating a temple to Liberty .? As I have said in the former 
 part of my letter, I trust entirely to your discretion on the 
 
 ♦ Presumably Alasior.—K. B. F. 
 
LETTERS, 197 
 
 subject of a house. Certainly the Forest engages my prefer- 
 ence, because of the sylvan nature of the place, and the beasts 
 with which it is filled. But I am not insensible to the beauties 
 of the Thames, and any extraordinary eligibility of situation 
 you mention in your letter would overwhelm our habitual 
 affection for the neighbourhood of Bishopgate. 
 
 Its proximity to the spot you have chosen is an argument 
 with us in favour of the Thames. Recollect, however, we are 
 now choosing a fixed, settled, eternal home, and as such its 
 internal qualities will affect us more constantly than those which 
 consist in the surrounding scenery, which whatever it may be at 
 first, will shortly be no more than the colours with which our 
 own habits shall invest it. 
 
 I am glad that circumstances do not permit the choice to be 
 my own. I shall abide by yours as others abide by the necessity 
 of their birth. 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 P^B. S. 
 
 VIII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 ST. MARTIN— SERVOZ— CHAMOUNI — MONTANVERT— 
 MONT BLANC. 
 
 HSiel de Londres, Chamouni, July 22nd ^ 1816. 
 
 Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing a home for 
 us, we are wandering in search of recollections to embellish it. 
 I do not err in conceiving that you are interested in details of all 
 that is majestic or beautiful in nature ; but how shall I describe 
 to you the scenes by which I am now surrounded ? To exhaust 
 the epithets which express the astonishment and the admiration — 
 the very excess of satisfied astonishment, where expectation 
 scarcely acknowledged any boundary, is this to impress upon 
 your mind the images which fill mine now, even till it overflow ? 
 I too have read the raptures of travellers ; I will be warned by 
 their example ; I will simply detail to you all that I can relate, 
 or all that, if related, would enable you to conceive, what we 
 have done or seen since the morning of the 20th, when we left 
 Geneva. 
 
 We commenced our intended journey to Chamouni at half-past 
 eight in the morning. We passed through the champain 
 
198 LETTERS. 
 
 country, which extends from Mont Sal^ve to the base of the 
 higher Alps. The country is sufficiently fertile, covered with 
 corn-fields and orchards, and intersected by sudden acclivities 
 with flat summits. The day was cloudless and excessively hot, 
 the Alps were perpetually in sight, and as we advanced, the 
 mountains, which form their outskirts, closed in around us. We 
 passed a bridge over a stream, which discharges itself into the 
 Arve. The Arve itself, much swollen by the rains, flows 
 constantly to the right of the road. 
 
 As we approached Bonneville through an avenue composed 
 of a beautiful species of drooping poplar, we observed that the 
 corn-fields on each side were covered with inundation. 
 Bonneville is a neat little town, with no conspicuous peculiarity, 
 except the white towers of the prison, an extensive building 
 overlooking the town. At Bonneville the Alps commence, one 
 of which, clothed by forests, rises almost immediately from the 
 opposite bank of the Arve. 
 
 From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts through a 
 spacious and fertile plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains, 
 covered like those of Meillerie with forests of intermingled pine 
 and chestnut. At Cluses the road turns suddenly to the right, 
 following the Arve along the chasm, which it seems to have 
 hollowed for itself among the perpendicular mountains. The 
 scene assumes here a more savage and colossal character : the 
 valley becomes narrow, affording no more space than is sufficient 
 for the river and the road. The pines descend to the banks, 
 imitating, with their irregular spires, the pyramidal crags, which 
 lift themselves far above the regions of forest into the deep azure 
 of the sky, and among the white dazzling clouds. The scene, 
 at the distance of half a mile from Cluses, differs from that of 
 Matlock in little else than in the immensity of its proportions, 
 and in its untameable inaccessible solitude, inhabited only by 
 the goats which >ve saw browsing on the rocks. 
 
 Near Maglans, within a league of each other, we saw two 
 waterfalls. They were no more than mountain rivulets, but the 
 height from which they fell, at least of twelve hundred feet, 
 made them assume a character inconsistent with the smallness 
 of their stream. The first fell from the overhanging brow of a 
 black precipice on an enormous rock, precisely resembling 
 some colossal Egyptian statue of a female deity. It struck the 
 head of the visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell 
 from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than water, imitating 
 a veil of the most exquisite woof It then united, concealing 
 the lower part of the statue, and hiding itself in a winding of its 
 
LETTERS. 199 
 
 channel, burst into a deeper fall, and crossed our route in its 
 path towards the Arve. 
 
 The other waterfall was more continuous and larger. The 
 violence with which it fell made it look more like some shape 
 which an exhalation had assumed, than like water, for it 
 streamed beyond the mountain, which appeared dark behind it, 
 as it might have appeared behind an evanescent cloud. 
 
 The character of the scenery continued the same until we 
 arrived at St. Martin (called in the maps Sallanches), the 
 mountains perpetually becoming more elevated, exhibiting at 
 every turn of the road more craggy summits, loftier and wider 
 extent of forests, darker and more deep recesses. 
 
 The following morning we proceeded from St. Martin, on 
 mules, to Chamouni, accompanied by two guides. We pro- 
 ceeded, as we had done the preceding day, along the valley of 
 the Arve, a valley surrounded on all sides by immense moun- 
 tains, whose rugged precipices are intermixed on high with 
 dazzling snow. Their bases were still covered with the eternal 
 forests, which perpetually grew darker and more profound as 
 we approached the inner regions of the mountains. 
 
 On arriving at a small village at the distance of a league 
 from St. Martin, we dismounted from our mules, and were con- 
 ducted by our guides to view a cascade. We beheld an 
 immense body of water fall two hundred and fifty feet, dashing 
 from rock to rock, and casting a spray which formed a mist 
 around it, in the midst of which hung a multitude of sunbows, 
 which faded or became unspeakably vivid, as the inconstant 
 sun shone through the clouds. When we approached near to 
 it, the rain of the spray reached us, and our clothes were wetted 
 by the quick-falling but minute particles of water. The cataract 
 fell from above into a deep craggy chasm at our feet, where, 
 changing its character to that of a mountain stream, it pursued 
 its course towards the Arve, roaring over the rocks that impeded 
 its progress. 
 
 As we proceeded, our route still lay through the valley, or 
 rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once 
 the couch and the creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, 
 winding between mountains, whose immensity staggers the 
 imagination. We crossed the path of a torrent, which three 
 days since had descended from the thawing snow, and torn the 
 road away. 
 
 We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there are lead and 
 copper mines, and where we saw a cabinet of natural curiosities, 
 like those of Keswick and Bethgelert. We saw in this cabinet 
 
200 LETTERS. 
 
 some chamois' horns, and the horns of an exceedingly rare 
 animal called the bouquetin, which inhabits the deserts of snow 
 to the south of Mont Blanc : it is an animal of the stag kind ; 
 its horns weigh, at least, twenty-seven English pounds. It is 
 inconceivable how so small an animal could support so 
 inordinate a weight. The horns are of a very peculiar con- 
 formation, being broad, massy, and pointed at the ends, and 
 surrounded with a number of rings, which are supposed to 
 afford an indication of its age : there were seventeen rings on 
 the largest of these horns. 
 
 From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni. — Mont 
 Blanc was before us — the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers 
 on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the 
 single vale — forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their 
 beauty — intermingled beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed 
 our road, or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have 
 never seen before, occupied these openings, and gradually 
 became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, 
 but it was covered with cloud ; its base, furrowed with dreadful 
 gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, 
 part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through 
 the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew — I never 
 imagined — what mountains were before. The immensity of 
 these aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon 
 the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to mad- 
 ness. And remember this was all one scene, it all pressed 
 home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced 
 a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the 
 bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path ; the ravine, 
 clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so 
 deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled 
 through it, could not be heard above — all was as much our own, 
 as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds 
 of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, 
 whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of 
 the divinest. 
 
 As we entered the valley of Chamouni, (which in fact, may be 
 considered as a continuation of those which we have followed 
 from Bonneville and Cluses,) clouds hung upon the mountains 
 at the distance perhaps of 6000 feet from the earth, but so as 
 effectually to conceal, not only Mont Blanc, but the other 
 aiguilles, as they call them here, attached and subordinate to it. 
 We were travelling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a 
 sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above ; yet 
 
LETTERS. 20I 
 
 there was something in the sound, that told us it could not be 
 thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the 
 mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an 
 avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path among the rocks, and 
 continued to hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on 
 the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw 
 its tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves over the ravine, 
 which was their couch. 
 
 We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier des Bossons 
 to-day, although it descends within a few minutes' walk of the 
 road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw 
 this glacier, which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed. 
 Its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures ; 
 conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in 
 height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling 
 splendour, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This 
 glacier winds upwards from the valley, until it joins the masses 
 of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its 
 own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of pines. 
 There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of 
 proportion : there is a majesty of outline ; there is an awful 
 grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes — 
 a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the 
 reality of their unutterable greatness. 
 
 July 24. 
 
 Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. 
 It is about a league from this village ; the river rolls forth 
 impetuously from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many 
 streams over a vast space of the valley, ravaged and laid 
 bare by its inundations. The glacier by which its waters are 
 nourished, overhangs this cavern and the plain, and the forests 
 of pine which surround it, with terrible precipices of solid ice. 
 On the other side rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, 
 fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains of 
 inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that 
 they seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw, as we 
 sat on a rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, 
 masses of ice detach themselves from on high, and rush with a 
 loud dull noise into the vale. The violence of their fall turned 
 them into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation of 
 water-falls, whose ravines they usurped and filled. 
 
 In the evening, I went with Ducrde, my guide, the only 
 
202 LETTERS. 
 
 tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier 
 of Bossons. This glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close 
 to the vale, overhanging the green meadows and the dark woods 
 with the dazzling whiteness of its precipices and pinnacles, 
 which are like spires of radiant crystal, covered with a net-work 
 of frosted silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the valley, 
 ravaging in their slow but irresistible progress the pastures and 
 the forests which surround them, performing a work of desola- 
 tion in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish in an hour, 
 but far more irretrievably ; for where the ice has once descended, 
 the hardiest plant refuses to grow ; if even, as in some extra- 
 ordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once 
 commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the 
 rate of a foot each day, with a motion that commences at the 
 spot where, on the boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are 
 produced by the freezing of the waters which arise from the 
 partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag with them, 
 from the regions whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of 
 the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of 
 sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the irresistible 
 stream of solid ice ; and when they arrive at a declivity of the 
 mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw 
 one of these rocks which had descended in the spring, (winter 
 here is the season of silence and safety,) which measured forty 
 feet in every direction. 
 
 The verge of a glacier, like that of Bossons, presents the most 
 vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No 
 one dares to approach it ; for- the enormous pinnacles of ice 
 which perpetually fall, are perpetually reproduced. The pines 
 of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, are overthrown and 
 shattered, to a wide extent, at its base. There is something 
 inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless 
 trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted 
 soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. 
 Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three 
 hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, 
 that they have their periods of increase and decay : the people 
 of the country hold an opinion entirely different; but as I judge, 
 more probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the 
 summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains per- 
 petually augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, subsists 
 without melting in the valley of Chamouni during its transient 
 and variable summer. If the snow which produces this glacier 
 must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the 
 
LETTERS, 203 
 
 perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already 
 descended into it, the consequence is obvious ; the glaciers 
 must augment and will subsist, at least until they have overflowed 
 this vale. 
 
 I will not pursue Buffon's sublime but gloomy theory — that 
 this globe which we inhabit will, at some future period, be 
 changed into a mass of frost by the encroachments of the polar 
 ice, and of that produced on the most elevated points of the 
 earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine 
 him throned among these desolating snows, among these 
 palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible 
 magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he 
 casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, 
 avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these 
 deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign ; — 
 add to this, the degradation of the human species — who, in 
 these regions, are half deformed or idiotic, and most of whom 
 are deprived of anything that can excite interest or admiration. 
 This is part of the subject more mournful and less sublime ; 
 but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should disdain 
 to regard. 
 
 This morning we departed, on the promise of a fine day, to 
 visit the glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a 
 slanting valley, it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 
 toises, or 7600 feet, above the level of the sea. We had not 
 proceeded far before the rain began to fall, but we persisted 
 until we had accomplished more than half of our journey, when 
 we returned, wet through. 
 
 Chamouni, July 2 5 th. 
 
 We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or 
 as it is called the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying 
 wonder. The path that winds to it along the side of a 
 mountain, now clothed with pines, now intersected with snowy 
 hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of Montanvert is three 
 leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is performed on 
 mules, not so sure-footed but that On the first day the one which 
 I rode fell in what the guides call a mauvais pas^ so that I 
 narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We 
 passed over a hollow covered with snow, down which vast 
 stones are accustomed to roll. One had fallen the preceding 
 day, a little time after we had returned : our guides desired us 
 to pass quickly, for it is said that sometimes the least sound 
 
204 LETTERS. 
 
 will accelerate their descent. We arrived at Montanvert, 
 however, safe. 
 
 On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting 
 frost, surround this vale : their sides are banked up with ice 
 and snow, broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. 
 The summits are sharp and naked pinnacles, whose over- 
 hanging steepness will not even permit snow to rest upon them. 
 Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and there their perpendicular 
 rifts, and shine through the driving vapours with inexpressible 
 brilliance : they pierce the clouds like things not belonging to 
 this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of undulating 
 ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the remotest 
 abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league 
 (about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits 
 an appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and 
 whirlpools of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon 
 its surface. The waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen 
 feet from the surface of the mass, which is intersected by long 
 gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more 
 beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions everything 
 changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has one 
 general progress, which ceases neither day nor night ; it breaks 
 and bursts for ever : some undulations sink while others rise ; 
 it is never the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow 
 which fall from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their 
 aerial summits, scarcely ceases for one moment. One would 
 think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast 
 animal, and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through his 
 stony veins. 
 
 We dined (M , C , and I) on the grass, in the open 
 
 air, surrounded by this scene. The air is piercing and clear. 
 We returned down the mountain sometimes encompassed by 
 the driving vapours, sometimes cheered by the sunbeams, and 
 arrived at our inn by seven o'clock. 
 
 Montalegre, July 28///. 
 
 The next morning we returned through the rain to St. Martin. 
 The scenery had lost something of its immensity, thick clouds 
 hanging over the highest mountains ; but visitings of sunlight 
 intervened between the showers, and the blue sky shone between 
 the accumulated clouds of snowy whiteness which brought them ; 
 the dazzling mountains sometimes glittered through a chasm of 
 the clouds above our heads, and all the charm of its grandeur 
 
LETTERS. 205 
 
 remained. We repassed Pont PelUsier^ a wooden bridge over 
 the Arve, and the ravine of the Arve. We repassed the pine 
 forests which overhang the defile, the chateau of St. Michael ; 
 a haunted ruin, built on the edge of a precipice, and shadowed 
 over by the eternal forest. We repassed the vale of Servoz, a 
 vale more beautiful, because more luxuriant, than that of 
 Chamouni. Mont Blanc forms one of the sides of this vale also, 
 and the other is inclosed by an irregular amphitheatre of enor- 
 mous mountains, one of which is in ruins, and fell fifty years ago 
 into the higher part of the valley ; the smoke of its fall was seen 
 in Piedmont, and people went from Turin to investigate whether 
 a volcano had not burst forth among the Alps. It continued 
 falling many days, spreading, with the shock and thunder of its 
 ruin, consternation into the neighbouring vales. In the evening 
 we arrived at St. Martin. The next day we wound through the 
 valley, which I have described before, and arrived in the evening 
 at our home. 
 
 We have bought some specimens of minerals and plants, and 
 two or three crystal seals, at Mont Blanc, to preserve the 
 remembrance of having approached it. There is a cabinet ol 
 histoire naturelle at Chamouni, just as at Keswick, Matlock, 
 and Clifton ; the proprietor of which is the very vilest specimen 
 of that vile species of quack, that, together with the whole army 
 of aubergistes and guides, and indeed the entire mass of the 
 population, subsist on the weakness and credulity of travellers 
 as leeches subsist on the sick. The most interesting of my 
 purchases is a large collection of all the seeds of rare alpine 
 plants, with their names written upon the outside of the papers 
 that contain them. These I mean to colonise in my garden in 
 England, and to permit you to make what choice you please 
 from them. They are companions which the Celandine — the 
 classic Celandine — need not despise ; they are as wild and more 
 daring than he, and will tell him tales of things even as touching 
 and sublime as the gaze of a vernal poet. 
 
 Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves among these 
 mountains ? In the winter they descend into the valleys, which 
 the snow occupies six months of the year, and devour every- 
 thing that they can find out of doors. A wolf is more powerful 
 than the fiercest and strongest dog. There are no bears in 
 these regions. We heard, when we were in Lucerne, that they 
 were occasionally found in the forests which surround that lake. 
 
 Adieu, S. 
 
2o6 LETTERS. 
 
 IX.— Journal. 
 
 Geneva^ Sunday ^ iZth August, 1816. 
 
 See Apollo's Sexton,* who tells us many mysteries of bis 
 trade. We talk of Ghosts. Neither Lord Byron nor M. G. L. 
 seem to believe in them ; and they both agree, in the very face 
 of reason, that none could believe in ghosts without believing in 
 God. I do not think that all the persons who profess to dis- 
 credit these visitations, really discredit them ; or, if they do in 
 the daylight, are not admonished, by the approach of loneli- 
 ness and midnight, to think more respectfully of the world of 
 shadows. 
 
 Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed at the 
 request of the Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales, he 
 premised, was not only a believer in ghosts, but in magic and 
 witchcraft, and asserted, that prophecies made in her youth had 
 been accomplished since. The tale was of a lady in Germany. 
 
 This lady, Minna, had been exceedingly attached to her 
 husband, and they had made a vow that the one who died first 
 should return after death to visit the other as a ghost. She 
 was sitting one day alone in her chamber, when she heard an 
 unusual sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, 
 and her husband's spectre, gashed with a deep wound across 
 the forehead, and in military habiliments, entered. She 
 appeared startled at the apparition ; and the ghost told her, 
 that when he should visit her in future, she would hear a passing 
 bell toll, and these words distinctly uttered close to her ear, 
 " Minna, I am here." On inquiry, it was found that her husband 
 had fallen in battle on the very day she was visited by the 
 vision. The intercourse between the ghost and the woman 
 continued for some time, until the latter laid aside all terror, 
 and indulged herself in the affection which she had felt for him 
 while living. One evening she went to a ball, and permitted 
 her thoughts to be alienated by the attentions of a Florentine 
 gentleman, more witty, more graceful, and more gentle, as it 
 appeared to her, than any person she had ever seen. As he was 
 conducting her through the dance, a death-bell tolled. Minna, 
 lost in the fascination of the Florentine's attentions, disregarded, 
 or did not hear the sound. A second peal, louder and more 
 deep, startled the whole company, when Minna heard the 
 ghost's accustomed whisper, and raising her eyes, saw in an 
 
 * Mr. G. Lewis, so named in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. — 
 AI.S, 
 
LETTERS. 207 
 
 opposite mirror the reflection of the ghost, standing over her. 
 She is said to have died of terror. 
 
 Lewis told four other stories — all grim. 
 
 Thursday, 29th August. — We depart from Geneva, at nine in 
 the morning. The Swiss are very slow drivers ; besides which 
 we have Jura to mount ; we, therefore, go a very few posts 
 to-day. The scenery is very beautiful, and we see many magnifi- 
 cent views. We pass Les Rousses, which, when we crossed in 
 the spring, was deep in snow. We sleep at Morrez. 
 
 Friday, 30th. — We leave Morrez, and arrive in the evening at 
 Dole, after a various day. 
 
 Saturday, 31st. — From Dole we go to Rouvray, where we 
 sleep. We pass through Dijon ; and, after Dijon, take a 
 different route than that which we followed on the two other 
 occasions. The scenery has some beauty and singularity in the 
 line of the mountains which surround the Val de Suzon. Low, 
 yet precipitous hills, covered with vines or woods, and with 
 streams, meadows, and poplars, at the bottom. 
 
 Sunday, September ist. — Leave Rouvray, pass Auxerre, where 
 we dine ; a pretty town, and arrive, at two o'clock, at Villeneuve 
 le Guiard. 
 
 Monday, 2nd. — From Villeneuve le Guiard, we arrive at Fon- 
 tainebleau. The scenery around this palace is wild and even 
 savage. The soil is full of rocks, apparently granite, which on 
 every side break through the ground. The hills are low, but 
 precipitous and rough. The valleys, equally wild, are shaded 
 by forests. In the midst of this wilderness stands the palace. 
 Some of the apartments equal in magnificence anything that I 
 could conceive. The roofs are fretted with gold, and the 
 canopies of velvet. From Fontainebleau we proceed to Ver- 
 sailles, in the route towards Rouen. We arrive at Versailles at nine. 
 
 Tuesday, 3rd. — We saw the palace and gardens of Versailles 
 and le Grand et Petit Trianon. They surpass Fontainebleau. 
 The gardens are full of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. 
 In all that essentially belongs to a garden they are extraor- 
 dinarily deficient. The orangery is a stupid piece of expense. 
 There was one orange-tree, not apparently so old, sown in 1442. 
 We saw only the gardens and the theatre at the Petit Trianon. 
 The gardens are in the English taste, and extremely pretty. 
 The Grand Trianon was open. It is a summer palace, light, 
 yet magnificent. We were unable to devote the time it deserved 
 to the gallery of paintings here. There was a portrait of 
 Madame de la Valli^re, the repentant mistress of Louis XIV. 
 
2o8 LETTERS. 
 
 She was melancholy, but exceedingly beautiful, and was repre 
 sented as holding a skull, and sitting before a crucifix, pale, and 
 with downcast eyes. 
 
 We then went to the great palace. The apartments are 
 unfurnished ; but even with this disadvantage, are more magni- 
 ficent than those of Fontainebleau. They are lined with 
 marble of various colours, whose pedestals and capitals are gilt, 
 and the ceiling is richly gilt with compartments of painting. 
 The arrangement of these materials has in them, it is true, 
 something effeminate and royal. Could a Grecian architect 
 have commanded all the labour and money which was expended 
 on Versailles, he would have produced a fabric which the whole 
 world has never equalled. We saw the Hall of Hercules, the 
 balcony where the King and the Queen exhibited themselves to 
 the Parisian mob. The people who showed us through the 
 palace, obstinately refused to say anything about the Revolu 
 tion. We could not even find out in which chamber the rioters 
 of the loth August found the king. We saw the Salle d'Opdra, 
 where are now preserved the portraits of the kings. There wa? 
 the race of the house of Orleans, with the exception of Egalite, 
 all extremely handsome. There was Madame de Maintenon, 
 and beside her a beautiful little girl, the daughter of La Valli^re. 
 The pictures had been hidden during the Revolution. We saw 
 the library of Louis XVL The librarian had held some place 
 in the ancient court near Marie-Antoinette. He returned with 
 the Bourbons, and was waiting for some better situation. He 
 showed us a book which he had preserved during the Revolu- 
 tion. It was a book of paintings, representing a tournament at 
 the Court of Louis XIV. ; and it seen^ed that the present deso- 
 lation of France, the fury of the injured people, and all the 
 horrors to which they abandoned themselves, stung by their 
 long sufferings, flowed naturally enough from expenditures so 
 immense, as must have been demanded by the magnificence of 
 this tournament. The vacant rooms of this palace imaged well 
 the hollow show of monarchy. After seeing these things we 
 departed towards Havre, and slept at Auxerre. 
 
 Wednesday, 4th. — We passed through Rouen, and saw the 
 cathedral, an immense specimen of the most costly and magnifi- 
 cent gothic. The interior of the church disappoints. We saw 
 the burial-place of Richard Coeur de Lion and his brother. 
 The altar of the church is a fine piece of marble. Sleep at 
 Yvetot. 
 
 Thursday, 5th.— We arrive at Havre, and wait for the packet 
 — wind contrary. S. 
 
LETTERS. 209 
 
 X.— To Mr, and Mrs. Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Great Marlow, lOfthJune 18 17. 
 
 My Dear Friends, 
 
 I performed my promise, and arrived here the 
 night after I set off. Everybody up to this minute has been and 
 continues well. I ought to have written yesterday, for to-day, I 
 know not how, I have so constant a pain in my side, and such a 
 depression of strength and spirits, as to make my holding the 
 pen whilst I write to you an almost intolerable exertion. This, 
 you know, with me is transitory. Do not mention that I am 
 unwell to your nephew ; for the advocate of a new system of 
 diet is held bound to be invulnerable by disease, in the same 
 manner as the sectaries of a new system of religion are held to 
 be more moral than other people, or as a reformed parliament 
 must at least be assumed as the remedy of all political evils. 
 No one will change the diet, adopt the religion, or reform the 
 parliament else. 
 
 Well, I am very anxious to hear how you get on, and I intreat 
 Marianne to excite Hunt not to delay a minute in writing the 
 necessary letters, and in informing me of the result. Kings are 
 only to be approached through their ministers ; who indeed, as 
 Marianne shall know to her cost, if she don't take care, are 
 responsible not only for all their commissions, but, a more 
 dreadful responsibility, for all their omissions. And I know not 
 who has a right to the title of king, if not according to the 
 Stoics, he to whom the King of kings had delegated the 
 prerogative of lord of the creation. 
 
 Let me know how Henry gets on, and make my best respects 
 to your brother and Mrs. Hunt. Adieu. 
 
 Always most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XL— To William Godwin. 
 
 Marlow^ December 7th, 18 17. 
 
 My Dear Godwin,— To begin with the subject of most 
 immediate interest : close with Richardson ; and when I say 
 this, what relief should I not feel from a thousand distressing 
 emotions, if I could believe that he was in earnest in his offer ! 
 I have not heard from Longdill, though I wish earnestly for 
 information. 
 
 95 
 
2IO LETTERS. 
 
 My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals 
 are of a deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to a state of such 
 unnatural and keen excitement, that, only to instance the organ 
 of sight, I find the very blades of grass and the boughs of distant 
 trees present themselves to me with microscopical distinctness. 
 Towards evening, I sink into a state of lethargy and inanima- 
 tion, and often remain for hours on the sofa, between sleep and 
 waking, a prey to the most painful irritability of thought. Such, 
 with little intermission, is my condition. The hours devoted to 
 study are selected with vigilant caution from among these 
 periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling 
 to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I 
 have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack ; and, although at 
 present it has passed away without any very considerable 
 vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the 
 true nature of my disease to be consumption. It is to my 
 advantage that this malady is in its nature slow, and, if one is 
 sufficiently alive to its advances, is susceptible of cure from a 
 warm climate. In the event of its assuming any decided shape, 
 it would be my duty to go to Italy without delay ; and it is only 
 when that measure becomes an indispensable duty that, contrary 
 to both Mary's feelings and to mine, as they regard you, I shall 
 go to Italy. I need not remind you (besides the mere pain 
 endured by the survivors) of the train of evil consequences 
 which my death would cause to ensue. I am thus circum- 
 stantial and explicit, because you seem to have misunderstood 
 me. It is not health, but life, that I should seek in Italy ; and 
 that, not for my own sake — I feel that I am capable of trampling 
 on all such weakness — but for the sake of those to whom 
 my life may be a source of happiness, utility, security, and 
 honour, and to some of whom my death might be all that is the 
 reverse. 
 
 I ought to say I cannot persevere in the meat diet. What 
 you say of Malthus fills me, as far as my intellect is concerned, 
 with life and strength. I believe that I have a most anxious 
 desire that the time should quickly come that, even so far as 
 you are personally concerned, you should be tranquil and 
 independent. But when I consider the intellectual lustre with 
 which you clothe this world, and how much the last generation 
 of mankind may be benefited by that light flowing forth without 
 the intervention of one shadow, I am elevated above all thoughts 
 which tend to you or myself as an individual, and become, by 
 sympathy, part of those distant and innumerable minds to 
 whom your writings must be present. 
 
LETTERS. 211 
 
 I meant to have written to you about Mandeville * solely ; 
 but I was so irritable and weak that I could not write, although 
 I thought I had much to say. I have read Mandeville^ but I 
 must read it again soon, for the interest is of that irresistible and 
 overwhelming kind, that the mind in its influence is like a cloud 
 borne on by an impetuous wind — like one breathlessly carried 
 forward, who has no time to pause or observe the causes of his 
 career. I think the power of Mandeville is inferior to nothing 
 you have done ; and, were it not for the character of Falkland, f 
 no instance in which you have exerted that power of creation 
 which you possess beyond all contemporary writers, might 
 compare with it. Falkland is sti)i alone ; power is, in Falkland, 
 not, as in Mandeville^^ tumult hurried onward by the tempest, 
 but tranquillity standing unshaken amid its fiercest rage. But 
 Caleb Williams never shakes the deepest soul like Mandeville. 
 It must be said of the latter, you rule with a rod of iron. The 
 picture is never bright ; and we wonder whence you drew the 
 darkness with which its shades are deepened, until the epithet 
 of tenfold might almost cease to be a metaphor. The noun 
 smorfia touches" some cord within us with such a cold and 
 jarring power, that I started, and for some time could scarce 
 believe but that I was Mandeville, and that this hideous grin 
 was stamped upon my own face. In style and strength of 
 expression, Mandeville is wonderfully great, and the energy and 
 the sweetness of the sentiments scarcely to be equalled. 
 Clifford's character, as mere beauty, is a divine and soothing 
 contrast ; and I do not think — if, perhaps, I except (and I 
 know not if I ought to do so) the speech of Agathon in the 
 Symposium of Plato — that there ever was produced a moral 
 discourse more characteristic of all that is admirable and 
 lovely in human nature — more lovely and admirable in itself— 
 than that of Henrietta to Mandeville, as he is recovering from 
 madness. Shall I say that, when I discovered that she was 
 pleading all this time sweetly for her lover, and when at last she 
 weakly abandoned poor Mandeville, I felt an involuntary 
 and, perhaps, an unreasonable pang ? Adieu ! 
 
 Always most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. S. 
 
 * Godwin's novel so called, — L. S. 
 
 t In the novel of Caleb Williams.— Ij. S. 
 
212 LETTERS, 
 
 XII.— To William Godwin. 
 
 Marlow^ December nth, 1817. 
 
 I have read and considered all that you ^ay about my general 
 powers, and the particular instance of the poem in which I have 
 attempted to develop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory 
 to me than the interest which your admonitions express. But I 
 think you are mistaken in some points with regard to the 
 peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be their amount, I 
 listened with deference and self-suspicion to your censures of 
 Laon and Cythna; but the productions of mine which you 
 commend hold a very low place in my own esteem, and this 
 reassured me, in some degree at least. The poem was pro- 
 duced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with 
 unbounded and sustained enthusiasm. I felt the precariousness 
 of my life, and I resolved in this book to leave some records of 
 myself. Much of what the volume contains was written with 
 the same feeling, as real, though not so prophetic, as the com- 
 munications of a dying man. I never presumed, indeed, to 
 consider it anything approaching to faultless ; but, when I 
 considered contemporary productions of the same apparent 
 pretensions, I will own that I was filled with confidence. I felt 
 that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind. 
 I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed : and in this 
 have I long believed — that my power consists in sympathy, and 
 that part of imagination which relates to sentiment and con- 
 templation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with 
 the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote dis- 
 tinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the 
 living beings which surround us, and to communicate the con- 
 ceptions which result from considering either the moral or the 
 material universe as a whole. . . . Yet, after all, I cannot but 
 be conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that 
 tranquillity which is the attribute and accompaniment of power. 
 This feeling alone would make your most kind and wise 
 admonitions, on the subject of the economy of intellectual force, 
 valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I see any trust in coming 
 years, doubt not but that I shall do something, whatever it 
 might be, which a serious and earnest estimate of my powers 
 will suggest to me, and which will be in every respect 
 accommodated to their utmost limits. 
 
LETTERS. 213 
 
 XIII.— To Charles Ollier. 
 
 Marlow^ December wth^ 18 17. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 It is to be regretted that you did not consult your 
 own safety and advantage (if you consider it connected witli the 
 non-publication of my book) before your declining the publica- 
 tion, after having accepted it, would have operated to so 
 extensive and serious an injury to my views as now. The 
 instances of abuse and menace which you cite were such as you 
 expected, and were, as I conceived, prepared for. If not, it 
 would have been just to me to have given them their due weight 
 and consideration before. You foresaw, you foreknew, all that 
 these people would say. You do your best to condemn my book 
 before it is given forth, because you publish it, and then with- 
 draw ; so that no other bookseller will publish it, because one 
 has already rejected it. You must be aware of the great injury 
 which you prepare for me. If I had never consulted your 
 advantage, my book would have had a fair hearing. But now it 
 is first published, and then the publisher, as if the author had 
 deceived him as to the contents of the work — and as if the 
 inevitable consequence of its publication would be ignominy and 
 punishment — and as if none should dare to touch it or look at it 
 — retracts, at a period when nothing but the most extraordinary 
 and unforeseen circumstances can justify his retraction. 
 
 I beseech you to reconsider the matter, for your sake no less 
 than for my own. Assume the high and secure ground of 
 courage. The people who visit your shop, and the wretched 
 bigot who gave his worthless custom to some other bookseller, 
 are not the public. The public respect talent ; and a large 
 portion of them are already undeceived with regard to the 
 prejudices which my book attacks. You would lose some 
 customers, but you would gain others. Your trade would be 
 diverted into a channel more consistent with your own 
 principles. Not to say that a publisher is in no wise pledged to 
 all the opinions of his publications, or to any ; and that he may 
 enter his protest with each copy sold, either against the truth or 
 the discretion of the principles of the books he sells. But there 
 is a much more important consideration in the case. You are, 
 and have been to a certain extent, the publisher. I don't 
 believe that, if the book was quietly and regularly published, 
 the Government would touch anything of a character so refined, 
 and so remote from the conceptions of the vulgar. They would 
 hesitate before they invaded a member of the higher circles of 
 
214 LETTERS. 
 
 the republic of letters. But, if they see us tremble, they will 
 make no distinctions ; they will feel their strength. You might 
 bring the arm of the law down upon us by flinching now. 
 Directly these scoundrels see that people are afraid of them, 
 they seize upon them and hold them up to mankind as criminals 
 already convicted by their own fears. You lay yourself 
 prostrate, and they trample on you. How glad they would be 
 to seize on any connection of Hunt's by this most powerful 
 of all their arms — the terrors and self-condemnation of their 
 victim. Read all the ex officio cases, and see what reward 
 booksellers and printers have received for their submission. 
 
 If, contrary to common sense and justice, you resolve to give 
 me up, you shall receive no detriment from a connection with 
 me in small matters, though you determine to inflict so serious a 
 one on me in great. You shall not be at a farthing's expense. 
 I shall still, so far as my powers extend, do my best to promote 
 your interest. On the contrary supposition, even admitting you 
 derive no benefit from the book itself— and it should be my care 
 that you shall do so — I hold myself ready to make ample 
 indemnity for any loss you may sustain. 
 
 There is one compromise you might make, though that would 
 be still injurious to me. Sherwood and Neely wished to be the 
 principal publishers. Call on them, and say that it was through 
 a mistake that you undertook the principal direction of the 
 book, as it was my wish that it should be theirs, and that I have 
 written to you to that effect. This, if it would be advantageous 
 to you, would be detrimental to, but not utterly destructive of, 
 my views. To withdraw your name entirely, would be to inflict 
 on me a bitter and undeserved injury. 
 
 Let me hear from you by return of post. I hope that you will 
 be influenced to fulfil your engagement with me, and proceed 
 with the publication, as justice to me, and, indeed, a well-under- 
 stood estimate of your own interest and character, demand. I 
 do hope that you will have too much regard to the well-chosen 
 motto of your seal * to permit the murmurs of a few bigots to 
 outweigh the serious and permanent considerations presented 
 in this letter. To their remonstrances you have only to reply, 
 " I did not write the book ; I am not responsible ; here is the 
 author's address — state your objections to him. I do no more 
 than sell it to those who inquire for it ; and, if they are not 
 pleased with their bargain, the author empowers me to receive 
 the book and to return the money." As to the interference of 
 
 * " In omnibus liber tas." 
 
LETTERS. 215 
 
 Government, nothing is more improbable [than] that in any 
 case it would be attempted ; but, if it should, it would be owing 
 entirely to your perseverance in the groundless apprehensions 
 which dictated your communication received this day, and 
 conscious terror would be perverted into an argument of guilt. 
 
 I have just received a most kind and encouraging letter from 
 Mr. Moore on the subject of my poem. I have the fairest 
 chance of the public approaching my work with unbiassed and 
 unperverted feeling : the fruit of reputation (and you know for 
 what purposes I value it) is within my reach. It is for you, 
 now you have been once named as publisher, and have me in 
 your power, to blast all this, and to hold up my literary 
 character in the eye of mankind as that of a proscribed and 
 rejected outcast. And for no evil that I have ever done you, 
 but in return for a preference which, although you falsely now 
 esteem injurious to you, was solicited by Hunt, and conferred 
 by me, as a source and a proof of nothing but kind intentions. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 I remain your sincere well-wisher, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 XIV.— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Lyons, March 22, 181 8. 
 
 My Dear Friend, — Why did you not wake me that night 
 before we left England, you and Marianne .f* I take this as 
 rather an unkind piece of kindness in you ; but which, in 
 consideration of the six hundred miles between us, I forgive. 
 
 We have journeyed towards the spring, that has been hasten- 
 ing to meet us from the south ; and though our weather was at 
 first abominable, we have now warm sunny days, and soft winds, 
 and a sky of deep azure, the most serene I ever saw. The heat 
 in this city to-day, is like that of London in the midst of summer. 
 My spirits and health sympathize in the change. Indeed, before 
 I left London, my spirits were as feeble as my health, and I had 
 demands on them which I found it difficult to supply. I have 
 read " Foliage : " with most of the poems I am already familiar. 
 What a delightful poem the " Nymphs" is 1 It is trn\y poetical, 
 in the intense and emphatic sense of the word. If six hundred 
 miles were not between us, I should say what pity that glib was 
 not omitted, and that the poem is not as faultless as it is beauti- 
 ful. But, for fear I should spoil your next poem, I will not let 
 slip a word upon the subject. 
 
2i6 LETTERS. 
 
 Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and tell Marianne 
 she defrauded me of a kiss by not waking me when she went 
 away, and that, as I have no better mode of conveying it, I 
 must take the best, and ask you to pay the debt. When shall I 
 see you again ? Oh, that it might be in Italy ! I confess thai 
 the thought of how long we may be divided makes me very 
 melancholy. Adieu, my dear friends. Write soon. 
 
 Ever most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XV.— Journal. 
 
 March 26, Thursday. 
 
 We travel towards the mountains, and begin to enter the 
 valleys of the Alps. The country becomes covered again with 
 verdure and cultivation, and white chateaux and scattered cot- 
 tages among woods of old oak and walnut trees. The vines are 
 here peculiarly picturesque ; they are trellissed upon immense 
 stakes, and the trunks of them are moss-covered and hoary with 
 age. Unlike the French vines, which creep lowly on the 
 ground, they form rows of interlaced bowers, which, when the 
 leaves are green and the red grapes are hanging among those 
 hoary branches, will afford a delightful shadow to those who sit 
 upon the moss underneath. The vines are sometimes planted 
 in the open fields, and sometimes among lofty orchards of apple 
 and pear trees, the twigs of which were just becoming purple 
 with the bursting blossoms. 
 
 We dined at Les Echelles, a village at the foot of the moun- 
 tain of the same name, the boundaries of France and Savoy. 
 Before this we had been stopped at Pont Bonvoisin, where the 
 legal limits of the French and Sardinian territories are placed. 
 We here heard that a Milanese had been sent back all the way 
 to Lyons, because his passport was unauthorised by the Sar- 
 dinian Consul, a few days before, and that we should be 
 subjected to the same treatment. We, in respect to the 
 character of our nation I suppose, were suffered to pass. Our 
 books, however, were, after a long discussion, sent to Chambery, 
 to be submitted to the censor ; a priest, who admits nothing of 
 Rousseau, Voltaire, etc., into the dominions of the King of 
 Sardinia. All such books are burned. 
 
 After dinner we ascended Les Echelles, winding along a road 
 cut through perpendicular rocks, of immense elevation, by 
 
LETTERS, 217 
 
 Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, in 1582. The rocks, which 
 cannot be less than a thousand feet in perpendicular height, 
 sometimes overhang the road on each side, and almost shut out 
 the sky. The scene is like that described in the Prometheus of 
 iEschylus. Vast rifts and caverns in the granite precipices, 
 wintry mountains with ice and snow above ; the loud sounds of 
 unseen waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, 
 only to be scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of the 
 ocean nymphs. 
 
 Under the dominion of this tyranny, the inhabitants of the 
 fertile valleys, bounded by these mountains, are in a state of 
 most frightful poverty and disease. At the foot of this ascent, 
 were cut into the rocks in several places, stories of the misery 
 of the inhabitants, to move the compassion of the traveller. 
 One old man, lame and blind, crawled out of a hole in the rock, 
 wet with the perpetual melting of the snows of above, and 
 dripping like a shower-bath. 
 
 The country, as we descended to Chambery, continued as 
 beautiful ; though marked with somewhat of a softer character 
 than before : we arrived a little after night-fall. 
 
 XVI.— To T, L. Peacock. 
 
 Milan^ April 1818. 
 My Dear P., 
 
 Behold us arrived at the end of our journey — that 
 is, within a few miles of it — because we design to spend the 
 summer on the shore of the lake of Como. Our journey was 
 somewhat painful from the cold — and in no other manner 
 interesting until we passed the Alps : of course I except the 
 Alps themselves ; but no sooner had we arrived at Italy, than 
 the loveliness of the earth and the serenity of the sky made the 
 greatest difference in my sensations. I depend on these things 
 for life ; for in the smoke of cities, and the tumult of human 
 kind, and the chilling fogs and rain of our own country, I can 
 hardly be said to live. With what delight did I hear the 
 woman, who conducted us to see the triumphal arch of 
 Augustus at Susa, speak the clear and complete language of 
 Italy, though half unintelligible to me, after that nasal and 
 abbreviated cacophony of the French ! A ruined arch of 
 magnificent proportions in the Greek taste, standing in a kind 
 of road of green lawn, overgrown with violets and primroses, 
 and in the midst of stupendous mountains, and a blonde woman, 
 
2i8 LETTERS. 
 
 of light and graceful manners, something in the style of Fuseli's 
 Eve, were the first things we met in Italy. 
 
 This city is very agreeable. We went to the opera last night 
 — which is a most splendid exhibition. The opera itself was 
 not a favourite, and the singers very inferior to our own. But 
 the ballet, or rather a kind of melodrame or pantomimic drama, 
 was the most splendid spectacle I ever saw. We have no Miss 
 Melanie here — in every other respect, Milan is unquestionably 
 superior. The manner in which language is translated into 
 gesture, the complete and full effect of the whole as illustrating 
 the history in question, the unaffected self-possession of each 
 of the actors, even to the children, made this choral drama 
 more impressive than I could have conceived possible. The 
 story is Othello^ and strange to say, it left no disagreeable 
 impression. 
 
 I write, but I am not in the humour to write, and you must 
 expect longer, if not more entertaining, letters soon — that is, in 
 a week or so — when I am a little recovered from my journey. 
 Pray tell us all the news with regard to our own offspring, whom 
 we left at nurse in England ; as well as those of our friends. 
 Mention Cobbett and politics too — and Hunt— to whom Mary 
 is now writing — and particularly your own plans and yourself. 
 You shall hear more of me and my plans soon. My health is 
 improved already — and my spirits something — ^and I have many 
 literary schemes, and one in particular — which I thirst to be 
 settled that I may begin. I have ordered Oilier to send you 
 some sheets, etc., for revision. 
 
 Adieu.— Always faithfully yours, 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XVIL— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Milan^ April 10^ 1818. 
 
 My Dear P. — I had no conception that the distance between 
 us, measured by time in respect of letters, was so great. I have 
 but just received yours dated the 2nd — and when you will 
 receive mine written from this city somewhat later, than the 
 same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to hear that you have 
 been obliged to remain at Marlow ; a certain degree of society 
 being almost a necessity of life, particularly as we are not to see 
 you this summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as it is. 
 I often revisit Marlow in thought. The curse of this life is, that 
 whatever is once known, can never be unknown. You inhabit 
 
LETTERS. 219 
 
 a spot, which before you inhabit it, is as indifferent to you as 
 any other spot upon earth, and when, persuaded by some 
 necessity, you think to leave it, you leave it not ; it clings to 
 you — and with memories of things, which, in your experience of 
 them, gave no such promise, revenges your desertion. Time 
 flows on, places are changed ; friends who were with us, are no 
 longer with us ; yet what has been seems yet to be, but barren 
 and stripped of life. See, I have sent you a study for Nightmare 
 Abbey. 
 
 Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking for 
 a house. This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in beauty, 
 with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killamey. It is 
 long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river 
 winding among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from 
 the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, 
 and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. 
 The mountams between Como and that village, or rather cluster 
 of villages, are covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating 
 chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in 
 time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of 
 the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually 
 the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, 
 and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives which grow 
 in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and 
 shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light 
 of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot 
 name, grow there also. On high, the towers of village churches 
 are seen white among the dark forests. Beyond, on the 
 opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains descend 
 less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much 
 higher, and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes 
 between them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have 
 glens and rifts opening to the other, such as I should fancy the 
 abysses of Ida or Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and 
 orange, and lemon trees, which are now so loaded with fruit, 
 that there is more fruit than leaves — and vineyards. This 
 shore of the lake is one continued village, and the Milanese 
 nobility have their villas here. The union of culture and the 
 untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close, 
 that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. 
 But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana ; so called 
 from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, 
 described by the younger Pliny, which is in the court-yard. 
 This house, which was once a magnificent palace, and is now 
 
220 LETTERS. 
 
 half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon 
 terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its 
 garden, at the foot of a semicircular precipice, overshadowed by 
 profound forests of chestnut. The scene from the colonnade is 
 the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye 
 ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and immediately 
 over you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing height, 
 which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the 
 clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken 
 by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On 
 the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the 
 mountains, speckled with sails and spires. The apartments ot 
 the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill furnished and antique. 
 The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the 
 shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of 
 Pythian, are most delightful. We staid at Como two days, and 
 have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation 
 about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, and its 
 mountains are seen from the cathedral. 
 
 This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is built 
 of white marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense height, and 
 the utmost delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. 
 The efifect of it, piercing the solid blue with those groups of 
 dazzling spires, relieved by the serene depth of this Italian 
 heaven, or by moonlight when the stars seem gathered among 
 those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing I had imagined 
 architecture capable of producing. The interior, though very 
 sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with its stained 
 glass and massy granite columns overloaded with antique 
 figures, and the silver lamps, that burn for ever under the 
 canopy of black cloth beside the brazen altar and the marble 
 fretwork of the dome, give it the aspect of some gorgeous 
 sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among those aisles, 
 behind the altar, where the light of day is dim and yellow under 
 the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and read 
 Dante there. 
 
 I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next year, to the 
 composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso's madness, 
 which I find upon inspection is, if properly treated, admirably 
 dramatic and poetical. But, you will say, I have no dramatic 
 talent ; very true, in a certain sense ; but I have taken the 
 resolution to see what kind of a tragedy a person without 
 dramatic talent could write. It shall be better morality than 
 Fazio, and better poetry than Bertram, at least. You tell me 
 
LETTERS. 221 
 
 nothing of Rhododaphne, a book from which, I confess, I 
 expected extraordinary success. 
 
 Who lives in my house at Marlow now, or what is to be done 
 with it? I am seriously persuaded that the situation was 
 injurious to my health, or I should be tempted to feel a very 
 absurd interest in who is to be its next possessor. The expense 
 of our iourney here has been very considerable — but we are now 
 living at the hotel here, in a kind of Pension, which is very 
 reasonable in respect of price, and when we get into a menage 
 of our own, we have every reason to expect that we shall experi- 
 ence something of the boasted cheapness of Italy. The finest 
 bread, made of a sifted flour, the whitest and the best I ever 
 tasted, is only one English penny a pound. All the necessaries 
 of life bear a proportional relation to this. But then the 
 luxuries, tea, etc., are very dear, — and the English, as usual, are 
 cheated in a way that is quite ridiculous, if they have not their 
 wits about them. We do not know a single human being, and 
 the opera, until last night, has been always the same. Lord 
 Byron, we hear, has taken a house for three years, at Venice ; 
 whether we shall see him or not, I do not know. The number 
 of English who pass through this town is very great. They 
 ought to be in their own country in the present crisis. Their 
 conduct is wholly inexcusable. The people here, though inoffen- 
 sive enough, seem both in body and soul a miserable race. The 
 men are hardly men ; they look like a tribe of stupid and 
 shrivelled slaves, and I do not think that I have seen a gleam 
 of intelligence in the countenance of man since I passed the 
 Alps. The women in enslaved countries are always better than 
 the men ; but they have tight-laced figures, and figures and 
 mien which express (O how unlike the French !) a mixture of 
 the coquette and prude, which reminds me of the worst 
 characteristics of the English.* Everything but humanity is in 
 much greater perfection here than in France. The cleanliness 
 and comfort of the inns is something quite English. The 
 country is beautifully cultivated ; and altogether, if you can, as 
 one ought always to do, find your happiness in yourself, it is a 
 most delightful and commodious place to live in. 
 
 Adieu. — Your affectionate friend, 
 P. B. S. 
 
 * These impressions of Shelley, with regard to the Italians, formed 
 in ignorance, and with precipitation, became altogether altered after a 
 longer stay in Italy. He quickly discovered the extraordinary intel- 
 ligence and genius of this wonderful people, amidst the ignorance in 
 
222 LETTERS. 
 
 XVIII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Milauy April y)thy 1818. 
 
 My Dear P., — I write, simply to tell you, to direct your next 
 letters, Poste Restante, Pisa. We have engaged a vetturino for 
 that city, and leave Milan to-morrow morning. Our journey 
 will occupy six or seven days. 
 
 Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, with which it 
 communicates by the river Arno. We shall pass by Piacenza, 
 Parma, Bologna, the Apennines, and Florence, and I will 
 endeavour to tell you something of these celebrated places in 
 my next letter ; but I cannot promise much, for, though my 
 health is much improved, my spirits are unequal, and seem to 
 desert me when I attempt to write. 
 
 Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst of summer — we 
 shall do, therefore, what other people do, retire to Florence, or 
 to the mountains. But I will write to you our plans from Pisa, 
 when I shall understand them better myself. 
 
 You may easily conjecture the motives which led us to forego 
 the divine solitude of Como. To me, whose chief pleasure in 
 life is the contemplation of nature, you may imagine how great 
 is this loss. 
 
 Let us hear from you once a fortnight. Do not forget those 
 who do not forget you. 
 
 Adieu. — Ever most sincerely yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 XIX.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 LivornOy June 5, 1818. 
 
 My Dear P., — We have not heard from you since the middle 
 of April — that is, we have received only one letter from you 
 since our departure from England. It necessarily follows that 
 some accident has intercepted them. Address, in future, to 
 the care of Mr. Gisborne, Livomo — and I shall receive them, 
 though sometimes somewhat circuitously, yet always securely. 
 
 We left Milan on the ist of May, and travelled across the 
 Apennines to Pisa. This part of the Apennine is far less beauti- 
 
 which they are carefully kept by their rulers, and the vices, fostered by 
 a religious system, which these same rulers have used as their most 
 successful engine. — M. S. 
 
LETTERS. 223 
 
 ful than the Alps ; the mountains are wide and wild, and the 
 whole scenery broad and undetermined — the imagination 
 cannot find a home in it. The Plain of the Milanese, and that 
 of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful — it is like one garden, or 
 rather cultivated wilderness ; because the corn and the meadow- 
 grass grow under high and thick trees, festooned to one another 
 by regular festoons of vines. On the seventh day we arrived at 
 Pisa, where we remained three or four days. A large disagree- 
 able city, almost without inhabitants. We then proceeded to 
 this great trading town, where we have remained a month, and 
 which, in a few days, we leave for the Bagni di Lucca, a kind of 
 watering-place situated in the depth of the Apennines ; the 
 scenery surrounding this village is very fine. 
 
 We have made some acquaintance with a very amiable and 
 accomplished lady, Mrs. Gisborne, who is the sole attraction in 
 this most unattractive of cities. We had no idea of spending a 
 month here, but she has made it even agreeable. We shall see 
 something of Italian society at the Bagni di Lucca, where the 
 most fashionable people resort. 
 
 When you send my parcel — which, by-the-by, I should 
 request you to direct to Mr. Gisborne — I wish you could 
 contrive to enclose the two last parts of Clarke's Travels, 
 relating to Greece, and belonging to Hookham. You know I 
 subscribe there still — and I have determined to take the 
 Examiner here. You would, therefore, oblige me, by sending it 
 weekly, after having read it yourself, to the same direction, and 
 so clipped, as to make as little weight as possible. 
 
 I write as if writing where perhaps my letter may never 
 arrive. 
 
 With every good wish from all of us. 
 
 Believe me most sincerely yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XX.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, 
 (leghorn). 
 
 You cannot know, as some friends in England do, to whom 
 my silence is still more inexcusable, that this silence is no proof 
 of forgetfulness or neglect. 
 
 I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I shall be happy to 
 see you again, and renew our delightful walks, until the desire 
 or the duty of seeing new things hurries us away. We have spent 
 
224 LETTERS. 
 
 a month here in our accustomed solitude, with the exception of 
 one night at the Casino ; and the choice society of all ages, 
 which I took care to pack up in a large trunk before we left 
 England, have revisited us here. I am employed just now, 
 having little better to do, in translating into my faint and 
 inefficient periods, the divine eloquence of Plato's Symposium ; 
 only as an exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some idea of the 
 manners and feelings of the Athenians — so different on many 
 subjects from that of any other community that ever existed. 
 
