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 Cornell University Library 
 PR5431.M481913 
 
 The life of Percy Bysshe SJieS 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013549906 
 
The Life of Shelley 
 from Medwiii's revised copy. 
 
Oxford : Horace Hart 
 Printer to the University 
 
The Life of 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley 
 
 By Thomas Medwin 
 
 A New Edition printed from a copy copiously amended 
 
 and extended by the Author and left 
 
 unpublished at his death 
 
 With an Introduction and Commentary by 
 
 H. Buxton Forman, C.B. 
 
 Humphrey Milford 
 
 Oxford University Press 
 
 London Edinburgh New York Toronto 
 
 Melbourne Bombay 
 
 1913 
 5 
 
^.tS^'Sbio 
 
TO ALFRED WILLIAM FORMAN. 
 
 My deae Alfred, — My earliest recollections are of 
 digging on the sands at Teigmnoutli, between the sea 
 and those red cliffs now bastioned by Brunei's long sea- 
 wall, and of gathering wild convolvuluses at the foot of 
 the cliffs before the railway was there. I was Ijttle 
 more than a year and a half old then ; and my guide, 
 philosopher, and friend was my elder brother, you, some 
 three years and a half old. It has been a less joyful dig- 
 ging and flower-culling, on a shiftier and more uncertain 
 strand, this in which you have been helping me round 
 about the footings of Tom Medwin's Life of Shelley. 
 Still I have enjoyed it ; and I believe you have. I know, 
 at all events, that your learned and brotherly assistance 
 has been of great value to me ; and I am venturing, 
 without your leave, to make this confession publicly, 
 and to dedicate whatever is mine in the following pages 
 to you. 
 
 H.B. F. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ix 
 
 Introduction by the Editok . . . . 
 
 Medwin's Preface op 1847 . . .... 1 
 
 Sonnet from Herwegh translated by Medwin . . 5 
 
 Note by the Editor . ...... 6 
 
 THE LIFE .... 7 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 I. Early Letters of Shelley 447 
 
 II. Frankenstein : Shelley's Preface to the first edition . 456 
 
 Mary Shelley's Introduction to the editions of 1831 and 
 
 later 458 
 
 III. Chancery Papers relating to Shelley's Children by 
 
 Harriett 463 
 
 IV. An Annotated List of Books brought out by Medwin . 487 
 Index 507 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Portrait of Shelley : Photogravure by Henry Dixon & Son 
 
 from a drawing by Alfred Soord Frontispiece 
 
 Portrait op Med win : Photogravure by Emery Walker from 
 
 an oil-painting xxxii 
 
 Facsimile op Shelley's Autograph drapt of the Song 
 
 From the Arabic . . . . . . 350-1 
 
 Facsimile of a page op the Life of Shelley revised 
 
 in manuscript by i edwin ... , 504 
 

INTKODUCTION. 
 
 Medwin's Life of Shelley contains so much about 
 Medwin himself that a separate memoir of him would 
 be a superfluity in the -work -which is assuredly his best 
 title to remembrance. But there are a few points which 
 call for some further remark than the foot-notes afford. 
 To deny him the rank of a good biographer would be 
 mere platitude. He has none of the qualifications ; but 
 he had extraordinary opportunities of aggregating 
 material concerning two of the great poetic lights of 
 the nineteenth century ; and, although he obtained much 
 of that material in the spirit of a shifty adventurer, there 
 the data are for others to scrutinize and sift and employ 
 to the profit of Shelley and Byron students. Hence, 
 although Mr. Rowland Prothero repeats with pardon- 
 able gusto 1 the opinion which Scrope Berdmore Davies 
 attributed to Captain Hay — that Medwin was " a perfect 
 idiot," there is no more chance of eliminating him from 
 the story of Byron and Shelley than there is of effectively 
 cashiering Moore from Byronic service or disservice, 
 albeit Moore had genius of his own to back him while 
 Medwin had none. 
 
 Mere want of genius or even of biographic instinct or 
 any other conspicuous talent is not sufficient qualification 
 for the rdle of " perfect idiot " even among the brilliant 
 minor personages whose phantoms still haunt the figures 
 of Shelley and Byron. There is not one of Medwin's 
 
 ^ Byron's Letters and Journals, vi, 202. 
 ■f 
 
X INTEODDCTION. 
 
 works, it is true, that would have gained him any 
 permanent place in English literature, save for his 
 assiduity and perseverance in collecting unpublished 
 work and recording conversations and incidents which 
 cannot be ignored by critics and competent biographers 
 and editors. Even as a translator of -lEschylus his work 
 is moribund if not dead, though fifty years ago classical 
 scholars referred to him as if he were one of themselves. 
 If hereafter his six by no means contemptible transla- 
 tions are dug up and republished, it will not be because 
 they fail to be superfluous in ^schylean literature, but 
 because, having studied some of them with his august 
 cousin in Italy, Medwin may claim to have caught an 
 occasional whiff" of the aroma that hung round Shelley's 
 tdvd voce renderings, — may, with that portentous though 
 inexact memory of his, have preserved such whiffs for the 
 occasion that ultimately arose when he found a magazine 
 editor ready to print in extenso his versions of six 
 JEschylean tragedies.^ 
 
 Meanwhile Scrope Berdmore Davies the brilliant had 
 very properly gone below the horizon so long that his 
 resurrection in London in 1851 lends pathos to a page in 
 the Becollections of a Long Life ^ in which his intimate 
 friend and fellow traveller of thirty-five years earlier 
 (when John Cam Hobhouse) tells how he met a little 
 unrecognizable old man who, accosting him in the street, 
 had to recall himself to his once intimate friend's 
 memory as Scrope Davies, the associate of giants, the 
 ruined gambler, still forced to live abroad, still holding 
 his fellowship of King's College, Cambridge, but evidently 
 not long for this world either in England or elsewhere. 
 Ko ! Medwin, wanting brilliancy in every particular, 
 • On this subject see pp. 242-3 and 497-8 posi. 2 Vol. vi' p. 282. 
 
a certain Dluntness ot intellect incompatible with the 
 production of really high work. Although, to apply to 
 him a phrase which Edward Fitzgerald applied to him- 
 ,self, Medwin was " one of the most translatingest men 
 alive," he did not truly excel in that occupation ; although 
 he wrote much of what courtesy calls original verse, he 
 was no poet ; although he composed a three- volume 
 narrative of modern life,^ he cannot be called a novelist ; 
 although he had some appreciation of the great in art and 
 letters, he was not a critic ; and although he printed, and 
 revised, and rewrote once more, and revised yet again 
 Shelley's biography, the last verdict I have seen on 
 him is that his magnum opus, the 1847 Life, the one 
 known to his latest assailant, is "a bad book, full of 
 inaccuracies." ^ 
 
 Taking "full" in its colloquial sense, no one can 
 dispute the truth of this summary. The Life of Shelley, 
 unregenerate as Mr. Waterlow appears to know it, and 
 without a commentary, concerns specialists alone in this 
 twentieth century; but as it last left the author's octo- 
 genarian hands, and with such commentary as its 
 numerous faults and flaws necessitate, it can no more be 
 
 ^ This attempt attracted some at- mas season of 1842 is, however, be- 
 
 tention at the time. A first sketch yond question ; and it is to be 
 
 of Lady Singleton had appeared un- gathered that it was classified as to 
 
 der the title of The Sacrifice ; or, the some extent a novel with a purpose, 
 
 Cknmiry, Town, and the Continent, in viz. to inveigh against mercenary 
 
 Eraser's Magazine. There was very marriages ; and in that crusade 
 
 much less of it there than in the Medwin is said to have been sur- 
 
 three-volume novel ; but it is un- passed in The Mancemrring Mother 
 
 likely that any living being has and other works by contemporary 
 
 read it either in the numbers of writers. , 
 
 Fraser for November and December * Shelley by Sydmey Waterlow, M.A., 
 
 1837, or as subsequently increased contributed to Messrs. Jack's slx- 
 
 in bulk ; that it was received with penny series" The People's Boolcs," 
 
 respect by The Athenoeum as a con- 1913. 
 tribution to the fiction of the Christ- 
 
Xil INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ignored by serious students than the biographical con- 
 tributions of Mary Shelley, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, 
 Thomas Love Peacock, and Edward John Trelawny. 
 
 To Mary, to Hogg, and to Moore, Medwin owes a great 
 mass of his book, having freely plundered Mary's notes 
 and prefaces to her collections of Shelley's poetry and 
 prose, Hogg's inimitable articles in The New Monthly 
 Magazine, and Moore's editions of Byron. De Quincey's 
 articles in Tait's Magazine yielded him substantial 
 assistance ; and from his own books he naturally swept 
 together all he could make available. As to indicating 
 what is new and what old, what is his and what is 
 other people's, he may be called without fear of contra- 
 diction the champion defaulter. 
 
 There are folk who exaggerate the value of champion- 
 ship. Chatting of athletic championships at one of our 
 Shelley Society Meetings, the late Dr. Furnivall told me 
 he would rather be champion of anything than mediocre 
 as ^n exponent of anything else : 
 
 I recall 
 The sense of what he said, although I mar 
 The force of his expressions. 
 
 The position is an arguable one, and may be applied to 
 Medwin's. case. Last century produced a plethora of bad 
 books that were valuable and of fairly good books with 
 no lasting value. Medwin's distinction is that he left 
 two bad books which were and still are valuable ; but 
 whether the Byron Conversations and the Life of 
 Shelley should be called the two most valuable bad 
 books of the century or the two worst, valuable books of 
 the century is a hard point in casuistry. There is 
 a championship at stake, and I should dearly like to have 
 Furnivall's view of the case. 
 
unless we are to except Williams and Jane. There is one 
 unpleasant association from which he maybe discharged. 
 He is among those who have been suspected of supplying 
 Browning with an original for the man who did " once 
 see Shelley plain " in the beautiful little poem Memora- 
 bilia, with its allegorical quatrain — 
 
 I crossed a moor, with a name of its own 
 And a certain use in the world no doubt ; 
 
 Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 
 'Mid the blank miles round about : 
 
 but that moor, it seems, did not typify any one of the 
 known Shelley circle. 
 
 On the occasion of the Browning Centenary The Daily 
 News and Leader (13 May, 1912) gave a reminiscence of 
 Mr. "W. G. Kingsland, who had from Browning the state- 
 ment that the person alluded to was a stranger met by 
 the poet casually in a bookseller's shop, who, struck by 
 Browning's expression of countenance on hearing that the 
 man had been spoken to by Shelley, "burst into laughter." 
 Browning said to Mr. Kingsland — "I still vividly 
 remember how strangely the presence of a man who had 
 seen and spoken with Shelley aflPected me." It will be 
 a relief to many lovers of both poets to know that there is 
 no sneer in Memorabilia directed against any of those who 
 hung, usefully enough, to Shelley's skirt — as Medwin, or 
 Hogg, or even Trelawny, none of whom could have been 
 altogether persona grata to Browning^although he went 
 in 1844 to Leghorn to see Trelawny, to whom he carried 
 a letter of introduction.^ 
 
 ^ "Mr. Browning's main object," to speak with one who had known 
 
 records Mrs. Sutherland Orr in her Byron and heen the last to- see 
 
 Life and Letters of Robert Browning, Shelley alive ; but we only hear of 
 
 1891 (p. 137), " had been, naturally, the two poets that they formed in 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The fourth appendix to this voluma will show broadly, 
 to those who would know, how Medwin employed himself 
 in the calling of letters after his return from India as a 
 half-pay lieutenant of dragoons with the nominal rank of 
 Captain. He must have been industrious, and in his 
 slovenly fashion studious, never thoroughly mastering 
 anything, and especially never acquiring the grace to 
 avoid the offence of arrogant detraction from the merits 
 of others. 
 
 There is a disparaging allusion to two literary ladies at 
 page 319 which has puzzled many of those who have had 
 to consult the Life, and certainly puzzled me afresh as 
 the new edition passed under my hand. What did the 
 biographer mean by dragging in the " L.E.L.'s and Lady 
 Emmelines of the day" for comparison with Shelley in the 
 matter of poetic or platonic passions ? " L.E.L." should not 
 raise any difficulty whether under those her pen initials, 
 or under her maiden name of Letitia Elizabeth Land on or 
 her married name of Mrs. Maclean ; but who the Lady 
 Emmeline was to excite the ungallant Captain's spleen 
 was not easy to make out. I had never read anything by 
 any Lady Emmeline ; and English books of reference do 
 not record people by their Christian names. But I got a 
 clue from Mrs. Browning's Letters to R. H. Home,^ in one 
 of which that sweet lady and glorious poet and critic took 
 her correspondent to task for ignoring in A New Spirit of 
 the Age a " poor Lady E " whose poetical work had been 
 acknowledged some years earlier, to Home's disgust, by 
 
 part the subject of their conversa- did " once see Shelley plain." 
 
 tion." His strong impression of ' lettm of Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 
 
 the cool courageTrelawny displayed addressed to Richard Hmgist [sic for 
 
 under a painful operation carried Smry] Kmne, . . . London : Richard 
 
 on during the interview would of Bentley and Son, . . 1877 ' rtwo 
 
 itself disqualify Trelawny for the volumes]. ' 
 unsuitable position of the man who 
 
J-ietters tne Diank alter i*j is fiUed m manuscript to make 
 Emmeline ; and so reads the autograph letter. An article 
 in the Quarterly on Modern English Poetesses had 
 included the -works of Lady Emmeline Stuart "Wortley, 
 formerly Lady Emmeline Manners, an elder sister of 
 Lord John Manners who distinguished himself both in 
 literature and in politics before he succeeded in his old 
 age to the Dukedom of Rutland, While following up 
 that clue it occurred to me to consult the auction catalogue^ 
 of the Stainforth collection of poetry by women, a collection 
 reputed to have contained everything and anything in 
 verse published by English or American women up to 1866. 
 It is a thoroughly useful work of reference, like many 
 other sale catalogues issued by those eminent auctioneers 
 Sotheby, "Wilkinson, and Hodge. I always have it at hand ; 
 and this time I turned it over from lot 1 to lot 3076 ; and 
 it was not till I got to the 160th page that I found the 
 works of Lady Emmeline Stuart "Wortley duly catalogued 
 as lots 2951 to 2980. Her ladyship being the sole Lady 
 Emmeline named in the Stainforth catalogue, it would have 
 been absolutely safe to assume that here was the list of the 
 devoted lady's works which Medwin and Home both 
 treated with contumely ; and which Home's illustrious 
 correspondent pronounced worthy of more respect than 
 those of the Marchioness of Northampton, Miss Helen 
 Lowe, Mrs. Clive, and Sara Coleridge put together. 
 Medwin must, surely, have known the Quarterly article 
 and been aware of the writing of Miss Barrett as she 
 
 ' Catalogue of the Extraordinary Lib- Writers . . . which will he sold by 
 
 rary, unique of its Kind, formed by the Auction, by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson 
 
 late Rev. F. J. Stainforth, consisting and Hodge, . . . On Monday, the 1st of 
 
 entirely of Works of British and Ameri- July, 1S67, and Five following Days . . . 
 
 can Poetesses, and Female Dramatic 800. pp. iT+ 166. 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 then was in The AthencBum and other periodicals. He 
 presumably lotted her up with " the L.E.L.'s and Lady 
 Emmelines of the day "—to his shame ; for he never so 
 much as alludes to her anywhere else, though, by the by, 
 she was acquainted with his translation of Prometheus 
 Bound published the year before her own first version of 
 that tragedy. 
 
 It was to ^schylus that he devoted more time and 
 study than to any of the poets but Shelley and Byron. 
 In a certain limited sense he may be said to have had 
 ^schylus on the brain ; and yet he could classify the 
 best-known words of Archimedes as "from some Greek 
 dramatist — probably ^schylus " (page 99post), and could 
 furnish a still re ore comical case which we may call the 
 duck and drake case, at pp. 90 and 91. There we are told 
 about the "classical recreation" of making "ducks and 
 drakes " to which Shelley is said to have been addicted — 
 not the metaphorical game of wasting his money on 
 Med win and other unworthy objects of his princely 
 largesse, but the literal game of making stones skim along 
 the water and watching the number of bounds — pronounced 
 " classical " on the strength of " a fragment from some 
 comic drama of ^schylus." I have not been able to 
 verify the existence of such a fragment, whether of 
 ^schylus or of either of the other great Attic drama- 
 tists ; but my brother Alfred Forman calls my attention 
 to a pretty Latin description of the game in a dialogue 
 (Octavius) by Minucius Felix. It is a far cry from that 
 pre-TertuUian early Christian writer to "our ^schylus 
 the thundrous " ; but I dropped the enquiry at that point 
 as perhaps near enough for Medwin.' 
 
 r-! ^." ^J?f^'T.- ^^^^^'}'' -^'**'" *^« ^'^''^ Of the Oofavius is de- 
 Literature (,5th edition, 1906, p. 250) scribed, and the missiles used in 
 
Charles Oilier of his employment on this his magnum 
 opus, and of his need for any material with which 
 Shelley's publisher could furnish him, adding with 
 characteristic slovenliness of expression " I need not say 
 that I shall consider it a matter of course to make you 
 any proportionate remuneration I may receive for the 
 work." He mentions specially letters from Shelley, of 
 which he rightly supposed that Oilier had many, though 
 indisposed to let them out at that time. He deplores the 
 failure to preserve Shelley's letters to himself, which he 
 represents as covering years of their life, and says he 
 lent to Trelawny those written to him by Shelley in 
 Italy, but that he could never get back even these, and 
 did not at the time of his addressing Oilier so much as 
 know where Trelawny was. After Medwin's death some 
 of those letters were published in Trelawny's Records 
 (1878, ii. 28-42) more or less imperfectly. The old lion 
 had seen Medwin shortly before the gallant and always 
 impecunious Captain died ; and we may rest assured that 
 the matter of the borrowed letters was brought up and 
 squared. The sale of two of them by auction in Novem- 
 ber 1907 as the property of Mrs. Call (me'e Trelawny) 
 may doubtless be taken as evidence that the legatee of 
 Trelawny's treasures knew those letters were no longer 
 in the category of borrowed property, though it is very 
 improbable that the loan was a mere invention of 
 Medwin's. It is an easier story to accept than one told 
 in the same letter to Oilier clearly intended to inspire 
 him with confidence in Medwin's continuous intimacy 
 with Shelley during the college period of their lives. 
 
 the duck and drake playing speci- ammunition for the purpose ! 
 fied as "pieces of tile" — splendid 
 
XVlll INTEODUCTION. 
 
 The words employed, "were at Oxford at the same time," 
 are cunniiigly enough chosen, as any reader would under- 
 stand from them that the poet' and his biographer were 
 College contemporaries ; whereas in the Life no such state- 
 ment is ventured, though Medwin, when annexing Hogg's 
 description of Shelley's rooms, professes to have visited 
 his cousin at Oxford. Also, he tells how Shelley came to 
 him in London when expelled. The late Joseph Foster, 
 in his Alumni Oxonienses, does not help the lame phrase 
 "were at Oxford at the same time" over the stile. He 
 gives Medwin's matriculation when 17 years old under 
 the date December 2, 1805, and indicates in his usual 
 negative manner that the hopeful youth left without 
 taking a degree; whereas Shelley did not matriculate 
 till April 1810, and, commencing residence in the 
 Michaelmas term, almost certainly began his brief career 
 at Oxford after Medwin had left College. I wish I could 
 feel assured that there was nothing much more discredit- 
 able than this bit of mystification in the biographer's 
 appro^rches to those likeliest to have materials at command. 
 Among these was Mary Shelley, whose unpublished reply 
 to his application (mentioned in the Appendix, p. 504) 
 is of considerable interest : — 
 
 Dear Captain Medwin 
 
 Tour letter has surprised and pained me — I had no idea that you 
 contemplated the work you mention. 
 
 As you remark I had said, the time has not yet come to recount the 
 events of my husband's life. I have done all that can be done with 
 propriety at present. I vindicated the memory of my Shelley and 
 spoke of him as he was— an angel among his fellow mortals — lifted 
 far above this world — a celestial spirit given and taken away, for we 
 were none of us worthy of him — and his works are an immortal testa- 
 ment giving his name to posterity in a way more worthy of him than 
 my feeble pen is capable of doing. 
 
 In modern society there is no injury so great as dragging private 
 
lonouraDle ana nprignt mma stmnJss — and yours does — i am sure, for 
 rou have always been careful not to injure others in your writings. — 
 But the life of dear Shelley — the account of the Chancery Suit above 
 ill, would wound and injure the living— and especially Shelley's 
 laughter who is innocent of all blame and whose peace every friend 
 )f Shelley must respect. 
 
 I must therefore in the most earnest manner deprecate the publica- 
 ,ion of particulars and circumstances injurious to the living. That 
 luch is the feeling of Shelley's friends their common silence shews. 
 Tou have been long in Germany and forget what our English world 
 s — when you reflect, I am sure you will feel as we all must do — In 
 hese publishing, inquisitive, scandal-mongering days, one feels called 
 ipon for a double exercise of delicacy, forbearance — and reserve. If 
 roTi were to write to Mrs. Hogg on the subject I am sure you will find 
 hat her feelings coincide with mine. 
 
 I had a severe attack of illness this spring — and both before and 
 lince I have been very unwell. I went to Cowes for change of air — 
 md am now on a visit to a friend. My address in town is 24 Chester 
 Square — for the present — but I hope (though disappointed last autumn) 
 rery soon to be on my way to Italy — as a Southern climate is absolutely 
 lecessary to my health for some little time. I have not been to 
 lorsham for a long long time. As to any sort of writing even a short 
 etter is a most painful effort to me — and I do not know when I have 
 vritten as much as now. 
 
 I am, dear Cap" Medwin 
 Tours truly 
 
 M Shelley 
 
 Following Iter husband's charming recipe for the 
 improvement of inferior people, that, namely, of making 
 ;hem out better than they were, Mary despatched this 
 jxcellent letter to Medwin ; but she failed in her object ; 
 "or there is not, I fear, any doubt that he attempted to 
 alackmail her by extorting money from her in payment 
 OT reticence. This next stage in the case is evident from 
 I letter which she wrote to Leigh Hunt, replying to one 
 received from him on the subject. Her letter was sold 
 it auction a few months ago, and passed into the hands 
 jf Messrs. Maggs Brothers of No. 109 in the Strand, who 
 
 b2 
 
XX INTEODUCTION. 
 
 have included it in a recent catalogue o£ autographs for 
 sale, quoting the salient sentences. Mary, after avowing 
 her indifference to Medwin's attitude, says — 
 
 "An attempt to extort money finds me quite hardened. I have 
 suffered too much from things of this kind not to have entirely made 
 up my mind. I told Mrs. Hogg, hecause as she had known Captain 
 Medwin it was possible that he might make some sort of Communica- 
 tion to her— but I never dreamt of answering his letter or taking any 
 notice of this threat. The fact is, he couldn't find any bookseller to 
 publish his trash, so he thought, by working on my fears, to dispose 
 of it to me. Unfortunately for his plan and for my own comfort I 
 have had too much experience of this sort of villainy, and his attempt 
 is quite abortive. He may certainly find a bookseller to publish 
 a discreditable work— but really I cannot bring myself to care the 
 least about it." 
 
 Considering all things, that was a fairly brave attitude. 
 Those who read the present volume will see that Medwin 
 did not let his cousin's second wife go unscathed, any more 
 than her father did when he tried to get money from John 
 Taylor of Norwich by writing that villainous letter about 
 her elopement with Shelley edited by me in 1911 for 
 the Bibliophile Society of Boston — in whose privately 
 printed Year Book for that date it, appears, and may be 
 read by the curious at the British Museum. 
 
 In the foot-note at page 332 (post), the reader is 
 cautioned on the subject of Tait's Magazine and Medwin's 
 dealings with De Quincey's articles in it. The case of 
 "the Eternal Child" there referred to is an almost 
 incredibly shameless piece of petty larceny. De Quincey, 
 in finishing a brilliant piece of work by way of " Notes " 
 on the portraiture of Shelley by George Gilfillan in 
 A Gallery of Literary Portraits,^ had drawn on his own 
 account an exquisite prose vignette of the poet to set 
 
 1 Tait, Edinburgh, 1845. 
 
ifidelity : he says — 
 
 "When one recurs to his gracious nature, his fearlessness, his truth, 
 is purity from all fleshliness of appetite, his freedom from vanity, his 
 iffusive love and tenderness,— suddenly out of the darkness reveals 
 self a morning of May, forests and thickets of roses advance to the 
 )reground, from the midst of them looks out 'the eternal child', 
 Leansed from his sorrow, radiant with joy, having power given him 
 J forget the misery which he suffered, power given him to forget the 
 lisery which he caused, and leaning with his heart upon that dove-like 
 lith against which his erring intellect had rebelled." 
 
 Too proud to adorn his picture with three borrowed 
 rords and make no acknowledgment, De Quincey filled 
 he foot of Tait's hideous great page with a note in very 
 ninute type, giving an extract from the Literary Portraits, 
 hus — 
 
 " ' The eternal child : ' this beautiful expression, so true in its 
 .pplication to Shelley, I borrow from Mr. GilfiUan ; and 1 am 
 empted to add the rest of his eloquent parallel between Shelley and 
 jord Byron, so far as it relates to their external appearance : — ' In the 
 "orehead and head of Byron, there is more massive power and breadth : 
 Shelley's has a smooth, arched, spiritual expression ; wrinkle there 
 leems none on his brow ; it is as if perpetual youth had there dropped 
 ts freshness. Byron's eye seems the focus of pride and lust ; Shelley's 
 s mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing you through the mist of his 
 )wn idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and sensuality steeps 
 lis full large lips: the lower features of Shelley's face are frail, 
 'eminine, flexible. Byron's head is turned upwards; as if, having 
 risen proudly above his contemporaries, he were daring to claim 
 rindred, or to demand a contest, with a superior order of beings ; 
 Shelley's is half bent, in reverence and humility, before some vast 
 vision seen by his own eye alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover 
 ts retreat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent 
 md pervading expression of Byron's countenance : — sorrow, softened 
 md shaded away by hope and habit, lies like a "holier day" of still 
 moonshine upon that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at 
 the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of premature passion ; 
 dis hair is young, his dress is youthful ; but his face is old :— in Shelley 
 
XXll INTHODUCTION. 
 
 you see the eternal cliild, none the less that his hair is grey, and that 
 " sorrow seems half his immortality ".' '" 
 
 Medwin's impudent annexation of all lie wanted from 
 this passage, and his slovenly changes in the text, were 
 certainly not the result of idiocy. Indeed his aplomb in 
 stealing fine things shows a good measure of mean ability, 
 and the cognate capacity of the creature for spoiling fine 
 things when stolen was almost unbounded. A shocking 
 example of this gift of his is his treatment of the letter 
 of Shelley to Peacock, written at Naples on the 22nd of 
 December 1818, opening with that luminous account of the 
 causes which had led to the misanthropic tone of CMlde 
 Harold's Pilgrimage (Prose Works, vol. iv, page 60, and 
 Ingpen's Collected Letters^ vol. ii, pages 650-1). 
 
 Thus Shelley:— 
 
 " I entirely agree with what you say about Childe Harold. The 
 spirit in which it is written is, if insane, the most wicked and 
 mischievous insanity that ever was given forth. It is a kind of 
 obstinate and self-willed folly, in which he hardens himself. I 
 remonstrated with him in vain on the tone of mind from which such 
 a view of things alone arises. For its real root is very different from 
 its apparent one. Nothing can be less sublime than the true source 
 of these expressions of contempt and desperation. The fact is, that 
 first, the Italian women with whom he associates are perhaps the 
 most contemptible of all who exist under the moon — the most ignorant, 
 the most disgusting, the most bigoted ; countesses smell so strongly 
 of garlic, that an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well, 
 L. B. is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the people his 
 gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associates with wretches who 
 seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who 
 do not scruple to avow practices, which are not only not named, but 
 I believe seldom ever conceived in England. He says he disapproves, 
 but he endures. He is heartily and deeply discontented with himself ; 
 and contemplating in the distorted mirrors of his own thoughts the 
 nature and the destiny of man, what can he behold but objects of 
 contempt and despair? But that he is a great poet, I think the 
 address to Ocean proves. And he has a certain degree of candour 
 
his present career must end soon in some violent circumstance." 
 
 A reference to page 257 of this volume will show that 
 Medwin quotes in inverted commas as from this invaluable 
 passage as follows : 
 
 [1] "The spirit in which it is written, is the most wicked and 
 mischievous insanity that ever was given forth." [2] " It is a kind of 
 obdurate and self-vrilled folly, in which he hardens himself." [3] " I 
 remonstrated with him in vain on the tone of mind from which such 
 a view of things arises.'' [4] " He is heartily and deeply discontented 
 with himself; and contemplating in the distorted mirror of his own 
 thoughts, the nature and duty of man, what can he behold but objects 
 of contempt and despair ? " 
 
 That is all ; and in that comparatively insignificant all 
 he not only garbles the text by leaving out of the first 
 sentence the words if insane, substituting obdurate for 
 obstinate in the second, omitting the essential word alone 
 from the third, and substituting nature and duty for nature 
 and the destiny in the fourth; but also, instead of frankly 
 quoting Shelley's verdict on Byron's magnitude as a poet, 
 pretends to have dug out the opinion from the Sonnet "If 
 I esteemed thee less," &c. These peccadillos, however, are 
 as nothing compared with the total omission of the main 
 basis on which Shelley concurred with Peacock in con- 
 demning the Childe Harold tone of mind. 
 
 Inaccuracy, indeed, dogs the steps not only of the gay 
 deceiver himself but of those who, following him, some- 
 times succeed in tripping him up and sometimes suffer 
 discomfiture from insufficient care to avoid being tripped 
 up by his light-hearted and heavy handed dealings with 
 the skipping rope. Take for example the matter of the 
 Bartolini bust — the bust of which Byron wrote to Murray 
 
Xxiv INTKODITCTION. 
 
 as representing "a superannuated Jesuit," and depreciated 
 and tabooed in several other delightful phrases. Medwin 
 got that bust inserted in the form of an engraving by 
 Robert Cooper in some of the 1824 octavos of the Conver- 
 sations of Lord Byron — whether to thwart the great dead 
 Lion or for honafde purposes of decoration I cannot say. 
 Cooper (or his writing assistant) described the bust on the 
 plate as by Bertolini. Byron names the renowned 
 Florentine sculptor correctly as Bartolini (every time, 
 I think), and Mr. Prothero does not set the text right (or 
 rather wrong) by altering Bartolini to Bertolini ; but by 
 evil hap, he quoted (vol. vi, p. 37), as an illustration of the 
 phrase " Bartolini, the celebrated Sculptor," some words 
 from the Diary of an Invalid, by Henry Matthews, 
 beginning with "Bertolini is an excellent workman"; 
 and later (p. 222) he has occasion to mention a Professor 
 Bartolini (alive in 1891). Then his volumes fell into the 
 hands of Mr. C. Eastlake Smith, whose invaluable index 
 does not contain the name of the Bartolini, Lorenzo, who 
 died in 1850, but does contain the portentous entry 
 " Bertolini, Professor Antonio, sculptor,^' with a reference 
 to the five several pages upon which the patronymic 
 Bartolini occurs, four for Sculptor Lorenzo and one for 
 Professor Antonio ! Mr. Coleridge had better luck when 
 Mr. Smith indexed the seven volumes of poetry ; for his 
 note to a remarkable passage in Don Juan (vol. vi, p. 360) 
 about 
 
 a pale yet radiant face, 
 Like to a lighted alabaster vase ; — 
 
 happened to mention the right Bartolini by his Christian 
 name, and was correctly indexed by Mr. Smith. 
 
 Of the perpetuation of the wrong patronymic under 
 the flag— the Jolly Eoger— of Medwin, another of the 
 
doubtless the prime cause ; he appeared in the first edi- 
 tion of this present work in 1847 disguised as " Mathews, 
 the invalid" (p. 407 of this edition), though only as 
 recommending the best method of travelling from Pisa 
 to Genoa. In 1824 he had figured in the Conversations 
 a trifle more recognizably in a phrase about his brother, 
 the brilliant but ill-starred Charles Skinner Matthews, 
 "a much more able man than the Invalid" said Byron. 
 It is therefore safe to assume that, when Medwin 
 furnished Colburn with the wrong name for the in- 
 scription on Cooper's plate, he had been misled by 
 Henry Matthews's Diary of an Invalid, where the 
 mistake unquestionably occurs. 
 
 Another of Medwin's victims is that talented and 
 indefatigable lady Miss Ethel Colburn Mayne, who has 
 written the best book about Byron publishedfor some years, 
 ■ but who might have been better employed in investigating 
 important statements of Medwin's than in hunting up 
 cheap gibes to sling at him. This paragraph from p. 247 
 of her second volume is not, for style and taste, up to her 
 highest level, and is not even amusing : — 
 
 "Tom Medwin — Jeaifreson's ' well-inaiinered noodle', 'amiable 
 absurdity ', ' perplexing simpleton ' ; Mary Shelley's ' seceatura ', 
 wMob is the Italian term for a paralysing bore — Tom Medwin, with 
 his notes of Byron's conversations, ' when tipsy ' (by Mary's aecount), 
 had long ago left Pisa. He had returned at the time of Shelley's 
 death, and was present at the cremation on August 16 ; on the 28th 
 he left again, parting from Byron ' with a sadness that looked like 
 presentiment '." 
 
 In this case Medwin has his revenge, for what 
 vengeance is worth to the departed. He tried hard in 
 the Conversations to make it appear that he was at the 
 Cremation ; but nothing is more certain than that he was 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 not ; and the attempt to mislead was abandoned later on. 
 Miss Mayne will no doubt follow with an excellent grace 
 his humiliating example of withdrawing the statement 
 in her next edition of what is certainly destined to be 
 a standard work on Byron. 
 
 Even that magnificent institution the Dictionary of 
 National Biography, enduring monument as it is to the 
 memory of its founder the late Mr. George Smith and 
 its first Editor Sir Leslie Stephen, has not escaped the in- 
 fection. In a notice gratuitously imperfect and wanting 
 in accuracy, it represents Medwin as appearing to have 
 served in the First Life Guards, — on the strength of one 
 of his own title-pages. The author of The Angler in 
 Wales describes himself as "late of the First Life 
 Guards." Of that distinguished regiment, he certainly 
 was— for a fortnight or so ; but as to service, well, let us 
 see. Mary Shelley, though cordially disliking him, was 
 incapable of lying and was among the least malicious 
 of injured women; and it is to her that the world is 
 beholden for the solution of the mystery which has been 
 made of the " Angler's " description of himself Certainly 
 it cannot be said in any correct sense that he " served " in 
 the Life Guards. He was, as we have seen, a lieutenant 
 in the 24th Light Dragoons, put on half-pay with the 
 nominal rank of Captain ; and as " Captain Medwin " he 
 was commonly known. Now Mary Shelley, writing 
 "news" to Trelawny in March 1831, says "did you hear 
 that Medwin contrived to get himself gazetted for foil 
 pay in the Guards? I fancy that he employeid his 
 connection with the Shelleys, who are connected with 
 the King through the FitzClarences. However, a week 
 after he was gazetted as retiring. I suppose the officers 
 cut him at mess; his poor wife and children! how I pity 
 
made public as long ago as 1889 by Mrs. Julian Marshall ; 
 but it seems to have escaped the writer in the Dictionary 
 of National Biography, or, perhaps, was deemed of too 
 vague a nature for authoritative use. Probably it had 
 not occurred to Mary, when gossiping to her friend of 
 ten years' standing, to consult the ^printed notice ; had 
 she done so, she would have found that there was 
 a fortnight between the two announcements, which, of 
 course, give but the bald facts. In The London Gazette 
 for Tuesday the 1st of February 1831 we read : — 
 
 " 1st Regiment of Life Guards, Lieutenant Thomas Medwin, from 
 the half-pay of the 24th Light Dragoons, to be Lieutenant, vice George 
 William Fox Lord Kinnaird, who exchanges. Dated 1st February 
 1831." 
 
