Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Which mortals truth and reason deem,

  But IS revenge and fear and pride.

  Joyous he was; and hope and peace

  On all who heard him did abide,

  Raining like dew from his sweet talk,

  As where the evening star may walk

  Along the brink of the gloomy seas,

  Liquid mists of splendour quiver.

  His very gestures touch’d to tears

  The unpersuaded tyrant, never

  So moved before: his presence stung

  The torturers with their victim’s pain,

  And none knew how; and through their ears,

  The subtle witchcraft of his tongue

  Unlocked the hearts of those who keep

  Gold, the world’s bond of slavery.

  Men wondered, and some sneer’d to see

  One sow what he could never reap:

  For he is rich, they said, and young,

  And might drink from the depths of luxury.

  If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown’d

  The champion of a trampled creed:

  If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned

  ‘Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed

  Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,

  Those who would sit near Power must toil;

  And such, there sitting, all may see.

  During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a frequent visitor at Leigh Hunt’s Hampstead house, where he made acquaintance with Keats, and the brothers Smith, authors of “Rejected Addresses”. Hunt’s recollections supply some interesting details, which, since Hogg and Peacock fail us at this period, may be profitably used. Describing the manner of his life at Marlow, Hunt writes as follows: “He rose early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open) again walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o’clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job.” Mrs. Shelley, in her note on the “Revolt of Islam”, confirms this account of his Bible studies; and indeed the influence of the Old Testament upon his style may be traced in several of his poems. In the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt gives a just notion of his relation to Christianity, pointing out that he drew a distinction between the Pauline presentation of the Christian creeds, and the spirit of the Gospels. “His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes on that point.” We have only to read Shelley’s “Essay on Christianity”, in order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. That work, brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant contributions to a sound theology, and is morally far in advance of the opinions expressed by many who regard themselves as specially qualified to speak on the subject. It is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaeval phase, and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more and more approximate to Shelley’s exposition. Here and here only is a vital faith, adapted to the conditions of modern thought, indestructible because essential, and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of divers quality. It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all men a clear insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed; but it was precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him to discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to its Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relinquish what is permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the inevitable conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubitably valuable. His fierce tirades against historic Christianity must be taken as directed against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and superstition, which in his opinion had retarded the growth of free institutions, and fettered the human intellect. Like Campanella, he distinguished between Christ, who sealed the gospel of charity with his blood, and those Christians, who would be the first to crucify their Lord if he returned to earth.

  That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved. To help the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple duty, which he cheerfully discharged. “His charity, though liberal, was not weak. He inquired personally into the circumstances of his petitioners, visited the sick in their beds,....and kept a regular list of industrious poor, whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts.” At Marlow, the miserable condition of the lace-makers called forth all his energies; and Mrs. Shelley tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which he twice suffered, was contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story told by Leigh Hunt about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and carrying her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man as charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ’s parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so-called poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was always open to his friends. Peacock received from him an annual allowance of 100 pounds. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400 pounds; and he discharged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 6000 pounds. In his pamphlet on “Putting Reform to the Vote”, he offered to subscribe 100 pounds for the purpose of founding an association; and we have already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription with a sum of 500 pounds. These instances of his generosity might be easily multiplied; and when we remember that his present income was 1000 pounds, out of which 200 pounds went to the support of his children, it will be understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, but also that he was in frequent money difficulties through the necessity of raising funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in all minor matters of expenditure was conspicuous. Without a murmur, without ostentation, this heir of the richest baronet in Sussex illustrated by his own conduct those principles of democratic simplicity and of fraternal charity which formed his political and social creed.

  A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a careless sentence of Leigh Hunt’s. “He used to sit in a study adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the celestial Venus.” Fancy Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of “Laon and Cythna”, between the Apollo of the Belvedere and Venus de’ Medici, life-sized, and as crude as casts by Shout could make them! In this house, Miss Clairmont, with her brother and Allegra, lived as Shelley’s guests; and here Clara Shelley was born on the 3rd of September, 1817. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered from a severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor might lay his vulture’s talons on the children of his second marriage, were the motives which induced him to leave England for Italy in the spring of 1818. (See Note on Poems of 1819, and compare the lyric “The billows on the beach.”) He never returned. Four years only of life were left to him — years filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts.

  It was on the 11th of March that the Shelleys took their departure with Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to Milan, and after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and Rome, they settled early in the following December at Naples. Shelley’s letters to Peacock form the invaluable record of this period of his existence. Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of descriptive prose in the English language; never over-charged with colour, vibrating with emotions excited by the stimulating scenes of Italy, frank in their criticism, and exquisitely delicate in observation. Their transparent sincerity and unpremeditated g
race, combined with natural finish of expression, make them masterpieces of a style at once familiar and elevated. That Shelley’s sensibility to art was not so highly cultivated as his feeling for nature, is clear enough in many passages: but there is no trace of admiring to order in his comments upon pictures or statues. Familiarity with the great works of antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the people made him modify his views about their character. Meanwhile, the spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous critic’s verdict is the acme of good taste. If there were space for a long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, 1819). As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818: —

  “The handwriting 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.”