 We have almost finished Ariosto — who is entertaining and 
 graceful, and sometimes a poet. Forgive me, worshippers of a 
 more equal and tolerant divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me 
 less than you. Where is the gentle seriousness, the delicate 
 sensibility, the calm and sustained energy, without which true 
 greatness cannot be ? He is so cruel, too, in his descriptions ; 
 his most prized virtues are vices almost without disguise. He 
 constantly vindicates and embellishes revenge in its grossest 
 form ; the most deadly superstition that ever infested the world. 
 How different from the tender and solemn enthusiasm of 
 Petrarch— or even the delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, 
 though somewhat obscured by an assumed and artificial 
 style. 
 
 We read a good deal here — and we read little in Livorno. 
 We have ridden, Mary and I, once only, to a place called Prato 
 Fiorito, on the top of the mountains : the road, winding through 
 forests, and over torrents, and on the verge of green ravines, 
 affords scenery magnificently fine. I cannot describe it to you, 
 but bid you, though vainly, come and see. I take great delight 
 in watching the changes of the atmosphere here, and the growth 
 of the thunder showers with which the noon is often over- 
 shadowed, and which break and fade away towards evening 
 into flocks of delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away 
 fast ; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically over 
 the rift in the forest-covered mountains to the south, and the 
 pale summer lightning which is spread out every night, at 
 intervals, over the sky. No doubt Providence has contrived 
 these things, that, when the fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl 
 may see her way home. 
 
 Remember me kindly to the Machinista. 
 
 With the sentiment of impatience until we see you again in 
 the autumn, 
 
 I am, yours most sincerely, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca^July loth^iZiZ, 
 
LETTERS. Its 
 
 XXI.— To William Godwin. 
 
 Bagni di Lticca, July 2 5 M, 181 8. 
 
 My Dear Godwin, — We have, as yet, seen nothing of Italy 
 which marks it to us as the habitation of departed greatness. 
 The serene sky, the magnificent scenery, the delightful pro- 
 ductions of the climate, are known to us, indeed, as the same 
 with those which the andents enjoyed. But Rome and Naples 
 — even Florence, are yet to see ; and if we were to write you at 
 present a history of our impressions, it would give you no idea 
 that we lived in Italy. 
 
 I am exceedingly delighted with the plan you propose of a 
 book, illustrating the character of our calumniated republicans. 
 It is precisely the subject for Mary ; and I imagine that, but for 
 the fear of being excited to refer to books not within her reach, 
 she would attempt to begin it here, and order the works you 
 notice. I am unfortunately little skilled in English history, and 
 the interest which it excites in me is so feeble, that I find it a 
 duty to attain merely to that general knowledge of it which is 
 indispensable. 
 
 Mary has just finished Ariosto with me, and, indeed, has 
 attained a very competent knowledge of Italian. She is now 
 reading Livy. I have been constantly occupied in literature, 
 but have written little — except some translations from Plato, in 
 which I exercised myself, in the despair of producing anything 
 original. The Symposium of Plato seems to me one of the 
 most valuable pieces of all antiquity ; whether we consider the 
 intrinsic merit of the composition, or the light which it throws 
 on the inmost state of manners and opinions among the ancient 
 Greeks. I have occupied myself in translating this, and it has 
 excited me to attempt an Essay upon the cause of some 
 differences in sentiment between the Ancients and Moderns, 
 with respect to the subject of the dialogue. 
 
 Two things give us pleasure in your last letters. The 
 resumption of \_your answer to] Malthus, and the favourable 
 turn of the general election. If Ministers do not find some 
 means, totally inconceivable to me, of plunging the nation in 
 war, do you imagine that they can subsist? Peace is all that a 
 country, in the present state of England, seems to require, to 
 afford it tranquillity and leisure for attempting some remedy ; 
 not to the universal evils of all constituted society, but to the 
 peculiar system of misrule under which those evils have been 
 exasperated now. I wish that I had health or spirits that 
 
 96 
 
i26 Letters. 
 
 would enable me to enter into public affairs, or that I could 
 find words to express all that I feel and know. 
 
 The modern Italians seem a miserable people, without 
 sensibility, or imagination, or understanding. Their outside is 
 polished, and an intercourse with them seems to proceed with 
 much facility, though it ends in nothing, and produces nothing. 
 The women are particularly empty, and though possessed of the 
 same kind of superficial grace, are devoid of every cultivation 
 and refinement. They have a ball at the Casino here every 
 
 Sunday, which we attend — but neither Mary nor C dance. 
 
 I do not know whether they refrain from philosophy or 
 protestantism. 
 
 I hear that poor Mary's book is attacked most violently in the 
 Quarterly Review. We have heard some praise of it, and 
 among others, an article of Walter Scott's in Blackwood's 
 Magazine. 
 
 If you should have anything to send us— and, I assure you, 
 anything relating to England is interesting to us — commit it to 
 
 the care of Oilier the bookseller, or P ; they send me a 
 
 parcel every quarter. 
 
 My health is, I think, better, and, I imagine, continues to 
 improve, but I still have busy thoughts and dispiriting cares, 
 
 which I would shake oflT— and it is now summer. A thousand 
 
 good wishes to yourself and your undertakings. 
 
 Ever most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XXII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca^ July i^th^ i8iS. 
 
 My Dear Peacock, — I received on the same day your letters 
 marked 5 and 6, the one directed to Pisa and the other to Livorno, 
 and I can assure you that they are most welcome visitors. 
 
 Our life here is as unvaried by any external events as if we 
 were at Marlow, where a sail up the river or a journey to London 
 makes an epoch. Since I last wrote to you, I have ridden over 
 to Lucca, once with C, and once alone ; and we have been over 
 to the Casino, where I cannot say there is anything remarkable, 
 the women being far removed from anything which the most 
 liberal annotator would interpret into beauty or grace, and 
 
LETTERS. 227 
 
 apparently possessing no intellectual excellences to compensate 
 the deficiency. I assure you it is well that it is so, for the 
 dances, especially the waltz, are so exquisitely beautiful that it 
 would be a little dangerous to the newly unfrozen senses and 
 imaginations of us migrators from the neighbourhood of the 
 pole. As it is — except in the dark — there can be no peril. The 
 atmosphere here, unlike that of the rest of Italy, is diversified 
 with clouds, which grow in the middle of the day, and some- 
 times bring thunder and lightning, and hail about the size of a 
 pigeon's egg, and decrease towards the evening, leaving only 
 those finely woven webs of vapour which we see in English 
 skies, and flocks of fleecy and slowly moving clouds, which all 
 vanish before sunset ; and the nights are for ever serene, and 
 we see a star in the east at sunset — I think it is Jupiter — almost 
 as fine as Venus was last summer ; but it wants a certain silver 
 and aerial radiance, and soft yet piercing splendour, which 
 belongs, I suppose, to the latter planet by virtue of its at once 
 divine and female nature. I have forgotten to ask the ladies if 
 Jupiter produces on them the same effect. I take great delight 
 in watching the changes of the atmosphere. In the evening, 
 Mary and I often take a ride, for horses are cheap in 
 this country. In the middle of the day, I bathe in a pool or 
 fountain, formed in the middle of the forests by a torrent. It is 
 surrounded on all sides by precipitous rocks, and the waterfall 
 of the stream which forms it falls into it on one side with 
 perpetual dashing. Close to it, on the top of the rocks, are 
 alders, and above the great chestnut trees, whose long and 
 pointed leaves pierce the deep blue sky in strong relief. The 
 water of this pool, which, to venture an unrythmical paraphrase, 
 is " sixteen feet long and ten feet wide," is as transparent as the 
 air, so that the stones and sand at the bottom seem, as it were, 
 trembling in the light of noonday. It is exceedingly cold 
 also. My custom is to undress, and sit on the rocks, reading 
 Herodotus, until the perspiration has subsided, and then to leap 
 from the edge of the rock into this fountain — a practice in the 
 hot weather excessively refreshing. This torrent is composed, 
 as it were, of a succession of pools and waterfalls, up which 
 I sometimes amuse myself by climbing when I bathe, and 
 receiving the spray over all my body, whilst I clamber up the 
 moist crags with difficulty. 
 
 I have lately found myself totally incapable of original com- 
 position. I employed my mornings, therefore, in translating 
 the Symposium^ which I accomplished in ten days. Mary 
 is now transcribing it, and I am writing a prefatory essay. I 
 
228 LETTERS, 
 
 have been reading scarcely anything but Greek, and a little 
 Italian poetry with Mary. We have finished Ariosto together 
 — a thing I could not have done again alone. 
 
 Fra7ikenstein seems to have been well received ; for although 
 the unfriendly criticism of the Quarterly is an evil for it, yet it 
 proves that it is read in some considerable degree, and it would 
 be difficult for them with any appearance of fairness, to deny it 
 merit altogether. Their notice of me, and their exposure of 
 their true motives for not noticing my book, shows how 
 well understood an hostility must subsist between me and 
 them. 
 
 The news of the result of the elections, especially that of the 
 metropolis, is highly inspiriting. I received a letter, of two day's 
 later date, with yours, which announced the unfortunate termina- 
 tion of that of Westmoreland. I wish you had sent me some 
 of the overflowing villainy of those apostates. What a pitiful 
 wretch that Wordsworth 1 That such a man should be such a 
 poet I I can compare him with no one but Simonides, that 
 flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the 
 most natural and tender of lyric poets. 
 
 What pleasure would it have given me if the wings of imagina- 
 tion could have divided the space which divides us, and I could 
 have been of your party. I have seen nothing so beautiful as 
 Virginia Water in its kind. And my thoughts for ever cling to 
 Windsor Forest, and the copses of Marlow, like the clouds 
 which hang upon the woods of the mountains, low trailing, 
 and though they pass away, leave their best dew when they 
 themselves have faded. You tell me that you have finished 
 Nightmare Abbey. I hope that you have given the enemy no 
 quarter. Remember, it is a sacred war. We have found an 
 excellent quotation in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his 
 Humour. I will transcribe it, as I do not think you have these 
 plays at Marlow. 
 
 " Matthew. O, it's only your fine humour, sir. Your true 
 melancholy breeds your fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself 
 divers times, sir ; and then do I no more but take pen and 
 paper presently, and overflow you half a score or a dozen of 
 sonnets at a sitting. 
 
 " Ed. Knowell. Sure, he utters them by the gross. 
 
 " Stephen. Truly, sir ; and I love such things out of 
 measure. 
 
 "Ed. Knowell. T faith, better than in measure, I'll 
 undertake. 
 
LETTERS, 229 
 
 " Matthew. Why, I pray you, sir, make use of my study ; 
 it's at your service. 
 
 "Stephen. I thank you, sir; I shall be bold, I warrant 
 you. Have you a stool there to be melancholy upofi ? " — Every 
 Alan in his Humour, Act 3, scene i. 
 
 The last expression would not make a bad motto.* 
 
 XXIII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Bagni de Lticca, Aug. i6th, t8i8. 
 
 My Dear Peacock, 
 
 No new event has been added to my life since I 
 wrote last : at least none which might not have taken place as 
 well on the banks of the Thames as on those of the Serchio. I 
 project soon a short excursion, of a week or so, to some of the 
 neighbouring cities ; and on the tenth of September we leave 
 this place for Florence, when I shall at least be able to tell you 
 of some things which you cannot see from your windows. 
 
 I have finished, by taking advantage of a few days of 
 inspiration — which the Cameonce have been lately very backward 
 in conceding — the little poem I began sending to the press in 
 London. Oilier will send you the proofs. Its structure is slight 
 and airy ; its subject ideal. The metre corresponds with the 
 spirit of the poem, and varies with the flow of the feeling. I 
 have translated, and Mary has transcribed the Symposium, as 
 well as my poem ; and I am proceeding to employ myself on a 
 discourse, upon the subject of which the Symposium treats, 
 considering the subject with reference to the difference of 
 sentiments respecting it, existing between the Greeks and 
 modern nations ; a subject to be handled with that delicate 
 caution which either I cannot or I will not practise in other 
 matters, but which here I acknowledge to be necessary. Not 
 that I have any serious thought of publishing either this 
 discourse or the Symposium, at least till I return to England, 
 when we may discuss the propriety of it. 
 
 Nightmare Abbey finished. Well, what is in it ? What is it ? 
 You are as secret as if the priest of Ceres had dictated its sacred 
 
 * I adopted this passage as a second motto, omitting E. Knowell's 
 interlocutions. — T. L. P. 
 
230 LETTERS, 
 
 pages. However, I suppose I shall see in time, when my second 
 parcel arrives. My first is yet absent. By what conveyance 
 did you send it ? 
 
 Pray, are you yet cured of your Nympholepsy ? 'Tis a sweet 
 disease : but one as obstinate and dangerous as any — even when 
 the Nymph is a Poliad. Whether such be the case or not, I 
 hope your nympholeptic tale is not abandoned. The subject, if 
 treated with a due spice of Bacchic fury, and interwoven with 
 the manners and feelings of those divine people, who, in their 
 very errors, are the mirrors, as it were, in which all that is 
 delicate and graceful contemplates itself, is perhaps equal to any. 
 What a wonderful passage there is in Phcedrus — the beginning, 
 I think, of one of the speeches of Socrates * — in praise of poetic 
 madness, and in definition of what poetry is, and how a man 
 becomes a poet. Every man who lives in this age and desires 
 to write poetry, ought, as a preservative against the false and 
 narrow systems of criticism which every poetical empiric vents, 
 to impress himself with this sentence, if he would be numbered 
 among those to whom may apply this proud, though sublime, 
 expression of Tasso ; " Non dh in mondo chi merita noine di 
 creatore^ che Dio ed il Poeta.^^ 
 
 The weather has been brilliantly fine ; and now, among these 
 mountains, the autumnal air is becoming less hot, especially in 
 the mornings and evenings. The chestnut woods are now 
 inexpressibly beautiful, for the chestnuts have become large, and 
 add a new richness to the full foliage. We see here Jupiter in 
 the east ; and Venus, I believe, as the evening star, directly after 
 sunset. 
 
 More and better in my next. M. and C. desire their kind 
 remembrances. — Most faithfully your friend, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 *The passage alluded to is this: — "There are several kinds," says 
 Socrates, "of divine madness. That which proceeds from the Muses 
 taking possession of a tender and unoccupied soul, awakening, and 
 bacchically inspiring it towards songs and other poetry, adorning myriads 
 of ancient deeds, instructs succeeding generations, but he who, without 
 this madness from the Muses, approaches the poetical gates, having 
 persuaded himself that by art alone he may become sufficiently a poet, 
 will find in the end his own imperfection, and see the poetry of his cold 
 prudence vanish into nothingness before the light pf that which has 
 sprung from divine insanity." — Platonis PhadruSy p. 245 a, — T. L. P. 
 
LETTERS, 231 
 
 XXIV.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 (bagni di lucca). 
 
 Florence^ Thursday^ 11 o'clock, 
 20th August, 1 81 8. 
 Dearest Mary, 
 
 We have been delayed in this city four hours, for 
 the Austrian minister's passport, but are now on the point of 
 setting out with a vetturino, who engages to take us on the 
 third day to Padua ; that is, we shall only sleep three nights on 
 the road. Yesterday's journey, performed in a one-horse cab- 
 riolet, almost without springs, over a rough road, was excessively 
 
 fatiguing. suffered most from it ; for, as to myself, there 
 
 are occasions in which fatigue seems a useful medicine, as I 
 have felt no pam in my side — a most delightful respite — since I 
 left you. The country was various and exceedingly beautiful. 
 Sometimes there were those low cultivated lands, with their 
 vine festoons, and large bunches of grapes just becoming purple 
 — at others we passed between high mountains, crowned with 
 some of the most majestic Gothic ruins I ever saw, which 
 frowned from the bare precipices, or were half seen among the 
 olive-copses. As we approached Florence, the country became 
 cultivated to a very high degree, the plain was filled with the 
 most beautiful villas, and, as far as the eye could reach, the 
 mountains were covered with them ; for the plains are bounded 
 on all sides by blue and misty mountains. The vines are here 
 trailed on low trellisses of reeds interwoven into crosses to sup- 
 port them, and the grapes, now almost ripe, are exceedingly 
 abundant. You everywhere meet those teams of beautiful white 
 oxen, which are now labouring the little vine-divided fields with 
 their Virgilian ploughs and carts. Florence itself, that is the 
 Lung' Arno (for I have seen no more), I think is the most 
 beautiful city I have yet seen. It is surrounded with cultivated 
 hills, and from the bridge which crosses the broad channel of 
 the Arno, the view is the most animated and elegant I ever 
 saw. You see three or four bridges, one apparently supported 
 by Corinthian pillars, and the white sails of the boats, relieved 
 by the deep green of the forest, which comes to the water's 
 edge, and the sloping hills covered with bright villas on every 
 side. Domes and steeples rise on all sides, and the cleanliness 
 is remarkably great. On the other side there are the foldings 
 of the Vale of Arno above ; first the hills of olive and vine, then 
 
232 LETTERS. 
 
 the chestnut woods, and then the blue and misly pine forests, 
 which invest the aerial Apennines, that fade in the distance. 
 I have seldom seen a city so lovely at first sight as Florence. 
 
 We shall travel hence within a few hours, with the speed of 
 the post, since the distance is 190 miles, and we are to do it in 
 three days, besides the half day, which is somewhat more than 
 sixty miles a-day. We have now got a comfortable carriage 
 and two mules, and, thanks to Paolo, have made a very decent 
 bargain, comprising everything, to Padua. I should say we had 
 delightful fruit for breakfast — figs, very fine — and peaches, 
 unfortunately gathered before they were ripe, whose smell was 
 like what one fancies of the wakening of Paradise flowers. 
 
 Well, my dearest Mary, are you very lonely ? Tell me truth, 
 my sweetest, do you ever cry ? I shall hear from you once at 
 Venice, and once on my return here. If you love me you will 
 keep up your spirits— and, at all events, tell me truth about it ; 
 for, I assure you, I am not of a disposition to be flattered by 
 your sorrow, though I should be by your cheerfulness ; and, 
 above all, by seeing such fruits of my absence as were produced 
 when we were at Geneva. What acquaintances have you 
 made ? I might have travelled to Padua with a German, who 
 had just come from Rome, and had scarce recovered from a 
 malaria fever, caught in the Pontine Marshes, a week or two 
 
 since ; and I conceded to 's entreaties — and to your absent 
 
 suggestions, and omitted the opportunity, although I have no 
 great faith in such species of contagion. It is not very hot — 
 not at all too much so for my sensations ; and the only thing 
 that incommodes me are the gnats at night, who roar like so 
 many humming-tops in one's ear — and I do not always find 
 zanzariere. How is Willmouse and little Clara ? They must 
 be kissed for me — and you must particularly remember to speak 
 my name to William, and see that he does not quite forget me 
 before I return. Adieu— my dearest girl, I think that we shall 
 soon meet. I shall write again from Venice. Adieu, dear 
 Mary ! 
 
 I have been reading the Noble Kinsmen^ in which, with the 
 exception of that lovely scene, to which you added so much 
 grace in reading to me, I have been disappointed. The Jailor's 
 Daughter is a poor imitation, and deformed. The whole story 
 wants moral discrimination and modesty. I do not believe that 
 Shakspeare wrote a word of it. 
 
LETTERS, 233 
 
 XXV.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 (bagni di lucca). 
 
 Venice^ Sunday Mornine^. 
 
 My Dearest Mary, 
 
 We arrived here last night at twelve o'clock, and 
 it is now before breakfast the next morning. I can, of course, 
 tell you nothing of the future ; and though I shall not close this 
 letter till post time, yet I do not know exactly when that is. 
 Yet, if you are very impatient, look along the letter and you 
 will see another date, when I may have something to relate. 
 
 I came from Padua hither in a gondola, and the gondoliere, 
 among other things, without any hint on my part, began talking 
 of Lord Byron. He said he was a giovmotto Inglese, with a 
 nome stravagante^ who lived very luxuriously, and spent great 
 sums of money. This man, it seems, was one of Lord B.'s gon- 
 dolieri. No sooner had we arrived at the inn, than the waiter 
 began talking about him — said, that he frequented Mrs. H.'s 
 conversazioni very much. 
 
 Our journey from Florence to Padua contained nothing which 
 may not be related another time. At Padua, as I said, we took 
 a gondola — and left it at three o'clock. These gondolas are the 
 most beautiful and convenient boats in the world. They are 
 finely carpeted and furnished with black, and painted black. The 
 couches on which you lean are extraordinarily soft, and are so 
 disposed as to be the most comfortable to those who lean or 
 sit. The windows have at will either Venetian plate-glass 
 flowered, or Venetian blinds, or blinds of black cloth to shut out 
 the light. The weather here is extremely cold — indeed, some- 
 times very painfully so, and yesterday it began to rain. We 
 passed the laguna in the middle of the night in a most violent 
 storm of wind, rain, and lightning. It was very curious to 
 observe the elements above in a state of such tremendous con- 
 vulsion, and the surface of the water almost calm ; for these 
 lagunas, though five miles broad, a space enough in a storm to 
 sink a gondola, are so shallow that the boatmen drive the boat 
 along with a pole. The sea-water, furiously agitated by the 
 wind, shone with sparkles like stars. Venice, now hidden and 
 now disclosed by the driving rain, shone dimly with its lights. 
 We were all this while safe and comfortable. Well, adieu, 
 dearest : I shall, as Miss Byron says, resume the pen in the 
 evening. 
 
234 LETTERS. 
 
 Sunday Nighty 5 0^ clock in the Morning. 
 Well, I will try to relate everything in its order. 
 
 At three o'clock I called on Lord Byron : he was delighted to 
 see me. 
 
 He took me in his gondola across the laguna to a long 
 sandy island, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When 
 we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we 
 rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation 
 consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as 
 to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for 
 me. He said, that if he had been in England at the time of 
 the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to 
 have prevented such a decision. We talked of literary matters, 
 his Fourth Canto, which, he says, is very good, and indeed 
 repeated some stanzas of great energy to me. When we 
 returned to his palace — which 
 
 . . . ( The letter is here torn). 
 
 The Hoppners are the most amiable people I ever knew. 
 They are much attached to each other, and have a nice little 
 boy, seven months old. Mr. H. paints beautifully, and this 
 excursion, which he has just put off, was an expedition to the 
 Julian Alps, in this neighbourhood — for the sake of sketching, 
 to procure winter employment. He has only a fortnight's 
 leisure, and he has sacrificed two days of it to strangers whom 
 he never saw before. Mrs. H. has hazel eyes and sweet looks. 
 
 {Paper torn.) 
 Well, but the time presses ; I am now going to the banker's 
 to send you money for the journey, which I shall address to 
 you at Florence, Post-office. Pray come instantly to Este, 
 where I shall be waiting in the utmost anxiety for your arrival. 
 You can pack up directly you get this letter, and employ the 
 next day on that. The day after, get up at four o'clock, and go 
 post to Lucca, where you will arrive at six. Then take a 
 vetturino for Florence to arrive the same evening. From 
 Florence to Este is three days' vetturino journey — and ycu 
 could not, I think, do it quicker by the post. Make Paolo take 
 you to good inns, as we found very bad ones ; and pray avoid 
 the Tre Mori at Bologna, perche vi sono cose inespressibili nei 
 letti. I do not think you can, but try to get from Florence to 
 Bologna in one day. Do not take the post, for it is not much 
 
LETTERS. 235 
 
 faster and very expensive. I have been obliged to decide on 
 all these things without you : I have done for the best — 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 — for, I am 
 sure, I do not know which — and it is only the event that can 
 show. We shall at least be saved the trouble of introduction, 
 and have formed acquaintance with a lady who is so good, so 
 beautiful, so angelically mild, that were she as wise too, she 
 
 would be quite a . Her eyes are like a reflection of yours. 
 
 Her manners are like yours when you know and like a person. 
 
 Do you know, dearest, how this letter was written ? By 
 scraps and patches, and interrupted every minute. The 
 gondola is now come to take me to the banker's. Este is 
 a little place, and the house found without difficulty. I shall 
 count four days for this letter : one day for packing, four for 
 coming here — and on the ninth or tenth day we shall meet. 
 
 I am too late for the post — but I send an express to overtake 
 it. Enclosed is an order for fifty pounds. If you knew all that 
 I had to do ! — 
 
 Dearest love, be well, be happy, come to me — confide in your 
 own constant and affectionate P. B. S. 
 
 Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and do not let William 
 forget me. Clara cannot recollect me. 
 
 XXVI.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 
 (l CAPPUCCINI— este). 
 
 Padua^ mezzogio7"no. 
 
 My Best Mary,— I found at Mount Selice a favourable 
 opportunity for going to Venice, where I shall try to make 
 some arrangement for you and little Ca. to come for some days, 
 and shall meet you, if I do not write anything in the mean- 
 time, at Padua, on Thursday morning. C. says she is obliged 
 to come to see the Medico, whom we missed this morning, and 
 who has appointed as the only hour at which he can be at 
 leisure — half-past eight in the morning. You must, therefore, 
 arrange matters so that you should come to the Stella d'Oro a 
 little before that hour— a thing to be accomplished only by 
 setting out at half-past three in the morning. You will by this 
 means arrive at Venice very early in the day, and avoid the 
 heat, which might be bad for the babe, and take the time, when 
 she would at least sleep great part of the time. C. will return 
 
236 LETTERS. 
 
 with the return carriage, and I shall meet you, or send to you 
 at Padua. 
 
 Meanwhile remember Charles the First — and do you be pre- 
 pared to bring at least some of Myrra translated ; bring the 
 book also with you, and the sheets of " Prometheus Unbound," 
 which you will find numbered from one to twenty-six on the 
 table of the pavilion. My poor little Clara, how is she to-day ? 
 Indeed I am somewhat uneasy about her, and though I feel 
 secure that there is no danger, it would be very comfortable to 
 have some reasonable person's opinion about her. The Medico 
 at Padua is certainly a man in great practice, but I confess he 
 does not satisfy me. 
 
 Am I not like a wild swan to be gone so suddenly ? But, in 
 fact, to set off alone to Venice required an exertion. I felt 
 myself capable of making it, and I knew that you desired it. 
 What will not be — if so it is destined — the lonely journey 
 through that wide, cold France ? But we shall see. 
 
 Adieu, my dearest love — remember Charles I. and Myrra. I 
 have been already imagining how you will conduct some scenes. 
 The second volume of St. Leon begins with this proud and true 
 sentiment — " There is nothing which the human mind can 
 conceive, which it may not execute." Shakspeare was only a 
 human being. 
 
 Adieu till Thursday. — Your ever affectionate 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XXVII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Este, October 8, 1818. 
 
 My Dear P. — I have not written to you, I think, for six 
 weeks. But I have been on the point of writing many times, 
 and have often felt that I had many things to say. But I have 
 not been without events to disturb and distract me, amongst 
 which is the death of my little girl.. She died of a disorder pecu- 
 liar to the climate. We have all had bad spirits enough, and I, 
 in addition, bad health. I intend to be better soon : there is no 
 malady, bodily or mental, which does not either kill or is killed. 
 
 We left the Baths of Lucca, I think, the day after I wrote to 
 you — on a visit to Venice — partly for the sake of seeing the 
 city. We made a very delightful acquaintance there with a 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, the gentleman an Englishman, and the 
 lady a Swissesse, mild and beautiful, and unprejudiced, in the 
 best sense of the word. The kind attentions of these people 
 
LETTERS, 137 
 
 made our short stay at Venice very pleasant. I saw Lord 
 Byron, and really hardly knew him again ; he is changed into 
 the liveliest and happiest-looking man I ever met. He read me 
 the first canto of his " Don Juan " — a thing in the style of 
 Beppo, but infinitely better, and dedicated to Southey, in ten or 
 a dozen stanzas, more like a mixture of wormwood and verdi- 
 grease than satire. Venice is a wonderfully fine city. The 
 approach to it over the laguna, with its domes and turrets 
 glittering in a long line over the blue waves, is one of the finest 
 architectural delusions in the world. It seems to have— and 
 literally it has — its foundations in the sea. The silent streets 
 are paved with water, and you hear nothing but the dashing of 
 the oars, and the occasional cries of the gondolieri. I heard 
 nothing of Tasso. The gondolas themselves are things of a 
 most romantic and picturesque appearance ; I can only compare 
 them to moths of which a coffin might have been the chrysalis. 
 They are hung with black, and painted black, and carpeted 
 with grey ; they curl at the prow and stern, and at the former 
 there is a nondescript beak of shining steel, which glitters at the 
 end of its long black mass. 
 
 The Doge's palace, with its library, is a fine monument of 
 aristocratic power. I saw the dungeons, where these scoundrels 
 used to torment their victims. They are of three kinds — one 
 adjoining the place of trial, where the prisoners destined to 
 immediate execution were kept. I could not descend into them, 
 because the day on which I visited it was festa. Another under 
 the leads of the palace, where the sufferers were roasted to 
 death or madness by the ardours of an Italian sun : and others 
 called the Pozzi — or wells, deep underneath, and communicating 
 with those on the roof by secret passages — where the prisoners 
 were confined sometimes half up to their middles in stinking 
 water. When the French came here, they found only one old 
 man in the dungeons, and he could not speak. But Venice, 
 which was once a tyrant, is now the next worst thing, a slave ; 
 for in fact it ceased to be free or worth our regret as a nation, 
 from the moment that the oligarchy usurped the rights of the 
 people. Yet, I do not imagine that it was ever so degradec^ as 
 it has been since the French, and especially the Austrian yoke. 
 The Austrians take sixty per cent, in taxes, and impose free 
 quarters on the inhabitants. A horde of German soldiers, as 
 vicious and more disgusting than the Venetians themselves, 
 insult these miserable people. I had no conception of the 
 excess to which avarice, cowardice, superstition, ignorance, 
 passionless lust, and all the inexpressible brutalities which 
 
238 LETTERS. 
 
 degrade human nature, could be carried, until I had passed a 
 few days at Venice. 
 
 We have been living this last month near the little town from 
 which I date this letter, in a very pleasant villa which has been 
 lent to us, and we are now on the point of proceeding to 
 Florence, Rome, and Naples — at which last city we shall spend 
 the winter, and return northwards in the spring. Behind us 
 here are the Euganean hills, not so beautiful as those of the 
 Bagni di Lucca, with Arqu^, where Petrarch's house and tomb 
 are religiously preserved and visited. At the end of our 
 garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the habitation of owls 
 and bats, where the Medici family resided before they came to 
 Florence. We see before us the wide flat plains of Lombardy, 
 in which we see the sun and moon rise and set, and the evening 
 star, and all the golden magnificence of autumnal clouds. But I 
 reserve wonder for Naples. 
 
 I have been writing — and indeed have just finished the first 
 act of a lyric and classical drama, to be called " Prometheus 
 Unbound." Will you tell me what there is in Cicero about 
 a drama supposed to have been written by yEschylus under 
 this title. 
 
 I ought to say that I have just read Malthus in a French 
 translation. Malthus is a very clever man, and the world would 
 be a great gainer if it would seriously take his lessons into con- 
 sideration, if it were capable of attending seriously to anything 
 but mischief— but what on earth does he mean by some of his 
 inferences ? Yours ever faithfully, P. B. S. 
 
 I will write again from Rome and Florence — in better spirits, 
 and to more agreeable purpose, I hope. You saw those beauti- 
 ful stanzas in the fourth canto about the Nymph Egeria. Well, 
 I did not whisper a word about nympholepsy : I hope you 
 acquit me — and I hope you will not carry delicacy so far as to 
 let this suppress anything nympholeptic 
 
 XXVIII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Ferrar'a, Nov. 8///, 1818. 
 
 My Dear P. — We left Este yesterday on our journey towards 
 Naples. The roads were particularly bad ; we have, therefore, 
 accomplished only two days' journey, of eighteen and twenty- four 
 miles each, and you may imagine that our horses must be 
 tolerably good ones, to drag our carriage, with five people and 
 
LETTERS. 239 
 
 heavy luggage, through deep and clayey roads. The roads are, 
 however, good during the rest of the way. 
 
 The country is flat, but intersected by lines of wood, trellised 
 with vines, whose broad leaves are now stamped with the redness 
 of their decay. Every here and there one sees people employed 
 in agricultural labours, and the plough, the harrow, or the 
 cart, drawn by long teams of milk-white or dove-coloured 
 oxen of immense size and exquisite beauty. This, indeed, 
 might be the country of Pasiphaes. In one farm-yard I 
 was shown sixty-three of these lovely oxen, tied to their stalls, in 
 excellent condition. A farm-yard in this part of Italy is some- 
 what different from one in England. First, the house, which is 
 large and high, with strange-looking unpainted window-shutters, 
 generally closed, and dreary beyond conception. The farm- 
 yard and out-buildings, however, are usually in the neatest 
 order. The threshing-floor is not under cover, but like that 
 described in the Georgics, usually flattened by a broken column, 
 and neither the mole, nor the toad, nor the ant, can find on its 
 area a crevice for their dwelling. Around it, at this season, are 
 piled the stacks of the leaves and stalks of Indian corn, which 
 has lately been threshed and dried upon its surface. At a little 
 distance are vast heaps of many-coloured zucche or pumpkins, 
 some of enormous size, piled as winter food for the hogs. There 
 are turkeys, too, and fowls wandering about, and two or three 
 dogs, who bark with a sharp hylactism. The people who are 
 occupied with the care of these things seem neither ill-clothed 
 nor ill-fed, and the blunt incivility of their manners has an 
 English air with it, very discouraging to those who are 
 accustomed to the impudent and polished lying of the inhabit- 
 ants of the cities. I should judge the agricultural resources of 
 this country to be immense, since it can wear so flourishing an 
 appearance, in spite of the enormous discouragements which the 
 various tyranny of the governments inflicts on it. I ought to say 
 that one of the farms belongs to a Jew banker at Venice, 
 another Shylock. — We arrived late at the inn where I now 
 write ; it was once the palace of a Venetian nobleman, and is 
 now an excellent inn. To-morrow we are going to see the 
 sights of Ferrara. 
 
 Nov. 9. 
 
 We have had heavy rain and thunder all night ; and the 
 
 former still continuing, we went in the carriage about the town. 
 
 We went first to look at the cathedral, but the beggars very soon 
 
 made us sound a retreat ; so, whether, as it is said, there is 
 
240 LETTERS. 
 
 a copy of a picture of Michael Angelo there or no, I cannot tell. 
 At the public library we were more successful. This is, 
 indeed, a magnificent establishment, containing, as they say, 
 160,000 volumes. We saw some illuminated manuscripts 
 of church music, with verses of the psalms interlined between 
 the square notes, each of which consisted of the most delicate 
 tracery, in colours inconceivably vivid. They belonged to 
 the neighbouring convent of Certosa, and are three or four 
 hundred years old ; but their hues are as fresh as if they had 
 been executed yesterday. The tomb of Ariosto occupies one 
 end of the largest saloon of which the library is composed ; it 
 is formed of various marbles, surmounted by an expressive 
 bust of the poet, and subscribed with a few Latin verses, in 
 a less miserable taste than those usually employed for similar 
 purposes. But the most interesting exhibitions here, are the 
 writings, etc., of Ariosto and Tasso, which are preserved, and 
 were concealed from the undistinguishing depredations of the 
 French with pious care. There is the arm-chair of Ariosto, 
 an old plain wooden piece of furniture, the hard seat of which 
 was once occupied by, but has now survived its cushion, as 
 it has its master. I could fancy Ariosto sitting in it ; and the 
 satires in his own handwriting which they unfold beside it, 
 and the old bronze inkstand, loaded with figures, which 
 belonged also to him, assists the willing delusion. This 
 inkstand has an antique, rather than an ancient appearance. 
 Three nymphs lean forth from the circumference, and on the 
 top of the lid stands a cupid, winged and looking up, with 
 a torch in one hand, his bow in the other, and his quiver beside 
 him. A medal was bound round the skeleton of Ariosto, 
 with his likeness impressed upon it. I cannot say I think 
 it had much native expression ; but, perhaps, the artist was 
 in fault. On the reverse is a hand, cutting with a pair of 
 scissors the tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass, 
 with this legend — Pro bono malum. What this reverse of 
 the boasted Christian maxim means, or how it applies to 
 Ariosto, either as a satirist or a serious writer, I cannot exactly 
 tell. The cicerone attempted to explain, and it is to his 
 commentary that my bewildering is probably due — if, indeed, 
 the meaning be very plain, as is possibly the case. 
 
 There is here a manuscript of the entire Gerusalemme 
 Liberata, written by Tasso's own hand ; a manuscript of some 
 poems, written in prison, to the Duke Alfonso ; and the satires 
 of Ariosto, written also by his own hand ; and the Pastor Fido 
 of Guarini. The Gerusalemme, though it had evidently been 
 
LETTERS, 241 
 
 copied and recopied, is interlined, particularly towards the end, 
 with numerous corrections. The hand-writing of Ariosto is a 
 small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, a 
 strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind ; that of 
 Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked 
 expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into 
 a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the 
 word. It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, 
 exceeding at times its own depth, and admonished to return by 
 the chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its 
 adventurous feet. You know I always seek in what I see the 
 manifestation of something beyond the present and tangible 
 object ; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not 
 agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and 
 not to attempt to inspire others with them. Some of the MSS. 
 of Tasso were sonnets to his persecutor, which contain a great 
 deal of what is called flattery. If Alfonso's ghost were asked 
 how he felt those praises now, I wonder what he would say. 
 But to me there is much more to pity than to condemn in these 
 entreaties and praises of Tasso. It is as a bigot prays to and 
 praises his god, whom he knows to be the most remorseless, 
 capricious, and mflexible of tyrants, but whom he knows also to 
 be omnipotent. Tasso's situation was widely different from that 
 of any persecuted being of the present day j for, from the depth 
 of dungeons, public opinion might now at length be awakened 
 to an echo that would startle the oppressor. But then there was 
 no hope. There is something irresistibly pathetic to me in the 
 sight of Tasso's own hand-writing, moulding expressions of 
 adulation and entreaty to a deaf and stupid tyrant, in an age 
 when the most heroic virtue would have exposed its possessor to 
 hopeless persecution, and — such is the alliance between virtue 
 and genius — which unoffending genius could not escape. 
 
 We went afterwards to see his prison in the hospital of Sant' 
 Anna, and I enclose you a piece of the wood of the very door, 
 which for seven years and three months divided this glorious 
 being from the air and the light which had nourished in 
 him those influences which he has communicated, through his 
 poetry, to thousands. The dungeon is low and dark, and 
 when I say that it is really a very decent dungeon, I speak as 
 one who has seen the prisons in the doges' palace of Venice. 
 But it is a horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest thing 
 that ever wore the shape of man, much more for one of delicate 
 susceptibilities and elevated fancies. It is low, and has a grated 
 window, and being sunk some feet below the level of the earth, 
 
 97 
 
242 LETTERS. 
 
 is full of unwholesome damps. In the darkest corner is a mark 
 in the wall where the chains were rivetted, which bound him 
 hand and foot. After some time, at the instance of some 
 Cardinal, his friend, the Duke allowed his victim a fire-place ; 
 the mark where it was walled up yet remains. 
 
 At the entrance of the Liceo, where the library is, we were 
 met by a penitent ; his form was completely enveloped in a 
 ghost-like drapery of white flannel ; his bare feet were sandalled ; 
 and there was a kind of net-work visor drawn over his eyes, so 
 as entirely to conceal his face. I imagine that this man had 
 been adjudged to suffer this penance for some crime known 
 only to himself and his confessor, and this kind of exhibition is 
 a striking instance of the power of the Catholic superstition 
 over the human mind. He passed, rattling his wooden box for 
 charity.* 
 
 Adieu. — You will hear from me again before I arrive at 
 Naples. 
 
 Yours, ever sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XXIX.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Bologna^ Monday^ Nov. ()ih, 1818. 
 
 My Dear P. — I have seen a quantity of things here — churches, 
 palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures ; and my brain is at 
 this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or 
 a commonplace-book. I will try to recollect something of 
 what I have seen ; for, indeed, it requires, if it will obey, an act 
 of volition. First, we went to the cathedral, which contains 
 nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble 
 canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble 
 columns. We went then to a palace — I am sure I forget the 
 name of it — where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of 
 course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you 
 forget, for one you remember. I remember, however, an 
 interesting picture by Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in 
 which Proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling 
 eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the 
 fields of Enna. There was an exquisitely executed piece of 
 
 * These penitents ask alms, to be spent in masses for the souls in 
 purgatory. — M. S, 
 
LETTERS, 243 
 
 Correggio, about four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet 
 dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the devil who was 
 bound in that style— but who can make anything of four saints ? 
 For what can they be supposed to be about ? There was one 
 painting, indeed, by this master, Christ beautified, inexpressibly 
 fine. It is a half figure, seated on a mass of clouds, tinged with 
 an ethereal, rose-like lustre ; the arms are expanded ; the whole 
 frame seems dilated with expression ; the countenance is heavy, 
 as it were, with the weight of the rapture of the spirit ; the lips 
 parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath of intense but 
 regulated passion ; the eyes are calm and benignant ; the whole 
 features harmonised in majesty and sweetness. The hair is 
 parted on the forehead, and falls in heavy locks on each side. 
 It is motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath would move 
 it. The colouring, I suppose, must be very good, if I could 
 remark and understand it. The sky is of a pale aerial orange, 
 like the tints of latest sunset ; it does not seem painted around 
 and beyond the figure, but everything seems to have absorbed, 
 and to have been penetrated by its hues. I do not think we 
 saw any other of Correggio, but this specimen gives me a very 
 exalted idea of his powers. 
 
 We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces — 
 Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names 
 for any purpose, here they are ; I should be glad of them if I 
 was writing a novel. I saw many more of Guido. One, a 
 Samson drinking water out of an ass's jaw-bone, in the midst of 
 the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is supposed to do this, 
 God, who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows — but certain it 
 is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure of Samson 
 stands in strong relief in the foreground, coloured, as it were, 
 in the hues of human life, and full of strength and elegance. 
 Round him lie the Philistines in all the attitudes of death. One 
 prone, with the slight convulsion of pain just passing from his 
 forehead, whilst on his lips and chin death lies as heavy as 
 sleep. Another leaning on his arm, with his hand, white and 
 motionless, hanging out beyond. In the distance, more dead 
 bodies ; and, still further beyond, the blue sea and the blue 
 mountains, and one white and tranquil sail. 
 
 There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido, finely 
 coloured, with much fine expression — but the subject is very 
 horrible, and it seemed deficient in strength — at least, you 
 require the highest ideal energy, the most poetical and exalted 
 conception of the subject, to reconcile you to such a contempla- 
 tion. There was a Jesus Christ crucified, by the same, very 
 
244 LETTERS. 
 
 fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever may be the conception 
 and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and agonised 
 form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of torture. 
 But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross with the look of passive 
 and gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair, 
 and the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in passionate 
 compassion ; his hands clasped, and his fingers twisting them- 
 selves together, as it were, with involuntary anguish ; his feet 
 almost writhing up from the ground with the same sympathy ; 
 and the whole of this arrayed in colours of a diviner nature, yet 
 most like nature's self. Of the contemplation of this one would 
 never weary. 
 
 There was a "Fortune," too, of Guido ; a piece of mere beauty. 
 There was the figure of Fortune on a globe, eagerly proceeding 
 onwards, and Love was trying to catch her back by the hair, 
 and her face was half turned towards him ; her long chestnut 
 hair was floating in the stream of the wind, and threw its 
 shadow over her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were fixed on 
 her pursuer, with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light 
 smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which arrayed 
 her delicate limbs were ethereal and warm. 
 
 But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the pictures of 
 Guido which I saw was a Madonna Lattante. She is leaning 
 over her child, and the maternal feelings with which she is 
 pervaded are shadowed forth on her soft and gentle 
 countenance, and in her simple and affectionate gestures — there 
 is what an unfeeling observer would call a dulness in the 
 expression of her face ; her eyes are almost closed ; her lip 
 depressed ; there is a serious, and even a heavy relaxation, 
 as it were, of all the muscles which are called into action by 
 ordinary emotions : but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost 
 insupportable from its intensity, were brooding over and 
 weighing down the soul, or whatever it is, without which the 
 material frame is inanimate and inexpressive. 
 
 There is another painter here, called Franceschini, a 
 Bolognese, who, though certainly very inferior to Guido, is 
 yet a person of excellent powers. One entire church, that 
 of Santa Catarina, is covered by his works. I do not know 
 whether any of his pictures have ever been seen in England. 
 His colouring is less warm than that of Guido, but nothing 
 can be more clear and delicate ; it is as if he could have dipped 
 his pencil in the hues of some serenest and star-shining 
 twilight. His forms have the same delicacy and aerial 
 loveliness ; their eyes are all bright with innocence and love ; 
 
LETTERS. 24S 
 
 their lips scarce divided by some gentle and sweet emotion. 
 His winged children are the loveliest ideal beings ever created 
 by the human mind. These are generally, whether in the 
 capacity of Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the 
 picture ; and the underplot of their lovely and infantine play 
 is something almost pathetic, from the excess of its unpretend- 
 ing beauty. One of the best of his pieces is an Annunciation 
 of the Virgin : — the Angel is beaming in beauty ; the Virgin, 
 soft, retiring, and simple. 
 
 We saw, besides, one picture of Raphael — St. Cecilia : this 
 is ip another and higher style ; you forget that it is a picture 
 as you look at it ; and yet it is most unlike any of those things 
 which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, 
 and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar 
 state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those 
 perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling 
 models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a 
 perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, 
 St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her 
 image in the painter's mind ; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes 
 lifted up ; her chesnut hair flung back from her forehead — she 
 holds an organ in her hands — her countenance, as it were, 
 calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated 
 throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She 
 is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just 
 ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently 
 point, by their attitudes, towards her ; particularly St. John, 
 who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his 
 countenance towards her, languid with the depth of his 
 emotion. At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken 
 and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak ; it eclipses 
 nature, yet it has all her truth and softness. 
 
 We saw some pictures of Domenichino, Caracci, Albano, 
 Guercino, Elizabetta Sirani. The two former — remember, I do 
 not pretend to taste — I cannot admire. Of the latter there 
 are some beautiful Madonnas. There are several of Guercino, 
 which they said were very fine. I dare say they were, for the 
 strength and complication of his figures made my head turn 
 round. One, indeed, was certainly powerful. It was the 
 representation of the founder of the Carthusians exercising 
 his austerities in the desert, with a youth as his attendant, 
 kneeling beside him at an altar ; on another altar stood 
 a skull and a crucifix ; and around were the rocks and the trees 
 of the wilderness. I never saw such a figure as this fellow. 
 
246 LETTERS. 
 
 His face was wrinkled like a dried snake's skin, and drawn 
 in long hard lines : his very hands were wrinkled. He looked 
 like an animated mummy. He was clothed in a loose dress 
 of death-coloured flannel, such as you might fancy a shroud 
 might be, after it had wrapt a corpse a month or two. It had 
 a yellow, putrified, ghastly hue, which it cast on all the objects 
 around, so that the hands and face of the Carthusian and 
 his companion were jaundiced by this sepulchral glimmer. 
 Why write books against religion, when we may hang up 
 such pictures ? But the world either will not or cannot see. 
 The gloomy effect of this was softened, and, at the same time, 
 its sublimity diminished, by the figure of the Virgin and 
 Child in the sky, looking down with admiration on the monk, 
 and a beautiful flying figure of an angel. 
 
 Enough of pictures. I saw the place where Guido and his 
 mistress, Elizabetta Sirani, were buried. This lady was 
 poisoned at the age of twenty-six, by another lover, a rejected 
 one of course. Our guide said she was very ugly, and that we 
 might see her portrait to-morrow. 
 
 Well, good-night, for the present. " To-morrow to fresh 
 fields and pastures new." 
 
 November i6. 
 
 To-day we first went to see those divine pictures of Raffael 
 and Guido again, and then rode up the mountains, behind this 
 city, to visit a chapel dedicated to the Madonna. It made me 
 melancholy to see that they had been varnishing and restoring 
 some of these pictures, and that even some had been pierced 
 by the French bayonets. These are symptoms of the mortality 
 of man, and perhaps, few of his works are more evanescent than 
 paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness for twenty centuries 
 — the Apollo and the Venus are as they were. But books are 
 perhaps the only productions of man coeval with the human 
 race. Sophocles and Shakspeare can be produced and repro- 
 duced for ever. But how evanescent are paintings ! and must 
 necessarily be. Those of Zeuxis ana Apelles are no more ; and 
 perhaps they bore the same relation to Homer and iEschylus, 
 that those of Guido and Raffael bear to Dante and Petrarch. 
 There is one refuge from the despondency of this contemplation. 
 The material part, indeed, of their works must perish, but they 
 survive in the mind of man, and the remembrances connected 
 with them are transmitted from generation to generation. 
 The poet embodies them in his creations ; the systems of 
 philosophers are modelled to gentleness by their contemplation ; 
 
LETTERS. 247 
 
 opinion, that legislator, is infected with their influence ; men 
 become better and wiser ; and the unseen seeds are perhaps 
 thus sown, which shall produce a plant more excellent even 
 than that from which they fell. But all this might as well be 
 said or thought at Marlow as Bologna. 
 
 The chapel of the Madonna is a very pretty Corinthian 
 building — very beautiful indeed. It commands a fine view of 
 these fertile plains, the many-folded Apennines, and the city. I 
 have just returned from a moonlight walk through Bologna. It 
 is a city of colonnades, and the effect of moonlight is strikingly 
 picturesque. There are two towers here — one 400 feet high — 
 ugly things, built of brick, which lean both different ways ; and 
 with the delusion of moonlight shadows, you might almost fancy 
 that the city is rocked by an earthquake. They say they were 
 built so on purpose ; but I observe in all the plain of Lombardy 
 the church towers lean. 
 
 Adieu. — God grant you patience to read this long letter, and 
 courage to support the expectation of the next. Pray part them 
 from the Cobbetis on your breakfast table — they may fight it out 
 in your mind. 
 
 Yours ever most sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XXX.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Rome, November 20th, 18 18. 
 
 My Dear P.— Benold me m the capital of the vanished 
 world ! But I have seen nothing except St. Peter's and the 
 Vatican, overlooking the city in the mist of distance, and the 
 Dogana, where they took us to have our luggage examined, 
 which is built between the ruins of a temple to Antoninus Pius. 
 The Corinthian columns rise over the dwindled palaces of the 
 modern town, and the wrought cornice is changed on one side, 
 as it were, to masses of wave-worn precipices, which overhang 
 you, far, far on high. 
 
 I take advantage of this rainy evenmg, and before Rome has 
 effaced all other recollections, to endeavour to recall the vanished 
 scenes through which we have passed. We left Bologna, I 
 forget on what day, and passing by Rimini, Fano, and Foligno, 
 along the Via Flaminia and Terni, have arrived at Rome after 
 ten days' somewhat tedious, but most interesting journey. The 
 most remarkable things we saw were the Roman excavations in 
 the rock, and the great waterfall of Terni. Of course you have 
 
248 LETTERS. 
 
 heard that there are a Roman bridge and a triumphal arch at 
 Rimini, and in what excellent taste they are built. The bridge 
 is not unlike the Strand bridge, but more bold in proportion, 
 and of course infinitely smaller. From Fano we left the coast 
 of the Adriatic, and entered the Apennmes, toiiowing the course 
 of the Metaurus, the banks of which were the scene of the 
 defeat of Asdrubal : and it is said (you can refer to the book) 
 that Livy has given a very exact and animated description of it. 
 I forget all about it, but shall look as soon as our boxes are 
 opened. Following the river, the vale contracts, the banks of 
 the river become steep and rocky, the forests of oak and ilex 
 which overhang its emerald-coloured stream, cling to their abrupt 
 precipices. About four miles from Fossombrone, the river forces 
 for itself a passage between the walls and toppling precipices of 
 the loftiest Apennines, which are here rifted to their base, and 
 undermined by the narrow and tumultuous torrent. It was a 
 cloudy morning, and we had no conception of the scene that 
 awaited us. Suddenly the low clouds were struck by the clear 
 north wind, and like curtains of the finest gauze, removed one by 
 one, were drawn from before the mountain, whose heaven- 
 cleaving pinnacles and black crags overhanging one another, 
 stood at length defined in the light of day. The road runs 
 parallel to the river, at a considerable height, and is carried 
 through the mountain by a vaulted cavern. The marks of the 
 chisel of the legionaries of the Roman Consul are yet evident. 
 
 We passed on day after day, until we came to Spoleto, I 
 think the most romantic city I ever saw. There is here an 
 aqueduct of astonishing elevation, which unites two rocky 
 mountains — there is the path of a torrent below, whitening the 
 green dell with its broad and barren track of stones, and above 
 there is a castle, apparently of great strength and of tremendous 
 magnitude, which overhangs the city, and whose marble bastions 
 are perpendicular with the precipice. I never saw a more 
 impressive picture ; in which the shapes of nature are of the 
 grandest order, but over which the creations of man, sublime 
 from their antiquity and greatness, seem to predominate. The 
 castle was built by Belisarius or Narses, I forget which, but was 
 of that epoch. 
 