 And in the Gazette for the 15th of February 1831, 
 history goes on thus : — 
 
 " 1st Regiment of Life Guards, Sub-Lieutenant and Cornet Edward 
 Hammond to be Lieutenant, by purchase, vice Medwin, who retires. 
 Dated 15th Februai-y 1831." 
 
 Further than this it is hardly worth' while to push 
 research ; no enquiry could result creditably to Medwin ; 
 and one does not want to bespatter him more than 
 necessary. Indeed his morals and repute are as far past 
 
 1 Trelatvny appears to have been etta Baroness Hamilton of Sweden ; 
 
 misinformed when he wrote to by her first marriage Countess of 
 
 Claire in 1822 of the reported Stainfort." She died at Siena in 
 
 marriage of Medwin to " Mrs. Pain " 1868. Accounts differ as to details 
 
 (Letters, 1910, p. 26). The "poor of his domestic misdeeds ; but Mrs. 
 
 wife " compassionated by Mary, at Eossetti Angeli, who is rather 
 
 all events, was undoubtedly the lenient to him, records inter alia 
 
 "Baroness" whom he is said to (^Shelley and his friends in Italy, p. 
 
 have married in 1825, and left with 252) that, according to a verbal 
 
 two daughters when he had spent statement of Trelawny's to her 
 
 all her money. She is described in father, Medwin "treated his wife 
 
 Dallaway's History of the Western very badly — first dissipated all her 
 
 Biiiision of Sussex as " Anne-Henri- money and then abandoned her." 
 
XXVlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 praying for as his claims to be called an accurate 
 narrator. 
 
 The sequelce of the disorders affecting his career are 
 not finished or likely ever to be finished. Last, but not 
 least of these, in a legacy of Mr. Andrew Lang's which, 
 to paraphrase and mollify Mr. "Waterlow's trenchant 
 summary of Medwin's Life, may be called a fairly good 
 book " well peppered " with inaccuracies, a few lax words 
 of Medwin's serve the Historian of English Literature ^ 
 as sufficient ground for leaving students to infer that 
 Shelley lived habitually on the confines of lunacy. 
 Medwin says (see p. 208 post) that the state of the poet's 
 mind "must indeed have been bordering on madness — 
 hanging on the devouring edge of mental darkness, 
 when he could give utterance to those wonderful lines : — 
 
 Hasten to the bridal bed ! 
 
 Underneath the grave 'tis spread ! '' &c. 
 
 He also says that Shelley's " compunction " in respect of 
 Harriett's death " brought on a temporary derangement" 
 (p. 181) ; but on the next page he tells how the poet went 
 in a business-like way to Bath to obtain if possible his 
 children and provide for their bringing-up. Whether 
 these phrases justify the historianin closing some strangely 
 flippant paragraphs as he does, let posterity decide. 
 " Madness, said Medwin, a man who was much in his 
 company, hung over Shelley like the sword of Damocles." 
 Such are Lang's words ^ ; but they are not the words of 
 Medwin, whose record of the poet leavesnosuch impression, 
 either intentionally or unintentionally. 
 
 At the risk of appearing gratuitously censorious, I have 
 set down what seems to me to be the naked truth about 
 
 ' History of English Literature from 1912. 
 "JSeowulf" to Swiribume, Longmans, - p. 519. 
 
have been pleasanter to emulate the leniency of a writer 
 of the younger generation — one, indeed, whom, as a baby, 
 I have taken from her mother's arms and held in my own ; 
 but Mrs. Eossetti Angeli truly seems to me, in her mature 
 judgment and experience of life, to have set an undue 
 value on Trelawny's testimony, and that of the portrait of 
 Medwin which I had the pleasure of recovering from 
 oblivion and showing, I think, to her alone before putting 
 it in hand for reproduction. Of course I cordially assent 
 to her verdict that, notwithstanding defects and inaccu- 
 racies, the revised Life is "one of the most valuable Shelley 
 documents that we possess," But the words " staunch to 
 the end in his enthusiasm for Shelley " (p. 253) seem to 
 me a little more generous than the words used in writing 
 to Claire — " he was always honest and consistent in his love 
 of the poet" (Letters, p. 221) — in considering which account 
 I have been unable to dismiss from my mind Trelawny's 
 earlier sayings. Medwin was certainly included in the 
 " blood-sucking " indictment containing the words " he had 
 no honest friends," and, as certainly, was not excepted as one 
 of those who " loved and did not rob " Shelley {lb. p. 230), 
 Moreover, writing to Captain Eoberts, E.N., from Usk in 
 April 1858, Trelawny mentions (lb. p. 215) that Medwin 
 " is loafing about as usual seeking whom he may devour." 
 These phrases qualify seriously the meaning of " honest 
 in his love," which I take really to be that, in Trelawny's 
 opinion, it was not a simulated love : nor was it. The 
 portrait, which struck Mrs. Angeli as "that of an honest 
 and kindly man," I cannot myself get to like : I find 
 it unsympathetic, expressive of a certain obliquity, and 
 wanting in soul ; and indeed that conventional phrase ex- 
 presses to me almost all that was radically the matter with 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Medwin. None the less the following summary by Mrs. 
 Aiigeli (page 233) appeals to me as gentle and to the 
 purpose : — 
 
 "Tom Medwin doubtless thought that he fully appreciated his 
 oouain's poetry, and entertained a veiy genuine love for it, and hero- 
 worship for the poet ; but he had not the intellect to be the one man 
 of his age to fully appreciate Shelley at his true worth. Edward John 
 Trelawny, . . . who had so much of the poet in his own nature, came 
 nearer to a just appreciation ; but the one man who had full opportu- 
 nities to estimate him correctly was Byron." 
 
 Posterity will unquestionably "scrap" all the odds 
 and ends of work by Medwin listed in the fourth 
 Appendix ; and that is why I have included the list 
 in the book which posterity cannot "scrap." The 
 second Heidelberg pamphlet, to which he himself gave 
 the title of Odds and Ends, has a certain claim to con- 
 sideration, which, ungraciously perchance, I desire to 
 recognize. That claim, set up in his seventy -fourth year, 
 is the attempt to render in English several of the Poems 
 of Catullus. His versions have not, on the whole, much 
 fascination (whose versions of CatuUus have ?) ; but he 
 seems to have taken pains with them and bestowed some 
 thought on textual questions. The exquisite brotherli- 
 ness of Carmen CI, " Multas per gentes," he tried to em- 
 body in an unsuitable metre enough, the heroic couplet ; 
 but he, even he also, came home from his wanderings — not 
 to bury his brother, but to end his days in his brother's 
 house— the house of Pilfold Medwin in the Carfax at their 
 native Horsham. There, it seems to me — do I do him 
 too much grace? — he visited his mother's tomb, and 
 carrying his little paper-covered book to her grave, 
 struck out the words The End on page 118, and wrote 
 thus in the unfilled page : — 
 
Per maria et terras multis erroribus actis 
 Fessos hoc templum visere tendo pedes 
 Ut caram banc animam postremo munere donem 
 ' Atque iterum mutos alloquar heu cineres. 
 Persequor hoc votis longSB post tsdia vitae 
 ^temfi, tecum posse salute frui. 
 To " convey " so much of the actual vocabulary of the opening lines 
 of Catullus was not so very furtive : too tempting those wondrous 
 words : — 
 
 Multas per gentes et multa per sequora vectus 
 
 Aduenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, 
 Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis 
 Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem ; 
 
 nor may we blgiime a man of his convictions for substitut- 
 ing a filial aspiration of orthodox Christianity for the 
 ancestral pagan rites of the divine original. 
 
 As regards the mass of the translations it must be 
 admitted that they are greatly inferior in accomplish- 
 ment to those of his detested enemy Dr. Nott, who 
 employs the heroic quatrain, and the octosyllabic quatrain, 
 in a large number of cases. In rendering Carmen CI 
 (XCVI in Nott's edition) the reverend Doctor used the 
 heroic quatrain (Gray's Elegy metre), and produced a poor 
 result, departing with atrocious obtuseness from that 
 matchless simplicity with which Catullus preserves from 
 first to last the form of personal address to his brother. 
 Nott positively ends thus — 
 
 With many a tear I will the ground bedew — 
 Spirit of him I lov'd, those tears receive ! 
 
 Spirit of him I valued most, adieu ! 
 Adieu to him who sleeps in yonder grave ! 
 
 Medwin has it — 
 
 And now meantime, as wont, in ancient rite, 
 With these libations I invoke thy sprite. 
 And say with grief no floods of tears can tell. 
 Farewell ! for ever ! Brother ! farewell ! 
 
XXll INTEODUCTION. 
 
 f Medwin really did this — and with him one never 
 nows the truth for certain — it is the best thing he dver 
 id in verse. Perhaps after all he had soul enough to 
 )el the emotional quality of the original and how in- 
 nitely above him it was ; but the triumphant art of it 
 mnot have been fully perceived by a man who in the 
 )urse of six lines of imitation could not do better than 
 ave unreconciled the caram hanc animam of his line 3 
 id the tecum of his line 6. That is nearly as bad as 
 ott ; and yet, somehow, I feel impelled to pardon both 
 le theft and the bungle, and take off my hat to Tom 
 !edwin at parting. 
 
 H. B. F. 
 
 Midsummer-day, 1913. 
 46 Marlborough Hill, 
 St. John's Wood. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 [1847.] 
 
 Twenty-four years have elapsed since Shelley was 
 withdrawn from the world, and no " record " of him 
 "remains," save a few fugitive notices scattered about in 
 periodicals. The Notes, it is true, appended to the last 
 edition of his works, are highly valuable, and full of 
 eloquence and feeling, but they relate rather to the 
 " origin and history " of these works, than 'of the poet, and 
 date only from 1814 ; leaving his life up to that period a 
 blank, that imperatively requires to be filled up. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley, in January, 1839, says, " this is not the time 
 to tell the truth, and I should reject any colouring of the 
 truth," and adds, that " the errors of action committed by 
 a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far only 
 as he is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who 
 loved him, in the firm conviction, that were they judged 
 impartially, his character would stand fairer and brighter 
 than that of any of his contemporaries." 
 
 The long interval which has transpired since the writing 
 of this passage, makes me conclude that the amiable and 
 gifted person who penned it, has abandoned, if she had 
 ever formed, the intention of executing this " labour of 
 love ;" and the more so, as in 1824, she points out Leigh 
 Hunt as "the person best calculated for such an under- 
 taking." 
 
 " The distinguished friendship that Shelley felt for him, 
 and the enthusiastic affection with which he clings to the 
 
2 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 memory of his friend," no doubt well qualified him, on 
 those two grounds, for Shelley's biographer; but he 
 doubtless felt that an acquaintance of nine or ten yaars, 
 most of which were passed by Shelley abroad, furnished 
 him with very inadequate materials. 
 
 Sensible how much more iitted he would have been to 
 have performed this office than myself, I should have been 
 happy to have supplied him with data absolutely requisite 
 for tracing Shelley's genius from its first germs up to its 
 maturity, and forming an impartial judgment of his 
 character — data which no one but myself could have 
 supplied, inasmuch as I knew him from childhood — as 
 we were at school together, continually together during 
 the vacations, corresponded regularly, and although I lost 
 sight of him for a few years when in the East, as our 
 intimacy was renewed on my return ; and, more than all, 
 as I passed the two last winters and springs of his existence, 
 one under his roof, and the other with him, without the 
 interruption of a single day. 
 
 It may be objected that these memorabilia are imper- 
 fect, from the almost total want of letters. Unhappily all 
 those — and they would have formed volumes — which I 
 received from him in early youth, were lost, from my not 
 having the habit, at that time, of preserving letters, and 
 that those which passed between us from 1819 to 1822, were 
 lent, and never returned. 
 
 Mrs, Shelley has, in one of the volumes containing her 
 lamented husband's Prose "Works, given the world the 
 letters she could collect ; but, precious as they are in a 
 literary point of view, particularly those to Mr. Peacock, 
 they throw but little light on his life or pursuits. Those 
 letters also are few in number. After the appearance of 
 the Quarterly Review article, in 1818, many of his friends 
 
him, and he limits them to " three or four, or even less." 
 
 * But are letters the best media for developing character ? 
 Judging from Byron's, I should certainly answer in the 
 negative. In his epistolary correspondence, a man always 
 adapts his style and sentiments to the capacity and ways 
 of thinking of those with whom the interchange is carried 
 on ; besides that, a person must be intimate indeed with 
 another to lay bare his heart to him, to disclose un- 
 reservedly what can only be unfolded in the confidentiality 
 of social intercourse. 
 
 It was my determination, on commencing this work, to 
 have dififered from all writers of Memoirs, in stating what 
 Shelley's actions and opinions were, and letting the world 
 judge them ; but I soon found that such ground was 
 untenable, and was dissatisfied with making myself a mere 
 chronicler ; besides that with a knowledge of the motives 
 of his actions, it would have been a gross injustice to have 
 suppressed them. I was strengthened in this resolution 
 by the advice of the author of Shelley at Oxford} to whom 
 I am much indebted in these pages, who says, "The 
 biographer who would take upon himself the pleasing and 
 instructing, but difficult and delicate task of composing a 
 faithful history of his whole life, will frequently be com- 
 
 * The fact is that men write to please : so far from revealing their own 
 feelings in their private letters, they very generally, according to their 
 power, assume a character which will jump with the humour of their 
 correspondent. — The Athenieum. 
 
 1 The quotations from Thomas Expulsion from Oxford. Those who 
 
 Jefferson Hogg are not, of course, prefer to read them in a handy 
 
 taken from the incomplete Life of form, instead of consulting Hogg's 
 
 Shelley, but from the series of two thick volumes of 1858, where 
 
 papers contributed to The New they are reprinted, can do so in 
 
 Monthly Magazine, five in 1832 under a very pretty pocket volume 
 
 the title of Percy Bysshe Shelley at called Shelley at Oxford, edited by 
 
 Oxford, and one in May 1833 headed Mr. K. A. Streatfeild (Methuen & Co., 
 
 The History of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1904). 
 
 b2 
 
4 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 pelled to discuss the important questions, whether his 
 conduct at certain periods was altogether such as ought to 
 be proposed for imitation ; whether he was ever misled by 
 a glowing temperament, something of hastiness in choice, 
 and a certain constitutional impatience ; whether, like 
 less gifted mortals, he ever shared in the common feature, 
 of mortality, repentance, — and to what extent." 
 
 These questions I have fully discussed. How painfully 
 interesting is his Life ! "With so many weaknesses — with 
 so much to pardon — so much to pity — so much to admire 
 — so much to love — there is no romance, however stirring, 
 that in abler hands might not have paled before it. Such 
 as it is, I throw it on the indulgence of his friends and 
 the public. It has been Avritten with no indecorous 
 haste — by one sensible of the difficulty of the task — of his 
 inadequacy to do it justice — of his unworthiness to touch 
 the hem of Shelley's garment, but not by one unable to 
 appreciate the greatness of his genius, or to estimate the 
 qualities of his heart. I was the first to turn the tide of 
 obloquy, to familiarize the world with traits, that by a 
 glimpse, however slight and fleeting, could not but make 
 a favourable impression, and now elaborate a more finished 
 portrait, reflected in the mirror of memory, which distance 
 renders more distinct and faithful, and in the words of 
 Salvator Rosa, may add, — 
 
 Dioa poi quanto sa rancor severo, 
 Contra le sue saette ho doppio usbergo, 
 Non conosco interesse, e son' sincere. 
 
SONNET 
 
 ON SHELLEY. 
 
 FEOM THE GERMAN OF HEEWEGH. 
 
 With agony of thouglit, intensely striving 
 
 To work out God, his God was doubly dear : 
 
 A faith more firm had never poet here, 
 A brighter pledge of bliss immortal giving : 
 With all his pulses throbbing for his kind, 
 
 Hope steered his course thro' the world's stormy wave 
 If anger moved, but ruffled his calm mind, 
 
 A hatred of the tyrant and the slave. 
 In form of man a subtle elfin sprite — 
 
 From Nature's altar pure a hallowed fire — 
 A mark for every canting hypocrite — 
 
 Yearning for Heaven with all his soul's desire — 
 Cursed by his father — a fond wife's devotion — 
 Starlike to sink down into a wild ocean ! ^ 
 
 The Authok. 
 
 1 In the first edition this sonnet was closed with a sestet, of which the 
 last two lines were : 
 
 Cursed by his father — a fond wife's delight — 
 Starlike in a wild ocean to expire. 
 
 H. B.F. 
 
In order to make an obvious distinction between the authoi-'s own 
 foot-notes and the editorial commentary, the former are, throughout 
 the following pages, printed across the whole page and connected 
 ■with the text by means of asterisks, obelisks, and so on, while the 
 latter are arranged in double column and referred to the text by 
 means of arabic figures, 1, 2, 3, &c. 
 
THE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 Sussex boasts of two great poets, Collins and Otway — it 
 may pride itself on a third and a greater. Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley was born at Field Place, on the 4th of August, 
 1792. His surname of Percy being derived from an atint, 
 who was distantly connected with the Northumberland 
 fiamily, and that of Bysshe from the heiress of Fen Place, 
 through whom that portion of the estate was derived. 
 
 The family of Shelly, Shellie, or Shelley, as the name 
 has been spelt at different epochs, is of great antiquity in 
 the above county, and is descended from Sir William, 
 Lord of Affendary, brother of Sir Thomas Shelly, a faith- 
 ful adherent of King Richard the Second, who was 
 attainted and executed by Henry IV. Without tracing 
 the pedigree, and referring those interested in such matters 
 to the Peerage, under the head of "De Lisle and Dudley," 
 I will only say, that Sir John Shelley, of Maresfield Park, 
 who dated his Baronetage from the earliest creation of 
 that title, in 1611, had, besides other issue, two sons, 
 Sir William, a judge of the Common-pleas, and Edward ; 
 from the latter of whom, in the seventh descent, sprung 
 Timothy, who had also two sons, and settled — having 
 married an American lady — at Christ's Church, Newark, 
 in North America ; where Bysshe was born, on the 
 21st June, 1731. 
 
 As often happens to the junior branches of houses, he 
 
■8 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 began life with few of the goods of fortune, and little 
 chance of worldly aggrandisement. America was then 
 the land of promise ; but it was 07ily such to him. He 
 there exercised the profession of a Quack doctor, and 
 married, as it is said, the widow of a miller, but for this 
 I cannot vouch. 
 
 To a good name, and a remarkably handsome person, 
 he united the most polished manners and address, and it 
 is little to be wondered at that these, in addition to the 
 prestige that never fails to attach itself to a travelled man, 
 should have captivated the great heiress of Horsham, the 
 •only daughter and heiress of the Rev. Theobald Michell, 
 The guardian (the young lady was an orphan and a minor) 
 put his veto on the match, but, like a new Desdemona, 
 Miss Michell was not to be deterred by interdictions, and 
 ■eloped with Mr. Shelley to London, where the fugitives 
 were wedded in that convenient asylum for lovers, the 
 Fleet, by the Fleet parson, and lost no time in repairing 
 to Paris. There the lady was attacked, on her arrival, 
 with the small-pox, and her life despaired of; and which 
 circumstance, had it occurred, by a freak of fortune, would 
 have made my mother heiress to the estates. 
 
 After his wife's death, an insatiate fortune-hunter, he 
 laid siege to a second heiress in an adjoining county. In 
 order to become acquainted with her, he took up his abode 
 for some time in a small inn on the verge of the Park at 
 Penshurst, a mansion consecrated by the loves of "Waller 
 and Saccharissa, (whose oak is still an object of venera- 
 tion.) and honoured by the praises of Ben Jonson. 
 
 Thou art not, Pensliurst, built to envious show, 
 Or touch, of marble ; nor canst boast a row 
 Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold ; 
 Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told 
 
And these, grudged at, are reverenced tlie while. 
 
 Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, 
 
 Of wood, of water; therein art thou fair. 
 
 Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport, 
 
 Thy mount, to which the Dryads do resort, 
 
 Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made, 
 
 Beneath the broad beech, and the chesnut shade. 
 
 That taller tree, which of a nut was set, 
 
 At his great birth, where all the muses met : 
 
 There in the withered bark are cut the names 
 
 Of many a Sylvan, taken with his flames. 
 
 And thence the ruddy Satyrs oft provoke 
 
 The lighter Fauns to reach the " Lady's Oak ; " 
 
 Thy copse, too, named of Gamage, thou hast there, 
 
 That never fails to serve the seasoned deer, 
 
 When thou wouldst feast, or exercise thy friends: 
 
 The lower land, that to the river bends, 
 
 Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine and calves do feed. 
 
 The middle ground, thy mares and horses breed. 
 
 Each bank doth yield thee conies, and the tops, 
 
 Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sydney copse, 
 
 To crown thy open table doth provide. 
 
 The purple pheasant with the speckled side. 
 
 It might well have excited the ambition of Mr. Shelley 
 
 to become the proprietor of that historical mansion, so 
 
 often embellished by the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and 
 
 the presence of Lord Leicester, the nephew of the great 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, " a man without spot," ^ as Shelley calls 
 
 him in his Adonais, the patron and friend of Spenser, who 
 
 so pathetically laments his death, and where the Arcadia 
 
 (according to family tradition) was partly written ; but 
 
 he was little alive to these influences, and aimed at the 
 
 hand of Miss Sidney Pery, not as the last scion of the house 
 
 of Sidney, but as the largest fortune in Kent. He suc- 
 
 ^ Sidney, as he fought 
 
 And as he fell and as )ie lived and loved 
 Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
 Arose . . . 
 
10 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ceeded so well in ingratiating himself with this lady, that 
 she also eloped with him to London, where they were 
 married, at St. James's, Westminster. John Sidney, after- 
 wards Sir John Sidney Shelley, and who has now dropped 
 the name of Shelley, was one of the fruits of this marriage, 
 and in the person of his son, was revived the family title 
 of De Lisle, soon after his marriage with Lady Sophia 
 Pitzclarence, the natural daughter of "William the Fourth. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that the patent for his being 
 created Lord Leicester, had been drawn iip, but not signed 
 by his late Majesty, and somewhat singular that that title 
 should, in the face of it, have been conferred by the Whigs, 
 for political services, on one who had not only no claim 
 to it, but whose ancestor was the cold-blooded, and times- 
 serving, and foul-mouthed, Lawyer Coke. 
 
 As I shall not have occasion further to allude to this 
 branch of the family, I will remark here, that if Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley was proud of anything, it was his connexion 
 with the Sidneys, and that when Sir John, on his eldest 
 son Philip's coming of age, resettled the estate, he offered 
 Percy Bysshe £3000 to renounce his contingency, but 
 which, distressed as he was for money, he refused. 
 
 On the 3rd March, 1806, Bysshe, the grandfather, was 
 raised to the baronetage. He owed this distinction, if 
 such it be, to Charles, Duke of Norfolk, who wished 
 thereby to win over to his party the Shelley interest in 
 the western part of the county of Sussex and the Rape of 
 Bramber, not to mention Horsham, on which he, with 
 his borough-mongering propensities, had at this period 
 electioneering designs. 
 
 I remember Sir Bysshe well in a very advanced age, 
 a remarkably handsome man, fully six feet in height, and 
 with a noble and aristocratic bearing. Nil fuit unqiiatn 
 
he used to frequent daily the tap-room of one of the low 
 inns in Horsham, and there drank with some of the 
 lowest citizens, a habit he had probably acquired in the 
 new world. Though he had built a castle (Goring Castle), 
 that cost him upwards of £80,000, he passed the last 
 twenty or thirty years of his existence in a small cottage, 
 looking on the river Arun, at Horsham, in which all was 
 mean and beggarly — the existence, indeed, of a miser — 
 enriching his legatees at the expense, of one of his sons, by 
 buying up his post-obits. 
 
 In order to dispose of him, I will add that his affectionate 
 son Timothy, received every morning a bulletin of his 
 health, till he became one of the oldest heir-apparents in 
 England, and began to think his father immortal. God 
 takes those to him, who are worth taking, early, and 
 drains to the last sands in the glass, the hours of the 
 worthless and immoral, in order that they may reform their 
 ways. But his were unredeemed by one good action. Two 
 of his daughters by the second marriage led so miserable 
 a life under his roof, that they eloped from him ; a consum- 
 mation he devoutly wished, as he thereby found an excuse 
 for giving them no dowries ; and though they were married 
 to two highly respectable men, and one had a numerous 
 family, he made no mention of either of them in his will. 
 Shelley seems to have had him in his mind when he 
 says*: — 
 
 He died — 
 He was bowed and bent with fears: 
 Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold, 
 Which like fierce fever, left him weak, 
 
 * Shelley says in a letter to Leigh Hunt that Lionel in Rosalind and 
 Helen was in some degree a painting from Nature, but with respect to 
 time and place ideal. 
 
13 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And his straight lip and bloated cheek 
 Were wrapt in spasms by hollow sneers ; 
 And selfish cares, with barren plough, 
 Not age, had lined his narrow brow ; 
 And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed 
 Upon the withered life within. 
 Like vipers upon some poisonous weed.^ 
 
 Yes, he died at last, and in his room were found bank 
 notes to the amount of £10,000, some in the leaves of the 
 few books he possessed, others in the folds of his sofa, or 
 sewn into the lining of his dressing gown. But " Ohe ! 
 jam satis." 
 
 Timothy Shelley, his eldest son, and heir to the Shelley 
 and Michell estates, whose early education was much 
 neglected, and who had originally been designed to be 
 sent to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which 
 the great Sir Philip Sidney founded— and to which 
 his descendant, and Timothy's half-brother, Sir John, 
 nominates the Master, President, or whatever the head of 
 the College may be called, entered himself at University 
 College, Oxford, and after the usual routine of academical 
 studies, by which he little profited, made The Grand Tour. 
 He was one of those travellers, who, with so much waste 
 of time, travel for the sake of saying they have travelled ; 
 and, after making a circuit of Europe, return home, 
 knowing no more of the countries they have visited than 
 the trunks attached to their carriages. All, indeed, that 
 he did bring back with him was a smattering of French, 
 and a bad picture of an Eruption of Vesuvius, if we except 
 a certain air, miscalled that of the old school, which he 
 could put off and on, as occasion served. 
 
 ^ This very laxly set out passage if the text were amended by cor- 
 
 from Rosalind and Helen is as unlike rectly reading warped for lorapt and 
 
 a portrait of Sir Bysshe of the withering for withered. Lionel is in 
 
 "noble and aristocratic bearing" manyways like a portrait of Shelley 
 
 as one could well conceive — even himself. 
 
reducing all politeness to forms, and moral virtue to ex- 
 pediency ; as an instance of which, he once told his son, 
 Percy Bysshe, in my presence, that he would provide for 
 as many natural children as he chose to get, but that he 
 would never forgive his making a mesalliance; a sentiment 
 which excited in Shelley anything but respect for his sire. 
 
 This anecdote proves that the moral sense in Sir Timothy 
 was obtuse ; indeed, his religious opinions were also 
 very lax; although he occasionally went to the parish 
 church, and made his servants regularly attend divine 
 service, he possessed no true devotion himself, and in- 
 culcated none to his son and heir, so that much of Percy 
 Bysshe's scepticism may be traced to early example, if 
 not to precept. On one occasion when Sir Timothy and 
 his son were walking in a street of Horsham they met 
 the chaplain of the gaol in his canonicals just returned 
 from administering the last consolations of religion to 
 a criminal, before his .execution. " Well," exclaimed the 
 baronet with a loud laugh, " old soul-saver ! how did you 
 turn the rascal off?" How sadly forgetful was a father 
 here of the reverentia pueris. But I anticipate. Before 
 Sir Timothy, then Mr. Shelley, set out on his European 
 tour, he had engaged himself to Miss Pilfold (daughter 
 of Charles Pilfold, Esq., of Efi&ngham Place), who had 
 been brought up by her aunt. Lady Ferdinand Pool, the 
 wife of the well-known father of the turf, and owner of 
 " Potoooooooo," and the equally celebrated "Waxy" and 
 " Mealy." 
 
 It may not be irrelevant to mention that Miss Michell, 
 Sir Bysshe's first wife, was my grandfather's first cousin ; 
 and that my mother bore the same degree of consanguin- 
 ity to Miss Pilfold ; theiir fathers being brothers ; which 
 
14 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 circumstances I mention in order to account for the in- 
 timacy of our families, and mine with Bysshe, as he was 
 always called. Among the letters of an aunt of mine, was 
 found one * from him, written in his eleventh year, and 
 which I give entire, not so much on account of its merit, 
 or as a literary curiosity, but to show the early regard he 
 entertained for me, the playfulness of his character as 
 a boy, and the dry humour of franking the letter, his 
 father then being member of Parliament for the Eape of 
 Bramber ; nor is it less valuable to show his early fondness 
 for a boat. 
 
 He was most engaging and amiable as a child ; such as 
 he, afterwards thinking perhaps of himself, describes : — 
 
 He was a gentle boy, 
 
 And in all gentle sports took joy ; 
 
 Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, 
 
 With a small feather for a sail. 
 
 His fancy on that spring would float, 
 
 If some invisible breeze might stir 
 
 Its marble calm. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley was brought up in retirement at 
 Field Place, and received the same education as his elder 
 sisters,^ being instructed in the rudiments of Latin and 
 Greek by Mr. Edwards, the clergyman of Warnham, (the 
 parish in which they lived,) a good old man, but of very 
 limited intellects, and whose preaching might have been 
 edifying if his "Welsh pronunciation had made it intelli- 
 gible ; at all events, his performance of the service was 
 little calculated to inspire devotion. At ten years of age 
 Percy Bysshe was sent to Sion House, Brentford, where 
 
 * See Appendix, No. 1. 
 
 1 Shelley had no elder sisters. the youngest of the family, from 
 He had five sisters, of whom one whom the present Baronet de- 
 died in infancy, and one brother, scends. 
 
boys-hall," was conducted with the greatest regard to 
 economy. A slice of bread with an " idSe " of butter 
 smeared on the surface, and " thrice skimmed skyblue," 
 to use an expression of Bloomfield the poet, was miscalled 
 a breakfast. The supper, a repetition of the same frugal 
 repast ; and the dinner, at which it was never allowed to 
 send up the plate twice without its eliciting an observation 
 from the distributor, that effectually prevented a repetition 
 of the offence, was made up generally of ingredients that 
 were anonymous. The Saturday's meal, a sort of pie, 
 a collect from the plates during the week. This fare, to 
 a boy accustomed' to the delicacies of the table, was not 
 the most attractive ; the whole establishment was in 
 keeping with the dietry part of it, and the system of the 
 lavations truly Scotch. 
 
 The lady of the house was by no means a Mrs. Squeers 
 -r-I do not remember seeing her five times whilst I was 
 at the seminary of learning, — she was too fine to have any- 
 thing to do with all the dirty details of the household ; she 
 was, or was said to be, connected with the Duke of Argyll 
 — I never knew one of the Scottish nation who did not 
 claim relationship, or clanship, with the noble duke. She 
 was given out for a sprig of nobility at any rate ; another 
 sister, an old maid, the factotum of the establishment, was 
 an economist of the first order. 
 
 Exchanging for the caresses of his sisters an association 
 with boys, mostly the sons of London shopkeepers, of rude 
 habits and coarse manners, who made game of his girlish- 
 ness, and despised him because he was not "one of them;" 
 not disposed to enter into their sports, to wrangle, or fight ; 
 confined between four stone walls, in a playground of 
 very limited dimensions — a few hundred yards — (with 
 
16 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 a single Elm tree in it, and that the Bell tree, so called 
 from its having suspended in its branches, the odious bell 
 whose din, when I think of it, yet jars my ears,) instead 
 of breathing the pure air of his native fields, and rambling 
 about the plantations and flower gardens of his father's 
 country seat— the sufferings he underwent at his first 
 outset in this little world were most acute. 
 
 Sion House was indeed a perfect hell to him. Fagging, 
 that vestige of barbarous times, in the positive sense of 
 the word, as adopted in public schools, was not in strict 
 use ; that is, the boys of the higher classes had not ex- 
 pressly chosen and particular slaves ; but perhaps there 
 was in operation here, another and a worse form of 
 government — a democracy of tyrants — instead of the rule 
 of a few petty sovereigns ; and although here the elder 
 boys did not oblige their juniors to perform for them 
 offices the most menial, to clean their coats and shoes, 
 they forced them to bowl to them at cricket, and run after 
 their balls until they were ready to drop with fatigue- 
 to go out of bounds for them to the circulating library, 
 or purchase with dictionaries and other books sold by 
 weight to the grocer, bread and cheese to stay their 
 cravings of hunger, and to receive the punishment of the 
 transgression, if caught in the fact. And more than one 
 of these petty despots (there were young men at the school 
 of seventeen or eighteen) used to vent on his victims his 
 ill- humours in harsh words, sometimes in blows. Poor 
 Shelley ! he was always the martyr, and it was under the 
 smart of this oppression that he wrote : — 
 
 There arose 
 From the near school-room, voices, that alas! 
 Were but one echo from a world of -woes, 
 The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 
 
Day after day — week after week — 
 I walked about like a thing [sic for eot^se] alive — 
 Alas ! dear [sic for sweet] friend ! you must believe 
 The [sic for this] heart is stone — it did not break. 
 
 We were about sixty school-fellows. I well remember 
 ;he day when he was added to the number. A new 
 irrival is always a great excitement to the other boys, 
 s^ho pounce upon afresh man with the boldness of birds 
 )f prey. We all had had to pass through this ordeal, and 
 ihe remembrance of it gave my companions a zest for 
 lOrture. All tormented him with questionings. There 
 vas no end to their mockery, when they found that he 
 vas ignorant of pegtop or marbles, or leap-frog, or hop- 
 icotch, much more of fives or cricket. One wanted him 
 o spar, another to run a race with him. He was a tyro 
 n both these accomplishments, and the only welcome of 
 he Neophyte was a general shout of derision. To all 
 hese impertinences he made no reply, but with a look of 
 lisdain written in his countenance, turned his back on 
 lis new associates, and when he was alone, found relief in 
 ears. 
 
 Shelley was at this time tall for his age, slightly and 
 lelicately built, and rather narrow chested, with a com- 
 ilexion fair and ruddy, a face rather long than oval, 
 lis features, not regularly handsome, were set off by 
 . profusion of silky brown hair, that curled naturally, 
 'he expression of countenance was one of exceeding 
 weetness and innocence. His blue eyes were very large 
 nd prominent, considered by phrenologists to indicate 
 great aptitude for verbal memory. They were at times, 
 'hen he was abstracted, as he often was in contemplation, 
 all, and, as it were, insensible to external objects ; at 
 
18. LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Others they flashed with the fire of intelligence. His 
 voice was soft and low, but broken in its tones, — when 
 anything much interested him, harsh and immodulated ; 
 and this peculiarity he never lost. As is recorded ol 
 Thomson, he was naturally calm, but when he heard oi 
 or read of some flagrant act of injustice, oppression, 
 or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks of horror 
 and indignation were visible in his countenance. 
 
 I have said that he was delicately framed, and it has been 
 remarked, " that it is often noticed in those of very fine 
 and susceptible genius. That mysterious influence, which 
 the mind exercises over the body, seeming to prevent the 
 growth of physical strength, when the intellect is kept 
 ever alive, and the spirits continually are agitated." 
 