  In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at midnight in a thunderstorm. “Julian and Maddalo” was the literary fruit of this excursion — a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti as the most perfect specimen in our language of the “poetical treatment of ordinary things.” The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, ranks among Shelley’s finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of Byron’s life is interesting on a lower level. Here is the picture of the sunset and the island of San Lazzaro: —

  Oh!

  How beautiful is sunset, when the glow

  Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,

  Thou paradise of exiles, Italy,

  Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers

  Of cities they encircle! — it was ours

  To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,

  Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men

  Were waiting for us with the gondola.

  As those who pause on some delightful way,

  Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood

  Looking upon the evening, and the flood

  Which lay between the city and the shore,

  Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar

  And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared,

  Thro’ mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared

  Between the east and west; and half the sky

  Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,

  Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew

  Down the steep west into a wondrous hue

  Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent

  Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent

  Among the many-folded hills. They were

  Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,

  As seem from Lido through the harbour piles,

  The likeness of a clump of peaked isles —

  And then, as if the earth and sea had been

  Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen

  Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,

  Around the vaporous sun, from which there came

  The inmost purple spirit of light, and made

  Their very peaks transparent. “Ere it fade,”

  Said my companion, “I will show you soon

  A better station.” So o’er the lagune

  We glided; and from that funereal bark

  I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark

  How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,

  Its temples and its palaces did seem

  Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

  I was about to speak, when—”We are even

  Now at the point I meant,” said Maddalo,

  And bade the gondolieri cease to row.

  “Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well

  If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.”

  I looked, and saw between us and the sun

  A building on an island, such a one

  As age to age might add, for uses vile, —

  A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile;

  And on the top an open tower, where hung

  A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung, —

  We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue:

  The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled

  In strong and black relief—”What we behold

  Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,” —

  Said Maddalo; “and ever at this hour,

  Those who may cross the water hear that bell,

  Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,

  To vespers.”

  It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar quotations from Shelley’s poems occurs in “Julian and Maddalo”: —

  Most wretched men

  Are cradled into poetry by wrong:

  They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

  Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here “Prometheus Unbound” was begun, and the “Lines written among the Euganean Hills” were composed; and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their passport; but Shelley’s irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice — only in time, however, for the child to die.

  Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. Mrs. Shelley attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account for the poet’s melancholy. He says that so far back as the year 1816, on the night before his departure from London, “a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connexions,” came to him, avowed the passionate love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly together. (Medwin’s Life of Shelley, volume 1 324. His date, 1814, appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they parted. She followed him, however, from place to place; and without intruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remaining near him. Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died. The web of Shelley’s life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own. Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny Imlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet has already been told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in Medwin’s story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorously tells us about Shelley’s attraction for women in London. At any rate, the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly be accounted for by the “constant and poignant physical sufferings” of which Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him. She was herself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing something from her, and we know from her own words in another place that his “fear to wound the feelings of others” often impelled him to keep his deepest sorrows to himself
. (Note on the Revolt of Islam.)

  All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace of consumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks of pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem to have been ascertained. At Naples he was under treatment for disease of the liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and it is certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied with the quality of the water he drank. He was, for instance, forced to eschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated his symptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitable residence. The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have been determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed with him. That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived with him at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was obtained by mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of the torment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, that even during the last months of his life we find him begging Trelawny to procure him prussic acid as a final and effectual remedy for all the ills that flesh is heir to. It may be added that mental application increased the mischief, for he told Leigh Hunt that the composition of “The Cenci” had cost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitably real, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease; and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley’s spasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continual over-taxing of his nervous system.

  Mrs. Shelley states that the change from England to Italy was in all respects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to refer the depression from which he occasionally suffered, to his solitary habits; and there are several passages in his own letters which connect his melancholy with solitude. It is obvious that when he found himself in the congenial company of Trelawny, Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, he was simply happy; and nothing could be further from the truth than to paint him as habitually sunk in gloom. On the contrary, we hear quite as much about his high spirits, his “Homeric laughter,” his playfulness with children, his readiness to join in the amusements of his chosen circle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his solitary broodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories over-cast his heaven. Byron, who had some right to express a judgment in such a matter, described him as the most companionable man under the age of thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shooting with his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romantic persons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The voice of a stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar with Shelley’s almost inconceivable quickness of perception, was enough to make him leave the house; and one of his prettiest poems is written on his mistaking his wife’s mention of the Aziola, a little owl common enough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dislike for intercourse with commonplace people was a source of some disagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further apart from Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable letter recently published by Mr. Garnett, he writes:—”I detest all society — almost all, at least — and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that is hateful and tiresome in it.” And again, speaking about his wife to Trelawny, he said:—”She can’t bear solitude, nor I society — the quick coupled with the dead.”