 From Spoleto we went to Temi, and saw the cataract of the 
 Velino. The glaciers of Montanvert and the source of the 
 Arveiron is the grandest spectacle I ever saw. This is the 
 second. Imagine a river sixty feet in breath, with a vast volume 
 of waters, the outlet of a great lake among the higher moun- 
 tains, falling 300 feet into a sightless gulf of snow-white vapour, 
 
LETTERS. 249 
 
 which bursts up for ever and for ever, from a circle of black 
 crags, and thence leaping downwards, made five or six other 
 cataracts, each fifty or a hundred feet high, which exhibit, on a 
 smaller scale, and with beautiful and sublime variety, the same 
 appearances. But words (and far less could painting) will not 
 express it. Stand upon the brink of the platform of cliff, which 
 is directly opposite. You see the ever-moving water stream 
 down. It comes in thick and tawny folds, flaking off like solid 
 snow gliding down a mountain. It does not seem hollow 
 within, but without it is unequal, like the folding of linen thrown 
 carelessly down ; your eye follows it, and it is lost below ; not 
 in the black rocks which gird it around, but in its own foam 
 and spray, in the cloud-like vapours boiling up from below, 
 which is not like rain, nor mist, nor spray, nor foam, but water, 
 in a shape wholly unlike anything I ever saw before. It is as 
 white as snow, but thick and impenetrable to the eye. The 
 very imagination is bewildered in it. A thunder comes up from 
 the abyss wonderful to hear ; for, though it ever sounds, it is 
 never the same, but, modulated by the changing motion, rises 
 and falls intermittingly ; we passed half an hour in one spot 
 looking at it, and thought but a few minutes had gone by. The 
 surrounding scenery is, in its kind, the loveliest and most 
 sublime that can be conceived. In our first walk we passed 
 through some olive groves, of large and ancient trees, whose 
 hoary and twisted trunks leaned in all directions. We then 
 crossed a path of orange trees by the river side, laden with 
 their golden fruit, and came to a forest of ilex of a large size, 
 whose evergreen and acorn-bearing boughs were intertwined 
 over our winding path. Around, hemming in the narrow vale, 
 were pinnacles of lofty mountains of pyramidical rock clothed 
 with all evergreen plants and trees ; the vast pine, whose 
 feathery foliage trembled in the blue air, the ilex, that ancestral 
 inhabitant of these mountains, the arbutus with its crimson- 
 coloured fruit and glittering leaves. After an hour's walk, we 
 came beneath the cataract of Temi, within the distance of half 
 a mile ; nearer you cannot approach, for the Nar, which has 
 here its confluence with the Velino, bars the passage. We then 
 crossed the river formed by this confluence, over a narrow 
 natural bridge of rock, and saw the cataract from the platform 
 I first mentioned. We think of spending some time next year 
 near this waterfall. The inn is very bad, or we should have 
 stayed there longer. 
 
 We came from Terni last night to a place called Nepi, and 
 today arrived at Rome across the much-belied Campagna di 
 
250 LETTERS. 
 
 Roma, a place I confess infinitely to my taste. It is a flattering 
 picture of Bagshot Heath. But then there are the Apennines 
 on one side, and Rome and St. Peter's on the other, and it is 
 intersected by perpetual dells clothed with arbutus and ilex. 
 Adieu — very faithfully yours, P. B. S. 
 
 XXXI.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Naples, December 22^ 1818. 
 
 My Dear P. — I have received a letter from you here, dated 
 November ist; you see the reciprocation of letters from the 
 term of our travels is more slow. I entirely agree with what 
 you say about Childe Harold. The spirit in which it is written 
 is, if insane, the most wicked and mischievous insanity that ever 
 was given forth. It is a kind of obstinate and self-willed folly, 
 in which he hardens himself. I remonstrated with him in vain 
 on the tone of mind from which such a view of things alone 
 arises. For its real root is very different from its apparent one. 
 Nothing can be less sublime than the true source of these 
 expressions of contempt and desperation. The fact is, that first, 
 the Italian women with whom he associates, are perhaps the 
 most contemptible of all who exist under the moon — the most 
 ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted ; countesses 
 (who) smell so strongly of garlic that an ordinary Englishman 
 cannot approach them. Well, L. B. is familiar with the lowest 
 sort of these women, the people his gondolier! pick up in the 
 streets. He associates with wretches who seem almost to have 
 lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple 
 to avow practices which are not only not named, but I believe 
 seldom even conceived in England. He says he disapproves, 
 but he endures. He is heartily and deeply discontented with 
 himself ; and contemplating in the distorted mirror of his own 
 thoughts the nature and the destiny of man, what can he behold 
 but objects of contempt and despair? But that he is a great 
 poet, I think the address to Ocean proves. And he has a certain 
 degree of candour while you talk to him, but unfortunately it 
 does not outlast your departure. No, I do not doubt, and, for 
 his sake, I ought to hope, that his present career must end soon 
 in some violent circumstance. 
 
 Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins of Rome, the 
 Vatican, St. Peter's, and all the miracles of ancient and modern 
 
LETTERS. 251 
 
 art contained in that majestic city. The impression of it exceeds 
 anything I have ever experienced in my travels. We stayed 
 there only a week, intending to return at the end of February, 
 and devote two or three months to its rtiines of inexhaustible 
 contemplation, to which period I refer you for a minute account 
 of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins of the Coliseum 
 every day. The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands 
 I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and 
 the arches built of massy stones are piled on one another, and 
 jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging 
 rocks. It has been changed by time into the image of an 
 amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild olive, the 
 myrtle, and the fig-tree, and threaded by little paths, which 
 wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries : the 
 copse wood overshadows you as you wander through its 
 labyrinths, and the wild weeds of this climate of flowers bloom 
 under your feet. The arena is covered with grass, and pierces, 
 like the skirts of a natural plain, the chasms of the broken arches 
 around. But a small part of the exterior circumference 
 remains — it is exquisitely light and beautiful ; and the effect of 
 the perfection of its architecture, adorned with ranges of 
 Corinthian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice, is such as to 
 diminish the effect of its greatness. The interior is all ruin. I 
 can scarcely believe that when encrusted with Dorian marble 
 and ornamented by columns of Egyptian granite, its effect could 
 have been so sublime and so impressive as in its present state. 
 It is open to the sky, and it was the clear and sunny weather of 
 the end of November in this climate when we visited it, day 
 after day. 
 
 Near it is the arch of Constantino, or rather the arch of 
 Trajan ; for the servile and avaricious senate of degraded 
 Rome ordered, that the monument of his predecessor should be 
 demolished in order to dedicate one to the Christian reptile, 
 who had crept among the blood of his murdered family to the 
 supreme power. It is exquisitely beautiful and perfect. The 
 Forum is a plain in the midst of Rome, a kind of desert full of 
 heaps of stones and pits ; and though so near the habitations of 
 men, is the most desolate place you can conceive. The ruins 
 of temples stand in and around it, shattered columns and ranges 
 of others complete, supporting cornices of exquisite workman- 
 ship, and vast vaults of shattered domes distinct with regular 
 compartments, once filled with sculptures of ivory or brass. 
 The temples of Jupiter, and Concord, and Peace, and the Sun, 
 and the Moon, and Vesta, are all within a short distance of this 
 
252 LETTERS. 
 
 spot. Behold the wrecks of what a great nation once dedicated 
 to the abstractions of the mind ! Rome is a city, as it were, of 
 the dead, or rather of those who cannot die, and who survive 
 the puny generations which inhabit and pass over the spot 
 which they have made sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least in 
 the first enthusiasm of your recognition of ancient time, you see 
 nothing of the Italians. The nature of the city assists the 
 delusion, for its vast and antique walls describe a circumference 
 of sixteen miles, and thus the population is thinly scattered over 
 this space, nearly as great as London. Wide wild fields are 
 enclosed within it, and there are grassy lanes and copses wind- 
 ing among the ruins, and a great green hill, lonely and bare, 
 which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern 
 palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, and pine, 
 and the neglected walks are overgrown with weeds. The 
 English burying-place is a green slope near the walls, under 
 the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the most 
 beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the sun 
 shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with 
 the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among 
 the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of 
 Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, 
 and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people 
 who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the 
 sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it 
 peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion. 
 
 I have told you little about Rome ; but I reserve the Pan- 
 theon, and St. Peter's, and the Vatican, and Raffael, for my 
 return. About a fortnight ago I left Rome, and Mary and 
 
 C followed in three days, for it was necessary to procure 
 
 lodgings here without alighting at an inn. From my peculiar 
 mode of travelling I saw little of the country, but could just 
 observe that the wild beauty of the scenery and the barbarous 
 ferocity of the inhabitants progressively increased. On entering 
 Naples, the first circumstance that engaged my attention was 
 an assassination. A youth ran out of a shop, pursued by a 
 woman with a bludgeon, and a man armed with a knife. The 
 man overtook him, and with one blow in the neck laid him dead 
 in the road. On my expressing the emotions of horror and 
 indignation which I felt, a Calabrian priest, who travelled with 
 me, laughed heartily, and attempted to quiz me, as what the 
 English call a flat. I never felt such an inclination to beat any 
 one. Heaven knows I have little power, but he saw that I 
 looked extremely displeased, and was silent. This same man, a 
 
LETTERS. 253 
 
 fellow of gigantic strength and stature, had expressed the most 
 frantic terror of robbers on the road ; he cried at the sight of 
 my pistol, and it had been with great difficulty that the joint 
 exertions of myself and the vetturino had quieted his hysterics. 
 
 But external nature in these delightful regions contrasts with 
 and compensates for the deformity and degradation of humanity. 
 We have a lodging divided from the sea by the royal gardens, 
 and from our windows we see perpetually the blue waters of the 
 bay, forever changing, yet forever the same, and encompassed 
 by the mountainous island of Capreae, the lofty peaks which 
 overhang Salerno, and the woody hill of Posilipo, whose pro- 
 montories hide from us Misenum and the lofty isle Inarime,* 
 which, with its divided summit, forms the opposite horn of the 
 bay. From the pleasant walks of the garden we see Vesuvius ; 
 a smoke by day and a fire by night is seen upon its summit, 
 and the glassy sea often reflects its light or shadow. The 
 climate is delicious. We sit without a fire, with the windows 
 open, and have almost all the productions of an English sum- 
 mer. The weather is usually like what Wordsworth calls " the 
 first fine day of March ; " sometimes very much warmer, 
 though perhaps it wants that "each minute sweeter than 
 before," which gives an intoxicating sweetness to the awakening 
 of the earth from its winter's sleep in England. We have made 
 two excursions, one to Baias and one to Vesuvius, and we pro- 
 pose to visit, successively, the islands, Psestum, Pompeii, and 
 Beneventum. 
 
 We set off an hour after sunrise one radiant morning in a 
 little boat ; there was not a cloud in the sky, nor a wave upon 
 the sea, which was so translucent that you could see the hollow 
 caverns clothed with the glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves and 
 branches of those delicate weeds that pave the unequal bottom 
 of the water. As noon approached, the heat, and especially the 
 light, became intense. We passed Posilipo, and came first to 
 the eastern point of the bay of Puzzoli, which is within the great 
 bay of Naples, and which again incloses that of Baia2. Here 
 are lofty rocks and craggy islets, with arches and portals of 
 precipice standing in the sea, and enormous caverns, which 
 echoed faintly with the murmur of the languid tide. This is 
 called La Scuola di Virgilio. We then went directly across to 
 the promontory of Misenum, leaving the precipitous island of 
 Nesida on the right. Here we were conducted to see the Mare 
 Morto, and the Elysian fields ; the spot on which Virgil places 
 
 * The ancient name of Ischia.— ^]/. S. 
 
254 LETTERS. 
 
 the scenery of the Sixth ^neid. Though extremely beautiful, 
 as a lake, and woody hills, and this divine sky must make it, I 
 confess my disappointment. The guide showed us an antique 
 cemetery, where the niches used for placing the cinerary urns of 
 the dead yet remain. We then coasted the bay of Baise to the 
 left, in which we saw many picturesque and interesting ruins ; 
 but I have to remark that we never disembarked but we were 
 disappointed — while from the boat the effect of the scenery was 
 inexpressibly delightful. The colours of the water and the air 
 breathe over all things here the radiance of their own beauty. 
 After passing the bay of Baiae, and observing the ruins of its 
 antique grandeur standing like rocks in the transparent sea 
 under our boat, we landed to visit lake Avernus. We passed 
 through the cavern of the Sibyl (not Virgil's Sybil) which pierces 
 one of the hills which circumscribe the lake, and came to a 
 calm and lovely basin of water, surrounded by dark woody 
 hills, and profoundly solitary. Some vast ruins of the temple of 
 Pluto stand on a lawny hill on one side of it, and are reflected 
 in its windless mirror. It is far more beautiful than the Elysian 
 fields — but there are all the materials for beauty in the latter, 
 and the Avernus was once a chasm of deadly and pestilential 
 vapours. About half a mile from Avernus, a high hill, called 
 Monte Novo, was thrown up by volcanic fire. 
 
 Passing onward we came to Pozzoli, the ancient Dicaearchea, 
 where there are the columns remaining of a temple to Serapis, 
 and the wreck of an enormous amphitheatre, changed, like the 
 Coliseum, into a natural hill of the overteeming vegetation. 
 Here also is the Solfatara, of which there is a poetical descrip- 
 tion in the Civil War of Petronius, beginning — " Est locus," 
 and in which the verses of the poet are infinitely finer than what 
 he describes, for it is not a very curious place. After seeing 
 these things we returned by moonlight to Naples in our boat. 
 What colours there were in the sky, what radiance in the evening 
 star, and how the moon was encompassed by a light unknown 
 to our regions ! 
 
 Our next excursion was to Vesuvius. We went to Resina in 
 
 a carriage, where Mary and I mounted mules, and C was 
 
 carried in a chair on the shoulders of four men, much like a 
 member of parliament after he has gained his election, and 
 looking, with less reason, quite as frightened. So we arrived at 
 the hermitage of San Salvador, where an old hermit, belted with 
 rope, set forth the plates for our refreshment. 
 
 Vesuvius is, after the Glaciers, the most impressive exhibition 
 of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has not the immeasur- 
 
LETTERS. 255 
 
 able greatness, the overpowering magnificence, nor, above all, 
 the radiant beauty of the glaciers ; but it has all their character 
 of tremendous and irresistible strength. From Resina to the 
 hermitage you wind up the mountain, and cross a vast stream 
 of hardened lava, which is an actual image of the waves of the 
 sea, changed into hard black stone by enchantment. The lines 
 of the boiling flood seem to hang in the air, and it is difficult to 
 believe that the billows which seem hurrying down upon you 
 are not actually in motion. This plain was once a sea of liquid 
 fire. From the hermitage we crossed another wast stream of 
 lava, and then went on foot up the cone — this is the only part 
 of the ascent in which there is any difficulty, and that difficulty 
 has been much exaggerated. It is composed of rocks of lava, 
 and declivities of ashes ; by ascending the former and descend- 
 ing the latter, there is very little fatigue. On the summit is a 
 kind of irregular plain, the most horrible chaos that can be 
 imagined ; riven into ghastly chasms, and heaped up with 
 tumuli of great stones and cinders, and enormous rocks 
 blackened and calcined, which had been thrown from the 
 volcano upon one another in terrible confusion. In the midst 
 stands the conical hill from which volumes of smoke, and the 
 fountains of liquid fire, are rolled forth forever. The mountain 
 is at present in a slight state of eruption ; and a thick heavy 
 white smoke is perpetually rolled out, interrupted by enormous 
 columns of an impenetrable black bituminous vapour, which is 
 hurled up, fold after fold, into the sky with a deep hollow sound, 
 and fiery stones are rained down from its darkness, and a black 
 shower of ashes fell even where we sat. The lava, like the 
 glacier, creeps on perpetually, with a crackling sound as of 
 suppressed fire. There are several springs of lava ; and in one 
 place it rushes precipitously over a high crag, rolling down the 
 half-molten rocks and its own overhanging waves ; a cataract of 
 quivering fire. We approached the extremity of one of the 
 rivers of lava ; it is about twenty feet in breadth and ten in 
 height ; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, its motion was 
 very slow. We saw the masses of its dark exterior surface de- 
 tach themselves as it moved, and betray the depth of the liquid 
 flame. In the day the fire is but slightly seen ; you only 
 observe a tremulous motion in the air, and streams and fountains 
 of white sulphurous smoke. 
 
 At length we saw the sun sink between Capreas and Inarime, 
 and, as the darkness increased, the effect of the fire became 
 more beautiful. We were, as it were, surrounded by streams 
 and cataracts of the red and radiant fire ; and in the midst. 
 
356 LETTERS. 
 
 from the column of bituminous smoke shot up into the air, fell 
 'the vast masses of rock, white with the light of their intense 
 heat, leaving behind them through the dark vapour trains of 
 splendour. We descended by torch-light, and I should have 
 enjoyed the scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I 
 know not how, to the hermitage in a state of intense bodily 
 suffering, the worst effect of which was spoiling the pleasure of 
 
 Mary and C . Our guides on the occasion were complete 
 
 savages. You have no idea of the horrible cries which they 
 suddenly utter, no one knows why ; the clamour, the vocifera- 
 tion, the tumult. C in her palanquin suffered most from 
 
 it ; and when I had gone on before, they threatened to leave 
 her in the middle of the road, which they would have done had 
 not my Italian servant promised them a beating, after which 
 they became quiet. Nothing, however, can be more picturesque 
 than the gestures and the physiognomies of these savage people. 
 And when, in the darkness of night, they unexpectedly begin to 
 sing in chorus some fragments of their wild but sweet national 
 music, the effect is exceedingly fine. 
 
 Since I wrote this, I have seen the museum of this city. 
 Such statues 1 There is a Venus ; an ideal shape of the most 
 winning loveliness. A Bacchus, more sublime than any living 
 being. A Satyr, making love to a youth : in which the 
 expressed life of the sculpture, and the inconceivable beauty of 
 the form of the youth, overcome one's repugnance to the 
 subject. There are multitudes of wonderfully fine statues found 
 in Herculaneum and Pompeii. We are going to see Pompeii 
 the first day that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum is almost 
 filled up ; no more excavations are made ; the king bought the 
 ground and built a palace upon it. 
 
 You don't see much of Hunt. I wish you could contrive to see 
 him when you go to town, and ask him what he means to answer 
 to Lord Byron's invitation. He has now an opportunity, if he 
 likes, of seeing Italy. What do you think of joining his party, 
 and paying us a visit next year ; I mean as soon as the reign of 
 winter is dissolved ? Write to me your thoughts upon this. I 
 cannot express to you the pleasure it would give me to welcome 
 such a party. 
 
 I have depression enough of spirits and not good health, 
 though I believe the warm air of Naples does me good. We 
 see absolutely no one here. 
 
 Adieu, my dear P . 
 
 Affectionately your friend, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
LETTERS. 257 
 
 XXXI I.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Naples^ Jan. 26th, 1819. 
 
 My Dear P. — Your two letters arrived within a few days of 
 each other, one being directed to Naples, and the other to 
 Livorno. They are more welcome visitors to me than mine can 
 be to you. I writing as from sepulchres, you from the habita- 
 tions of men yet unburied ; though the sexton, Castlereagh, 
 after having dug their grave, stands with his spade in his hand, 
 evidently doubting whether he will not be forced to occupy it 
 himself. Your news about the bank-note trials is excellent 
 good. Do I not recognise in it the influence of Cobbett ? You 
 don't tell me what occupies Parliament. I know you will laugh 
 at my demand, and assure me that it is indifferent. Your 
 pamphlet I want exceedingly to see. Your calculations in the 
 letter are clear, but require much oral explanation. You know 
 I am an infernal arithmetician. If none but me had contem- 
 plated " lucentemque globum lunae, Titaniaque astra," the 
 world would yet have doubted whether they were many 
 hundred feet higher than the mountain tops. 
 
 In my accounts of pictures and things, I am more pleased to 
 interest you than the many ; and this is fortunate, because, in 
 the first place, I have no idea of attempting the latter, and if I 
 did attempt it, I should assuredly fail. A perception of the 
 beautiful characterises those who differ from ordinary men, and 
 those who can perceive it would not buy enough to pay the 
 printer. Besides, I keep no journal, and the only records of my 
 voyage will be the letters I send you. The bodily fatigue of 
 standing for hours in galleries exhausts me ; I believe that I 
 don't see half that I ought, on that account. And then we know 
 nobody ; and the common Itahans are so sullen and stupid, it's 
 impossible to get information from them. At Rome, where the 
 people seem superior to any in Italy, I cannot fail to stumble on 
 something more. O, if I had health, and strength, and equal 
 spirits, what boundless intellectual improvement might I not 
 gather in this wonderful country ! At present I write little else 
 but poetry, and little of that. My first act of Prometheus is 
 complete, and I think you would like it. I consider poetry 
 very subordinate to moral and political science, and if I were 
 well, certainly I would aspire to the latter ; for I can conceive a 
 great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmon- 
 ising the contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. 
 Far from me is such an attempt, and I shall be content, by 
 
 98 
 
158 LETTERS. 
 
 exercising my fancy, to amuse myself, and perhaps some others, 
 and cast what weight I can into the scale of that balance, which 
 the Giant of Arthegall holds. 
 
 Since you last heard from me, we have been to see Pompeii, 
 and are waiting now for the return of spring weather, to visit, 
 first, Paestum, and then the islands ; after which we shall return 
 to Rome. I was astonished at the remains of this city ; I had 
 no conception of anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea of 
 the mode of its destruction was this : — First, an earthquake 
 shattered it, and unroofed almost all its temples, and split its 
 columns ; then a rain of light small pumice-stones fell ; then 
 torrents of boiling water, mixed with ashes, filled up all its 
 crevices. A wide, flat hill, from which the city was excavated, 
 is now covered by thick woods, and you see the tombs and the 
 theatres, the temples and the houses, surrounded by the unin- 
 habited wilderness. We entered the town from the side towards 
 the sea, and first saw two theatres ; one more magnificent than 
 the other, strewn with the ruins of the white marble which 
 formed their seats and cornices, wrought with deep, bold 
 sculpture. In the front, between the stage and the seats, is the 
 circular space, occasionally occupied by the chorus. The stage 
 is very narrow, but long, and divided from this space by a 
 narrow enclosure parallel to it, I suppose for the orchestra. On 
 each side are the consuls' boxes, and below, in the theatre at 
 Herculaneum, were found two equestrian statues of admirable 
 workmanship, occupying the same place as the great bronze 
 lamps did at Drury Lane. The smallest of the theatres is said 
 to have been comic, though I should doubt. From both you 
 see, as you sit on the seats, a prospect of the most wonderful 
 beauty. 
 
 You then pass through the ancient streets ; they are very 
 narrow, and the houses rather small, but all constructed on an 
 admirable plan, especially for this climate. The rooms are 
 built round a court, or sometimes two, according to the extent 
 of the house. In the midst is a fountain, sometimes surrounded 
 with a portico, supported on fluted columns of white stucco; the 
 floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes wrought in imitation of 
 vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and more or less 
 beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant. There were 
 paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to 
 decorate the royal museums. Little winged figures, and small 
 ornaments of exquisite elegance, yet remain. There is an ideal 
 life in the forms of these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, 
 though most are evidently the work of very inferior artists. It 
 
LETTERS. 259 
 
 seems as if, from the atmosphere of mental beauty which sur- 
 rounded them, every human being caught a splendour not his 
 own. In one house you see how the bed-rooms were managed : 
 — a small sofa was built up, where the cushions were placed ; 
 two pictures, one representing Diana and Endymion, the other 
 Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber ; and a little niche, 
 which contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor is com- 
 posed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and 
 porphyry ; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white 
 columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of the portico they 
 supported. The houses have only one storey, and the apart- 
 ments, though not large, are very lofty. A great advantage 
 results from this, wholly unknown in our cities. The public 
 buildings, whose ruins are now forests, as it were, of white fluted 
 columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with 
 sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. 
 This was the excellence of the ancients. Their private expenses 
 were comparatively moderate ; the dwelling of one of the chief 
 senators of Pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with most 
 beautiful specimens of art, but small. But their public buildings 
 are everywhere marked by the bold and grand designs of an 
 unsparing magnificence. In the little town of Pompeii, (it con- 
 tained about twenty thousand inhabitants,) it is wonderful to see 
 the number and the grandeur of their public buildings. Another 
 advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious scenery 
 around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the 
 Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeians 
 could contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven ; could 
 see the moon rise high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the 
 sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of golden vapour, between 
 Inarime and Misenum. 
 
 We next saw the temples. Of the temple of ^sculapius 
 little remains but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice 
 imitating the scales of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, 
 was found in the cell. The temple of I sis is more perfect. It 
 is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, and in the area 
 around it are two altars, and many ceppi for statues ; and a 
 little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the most 
 exquisite proportion ; its panels are adorned with figures in 
 bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most 
 delicate and perfect that can be conceived. They are Egyptian 
 subjects, executed by a Greek artist, who has harmonised all the 
 unnatural extravagances of the original conception into the 
 supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. They scarcely 
 
2€o LETTERS. 
 
 touch the ground with their feet, and their wind-uplifted robes 
 seem in the place of wings. The temple in the midst raised on 
 a high platform, and approached by steps, was decorated with 
 exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum at 
 Portici. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a 
 pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of white stucco, 
 so white that it dazzles you to look at it. 
 
 Thence through other porticos and labyrinths of walls and 
 columns (for I cannot hope to detail everything to you), we 
 came to the Forum. This is a large square, surrounded by 
 lofty porticos of fluted columns, some broken, some entire, 
 their entablatures strewed under them. The temple of Jupiter, 
 of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the Hall of 
 Public Justice, with their forests of lofty columns, surround the 
 Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for, 
 whether they supported equestrian statues, or were the altars of 
 the temple of Venus, before which they stand, the guide could 
 not tell), occupy the lower end of the Forum. At the upper 
 end, supported on an elevated platform, stands the temple of 
 Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its portico we sate, and 
 pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and medlars (sorry 
 fare, you will say), and rested to eat. Here was a magnificent 
 spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous shafts of the 
 sun-shining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple 
 heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its line 
 the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly 
 deep, and tinged towards their summits with streaks of new- 
 fallen snow. Between was one small green island. To the 
 right was Capreas, Inarime, Prochyta, and Misenum. Behind 
 was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth volumes of 
 thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes 
 darted into the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the 
 wind. Between Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through 
 a chasm, was seen the main line of the loftiest Apennines, to the 
 east. The day was radiant and warm. Every now and then 
 we heard the subterranean thunder of Vesuvius ; its distant 
 deep peals seemed to shake the very air and light of day, which 
 interpenetrated our frames, with the sullen and tremendous 
 sound. This sound was what the Greeks beheld (Pompeii, you 
 know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony with nature ; 
 and the interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, 
 as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this 
 glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is 
 Pompeii, what was Athens ? What scene was exhibited from 
 
LETTERS. 261 
 
 the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the temples of Hercules, and 
 Theseus, and the Winds ? The islands and the ^Egean sea, the 
 mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and Olympus, 
 and the darkness of the Boeotian forests interspersed ? 
 
 From the Forum we went to another public place ; a 
 triangular portico, half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. 
 It is built on the edge of the hill overlooking the sea. That 
 black point is the temple. In the apex of the triangle stands an 
 altar and a fountain, and before the altar once stood the statue 
 of the builder of the portico. Returning hence, and following 
 the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of the city. The 
 walls are of enormous strength, and inclose a space of three 
 miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate are built the 
 tombs. How unlike ours ! They seem not so much hiding- 
 places for that which must decay, as voluptuous chambers for 
 immortal spirits. They are of marble, radiantly white ; and 
 two, especially beautiful, are loaded with exquisite bas-reliefs. 
 On the stucco-wall that incloses them are little emblematic 
 figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals, 
 and little winged genii, and female forms bending in groups in 
 some funereal office. The higher reliefs represent, one a 
 nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one. Within the 
 cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. 
 It is said that paintings were found within ; which are now, as 
 has been everything moveable in Pompeii, removed, and 
 scattered about in royal museums. These tombs were the 
 most impressive things of all. The wild woods surround them 
 on either side ; and along the broad stones of the paved road 
 which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver 
 and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like 
 the step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these 
 dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished 
 marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which 
 adorn them, contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses 
 of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them. 
 
 I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of great magni- 
 tude, though much inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand 
 why the Greeks were such great poets ; and, above all, I can 
 account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, the per- 
 fection, the uniform excellence, of all their works of art. They 
 lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature, and 
 nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their 
 theatres were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their 
 columns, the ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof of 
 
262 LETTERS. 
 
 interwoven tracery, admitted the light and wind ; the odour and 
 the freshness of the country penetrated the cities. Their 
 temples were mostly upaithric ; and the flying clouds, the stars, 
 or the deep sky, were seen above. O, but for that series of 
 wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest of the 
 world ; but for the Christian religion, which put the finishing 
 stroke on the ancient system ; but for those changes that 
 conducted Athens to its ruin — to what an eminence might not 
 humanity have arrived ! 
 
 In a short time I hope to tell you something of the museum of 
 this city. 
 
 You see how ill I follow the maxim of Horace, at least in its 
 literal sense : " nil admirari " — which I should say, " properes 
 est una " — to prevent there ever being anything admirable in 
 the world. Fortunately Plato is of my opinion ; and I had 
 rather err with Plato than be right with Horace. 
 
 At this moment I received your letter, indicating that you are 
 removing to London. I am very much interested in the subject 
 of this change, and beg you would write me all the particulars 
 of it. You will be able now to give me perhaps a closer insight 
 into the politics of the times than was permitted you at Marlow. 
 
 Of H I have a very slight opinion. There are rumours here 
 
 of a revolution in Spain. A ship came in twelve days from 
 Catalonia, and brought a report that the king was massacred ; 
 that eighteen thousand insurgents surrounded Madrid ; but that 
 before the popular party gained head enough, seven thousand 
 were murdered by the Inquisition. Perhaps you know all by 
 this time. The old king of Spain is dead here. Cobbett is a 
 fine v/ievoTTOLos — does his influence increase or diminish ? What 
 a pity that so powerful a genius should be combined with the 
 most odious moral qualities. 
 
 We have reports here of a change in the English ministry — to 
 what does it amount ? for, besides my national interest in it, I 
 am on the watch to vindicate my most sacred rights, invaded by 
 the chancery court. 
 
 I suppose now we shall not see you in Italy this spring, 
 whether Hunt comes or not. It's probable I shall hear nothing 
 from him for some months, particularly if he does not come. 
 Give me ses nouvelles. 
 
 I am under an English surgeon here, who says I have a 
 disease of the liver, which he will cure. We keep horses, as 
 this kind of exercise is absolutely essential to my health. Elise* 
 
 * A Swiss girl whom we had engaged as nursery-maid two years 
 before, at Geneva.— if. aS'. 
 
LETTERS. , 263 
 
 has just married our Italian servant, and has quitted us ; the 
 man was a great rascal, and cheated enormously : this event was 
 very much against our advice. 
 I have scarcely been out since I wrote last. 
 
 Adieu 1 — Yours most faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XXXIII.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Naples^ February 25M, 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Peacock — I am much interested to hear your 
 progress in the object of your removal to London. There is no 
 person in the world who would more sincerely rejoice in any 
 good that might befall you than I should. 
 
 We are on the point of quitting Naples for Rome. The 
 scenery which surrounds this city is more delightful than any 
 within the immediate reach of civilized man. I do not think I 
 have mentioned to you the Lago d'Agnano and the Caccia 
 d'Ischieri, and I have since seen what obscures those lovely 
 forms in my memory. They are both the craters of extin- 
 guished volcanos, and Nature has thrown forth forests of oak 
 and ilex, and spread mossy lawns and clear lakes over the dead 
 or sleeping fire. The first is a scene of a wider and milder 
 character, with soft sloping, wooded hills, and grassy declivities 
 declining to the lake, and cultivated plains of vines woven upon 
 poplar trees, bounded by the theatre of hills. Innumerable wild 
 water-birds, quite tame, inhabit this place. The other is a royal 
 chace, is surrounded by steep and lofty hills, and only accessible 
 through a wide gate of massy oak, from the vestibule of which 
 the spectacle of precipitous hills, hemming in a narrow and 
 circular vale, is suddenly disclosed. The hills are covered with 
 thick woods of ilex, myrtle, and laurustinus ; the polished 
 leaves of the ilex, as they wave in their multitudes under the 
 partial blasts which rush through the chasms of the vale, glitter 
 above the dark masses of foliage below, like the white foam of 
 waves upon a deep blue sea. The plain so surrounded is at 
 most three miles in circumference. It is occupied partly by a 
 lake, with bold shores wooded by evergreens, and interrupted 
 by a sylvan promonotry of the wild forest, whose mossy boughs 
 overhang its expanse, of a silent and purple darkness, like an 
 Italian midnight ; and partly by the forest itself, of all gigantic 
 trees, but the oak especially, whose jagged boughs, now leafless, 
 
264 LETTERS. 
 
 are hoary with thick lichens, and loaded with the massy and 
 deep foliage of the ivy. The effect of the dark eminences that 
 surround this plain, seen through the boughs, is of an enchant- 
 ing solemnity. (There we saw in one instance wild boars and 
 a deer, and in another — a spectacle little suited to the antique 
 and Latonian nature of the place — King Ferdinand in a winter 
 enclosure, watching to shoot wild boars.) The underwood was 
 principally evergreen, all lovely kinds of fern and furze ; the 
 cytisus, a delicate kind of furze with a pretty yellow blossom, 
 the myrtle, and the myrica. The willow trees had just begun to 
 put forth their green and golden buds, and gleamed like points 
 of lambent fire among the wintry forest. The Grotta del Cane, 
 too, we saw, because other people see it ; but would not allow 
 the dogs to be exhibited in torture for our curiosity. The poor 
 little animals stood moving their tails in a slow and dismal 
 manner, as if perfectly resigned to their condition — a cur-like 
 emblem of voluntary servitude. The effect of the vapour, which 
 extinguishes a torch, is to cause suffocation at last, through a 
 process which makes the lungs feel as if they were torn by 
 sharp points within. So a surgeon told us, who tried the 
 experiment on himself. 
 
 There was a Greek city, sixty miles to the south of Naples^ 
 called Posidonia, now Pesto, where there still subsist three 
 temples of Etruscan * architecture, one almost perfect. From 
 this city we have just returned. The weather was most 
 unfavourable for our expedition. After two months of cloudless 
 serenity, it began raining cats and dogs. The first night we 
 slept at Salerno, a large city situate in the recess of a deep bay ; 
 surrounded with stupendous mountains of the same name. A 
 few miles from Torre del Greco we entered on the pass of the 
 mountains, which is a line dividing the isthmus of those 
 enormous piles of rock which compose the southern boundary 
 of the bay of Naples, and the northern one of that of Salerno. 
 On one side is a lofty conical hill, crowned with the turrets of a 
 ruined castle, and cut into platforms for cultivation ; at least 
 every ravine and glen, whose precipitous sides admitted of 
 other vegetation but that of the rock-rooted ilex : on the other, 
 the aethereal snowy crags of an immense mountain, whose 
 terrible lineaments were at intervals concealed or disclosed by 
 volumes of dense clouds, rolling under the tempest. Half a 
 mile from this spot, between orange and lemon groves of 
 a lovely village, suspended as it were on an amphitheatral 
 
 * The architecture is Doric— r. Z. P. 
 
LETTERS. 265 
 
 precipice, whose golden globes contrasted with the white walls 
 and dark green leaves which they almost outnumbered, shone the 
 sea. A burst of the declining sunlight illumined it. The road 
 led along the brink of the precipice towards Salerno. Nothing 
 could be more glorious than the scene. The immense mountains 
 covered with the rare and divine vegetation of this climate, with 
 many-folding vales, and deep dark recesses, which the fancy 
 scarcely could penetrate, descended from their snowy summits 
 precipitously to the sea. Before us was Salerno, built into a 
 declining plain, between the mountains and the sea. Beyond, 
 the other shore of sky-cleaving mountains, then dim with the 
 mist of tempest. Underneath, from the base of the precipice 
 where the road conducted, rocky promontories jutted into the 
 sea, covered with olive and ilex woods, or with the ruined battle- 
 ments of some Norman or Saracen fortress. We slept at 
 Salerno, and the next morning before daybreak proceeded to 
 Posidonia. The night had been tempestuous, and our way lay 
 by the sea sand. It was utterly dark, except when the long 
 line of wave burst, with a sound like thunder, beneath the 
 starless sky, and cast up a kind of mist of cold white lustre. 
 When morning came, we found ourselves travelling in a wide 
 desert plain, perpetually interrupted by wild irregular glens, and 
 bounded on all sides by the Apennines and the sea. Sometimes 
 it was covered with forest, sometimes dotted with underwood, 
 or mere tufts of fern and furze, and the wintry dry tendrils 
 of creeping plants. I have never, but in the Alps, seen an 
 amphitheatre of mountains so magnificent. After travelling 
 fifteen miles we came to a river, the bridge of which had been 
 broken, and which was so swollen that the ferry would not take 
 the carriage across. We had, therefore, to walk seven miles of 
 a muddy road, which led to the ancient city across the desolate 
 Maremma. The air was scented with the sweet smell of violets 
 of an extraordinary size and beauty. At length we saw the 
 sublime and massy colonnades, skirting the horizon of the 
 wilderness. We entered by the ancient gate, which is now no 
 more than a chasm in the rock-like wall. Deeply sunk in the 
 ground beside it, were the ruins of a sepulchre, which the 
 ancients were in the custom of building beside the public way. 
 The first temple, which is the smallest, consists of an outer 
 range of columns, quite perfect, and supporting a perfect 
 architrave and two shattered frontispieces.* The proportions 
 * The three temples are amphiprostyle ; that is, they have two 
 prospects or fronts, each of six columns in the two first, and of nine in 
 the Basilica. See Major's Ruins of Paestum. 1768. — 7". Z. P. 
 
266 LETTERS. 
 
 are extremely massy, and the architecture entirely unornamented 
 and simple. These columns do not seem more than forty feet 
 high,* but the perfect proportions diminish the apprehension 
 of their magnitude ; it seems as if inequality and irregularity of 
 form were requisite to force on us the relative idea of greatness. 
 The scene from between the columns of the temple, consists on 
 one side of the sea, to which the gentle hill on which it is built 
 slopes, and on the other, of the grand amphitheatre of the 
 loftiest Apennines, dark purple mountains, crowned with snow 
 and intercepted there by long bars of hard and leaden-coloured 
 cloud. The effect of the jagged outline of mountains, through 
 groups of enormous columns on one side, and on the other the 
 level horizon of the sea, is inexpressibly grand. The second 
 temple is much larger, and also more perfect. Beside the 
 outer range of columns, it contains an interior range of column 
 above column, and the ruins of a wall, which was the screen of 
 the penetralia. With little diversity of ornament, the order of 
 architecture is similar to that of the first temple. The columns 
 in all are fluted, and built of a porous volcanic stone, which 
 time has dyed with a rich and yellow colour. The columns are 
 one-third larger, and like that of the first, diminish from the 
 base to the capital, so that, but for the chastening effect of their 
 admirable proportions, their magnitude would, from the delusion 
 of perspective, seem greater, not less, than it is ; though 
 perhaps we ought to say, not that this symmetry diminishes 
 your apprehension of their magnitude, but that it overpowers 
 the idea of relative greatness, by establishing within itself a 
 system of relations, destructive of your idea of its relation with 
 other objects, on which our ideas of size depend. The third 
 temple is what they call a Basilica ; three columns alone remain 
 of the interior range ; the exterior is perfect, but that the 
 cornice and frieze in many places have fallen. This temple 
 covers more ground than either of the others, but its columns 
 are of an intermediate magnitude between those of the second 
 and the first. 
 
 We only contemplated these sublime monuments for two 
 hours, and of course could only bring away so imperfect a 
 conception of them, as is the shadowof some half-remembered 
 dream. 
 
 * The height of the columns is respectively i8 feet 6 inches, and 28 
 feet 5 inches and 6i lines, in the two first temples ; and 21 feet 6 inches 
 in the Basilica. This shows the justice of the remarks on the difference 
 of real and apparent magnitude. — T. L. F, 
 
LETTERS. . 267 
 
 The royal collection of paintings in this city is sufficiently 
 miserable. Perhaps the most remarkable is the original studio 
 by Michael Angelo of the " Day of Judgment," which is painted 
 \n fresco on the Sixtine chapel of the Vatican. It is there so 
 defaced as to be wholly indistinguishable. I cannot but think 
 the genius of this artist highly overrated. He has not only no 
 temperance, no modesty, no feeling for the just boundaries of 
 art (and in these respects an admirable genius may err), but he 
 has no sense of beauty, and to want this is to want the sense of 
 the creative power of mind. What is terror without a contrast 
 with, and a connexion with, loveliness. How well Dante under- 
 stood this secret — Dante, with whom this artist has been so 
 presumptuously compared ! What a thing his " Moses " is ; 
 how distorted from all that is natural and majestic. ... In the 
 picture to which I allude, God is leaning out of heaven. The 
 Holy Ghost, in the shape of a dove, is under him. Under the 
 Holy Ghost stands Jesus Christ, in an attitude of haranguing 
 the assembly. This figure, which his subject, or rather the 
 view which it became him to take of it, ought to have modelled 
 of a calm, severe, awe-inspiring majesty, is in the attitude of 
 commonplace resentment. On one side of this figure are the 
 elect ; on the other, the host of heaven ; they ought to have 
 been what the Christians call glorified bodies^ floating onward, 
 and radiant with that everlasting light (I speak in the spirit of 
 their faith), which had consumed their mortal veil. They are in 
 fact very ordinary people. Below is the ideal purgatory, I 
 imagine, in mid air, in the shapes of spirits, some of whom 
 demons are dragging down, others falling as it were by their 
 own weight, others half-suspended in that Mahomet-coffin-kind 
 of attitude which most moderate Christians, I believe, expect to 
 assume. Every step towards hell approximates to the region of 
 the artist's exclusive power. There is great imagination in 
 many of the situations of these unfortunate spirits. But hell 
 and death are his real sphere. The bottom of the picture is 
 divided by a lofty rock, in which there is a cavern whose 
 entrance is thronged by devils, some coming in with spirits, 
 some going out for prey. The blood-red light of the fiery 
 abyss glows through their dark forms. On one side, are the 
 devils in all hideous forms, struggling with the damned, who 
 have received their sentence, and are chained in all forms of 
 agony by knotted serpents, and writhing on the crags in every 
 variety of torture. On the other, are the dead, coming out of 
 their graves — horrible forms. Such is the famous " Day of 
 Judgment " of Michael Angelo ; a kind of Titus Andronicus 
 
268 LETTERS. 
 
 in painting, but the author surely no Shakspeare. The other 
 paintings are one or two of Raphael or his pupils, very sweet 
 and lovely. A " Danae " of Titian, a picture, the softest and 
 most voluptuous form, with languid and uplifted eyes, and 
 warm yet passive limbs. A " Maddelena," by Guido, with 
 dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes, and an earnest, soft, 
 melancholy look. And some excellent pictures, in point of 
 execution, by Annibal Caracci. None others worth a second 
 look. Of the gallery of statues I cannot speak. They require 
 a volume, not a letter. Still less what can I do at Rome ? 
 
 I have just seen the Quarterly for September, not from my 
 own box. I suppose there is no chance now of the 
 organization of a review ! This is a great pity. The Quarterly 
 is undoubtedly conducted with talent, great talent, and affords 
 a dreadful preponderance against the cause of improvement. 
 If a band of staunch reformers, resolute and skilful, were united 
 in so close and constant a league as that in which interest and 
 fanaticism have bound the members of that literary coalition ! 
 
 Adieu. Address your next letter to Rome, whence you shall 
 hear from me soon again. M. and C. unite with me in the very 
 kindest remembrances. — Most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 A doctor here has been messing me, and I believe has done 
 me an important benefit. One of his pretty schemes has been 
 putting caustic on my side. You may guess how much quiet 
 :I have had since it was laid on. 
 
 XXXIV.— To T. L. P. 
 
 Rome^ March lyd^ 1819. 
 
 My Dear P. — I wrote to you the day before our departure 
 from Naples. We came by slow journeys, with our own horses, 
 to Rome, resting one day at Mola di Gaeta, at the inn called 
 Villa di Cicerone, from being built on the ruins of his Villa, 
 whose immense substructions overhang the sea, and are 
 scattered among the orange-groves. Nothing can be lovelier 
 than the scene from the terraces of the . inn. On one side 
 precipitous mountains, whose bases slope into an inclined plane 
 of olive and orange copses — the latter forming, as it were, an 
 emerald sky of leaves, starred with innumerable globes of their 
 ripening fruit, whose rich splendour contrasted with the deep 
 
LETTERS. 269 
 
 green foliage ; on the other the sea — bounded on one side by 
 the antique town of Gaeta, and the other by what appears to be 
 an island, the promontory of Circe. From Gaeta to Terracina 
 the whole scenery is of the most sublime character. At 
 Terracina, precipitous conical crags of immense height shoot 
 into the sky and overhang the sea. At Albano, we arrived again 
 in sight of Rome. Arches after arches in unending lines stretch- 
 ing across the uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined line of 
 the mountains seen between them ; masses of nameless ruin 
 standing like rocks out of the plain ; and the plain itself, with 
 its billowy and unequal surface, announced the neighbourhood 
 of Rome. And what shall I say to you of Rome ? If I speak 
 of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones piled upon stones, which 
 are the sepulchres of the fame of those who once arrayed them 
 with the beauty which has faded, will you believe me insensible 
 to the vital, the almost breathing creations of genius yet sub- 
 sisting in their perfection ? What has become, you will ask, of 
 the Appollo, the Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol ? What 
 of the Apollo di Belvedere, the Laocoon .? What of Rafifael and 
 Guido 1 These things are best spoken of when the mind has 
 drunk in the spirit of their forms ; and little indeed can I, who 
 must devote no more than a few months to the contemplation of 
 them, hope to know or feel of their profound beauty. 
 
 I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impressions on me 
 on my first visit to this city. The next most considerable relic 
 of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Caracalla. 
 These consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in 
 height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. 
 There are, in addition, a number of towers and labyrinthine 
 recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of weeds 
 and ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. 
 The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines 
 filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots 
 are knotted in the rifts of the stones. At every step the aerial 
 pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of 
 effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the distant 
 mountains change their aspect to one travelling rapidly along 
 the plain. The perpendicular walls resemble nothing more 
 than that cliff of Bisham wood, that is overgrown with wood, 
 and yet is stony and precipitous — you know the one I mean ; 
 not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the pretty copse of 
 
 fir-trees and privet-bushes at its base, and where H and I 
 
 scrambled up, and you, to my infinite discontent, would go 
 home. These walls surround green and level spaces of lawn, 
 
270 LETTERS, 
 
 on which some elms have grown, and which are interspersed 
 towards their skirts by masses of the fallen ruin, overtwined with 
 the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies 
 it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls. 
 
 But the most interesting effect remains. In one of the 
 buttresses, that supports an immense and lofty arch, " which 
 bridges the very winds of heaven," are the crumbling remains of 
 an antique winding staircase, whose sides are open in many 
 places to the precipice. This you ascend, and arrive on the 
 summit of these piles. There grow on every side thick 
 entangled wildernesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, 
 and the flowering laurestinus, whose white blossoms are just 
 developed, the white fig, and a thousand nameless plants sown 
 by the wandering winds. These woods are intersected on 
 every side by paths, like sheep-tracks through the copse-wood 
 of steep mountains, which wind to every part of the immense 
 labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses, 
 themselves like mountains, which have been seen from below. 
 In one place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown 
 ruin : on one side is the immensity of earth and sky, on the 
 other a narrow chasm, which is bounded by an arch of 
 enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured foliage and 
 blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid, over- 
 grown like itself with the all-prevailing vegetation. Around 
 rise other crags and other peaks, all arrayed, and the 
 deformity of their vast desolation softened down, by the 
 undecaying investiture of nature. Come to Rome. It is a 
 scene by which expression is overpowered ; which words 
 cannot convey. Still further, winding up one half of the 
 shattered pyramids, by the path through the blooming copse- 
 wood, you come to a little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild 
 shrubs ; it is overgrown with anemonies, wall-flowers, and 
 violets, whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant 
 blue flowers, whose names I know not, and which scatter 
 through the air the divinest odour, which, as you recline under 
 the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous faint- 
 ness, like the combinations of sweet music. The paths still 
 wind on, threading the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, 
 other lawns, and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, and 
 terrific chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover several 
 acres, and that the paths above penetrate at least half their 
 extent, your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to 
 express of this astonishing scene. 
 
 I speak of these things not in the order in which I visited 
 
LETTERS. 271 
 
 them, but in that of the impression which they made on me, or 
 perhaps chance directs. The ruins of the ancient Forum are so 
 far fortunate that they have not been walled up in the modern 
 city. They stand in an open, lonesome place, bounded on one 
 side by the modern city, and the other by the Palatine Mount, 
 covered with shapeless masses of ruin. The tourists tell you all 
 about these things, and I am afraid of stumbling on their 
 language when I enumerate what is so well known. There 
 remain eight granite columns of the Ionic order, with their 
 entablature, of the temple of Concord, founded by Camillus. 
 I fear that the immense expanse demanded by these columns 
 forbids us to hope that they are the remains of any edifice 
 dedicated by that most perfect and virtuous of men. It is 
 supposed to have been repaired under the Eastern Emperors ; 
 alas, what a contrast of recollections ! Near them stand those 
 Corinthian fluted columns, which supported the angle of a 
 temple ; the architrave and entablature are worked with 
 delicate sculpture. Beyond, to the south, is another solitary 
 column ; and still more distant, three more, supporting the 
 wreck of an entablature. Descending from the Capitol to the 
 Forum, is the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, less perfect 
 than that of Constantine, though from its proportions and 
 magnitude a most impressive monument. That of Constantine, 
 or rather of Titus (for the relief and sculpture, and even the 
 colossal images of Dacian captives, were torn by a decree of the 
 senate from an arch dedicated to the latter, to adorn that of this 
 stupid and wicked monster, Constantine, one of whose chief 
 merits consists in establishing a religion, the destroyer of 
 those arts which would have rendered so base a spoliation 
 unnecessary), is the most perfect. It is an admirable work of 
 art. It is built of the finest marble, and the outline of the 
 reliefs is in many parts as perfect as if just finished. Four 
 Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side, a bold entabla- 
 ture, whose bases are loaded with reliefs of captives in every 
 attitude of humiliation and slavery. The compartments above 
 express, in bolder relief, the enjoyment of success ; the 
 conqueror on his throne, or in his chariot, or nodding 
 over the crushed multitudes, who writhe under his horses' hoofs, 
 as those below express the torture and abjectness of defeat. 
 There are three arches, whose roofs are panneled with fretwork, 
 and their sides adorned with similar reliefs. The keystone of 
 these arches is supported each by two winged figures of Victory, 
 whose hair floats on the wind of their own speed, and whose 
 arms are outstretched, bearing trophies, as if impatient to meet. 
 
272 LETTERS, 
 
 They look, as it were, borne from the subject extremities of the 
 earth, on the breath which is the exhalation of that battle and 
 desolation, which it is their mission to commemorate. Never 
 were monuments so completely fitted to the purpose for which 
 they were designed, of expressing that mixture of energy and 
 error which is called a triumph. 
 
 I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian 
 evening, and return by star or moonlight, through this scene. 
 The elms are just budding, and the warm spring winds bring 
 unknown odours, all sweet from the country. I see the radiant 
 Orion through the mighty columns of the temple of Concord, 
 and the mellow fading light softens down the modern buildings 
 of the capitol, the only ones that interfere with the sublime 
 desolation of the scene. On the steps of the capitol itself, stand 
 two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each with his horse, 
 iinely executed, though far inferior to those of Monte Cavallo, 
 the cast of one of which you know we saw together in London. 
 This walk is close to our lodging, and this is my evening walk. 
 
 What shall I say of the modern city ? Rome is yet the capital 
 of the world. It is a city of palaces and temples, more glorious 
 than those which any other city contains, and of ruins more 
 glorious than they. Seen from any of the eminences that 
 surround it, it exhibits domes beyond domes, and palaces, and 
 colonnades interminably, even to the horizon ; interspersed with 
 patches of desert, and mighty ruins which stand girt by their 
 own desolation, in the midst of the fanes of living religions and 
 the habitations of living men, in sublime loneliness. St. Peter's 
 is, as you have heard, the loftiest building in Europe. Externally 
 it is inferior in architectural beauty to St Paul's, though not 
 wholly devoid of it ; internally it exhibits littleness on a large 
 scale, and is in every respect opposed to antique taste. You 
 know my propensity to admire ; and I tried to persuade myself 
 out of this opinion — in vain ; the more I see of the interior of 
 St. Peter's, the less impression as a whole does it produce on me. 
 I cannot even think it lofty, though its dome is considerably 
 higher than any hill within fifty miles of London ; and when 
 one reflects, it is an astonishing monument of the daring energy 
 of man. Its colonnade is wonderfully fine, and there are two 
 fountains, which rise in spire-like columns of water to an 
 immense height in the sky, and falling on the porphyry vases 
 from which they spring, fill the whole air with a radiant mist, 
 which at noon is thronged with innumerable rainbows. In the 
 midst stands an obelisk. In front is the palace-like facade of 
 St. Peter's, certainly magnificent ; and there is produced, on the 
 
LETTERS, 273 
 
 whole, an architectural combination unequalled in the world. 
 But the dome of the temple is concealed, except at a very great 
 distance, by the fagade and the inferior part of the building, and 
 that diabolical contrivance they call an attic. 
 
 The effect of the Pantheon is totally the reverse of that of St. 
 Peter's. Though not a fourth part of the size, it is, as it were, 
 the visible image of the universe ; in the perfection of its pro- 
 portions, as when you regard the unmeasured dome of heaven, 
 the idea of magnitude is swallowed up and lost. It is open to 
 the sky, and its wide dome is lighted by the ever-changing 
 illumination of the air. The clouds of noon fly over it, and at 
 night the keen stars are seen through the azure darkness, 
 hanging immoveably, or driving after the driving moon among 
 the clouds. We visited it by moonlight ; it is supported by 
 sixteen columns, fluted and Corinthian, of a certain rare and 
 beautiful yellow marble, exquisitely polished, called here giallo 
 antico. Above these are the niches for the statues of the twelve 
 gods. This is the only defect of this sublime temple ; there 
 ought to have been no interval between the commencement of 
 the dome and the cornice, supported by the columns. Thus 
 there would have been no diversion from the magnificent 
 simplicity of its form. This improvement is alone wanting to 
 have completed the unity of the idea. 
 
