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 royal. Literary & Scientific 
 
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 W.GREEN & SON! 
 
 lain lioohsfllrrs 
 
 is St. Giles Street 
 
 EDINBURGH.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 SPEECH 
 
 FOR THE DEFENDANT, 
 
 IN IMF. PUDSECl'TION OK 
 
 THE QUEEN v. MOXON, 
 
 FOK THF PUBLICATION OF 
 
 SHELLEY'S WORKS. 
 
 Delivered in the Court of Queens Bench, June 23. 1841 
 
 AND REVISED 
 
 BY T. N. TALFOURD, 
 
 SERGEANT AT LAW. 
 
 LONDON . 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXLI.
 
 LONDON : 
 ISRADBUBY ANU EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITtKRIAIlS.
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 In consenting to revise and publish the following 
 Speech, I trust the circumstances attendant on the 
 trial in which it was delivered will be found to 
 justify an exception to the usual abstinence of 
 Counsel from interfering with the publication of 
 speeches delivered at the bar. The peculiarity 
 of the occasion — the prosecution of an eminent 
 publisher of unblemished character at the instance 
 of a person who had been himself convicted of 
 blasphemous libel, on a similar charge — and the 
 nature of the question which that prosecution in- 
 volved, between Literature and the Law of Libel — 
 may render the attempt of the defendant's advocate, 
 to defeat the former and to solve the latter, worthy 
 of more consideration than it could command 
 either by its power or its success. Observing 
 that the case has been unavoidably deprived, by 
 ' the urgency of political topics and electioneering 
 details, of the notice it would have received from 
 
 A
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 the press at a calmer season ; and being anxious 
 that the references necessarily made to matters of 
 solemn interest and of delicate relation should not 
 be subject to the misconception attendant on any 
 imperfect reports, I have thought it right to take 
 on myself the responsibility of presenting to the 
 public, as correctly as I can, the substance of that 
 which I addressed to the jury. The necessary 
 brevity of the reports of the trial, which has 
 partly induced this publication of the speech 
 for the defendant, also renders it proper to 
 give a short account of the circumstances which 
 preceded it. 
 
 In the month of April 1840, an indictment was 
 preferred against Mr. Henry Hetherington, a book- 
 seller in the Strand, at the instance of the Attorney- 
 General, for selling certain numbers of a work 
 entitled " Haslam's Letters to the Clergy of all 
 Denominations," sold each at the price of one 
 jjemiy, and charging them as libels on the Old 
 Testament. The cause came on to be tried before 
 Lord Denman in the Court of Queen's Bench on 8th 
 December, 1840, when the defence was conducted, 
 with great propriety and talent, by the defendant
 
 PREFACE. 7 
 
 himself, who rested it mainly on a claim of unqua- 
 lified right to publish all matters of opinion, and on 
 the argument, that the work charged as blasphemous 
 came fairly within the operation of that principle. 
 Mr. Hetherington was, however, convicted, and 
 ultimately received judgment, under which he 
 underwent an imprisonment of four months in 
 the Queen's Bench prison. 
 
 While this prosecution was pending, Mr. 
 Hetherington appears to have adopted the design 
 of becoming in his turn the Prosecutor of several 
 booksellers for the sale of the complete edition of 
 Shelley's Works, which had been recently issued by 
 Mr. Moxon in a form similar to that in which he 
 had published the collected works of the greatest 
 English poets. He accordingly commissioned a 
 person named Holt, then a compositor in his 
 employ, to apply for the work at the shops of 
 several persons eminent in the trade, and thus 
 succeeded in obtaining copies of Mr. Moxon, of 
 Mr. Fraser, and of Mr. Otley, or rather of the 
 persons in their employ. On the sales thus 
 obtained, indictments were preferred at the Cen- 
 tral Criminal Court against the several vendors,
 
 8 PREFACE. 
 
 which, with a similar indictment against Mr. Mar- 
 shall, doubtless preferred by the same Prosecutor, 
 were removed by certiorari at the instance of the 
 defendants, and set down for trial by special 
 juries. Mr. Moxon felt that, as the original 
 publisher of the edition, he ought to bear the 
 first attack ; and therefore, although some ad- 
 vantage might have been gained by placing the 
 case of a mere vendor before his own, he declined 
 to use it, and entered his own cause the first of the 
 series which were to be tried in Middlesex. These, 
 causes were called on for trial at the sittings after 
 Hilary term ; but the prosecutor was not prepared 
 with the Attorney-General's warrant to pray a 
 tales to supply the default of the special jury, 
 and as the counsel for the defendant did not think 
 it right to expedite his proceedings by doing so 
 themselves, the cause went over, and ultimately 
 came on for trial on Wednesday 23d June, when 
 nine special jurymen appeared, and the panel was 
 completed by a tales prayed for the prosecution. 
 
 The indictment against Mr. Moxon, which the 
 others exactly resembled, charged that he, " being 
 an evil-disposed and wicked person, disregarding
 
 PREFACE. y 
 
 the laws and religion of this realm, and wickedly 
 and profanely devising and intending to bring the 
 Holy Scriptures and the Christian religion into 
 disbelief and contempt, unlawfully and wickedly, 
 did falsely and maliciously publish a scandalous, 
 impious, profane, and malicious libel of and con- 
 cerning the Christian religion, and of and concern- 
 ing the Holy Scriptures, and of and concerning 
 Almighty God," in which were contained certain 
 passages charged as blasphemous and profane. It 
 then set forth a passage in blank verse, beginning, 
 " They have three icords : well tyrants know their 
 use, well pay them for the loan, with usury torn 
 from a bleeding world ! — God, Hell, and Heaven ;" 
 and after adding an innuendo, "meaning thereby 
 that God, Hell, and Heaven, were merely words,''' 
 proceeded to recite a few more lines, applying very 
 coarse and irreverent, but not very intelligible com- 
 ments to each of those words. It then charged, 
 that the libel contained, in other parts, two other 
 passages, also in verse, and to which the same 
 character may be justly applied*. It lastly set forth 
 
 * It has not been thought necessary to the argument to set 
 out these passages ; as it proceeds on the admission, that, sepa- 
 rately considered, they are very offensive both to piety and good 
 taste.
 
 10 PREFACE. 
 
 a passage of prose from the notes, the object of 
 which seems to be to assert, that the belief in the 
 plurality of worlds is inconsistent with " religious 
 systems," and with " deifying the principle of the 
 universe ;" and which, after speaking in very 
 disrespectful terms of the statements of Christian 
 history as " irreconcilable with the knowledge of 
 the stars," concludes with the strange inconsist- 
 ency pointed out by Lord Denman in his charge 
 (if the author's intention was to deny the being 
 of God), " The work of His fingers have borne 
 witness against them." 
 
 The case for the prosecution was opened by 
 Mr. Thomas with a judicious abstinence from any 
 remark on the motives or object of the Prosecutor, 
 and without informing the jury who the Prosecutor 
 was. He stated several cases and dicta to esta- 
 blish the general proposition, that a work tending 
 to bring religion into contempt and odium is an 
 offence against the common law, and, among 
 others, that of Mr. Hetherington ; read, besides 
 the indicted passages, several others of a similar 
 character, all selected from the poem of " Queen 
 Mab ;" eloquently eulogised the genius of Shelley,
 
 PREFACE. 11 
 
 and fairly admitted the respectability of the de- 
 fendant ; and concluded by expressing the satisfac- 
 tion he should feel if the result of this trial should 
 establish, that no publications on religion should 
 be subject to prosecution in future. He then 
 called Thomas Holt, who proved the purchase of 
 the volume for twelve shillings at Mr. Moxon's 
 shop ; and who also proved, on cross-examination, 
 that he made the purchase and others at the desire 
 of Mr. Hetherington, whom he understood to be the 
 Prosecutor in this and the succeeding causes. 
 