 " As his port had the meekness of a maiden, the heart 
 of the young virgin who had never crossed her father's 
 threshold to encounter the rude world, could not be more 
 susceptible of all the sweet charities than his. In this 
 respect Shelley's disposition would happily illustrate the 
 innocence and virginity of the Muses. He possessed a 
 most affectionate regard for his relations, and particularly 
 for the females of his family. It was not without manifest 
 joy that he received a letter from his mother and sisters,"— 
 tor the two eldest he had an especial fondness, and I will 
 here observe that one, unhappily removed from the world 
 before her time, possessed a talent for oil-painting that 
 few artists have acquired, and that the other bore a striking 
 resemblance in her beauty and amiability, to his cousin, 
 Harriet Grove, of whom I shall have to speak. Mr. Hogg 
 mentions, on the occasion of Shelley's seeing the attach- 
 ment and tenderness of two sisters at Oxford, his feelings 
 regarding the sisterly affections, and says he seems to 
 have had his own in his eye. He oWt his occasion 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 19 
 
 described their appearance, and drew a lovely picture of 
 this amiable and innocent attachment ; the dutiful regard 
 of the younger, which partook, in some degree, of filial 
 reverence ; but, as more facile and familiar, and of the 
 protecting, instinctively hoping fondness of the elder, 
 that resembled maternal tenderness, but with less of 
 reserve and more of sympathy. 
 
 As a proof of his great sweetness of disposition and 
 feeling for others, I will cite an example of which I was 
 an eye-witness. Two of his sisters, on the occasion of ■ 
 a visit with himself to a young lady of their own age, and 
 a near relation, who was shy, reserved, and awkward, 
 behaved to her as he considered rudely, at which Shelley 
 was much hurt, endeavoured to soothe her, and severely 
 reprimanded his sisters, and persuaded his father, on his 
 return home, to call and make apology for them. 
 
 Such was Shelley when noviciated at Sion House 
 Academy. Our master, a Scotch doctor of law, and 
 a divine, was a choleric man, of a sanguinary complexion, 
 in a green old age ; not wanting in good qualities, but 
 very capricious in his temper, which; good or bad, was 
 influenced by the daily occurrences of a domestic life, 
 not the most harmonious, and of which his face was the 
 barometer, and his hand the index. He was a tolerable 
 Greet and Latin scholar : Homer, his cJieval de hataille. 
 He could construe fluently, in his own way^ some plays of 
 .^schylus — Schutz being his oracle — and several of those 
 of Sophocles and Euripides, looking upon the text as 
 immaculate, never sticking fast at any of its corruptions, 
 but driving straight forwards, in defiance of obstacles. 
 The brick wall of no chorus ever made him pull up. In 
 reading the historians, he troubled himself as little with 
 digressions or explanations of the habits and customs of 
 
 c2 
 
20 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the ancients, or maps. His Latin verses were certainly 
 original, but neither Virgilian nor Ovidian, for I remember 
 an inscription of his on a Scotch mull, which had been 
 presented to him (he took an inordinate quantity of Scotch 
 snuff) by one of his pupils, it ran thus: — Snuff-box 
 loquitur : — 
 
 Me, Carolus Mackintosh, de dono, dedit, alumnus, 
 
 Prseceptor, praesensu, accipit atque tenet. 
 
 Shelley certainly imbibed no love of the classics, much 
 as he afterwards cultivated them, from this Dominie. 
 The dead languages were to him as bitter a pill as they 
 had been to Byron, but he acquired them, as it were in- 
 tuitively, and seemingly without study, for during school- 
 hours he was wont to gaze at the passing clouds, — all that 
 could be seenfromthe lofty windows which his desk fronted 
 — or watch the swallows as they flitted past, with longing 
 for their wings; or would scrawl in his school-books — 
 a habit he always continued — rude drawings of pines and 
 cedars, in memory of those on the lawn of his native home. 
 On these occasions, our master would sometimes peep over 
 his shoulder, and greet his ears with no pleasing salutation. 
 
 Our pedagogue, when he was in one of his good humours, 
 dealt also in what he called facetiae, and when we came to 
 the imprisonment of the winds in the Cave of .^olus, as, 
 described in the ^neid, used, to the merriment of the 
 school, who enjoyed the joke much, to indulge in Cotton's 
 parody on the passage, prefacing it with an observation, 
 that his father never forgave him for the Travestie— 
 a punishment richly merited, and which ought to have 
 been visited on the joker by his other pupils as it was by 
 Shelley, who afterwards expressed to me his digust at this 
 bad taste, for he never could endure obscenity in any form. 
 
 A scene, that to poor Shelley, who instead of laughing 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 21 
 
 had made a face at tlie silly attempt at wit, and which 
 his preceptor had probably observed, has often recurred 
 to me. A few days after this, he had a theme set him for 
 two Latin lines on the subject of Tempestas. He came to 
 me to assist him in the task. I had got a cribbing book, 
 and of which I made great use — Ovid's Tristibus. I knew 
 that the only work of Ovid with which the doctor was 
 acquainted was the Metamorphoses, the only one, indeed, 
 read in that and other seminaries of learning, and by what 
 I thought great good luck, happened to stumble on two 
 lines exactly applicable to the purpose. The hexameter 
 I forget, but the pentameter ran thus : — 
 
 Jam jam tacturos sideia ceha putes. 
 
 When Shelley's turn came to carry up his exercise, my 
 eyes were turned on the Dominie. There was a peculiar 
 expression in his features, which, like the lightning before 
 the storm, portended what was coming. The spectacles, 
 generally lifted above his dark and bushy brows, were 
 lowered to their proper position, and their lenses had no 
 sooner caught the said hexameter and pentameter than 
 he read with a loud voice the stolen line, laying a sarcas- 
 tic emphasis on every word, and suiting the action to the 
 word by boxes on each side of Shelley's ears. Then came 
 the comment, " ' Jam jam,' — Pooh, pooh, boy ! raspberry 
 jam ! Do you think you are at your mother's ? " Here 
 a burst of laughter echoed through the listening benches. 
 " Don't you know that I have a sovereign objection to 
 those two monosyllables, with which schoolboys cram 
 their verses? haven't I told you so a hundred times 
 already? 'Tacturos sidera celsa putes,' — what, do the 
 waves on the coast of Sussex strike the stars, eh ? — ' celsa 
 sidera,' — who does not know that the stars are high ? 
 
22 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Where did you find that epithet?— in your Gradus ad 
 Parnasstim, I suppose. You will never mount so high ; " 
 (another box on the ears, which nearly felled him to the 
 ground)— "^M^es! you may think this very fine, but to 
 me it is all balderdash, hyperbolical stuff; " (another cuff) 
 after which he tore up the verses, and said in a fiiry, 
 " There, go now, sir, and see if you can't write something 
 better." ^ 
 
 Poor Shelley ! I had been the cause of his misfortune — 
 of what affected him more than this unjust punishment-^ 
 the ridicule of the whole school ; and I was half inclined 
 to have opened my desk, and produced, to the shame of 
 the ignorant pedagogue, the original line of the great 
 Latin poet, which this Crispinus had so savagely abused, 
 but terror, a persuasion that his penance would be light 
 compared to mine, soon repressed the impulse. 
 
 Youthful feelings are not deep, but the impression of 
 this scene long left a sting behind it ; perhaps SheUey, 
 in brooding over the prediction as to his incapacity for 
 writing Latin verses, then resolved to falsify it, for he 
 afterwards, as will appear by two specimens which I give 
 in their proper place, became a great proficient in the art. 
 
 He passed among his schoolfellows as a strange and 
 
 1 Medwin's industrious excui-- Tristibus; and the reading is teJuros, 
 
 sions into the tongues being volu- not tacturos ; summa, not eelsa ; the 
 
 minous and pretentious rather than latter tei-m is inapplicable to the 
 
 exact or important, it will not be stars. The distich is this : 
 worth while to set his learning to m • . ... 
 
 rights passim; but the reader should ^® miserum ! quanti montea 
 
 now and again, if possible, see ^ volyuntur aquarum ! 
 
 Peacock, whose ' 'fine wit makes such ■'^™' J*™ tacturas sidera sum- 
 
 it wound the knife is lost in it " ; ""^ P"*^^- 
 
 and on this jumble the witty scholar, ... Shelley was grievously beaten for 
 
 commenting in Fraser's Magazine what the schoolmaster thought bad ' 
 
 for June 1858, is too good to miss : Latin ... for the true Ovidian- 
 
 cutting in at putes, he says : " So Latin, which the Doctor held to be 
 
 far the story is not very classically bad." The name of the Doctor, 
 
 told. The title of the book should not mentioned by Medwin, was 
 
 have been given as Tristia, or Be Greenlaw. 
 
LIM! OF SHELLEY. 2S 
 
 unsocial being, for when a holiday relieved us from our 
 tasks, and the other boys were engaged in such sports as 
 the narrow limits of our prison-court allowed, Shelley, 
 who entered into none of them, would pace backwards 
 and. forwards — I think I see him .now — along the southern 
 wall, indulging in various vague and undefined ideas, the 
 chaotic elements, if I may say so, of what afterwards 
 produced so beautiful a world. I very early learned to 
 penetrate into this soul sublime — why may I not say 
 divine, for what is there that comes nearer to God than 
 genius in the heart of a child ? I, too, was the only one 
 at the school with whom he could communicate his suf- 
 ferings, or exchange ideas : I was, indeed, some years his 
 senior, and he was grateful to me for so often singling 
 him out for a companion ; for it is well known that it is 
 considered in some degree a condescension for boys to 
 make intimates of those in a lower form than themselves. 
 Then we used to walk together up and down his favourite 
 spot, and there he would outpour his sorrows to me, with 
 observations far beyond his years, and which, according 
 to his after ideas, seeraed to have sprung from an antenatal 
 life. I have often thought that he had these walks of 
 ours in mind, when, in describing an antique group, he 
 says, "Look, the figures are walking with a sauntering 
 and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, as 
 you may have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, 
 walking in some grassy spot of the play-ground, with 
 that tender friendship for each other which the age 
 inspires." If Shelley abominated one task more than 
 another it was a dancing lesson. At a Ball at Willis's 
 rooms, where, among other pupils of Sala, ! made one, an 
 aunt of mine, to whom the Letter No. 1, in the Appendix, 
 was addressed, asked the dancing master why Bysshe was 
 
24 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 notpresent, to which he replied in his brokenEngUsh, " Mon 
 Dieu, madam, what should he do here? Master Shelley 
 will not learn any ting— he is so gaucU." In fact, he 
 contrived to abscond as often as possible from the dancing 
 lessons, and when forced to attend, suffered inexpressibly. 
 Half-year after half-year passed away, and in spite of 
 his seeming neglect of his tasks, he soon surpassed all his 
 competitors, for his memory was so tenacious that he 
 never forgot a word once turned up in his dictionary. 
 He was very fond of reading, and greedily devoured all 
 the books which were brought to school after the holidays ; 
 these were mostly Hue books. Who does not know what 
 blue books mean ? but if there should be any one ignorant 
 enough not to know what those dear darling volumes, so 
 designated from their covers, contain, be it known, that 
 they are or were to be bought for sixpence, and embodied 
 stories of haunted castles, bandits, murderers, and other 
 grim personages — a most exciting and interesting sort, of 
 food for boys' minds ; among those of a larger calibre was 
 one which I have never seen since, but which I still re- 
 member with a recoucM delight. It was Peter Wilkins. 
 How much Shelley wished for a winged wife and little 
 winged cherubs of children ! ^ 
 
 1 In the summer of 1803 Shelley exquisitely conceived and drawn 
 
 completed his eleventh year and Youwarkee, the author, Robert 
 
 Medwin his sixteenth. It may be Paltock, must not be begrudged 
 
 doubted whether a lad of eleven a place among the literati who con- 
 
 with such a father as Shelley's, and tributed towards the shaping of 
 
 such a companion as his cousin such a denizen of the upper sky as 
 
 Tom Medwin to train him in un- Shelley ultimately became. One 
 
 desirable knowledge, would have almost hopes Medwin was able to 
 
 got much harm from that fine impress his little cousin with the 
 
 romance of the Flying People, The true value of the flying woman's 
 
 Life ancL AAmntures of Peter Wilkins, triumph when she bore a son whose 
 
 a Cornish Man (1751). Indeed if anatomy and physiology, smacking 
 
 he really I'cad it and understood of both parents, was not the true 
 
 thoroughly the domestic story of expression of either line of his 
 
 the castaway Cornubian and the ancestry. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 25 
 
 But this stock was very soon exhausted. As there was 
 no school library, we soon resorted, " under the rose," to 
 a low circulating one in the town (Brentford), and here 
 the treasures at first seemed inexhaustible. Novels at this 
 time, (I speak of 1803) in three goodly volumes, such as 
 we owe to the great Wizard of the North, were unknown. 
 Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, formed the staple of 
 the collection. But these authors were little to Shelley's 
 taste, for they exhibited life pretty much as it is, and 
 poets of all ages have despised the real. Anne Eadclyffe's 
 works pleased him most, particularly The Italian, but the 
 Rosa-Matilda school, especially a strange, wild romance, 
 entitled Zofloya, or the Moor, a Monk-Lewisy production, 
 where his Satanic Majesty, as in Faust, plays the chief 
 part, enraptured him. The two novels he afterwards 
 wrote, entitled Zastrozzi and The Eosicrucian, were 
 modelled after this ghastly production, all of which I now 
 remember, is, that the principal character is an incarna- 
 tion of the devil, but who, unlike The Monk, (then a pro- 
 hibited book, but afterwards an especial favourite with 
 Shelley) instead of tempting a man and turning him into 
 a likeness of himself, enters into a woman called Olympia, 
 who poisons her husband homcBopathically, and ends by 
 being carried off very melodramatically in blue flames to 
 the place of dolor.^ 
 
 ^ Algernon Charles Swinburne, somewhere in the Alps (if I mistake 
 the only man I ever knew as having not)," said Swinburne. The whole 
 read Zofloya, or the Moor, told me, in action of the book is, according to 
 1886, that the book was in three this almost infallible witness, con- 
 octavo volumes, malgre the contrary eerned with the misfortunes of 
 inference to be drawn from Virtue in the person of " the inno- 
 Medwin's paragraph, and that the cent Lilla," who is generally un- 
 eponymous hero is in fact revealed dergoing incarceration and varieties 
 on the last page as " the Father of of torment throughout her blame- 
 Evil in person," and bears off the less but comfortless career, and the 
 female accomplice of his crimes to prosperities of Vice in the person 
 a gulf of everlasting fire, " opening of "the fiendish Victoria," who 
 
26 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " Accursed," said Schiller, " the folly of our nurses, who 
 distort the imagination with frightful ghost stories, and 
 impress ghastly pictures of executions on our weak brains, 
 so that involuntary shudderings seize the limbs of a man, 
 making them rattle in frosty agony," &c. "But who 
 knows," he adds, " if these traces of early education be 
 ineffaceable in us?" Schiller was, however, himself 
 much addicted to this sort of reading. It is said of Collins 
 that he employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction 
 and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar 
 habits of thought, Was universally delighted with those 
 flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, 
 and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive 
 acquiescence in popular tradition. He loved fairies, genii, 
 giants, and monsters ; he delighted to rove through the 
 meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of 
 golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian 
 gardens. Milton, too, in early life, lived in a similar 
 dream-land, was fond of high romance and gothic dia- 
 bleries ; and it would seem that such contemplations 
 furnish a fit jjafewfem for the development of poetical genius. 
 
 This constant dwelling on the marvellous, had consider- 
 able influence on Shelley's imagination, nor is it to be 
 wondered, that at that age he entertained a belief in 
 apparitions, and the power of evoking them, to which he 
 alludes frequently in his afterworks, as in Alastor : 
 
 By forcing some lone ghost, 
 My [sic] messenger, to render up the tale 
 Of -what we are ; 
 
 ultimately accomplishes "thevivi- Zofloya,aKos Satan. Swinburne saw 
 
 section of Virtue by hewing her no reason to question that, in style 
 
 amiable victim into more or less throughout, and occasionally in in-' 
 
 minute though palpitating frag- cident, Zofloya was the immediate 
 
 ments,"afterwhich the aforenamed model of Zastrozzi. The authoress 
 
 retribution overtakes her in the was Charlotte Dacre (Mrs. Byrne), 
 
 grasp of her infernal paramour, better known as " Eosa Matilda." 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 27 
 
 and in an earlier effusion : 
 
 Oh, there are genii [sic for spirits] of the air, 
 And genii of the evening breeze, 
 And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair 
 As star-beams among twilight trees ; 
 
 and again in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty : 
 
 While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
 
 Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin. 
 
 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
 
 Hopes of high talk with the departed dead, 
 
 I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed — 
 
 I was not heard — I saw them not. 
 
 After supping on the horrors of the Minerva press, he 
 was subject to strange, and sometimes frightful dreams, 
 and was haunted by apparitions that bore all the sem- 
 blance of reality. "We did not sleep in the same dormi- 
 tory, but I shall never forget one moonlight night seeing 
 Shelley walk into my room. He was in a state of som- 
 nambulism. His eyes were open, and he advanced with 
 slow steps to the window, which, it being the height of 
 summer, was open. I got out of bed, seized him with my 
 arm, and waked him — I was not then aware of the danger 
 of suddenly rousing the sleep-walker. He was excessively 
 agitated, and after leading him back with some difficulty 
 to his couch, I sat by him for some time, a witness to the 
 severe erethism of his nerves, which the sudden shock 
 produced. 
 
 This was the only occasion, however, to my knowledge, 
 that a similar event occurred at school, but I remember that 
 he was severely punished for this involuntary transgres- 
 sion. If, however, he ceased at that time to somnambu- 
 lize, he was given to waking dreams, a sort of lethargy 
 and abstraction that became habitual to him, and after 
 the acces was over, his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his 
 
28 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 voice was tremulous with emotion, a sort of ecstacy came 
 over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel 
 than a human being. 
 
 The second or third year after Shelley's domicile at 
 Sion House, Walker ^ gave a course of lectures in the great 
 room at the academy, and displayed his Orrery. This 
 exhibition opened to Shelley a new universe of specula- 
 tions ; he was, till then, quite ignorant of astronomy ; 
 looking upon the stars as so many lights in heaven, as 
 flowers on the earth, sent for our mere gratification and 
 enjoyment ; but if he was astonished at the calculations 
 of the mathematician, and the unfolding of our System, 
 he was still more delighted at the idea of a plurality of 
 worlds. Saturn, which was then visible, and which we 
 afterwards looked at through a telescope, particularly 
 interested him, its atmosphere seeming to him an irre- 
 fragable proof of its being inhabited like our globe. He 
 dilated on some planets being more favoured than 
 ourselves, and was enchanted with the idea that we 
 should, as spirits, make the grand tour through the 
 heavens, —perhaps, to use the words of Jean Paul Eichter, 
 " that as boys are advanced and promoted from one class 
 to another, we should rise to a progressive state from 
 planet to planet, till we became Gods." But if his mind 
 was thus opened, he was not less charmed at the chemical 
 experiments, particularly with the fact that earth, air, and 
 water are not simple elements. This course of lectures 
 ended with the solar microscope, which, whilst it excited 
 his curiosity, constituted to most of us little spectators the 
 most attractive part of the exhibition. The mites in 
 cheese, where the whole active population was in motion 
 — the wing of a fly — the vermicular animalculce in vine- 
 
 > See Dowden's Life of Shelley, i. 17, 29. 
 
LIFB OF SHELLEY. 29 
 
 gar, and other minute creations still smaller, and even 
 invisible to tlie naked eye, formed afterwards the subjects 
 of many of our conversations; and that he had not 
 forgotten the subject is proved by his making a solar 
 microscope his constant companion, and an anecdote is 
 told in reference to it, which places in a strong light his 
 active benevolence : — " "We were crossing the New Eoad," 
 says Mr. Hogg, " when he said sharply, ' I must call for 
 a moment, but it will not be out of the way at all,' and 
 then dragged me suddenly towards the left. I enquired 
 whither are we bound, and I believe I suggested the 
 postponement of the intended visit till to-morrow. He 
 answered that it was not at all out of our way. I was 
 hurried along rapidly towards the left ; we soon fell into 
 an animated discussion respecting the nature of the virtue 
 of the Romans, which in some measure beguiled the 
 weary way. "Whilst he was talking with much vehemence, 
 and a total disregard of the people who thronged the 
 streets, he suddenly wheeled about, and pushed me through 
 a narrow door ; to my infinite surprise I found myself in 
 a pawnbroker's shop. It was in the neighbourhood of 
 Newgate street, for he had no idea whatever, in practice, 
 either of time or space, nor did he in any degree regard 
 method in the conduct of business. There were several 
 women in the shop in brown and grey cloaks, with 
 squalling children, some of them were attempting to 
 persuade the children to be quiet, or, at least, to scream 
 with moderation ; others were enlarging and pointing 
 out the beauties of certain coarse and dirty sheets that 
 lay before them, to a man on the other side of the counter. 
 I bore this substitute for our proposed tea for some minutes 
 with great patience, but, as the call did not promise to 
 terminate speedily, I said to Shelley in a whisper, ' Is not 
 
30 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 this almost as bad as the Roman virtue ? ' Upon this 
 he approached the pawnbroker : it was long before he 
 obtained a hearing, and he did not find civility ; the man 
 was unwilling to part with a valuable pledge so soon, or 
 perhaps he hoped to retain it eventually, or it might be 
 the obliquity of his nature disqualified him for respectful 
 behaviour. A pawnbroker is frequently an important 
 witness in criminal proceedings ; it has happened to me, 
 therefore, to see many specimens of this kind of banker ; 
 they sometimes appeared not less respectable than other 
 tradesmen — and sometimes I have been forcibly reminded 
 of the first I ever met with by an equally ill-conditioned 
 fellow. I was so little pleased with the introduction, that 
 I stood aloof in the shop, and did not hear what passed 
 between him and Shelley. On our way to Covent Garden, 
 I expressed my surprise and dissatisfaction at our strange 
 visit, and I learned that when he came to London before, 
 in the course of the summer, some old man had related to 
 him a tale of distress — of a calamity which could only 
 be alleviated by the timely application of ten pounds ; 
 five of them he drew from his pocket, and to raise the 
 other five he had pawned his beautiful solar microscope ! 
 He related this act of beneficence simply and briefly as if 
 it were a matter of course, and such indeed it was to him. 
 I was ashamed of my impatience, and we strode along in 
 silence. 
 
 " It was past ten when we reached the hotel, some 
 excellent tea and a liberal supply of hot muffins in the 
 coffee-room, now quiet and solitary, were the more grate- 
 ful after the wearisome delay and vast deviation. Shelley 
 often turned his head, and cast eager glances towards the 
 door ; and whenever the waiter replenished our teapot, 
 or approached our box, he was interrogated whether any 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 31 
 
 one had called. At last tlie desired summons was brought ; 
 Shelley drew forth some bank notes, hurried to the bar, 
 and returned as hastily, bearing in triumph under his 
 arm a mahogany box, followed by the officious waiter, 
 with whose assistance he placed it upon the bench by his 
 side. He viewed it often with evident satisfaction, and 
 sometimes patted it affectionately in the course of calm 
 conversation. The solar microscope was always a favourite 
 plaything, or instrument of scientific inquiry ; whenever 
 he entered a house his first care was to choose some 
 window of a southern aspect, and if permission could be 
 obtained by prayer or purchase, straightway cut a hole 
 through the shutter to receive it. His regard for the 
 solar microscope was as lasting as it was strong ; for he 
 retained it several years after this adventure, and long 
 after he had parted with all the rest of his philosophical 
 apparatus." 
 
 But to return to Sion House, and perhaps I have dwelt 
 long enough on the first epoch of the life of the Poet. I 
 was removed to a public school, with only one regret — to 
 part from him ; and Shelley shortly afterwards was sent to 
 Eton. So much did we mutually hate Sion House, that 
 we never alluded to it in after life ; nor shall I have 
 much to say about Eton. The pure system of fagging was 
 here, as it still is, carried on in all its rankness ; and, as it 
 is the maxim of jurisprudence, that custom makes law — 
 that tradition stands in the place of, and has the force of law 
 — has continued to defy all attempts to put it down. By 
 the way, in one of the military colleges, hardly a year ago, 
 a young man was rolled up in a snow-ball, and left in his 
 room during the time the other cadets were at church. 
 The consequence was, that though restored to animation, 
 he still is, and is likely to remain all his life, a cripple. 
 
32 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The authorities, to -whom an appeal was made against 
 this barbarous treatment, refused to interfere. Shelley, 
 Mrs. Shelley says,^ " refusing to fag at Eton, was treated 
 with revolting cruelty by masters and boys. This roused, 
 instead of taming his spirit, and he rejected the duty of 
 obedience, when it was enforced by menaces and punish- 
 ment. To aversion to the society of his fellow-creatures, 
 such as he found them, collected together in societies, where 
 one egged on the other to acts of tyranny, was joined the 
 deepest sympathy and compassion ; while the attachment 
 he felt to individuals, and the admiration with which he 
 regarded their prowess and virtue, led him to entertain a 
 high opinion of the perfectibility of human nature ; and 
 he believed that all could reach the highest grade of moral 
 improvement, did not the customs and prejudices of society 
 foster evil passions and excuse evil actions." 
 
 That the masters would not listen to his complaints, if 
 he made any, I readily believe ; and the senior boys no 
 doubt resented, as contumacy, and infringement of their 
 rights, Shelley's solitary resistance to them, and visited 
 him with condign punishment. It has been said, and the 
 anecdote is probably borrowed from the Life of Shaftes- 
 bury, that he headed a conspiracy against this odious and 
 degrading custom, but I have enquired of some Etonians, 
 his contemporaries, and find that there is no foundation 
 for the report. Indeed, what could a conspiracy of the 
 junior boys, however extensive, effect by numbers against 
 a body so much their superiors in age and physical force ? 
 
 Tyranny produces tjnranny, in common minds ; and it 
 is well known in schools, that those boys who have been 
 
 > Medwin acknowledged the in MS. in the revised copy ^perhaps 
 
 source of these remarks in the first erroneously. The passage is from 
 
 edition of the Life ; hut the words Mary's note on Queen Mab. 
 "Mrs. Shelley says '' are struck out 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 33 
 
 the most fagged, become the greatest oppressors ; not so 
 
 Shelley : he says [Dedication to Laon and Cythna] : — 
 
 And then I clasped my hands, and looked around. 
 But none was near to mark my streaming eyes, 
 Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground; 
 So without shame I spake — " I will be wise 
 And just and free— and mild— if in me lies 
 Such power : for I grow weary to behold 
 The selfish and the strong still tyrannize, 
 Without reproach or check." 
 
 The boy, so delicately organized, with so nervous a 
 temperament, under the iufluence of a chronic melancholy, 
 whose genius was a sort of malady ; this child, so strong 
 and yet so feeble, suffered in every way. Like the 
 martyrs, who smiled in the midst of torture, he sought 
 refuge in his own thoughts, in the heaven of his own soul, 
 and perhaps this inward life aided him in his search after 
 those mysteries to which he afterwards clung with a faith 
 so unshq,ken. 
 
 It 'is well known how few boys profit much by these 
 great public schools, especially by Eton, the most aristo- 
 cratic of them all. He says [Ibidem] — 
 
 Nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
 I cared to learn. 
 
 But an exception to these was one of the masters 
 
 Dr. Lind, whom he had in mind, in the old man who 
 
 liberates Laon from his tower in The Revolt of Islam, (and 
 
 it might be added in the Hermit in Prince Athanase,) 
 
 who befriended and supported him, and whose name he 
 
 never mentioned without love and veneration, and with 
 
 whom Shelley says he read the Symposium. 
 
 Then Plato's words of light in thee and me 
 Lingered, like moonlight in the moonless Easjt, 
 
 For we had just then read — thy memory 
 Is faithful now — the story of the Feast. 
 
 8HEl.LI!T D 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But tJiougli he did not distinguish himself highly at Eton, 
 owing perhaps to his want of emulation, and ambition of 
 shining above his fellows in the class ; he passed through 
 the school with credit. He had been so well grounded in 
 the classics, that it required little labour for him to get 
 up his daily lessons. With these, indeed, he often went 
 before his master unprepared, his out-of-school hours 
 being occupied with other studies. 
 
 Stories are told of his chemical mishaps. — I have before 
 me two notes from his father to mine, written in 1808. 
 Shelley had sent for some book on chemistry, which 
 happened to be in my father's library, but which fell into 
 the hands of his tutor and was sent back. Sir Timothy 
 Shelley says — '^ I have returned the hook on chemistry, as it 
 is a forbidden thing at Eton !" Might not this extraordi- 
 nary prohibition have the more stimulated SheUey to 
 engage in the pursuit ? 
 
 He made himself a tolerable French scholar, and during 
 the last year worked hard at G-erman, that most difficult 
 of modern, I might say of all tongues, and in which, with 
 his astonishing verbal memory, he soon made great 
 advances. 
 
 The author of the papers entitled " P. B. Shelley at 
 Oxford " says that, on visiting him, " he was writing the 
 usual exercise, which is presented once a week— a Latin 
 translation of a paper in the Spectator ; he soon finished 
 it, and as he held it before the fire to dry, I offered to 
 take it from him ; he said it was not worth looking at, 
 but I persisted, through a certain scholastic curiosity, to 
 examine the Latinity of my new acquaintance. He gave . 
 it me. The Latin was sufficiently correct, but the version 
 was paraphrastic; which I observed; he assented, and 
 said it would pass muster, and he felt no interest in such 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 35 
 
 efforts, and no desire to excel in them. I also noticed 
 many portions of heroic verse, and several entire verses, 
 and these I pointed out as defects in a prose composition. 
 He smiled archly, and added in his peculiar whisper : ' Do 
 you think they will observe them ? I inserted them 
 intentionally, to try their ears. I once showed up a 
 theme at Eton, to old Keate, in which there were a great 
 many verses, but he observed them, scanned them, and 
 asked why I had introduced them — I answered that I did 
 not know they were there — this was partly true and 
 partly false, and he believed me, and immediately applied 
 to me a line in which Ovid says of himself: 
 
 Et quid tentabam dicere, versus erat.' 
 
 Shelley then spoke of the facility with which he composed 
 Latin verses, and taking the paper out of my hand, he 
 began to put the entire translation into verse. He would 
 sometimes open at hazard a prose writer, as Livy or 
 Sallust, and by changing the position of the words, and 
 occasionally substituting others, he would transmute 
 several sentences from prose to verse, to heroic, or more 
 commonjly elegiac verse, for he was particularly charmed 
 with the gracefdl and easy flow of the latter, with surpris- 
 ing rapidity and readiness." 
 
 That he had certainly arrived at great skill in the art 
 of versification, I think I shall be able to prove by the 
 following specimens I kept among my treasures, which he 
 gave me in 1808 or 9. The first is the Epitaph in Gray's 
 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, probably a school 
 task.^ 
 
 * In Medwin's tiny collection of JEpitaphium ! It is right to record 
 
 Nugse (Heidelberg, 1856) the first that, of this very scarce little book, 
 
 piece is a rendering of the whole I have one copy presented by the 
 
 Elegy into Latin, all in elegiacs but "author'' to Captain W. W. Shortt 
 
 the epitaph, which is this very and having the word EDITED in- 
 
36 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 EPITAPHIUM. 
 Hie, sinu fesgum caput, hospitale, 
 Ceapitis, dormit juvenis, nee illi 
 Fata ridebant, popularis ille 
 
 Nescius aurse. 
 
 Musa non vultu, genus, arrogante. 
 Rustics, natum grege despieatur, 
 Et suum, moerens puerum, notavit 
 
 Sollicitudo. 
 
 Indoles illi bene larga, pectus 
 Veritas sedem sibi vindicavit, 
 Et pari, tantis meritis, beavit 
 
 Munere, coelum. 
 
 Omne, quod msestis habuit, miserto 
 Corde, largivit lacrymam, fecepit, 
 Omne, quod coelo volnit, fldelis 
 
 Pectus amici. 
 
 Longius, sed tu, fuge, curiosus, 
 Caeteraa laudes, fuge, suspicari, 
 Cseteras culpas, fuge, velle tractas 
 
 Sede tremenda. 
 
 Spe tremescentes, recubant, in ilia 
 Sede, virtutes, simulatque culpis, 
 In sui Patris gremio, (tremendS, 
 
 , Sede,) Deique. 
 
 aertedin manuscript romau capitals Spes, metus, sacra, recubant in 
 
 between Nugss and By Thomas ilia 
 
 Medwin. In this correction I trace Sede, virtutes, pariterque culpse 
 
 Medwin'a hand, not Shortt's. The In patris can gremio, Deique, 
 
 Epitaphium seems to have been very Pace beata 
 
 much edited in 1856; for in the 
 
 Nugai we read, for example, at the ■^"*' ^ Medwin takes at least as 
 
 close, what is practically an niuch editorial liberty when he 
 
 altogether new version, namely extracts from published writings of 
 
 „,.,.. . . Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, Hogg, or 
 
 Cseteris donis, fuge, suspican, whomsoever, we need not m the 
 
 Debitas laudes meritis negare. present instance hasten to reject 
 
 Cseteras culpas, fuge, velle tractas the Epitaphium from the roll of 
 
 Sede verenda. Shelley's juvenilia. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 37 
 
 . The second specimen of his versification is of a totally 
 different character, and shows a considerable precocity. 
 
 IN HOEOLOGIUM. 
 
 Inter marmoreas, Leouorse, pendula colles, 
 Fortunata ninuB, Machiua, dicit boras. 
 Qua manilms, premit ilia duas, insensa, papillas, 
 Cur mihi sit digito tangere, amata, nefas.* 
 
 Though these two poems may not bear strict criticism, 
 and fall short of those produced by Canning or Lord 
 "Wellesley at the same age, Mr. H[ogg] says justly that 
 Shelley had a great facility of Latin versification. He 
 proved himself also an excellent Latin scholar, by trans- 
 lating in his leisure hours, several Books of Pliny the 
 Elder, "the enlightened and benevolent," as he styled 
 him, that Encyclopaedist whose works he greatly admired, 
 and whose chapter De Deo was the first germ of his ideas 
 respecting the Nature of God. Shelley had intended to 
 make a complete version of his Natural History, but 
 stopped short at the chapters on Astronomy, which 
 Dr. Lind, whom he consulted, told him the best scholars 
 could not understand. No author is more difficult to 
 render than Pliny the Elder, for I remember it took me 
 half a day to translate one passage, that most beautiful 
 one, about the nightingale — probably itself a translation 
 from some lost Greek Lyric; but Shelley's MS. — and 
 what a MS. ! what a free, splendid hand he wrote — was 
 almost pure. I could have wished that Mrs. Shelley, if 
 she possessed this early production, had given some speci- 
 
 ^ The late Denis Florence Mac- tember 16, 1809, an English epigram 
 Carthy {SMley^s Early Life, 1872) On Seeing a FtenchWatch round the Neck 
 found in The Oxford Herald of Sep- of a Beautiful Young Woman: 
 
 Hark what we gain from foreign lands, 
 Time cannot now be said to linger, — 
 
 Allow'd to lay his two rude hands 
 Where others dare not lay a finger. 
 
38 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 mens of what was a remarkable effort for a mere boy. 
 His knowledge of Greek was at that time superficial, but 
 he, in after years, became sensible, as I have often heard 
 him say, of the great inferiority of Latin authors— of the 
 Latin language, to the Greek, and learned to draw from 
 those richer fountains which he found inexhaustible— to 
 form his lyrics on the Choruses of Sophocles and ^schylus, 
 and his prose on Plato, which he considered a model of style. 
 