 The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, magnificent 
 combinations of art, such as alone it were worth coming to see. 
 That in the Piazza Navona, a large square, is composed of 
 enormous fragments of rock, liled on each other, and penetrated 
 as by caverns. This mass supports an Egyptian obelisk of 
 immense height. On the four corners of the rock recline, in 
 different attitudes, colossal figures representing the four divi- 
 sions of the globe. The water bursts from the crevices beneath 
 them. They are sculptured with great spirit ; one impatiently 
 tearing a veil from his eyes ; another with his hands stretched 
 upwards. The Fontana di Trevi is the most celebrated, and is 
 rather a waterfall than a fountain ; gushing out from masses of 
 rock, with a gigantic figure of Neptune ; and below are two 
 river gods, checking two winged horses, struggling up from 
 among the rocks and waters. The whole is not ill conceived 
 nor executed ; but you know not how delicate the imagination 
 becomes by dieting with antiquity day after day ! The only 
 things that sustain the comparison are RafFael, Guido, and 
 Salvator Rosa. 
 
 The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group formed by 
 the statues, obelisk, and the fountain, is, however, the most 
 
 99 
 
274 LETTERS. 
 
 admirable of all. From the Piazza Quirinale, or rather Monte 
 Cavallo, you see the boundless ocean of domes, spires, and 
 columns, which is the City, Rome. On a pedestal of white 
 marble rises an obelisk of red granite, piercing the blue sky. 
 Before it is a vast basin of porphyry, in the midst of which rises 
 a column of the purest water, which collects into itself all the 
 overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks them into a thousand 
 prismatic hues and graduated shadows — they fall together with 
 its dashing water-drops into the outer basin. The elevated situa- 
 tion of this fountain produces, I imagine, this effect of colour. 
 On each side, on an elevated pedestal, stand the statues of 
 Castor and Pollux, each in the act of taming his horse ; which 
 are said, but I believe wholly without authority, to be the work 
 of Phidias and Praxiteles. These figures combine the irresist- 
 ible energy with the sublime and perfect loveliness supposed to 
 have belonged to their divine nature. The reins no longer 
 exist, but the position of their hands and the sustained and 
 calm command of their regard, seem to require no mechanical 
 aid to enforce obedience. The countenances at so great a 
 height are scarcely visible, and I have a better idea of that of 
 •which we saw a cast together in London, than of the other. 
 But the sublime and living majesty of their limbs and mien, the 
 nervous and fiery animation of the horses they restrain, seen in 
 the blue sky of Italy, and overlooking the city of Rome, 
 surrounded by the light and the music of that crystalline 
 fountain, no cast can communicate. 
 
 These figures were found at the Baths of Constantine ; but, 
 of course, are of remote antiquity. I do not acquiesce however 
 in the practice of attributing to Phidias, or Praxiteles, or 
 Scopas, or some great master, any admirable work that may be 
 found. We find little of what remained, and perhaps the works 
 of these were such as greatly surpassed all that we conceive of 
 most perfect and admirable in what little has escaped the 
 deluge. If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks, our 
 masters and creators, the gods whom we should worship, — 
 pardon me. 
 
 I have said what I feel without entering into any critical dis- 
 cussions of the ruins of Rome, and the mere outside of this 
 inexhaustible mine of thought and feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, 
 and Forsyth, will tell all the shew-knowledge about it, — " the 
 common stuff of the earth." By-the-bye, Forsyth is worth 
 reading, as I judge from a chapter or two I have seen. I 
 cannot get the book here. 
 
 I ought to have observed that the central arch of the 
 
LETTERS. 275 
 
 triumphal Arch of Titus yet subsists, more perfect in its pro- 
 portions, they say, than any of a later date. This I did not 
 remark. The figures of Victory, with unfolded wings, and each 
 spurning back a globe with outstretched feet, are, perhaps, more 
 beautiful than those on either of the others. Their lips are 
 parted : a delicate mode of indicating the fervour of their desire 
 to arrive at the destined resting-place, and to express the eager 
 respiration of their speed. Indeed, so essential to beauty were 
 the forms expressive of the exercise of the imagination and the 
 affections considered by Greek artists, that no ideal figure of 
 antiquity, not destined to some representation directly exclusive 
 of such a character, is to be found with closed lips. Within 
 this arch are two panneled alto relievos, one representing a 
 train of people bearing in procession the instruments of Jewish 
 worship, among which is the holy candlestick with seven 
 branches ; on the other, Titus standing on a quadriga, with a 
 winged Victory. The grouping of the horses, and the beauty, 
 correctness, and energy of their delineation, is remarkable, 
 though they are much destroyed. 
 
 XXXV.— To T. L. P. 
 
 Rome^ April 6t hi 1819. 
 
 My Dear P.— I sent you yesterday a long letter, all about 
 antique Rome, which you had better keep for some leisure day. 
 I received yours, and one of Hunt's, yesterday. — So, you know 
 
 the B s ? I could not help considering Mrs. B., when I 
 
 knew her, as the most admirable specimen of a human being I 
 had ever seen. Nothing earthly ever appeared to be more per- 
 fect than her character and manners. It is improbable that I 
 shall ever meet again the person whom I so much esteemed, 
 and still admire. I wish, however, that when you see her, you 
 would tell her that I have not forgotten her, nor any of the 
 amiable circle once assembled round her; and that I desire 
 such remembrances to her as an exile and a Pariah may be per- 
 mitted to address to an acknowledged member of the community 
 of mankind. I hear they dined at your lodgings. But no men 
 
 tion of A and his wife — where were they? C , though 
 
 so young when I saw her, gave indications of her mother's 
 excellences ; and, certainly less fascinating is, I doubt not, 
 equally amiable, and more sincere. It was hardly possible 
 
 for a person of the extreme subtlety and delicacy of Mrs. B 's 
 
 understanding and affections, to be quite sincere and constant. 
 
276 LETTERS, 
 
 I am all anxiety about your I. H. affair. There are few who 
 will feel more hearty satisfaction at your success, in this or any 
 other enterprise, than I shall. Pray let me have the earliest 
 intelligence. 
 
 When shall I return to England? The Pythia has ascended 
 the tripod, but she replies not. Our present plans---and I know 
 not what can induce us to alter them — lead us back to Naples 
 in a month or six weeks, where it is almost decided that we 
 should remain until the commencement of 1820. You may 
 imagine, when we receive such letters as yours and Hunt's, what 
 this resolution costs us — but these are not our only communi- 
 cations from England. My health is materially better. My 
 spirits, not the most brilliant in the world ; but that we attribute 
 to our solitary situation, and, though happy, how should I be 
 lively .? We see something of Italian society indeed. The 
 Romans please me much, especially the women, who, though 
 totally devoid of every kind of information, or culture of the 
 imagination, or affections, or understanding — and, in this re- 
 spect, a kind of gentle savages — yet contrive to be interesting. 
 Their extreme innocence and naivete, the freedom and gentle- 
 ness of their manners ; the total absence of affectation, makes an 
 intercourse with them very like an intercourse with uncorrupted 
 children, whom they resemble in loveliness as well as simplicity. 
 I have seen two women in society here of the highest beauty ; 
 their brows and lips, and the moulding of the face modelled 
 with sculptural exactness, and the dark luxuriance of their hair 
 floating over their fine complexions ; and the lips— you must 
 hear the commonplaces which escape from them, before they 
 cease to be dangerous. The only inferior part are the eyes, 
 which, though good and gentle, want the mazy depth of 
 colour behind colour, with which the intellectual women of 
 England and Germafty entangle the heart in soul-inwoven 
 labyrinths. 
 
 This is holy-week, and Rome is quite full. The Emperor of 
 Austria is here, and Maria Louisa is coming. On their journey 
 through the other cities of Italy, she was greeted with loud 
 acclamations, and vivas of Napoleon. Idiots and slaves ! Like 
 the frogs in the fable, because they are discontented with the 
 log, they call upon the stork, who devours them. Great festas, 
 and magnificent funzioni here — we cannot get tickets to all. 
 There are five thousand strangers in Rome, and only room for 
 five hundred, at the celebration of the famous Miserere, in the 
 Sixtine chapel, the only thing I regret we shall not be present 
 at. After all, Rome is eternal ; and were all that is extinguished, 
 
LETTERS. 177 
 
 that which has been, the ruins and the sculptures, would remain, 
 and Raffael and Guido be alone regretted. 
 
 In the Square of St. Peter's there are about three hundred 
 fettered criminals at work, hoeing out the weeds that grow 
 between the stones of the pavement. Their legs are heavily 
 ironed, and some are chained two by two. They sit in long 
 rows, hoeing out the weeds, dressed in parti-coloured clothes. 
 Near them sit or saunter groups of soldiers, armed with loaded 
 muskets. The iron discord of those innumerable chains clanks 
 up into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted with the 
 musical dashing of the fountains, and the deep azure beauty of 
 the sky, and the magnificence of the architecture around, a 
 conflict of sensations allied to madness. It is the emblem of 
 Italy — moral degradation contrasted with the glory of nature 
 and the arts. 
 
 We see no English society here ; it is not probable that we 
 would if we desired it, and I am certain that we should find 
 It unsupportable. The manners of the rich English are wholly 
 unsupportable, and they assume pretensions which they would 
 not venture upon in their own country. I am yet ignorant 
 of the event of Hobhouse's election. I saw the last numbers 
 were — Lamb, 4200 ; and Hobhouse, 3900 — 14th day. There is 
 little hope. That mischievous Cobbett has divided and weak- 
 ened the interests of the popular party, so that the factions that 
 prey upon our country have been able to coalesce to its 
 
 exclusion. The N s you have not seen. I am curious to 
 
 know what kind of a girl Octavia becomes ; she promised well. 
 
 Tell H his Melpomene is in the Vatican, and that her 
 
 attitude and drapery surpass, if possible, the graces of her 
 countenance. 
 
 My " Prometheus Unbound " is just finished, and in a month 
 or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and 
 mechanism of a kind yet unattempted ; and I think the execu- 
 tion is better than any of my former attempts. By-the-bye, 
 have you seen Oilier ? I never hear from him, and am ignorant 
 whether some verses I sent him from Naples, entitled, I think, 
 " Lines on the Euganean hills," have reached him in safety or 
 not. As to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but abuse ; 
 and this is not hearty or sincere enough to amuse me. As to 
 the poem now printing,* I lay no stress on it one way or the 
 other. The concluding lines are natural. 
 
 I believe, my dear P., that you wish us to come back to 
 
 * Rosalind and Helen. 
 
278 LETTERS. 
 
 England. How is it possible ? Health, competence, tranquillity 
 —all these Italy permits, and England takes away. I am 
 regarded by all who know or hear of me, except^ I think, on the 
 whole, five individuals, as a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, 
 whose look even might infect. This is a large computation, 
 and I don't think I could mention more than three. Such is 
 the spirit of the English abroad as well as at home. 
 
 Few compensate, indeed, for all the rest, and if I were alone 
 I should laugh ; or if I were rich enough to do all things, which 
 I shall never be. Pity me for my absence from those social 
 enjoyments which England might afford me, and which I know 
 so well how to appreciate. Still I shall return some fine 
 morning, out of pure weakness of heart. 
 
 My dear P., most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 XXXVI.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 (leghorn.) 
 
 Rome^ April 6thy 1819. 
 
 My Dear Friends — A combination of circumstances, which 
 Mary will explain to you, leads us back to Naples in June, or 
 rather the end of May, where we shall remain until the ensuing 
 winter. We shall take a house at Portici or Castel a Mare, 
 until late in the autumn. 
 
 The object of this letter is to ask you to spend this period 
 with us. There is no society which we have regretted or 
 desired so much as yours, and in our solitude the benefit of 
 your concession would be greater than I can express. What is 
 a sail to Naples ? It is the season of tranquil weather and 
 prosperous winds. If I knew the magic that lay in any given 
 form of words, I would employ them to persuade ; but I fear 
 that all I can say is, as you know with truth, we desire that you 
 would come— we wish to see you. You came to see Mary at 
 Lucca, directly I had departed to Venice. It is not our custom, 
 when we can help it, any more than it is yours, to divide our 
 pleasures. 
 
 What shall I say to entice you ? We shall have a piano, and 
 some books, and — little else, besides ourselves. But what will 
 be most inviting to you, you will give much, though you may 
 receive but little, pleasure. 
 
LETTERS. 279 
 
 But whilst I write this with more desire than hope, yet some 
 of that, perhaps the project may fall into your designs. It 
 is intolerable to think of your being buried at Livorno. The 
 success assured by Mr. Reveley's talents requires another scene. 
 You may have decided to take this summer to consider — and 
 why not with us at Naples, rather than at Livorno ? 
 
 I could address with respect to Naples, the words of 
 Polypheme in Theocritus, to all the friends I wish to see, and 
 you especially : 
 
 'E^^j'^ots, FaXdreta, koX i^evOoiaa \d6oio, 
 "ficTTrep e->u; vvv (^de KadT^fxefos, of/caS' 6.7rev6eiP. * 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 XXXVII.— To T. L. P. 
 
 Rome^ Ju7ie Zih^ 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Friend — Yesterday, after an illness of only a 
 few days, my little William died. There was no hope from 
 the moment of the attack. You will be kind enough to tell all 
 my friends, so that I need not write to them. It is a great 
 exertion to me to write this, and it seems to me as if, hunted by 
 calamity as I have been, that I should never recover any 
 cheerfulness again. 
 
 If the things Mary desired to be sent to Naples have not 
 been shipped, send them to Livorno. 
 
 We leave this city for Livorno to-morrow morning, where 
 we have written to take lodgings for a month. I will then 
 write again. Yours ever affectionately, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 XXXVIII.— To T. L. P. 
 
 Livorno^ June 20M, 1 8 1 9. 
 
 My Dear Peacock — Our melancholy journey finishes 
 at this town, but we retrace our steps to Florence, where, 
 as I imagine, we shall remain some months. O that I could 
 
 * Come, O Galatea ; and having come, forget, as do I, now sitting 
 here, to return home. — M. S. 
 
2go LETTEkS. 
 
 return to England ! How heavy a weight when misfortune 
 is added to exile, and solitude, as if the measure were not full, 
 heaped high on both. O that I could return to England ; 
 I hear you say, "Desire never fails to generate capacity." Ahl 
 but that ever-present Malthus, Necessity, has convinced Desire 
 that even though it generated capacity, its offspring must 
 starve. Enough of melancholy ! Nightmare Abbey^ though 
 no cure, is a palliative. I have just received the parcel which 
 contained it, and at the same time the Examiners^ by the 
 way of Malta. I am delighted with Nightmare Abbey. I 
 think Scythrop a character admirably conceived and executed ; 
 and I know not how to praise sufficiently the lightness, 
 chastity, and strength of the language of the whole. It 
 perhaps exceeds all your works in this. The catastrophe is 
 excellent. I suppose the moral is contained in what Falstaff 
 says — " For God's sake, talk like a man of this world ; " and 
 yet, looking deeper into it, is not the misdirected enthusiasm 
 of Scythrop what J. C. calls the " salt of the earth ? " My 
 friends the Gisbornes here admire and delight in it exceedingly. 
 I think I told you that they (especially the lady) are 
 people of high cultivation. She is a woman of profound 
 accomplishments and the most refined taste. 
 
 Cobbett still more and more delights me, with all my horror 
 of the sanguinary commonplaces of his creed. His design 
 to overthrow bank notes by forgery is very comic. One of the 
 volumes of Birbeck interested me exceedingly. The letters I 
 think stupid, but suppose that they are useful. 
 
 I do not, as usual, give you an account of my journey, 
 for I had neither the health nor the spirit to take notes. 
 My health was greatly improving, when watching and anxiety 
 cast me into a relapse. The doctors (I put little faith in the 
 best) tell me I must spend the winter in Africa or Spain. I 
 shall of course prefer the latter, if I choose either. 
 
 Are you married, or why do I not hear from you ? That 
 were a good reason. 
 
 M. and C. unite with me in kindest remembrances to 
 you, and in congratulations, if she exist, to the new married 
 lady. 
 
 When shall I see you again ? — Ever yours, most faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 Pray do not forget Mary's things. 
 
 I have not heard from you since the middle of April. 
 
LETTERS, 281 
 
 XXXIX.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Ltvorno, Jttly 6, 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Peacock — I have lost some letters, and, in all 
 probability, at least one from you, as I can account in no other 
 manner for not having heard from you since March 26th. We 
 have changed our design of going to Florence immediately, and 
 are now established for three months in a little country house 
 in a pretty verdant scene near Livorno. 
 
 I have a study here in a tower, sonnething like Scythrop's, 
 where I am just beginning to recover the faculties of reading 
 and writing. My health, whenever no Libecchio blows, im- 
 proves. From my tower I see the sea, with its islands, Gorgona, 
 Capraja, Elba, and Corsica, on one side, and the Apennines on 
 the other. Milly surprised us the other day by first discovering 
 a comet, on which we have been speculating. She may "make 
 a stir, like a great astronomer."* 
 
 The direct purpose of this letter, however, is to ask you about 
 the box which I requested you to send to me to Naples. If it 
 has been sent, let me entreat you (for really it is of the most 
 serious consequence to us) to write to me by return of post, 
 stating the name of the ship, the bill of lading, etc., so that I 
 may get it without difficulty. If it has not been sent, do me the 
 favour to send it instantly, direct to Livorno. If you have not 
 the time, you can ask Hogg. If you cannot get the things 
 from Mrs. Hunt (a possible case), send those you were to buy, 
 and the things from Furnival,t alone. You can add what books 
 you think fit. The last parcel I have received from you is that 
 of last September. 
 
 All good wishes, and many hopes that you have already that 
 
 * Eyes of some men travel far 
 For the finding of a star : 
 Up and down the heavens they go, 
 Men that make a mighty rout : 
 I'm as great as they, I trow, 
 Since the day I found thee out, 
 Little flower ! I'D make a stir, 
 Like a great astronomer. 
 
 — Wordsworth. — To the Little Celandine. 
 
 t A surgeon at Egham, in whom Shelley had great confidence.^ 
 T. L. P. 
 
^82 LETTERS. 
 
 success on which there will be no congratulations more cordial 
 than those you will receive from me. 
 
 Ever most sincerely yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 I shall receive your letter, if written by return of post, in 
 thirty days ; a distance less formidable than Rome or Naples. 
 
 XL.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Livorno, July^ 1819. 
 
 My Dear P. — We still remain, and shall remain nearly two 
 months longer at Livorno. Our house is a melancholy one,* 
 and only cheered by letters from England. I got your note, in 
 which you speak of three letters having been sent to Naples, 
 
 which I have written for. I have heard also from H ^ who 
 
 confirms the news of your success, an intelligence most grateful 
 to me. 
 
 The object of the present letter is to ask a favour of you. I 
 have written a tragedy, on the subject of a story well known in 
 Italy, and, in my conception, eminently dramatic. I have taken 
 some pains to make my play fit for representation, and those 
 who have already seen it judge favourably. It is written with- 
 out any of the peculiar feelings and opinions which characterise 
 my other compositions ; I having attended simply to the 
 impartial development of such characters, as it is probable the 
 persons represented really were, together with the greatest 
 degree of popular effect to be produced by such a development. 
 I send you a translation of the Italian manuscript on which my 
 play is founded, the chief subject of which I have touched very 
 delicately ; for my principal doubt, as to whether it would 
 succeed as an acting play, hangs entirely on the question, as to 
 whether such a thing as incest in this shape, however treated, 
 would be admitted on the stage. I think, however, it will form 
 no objection : considering, first, that the facts are matter of 
 history ; and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have 
 treated it. 
 
 I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this 
 attempt of mine will succeed or no. I am strongly inclined 
 to the affirmative at present, founding my hopes on this, 
 that, as a composition, it is certainly not inferior to any 
 
 * We had lost our eldest, and at that time, only child, the preceding 
 month at Rome. — M. S. 
 
LETTERS. 283 
 
 of the modern plays that have been acted, with the exception 
 of " Remorse ; " that the interests of its plot is incredibly 
 greater and more real ; and that there is nothing beyond what 
 the multitude are contented to believe that they can under- 
 stand, either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to 
 preserve a complete incognito, and can trust to you, that 
 whatever else you do, you will at least favour me on this point. 
 Indeed this is essential, deeply essential to its success. After 
 it had been acted, and successfully (could I hope such a 
 thing), I would own it if I pleased, and use the celebrity it 
 might acquire to my own purposes. 
 
 What I want you to do is, to procure for me its presentation 
 at Covent Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is 
 precisely fitted for Miss O'Neil, and it might even seem written 
 for her, (God forbid that I should ever see her play it — it 
 would tear my nerves to pieces,) and, in all respects, it is 
 fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief male character, 
 I confess, I should be very unwilling that any one but Kean 
 should play — that is impossible, and I must be contented 
 with an inferior actor. I think you know some of the people 
 of that theatre, or, at least, some one who knows them ; 
 and when you have read the play, you may say enough, perhaps, 
 to induce them not to reject it without consideration — 
 but of this, perhaps, I may judge from the tragedies which 
 they have accepted, there is no danger at any rate. 
 
 Write to me as soon as you can on this subject, because it is 
 necessary that I should present it, or, if rejected by the theatre, 
 print it this coming season ; lest somebody else should get hold 
 of it, as the story, which now only exists in manuscript, 
 begins to be generally known among the English. The trans- 
 lation which I send you is to be prefixed to the play, together 
 with a print of Beatrice. I have a copy of her picture by Guido, 
 now in the Colonna palace at Rome — the most beautiful creature 
 you can conceive. 
 
 Of course, you will not show the manuscript to any one — and 
 write to me by return of post, at which time the play will be 
 ready to be sent. 
 
 I expect soon to write again, and it shall be a less selfish 
 letter. As to Oilier, I don't know what has been published, or 
 what has arrived at his hands. — My "Prometheus," though 
 ready, I do not send till I know more. 
 
 Ever yours, most faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
284 LETTERS. 
 
 XLL— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Lzvorno, August 15M, 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Friend — How good of you to write to us so 
 often, and such kind letters 1 But it is like lending to a beggar. 
 What can I offer in return ? 
 
 Though surrounded by suffering and disquietude, and, 
 latterly, almost overcome by our strange misfortune,* I have 
 not been idle. My " Prometheus " is finished, and I am also 
 on the eve of completing another work,t totally different from 
 anything you might consider that I should write ; of a more 
 popular kind ; and, if anything of mine could deserve atten- 
 tion, of higher claims. " Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest 
 chuck, till thou approve the performance.'' 
 
 I send you a little poemf to give to Oilier for publication, 
 but without 7ny 7iame. P. will correct the proofs. I wrote it 
 with the idea of offering it to the " Examiner," but I find it is too 
 long. It was composed last year at Este ; two of the characters 
 you will recognise ; and the third is also in some degree a 
 painting from nature, but, with respect to time and place, ideal. 
 You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent 
 with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be 
 written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language 
 to express the actual way in which people talk with each 
 other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment 
 have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. I use the word 
 vulgar in its most extensive sense. The vulgarity of rank and 
 fashion is as gross in its way as that of poverty, and its cant 
 terms equally expressive of bare conceptions, and therefore 
 equally unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is to be 
 admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly ideal, or in that 
 part of any subject which relates to common life, where the 
 passion, exceeding a certain limit, touches the boundaries of 
 that which is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in meta- 
 phor, borrowed from objects alike remote or near, and casts 
 over all the shadow of its own greatness. But what am I about ? 
 If my grandmother sucks eggs, was it I who taught her ? 
 
 \iyou would really correct the proof, I need not trouble P., 
 who, I suppose, has enough. Can you take it as a compliment 
 that I prefer to trouble you ? 
 
 * The sudden death of William Shelley, then our only child, which 
 happened in Rome, 6th June, 18 19. — M. S. 
 
 T The Cenci. % Julian and Maddalo. 
 
LETTERS. 285 
 
 I do not particularly wish this poem to be known as mine ; 
 but, at all events, I would not put my name to it. I leave you 
 to judge whether it is best to throw it into the fire, or to publish 
 it. So much for self — self, that burr that will stick to one. Your 
 kind expressions about my Eclogue gave me great pleasure ; 
 indeed, my great stimulus in writing, is to have the approbation 
 of those who feel kindly towards me. The rest is mere duty. 
 I am also delighted to hear that you think of us and form 
 ianciea about us. We cannot yet come home. 
 
 Most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 XLIL— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Livorno, August {probably 22nd), 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Peacock— I ought first to say, that I have not 
 yet received one of your letters from Naples ; but your present 
 letter tells me all that I could desire to hear. 
 
 My employments are these : I awaken usually at seven ; read 
 half-an-hour ; then get up ; breakfast ; after breakfast ascend 
 my tower, and read or write until two. Then we dine. After 
 dinner I read Dante with Mary, gossip a little, eat grapes and 
 figs, sometimes walk, though seldom, and at half-past five pay a 
 visit to Mrs. Gisborne, who reads Spanish with me until near 
 seven. We then come for Mary, and stroll about till supper 
 time. Mrs. Gisborne is a sufficiently amiable and very 
 accomplished woman ; she is drjfxoKpaTiKrj and aOer] — how far she 
 may be (pCkavdpwTn) I don't know, for she is the antipodes of 
 enthusiasm. Her husband, a man with little thin lips, reced- 
 ing forehead, and a prodigious nose, is an [ ] bore. His 
 nose is something quite Slawkenbergian — it weighs on the 
 imagination to look at it. It is that sort of nose which trans- 
 forms all the g's its wearer utters into k's. It is a nose once 
 seen never to be forgotten, 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. 
 
 I most devoutly wish I were living near London. I do not 
 think I shall settle so far off as Richmond ; and to inhabit any 
 intermediate spot on the Thames would be to expose myself to 
 the river damps ; not to mention that it is not much to my taste. 
 My inclinations point to H'lmpstead ; but I do nnt know 
 
286 LETTERS. 
 
 whether I should not make up my mind to something more 
 completely suburban. What are mountains, trees, heaths, or 
 even the glorious and ever-beautiful sky, with such sunsets as I 
 have seen at Hampstead, to friends ? Social enjoyment, in 
 some form or other, is the alpha and the omega of existence. 
 All that I see in Italy — and from my tower window I now see 
 the magnificent peaks of the Apennine half enclosing the plain 
 — is nothing ; it dwindles into smoke in the mind, when I think 
 of some familiar forms of scenery, little perhaps in themselves, 
 over which old remembrances have thrown a delightful colour. 
 How we prize what we despised when present 1 The ghosts of 
 our dead associations rise and haunt us, in revenge for our 
 having let them starve, and abandoned them to perish. 
 
 You don't tell me if you see the B 's ; nor are they 
 
 included in the list of the conviti at the monthly symposium. I 
 will attend it in imagination. 
 
 One thing, I own, I am curious about ; and in the chance of 
 the letters not coming from Naples, pray tell me. What is it 
 you do at the India House ? Hunt writes, and says you have 
 got a situation in the India House : Hogg that you have an 
 Jionoiirable employment : Godwin writes to Mary that you have 
 got so much or so much : but nothing of what you do. The 
 devil take these general terms. Not content with having driven 
 all poetry out of the world, at length they make war on their 
 own allies ; nay, on their very parents, dry facts. If it had not 
 been the age of generalities, any one of these people would have 
 told me what you did. 
 
 I have been much better these last three weeks. My work 
 on the Cenci, which was done in two months, was a fine anti- 
 dote to nervous medicines, and kept up, I think, the pain in my 
 side, as sticks do a fire. Since then, I have materially im- 
 proved. I do not walk enough. C, who is sometimes my 
 companion, does not dress in exactly the right time. I have no 
 stimulus to walk. Now, I go sometimes to Livorno on business; 
 and that does me good. 
 
 England seems to be in a very disturbed state, if we may 
 judge from some Paris papers, I suspect it is rather exag- 
 gerated. But the change should commence among the higher 
 orders, or anarchy will only be the last flash before despotism. 
 
 I have been reading Calderon in Spanish. A kind of Shak- 
 speare is this Calderon ; and I have some thoughts, if I find 
 that I cannot do anything better, of translating some of his 
 plays. 
 
 The Examiners I receive. Hunt, as a political writer, 
 
LETTERS. 287 
 
 pleases me more and more. Adieu. M. and C. send their 
 best remembrances. 
 
 Your most faithful friend, P. B. Shelley. 
 Pray send me some books, and Clare would take it as a great 
 favour if you would send her music books. 
 
 XLIIL— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Livor7io, Sept. 3, 1819. 
 
 My Dear Friend — At length has arrived Ollier's parcel, 
 and with it the portrait. What a delightful present I It is 
 almost yourself, and we sat talking with it, and of it, all the 
 evening. It is a great pleasure to us to possess it, a pleasure in 
 time of need, coming to us when there are few others. How we 
 wish it were you, and not your picture ! How I wish we were 
 with you ! 
 
 This parcel, you know, and all its letters, are now a year old 
 — some older. There are all kinds of dates, from March to 
 August, and " your date," to use Shakspeare's expression, " is 
 better in a pie or a pudding, than in your letter." — " Virginity," 
 Parolles says, but letters are the same thing in another shape. 
 
 With it came, loo. Lamb's works. I have looked at none of 
 the other books yet. What a lovely thing is his " Rosamund 
 Gray ! " How much knowledge of the sweetest and deepest 
 parts of our nature in it5! When I think of such a mind as 
 Lamb's — when I see how unnoticed remain things of such 
 exquisite and complete perfection, what should I hope for 
 myself, if I had not higher objects in view than fame } 
 
 I have seen too little of Italy, and of pictures. Perhaps P. 
 has shown you some of my letters to him. But at Rome I was 
 very ill, seldom able to go out without a carriage : and though I 
 kept horses for two months there, yet there is so much to see ! 
 Perhaps I attended more to sculpture than painting, its forms 
 being more easily intelligible than that of the latter. Yet, I saw 
 the famous works of Raffaele, whom I agree with the whole 
 world in thinking the finest painter. Why, I can tell you 
 another time. With respect to Michael Angelo I dissent, 
 and think with astonishment and indignation of the common 
 notion that he equals, and in some respects, exceeds Raffaele. 
 He seems to me to have no sense of moral dignity and love- 
 liness ; and the energy for which he has been so much praised, 
 appears to me to be a certain rude, external, mechanical 
 quality, in comparison with anything possessed by Raffaele, 
 
288 LETTERS. 
 
 or even much inferior artists. His famous painting in the 
 Sixtine Chapel seems to me deficient in beauty and majesty, 
 both in the conception and the execution. He has been called 
 the Dante of painting ; but if we find some of the gross and 
 strong outlines which are employed in the most distasteful 
 passages of the " Inferno," where shall we find j/^^^r Francesca 
 — where the spirit coming over the sea in a boat, like Mars 
 rising from the vapours of the horizon — where Matilda gathering 
 flowers, and all the exquisite tenderness, and sensibility, 
 and ideal beauty, in which Dante excelled all poets except 
 Shakspeare .'' 
 
 As to Michael Angelo's Moses — but you have a cast of that in 
 England. I write these things, heaven knows why ! 
 
 I have written something and finished it, different from any- 
 thing else, and a new attempt for me ; and I mean to dedicate 
 it to you. I should not have done so without your approbation, 
 but I asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent. If I 
 did not think it in some degree worthy of you, I would not 
 make you a public offering of it. I expect to have to write to 
 you soon about it. If OlHer is not turned Jew, Christian, or 
 become infected with the Murrain^ he will publish it. Don't 
 let him be frightened, for it is nothing which, by any courtesy of 
 language, can be termed either moral or immoral. 
 
 Mary has written to Marianne for a parcel, in which I beg 
 you will make Oilier enclose what you know would most interest 
 me — your " Calendar," (a sweet extract from which I saw in the 
 Examiner,) and the other poems belonging to you ; and, for 
 some friends of mine, my Eclogue. This parcel, which must be 
 sent instantly, will reach me by October, but don't trust letters 
 to it, except just a line or so. When you write, write by the post. 
 Ever your affectionate, P. B. S. 
 
 My love to Marianne and Bessy, and Thornton too, and 
 Percy, etc., and if you could imagine any way in which I could 
 be useful to them here, tell me. I will enquire about the Italian 
 chalk. You have no idea of the pleasure this portrait gives us. 
 
 XL I v.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Leghorn, September dth, 1819. 
 Dear Sir — I received your packet with Hunt's picture about 
 a fortnight ago ; and your letter with Nos. i, 2, and 3 yesterday, 
 but not No, 4, which is probably lost or mislaid, through the 
 extreme irregularity of the Italian post. 
 
LETTERS, 289 
 
 The ill account you give of the success of my poetical 
 attempts, sufficiently accounts for your silence ; but I believe 
 that the truth is, I write less for the public than for myself. 
 Considering that perhaps the parcel will be another year on 
 its voyage, I rather wish, if this letter arrives in time, that 
 you would send the Quarterly's article by the post, and the rest 
 of the Review in the parcel. Of course, it gives me a certain 
 degree of pleasure to know that any one likes my writings ; but 
 it is objection and enmity alone that rouses my curiosity. My 
 Prometheus^ which has been long finished, is now being tran- 
 scribed, and will soon be forwarded to you for publication. It is, 
 in my judgment, of a higher character than anything I have 
 yet attempted, and is perhaps less an imitation of anything that 
 has gone before it. I shall also send you another work, calcu- 
 lated to produce a very popular effect, and totally in a different 
 style from anything I have yet composed. This will be sent 
 already printed. The Prometheus you will be so good as to 
 print as usual. . . . 
 
 In the Rosalind and Helen, I see there are some few errors, 
 which are so much the worse because they are errors in the 
 sense. If there should be any danger of a second edition, I 
 will correct them. 
 
 I have read your Altham, and Keats's poem, and Lamb's 
 works. For the second in this list, much praise is due to me 
 for having read it, the author's intention appearing to be that 
 no person should possibly get to the end of it. Yet it is full of 
 some of the highest and the finest gleams of poetry ; indeed, 
 everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet which is 
 described in it. I think, if he had printed about fifty pages of 
 fragments from it, I should have been led to admire Keats as a 
 poet more than I ought, of which there is now no danger. In 
 Altham you have surprised and delighted me. It is a natural 
 story, most unaffectedly told ; and, what is more, told in a 
 strain of very pure and powerful English, which is a very rare 
 merit. You seem to have studied our language to some 
 purpose ; but I suppose I ought to have waited for Inesilla. 
 
 The same day that your letter came, came the news of the 
 Manchester work, and the torrent of my indignation has not yet 
 done boiling in my veins. I wait anxiously to hear how the 
 country will express its sense of this bloody, murderous oppres- 
 sion of its destroyers. " Something must be done. What, yet I 
 know not." 
 
 In your parcel (which I pray you to send in some safe 
 manner, forwarding to me the bill of lading, etc., in a regular 
 
 loo 
 
290 LETTERS. 
 
 mercantile way, so that my parcel may come in six weeks, not 
 twelve months) send me Jones's Greek Grammar and some 
 sealing-wax. 
 
 Whenever I publish, send copies of my books to the following 
 people from me : — 
 
 Mr. Hunt, Mr. Godwin, Mr. Hogg, 
 
 Mr. Peacock, Mr. Keats, Mr. Thomas Moore, 
 
 Mr. Horace Smith, Lord Byron (at Murray's). 
 
 Yours, obliged and faithful, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 XLV.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Livorno^ September (^th^ 1816. 
 
 My Dear Peacock— I send you the tragedy.* You will 
 see that the subject has not been treated as you suggested, and 
 why it was not susceptible of such treatment. In fact, it was 
 then already printing when I received your letter, and it has 
 been treated in such a manner that I do not see how the subject 
 forms an objection. You know CEdipus is performed on the 
 fastidious French stage, a play much more broad than this. I 
 confess I have some hopes, and some friends here persuade me 
 that they are not unfounded. 
 
 Many thanks for your attention in sending the papers which 
 contain the terrible and important news of Manchester. These 
 are, as it were, the distant thunders of the terrible storm which 
 is approaching. The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, 
 have first shed blood. May their execrable lessons not be 
 learnt with equal facility ! Pray let me have the earliest 
 political news which you consider of importance at this crisis. 
 Yours ever most faithfully, P. B. S. 
 
 XLVI.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Leghorn, September 2isfy \^i(). 
 
 My Dear Peacock — You will have received a short letter 
 
 sent with the tragedy, and the tragedy itself by this time. I am, 
 
 you may believe, anxious to hear what you think of it, and how 
 
 the manager talks about it. I have printed in Italy 250 copies, 
 
 * The Cenci. 
 
LETTERS. 291 
 
 because it costs, with all duties and freightage, about half what 
 it would cost in London, and these copies will be sent by sea. 
 My other reason was a belief that the seeing it in print would 
 enable the people at the theatre to judge more easily. Since I 
 last wrote to you Mr. Gisborne is gone to England for the 
 purpose of obtaining a situation for Henry Reveley. I have 
 given him a letter to you, and you would oblige me by showing 
 what civilities you can, and by forwarding his views, either 
 by advice or recommendation, as you may find opportunity. 
 Henry is a most amiable person, and has great talents as a 
 mechanic and engineer. Mr. Gisborne is a man who knows I 
 cannot tell how many languages, and has read almost all the 
 books you can think of j but all that they contain seems to be to 
 his mind what water is to a sieve. His liberal opinions are all 
 the reflections of Mrs. G.'s, a very amiable, accomplished, and 
 completely unprejudiced woman. 
 
 Charles Clairmont is now with us on his way to Vienna. He 
 has spent a year or more in Spain, where he has learnt Spanish, 
 and I make him read Spanish all day long. It is a most 
 powerful and expressive language, and I have already learnt 
 sufficient to read with great ease their poet Calderon. I have 
 read about twelve of his plays. Some of them certainly deserve 
 to be ranked among the grandest and most perfect productions 
 of the human mind. He exceeds all modern dramatists, with 
 the exception of Shakspeare, whom he resembles, however, in 
 the depth of thought and subtlety of imagination of his writings, 
 and in the rare power of interweaving delicate and powerful 
 comic traits with the most tragical situations, without diminishing 
 their interest. I rate him far above Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 I have received all the papers you sent me, and the Examiners 
 regularly, perfumed with muriatic acid. What an infernal 
 business this of Manchester ! What is to be done ? Something 
 assuredly. H. Hunt has behaved, I think, with great spirit and 
 coolness in the whole affair. 
 
 I have sent you my Prometheus^ which I do not wish to be 
 sent to Oilier for publication until I write to that effect. Mr. 
 Gisborne will bring it, as also some volumes of Spenser, and 
 the two last of Herodotus and Paradise Lost, which may be put 
 up with the others. 
 
 If my play should be accepted, don't you think it would excite 
 some interest, and take off the unexpected horror of the story, 
 by showing that the events are real, if it could be made to 
 appear in some paper in some form 1 
 
 You will hear from me again shortly, as I send you by 
 
tgi LETTERS. 
 
 sea the Cencis printed, which you will be good enough to 
 keep. Adieu. 
 
 Yours most faithfully, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 XLVIL— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Livorno^ Sept. iTth^ 1819. 
 
 My Dear Friend — We are now on the point of leaving 
 this place for Florence, where we have taken pleasant apart- 
 ments for six months, which brings us to the ist of April, the 
 season at which new flowers and new thoughts spring forth upon 
 the earth and in the mind. What is then our destination is yet 
 undecided. I have not seen Florence, except as one sees the 
 outside of the streets ; but its physiognomy indicates it to be a 
 city which, though the ghost of a republic, yet possesses most 
 amiable qualities. I wish you could meet us there in the spring, 
 and we would try to muster up a " li^ta brigata," which, leaving 
 behind them the pestilence of remembered misfortunes, might 
 act over again the pleasures of the Interlocutors in Boccaccio. 
 I have been lately reading this most divine writer. He is, 
 in a high sense of the word, a poet, and his language has 
 the rhythm and harmony of verse. I think him not equal 
 certainly to Dante or Petrarch, but far superior to Tasso 
 and Ariosto, the children of a later and of a colder day. I 
 consider the three first as the productions of the vigour of 
 the infancy of a new nation — as rivulets from the same spring 
 as that which fed the greatness of the republics of Florence 
 and Pisa, and which checked the influence of the German 
 emperors ; and from which, through obscurer channels, Raffaele 
 and Michael Angelo drew the light and the harmony of their 
 inspiration. When the second-rate poets of Italy wrote, 
 the corrupting blight of tyranny was already hanging on 
 every bud of genius. Energy, and simplicity, and unity of 
 of idea, were no more. In vain do we seek in the finest 
 passages of Ariosto and Tasso, any expression which at all 
 approaches in this respect to those of Dante and Petrarch. 
 How much do I admire Boccaccio 1 What descriptions of 
 nature are those in his little introductions to every new day ! 
 It is the morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity 
 which makes it obscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to 
 have possessed a deep sense of the fair ideal of human life, 
 
LETTERS. 293 
 
 considered in its social relations. His more serious theories 
 of love agree especially with mine. He often expresses things 
 lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very beautiful 
 kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, 
 stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you 
 remember one little remark, or rather maxim of his, which 
 might do some good to the common narrow-minded concep- 
 tions of love, — " Bocca bacciata non perde ventura ; anzi 
 rinnuova, come fa la luna } " 
 
 We expect Mary to be confined towards the end of October. 
 The birth of a child will probably retrieve her from some part 
 of her present melancholy depression. 
 
 It would give me much pleasure to know. Mr. Lloyd. Do 
 you know, when I was in Cumberland, I got Southey to borrow 
 a copy of Berkeley from him, and I remember observing 
 some pencil notes in it, probably written by Lloyd, which 
 I thought particularly acute. One, especially, struck me as 
 being the assertion of a doctrine, of which even then I had 
 long been persuaded, and on which I had founded much of 
 my persuasions, as regarded the imagined cause of the 
 universe — " Mind cannot create, it can only perceive." Ask 
 him if he remembers having written it. Of Lamb you know 
 my opinion, and you can bear witness to the regret which I 
 felt, when I learned that the calumny of an enemy had deprived 
 me of his society whilst in England. — Oilier told me that the 
 Quarterly are going to review me. I suppose it will be a 
 pretty , and as I am acquiring a taste for humour and 
 
 drollery, I confess I am curious to see it. I have sent my 
 " Prometheus Unbound " to P. ; if you ask him for it he will 
 show it you. I think it will please you. 
 
 Whilst I went to Florence, Mary wrote, but I did not see 
 her letter. — Well, good b'ye. Next Monday I shall write to 
 you from Florence. Love to all. 
 
 Most affectionately your friend, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XLVIIL— To Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Florence^ October i^fh or I4f/i, 1819. 
 
 My Dear Friend — The regret we feel at our absence from 
 you persuades me that it is a state which cannot last, and 
 which, so long as it must last, will be interrupted by some 
 
294 LETTERS. 
 
 intervals, one of which is destined to be, your all coming to visit 
 us here. Poor Oscar ! I feel a kind of remorse to think of the 
 unequal love with which two animated beings regard each other, 
 when I experience no such sensations for him, as those which 
 he manifested for us. His importunate regret is, however, a 
 type of ours, as regards you. Our memory — if you will accept 
 so humble a metaphor — is for ever scratching at the door of 
 your absence. 
 
 About Henry and the steam-engine.* I am in torture until 
 this money comes from London, though I am sure that it will and 
 must come ; unless, indeed, my banker has broke, and then it 
 will be my loss, not Henry's — a little delay will mend the 
 matter. I would then write instantly to London an effectual 
 letter, and by return of post all would be set right — it would 
 then be a thing easily set straight — but if it were not, you know 
 me too well not to know that there is no personal suffering, or 
 degradation, or toil, or anything that can be named, with which 
 I do not feel myself bound to support this enterprise of Henry. 
 But all this rhodomontade only shows how correct Mr. Bielby's 
 advice was, about the discipHne necessary for my imagination. 
 No doubt that all will go on with mercantile and commonplace 
 exactness, and that you will be spared the suffering, and I the 
 virtue, incident to some untoward event. 
 
 I am anxious to hear of Mr. Gisborne's return, and I 
 anticipate the surprise and pleasure with which he will learn that 
 a resolution has been taken which leaves you nothing to regret 
 in that event. It is with unspeakable satisfaction that I reflect 
 that my entreaties and persuasions overcame your scruples on 
 this point, and that whatever advantage shall accrue from it 
 will belong to you, whilst any reproach due to the imprudence of 
 such an enterprise must rest on me. I shall thus share the 
 pleasure of success, and bear the blame and loss, (if such a 
 thing were possible,) of a reverse ; and what more can a man, 
 who is a friend to another, desire for himself? Let us believe 
 in a kind of optimism, in which we are our own gods. It is 
 best that Mr. Gisborne should have returned ; it is best 
 that I should have over-persuaded you and Henry ; it is best 
 that you should all live together, without any more solitary 
 
 * Shelley set on foot the building of a steam-boat, to ;ply between 
 Marseilles, Genoa, and Leghorn. Such an enterprise promised fortune 
 to his friend who undertook to build it, and the anticipation filled hitn 
 with delight. Unfortunately, an unforeseen complication of circum- 
 stances caused the design to be abandoned, when already far advanced 
 towards completion. — M. S. 
 
LETTERS, 29$ 
 
 attempts; it is best that this one attempt should have been 
 made, otherwise, perhaps, one thing which is best might not 
 have occurred ; and it is best that we should think all this for 
 the best, even though it is not ; because Hope, as Coleridge 
 says, is a solemn duty, which we owe alike to ourselves and to 
 the world — a worship to the spirit of good within, which 
 requires, before it sends that inspiration forth, which impresses 
 its likeness upon all that it creates, devoted and disinterested 
 homage. 
 
 A different scene is this from that in which you made the 
 chief character of our changing drama. We see no one, as 
 
 usual. Madame M is quiet, and we only meet her now and 
 
 then, by chance. Her daughter, not so fair, but I fear as cold, 
 as the snowy Florimel in Spenser, is in and out of love with 
 
 C as the winds happen to blow ; and C , who, at the 
 
 moment I happen to write, is in a high state of transitory 
 contentment, is setting off to Vienna in a day or two. 
 
 My >^ioo, from what mistake remains to be explained, has 
 not yet arrived, and the banker here is going to advance me 
 ;^5o, on my bill at three months — all additional facilitation, 
 should any such be needed, for the steam-boat. I have yet seen 
 little of Florence. The gallery I have a design of studying 
 piece-meal ; one of my chief objects in Italy being the observing 
 in statuary and painting the degree in which, and the rules 
 according to which, that ideal beauty, of which we have so 
 intense yet so obscure an apprehension, is realised in external 
 forms. 
 
 Adieu. — I am anxious for Henry's first letter. Give to him 
 and take to yourself those sentiments, whatever they may be, 
 with which you know that I cannot cease to regard you. 
 Most faithfully and affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 I had forgotten to say that I should be very much obliged to 
 you, if you would contrive to send The Cenci, which are at the 
 printer's, to England, by the next ship. I forgot it in the hurry 
 of departure. — I have just heard from P., saying, that he don't 
 think that my tragedy will do, and that he don't much like it. 
 But I ought to say, to blunt the edge of his criticism, that he is 
 a nursling of the exact and superficial school in poetry. 
 
 If Mr. G. is returned, send the " Prometheus" with them. 
 
296 LETTERS, 
 
 XLIX.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Florence, Oct. 15, 18 19. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 The droll remarks of the Quarterly ^ and Hunt s 
 kind defence, arrived as safe as such poison, and safer than such 
 an antidote, usually do. 
 
 I am on the point of sending to you 250 copies of a work 
 which I have printed in Italy ; which you will have to pay four 
 or five pounds duty upon, on my account. Hunt will tell you 
 the kind of thing it is, and in the course of the winter I shall 
 send directions for its publication, until the arrival of which 
 directions, I request that you would have the kindness not to 
 open the box, or, if by necessity it is opened, to abstain fro7n 
 observing yourself, or permitting others to observe, what it con- 
 tains."^ I trust this confidently to you, it being of consequence. 
 Meanwhile, assure yourself that this work has no reference, 
 direct or indirect, to politics, or religion, or personal satire, and 
 that this precaution is merely literary. 
 
 The Prometheus, a poem in my best style, whatever that may 
 amount to, will arrive with it, but in MS., which you can print 
 and publish in the season. It is the most perfect of my 
 productions. 
 
 Southey wrote the article in question, I am well aware. 
 Observe the impudence of the man in speaking of himself. The 
 only remark worth notice in this piece is the assertion that I 
 imitate Wordsworth. It may as well be said that Lord Byron 
 imitates Wordsworth, or that Wordsworth imitates Lord Byron, 
 both being great poets, and deriving from the new springs of 
 thought and feeling, which the great events of our age have 
 exposed to view, a similar tone of sentiment, imagery, and 
 expression. A certain similarity all the best writers of any 
 particular age inevitably are marked with, from the spirit of 
 that age acting on all. This I had explained in my Preface, 
 which the writer was too disingenuous to advert to. As to the 
 other trash, and particularly that lame attack on my personal 
 character, which was meant so ill, and which I am not the man 
 to feel, 'tis all nothing. I am glad, with respect to that part of 
 it which alludes to Hunt, that it should so have happened that I 
 dedicate, as you will see, a work which has all the capacities for 
 being popular to that excellent person. I was amused, too, 
 with the finale ; it is like the end of the first act of an opera, 
 
 • The italics are Shelley's own, — Z. 4". 
 
LETTERS, 297 
 
 when that tremendous concordant discord sets up from the 
 orchestra, and everybody talks and sings at once. It describes 
 the result of my battle with their Omnipotent God ; his pulling 
 me under the sea by the hair of my head, like Pharaoh ; my 
 calling out like the devil who was ^ame to the last; swearing 
 and cursing in all comic and horrid oaths, like a French postillion 
 on Mount Cenis ; entreating everybody to drown themselves ; 
 pretending not to be drowned myself when I am drowned ; and, 
 lastly, being drowned.* 
 
 You would do me a particular kindness if you would call on 
 Hunt, and ask him when my parcel went, the name of the ship, 
 and the name of the captain, and whether he has any bill of 
 lading, which, if he has, you would oblige me by sending, 
 together with the rest of the information, by return of post, 
 addressed to the Post Office, Florence. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 L.— To Henry Reveley. 
 
 Florence^ Oct. 28, 1819. 
 
 My Dear Henry — So it seems / am to begin the cor- 
 respondence, though I have more to ask than to tell. 
 
 You know our bargain ; you are to write me uncollected 
 letters, just as the words come, so let me have them — I like coin 
 from the mint — though it may be a little rough at the edges ; — 
 clipping is penal according to our statute. 
 
 In the first place, listen to a reproach ; you ought to have 
 sent me an acknowledgment of my last billet. I am very 
 happy to hear from Mr. Gisborne, and he knows well enough 
 how to interest me himself, not to need to rob me of an occasion 
 of hearing from you. Let you and I try if we cannot be as 
 punctual and business-like as the best of them. But no clipping 
 and coining, if you please. 
 
 Now take this that I say in a light just so serious as not to 
 give you pain. In fact, my dear fellow, my motive for soliciting 
 your correspondence, and that flowing from your own mind, and 
 clothed in your own words, is, that you may begin to accustom 
 to discipline yourself in the only practice of life in which you 
 appear deficient. You know that you are writing to a person 
 persuaded of all the confidence and respect due to your powers 
 
 * Shelley's frequent allusions to his being drowned are very 
 singular. — L. S. 
 
298 LETTERS. 
 
 in those branches of science to which you have addicted yourself ; 
 and you will not permit a false shame with regard to the mere 
 mechanical arrangement of words to overbalance the advantage 
 arising from the free communication of ideas. Thus you will 
 become day by day more skilful in the management of that 
 instrument of their communication, on which the attainment of 
 a person's just rank in society depends. Do not think me 
 arrogant. There are subjects of the highest importance in which 
 you are far better qualified to instruct me, than I am qualified to 
 instruct you on this subject. 
 
 Well, how goes on all .? The boilers, the keel of the boat, and 
 the cylinder, and all the other elements of that soul which is to 
 guide our " monstruo de fuego y agua " over the sea ? Let ine 
 hear news of their birth, and how they thrive after they are born. 
 And is the money arrived at Mr. Webb's 1 Send me an account 
 of the number of crowns you realise ; as I think we had better, 
 since it is a transaction in this country, keep our accounts in 
 money of this country. 
 
 We have rains enough to set the mills going, which are 
 essential to your great iron bar. I suppose it is at present either 
 made or making. 
 
 My health is better so long as the scirocco blows, and, but for 
 my daily expectation of Mary's confinement, I should have been 
 half tempted to have come to see you. As it is, I shall wait till 
 the boat is finished. On the subject of your actual and your 
 expected progress, you will certainly allow me to hear from you. 
 
 Give my kindest regards to your mother and Mr. Gisborne — tell 
 the latter, whose billet I have neglected to answer, that I did so, 
 under the idea of addressing him in a post or two on a subject 
 which gives me considerable anxiety about you all. I mean the 
 continuance of your property in the British funds at this crisis 
 of approaching revolution. It is the business of a friend to say 
 what he thinks without fear of giving offence ; and, if I were 
 not a friend, argument is worth its market-price anywhere. 
 Believe me, my dear Henry, 
 
 Your very faithful friend, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LI. — To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Florence^ Oct. 28, 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Friends — I receive this morning the strange and 
 unexpected news, that my bill of ;^20o has been returned to Mr. 
 