 The success of such a prosecution proceeding 
 from such a quarter, gives rise to very serious 
 considerations ; for although, in determining sen- 
 tences, Judges will be able to diminish the evil, by 
 a just discrimination between the publication of 
 the complete works of an author of established 
 fame, for the use of the studious, and for deposit 
 in libraries, and the dissemination of cheap irreli- 
 gion, directed to no object but to unsettle the 
 belief of the reader — the power of prosecuting to 
 conviction every one who may sell, or give, or lend 
 any work containing passages to which the indict- 
 able character may be applied, is a fearful engine
 
 12 PREFACE. 
 
 of oppression. Should such prosecutions be mul- 
 tiplied, and juries should not feel justified in 
 adopting some principle of distinction like that for 
 which I have feebly endeavoured to contend, they 
 must lead to some alteration in the law, or to some 
 restriction of the right to set it in action. It will, 
 I think, be matter of regret among many who 
 desire to respect the Law, and to see it wisely 
 applied, that the question should have arisen ; but 
 since it has been so painfully raised, it is difficult 
 to avoid it ; and if the following address should 
 present any materials for its elucidation, it will 
 not, although unsuccessful in its immediate object, 
 have been delivered entirely in vain. 
 
 T. N. T. 
 
 Sergeants' Inn, 
 
 28th June. 1841.
 
 SPEEC H. 
 
 May it please your Lordship, 
 Gentlemen of the Jury, 
 
 It has sometimes been my lot to express, 
 and much oftener to feel, a degree of anxiety in 
 addressing juries, which has painfully diminished the 
 little power which I can ever command in represent- 
 ing the interests committed to my charge ; but never 
 has that feeling been so excited, and so justified, by 
 any occasion as that on which it is my duty to 
 address you. I am called from the Court in which I 
 usually practise, to defend from the odious charge of 
 blasphemy one with whom I have been acquainted 
 for many years — one whom I have always believed 
 incapable of wilful offence towards God or towards 
 man — one who was introduced to me in early and 
 happy days, by the dearest of my friends who are gone 
 before me — by Charles Lamb — to whom the wife of 
 the defendant was as an adopted daughter ; and who, 
 dying, committed the interests which he left her in
 
 14 
 
 the products of his life of kindness to my charge. 
 Would to God that the spirit which pervaded his 
 being could decide the fate of this strange prosecu- 
 tion — I should only have to pronounce his name 
 and to receive your verdict ! 
 
 Apart from these personal considerations, there is 
 something in the nature of the charge itself, however 
 unjustly applied to the party accused, which must 
 depress a Christian advocate addressing a Christian 
 jury. On all other cases of accusation, he would 
 implore the jurors sworn to decide between the 
 accuser and the defendant, to lay aside every prepos- 
 session — to forget every rumour — to strip themselves 
 of every prejudice — to suppress every affection, which 
 could prevent the exercise of a free and unclouded 
 judgment ; and, having made this appeal, or having 
 forborne to make it as needless, he would regard the 
 jury-box as a sacred spot, raised above all encircling 
 influences, to which he might address the arguments 
 of justice and mercy with the assurance of obtaining 
 a decision only divested of the certainty of unerring 
 truth by the imperfection of human evidence and of 
 human reason. But in this case you cannot grant — 
 I cannot ask — the cold impartiality which on all 
 other charges may be sought and expected from 
 English juries. Sworn on the Gospel to try a charge 
 of wickedly and profanely attempting to bring that
 
 15 
 
 Gospel, and the holy Religion which it reveals, into 
 disbelief and contempt, you are reminded even by 
 that oath — if it were possible you could ever forget 
 — of the deep, the solemn, the imperishable interest 
 you have in those sacred things which the defendant 
 is charged with assailing. The feelings which such 
 a charge awakens are not like those political differ- 
 ences which it is delightful sometimes to forget or to 
 trample on ; — or those local partialities which it is 
 ennobling to forsake for a wider sphere of contempla- 
 tion — or those hasty opinions which the daily press, in 
 its vivid course, has scattered over our thoughts, and 
 which we are proud sometimes to bring to the test of 
 dispassionate reflection ; — or those worldly interests 
 which, if they sway the honourable mind at all, incline 
 it to take part against them ; — but the emotions 
 which this charge enkindles are intertwined with all 
 that endears the Past and peoples the Future — with 
 all that renders this life noble by enriching it with 
 the hope of that which is to come. If the passages 
 which have been read to you — torn asunder from the 
 connexion in which they stand — regarded without 
 reference to the time, the object, the mode of their 
 publication, — should array you at this moment 
 almost as plaintiffs, personally wronged and insulted 
 against their publisher, I must not complain ; for 
 I shall not be provoked, even by the peculiarity of 
 
 b 2
 
 16 
 
 this charge, to defend Mr. Moxon by a suggestion 
 which can violate the associations which are inter- 
 twined with all that is dear to you. He would rather 
 submit to the utmost consequences which the selfish 
 recklessness of this prosecution could entail, if you 
 should sanction and the Court hereafter should sup- 
 port its aim ; he would rather be severed from the 
 family whom he cherishes, and from the society of the 
 good and the great in our Literature, which he is pri- 
 vileged to share ; than he would obtain immunity by 
 a recourse to those weapons which the Prosecutor 
 would fain present to his choice. Neither will I, 
 notwithstanding the anticipation of my learned 
 friend, ask you to palter with your consciences, and 
 because you may doubt or deny the policy of the law 
 which is thus set in action, invite you to do other than 
 administer justice according to your oath and your 
 duty. I take my stand on Christian ground ; I base 
 my defence on the recognised Law ; and if I do not 
 show you that the Christianity which the Prosecutor 
 most needlessly presumes to vindicate, and the Law 
 which with unhallowed hands he is striving to per- 
 vert, justify your verdict of acquittal, I am content 
 that you should become the instruments of his 
 attempt to retort the penalties of his own sentence 
 on one who never wronged him even in thought — 
 that you should aid him to render the Law under
 
 17 
 
 which he has suffered, odious by sanctioning the 
 odious application which he contemplates ; and that 
 at his bidding you should scatter through the loftiest 
 and serenest paths of Literature, distress, and doubt, 
 and dismay, awarding him that success which " if 
 not victory is yet revenge." 
 
 The charge which Mr. Moxon is called upon to 
 answer is, that with a wicked intention to bring the 
 Holy Scriptures and the Christian religion into con- 
 tempt, he published the volume which is in evidence 
 before you, and which is characterised as a libel on 
 that religion, on the Scriptures, and on Almighty 
 God. I speak advisedly when I say the ivhole volume 
 is thus indicted ; it must be so considered in point of 
 justice — it is so charged in point of form. The 
 indictment, indeed, sets forth four passages, torn 
 violently asunder from their context ; yet it does not 
 charge them as separate libels, but as portions of one 
 "impious, blasphemous, profane, and malicious libel," 
 in different parts of which the selected parts are 
 found. Now these are not all to be found even in 
 one poem, for the first three being in poetry, the last 
 is taken from a mass of prose appended to the first 
 poem of " Queen Mab," and intervening between it 
 and a poem entitled " Alastor," which is the next in 
 the series. And if this were not the form of the record, 
 can it be doubted that, in point of justice, the scope,
 
 18 
 
 the object, the tendency of the entire publication, 
 must be determined before you can decide on the 
 guilt or innocence of the party who has thus published 
 the passages charged as blasphemous ? Supposing 
 some question of law should be raised on the suffi- 
 ciency of the indictment in which they are inserted, 
 and they should be copied necessarily for the eluci- 
 dation of the argument in one of the reports in which 
 the decisions of this Court are perpetuated ; would 
 the reporter, the law-bookseller, the officer of the 
 Court, who should hand the volume to a barrister, be 
 guilty of blasphemy ? Or if they should appear in 
 some correct report, partaking of a more popular form, 
 and that report should be indicted as containing them, 
 what form would the question of the guilt or inno- 
 cence of the publisher assume ? Would it not be, 
 whether he had been honestly anxious to lay before 
 the world the history of an unexampled attempt to 
 degrade and destroy the law, under pretence of assert- 
 ing it ; or whether he was studious to disseminate 
 some fragments of strange and fearful audacity, and 
 had professed to report an extraordinary trial, only 
 as a pretext to cover the popular dissemination of 
 blasphemy ? And would not the form, the commen- 
 tary, the occasion, the price, all be material in deciding 
 whether the work were laudable or guilty — whether, 
 as a whole, it tended to good or to evil ? These pas-
 
 19 
 
 sages, like details and pictures in works of anatomy 
 and surgery, are either innocent or criminal, according 
 to the accompaniments which surround them, and the 
 class to whom they are addressed. If really intended 
 for the eye of the scientific student, they are most 
 innocent ; but if so published as to manifest another 
 intention, they will not be protected from legal censure 
 by the flimsy guise of science. By a similar test let 
 this publication be judged ! If its whole tenor lead 
 you to believe that the dissemination of irreligious 
 feelings was its object — nay, that such will be its 
 natural consequence — let Mr. Hetherington have his 
 triumph ; but if you believe that these words, how- 
 ever offensive when abstractedly taken, form part of 
 a great intellectual and moral phenomenon, which 
 may be disclosed to the class of readers who alone 
 will purchase the volume, not only without injury, 
 but to their instruction, you will joyfully find Mr. 
 Moxon as free from blasphemy in contemplation 
 of the strictest law, as I know he is in purpose and 
 in spirit. 
 