 Shelley made few, if any intimacies at Eton, and I never 
 heard him mention in after life one of his class-fellows, 
 and I believe their very names had escaped him, — ^unlike 
 Lord Byron, who never forgot those in his own form, nor, 
 indeed, what is still more remarkable, as proved in the 
 instance of Proctor, the order in which those in a lower 
 one stood. But Shelley's companions were his books, 
 which he calls " the best Society " ; not that he was either 
 morose or unsocial, and must have had a rather large 
 circle of friends, since his parting breakfast at Eton cost 
 £50 ; and Mr. Hogg says " he possessed an unusual num- 
 ber of books, Greek and Latin, each inscribed with the 
 name of the donor, which had been presented to him, 
 according to the custom, on quitting Eton," — a proof that 
 Shelley had been popular among his school-fellows, many 
 of whom were then at Oxford, and they frequently called 
 at his rooms, and although he spoke with regard, he 
 generally avoided an association with them, for it inter- 
 fered with his beloved study, and interrupted the pursuits 
 to which he ardently and devotedly attached himself. 
 
 He told me the greatest delight he experienced at Eton, 
 was from boating, for which he had, as I have already 
 mentioned, early acquired a taste. I was present at 
 a regatta at which he assisted, in 1809, and seemed to 
 enjoy with great zest. A wherry was his beau ideal of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 39 
 
 happiness, and lie never lost the fondness with which he 
 regarded the Thames, no new acquaintance when he went 
 to Eton, for at Brentford we had more than once played 
 the truant, and rowed to Kew, and once to Eichmond, 
 where we saw Mrs. Jordan, in The Country Girl, at that 
 theatre, the first Shelley had ever visited. It was an era in 
 my life. But he had no fondness for theatrical representa- 
 tions ; and in London, afterwards, rarely went to the play 
 except to see his Beau Ideal of an actress, Miss O'Neill. 
 
 I now bring Shelley, his school education completed, 
 back to Field-place. "We had always been much together 
 during the vacations, and constantly corresponded, and it 
 is a matter of deep regret to me that I did not preserve 
 those letters, the tenor of which was partly literary, 
 and partly metaphysical. Such literature! and such 
 metaphysics ! both rather crude. I have a vivid re- 
 collection of the walks we took in the winter of 1869, 
 There is something in a frosty day, when the sun isbrig^ht, 
 the sky clear, and the air rarefied, which acts like a sort 
 of intoxication. On such days Shelley's spirits used to 
 run riot, his " sweet and subtle talk " was to me inebriating 
 and electric. He had begun to have a longing for author- 
 ship — a dim presentiment of his future fame — an ambition 
 of making a name in the world. We that winter wrote, in 
 alternate chapters, the commencement of a wild and extra- 
 vagant romance, where a hideous witch played the principal 
 part, and whose portrait — not a very inviting one— is given 
 in The Wandering Jew, of which I shall have occasion to 
 speak, almost versified from a passage in our Nightmare. 
 
 When suddenly, a meteor's glare 
 With brilliant flash illumed the air, 
 Bursting thro' clouds of sulphurous smoke, 
 As from a witch's form it broke : 
 
40 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Of Herculean bulk her frame , 
 Seemed blasted by the lightning's flame— 
 Her eyes, that flared with lurid light, 
 Were now with bloodshot lustre filled, 
 / And now thick rheumy gore distilled ; 
 Black as the raven's plume, her locks 
 Loose streamed upon the pointed rocks — 
 Wild floated on the hollow gale, 
 Or swept the ground in matted trail : 
 Vile loathsome weeds, whose pitchy fold 
 Were blackened by the Are of. Hell, 
 Her shapeless limbs of giant mould 
 Scarce served to hide, as she the while 
 Grinned horribly a ghastly smile, 
 And shrieked with hideous yell. 
 
 Stelley having abandoned prose for poetry, now formed 
 a grand design, to write a metrical romance on the subject 
 of the "Wandering Jew, of which the first three cantos 
 Were, with a few additions and alterations, almost entirely 
 mine. It was a sort of thing such as boys usually write, 
 a cento from different favourite authors; the vision in 
 the third canto taken from Lewis's Monk, of which, in 
 common with Byron, he was a great admirer ; and the 
 Crucifixion scene, altogether a plagiarism from a volume 
 of Cambridge Prize Poems. The part which I supplied is 
 still in my possession. After seven or eight cantos were 
 perpetrated, Shelley sent them to Campbell for his opinion 
 on their merits, with a view to publication. The author 
 of The Pleasures of Hope returned the MS. with the 
 remark, that there were only two good lines in it : 
 
 It seemed as if an angel's sigh 
 Had breathed the plaintive symphony.* 
 Lines, by the way, savouring strongly of Walter Scott 
 
 * The passage ran thus : — 
 
 She ceased, and on the listening ear 
 
 Her pensive accents died — 
 
 So sad they were, so softly clear. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 41 
 
 This criticism of Campbell's gave a deatk-blow to our 
 hopes of immortality, and so little regard did Shelley 
 entertain for the production, that he left it at his lodgings 
 in Edinburgh, where it was disinterred by some corre- 
 spondent of Preiser's, and in whose magazine, in 1831, four 
 of the cantos appeared.^ The others he very wisely did 
 not think worth publishing. 
 
 It must be confessed that Shelley's contributions to this 
 juvenile attempt were far the best, and those, with my 
 MS. before m^, I could, were it worth while, point out, 
 though the contrast in the style, and the inconsequence 
 of the opinions on religion, particularly in the last canto, 
 are sufficiently obvious to mark two different hands, and 
 show which passages were his. There is a song at the end 
 of the fourth canto which is very musical : 
 
 See yon opening rose 
 
 Spreads its fragrance to the gale ! 
 
 It fades within an hour! 
 
 Its decay is fast — is pale — 
 
 Paler is yon maiden, 
 
 Paster is her heart's decay — 
 
 Deep with sorrow laden 
 
 She sinks in death— away. 
 
 The finale of The Wandering Jew is also Shelley's, and 
 proves that thus early he had imbibed opinions which 
 were often the subject of our controversies. We differed 
 also as to the conduct of the poem. It was my wish to 
 
 It seemed as if an angel's sigh 
 
 Had breathed a plaintive symphony : 
 
 So ravishingly sweet their close. 
 
 * I am not prepared to reject who are curious on the subject 
 
 Medwin's claim to the authorship should consult Mr, Bertram Dobell's 
 
 of the greater part of the rubbish introduction to the Society's book, 
 
 called 2%e Wandering Jew, which which is by no means difficult to 
 
 was reprinted by the late lamented obtain. Editors still exclude the 
 
 Shelley Society in 1887 as " A Poem work from the fold, 
 by Percy Bysshe Shelley." Those 
 
42 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 put an end to the Wandering Jew— a consummation 
 
 Shelley would by no means consent to, Mrs. Shelley is 
 
 strangely misinformed as to the history of the fragment, 
 
 which I, not Shelley, picked up in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields 
 
 (as mentioned in my preface to Ahasuerus), and which 
 
 was not found till some-of the cantos had been written. 
 
 Byron was well acquainted with this fragment * which 
 
 appeared With many additions in one of the notes to 
 
 Queen Mob, and owes to it the passage in Manfred : 
 
 I have affronted Death, but in the storm 
 
 Of elements, the -water shrunk from me, 
 
 And fatal things passed harmless : the cold hand 
 
 Of an all-pitiless demon held me back, 
 
 Back hy a single hair — / could not die. 
 
 Ahasuerus ever continued a favourite with Shelley. 
 He introduces him into Queen Mab, where is to be found 
 a passage, but slightly changed, from the original Wander- 
 ing Jew, which he took as an epigraph of a chapter in his 
 Rodcrucian. 
 
 E'en as a giant oak, which Heaven's fierce flame 
 Has scathed in the wilderness, to stand 
 A monument of fadeless ruin there ; 
 Tet powerfully and movelessly it bears 
 The midnight conflict of the wintry waves.t 
 
 * The Serpent stung but could not destroy me. The Dragon tormented 
 but dared not to devour me. The foaming billows cast me on the shore, 
 and the burning arrows of existence pierced my cold heart again. The 
 restless Ourse held me by the hair, and I could not die. — Notes to Queen Mab, p. 29. 
 t Still like the scathed pine tree's height, 
 Braving the tempest of the night ; 
 Have I 'scaped the bickering fire — 
 Like the shattered pine, which a monument stands 
 Of faded grandeur, which the brands 
 Of the tempest-shaken air 
 Have riven on the desolate heath ; 
 Yet it stands majestic e'en in death. 
 And raises its wild form there. 
 
 Wandering Jew, Fraser's Hag., 1831, p. 672. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 43 
 
 Ahasuerus is also made to figure in Hellas, and we find 
 in Alastor the following aspiration : 
 
 O ! that God, 
 Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice, 
 Which but one living man has drained, who now, 
 Vessel of deathless wrath, wanders for ever, 
 Lone as incarnate Death. 
 
 But Shelley wa^s not the first who has been struck with 
 the poetical capabilities of such a character. Voltaire 
 makes him play a part in the Henriade, and says : 
 
 C'etoit un de ces Hebreux, 
 Qui proscrits sur la terre, et citoyens du monde, 
 Portent de mars en mers leur misere profonde, 
 Et d'un antique amas de superstitions, 
 Ont remplis de longtemps toutes les nations. 
 
 In order to dispose of this subject, I will add, that after 
 Shelley had been matriculated, on his visit to the Bod- 
 leian, the first question he put to the librarian, was, 
 whether he had The Wandering Jew. He supposed 
 Shelley meant the Periodical so entitled, edited, I believe, 
 by the Marquis d'Argens, who formed one of the wits 
 composing the literary court of Frederick the Great, but 
 told him he knew of no book in Grerman by that name. 
 German was at that time little cultivated in England. 
 There were, I believe, no translations then extant of 
 Schiller. Gothe was only known by The Sorrows of 
 Werther, and Canning and Frere had, in The Antijacobin, 
 thrown ridicule on the poetry of that country, which long 
 lasted. Shelley had imagined that the great Oxford 
 library contained all books in all languages, and was 
 much disappointed. He was not aware that the fragment 
 which I had accidentally foiind was not a separate publica- 
 tion, but mixed up with the works of Schubard [sic], and 
 had been copied, I believe, from a Magazine of the day. 
 
44 LIFE OP SHBLIEY. 
 
 Shelley's favourite poet in 1809 was Southey. He had 
 read Thalaba till he almost knew it by heart, and had 
 drenched himself with its metrical beauty. 
 
 I have often heard him quote that exquisite passage, 
 
 where the Enchantress winds round the finger of her 
 
 victim a single hair, till the spell becomes inextricable— 
 
 the charm cannot be broken. But he still more doted on 
 
 Kehamah, the Curse of which I remember Shelley often 
 
 declaiming : 
 
 And water shall see tliee ! 
 And fear thee, and fly thee! 
 The waves shall not touch thee 
 As they pass by thee ! 
 
 And this curse shall be on thee, 
 For ever and ever. 
 
 I transcribe the passage from memory, for I have never 
 read since that romance he used to look upon as perfeqt ; 
 and was haunted by the witch Loranite, raving enthusi- 
 astically about the lines, beginning : 
 
 Is there a child whose little winning -ways 
 Would lure all hearts, on whom its parents gaze 
 Till they shed tears of tenderest delight, 
 Oh hide her from the eye of Loranite ! 
 
 Wordsworth's writings were at that time by no means 
 to his taste. It was not sufficiently refined to enjoy his 
 simplicity, he wanted something more exciting. Chatter^ 
 ton was then one of his great favourites ; he enjoyed very 
 much the literary forgery and successful mystificatioi of 
 Horace Walpole and his contemporaries ; and the Immortal 
 Child's melancholy and early fate often suggested his own. 
 One of his earliest effusions was a fragment beginning- 
 it was indeed almost taken from the pseudo Rowley : 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 45 
 
 Hark ! the owlet flaps his wings 
 In the pathless dell beneath ; 
 Hark ! 'tis the night-raven sings 
 Tidings of approaching death. 
 
 I had had lent me the translation of Burger's Leonora, 
 
 with Lady Diana Beauclerk's talented illustrations, which 
 
 so perfectly breathe the spirit of that wild, magical, 
 
 romantic, fantastic ballad, perhaps without exception the 
 
 most stirring in any language. It produced on Shelley 
 
 a powerful effect ; and I have in my possession a copy of 
 
 the whole poem, which he made with his own hand. The 
 
 story is by no means original, if not taken from an old 
 
 English ballad. For the refrain, 
 
 How quick ride the dead, 
 
 which occurs in so many stanzas. Burger is indebted to 
 
 an old VolksUed, was indeed inspired by hearing in the 
 
 night sung from the church-yard : 
 
 Der Mond,, der scheint so helle, 
 Die Todten reiten so schnelle, 
 Feinliebchen, 'grant dir nicht ? 
 
 Situate as Horsham is on the borders of St. Leonard's 
 Forest, into which we used frequently to extend our pere- 
 grinations, — a forest that has ever been the subject of the 
 legends of the neighbouring peasantry, in whose gloomy 
 
 mazes. 
 
 The adders never stynge, 
 Nor ye nightyngales synge, — 
 
 Shelley very early imbibed a love of th& marvellous, and, 
 according to one of those legends, " Wo to the luckless 
 wight who should venture to cross it alone on horseback 
 during the night, for no sooner has he entered its dark- 
 some precincts, than a horrible decapitated spectre dis- 
 regarding all prayers and menaces, leaps behind him on 
 his good steed, and accompanies the affrighted traveller 
 
46 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to the boundaries, where his power ceases," It was 
 only another, and perhaps a more poetical version of the 
 story of Leonora, and which Shelley had at one time an 
 idea of working out himself. But St. Leonard's is equally 
 famous for its dragon, or serpent, of which a " True and 
 Wonderful Discourse " was printed at London in 1614, by 
 John Trundle, and to the truth of which three persons 
 then living afifixed their signatures. "Who could resist 
 a faith in the being of a monster so well certificated? 
 Certainly Shelley was not inclined to do so, as a boy ; and 
 if he had read Schiller's Fight of the Dragon at Rhodes, 
 where, by the way, one of his ancestors was slain, in the 
 words of the pedigree, " at winning the battle of the said 
 Isle by the Turks," he would have been still more con- 
 firmed in his belief. 
 
 Many of these details may appear trivial, but they are 
 not so to the physiologist, inasmuch as they serve to show 
 how the accidental incidents of early impressions, if they 
 did not model, influenced the direction of his mind. 
 Admitting that Poeta nascitur, nan Jit, I am firmly 
 persuaded of the truth of the above observation ; for as 
 all animals have brains like ourselves, dependent on 
 organization, and an instructive kind of knowledge, 
 adapted accordingly ; and this instructive knowledge, 
 although perfect in its way at the first, being capable of 
 being influenced by new and altered circumstances ; why 
 should not, then, the different circumstances of early life 
 assist the character, and give the bent to a poetical ima- 
 gination ? Animals, as well as ourselves, have intellectual 
 qualities, — the difference is in degree, not in kind ; but 
 over and above this, they must have a something super- 
 added, to make the difference, which is the faculty of 
 taking cognizance of things wholly above the senses, of 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 47 
 
 things spiritual and moral — a sense independent of the 
 bodily brain, independent of themselves, and having 
 a i^atural supremacy in the mind over and above all its 
 other powers. I do not mean to say that a La Place, 
 a Newton, or a Shakspeare, if we had sufficient data to 
 trace the progress of their education, could be reproduced, 
 according to the Helvetian doctrine, by following the 
 same course, for as men are bom with different constitu- 
 tions, features, and habits of body, mental organization 
 must be of course also differently organized. Yet no mind 
 can be developed without preliminary education, and, 
 consequently, all the minutiae of this education must more 
 or less exercise a modifying influence on it, as every 
 physiologist in the natural history of animals can testify. 
 Shelley, like Byron, knew early what it was to love — 
 almost all great poets have. It was in the summer of this 
 year, that he became acquainted with our cousin, Harriet 
 Grove. Living in distant counties, they then met for the 
 first time, since they had been children, at Field-place, 
 where she was on a visit. She was born, I think, in the 
 same year with himself. 
 
 She was like him in lineaments — her eyes, 
 
 Her hair, her features, they said were like to his, 
 
 But softened all and tempered into beauty. 
 
 After so long an interval, I still remember Miss Harriet 
 G-rove, and when I call to mind all the women I have 
 ever seen, I know of none that surpassed, or that c®uld 
 compete with her. She was like one of Shakspeare's 
 women — like some Madonna of. Eaphael, Shelley, in a 
 fragment written many years after, seems to have had 
 her in his mind's eye, when he writes : 
 
 They were two cousins, almost like to twins. 
 Except that from the catalogue of sins 
 
48 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Nature had razed their love, which could not be, 
 
 But in dissevering their nativity ; 
 
 And so they grew together like two flowers 
 
 Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers 
 
 Lull or awaken in the purple prime. 
 
 Indeed it is easy to recognize himself and Miss 
 Harriet Grove under the Italian names of Cosimo and 
 Fiordispina. In the first, a new passion obscures the 
 image of the idol stiU adored, but if she is no longer the 
 object of this inconstant love, she remains love itself, 
 a planet shining with brilliancy among the heavenly 
 spheres, and regulating the motions of an Intelligence for 
 ever subjected to its influence. 
 
 Young as they were, it is not likely that they had 
 entered into a formal engagement with each other, or 
 that their parents looked upon their attachment, if it 
 were mentioned, as any other than an intimacy natural 
 to such near relations, or the mere fancy of a moment ; 
 and after they parted, though they corresponded regularly, 
 there was nothing in the circumstance that called for 
 observation. Shelley's love, however, had taken deep 
 root, as proved by the dedication to Queen Mab, written 
 in the following year. 
 
 To Hakeiet G.— ' 
 Whose is the love that gleaming thro' the worldj 
 Wards off the poisonous arrow of its soora? 
 Whose is the warm and partial strain, 
 Virtue's own sweet reward? 
 
 1 Medwin may, of course, have Jlfo5 thus. Shelley's private print 
 
 seen early draftings towards Queen of 1813 heads it To Harriet *»**»; 
 
 Mab, and lines of dedication "to but in 1821 when the book was 
 
 Harriet G." ; but it is probably one pirated, he congratulated himself 
 
 of hismuddlesthatwearefacetofaee on the absence of the dedication to 
 
 with here. (See, however, posi, pp. his "late wife." See letter to 
 
 91and93.) I know of no authority Charles Oilier in Ingpen'a collection 
 
 for heading the dedication to 0«cen of the Letters of Shelley, p. 876. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 49 
 
 Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul 
 Eiper in truth and virtuous daring grow ? 
 Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, 
 And loved mankind the more ? 
 
 Harriet ! on thine :— thou wert my purer mind — 
 Thou wert the inspiration of my song — 
 Thine are these early wilding ilowers 
 Though garlanded by me. 
 
 Then press into thy breast this pledge of love, 
 
 And know, though time may change and years may roll ; 
 
 Each floweret gathered in my heart, 
 
 It consecrates to thine. 
 
 But the lady was not alone "the inspiration of his 
 song." In the latter end of this year, he wrote a novel, 
 that might have issued from the Minerva Press, entitled 
 Zastrozzi, which embodies much of the intensity of the 
 passion that devoured him ; and some of the chapters 
 were, he told me, by Miss G-rove. 
 
 In this wild romance there are passages sparkling with 
 brilliancy. A reviewer — ^for it was reviewed, but in what 
 periodical I forget — spoke of it as a book of much promise. 
 It was shortly followed by another Rosa-Matilda-like 
 production, entitled St. Irvyne, or the Eosicrucian. 
 
 The Rosicrucian was suggested by St. Leon, which 
 
 Shelley wonderfully admired. He read it till he believed 
 
 that there was truth in Alchymy, and the Elixir Vitx, 
 
 which indeed entered into the plot of The Wandering 
 
 ■lew, of which I possess a preface by him, intended for 
 
 the poem, had it been published. He says : — 
 
 " The opinion that gold can be made, passed from the Arabs to the 
 Greeks, and from the Greeks to the rest of Europe ; those who 
 professed it, gradually assumed the form of a sect, under the name of 
 Alchymists. These Alchymists laid it down as a first principle, that 
 all metals are composed of the same materials, or that the substances 
 at least that form gold, exist in all metals, contaminated indeed by 
 various impurities, but capable of being brought to a perfect state, 
 
50 X/IFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 by purification ; and hence that considerable quantities of gold mighl 
 be extracted from them. The generality of this belief in the easterr 
 provinces of the Roman empire, is proved by a remarkable edict ol 
 Dioclesian, [sic], quoted by Gibbon from the authority of two ancient 
 historians, &c." 
 
 But if Shelley was at that time a believer in alchymy. 
 he was even as much so in the Panacea. He used to cite 
 the opinion of Dr. Franklin, whom he swore by, that 
 " a time would come, when mind will be predominant 
 over matter, or in other words, when a thorough know- 
 ledge of the human frame, and the perfection of medical 
 science, will counteract the decay of Nature." " "What," 
 added he, "does Condorcet say on the subject?" and he 
 read me the following passage : 
 
 " ' Is it absurd to suppose this quality of amelioration in the human 
 species as susceptible of an indefinite advancement ; to suppose that 
 a period must one day arrive, when death will be nothing more than 
 the effect either of extraordinary accident, or of the slow and gradual 
 decay of the vital powers ; and that the duration of the middle space, 
 of the interval between the birth of man and his decay, will have no 
 assignable limit ? '" 
 
 On such opinions was based The Rosicrucian. It was 
 
 written before he went to Oxford, and published by 
 
 Stockdale ; the scene, singularly enough, is laid at Greneva, 
 
 and from this juvenile effort I shall hereafter make some 
 
 extracts in prose and verse, in order to show the elements 
 
 of what it gave rise afterwards to — 
 
 Creations vast and fair. 
 As perfect worlds at the Creator's will. 
 
 During the last two years of his stay at Eton, he had 
 
 as I have already stated, imbued himself with Pliny the 
 
 Elder, especially being struck with the chapter De Deo 
 
 and studied deeply Lucretius, whom he considered th« 
 
 best of the Latin poets, and with him he referred ai 
 
 that time, as will be seen from the following- extract 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY.^^^ . 51 
 
 1 creation to the power of Nature./_It must be remem- 
 
 sred tliat it is the Rosicrucian wlio speaks : — [ ^ 
 
 " From my earliest youtli, before it was quenched by complete 
 tiation, curiosity, and a desire of unveiling the latent mysteries of 
 tture, was the passion by which all the other emotions of my mind 
 jre intellectually organised. This desire led me to cultivate, and 
 ith success, the various branches of learning which led to the gates 
 ' wisdom. I then applied myself to the cultivation of philosophy, 
 id the iclat with which I pursued it, exceeded my most sanguine , 
 cpectations. Love I cared not for, and wondered why men per-' 
 irsely sought to ally themselves to weakness. Natural philosophy- ^ 
 i last became the peculiar science to which I directed my eager 
 iquiries ; thence I was led into a train of labyrinthine meditations- 
 thought of death— 1 shuddered when I reflected, and shrunk in 
 arror from the idea, selfish and self-interested as I was, of entering a 
 3W existence to which I was a stranger. I must either dive into the 
 scesses of futurity, or I must not— I cannot die. Will not thisri 
 ature — will not this matter of which it is composed, exist to all I 
 iernity ? Ah ! I know it will, and by the exertion of the energies \ 
 ith which nature has gifted me, well I know it shall. This was my^ I 
 pinion at that time : I then believed that there existed no God. J "^ 
 h ! at what an exorbitant price have I bought the conviction that [ 
 lere is ! ! Believing that priestcraft and superstition were all the I 
 jligion which man ever practised, it could not be supposed that I I 
 liought there existed supernatural beings of any kind. I believed \ 
 Tature to be self-sufficient and excelling. I supposed not, thrrrfnvrr' 
 bat there could be anything beyond nature. I was now about seveji-l *-4 
 een ; I had dived into the depths of metaphysical calculations ; with 
 ophistical arguments, had I convinced myself of the non-existence 
 f a First Cause, and by every combined modification of the essences 
 if matter, had I apparently proved that no existences could possibly 
 le, unseen by human vision." ' 
 
 • This is a fairly correct tran- one obvious improvement, in line 
 
 cript ifrom pp. 187-9 of St. Irvyne, 13 of the first song, I leave because 
 
 r the Bosicrucian (1811). An exact it looks like an authentic correction, 
 
 eprint may be seen at pages 269- — "in the whirlwind upfolding " 
 
 1 of the first volume of Shelley's for "on the whirlwind upholding." 
 
 ^rose Works (4 vol. 1880). The The statement that some of them 
 
 erses from St. Irvyne are also taken were written " a year or two before 
 
 vith reasonable accuracy from the the date of the Komance " derives 
 
 look itself. I have amended a few some support from outside evidence: 
 
 rifling errors of transcription ; but see notes, post, pp. 53 and 54. 
 
 T? O. 
 
53 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 This work contains several poems, some of whioli were 
 written a year or two before tlie date of the Eomance, and 
 which I insert in these memorabilia, more as literary 
 curiosities, than for their intrinsic merit, though some of 
 them may bear comparison with those contained in Byron's 
 Hours of Idleness. Three of them are in the metre of 
 Walter Scott's Helvellyn, a poem he greatly admired, 
 although The Lay of the Last Minstrel was little to his 
 taste. 
 
 'Twas dead of the night, -when I sat in my dwelling 
 
 One glimmering lamp was expiring and low. 
 Around, the dark tide of the, tempest was swelling, 
 Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling, 
 They bodingly presaged destruction and woe : 
 
 'Twas then that I started ! the wild storm was howling, 
 Nought was seen save the lightning which danced in the sky. 
 
 Above me, the crash of the thunder was rolling. 
 And low chilling murmurs the blast wafted by. 
 
 My heart sunk within me, unheeded the war 
 Of the battling clouds on the mountain-tops broke. 
 
 Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear. 
 
 This heart, hard as iron, is stranger to fear; 
 
 But conscience in low, noiseless whispering spoke. 
 
 'Twas then that, her form in the whirlwind upfolding, 
 
 The ghost of the murdered Victoria strode, 
 In her right hand a shadowy shroud she was holding, 
 
 She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode. 
 
 I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me. — 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Ghosts of the dead ! have I not heard your yelling, 
 Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast, 
 
 "When o'er the dark ether the tempest was swelling, 
 And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peals past. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 53 
 
 For oft have I stood on the dark height of Jura, 
 Which frowns on the valley that opens beneath ; 
 
 Oft have I braved the chiU night-tempest's fury, 
 
 Whilst around me I thought echoed murmurs of death. 
 
 And now whilst the winds of the mountain are howling, 
 Father ! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear. 
 
 In air, whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling. 
 It breaks on the pause of the element's jar. 
 
 On the wing of the whirlwind which roars o'er the mountain, 
 Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead, 
 
 On the mist of the tempest which hangs o'er the fountain, 
 Whilst a wreath of dark vapour encircles his head. 
 
 SONG.' 
 
 How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner. 
 
 As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier. 
 As enanguished he turns from, the laugh of the scorner. 
 
 And drops to Perfection's remembrance a tear; 
 When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming, 
 When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming. 
 Or if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming. 
 And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear. 
 
 Ah ! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave, 
 Or summer succeed to the winter of death ? 
 
 Rest awhile, hapless victim! and heaven will save 
 The spirit that faded away with the breath. 
 
 Eternity points in its amaranth bower. 
 
 Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lower, 
 
 Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower. 
 When woe fades away like the mist of the heath. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Ah', faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary. 
 
 Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam. 
 Though the tempest is stem, and the mountain is dreary, 
 
 She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home. 
 
 • That this song existed apart assigned to the year 1810, published 
 
 om St. Iroyne is unquestionable. for the first time in Mr. Ingpen's 
 
 ; is to be found, with slight verbal edition of Shelley's Letters, vol. i, 
 
 mations, in a letter to Edward pp. 9-10. 
 raham imperfectly dated, but 
 
54 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle, 
 As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle ; 
 And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle, 
 " Stay thy boat on the lake, dearest Henry ! I come ! " 
 
 High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection, 
 
 As lightly her form bounded over the lea. 
 And arose in her mind every dear recollection, 
 
 "I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee! " 
 
 How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing, 
 
 When sympathy's swell the soft bosom is moving. 
 
 And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving, 
 
 Is the stern voice of fate that bids happiness flee. 
 
 Oh ! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve. 
 
 And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air, 
 Oh ! how could fond visions such softness deceive ? 
 
 Oh how could false hope rend a bosom so fair? 
 Thy love's pallid corse the wild surges are laving, 
 On his form the fierce swell of the tempest is raving, 
 But fear not, parting spirit ! thy goodness is saving, 
 In eternity's bower, a seat for thee there. 
 
 SONG.' 
 
 How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse 
 
 Bright day's resplendent colours fade ! 
 How sweetly does the moonbeam's glance 
 
 With silver tint St. Irvyne's glade ! 
 
 No cloud along the spangled air 
 
 Is borne upon the evening breeze ; 
 How solemn is the scene ! how fair 
 
 The moonbeams rest upon the trees ! 
 
 • This song from St. Irvyne is published a letter from me, giving 
 certainly a retrenched and revised an account of this document, which 
 version of a poem of ten quatrains contains five quatrainsnot included 
 embodied in a tattered and im- in the St. Irvyne Song, between the 
 perfect letter to Edward Graham, fourth and fifth, but does not con- 
 sold by Messrs. Christie, Manson & tain the sixth quatrain. The lettei 
 Woods at their auction of autograph is dated April 22, and seems t( 
 letters and books on the 31st of belong to 1810. The remains of i 
 March, 1909. TJie Athmseum, on will be found among the earlj 
 the 5th of the following June, letters in the Appendix. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 55 
 
 Yon dark grey turret glimmers white. 
 
 Upon it sits the gloomy owl, 
 Along the stillness of the night, 
 
 Her melancholy shriekings roll. 
 
 But not alone on Irvyne's tower 
 The silver moonbeam pours her ray ; 
 
 It gleams upon the ivied bower. 
 It dances in the cascade's spraj'. 
 
 " Ah ! why do darkening shades conceal 
 The hour when man must cease to be ? 
 
 Why may not human minds unveil 
 The dim mists of futurity ? 
 
 The keenness of the world hath torn 
 The heart which opens to its blast ; 
 
 Despised, neglected and forlorn, 
 Sinks the wretch in death at last." 
 
 BALLAD. 
 
 The death-bell beats, 
 
 The mountain repeats 
 
 The echoing sound of the knell ; 
 
 And the dark Monk now 
 
 Wraps the cowl round his brow. 
 
 As he sits in his lonely cell. 
 
 And the cold hand of death 
 Chills his shuddering breath. 
 As he lists to the fearful' lay 
 Which the ghosts of the sky. 
 As they sweep wildly by, 
 Sing to departed day. 
 And they sing of the hour 
 When the stern Pates had power 
 To resolve Rosa's form to its clay. 
 
 But that hour is past 
 
 And that hour was the last 
 
 Of peace to the dark Monk's brain ; 
 
 ■ Bitter tears, from his eyes, gush'd silent and fast ; 
 
 And he strove to suppress them in vain. 
 
56 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Then Ms fair cross of gold he dashed on the floor, 
 When the death-knell struck on his ear — 
 " Delight is in store for her evermore, 
 But for me is fate, horror, and fear." 
 
 Then his eyes wildly rolled, 
 When the death-bell tolled. 
 And he raged in terrific woe ; 
 And he stamped on the ground, 
 But when ceased the sound, 
 Tears again begun to flow. 
 
 And the ice of despair 
 
 Chilled the wild throb of care, 
 
 And he sate in mute agony still : 
 
 Till the night-stars shone thro' the cloudless air. 
 
 And the pale moonbeam slept on the hill. 
 
 Then he knelt in his cell, 
 
 And the horrors of hell 
 
 Were delights to his agonised pain. 
 
 And he prayed to God to dissolve the spell, 
 
 Which else must ever remain. 
 
 And in fervent prayer he knelt on the ground, 
 
 Till the abbey bell struck one ; 
 
 His feverish blood ran chill at the sound, 
 
 A voice hollow and horrible murmured around, 
 
 " The term of thy penance is done ! " 
 
 Grew dark the night ; 
 
 The moonbeam bright 
 
 Waxed faint on the mountain high ; 
 
 And from the black hill 
 
 Went a voice cold and still — 
 
 "Monk! thou art free to die." 
 
 Then he rose on his feet, 
 
 And his heart loud did beat. 
 
 And his limbs they were palsied with dread ; 
 
 Whilst the grave's clammy dew 
 
 O'er his pale forehead grew ; 
 
 And he shuddered to sleep with the dead. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 57 
 
 And the wild midniglit storm 
 
 Eaved around liis tall form, 
 
 As he sought the chapel's gloom; 
 
 And the sunk grass did sigh 
 
 To the wind, bleak and high, 
 
 As he search'd for the new-made tomb. 
 
 And forms dark and high 
 
 Seem'd around him to fly, 
 
 And mingle their yells with the blast ; 
 
 And on the dark wall 
 
 Half-seen shadows did fall, 
 
 As enhorror'd he onward pass'd. 
 
 And the storm-fiend's wild rave 
 
 O'er the new made grave. 
 
 And dread shadows, linger around, 
 
 The Monk call'd on God his soul to save, 
 
 And in horror sank on the ground. 
 
 Then despair nerved his arm, 
 
 To dispel the charm, 
 
 And he burst Rosa's coffin asunder. 
 
 And the fierce storm did swell 
 
 More terrific and fell. 
 
 And louder peal'd the thunder. 
 
 And langh'd, in joy, the fiendish throng, 
 Mix'd with ghosts of the mouldering dead ; 
 And their grisly wings, as they floated along. 
 Whistled in murmurs dread. 
 
 And her skeleton form the dead Nun rear'd, 
 Which dripp'd with the chill dew of hell. 
 In her half-eaten eye-balls two pale flames appear'd. 
 But triumphant their gleam on the dark Monk glar'd. 
 As he stood within the cell. 
 
 And her lank hand lay on his shuddering brain, 
 But each power was nerv'd by fear. — 
 "I never, henceforth, may breathe again; 
 Death now ends mine anguish'd pain ; 
 The grave yawns — we meet there." 
 
58 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And her skeleton lungs did utter the sound, 
 
 So deadly, so lone, and so fell, 
 
 That in long vibrations shudder'd the ground, 
 
 And as the stern notes floated around, 
 
 A deep groan was answer'd from Hell ! 
 
 Such was the sort of poetry Shelley wrote at this period 
 — and it is valuable, inasmuch as it serves to shew tKe 
 disposition and bent of his mind in 1808 and 1809, which 
 ran on bandits, castles, ruined towers, wild mountains, 
 storms and apparitions — the Terrific, which according to 
 Burke is the great machinery of the Sublime. In the 
 beginning of the first of these two years, I showed Shelley 
 some poems to which I had subscribed by Felicia Browne,' 
 whom I had met in North Wales, where she had been on 
 a visit at the house of a connection of mine. She was 
 then sixteen, and it was impossible not to be struck with 
 the beauty (for beautiful she was), the grace, and charming 
 simplicity and naivetd of this interesting girl — and on my 
 return from Denbighshire, I made her and her works 
 the frequent subject of conversation with Shelley. Her 
 
 * Professor Dowden taies this tale Remains of the late Mrs. Retmm 
 
 seriously enough (Life of Shelley, (Blackwood, 1836, p. xv). Among 
 
 vol. i, pp. 49-50), though Shelley's these posthumous poems is The 
 
 sister Hellen did not know of any Broken Lute — a piece quite wort^ 
 
 long correspondence with Felicia of Mrs. Hemans's reputation, and 
 
 Brojvne, — aged fourteen years, not showing the influence of Shelley 
 
 sixteen as Medwin says. For the not only by the epigraph consisting 
 
 rest, when a historian's reputation of twelve lines from "When the 
 
 for accuracy is indifferent, chances lamp is shattered,'' but also by the 
 
 to verify his statements may advau- obvious presence of The Sensitive 
 
 tageously be taken. The handsome Plant in the author's mind. In her 
 
 quarto volume of Poems, by Felicia National Lyrics, and Songs for Jlfastc 
 
 Dorothea Broume, Liverpool, 1808, has (Dublin, 1834) she had included a 
 
 avoluminouslistofsubscribersoccu- poem called The Swan and the Skij- 
 
 pying pp. ix-xxvi ; and in due al- lark with an epigraph of four Unes 
 
 phabetical orderwe find the nameof from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale and 
 
 "Tho. Medwin, jun. Esq. Horsham, a stanza from Shelley's Skylark; 
 
 Sussex.'' The fact that the young and there is another charming 
 
 lady's early works attracted Byron poem, A Song of the Rose, written in 
 
 and Shelley stands chronicled in the actual metre of Shelley's Sky- 
 
 the Memoir prefixed to the Poetical lark. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 59 
 
 juvenile productions, remarkable certainly for her age — 
 and some of those which the volume contained were 
 written when she was a mere child — made a powerful 
 impression on Shelley, ever enthusiastic in his admiration 
 of talent; and with a prophetic spirit he foresaw the 
 coming greatness of that genius, which under the name 
 of Hemans afterwards electrified the world. 
 