LETTERS. 299 
 
 Webb protested. Ultimately this can be nothing but delay, as 
 I have only drawn from my banker's hands so much as to leave 
 them still in possession of ;^8o, and this I positively know, and 
 can prove by documents. By return of post, for I have not only 
 written to my banker, but to private friends, no doubt Henry 
 will be enabled to proceed. Let him meanwhile do all that can 
 be done. 
 
 Meanwhile, to save time, could not money be obtained 
 
 temporarily, at Livorno, from Mr. W , or Mr. G , or any 
 
 of your acquaintance, on my bills at three or six months, indorsed 
 by Mr. Gisborne and Henry, so that he may go on with his 
 work ? If a month is of consequence, think of this. 
 
 Be of good cheer, Madonna mia, all will go well. The 
 inclosed is for Henry, and was written before this news, as he 
 will see ; but it does not, strange as it is, abate one atom of my 
 cheer. 
 
 Accept, dear Mr. G., my best regards. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LH.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Floreftce, Nov. 6, 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Friends — I have just finished a letter of five 
 sheets on Carlile's affair, and am in hourly expectation of Mary's 
 confinement : you will imagine an excuse for my silence. 
 
 I forbear to address you, as I had designed, on the subject of 
 your income as a public creditor of the English government, as 
 it seems you have not the exclusive management of your funds ; 
 and the peculiar circumstances of the delusion are such that none 
 but a very few persons will ever be brought to see its instability 
 but by the experience of loss. If I were to convince you, Henry 
 would probably be unable to convince his uncle. In vindication, 
 however, of what I have already said, allow me to turn your 
 attention to England at this hour. 
 
 In order to meet the national expenses, or rather that some 
 approach towards meeting them might seem to be made, a tax 
 of ;,^3,ooo,ooo was imposed. The first consequence of this has 
 been a defalcation in the revenue at the rate of ;^3,6oo,ooo 
 a-year. Were the country in the most tranquil and prosperous 
 state, the minister, in such a condition of affairs, must reduce 
 the interest of the national debt, or add to it ; a process which 
 would only insure the greater ultimate reduction of the interest. 
 
300 LETTERS. 
 
 But the people are nearly in a state of insurrection, and the least 
 unpopular noblemen perceive the necessity of conducting a 
 spirit, which it is no longer possible to oppose. For submitting 
 to this necessity — which, be assured, the haughty aristocrats 
 unv^illingly did — Lord Fitzwilliam has been degraded from his 
 situation of Lord-Lieutenant. An additional army of 1 1,500 men 
 has received orders to be organised. Everything is preparing 
 for a bloody struggle, in which, if the ministers succeed, they 
 will assuredly diminish the interest of the national debt, for no 
 combination of the heaviest tyranny can raise the taxes for its 
 payment. If the people conquer, the public creditor will equally 
 suffer ; for it is monstrous to imagine that they will submit to 
 the perpetual inheritance of a double aristocracy. They will 
 perhaps find some crown and church lands, and appropriate the 
 tithes to make a kind of compensation to the public creditor. 
 They will confiscate the estates of their political enemies. But 
 all this will not pay a tenth part of their debt. The existing 
 government, atrocious as it is, is the surest party to which a 
 public creditor may attach himself. He may reason that it may 
 last my titne^ though in the event the ruin is more complete than 
 in the case of a popular revolution. I know you too well to 
 believe you capable of arguing in this manner ; I only reason on 
 how things stand. 
 
 Your income may be reduced from ;^2io to ^150, and then 
 ;^ioo, and then, by the issue of immense quantities of paper to 
 save the immediate cause of one of the conflicting parties, to any 
 value however small ; or the source of it may be cut off at once. 
 The ministers had, I doubt not, long since determined to 
 establish an arbitrary government ; and if they had not 
 determined so, they have now entangled themselves in that 
 consequence of their instinct as rulers, and if they recede they 
 must perish. They are, however, not receding, and we are on 
 the eve of great actions. 
 
 . Kindest regards to Henry. I hope he is not stopped for want 
 of money, as I shall assuredly send him what he wants in a 
 month from the date of my last letter. I received his letter from 
 Pistoia, and have no other criticism to make on it, except the 
 severest — that it is too short. How goes on Portuguese — and 
 Theocritus ? I have deserted the odorous gardens of literature, 
 to journey across the great sandy desert of politics ; not, as you 
 may imagine, without the hope of finding some enchanted 
 paradise. In all probability, I shall be overwhelmed by one of 
 the tempestuous columns which are forever traversing, with the 
 speed of a storm, and the confusion of a chaos, that pathless. 
 
LETTERS. 301 
 
 wilderness. You meanwhile will be lamenting in some happy 
 oasis that I do not return. This is out-Calderonizing Muley. 
 We have had lightning and rain here in plenty. I like the 
 Cascini very much, where I often walk alone, watching the leaves, 
 and the rising and falling of the Arno. I am full of all kinds of 
 literary plans. 
 
 Meanwhile, all yours most faithfully, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LIII.— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Firenze, Nov. 13, 18 19. 
 
 My Dear Friend — Yesterday morning Mary brought me 
 a little boy. She suffered but two hours' pain, and is now so 
 well that it seems a wonder that she stays in bed. The babe is 
 also quite well, and has begun to suck. You may imagine that 
 this is a great relief and a great comfort to me amongst all my 
 misfortunes, past, present, and to come. 
 
 Since I last wrote to you, some circumstances have occurred 
 not necessary to explain by letter, which makes my pecuniary 
 condition a very painful one. The physicians absolutely forbid 
 my travelling to England in the winter, but I shall probably pay 
 you a visit in the spring. With what pleasure, among all the other 
 sources of regret and discomfort with which England abounds 
 for me, do I think of looking on the original of that kind and 
 earnest face, which is now opposite Mary's bed. It will be the 
 only thing which Mary will envy me, or will need to envy me, in 
 that journey, for I shall come alone. Shaking hands with you is 
 worth all the trouble ; the rest is clear loss. 
 
 I will tell you more about myself and my pursuits in my next 
 letter. 
 
 Kind love to Marianne, Bessy, and all the children. Poor 
 Mary begins (for the first time) to look a little consoled ; for we 
 have spent, as you may imagine, a miserable five months. 
 
 Good-bye, my dear Hunt. 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 I have had no letter from yon fur a month. 
 
302 LETTERS. 
 
 LIV.— To Mrs. Gisborne, 
 
 Florence^ Nov. i6, 1819. 
 
 Madonna — I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my 
 pilot, and although my sail has often been torn, my boat become 
 leaky, and the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of way from 
 island to island ; some of craggy and mountainous magnifi- 
 cence, some clothed with moss and flowers, and radiant with 
 . fountains, some barren deserts. / have been reading Calderon 
 without you. I have read the " Cisma de Ingalaterra," the 
 " Cabellos de Absolom," and three or four others. These pieces, 
 inferior to those we read, at least to the " Principe Constante," 
 in the splendour of particular passages, are perhaps superior in 
 their satisfying completeness. The Cabellos de Absolom is full 
 of the deepest and tenderest touches of nature. Nothing can 
 be more pathetically conceived than the character of old David, 
 and the tender and impartial love, overcoming all insults and all 
 crimes, with which he regards his conflicting and disobedient 
 sons. The incest scene of Amnon and Tamar is perfectly 
 tremendous. Well may Calderon say in the person of the 
 former : — 
 
 Si sangre sin fuego hiere, 
 que fara sangre con fuego ? 
 
 Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circum- 
 stance. It may be the excess of love or hate. It may be the defi- 
 ance of everything for the sake of another, which clothes itself in 
 the glory of the highest heroism ; or it may be that cynical rage 
 which, confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, 
 breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and 
 antipathy. Calderon, following the Jewish historians, has 
 represented Amnon's action in the basest point of view — he is a 
 prejudiced savage, acting what he abhors, and abhorring that 
 which is the unwilling party to his crime. 
 
 Adieu. Madonna, yours truly, P. B. S. 
 
 I transcribe you a passage from the Cisma de Ingalaterra — 
 spoken by " Carlos, Embaxador de Francia, enamorado de Ana 
 Bolena." Is there anything in Petrarch finer than the second 
 stanza ?* 
 
 * Porque apenas el Sol se coronaba 
 de nueva luz en la estacion primeva, 
 quando yo en sus umbrales adoraba 
 segundo Sol en abreviada esfera ; 
 
LETTERS. 303 
 
 LV. — To John Gisborne. 
 
 My Dear Sir, — I envy you the first reading of Theocritus. 
 Were not the Greeks a glorious people ? What is there, as Job 
 says of the Leviathan, like unto them ? If the army of Nicias 
 had not been defeated under the walls of Syracuse ; if the 
 Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance between 
 Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the Greek colonies in the 
 south of Italy,- Rome might have been all that its intellectual 
 condition entitled it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror of 
 Greece ; the Macedonian power would never have attained to 
 the dictatorship of the civilised states of the world. Who 
 knows whether, under the steady progress which philosophy 
 and social institutions would have made, (for, in the age to 
 which I refer, their progress was both rapid and secure) among 
 
 la noche apenas tremula baxaba, 
 k solos mis deseos lisonjera, 
 quando un jardin, republica de flores, 
 era tercero fiel de mis amores. 
 
 Alli, el silencio de la noche fria, 
 
 el jazmin, que en las redes se enlazava, 
 
 el cristal de la fuente que corria, 
 
 el arroyo que d solas murmurava, 
 
 El viento que en las hojas se movia, 
 
 el Aura que en las flores respirava ; 
 
 todo era amor' ; qu^ mucho, si en tal cahna, 
 
 aves, fuentes, y flores tienen alma ! 
 
 No has visto providente y officiosa, 
 mover el ayre iluminada aveja, 
 que hasta beber la purpura a la rosa 
 ya se acerca cobarde, y ya se alexa ? 
 No has visto enamorada mariposa, 
 dar cercos d la luz, hasta que dexa, 
 en monumento facil abrasadas 
 las alas de color tornasoladas ? 
 
 Assi mi amor, cobarde muchos dias, 
 tornos hizo d la rosa y a la llama ; 
 temor che ha sido entre cenizas frias, 
 tantas vezes llorado de quien ama ; 
 pero el amor, que vence con porfias, 
 y la ocasion, que con disculpas llama, 
 me animaron, y aveja y mariposa 
 queme las alas, y llegue d la rosa. 
 
304 LETTERS. 
 
 a people of the most perfect physical organization, whether the 
 Christian religion would have arisen, or the barbarians have 
 overwhelmed the wrecks of civilisation which had survived the 
 conquest and tyranny of the Romans? What then should. we 
 have been ? As it is, all of us who are worth anything, spend 
 our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes, 
 of our youth. We are stuffed full of prejudices ; and our 
 natural passions are so managed, that if we restrain them we 
 grow intolerant and precise, because we restrain them not 
 according to reason, but according to error ; and if we do not 
 restrain them, we do all sorts of mischief to ourselves and 
 others. Our imagination and understanding are alike subjected 
 to rules the most absurd ;— so much for Theocritus and the 
 Greeks. 
 
 In spite of all your arguments, I wish your money were out of 
 the funds. This middle course which you speak of, and which 
 may probably have place, will amount to your losing not all 
 your income, nor retaining all, but have the half taken away. 
 I feel intimately persuaded, whatever political forms may have 
 place in England, that no party can continue many years, 
 perhaps not many months, in the administration, without 
 diminishing the interest of the national debt. — And once having 
 commenced — and having done so safely — where will it end ? 
 
 Give Henry my kindest thanks for his most interesting letter, 
 and bid him expect one from me by the next post. 
 
 Mary and the babe continue well. — Last night we had a 
 magnificent thunder storm, with claps that shook the house like 
 
 an earthquake. Both Mary and C unite with me in kindest 
 
 remembrances to all. 
 
 Most faithfully yours obliged, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 Florence ^ Nov. \6(h^ 1819. 
 
 LVI.— To A Lady. 
 
 [Exact date imknown.'\ 
 
 " It is probable that you will be earnest to employ the sacred 
 talisman of language. To acquire these you are now necessitated 
 to sacrifice many hours of the time, when, instead of being 
 conversant with particles and verbs, your nature incites you to 
 contemplation and inquiry concerning the objects which they 
 
LETTERS. 30s 
 
 conceal. You desire to enjoy the beauties of eloquence and 
 poetry — to sympathise in the original language with the insti- 
 tutors and martyrs of ancient freedom. The generous and 
 inspiriting examples of philosophy and virtue, you desire 
 intimately to know and feel ; not as mere facts detailing names, 
 and dates, and motions of the human body, but clothed in the 
 very language of the actors, — that language dictated by and 
 expressive of the passions and principles that governed their 
 conduct. Facts are not what we want to know in poetry, in 
 history, in the lives of individual men, in satire, or panegyric. 
 They are the mere divisions, the arbitrary points on which we 
 hang, and to which we refer those delicate and evanescent hues 
 of mind, which language delights and instructs us in precise 
 proportion as it expresses. What is a translation of Homer 
 into English ? A person who is ignorant of Greek, need only 
 look at Paradise Lost, or the tragedy of Lear translated into 
 French, to obtain an analogical conception of its worthless and 
 miserable inadequacy. Tacitus, or Livius, or Herodotus, are 
 equally undelightful and uninstructive in translation. You 
 require to know and to be intimate with those persons who 
 have acted a distinguished part to benefit, to enlighten, or even 
 to pervert and injure humankind. Before you can do this, four 
 years are yet to be consumed in the discipline of the ancient 
 languages, and those of modern Europe, which you only imper- 
 fectly know, and which conceal from your intimacy such names 
 as Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch, and Macchiavelli ; or Goethe, 
 Schiller, Wieland, etc. The French language you, like every 
 other respectable woman, already know ; and if the great name 
 of Rousseau did not redeem it, it would have been perhaps as 
 well that you had remained entirely ignorant of it." 
 
 LVIL— To Henry Reveley. 
 
 Florence, Nov. lyth, 1819. 
 
 My Dear Henry — I was exceedingly interested by your 
 letter, and I cannot but thank you for overcoming the inaptitude 
 of a long disuse at my request, for my pleasure. It is a great 
 thing done, the successful casting of the cylinder — may it be a 
 happy auspice for what is to follow 1 I hope, in a few posts, to 
 remit the necessary money for the completion. Meanwhile, are 
 not those portions of the work which can be done without 
 
 101 
 
3o6 LETTERS. 
 
 expense, saving time in their progress ? Do you think you lose 
 much money or time by this delay ? 
 
 All that you say of the alteration in the form of the boat 
 strikes me, though one of the multitude in this respect, as 
 improvement. I long to get aboard her, and be an unworthy 
 partaker in the glory of the astonishment of the Livornese, when 
 she returns from her cruise round Melloria. When do you 
 think she will be fit for sea ? 
 
 Your volcanic description of the birth of the cylinder is very 
 characteristic of you, and of it* One might imagine God, when 
 he made the earth, and saw the granite mountains and flinty 
 promontories flow into their craggy forms, and the splendour of 
 their fusion filling millions of miles of the void space, like the 
 tail of a comet, so looking, so delighting in his work. God 
 sees his machine spinning round the sun, and delights in its 
 success, and has taken out patents to supply all the suns in 
 space with the same manufacture. Your boat will be to the 
 ocean of water, what this earth is to the ocean of ether — a 
 prosperous and swift voyager. 
 
 When shall we see you all ? You not, I suppose, till your 
 boat is ready to sail — and then, if not before, I must, of course, 
 come to Livorno. Our plans for the winter are yet scarcely 
 defined ; they tend towards our spending February and March 
 at Pisa, where our communications will not be so distant, nor 
 
 so epistolary. C left us a week ago, not without many 
 
 lamentations, as all true lovers pay on such occasions. He is 
 to write me an account of the Trieste steam-boat, which I will 
 transmit to you. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley and Miss C return you their kindest 
 
 salutations, with interest. 
 
 Most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 * I insert the extract alluded to from Mr. Reveley's letter : — 
 
 '■'■ Friday ^ I2lh Nov. 
 
 " The event is now past — both the steam cylinder and air-pump were 
 cast at three o'clock this afternoon. At two o'clock this morning I 
 repaired to the mill to see that the preliminary operations, upon which 
 the ultimate success of a fount greatly depends, were conducted with 
 proper attention. The moulds are buried in a pit, made close, before 
 the mouth of the furnace, so that the melted melal, when the plug is 
 driven in, may run easily into them, and fill up the vacant space left 
 between the core and the shell, in order to form the desired cylinders. 
 The fire was lighted in the furnace at nine, and in three hours 
 the metal was fused. At three o'clock it was ready to cast, the fusion 
 
LETTERS, 307 
 
 LVIIL— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Florence^ Nov. 23, 181 9. 
 
 My Dear Hunt — Why don't you write to us ? I was pre- 
 paring to send you something for your " Indicator," but I have 
 been a drone instead of a bee in this business, thinking that per- 
 haps, as you did not acknowledge any of my late enclosures, it 
 would not be welcome to you, whatever I might send. 
 
 What a state England is in ! But you will never write 
 politics. I don't wonder j but I wish, then, that you would 
 wri . paper in the " Examiner " on the actual state of the 
 country, and what, under all circumstances of the conflicting 
 passions and interests of men, we aie to expect. Not what we 
 ought to expect, nor what, if so and so were to happen, we 
 might expect ; — but what, as things are, there is reason to 
 believe will come ; — and send it me for my information. Every 
 word a man has to say is valuable to the public now ; and thus 
 you will at once gratify your friend, nay, instruct, and either 
 exhilarate him, or force him to be resigned, and awaken the 
 minds of the people. 
 
 I have no spirits to write what I do not know whether you 
 will care much about ; I know well that if I were in great 
 misery, poverty, etc., you would think of nothing else but how 
 to amuse and relieve me. You omit me if I am prosperous. 
 
 I could laugh, if I found a joke, in order to put you in good- 
 being remarkably rapid, owing to the perfection of the furnace. The 
 metal was also heated to an extreme degree, boiling with fury, and 
 seeming to dance with the pleasure of running into its proper form: 
 The plug was struck, and a massy stream of a bluish dazzling whiteness 
 filled the moulds in the twinkling of a shooting star. The castings will 
 not be cool enough to be drawn up till to-morrow afternoon ; but, to 
 judge from all appearances, I expect them to be perfect." 
 
 *' Saturday^ I'^th Nov. 
 
 "They have been excavated and drawn up. I have examined them 
 and found them really perfect ; they are massive and strong to bear any 
 usage and sea-water, in scecula sceculorum. I am now going on gently 
 with the brass-work, which does not require any immediate expenses, 
 and which I attend to entirely myself. I have no workmen about me 
 at present. 
 
 '* With kindest salutations to Mrs. Shelley and Miss C, 
 " I remain, most truly, 
 
 " Your obliged friend and devoted servant, 
 
 "Henry W. Reveley." 
 —M. S, 
 
3o8 LETTERS. 
 
 humour with me after my scolding ; in good-humour enough to 
 write to us. . . . Affectionate love to and from all. This ought 
 not only to be the Vale of a letter, but a superscription over the 
 gate of life. 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 I send you a sonnet. I don't expect you to publish it, but you 
 may show it to whom you please. 
 
 LIX.— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Florence, November, 1819. 
 
 My Dear Friend— Two letters, both bearing date Oct. 20, 
 arrive on the same day ; one is always glad of twins. 
 
 We hear of a box arrived at Genoa with books and clothes ; 
 it must be yours. Meanwhile the babe is wrapt in flannel petti- 
 coats, and we get on with him as we can. He is small, healthy, 
 and pretty. Mary is recovering rapidly. Marianne, I hope, is 
 quite well. 
 
 You do not tell me whether you have received my lines on 
 the Manchester affair. They are of the exoteric species, and 
 are meant, not for the " Indicator," but the " Examiner." I 
 would send for the former, if you like, some letters on such sub- 
 jects of art as suggest themselves in Italy. Perhaps I will, at a 
 venture, send you a specimen of what I mean next post. I 
 enclose you in this a piece for the " Examiner," or let it share 
 the fate, whatever that fate may be, of the " Masque of 
 Anarchy."* 
 
 I am sorry to hear that you have employed yourself in trans- 
 lating the " Aminta," though I doubt not it will be a just and 
 beautiful translation. You ought to write Amintas. You ought 
 to exercise your fancy in the perpetual creation of new forms of 
 gentleness and beauty. 
 
 With respect to translation, even / will not be seduced by it ; 
 although the Greek plays, and some of the ideal dramas of 
 Calderon, (with which I have lately, and with inexpressible 
 wonder and delight, become acquainted) are perpetually tempt- 
 ing me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey 
 veil of my own words. And you know me too well to suspect 
 
 • Peter Bell the Third.— if. -S'. 
 
LETTERS. 309 
 
 that I refrain from a belief that what I could substitute for them 
 would deserve the regret which yours would, if suppressed. I 
 have confidence in my moral sense alone ; but that is a kind of 
 originality. I have only translated the Cyclops of Euripides, 
 when I could absolutely do nothing else ; and the Symposium 
 of Plato, which is the delight and astonishment of all who read 
 it ; I mean the original, or so much of the original as is seen in 
 my translation, not the translation itself. 
 
 I think I have had an accession of strength since my residence 
 in Italy, though the disease itself in the side, whatever it may 
 be, is not subdued. Some day we shall all return from Italy. 
 I fear that in England things will be carried violently by the 
 rulers, and they will not have learned to yield in time to the 
 spirit of the age. The great thing to do is to hold the balance 
 between popular impatience and tyrannical obstinacy ; to incul- 
 cate with fervour both the right of resistance and the duty of 
 forbearance. You know my principles incite me to take all the 
 good I can get in politics, for ever aspiring to something more. 
 I am one of* those whom nothing will fully satisfy, but who are 
 ready to be partially satisfied in all that is practicable. We 
 shall see. 
 
 Give Bessy a thousand thanks from me for writing out in that 
 pretty neat hand your kind and powerful defence. Ask what 
 she would like best from Italian land. We mean to bring you 
 all something ; and Mary and I have been wondering what it 
 shall be. Do you, each of you, choose. 
 
 Adieu, my dear friend, 
 
 Yours affectionately ever, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LX.— From Shelley to Mr. Ollier. 
 
 Florence J December i$tkj 18 19. 
 
 Dear Sir — Pray, give Mr. Procter my best thanks for his 
 polite attention. I read the article you enclosed with the 
 pleasure which every one feels, of course, when they are praised 
 or defended ; though the praise would have given me more 
 pleasure if it had been less excessive. I am glad, however, to 
 see the Quarterly cut up, and that by one of their own people. 
 Poor Southey has enough to endure. Do you know, I think 
 the article in Blackwood could not have been written by a 
 favourer of Government and a religionist. I don't believe any 
 
3IO LETTERS, 
 
 such one could sincerely like my writings. After all, is it not 
 some friend in disguise, and don't you know who wrote it ? 
 
 There is one very droll thing in the Quarterly. They say 
 that " my chariot-wheels are broken." Heaven forbid 1 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 prevailed, in 
 consequence of some insinuations in the Quarterly Review^ that 
 Mr. Shelley's chariot wheels are broken, Mr. Charters, of Bond 
 Street, begs to assure the public that they, after having carried 
 him through Italy, France, and Switzerland, still continue in 
 excellent repair." 
 
 When the box comes, you may write a note to Mr. Peacock ; 
 or it would be better to call on him, and ask if my tragedy is 
 accepted? If not, publish what you find in the box. I think it 
 will succeed as a publication. Let Prometheus be printed 
 without delay. You will receive the additions, which Mrs. S. 
 is now transcribing, in a few days. It has already been read to 
 many persons. My Prometheus is the best thing I ever wrote. 
 
 Pray, what have you done with Peter Bell f Ask Mr. Hunt 
 for it, and for some other poems of a similar character I sent 
 him to give you to publish. I think Peter not bad in his way ; 
 but perhaps no one will believe in anything in the shape of a 
 joke from me. 
 
 Of course with my next box you will send me the Dramatic 
 Sketches* I have only seen the extracts in the Examiner. 
 They have some passages painfully beautiful When I consider 
 the vivid energy to which the minds of men are awakened in 
 this age of ours, ought I not to congratulate myself that I am a 
 contemporary with names which are great, or will be great, or 
 ought to be great ? 
 
 Have you seen my poem, Julian and Maddalo f Suppose 
 you print that in the manner of Hunt's Hero and Leander; for 
 I mean to write three other poems, the scenes of which will be 
 laid at Rome, Florence, and Naples, but the subjects of which 
 will be all drawn from dreadful or beautiful realities, as that of 
 this was. 
 
 If I have health — but I will neither boast nor promise. I am 
 preparing an octavo on reform — a commonplace kind of book — 
 which, now that I see the passion of party will postpone the 
 great struggle till another year, I shall not trouble myself to 
 
 * By B. W. Procter— (Barry Cornwall). 
 
LETTERS. 311 
 
 finish for this season. I intend it to be an instructive and 
 readable book, appealing from the passions to the reason of 
 men. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LXL— To Henry Reveley. 
 
 Florence^ iZth Dec.^ 1819. 
 
 My Dear Henry — You see, as I said, it only amounts to 
 delay, all this abominable entanglement. I send you 484 
 dollars, or ordinary francesconi, I suppose, but you will tell me 
 what you receive in Tuscan money, if they are not — the produce 
 of ;^ioo. So my heart is a little lightened, which, I assure you, 
 was heavy enough until this moment, on your account. I write 
 to Messrs. Ward to pay you. 
 
 I have received no satisfactory letter from my bankers, but I 
 must expect it every week — or, at least, in a month from this 
 date, when I will not fail to transmit you the remainder of what 
 may be necessary. 
 
 Everybody here is talking of a steam-ship which is building 
 at Leghorn ; one person said, as if he knew the whole affair, 
 that he was waiting in Tuscany to take his departure to Naples 
 in it. Your name has not, to my knowledge, been mentioned. 
 I think you would do well to encourage this publicity. 
 
 I have better health than I have known for a long time- 
 ready for any stormy cruise. When will the ship be ready to 
 sail ? We have been feeding ourselves with the hope that Mr. 
 Gisborne and your mother would have paid us their promised 
 visit. I did not even hope, perhaps not even wish, that you 
 should, until the engine is finished. My regret at this failure 
 has several times impelled me to go to Leghorn — but I have 
 always resisted the temptation. Ask them, entreat them, from 
 me, to appoint some early day. We have a bed and room, and 
 everything prepared. 
 
 I write in great haste, as you may see. Ever believe me, my 
 dear Henry, your attached friend, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
3ia LETTERS. 
 
 LXII.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Florence^ Dec. lyd^ 1819. 
 
 My Dear Friends— I suffered more pain than it would be 
 manly to confess, or than you can easily conceive, from that 
 wretched uncertainty about the money. At last, however, it is 
 certain that you will encounter no further check in the receiving 
 supplies, and a weight is taken from my spirits, which, in spite 
 of many other causes of discomfort, makes itself known to have 
 been a heavy load, by the lightness which I now feel in writing 
 to you. 
 
 So the steam-boat will take three months to finish? The 
 vernal equinox will be over by that time, and the early wakening 
 of the year have paved the Mediterranean with calm. Among 
 other circumstances to regret in this delay, it is so far well that 
 our first cruise will be made in serene weather. 
 
 I send you enclosed a mandate for 396 francesconi, which is 
 what M. Torlonia incorrectly designates a hundred pounds — 
 but as we count in the money of the country, that need make no 
 difference to us. 
 
 I have just finished an additional act to " Prometheus," which 
 Mary is now transcribing, and which will be enclosed for your 
 inspection before it is transmitted to the bookseller. I am 
 engaged in a political work — I am busy enough, and if the 
 faculties of my mind were not imprisoned within a mind, whose 
 bars are daily cares and vulgar difficulties, I might yet do 
 something — but as it is 
 
 Mary is well — but for this affair in London I think her spirits 
 would be good. What shall I— what can I — what ought I to 
 do ? You cannot picture to yourself my perplexity. 
 
 Adieu, my dear friends. 
 
 Ever yours, faithfully attached, 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LXII I.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa, Jan. 20th, 1820. 
 
 Dear Sir— I send you the Witch 0/ Atlas, a fanciful poem, 
 which, if its merit be measured by the labour which it cost, 
 is worth nothing ; and the errata of Prometheus, which I ought 
 ^o h^ve sent long since — a formidable list, as you will see. 
 
LETTERS. 313 
 
 I have lately, and but lately, received Mr. Gisbome's parcel, 
 with reviews, etc. I request you to convey to Mr. Procter my 
 thanks for the present of his works, as well as for the pleasure 
 which I received from the perusal, especially of the Dramatic 
 Sketches. 
 
 The reviews of my Cenci (though some of them, and 
 especially that marked "John Scott," are written with great 
 malignity) on the whole give me as much encouragement 
 as a person of my habits of thinking is capable of receiving 
 from such a source, which is, inasmuch as they coincide with, 
 and confirm, my own decisions. My next attempt (if I should 
 write more) will be a drama, in the composition of which I 
 shall attend to the advice of my critics, to a certain degree. 
 But I doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content 
 either with the Hell or the Paradise of poetry \ but the 
 torments of its purgatory vex me, without exciting my powers 
 sufficiently to put an end to the vexation. 
 
 I have also to thank you for the present of one or two 
 of your publications. I am enchanted with your Literary 
 Miscellany^ although the last article it contains has excited 
 my polemical faculties so violently, that the moment I get rid 
 of my ophthalmia, I mean to set about an answer to it, which 
 I will send to you, if you please. It is very clever, but, I think, 
 very false.* Who is your commentator on the German 
 Drama ? He is a powerful thinker, though I differ from him 
 toto ccelo about the Devils of Dante and Milton. If you know 
 him personally, pray ask him from me what he means by 
 receiving the spirit into mej\ and (if really it is any good) 
 how one is to get at it. I was immeasurably amused by the 
 quotation from Schlegel about the way in which the popular 
 faith is destroyed — first the Devil, then the Holy Ghost, then 
 God the Father. I had written a Lucianic essay to prove the 
 same thing. There are two beautiful stories, too, in this 
 Miscellany. It pleased me altogether infinitely. I was also 
 much pleased with the Retrospective Review — that is, with all 
 the quotations from old books in it ; but it is very ill executed. 
 
 * The article (which was written by Mr. Peacock) was an Essay on 
 Poetry, which the writer regarded as a worn-out delusion of barbarous 
 times. — Z. S. 
 
 t The writer was the late Archdeacon Hare, who, despite his 
 orthodoxy, was a great admirer of Shelley's genius. He contended 
 that Milton erred in making the Devil a majestical being, and hoped 
 that Shelley would in time humble his soul, and " receive the spirit 
 into him." — L, S. 
 
314 LETTERS. 
 
 When the spirit moves you, write and give me an account of 
 the ill success of my verses. 
 
 Who wrote the review in your publication of my Cencif It 
 was written in a friendly spirit, and, if you know the author, I 
 wish you would tell him from me how much obliged I am to him 
 for this spirit, more gratifying to me than any literary laud. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LXIV.— To John Gisborne. 
 
 My Dear Sir — We have suddenly taken the determination 
 to avail ourselves of this lovely weather to approach you as far 
 as Pisa. I need not assure you — unless my malady should 
 violently return — you will see me at Leghorn. 
 
 We embark j' arid I promise myself the delight of the sky, 
 the water, and the mountains. I must suffer at any rate, but 
 I expect to suffer less in a boat than in a carriage. I have 
 many things to say, which let me reserve till we meet. 
 
 I sympathise in all your good news, as I have done in your 
 ill. Let Henry take care of himself, and not, desiring to 
 combine too many advantages, check the progress of his 
 recovery, the greatest of all. 
 
 Remember me affectionately to him and to Mrs. Gisborne, 
 and accept for yourself my unalterable sentiments of regard. 
 Meanwhile, consider well your pians^ which I only half 
 understand. 
 
 Ever most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 Florence^ 2lth Jan.^ 1820. 
 
 LXV.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa, ()th Feb., 1820. 
 
 Pray let us see you soon, or our threat may cost both us and 
 you something — a visit to Livorno. The stage direction on the 
 present occasion is, (exit Moonshine) and enter Wall ; or rather 
 four walls, who surround and take prisoners the Galan and 
 Dama. 
 
LETTERS. 315 
 
 Seriously, pray do not disappoint us. We shall watch the 
 sky, and the death of the scirocco must be the "birth of your 
 arrival. 
 
 Mary and I are going to study mathematics. We design to 
 take the most compendious, yet certain methods of arriving at 
 the great results. We believe that your right-angled Triangle 
 will contain the solution of the problem of how to proceed. 
 
 Do not write, but come. Mary is too idle to write, but all 
 that she has to say is corne. She joins with me in condemning 
 the moonlight plan. Indeed we ought not to be so selfish as to 
 allow you to come at all, if it is to cost you all the fatigue and 
 annoyance of returning the same night. But it will not be— so 
 adieu. 
 
 LXVL— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa, March 6th, 1820. 
 
 Dear Sir — I do not hear that you have received Prometheus 
 and the Cenci ; I therefore think it safest to tell you how and 
 when to get them if you have not yet done so. 
 
 Give the bill of lading Mr. Gisborne sent you to a broker in 
 the City, whom you employ to get the package, and to pay the 
 duty on the unbound books. The ship sailed in the middle of 
 December, and will assuredly have arrived long before now. 
 
 Prometheus Unbound, I must tell you, is my favourite poem ; 
 I charge you, therefore, specially to pet him and feed him with 
 fine ink and good paper. Cenci is written for the multitude, and 
 ought to sell well. I think, if I may judge by its merits, the 
 Prometheus cannot sell beyond twenty copies. I hear nothing 
 either from Hunt, or you, or any one. If you condescend to 
 write to me, mention something about Keats. 
 
 Allow me particularly to request you to send copies of whatever 
 I publish to Horace Smith. 
 
 Maybe you will see me in the summer ; but in that case I 
 shall certainly return to this "Paradise of Exiles" by the ensuing 
 winter. 
 
 If any of the Reviews abuse me, cut them out and send them. 
 If they praise, you need not trouble yourself. I feel ashamed if 
 I could believe that I should deserve the latter ; the former, I 
 flatter myself, is no more than a just tribute. If Hunt praises 
 me, send it, because that is of another character of thing. 
 Dear Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
3l6 LETTERS. 
 
 ■ LXVII.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa^ March i^th^ 1820. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I am anxious to hear that you have received the 
 parcel from Leghorn, and to learn what you are doing with the 
 Proinethetis. If it can be done without great difficulty, I should 
 be very glad that the revised sheets might be sent by the post 
 to me at Leghorn. It might be divided into four partitions, 
 sending me four or five sheets at once. 
 
 My friends here have great hopes that the Cenci will succeed 
 as a publication. It was refused at Drury Lane,* although 
 expressly written for theatrical exhibition, on a plea of the story 
 being too horrible. I believe it singularly fitted for the stage. 
 
 Let me request you to give me frequent notice of my literary 
 interests also. 
 
 I am, dear Sir, 
 
 Your very obliged servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 I hope you are not implicated in the late plot.f Not having 
 heard from Hunt, I am afraid that he, at least, has something 
 to do with it. It is well known, since the time of Jaffier, that a 
 conspirator has no time to think about his friends. 
 
 LXVII I.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa^ April 22,^ 1820. 
 
 My Dear Friends — We are much pained to hear of the 
 illness you all seem to have been suffering, and still more at the 
 apparent dejection of your last letter. We are in daily expecta- 
 tion this lovely weather of seeing you, and I think the change of 
 air and scene might be good for your health and spirits, even if 
 lue cannot enliven you. I shall have some business at Livorno 
 soon ; and I thought of coming to fetch you, but I have changed 
 my plan, and mean to return with you, that I may save myself 
 two journeys. 
 
 I have been thinking, and talking, and reading Agriculture 
 
 * This is apparently a slip of the pen for Covent Garden, — L, S. 
 t The Cato Street Conspiracy.— Z. S. 
 
LETTERS. 317 
 
 this last week. But I am very anxious to see you, especially 
 now as instead of six hours, you give us thirty-six, or perhaps 
 more. I shall hear of the steam-engine, and you will hear of 
 our plans when we meet, which will be in so short a time, thai 
 I neither inquire nor communiate. 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 LXIX.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa^ May i/\ih, 1820. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I reply to your letter by return of post, to confirm 
 what I said in a former letter respecting a new edition of the 
 Cenci^ which ought by all means to be instantly urged forward. 
 
 I see by your account that I have been greatly mistaken in 
 my calculations of the profit of my writings. As to the trifle 
 due to me, it may as well remain in your hands. 
 
 As to the printing of the Prometheus^ be it as you will. But, 
 in this case, I shall repose or trust in your care respecting the 
 correction of the press ; especially in the lyrical parts, where a 
 minute error would be of much consequence. Mr. Gisbome 
 will revise it ; he heard it recited, and will therefore more 
 readily seize any error. 
 
 If I had even intended to publish y«//<«;^ and Maddalo with 
 my name, yet I would not print it with Prometheus. It would 
 not harmonize. It is an attempt in a different style, in which I 
 am not yet sure of myself — a sermo pedestris way of treating 
 human nature, quite opposed to the idealisms of that drama. 
 If you print Julian and Maddalo, I wish it to be printed in 
 some unostentatious form, accompanied with the fragment of 
 Athanase, and exactly in the manner in which I sent it ; and I 
 particularly desire that my name be not annexed to the first 
 edition of it, in any case. 
 
 li Peter Bell be printed (you can best judge if it will sell or 
 no, and there would be no other reason for printing such a 
 trifle), attend, I pray you, particularly to completely concealing 
 the author ; and for Emma read Betty, as the name of Peter's 
 sister. Emma, I recollect, is the real name of the sister of a 
 great poet who might be mistaken for Peter. I ought to say 
 that I send you poems in a few posts, to print at the end of 
 Prometheus^ better fitted for that purpose than any in your 
 possession. 
 
3i8 LETTERS. 
 
 Keats, I hope, is going to show himself a great poet ; like 
 the sun, to burst through the clouds, which, though dyed in the 
 finest colours of the air, obscured his rising. The Gisbornes 
 will bring me from you copies of whatever may be published 
 when they leave England. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 LXX.— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Pisa^ May, 1820. 
 
 My Dear Peacock— I congratulate you most sincerely on 
 your choice and on your marriage. ... I was very much 
 amused by your laconic account of the affair. It is altogether 
 extremely like the denouement of one of your own novels, and as 
 such serves to a theory I once imagined, that in everything 
 any man ever wrote, spoke, acted, or imagined, is contained, as 
 it were, on allegorical idea of his own future life, as the acorn 
 contains the oak. 
 
 But not to ascend in my balloon. I have written to ask him 
 to pay me a visit, and though I had no hope of success, I com- 
 missioned him to endeavour to bring you. This becomes still 
 more improbable from your news ; but I need not say that your 
 amiable mountaineer would make you still more welcome. My 
 friends, the Gisbornes, are now really on their way to London, 
 where they propose to stay only six weeks. I think you will 
 like Mrs. Gisborne. Henry is an excellent fellow, but not very 
 communicative. If you find anything in the shape of dulness or 
 otherwise to endure in Mr. Gisborne, endure it for the lady's 
 sake and mine ; but for Heaven's sake 1 do not let him know 
 that I think him stupid. Indeed, perhaps I do him an injustice.* 
 Hogg will find it very agreeable (if he postpones his visit so 
 long, or if he visits me at all) to join them on their return. I 
 wish you, and Hogg, and Hunt, and — I know not who besides — 
 would come and spend some months with me together in this 
 wonderful land. 
 
 * I think he did. I found Mr. Gisborne an agreeable and well- 
 informed man. He and his amiable and accomplished wife have long 
 been dead. I should not have printed what Shelley says of him if any 
 person were living whom the remembrance could annoy. — T L. P, 
 
LETTERS. 319 
 
 We know little of England here. I take in Galignani's paper, 
 which is filled with extracts from the Courier^ and from those 
 accounts it appears probable that there is but little unanirrxity 
 in the mass of the people ; with on the one side the success of 
 ministers, and on the other the exasperation of the poor. 
 
 I see my tragedy has been republished in Paris ; if that is 
 the case, it ought to sell in London ; but I hear nothing from 
 Oilier. 
 
 I have suffered extremely this winter ; but I feel myself most 
 materially better at the return of spring. I am on the whole 
 greatly benefited by my residence in Italy, and but for certain 
 moral causes should probably have been enabled to re-establish 
 my system completely. Believe me, my dear Peacock, yours 
 very sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 Pray make my best regards acceptable to your new 
 companion. 
 
 LXXI.— To John Gisborne, 
 
 (LONDON.) 
 
 Pisa, May 26th, 1820. 
 
 My Dear Friends — I write to you thus early, because I 
 have determined to accept of your kind offer about the cor- 
 rection of " Prometheus." The bookseller makes difficulties 
 about sending the proofs to me, and to whom else can I so well 
 entrust what I am so much interested in having done well ; and 
 to whom would I prefer to owe the recollection of an additional 
 kindness done to me ? I enclose you two little papers of 
 corrections and additions ; — I do not think you will find any 
 difficulty in interpolating them into their proper places. 
 
 Well, how do you like London, and your journey ; the Alps 
 in their beauty and their eternity -, Paris in its slight and 
 transitory colours ; and the wearisome plains of France — and 
 the moral people with whom you drank tea last night? Above 
 all, how are you ? And of the last question, believe me, we are 
 anxiously waiting for a reply — until which I will say nothing, 
 nor ask anything. I rely on the journal with as much security 
 as if it were already written. 
 
 I am just returned from a visit to Leghorn, Casciano, and 
 our old fortress at Sant' Elmo. I bought the vases you saw 
 
320 LETTERS. 
 
 for about twenty sequins less than Micale asked, and had them 
 packed up, and, by the polite assistance of your friend, Mr. 
 Guebhard, sent them on board. I found your Giuseppe very 
 useful in all this business. He got me tea and breakfast, and I 
 slept in your house, and departed early the next morning for 
 Casciano. Everything seems in excellent order at Casa Ricci 
 — garden, pigeons, tables, chairs, and beds. As I did not find 
 my bed sealed up, I left it as I found it. What a glorious 
 prospect you had from the windows of Sant' Elmo 1 The 
 enormous chain of the Apennines, with its many-folded 
 ridges, islanded in the misty distance of the air ; the sea, so 
 immensely distant, appearing as at your feet ; and the pro- 
 digious expanse of the plain of Pisa, and the dark green 
 marshes lessened almost to a strip by the height of the blue 
 mountains overhanging them. Then the wild and unreclaimed 
 fertility of the foreground, and the chestnut trees, whose vivid 
 foliage made a sort of resting-place to the sense before it darted 
 itself to. the jagged horizon of this prospect. I was altogether 
 delighted. I had a respite from my nervous symptoms, which 
 was compensated to me by a violent cold in the head. There 
 was a tradition about you at Sant' Elmo — An English family 
 that had lived here in the time of the French. The doctor, too, 
 at the Bagni, knew you. The house is in a most dilapidated 
 condition, but I suppose all that is curable. 
 
 We go to the Bagni* next month— but still direct to Pisa as 
 safest. I shall write to you the ultimates of my commission in 
 my next letter. I am undergoing a course of the Pisan baths, 
 on which I lay no singular stress — but they soothe. I ought to 
 have peace of mind, leisure, tranquillity ; this I expect soon. 
 Our anxiety about Godwin is very great, and any information 
 that you could give a day or two earlier than he might, 
 respecting any decisive event in his law-suit, would be a great 
 relief. Your impressions about Godwin, (I speak especially to 
 Madonna mia, who had known him before), will especially 
 interest me. You know that added years only add to my 
 admiration of his intellectual powers, and even the moral 
 resources of his character. Of my other friends I say nothing. 
 To see Hunt is to like him ; and there is one other recommenda- 
 tion which he has to you, he is my friend. To know H -, if 
 
 any one can know him, is to know something very unlike, 
 and inexpressibly superior, to the great mass of men. 
 Will Henry write me an adamantine letter, flowing not like 
 * Baths of natural warm spring, distant four miles from Pisa, and 
 called indifferently Bagni di Pisa, and Bagni di San GiuHanc— il/. S, 
 
LETTERS. 321 
 
 the words of Sophocles, with honey, but molten brass and iron, 
 and bristling with wheels and teeth ? I saw his steam-boat 
 asleep under the walls. I was afraid to waken it, and ask it 
 whether it was dreaming of him, for the same reason that I 
 would have refrained from awakening Ariadne, after Theseus 
 had left her — unless I had been Bacchus. 
 
 Affectionately and anxiously yours,. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LXXII.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, 
 
 (LONDON.) 
 
 My Dear Friends — I am to a certain degree indifferent as 
 to the reply to our last proposal, and, therefore, will not allude 
 to it. Permit me only on subjects of this nature to express one 
 sentiment, which you would have given me credit for, even if 
 not expressed. Let no considerations of my interest, or any 
 retrospect to the source from which the funds were supplied, 
 modify your decision as to returning and pursuing or abandon- 
 ing the adventure of the steam-engine. My object was solely 
 your true advantage, and it is when I am baffled of this, by any 
 attention to a mere form, that I shall be ill-requited. Nay, 
 more, I think it for your interest, should you obtain almost 
 whatever situation for Henry, to accept dementi's proposal, 
 and remain in England ; — not without accepting it, for it does 
 no more than balance the difference of expense between Italy 
 and London ; and if you have any trust in the justice of my 
 moral sense, and believe that in what concerns true honour and 
 virtuous conduct in life, I am an experienced counsellor, you 
 will not hesitate — these things being equal — to accept this 
 proposal. The opposition I made, while you were in Italy, to 
 the abandonment of the steam-boat project, was founded, you 
 well know, on the motives which have influenced everything 
 that ever has guided, or ever will guide anything that I can do 
 or say respecting you. I thought it against Henry's interest. 
 I think it now against his interest that he and you should 
 abandon your prospects in England. As to us — we are un- 
 certain people, who are chased by the spirits of our destiny 
 from purpose to purpose, like clouds by the wind. 
 
 There is one thing more to be said. If you decide to remain 
 in England, assuredly it would be foolish to return. Your 
 journey would cost you between ;^ioo and ^200, a sum far 
 
 102 
 
322 . LETTERS. 
 
 greater than you could expect to save by the increased price by 
 which you would sell your things. Remit the matter to me, and 
 I will cast off my habitual character, and attend to the minutest 
 
 points. With Mr. G 's, devil take his name, I can't write it, 
 
 — you know who's, assistance, all this might be accomplished in 
 such a manner as to save a very considerable sum. Though I 
 shall suffer from your decision in the proportion as your society 
 is delightful to me, I cannot forbear expressing my persuasion, 
 that the time, the expense, and the trouble of returning to Italy, 
 if your ultimate decision be to settle in London, ought all to be 
 spared. A year, a month, a week, at Henry's age, and with his 
 purposes, ought not to be unemployed. It was the depth with 
 which I felt this truth, which impelled me to incite him to this 
 adventure of the steam-boat. 
 
 LXXIIL— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Leghorn^ July 12M, 1820. 
 
 My Dear Peacock — I remember you said that when 
 
 married you were afraid you would see or hear but little of him. 
 " There are two voices," says Wordsworth, " one of the moun- 
 tains and one of the sea, each a mighty voice." So you have 
 two wives — one of the mountains, all of whose claims I perfectly 
 admit, whose displeasure I deprecate, and from whom I feel 
 assured that I have nothing to fear : the other of the sea, 
 perhaps, makes you write so much, that you have not a scrawl 
 to spare. I make bold to write to you on the news that you are 
 correcting my Prometheus^ for which I return thanks. I hear of 
 you from Mr. Gisborne, but from you I do not hear. 
 
 Nothing, I think, shows the generous gullibility of the English 
 nation more than their having adopted her Sacred Majesty ar 
 the heroine of the day, in spite of all their prejudices and 
 bigotry. . I, for my part, of course wish no harm to happen to 
 her, even if she has, as I firmly believe, amused herself in a 
 manner rather indecorous with any courier or baron. But I 
 cannot help adverting to it as one of the absurdities of royalty, 
 that a vulgar woman, with all those low tastes which prejudice 
 considers as vices, and a person whose habits and manners 
 every one would shun in private life, without any redeeming 
 virtues, should be turned into a heroine because she is a queen, 
 or, as a collateral reason, because her husband is a king ; and 
 
LETTERS. 323 
 
 he, no less than his ministers, are so odious that everything, 
 however disgusting, which is opposed to them, is admirable. 
 The Paris paper, which I take in, copied some excellent remarks 
 from the Examiner about it. 
 
 We are just now occupying the Gisbornes' house at Leghorn, 
 and I have turned Mr. Reveley's workshop into my study. The 
 Libecchio here howls like a chorus of fiends all day, and the 
 weather is just pleasant, — not at all hot, the days being very 
 misty, and the nights divinely serene. I have been reading 
 with much pleasure the Greek romances. The best of them is 
 the pastoral of Longus : but they are all very entertaining, and 
 would be delightful if they were less rhetorical and ornate. I 
 am translating in ottava rima the Hymn to Mercury of Homer. 
 Of course my stanza precludes a literal translation. My next 
 effort will be, that it should be legible — a quality much to be 
 desired in translations. 
 
 I am told that the magazines, etc., blaspheme me at a great 
 rate. I wonder why I write verses, for nobody reads them. It 
 is a kind of disorder, for which the regular practitioners 
 prescribe what is called a torrent of abuse ; but I fear that can 
 hardly be considered as a specific. 
 
 I enclose two additional poems, to be added to those printed 
 at the end of Prometheus : and I send them to you, for fear 
 Oilier might not know what to do in case he objected to some 
 expressions in the fifteenth and sixteenth stanzas ;* and that you 
 would do me the favour to insert an asterisk or asterisks, with 
 as little expense to the sense as may be. The other poem I 
 send to you, not to make two letters. I want Jones's Greek 
 Grammar very much for Mary, who is deep in Greek. I 
 thought of sending for it in sheets by the post ; but as I find it 
 would cost as much as a parcel, I would rather have a parcel, 
 including it and some other books, which you would do me a 
 great favour by sending by the first ship. Never send us more 
 reviews than two back on any of Lord Byron's works, as we 
 get them here. — Believe me, my dear Peacock, 
 
 Sincerely and affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 Jones's Greek Grammar; Schrevelii Lexicon; The Greek 
 Exercises; Melincourt^ and Headlong Hall; papers, Indi- 
 cators^ and whatever else you may think interesting. Godwin'* 
 Answer to Malthus^ if out. 
 
 * These were the 15th and i6th stanzas of the Ode to Liberty. — T. L. P, 
 
324 LETTERS. 
 
 LXXIV.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 
 (LEGHORN.) 
 
 My Dear Love — I believe I shall have taken a very pleasant 
 and spacious apartment at the Bagni for three months. It is as 
 all the others are — dear. I shall give forty or forty-five sequins 
 for the three months, but as yet I do not know which. I could 
 get others something cheaper, and a great deal worse ; but if 
 we would write, it is requisite to have space. 
 
 To-morrow evening, or the following morning, you will 
 
 probably see me. T is planning a journey to England to 
 
 secure his property in the event of a revolution, which, he is 
 persuaded, is on the eve of exploding. I neither believe that, 
 nor do I fear that the consequences will be so immediately 
 destructive to the existing forms of social order. Money will be 
 delayed, and the exchange reduced very low, and my annuity 
 and Mrs. M.'s, on account of these being money ^ will be in some 
 danger ; but land is quite safe. Besides, it will not be so rapid. 
 
 Let us hope we shall have a reform. T will be lulled into 
 
 security, while the slow progress of things is still flowing on, 
 after this affair of the Queen may appear to be blown over. 
 There are bad news from Palermo : the soldiers resisted the 
 people, and a terrible slaughter, amounting, it is said, to four 
 thousand men, ensued. The event, however, was as it should 
 be. Sicily, like Naples, is free. By the brief and partial 
 accounts of the Florence paper, it appears that the enthusiasm 
 of the people was prodigious, and that the women fought from 
 the houses, raining down boiling oil on the assailants. 
 
 I am promised a bill on Vienna on the 5th, the day on which 
 my note will be paid, and the day on which I purpose to leave 
 Leghorn. Mrs. M. is very unhappy at the idea of T.'s going to 
 England, though she seems to feel the necessity of it. Some 
 time or other he must go to settle his affairs, and they seem to 
 agree that this is the best opportunity. / have no thought 
 of leaving Italy. The best thing we can do is to save money, 
 and, if things take a decided turn, (which I am convinced they 
 will at last, but not perhaps for two or three years,) it will be 
 time for me to assert my rights, and preserve my annuity. 
 Meanwhile, another event may decide us. Kiss sweet babe, 
 and kiss yourself for me — I love you affectionately. 
 
 P. B. S. 
 Casa Silva^ 
 
 Sunday morning^ lyrdjuly^ 1820. 
 
LETTERS. 325 
 
 I have taken the house for forty sequins for three months — a 
 good bargain, and a very good house as things go — this is 
 about thirteen sequins a-month. To-morrow I go to look over 
 the inventory ; expect me therefore on Tuesday morning. 
 
 Sunday evening. 
 
 LXXV.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 
 (BAGNI DI SAN GIULIANO.) 
 
 I AM afraid, my dearest, that I shall not be able to be with 
 you so soon as to-morrow evening, though I shall use every 
 exertion. Del Rosso I have not seen, nor shall until this even- 
 ing. Jackson I have, and he is to drink tea with us this 
 evening, and bring the Constitutionnel. 
 