 The passages selected as specimens of the indicted 
 libel are found in a complete edition of the works 
 of Percy Bysshe Shelley — a work comprising more 
 than twenty thousand lines of verse, and occupy 
 something less than the three-hundredth part of the 
 volume which contains them. The book presents 
 the entire intellectual history — true and faithful,
 
 20 
 
 because traced in the series of those works which were 
 its events — of one of the most extraordinary persons 
 ever gifted and doomed to illustrate the nobleness, 
 the grandeur, the imperfections, and the progress of 
 human genius — whom it pleased God to take from 
 this world while the process harmonising his stupen- 
 dous powers was yet incomplete, but not before it had 
 indicated its beneficent workings. It is edited by 
 his widow, a lady endowed with great and original 
 talent, who, as she states in her preface, hastens "to 
 fulfil an important duty, that of giving the produc- 
 tions of a sublime genius to the world, with all the 
 correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detail- 
 ing the history of these productions as they sprang, 
 warm and living from his heart and brain." And, 
 accordingly, the poems are all connected together by 
 statements as to the circumstances under which they 
 were written, and the feelings which inspired them. 
 The " alterations (says Mrs. Shelley) his opinions 
 underwent ought to be recorded, for they form his 
 history." 
 
 The first of these works is a poem, written at the 
 age of eighteen, entitled " Queen Mab ;" a composition 
 marked with nothing to attract the casual reader — 
 irregular in versification, wild, disjointed, visionary ; 
 often difficult to be understood even by a painful 
 student of poetry, and sometimes wholly unintel- 
 ligible even to him ; but containing as much to wonder
 
 21 
 
 at, to ponder on, to weep over, as any half-formed 
 work of genius which ever emanated from the vigour 
 and the rashness of youth. This poem, which I 
 shall bring before you presently, is followed by the 
 marvellous series of works of which " Alastor," 
 " The Revolt of Islam," the " Prometheus Unbound," 
 and " The Cenci " form the principal, exhibiting a 
 continuous triumph of mellowing and consecrating 
 influences, down to the moment when sudden death 
 shrouded the Poet's career from the observation of 
 mortals. Now the question is, whether it is blas- 
 phemy to present to the world — say rather to the 
 calm, the laborious, the patient searcher after wisdom 
 and beauty, who alone will peruse this volume — the 
 awful mistakes, the mighty struggles, the strange 
 depressions, and the imperfect victories of such a 
 spirit, because the picture has some passages of 
 frightful gloom. I am far from contending that 
 everything which genius has in rashness or in 
 wantonness produced, becomes, when once com- 
 mitted to the press, the inalienable property of 
 mankind. Such a principle, indeed, seems to be 
 involved in an argument which was recently sanc- 
 tioned by the authority of a Cabinet Minister more 
 distinguished even as a profound thinker and an 
 eloquent and accomplished critic, than by political 
 station. When I last urged the claim of the 
 descendants of men of genius to be the guardians of
 
 22 
 
 their fame, as well as the recipients of its attendant 
 rewards, I was met with denial on the plea that, 
 from some fastidiousness of taste, or some over- 
 niceness of moral apprehension, the hereditary repre- 
 sentatives of a great writer may cover his works with 
 artificial oblivion. I have asked, whether, if a poet 
 has written " some line which, dying, he may wish to 
 blot," he shall not be allowed by the insatiate public 
 to blot it dying ; and T have asked in vain ! Fielding 
 and Richardson have been quoted, as writers whose 
 works, multiplying as they will through all time 
 the sources of innocent enjoyment, might have been 
 suppressed by some too dainty moralist. Now ad- 
 mitting that the tendency of Fielding's works, taken 
 as a whole, is as invigorating as it is delightful, I 
 fear there are chapters which if taken from their 
 connexion — apart from the healthful atmosphere in 
 which their impurities evaporate and die — and 
 printed at some penny cost for dissemination among 
 the young, would justly incur the censure of that 
 Law which has too long withheld its visitations from 
 those who have sought a detestable profit by spreading 
 cheap corruption through the land. It may be true, 
 as Dr. Johnson ruled, that Richardson " had taught 
 the passions to move at the command of virtue ; " 
 and, as was recently asserted, that Mrs. Hannah 
 More " first learned from his writings those principles 
 of piety by which her life was guided ; ,: but (to
 
 23 
 
 leave out of consideration the Adventures of Pamela, 
 which must sometimes have put Mrs. Hannah More 
 to the blush) I fear that selections might be made, 
 even from the greatest of all prose romances, Clarissa 
 Harlowe, which the Society for the Suppression of Vice 
 would scarcely endure. Do I wish them therefore 
 suppressed ? No ! Because in these massive volumes 
 the antidote is found with the bane ; because the 
 effect of Lovelace's daring pleas for vice, and of 
 pictures yet more vicious, is neutralised by the scenes 
 of passion and suffering which surround them ; 
 because the unsullied image of heroic purity and 
 beautiful endurance rises fairer from amidst the 
 encircling pollutions, and conquers every feeling but 
 those of admiration and pity. Yet if detached scenes 
 were, like these passages of Shelley, selected for the 
 prosecution, how could they be defended — but, like 
 them, by reference to the spirit, and intent, and 
 tendency of the entire work from which they were 
 torn ? And yet the defence would be less conclusive 
 than that which I now offer ; as descriptions which 
 appeal to passion are far less capable of correction by 
 accompanying moralities, than the cold speculations 
 of a wild infidelity by the considerations which the 
 history of their author's mind supplies. In the wise 
 and just dispensations of Providence great powers 
 are often found associated with weakness or with
 
 24 
 
 sorrow ; but when these are not blended with the 
 intellectual greatness they countervail, but merely 
 affect the personal fortunes of their possessors — as 
 when a sanguine temperament leads into vicious 
 excesses — there is no more propriety in unveiling the 
 truth, because it is truth, than in exhibiting the 
 details of some physical disease. But when the 
 greatness of the poet's intellect contains within itself 
 the elements of tumult and disorder— when the ap- 
 preciation of the genius, in all its divine relations 
 and all its human lapses, depends on a view of the 
 entire picture, must it be withheld ? It is not a 
 sinful Elysium, full of lascivious blandishments, but 
 a heaving chaos of mighty elements, that the publisher 
 of the early productions of Shelley unveils. In such 
 a case, the more awful the alienation, the more preg- 
 nant with good will be the lesson. Shall this life, 
 fevered with beauty, restless with inspiration, be 
 hidden ; or, wanting its first blind but gigantic 
 efforts, be falsely, because partially revealed ? If to 
 trace back the stream of genius, from its greatest and 
 most lucid earthly breadth to its remotest fountain, 
 is one of the most interesting and instructive objects 
 of philosophic research, shall we — when we have fol- 
 lowed that of Shelley through its majestic windings, 
 beneath the solemn glooms of " The Cenci," through 
 the glory-tinged expanses of " The Revolt of Islam,"
 
 25 
 
 amidst the dream-like haziness of the " Prome- 
 theus" — be forbidden to ascend with painful steps 
 its narrowing course to its furthest spring, because 
 black rocks may encircle the spot whence it rushes 
 into day, and demon shapes — frightful but powerless 
 for harm — may gleam and frown on us beside it ? 
 