 He desired to become acquainted with the young 
 
 authoress, and using my name, wrote to her, as he was in 
 
 the habit of doing to all those who in any way excited 
 
 his sympathies. This letter produced an answer, and 
 
 a correspondence of some length passed between them, 
 
 which of course I never saw, but it is to be supposed that 
 
 it turned on other subjects besides poetry. I mean, that 
 
 it was sceptical. It has been said by her biographer, and 
 
 proved by one of the longest of her Poems, The Sceptic, 
 
 that she was deeply embued with Shelley's Pantheism, 
 
 that the poetess was at one period of her life, as is the 
 
 case frequently with deep thinkers on religion, inclined 
 
 to doubt; and it is not impossible that such owed its 
 
 origin to this interchange of thought. One may indeed 
 
 suppose this to have been the case, from the circumstance 
 
 of her mother writing to my father, and begging him to 
 
 use his influence with Shelley to cease from any further 
 
 communication with her daughter,^in fact, prohibiting 
 
 their further correspondence. Mrs. Hemans seems, 
 
 however, to have been a great admirer of his poetry, and 
 
 to have in some measure modelled her style after his, 
 
 particularly in her last and most finished effusions, in 
 
 which we occasionally find a line or two of Shelley's, 
 
 proving that she was an attentive reader of his works. 
 
 "Poets," as Shelley says, "the best of them, are a very 
 
 chameleonic race, and take the colour not only of what 
 
60 LIfE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 they feed on, but of the very leaves over which they 
 pass." 
 
 It so happened that neither Shelley nor myself in after 
 years mentioned Mrs. Hemans ; indeed her finest lyrics 
 were written subsequent to his death ; I allude to those 
 which appeared in Blackwood — the longer pieces I have 
 never read,i nor I believe had Shelley, who looked upon 
 prose as the best medium for such subjects as she has 
 treated in them, the purely didactic and moral, as he has 
 expressed in the preface to the Prometheus Unbound, where 
 he says, "Didactic poetry is my abhorrence. Nothing 
 can be equally well expressed in prose, that is not tedious 
 and supererogatory in verse." 
 
 His days and nights at Oxford were dedicated to 
 incessant study and composition, and soon after his 
 arrival, he sent me a volume of poems published at 
 Parkers', entitled the "Posthumous works of my Aunt 
 Margaret Nicholson,'' in which were some stanzas to 
 Charlotte Corday. It might easily be perceived that he 
 had been reading the French revolutionary writers, from 
 the tenor of this wild, half-mad production, the poetiy of 
 which was well worthy the subject. 
 
 The author of Shelley at Oxford, gives the following 
 account of this extraordinary effort : — ^ 
 
 1 Wfe may assume that The Sceptic, is a poem, of some vigour, liowever, 
 
 about which he is rather silly though not the work of one who 
 
 above, and misrepresents the late had the makings of a sceptic. 
 
 H. F. Chorley {Memorials of Mrs. " These paragraphs are in the 
 
 Hemcms, 1S36, vol. i, p. 48), was one main composed of the ipsissima verba 
 
 of the pieces he never read. He of Hogg, snipped out of his last 
 
 was not alone in that abstinence, paper in The New Monthly Magazine 
 
 even if he possessed the work : my (May, 1833), rearranged a little and 
 
 own copy— or one of my own copies much cut down. Though far better 
 
 — which I have turned to for this in point of humour and imagination 
 
 present note, has John Hookham than anything Medwin could have 
 
 Frere's autograph in it; but that substituted for them, a grain of salt 
 
 notable writer of splendid verse did is good to be taken with them. I 
 
 not even finish cutting it open. It do not believe in Hogg's joint 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 61 
 
 " A mad washerwoman named Peg Nicholson, had attempted to 
 stab King George the Third, with a carving knife — the story has been 
 long forgotten, but it was then fresh in the recollection of every one ; 
 it was proposed that we should ascribe the poems to her. The poor 
 woman was still living, and in green vigour, within the walls of 
 Bedlam, but since her existence must be incompatible, there could be 
 no harm in putting her to death, and in creating a nephew and adminis- 
 trator to his aunt's poetical works. 
 
 " The idea gave an object and purpose to our burlesque, for Shelley, 
 although of a grave disposition, had a certain sly relish in a practical 
 joke, so that it was ingenious and abstruse, and of a literary nature. 
 To ridicule the strange mixture of sentimentality with the murderous 
 fury of revolutionists, that was so powerful in the composition of the 
 day, amused him much, and the proofs were altered again to adapt 
 them to their new scheme, but still without any notion of publication. 
 But the bookseller was pleased with the whimsical conceit, and 
 asked to be permitted to pubhsh the book on his own account, 
 promising inviolate secrecy, and as many copies gratis as might be 
 required. After some hesitation, permission was granted, upon the 
 plighted honour of the trade. In a few days, or rather in a few hours, 
 a noble quarto appeared,— it consisted of a small number of pages, it 
 is true, but they were of the largest size, of the thickest, the whitest, 
 and the smoothest drawing paper. The poor maniac laundress was 
 grandly styled the late Mrs. Margaret Nicholson, widow; and the 
 sonorous name of Fitzvictor had been culled for the inconsolable 
 nephew and administrator; and to add to his dignity, the waggish 
 printer had picked up some huge types of so unusual a form, that 
 even an antiquary could not spell the words at the first glance. The 
 effect was certainly striking. Shelley had torn open the large square 
 bundle before the printer's boy quitted the room, and holding 
 
 authorship. However, his posses- sent to the poet's mother. I never 
 slon of a copy of the portentous saw one of those copies. The book 
 quarto I can answer for ; for it is is extraordinarily rare. There is 
 in my library with Hogg's autograph no hint in Shelley's letter of any 
 on the half-title ; and bound up male collaboration ; but on the 
 with it now is a letter which Shelley other hand Hogg's allegation of a 
 wrote from Oxford about the book rapid sale is supported by Shelley's 
 to his friend Graham. Here he own statement — "It sells wonder- 
 says that a portion of the work, in- fully here, and is become the 
 eluding the objectionable "verses fashionable subject of discussion." 
 about sucking" which Hogg men- I doubt whether Medwin had a 
 tions, was written by "a friend's mis- copy; but perhaps his claim to 
 tress " and is " omitted in numbers have received one should be ac- 
 of the copies,'' as for instance one cepted. 
 
63 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 out a copy with his hands, he ran about in an extacy of delight, 
 gazing on the superb title-page. 
 
 " The first poem was a long one, condemning war in the lump, 
 puling trash that might have been written by a quaker, and could 
 only have been published in sober sadness by a society for the 
 diffusion of that kind of knowledge which they deemed useful -useful 
 for some end which they have not been pleased to reveal, and which 
 unassisted reason is wholly incapable to discover. It contained 
 many odes and other pieces professing an ardent attachment to 
 freedom, and proposing to stab all who were less enthusiastic than 
 the supposed authoress. There were some verses about sucking in 
 them, to these I objected, as unsuitable to the gravity of an university, 
 but Shelley declared they would be the most impressive of all. 
 
 " A few copies were sent as a special favour to trusty and sagacious 
 friends at a distance, whose gravity would not permit them to suspect 
 a hoax, — they read and admired, being charmed with the wild notes . 
 of liberty ; some indeed presumed to censure mildly certain papers, as 
 having been thrown off in too bold a vein. Nor was a certain success 
 wanting ; the lemaining copies were rapidly sold in Oxford, at the 
 aristocratic price of half-a-crown per half dozen pages. We used to 
 meet gownsmen in High Street, reading the goodly volume, as they 
 walked, pensive, with grave and sage delight, — some of them perhaps 
 more pensive, because it seemed to pourtray the instant overthrow of 
 all royalty, from a king to a court-card. 
 
 " What a strange delusion to admire such stuff — the concentrated 
 essence of nonsense ! It was indeed a kind of fashion to be seen 
 reading it in public, as a mark of nice discernment, of a delicate and 
 fastidious taste in poetry, and the very criterion of a choice spirit ! " 
 
 Without stopping' to enquire whether Mr. Hogg might 
 not be mistaken in the sort of appreciation in which this 
 regicide production was held, one can hardly conceive, in 
 coipparing this with Queen Mob, which Shelley says was 
 written at 18, in 1809, that they were by the same hand. 
 Though begun, it was not completed till 1812, nor the 
 notes appended to it till the end of 1811, or the beginning 
 of the succeeding year. It has been said, though I do not 
 affirm it, that for these he was much indebted to Godwin, 
 of whom he says, that he has been in moral philosophy 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 63 
 
 what WordswortL. is in poetry; and certainly tlie 
 correctness, I might say the elegance of the style which 
 they display, and the mass of information they contain 
 on subjects with which, in 1809, he could not have been 
 conversant, seems to show that he must have had some 
 powerful assistance in the task. Queen Mob is undoubtedly 
 a more extraordinary effort of genius than any on record, 
 — and when I say this, I do not forget the early pro- 
 ductions of Pope, of Chatterton, or Kirke "White. It is 
 the more wonderful when we consider, that vivid and 
 truthfiil as his descriptions of nature are, he had never 
 been made familiar with her wonders. Mrs. Shelley is 
 mistaken in saying that " at the period of writing Queen 
 Mab, he had been a great traveller in England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland." In fact he had never been 50 miles from 
 his native home, but the country round Horsham is one 
 of exceeding beauty, and imagination supplied what was 
 wanting in reality. And I have often heard him say, 
 that a poet has an instinctive sense of the truth of things, 
 or, as he has expressed more fully the sentiment in his 
 admirable Treatise on Poetry, 
 
 " He participates in the Eternal, the Infinite, and the One. As far 
 as relates to his conception, time, and place, and number are not. 
 Poetry is an interpretation of a divine nature, through our own ; it 
 compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which 
 we know ; it creates anew the universe ; it justifies the bold words of 
 Tasso : Xon merita nome di Creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta. " 
 
 Compassion for his fellow creatures was the ruling 
 
 motive that originated this poem. 
 
 " His sympathy was excited by the misery with which the world is 
 bvirsting. He witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was aware 
 of the evils of ignorance. He desired to induce every rich man to 
 despoil himself of superfluity, and to erect a brotherhood of property 
 and science, and was ready to be the first to lay down the advantages 
 of birth. He looked forward to a sort of millennium of freedom and 
 
64 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 brotherhood. He saw in a fervent call on his fellow creatures to 
 share alike the blessings of the Creator, to love and serve each other, 
 the noblest work that life and time permitted." 
 
 Sucli was the spirit that dictated Queen Mab ! 
 
 There is a vast deal of twaddle in Moore's Life of Byron^ 
 respecting early scepticism , where he says, " It and infidelity 
 rarely find an entrance into youthful minds," adding, 
 
 " It is fortunate that these inroads are seldom felt in the mind till 
 a period of life when the character, already formed, is out of the 
 reach of their disturbing influence — when being the result, however 
 erroneous, of thought and reasoning, they are likely to partake of the 
 sobriety of the process by which they are acquired, and being con- 
 sidered but as matters of pure speculation, to have as little share in 
 determining the mind towards evil, as too often the most orthodox creeds 
 have at the same age of influencing it towards good." 
 
 What the sense of these words marked in italics may be, 
 is beyond my comprehension. But in my way of thinking, 
 it is when the reasoning powers are matured — the effer- 
 vescence of youth has somewhat cooled down — when the 
 self-sufficiency of scholarship, the pride of being thought 
 to think differently from the generality of the world, the 
 vanity of running a-muck against received opinions, has 
 yielded to reason and judgment, and man begins to know 
 that he knows nothing, that he ceases to arrogate to 
 himself a superiority over his fellows — learns tO--beeome 
 humble and diffident ; and this is not a state of mind that 
 leads to doubt. Every superior mind will, says Emerson, 
 pass thro' this domain of equilibration — I should rather say 
 will know how to avail himself of the checks and balances 
 in Nature — as a natural weapon against the exaggeration 
 and formalism of bigots and blockheads. Scepticism is 
 the attitude assumed by the student in relation to the 
 particulars which Society adores, but which he sees to be 
 reverenced only in their tendency and spirit — The ground 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 65 
 
 occupied by the sceptic is the vestibule of the temple. 
 Society does not like to have any breath of aspersion 
 blown on the existing order. But the interrogation of 
 Custom at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth of 
 every Superior Mind and is the evidence of its perception 
 of the flowing power which remains itself in all changes. 
 The Superior Mind will find itself equally at odds with 
 the evils of Society and with the projects that are offered 
 to relieve them — the wise Sceptic is a bad Citizen — No 
 Conservative, he sees the Selfishness of property and the 
 drowsings of Institutions. But as to the unfrequency of 
 scepticism in youth, Moore never laid down a more false 
 or unphilosophical axiom. "Why, he must have forgotten 
 Gibbon, and Southey, and Cowper, and Malherbe, and 
 Coleridge, and Kirke White, and a hundred others, 
 himself included, {vide Little's Poems,) when he penned 
 this startling and unborne-out proposition. If he means 
 that, absorbed in dissipation, and carried away by their 
 passions, most young men seldom reflect on subjects most 
 worthy of reflection, I agree with him ; but neither 
 Byron nor Shelley were [sic] of this kind. They did not, 
 as with the troWoi, take for granted what had been incul- 
 cated ; they were not contented with impressions, they 
 wished to satisfy themselves that their impressions were 
 right, and both fell into scepticism, oneirom presumption 
 and an overweening, foolish ambition of making himself 
 out worse than he was ; and Shelley from what he rea.lly 
 thought " a matter of pure speculation ; " the result, how- 
 ever erroneous, to repeat Moore's words, " of thought and 
 reasoning." Little dependence is however to be placed 
 on the profession of faith contained in the two lettersByron 
 wrote to Mr. Dallas, at 20, (in 1808,) in which his object 
 clearly was — an object he carried out all his life, with his 
 
€6 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 biographer even more than any one else— mystification. 
 Voltaire was his horn-book ; but in the list of works he says 
 he had studied, in different languages, he only confesses 
 to have read his Charles XII., though that scoffer at 
 religion was his delight and admiration, and with him he 
 fell into the slimy pool of materialism. Montaigne was 
 the only great writer of past times whom he read with 
 avowed satisfaction. 
 
 Shelley's scepticism produced different fruits — he would 
 never have joined with Matthews, Hobhouse, Scrope 
 Davies, and "beasts after their kind," in those orgies which 
 were celebrated at Newstead, when with Byron for an 
 Abbot, they travestied themselves in monkish dresses, 
 and the apparatus of beads and crosses, and passed their 
 nights in intemperance and debauchery. No, his way of 
 thinking never affected the purity of his morals. "Looking 
 upon religion as it is professed, and above all practised, 
 as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of those 
 virtues that would make men brethren, he raised his 
 voice against it, though by so doing he was perfectly 
 aware of the odium he would incur, of the martjrrdom to 
 which he doomed himself. Older men, when they oppose 
 their fellows, and transgress ordinary rules, carry a certain 
 prudence or hypocrisy as a shield along with them ; hut 
 youth is rash, nor can it imagine, while asserting what it 
 believes to be right, that it should be denounced as vicious 
 and pronounced as criminal. Had he foreseen such a fate, 
 he was too enthusiastic, and too full of hatred of all the 
 ills of life he witnessed, not to scorn danger." That fate 
 was at hand. But I anticipate. 
 
 We come now to another epoch in the life of the poet 
 — Shelley at Oxford : — 
 
 He was matriculated, and went to University College 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 67 
 
 at the commencement of Michaelmas term, at the end of 
 October. 1810. The choice of this college (though a 
 respectable one, by no means of high repute) was made 
 by his father for two reasons — first, that he had himself, 
 as already mentioned, been a memberof it, — and secondly, 
 because it numbered among its benefactors some of his 
 ancestors, one of whom had founded an Exhibition. I had 
 left the university before he entered it, and only saw him 
 once in passing through the city. " His rooms were in 
 the comer next to the hall of the principal quadrangle, 
 on the first floor, and on the right of the entrance, but by 
 reason of the turn in the stairs, when you reach them, 
 they will be on the right hand.^ It is a spot, which I 
 might venture to predict many of our posterity will here- 
 after reverently visit, and reflect an honour on that college, 
 which has nothing so great to distinguish it." The portrait 
 of him drawn by his friend, from whom I have borrowed 
 largely, corresponded with my recollection of him at this 
 interview. " His figure was slight and fragile, and yet 
 his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, 
 but he stooped so much, that he seemed of low stature." 
 De Quincey^ says, that he remembers seeing in London, 
 a little Indian ink sketch of him in his academical costume 
 of Oxford. The sketch tallying pretty well with a verbal 
 description which he had heard of him in some company, 
 viz., that he looked like an elegant and slender flower 
 whose head drooped from being surcharged with rain." 
 Where is this sketch ? How valuable would it be ! " His 
 clothes," Mr. H[ogg]adds, "were expensive, and according 
 
 ^ Here Hogg's tribute to his right hand" is substituted for the 
 
 friend is cruelly mangled : not only phrase "upon your left hand" in 
 
 are the parts of the whole passage the New Monthly of February 1832, 
 
 transposed and reworded within p. 136. 
 the quotation marks, but " on the ^ Taifs Magazine, January 1846. 
 
 f2 
 
68 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to tlie most approved mode of the day, but they were 
 tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, 
 sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more 
 frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was 
 delicate, and almost feminine, of the purest red and white, 
 yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, 
 having past the autumn, as he said, in shooting ; " and he 
 said rightly, for he had, during September, often carried 
 a gun in his father's preserves ; Sir Timothy being a keen 
 sportsman, and Shelley himself an excellent shot, for I weU 
 remember one day in the winter of 1809, when we were 
 out together, his killing at three successive shots, three 
 snipes, to my great astonishment and envy, at the tail of 
 the pond in front of Field-place.^ 
 
 " His features, his whole face, and his head, were particularly small, 
 yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and 
 bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may use the word) 
 of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or 
 passed his fingers swiftly through his locks, unconsciously, so that 
 it was singularly rough and wild — a particularity which he had at 
 school. His features were not symmetrical, the mouth perhaps 
 excepted, yet was the efi'ect of the whole extremely powerful. They 
 
 1 To establish a relationship who sang — 
 
 between Shelley as a sporting. lad ^f „„ i...;„i,j. v,-.j • i 
 
 of seventeen and the redoubtable ""tie beast 
 
 veteran Allan Quatermain would ■, f„„„ . _, , . . , . . 
 
 beanotimpossiblefeatofcriticism; ^ sUU Tved ^ ' 
 
 but I do not seriously suggest that , , „i,„;„i, j i. ,. 
 
 this tale of Medwin's Ibout the ^^."''T ^^^ *^.^'« ""^ ^"'■ 
 
 three snipe is the source of the Tl,i= I'.l*^". ^"^'Tf v, *,. 
 
 spirited incident of Quatermain This boast beloved brethren. 
 
 J ii. ii- J 1 ■ n^ ■ > and withdraw 
 
 and the three woodcock in JlffWMa s •., .. .. 
 
 Bevmge 0888, p. 5). The family \,Z'Z..^ ^°"'" 
 
 relationship of the two birds, their lavour now ! 
 
 zig-zag flight, and the number 3 The lad Shelley has left one or two 
 
 common to the two anecdotes, do records less reconcilable with the 
 
 not sufSce to cancel the probability lofty tone and character of the man 
 
 of mere coincidence. I do not for than the perfunctory slaughter of 
 
 a moment doubt the tale of Shelley's birds in his father's preserves, 
 
 boyhood, on the ground that so Long before the new-birth of 1814, 
 keen a young sportsman is not easy ,. " sport " would have been impossi- 
 
 to reconcile with the poet of Mastor, ble to the poet. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLE"?. 69 
 
 breathed an animation— a fire— an enthusiasm — a vivid and preter- 
 natural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. 
 Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual, for 
 there was a softness and delicacy, a gentleness, and'especially (though 
 this will surprise many) an air of profound veneration, that character- 
 ises the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they 
 infused their whole souls) of the great masters of Rome and Florence." 
 " I observed, too, the same contradiction in his rooms, which I had 
 often remarked in his person and dress. The carpet, curtain, and 
 furniture were quite new, and had not passed through several genera- 
 tions of students on the payment of the thirds, that is, the third ' price 
 last given. This general air of freshness was greatly obscured by the 
 indescribable confusion in which the various objects were mixed. 
 Scarcely a single article was in its right place — books, boots, papers, 
 shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, 
 ammunition, and phials innumerable, with money, stockings, prints, 
 crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered on the floor in every place, 
 as if the young chemist, in order to analyze the mystery of creation, 
 had endeavoured first to reconstruct the primaeval chaos. The tables, 
 and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of 
 various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of Are. An 
 electrical machine, an air pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, 
 and large glass jars and receivers, were conspicuous amidst the mass 
 of matter. Upon the table by his side, were some books lying open, 
 a bundle of new pens, and a bottle of japan ink, with many chips, and 
 a handsome razor, that had been used as a knife. There were bottles 
 of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent 
 beverage." 
 
 Such, witli some variations, was, as they come back on 
 me, the appearance of Shelley and his rooms during this 
 visit to him in the November of 1810. 
 
 He had not forgotten our Walker's Lectures, and was 
 deep in the mysteries of chemistry, and had apparently, 
 been making some experiments; but it is highly im- 
 probable that Shelley was qualified to succeed in that 
 science, where scrupulous minuteness and a mechanical 
 accuracy are indispensable. His chemical operations 
 
 ^ Medwin's bungle, this, of Hogg are " two-thirds of the 'price 
 course. The words really used by last given." 
 
70 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 seeined to an unskilful observer to premise nothing but 
 disasters. He had blown himself up at Eton. He had 
 i^iadvertently swallowed some mineral poison, which he 
 declared had seriously injured his health, and from the 
 effects of which he should never recover. His hands, his 
 clothes, his books, and his furniture were stained and 
 coveredby medical acids — more than one holeinthe carpet 
 could elucidate the ultimate phenomena of combustion, 
 especially in the middle of the room, where the floor had 
 also been burnt by his mixing ether with some other fluid 
 in a crucible, and the honourable wound was speedily en- 
 larged by rents, for the philosopher, as he hastily crossed 
 the room in pursuit of truth, was frequently caught in it 
 by the foot. 
 
 And speaking of electricity and chemistry, Mr. Hogg 
 says, " I know little of the physical sciences, and felt 
 therefore but a slight degree of interest in them. I looked 
 upon his philosophical apparatus as toys and playthings, 
 like a chess board. Through want of sympathy, his zeal, 
 which was at first ardent, gradually cooled, and he applied 
 himself to those pursuits, after a time less frequently, 
 and with less earnestness." " The true value of these," 
 Mr. H[ogg] adds, " was often the subject of animated dis- 
 cussion ; and I remember one evening at my rooms, when 
 he had sought refuge from the extreme cold in the little 
 apartment or study, I referred, in the course of our debate 
 to a passage in Xenophon's Memorabilia, where Socrates 
 speaks in dispraise of physics." But that Shelley, instead 
 of disparaging, was almost inclined to overrate them, is 
 proved by the great interest he took in 1820, in 
 Mr. Eeveley's steam-boat, and the active assistance he 
 afforded him in completing the engine ; and his imagina- 
 tion seems to have fallen back in his old pursuits, with 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 71 
 
 the delight of a boy, where he says, (he had been visiting 
 the laboratory of the young engineer) : — 
 
 Magical forms the brick floor overspread, 
 
 Proteus transformed to metal, did not make 
 
 More figures or more strange, nor did he take 
 
 Such shapes of unintelligible brass, 
 
 Or heap himself in such a horrid mass 
 
 Of tin and iron, not to be understood. 
 
 And forms of unimaginable wood, 
 
 To puzzle Tubal Cain, and all his brood ; 
 
 Great screws, and cones, and wheels and grooved blocks. 
 
 The elements of what will stand the shocks 
 
 Of wave, and wind, and time ; upon the table 
 
 More knacks and quips there be, than I am able 
 
 To catalogize in this verse of mine — 
 
 A pretty bowl of wood — not full of wine, 
 
 But quicksilver — that dew, which the gnomes drink — 
 
 When at their subterranean toil they swink. 
 
 Pledging the dBemons of the earthquake, who 
 
 Reply to them in lava— cry "Halloo!" 
 
 And call out to the cities o'er their head — 
 
 Boofs, towers, and shrines — the dying and the dead 
 
 Crash thro' the chinks of earth — and then all quaff 
 
 Another rouse, and hold their sides, and laugh. 
 
 this quicksilver no gnome has drunk— within 
 
 The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin, 
 
 In colour like the wake of light that stains 
 
 The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains 
 
 The inmost shower of its white fire — the breeze 
 
 Is still — blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas — 
 
 And in this bowl of quicksilver— /or I 
 
 Yield to the impulse of an infancy 
 
 Outlasting manhood — I have made to float 
 
 The rude idealism of a paper boat : — 
 
 A hollow screw ivith cogs.^ 
 
 On reading these beautifully imaginative lines, who 
 will say with Wordsworth, that there is no poetry in 
 a steam engine ? 
 
 1 I have amended a few words in Gisbome where Medwin's copying 
 this extract from the Letter to Maria was at fault. 
 
72 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But " the Weird Archimage," as Shelley calls himself, 
 was right in abandoning chemistry. I doubt, with 
 Mr. Hogg, whether he would ever have made a natural 
 philosopher. As a boy he was fond of flying kites, and 
 at Field Place, made an electrical one, an idea borrowed 
 from Franklin, in order to draw lightning from the clouds 
 — fire from Heaven, like a new Prometheus. But its 
 phenomena did not alone excite his interest. He 
 thought 1 " "What a mighty instrument electricity might 
 be in the hands of him who knew how to wield it, and in 
 what manner to direct its omnipotent energies; what 
 a terrible organ would the supernal shock prove, if 
 we were able to guide it ; how many of the secrets; of 
 nature could not such a stupendous force unlock ! The 
 galvanic battery," said Shelley, " is a new engine. It has 
 been used hitherto to an insignificant extent, yet it has 
 worked wonders already. What will not an extraordinary 
 combination of troughs of colossal magnitude — a well 
 arranged system of hundreds of metallic plates, effect ? 
 Shelley also speculated on the uses of chemistry as applied 
 to agriculture, in transmuting an unfruitful region into 
 a land of exuberant plenty ; on generating from the atmo- 
 spheric air, water in every situation, and in every quantity ; 
 and of the power of providing heat at will," — adding, 
 " what a comfort it would be to the poor at all times, and 
 especially in the winter, if we could be masters of caloric, 
 and could at will furnish them with a constant supply ! " 
 
 "With such fervour," adds Mr. H[ogg], "did the slender 
 and beardless boy speculate concerning the march of 
 physical science; his speculations were as wild as the 
 experience of twenty years had shown them to be, but the 
 zealous earnestness for the augmentation of knowledge, 
 ^ Hogg, altered and adapted. 
 
i,IPE OF SHELLEY. 73 
 
 and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence 
 that marked them, are without parallel." ^ 
 
 We had been more frequent correspondents than ever, 
 since he became an Oxonian, and our friendly controversies 
 were carried on with greater animation. But at this 
 period of time the tenor, though not the nature, of 
 them has entirely escaped me, and as I can draw from 
 a most authentic source his metaphysical speculations, 
 I shall make use of these materials in another place when 
 I come to treat of them. 
 
 Mr. Hogg says that " Shelley knew nothing of German, 
 but from the glimmering light of translation ; " there 
 I think he is mistaken, for on the occasion of this visit 
 he showed me a volume of tales which he had himself 
 rendered from the original. During half an hour that we 
 were together, (I passed the whole day with him) I 
 perused these MSS., and they gave me a very low idea of 
 the literature of that country, then almost unknown in 
 England. It was evident that the books that had fallen 
 into his hands were from the pens of very inferior writers ; 
 and I told him he had lost his time and labour in clothing 
 them in his own language, and that I thought he could 
 write much better things himself. He showed and read 
 to me many letters he had received in controversies he 
 had originated with learned divines ; among the rest with 
 a bishop, under the assumed name of a woman. 
 
 "He had commenced this practice at Eton, and when he came to 
 Oxford he tetained and extended the former practice, keeping up the 
 ball of doubt in letters, and of those he received many, so that the 
 arrival of the postman was always an anxious moment to him. This 
 practice he had learnt of a physician, from whom he had taken 
 instructions in chemistry, and of whose character and talents he often 
 fipoke with profound veneration. It was indeed the usual course with 
 men of learning, as their biographers and many volumes of such 
 
74 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 epistles testify. The physician was an old man, and a man of the old 
 school ; he confined his epistolary discussions to matters of science, 
 and so did his disciple for a long time ; but when metaphysics 
 usurped the place in his affections, that chemistry had before had, the 
 latter fell into disceptations respecting existences stiU more subtle 
 than gases and the electric iluid. The transition, however, from 
 physics to metaphysics was gradual. Is the electric fluid material ? 
 he would ask his correspondent. Is light ? Is the vital principle in 
 vegetables ? — in the human soul ? His individual character had 
 proved an obstacle to his inquiries, even whilst they were strictly 
 physical. A refuted or irritated chemist had suddenly concluded 
 a long correspondence by telling his youthful opponent that he would 
 write to his master and have him flogged. The discipline of a public 
 school, however salutary in other respects, was not favourable to free 
 and fair discussion, and hence Shelley began to address his enquiries 
 anonymously, or rather that he might receive an answer as Philalethes 
 and the like ; but even at Eton the postman did not understand 
 Greek, and to prevent miscarriages, therefore, it was necessary to 
 adopt a more familiar name, as John Short or Thomas Long. 
 
 " In briefly describing the nature of Shelley's epistolary contentions, 
 the impression that they were conducted on his part, or considered by 
 him with frivolity, or any unseemly levity, would be most erroneous ; 
 his whole frame of mind was grave, earnest, and anxious, and his 
 deportment was reverential, with an edification reaching beyond his 
 age, an age wanting in reverence — an unlearned age — a young age 
 for the lack-learning. Hume permits no object of respect to remain 
 — Locke approaches the most awful speculations with the same 
 indifference as if he were about to handle the properties of triangles ; 
 the small deference rendered to the most holy things by the able 
 theologian Paley, is not the least remarkable of his characteristics. 
 Wiser and better men displayed anciently, together with a more 
 profound erudition, a superior and touching solemnity; the meek 
 seriousness of Shelley was redolent of those good old times, before 
 mankind had been despoiled of a main ingredient in the composition 
 of happiness, a well directed veneration. 
 
 "Whether such disputations were decorous or profitable, may be 
 perhaps doubtful ; there can be no doubt, however, since the sweet 
 gentleness of Shelley was easily and instantly swayed by the mild 
 influences of friendly admonition, that had even the least dignified 
 of his elders suggested the propriety of his pursuing his metaphysical 
 inquiries with less ardour, his obedience would have been prompt 
 and perfect." 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 75 
 
 It is to be lamented that all his letters written at this 
 time should have perished, as they wotild throw light on 
 the speculations of his active and inquiring mind. 
 
 Shelley was an indefatigable student, frequently devot- 
 ing to his books ten or twelve hours of the day, and part 
 of the night. The absorption of his ideas by reading, was 
 become in him a curious phenomenon. He took in seven 
 or eight lines at a glance, and his mind seized the sense 
 with a velocity equal to the twinkling of an eye. Often 
 would a single word enable him at once to comprehend 
 the meaning of the sentence. His memory was prodi- 
 gious. He with the same fidelity assimilated, to use a 
 medical term for digestion, the ideas acquired by reading 
 and those which he derived from reflection or conversa- 
 tion. In short, he possessed the memory of places, words, 
 things, and figures. Not only did he call up objects at 
 will, but he revived them in the mind, in the same situa- 
 tions, and with the lights and colours in which they had 
 appeared to him at particular moments. He collected 
 not only the gist of the thoughts in the book wherefrom 
 they were taken, but even the disposition of his soul at 
 the time. Thus, by an unheard-of faculty and privilege, 
 he could retrace the progress and the whole course of his 
 imagination from the most anciently sketched idea, down 
 to its last development. His brain, habituated from 
 earliest youth to the complicated mechanism of human 
 forces, drew from its rich structure a crowd of admirable 
 images, fall of reality and freshness, with which it was 
 continually nurtured. He could throw a veil over his 
 eyes, and find himself in a camera obscura, where all the 
 features of a scene were reproduced in a form more pure 
 and perfect than they had been originally presented to 
 his external senses. 
 
76 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour 
 of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life 
 most conspicuous. His food was plain and simple as that of a hermit, 
 with a certain anticipation at this time of a vegetable diet, respecting 
 which he afterwards became an ehthusiast in theory, and in practice 
 an irregular votary. With his usual fondness for moving the abstruse 
 and difficult questions of the highest theology, he loved to inquire, 
 whether man can justify:, on the ground of reason alone, the practice 
 of taking the life of inferior animals, except in the necessary defence 
 of his life, and of his means of life, the fruits of that field which he 
 had tilled, from violence and spoliation. Not only have considerable 
 sects, he said, denied the right altogether; but those among the 
 tender-hearted and imaginative people of antiquity,, who accounted 
 it lawful to kill and eat, appear to have doubted whether they might 
 take away life solely for the use of man alone. They slew their cattle, 
 not simply for human gusto, like the less scrupulous butchers , of 
 modern times, but only as a sacrifice for the honour and in the name 
 of the Deity, or rather of those subordinate divinities, to whom as 
 they believed the Supreme Being had assigned the creation and 
 conservation of the visible material world ; as an incitement to these 
 pious offerings, they partook of the residue of the victims, of which, 
 without such sanction and sanctification, they would not have 
 presumed to taste. So reverent was the caution of a humane and 
 prudent antiquity. Bread became his chief sustenance ; when his 
 regimen attained an austerity that afterwards distinguished it, he 
 could have lived on bread alone, without repining. When he was 
 walking in London, he would suddenly turn into a baker's shop, 
 purchase a supply, and breaking a loaf, he would offer it to his 
 companion. 'Do you know,' he said to me one day with some 
 surprise, ' that such a one does not like bread ? Did you ever know 
 a person who disliked bread ? ' And he told me that a friend had 
 refused such an offer. I explained to him that the individual in 
 question probably had no objection to bread in a moderate quantity, 
 and with the usual adjuncts, and was only unwilling to devour two 
 or three pounds of dry bread in the street, and at an early hour. 
 Shelley had no such scruples — his pockets were generally well stored 
 with bread. A circle upon the carpet clearly defined by an ample verge 
 of crumbs, often marked the place where he had long sat at his studies 
 — his face nearly in contact with his book. He was near-sighted." 
 