 You will have seen the papers, but I doubt that they will not 
 contain the latest and most important news. It is certain, by 
 private letters from merchants, that a serious insurrection has 
 broken out at Paris, and the reports last night are, that an 
 attack made by the populace on the Tuileries still continued 
 when the last accounts came away. At Naples the consti- 
 tutional party have declared to the Austrian minister, that if 
 the Emperor should make war on them, their first action would 
 be to put to death all the members of the royal family — a 
 necessary and most just measure, when the forces of the com- 
 batants, as well as the merits of their respective causes, are so 
 unequal. That kings should be everywhere the hostages for 
 liberty were admirable. 
 
 What will become of the Gisbornes, or of the English at 
 Paris ? How soon will England itself, and perhaps Italy, be 
 caught by the sacred fire t And what, to come from the solar 
 system to a grain of sand, shall we do f 
 
 Kiss babe for me, and your own self. I am somewhat better, 
 but my side still vexes me — a little. 
 
 Your affectionate S. 
 
 [Leghorn'], Casa Ricci, Sept. ist, 1820. 
 
 LXXVL— To James Ollier. 
 
 Fi'say November loth, 1820. 
 
 Dear Sir — Mr. Gisborne has sent me a copy of the Pro- 
 metheus^ which is certainly most beautifully printed. It is to be 
 
326 LETTERS. 
 
 regretted that the errors of the press are so numerous, and in 
 many respects so destructive of the sense of a species of poetry 
 which, I fear, even without this disadvantage, very few will 
 understand or like. I shall send you the list of errata in a day 
 or two. 
 
 I send some poems to be added to the pamphlet of Julian 
 and Maddalo. I think you have some other smaller poems 
 belonging to that collection, and I believe you know that I do 
 not wish my name to be printed on the title-page, though I 
 have no objection to my being known as the author. 
 
 I enclose also another poem, which I do not wish to be 
 printed with Julian and Maddalo^ but at the end of the second 
 edition of the Cenci^ or of any other of my writings to which my 
 name is affixed, if any other should at present have arrived ata 
 second edition, which I do not expect. I have a purpose in 
 this arrangement, and have marked the poem I mean by a 
 cross. 
 
 I can sympathise too feelingly in your brother's misfortune.* 
 It has been my hard fate also to watch the gradual death of a 
 beloved child, and to survive him. Present my respects to your 
 brother. 
 
 My friend Captain Medwin is with me, and has shown me a 
 poem on Indian hunting, which he has sent you to publish. It 
 is certainly a very elegant and classical composition, and, even 
 if it does not belong to the highest style of poetry, I should be 
 surprised if it did not succeed. May I challenge your kindness 
 to do what you can for it ? 
 
 You will hear from me again in a post or two. The Julian 
 and Maddalo, and the accompanying poems, are all my saddest 
 verses raked up into one heap. I mean to mingle more smiles 
 with my tears in future. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 LXXVII.— ToT. L. P. 
 
 Pisa, November {probably 15M), 1820. 
 
 My Dear Peacock— I delayed to answer your last letter, 
 because I was waiting for something to say : at least something 
 that should be likely to be interesting to you. The box 
 
 * Chas. Oilier had just lost a daughter.— Z. S. 
 
LETTERS. 327 
 
 containing my books, and consequently your Essay against the 
 cultivation of poetry, has not arrived ; my wonder, meanwhile, 
 in what manner you support such a heresy in this matter-of- 
 fact and money-loving age, holds me in suspense. Thank you 
 for your kindness in correcting Prometheus^ which I am afraid 
 gave you a great deal of trouble. Among the modern things 
 which have reached me is a volume of poems by Keats : in 
 other respects insignificant enough, but containing the fragment 
 of a poem called Hyperion. I dare say you have not time 
 to read it ; but it is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, 
 and gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had not 
 before. 
 
 I hear from Mr. Gisborne that you are surrounded with 
 papers — a chaos of which you are the god ; a sepulchre which 
 encloses in a dormant state the chrysalis of the Pavonian 
 Psyche. May you start into life some day, and give us another 
 Melincourt. Your Melincourt is exceedingly admired, and 
 I think much more so than any of your other writings. In this 
 respect the world judges rightly. There is more of the true 
 spirit, and an object less indefinite, than in either Headlong 
 Hall or Scythrop. 
 
 I am, speaking literarily, infirm of purpose. I have great 
 designs, and feeble hopes of accomplishing them. I read 
 books, and, though I am ignorant enough, they seem to teach 
 me nothing. To be sure, the reception the public have given 
 me might go far enough to damp any man's enthusiasm. They 
 teach you, it may be said, only what is true. Very true, I doubt 
 not, and the more true the less agreeable. I can compare 
 my experience in this respect to nothing but a series of wet 
 blankets. I have been reading nothing but Greek and Spanish. 
 Plato and Calderon have been my gods. A schoolfellow of 
 mine from India is staying with me, and we are beginning 
 Arabic together. Mary is writing a novel, illustrative of the 
 manners of the Middle Ages in Italy, which she has raked out 
 of fifty old books. I promise myself success from it ; and 
 certainly, if what is wholly original will succeed, I shall not be 
 disappointed. 
 
 Adieu. In publica commoda peccem^ si longo sermone. 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B, Shelley 
 
328 LETTERS, 
 
 LXXVIII.— To THE Editor of the " Quarterly Review." 
 
 Sir — Should you cast your eye on the signature of this letter 
 before your read the contents, you might imagine that they 
 related to a slanderous paper which appeared in your Review 
 some time since. I never notice annonymous attacks. The 
 wretch who wrote it has doubtless the additional reward of a 
 consciousness of his motives, besides the thirty guineas a sheet, 
 or whatever it is that you pay him. Of course you cannot be 
 answerable for all the writings which you edit, and / certainly 
 bear you no ill-will for having edited the abuse to which I 
 allude — indeed, I was too much amused by being compared to 
 Pharaoh, not readily to forgive editor, printer, publisher, stitcher, 
 or any one, except the despicable writer, connected with some- 
 thing so exquisitely entertaining. Seriously speaking, I am not 
 in the habit of permitting myself to be disturbed by what is said 
 or written of me, though, I dare say, I may be condemned 
 sometimes justly enough. But I feel, in respect to the writer in 
 question, that " I am there sitting, where he durst not soar." 
 
 The case is different with the unfortunate subject of this 
 letter, the author of Endymion, to whose feelings and situation 
 I entreat you to allow me to call your attention. I write con- 
 siderably in the dark ; but if it is Mr. Gifford that I am 
 addressing, I am persuaded that in an appeal to his humanity 
 and justice, he will acknowledge the fas ab hoste doceri, I am 
 aware that the first duty of a Reviewer is towards the public, 
 and I am willing to confess that the Endymion is a poem 
 considerably defective, and that, perhaps, it deserved as much 
 censure as the pages of your Review record against it ; but, not 
 to mention that there is certain contemptuousness of phraseology 
 from which it is difficult for a critic to abstain, in the review of 
 Endymion, I do not think that the writer has given it its due 
 praise. Surely the poem, with all its faults, is a very remark- 
 able production for a man of Keats's age, and the promise of 
 ultimate excellence is such as has rarely been afforded even by 
 such as has afterwards attained high literary eminence. Look 
 at book ii., line 833, etc., and book iii., line 113 to 120 — read 
 down that page, and then again from line 193. I could cite 
 many other passages, to convince you that it deserved milder 
 usage. Why it should have been reviewed at all, excepting for 
 the purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, I cannot 
 conceive, for it was very little read, and there was no danger 
 
LETTERS. 329 
 
 that it should become a model to the age of that false taste, with 
 which I confess that it is replenished. 
 
 Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by 
 this review, which, I am persuaded, was not written with any 
 intention of producing the effect, to which it has, at least, 
 greatly contributed, of embittering his existence, and inducing a 
 disease from which there are now but faint hopes of his recovery. 
 The first effects are described to me to have resembled insanity, 
 and it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from 
 effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at 
 length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and 
 the usual process of consumption appears to have begun. He 
 is coming to pay me a visit in Italy ; but I fear that unless his 
 mind can be kept tranquil, little is to be hoped from the mere 
 influence of climate. 
 
 But let me not extort anything from your pity. I have just 
 seen a second volume, published by him evidently in careless 
 despair. I have desired my bookseller to send you a copy, and 
 allow me to solicit your special attention to the fragment of a 
 poem entitled " Hyperion," the composition of which was 
 checked by the Review in question. The great proportion of 
 this piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry. I speak 
 impartially, for the canons of taste to which Keats has con- 
 formed in his other compositions are the very reverse of my 
 own. I leave you to judge for yourself : it would be an insult 
 to you to suppose that from motives, however honourable, you 
 would lend yourself to a deception of the public. 
 
 {This letter was nei/er sent.) 
 
 LXXIX. — To John Gisborne, 
 (at leghorn.) 
 
 Pisa, oggi, {November,' 1^20.) 
 
 My Dear Sir~I send you the Phsedon and Tacitus. I 
 congratulate you on your conquest of the Iliad. You must 
 have been astonished at the perpetually increasing magnificence 
 of the last seven books. Homer there truly begins to be him- 
 self. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of Patroclus, and 
 the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale in tenderness 
 
330 LETTERS. 
 
 and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable 
 with anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but 
 there is nothing like this. 
 
 / am bathing myself in the light and odour of the flowery and 
 starry Autos. I have read them all more than once. Henry 
 will tell you how much I am in love with Pacchiani. I suffer 
 from my disease considerably. Henry will also tell you how 
 much, and how whimsically, he alarmed me last night. 
 
 My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Gisborne, and best wishes 
 for your health and happiness. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 P, B. S. 
 
 I have a new Calderon coming from Paris. 
 
 LXXX.— To T. L. P. 
 
 Pisa^ February i^^k, 1821. 
 
 My Dear Peacock — The last letter I received from you, 
 nearly four months from the date thereof, reached me by the 
 boxes which the Gisbornes sent by sea. I am happy to learn 
 that you continue in good external and internal preservation. 
 I received at the same time your printed denunciations against 
 general, and your written ones against particular poetry ; and 
 I agree with you as decidedly in the latter as I differ in the 
 former. The man whose critical gall is not stirred up by 
 
 such rhymes as 's, may safely be conjectured to possess no 
 
 gall at all. The world is pale with the sickness of such stuff. 
 At the same time, your anathemas against poetry itself excited 
 me to a sacred rage, or caco'ethes scribendi of vindicating the 
 insulted Muses. I had the greatest possible desire to break 
 a lance with you, within the lists of a magazine, in honour of 
 my mistress Urania ; but God willed that I should be too lazy, 
 and wrested the victory from your hope : since first having 
 unhorsed poetry, and the universal sense of the wisest in all 
 ages, an easy conquest would have remained to you in me, 
 the knight of the shield of shadow and the lance of gossamere. 
 Besides, I was at that moment reading Plato's lon^ which I 
 recommend you to reconsider. Perhaps in the comparison of 
 Platonic and Malthusian doctrines, the mavis errare of Cicero 
 is a justifiable argument ; but I have a whole quiver of 
 arguments on such a subject. 
 
LETTERS. 331 
 
 Have you seen Godwin's answer to the apostle of the rich ? 
 And what do you think of it ? It has not yet reached me, nor 
 has your box, of which I am in daily expectation. 
 
 We are now in the crisis and point of expectation in Italy. 
 The Neapolitan and Austrian armies are rapidly approaching 
 each other, and every day the news of a battle may be 
 expected. The former have advanced into the Ecclesiastical 
 States, and taken hostages from Rome, to assure themselves 
 of the neutrality of that power, and appear determined to try 
 their strength in open battle. I need not tell you how little 
 chance there is that the new and undisciplined levies of Naples 
 should stand against a superior force of veteran troops. But 
 the birth of liberty in nations abounds in reversals of the 
 ordinary laws of calculation : the defeat of the Austrians 
 would be the signal of insurrection throughout all Italy. 
 
 I am devising literary plans of some magnitude. But 
 nothing is more difficult and unwelcome than to write without a 
 confidence of finding readers ; and if my plan of the Cenci 
 found none or few, I despair of ever producing anything that 
 shall merit them. 
 
 Among your anathemas of the modern attempts in poetry, do 
 you include Keats's Hyperion f I think it very fine. His 
 other poems are worth little ; but if the Hyperion be not grand 
 poetry, none has been produced by our contemporaries. 
 
 I suppose you are writing nothing but Indian laws, etc. I 
 have but a faint idea of your occupation ; but I suppose it has 
 something to do with pen and ink. 
 
 Mary desires to be kindly remembered to you ; and I 
 remain, my dear Peacock, yours very faithfully, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 LXXXI.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 PisUyFeb. i6thy 1821. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I send you three poems — Ode to Naples ^ a sonnet, 
 and a longer piece, entitled Epipsychidion. The two former 
 are my own ; and you will be so obliging as to take the first 
 opportunity of publishing according to your own discretion. 
 
 The longer poem, I desire, should not be considered as my 
 own ; indeed, in a certain sense, it is a production of a portion 
 of me already dead ; and in this sense the advertisement is no 
 
332 LETTERS. 
 
 fiction* It is to be published simply for the esoteric few ; 
 and I make its author a secret, to avoid the malignity of those 
 who turn sweet food into poison ; transforming all they touch 
 into the corruption of their own natures. My wish with respect 
 to it is, that it should be printed immediately in the simplest 
 form, and merely one hundred copies : those who are capable 
 of judging and feeling rightly with respect to a composition of 
 so abstruse a nature, certainly do not arrive at that number — 
 among those, at least, who would ever be excited to read an 
 obscure and anonymous production ; and it would give me no 
 pleasure that the vulgar should read it. If you have any book- 
 selling reason against publishing so small a number as a 
 hundred, merely, distribute copies among those to whom you 
 think the poetry would afford any pleasure, and send me, as 
 soon as you can, a copy by the post. I have written it so as to 
 give very little trouble, I hope, to the printer, or to the person 
 who revises. I would be much obliged to you if you would 
 take this office on yourself. 
 
 Is there any expectation of a second edition of the Revolt of 
 Islam f I have many corrections to make in it, and one part will 
 be wholly remodelled. I am employed in high and new designs 
 in verse ; but they are the labours of years, perhaps. 
 
 We expect here every day the news of a battle between the 
 armies of Austria and Naples. The latter have advanced upon 
 Rome ; and the first affair will probably take place in the 
 Ecclesiastical States. You may imagine the expectation of all 
 here. 
 
 Pray send me news of my intellectual children. For Protne- 
 theus^ I expect and desire no great sale. The Cenci ought to 
 have been popular. 
 
 I remain, dear Sir, 
 
 Your very obedient servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 * In his preface he speaks of the poem as having been written by a 
 person who " died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to 
 one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where 
 it was his hope to have realized a scheme of life suited, perhaps, to 
 that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but 
 hardly practicable in this." The preface is signed " S." — L. S. 
 
LETTERS. 333 
 
 LXXXII.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa^ Feb. 22nd, 1821. 
 
 Dear Sir — Peacock's essay is at Florence at present. I have 
 sent for it, and will transmit to you my paper [on Poetry] as soon 
 as it is written, which will be in a very few days. Nevertheless, 
 I should be sorry that you delayed your magazine through any 
 dependence on me. I will not accept anything for this paper, 
 as I had determined to write it, and promised it you, before I 
 heard of your liberal arrangements ; but perhaps in future, if I 
 think I have any thoughts worth publishing, I shall be glad to 
 contribute to your magazine on those terms. Meanwhile, you 
 are perfectly at liberty to publish the Ode to Naples^ the sonnet, 
 or any short piece you may have of mine. 
 
 I suppose Julian and Maddalo is published. If not, do not 
 add the Witch of Atlas to that peculiar piece of writing ; you 
 may put my name to the Witch of Atlas, as usual. The piece 
 I last sent you, I wish, as I think I told you, to be printed im- 
 mediately, and that anonymously. I should be very glad to 
 receive a few copies of it by the box, but I am unwilling that it 
 should be any longer delayed. 
 
 I doubt about Charles the First ; but, if I do write it, it 
 shall be the birth of severe and high feelings. You are very 
 welcome to it, on the terms you mention, and, when once I see 
 and feel that I can write it, it is already written.* My thoughts 
 aspire to a production of a far higher character ; but the execu- 
 tion of it will require some years. I write what I write chiefly 
 to inquire, by the reception which my writings meet with, how 
 far I am fit for so great a task, or not. And I am afraid that 
 your account will not present me with a very flattering result in 
 this particular. 
 
 You may expect to hear from me within a week, with the 
 answer to Peacock. I shall endeavour to treat the subject in its 
 elements, and unveil the inmost idol of the error. 
 
 If any Review of note abuses me excessively, or the contrary, 
 be so kind as to send it me by post. 
 
 If not too late, pray send me by the box the following 
 books : — The most copious and correct history of the discoveries 
 of Geology. If one publication does not appear to contain what 
 I require, send me two or three. A history of the late war in 
 Spain ; I think one has been written by Southey. Major Some- 
 body's account of the siege of Zaragosa ; it is a little pamphlet 
 * The play was never finished. — Ed. 
 
334 LETTERS. 
 
 B-irnet's History of his Own Times; and the Old English 
 Dratna^ 3 vols. 
 
 Excuse my horrible pens, ink, and paper. I can get no pen 
 that will mark ; or, if you will not excuse them, send me out 
 some English ones. 
 
 I am delighted to hear of Procter's success, and hope that he 
 will proceed gathering laurels. Pray tell me how the Prometheus 
 Unbound was received. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Your very obliged servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 LXXXIIL— To C Ollier. 
 
 Pisa^ March 20th, 1821. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I send you the Defence of Poetry^ Part I. It is 
 transcribed, I hope, legibly. 
 
 1 have written nothing which I do not think necessary to the 
 subject. Of course, if any expressions should strike you as too 
 unpopular, I give you the power of omitting them ; but I trust 
 you will, if possible, refrain from exercising it. In fact, I hope 
 that I have treated the question with that temper and spirit as 
 to silence cavil. I propose to add two other parts in two 
 succeeding Miscellanies. It is to be understood that, although 
 you may omit, you do not alter or add. 
 Pray let me hear from you soon. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 LXXXIV.— To T. L. P. 
 
 Pisa^ March 21st, 1821. 
 
 My Dear Peacock— I dispatch by this post the first part 
 of an essay, intended to consist of three parts, which I design 
 for an antidote to your Four Ages of Poetry!'' You will see 
 that I have taken a more general view of what is poetry than 
 
 * The "Four Ages of Poetry" here alluded to was published 
 in Ollier's Literary Miscellany. Shelley wrote the "Defence of 
 Poetry " as an answer to it j and as he wrote it, it contained many 
 
LETTERS. 335 
 
 you have, and will perhaps agree with several of my positions, 
 without considering your own touched. But read and judge ; 
 and do not let us imitate the great founders of the picturesque, 
 Price and Payne Knight, who, like two ill-trained beagles, 
 began snarling at each other when they could not catch the 
 hare. 
 
 I hear the welcome news of a box from England announced 
 by Mr. Gisborne. How much new poetry does it contain? 
 The Bavii and Masvii of the day are fertile ; and I wish those 
 who honour me with boxes would read and inwardly digest 
 your Four Ages of Poetry ; for I had much rather, for my 
 own private reading, receive political, geological, and moral 
 treatises, than this stuff in terza^ ottava, and tremillesima rima^ 
 whose earthly baseness has attracted the lightning of your 
 undiscriminating censure upon the temple of immortal song. 
 These verses enrage me far more than those of Codrus did 
 Juvenal, and with better reason. Juvenal need not have been 
 stunned, unless he had liked it ; but my boxes are packed with 
 this trash, to the exclusion of better matter. But your box will 
 make amends. 
 
 We are surrounded here in Pisa by revolutionary volcanos, 
 which as yet give more light than heat : the lava has not yet 
 reached Tuscany. But the news in the papers will tell you 
 far more than it is prudent for me to say ; and for this once I 
 will observe your rule of political silence. The Austrians wish 
 that the Neapolitans and Piedmontese would do the same. 
 
 We have seen a few more people than usual this winter, 
 and have made a very interesting acquaintance with a Greek 
 Prince, perfectly acquainted with ancient literature, and full of 
 enthusiasm for the liberties and improvement of his country. 
 Mary has been a Greek student several months, and is reading 
 Antigone with our turbaned friend, who in return is taught 
 English. C. has passed the carnival at Florence, and has 
 
 allusions to the article and its author, such as *' If I know the knight 
 by the device of his shield, I have only to inscribe Cassandra, 
 Antigone, or Alcestis on mine to blunt the point of his spear ; " taking 
 one instance of a favourite character from each of the three great Greek 
 tragedians. All these allusions were struck out by Mr. John Hunt 
 when he prepared the paper for publication in the Liberal. The 
 demise of that periodical prevented the publication, and Mrs. Shelley 
 subsequently printed it from Mr. Hunt's rifacciamento, as she received 
 it. The paper as it now stands is a defence without an attack. 
 Shelley intended this paper to be in three parts, but the other two 
 were not written. — T. L. P. 
 
336 LETTERS, 
 
 been praeternaturally gay. I have had a severe ophthalmia, 
 and have read or written little this winter ; and have made 
 acquaintance in an obscure convent with the only Italian 
 for whom I ever felt any interest.* 
 
 I want you to do something for me : that is, to get me two 
 pounds' worth of Tassi's gems, in Leicester Square, the 
 prettiest according to your taste ; among them, the head of 
 Alexander ; and to get me two seals engraved and set, one 
 smaller, and the other handsomer : the device a dove with 
 outspread wings, and this motto round it : 
 
 yi6MTi% dix iady&v dydjvcav. 
 
 LXXXV.— To Henry Reveley. 
 
 My Dear Henry— Our ducking last night has added fire, 
 instead of quenching the nautical ardour which produced it ; 
 and I consider it a good omen in any enterprise, that it begins 
 in evil ; as being more probable that it will end in good. I 
 hope you have not suffered from it. I am rather feverish, but 
 very well as to the side, whence I expected the worst con- 
 sequences. I send you directions for the complete equipment 
 of our boat, since you have so kindly promised to undertake it. 
 In putting into execution, a little more or less expense in so 
 trifling an affair is to be disregarded. I need not say that the 
 approaching season invites expedition. You can put her in 
 hand immediately, and write the day on which we may come 
 for her. 
 
 We expect with impatience the arrival of our false friends, 
 who have so long cheated us with delay ; and Mary unites with 
 me in desiring, that, as you participated equally in the crime, 
 you should not be omitted in the expiation. 
 
 All good be with you. — Adieu. Yours faithfully, S. 
 
 Williams desires to be kindly remembered to you, and begs 
 
 to present his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. G , and — heaven 
 
 knows what. 
 
 Fisa, Tuesday, i d clock, 17 th April, 1821. 
 
 • Lady Emilia Viviani, the subject of his Epipsychidioiu 
 
LETTERS. 337 
 
 LXXXVL— To Henry Reveley. 
 
 Pisa^ April lOjth. 
 
 My Dear Henry— The rullock, or place for the oar, ought 
 not to be placed where the oar-pins are now, but ought to be 
 nearer to the mast ; as near as possible, indeed, so that the 
 rower has room to sit. In addition let a false keel be made in 
 this shape, so as to be four inches deep at the stern, and to 
 decrease towards the prow. It may be as thin as you please. 
 
 Tell Mr. and Mrs. G that I have read the Numancia, and 
 
 after wading through the singular stupidity of the first act, began 
 to be greatly delighted, and, at length, interested in a very high 
 degree, by the power of the writer in awakening pity and 
 admiration, in which I hardly know by whom he is excelled. 
 There is little, I allow, in a strict sense, to be called poetry in 
 this play ; but the command of language, and the harmony of 
 versification, is so great as to deceive one into an idea that it is 
 poetry. 
 
 Adieu. — We shall see you soon. 
 
 Yours ever truly, S. 
 
 LXXXVII.— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Bagni^ Tuesday Evening 
 {June sth, 1821). 
 
 My Dear Friends — We anxiously expect your arrival at 
 the Baths ; but as I am persuaded that you will spend as much 
 time with us as you can save from your necessary occupations 
 before your departure, I will forbear to vex you with impor- 
 tunity. My health does not permit me to spend many hours 
 from home. I have been engaged these last days in composing 
 a poem on the death of Keats, which will shortly be finished ; 
 and I anticipate the pleasure of reading it to you, as some of the 
 very few persons who will be interested in it and understand it. 
 It is a highly- wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point 
 of composition, than anything I have written. 
 
 I have obtained a purchaser for some of the articles of your 
 three lists, a catalogue of which I subjoin. I shall do my 
 utmost to get more ; could you not send me a complete list of 
 your furniture^ as I have had inquiries made about chests of 
 drawers, etc. 
 
 103 
 
338 LETTERS, 
 
 My unfortunate box ! it contained a chaos of the elements of 
 " Charles I." If the idea of the creator had been packed up 
 with them, it would have shared the same fate ; and that, I am 
 afraid, has undergone another sort of shipwreck. 
 
 Very faithfully and affectionately yours, S. 
 
 LXXXVIII.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa,, June Zthy 182 1. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 You may announce for publication a poem entitled 
 Adonais. It is a lament on the death of poor Keats, with some 
 interposed stabs on the assassins of his peace and of his fame ; 
 and will be preceded by a criticism on Hyperion,, asserting the 
 due claims which that fragment gives him to the rank which I 
 have assigned him. My poem is finished, and consists of about 
 forty Spenser stanzas. I shall send it you, either printed at 
 Pisa, or transcribed in such a manner as it shall be difficult for 
 the reviser to leave such errors as assist the obscurity of the 
 Prometheus. But, in case I send it printed, it will be merely 
 that mistakes may be avoided ; [so] that I shall only have a few 
 copies struck off in the cheapest manner. 
 
 If you have interest enough in the subject, I could wish that 
 you inquired of some of the friends and relations of Keats 
 respecting the circumstances of his death, and could transmit 
 me any information you may be able to collect, and especially 
 as to the degree in which, as I am assured, the brutal attack in 
 the Quarterly Review excited the disease by which he perished. 
 
 I have received no answer to my last letter to you. Have 
 you received my contribution to your magazine ? 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 LXXXIX.— To John Gisborne. 
 
 My Dear Friend — I have received the heart-rending 
 account of the closing scene of the great genius whom envy and 
 ingratitude scourged out of the world. I do not think that if I 
 had seen it before, I could have composed my poem. The 
 
LETTERS. 339 
 
 enthusiasm of the imagination would have overpowered the 
 sentiment. 
 
 As it is, I have finished my Elegy ; and this day I send it to 
 the press at Pisa. You shall have a copy the moment it is 
 completed. I think it will please you. I have dipped my pen 
 in consuming fire for his destroyers ; otherwise the style is calm 
 and solemn. 
 
 Pray, when shall we see you ? Or are the streams of Helicon 
 less salutary than sea-bathing for the nerves? Give us as much 
 as you can before you go to England, and rather divide the 
 term than not come soon. 
 
 Mrs. wishes that none of the books, desk, etc., should be 
 
 packed up with the piano; but that they should be sent, one by 
 one, by Pepi: Address them to me at her house. She desired 
 me to have them addressed to ?ne, why I know not. 
 
 A droll circumstance has occurred. Queen Mab, a poem 
 written by me when very young, in the most furious style, with 
 long notes against Jesus Christ, and God the Father, and the 
 king, and bishops, and marriage, and the devil knows what, is 
 just published by one of the low booksellers in the Strand, 
 against my wish and consent, and all the people are at logger- 
 heads about it. H. S. gives me this account. You may 
 imagine how much I am amused. For the sake of a dignified 
 appearance, however, and really because I wish to protest 
 against all the bad poetry in it, I have given orders to say that 
 it is all done against my desire, and have directed my attorney 
 to apply to Chancery for an injunction, which he will not get. 
 
 I am pretty ill, I thank you, just now ; but I hope you are 
 better. 
 
 Most affectionately yours, P. B. S. 
 
 Pisa. Saturday, June i6M, 1821.) 
 
 ■ XC— To The "Examiner." 
 
 June 22nd, 1 82 1. 
 
 " A POEM, entitled Queen Mab, was written by me at the age 
 of eighteen — I dare say, in a sufficiently intemperate spirit. I 
 have not seen this production for several years : I doubt not but 
 that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition ; and 
 that, in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well 
 as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and religious 
 doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I am a devoted 
 
340 LETTERS. 
 
 enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression ; and I 
 regret this publication, not so much from literary vanity, as 
 because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred 
 cause of freedom." . . . 
 
 XCL— To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne. 
 
 Bagni, Friday Night 
 {July i^th, 1 821). 
 
 My Dear Friends — I have been expecting every day a writ 
 to attend at your court at Guebhard's, whence you know it is 
 settled that I should conduct you hither to spend your last days 
 in Italy. A thousand thanks for your maps ; in return for which 
 I send you the only copy of " Adonais " the printer has yet 
 delivered. I wish I could say, as Glaucus could, in the exchange 
 for the arms of Diomed, — eKaTdfx^ioi iwea^oiuv. 
 
 I will only remind you of " Faust ; " my desire for the con- 
 clusion of which is only exceeded by my desire to welcome you. 
 Do you observe any traces of him in the poem I send you.? 
 Poets — the best of them, are a very cameleonic race ; they take 
 the colour not only of what they feed on, but of the very leaves 
 under which they pass. 
 
 Mary is just on the verge of finishing her novel j but it cannot 
 be in time for you to take to England. — Farewell. 
 
 Most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XCII.— To Mrs. and Mrs Gisborne. 
 
 My Dearest Friends— I am fully repaid for the painful 
 emotions from which some verses of my poem sprang, by your 
 sympathy and approbation — which is all the reward I expect — 
 and as much as I desire. It is not for me to judge whether, in 
 the high praise your feelings assign me, you are right or wrong. 
 The poet and the man are two different natures ; though they 
 exist together, they may be unconscious of each other, and 
 incapable of deciding on each other's powers and efforts by any 
 reflex act. The decision of the cause, whether or no / am a 
 poet, is removed from the present time to the hour when our 
 posterity shall assemble ; but the court is a very severe one, and 
 I fear that the verdict will be, " Guilty— death 1 " 
 
LETTERS, 341 
 
 I shall be with you on the first summons. I hope that the 
 time you have reserved for us, 'Hhis bank and shoal of time," is 
 not so short as you once talked of. 
 
 In haste, most affectionately yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 Bagniyjuly i()th. 
 
 XCIII.— To Mrs Shelley, 
 (bagni di pisa). 
 
 Tuesday, Lione Bianco, Florence 
 {August \st, 1 821). 
 
 My Dearest Love — I shall not return this evening ; nor, 
 unless I have better success, to-morrow. I have seen many 
 houses, but very few within the compass of our powers ; and, 
 even in those which seem to suit, nothing is more difficult than 
 to bring the proprietors to terms. I congratulate myself on 
 having taken the season in time, as there is great expectation of 
 Florence being full next winter. I shall do my utmost to return 
 to-morrow evening. You may expect me about ten or eleven 
 o'clock, as I shall purposely be late, to spare myself the excessive 
 heat. 
 
 The Gisbomes (four o'clock, Tuesday,) are just set out in a 
 diligence-and-four, for Bologna. They have promised to write 
 from Paris. I spent three hours this morning principally in the 
 contemplation of the Niobe, and of a favourite Apollo ; all 
 worldly thoughts and cares seem to vanish from before the 
 sublime emotions such spectacles create; and I am deeply 
 impressed with the great difference of happiness enjoyed by 
 those who live at a distance from these incarnations of all that 
 the finest minds have conceived of beauty, and those who can 
 resort to their company at pleasure. What should we think if 
 we were forbidden to read the great writers who have left us 
 their works ? And yet to be forbidden to live at Florence or 
 Rome, is an evil of the same kind, of scarcely less magnitude. 
 
 I am delighted to hear that the W.'s are with you. I am 
 convinced that Williams must persevere in the use of the doccia. 
 Give my most affectionate remembrances to them. I shall know 
 all the houses in Florence, and can give W. a good account of 
 them all. You have not sent my passport, and I must get home 
 as I can. I suppose you did not receive my note. 
 
.342 LETTERS, 
 
 I grudge my sequins for a carriage ; but I have suffered from 
 the sun and the fatigue, and dare not expose myself to that 
 which is necessary for house-hunting. 
 
 Kiss little babe, and how is he ? but I hope to see him fast 
 asleep to-morrow night. And pray, dearest Mary, have some of 
 your novel prepared for my return. 
 
 Your ever affectionate S. 
 
 XCIV.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 
 (BAGNI DI PISA.) 
 
 Bologna^ Agosto 6. 
 
 Dearest Mine— I am at Bologna, and the caravella is 
 ordered for Ravenna. I have been detained, by having made 
 an embarrassing and inexplicable arrangement, more than 
 twelve hours ; or I should have arrived at Bologna last night 
 instead of this morning. 
 
 Though I have travelled all night at the rate of two miles 
 an'd a-half an hour, in a little open calesso, I am perfectly well 
 in health. One would think that I were the spaniel of Destiny, 
 for the more she knocks about me, the more I fawn on her. I 
 had an overturn about day-break ; the old horse stumbled, and 
 threw me and the fat vetturino into a slope of meadow, over the 
 hedge. My angular figure stuck where it was pitched ; but my 
 vetturino's spherical form rolled fairly to the bottom of the hill, 
 and that with so few symptoms of reluctance in the life that 
 animated it, that my ridicule (for it was the drollest sight in the 
 world) was suppressed by my fear that the poor devil had been 
 hurt. But he was very well, and we continued our journey with 
 great success. 
 
 My love to the Williams's. Kiss my pretty ones, and accept 
 an affectionate one for yourself from me. The chaise waits. I 
 will write the first night from Ravenna at length. 
 
 Yours ever, S. 
 
 XCV.— To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Ravenna, August y^ 1821. 
 
 My Dearest Mary— -I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and 
 sate up talking with Lord Byron until five this morning. I then 
 
LETTERS. 343 
 
 went to sleep, and now awake at eleven, and having despatched 
 my breakfast as quick as possible, mean to devote the interval 
 until twelve, when the post departs, to you. 
 
 Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted to see me. He has 
 in fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the 
 reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent 
 sort of liaison with Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, 
 and seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She 
 is waiting there until something shall be decided as to their 
 emigration to Switzerland or stay in Italy ; which is yet unde- 
 termined on either side. She was compelled to escape from 
 the Papal territory in great haste, as measures had already 
 been taken to place her in a convent, where she would have 
 been unrelentingly confined for life. The oppression of the 
 marriage contract, as existing in the laws and opinions of Italy, 
 though less frequently exercised, is far severer than that of 
 England. I tremble to think of what poor Emilia is destined to. 
 
 Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself in Venice : his 
 state of debility was such that he was unable to digest any food, 
 he was consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have 
 perished, but for this attachment, which has reclaimed him from 
 the excesses into which he threw himself from carelessness and 
 pride, rather than taste. Poor fellow ! he is now quite well, 
 and immersed in politics and literature. He has given me a 
 number of the most interesting details on the former subject, 
 but we will not speak of them in a letter. Fletcher is here, and 
 as if like a shadow, he waxed and waned with the substance of 
 his master : Fletcher also has recovered his good looks, and 
 from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest of 
 flaxen locks put forth. 
 
 We talked a great deal of poetry, and such matters last 
 night ; and as usual differed, and I think more than ever. He 
 affects to patronise a system of criticism fit for the production 
 of mediocrity, and although all his fine poems and passages 
 have been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise 
 the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice ; and it will 
 cramp and limit his future efforts however great they may be, 
 unless he gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather 
 he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole. 
 
 Lord Byron has also told me of a circumstance that shocks 
 me exceedingly ; because it exhibits a degree of desperate and 
 wicked malice for which I am at a loss to account. When I 
 hear such things my patience and my philosophy are put to a 
 severe proof, whilst I refrain from seeking out some obscure 
 
344 LETTERS. 
 
 hiding-place, where the countenance of man may never meet 
 
 me more 
 
 .... Imagine my despair of good, imagine how it is 
 possible that one of so weak and sensitive a nature as mine can 
 run further the gauntlet through this hellish society of men. 
 You should write to the Hoppners a letter refuting the charge, 
 in case you believe, and know, and can prove that it is false ; 
 stating the grounds and proofs of your belief. I need not 
 dictate what you should say ; nor, I hope, inspire you with 
 warmth to rebut a charge, which you only can effectually rebut. 
 If you will send the letter to me here, I will forward it to the 
 Hoppners. Lord Byron is not up, I do not know the Hoppners' 
 address, and I am anxious not to lose a post. 
 
 XCVI.— To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Thursday ^ Zth August. 
 
 My Dearest Mary — I wrote to you yesterday, and I begin 
 another letter to-day, without knowing exactly when I can send 
 it, as I am told the post only goes once a-week. I dare say the 
 subject of the latter half of my letter gave you pain, but it was 
 necessary to look the affair in the face, and the only satisfactory 
 answer to the calumny must be given by you, and could be 
 given by you alone. This is evidently the source of the violent 
 denunciations of the Literary Gazette, in themselves contemptible 
 enough, and only to be regarded as effects, which show us their 
 cause, which, until we put off our mortal nature, we never 
 despise — that is, the belief of persons who have known and seen 
 you, that you are guilty of crimes. 
 
 After having sent my letter to the post yesterday, I went to 
 see some of the antiquities of this place ; which appear to be 
 remarkable. This city was once of vast extent, and the traces 
 of its remains are to be found more than four miles from the 
 gate of the modern town. The sea, which once came close to 
 it, has now retired to the distance of four miles, leaving a melan- 
 choly extent of marshes, interspersed with patches of cultivation, 
 and towards the seashore with pine forests, which have followed 
 the retrocession of the Adriatic, and the roots of which are 
 actually washed by its waves. The level of the sea and of this 
 tract of country correspond so nearly, that a ditch dug to a few 
 
LETTERS. 345 
 
 feet in depth, is immediately filled up with sea water. All the 
 ancient buildings have been choked up to the height of from 
 five to twenty feet by the deposit of the sea, and of the inunda- 
 tions, which are frequent in the winter. I went in L. B.'s 
 carriage, first to the Chiesa San Vitale, which is certainly one 
 of the most ancient churches in Italy. It is a rotunda, sup- 
 ported upon buttresses and pilasters of white marble ; the ill 
 effect of which is somewhat relieved by an interior row of 
 columns. The dome is very high and narrow. The whole 
 church, in spite of the elevation of the soil, is very high for its 
 breadth, and is of a very peculiar and striking construction. In 
 the section of one of the large tables of marble with which the 
 church is lined, they showed me the perfect figure^ as perfect as 
 if it had been painted, of a Capuchin friar, which resulted merely 
 from the shadings and the position of the stains in the marble. 
 This is what may be called a pure anticipated cognition of a 
 Capuchin. 
 
 I then went to the tomb of Theodosius, which has now been 
 dedicated to the Virgin, without, however, any change in its 
 original appearance. It is about a mile from the present city. 
 This building is more than half overwhelmed by the elevated 
 soil, although a portion of the lower storey has been excavated, 
 and is filled with brackish and stinking waters, and a sort of 
 vaporous darkness, and troops of prodigious frogs. It is a 
 remarkable piece of architecture, and without belonging to a 
 period when the ancient taste yet survived, bears, nevertheless, 
 a certain impression of that taste. It consists of two stories ; 
 the lower supported on Doric arches and pilasters, and a simple 
 entablature. The other circular within, and polygonal outside, 
 and roofed with one single mass of ponderous stone, for it is 
 evidently one, and Heaven alone knows how they contrived to 
 lift it to that height. It is a sort of flattish dome, rough-wrought 
 within by the chisel, from which the Northern conquerors tore 
 the plates of silver that adorned it, and polished without, with 
 things like handles appended to it, which were also wrought out 
 of the solid stone, and to which I suppose the ropes were 
 applied to draw it up. You ascend externally into the second 
 storey by a flight of stone steps, which are modern. 
 
 The next place I went to, was a church called la chiesa di 
 Sanf Appollinare^ which is a Basilica, and built by one, I forget 
 whom, of the Christian Emperors ; it is a long church, with 
 a roof like a barn, and supported by twenty-four columns of 
 the finest marble, with an altar of jasper, and four columns of 
 jasper, and giallo antico, supporting the roof of the tabernacle, 
 
346 LETTERS. 
 
 which are said to be of immense value. It is something like 
 that church (I forget the name of it) we saw at Rome, fuore 
 delle mura.* I suppose the Emperor stole these columns, which 
 seem not at all to belong to the place they occupy. Within the 
 city, near the church of San Vitale, there is to be seen the tomb 
 of the Empress Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius the 
 Great, together with those of her husband Constantius, her 
 brother Honorius, and her son Valentinian — all Emperors. The 
 tombs are massy cases of marble, adorned with rude and taste- 
 less sculpture of lambs, and other Christian emblems, with 
 scarcely a trace of the antique. It seems to have been one of 
 the first effects of the Christian religion to destroy the power of 
 producing beauty in art. These tombs are placed in a sort of 
 vaulted chamber, wrought over with rude mosaic, which is said 
 to have been built in 1300. I have yet seen no more of 
 Ravenna. 
 
 Friday. 
 
 We ride out in the evening, through the pine forests which 
 divide this city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have 
 accommodated myself to it without much difficulty : — L. B. 
 gets up at two, breakfasts ; we talk, read, etc., until six ; then we 
 ride, and dine at eight ; and after dinner sit talking till four or 
 five in the morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting 
 in the interval between my rising and his, to you. 
 
 L. B. is greatly improved in every respect. In genius, in 
 temper, in moral views, in health, in happiness. The connexion 
 with la Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He 
 lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is 
 now about ;^4ooo a-year; ;^ioo of which he devotes to purposes 
 of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he 
 seems to have subdued, and he is becoming what he should be, 
 a virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of 
 Italy, and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are 
 subjects not fit to be written^ but are such as will delight and 
 surprise you. He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland — a 
 place, indeed, little fitted for him : the gossip and the cabals of 
 those anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did before, 
 and might exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which 
 he says he plunged into not from taste, but despair. La Guic- 
 cioli and her brother (who is L. B.'s friend and confidant, and 
 acquiesces perfectly in her connexion with him,) wish to go to 
 
 * San Paolo fuore delle mura— burnt down, and its beautiful columns 
 calcined by the fire, in 1823 — now rebuilt. — M. S. 
 
LETTERS, 347 
 
 Switzerland ; as L. B. says, merely from the novelty of the 
 pleasure of travelling. L. B. prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is 
 trying to persuade them to adopt his views. He has made me 
 write a long letter to her to engage her to remain — an odd thing 
 enough for an utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost 
 delicacy to his friend's mistress. But it seems destined that I 
 am always to have some active part in every body's affairs 
 whom I approach. I have set down, in lame Italian, the 
 strongest reasons I can think of against the Swiss emigration — 
 to tell you truth, I should be very glad to accept, as my fee, his 
 establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna is a miserable place ; the 
 people are barbarous and wild, and their language the most 
 infernal patois that you can imagine. He would be, in every 
 respect, better among the Tuscans. I am afraid he would not 
 like Florence, on account of the English there. There is Lucca, 
 Florence, Pisa, Siena, and I think nothing more. What think 
 you of Prato, or Pistoia, for him.'' — no Englishman approaches 
 those towns ; but I am afraid no house could be found good 
 enough for him in that region. 
 
 He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don 
 Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, 
 but far above, all the poets of the day — every word is stamped 
 with immortality. I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I 
 may, and there is no other with whom it is worth contending. 
 This canto is in the style, but totally, and sustained with 
 incredible ease and power, like the end of the second canto. 
 There is not a word which the most rigid asserter of the dignity 
 of human nature would desire to be cancelled. It fulfils, in a 
 certain degree, what I have long preached of producing — some- 
 thing wholly new and relative to the age, and yet surpassingly 
 beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the trace of my 
 earnest exhortations to him to create something wholly new. 
 He has finished his life up to the present time, and given it to 
 Moore, with liberty for Moore to sell it for the best price he can 
 get, with condition that the bookseller should publish it after 
 his death. Moore has sold it to Murray for two thousatid 
 pounds. I have spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a direct 
 view of demanding a contribution ; and, though I am sure that 
 if asked it would not be refused — yet there is something in me 
 that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are excellent 
 friends, and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who 
 had no claims to a higher station than I possess — or did I pos- 
 sess, a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things as 
 such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not the 
 
348 LETTERS. 
 
 case. The demon of mistrust and pride lurks between two 
 persons in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our inter- 
 course. This is a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for 
 being human. I think the fault is not on my side, nor is it 
 likely, I being the weaker. I hope that in the next world these 
 things will be better managed. What is passing in the heart of 
 another, rarely escapes the observation of one who is a strict 
 anatomist of his own. 
 
 Write to me at Florence, where I shall remain a day at least, 
 and send me letters, or news of letters. How is my little dar- 
 ling ? And how are you, and how do you get on with your 
 book ? Be severe in your corrections, and expect severity from 
 me, your sincere admirer. I flatter myself you have composed 
 something unequalled in its kind, and that, not content with the 
 honours of your birth and your hereditary aristocracy, you will 
 add still higher renown to your name. Expect me at the end 
 of my appointed time. I do not think I shall be detained. Is 
 C. with you, or is she coming ? Have you heard anything of 
 my poor Emilia, from whom I got a letter the day of my de- 
 parture, saying, that her marriage was deferred for a very 
 short time, on account of the illness of her sposo? How are 
 the Williams's, and Williams especially? Give my very kindest 
 love to them. 
 
 Lord B. has here splendid apartments in the house of his 
 mistress's husband, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She 
 is divorced, with an allowance of 1200 crowns a-year, a miser- 
 able pittance from a man who has I20,cx)0 a-year. — Here are 
 two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all of whom, 
 (except the horses), walk about the house like the masters of it. 
 Tita the Venetian is here, and operates as my valet ; a fine 
 fellow, with a prodigious black beard, and who has stabbed two 
 or three people, and is one of the most good-natured looking 
 fellows I ever saw. 
 
 We have good rumours of the Greeks here, and a Russian 
 war. I hardly wish the Russians to take any part in it. My 
 maxim is with ^Eschylus :— t6 Svaae^^s—fierb, fxkv irKdova tIktci, 
 c<peT4pq. delKora yeuvq.. There is a Greek exercise for you. How 
 should slaves produce anything but tyranny — even as the seed 
 produces the plant ? 
 
 Adieu, dear Mary. 
 
 Yours affectionately, S. 
 
LETTERS. 349 
 
 XCVII.— To T. L. P. 
 Ravenna^ August (probably ioth\ 1821. 
 
 My Dear Peacock — I received your last letter just as I was 
 setting off from the Bagni on a visit to Lord Byron at this 
 place. Many thanks for all your kind attention to my accursed 
 affairs. . . . 
 
 I have sent you by the Gisbornes a copy of the Elegy on 
 Keats. The subject, I know, will not please you ; but the com- 
 position of the poetry, and the taste in which it is written, I do 
 not think bad. You and the enlightened public will judge. 
 Lord Byron is in excellent cue both of health and spirits. He 
 has got rid of all those melancholy and degrading habits which 
 he indulged at Venice. He lives with one woman, a lady of 
 rank here, to whom he is attached, and who is attached to him, 
 and is in every respect an altered man. He has written three 
 more cantos oi Don Juan. I have yet only heard the fifth, and 
 I think that every word of it is pregnant with immortality. I 
 have not seen his late plays, except Marino Faleiro^ which is 
 very well, but not so transcendently fine as Don Juan. Lord 
 Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual 
 custom, but one must sleep or die, like Southey's sea-snake in 
 Kehama,', at twelve. After breakfast, we sit talking till six. 
 From six to eight we gallop through the pine forests which 
 divide Ravenna from the sea ; then come home and dine, and 
 sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I do not think this will 
 kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. 
 Lord B.'s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, 
 eight enormous dogs, three monkies, five cats, an eagle, a crow, 
 and a falcon ; and all these, except the horses, walk about the 
 house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbi- 
 trated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it. Lord B. 
 thinks you wrote a pamphlet signed John Bull; he says he 
 knew it by the style resembling Melincourt, of which he is a 
 great admirer. I read it, and assured him that it could not 
 possibly be yours. I write nothing, and probably shall write no 
 more. It offends me to see my name classed among those who 
 have no name. If I cannot be something better, I had rather 
 be nothing. My motive was never the infirm desire of fame ; 
 and if I should continue an author, I feel that I should desire it. 
 This cup is justly given to one only of an age ; indeed, partici- 
 pation would make it worthless : and unfortunate they, who seek 
 it and find it not. 
 
350 LETTERS. 
 
 I congratulate you — I hope I ought to do so — on your 
 expected stranger. He is introduced into a rough world. 
 Ever most faithfully yours, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 XCVIII.— To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Saturday — Ravemia. 
 
 My Dear Mary— You will be surprised to hear that L. B. 
 has decided upon coming to Pisa, in case he shall be able, with 
 my assistance, to prevail upon his mistress to remain in Italy, 
 of which I think there is little doubt. He wishes for a large and 
 magnificent house, but he has furniture of his own, which he 
 would send from Ravenna. Inquire if any of the large palaces 
 are to be let. We discussed Prato, Pistoia, Lucca, etc., but they 
 would not suit him so well as Pisa, to which, indeed, he shows a 
 decided preference. So let it be ! Florence he objects to, on 
 account of the prodigious influx of English. 
 
 I don't think this circumstance ought to make any difference 
 in our own plans with respect to this winter in Florence, because 
 we could easily reassume our station with the spring, at Pugnano 
 or the baths, in order to enjoy the society of the noble lord. 
 But do you consider this point, and write to me your full 
 opinion, at the Florence post-office. 
 
 I suffer much to-day from the pain in my side, brought on, I 
 believe, by this accursed water. In other respects, I am pretty 
 well, and my spirits are much improved ; they had been im- 
 proving, indeed, before I left the baths, after the deep dejection 
 of the early part of the year. 
 
 I am reading " Anastasius." One would think that L. B. had 
 taken his idea of the three last cantos of Don Juan from this 
 book. That, of course, has nothing to do with the merit of this 
 latter, poetry having nothing to do with the invention of facts. 
 It is a very powerful, and very entertaining novel, and a faithful 
 picture, they say, of modem Greek manners. I have read 
 L. B.'s Letter to Bowles : some good things — but he ought not 
 to write prose criticism. 
 
 You will receive a long letter, sent with some of L. B.'s, 
 express to Florence. I write this in haste. 
 
 Yours most affectionately, S. 
 
LETTERS. 351 
 
 XCIX.— To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Ravenna^ \^th Aug.^ 1 8 2 1 . 
 
 I WENT the other day to see Allegra at her convent, and 
 stayed with her about three hours. She is grown tall and slight 
 for her age, and her face is somewhat altered. The traits have 
 become more delicate, and she is much paler, probably from 
 the effect of improper food. She yet retains the beauty of her 
 deep blue eyes and of her mouth, but she has a contemplative 
 seriousness which, mixed with her excessive vivacity, which has 
 not yet deserted her, has a very peculiar effect in a child. She 
 is under very strict discipline as may be observed from the 
 immediate obedience she accords to the will of her attendants. 
 This seems contrary to her nature, but I do not think it has 
 been obtained at the expense of much severity. Her hair, 
 scarcely darker than it was, is beautifully profuse, and hangs in 
 large curls on her neck. She was prettily dressed in white 
 muslin, and an apron of black silk, with trousers. Her light 
 and airy figure and her graceful motions were a striking contrast 
 to the other children there. She seemed a thing of a finer and 
 a higher order. At first she was very shy, but after a little 
 caressing, and especially after I had given her a gold chain 
 which I had bought at Ravenna for her, she grew more familiar, 
 and led me all over the garden, and all over the. convent, 
 running and skipping so fast that I could hardly keep up with 
 her. She showed me her little bed, and the chair where she sat 
 at dinner, and the carozzina in which she and her favourite 
 companions drew each other along a walk in the garden. I had 
 brought her a basket of sweetmeats, and before eating any of 
 them she gave her companions and each of the nuns a portion. 
 This is not much like the old Allegra. I asked her what I 
 should say from her to her mama, and she said : — 
 
 " Che mi manda un bacio e un bel vestituro." 
 
 " E come vuoi il vestituro sia fatto ? " 
 
 " Tutto di seta e d'oro," was her reply. 
 
 Her predominant foible seems the love of distinction and 
 vanity, and this is a plant which produces good or evil accord- 
 ing to the gardener's skill. I then asked what I should say to 
 papa ? " Che venga farmi un visitino e che porta seco la matn- 
 mina." Before I went away she made me run all over the 
 convent, like a mad thing. The nuns, who were half in bed, 
 
352 LETTERS. 
 
 were ordered to hide themselves, and on returning Allegra 
 began ringing the bell which calls the nuns to assemble. The 
 tocsin of the convent sounded, and it required all the efforts of 
 the prioress to prevent the spouses of God from rendering 
 themselves, dressed or undressed, to the accustomed signal. 
 Nobody scolded her for these scappature, so I suppose she is 
 well treated, so far as temper is concerned. Her intellect is not 
 much cultivated. She knows certain orazioni by heart, and 
 talks and dreams of Paradiso and all sorts of things, and has a 
 prodigious list of saints, and is always talking of the Bambino. 
 This will do her no harm, but the idea of bringing up so sweet 
 a creature in the midst of such trash till sixteen 1 
 
 C. — To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Ravenna^ Tuesday^ August \^th^ 1821. 
 
 My Dearest Love — I accept your kind present of your 
 picture, and wish you would get it prettily framed for me. I 
 will wear, for your sake, upon my heart this image which is ever 
 present to my mind. 
 
 I have only two minutes to write, the post is just setting off. 
 I shall leave this place on Thursday or Friday morning. You 
 would forgive me for my longer stay, if you knew the fighting I 
 have had to make it so short. I need not say where my own 
 feelings impel me. 
 
 It still remains fixed that L. B. should come to Tuscany, and, 
 if possible, Pisa ; but more of that to-morrow. 
 
 Your faithful and affectionate S. 
 