 Having thus endeavoured to present to you the 
 foundation of my defence — that the volume in which 
 these passages appear is in its substance historical, 
 and that, so far from being adopted by the compiler, 
 they are presented as necessary to historical truth, — I 
 will consider the passages themselves, and the poem 
 in which they appear, with a view to inquire whether 
 they are of a nature capable of being fairly re- 
 garded as innoxious in their connexion with Shelley's 
 life. Admitting, as I do, that if published with an 
 aim to commend them to the reader as the breathings 
 or suggestions of truth — nay, that if recklessly pub- 
 lished in such a manner as to present them to the 
 reader for approval, they deserve all the indig- 
 nation which can be lavished on them ; I cannot 
 think, even then, they would have power to injure. 
 They appeal to no passion — they pervert no affection 
 — they find nothing in human nature, frail as it 
 always is, guilty as it sometimes becomes — to work 
 on. Contemplated apart from the intellectual history 
 of the extraordinary being who produced them, and
 
 26 
 
 from which they can never be severed by any reader 
 of this book, they would excite no feelings but those 
 of wonder at their audacity, and pity for their weak- 
 ness. Not only are they incapable of awakening any 
 chords of evil in the soul, but they are ineffectual even 
 to present to it an intelligible heresy. " We under- 
 stand a fury in the words — but not the words." 
 What do they import ? Is it atheism ? — or is it 
 mad defiance of a God by one who believes and hates, 
 yet does not tremble ? To the first passage, com- 
 mencing, " They have three words," — " God, Hell, 
 mid Heaven ! " — the prosecutor does not venture to 
 affix any meaning at all, but tears them from their 
 context, and alleges that they are part of a libel on 
 the Holy Scriptures, though there is no reference in 
 them to the Bible, or to any Scripture doctrine ; nor 
 does the indictment supply any definite meaning or 
 reference to explain or to answer. To the second 
 paragraph — 
 
 Is there a God ! — ay, an Almighty God, 
 
 And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 
 
 Was heard on earth : earth shudder'd at the sound ; 
 
 The fiery-visaged firmament express'd 
 
 Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn'd 
 
 To swallow all the dauntless and the good 
 
 That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 
 
 Girt as it was with power — 
 
 the indictment does present a most extended
 
 27 
 
 innuendo ; " Thereby meaning and referring to the 
 Scripture history of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram ; 
 and meaning that the said Korah, Dathan, and 
 Abiram, ivere dauntless and good, and were so 
 dauntless and good for daring to hurl defiance at the 
 throne of Almighty God'* This is, indeed, a flight 
 of the poetry of pleading — a construction which you 
 must find as the undoubted sense of the passage — be- 
 fore you can sustain this part of the accusation. But 
 again, I ask, is there any determinate meaning in 
 these "wild and whirling words?" Are they more 
 than atoms of chaotic thought not yet subsided into 
 harmony, — over which the Spirit of Love has not 
 yet brooded, so as to make them pregnant with life, 
 and beauty, and joy ? But suppose, for a moment, 
 they nakedly assert atheism — never was there an 
 error which, thus incidentally exhibited, had less 
 power to charm. How far it is possible that such a 
 miserable dogma, dexterously insinuated into a per- 
 plexed understanding or a corrupted heart, may find 
 reception, I will not venture to speculate, — but I 
 venture to affirm that thus nakedly presented, as the 
 dream of a wild fancy, it can at most only glare for a 
 moment, a bloodless phantom, and pass into kindred 
 nothing ! Or do the words rather import a belief in 
 a God — the ruling Power of the universe — yet an 
 insane hatred of his attributes ? I it possible to
 
 28 
 
 contemplate the creature of a day standing up amidst 
 countless ages — like a shadowy film among the con- 
 fused grandeur of the universe — thus propelled, with 
 any other feeling than those of wonder and pity ? Or 
 do these words merely import that the name and attri- 
 butes of the Supreme Being have been abused and 
 perverted by " the oppressors of mankind," for their 
 own purposes, to the misery of the oppressed ? Or 
 do they vibrate and oscillate between all these mean- 
 ings, so as to leave the mind in a state of perplexity, 
 — balancing and destroying each other? In either 
 case, they are powerless for evil. Unlike that seduc- 
 tive infidelity which flatters the pride of the under- 
 standing, by glittering sophistry, — or that still more 
 dangerous infidelity, which gratifies its love of power 
 by bitter sarcasm, — or that most dangerous of all 
 which perverts the sensibilities, and corrupts the 
 affections, — it resembles that Evil of which Milton 
 speaks, when, with a boldness which the fastidious 
 might deem profane, he exclaims, 
 
 Evil into the mind of God or man 
 
 May come and go, so unapproved, and leave 
 
 No spot or blame behind. 
 
 If regarded in themselves these passages were 
 endowed with any power of mischief, the manner 
 in which they are introduced in the poem — or 
 rather phantasm of a poem — of " Queen Mab "
 
 29 
 
 must surely neutralise them. It has no human 
 interest — no local affinities — no machinery familiar 
 even to thought. It opens in a lyrical measure, 
 wanting even the accomplishment of rhyme, with an 
 apostrophe uttered, no one knows by whom or where, 
 on a sleeping nymph — whether human or divine — 
 the creature of what mythology — on earth or in 
 some other sphere — is unexplained ; all we know is, 
 that the lady or spirit is called Ianthe. Thus it 
 begins : — 
 
 How wonderful is Death — 
 
 Death and his brother Sleep ! 
 One, pale as yonder waning moon, 
 
 With lips of lurid blue ; 
 The other, rosy as the morn 
 When, throned in Ocean's wave, 
 
 It blushes o'er the world ; 
 Yet both so passing wonderful ! 
 
 Hath then the gloomy power 
 Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
 
 Seized on her sinless soul ? 
 
 Must then that peerless form, 
 Which love and admiration cannot view 
 Without a beating heart — those azure veins 
 Which steal like streams along a field of snow — 
 That lovely outline which is fair 
 
 As breathing marble, perish ? 
 
 Must putrefaction's breath 
 Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 
 
 But loathsomeness and ruin ! 
 Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 
 On which the lightest heart might moralize ? 
 
 C
 
 fiO 
 
 Or is it only a sweet slumber 
 
 Stealing o'er sensation, 
 Which the breath of roseate morning 
 
 Chaseth into darkness ? 
 
 Will Ianthe wake again, 
 And give that faithful hosom joy, 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 Light, life, and rapture from her smile ? 
 
 The answer to the last question is, that Ianthe 
 will awake, — which is expressed in terms appropri- 
 ately elaborate and mystical. But while she is thus 
 sleeping, the Fairy Mab descends — invites the soul 
 of the nymph to quit her form — and conveys it 
 through systems, suns, and worlds to the temple of 
 " The Spirit of Nature," where the Fairy and the 
 Soul enter " The Hall of Spells," and a kind of phan- 
 tasmagoria passes before them, in which are dimly 
 seen representations of the miseries, oppressions, and 
 hopes of mankind. Few, indeed, are the readers 
 who will ever enter the dreary portals of that fane, or 
 gaze on the wild intermixture of half-formed visions 
 and theories which gleam through the hazy prospects 
 seen from its battlements. The discourse of the 
 Fairy — to the few who have followed that dizzy 
 career — is an extraordinary mixture of wild rhap- 
 sody on the miseries attendant on humanity, and the 
 supposed errors of its faith, and of fancies " of the 
 moonshine's watery beams." After the " obstinate
 
 81 
 
 questioning" respecting the existence of a God, 
 this Fairy — who is supposed to deny all supernatural 
 existence — calls forth a shape of one whose imagi- 
 nary being is entirely derived from Christian tradition 
 — Ahasuerus, the Jew — who is said to have scoffed 
 at our Saviour as he bore his cross to Calvary, and 
 to have been doomed by Him to wander on the earth 
 until His second coming. Of this phantom the ques- 
 tion is asked, " Is there a God ? " and to him are 
 the words ascribed in answer which form the second 
 and third portions of the Prosecutor's charge. Can 
 anything be conceived more inconsistent — more com- 
 pletely self-refuted — and therefore more harmless? 
 The whole machinery, indeed, answers to the descrip- 
 tion of the Fairy, — 
 
 The matter of which dreams are made, 
 Not more endow'd with actual life 
 Than this phantasmal portraiture 
 Of wandering human thought. 
 