 Shelley frequently exercised his ingenuity in long dis- 
 cussions respecting various questions in logic, and more 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 1^ 
 
 frequently indulged in metaphysical inquiries. Mr. H[ogg] 
 
 and himself read several metaphysical works together in 
 
 whole or in part, for the first time, and after a previous 
 
 perusal by one or both of them. The examination of a 
 
 chapter of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, 
 
 would induce him at any moment to quit every other 
 
 pursuit. They read together Hume's Essays, and some 
 
 productions of the Scotch metaphysicians of inferior 
 
 ability, all with assiduous and friendly altercations, and 
 
 the latter writers at least with small profit, unless some 
 
 sparks of knowledge wete struck out in the collision of 
 
 debate. They read also certain popular French works, 
 
 that treat of man for the most part in a mixed method, 
 
 metaphysically, morally and politically. 
 
 " We must bear in mind, however, that he was an eager, bold, and 
 unwearied disputant, and although the position in which the sceptic 
 and materialist love to entrench themselves, offer no picturesque 
 attractions to the eye of the poet, it is well adapted to defensive war- 
 fare, and it is not easy for an ordinary enemy to dislodge him who 
 occupies a post that derives strength from the weakness of the 
 assailant. It has been insinuated that whenever a man of real talent 
 and generous feelings condescends to fight under these colours, he is 
 guilty of a dissimulation which he deems harmless, perhaps even 
 praiseworthy, for the sake of victory in argument. It is not a little 
 curious to observe one whose sanguine temper led him to believe 
 implicitly every assertion, so that it was impossible and incredible, 
 exulting in his philosophical doubts, when, the calmest and most 
 suspicious of analysts, he refused to admit, without strict proof, 
 propositions, that many who are not deficient in metaphysical 
 prudence account obvious and self-evident. The sceptical philosophy 
 had another charm, it partook of the new and wonderful, inasmuch 
 as it called into doubt, and seemed to place in jeopardy, during the 
 joyous hours of disputation, many important practical conclusions. 
 To a soul loving excitement and change, destruction, so it be on 
 a large scale, may sometimes prove hardly less inspiring than 
 creation. The fact of the magician, who by the touch of his rod, 
 could cause the great Pyramid to dissolve into the air, and to vanish 
 from the sight, would be as surprising as the achievement of him. 
 
78 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 who by the same rod, could instantly raise a similar mass in any 
 chosen spot. If the destruction of the eternal monument was only 
 apparent, the ocular sophisin would be at once harmless and in- 
 genious; so was it with the logomachy of the young and strenuous 
 logician, and his intellectual activity merited praise and reward. 
 There was another reason, moreover, why the sceptical philosophy 
 should be welcome to Shelley,-at that time he was young, and it is 
 generally acceptable to youth. It is adopted as the abiding rule of 
 reason, throughout life, by those who are distinguished by a sterility 
 of soul, a barrenness of invention, a total dearth of fancy, and 
 a scanty stock of learning. Such, in truth, although the warmth of 
 feverish blood, the light burthen of a few years, and the precipita- 
 tion of experience, may sometimes seem to contradict the assertion, 
 is the state of mind at the commencement of manhood, when the 
 vessel has, as yet, received but a small portion of the cargo of the - 
 accumulated wisdom of past ages; when the amount of mental 
 operations that have actually been performed is small, and the 
 materials upon which the imagination can work are insignificant; 
 consequently, the inventions of the young are crude and frigid. 
 Hence the most fertile mind exactly resembles in early youth, the 
 hopeless barrenness of those, who have grown old in vain, as to its 
 actual condition, and it differs only in the unseen capacity for future 
 production. The philosopher who declares that he knows nothing, 
 and that nothing can be known, will readily find followers among 
 the young, for they are sensible that they possess the requisite 
 qualification for entering the school, and are as far advanced in the 
 science of ignorance as their master. A stranger who had chanced 
 to have been present at some of Shelley's disputes, or who knew him 
 only from having read some of the short argumentative essays which 
 he composed as voluntary exercises, would have said, ' Surely the soul 
 of Hume passed by transmigration into the body of that eloquent 
 young man, or rather he represents one of the enthusiastic and 
 animated' materialists of the French school, whom revolutionary 
 violence lately intercepted at an early age in his philosophical career.' 
 " There were times, however, when a visitor who had listened to 
 the glowing discourses delivered with a more intense ardour, would 
 have hailed a young Platonist breathing forth the ideal philosophy, 
 and in his pursuit of the intellectual world, entirely overlooking the 
 material, or noticing it only to contemn it. The tall boy, who is 
 permitted, for the first time, to scare the partridges with his fowling 
 piece, scorns to handle the top or the hoop of his younger brother ; 
 thus the man, whose years and studies are mature, slights the feeble as- 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 79 
 
 pirations after the higher departments of knowledge that were deemed 
 so important during his residence at college. It seems laughable, 
 but it is true, his knowledge of Plato was derived solely from Dacier's 
 translation of a few of the Dialogues, and from an English version 
 of that French translation. Since that time, however, few of his 
 countrymen have read the golden works of that majestic philosopher 
 in the original language, more frequently, and more carefully ; and 
 few, if any, with more proiit than Shelley. Although the source 
 whence flowed his earliest taste of the divine philosophy was scanty 
 and turbid, the draught was not the less grateful to his lips. Shellej' 
 was never tired of reading passages from the dialogues contained in 
 this collection, especially from the Phsedo, and he was vehemently 
 excited by the striking doctrines which Socrates unfolds, especially 
 by that which teaches, that all our knowledge consists of remi- 
 niscences of what we had learnt in a former existence. He often even 
 paced about his room, slowly shook his wild locks, and discoursed in 
 a solemn tone with a mysterious air, speculating concerning our 
 previous condition, and of the nature of our life and occupations in 
 the world, where, according to Plato, we had attained to erudition, 
 and had advanced ourselves in knowledge, so that the most studious 
 and the most inventive, in other words, those who have the best 
 memory, are able to call back a part only, and with much pain, and 
 extreme difficulty, of what was familiar to us.'' 
 
 This doctrine, introduced by Pythagoras, after his 
 travels in India, and derived from the G-ymnosophists, 
 was received almost without question by several of the 
 philosophers of Greece ; and long before Shelley went to 
 Oxford, had taken deep root in his mind, for he had met 
 with it in Coleridge and introduced it into The Wander- 
 ing Jew. That Shelley should have been delighted in 
 finding it unfolded in the PJiaedo, I can easily believe. 
 The metempsychosis is a doctrine that vindicated the 
 justice of the Gods ; for, by it, the inequalities of condi- 
 tions, the comparative misery and happiness of individuals, 
 were reconciled to the mind, such individuals being re- 
 warded or punished in this life for good or evil deeds com- 
 mitted in a former state of existence. The objection, that 
 
80 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 we have no memory of that state, is answered by the ques- 
 tion, " Does a childof two years old remember what passed 
 when he was a year old?" But it is Shelley's opinion 
 that it is permitted to some gifted persons to have glimpses 
 of the past, and he thus records it in his own person.^ 
 
 "I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccountable 
 connection of which with the obscure parts of my own nature, 
 I have been irresistibly impressed. I have beheld a scene that has 
 produced no unusual effect on my thoughts. After a lapse of many 
 years I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it 
 has haunted my thoughts at intervals with the pertinacity of an object 
 connected with human affections. I have visited this scene again. 
 Neither the dream could be dissociated from the landscape, nor the 
 landscape from the dream, nor feelings such as neither singly could have 
 awakened from both. But the most remarkable event of this nature 
 which ever occurred to me, happened at Oxford. I was walking with 
 a friend in the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest and 
 interesting conversation ; we suddenly turned a comer of a lane, and 
 the view, which its high banks and hedges had concealed, presented 
 itself. The view consisted of a vrindmill, standing in one among 
 many pleasing meadows, inclosed with stone walls. The irregular 
 and broken ground between the wall and the road in which we stood, 
 a long low hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering of uniform 
 cloud spread oVer the evening sky. It was that season when the last 
 leaf had just fallen from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely 
 was a common one, the season and the hour little calculated to kindle 
 lawless thought. It was a tame and uninteresting assemblage of 
 objects, such as would drive the imagination for refuge in serious and 
 sober talk to the evening fireside and the dessert of winter fruits and 
 ■wrine. The-effect which it produced on me was not such as could be 
 expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen the exact scene in 
 some dream of long.— Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome with 
 thrilling horror." 
 
 Mrs. Shelley appends to this passage the following 
 
 > This passage from the frag- can be consulted in her editions of 
 
 mentAry Catalogue of the Phenomena of the Ussays See. or in mine of the 
 
 Breams, as connecting Sleeping and Prose Works (vol ii pp 296-71 
 
 Waking is rather disfigured by So can those given 'a feW pages 
 
 Medwm s careless and clumsy treat- further on with almost as little care 
 
 ment : so is Mary's note. Both in the transfer. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 81 
 
 remark : " This fragment was written in 1815. I remem- 
 ber well his coming to me from writing it, pale and 
 agitated, to seek reftige in conversation from the fearfril 
 emotions it excited." " No man," she adds, " had such 
 keen sensations as Shelley. His nervous temperament 
 was wound up by the delicacy of his health to an intense 
 degree of sensibility ; and while his active mind pondered 
 for ever upon, and drew conclusions from his sensations, 
 his reveries increased their vivacity, till they mingled 
 with and were one with thought, and both became absorb- 
 ing and tumultuous, even to physical pain." 
 
 Balzac relates of Louis Lambert a similar phenomenon 
 to the above : — 
 
 "Whilst at school at Blois, during a holiday, we were allowed to 
 go to the chateau of Eochambeau. As soon as we reached the hill, 
 whence we could behold the chateau, and the tortuous valley where 
 the river wound through meadows of graceful slope, — one of those 
 admirable landscapes on which the lively sensations of boyhood, 
 or those of love have impressed such a charm that we can never 
 venture to loot on them a second time, — Louis Lambert said to me, — 
 ' I have seen all this last night in dream.' He recognised the grove 
 of trees under which we were, and the disposition of the foliage, the 
 colour of the water, the turrets of the chateau, the lights and shades, 
 the distances, in fine all the details of the spot which we had then 
 perceived for the first time." 
 
 After some interesting conversation, which would 
 occupy too much space here, Balzac makes Louis Lambert 
 say, — " If the landscape did not come to me, which it is 
 absurd to think, then must I have come to it. If I were 
 here whilst I slept, does not this fact constitute a complete 
 separation between my body and inward being ? Does it 
 not form a locomotive faculty in the soul, or effects that are 
 equivalent to locomotive ? Thus, if the disunion of our two 
 natures could take place during sleep, why could they not 
 equally dissever themselves when awake?" '"Is there not 
 
 SBFLliBT 
 
82 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 an entire science in this phenomenon? ' added he, striking 
 his forehead. ' If it be not the principle of a science, it 
 certainly betrays a singular faculty in man.' " 
 To return, however, to Shelley and Oxford. 
 
 " It is hazardous to speak of his earlier efforts as a Platonist, lest 
 they should be confounded with his subsequent advancement ; it is 
 not easy to describe his first introduction to the exalted wisdom of 
 antiquity, without borrowing inadvertently from the knowledge 
 which he afterwards acquired. The cold, ungenial, foggy atmosphere 
 of northern metaphysics was less suited to the ardent temperament 
 of his soul than the warm, vivifjdng climate of the southern and 
 eastern philosophy. His genius expanded under the benign 
 influence of the latter, and he derived copious instruction from 
 a luminous system that is only dark through excess of brightness, 
 and seems obscure to vulgar vision through its extreme radiance." 
 
 On this subject I shall have hereafter much to say. 
 Nevertheless, for the present I will repeat, that " in argu- 
 ment, and to argue on all questions was his dominant 
 passion. He usually adopted the scheme of the Sceptics ; 
 partly because it was more popular, and is more generally 
 understood. The disputant who would use Plato as a text: 
 book in this age, would reduce his opponents to a small 
 number indeed." It was inthis spirit, that, in conjunction 
 with his friend (for it was the production of both), in their 
 everyday studies they made up a little book entitled, The 
 Necessity of Atheism, and had it printed, I believe in 
 London— certainly not at Oxford. This little pamphlet 
 was never oflEered for sale. It was not addressed to an 
 orfinary reader, but to the metaphysical alone ; and it 
 was so short, that it was only designed to point out the 
 line of argument. It was, in truth, a general issue, a 
 compendious denial of every allegation in order to put 
 the whole case in proof. It was a formal mode of saying, 
 — " You aifirm so and so,— then prove it." And thus was 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 83 
 
 it understood by Ms more candid and intelligent cor- 
 respondents. As it was shorter, so was it plainer, and 
 perhaps, in order to provoke discussion, a little bolder than 
 Hume^s Essays — a book which occupies a conspicuous 
 place in the library of every student. The doctrine, if 
 not deserving the name, was precisely similar — the neces- 
 sary and inevitable consequence of Locke's philbsophy, 
 and the theory, that all know;ledge is from without. 
 
 I will not admit your conclusions, his opponent might 
 answer. — Then you must deny those of Hume. — I deny 
 them. — But you must deny those of Locke also ; and we 
 will go back together to Plato. Such was the usual 
 course of argument. Sometimes, however, he rested on 
 mere denial, holding his adversary to strict proof, and 
 deriving strength from his weakness. But those who are 
 anxious to see this syllabus, may find it totidem verbis in 
 the notes to Queen Mob} 
 
 This syllabus he sent to me among many others, and 
 circulated it largely among the heads of colleges, and pro- 
 fessors of the university, forwarding copies it is said to 
 several of the bishops. The author of The Opium Eater ^ 
 says that Shelley put his name to the pamphlet, and the 
 name of his college. The publication was anonymous ; but 
 the secret (scarcely made a secret) of the authorship soon 
 transpired. I wish I could also confirm Mr. De Quincey's 
 observation, that Shelley had but just entered his sixteenth 
 
 * The principal errors in this University and City Serald of the 9th 
 account of The Necessity of Atheism of February 1811 ; and the Qtieen 
 (Worthing; Printed by E. & W. Mab version varies considerably in 
 Phillips) ai-e the statements that it detail from the tract. Full parti- 
 was not offered for sale and that it culars of the episode are given in 
 will be found totidem verbis in the vol. i of Shelley's Prose Works 
 notes to Queen Mab. It certainly (1880) and in Part I of my un- 
 was offered for sale by Munday & completed work The ShelXey Library, 
 Slatter, at their shop in Oxford, an Essay in Bibliography (1886). 
 and advertized for sale in the Oxford ^ TaiPs Magazine, January 1846. 
 
 g2 
 
84 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 year ; he was in his nineteenth. Still, however, Shelley 
 was a thoughtless boy at this era, and not a man. The 
 promulgation of this syllabus was a reckless— a mad act. 
 The consequence might be anticipated. 
 
 " It was a fine spring morning, on Lady-day, in the year 1811, 
 when," says Mr. H[ogg] "I went to Shelley's rooms; he was 
 absent; but before I had collected our books, he rushed in. He was 
 terribly agitated.* I anxiously enquired what had happened: ' I am 
 expelled ! ' he said, as soon as he had recovered himself a little,— 'I am 
 expelled ! I was sent for suddenly, a few minutes ago,— I went to the 
 common room, where I found our master and two or three of his 
 fellows. The master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and 
 asked me if I wa.s the author of it ; he spoke in a rude, abrupt, and 
 insolent tone ; I begged to be informed for what purpose they put 
 the question, — no answer was given, but the master loudly and 
 angrily repeated, ' Are you the author of this book ? ' ' If I can 
 judge from your manner,' I said, ' you are resolved to punish me, if 
 I should acknowledge that it is my work. If you can prove that it is, 
 produce your evidence ; it is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me 
 in such a case, and for such a purpose. Such proceedings would 
 become a Court of Inquisitors ; but not free men in a free country.' 
 ' Do you choose to deny that this is your composition ? ' the master 
 reiterated in the same rude and angry voice. 
 
 " Shelley complained much of his violent and ungentlemanlike 
 deportment, saying, ' I have experienced tyranny and injustice 
 
 * A pendant to this inquisitorial conduct, may be found in the case of 
 Bonge, the new Beformer, who wrote an article in the Annales ifo la 
 Fatrie, proclaiming the most ardent sympathy for liberty; and an 
 admiration without hounds for the French revolution. Bonge was sum- 
 moned by a letter of the Vicar-General of Silesia, to declare whether or 
 not he was the author of the paper in question. Throwing himself on 
 the protection of Prussian laws, that interdict the prosecution of an 
 anonymous author, — at least, where his writings contain no personal 
 scandal, or attacks on the state that may be dangerous, — the curate of 
 Grolkan made this laconic reply, "that his conscience enjoined him 
 silence." Yet without any proof or trial, Bonge was suspended, and con- 
 demned to imprisonment. Bonge who was once looked up to as a new 
 Luther in Germany has fallen into utter contempt. His doctrines are 
 almost forgotten. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 85 
 
 before, and I well know what vulgar virulence is, but I never met 
 with such unworthy treatment. I told him calmly, but firmly, that 
 I yas determined not to answer any questions respecting the book on 
 the table — he immediately repeated his demand ; I persisted in my 
 refusal, and he said, furiously, ' Then you are expelled, and I desire 
 that you will quit the college to-morrow morning at the latest.' 
 
 " 'One of the fellows took up two papers, and handed me one of 
 them, — here it is'^ — he produced a regular sentence of expulsion 
 drawn up in due form, under the seal of the college. 
 
 " Shelley was full of spirit and courage, frank and fearless, but he 
 was likewise shy, unpresuming, and eminently sensitive ; I have been 
 with him on many trying occasions of his after life, but I never saw 
 him so deeply shocked and so cruelly agitated as on this occasion. 
 A nice sense of honour shrinks from the most distant touch of 
 ~ disgrace — even from the insults of those men whose contumely can 
 bring no shame. He sat on the sofa, repeating with convulsive 
 vehemence the word ' Expelled ! Expelled ! ' his head shaking with 
 emotion, his whole frame quivering." 
 
 Speaking of this expulsion, it is to be regretted that he 
 had a tutor of whom Mr. H[ogg] does not give a very- 
 flattering picture, and whom he accuses of denouncing 
 Shelley. I had once a conversation with a German 
 Professor, who expressed his astonishment at this laconic 
 fiat, and said, that had Shelley promulgated this Syllabus 
 at any of their universities, he would have found Divines 
 enough to have entered the lists with him, adding, that 
 had not the young collegian been convinced, he would 
 not have drawn from what he deemed intolerance and 
 persecution, an obstinate adherence to his errors, from a 
 belief that his logic was unanswerable. A manifest of 
 this sort from a man whose opinions are formed, and who 
 gives them the authority of a name, may to a certain 
 point awaken the attention of a government partly 
 founded on respect for the established religion. — But not 
 so when a Student overloaded with an undigested and un- 
 wholesome erudition, seduced by the spurious and brilliant 
 
86 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Novelty of some prohibited ^ Theories, sets himself up in 
 the face of Ages, of History, and of God, to abjure and 
 deny on the ipse dixits of others, all that is believed 
 and taught to be sacred — was it just was it prudent to 
 treat as Serious these idle speculations of a beardless philo- 
 sopher ? To my mind a dignified silence, an indulgent 
 disdain, or at most a contemptuous raillery would have 
 best become these crudities, the most cutting and surest 
 of chastisements which he could have received. 
 
 It might be supposed that it was not without some 
 reluctance, that the master and fellows of University 
 College passed against Shelley this stern decree (which 
 Mr. Hogg designates as monstrous and illegal), not only 
 on account of his youth and distinguished talents, 
 promising to reflect credit on the college ; but because, as 
 I have said, his father had been a member of it, his 
 ancestors its benefactors. I know not if these considera- 
 tions had any weight with the conclave, but it appears 
 that Shelley was by no means in good odour with the 
 authorities of the college, from the side he took in the 
 election of Lord Grenville, as chancellor, against his 
 competitor, a member of University College. Shelley, by 
 his family and connexions, as well as disposition, was 
 attached to the successful party, in common with the 
 whole body of undergraduates, one and all, in behalf of 
 the scholar and liberal statesman. Plain and loud was 
 the avowal of his sentiments, nor were they confined to 
 words, for he published, I think in the Morning Chronicle, 
 under the pseudo signature of "A Master of Arts of 
 Oxford," a letter advocating the claims of Lord G-renville, 
 
 1 This passage is one of those hipted; but we may assume that 
 
 manuscript additions with which the old gentleman meant pro- 
 
 Medwin's margin is crammed : the hihited and knew how to spell that 
 
 word written here is, literally, pro- word. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 87 
 
 which, perhaps, might have been, detected as his, by the 
 heads of the college. It was a well-written paper, and 
 calcidated to produce some effect; and as he expressed 
 himself eminently delighted at the issue of the contest, — 
 " at that wherewith his superiors were offended, he was 
 regarded from the beginning with a jealous eye." Such 
 at least are the impressions of his friend. 
 
 The next morning at eight o'clock, Shelley and 
 Mr. H[ogg], who had been involved in the same fate, set 
 out together for London on the top of the coach ; and with 
 his final departure from the university, the reminiscences 
 of his life at Oxford terminate.^ ' 
 
 The narration of the injurious effects of this cruel, 
 precipitate, unjust, and illegal expulsion, upon the entire 
 course of his subsequent life, will not be wanting in 
 interest or instruction ; of a period, when the scene was 
 changed from the quiet seclusion of academic groves and 
 gardens, and the calm valley of the silvery Isis, to the 
 stormy ocean of that vast and shoreless world, and to 
 the utmost violence of which, he was, at an early age, 
 suddenly and unnaturally abandoned. 
 
 I remember, as if it occurred yesterday, his knocking 
 
 ' Other accounts of the expulsion it easy to reject Merle on the 
 are given in Professor Dowdeu's strength of this opinion ; hut, as 
 Life of Shelley, vol. i, pp. 123-5, in a the Newspaper Editor is among 
 long foot-note in which I think my those w^ho contribute to the ex- 
 friend the family biographer takes pulsion chronicles, it may be weU 
 too much as a certainty my sug- to offer what further knowledge of 
 gestion that W. H. Merle, the Merle has come to the surface since 
 author of Cosiartfa, a Poem (London, Professor Dowden dealt with the 
 1828), and Odds and Ends in Prose and subject. In a collection of Shelley's 
 Verse (London, 1831), was the Letters which I had intended to 
 writer of A Newspaper Editor's re- publish if Mr. Ingpen had not saved 
 miniscences, published in Eraser's me the labour are two to Graham 
 Magasine for June 1841. Mr. Boger about Merle. One Mr. Ingpen has 
 Ingpen records (Letters of Shelley, published ; but the other I have 
 vol. i, p. 7) that Dr. Garnett held not seen in print. It seems best to 
 the Newspaper Editor to have add both to Medwin's appendix of 
 been Gibbon Neale. I do not find early letters, q.v. 
 
88 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 at my door in Garden Court, in the Temple, at four 
 o'clock in the morning, the second day after his expulsion. 
 I think I hear his cracked voice, with his well-known 
 pipe,—" Medwin, let me in, I am expelled ; " here followed 
 a sort of loud, half-hysteric laugh, and a repetition of the 
 words— ''1 am expelled," with the addition of, -"for 
 Atheism." Though greatly shocked, I was not much 
 surprised at the news, having been led to augur such a 
 close to his collegiate career, from the Syllabus and the 
 Posthumous "Works of Peg Nicholson, which he had sent 
 me. My apprehensions, too, of the consequences of this 
 unhappy event, from my knowledge of Sir Timothy's 
 character, were soon confirmed ; nor was his partner in 
 misfortune doomed to a milder fate. Their fathers 
 refused to receive them under their roofs. Like the old 
 men in Terence, they compared notes, and hardened each 
 other's hearts. This unmitigable hatred was continued 
 down to the deaths of both. One had not the power of 
 carrying his worldly resentment beyond the grave, but 
 the other not only never forgave, or I believe ever would 
 see his eldest son (for such he was, and presumptive heir 
 to a large fortune), but cut him off, speaking after the 
 manner of the Roman law, with a shilling. 
 
 During Shelley's ostracism, he and his friend took 
 a lodging together, where I visited them, living as best 
 they could. Good arises out of evil. Both owe, perhaps, 
 to this expulsion, their celebrity ; one has risen to an 
 eminence as a lawyer,^ which he might never have attained, 
 
 1 Trelawny {Letters, 1910, p. 232) by him and Edward Williams's 
 
 describes him as "a soured and Jane. His writings, including a large 
 
 grossly ill-used able man." As the number of unpublished, almost un- 
 
 boy said, "the Ibis is safest in the itnown, letters to his friend and 
 
 middle" (In medio tiUissi'mus ibis). colleague in the law Mr. B. 
 
 Hogg was a revising barrister and Hoskyns Abrahall, are of a manly 
 
 was beloved in the family founded and original tone ; but not of great 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 89 
 
 and the other has made himself a name which will go down 
 to posterity with those of Milton and Byron. 
 
 At this time Shelley was ever in a dreamy state, and he 
 told me he was in the habit of noting down his dreams. 
 The first day, he said, they amounted to a page, the next 
 to two, the third to several, till at last they constituted the 
 greater part of his existence ; realising Calderon's Sueho 
 e Sueno. One morning he told me he was satisfied of the 
 existence of two sorts of dreams, the Phrenic and the 
 Psychic ; and that he had witnessed a singular phenome- 
 non, proving that the mind and the soul were separate 
 and different entities — that it had more than once 
 happened to him to have a dream, which the mind was 
 pleasantly and actively developing ; in the midst of which, 
 it was broken off" by a dream within a dream — a dream of 
 the soul, to which the mind was not priAry ; but that from 
 the effect it produced — the start of horror with which he 
 waked, must have been terrific. It is no wonder that, 
 making a pursuit of dreams, he should have left some as 
 
 general interest except when he is such are my feelings towards the 
 dealing with Shelley. It is a pity Greek Classics ; a doating fondness, 
 we have not the other two projected and to them I devote much of my 
 volumes of his Life. In the last time, particularly to the Poets, 
 of over a hundred letters to Mr. However, peace be with the Poets ; 
 Abrahall (penes me) is a pleasant I must complete the Life of a Poet ; 
 passage showing that, as late as and all the more, because, as I am 
 January 1862, he still held to the told, I have been abused roundly 
 intention of completing his Life of by the Quarterly, by the Hind 
 Shelley, although the official volume quarterly I should say, for so is it 
 of Shelley Memorials had then been commonly called, either with a 
 issued by Lady Shelley in default peculiar significancy, or as express- 
 of Hogg's second half between two ing generally contempt. — The nega- 
 and three years. " I shall be glad tive power of reviews is very great ; 
 to hear, whenever you have leisure praise passes for a publisher's paid 
 to write, how you get on in your for -paS, but censure, angry cen- 
 new and higher sphere. For my- sure, compels the reader to infer, 
 self, I am commonly plagued, more that the condemned work must 
 or less, with gout ; nevertheless, I contain something to repay curi- 
 am contented and happy. Old osity: I perceive this effect very 
 men do not love, they doat, and sensibly." 
 
90 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 a catalogue of the phenomena of dreams, as connecting 
 sleeping and waking. 
 
 "I distinctly remember," he says, "dreaming several 
 times, between the intervals of two or three years, the 
 same precise dream. It was not so much what is 
 ordinarily called a dream : The single image, unconnected 
 with all other images, of a youth who was educated at the 
 same school with myself, presented itself in sleep. Even 
 now, after a lapse of many years, I can never hear the 
 name of this youth, without the three places where I 
 dreamed of him presentiag themselves distinctly to my 
 mind." And again, " in dreams, images acquire associa- 
 tions peculiar to dreaming ; so that the idea of a particular 
 house, when it occurs a second time in dreams, will have 
 relation with the idea of the same house in the first time, 
 of a nature entirely different from that which the house 
 excites when seen or thought of in relation to waking 
 ideas." 
 
 His systematising of dreams, and encouraging, if I may 
 so say, the habit of dreaming, by this journal, which he 
 then kept, revived in him his old somnambulism. As an 
 instance of this, being in Leicester Square one morning 
 at five o'clock, I was attracted by a group of boys collected 
 round a well-dressed person lying near the rails. On 
 coming up to them, my curiosity being excited, I descried 
 Shelley, who had unconsciously spent a part of the night 
 sub dio. He could give me no account of how he got 
 there. 
 
 We took during the spring frequent walks in the Parks, 
 and on the banks of the Serpentine. He was fond of that 
 classical recreation, as it appears by a fragment from 
 some comic drama of ^schylus, of making " ducks and 
 drakes," counting with the utmost glee the number of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 91 
 
 bounds, as the flat stones flew skimming over the surface 
 of the water; nor was he less delighted with floating 
 down the wind paper boats, in the constructing of which 
 habit had given him a wonderful skill. He took as great 
 interest in the sailing of his frail vessels as a ship-builder 
 may do in that of his vessels — and when one escaped the 
 dangers of the winds and waves, and reached in safety 
 the opposite shore, he would run round to hail the safe 
 termination of its voyage. Mr. H[ogg] gives a very 
 pleasant account of Shelley's fondness for this sort of 
 navigation, and on one occasion, wearied with standing 
 shivering on the bank of the canal, said, " ' Shelley, there 
 is no use in talking to you, you are the Demiurgus of 
 Plato.' He instantly caught up the whole flotilla he was 
 preparing, and bounding homewards with, mighty strides, 
 laughed aloud, — laughed like a giant, as he used to say." 
 Singular contrast to the ^profound speculations in which 
 he was engaged. He now, rankling with the sense of 
 wrong, and hardened by persecution, and the belief that 
 the logic of his Syllabus had been unrespected because it 
 could not be shaken, applied himself more closely than 
 ever to that Sceptical philosophy, which he had begun to 
 discard for Plato, and would, but for his expulsion, have 
 soon entirely abandoned. He reverted to his Queen Mab^ 
 commenced a year and a half before, and converted what 
 was a mere imaginative poem into a systematic attack on 
 the institutions of society. He not only corrected the 
 versification with great care, but more than doubled its 
 length, and appended to the text the Notes, which were 
 at that time scarcely, if at all begun, even if they were 
 
 ' For these details about Qwm (p. 93) that Shelley never sho\^ed 
 Mob Medwin is no very credible him a line of the poem, 
 authority : he says himself later on 
 
92 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 contemplated. The intolerance of tlie members of a 
 religion, which should be that of love and charity and 
 long-suffering, in his own case, made him throw the 
 odium on the creed itself; and he argues that it is ever a 
 proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those 
 who use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission, 
 and adds, that a dispassionate observer would feel himself 
 more powerfully interested in favour of a man who, 
 depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated his 
 reasons for entertaining them, than that of his aggressor, 
 who daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to 
 answer them by argument, proceeded to repress the 
 energies and break the spirit of their promulgator. 
 
 Like a man dominated by a fixed idea, Shelley's reading, 
 in the concoction of these notes, was one-sided. In addi- 
 tion to Hume's Essays* which were his hand-book, — and 
 I remember ridiculing the chapter entitled a Sceptical 
 Solution of Sceptical Doubts, asking him what could be 
 made of a doubtful solution of doubtful doubts ? — he dug 
 out of the British Museum, Lucretius, Pliny the Elder, 
 Voltaire, Eousseau, Helvetius, Le Systeme du Monde of 
 Laplace, "Les Eapports de Cabanis ", the Letters of 
 Bailly to Voltaire, the Ethic Treatises of Bacon, the 
 Theology of Spinoza, Condorcet, Cuvier, Volney's Ruins of 
 Empires, Godwin's Political Justice and Enquirer, and 
 many other French and English works, to suit his purpose, 
 
 * The dilemma in which Hume placed Philosophy delighted him. He 
 at that time thought the sceptical mode of reasoning unanswerable. 
 Berkeley denied the existence of matter, or rather of the substratum of 
 matter. Hume, going deeper, endeavoured to show mind a figment. 
 Berkeley says Hume professes in his title-page to have composed his book 
 against sceptics as well as Atheists and Freethinkers ; but all his argu- 
 ments, though otherwise intended, are in reaUty sceptical, as appears 
 from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLKY. 93 
 
 and in the course of the year printed that extraordinarily 
 talented poem. / 
 
 Intimate and confidential as we were, Shelley never 
 showed me a line of Queen Mob, which may, in some 
 degree, be accounted for by his knowing that our opinions 
 on very many of the theories, or rather hypotheses, 
 contained in that book, were as wide apart as the poles, 
 and that he was sensible that I should have strongly 
 objected to his disseminating them. Not that, although 
 he did print, he ever published Queen Mob — confining 
 himself to sending copies of it to many of the writers of 
 the day ; but falling into the hands of a piratical book- 
 seller, it soon got circulation from his reprint. It is 
 certain that in its present form, Shelley would never have 
 admitted it into a collection of his works, and the 
 modification of some of his opinions — though, in the 
 main, he never changed the more important ones — would 
 have prevented him from putting forth those crude 
 speculations of his boyish days. That such was the case, 
 excuse the anachronism, we may judge from a letter 
 addressed to the editor of The Examiner, bearing date 
 June 22nd, 1821, wherein he says : 
 
 "Having heard that a poem entitled Queen Mab has been 
 surreptitiously published in London, and that legal proceedings have 
 been instituted against the publisher, I request the favour of your 
 insertion of the following explanation of the affair as it relates to 
 me : — 
 
 " A poem, entitled Qtieen Mab, was written by me at the age of 
 eighteen, I dare say in a sufficiently intemperate spirit, but even 
 then was not intended for publication, and a few copies only were 
 struck off to be distributed among my personal friends. I have not 
 seen this production for several years. I doubt not that it is perfectly 
 taorthless in point of literary composition ; that in all that concei'ns moral 
 and political speculations, as well as in the subtler discriminations of 
 metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. 
 
94 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression, 
 and I regret this publication, not so much from literary vanity, as 
 because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of 
 freedom. I have directed my solicitor to apply for an injunction to 
 restrain the sale, but after the precedent of Mr. Southey's Wat Tyler 
 — a poem wiitten, I believe, at the same age, and with the same 
 unreflecting enthusiasm — with little hope of success." 
 
 And again in a letter to Mr. Grisbome dated June 16tli, 
 1821, lie says after some deprecating remarks on tlie Notes, 
 
 "I have given orders because / toish to protest against all the had 
 poetry in it that the publication has been made against my desire, and 
 have directed my attorney to apply to Chancery for an injunction 
 which he will not get." 
 
 I may here remark, that it is singular and unaccountable 
 that the editor of The Examiner should not have complied 
 with Shelley's wishes in giving publicity to this letter 
 which could not but have proved beneficial to Shelley. 
 He had so completely forgotten this poem of his youth, 
 that in a letter to Mr. Horace Smith, he says, " If you 
 happen to have [brought] a copy of Clarke's edition of 
 Queen Mob for me, I should like [very well] to see it. I 
 hardly know what this poem may be about. 7 fear it is 
 rather rough." This letter bears date Sept. 14th, 1821. 
 
 I have marked in italics the passages in these extracts 
 that show his change of opinions — his regret of the 
 publication as a literary .composition, and his fear of its 
 tendency, although perhaps Mrs. Shelley is right in 
 including Queen Mai among her lamented husband's 
 works, from its wide dissemination, and her utter 
 inability to suppress it. Everything is valuable that 
 came from his pen, inasmuch as it assists to show the 
 progress of his master-mind, the elements on which the 
 superstructure of his philosophy was reared. 
 