 CI. — To Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Wednesday^ Ravenna. 
 
 My Dearest Love — I write, though I doubt whether 1 
 shall not arrive before this letter ; as the post only leaves 
 Ravenna once a week, on Saturdays, and as I hope to set out 
 to-morrow evening by the courier. But as I must necessarily 
 stay a day at Florence, and as the natural incidents of travelling 
 may prevent me from taking my intended advantage of the 
 couriers, it is probable that this letter will arrive first. Besides, 
 
LETTERS. 353 
 
 as I will explain, I am not j<?/ quite my own master. But that 
 by and bye. I do not think it necessary to tell you of my 
 impatience to return to you and my little darling, or the dis- 
 appointment with which I have prolonged my absence from you. 
 I am happy to think that you are not quite alone. 
 
 Lord Byron is still decided upon Tuscany : and such is his 
 impatience, that he has desired me— as if I should not arrive in 
 time — to write to you to inquire for the best unfurnished palace 
 in Pisa, and to enter upon a treaty for it. It is better not to be 
 on the Lung' Arno ; but, in fact, there is no such hurry, and as 
 I shall see you so soon it is not worth while to trouble yourself 
 about it. 
 
 I told you I had written by L. B.'s desire to la Guiccioli, to 
 dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her answer is 
 this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have 
 reconciled them to the unfitness of that step. At the conclusion 
 of a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of 
 me, is this request, which I transcribe ; — ^^S ignore — la vostra 
 bontcL mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore — me lo accorderete 
 voi? Non partite da Ravenna senza Milord." Of course, 
 being now, by all the laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's 
 request, I shall only be at liberty on my parole^ until Lord 
 Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall reply, of course, that the boon 
 is granted, and that if her lover is reluctant to quit Ravenna, 
 after I have made arrangements for receiving him at Pisa, I am 
 bound to place myself in the same situation as now, to assail 
 him with importunities to rejoin her. Of this there is, for- 
 tunately, no need ; and I need not tell you there is no fear that 
 this chivalric submission of mine to the great general laws of 
 antique courtesy, against which I never rebel, and which is my 
 religion, should interfere with my quick returning, and long 
 remaining with you, dear girl. 
 
 I have seen Dante's tomb, and worshipped the sacred spot. 
 The building and its accessories are comparatively modern, but, 
 the urn itself, and the tablet of marble, with his portrait in 
 relief, are evidently of equal antiquity with his death. The 
 countenance has all the marks of being taken from his own ; 
 the lines are strongly marked, far more than the portraits, 
 which, however, it resembles ; except, indeed, the eye, which is 
 half closed, and reminded me of Pacchiani. It was probably 
 taken after death. I saw the library, and some specimens of 
 the earliest illuminated printing from the press of Faust. They 
 are on vellum, and of an execution little inferior to that of the 
 present day. 
 
 104 
 
354 LETTERS. 
 
 We ride out every evening as usual, and practice pistol- 
 shooting at a pumpkin ; and I am not sorry to observe, that 
 I approach towards my noble friend's exactness of aim. The 
 water here is villainous, and I have suffered tortures ; but I now 
 drink nothing but alcalescent water, and am much relieved. I 
 have the greatest trouble to get away ; and L. B., as a reason 
 for my stay, has urged, that, without either me or the Guiccioli, 
 he will certainly fall into his old habits. I then talk, and he 
 listens to reason ; and I earnestly hope that he is too well 
 aware of the terrible and degrading consequences of his former 
 mode of life, to be in danger from the short interval of tempta- 
 tion that will be left him. L. B. speaks with great kindness 
 and interest of you, and seems to wish to see you. 
 
 Thursday^ Ravenna. 
 
 I HAVE received your letter with that to Mrs. Hoppner. I do 
 not wonder, my dearest friend, that you should have been 
 moved. I was at first, but speedily regained the indifference 
 which the opinion of anything, or anybody, except our own 
 consciousness, amply merits ; and day by day shall more 
 receive from me. I have not recopied your letter ; such a 
 measure would destroy its authenticity, but have given it to 
 Lord Byron, who has engaged to send it with his own 
 comments to the Hoppners. People do not hesitate, it seems, 
 to make themselves panders and accomplices to slander, for 
 the Hoppners had exacted from Lord Byron that these 
 accusations should be concealed from me. Lord Byron is not a 
 man to keep a secret, good or bad ; but in openly confessing 
 that he has not done so, he must observe a certain delicacy, and 
 therefore wished to send the letter himself, and indeed this 
 adds weight to your representations. Have you seen the 
 article in the Literary Gazette on me ? They evidently allude 
 to some story of this kind — however cautious the Hoppners 
 have been in preventing the calmuniated person from asserting 
 his justification, you know too much of the world not to be 
 certain that this was the utmost limit of their caution. So 
 much for nothing. 
 
 Lord Byron is immediately coming to Pisa. He will set off 
 the moment I can get him a house. Who would have 
 
 imagined this ? Our first thought ought to be , our second 
 
 our own plans. The hesitation in your letter about Florence 
 has communicated itself to me ; although I hardly see what we 
 can do about Horace Smith, to whom our attentions are so due, 
 and would be so useful. If I do not arrive before this long 
 
LETTERS. 355 
 
 scrawl, wri^e something to Florence to decide me. I shall 
 certainly, not without strong reasons, at present sign the 
 agreement for the old codger's house ; although the extreme 
 beauty and fitness of the place, should we decide on Florence, 
 might well overbalance the objection of your deaf visitor. One 
 thing — with Lord Byron and the people we know at Pisa, we 
 should have a security and protection, which seems to be 
 more questionable at Florence. But I do not think that this 
 consideration ought to weigh. What think you of remaining at 
 Pisa? The Williams's would probably be induced to stay there 
 if we did ; Hunt would certainly stay, at least this winter, near 
 us, should he emigrate at all ; Lord Byron and his Italian 
 friends would remain quietly there ; and Lord Byron 
 has certainly a great regard for us — the regard of such a 
 man is worth — some of the tribute we must pay to the base 
 passions of humanity in any intercourse with those within their 
 circle ; he is better worth it than those on whom we bestow 
 
 it from mere custom. The are there, and as far as 
 
 solid affairs are concerned, are my friends. ... At Pisa 
 I need not distil my water — if I can distil it anywhere. 
 Last winter I suffered less from my painful disorder than the 
 winter I spent at Florence. The arguments for Florence you 
 know, and they are very weighty; judge {I know you like the 
 job,) which scale is overbalanced. 
 
 My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human 
 society. I would retire with you and our child to a solitary 
 island in the sea, would built a boat, and shut upon my retreat 
 the floodgates of the world. I would read no reviews, and 
 talk with no authors. If I dared trust my imagination, it would 
 tell me that there are one or two chosen companions besides 
 yourself whom I should desire. But to this I would not listen 
 — where two or three are gathered together, the devil is among 
 them. And good, far more than evil impulses, love, far more 
 than hatred, has been to me, except as you have been its object, 
 the source of all sorts of mischief. So on this plan, I would 
 be alone, and would devote, either to oblivion or to future 
 generations, the overflowings of a mind which, timely with- 
 drawn from the contagion, should be kept fit for no baser 
 object. But this it does not appear that we shall do. 
 
 The other side of the alternative (for a medium ought not 
 to be adopted) is to form for ourselves a society of our own 
 class, as much as possible in intellect, or in feelings ; and to 
 connect ourselves with the interests of that society. Our 
 roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the transplanted 
 
356 LETTERS. 
 
 tree flourishes not. People who lead the lives which we led 
 until last winter, are like a family of Wahabee Arabs, pitching 
 their tent in the midst of London. We must do one thing 
 or the other — for yourself, for our child, for our existence. The 
 calumnies, the sources of which are probably deeper than 
 we perceive, have ultimately, for object, the depriving us 
 of the means of security and subsistence. You will easily 
 perceive the gradations by which calumny proceeds to pretext, 
 pretext to persecution, and persecution to the ban of fire and 
 water. It is for this, and not because this or that fool, or 
 the whole court of fools, curse and rail, that calumny is worth 
 refuting or chastising. 
 
 CI I.— To Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Pisa^ A ugust 26M, 1 8 2 1 . 
 
 My Dearest Friend — Since I last wrote to you, I have 
 been on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. The result of this 
 visit was a determination, on his part, to come and live at 
 Pisa ; and I have taken the finest palace on the Lung' Arno 
 for him. But the material part of my visit consists in a 
 message which he desires me to give you, and which, I think, 
 ought to add to your determination — for such a one I hope 
 you have formed, of restoring your shattered health and spirits 
 by a migration to these " regions mild of calm and serene air." 
 
 He proposes that you should come and -go shares with him 
 and me, in a periodical work, to be conducted here ; in which 
 each of the contracting parties should publish all their 
 original compositions, and share the profits. He proposed 
 it to Moore, but for some reason it was never brought to bear. 
 There can be no doubt that \\xq profits of any scheme in which 
 you and Lord Byron engage, must, from various, yet 
 co-operating reasons, be very great. As for myself, I am, 
 for the present, only a sort of link between you and him, 
 until you can know each other, and effectuate the arrangement ; 
 since (to entrust you with a secret which, for your sake, I 
 withhold from Lord Byron) nothing would induce me to 
 share in the profits, and still less, in the borrowed splendour of 
 such a patnership. You and he, in different manners, would 
 be equal, and would bring, in a different manner, but in the 
 same proportion, equal stocks of reputation and success. Do 
 not let my frankness with you, nor my belief that you deserve 
 
LETTERS. 357 
 
 it more than Lord Byron, have the effect of deterring you 
 from assuming a station in modern literature, which the universal 
 voice of my contemporaries forbids me either to stoop or 
 to aspire to. I am, and I desire to be, nothing. 
 
 I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in sending a 
 remittance for your journey ; because there are men, however 
 excellent, from whom we would never receive an obligation, 
 in the worldly sense of the word ; and I am as jealous for 
 my friend as for myself; but I suppose that I shall at last 
 make up an impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to add 
 to the many obligations he has conferred on me. I know 
 I need only ask. 
 
 I think I have never told you how very much I like your 
 " Amyntas ; " it almost reconciles me to translations. In 
 another sense I still demur. You might have written another 
 such poem as the " Nymphs," with no great access of efforts. I 
 am full of thoughts and plans, and should do something, if 
 the feeble and irritable frame which incloses it was willing 
 to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should do great things. 
 Before this you will have seen " Adonais." Lord Byron, I sup- 
 pose from modesty, on account of his being mentioned in it, did 
 not say a word of " Adonais," though he was loud in his praise 
 of " Prometheus," and, what you will not agree with him in, 
 censure of " the Cenci." Certainly, if " Marino Faliero " is a 
 drama, " the Cenci " is not — but that between ourselves. Lord 
 Byron is reformed, as far as gallantry goes, and lives with a 
 beautiful and sentimental Italian lady, who is as much attached 
 to him as may be. I trust greatly to his intercourse with you, 
 for his creed to become as pure as he thinks his conduct is. He 
 has many generous and exalted qualities, but the canker of 
 aristocracy wants to be cut out. 
 
 cm.— To Horace Smith. 
 
 Pisa, Sept. i^th, 1821. 
 
 My Dear Smith — I cannot express the pain and disappoint- 
 ment with which I learn the change in your plans, no less than 
 the afflicting cause of it. Florence wUl no longer have any 
 attractions for me this winter, and I shall contentedly sit down 
 in this humdrum Pisa, and refer to hope and to chance the 
 pleasure I had expected from your society this winter. What 
 
358 LETTERS. 
 
 shall I do with your packages, which have now, I believe, all 
 arrived at Guebhard's at Leghorn ? Is it not possible that a 
 favourable change in Mrs. Smith's health might produce a cor- 
 responding change in your determinations, and would it, or 
 would it not, be premature to forward the packages to your 
 present residence, or to London ? I will pay every possible 
 attention to your instructions in this regard. 
 
 I had marked down several houses in Florence, and one 
 especially on the Arno, a most lovely place, though they asked 
 rather more than perhaps you would have chosen to pay — yet 
 nothing approaching to an English price. — I do not yet entirely 
 give you up. — Indeed, I should be sorry not to hope that Mrs. 
 Smith's state of health would not soon become such, as to 
 remove your principal objection to this delightful climate. I 
 have not, with the exception of three or four days, suffered in 
 the least from the heat this year. Though, it is but fair to 
 confess, that my temperament approaches to that of the 
 salamander. 
 
 We expect Lord Byron here in about a fortnight. I have 
 just taken the finest palace in Pisa for him, and his luggage, 
 and his horses, and all his train, are, I believe, already on their 
 way hither. I dare say you have heard of the life he led at 
 Venice, rivalling the wise Solomon almost, in the number of his 
 concubines. Well, he is now quite reformed, and is leading a 
 most sober and decent life, as cavaliere servente to a very pretty 
 Italian woman, who has already arrived at Pisa, with her father 
 and her brother (such are the manners of Italy), as the jackals 
 of the lion. He is occupied in forming a new drama, and, with 
 views which I doubt not will expand as he proceeds, is deter- 
 mined to write a series of plays, in which he will follow the 
 French tragedians and Alfieri, rather than those of England and 
 Spain, and produce something new, at least, to England. This 
 seems to me the wrong road ; but genius like his is destined to 
 lead and not to follow. He will shake off his shackles as he 
 finds they cramp him. I believe he will produce something 
 very great ; and that familiarity with the dramatic power of 
 human nature, will soon enable him to soften down the severe 
 and unharmonising traits of his " Marino Faliero." I think you 
 know Lord Byron personally, or is it your brother.? If the 
 latter, I know that he wished particularly to be introduced to 
 you, and that he will sympathise, in some degree, in this great 
 disappointment which I feel in the change, or, as I yet hope, in 
 the prorogation of your plans. 
 
 I am glad you like '* Adonais," and, particularly, that you do 
 
LETTERS, 3S9 
 
 not think it metaphysical, which I was afraid it was. I was 
 resolved to pay some tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured 
 dead, but I wrote, as usual, with a total ignorance of the effect 
 that I should produce. — I have not yet seen your pastoral 
 drama ; if you have a copy, could you favour me with it.^* It 
 will be six months before I shall receive it from England. I 
 have heard it spoken of with high praise, and I have the 
 greatest curiosity to see it. 
 
 The Gisbornes promised to buy me some books in Paris, and 
 I had asked you to be kind enough to advance them what they 
 might want to pay for them. I cannot conceive why they did 
 not execute this little commission for me, as they knew how 
 very much I wished to receive these books by the same con- 
 veyance as the filtering-stone. Dare I ask you to do me the 
 favour to buy them ? A complete edition of the works of 
 Calderon, and the French translation of Kant, a German Faust, 
 and to add the Nympholept? — I am indifferent as to a little 
 more or less expense, so that I may have them immediately. I 
 will send you an order on Paris for the amount, together with 
 the thirty-two francs you were kind enough to pay for me. 
 
 All public attention is now centred on the wonderful revolu- 
 tion in Greece. I dare not, after the events of last winter, hope 
 that slaves can become freemen so cheaply ; yet I know one 
 Greek of the highest qualities, both of courage and conduct, 
 the Prince Mavrocordato, and if the rest be like him, all will go 
 well. — The news of this moment is, that the Russian army has 
 orders to advance. 
 
 Mrs. S. unites with me in the most heartfelt regret. And I 
 remain, my dear Smith, 
 
 Most faithfully yours, P. B. S. 
 
 If you happen to have brought a copy of Clarke's edition of 
 Queen Mab for me, I should like very well to see it. — I really 
 hardly know what this poem is about. I am afraid it is rather 
 rough. 
 
 CIV.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa, September 2^th^ 1821. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 It will give me great pleasure if I can arrange the 
 affair of Mrs. Shelley's novel with you to her and your satisfac- 
 tion. She has a specific purpose in the sum which she instructed 
 me to require ; and although this purpose could not be answered 
 
36o LETTERS. 
 
 without ready money, yet I should find means to answer her 
 wishes in that point, if you could make it convenient to pay 
 one-third at Christmas, and give bills for the other two-thirds at 
 twelve and eighteen months. It would give me peculiar satis- 
 faction that you, rather than any other person, should be the 
 publisher of this work ; it is the product of no slight labour, 
 and, I flatter myself, of no common talent. I doubt it will give 
 no less credit than it will receive from your names. I trust you 
 know me too well to believe that my judgment deliberately 
 given in testimony of the value of any production is influenced 
 by motives of interest or partiality. 
 
 The romance is called Castruccio^ Prince of Lucca^ and is 
 founded (not upon the novel of Macchiavelli under that name, 
 which substitutes a childish fiction for the far more romantic 
 truth of history, but) upon the actual story of his life. He was 
 a person who, from an exile and an adventurer, after having 
 served in the wars of England and Flanders in the reign of our 
 Edward the Second, returned to his native city, and, liber- 
 ating it from its tyrants, became himself its tyrant, and died in 
 the full splendour of his dominion, which he had extended over 
 the half of Tuscany. He was a little Napoleon, and, with a 
 dukedom instead of an empire for his theatre, brought upon 
 the same all the passions and the errors of his antitype. The 
 chief interest of this romance rests upon Euthanasia, his 
 betrothed bride, whose love for him is only equalled by her 
 enthu^asm for the liberty of the republic of Florence, which is 
 in some sort her country, and for that of Italy, to which 
 Castruccio is a devoted enemy, being an ally of the party of 
 the Emperor. This character is a masterpiece ; and the key- 
 stone of the drama, which is built up with admirable art, is the 
 conflict between these passions and these principles. Euthanasia, 
 the last survivor of a noble house, is a feudal countess, and her 
 castle is the scene of the exhibition of the knightly manners of 
 the time. The character of Beatrice, the prophetess, can only 
 be done justice to in the very language of the author. I know 
 nothing in Walter Scott's novels which at all approaches to 
 the beauty and sublimity of this — creation, I may almost say, 
 for it is perfectly original ; and, although founded upon the 
 ideas and manners of the age which is represented, is wholly 
 without a similitude in any fiction I ever read. Beatrice is in 
 love with Castruccio, and dies ; for the romance, although 
 interspersed with much lighter matter, is deeply tragic, and the 
 shades darken and gather as the catastrophe approaches. All 
 the manners, customs, opinions, of the age are introduced ; the 
 
LETTERS. 361 
 
 superstitions, the heresies, and the religious persecutions are 
 displayed ; the minutest circumstance of Italian manners in 
 that age is not omitted ; and the whole seems to me to con- 
 stitute a living and a moving picture of an age almost forgotten. 
 The author visited the scenery which she describes in person ; 
 and one or two of the inferior characters are drawn from her 
 own observation of the Italians, for the national character shows 
 itself still in certain instances under the same forms as it wore 
 in the time of Dante.* The novel consists, as I told you before, 
 of three volumes, each at least equal to one of the Tales of my 
 Landlord, and they will be very soon ready to be sent. In case 
 you should accept the present offer, I will make one observation 
 which I consider of essential importance. It ought to be 
 printed in half volumes at a time, and sent to the author for her 
 last corrections by the post. It may be printed on thin paper 
 like that of this letter, and the expense shall fall upon me. 
 Lord Byron has his works sent in this manner ; and no person, 
 who has either fame to lose or money to win, ought to publish 
 in any other manner. 
 
 By-the-bye, how do I stand with regard to these two great 
 objects of human pursuit .? I once sought something nobler and 
 better than either ; but I might as well have reached at the 
 moon, and now, finding that I have grasped the air, I should 
 not be sorry to know what substantial sum, especially of the 
 former, is in your hands on my account. The gods have made 
 the reviewers the almoners of this worldly dross, and I think 
 I must write an ode to flatter them to give me some ; if I would 
 not that they put me off with a bill on posterity, which, when 
 my ghost shall present, the answer will be — " no effects." 
 
 Charles the First is conceived, but not born. Unless I am 
 sure of making something good, the play will not be written. 
 Pride, that ruined Satan, will kill Charles the First, for his mid- 
 wife would be only less than him whom thunder has made 
 greater. I am full of great plans ; and, if I should tell you 
 them, I should add to the list of these riddles. 
 
 * The book here alluded to was ultimately published under the title 
 of Valperga. Mrs. Shelley received ;^400 for the copyright ; and this 
 sum was generously devoted to the relief of Godwin's pecuniary 
 difficulties. In a letter to Mrs. Gisborne, dated June 30th, 1821, Mrs. 
 Shelley says that she first formed the conception at Marlow ; that this 
 took a more definite shape at Naples ; that the work was delayed 
 several times; and that it was "a child of a mighty slow growth." 
 It was also, she says, a work of labour, as she had read and consulted a 
 great many books. — L. S. 
 
362 LETTERS. 
 
 I have not seen Mr. Procter's Mirandola. Send it me in the 
 box, and pray send me the box immediately. It is of the utmost 
 consequence ; and, as you are so obliging as to say you will not 
 neglect my commissions, pray send this without delay. I hope 
 it is sent, indeed, and that you have recollected to send me 
 several copies of Prometheus^ the Revolt of Islam^ and the Cenci^ 
 etc., as I requested you. Is there any chance of a second edi- 
 tion of the Revolt of Islam f I could materially improve that 
 poem on revision. The Adonats, in spite of its mysticism, is 
 the least imperfect of my compositions, and, as the image of my 
 regret and honour for poor Keats, I wish it to be so. I shall 
 write to you, probably, by next post on the subject of that poem, 
 and should have sent the promised criticism for the second 
 edition, had I not mislaid, and in vain sought for, the volume 
 that contains Hyperion. Pray give me notice against what 
 time you want the second part of my Defence of Poetry, I give 
 you this Defence, and you may do what you will with it. 
 
 Pray give me an immediate answer about the novel. 
 I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 Your very obliged servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 I ought to tell you that the novel has not the smallest tincture 
 of any peculiar theories in politics or religion. 
 
 CV.— To John Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa^ October 22, 1821. 
 
 My Dear Gisborne — At length the post brings a welcome 
 letter from you, and I am pleased to be assured of your health 
 and safe arrival. I expect with interest and anxiety the intel- 
 ligence of your progress in England, and how far the advantages 
 there compensate the loss of Italy. I hear from Hunt that he 
 is determined on emigration, and if I thought the letter would 
 arrive in time, I should beg you to suggest some advice to him. 
 But you ought to be incapable of forgiving me in the fact of 
 depriving England of what it must lose when Hunt departs. 
 
 Did I tell you that Lord Byron comes to settle at Pisa, and 
 that he has a plan of writing a periodical work in connection 
 with Hunt? His house, Madame Felichi's, is already taken 
 and fitted up for him, and he has been expected every day these 
 six weeks. La Guiccioli, who awaits him impatiently, is a very 
 
LETTERS. 363 
 
 pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian, who has sacrificed an 
 immense fortune for the sake of Lord Byron, and who, if I 
 know anything of my friend, of her and of human nature, will 
 hereafter have plenty of leisure and opportunity to repent her 
 rashness. Lord Byron is, however, quite cured of his gross 
 habits, as far as habits ; the perverse ideas on which they were 
 formed are not yet eradicated. 
 
 We have furnished a house at Pisa, and mean to make it our 
 head-quarters. I shall get all my books out, and entrench my- 
 self like a spider in a web. If you can assist P. in sending 
 them to Leghorn, you would do me an especial favour ; but do 
 not buy me Calderon, Faust, or Kant, as H. S. promises to send 
 them me from Paris, where I suppose you had not time to 
 procure them. Any. other books you or Henry think would 
 accord with my design, Oilier will furnish you with. 
 
 I should like very much to hear what is said of my 
 " Adonais," and you would oblige me by cutting out, or making 
 Oilier cut out, any respectable criticism on it and sending it me ; 
 you know I do not mind a crown or two in postage. The Epipsy- 
 chidion is a mystery ; as to real flesh and blood, you know that 
 I do not deal in those articles ; you might as well go to a gin- 
 shop for a leg of mutton, as expect anything human or earthly 
 from me. I desired Oilier not to circulate this piece except to 
 the avperoi, and even they, it seems, are inclined to approximate 
 me to the circle of a servant girl and her sweetheart. But I 
 intend to write a Symposium of my own to set all this right. 
 
 I am just finishing a dramatic poem, called Hellas, upon the 
 contest now raging in Greece — a sort of imitation of the PerscC 
 of ^schylus, full of lyrical poetry. I try to be what I might 
 have been, but am not successful. I find that (I dare say I 
 shall quote wrong,) 
 
 "Den herrlichsten, den sich der Geist emprangt 
 Drangt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an." 
 
 The Edinburgh Review lies. Godwin's answer to Malthus is 
 victorious and decisive ; and that it should not be generally 
 acknowledged as such, is full of evidence of the influence of 
 successful evil and tyranny. What Godwin is, compared to 
 Plato and Lord Bacon, we well know ; but compared with these 
 miserable sciolists, he is a vulture to a worm. 
 
 I read the Greek dramatists and Plato for ever. You are 
 right about Antigone ; how sublime a picture of a woman ! and 
 what think you of the choruses, and especially the lyrical com- 
 plaints of the godlike victim ? and the menaces of Tiresias, and 
 
364 LETTERS. 
 
 their rapid fulfilment ? Some of us have, in a prior existence, 
 been in love with an Antigone, and that makes us find no full 
 content in any mortal tie. As to books, I advise you to live 
 near the British Museum, and read there. I have read, since I 
 saw you, the " Jungfrau von Orleans " of Schiller, — a fine play, 
 if the fifth act did not fall off. Some Greeks, escaped from the 
 defeat in Wallachia, have passed through Pisa to re-embark at 
 Leghorn for the Morea ; and the Tuscan Government allowed 
 them, during their stay and passage, three lire each per day 
 and their lodging ; that is good. Remember me and Mary 
 most kindly to Mrs. Gisborne and Henry, and believe me, 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 P. B. S. 
 
 CVI.— To C. Ollier. 
 
 Pisa, Nov. nth, 1821. 
 
 Dear Sir — I send you the drama of Hellas, relying on your 
 assurance that you will be good enough to pay immediate 
 attention to my literary requests. What little interest this 
 poem may ever excite, depends upon its immediate publication ; 
 I entreat you, therefore, to have the goodness to send the MS. 
 instantly to a printer, and the moment you get a proof despatch 
 it to me by the post. The whole might be sent at once. Lord 
 Byron has his poem sent to him in this manner, and I cannot 
 see that the inferiority in the composition of a poem can affect 
 the powers of a printer in the matter of despatch, etc. If any 
 passages should alarm you in the notes, you are at liberty to 
 suppress them ; the poem contains nothing of a tendency to 
 danger. 
 
 Do not forget my other questions. I am especially curious 
 to hear the fate of Adonais. I confess I should be surprised if 
 that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion. 
 
 Within a few days I may have to write to you on a subject of 
 greater interest. Meanwhile, I rely on your kindness for carrying 
 my present request into immediate effect. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Your very faithful servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 I need not impress on you the propriety of giving a speedy 
 answer to Mrs. S.'s proposal. Her volumes are now ready for 
 the press. The Ode to Napoleoti to print at the end. 
 
LETTERS. 36s 
 
 CVIL— To Joseph Severn. 
 
 Pisa^ November 2()th, 1821. 
 
 Dear Sir — I send you the elegy on poor Keats — and I wish 
 it were better worth your acceptance. You will see, by the 
 preface, that is was written before I could obtain any particular 
 account of his last moments ; all that I still know, was communi- 
 cated to me by a friend who had derived his information from 
 Colonel Finch ; I have ventured to express, as I felt, the 
 respect and admiration, which yottr conduct towards him 
 demands. 
 
 In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor 
 ever will be, a popular poet ; and the total neglect and 
 obscurity in which the astonishing remnants of his mind still 
 lie, was hardly to be dissipated by a writer, who, however he 
 may differ from Keats in more important qualities, at least 
 resembles him in that accidental one, a want of popularity. 
 
 I have little hope, therefore, that the poem I send you will 
 excite any attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice 
 of his writings would find a single reader. But for these con- 
 siderations, it had been my intention to have collected the 
 remnants of his compositions, and to have published them with 
 a life and criticism. — Has he left any poems or writings of 
 whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they ? Perhaps 
 you would oblige me by information on this point. 
 
 Many thanks for the picture you promised me : I shall 
 consider it among the most sacred relics of the past. 
 
 For my part, I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my 
 friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should survive him. 
 
 Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the 
 pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into 
 something pleasant, begun under such melancholy auspices. 
 
 Accept, my dear sir, the assurances of my sincere esteem, 
 and believe me. 
 
 Your most sincere and faithful servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 Do you know Leigh Hunt ? I expect him and his family 
 here every day. 
 
366 LETTERS. 
 
 CVIIL— To T. L. Peacock. 
 
 Pisa. January {probably nth), 1822. 
 
 My Dear Peacock— I am still at Pisa, where I have at 
 length fitted up some rooms at the top of a lofty palace that 
 overlooks the city and the surrounding region, and have col- 
 lected books and plants about me, and established myself for 
 some indefinite time, which, if I read the future, will not be 
 short. I wish you to send my books, by the very first oppor- 
 tunity, and I expect in them a great augmentation of comfort. 
 Lord Byron is established here, and we are constant com- 
 panions. No small relief this, after the dreary solitude of the 
 understanding and the imagination in which we pass the first 
 years of our expatriation, yoked to all sorts of miseries and dis- 
 comforts. Of course you have seen his last volume, and if you 
 before thought him a great poet, what is your opinion now that 
 you have read Cain ? The Foscari and Sardanapalus I have 
 not seen ; but as they are in the style of his later writings, I 
 doubt not they are very fine. We expect Hunt here every day, 
 and remain in great anxiety on account of the heavy gales which 
 he must have encountered at Christmas. Lord Byron has fitted 
 up the lower apartments of his palace for him, and Hunt will be 
 agreeably surprised to find a commodious lodging prepared for 
 him after the fatigues and dangers of his passage. I have been 
 long idle, and, as far as writing goes, despondent ; but I am 
 now engaged on Charles the firsts and a devil of a nut it is to 
 crack. 
 
 M. and C, who is not with us just at present, are well, and so 
 is our little boy, the image of poor William. We live, as usual, 
 tranquilly. I get up, or at least wake, early ; read and write till 
 two ; dine; go to Lord B.'s, and ride, or play at billiards, as the 
 weather permits ; and sacrifice the evening either to light books 
 or whoever happens to drop in. Our furniture, which is very 
 neat, cost fewer shillings than that at Marlow did pounds sterling ; 
 and our windows are full of plants, which turn the sunny winter 
 into spring. My health is better — my cares are lighter ; and 
 although nothing will cure the consumption of my purse, yet it 
 drags on a sort of life in death, very like its master, and seems, 
 like Fortunatus's, always empty yet never quite exhausted. You 
 will have seen my Adonais, and perhaps my Hellas, and I think, 
 whatever you may think of the subject, the composition of the 
 first poem will not wholly displease you. I wish I had something 
 better to do than furnish this jingling food for the hunger of 
 
LETTERS. 367 
 
 oblivion, called verse, but I have not ; and since you give me no 
 encouragement about India,"* I cannot hope to have. 
 
 How is your little star, and the heaven which contains the 
 milky way in which it glimmers ? 
 
 Adieu — Yours ever, most truly, S. 
 
 CIX.— To Horace Smith. 
 
 Pisa, 2$th January, 1822. 
 
 My Dear Smith — I have delayed this fortnight answering 
 your kind letter because I was in treaty for a Calderon, which 
 at last I have succeeded in procuring at a tolerably moderate 
 price. All the other books you mention I should be glad to 
 have ; together with whatever others might fall in your way 
 that you might think interesting. 
 
 Will you not think my exactions upon your kindness 
 interminable if I ask you to execute another commission for 
 me ? It is to buy a good pedal harp, without great ornament or 
 any appendage that would unnecessarily increase the expense — 
 but good ; nor should I object to its being second-hand, if that 
 were equally compatible with its being despatched immediately. 
 Together with the harp I should wish for five or six napoleons' 
 worth of harp music, at your discretion. I do not know the 
 price of harps at Paris, but I suppose that from seventy to 
 eighty guineas would cover it, and I trust to your accustomed 
 kindness, as I want it for a present, to make the immediate 
 advance, as if I were to delay, the grace of my compliment 
 would be lost. Do not take much trouble about it, but simply 
 take what you find, if you are so exceedingly kind as to oblige 
 me. It had better be sent by Marseilles, through some mer- 
 chant or in any other manner you think best, addressed to me 
 at Messrs. Guebhard and Co., merchants, Leghorn ; the books 
 may be sent together with it. 
 
 Our party at Pisa is the same as when I wrote last. Lord 
 Byron unites us at a weekly dinner, when my nerves are 
 generally shaken to pieces by sitting up contemplating the rest 
 making themselves vats of claret, etc., till three o'clock in the 
 
 * He had expressed a desire to be employed politically at the court 
 of a native prince, and I had told him that such employment was 
 restricted to the regular service of the East India Company. — T. L. P. 
 
368 LETTERS, 
 
 morning. We regret your absence exceedingly, and Lord 
 Byron has desired me to convey his best remembrances to you. 
 I imagine it is you^ and not your brother, for whom they are 
 intended. Hunt was expected, and Lord Byron had fitted up a 
 part of his palace for his accommodation, when we heard that 
 the late violent storms had forced him to put back ; and that 
 nothing could induce Marianne to put to sea again. This, for 
 many reasons that I cannot now explain, has produced a chaos 
 of perplexities. . . . The reviews and journals, they say, 
 continue to attack me, but I value neither the fame they can 
 give nor the fame they can take away, therefore blessed be the 
 name of the reviews. 
 
 Pray, if possible, let the " Nympholept " be included in the 
 package. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Smith, 
 
 Your most obliged and affectionate friend, 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 ex.— To John Gisborne. 
 
 Pisa^ April lo, 1822. 
 
 My Dear Gisborne — I have received Hellas, which is 
 prettily printed, and with fewer mistakes than any poem I ever 
 published. Am I to thank you for the revision of the press .? or 
 who acted as midwife to this last of my orphans, introducing it 
 to oblivion, and me to my accustomed failure ? May the cause 
 it celebrates be more fortunate than either ! Tell me how you 
 like Hellas, and give me your opinion freely. It was written 
 without much care, and in one of those few moments of 
 enthusiasm which now seldom visit me, and which make me 
 pay dear for their visits. I know what to think of Adonais, but 
 what to think of those who confound it with the many bad 
 poems of the day, I know not. 
 
 I have been reading over and over again Faust, and always 
 with sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens 
 the gloom and augments the rapidity of ideas, and would 
 therefore seem to me an unfit study for any person who is a prey 
 to the reproaches of memory, and the delusions of an imagination 
 not to be restrained. And yet the pleasure of sympathising 
 with emotions known only to few, although they derive their sole 
 charm from despair, and the scorn of the narrow good we can 
 attain in our present state, seems more than to ease the pain 
 which belongs to them. Perhaps all discontent with the less (to 
 
LETTERS. 369 
 
 use a Platonic sophism,) supposes the sense of a just claim to the 
 greater^ and that we admirers of Faust are on the right road to 
 Paradise. Such a supposition is not more absurd, and is 
 certainly less demoniacal, than that of Wordsworth, where he 
 says — 
 
 "This earth, 
 
 Wliich is the world of all of us, and where 
 
 IVefnd our happiness, or not at all." 
 
 As if, after sixty years' suffering here, we were to be roasted alive 
 for sixty million more in hell, or charitably annihilated by a 
 coicp de grdce of the bungler who brought us into existence at 
 first ! 
 
 Have you read Calderon's Magico Prodigioso? I find a 
 striking singularity between Faust and this drama, and if I were 
 to acknowledge Coleridge's distinction, should say Goethe was 
 the greaiesf philosopher, and Calderon the greatest poet. Cyprian 
 evidently furnished the germ of Faust, as Faust may furnish the 
 germ of other poems ; although it is as different from it in 
 structure and plan as the acorn from the oak. I have — imagine 
 my presumption — translated several scenes from both, as the 
 basis of a paper for our journal. I am well content with those 
 from Calderon, which in fact gave me very little trouble ; but 
 those from Faust — I feel how imperfect a representation, even 
 with all the licence I assume to figure to myself how Goethe 
 would have written in English, my words convey. No one but 
 Coleridge is capable of this work. 
 
 We have seen here a translation of some scenes, and indeed 
 the most remarkable ones, accompanying those astonishing 
 etchings which have been published in England from a German 
 master. It is not bad — and faithful enough — but how weak ! 
 how incompetent to represent Faust I I have only attempted 
 the scenes omitted in this translation, and would send you that 
 of the Walpurgisnacht^ if I thought Oilier would place the 
 postage to my account. What etchings those are ! I am never 
 satiated with looking at them ; and, I fear, it is the only sort of 
 translation of which Faust is susceptible. I never perfectly 
 understood the Hartz Mountain scene, until I saw the etching ; 
 and then, Margaret in the summer-house with Faust 1 The 
 artist makes one envy his happiness that he can sketch such 
 things with calmness, which I only dared look upon once, and 
 which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on the 
 opposite side of which I knew that it was figured. Whether it 
 is that the artist has surpassed Faust, or that the pencil 
 
 105 
 
370 LETTERS. 
 
 surpasses language in some subjects, I know not, or that I am 
 more affected by a visible image, but the etching certainly 
 excited me far more than the poem it illustrated. Do you 
 remember the fifty-fourth letter of the first part of the " Nouvelle 
 Heloise?" Goethe, in a subsequent scene, evidently had that 
 letter in his mind, and this etching is an idealism of it. So 
 much for the world of shadows ! 
 
 What think you of Lord Byron's last volume ? In my opinion 
 it contains finer poetry than has appeared in England since the 
 publication of Paradise Regained. Cain is apocalyptic — it is a 
 revelation not before communicated to man. I write nothing 
 but by fits. I have done some of Charles I. ; but although the 
 poetry succeeded very well, I cannot seize on the conception of 
 the subject as a whole, and seldom now touch the canvas. 
 You know I don't think much about Reviews, nor of the fame 
 they give, nor that they take away. It is absurd in any Review 
 to criticise Adonais, and still more to pretend that the verses 
 are bad. Prometheus was never intended for more than five or 
 six persons. 
 
 And how are you getting on ? Do your plans still want 
 success ? Do you regret Italy ? or any thing that Italy 
 contains ? And in case of an entire failure in your expecta- 
 tions, do you think of returning here ? You see the first blow 
 has been made at funded property: — do you intend to confide 
 and invite a second .? You would already have saved some- 
 thing per cent., if you had invested your property in Tuscan 
 land. The next best thing would be to invest it in English, and 
 reside upon it. I tremble for the consequences, to you personally, 
 from a prolonged confidence in the funds. Justice, policy, the 
 hopes of the nation and renewed institutions, demand your ruin, 
 and I, for one, cannot bring myself to desire what is in itself 
 desirable, till you are free. You see how liberal I am of advice ; 
 but you know the motives that suggest it. What is Henry 
 about, and how are his prospects ? Tell him that some adven- 
 turers are engaged upon a steam-boat at Leghorn, to make the 
 irajet we projected. I hope he is charitable enough to pray 
 that they may succeed better than we did. 
 
 Remember me most affectionately to Mrs. Gisborne, to whom, 
 as well as to yourself, I consider that this letter is written. 
 How is she, and how are you all in health .? And pray tell me, 
 what are your plans of life, and how Henry succeeds, and 
 whether he is married or not 1 How can I send you such small 
 sums as you may want for postages, etc., for I do not mean to 
 tax with my unreasonable letters both your purse and your 
 
LETTERS, 371 
 
 patience ? We go this summer to Spezzia ; but direct as ever 
 
 to Pisa, — Mrs. will forward our letters. If you see anything 
 
 which you think would particularly interest me, pray make 
 Oilier pay for sending it out by post. Give my best and affec- 
 tionate regards to H , to whom I do not write at present, 
 
 imagining that you will give him a piece of this letter. 
 
 Ever most faithfully yours, P. B. S. 
 
 CXI.— To Horatio Smith. 
 
 Pisa^ April nth, 1822. 
 
 My Dear Smith. — I have, as yet, received neither the . . ., 
 nor his metaphysical companions — Time, my Lord, has a wallet 
 on his. back, and I suppose he has bagged them by the way. As 
 he has had a good deal of alms for oblivion out of me, I think 
 he might as well have favoured me this once ; I have, indeed, 
 just dropped another mite into his treasury, called Hellas, which 
 I know not how to send to you ; but I dare say, some fury of 
 the Hades of authors will bring one to Paris. It is a poem 
 written on the Greek cause last summer — a sort of lyrical, 
 dramatic, nondescript piece of business. 
 
 You will have heard of a row we have had here, which, I dare 
 say, will grow to a serious size before it arrives at Paris. It was, 
 in fact, a trifling piece of business enough, arising from an insult 
 of a drunken dragoon, offered to one of our party, and only 
 serious, because one of Lord B.'s servants wounded the fellow 
 dangerously with a pitchfork. He is now, however, recovering, 
 and the echo of the affair will be heard long after the original 
 report has ceased. 
 
 Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him,* 
 in which Moore speaks with great kindness of me ; and of course 
 I cannot but feel flattered by the approbation of a man, my 
 inferiority to whom I am proud to acknowledge. — Amongst other 
 things, however, Moore, after giving Lord B. much good advice 
 about public opinion, etc., seems to deprecate my influence on 
 his mind, on the subject of religion, and to attribute the tone 
 assumed in " Cain " to my suggestions. Moore cautions him 
 against my influence on this particular, with the most friendly 
 zeal ; and it is plain that his motive springs from a desire of 
 
 * For Mr. Moore's account of this incident, and his own feelings and 
 opinions on the subject — those imputed to him by Shelley being purely 
 conjectural — see Moore's Life of Byron, Vol. II. p. 584, first edition. 
 —M. S. 
 
372 LETTERS. 
 
 benefiting Lord B., without degrading me. I think you know 
 Moore. Pray assure him that I have not the smallest influence 
 over Lord Byron, in this particular, and if I had, I certainly 
 should employ it to eradicate from his great mind the delusions 
 of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem perpetually 
 to recur, and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness and 
 distress. " Cain " was conceived many years ago, and begun 
 before I saw him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I 
 not be to attribute to myself, however indirectly, any participation 
 in that immortal work ! — I differ with Moore in thinking 
 Christianity useful to the world ; no man of sense can think it 
 true ; and the alliance of the monstrous superstitions of the 
 popular worship with the pure doctrines of the Theism of such a 
 man as Moore, turns to the profit of the former, and makes the 
 latter the fountain of its own pollution. I agree with him, that 
 the doctrines of the French, and Material Philosophy, are as false 
 as they are pernicious ; but still they are better than Christianity, 
 inasmuch as anarchy is better than despotism ; for this reason, 
 that the former is for a season, and the latter is eternal. My 
 admiration of the character, no less than of the genius of Moore, 
 makes me rather wish that he should not have an ill opinion 
 of me. 
 
 Where are you ? We settle this summer near Spezzia ; Lord 
 Byron at Leghorn. May not I hope to see you, even for a trip 
 in Italy ? I hope your wife and little ones are well Mine grows 
 a fine boy, and is quite well. 
 
 I have contrived to get my musical coals at Newcastle itself. — 
 My dear Smith, believe me, 
 
 Faithfully yours, P. B. S. 
 
 CXIL— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 (at spezzia.) 
 
 Lerici^ Sunday^ April 2Zih, 1822. 
 
 Dearest Mary — I am this moment arrived at Lerici, where 
 I am necessarily detained, waiting the furniture, which left Pisa 
 last night at midnight ; and as the sea has been calm, and the 
 wind fair, I may expect them every moment. It would not do 
 to leave affairs here in an impiccio^ great as is my anxiety to see 
 you. — How are you, my best love ? How have you sustained 
 the trials of the journey ? Answer me this question, and how 
 my little babe and Clare are. 
 
LETTERS. 373 
 
 Now to business : — Is the Magni House taken ? if not, pray 
 occupy yourself instantly in finishing the affair, even if you are 
 obliged to go to Sarzana, and send a messenger to me to tell 
 me of your success. I, of course, cannot leave Lerici, to which 
 place the boats (for we were obliged to take two), are directed. 
 But you can come over in the same boat that brings this letter, 
 and return in the evening. 
 
 I ought to say that I do not think that there is accommoda- 
 tion for you all at this inn ; and that, even if there were, you 
 would be better off at Spezzia ; but if the Magni House is taken, 
 then there is no possible reason why you should not take a row 
 over in the boat that will bring this — but don't keep the men 
 long. I am anxious to hear from you on every account. 
 
 Ever yours, S. 
 
 CXni.— To Horatio Smith, 
 
 (VERSAILLES.) 
 
 Lerici y May^ 1822. 
 
 My Dear Smith — It is some time since I have heard from 
 you ; are you still at Versailles ? Do you still cling to France, 
 and prefer the arts and conveniences of that over-civilised 
 country to the beautiful nature and mighty remains of Italy ? 
 As to me, like Anacreon's swallow, I have left my Nile, and 
 have taken up my summer quarters here, in a lonely house, 
 close by the sea-side, surrounded by the soft and sublime 
 scenery of the gulf of Spi^zzia. 1 do not write ; I have lived 
 too long near Lord Byron, and the sun has extinguished the 
 glow-worm ; for I cannot hope, with St. John, that " the light 
 ca77ie into the worlds and the world knew it not." 
 
 The object of my present letter is, however, a request, and as 
 it concerns that most odious of all subjects, money, I will put it 
 in the shortest shape — Godwin's law-suit, he tells us, is decided 
 against him ; and he is adjudged to pay £aoo. He writes, of 
 course, to his daughter in the greatest distress : but we have 
 no money except our income, nor any means of procuring it. 
 My wife has sent him her novel, which is now finished, the 
 copyright of which will probably bring him ;!f 300 or ;/^4oo— as 
 Oilier offered the former sum for it, but as he required a con- 
 siderable delay for the payment, she rejected his offer. Now, 
 what I wish to know is, whether you could with convenience 
 lend me the ;!{^400 which you once dedicated to this service, and 
 allow Godwin to have it, under the precautions and stipulations 
 
374 LETTERS, 
 
 which I formerly annexed to its employment. You could not 
 obviously allow this money to lie idle waiting for this event, 
 without interest. I forgot this part of the business till this 
 instant, and now I reflect that I ought to have assured you of 
 the regular payment of interest, which I omitted to mention, 
 considering it a matter of course. 
 
 I can easily imagine that circumstances may have arisen to 
 make this loan inconvenient or impossible. — In any case, 
 believe me, 
 
 My dear Smith, 
 
 Yours very gratefully and faithfully, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 CXIV.— To Horatio Smith. 
 
 Lerici^June 2()thy 1822. 
 
 MyDear Smith. — Pray thank Moore for his obliging message. 
 I wish I could as easily convey my sense of his genius and 
 character. I should have written to him on the subject of my 
 late letter, but that I doubted how far I was justified in doing so ; 
 although, indeed, Lord Byron made no secret of his communica- 
 tion to me. It seems to me that things have now arrived at such 
 a crisis as requires every man plainly to utter his sentiments on 
 the inefficacy of the existing religion, no less than political 
 systems, for restraining and guiding mankind. Let us see the 
 truth, whatever that may be. The destiny of man can scarcely 
 be so degraded, that he was born only to die ; and if such 
 should be the case, delusions, especially the gross and pre- 
 posterous ones of the existing religion, can scarcely be supposed 
 to exalt it. If every man said what he thought, it could not 
 subsist a day. But all, more or less, subdue themselves to the 
 element that surrounds them, and contribute to the evils they 
 lament by the hypocrisy that springs from them. 
 
 England appears to be in a desperate condition, Ireland still 
 worse ; and no class of those who subsist on the public labour 
 will be persuaded that tfieir claims on it must be diminished. 
 But the government must content itself with less in taxes, the 
 landholder must submit to receive less rent, and the fundholder 
 a diminished interest, or they will all get nothing. I once 
 thought to study these affairs, and write or act in them. I am 
 glad that my good genius said, refrain. I see little public 
 virtue, and I foresee that the contest will be one of blood and 
 
LETTERS. 375 
 
 gold, two elements which however much to my taste in my 
 pockets and my veins, I have an objection to out of them. 
 
 Lord Byron continues at Leghorn, and has just received from 
 Genoa a most beautiful little yacht, which he caused to be built 
 there. He has written two new cantos of Don Juan, but I have 
 not seen them. I have just received a letter from Hunt, who 
 has arrived at Genoa. As soon as I hear that he has sailed, I 
 shall weigh anchor in my little schooner, and give him chase to 
 Leghorn, when I must occupy myself in some arrangements for 
 him with Lord Byron. Between ourselves, I greatly fear that 
 this alliance will not succeed ; for I, who could never have been 
 regarded as more than the link of the two thunderbolts, cannot 
 now consent to be even that ; and how long the aUiance may 
 continue, I will not prophesy. Pray do not hint my doubts on 
 the subject to any one, or they might do harm to Hunt ; and 
 they may be groundless. 
 
 I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish dramas, and 
 sailing, and listening to the most enchanting music. We have 
 some friends on a visit to us, and my only regret is that the 
 summer must ever pass, or that Mary has not the same pre- 
 dilection for this place that I have, which would induce me 
 never to shift my quarters. 
 
 Farewell. — Believe me ever your affectionate friend, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 CXV.— To Mrs. Williams, 
 
 (CASA MAGNI.) 
 
 PisUj/uly ^^ 1822. 
 
 You will probably see Williams before I can disentangle 
 myself from the affairs with which I am now surrounded. I 
 return to Leghorn to-night, and shall urge him to sail with the 
 first fair wind, without expecting me. I have thus the pleasure 
 of contributing to your happiness when deprived of every other, 
 and of leaving you no other subject of regret, but the absence of 
 one scarcely worth regretting. I fear you are solitary and 
 melancholy at Villa Magni, and, in the intervals of the greater 
 and more serious distress in which I am compelled to sym- 
 pathise here, I figure to myself the countenance which had been 
 the source of such consolation to me, shadowed by a veil of 
 sorrow. 
 
 How soon those hours passed, and how slowly they return, to 
 pass so soon again, perhaps for ever, in which we have lived 
 
376 LETTERS. 
 
 together so intimately, so happily ! Adieu, my dearest friend ! 
 I only write these lines for the pleasure of tracing what will 
 meet your eyes. Mary will tell you all the news. 
 
 S 
 
 CXVI.— To Mrs. Shelley, 
 (CASA magnl) 
 
 Pisa^Jidy 4, 1822. 
 
 My Dearest Mary — I have received both your letters, and 
 shall attend to the instructions they convey. I did not think of 
 buying the Bolivar ; Lord B. wishes to sell her, but I imagine 
 would prefer ready money. I have as yet made no inquiries 
 about houses near Pugnano — I have no moment of time to spare 
 from Hunt's affairs ; I am detained unwillingly here, and you 
 will probably see Williams in the boat before me, — but that will 
 be decided to-morrow. 
 
 Things are in the worst possible situation with respect to poor 
 Hunt. I find Marianne in a desperate state of health, and on 
 our arrival at Pisa sent for Vacck. He decides that her case is 
 hopeless, and that although it will be lingering, must inevitably 
 end fatally. This decision he thought proper to communicate 
 to Hunt ; indicating at the same time, with great judgment and 
 precision, the treatment necessary to be observed for availing 
 himself of the chance of his being deceived. This intelligence 
 has extinguished the last spark of poor Hunt's spirits, low 
 enough before. The children are well and much improved. 
 
 Lord Byron is at this moment on the point of leaving Tuscany. 
 The Gambas have been exiled, and he declares his intention of 
 following their fortunes. His first idea was to sail to America, 
 which was changed to Switzerland, then to Genoa, and last to 
 Lucca. Everybody is in despair and everything in confusion. 
 Trelawny was on the point of sailing to Genoa for the purpose 
 of transporting the Bolivar overland to the lake of Geneva, and 
 had already whispered in my ear his desire that I should not 
 influence Lord Byron against this terrestrial navigation. He 
 next received orders to weigh anchor and set sail for Lerici. 
 He is now without instructions, moody and disappointed. But 
 it is the worst for poor Hunt, unless the present storm should 
 blow over. He places his whole dependence upon the scheme 
 of a journal, for which every arrangement has been made. 
 Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at 
 present^ as I cannot ; but he seems inclined to depart without 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 vn 
 
 the necessary explanations and arrangements due to such a 
 situation as Hunt's. These, in spite of delicacy, I must pro- 
 cure ; he offers him the copyright of the Vision of Judgment 
 for the first number. This offer, if sincere, is more than enough 
 to set up the journal, and, if sincere, will set everything right. 
 
 How are you, my best Mary ? Write especially how is your 
 health and how your spirits are, and whether you are not more 
 reconciled to staying at Lerici, at least during the summer. 
 
 You have no idea how I am hurried and occupied ; I have not 
 a moment's leisure, but will write by next post. Ever, dearest 
 Mary, Yours affectionately, S. 
 
 I have found the translation of the Symposium. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 EARLY PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
 Limits of space have made it impossible to give representative 
 excerpts from all Shelley's early prose writings, as was originally 
 intended, and only three will be found represented here accordingly. 
 As it may be useful for purposes of reference to have a full list of 
 the early writings, however, we append one giving the titles in the 
 order in which they were published : — 
 
 The Necessity of Atheism; Oxford, 1811. 
 
 An Address to the Irish People ; Dublin, 1812. 
 
 Proposals for an Association of those Philanthropists, who, 
 convinced of the inadequacy of the moral and political state 
 of Ireland to produce benefits which are nevertheless attain- 
 able, are willing to unite to accomplish its regeneration ; 
 Dublin, 1812. 
 
 Declaration of Rights ; Dublin, 1812. 
 
 Letter to Lord Ellenborough ; [Printed at Barnstaple] 1812. 
 
 A Vindication of Natural Diet; London, 1813. 
 
 A Refutation of Deism ; London, 1814. 
 