 All, indeed, is fantastical — nothing clear except 
 that atheism and the materialism, on which alone 
 atheism can rest, are refuted in every page. If the 
 being of God is in terms denied — which I deny — it 
 is confessed in substance ; and what injury can an 
 author do, who one moment deprecates the " deifying 
 the Spirit of the universe," and the next himself 
 deifies " the spirit of nature," — speaks of her " eternal 
 breath," and fashions for her " a fitting temple ? " 
 
 c2
 
 Nay, in this strange poem, the spiritual immunities 
 of the soul and its immortal destinies are distinctly 
 asserted amidst all its visionary splendours. The 
 Spirit of Ianthe is supposed to arise from the slumber- 
 ing body, and to stand beside it; while the poet 
 thus represents each : — 
 
 'Twas a sight 
 Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 
 The self-same lineaments, the same 
 Marks of identity were there, 
 Yet, O how different ! One aspires to heaven, 
 Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
 And ever changing, ever rising, still 
 
 Wantons in endless being ; 
 The other for a time the unwilling sport 
 Of circumstance and passion, struggles on, 
 Fleets through its sad duration rapidly ; 
 Then, like a useless and worn-out machine, 
 Rots, perishes, and passes. 
 
 Now, when it is found that this poem, thus con- 
 taining the doctrine of immortality, is presented with 
 the distinct statement that Shelley himself in maturer 
 life departed from its offensive dogmas — when it is 
 accompanied by his own letter in which he expresses 
 his wish for its suppression — when, therefore, it is 
 not given even as containing///* deliberate assertions, 
 but only as a feature in the development of his 
 intellectual character — surely all sting is taken out 
 of the rash and uncertain passages which have been 
 selected as indicating blasphemy ! But is it not
 
 33 
 
 antidote enough to the poison of a pretended 
 atheism, that the poet who is supposed to-day to 
 deny Deity, finds Deity in all things ! 
 
 I cannot proceed with this defence without feeling 
 that I move tremulously among sacred things which 
 should be approached only in serene contemplation ; 
 that I am compelled to solicit your attention to 
 considerations more fit to be weighed in the still- 
 ness of thought than amidst the excitements of 
 a public trial ; and that I am able only to suggest 
 reasonings which, if woven into a chain, no strength 
 of mine could utter, nor your kindest patience 
 follow. But the fault is not mine ! I cannot other- 
 wise even hint the truth — the living truth—of this 
 case to your minds as it fills and struggles in my 
 own, or protect my client and friend from a prosecu- 
 tion without parallel in our legal history. If the 
 Prosecutor, in return for his own conviction of pub- 
 lishing some cheap and popular work of alleged 
 blasphemy — prepared, calculated, and intended by 
 the author to shake the religious principles of the 
 uneducated and the young, — has attempted to assail 
 the efforts of genius, and to bring into question the 
 relations, the uses, the tendencies of the divinest 
 faculties, I must not shrink from entreating you to 
 consider those bearings of the question which are 
 essential to its justice. And if you feel unable
 
 34 
 
 fully to examine them within the limits of a trial, 
 and in the atmosphere of a court of justice, yet if 
 you feel with me that they are necessary to a just 
 decision, you cannot doubt what your duty to the 
 defendant and to justice is, on a criminal charge ! 
 Pardon me, therefore, if I now seek to show you, by 
 a great example, how unjustly you would deal with 
 so vast and so divine a thing as the imagination of a 
 poet, if you were to take his isolated passages which 
 may seem to deal too boldly with sacred things, and 
 — without regard to the process of the faculty by 
 which they are educed — to brand them as the effu- 
 sions of a blasphemous mind, or as tending to evil 
 issues. That example will also show you how a 
 poet — devoting the noblest powers to the loftiest 
 themes — when he ventures to grapple with the 
 spiritual existences revealed by the Christian faith, in 
 the very purpose of vindicating " the ways of God to 
 men," may seem to incur a charge like the present, 
 and with as much justice, and may be absolved from 
 it only by nice regard to the tendencies of the divine 
 faculty he exerts. I speak not of a "marvellous 
 boy," as Shelley was at eighteen, but of Milton, in 
 the maturity of his powers, when he brought all the 
 " spoils of time," and the clustered beauty hoarded 
 through a long life, to the deliberate construction of 
 a work which should never die. His case is the
 
 35 
 
 converse of that of Shelley — he begins from an 
 opposite point ; he falls into an opposite error ; but 
 he expatiates in language and imagery out of which 
 Mr. Hetherington might shape a charge as specious 
 as that which he has given you to decide. Shelley 
 fancies himself irreligious, and everywhere falters 
 or trembles into piety ; Milton, believing himself 
 engaged in a most pious work, is led by the ten- 
 dencies of his imagination to individualise — to adorn 
 — to enthrone — the Enemy of God ; and to invest his 
 struggles against Omnipotence with all the nobleness 
 of a patriotic resistance to tyranny, and his suffering 
 from Almighty justice with the graces of fortitude. 
 Let it not be urged that the language which his 
 Satan utters is merely to be regarded with reference 
 to dramatic proprieties — it is attributed to the being 
 in whom the interest of his poem centres ; and on 
 whom admiration and sympathy attend as on a suf- 
 ferer in the eternal struggle of right against power. 
 Omnipotence becomes tyranny in the poet's vision, 
 and resistance to its requisitions appears the more ge- 
 nerous even because hopelessly vain. Before I advert 
 to that language, and ask you to compare it with the 
 expressions selected for prosecution, let me call to 
 your recollection the grandeurs — nay, the luxuries of 
 thought with which the " Lost Archangel " is sur- 
 rounded ; — the magic by which even out of the mate-
 
 36 
 
 rials of torture dusky magnificence is created in his 
 place of exile, beyond " the wealth of Ormus and of 
 Ind ;" and the faded glory and unconquerable spirit 
 attributed to those rebel legions who still sustain him 
 in opposition to the Most High. Observe the hosts, 
 still angelic, as they march at his bidding ! — 
 
 Anon they move 
 In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood 
 Of flutes and soft recorders ; such as raised 
 To height of noblest temper heroes old 
 Arming to battle : and, instead of rage, 
 Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved 
 "With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat ; 
 Nor wanting power to mitigate and 'suage 
 With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase 
 Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, 
 From mortal or immortal minds. 
 
 Whether we listen to those who — 
 
 More mild, 
 Retreated in a silent valley, sing, 
 With notes angelical, to many a harp 
 Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall 
 By doom of battle — 
 
 or those with whom the moral philosopher sympa- 
 thises yet more — who 
 
 Sat on a hill retired, 
 In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high 
 Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
 Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute — 
 
 or expatiate over the muster-roll of their chiefs, 
 in which all the splendours of the East, the gigantic
 
 37 
 
 mysteries of Egypt, and the chastest forms of Grecian 
 
 beauty gleam on us — all reflect back the greatness of 
 
 Him who surveys them with " tears such as angels 
 
 weep." His very armour and accoutrements glisten 
 
 on us with a thousand beauties ! 
 
 His ponderous shield, 
 Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 
 Behind him cast ; the broad circumference 
 Hung on his shoulders like the moon 
 
 And not only like the moon as seen to the up- 
 turned gaze of ordinary men, but as associated with 
 Italian art, and discerned from places whose names 
 
 are music — 
 
 Like the moon whose orb 
 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 At evening from the top of Fesole, 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
 Rivers or mountains in, her spotty globe. 
 
 " His spear" is not only likened to a pine hewn 
 in the depth of mountain forests, but, as if the 
 sublimest references to nature were insufficient to 
 accumulate glories for the bearer, is consecrated by 
 allusions to the thousand storms and thousand thun- 
 ders which the mast of an imperial ship withstands. 
 
 His spear (to equal which the tallest pine 
 Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
 Of some great admiral, were but a wand) 
 He walkM with to support uneasy steps 
 Over the burning marie ; not like those steps 
 On Heaven's azure.
 
 38 
 
 Now having seen how the great Christian Poet has 
 
 lavished all the glories of his art on the attendant 
 
 hosts and personal investiture of the brave opponent 
 
 of Almighty Power, let us attend to the language in 
 
 which he addresses his comrade in enterprise and 
 
 suffering. 
 
 Into what pit thou seest, 
 
 From what height fallen — so much the stronger proved 
 
 He icith his thunder : and till then who knew 
 
 The force of those dire arms ? Yet not for those, 
 
 Nor what the potent Victor in his rage 
 
 Can else inflict, do I repent or change, 
 
 Though changed in outward lustre, that fix'd mind, 
 
 And high disdain from sense of injured merit, 
 
 That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, 
 
 And to the fierce contention brought along 
 
 Innumerable force of spirits arm'd, 
 
 That durst dislike His reign, and, me preferring, 
 
 His utmost power with adverse power opposed 
 
 In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, 
 
 And shook His throne ! 
 