 I was acquainted with Sir Something Lawrence, a 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 95 
 
 Knight of Malta, whom I met first at Paris, and after- 
 wards in London. He had purchased his knighthood in 
 the French metropolis, where an office was opened for the 
 sale of these honours. Nobility of origin was held as an 
 indispensable qualification for such titles; but it would 
 seem that it was not very rigorously enforced, for in the 
 Knight's case the proofs were defective on the paternal side, 
 and it was with a consciousness of this fact that he wrote 
 a sort of half-historical romance, a miserable Utopia in 
 four volumes entitled the History of the Nairs, in which 
 he endeavours to establish the supremacy of woman. He 
 had also published a small volume entitled The Nobility 
 of the English Gentry in which he endeavours to prove 
 that an English Esquire is as noble as a Grerman Baron, 
 with his 50 quarters, or a French Vicomte, or an Italian 
 Marquese. It was a work that not only flattered his own 
 vanity but was in high esteem among bur title loving 
 compatriots, and is probably still indexed in G-alignani's 
 Catalogues. Ours is the only nation at the present day that 
 twaddles over these antiquated and outworn lucubrations 
 — on which the late French and German revolutions 
 have set their Seal in those Countries. 
 
 When I saw him in town, he was always wading at the 
 British Museum, in the stagnant pool of genealogy, en- 
 deavouring in spite of his system, to discover the flaw in 
 his escutcheon a mistake, and when he failed in so doing, 
 used to contend that the only real nobility was in the 
 female line. To what absurdity will not an idde fixe 
 impart conviction, or the semblance of conviction ! ^ 
 
 1 We must not take at Medwin's of the Nairs ; \ or, the \ Rights of 
 
 valuation either James Lawrence Wommi. | An | Utopian Romance, | In 
 
 or his numerous remarkable works Twelve Books. | By James Lawrence, | 
 
 — often more remarkable than author of | "The Bosom Friend, 
 
 decent or profitable. The | Umpire "Love, an Allegory," ] etc. . . 
 
96 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 After the publication of this strange History of the 
 Nairs, he sent it with a letter to Shelley, referring him 
 to a note in Queen Mai hostile to matrimony, and taxing 
 him with apostacy from his principles, in having twice 
 entered that state. This epistle produced an answer ; ^ I 
 
 In four volumes . . . | London . . . | 
 Hookham ... | 1811, is by no means 
 unreadable ; and, though now some- 
 what rare, can be consulted by the 
 curious and enterprising in English, 
 French, or German. 
 
 1 There appears to be no doubt 
 that Shelley wrote to Lawrence ; 
 but Medwin has made a character- 
 istic hash of the episode, and, I 
 think, gives the snatch from 
 Shelley's letter quite inaccurately 
 and without understanding it. 
 Lawrence corrected Medwin to some 
 extent in 1834, the anecdote in the 
 text having appeared first in The 
 Aihenxum in 1832 and secondly in 
 The Shelley Papers as separately 
 printed in 1838. He denied send- 
 ing the ffmVs to the youth. He had 
 published as early as 1802 a poem 
 called Love : An Allegory ; Shelley 
 had tried to get a copy through 
 Hookham ; and Hookham borrowed 
 Lawrence's own lastremaining copy 
 from him to lend to Shelley, who 
 had already read the Nairs before 
 Lawrence was aware of the young 
 poet's existence. Having then read 
 Love, Shelley wrote to thank Law- 
 rence ; and the letter (which may be 
 seen in extenso in the Prose Works, 
 1880) contains the following pas- 
 sage: "Ifthere is any enormous and 
 desolating crime, of which I should 
 shudder to be accused, it is se- 
 duction. I need not say how much 
 I admire ' Love ' ; and little as 
 a British public seems to appreciate 
 its merit. In never permitting it to 
 emerge from a first edition, it is 
 with satisfaction I find, that Justice 
 has conceded abroad what bigotry 
 has denied at home." This was 
 what Shelley wrote from Lynmouth 
 in 1812. In 1828 Lawrence re- 
 
 printed Love in a miscellany in two 
 small volumes called The | Etonian 
 out. of Bounds ; \ or \ Poetry and Prose. \ 
 By Sir James Lawrence . . . | 
 London : | . . . Hunt and Clarke, | 
 No. 4 York Street, Covent Gar- 
 den I ; but I can find nothing 
 about Shelley in that issue. In 
 1834, however, there was evidently 
 a remainder of The Etonian out of 
 Bounds; and then Lawrence be- 
 thought him to push it along on 
 the backs of Shelley and Goethe, 
 printed an Appendix Extraordinary 
 for each volume, and republished 
 the whole, the old sheets and the 
 new, with fresh title-pages and en- 
 graved frontispieces. It was thus 
 and then that Shelley's letter was 
 published, in unsuitable company 
 enough. The | Etonian out of Bounds ;\ 
 or The | Philosophy of the Boudoir, \ to 
 which are annexed | several hundred 
 new verses, | TaZes of Oallantrtj, Satires, 
 Epigrams, \ Songs, Wild Oats, Far- 
 hidden Fruit, 1 Anecdotes, of \ Goethe 
 and Shelley, \ And a Variety of Literary 
 and Philosophic Speculations, | By 
 James de Laurence, | author of 
 The Empire of the Nairs, etc. . . . 
 London . . . | Brooks . . . : i 1834, 
 swollen by its two appendices 
 paged in roman numerals, form in 
 all 450 pages. The book is a good 
 deal more various than the Nairs 
 and far more brilliant than proper. 
 It contains very little Shelley to 
 dilute its flood of "wild oats" and 
 "forbidden fruit"; and one re- 
 grets that no gentleman's Shelley 
 Libraiy is complete without it. 
 Observe that Lawrence (with a w) 
 has become de Laurence (with a «) ; 
 but take Medwin's bit of scandal 
 cum grano salis. Although a lewd 
 writer at times, Lawrence had 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 97 
 
 have not the whole of it, though it -was published by Law- 
 rence. Shelley says there, " I abhor seduction as much 
 as I adore love ; and if I have conformed to the uses of 
 the world on the score of matrimony, it is " (the argument 
 is borrowed, by the bye, from Godwin, in his Life of Mary 
 Wollstonecraft,) "that disgrace always attaches to the 
 weaker side." 
 
 It may be here remarked that the second Mrs. Shelley 
 (when Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) fally coalesced in 
 opinion with Shelley on the score of marriage. Her 
 objections to it were embodied in a correspondence which 
 past between them in the early stage of their acquaintance. 
 This correspondence would be very curious, but it is not 
 likely that the "World will see the letters as Lady Blessing- 
 ton told me they were purchased by Mrs. Shelley for £40 
 of George Gordon Byron into whose hands they happened 
 to fall, and who had intended to publish them in his 
 promised life of his father. She seems indeed after 
 her marriage to have looked back to their illicit inter- 
 course with complacency for in his Dedication to her of 
 The Revolt of Islam Shelley says — 
 
 How beautiful and calm and free thou 'weit 
 In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain 
 Of custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, 
 And walked as free as light the clouds among : — 
 
 A decided anti-matrimonialist, the historian of the Nairs 
 was by no means convinced by Shelley's argument. One 
 evening he persuaded me to accompany him to the 
 Owenite chapel, in Charlotte-street. In the ante-room, I 
 observed a man at a table, on which were laid for sale, 
 among many works on a small scale, this History of the 
 
 genuinely on the brain the subject theoryandof oueof hispublications, 
 of descent through the female line ; a print called The Navel String, 
 and his pictorial illustration of his approaches the verge of lunacy. 
 
 SHBLLXY H 
 
98 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Nairs, and Queen Mob, and after tlie discourse by Owen— 
 a sort of doctrinal rather than moral essay, in which he 
 promised his disciples a millennium of roast beef and 
 fowls, and three or four days' recreation out of the seven, 
 equal divisionofproperty,andanuniversalityof knowledge 
 by education, — we had an interview with the lecturer and 
 reformer, whom I had met some years before at the house 
 of a Northumberland lady. On finding that I was con- 
 nected with Shelley, he made a long panegyric on him, 
 and taking up one of the Queen Mobs from the table, read, 
 premising that it was the basis of one of his chief tenets, 
 the following passage : 
 
 " How long ought the sexual connection to last ? What law ought 
 to specify the extent of the grievance that should limit its duration ? 
 A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love one 
 another. Any law that should bind them to cohabitation for one 
 moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable 
 tyranny, and most unworthy of toleration." 
 
 If Lord Melbourne did not hold similar opinions, he at 
 least thought there was no harm in encouraging them, 
 by presenting Mr. Owen to our then virgin Queen. The 
 question is, whether, in the present state of society, and 
 with the want of education that characterises the sect of 
 which Mr. Owen is the founder, the Socialists, their tenets 
 are, or are not pregnant with danger. This pMlanihropist, 
 however, certainly is sincere in believing the contrary ; 
 and up to this time experience seems to have confirmed 
 his belief. He has spent his life, and expended his fortune 
 in inculcating them ; and a more thoroughly amiable and 
 moral man does not exist. 
 
 " He has had but one object in both hemispheres," (to use the words of 
 Prederica Bremer,) " to help the mass of mankind to food and raiment, 
 in order that the mass may make provision for their mental improve^ 
 ment ; for when the necessary wants are satisfied, man turns to those 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 99 
 
 of a more general and exalted kind. Hence, when the great daywork 
 of the earth is done with men, the Sabbath will begirf, in which 
 a generation of tranquil worshippers will spread over the earth, no 
 longer striving after perishable treasures, but seeking those which are 
 eternal ; a people whose whole life will be devoted to the improvement 
 of their mental powers, and to the worship of the Creator in spirit 
 and in truth. Then the day will arrive in which the angels will say, 
 ' Peace upon Earth ! ! ! '" 
 
 This edition of Queen Mai, tliat lias led to the above 
 quotation, bore the name of Brooks as publisher. It 
 contains a beautiful frontispiece illustrative of the death 
 of lanthe, and as a motto, the well-known line from some 
 Greek dramatist — -probably ^Eschylus — which may be 
 rendered : 
 
 Give me whereon to stand, I'll move the earth.' 
 
 Brooks did, or does, live in Oxford Street, and I paid him 
 more than one visit. He had a correspondent at Marlow, 
 who knew Shelley, but whose name I have forgotten^ 
 from whom he obtained a copy of Queen Mai, which, like 
 The Wandering Jew, had probably been left by Shelley's 
 inadvertence in his abode there. This copy was exceedingly 
 interlined, very much curtailed and modified, as by 
 a specimen given in a fragment entitled The Demon of the 
 World, appended to Alastor ; and what is still more im- 
 portant and worthy of remark, with the Notes torn out. 
 The copy had been revised with great care, and as though 
 Shelley had an intention at the time of bringing out 
 9, new edition, an idea which his neglect of his labour 
 
 1 The remark on the Charles matist'— probably ^schylus " — was 
 
 Landseer's vignette of Queen Mab in truth Archimedes. It was a 
 
 summoning the soul of lanthe is curious freak of Med win's to render 
 
 not undeserved ; but John Brooks, in blank verse the immortal scien- 
 
 who published the handsome 8vo tifio prose of theAis iroG ota)' boast, 
 
 containing the print in 1829, did Is this theunhumorous biographer's 
 
 so with a full acknowledgment re- one recorded joke ? By the by, the 
 
 peated from Shelley's own title- 1813 title-page reads /cocr/iOH instead 
 
 page of 1813 that the "Greek dra- ofrTivyriv. 
 
 h2 
 
100 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 shows he soon abandoned. This emendated work is a great 
 curiosity, and has scattered about the pages rude pen- 
 and-ink drawings of the most fantastic kind, proving the 
 abstraction of his mind during this pursuit. It was a 
 comment that led me to many speculations, suggesting 
 a deep sense of the obloquy of which he had made himself 
 the victim, and betokening a iiuctuation of purpose, a 
 hesitation and doubt of himself and of the truth or policy 
 of his theories. That Mr. Brooks (he was the publisher 
 if not the printer of the Owenites) did not make use of 
 the refacciamenti or pentimente in his numerous reprints 
 of Queen Mob, may easily be conceived, for these very 
 alterations were the only objectionable parts to him, and 
 he would have thought it a sacrilege to have struck out 
 a word of the original text, much less the notes. Queen 
 Mab is indeed the gospel of the sect, and one of them told 
 me, that he had found a passage in Scripture, that im- 
 questionably applied to Shelley, and that the word STiiloh 
 was pronounced in the Hebrew precisely in the same 
 manner as his name. 
 
 It is much to be desired that Mrs. Shelley should have 
 endeavoured to obtain this Queen Mob of Mr. Brooks, 
 I have no doubt that he would estimate it at a price far 
 beyond my means, nor have I made any overtures tO' 
 him for the purchase, invaluable as its acquisition would 
 be to me at this moment. 
 
 In the autumn, the rage of Shelley's father having 
 somewhat cooled down, he was received at home, but the 
 reconciliation was hollow and insincere. Sir Timothy, 
 who, proud of his son's talents, had looked forward to his 
 acquiring high academical distinctions, felt deeply, not so 
 much the disgrace of the expulsion, as an apprehension 
 that the circumstance might tend hereafter to affect the 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 101 
 
 brilliant worldly career he had etched out for his heir, 
 marring his prospect of filling the seat in parliament 
 which he then occupied, and intended one day to resign 
 in favour of Percy Bysshe, But it is doubtful if SheUey 
 would, with all his eloquence, have made a politician. 
 He shrunk with an unconquerable dislike from political 
 articles; he never could be induced to read one. The 
 Duke of Norfolk, who was a friend of his father, and to 
 whom his grandfather as I have said owed his title, often 
 engaged him, when dining, as he occasionally did, in 
 St. James's Square, to turn his thoughts towards politics. 
 — "You cannot direct your attention too early to them," 
 said the Duke. " They are the proper career of a young 
 man of ability and of your station in life. That career is 
 most advantageous, because it is a monopoly. A little 
 success 'in that line goes far, since the number of com- 
 petitors is limited, and of those who are admitted to the 
 contest, the greater part are wholly devoid of talent, or 
 too indolent to exert themselves. So many are excluded, 
 that of the few who are permitted to enter, it is difficult 
 to find any that are not utterly unfit for the ordinary 
 service of the state. It is not so in the church ; it is not 
 so at the bar. There all may offer themselves. In letters 
 your chance of success is still worse — there none can win 
 gold, and all may try to gain reputation — it is a struggle 
 for glory, the competition is infinite; — there are no 
 bounds ; — that is a spacious field indeed, a sea without a 
 shore." 
 
 This holding up of politics as the ro KaXov, was natural 
 in one, who had renounced and recanted his faith for 
 political power. I was present at a great dinner of "Whigs, 
 at Norfolk House where one of them, an M. P., speaking 
 of the nominees of election committees, who act as 
 
102 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 advocates on the side of their nominators, though they 
 take the same oath as the other members of the 
 committee, and his saying how easy it was for a man 
 determined to believe, bending his mind to believe any 
 thing, alias, making up his mind beforehand how he 
 should vote. Such casuistry would have been lost on 
 Shelley, to whom I detailed these sentiments, which he 
 highly reprobated. The Duke of Norfolk talked to him 
 many times, in order to convert him to politics, but in 
 vain. 
 
 Shelley used to say that he had heard people talk politics 
 by the hour, an,d how he hated it and them. He carried 
 this aversion through life, and never have I seen him read 
 a newspaper, incredible as it may appear to those who 
 pass half their lives in this occupation. 
 
 Mr. Hogg remarks, that, 
 
 "had he resolved to enter the career of politics, it is possible that 
 habit would have reconciled him to many things which at first seemed 
 repugnant to his nature ; it is possible that his unwearied industry, his 
 remarkable talents, and vast energy, would have led to renown in that 
 line as well as any other, but it is most probable that his parliamen- 
 tary success would have been but moderate ; but he struck out a path 
 for himself, by which boldly following his own course, greatly as it 
 deviated from that prescribed to him, he became more illustrious than 
 he would have been had he steadily pursued the beaten track. His 
 memory will be green when the herd of every-day politicians are 
 forgotten. Ordinary rules may guide ordinary men, but the orbit of 
 the child of genius is especially eccentric." 
 
 Sir Timothy was a man entertaining high notions of 
 genitorial rights, but of a very capricious temper ; at one 
 moment too indulgent, at another tyrannically severe to 
 his children. He was subject to the gout, and during its 
 paroxysms, it was almost dangerous to approach him, and 
 he would often throw the first thing that came to hand at 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 103 
 
 their heads. Shelley seems to allude to him when he 
 says,— 
 
 * I'll tell the[e] truth, he was a man, 
 Hard, selfish, loving only gold — 
 Yet full of guile ; his pale eyes ran 
 With tears which each some falsehood told, 
 And oft his smooth and bridled tongue 
 Would give the lie to his flushing cheek. 
 
 He was a tyrant to the weak. 
 
 On whom his vengeance he would wreak, 
 
 For scorn, whose arrows search the heart, 
 
 From many a stranger's eye would dart, 
 
 And on his memoiy cling, and follow 
 
 His soul to its home so cold and hollow. 
 
 He was a tyrant to the weak ! 
 
 And we were such, alas the day ! 
 
 Oft when his [sic for my\ little ones at play, 
 
 Were in youth's natural lightness gay, 
 
 Or if they listened to some tale 
 
 Of travellers, or of fairy land. 
 
 When the light from the woodfire's dying brand 
 
 Flushed on their faces, and they heard. 
 
 Or thought they heard, upon the stair 
 
 His footsteps, the suspended word 
 
 Died on their lips — so each grew pale.^ 
 
 * Bosalind and Helen, — Page 208. 
 
 ' This is not very much garbled ; we must search Mary for the text 
 but in the last four lines Flushed of the quotation, and so ascertain 
 should be Flashed, footsteps should from what edition Medwin con- 
 be footstep ; and the last line really veyed her notes &c. Page 208 in the 
 reads — double-columnroyalSvoishissource 
 Died on my lips ; we all grew in this case, and not the earliest 
 pale : issue of this, which was Mary's 
 which would not have suited the second collected edition of 1839. 
 historian's purpose. But even from In her first and second collected 
 such an arch-sloven as Medwin one editions the first line of the passage 
 may with due submission get an reads, with the princeps, I'll tell thee 
 occasional lesson. The almost truth ; but in the repetition of that 
 unique exactness of his reference sentence in the next paragraph she 
 to Bosalind and Belen, his " Page reads, flatly, and against the prin- 
 208," awakes speculation. The ceps, I'll tell the truth. In reprinting 
 Editio princeps (London, Oilier, 1819) the royal 8vo from the stereotyped 
 has but 100 pages, all told. Hence plates, the two professions of truth- 
 
104 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Talent is said to be in some degree hereditary, and I 
 liave often heard it questioned from whom Shelley 
 derived his genius— undoubtedly not from his father, who 
 was so deficient that he never addressed a public meeting 
 without committing some contretems, and could not in his 
 legislative capacity have made an observation that would 
 not have been accompanied by a laugh at " the country 
 gentleman." His mother was, to use the words of 
 a popular writer, " if not a literary, an intellectual woman, 
 that is, in a certain sense a clever woman, and though of 
 all persons most unpoetical, was possessed of strong 
 masculine sense, a keen observation of character, which if 
 it had had a wider field, might have made her a Madame 
 de Sevigne, or a Lady Wortley Montague, for she wrote 
 admirable letters ; but judging of men and things by the 
 narrow circle in which she moved, she took a narrow and 
 cramped view of both, and was as little capable of 
 understanding Shelley, as a peasant would be of com- 
 prehending Berkeley." 
 
 Evesy man of talent, full of new ideas, and dominated 
 by a system, as he was, has his peculiar idiotisms; the 
 more expansive his genius, the more startling are the 
 eccentricities that constitute the different degrees of his 
 originality. "Eh Province un original passe pour un 
 
 telling were assimilated, not by call up Medwin, he tells me I did 
 correcting the second but by de- not. It is strange that the dead 
 grading the first. The second e in sloven and not one of the several 
 thee was cut off the plate, and a gap living men of. repute who have 
 left, — a cheaper operation than followed me in editing Shelley, 
 plugging-in a whole line, or even has brought about this impeach- 
 half a line, to establish the harmony ment of my industry. The twofold 
 ordained by the princeps. This is corruption of the text passed into 
 one of the agreeable surprises that the latest of Mary's editions, and 
 await one disposed to continue a will be found surviving in the 
 job for thirty or forty years. I smaller one-volume edition of the 
 thought I had made an exhaustive Poetical "Works issued by Moxon 
 comparison between Shelley's and (1853) together with an error in the 
 Mary's editions ; and now, when I division of the paragraphs. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 105 
 
 homme a moitie fou" says a witty French writer. Few 
 men are so fortunate as was Mahomet, to make converts 
 in their own family — certain it is, that Shelley's never 
 valued or appreciated his character, or his surpassing 
 genius. Sir Timothy had no respect for learning but as 
 a means of worldly advancement — a stepping-stone to 
 political power. After Percy Bysshe's expulsion, he took 
 a hatred to books, and even carried his animosity to 
 education so far that he never employed a steward who 
 could read or write. He was an enemy to the instruction 
 of the children of the poor, and on the ocoasion of his 
 younger son's going to school, said to him, " You young 
 rascal, don't you be like your brother. Take care you 
 don't learn too much ; " a piece of advice very palatable 
 to boys, and which, doubtless, the promising youth 
 fulfilled to the letter, with filial obedience. 
 
 But if Shelley's expulsion rudely severed all domestic 
 ties — alienated the hearts of his parents from him — it was 
 the rock on which all the prospects of wedded happiness 
 split. Further communication with Miss Grove was 
 prohibited ; and he had the heartrending agony of soon 
 knowing that she was lost to him for ever. By a sort of 
 presentiment of this blight to all his hopes, he says in his 
 Romance of St. Irvyne, at the commencement of one of the 
 chapters : " How sweet are the scenes endeared to us by 
 ideas which we have cherished in the society of one we 
 have loved. How melancholy to wander amongst them 
 again after an absence perhaps of years — ^years which 
 have changed the tenor of our existence — ^have changed 
 even [the friend,] the dear friend for whose sake alone the 
 landscape lives in the memory — for whose sake tears flow 
 at each varying feature of the scenery which catches the 
 eye of one who has never seen them since he saw them 
 
106 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 with th« being who was dear to him." ^ Byron's whole life 
 is said to have received its bias fromlove — ^from his blighted 
 »»£> affection for Miss Chaworth. There was a similarity in 
 the fates of the two poets ; but the effects were different : 
 Byron sought for refuge in dissipation, and gave vent to 
 his feelings in satire. He looked upon the world as his 
 enemy, and visited what he deemed the wrong of one, on 
 his species at large. Shelley, on the contrary, with the 
 goodness of a noble mind, sought by a more enlarged 
 philosophy to dull the edge of his own miseries, and in 
 the sympathy of a generous and amiable nature for the 
 sufferings of his kind, to find relief and solace for a 
 disappointment which in Byron had only led to wilful 
 exaggeration of its own despair. Shelley, on this trying 
 occasion, had the courage to live, in order that he might 
 labour for one great object, the advancement of the 
 human race, and the amelioration of society, and 
 strengthened himself in a resolution to devote his 
 energies to this ultimate end, being prepared to endure 
 every obloquy, to make any sacrifice for its accomplish- 
 ment ; and would, if necessary, have died for the cause. 
 He had the ambition, thus early manifested, of becoming 
 a reformer; for one Sunday, after we had been to 
 Eowland Hill's chapel, and were dining together in the 
 city, he wrote to him under an assumed name, proposing 
 to preach to his congregation. Of course he received no 
 answer. Had he applied to Carlile ^ or Owen, perhaps the 
 reply would have beerl affirmative. But he had perhaps 
 scarcely heard of their names or doctrines, even if they 
 had commenced their career. 
 
 'This extract follows, with agitator, and his wife also, suffered 
 
 wederate accuracy, the opening of in the cause of freedom— especially 
 
 Chapter vii of St. Irvyne. the cause of free speech and a free 
 
 " Richard Carlile, the republican press. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 107 
 
 It is possible that Shelley wrongly classified that 
 excellent and worthy man, Eowland Hill, who had 
 renounced the advantages of birth and position for the 
 good of his species, with the ranting Methodists, or violent 
 demagogues of the time ; in all probability, he had never 
 even heard of him before that day, when he stood amid the 
 crowd that overflowed the chapel through the open door. 
 It was at best a foolish and inconsiderate act — and can 
 only be excused from his total ignorance of the character 
 of Eowland Hill, and the nature of his preaching.^ 
 
 That Shelley's disappointment in love affected him 
 acutely, may be seen by some lines inscribed erroneously, 
 " On F. G.," instead of " H. G.," and doubtless of a much 
 earlier date than assigned by Mrs. Shelley to the 
 fragment: — 
 
 Her voice did quiver as we parted, 
 Yet knew I not that heart was broken 
 
 From which it came, — and I departed 
 Heeding not the words then spoken — 
 
 ^ It is to be feared that the oeta- that the stalwart preacher, making 
 
 gonal Surrey Chapel of the Black- his way as was his custom through 
 
 friars Bead, of which that eminent this standing crowd to occupy his 
 
 unconventional divine the Eev. pulpit and preach his sermon, over- 
 
 Eowland Hill was pastor from 1784 heard one Sunday some thoughtless 
 
 till 1833, is not now held in very youths discussing a plan to " have 
 
 active remembrance. As I passed alark"byinterruptingthepreacher. 
 
 and repassed the strange building Hill ascended his pulpit, paused 
 
 in 1 860 on my way from lodgings portentously, fixed the peccant 
 
 on " the Surrey side " to St. Martin's group severely vnth his eye, and at 
 
 le Grand, to and from my daily work length amid a dead silence gave 
 
 for a grateful country under a now out his text : — "The Wicked shall 
 
 much more renowned Eowland Hill be turned into Hell, and all the 
 
 (the Penny Postage benefactor of people that forget God ; and there's 
 
 the commercial world), a story a lark for you ! " The conspirators 
 
 told me by my father a year or two dribbled out ; and there was peace 
 
 earlier came frequently to my mind ; in the brick-built octagon. I have 
 
 and I trust Medwin and his young not searched the biographies of the 
 
 cousin the poet had no part in it, — preacher by Sherman,Sidney, Jones, 
 
 though the standing "among the and Broome, to find out whetherthis 
 
 crowd that overflowed the chapel " is a " chestnut " ; it is more grateful 
 
 is suggestive. My father's version to me to pay the tribute of a note 
 
 of a tale possibly well known was to the memory of the best of fathers. 
 
108 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 Misery ! misery ! 
 
 This world is all too wide for thee !— 
 
 proving that his first Love was inerasable from his mind, 
 
 that it was an occurrence resplendent with the summer of 
 
 life—recalling the memory of many a vision— or perhaps 
 
 but one— which the delusive exhalations of hope invested 
 
 with a rose-like lustre as of the morning, yet unlike 
 
 morning, a light which once extinguished never could 
 
 return.^ 
 
 Shelley's residence with his family was become, for the 
 reasons I have stated, so irksome to him, that he soon 
 took refuge in London, from 
 
 His cold fireside and alienated home. 
 
 I have found a clue, to develop the mystery of how he 
 became acquainted with Miss "Westbrook. The father, 
 who was in easy circumstances, kept an hotel in London, 
 and sent his daughter to a school at Balam Hill, where 
 Shelley's second sister made one of the boarders. It so 
 happened, that as Shelley was walking in the garden of 
 this seminary, Miss "Westbrook past them. She was 
 a handsome blonde, not then sixteen. Shelley was so 
 struck with her beauty, that after his habit of writing, as 
 in the case of Felicia Browne and others, to ladies who 
 interested him, he contrived, through the intermediation 
 of his sister, to carry on a correspondence with her. The 
 intimacy was not long in ripening. The young lady was 
 nothing loth to be wooed, and after a period of only a few 
 
 * Mrs. Shelley was of course October 1816. Her death was a 
 
 right. "Fanny Godwin" (more great grief to the Shelleys; and 
 
 strictly Frances Wollstonecraft), a calamity for Godwin, to whom 
 
 who was Mary Shelley's half-sister, she was very good and dutiful, 
 
 that is to say the child of Mary Her identity with the protagonist 
 
 Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay, of these lovely lines disposes of 
 
 is thought to have been more or Medwin's tall twaddle about 
 
 less enamoured of Shelley. She " pi-oving " &c. &c. 
 poisoned herself on the 9th of 
 
LIFE OF SHKLLEY. 109 
 
 weeks, it -was by a sort of kniglat-errantry that Shelley 
 carried her off from Chapel-street, Grrosvenor-square, 
 where she sorely complained of being subject to great 
 oppression from her sister and father. Whether this was 
 well or ill-founded, is little to the purpose to enquire. 
 Probably, Shelley and Miss Harriett Westbrook — there 
 might have been some magic in the name of Harriett — had 
 not met half a dozen times in all before the elopement ; 
 they were totally unacquainted with each other's dis- 
 positions, habits, or pursuits ; and took a rash step, that 
 none but a mere boy and girl would have taken. "Well 
 might it be termed an ill-judged and ill-assorted union, — 
 bitter were destined to be its fruits. 
 
 All the circumstances relative to the progress of this 
 affair, he kept a profound secret, nor in any way alluded 
 to it in our correspondence, nor was it even guessed at by 
 Dr. Grove, in whose house he was lodging in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields ; nor on parting with Shelley at Horsham, the 
 day before his departure, when he borrowed some money 
 of my father, did he throw out a hint on the subject. 
 Authors make the strangest matches. It was at the end 
 of August, 1811, that the youthful pair set out to Gretna 
 Green, where they were united after the formula, which, 
 as we have lately had so circumstantial an account of the 
 ceremony, I shall not repeat, though he many years after 
 detailed it to me, with other particulars not therein 
 included. From thence the " new-married couple " betook 
 themselves to Edinburgh. Their stay in that city was 
 short ; for by a letter dated Cuckfield, the residence of an 
 uncle, of the 21 Oct., 1811, he says, — " In the course of 
 three weeks or a month, I shall take the precaution of 
 being remarried." In fact, he did execute that intention. 
 This uncle, the gallant Captain Pilfold, whose name is 
 
110 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 well known in his country's naval annals, (for he was in 
 the battle of the Nile, and commanded a frigate at that of 
 Trafalgar, and was the friend of Nelson) supplied the 
 place of a father to Shelley, receiving him at his house 
 when abandoned and cast off by Sir Timothy, who, if 
 irritated at Shelley's expulsion from Oxford, was rendered 
 furious by the mdsalliance, and cut off his allowance 
 altogether, the very moderate allowance of £200 a year. 
 
 By the advice of Captain Pilfold, who supplied Shelley 
 with money for his immediate necessity, he sought in 
 a distant county some cheap abode, and proceeded to 
 Cumberland. 
 
 I have before me two letters^ from Keswick — in that 
 dated Nov. 26th, 1811, he says, — 
 
 " We are now in this lovely spot where for a time we have fixed 
 our residence ; the rent of our cottage, furnished, is £1 10s. per week. 
 We do not intend to take up our abode here for a perpetuity, but 
 should wish to have a house in Sussex. Perhaps you could look out 
 for one for us. Let it be in some picturesque, retired place, — St. 
 Leonard's Forest, for instance ; let it not be nearer to London than 
 Horsham, nor near any populous manufacturing, dissipated town ; we 
 do not covet either a propinquity to barracks. Is there any possible 
 method of raising money without any exorbitant interest, until my 
 coming of age ? I hear that you and my father have had a rencontre ; 
 I was surprised he dared attack you ; but men always hate those whom 
 they have injured ; this hatred was, I suppose, a stimulus which 
 supplied the place of courage. Whitton has written to me, to state 
 the impropriety of my letter to my mother and sister ; this letter I 
 have returned with a passing remark on the back of it. I find that 
 
 ' Both letters are to Medwin's he has been in communication on 
 
 father. The first is the principal the subject with the Historical 
 
 part of No. 3 in the Appendix, but Society of Pennsylvania, in whose 
 
 with minor variations in the text. library the original is said to be 
 
 Mr. Ingpen in his collection of preserved. The second is about one 
 
 Shelley's Letters varies more or half of No. 4 in the Appendix — 
 
 less from both texts, and adds a hacked and jumbled in a manner 
 
 few words to the postscript of the disgracefully unjust to Shelley, as 
 
 Appendix version. No doubt his may be seen by compai'ison. 
 recension Is the one to rely on, as 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. Ill 
 
 affair on which those letters spoke, is become the general gossip of the 
 idle newsmongers of Horsham — they give me credit for having 
 invented it. They do my invention much honour, but greatly dis- 
 credit their own penetration." 
 
 The affair here referred to may be passed sub silentia, 
 but during Sir Timothy's absence in London, on his par- 
 liamentary duties. Lady Shelley invited Shelley to Field 
 Place, where he was received, to use his own words, with 
 much show-affection. Some days after he had been there, 
 his mother produced a parchment deed, which she asked 
 him to sign, to what purport I know not ; but he declined 
 so doing, and which he told me he would have signed, 
 had he not seen through the false varnish of hypocritical 
 caresses. This anecdote is not idle gossip — but comes 
 from Shelley himself. 
 
 The second letter bears date, Keswick, Nov. 30th, 1811. 
 
 "When I last saw you, you mentioned the imprudence of raising 
 money even at my present age, at 7 per cent. • We are now so poor as 
 to he actually in danger of being erery day deprived of the necessaries of 
 life. I would thank you to remit me a small sum for immediate expenses. 
 Mr. Westbrook has sent a small sum, with an intimation that we are to 
 expect no more ; this suffices for the immediate discharge of a few 
 debts, and it is nearly with our last guinea that we visit the Duke of 
 Norfolk at Greystoke ; to-morrow we return to Keswick. I have very 
 few hopes from this visit; that reception into Abraham's bosom, 
 (meaning a reconciliation with his father) appeared to me, to be the 
 consequence of some infamous concessions, which are, I suppose, 
 synonymous with duty. Love to all." 
 
 The overture, of which the Duke was the intermediary, 
 seems to have failed. His Grace had written to several 
 gentlemen amongst his agricultural friends in Cumber- 
 land, requesting them to pay such neighbourly attentions 
 to the solitary young people, as circumstances might 
 place in their power ; Southey, with his usual kindness, 
 and the ladies of his family, immediately called^ on him. 
 