 A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout 
 the Kingdom, by the Hermit of Marlow ; London, 1817. 
 
 "We Pity the Plumage, but forget the Dying Bird." 
 An Address to the People, on the Death of the Princess 
 Charlotte, by the Hermit of Marlow ; London, 1817. 
 
 Exc&rptBfrom 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE IRISH PEOPLE. 
 
 Dublin, 1812. 
 
 I look upon the Catholic Emancipation, and the restoration of the 
 liberties and happiness of Ireland, so far as they are compatible with 
 the English Constitution, as great and important events. I hope to 
 see them soon. But if all ended here, it would give me little pleasure 
 — I should still see thousands miserable and wicked, things would still 
 be wrong. I regard, then, the accomplishment of these things as the 
 road to a greater reform — that reform after which virtue and wisdom 
 
38o APPENDIX. 
 
 shall have conquered pain and vice. "When no Government will be 
 wanted, but that of your neighbour's opinion. — I look to these things 
 with hope and pleasure, because I consider that they will certainly 
 happen, and because men will not then be wicked and miserable. But 
 I do not consider that they will or can immediately happen; their 
 arrival will be gradual, and it all depends upon yourselves how soon 
 or how late these great changes will happen. If all of you to-morrow 
 were virtuous and wise, Government, which to-day is a safe-guard, 
 would then become a tyranny. But I cannot expect a rapid change. - 
 Many are obstinate and determined in their vice, whose selfishness 
 makes them think only of their own good, when, in fact, the best way 
 even to bring that about, is to make others happy. I do not wish to 
 see things changed now, because it cannot be done without violence, 
 and we may assure ourselves that none of us are fit for any change 
 hovever good, if we condescend to employ force in a cause which we 
 think right. Force makes the side that employs it directly wrong, 
 and as much as we may pity we cannot approve the headstrong and 
 intolerant zeal of its adherents. 
 
 Can you conceive, Irishmen ! a happy state of society — conceive 
 men of every way of thinking living together like brothers. The 
 descendant of the greatest Prince would there be entitled to no more 
 respect than the son of a peasant There would be no pomp and no 
 parade, but that which the rich now keep to themselves, would then 
 be distributed among the people. None would be in magnificence, 
 but the superfluities then taken from the rich would be sufficient, when 
 spread abroad, to make every one comfortable. — No lover would then 
 be false to his mistress, no mistress would desert her lover. No friend 
 would play false, no rents, no debts, no taxes, no frauds of any kind 
 would disturb the general happiness : good as they would be, wise as 
 they would be, they would be daily getting better and wiser. No 
 beggars would exist, nor any of those wretched women, who are now 
 reduced to a state of the most horrible misery and vice, by men 
 whose wealth makes them villainous and hardened. No thieves or 
 murderers, because poverty would never drive men to take away 
 comforts from another, when he had enough for himself. Vice and 
 misery, pomp and poverty, power and obedience, would then be 
 banished altogether. — It is for such a state as this. Irishmen, that I 
 exhort you to prepare. 
 
 I have purposely avoided any lengthened discussion on those griev- 
 ances to which your hearts are from custom, and the immediate interest 
 of the circumstances, probably most alive at present. I have not 
 however wholly neglected them. Most of all have I insisted on their 
 instant palliation and ultimate removal ; nor have I omitted a 
 consideration of the means which I deem most effectual for the accom- 
 plishment of this great end. How far you will consider the former 
 worthy of your adoption, so far shall I deem the latter probable and 
 
APPENDIX. 381 
 
 interesting to the lovers of human kind. And I have opened to your 
 view a new scene — does not your heart bound at the bare possibility 
 of your posterity possessing that liberty and happiness of which during 
 ours lives powerful exertions and habitual abstinence may give us a 
 foretaste. Oh ! if your hearts do not vibrate at such as this ; then ye 
 are dead and cold — ye are not men. 
 
 I now corne to the application of my principles, the conclusion of my 
 address ; and Irishmen, whatever conduct ye may feel yourselves 
 bound to pursue, the path which duty points to, lies before me clear 
 and unobscured. Dangers may lurk around it, but they are not 
 the dangers which lie beneath the footsteps of the hypocrite or 
 temporizer. 
 
 For I have not presented to you the picture of happiness on which 
 my fancy doats as an uncertain meteor to mislead honourable enthu- 
 siasm, or blindfold the judgment which makes virtue useful. I have 
 not proposed crude schemes, which I should be imcompetent to 
 mature, or desired to excite in you any virulence against the abuses 
 of political institution ; where I have had occasion to point them out 
 I have recommended moderation whilst yet I have earnestly insisted 
 upon energy and perseverance ; I have spoken of peace, yet declared 
 that resistance is laudable ; but the intellectual resistance which I 
 recommend, I deem essential to the introduction of the millenium of 
 virtue, whose period every one can, so far as he is concerned, forward 
 by his own proper power. I have not attempted to shew, that the 
 Catholic claims or the claims of the people, to a full representation in 
 Parliament, or any of those claims to real rights, which I have insisted 
 upon as introductory to the ultimate claim of ally to universal happi- 
 ness, freedom, and equality ; I have not attempted, I say, to shew 
 that these can be granted consistently with the spirit of the English 
 Constitution :* this is a point which I do not feel myself inclined 
 to discuss, and which I consider foreign to my object. But I have 
 shewn that these claims have for their basis, truth and justice, which 
 are immutable, and which in the ruiij of Governments shall rise like a 
 Phoenix from their ashes. 
 
 * Note. —The excellence of the Constitution of Great Britain, appears to 
 me, to be its indefiniteness and versatility, whereby it may be unresistingly 
 accommodated to the progression of wisdom and virtue. Such accommoda- 
 tion I desire ; but I wish for the cause before the effect. 
 
 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS. 
 
 1. GovEENMENT has no rights ; it is a delegation from several 
 individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, 
 only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates 
 to their well-being. 
 
382 APPENDIX. 
 
 2. If these individuals think that the form of government wliich 
 they or their forefathers constituted is ill adapted to produce their 
 happiness, they have a right to change it. 
 
 3. Government is devised for the security of Eights. The rights of 
 man are liberty, and an equal participation of the commonage of Nature. 
 
 4. As the benefit of the governed is, or ought to be, the origin of 
 government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly 
 emanate from tlielr will. 
 
 5. Though all governments are not so bad as that of Turkey, yet 
 none are so good as they might be. The majority of every country 
 have a right to perfect their government. The minority should not 
 disturb them ; they ought to secede, and form their own system in 
 their own way. 
 
 6. All have a right to an equal share in the benefits and burdens 
 of Government. Any disabilities for opinion imply, by their exist- 
 ence, bare-faced tyranny on the side of Government, ignorant 
 slavishness on the side of the governed. 
 
 7. The rights of man, in the present state of society, are only to 
 be secured by some degree of coercion to be exercised on their violator. 
 The suficrer has a right that the degree of coercion employed be as 
 slight as possible. 
 
 8. It may be considered as a plain proof of the hollowness of any 
 proposition if power be used to enforce instead of reason to persuade 
 its admission. Government is never supported by fraud until it 
 cannot be supported by reason. 
 
 9. No man has a right to disturb the public peace by personally 
 resisting the execution of a law, however bad. He ought to acquiesce, 
 using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason to promote its 
 repeal. 
 
 10. A man must have a right to act in a certain manner, before it 
 can be his duty. He may, before he ought. 
 
 11. A man has a right to think as his reason directs ; it is a 
 duty he owes to himself to think with freedom, tliat he may act from 
 conviction. 
 
 12. A man has a right to unrestricted liberty of discussion. 
 Falsehood is a scorpion that will sting itself to death. 
 
 13. A man has not only a right to express his thoughts, but it is 
 his duty to do so. 
 
 14. No law has a right to discourage the practice of truth. A man 
 ought to speak the truth on every occasion. A duty can never be 
 criminal ; what is not criminal cannot be injurious. 
 
 15. Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent 
 to be criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be 
 innocent. Government cannot make a law ; it can only pronounce 
 that which was the law before its organization ; viz., the moral result 
 of the imperishable relations of things. 
 
 16. The present generation cannot bind their posterity: the few 
 cannot promise for the many. 
 
APPENDIX. 383 
 
 17. No man has a right to do an evil thing that good may come. 
 
 18. Expediency is inadmissible in morals. Politics are only sound 
 when conducted on principles of morality : they are, in fact, the 
 morals of nations. 
 
 19. Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he 
 does so in uniform : he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime 
 of murder. 
 
 20. Man, whatever be his country, has the same rights in one 
 place as another — the rights of universal citizenship. 
 
 21. The government of a country ought to be perfectly indifferent 
 to every opinion. Religious differences, the bloodiest and most 
 rancorous of all, spring from partiality. 
 
 22. A delegation of individuals, for the purpose of securing their 
 rights, can have no undelegated power of restraining the expression of 
 their opinion. 
 
 23. Belief is involuntary ; nothing involuntary is meritorious or 
 reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for 
 his belief. 
 
 24. A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights : 
 they are men and brethren. 
 
 25. If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love 
 him nevertheless. How different would yours have been had the 
 chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India ! 
 
 26. Those who believe that Heaven is, what earth has been, a 
 monopoly in the hands of a favoured few, would do well to reconsider 
 their opinion ; if they find that it came from their priest or their 
 grandmother, they could not do better than reject it. 
 
 27. No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions 
 but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, 
 glory a bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor. 
 
 28. No man has a right to monopolise more than he can enjoy ; 
 what the rich give to the poor, whilst millions are starving, is not a 
 perfect favour, but an imperfect right. 
 
 29. Every man has a right to a certain degree of leisure and liberty, 
 because it is his duty to attain a certain degree of knowledge. He 
 may, before he ought. 
 
 30. Sobriety of body and mind is necessary to those who would be 
 free ; because, without sobriety, a high sense of philanthropy cannot 
 actuate the heart, nor cool and determined courage execute its 
 dictates. 
 
 31. The only use of government is to repress the vices of man. If 
 man were to-day sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to demand 
 that government and all its evils should cease. 
 
 Man ! thou whose rights are here declared, be no longer forgetful 
 of the loftiness of thy destination. Think of thy rights, of those pos- 
 sessions which will give thee virtue and wisdom, by which thou mayest 
 
384 APPENDIX, 
 
 arrive at happiness and freedom. They are declared to thee by one 
 who knows thy dignity, for every hour does his heart swell with 
 honourable pride in the contemplation of what thou mayest attain — 
 by one who is not forgetful of thy degeneracy, for every moment 
 brings home to him the bitter conviction of what thou art. 
 Awalce, ! — arise ! — or he for ever fallen. 
 
 LETTEK TO LORD ELLENBOROUGH. 
 
 My Lord — As the station to which you have been called by your 
 country is important, so much the more awful is your responsibility, 
 so much the more does it become you to watch lest you inadvertently 
 punish the virtuous and reward the vicious. 
 
 You preside over a Court which is instituted for the suppression of 
 crime, and to whose authority the people submit on no other 
 conditions than that its decrees should be conformable to justice. 
 
 If it should be demonstrated that a judge had condemned an 
 innocent man, the bare existence of laws in conformity to which the 
 accused is punished would but little extenuate his offence. The 
 inquisitor, when he burns an obstinate heretic, may set up a similar 
 plea ; yet few are sufficiently blinded by intolerance to acknowledge 
 its validity. It will less avail such a judge to assert the policy of 
 punishing one who has committed no crime. Policy and morality 
 ought to be deemed synonymous in a court of justice, and he whose 
 conduct has been regulated by the latter principle, is not justly 
 amenable to any penal law for a supposed violation of the former. It 
 is true, my Lord, laws exist which suffice to screen you from the 
 animadversion of any constituted power, in consequence of the un- 
 merited sentence which you have passed upon Mr. Eaton ; but there 
 are no laws which screen you from the reproof of a nation's disgust, 
 none which ward ofif the just judgment of posterity, if that posterity 
 will deign to recollect you. 
 
 But what right do you punish Mr. Eaton ? What but antiquated 
 precedents, gathered from times of priestly and tyrannical domination, 
 can be adduced in palliation of an outrage so insulting to humanity 
 and justice ? Whom has he injured ? What crime has he committed ? 
 Wherefore may he not walk abroad like other men, and follow his 
 accustomed pursuits ? What end is proposed in confining this man, 
 charged with the commission of no dishonourable action ? Wherefore 
 did his aggressor avail himself of popular prejudice, and return no 
 answer but one of commonplace contempt to a defence of plain and 
 simple sincerity ? Lastly, when the prejudices of the jury as Chris- 
 tians, were strongly and unfairly inflamed* against this injured man, 
 
 • See the Attorney-Goneral's Speech. — (S.) 
 
APPENDIX. 3S5 
 
 as a Deist, wherefore did not you, my Lord, check such unconstitu- 
 tional pleading, and desire the jury to pronounce the accused innocent 
 or criminal* without reference to the particular faith which he 
 professed ? 
 
 In the name of justice, what answer is there to these questions ? 
 The answer which Heathen Athens made to Socrates is the same with 
 which Christian England must attempt to silence the advocates of this 
 injured man. " He has questioned established opinions." Alas ! the 
 crime of inquiry is one which religion never has forgiven. Implicit 
 faith and fearless inquiry have in all ages been irreconcileable enemies. 
 Unrestrained philosophy has in every age opposed itself to the reveries 
 of credulity and fanaticism. The truths of astronomy demonstrated by 
 Fewton have superseded astrology ; since the modern discoveries in 
 chemistry, the philosopher's stone has been deemed attainable. 
 Miracles of every kind have become rare in proportion to the hidden 
 principles which those who study nature have developed. That which 
 is false will ultimately be controverted by its own falsehood. That 
 which is true needs but publicity to be acknowledged. It is ever a 
 proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who use 
 power and coercion, not reasoning and persuasion, to procure its 
 admission. Falsehood skulks in holes and corners, " it lets I dare not 
 wait upon I would, like the poor cat in the adage," except when it has 
 power, and then, as it was a coward, it is a tyrant ; but the 
 eagle-eye of truth darts thro' the undazzling sunbeam of the im- 
 mutable and just, gathering there wherewith to vivify and illuminate 
 a universe ! 
 
 Wherefore, I repeat, is Mr. Eaton punished ? Because he is a 
 Deist. And what are you, my Lord ? A Christian. Ha, then ! the 
 mask has fallen off ; you persecute him because his faith differs from 
 yours. You copy the persecutors of Christianity in your actions, and 
 are an additional proof that your religion is as bloody, barbarous, and 
 intolerant as theirs. If some Deistical bigot in power (supposing such 
 a character for the sake of illustration) should in dark and barbarous 
 ages, have enacted a statute making the profession of Christianity 
 criminal ; if you, my Lord, were a Christian bookseller, and Mr. 
 Eaton a Judge, those arguments which you consider adequate to 
 justify yourself for the sentence you have passed must likewise suffice, 
 in the suppositionary case, to justify Mr. Eaton in sentencing you to 
 Newgate and the pillory for being a Christian. Whence is any right 
 derived, but that which power confers, for persecntion ? Do you think 
 to convert Mr. Eaton to your religion by embittering his existence 1 
 You might force him by torture to profess your tenets, but he could 
 not believe them, except you should make them credible, which 
 perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please the God you 
 worship by this exhibition of your zeal ? If so, the Demon to whom 
 
 * By Mr. Fox's bill (1791) juries are, in cases of libel, judges both of the 
 law and the fact. — (S.) 
 
 106 
 
386 APPENDIX, 
 
 some nations offer human hecatombs is less barbarous than the Deity 
 of civilised society. 
 
 You consider man as an accountable being — but he can only be 
 accountable for those actions which are influenced by his will. 
 
 Belief and disbelief are utterly distinct from and unconnected with 
 volition. They are the apprehension of the agreement or disagree- 
 ment of the ideas which compose any proposition. Belief is an 
 involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its 
 intensity is purely proportionate to the degrees of excitement. 
 Volition is essential to merit or demerit. How, then, can merit or 
 demerit be attached to what is distinct from that faculty of the mind 
 whose presence is essential to their being ? I am aware that religion 
 is founded on the voluntariness of belief, as it makes it a subject 
 of regard and punishment ; but before we extinguish the steady ray 
 of reason and common sense, it is fit that we should discover, which 
 wo cannot do without their assistance, whether or no there be any 
 other which may suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life. 
 
 If the law de hceretico comburendo had not been formally 
 repealed, I conceive that, from the promise held out by your 
 Lordship's zeal, we need not despair of beholding the flames of 
 persecution rekindled in Smithfield. Even now the lash that drove 
 Descartes and Voltaire from their native country, the chains which 
 bound Galileo, the flames which burned Vanini, again resound : — 
 And where ? in a nation that presumptuously calls itself the 
 sanctuary of freedom. Under a government which, whilst it infringes 
 the very right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty 
 of the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he is a Deist, 
 and no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity. 
 Does the Christian God, whom his followers eulogize as the Deity 
 of humility and peace — He, the regenerator of the world, the meek 
 reformer — authorise one man to rise against another, and, because 
 lictors are at his beck, to chain and torture him as an Infidel ? 
 
 When the Apostles went abroad to convert the nations, were they 
 enjoined to stab and poison all who disbelieved the divinity of 
 Christ's mission ; assuredly, they would have been no more justifiable 
 in this case than he is at present who puts into execution the law 
 which inflicts pillory and imprisonment on the Deist. 
 
 Has not Mr. Eaton an equal right to call your Lordship an Infidel 
 as you have to imprison him for promulgating a different doctrine 
 from that which you profess ? What do I say ? Has he not even a 
 stronger plea ? The word Infidel can only mean anything when 
 applied to a person who professes that which he disbelieves. The 
 test of truth is an undivided reliance on its inclusive powers ; the 
 test of conscious falsehood is the variety of the forms under which 
 it presents itself, and its tendency towards employing whatever 
 coercive means may be within its command, in order to procure the 
 admission of what is unsusceptible of support from reason or 
 persuasion. A dispassionate observer would feel himself more 
 
APPENDIX. 387 
 
 powerfully interested in favor of a man, who, depending on the truth 
 of his opinions, simply stated his reasons for entertaining them, than 
 in that of his aggressor, who, daringly avowing his unwillingness 
 or incapacity to answer them by argument, proceeded to repress the 
 energies and break the spirit of their promulgator by that torture 
 and imprisonment whose infliction he could command. 
 
 I hesitate not to affirm that the opinions which Mr. Eaton 
 sustained, when undergoing that mockery of a trial, at which your 
 Lordship presided, appear to me more true and good than those of 
 his accuser ; but were they false as the visions of a Calvinist, it still 
 would be the duty of those who love liberty and virtue to raise their 
 voice indignantly against a reviving system of persecution — against 
 the coercively repressing any opinion, which, if false, needs but the 
 opposition of truth ; which, if true, in spite of force must ultimately 
 prevail. 
 
 Mr. Eaton asserted that the scriptures were, from beginning to 
 end, a fable and imposture,* that the Apostles were liars and 
 deceivers. He denied the miracle, the resurrection, and ascension 
 of Jesus Christ. He did so : and the Attorney-General denied 
 the proposition which he asserted, and asserted that which he denied. 
 What singular conclusion is deducible from this fact ? None, but 
 that the Attorney-General and Mr. Eaton sustained two opposite 
 opinions. The Attorney-General puts some obsolete and tyrannical 
 laws in force against Mr. Eaton, because he publishes a book tending 
 to prove that certain supernatural events, which are supposed to have 
 taken place eighteen centuries ago, in a remote corner of the world, 
 did not actually take place. But how is the truth or falsehood of 
 the facts in dispute relevant to the merit or demerit attachable to the 
 advocates of the two opinions ? No man is accountable for his belief, 
 because no man is capable of directing it. Mr. Eaton is therefore 
 totally blameless. What are we to think of the justice of a sentence 
 which punishes an individual against whom it is not even attempted 
 to attach the slightest stain of criminality ? 
 
 It is asserted that Mr. Eaton's opinions are calculated to subvert 
 morality. How ? What moral truth is spoken of with irreverence or 
 ridicule in the book which he published ? Morality, or the duty of a 
 man and citizen, is founded on the relations which arise from the 
 association of human beings, and which vary with the circumstances 
 produced by the diff'erent states of this association. This duty, in 
 similar situations, must be precisely the same in all ages and nations. 
 The opinion contrary to this has arisen from a supposition that the 
 will of God is the source or criterion of morality. It is plain that the 
 utmost exertion of Omnipotence could not cause that to be virtuous 
 which actually is vicious. An all-powerful Demon might, indubitably, 
 annex punishments to virtue and rewards to vice, but could not by 
 these means effect the slightest change in their abstract and immutable 
 
 * See the Attorney-General's Sf)eech. — (S.) 
 
388 APPENDIX. 
 
 natures. Omnipotence could vary, by a providential interposition, 
 the relations of human society ; in this latter case, what before was 
 virtuous would become vicious, according to the necessary and natural 
 result of the alteration ; but the abstract natures of the opposite prin- 
 ciples would have sustained not the slightest change. For instance, the 
 punishment with which society restrains the robber, the assassin, and 
 the ravisher, is just, laudable, and requisite. We admire and respect 
 the institutions which curb those who would defeat the ends for which 
 society was established ; but, should a precisely similar coercion be 
 exercised against one merely who expressed his disbelief of a system 
 admitted by those entrusted with the executive power, using at the 
 same time no methods of promulgation but those afforded by reason, 
 certainly this coercion would be eminently inhuman and immoral ; 
 and the supposition that any revelation from an unknown power avails 
 to palliate a persecution so senseless, unprovoked, and indefensible, is 
 at once to destroy the barrier which reason places between vice and 
 virtue, and leave to unprincipled fanaticism a plea whereby it may 
 excuse every act of frenzy which its own wild passions, and the 
 inspirations of the Deity, have engendered. 
 
 Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To 
 attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is 
 capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to 
 this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with SLuy possible 
 definition of its nature. It may be here objected : — Ought not the 
 Creator to possess the perfections of the creature ? No. To attribute 
 to God the moral qualities of man, is to suppose him susceptible of 
 passions, which, arising out of corporeal organisation, it is plain that 
 a pure Spirit cannot possess, A bear is not perfect except he is rough, 
 a tiger is not perfect if he be not voracious, an elephant is not perfect 
 if otherwise than docile. How deep an argument must not that be 
 which proves that the Deity is as rough as a bear, as voracious as a 
 tiger, and as docile as an elephant. But even suppose, with the 
 vulgar, that God is a venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, 
 his breast the theatre of various passions analogous to those of 
 humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly 
 king ; still, goodness and justice are qualities seldom nominally denied 
 him, and it will be admitted that he disapproves of any action incom- 
 patible with those qualities. Persecution for opinion is unjust. With 
 what consistency, then, can the worshippers of a Deity whose benevo- 
 lence they boast embitter the existence of their fellow being, because 
 his ideas of that Deity are different from those which they entertain 1 
 Alas I there is no consistency in those persecutors who worship a 
 benevolent Deity ; those who worship a Demon would alone act 
 consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in liis 
 name. 
 
 Persecution is the only name applicable to punishment inflicted on 
 an individual in consequence of his opinions. What end is persecution 
 designed to answer ? Can it qonvince him whom it injures ? Can it 
 
APPENDIX. 389 
 
 prove to the people the falsehood of his opinions 1 It may make Tivm, 
 a hypocrite, and tliem cowards ; but bad means can promote no good 
 end. The unprejudiced mind looks with suspicion on a doctrine that 
 needs the sustaining hand of power. 
 
 Socrates was poisoned because he dared to combat the degrading 
 superstitions in which his countrymen were educated. Not long after 
 his death Athens recognised the injustice of his sentence ; his accuser, 
 Melitus, was condemned, and Socrates became a demigod. 
 
 Jesus Christ was crucified because he attempted to supersede the 
 ritual of Moses with regulations more moral and humane — his very 
 judge made public acknowledgment of his innocence, but a bigoted 
 and ignorant mob demanded the deed of horror — Barabbas the 
 murderer and traitor was released. The meek reformer Jesus was 
 immolated to the sanguinary Deity of the Jews. Time rolled on, time 
 changed the situations, and with them the opinions of men. 
 
 The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded the crucifixion of 
 Jesus was a supernatural event. Testimonies of miracles, so frequent 
 in unenlightened ages, were not wanting to prove that he was some- 
 thing divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, met with 
 the reveries of Plato and the reasonings of Aristotle, and acquired 
 force and extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which 
 to dispute was death, which to doubt was infamy. 
 
 Christianity is now the established religion : he who attempts to 
 impugn it, must be contented to behold murderers and traitors take 
 precedence of him in public opinion ; though, if his genius be equal 
 to his courage, and assisted by a peculiar coalition of circumstances, 
 future ages may exalt him to a divinity, and persecute others in his 
 name, as he was persecuted in the name of his predecessors in the 
 homage of the world. 
 
 The same means that have supported every other popular belief, 
 have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, murder, and 
 falsehood ; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made 
 it what it is. We derive from our ancestors a belief thus fostered and 
 supported : we quarrel, persecute, and hate for its maintenance. Does 
 not analogy favour the opinion that, as, like other systems, Christianity 
 has arisen and augmented, so like them it will decay and perish ; that, 
 as violence, darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and persuasion, have 
 procured its admission among mankind, so, when enthusiasm has 
 subsided, and time, that infallible controverter of false opinions, has 
 involved its pretended evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will 
 become obsolete ; that Milton's poem alone will give permanency to 
 the remembrance of its absurdities ; and that men will laugh as heartily 
 at grace, faith, redemption, and original sin, as they now do at the 
 metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints, the efficacy 
 of witchcraft, and the appearance of departed spirits. 
 
 Had the Christian Religion commenced and continued by the mere 
 force of reasoning and persuasion, by its self-evidence, excellence and 
 ^tness, the preceding analogy would be inadmissible. We should never 
 
390 APPENDIX. 
 
 speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system perfectly conformable 
 to nature and reason : it would endure so long as they endured ; it 
 would be a truth as indisputable as the light of the sun, the criminality 
 of murder, and other facts, physical and moral, which, depending on 
 our organisation and relative situations, must remain acknowledged as 
 satisfactory, so long as man is man. It is an incontrovertible fact, the 
 consideration of which ought to repress the hasty conclusions of 
 credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining them, that, had 
 the Jews not been a barbarous and fanatical race of men, had even the 
 resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, the Christian 
 Religion never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed. 
 Man ! the very existence of whose most cherished opinions depends 
 from a thread so feeble, arises out of a source so equivocal, learn at 
 least humility ; own at least that it is possible for thyself also to have 
 been seduced by education and circumstance into the admission of 
 tenets destitute of rational proof, and the truth of which has not yet 
 been satisfactorily demonstrated. Acknowledge at least that the 
 falsehood of thy brother's opinions is no sufficient reason for his 
 meriting thy hatred. What ! because a fellow being disputes the 
 reasonableness of thy faith, wilt thou punish him with torture and 
 imprisonment ? If persecution for religious opinions were admitted 
 by the moralist, how wide a door would not be open by which 
 convulsionists of every kind might make inroads on the peace of 
 society I How many deeds of barbarism and blood would not receive 
 a sanction 1 But I will demand, if that man is not rather entitled to 
 the respect than the discountenance of society, who, by disputing a 
 received doctrine, either proves its falsehood and inutility (thereby 
 aiming at the abolition of what is false and useless), or gives to its 
 adherents an opportunity of establishing its excellence and truth. 
 Surely this can be no crime. Surely the individual who devotes his 
 time to fearless and unrestricted inquiry into the grand questions 
 arising out of our moral nature ought rather to receive the patronage, 
 than encounter the vengeance, of an enliglitened legislature. I would 
 have you to know, my Lord, that fetters of iron cannot bind or subdue 
 the soul of virtue. From the damps and solitude of its dungeon it 
 ascends, free and undaunted, whither thine, from the pompous seat of 
 judgment, dare not soar. I do not warn you to beware lest your 
 profession as a Christian should make you forget that you are a man ; 
 but I warn you against festinating that period, which, under the 
 present coercive system, is too rapidly maturing, when the seats of 
 justice shall be the seats of venality and slavishness, and the cells of 
 Newgate become the abode of all that is honourable and true. 
 
 I mean not to compare Mr. Eaton with Socrates or Jesus ; he is a 
 man of blameless and respectable character ; ho is a citizen unimpeached 
 with crime ; if, therefore, his rights as a citizen and a man have been 
 infringed, they have been infringed by illegal and immoral violence. 
 But I will assert thatj should a second Jesus arise among men ; should 
 such a one as Socrates again enlighten the earth ; lengthened imprison- 
 
APPENDIX. 39t 
 
 mentand infamous punishment (according to the regimen of persecution 
 revived by your Lordship) would effect what hemlock and the cross 
 have heretofore effected, and the stain on the national character, like 
 that on Athens and Judea, would remain indelible, but by the de- 
 struction of the history in which it is recorded. When the Christian 
 Religion shall have faded from the earth, when its memory like that 
 of Polytheism now shall remain, but remain only as the subject of 
 ridicule and wonder, indignant posterity would attach immortal infamy 
 to such an outrage ; like the murder of Socrates, it would secure the 
 execration of every age. 
 
 The horrible and wide-wasting enormities, which gleam like comets 
 through the darkness of gothic and superstitious ages, are regarded 
 by the moralist as no more than the necessary effect of known causes ; 
 but, when an enlightened age and nation signalises itself by a deed 
 becoming none but barbarians and fanatics, philosophy itself is even 
 induced to doubt whether human nature will ever emerge from the 
 pettishness and imbecility of its childhood. The system of persecu- 
 tion, at whose new birth, you, my Lord, are one of the presiding 
 midwives, is not more impotent and wicked than inconsistent. The 
 press is loaded with what are called (ironically, I should conceive) 
 proofs of the Christian religion : these books are replete with invective 
 and calumny against infidels ; they presuppose that he who rejects 
 Christianity must be utterly divested of reason and feeling; they 
 advance the most unsupported assertions, and take as first principles 
 the most revolting dogmas. The inferences drawn from these assumed 
 premises are imposingly logical and correct ; but, if a foundation is 
 weak, no architect is needed to foretell the instability of the super- 
 structure. If the truth of Christianity is not disputable, for what 
 purpose are these books written % If there are sufiicient to prove it, 
 what further need of controversy ? If God has spoken^ why is the 
 universe not convinced ? If the Christian religion needs deeper learn- 
 ing, more painful investigation to establish its genuineness, wherefore 
 attempt to accomplish that by force, which the human mind can alone 
 effect with satisfaction to itself ? If, lastly, its truth cannot be demon- 
 strated, wherefore impotently attempt to snatch from God the govern- 
 ment of his creation, and impiously assert that the Spirit of Benevolence 
 has left that knowledge most essential to the well-being of man, the 
 only one which, since its promulgation, has been the subject of 
 unceasing cavil, the causes of irreconcileable hatred ? Either the 
 Christian religion is true, or it is not. If true it comes from God, 
 and its authenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further than 
 its Omnipotent Author is willing to allow. If true it admits of 
 rational proof, and is capable of being placed equally beyond contro- 
 versy, as the principles which have been established concerning matter 
 and 'mind, by Locke and Newton ; and in proportion to the usefulness 
 of the fact in dispute, so must it be supposed that a benevolent being 
 is anxious to procure the diffusion of its knowledge on the earth, — If 
 false, surely no enlightened legislature would punish the reasoner, 
 
392 APPENDIX. 
 
 who opposes a system so much the inoro fatal and pernicious as it is 
 extensively admitted ; so much the more productive of absurd and 
 ruinous consequences, as it is entwined by education, with the 
 prejudices and affections of the human heart, in the shape of a 
 popular belief. 
 
 Let us suppose that some half-witted philosopher should assert that 
 the earth was the centre of the universe, or that idea could enter the 
 human mind independently of sensation or reflexion. This man 
 would assert what is demonstrably incorrect ; he would promulgate a 
 false opinion. Yet, would he therefore deserve pillory and imprison- 
 ment ? By no means ; probably few would discharge more correctly 
 the duties of a citizen and a man. I admit that the case above stated 
 is not precisely in point. The thinking part of the community has 
 not received as indisputable the truth of Christianity, as they have 
 that of the Newtonian system. A very large portion of society, and 
 that powerfully and extensively connected, derives its sole emolument 
 from the belief of Christianity, as a popular faith. 
 
 To torture and imprison the asserter of a dogma, however ridiculous 
 and false, is highly barbarous and impolitic. How, then, does not 
 the cruelty of persecution, become aggravated when it is directed 
 against the opposer of an opinion yet under dispute, and which men of 
 unrivalled acquirements, penetrating genius, and stainless virtue, 
 have spent, and at last sacrificed, their lives in combating ! 
 
 The time is rapidly approaching, I hope that you, my Lord, may 
 live to behold its arrival, when the Mahometan, the Jew, the Chris- 
 tian, the Deist, and the Atheist, will live together in one community, 
 equally sharing the benefits which arise from its association, and 
 united in the bonds of charity and brotherly love. My Lord, you 
 have condemned an innocent man ; no crime was imputed to him — 
 and you sentenced him to torture and imprisonment. I have not 
 addressed this letter to you with the hope of convincing you that you 
 have acted wrong. The most unprincipled and barbarous of men are 
 not unprepared with sophisms to prove that they would have acted in 
 no other manner, and to show that vice is virtue. But I raise my 
 solitary voice to express my disapprobation, so far as it goes, of the 
 cruel and unjust sentence you passed upon Mr. Eaton — to assert, so 
 far as I am capable of influencing, those rights of humanity which 
 you have wantonly and unlawfully infringed. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
 Priixted by Waltee Scott, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
 
In SHILLING Monthly Volumes^ Square %vo. Well printed on fine 
 toned paper ^ with Red-line Border y and strongly bound in Cloth, Each 
 Volume contains from 300 to 350 pages. With Introductory Notices 
 by William Sharp, Mathilde Blind, Walter Lewin, John 
 HoGBEN, A. J. Symington, Joseph Skipsey, Eva Hope, John 
 Richmond, Ernest Rhys, Percy E. Pinkerton, Mrs. Garden, 
 Dean Carrington, Dr. J. Bradshaw, Frederick Cooper, Hon. 
 RoDEN Noel, J. Addington Symonds, G. Willis Cooke, Eric 
 Mackay, Eric S. Robertson, William Tirebuck, Stuart 
 J. Reid, Mrs. Freiligrath Kroeker, J. Logie Robertson, M.A. 
 Samuel Waddington, etc., etc. 
 
 Cloth, Red Edges 
 Cloihy Uncut Edges - 
 
 Is. I Red Roan, Gilt Edges 2s. 6d. 
 Is. I Silk Plush, Gilt Edges 4s. 6d. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY. 
 
 CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 By Rev. John Keble. 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 Edited by Joseph Skipsey. 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Edited by Eva Hope. 
 CAMPBELL. 
 
 Edited by J. Hogben. 
 SHELLEY. 
 
 Edited by Joseph Skipsey. 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Edited by A. J. Symington. 
 BLAKE. Edited by Joseph Skipsey. 
 WHITTIER. 
 
 Edited by Eva Hope. 
 POE. Edited by Joseph Skipsey. 
 
 CHATTERTON. 
 
 Edited by John Richmond. 
 BURNS. Poems. 
 BURNS. Songs. 
 
 Edited by Joseph Skipsey. 
 MARLOWE. 
 
 Edited by P. E. Pinkerton. 
 KEATS. Edited by John Hogben. 
 HERBERT. 
 
 Edited by Ernest Rhys. 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 Translated by Dean Carrington. 
 COWPER. Edited by Eva Hope. 
 SHAKESPEARE: 
 
 Songs, Poems, and Sonnets. 
 
 Edited by William Sharp. 
 
 EMERSON. Edited by W. Lewin. 
 
 SONNETS of this CENTURY. 
 
 Edited by William Sharp. 
 
 WHITMAN. Edited by E. Rhys. 
 
 SCOTT. Marmion, etc. 
 SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc. 
 Edited by William Sharp. 
 PRAED. Edited by Fred. Cooper, 
 HOGG. 
 
 By his Daughter, Mrs. Garden. 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Edited by William Tirebuck. 
 LOVE LETTERS OF A 
 VIOLINIST. By Eric Mackay. 
 SPENSER. 
 
 Edited by Hon. Roden Noel. 
 CHILDREN OF THE POETS. 
 Edited by Eric S. Robertson. 
 BEN JONSON. 
 
 Edited by J. A. Symonds. 
 BYRON (2 Vols.) 
 
 Edited by Mathilde Blind. 
 THE SONNETS OF EUROPE. 
 Edited by S. Waddington. 
 ALLAN RAMSAY. 
 
 Edited by J. Logie Robertson. 
 SYDNEY DOBELL. 
 
 Edited by Mrs. Dobell. 
 POPE. Edited by John Hogben. 
 HEINE. Edited by Mrs. Kroeker. 
 BEAUMONT & FLETCHER. 
 
 Edited by J. S. Fletcher. 
 
 BOWLES, LAMB, AND 
 
 HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 
 
 Edited by William Tirebuck. 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Edited by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon. 
 
 SEA MUSIC. 4 
 
 Edited by Mrs. Sharp. 
 HERRICK. Edited by Ernest Rhya 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row 
 
THE C AMELOT S ERIES. 
 
 1/- VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED. 1/- 
 
 ROMANCB OF KINQ ARTHUR. 
 
 Edited by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 WALDBN. Edited by W. H. Dircks. 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM 
 
 EATER. Edited by William Sharp. 
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. 
 
 Edited by Havelock Ellis. 
 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. Edited by B. J. Snell, M.A. 
 
 SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S RELIGIO MEDICI, etc. 
 
 Edited by J. Addington Symonds. 
 SHELLEY'S ESSAYS AND LETTERS. 
 
 Edited by Ernest Rhys. 
 PROSE WRITINGS OF SWIFT. 
 
 Edited by W. Lewin. 
 MY STUDY WINDOWS. 
 
 With Introduction by Richard Garnett, LL.D, 
 GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS. 
 
 Edited by William Sharp. 
 LORD BYRON'S LETTERS. Edited by M. Blind. 
 
 ESSAYS BY LEIGH HUNT. Edited by A. Symons. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S PROSE WORKS. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction, by William Tirebuck. 
 
 GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction, by Mrs. Sharp. 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. Edited by Alice Zimmern. 
 
 SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA- By V/alt Whitman. 
 
 WHITE'S NATURAL HISTORY of SELBORNE. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction, by Richard Jefferies. 
 
 DEFOE'S CAPTAIN SINGLETON. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction, by H. Halliday Sparling. 
 
 ESSAYS : Literary and Political- By Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 With Introduction by William Clarke. 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
MONTHLY SHILLING VOLUMES. 
 
 G R E AT_WRiJ E ^^• 
 
 A New Series of Critical BiograpWes. 
 
 Edited by Professor Eric S. Robertson. 
 
 ALREADY ISSUED— 
 
 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW. By Professor ERIC S. 
 ROBERTSON. 
 
 " The story of the poet's life is well told. . . . The remarks on Longfellow as 
 a translator are enceWerA."— Saturday Review. 
 
 " No better life of Longfellow has been published."— GZasf/o^o Herald. 
 
 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. By HALL CAINE. 
 
 The Scotsman says— "It is a capital book. , . . "Written throughout with 
 spirit and great literary skill. The bibliography is unusually full, and adds to 
 the value of the work." 
 
 The J.cac?em2/ says— "It is gracefully and sympathetically written, . . . and 
 it is no small praise to say that it is worthy of the memory which it enshrines." 
 
 The Birmingham Daily Post says— "The book is a great gain, and cannot 
 be overlooked by any student of Coleridge." 
 
 LIFE OF DICKENS. By FRANK T. MARZIALS. 
 
 " An interesting and well-written biography." — Scotsman. 
 
 LIFE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. By 
 JOSEPH KNIGHT 
 
 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Col. F. GRANT. 
 LIFE OF DARWIN By G. T. BETTANY. 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. By AUGUSTINE BIRRELL. 
 LIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. By RICHARD 
 GARNETT, LL.D. 
 
 Ready August 25M. 
 LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. By R. B. HALDANE, M.P. 
 
 To be followed on September 26th by 
 LIFE OF KEATS. By W. M. ROSSETTL 
 
 Volumes in preparation by Austin Dobson, William Sharp, 
 James Sime, Edmund Gosse, etc. 
 
 LIBRARY EDITION OF "GREAT WRITERS." 
 
 An Issue of all the Volumes in this Series will be published, printed 
 on large paper of extra quality, in handsome binding, Demy 8vo, price 
 2s. 6d. per volume. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
iooth thousand. 
 
 CROWN Zvo, 440 PAGES, PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
 THE WORLD 
 
 OF CANT 
 
 ** Daily Telegraph." — " Decidedly a book with a purpose." 
 
 ^^ Scotsman^ — "A vigorous, clever, and almost ferocious exposure, 
 in the form of a story, of the numerous shams and injustices. " 
 
 ^^ Newcastle Weekly Chronicle.'" — "Trenchant in sarcasm, warm in 
 commendation of high purpose. ... A somewhat remarkable book. " 
 
 ^^ London Figaro.''^ — "It cannot be said that the author is partial ; 
 clergymen and Nonconformist divines, Liberals and Conservatives, 
 lawyers and tradesmen, all come under his lash. , . . The sketches are 
 worth reading. Some of the characters are portrayed with considerable 
 skill." 
 
 *' May the Lord deliver us from all Cant : may the Lord, whatever 
 else He do or forbear, teach us to look facts honestly in the face, and to 
 beware (with a kind of shudder) of smearing them over with our 
 despicable and damnable palaver into irrecognisability, and so falsifying 
 the Lord's own Gospels to His unhappy blockheads of Children, 
 all staggering down to Gehenna and the everlasting Swine's-trough, for 
 want of Gospels. 
 
 *'0 Heaven ! it is the most accursed sin of man: and done every- 
 where at present, on the streets and high places at noonday 1 Verily, 
 seriously I say and pray as my chief orison, May the Lord deliver us 
 from it. " — Letter from Carlyle to Emerson. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
Zbe Camelot ©erica* 
 
 PJilCE ONE SHILLING, 
 
 Specimen Days 
 
 IN America. 
 
 By WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 NEWLY REVISED BY THE AUTHOR, WITH FRESH 
 PREFACE AND ADDITIONAL NOTE. 
 
 London : Waltbr Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
NOW READY. 
 
 Uniform in size with the " Canterbury Poets ^ 
 
 365 pages, 
 
 Cloth Giit, price is, ^d; 
 
 BkYS OF THE YEAR 
 
 A POETIC CALENDAR 
 
 OF PASSAGES FROM THE WORKS OF* 
 
 ALFRED AUSTIN. 
 
 SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY A, S, 
 
 With an Introduction by WILLIAM SHARP. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
NEW BOOKS FOR CHILDREN, 
 
 Foolscap 8vo, Cloth Boards, price One Shilling each. 
 
 VERY SHORT STORIES 
 
 AND 
 
 VERSES FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 BY MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD, 
 
 Author of ** Anyhow Stories" etc. 
 
 WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY EDITH CAMPBELL. 
 
 A NEW NATURAL HISTORY 
 
 OF BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES. 
 
 BY JOHN K LEYS, M.A. 
 
 LIFE STORIES OF 
 
 FAMOUS CHILDREN. 
 
 ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH. 
 By the Author of ^'' Spenser for Children." 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, 24 Wan*ick T^^ne. Paternoster Row. 
 
Now Ready ^ Price One Shilling ; Post Free 1/2. 
 
 THE 
 
 Emigrant's Handbook 
 
 TO THE 
 
 British Colonies. 
 
 SUITABLE FOR EUROPEAN EMIGRATION 
 
 Compiled by WALDEMAR BANNOW, 
 Author of " Guide to Emigration and Colonisation^" 
 
 A BOOK EVERY BRITISH SUBJECT SHOULD READ. 
 
 London : 
 Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
SEASON 1887 . 
 Now Ready. Price (Cloth) 3/6. 
 
 THOROUGHLY REVISED, NEW ILLUSTRATIONS, STEAMER TIME 
 TABLES, SKELETON TOURS. 
 
 THE LAND OF THE VIKINGS, 
 
 A POPULAR 
 
 Guide to Norway, 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 Description of that Wonderful Country. 
 
 Constitution and Politics of Norway. 
 
 Hints to Tourists. 
 
 Railway and Steamboat Arrangements. 
 
 Popular Tourist Routes by Fjeld and /jord. 
 
 Tables of Exchange. 
 
 Cost of Travelling in Norway. 
 
 Trips to the North Cape. 
 
 The Scenery of the Sogne, the Hardanger, the Hjorund, Norang, 
 
 and other famous Arms of the Sea- 
 Fishing and Shooting. 
 Modes of Travel. 
 
 Rates of Charges for Horse and Carriole, etc. 
 Tourist Tracks to all Parts. 
 Tables of Distances from Station to Station. 
 
 A new feature of this Season's Guide will be a detailed list of 
 over thirty diSerent Tours, extending over five, twelve, and 
 nineteen days. 
 
 Maps of the Principal Routes, and every other Information useful 
 
 to the Traveller. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 34 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
Crown Svo, 440 pages^ printed on antique paper, 
 cloth ffilt, price 3s. 6c?. 
 
 WOMEN'S 
 
 VOICES 
 
 An Anthology of the most characteristic Poems 
 by English, Scotch, and Irish Women. 
 
 Selected, Arranged, and Edited 
 
 By Mes. WILLIAM SHARP. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lank 
 
NOW READY. 
 
 SUMMER VOLUME OF ''THE CANTERBURY POETS; 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
 SEA MUSIC. 
 
 An Anthology of the best Poems and Passages descriptive 
 
 of the Sea, selected from the writings of English Poets, from 
 
 Shakespeare to the present day, and including several 
 
 hitherto unpublished examples. 
 
 Selected and Arranged by Mrs. WILLIAM SHARP, 
 
 Editor of ''Wovien's Voices," ''Great Musical Composers," etc. 
 
 The above may be had in the various *' Canterbury Series" Bindings. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
Grown 8uo, Price 4s. 6d, 
 
 For 
 
 A Songs 
 
 Sake 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LATE PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. 
 WITH A MEMOIR BY WILLIAM SHARP. 
 
 The Globe says : — " The volume should be acquired, if only for the 
 sake of the memoir by Mr. William Sharp, by which it is prefaced. . . 
 The fullest and most authoritative account that has yet appeared. Its 
 statements may be relied upon, it is excellent in feeling, and it affords 
 altogether a successful portrayal of the poet." 
 
 TTie Scotsman says: — "A brief memoir by Mr. William Sharp, ably 
 and sympathetically vi^ritten, introduces the stories, and makes the 
 volume one which the author's many admirers will be eager to possess. 
 . . . Powerful studies, romantic in sentiment." 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
a poem on tbe Crofter jgvictions. 
 
 THE HEATHER ON FIRE 
 
 By MATHILDE BLIND. Price is. 
 
 " A subject of our own time fertile in what is pathetic and awe-inspiring, and free 
 from any taint of the vulgar and conventional. . . . Positive subject-Ejatter, the 
 emotion which inheres in actual life, the very smile and the very tear and heart-pang, 
 are, after all, precious to poetry, and we have them here. ' The Heather on Fire may 
 
 Sossibly prove something of a new departure, and one that was certainly not super- 
 uous. . . . Even apart from the fascination of its subject-matter, the poem is developed 
 with spirit and energy* with a feeling for homely truth of character and treatment, 
 and with a generally pervasive sense of beauty."— ^^Aenceum. 
 
 " Miss Blind has chosen for her new poem one of those terrible Highland clearances 
 which stain the history of Scotch landlordism. Though her tale is a Action, it is too 
 well founded on fact. ... It may be said generally of the poem that the most diflBcult 
 scenes are those in which Miss Blind succeeds best ; and on the whole we are inclined 
 to think that its greatest and most surprising success is the picture of the poor old 
 soldier, Rory, driven mad by the burning of his \fiie."— Academy. 
 
 •• A subject which has painfully pre-occupied public opinion is, in the poem entitled 
 ' The Heather on Fire,' treated with characteristic power by Miss Blind. . . . Both as 
 a narrative and descriptive poem, ' The Heather on Fire ' is equally remarkable."— 
 Morning Post. 
 
 " A poem remarkable for beauty of expression and pathos of incidents will be found 
 in "The Heather on Fire." Exquisitely delicate are the touches with which the progress 
 of this tale of true love is delineated up to its consummation amid the simple rejoicings of 
 the neighbourhood ; and the flight of years of married life and daily toil, as numerous 
 as those of their courtship, is told in stanzas full of music and soul. . . This tale 
 is one which, unless we are mistaken, may so affect public feeling as to be an effectual 
 bar to similar human clearings in future."— I/«ed» Mercury. 
 
 "Literature and poetry are never seen at their best save in contact with actual life. 
 This little book abounds in vivid delineation of character, and is redolent with the 
 noblest human sympathy."— ^ewca«fi« Daily Chronicle. 
 
 "The Heather on Fire" is a poem that is rich not only in power and beauty but 
 in that " enthusiasm of humanity ' which stirs and moves us, and of which so much 
 contemporary verse is almost painfully deficient. . . . Miss Blind is not a mere poetic 
 trifler who considers that the best poetry is that written by the man who has nothing 
 to say but can say that nothing gracefully. . . . We can best describe the kind of her 
 success by noting the fact that whUe engaged in the perusal of her book we do not 
 say, "What a fine poem!" but "What a terrible story 1" or more probably still say 
 notning at all but read on and on under the spell of a great horror and an overpowering 
 
 5ity. Poetry of which this can be said needs no other recommendation."— 27ie 
 lanchester Examiner and Times. 
 
 " A poem recently published in London (' The Heather on Fire ; a Tale of the High- 
 land Clearances ') is aeclared, in one of the articles which have appeared in the German 
 press on the Scottish Land Question, ' to be based on terrible truth and undoubted real 
 norrors ; giving, in noblest poetical language and thrilling words, a description which 
 ought to be a spur of action to thinking statesmen.' "—North British Daily Mail. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
Price 6d,; Post Free, ^d. 
 No. I. READY SEPTEMBER ist, 1887. 
 
 IP MIlfRALISIS' MOFIHIY: 
 
 A JOURNAL FOR NATURE-LOVERS AND 
 
 NA TURE- THINKERS, 
 
 Edited by Dr. J. W. WILLIAMS, M.A 
 
 The Naturalists' Monthly will contain — 
 
 1. Original and Recreative Papers on Popular Scientific 
 
 subjects by well-known writers. 
 
 2. Articles on the Distribution of Animal and Plant Life in the 
 
 British Islands. 
 
 3. Monographs on groups generally looked over by the Field- 
 
 Naturalist, as the British Fresh-water Worms and Leeches 
 in Zoology, and the Lichens and Mosses in Botany. 
 
 4. Accounts of Scientific Voyages and Expeditions. 
 
 5. Biographical Lives of the Greatest Scientific Men 
 
 6. "The Editor's Easy Chair"— a Monthly Chit-chat on the 
 
 most important Scientific Questions of the day. 
 
 7. Reports of the Learned Societies. 
 
 8. General Notes and Correspondence. 
 
 9. Reviews of the latest Works and Papers. 
 la Answer and Query Column for Workers. 
 
 The Naturalists^ Monthly will be issued on the 1st of each 
 Month, Annual Subscription, 7/- post free. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. 
 
NEW NORTH-COUNTRY MAGAZINE. 
 
 Zhc HDontblie Cbronfcle 
 
 OF NORTH-COUNTRY LORE AND LEGEND. 
 
 Crown Quarto^ Forty-Eight Pages, Price Sixpence. 
 
 The Monthly Chronicle has been established to preserve 
 the great wealth of legend and story that abounds in the 
 North of England. Every number contains a variety of 
 articles of great popular interest. Most of the articles 
 are illustrated with engravings of the persons or scenes 
 described. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, 
 
 " A word of welcome is due to the Monthly Chronicle of North-Country 
 Lore and Legend, which promises to be useful, and is certainly very 
 cheap. " — A thcnceum. 
 
 " Tlie Monthly Chronicle is an admirable sixpenny budget of North- 
 Country lore and legend. It merits, and will doutless obtain, an extensive 
 circulation." — Wakefield Free Press. 
 
 "It is illustrated and clearly printed, and promises to be a choice 
 repository for the lore of Northumbria." — Leeds Mercury. 
 
 "It is splendidly got up, marvellously cheap, and interesting in every 
 page." — British Weekly. 
 
 "The magazine, which is excellently arranged, and beautifully printed 
 and illustrated, contains a great mass of matter relating to men and things 
 of the past in Northumbria. Published at sixpence a month, it is the best 
 local periodical we have ever seen." — Derby and Derbyshire Gazette. 
 
 " For the modest sum of sixpence Mr. Scott gives us no less than forty- 
 eight closely printed quarto pages of good sound prose." — Kelso Alail. 
 
 " The Monthly Chronicle is a wonderfiil sixpennyworth, and we wish it 
 the success it deserves." — West Cumberland Times. 
 
 "It is an amusing collection of antiquarian scraps, reminiscences, 
 rhymes, and sketches." — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 "Full of interesting reading, to Tynesiders especially." — Shields Daily 
 Hews. 
 
 Published for the Proprietors hy Walter Scott, Newcastle and London. 
 
THE OCTOBER VOLUME OF 
 
 THE CANTERBURY POETS 
 
 WILL BE 
 
 BALLADES 
 
 AND 
 
 RONDEAUS 
 
 Selected from English and American Writers 
 By J. GLEESON WHITE. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS BY 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON 
 E. W. GOSSE 
 W. E. HENLEY 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 JOHN PAYNE 
 
 A. C. SWINBURNE 
 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 This is the first attempt at a collection of the English use of these old 
 French metrical forms. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.