 Such is the force of the poet's enthusiastic sym- 
 pathy with the speaker, that the reader almost thinks 
 Omnipotence doubtful ; or. if that is impossible, 
 admires the more the courage that can resist it ! 
 The chief proceeds — 
 
 What though the field be lost ? 
 All is not lost ; the unconquerable will, 
 And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
 And courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome ; 
 That glory never shall his wrath or might 
 Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
 
 39 
 
 With suppliant knee, and deify II is power, 
 Who from the terror of this arm so late 
 Doubted his empire ; that were low indeed, 
 That were an ignominy, and shame beneath 
 This downfall ! 
 
 This mighty representation of generous resistance, 
 of mind superior to fortune ; of resolution nobler than 
 the conquest ; concludes by proclaiming " eternal 
 war" against Him — 
 
 Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy, 
 Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven. 
 
 Surely, but for the exquisite grace of the language 
 compared with the baldness of Shelley's, T might pa- 
 rallel from this speech all that the indictment charges 
 about " an Almighty Fiend," and " Tyrannous 
 Omnipotence." Listen again to the more composed 
 determination and sedate self-reliance of the arch- 
 angelic sufferer ! 
 
 " Is this the region ? this the soil, the clime ? " 
 
 Said then the lost archangel, " this the seat 
 
 That we must change for heaven ? this mournful gloom 
 
 For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he, 
 
 Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid 
 
 What shall be right ; farthest from him is best, 
 
 Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme 
 
 Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 
 
 Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrors, hail ! 
 
 Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell, 
 
 Receive thy new possessor ; one who brings 
 
 A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
 
 The mind is its own place, and in itself
 
 40 
 
 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 
 What matter where, if I be still the same? 
 And what I should be, all but less than he 
 Whom thunder hath made greater. Here at lea9t 
 We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built 
 Here for his envy, will not drive us hence ; 
 Here we may reign secure, and in my choice 
 To reign is worth ambition, though in hell ; 
 Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven ! " 
 
 I might multiply passages of the same kind ; but 
 I dare only allude to the proposition made of assault- 
 ing the throne of God " with Tartarean sulphur and 
 strange fire, his own invented torments ; " and to the 
 address of Satan to the newly-created sun, in which 
 he actually curses the love of God. Suppose that last 
 passage introduced into this indictment— suppose that 
 instead of the unintelligible lines beginning " They 
 have three words, God, Hell, and Heaven" we had 
 these — "Be then His love accursed" with the innu- 
 endo, " Thereby meaning the love of Almighty God" 
 how would you deal with the charge ? How ! but by 
 looking at the object of the great poem of which those 
 words are part ; by observing how the poet, incapable 
 of resting in a mere abstraction, had been led insen- 
 sibly to clothe it from the armoury of virtue and 
 grandeur ; by showing that although the names of the 
 Almighty and of Satan were retained, in truth other 
 ideas had usurped those names, as the theme itself 
 had eluded even Milton's grasp ! I will not ask you
 
 41 
 
 whether you agree with me in the defence which might 
 be made for Milton ; but I will ask, do you not feel 
 with me that these are matters for another tribunal ? 
 Do you not feel with me that except that the boldness 
 of Milton's thoughts come softened to the ears by 
 the exquisite beauty of Milton's language, I may 
 find parallels in the passages I have quoted from the 
 Paradise Lost, for those selected for prosecution from 
 Queen Mab ? Do you not feel with me that, as 
 without a knowledge of the Paradise Lost, you could 
 not absolve the publisher of Milton from the prose- 
 cution of " some mute inglorious " Hetherington ; 
 so neither can you, dare you, convict Mr. Moxon of 
 a libel on God and Religion, in publishing the works 
 of Shelley, without having read and studied them all ? 
 If rashly you assail the mighty masters of thought and 
 fantasy, you will, indeed, assail them in vain, for the 
 purpose of suppression, though not for the purpose 
 of torture ; all you can do is to make them suffer, as 
 being human, they are liable to corporal suffering ; 
 but, like the wounded spirits in Milton, " they will 
 soon close," "confounded, though immortal!" 
 
 If, however, these are considerations affecting the 
 exercise of human genius on themes beyond its 
 grasp, which we cannot discuss in this place, however 
 essential to the decision of the charge, there is one 
 plain position which I will venture to assert : that
 
 42 
 
 the poetry which pretends to a denial of God or of 
 an immortal life, must contain its own refutation 
 in itself, and sustain what it would deny ! A Poet, 
 though never one of the highest order, may " link 
 vice to a radiant angel ; " he may diffuse luxurious 
 indifference to virtue and to truth ; but he cannot 
 inculcate atheism. Let him strive to do it, and 
 like Baalam, who came to curse, like him he must 
 end in blessing ! His art convicts him ; for it is 
 " Eternity revealing itself in Time ! " His fancies 
 may be wayward, his theories absurd, but they will 
 prove, no less in their failure than in their success, 
 the divinity of their origin, and the inadequacy of 
 this world to give scope to his impulses. They are 
 the beatings of the soul against the bars of its clay 
 tenement, which though they may ruffle and sadden 
 it, prove that it is winged for a diviner sphere ! 
 Young has said, " An undevout astronomer is 
 mad ; " how much more truly might he have said, an 
 atheist poet is a contradiction in terms ! Let the 
 poet take what range of associations he will — let him 
 adopt what notions he may — he cannot dissolve his 
 alliance with the Eternal. Let him strive to shut out 
 the vistas of the Future by encircling the Present with 
 images of exquisite beauty ; his own forms of ideal 
 grace will disappoint him with eternal looks, and 
 vindicate the immortality they were fashioned to veil!
 
 43 
 
 Let him rear temples, and consecrate them to fabled 
 divinities, they will indicate in their enduring beauty 
 " Temples not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens ! " If he celebrates the delights of social 
 intercourse, the festal reference to their fragility in- 
 cludes the sense of that which must endure ; for the 
 very sadness which tempers them speaks the longing 
 after that " which prompts the eternal sigh." If he 
 desires to bid the hearts of thousands beat as one 
 man at the touch of tragic passion, he must present 
 " the future in the instant," — show in the death- 
 grapple of contending emotions a strength which 
 death cannot destroy — vindicate the immortality of 
 affection at the moment when the warm passages 
 of life are closed against it ; and anticipate in the 
 virtue which dares to die, the power by which " mor- 
 tality shall be swallowed up of life ! " The world is 
 too narrow for us. Time is too short for man, — 
 and the poet only feels the sphere more inadequate, 
 and pants for the " all-hail hereafter," with more 
 urgent sense of weakness than his fellows : — 
 
 Too — too contracted are these walls of flesh, 
 
 This vital heat too cold ; these visual orbs, 
 
 Though inconceivably endow'd, too dim 
 
 For any passion of the soul which leads 
 
 To ecstasy, and all the frigid bonds 
 
 Of time and change disdaining, takes her range 
 
 Along the line of limitless desires !
 
 44 
 
 If this prosecution can succeed, on what principle 
 can the publishers of the great works of ancient 
 times, replete with the images of idolatrous faitL, and 
 with moralities only to be endured as historical, 
 escape a similar doom ? These are the works which 
 engage and reward the first labours of our English 
 youth, — which, in spite of the objections raised to 
 them, practically teach lessons of beauty and wis- 
 dom — the sense of antiquity — the admiration of 
 heroic daring and suffering ; and refine and elevate 
 their lives. It was destined in the education of the 
 human race, that imperfect and faint suggestions 
 of truth, combined with exquisite perceptions of 
 beauty, should in a few teeming years give birth to 
 images of grace which, untouched by time, people 
 the retreats which are sought by youthful toil, and 
 make learning lovely. Why shall not these be 
 brought, with the poetry of Shelley, within the range 
 of criminal jurisdiction ? Because, with all their 
 beauty, they do not belong to the passions of the present 
 time, — because they hold their dominion apart from 
 the realities which form the business of life, — because 
 they are presented to the mind as creations of another 
 sphere, to be admired, not believed. And yet, with- 
 out prosecution — without offence — one of the greatest 
 and purest of our English poets, wearied with the 
 selfishness which he saw pervading a Christian
 
 45 
 
 nation, has dared an ejaculating wish for the return 
 of those old palpable shapes of divinity, when he 
 c-xcl-°\med, 
 
 Great God ! I'd rather be 
 A Paean suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on some pleasant lee, 
 Have glimpses which may make me less forlorn, 
 Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn ! 
 
 And the fantasies of Queen Mab, if not so com- 
 pact of imagination, are as harmless now as those 
 forms of Grecian deities which Wordsworth thus 
 invokes ! Pure — passionless — they were while their 
 author lived ; they have grown classic by that touch 
 of death which stopped the generous heart and 
 teeming fancy of their fated author. They have no 
 more influence on living opinion, than that world of 
 beauty to which Shelley adverts, when he exclaims 
 in " Hellas," 
 
 But Greece and her foundations are 
 Built below the tide of war, 
 Based on the crystalline sea 
 Of thought and its eternity. 
 
 Having considered this charge chiefly as affecting 
 poetry, I must not forget that the last passage 
 selected by the Prosecutor is in prose, culled from 
 the essay which was appended to the poem of " Queen 
 Mab," disclaimed by the editor — disclamed by Shelley 
 long before he reached the prime of manhood — but 
 
 D
 
 46' 
 
 rightly preserved, shocking as it is in itself, as essen- 
 tial to the just contemplation of his moral and 
 intellectual nature. They form the dark ground of 
 a picture of surpassing interest to the philosopher. 
 There shall you see a poet whose fancies are most 
 ethereal, struggling with a theory gross, material, 
 shallow — imaging the great struggle by which the 
 Spirit of the Eternal seeks to subdue the material 
 world to its uses. His genius was pent up 
 within the hard and bitter rind of his philosophy, 
 as Ariel was in the rift of the cloven pine ; and 
 what wonder if a Spirit thus enthralled should send 
 forth strange and discordant cries ? Because the 
 words which those strange voices syllabled are 
 recorded here, will you say the record is a crime ? 
 I recollect in the speech of that great ornament of 
 our profession, Mr. Erskine, an illustration of the 
 injustice of selecting part of a conversation or of a 
 book, and because singly considered it is shocking, 
 charging a criminal intent on the utterer or the 
 publisher ; which, if, at first, it may not seem 
 applicable to this case, will be found essentially to 
 govern it. He refers to the passage in the Bible, 
 " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" 
 and shows how the publisher of the Book of God 
 itself might be charged with atheism, by the inser- 
 tion only of the latter division of the sentence. It is
 
 47 
 
 not surely by the division of a sentence only that the 
 context may be judged ; but by the general intent of 
 him who publishes what is in itself offensive, for the 
 purpose of curious record — of controversy — of evidence 
 — of example. The publisher of Shelley has not indeed 
 said " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no 
 God ; M but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to 
 say with his lips " There is no God," but his genius 
 and his heart belie his words ! What indeed does the 
 publisher of Shelley's works virtually say, w 7 here he 
 thus presents to his readers this record of the poet's 
 life and death ? He says — Behold ! Here is a 
 spectacle which angels may admire and w^eep over ! 
 Here is a poet of fancy the most ethereal — feelings 
 the most devout — charity the most Christian — 
 enthralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and 
 debasing ! Here is a youth endowed with that 
 sensibility to the beautiful and the grand which 
 peoples his minutes with the perceptions of years — 
 who, with a spirit of self-sacrifice which the eldest 
 Christianity might exult in if found in one of its 
 martyrs, is ready to lay down that intellectual being 
 — to be lost in loss itself — if by annihilation he 
 could multiply the enjoyments and hasten the pro- 
 gress of his species — and yet, with strange wilfulness, 
 rejecting that religion in form to which in essence he 
 is imperishably allied ! Observe these radiant fancies 
 
 d 2
 
 48 
 
 — pure and cold as frostwork — how would they be 
 kindled by the warmth of Christian love ! Track 
 those " thoughts that wander through eternity," 
 and think how they would repose in their proper 
 home ! And trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem 
 after poem — year after year, month after month 
 — how shall you see the icy fetters which encircle his 
 genius gradually dissolve ; the wreaths of mist ascend 
 from his path ; and the distance spread out before 
 him peopled with human affections, and skirted by 
 angel wings ! See how this seeming atheist begins to 
 adore — how the divine image of suffering and love 
 presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to be seen 
 — and in its contemplation the softened, not yet 
 convinced poet exclaims, in his Prometheus, of the 
 followers of Christ — 
 
 The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, 
 Whom thy slaves hate — for being like to thee ! 
 
 And thus he proceeds — with light shining more 
 and more towards the perfect day — which he was 
 not permitted to realise in this world. As you 
 trace this progress, alas ! Death veils it — veils it, not 
 stops it — and this perturbed, imperfect, but glorious 
 being is hidden from us — " Till the sea shall give up 
 its dead !" What say you now to the book which exhi- 
 bits this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe? 
 Is it a libel on religion and God ? Talk of proofs of
 
 49 
 
 Divine existence in the wonders of the material 
 universe, there is nothing in any — nor in all — com- 
 pared to the proof which this indicted volume con- 
 veys ! What can the telescope disclose of worlds 
 and suns and systems in the heavens above us, or the 
 microscope detect in the descending scale of various 
 life, endowed with a speech and a language like that 
 with which Shelley, being dead, here speaks ? Not 
 even do the most serene productions of poets, whose 
 faculties in this world have attained comparative har- 
 mony — strongly as they plead for the immortality of 
 the mind which produced them — afford so unanswer- 
 able a proof of a life to come, as the mighty embryo 
 which this book exhibits ; — as the course, the frailty, 
 the imperfection, with the dark curtain dropped on 
 all ! It is, indeed, when best surveyed, but the infancy 
 of an eternal being ; an infancy wayward but gigantic ; 
 an infancy which we shall never fully understand, 
 till we behold its development " when time shall be 
 no more" — when doubt shall be dissolved in vision — 
 " when this corruptible shall have have put on incor- 
 ruption, and when this mortal shall have put on 
 immortality !" 
 
 Let me, before I sit down, entreat you to ask your- 
 selves where the course of prosecution will stop if you 
 crown with success Mr. Hetherington's revenge. 
 Revenge, did I say? I recal the word. Revenge
 
 50 
 
 means the returning of injury for injury — an emotion 
 most unwise and unchristian, but still human ; — the 
 satisfaction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice che- 
 rished by a heart which judges bitterly in its own cause. 
 But this attempt to retaliate on one who is a stranger 
 to the evil suffered — this infliction of misery for doing 
 that which the Prosecutor has maintained within these 
 works the right of all men to do — has no claim to 
 the savage plea of wild justice ; but is poor, cruel, 
 paltry injustice ; as bare of excuse as ever tyrant, 
 above or below the opinion of the wise and good, 
 ever ventured to threaten. Admit its power in this 
 case — grant its right to select for the punishment 
 of blasphemy the exhibition of an anomaly as harm- 
 less as the stuffed aspic in a museum, or as its image 
 on the passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatra — 
 and what ancient, what modern history, shall be 
 lent unchallenged to our friends ? If the thousand 
 booksellers who sell the " Paradise Lost " — from the 
 greatest publisher in London or Edinburgh down to 
 the proprietor of the little book-stall, where the 
 poor wayfarer snatches a hasty glance at the gran- 
 deur and beauty of the poet, and goes on his way 
 refreshed — may hope that genius will render to the 
 name of Milton what they deny to that of Shelley ; 
 what can they who sell " The History of the Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire" hope from the
 
 51 
 
 Prosecutor of " Queen Mab ? " In that work arc 
 two celebrated chapters, sparkling with all the mere- 
 tricious felicities of epigrammatic style, which, full 
 of polished sarcasm against infant Christianity, are 
 elaborately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs 
 and Confessors with bitterest scorn — two chapters 
 which, if published at a penny each, would do more 
 mischief than thousands of metaphysical poems ; but 
 which, retained in their appropriate place, to be 
 sought only by the readers of history, may serve the 
 cause of truth by proving the poverty of the spite by 
 which it has been assailed, and find ample counter- 
 poise in the sequel. The possibility that this his- 
 tory should be suppressed by some descendant of 
 Gibbon, who might extravagantly suppose it his 
 duty to stifle cold and crafty sneers aimed at the first 
 followers of Christ, was urged — and urged with suc- 
 cess — against me when I pleaded for the right of 
 those descendants to the fruits of the labours of their 
 ancestor ; yet, if you sanction this attempt, any 
 Hetherington may compel by law that suppression 
 the remote possibility of which has been accepted as 
 a reason for denying to the posterity of the author a 
 property in the work he has created ! This work, 
 invested with the peculiar interest which belongs to 
 the picture of waning greatness, lias recently been 
 printed in a cheap form, under the sanction of a
 
 52 
 
 dignitary of the Established Church — a Christian 
 Poet of the noblest aim — whose early genius was the 
 pride of our fairest university, and who is now the 
 honoured Minister of the very parish in which we 
 are assembled. If I were now defending Mr. Mil- 
 man, of whose friendship I am justly proud, for this 
 last and cheapest and best edition of Gibbon, I could 
 only resort to the arguments I am now urging for 
 Mr. Moxon, and claim the benefit of the same 
 distinction between the tendency of a book adapted 
 to the promotion of infidelity, and one which, con- 
 taining incidental matter of offence, is commended 
 to the student with those silent guards which its 
 form and accompaniments supply. True it is that 
 Mr. Milman has accompanied the text with notes in 
 which he sometimes explains or counteracts the insi- 
 nuations of the author ; but what Notes can be so 
 effectual as that which follows " Queen Mab " — in 
 which Shelley's own letter is set forth, stating, on 
 his authority, that the work was immature, and that 
 he did not intend it for the general eye ? Is not 
 the publication of this letter by the publisher as 
 decisive of his motive — not to commend the wild 
 fancies and stormy words of . the young poet to the 
 reader's approval, but to give them as part of his 
 biography, — as the notes of Mr. Milman are of that 
 which no one doubts, his desire to make the perusal
 
 53 
 
 of Gibbon healthful ? Prosper this attempt, and 
 what a field of speculative prosecution will open 
 before us ! Every publisher of the works of Rous- 
 seau, of Voltaire, of Volney, of Hume — of the Clas- 
 sics and of their Translations — works regarded as 
 innoxious, because presented in a certain aspect and 
 offered to a certain class, will become liable to every 
 publisher of penny blasphemy who may suffer or 
 hate or fear the law ; — nor of such only, but of every 
 small attorney in search of practice, who may find in 
 the machinery of the Crown-office the facilities of ex- 
 tortion. Nor will the unjust principle you are asked 
 to sanction stop with retaliation in the case of alleged 
 blasphemy — the retailer of cheap lasciviousness, if 
 checked in his wicked trade, will have Ms revenge 
 against the works of the mighty dead in which some 
 tinge of mortal stain may unfortunately be detected. 
 The printer of one of those penny atrocities which 
 are thrust into the hands of ingenuous youths 
 when bound on duty or innocent pleasure, the 
 emissaries of which — children often themselves — 
 mount the chariot and board the steamboat to scatter 
 that poison which may infect the soul as long as 
 the soul shall endure — ^whom, to do this Prosecutor 
 justice, I know he disclaims — may obtain true 
 bills of indictment against any man who has sold
 
 54 
 
 Horace, or Virgil, or Lucretius, or Ovid, or Juvenal 
 — against all who have sold a copy of any of our 
 old dramatists — and thus not only Congreve, and Far- 
 quhar, and Wycherley, but Fletcher, and Massinger, 
 and Ford, and Webster, and Ben Jonson ; nay, with 
 reverence be it spoken, even Shakspeare, though 
 ever pure in essence, may be placed at the mercy 
 of an insect abuser of the press — unless juries have 
 the courage and the virtue to recognise the distinction 
 between a man who publishes works which are infidel 
 or impure, because they are infidel or impure, and 
 publishes them in a form and at a price which indi- 
 cate the desire that they should work out mischief, 
 and one who publishes works in which evil of the 
 same kind may be found, but who publishes them 
 because, in spite of that imperfection, they are on the 
 whole for the edification and delight of mankind ; — 
 between one who tenders the mischief for approba- 
 tion, and one who exposes it for example. And are 
 you prepared to succumb to this new censorship ? 
 Will you allow Mr. Hetherington to prescribe what 
 leaves you shall tear from the classic volumes in your 
 libraries? Shall he dictate to you how much of 
 Lord Byron — a writer far more influential than 
 Shelley — you shall be allowed to lend to your friends 
 without fear of his censure ? Shall he drag into
 
 55 
 
 Court the vast productions of the German mind, and 
 ask juries to decide whether the translator of Goethe, 
 Schiller, Wieland, and Lessing — dealing with sacred 
 things with a boldness to which we are unused — are 
 guilty of crime ? Shall he call for judgment on that 
 stupendous work, the " Faust," with its prologue in 
 Heaven, which has been presented by my friend Mr. 
 Hayward, whose able assistance I have to-day, with 
 happy vividness to English readers — and ask a jury 
 to take it in their hand, and at an hour's glance to 
 decide whether it is a libel on God, or a hymn by 
 Genius to His praise ? Do you not feel those matters 
 are for other seasons — for another sphere ? — If so, will 
 you, in the dark — without knowledge — without 
 evidence — sanction a prosecution which will, in its 
 result, impose new and strange tasks on juries who 
 may decide on other trials ; which may destroy the 
 just allowance accorded to learning even under abso- 
 lute monarchies ; and place every man who hereafter 
 shall print, or sell, or give, or lend, any one of a 
 thousand volumes sanctioned by ages, at the mercy 
 of any Prosecutor who for malice — for gain — or 
 mere mischief, may choose to denounce him as a 
 blasphemer ? 
 
 And now, I commend into your hands the cause 
 of the defendant, — the cause of Genius, — the cause
 
 56 
 
 of Learning,— the cause of History,— the cause of 
 Thought. I have not sought to maintain it by 
 assailing the law as it has been expounded by courts, 
 and administered by juries ; which, if altered, should 
 be changed by the authority of the Legislature, and 
 neither by the violation of oaths, nor by the machi- 
 nery which the Prosecutor has employed to render it 
 odious at the cost of those whom he himself contends 
 to be guiltless ; but I have striven to convince you, 
 that by a just application of that law, you may 
 hold this publication of the Works of Shelley to be 
 no crime. It has been fairly conceded that Mr. 
 Moxon is a most respectable publisher ; one who has 
 done good service to the cause of poetry and wisdom; 
 and one who could not intentionally publish a blas- 
 phemous work, without treason to all the associations 
 which honour his life. Beginning his career under 
 the auspices of Rogers, the eldest of a great age of 
 poets, and blessed with the continued support of that 
 excellent person, who never broke by one unworthy 
 line the charm of moral grace which pervades his 
 works, he has been associated with Lamb, whose 
 kindness embraced all sects, all parties, all classes, 
 and whose genius shed new and pleasant lights on 
 daily life ; with Southey, the pure and childlike in 
 heart ; with Coleridge, in the light of whose Chris-
 
 57 
 
 tian Philosophy these indicted poems would assume 
 their true character as mournful, yet salutary speci- 
 mens of power developed imperfectly in this world ; 
 and with Wordsworth, whose works so long neglected 
 or scorned, but so long silently nurturing tastes for 
 the lofty and the pure, it has been Mr. Moxon's 
 privilege to diffuse largely throughout this and other 
 lands, and with them the sympathies which link the 
 human heart to nature and to God, and all classes of 
 mankind to each other ! Reject then, in your justice, 
 the charge which imputes to such a man, that by 
 publishing this book, he has been guilty of blasphemy 
 against the God whom he reveres ! Refuse to set 
 the fatal precedent, which will not only draw the 
 fame of the illustrious dead into question before 
 juries, without time to investigate their merits ; 
 which may not only harass the first publishers of 
 these works ; but which will beset the course of 
 every bookseller, every librarian, throughout the 
 country, with perpetual snares, and make our Crimi- 
 nal Courts the arenas for a savage warfare of literary 
 prosecutions ! Protect our noble Literature from 
 the alternative of being either corrupted or enslaved ! 
 Terminate those anxieties which this charge so 
 unprovoked — so undeserved — has now for months 
 inflicted on the defendant, and his friends, by that
 
 58 
 
 verdict of Not Guilty, which will disappoint only 
 those who desire that cheap blasphemy should have 
 free course ; which the noblest and purest, and most 
 pious of your own generation will rejoice in; and 
 for which their posterity will honour and bless you ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON : 
 DIUDRHKY AND F.VANS, HUNTERS, W^ITKFRIARS.
 
 UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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