113 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Speaking of his sojourn to Leigh Hunt, he says, 
 
 " Do you know that when I was in Cumberland, I got Southey to 
 borrow a copy of Berkeley, from Mr. Lloyd, and I remember obseiTing 
 some pencil notes in it, probably written by Lloyd, which I thought 
 particularly acute ; one especially struck me, as being the assertion 
 of a doctrine, of which even then I had been long persuaded, and on 
 which I had founded much of my persuasions as regarded the 
 imagined cause of the universe : ' Mind cannot create, it can only 
 perceive.' " 
 
 The beauty of the lakes, which were ever fresh in 
 Shelley's memory, made a powerful impression on his 
 imagination ; and he would have wished to have fixed 
 himself there, but found Cumberland any thing but a 
 cheap place — or for eight months in the yfear, anything 
 but a sequestered one. Where he fixed his abode, was in 
 part of a house standing about half a mile out of Keswick, 
 on the Penrith road, which they had been induced to 
 take by one of their new friends; (probably Southey), 
 more, says De Quincey, I believe in that friend's intention, 
 for the sake of bringing them easily within his hospital- 
 ities, than for any beauty in the place. There was, how- 
 ever, a pretty garden attached to it ; and whilst walking 
 in this, one of the Southey party asked Mrs. Shelley if 
 the garden had been let with this part of the house? 
 " Oh no ! " she replied, " the garden is not ours, but then 
 you know the people let us run about in it, whenever 
 Percy and I are tired of sitting in the house," The 
 naivete of this expression, "run about," contrasting so 
 picturesquely with the intermitting efforts of the girlish 
 wife at supporting a matron-like gravity, now that she 
 was doing the honours of her house to married ladies, 
 caused all the party to smile, De Quincey says, that he 
 might have placed some neighbourly advantages at 
 Shelley's disposal — Grassmere, for instance, itself, at that 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 113 
 
 time, where, tempted by a beauty that had not been 
 sullied, Wordsworth then lived, — in Grassmere, Elleray, 
 and Professor Wilson nine miles further, — finally, his own 
 library, which being rich in the wickedest of German 
 speculations, would naturally have been more to Shelley's 
 taste than the Spanish library of Southey. " But," says 
 De Quincey, " all these temptations were negatived for 
 Shelley by his sudden departure. Off he went in a hurry, 
 but why he went, or whither he went, I did not inquire." 
 Why he went is explained by the letter of Nov. 30th : his 
 being so poor as to be actually in danger of every day 
 being deprived of the necessaries of life — his visiting the 
 Duke of Norfolk with his last guinea. That he was 
 enabled to quit Keswick was owing to a small advance of 
 money made him by my father. De Quincey was alto- 
 gether mistaken in saying that his wife's father had made 
 over to him an annual incomeof £200 a-year [«z'c],as proved 
 by the words, " Mr. Westbrook has sent a small sum, with 
 an intimation that we are to expect no more." Shelley 
 had heard that Ireland was a cheap country, and without 
 any leavestaking, betook himself to Cork, and after visit- 
 ing the lakes of Killamey, where he was enchanted with 
 the arbutus-covered islands that stud it — lakes, he used 
 to say, more beautiful than those of Switzerland or Italy, 
 — came to Dublin. Ireland was then, as ever, in a dis- 
 turbed state, and with an enthusiasm for liberty, and 
 sympathy for the sufferings of that misgoverned people, 
 whose wretched cabins and miserable fare, shared in 
 common with their companions, the swine, he had beheld 
 with pity and disgust during his tour, it was natural that 
 he should take a lively interest in bettering their condi- 
 tion. He attended some public meetings, where he 
 displayed that eloquence for which he was remarkable, 
 
114 LIPK OF SHELLEY. 
 
 and wMcli would doubtless have disfcinguished him, had 
 he embarked in a political career in the senate. Nor did 
 he confine himself to speeches. In a letter dated from 
 No. 17, Grafton Street, of the date of the 10th March, 
 1813, he says, " I am now engaged with a literary friend 
 in the publication of a voluminous History of Ireland, of 
 which 250 pages are already printed, and for the comple- 
 tion of which, I wish to raise £250; I could obtain 
 iindeniable security for its payment at the expiration of 
 eighteen months. Can you tell me how I ought to proceed ? 
 The work will produce great profits.' ' ^ Who his coadjutor 
 was I know not ; but it would seem that the History of 
 Ireland was abandoned for a pamphlet on the state of the 
 country, which he sent me. It was rather a book than 
 a pamphlet, closely and cheaply printed, very ill-digested, 
 but abounding in splendid passages. The tenor of it was 
 by no means violent, and, I remember well, suggested 
 a policy afterwards so successfully adopted by the great 
 ■agitating Pacificator, — a policy which Shelley laid down 
 in one of his letters many years afterwards, where he 
 says: — "The great thing to do is to hold the balance 
 between popular impatience and tyrannical obstinacy, 
 and inculcate with fervour, both the right of resistance, 
 and the duty of forbearance. You know my principles 
 incite me to take all the good I can get in politics, for 
 ■ever aspiring to something more. I am one of those 
 whom nothing will fully satisfy, but who are ready to be 
 partially satisfied with all that is practicable." 
 
 1 The letter to Medwin's father but the poet's contributions to the 
 
 here referred to, but dated the 20th subject have never, as far as we 
 
 of March, is No. 5 in the Appendix. know, been printed, and are said by 
 
 "Whatever Shelley may have written Professor Dowden to " have dis- 
 
 on this subject was meant to be in- appeared beyond hope of recovery " 
 
 corporated in John Lawless's Com- (Life of Shelley, i. 257). 
 pendium of the History of Ireland; 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 115 
 
 A friend of mine in Dublin has searched among the 
 innumerable pamphlets in the public library there, for 
 this, but in vain.^ 
 
 His departure from Ireland was occasioned, as he told 
 me, by a hint from the police, and he in haste took refuge 
 in the Isle of Man — that then imperium in imperio, that 
 extrajudicial place, where the debtor was safe from his 
 creditor, and the political refugee found an asylum in his 
 obscurity from the myrmidons of the law. He remained, 
 however, at Douglas but a short time, and on his passage 
 to some port in Wales, had a veiy narrow escape from his 
 fatal element. He had embarked in a small trading 
 vessel which had only three hands on board. It was the 
 month of November, and the weather, boisterous when 
 they left the harbour, increased to a dreadful gale. The 
 skipper attributed to Shelley's exertions, so much the 
 safety of the vessel, that he refused on landing to accept 
 his fare.^ 
 
 After all these, and many other wanderings, we find 
 Shelley at Rhayader, Radnorshire. Its vicinity to Combe 
 Ellen, (which Bowles has immortalised) the occasional 
 summer residence of his cousin, Thomas Grove, probably 
 led him to desire to fix himself in that neighbourhood, 
 and he selected Nantgwillt. In a letter dated April 25th, 
 1812, he expresses a desire to take a lease of the place, 
 and says, — " So eligible an opportunity for settling in a 
 cheap, retired, romantic spot, will scarcely occur again.'' 
 But how was he to purchase the stock of two hundred 
 
 ^ An Address to the Irish, People santly variegated, and has the 
 
 (Dublin, 1812) was indeed a dread- salient virtue of being unshorn, 
 
 fill piece of typography, 24 pp, 8vo, ^ Professor Dowden(ib., i.266, note) 
 
 price 5d. The few extant copies discredits this anecdote, and tells 
 
 vary in colour between whitey- us that the departure from Dublin 
 
 brown and browny-yellow. Claire took place on the 4th of April, and 
 
 Clairmont's copy (j^enesme) is plea- the voyage ended at Holylioad. 
 
 l2 
 
116 LIFE OF SHELI(EY. 
 
 acres of ground, and pay a rent of ninety-eight pounds 
 a year ? In fact lie soon perceived the incompetency of 
 his means for such an undertaking. It was subsequent 
 to this period, that he settled himself in a cottage belong- 
 ing to Mr. Haddocks, in Caernarvonshire. Shelley was of 
 opinion, that for some time after he had left Ireland, he 
 was under the surveillante of the police, and that his life 
 was in danger from its emissaries; doubtless, a most 
 erroneous notion, but one which the total sequestration, 
 and wild solitude of the country, contributed to render an 
 idee fixe. He was many years afterwards under a similar 
 delusion in Italy — and told me that on quitting Naples he 
 was afraid of being arrested. 
 
 I knew Mr. Maddocks well, and had many conversations 
 with him at Florence regarding a circumstance that 
 occurred, or which Shelley supposed did occur, in North 
 Wales. The horrors of the inn in Count Fathom were 
 hardly surpassed by the recital Shelley used to make of 
 this scene. The story as dictated by him was simply 
 this : — At midnight, sitting alone in his study on the 
 ground floor, he heard a noise at the window, saw one of 
 the shutters gradually unclosed, and a hand advanced 
 into the room armed with a pistol. The muzzle was 
 directed towards him, the aim taken, the weapon cocked, 
 and the trigger drawn. The trigger missed fire. Shelley, 
 with that personal courage which partic^^larly distin- 
 guished him, rushed out in order to discover and seize 
 the assassin. As he was in the act of passing through 
 the outer door, at the entrance of an avenue leading into 
 the garden, he found himself face to face with the ruffian, 
 whose pistol missed fire a second time. This opponent 
 he described as a short, stout, powerful man. Shelley, 
 though slightly built, was tall, and though incapable of 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 117 
 
 supporting much fatigue, and seeming weak, had the 
 faculty in certain moments of evoking extraordinary 
 powers, and concentrating all his energies to a given 
 point. This singular phenomenon, which has been 
 noticed in others, he displayed on this occasion ; and it 
 made the aggressor and Shelley no unequal match. It was 
 a contest between mind and matter, between intellectual 
 and brute force. After long and painful wrestling, the 
 victory was fast declaring itself for moral courage, which 
 his antagonist perceiving, extricated himself from his 
 grasp, darted into the grounds, and disappeared among the 
 shrubbery. Shelley made a deposition the next day before 
 the magistrate, Mr. Haddocks, of these facts. An attempt 
 to murder caused a great sensation in that part of the 
 principality, where not even a robbery had taken place 
 for several years. No solution could be found for the 
 enigma; and the opinion generally was that the whole 
 was a nightmare — a horrid dream, the effect of an over- 
 heated imagination. The savage wildness of the scenery 
 — the entire isolation of the place — the profound meta- 
 physical speculations in which Shelley was absorbed — 
 the want of sound and wholesome reading, and the un- 
 geniality of his companions (for he had one besides his 
 wife, a spinster of a certain age for a humble companion 
 to her) — all combined to foster his natural bent for the 
 visionary, and confirm Mr. Maddocks's idea, that the 
 events of that horrible night were a delusion. This lady, 
 a certain Miss Kitchener [sic for Kitchener] who had 
 accompanied the young couple from Sussex, where she 
 kept a school, was an esprit fort, ceruleanly blue, and 
 fancied herself a poetess. I only know one anecdote of 
 her, which Shelley used to relate, laughing till the tears 
 ran down his cheek. She perpetrated an ode, proving 
 
118 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 that she was a great stickler for the rights of her sex, the 
 first line of which ran thus : — 
 
 All, all are mea—tvomen anfi all!^ 
 
 He himself appears to have written nothing in Wales, 
 if we except some stanzas breathing a tone of deep 
 despondency, of which I will quote four lines : — 
 
 Away, away to thy sad and silent home, 
 
 Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth. 
 
 Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, 
 
 And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.^ 
 
 ^ She wrote, at all • events, a 
 respectable topographical volume of 
 verse called Tlte Weald of Sussex (not 
 Kent as in Ingpen's Letters, i. xxiii) 
 with more or less learned notes. 
 The book was "printed for Black, 
 Young, and Young, TavistockStreet, 
 Covent Garden," andissued in 1822. 
 I find no mention of Shelley by 
 name, although he whom she had 
 known when she was " Portia " 
 (and not " the Brown Demon ") had 
 become one of the chief glories of 
 her beloved county. On Tre Madoc 
 and Mr. Madox (as she spells the 
 name) she has a lengthy note in 
 prose and verse, in which her poet- 
 friend of ten years earlier might 
 well have figured. She could not 
 at that time have been stirred by 
 the news of his death, for her pre- 
 face is dated the 9th of August 1821 ; 
 but that she had not forgotten him 
 is made evident in some "Apologe- 
 tic Stanzas " prefixed to the poem. 
 The first quatrain is — 
 
 Yes, little volume, yes, un- 
 shielded go. 
 
 Without the sanction of patri- 
 cian name. 
 
 O'er thy deserts a splendid veil 
 to throw, 
 
 Or gain the meed of cheaply 
 purchased fame. 
 
 And before closing the address, in 
 which she seems to mix up her 
 
 book and herself somewhat eccen- 
 trically, she had evolved these 
 lines : 
 
 No kindred friendship soothed 
 
 thine infant years, 
 No brilliant converse to elicit 
 
 truth, 
 When leaps the soul, as sweet 
 
 response it hears. 
 And wisdom mingles with the 
 
 fire of youth. 
 
 Yet once, — a vision waked thy 
 
 slumbering lyre, 
 Which fancy whispered wise, 
 
 and great, and fair. 
 One which could loftiest, 
 
 noblest strains inspire, 
 And to sweet cadence, tune thy 
 
 wildest air. 
 
 What would that "vision'' have 
 thought of the closing lines in the 
 Tre-Madoc verses (page 118) ? — 
 
 Behold this work, ye triflers of 
 
 a day! 
 See what a Madox in few years 
 
 has done, 
 And own, important is the life of 
 ■ Man ! 
 
 " These lines have of course no 
 connexion with the Brown Demon 
 or Wales, — belonging as they do to 
 that exquisitely wrought yet seem- 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 119 
 
 Mr. Maddocks, like all who really knew Shelley, 
 perfectly idolised him. I have often heard him dilate on 
 his numerous acts of benevolence, his relieving the dis- 
 tresses of the poor, visiting them in their humble abodes, 
 and supplying them with food and raiment and fuel 
 during the winter, which on that bleak coast, exposed to 
 the north, is particularly severe. But he laid Mr. Mad- 
 docks under a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid. 
 
 During his temporary absence in a distant county in 
 England, an extraordinary high tide menaced that truly 
 Dutch work, his embankment against the sea, by which 
 he had rescued from it many thousand acres. Shelley, 
 always ready to be of service to his friends, and anxious 
 to save the dyke from destruction, which would have in- 
 volved his landlord and hundreds in ruin, heading a paper 
 with a subscription of £500, took it himself all round the 
 neighbourhood, and raised a considerable sum, which, 
 enabling him to employ hundreds of workmen, stopped 
 the progress of the waves. I cite this as a proof of his 
 active benevolence. His heart and purse were, almost to 
 improvidence, open to all. 
 
 Some one said of another, that he would have divided 
 his last sixpence with a friend ; Shelley would have given 
 it all to a stranger in distress. I have no clue to discover 
 in what manner he contrived to find money for this sub- 
 scription, or for the acts of charity here detailed. It must 
 have been raised at some great sacrifice. 
 
 After a year's abode in the Principality, Shelley betook 
 himself to London, where he arrived in the spring of 1813. 
 
 ing-spontaueous burst of autobio- when his own home, whei-eof 
 
 graphy headed "April, 1814,'' Harriett was mistress, beingloveless 
 
 published with Alastor and other and desolate, he was finding solace 
 
 poems (1816). The poem chronicles and sympathy with the ladies 
 
 the end of the Bracknell period, of the Boiuville-Turner circle. 
 
120 LIFK OF SHELLEY. 
 
 In a letter dated 21st June, Cooke's hotel, Dover-street, 
 he says, " Depend on it that no artifice of my father's 
 shall seduce me to take a life interest in the estate ; I feel 
 with sufficient force, that I should not by such conduct be 
 guilty alone of injustice to myself, but to those who have 
 assisted me by kind offices and advice during my adver- 
 sity." It would seem from this letter that his father had 
 thrown out such a proposition — and gloated on his son's 
 poverty, under the hope that it and not his will would 
 consent to such terms as he chose to dictate. 
 
 In another letter, dated the same month, he says, " The 
 late negociations between myself and my father have been 
 abruptly broken off by the latter. This I do not regret, 
 as his caprice and intolerance would not have suffered the 
 wound to heal." These letters were addressed to my 
 father.^ A relation of mine, who visited him at his hotel, 
 and dined with him on the 6th of July, 1813, says that 
 he was become from principle and habit a Pythagorean, 
 and confined himself strictly to a vegetable diet. He 
 was always temperate, but had completely renounced 
 wine, ^y 
 
 Mrs/Bhelley was confined of a daughter at this hotel 
 between the 21st and 28th June. He was at that time 
 in great- pecuniary straits, which it seems that Sir 
 Timothy ^ did nothing to alleviate ; on the contrary, was 
 hardened to his necessities, by which he hoped to profit 
 in the hard bargain which he was endeavouring, as it 
 appears, to exact from him. His privations must have been 
 extreme, during the ensuing winter and spring ; for his 
 lawyer says in a letter, dated April, 1814,—" Mr. Shelley 
 
 1 The letters from which these 2 Just then there was of course 
 
 extracts are quoted (in reversed no such person as "Sir Timothy "— 
 
 order as to time) are No. 7 and No. 8 Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bys'she, 
 
 in the Appendix. being still alive. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 121 
 
 is entitled to a considerable landed property in Sussex, 
 under a family settlement, but which is previously liable 
 to the life estates of his grandfather and father, both of 
 whom are living ; upon which pro;^rty, as his family 
 cannot, during the lifetime of his grandfather, assist him, 
 he has used the utmost of his endeavours to raise money 
 for the payment of his debts, without success." How he 
 continued under these circumstances to exist, I know not. 
 Among the few other persons with whom Shelley asso- 
 ciated in London was the celebrated Godwin. Their 
 acquaintance also commenced by Shelley's writing to him 
 as he was in the habit of doing to those whose works 
 interested him, and Godwin's were at that time his vade- 
 mecum. During this year the Poet became a frequent 
 visitor at Godwin's House, and there it was he saw Mary 
 "WoUstonecraffc Godwin. Godwin's principles on the subject 
 of matrimony had been fuUy promulgated, and when he 
 did marry Mary "WoUstonecraft, he thought it necessary to 
 apologize to the public for his want of consistency, and treat 
 the ceremony as a sacrifice to the conventionalities of the 
 World to which for the Lady's sake he thought it right to 
 accede. It is to be hoped however that lax as Godwin's 
 opinions were, he was not privy to the connection which 
 had been forming between Shelley and his Daughter. 
 Miss Godwin was then very young, scarcely 17. It could 
 not have been her personal charms that captivated him, 
 for to judge of her in 1820, she could not have been 
 handsome, or even what may be denominated pretty. 
 Shelley seems to have had a rage for Elopements ; but it 
 was not the romance of such a Situation (to use a dramatic 
 phrase) that led to this step, there were other and more 
 substantial reasons for her throwing herself on his protec- 
 tion. I must mention among his friends at this period 
 
122 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Mr. Hookham of Bond Street.— On the occasion of the 
 Prosecution of a Publisher of Paine's Age of Reason 
 Shelley had addressed a Letter in the form of a Pamphlet 
 to Lord EUenborough, and forwarded it to that respectable 
 bookseller. The Pamphlet ^ never appeared but it led to 
 an acquaintance -which afterwards was very useful to 
 Shelley, for he obtained an asylum under his roof at a 
 time when perhaps he found it difficult to procure one to 
 shelter him. Shelley told me that when staying with 
 him he was offered a considerable sum to work up the 
 materials of Lady Caroline Lamb's novel of Glenarvon, 
 which he declined. 
 
 It was however after a severe mental struggle — a 
 conflict not without the poignancy of some remorse, 
 that almost upset the balance of his reason, as witnessed 
 by one whom he made privy to his design and who 
 with all the earnestness of friendship strongly appealed 
 to him against the step, that he at length came to the 
 resolution of separating from his wife and child. What 
 Miss Godwin's own feelings on this occasion were, 
 St. Simonian before St. Simon as she was, may be more 
 than conjectured, when she trusted her future destiny to 
 one of whose inconstancy — (tho' his treachery was truth to 
 her — ) she had so glaring a proofs But I have first a 
 few words to say — a few remarks to make. — 
 
 In looking back to this marriage of Shelley's with an 
 
 ^ A Letter to Lord EUenborough was able man enough in the story of 
 
 printed at Barnstable in 1812, but free speech and free press, 
 
 not published. Mr. Syle, at whose * This passage is one of the 
 
 press it was put into type, took manuscript interpolations ; but the 
 
 fright and destroyed all he could odd phrase " St. Simonian before 
 
 of the intended publication ; but St. Simon " is perfectly legible. 
 
 Shelley rescued a few copies. There What it means we need not attempt 
 
 is one in the Shelley bequest at the to determine. The socialist Count 
 
 Bodleian. The prosecuted publisher St. Simon was born in 1760 and 
 
 was Daniel Isaac Eaton, a remark- lived till 1825. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 123 
 
 individual neither adapted to Ms condition in life, nor 
 fitted for his companionship by accomplishments or 
 manners, it is surprising, not that it should have ended in 
 a separation, but that for so long a time, (for time is not 
 to be calculated by years,) he should have continued to 
 drag on a chain, every link of which was a protraction of 
 torture. 
 
 It was not without mature deliberation, and a convic- 
 tion common to both, of their utter incapacity of rendering 
 the married state bearable to each other, that they came 
 to a resolve, which, the cold, formal English world, with 
 its conventionalities, under any circumstances short of 
 legally proved infidelity, stamps as a dereliction of duty 
 on -the side of the man. Ours is the only country where 
 the yoke of marriage, when it is an iron one, weighs down 
 and crushes those who have once thrown it over their 
 necks. It may be compared to the leaden mantle in the 
 Inferno. It is true that the Roman Catholic religion in 
 some countries, such as Italy and Trance, except by the 
 express permission, rarely obtaiued, (though it was in the 
 case of the Countess Quiccioli,) of the Pope, does not allow 
 divorces ; but separations, tantamount to them, constantly 
 take place by mutual agreement, without placing the 
 parties in a false position as regards society. Spain has 
 emancipated herself from the inextrieability of the chain. 
 In Poland and Eussia remarriages are of daily occurrence. 
 But let us look into Protestant lands, for we are yet 
 Protestants, and we shall find that in most of the states 
 in Germany, nothiug is easier than to dissolve the tie. 
 The marriage laws in Prussia are very liberal. In Norway 
 the parties cannot be disunited under three years. In 
 Sweden one year's notice suffices. But with us, not even 
 confirmed insanity is sufficient to dissolve a marriage ! 
 
124 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Our laws admit of but one ground for divorces, and who 
 
 with any fine feeling would like to drag through the mire 
 
 of public infamy, her who had once been dear to him— 
 
 the mother, perhaps, of his children ? How long will our 
 
 statute-book continue to uphold this barbarous and 
 
 unnatural law, on the very doubtful plea (according to 
 
 Dr. "Wheatley [sic] and others) that marriage is of divine 
 
 institution — a law a disgrace to our civilization, the source 
 
 of more miseries than all "that flesh is heir to ? " 
 
 y Ill-omened and most unfortunate, indeed, was the 
 
 union ! He had joined himself to one utterly incapable 
 
 of estimating his talents — one destitute of all delicacy of 
 
 feeling, who made his existence "A blight and a curse;" 
 
 one who had " a heart, hard and cold," 
 
 Like weight of icy stone, 
 That crushed and withered his. 
 
 It is in his own writings, and from them his life may 
 
 be drawn as in a mirror, that the best insight is to be 
 
 found of the character of the first Mrs. Shelley. He calls 
 
 her 
 
 A mate with feigned sighs, 
 Who fled in the April hour. 
 
 In the bitterness of his soul, he exclaims : 
 
 Alas ! that love should be a blight and snare 
 To those who seek all sympathies in one ; 
 Such one I sought in vain,— then black despair, 
 The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
 Over the world in which I moved alone.' 
 
 And we find her in the Epipsychidion thus allegorised i 
 
 Then one whose voice was venomed melody 
 Sate by a well, under blue nightshade-bowers. 
 
 ' See Stanza vi of the Dedication stanza, somewhat as the previous 
 
 toZamand Cythna {The Revolt of Islam} i snatch is from " The Serpent is shut 
 
 " Like weight of icy stone " &c. is out from Paradise." 
 badly mistranscribed from the same 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 125 
 
 Her touch was as electric poison — flame 
 Out of her looks into my vitals came, 
 And from her living cheeks and bosom flew 
 A killing air that pierced like honeydew 
 Into the core of my green heart, and lay 
 Upon its leaves, until as hair groimi grey 
 On a young hrow, they hid its unblown prime 
 With ruins of unseasonable time.' 
 
 The beautiful fragment on Love which appeared origin- 
 ally in The Athenseum, and raay be found among the 
 Prose "Works, proves with what a lacerated heart he 
 poured out his love, in aspiration for an object who* could 
 sympathise with his ; and how pathetically does he paint 
 his yearning after such a being, when he says : — 
 
 " I know not the internal constitution of other men. I see that in 
 some external attributes they resemble me ; but when misled by that 
 appearance, I hav^thought to appeal to something in common, and 
 unburthen my inmost soul, I have found my language misunderstood, 
 like one in a desert and savage land. The more opportunities they 
 have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the' interval 
 between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy 
 been withdrawn. With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proofs 
 trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere 
 sought sympathy, and found only repulse and disappointment." , 
 
 And after a description of what he did seek for in this 
 union, he adds, " Sterne says, that if he were in a desert, 
 he would love some cypress. No sooner is this want or 
 power dead, than man becomes the living sepulchre of 
 himself, and what yet survives is the mere wreck of what 
 he was," ^ The disappointed hopes that gave birth to this 
 eloquence of passion, may be more than conjectured. To 
 
 1 This is more or less misquoted. Letters from Abroad, Translations and 
 and, I should say, misapplied ; but Fragments. This essay had appeared 
 that is an open question. in The Keepsake ; but it is by no 
 
 2 The extracts are not very aecu- means the same composition as that 
 rately, nor, for Medwin, so very in- published by Medwin in The Atlie- 
 accurately, taken from the Essays, nwum and Tlie Shelley Papers. 
 
126 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 love, to be beloved, became an insatiable famine of his 
 nature, which the wide circle of the universe, compre- 
 hending beings of such inexhaustible variety and stupen- 
 dous magnitude of excellence, appeared too narrow and 
 confined to satiate. 
 
 It was with the recollection of these withered feelings, 
 that he afterwards, in his desolation, thus apostrophised i 
 a wild swan that rose from a morass in the wilderness : — 
 
 Thou hast a home, 
 Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home ! 
 Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 
 With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
 Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 
 
 The example of the most surpassing spirits that have 
 ever appeared, Dante, Shakspeare, and , Milton, proves 
 that poets have been most unfortunate in their matri- 
 monial choice, not, as Moore would endeavour to establish, 
 because such are little fitted for the wedded state, but 
 because in the condition of society, which Shelley charac- 
 terises as " a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect 
 civilisation," women are unequally educated,and are hence 
 on an inequality with men, and unable to form a just esti- 
 mate of their genius, or to make allowances for those eccen- 
 tricities of genius, those deviations from the standard of 
 common minds which they have set up. 
 
 Mr. Moore is a married man, and as such his opinion is 
 worth quoting, though I cannot agree with him in his 
 deductions, that poets should never marry. He says, that 
 " those who have often felt in themselves a call to 
 matrimony, have kept aloof from such ties, and the 
 exercise of the softer duties and rewards of being amiable 
 
 'The Poet in. Alastar is represented which was certainly not one of 
 as thus addressing a swan rising Shelley's haunts, as the historian 
 from "the lone Chorasmlan shore," would seem to imply. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 127 
 
 reserved themselves for the high and hazardous chances 
 of being great." He adds, that " to follow poetry, one 
 must forget father and mother, and cling to it alone ; " 
 and he compares marriage to " the wormwood star, whose 
 light filled the waters on which it fell, with bitterness." 
 
 But if a poetical temperament unfits mankind from 
 entering into the married state, and if those who possess 
 it are to be debarred from those sympathies which are the 
 only leaven in the dull dough of mortality, — if they are 
 to be made responsible for all the misery of which such 
 unions are often the fertile source, it would, in his view, 
 be only fair to consider that poetesses are to be visited 
 with a similar measure of reproach ; and, alas ! how many 
 of the female writers of this and former days, have found 
 marriage anything but a bed of roses ! Charlotte Smith, 
 L. E. L.,^ Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Norton, stand at the head of 
 the long catalogue with us. In America, Mrs. Butler and 
 Mrs. Sigourney. In Germany, beginning with the 
 Karschin, their name is legion. In France, two examples 
 suffice — De Stael and Georges Sand. Were they alone 
 to blame ? Who will venture to cast the first stone at 
 them ? Surely not Mr. Moore, who is too gallant, and too 
 fond of the sex, to raise a whisper against their good fame ? 
 Lady Byron also is a poetess, — good, bad, or indifferent, 
 — and on the principle, that acids neutralise each other, 
 that remarkable case ought, on the homoeopathic system, 
 to have proved an exception to the general rule, instead 
 of being the rule itself. 
 
 ' It ought not to be necessaiy to of her husband's mistresses. Med- 
 
 fill up these initials with the name win might have added to his list 
 
 of the once deservedly popular tlie beautiful and accomplished 
 
 Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who, as Mrs. Tighe (born Mary Blachford), 
 
 Mrs. Maclean, met with a tragic authoress of Psyche, who, neglected 
 
 fate on the West Coast of Africa, by an unappreciative husband, died 
 
 falling avictim to the jealousyof one in 1810, at the age of thirty-six. 
 
128 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The last name calls up a whole Iliad of woes. Yes, true 
 it is, and "pity 'tis, 'tis true," that two other poets must 
 be added to the number of the unfortunates, — two the 
 greatest of our times, Shelley and Byron. The world has 
 given up troubling itself about the causes of the domestic 
 differences of " the three gods of poetry," as they soon will 
 about those of the two last ; ceasing, ere long, to canvass 
 Byron's feverish existence, to speculate on his intrigues, 
 or to think about Lady Byron or the first Mrs. Shelley, 
 more than it now does la Signora Dante, Mrs. Shakespeare, 
 or Mrs. Milton.^ But there was this difference in the 
 destinies of the two poet-friends : Byron was separated 
 from Lady Byron, by Lady Byron, against his will, after 
 a short trial, — less than twelve months ; Shelley and his 
 wife parted by mutual consent, after a much longer test 
 of the incompatibility of their tempers, and incapacity 
 to render the duration of their union anything but an 
 intolerable tyranny ; and it must not be forgotten, too, that 
 isolation from societymade them perfectly acquainted with 
 each other's dispositions and habits and pursuits. Li both 
 cases the world ranged itself on the weaker side ; but if 
 Byron had his measure of reproach and defamation, Shelley 
 was persecuted with a more exceeding amount of obloquy, 
 was finally doomed to be driven from his native land, 
 placed under a ban by his friends and relations, and con- 
 sidered, as he says, " a rare prodigy of crime and pollution." 
 
 It was on the 28th of July 1814, that Shelley, as appears 
 by the second volume of the Posthumous "Works, left 
 
 ^ Mr. Gribble, one of Shelley's folk will be found to rake the mud 
 
 latest biographers, appears to think for the worst that can be found to 
 
 we have already arrived at the put forward about the "gods of 
 
 millennium predicted by Medwin. poetry" belonging to the early 
 
 But to me it seems that, as long as part of last century, and bolster up 
 
 folk will read spicy volumes, other so-called " romantic lives" of them. 
 
LH'E OF SHELLEY. 
 
 129 
 
 'a 
 
 London, with Miss W. Godwin and her half sister ^ the 
 daughter of Godwin's second wife, Mrs. Olairmont, who 
 continued to keep a book shop in the Strand after her 
 marriage with Godwin.^ — With that contempt of danger 
 from an element ever his delight, which characterised him, 
 and perhaps afraid of being overtaken by Godwin, he 
 embarked with them in an open boat from Dover, and 
 not without exposure to a gale of wind on the passage, suc- 
 ceeded in reaching Calais, and thence proceeded to Paris. 
 There, after remaining a week, they resolved to walk 
 through France. He went to the Marche des Herbes, 
 purchased an ass, and thus pilgrimaging, the gipsy party 
 started for Charenton. There finding the quadruped 
 
 1 This reference indicates that 
 the edition of the Essays, Letters, &c. 
 which Medwin calls "the Post- 
 humous Works " was the original 
 two-volunje edition of 1840. It is 
 in the second volume that we find 
 the History of a Six WeeTcs' Tour and 
 the letters, whereas the reprint of 
 1845 is in one volume. In the 
 original edition of Medwin's book 
 (1847, i. 213) the corresponding 
 passage reads thus : 
 
 "With a view of in some degree 
 renovating his health, which had 
 suffered from intense study, his 
 strict Pythagorean system of diet, 
 that by no means agreed with his 
 constitution, and the immoderate 
 use of laudanum, in which he 
 sought for an opiate to his harassed 
 feelings, and in the hope, by the 
 distraction of new scenes, to dull 
 their irritability, on the 28th of 
 •July 1814, Shelley, as appears by the 
 second volume of the Posthumous 
 Works, left London, accompanied by 
 the present Mrs. Shelley, the daugh- 
 ter of Godwin and Mary Wollstone- 
 craft, and another lady." 
 
 This was. unscrupulous enough, as 
 Mary was the legitimate daughter 
 of Godwin, who had married Mary 
 WoUstonecraft ; but the revision 
 
 left by Medwin and now published 
 seems to me to be deliberately 
 spiteful with its "Miss W. Godwin" 
 and her " half sister." Mary Jane 
 Clairmont ("Claire") was no blood 
 relation whatever of Mary's, but 
 the daughter ' of the second Mrs. 
 Godwin by her former husband, 
 Clairmont. The young ladies might 
 possibly have been described cum- 
 brously as " step-half-sisters," see- 
 ing that one was the daughter of 
 the other's step-mother. Let us 
 hope Medwin wrote in simple 
 ignorance of the facts. 
 
 2 It was in the year 1801 that 
 the widow Clairmont, being next- 
 door neighbour to Godwin in the 
 Polygon, Somers Town, courted, 
 won, and married the widowed 
 philosopher, already twice rejected 
 of women. She helped her husband 
 keep the wolf from the door — for 
 the wolf was generally hard by — 
 by making translations. In 1805 
 she devised a scheme for a booksell- 
 ing business, which was set up and 
 carried on under the style of 
 M. J. Godwin & Co. for many years 
 in Skinner Street. See Kegan Paul's 
 William Godwin (2 vol., 1876), vol. ii, 
 p. 58 et seq. So much for Mrs. Clair- 
 mont's "book shop in the Strand.' 
 
 K 
 
130 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 useless, they sold it, purchased a mule, and continued their 
 peregrinations. 
 
 The destitution and ruin which the Cossacks had, locust 
 like, left everywhere behind them in their pestilential 
 march, — the distress of the plundered inhabitants, — their 
 roofless cottages, the rafters black, and the walls dilapi- 
 dated, made a deep impression on Shelley's mind, and 
 gave a sting to his detestation of war and despotism. 
 
 Further pedestrianism being rendered impossible by 
 a sprained ancle, he now bought an open voiture, on four 
 wheels, for five napoleons, and hired a man with a mule, 
 with eight, more, to convey them to Neufchatel, which, 
 after many inconveniences en route, they reached. A 
 magical effect was produced on the travellers by the first 
 sight of the Alps. They were, says the tourist, "a hundred 
 miles distant, but reach so high in the heavens, that 
 they look like those accumulated clouds of dazzling white, 
 that arrange themselves on the horizon during summer, — 
 their immensity staggers the imagination, and so far 
 surpasses all conception, that it requires an effort of the 
 understanding to believe that they indeed form a part of 
 the earth." 
 
 With the improvidence peculiar to Shelley in pecuniary 
 matters, he found that on his arrival at Neufchatel, his 
 money was exhausted, and after obtaining thirty-eight 
 pounds on the discount of a bill for forty pounds, at three 
 months, (pretty good discount,) they journeyed on to 
 Lucerne. On reaching the lake of Uri, they hired a boat. 
 This romantic lake, remarkable for its deep seclusion and 
 sacred solitude, is thus described : " The lake of Lucerne 
 is encompassed on all sides by high mountains, that rise 
 abruptly from the water. Sometimes their base points 
 downwards perpendicularly, and casts a black shadow on 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 131 
 
 the waves,— sometimes they are covered with thick wood, 
 whose dark foliage is interspersed by the brown, bare 
 crags, on which the trees have taken root. In every part 
 whereaglade shows itselfinthe forest, itappears cultivated 
 and cottages peep from among the woods. The most 
 luxuriant islands, rooky and covered with moss, and 
 bending trees, are sprinkled over the lake. Most of 
 these are decorated by the figure of a saint, in wretched 
 waxwork." 
 
 After much search after a habitation, they at length 
 domiciled themselves in two unfurnished rooms, in an ugly 
 big house at Brunen, called the Chateau. These they 
 hired at a guinea a month, had beds moved into them, 
 and the next day took possession. It was a wretched 
 place, with no comfort or convenience. It was with some 
 difficulty that they could get any food prepared. As it 
 was cold and rainy, they ordered a fire. They lighted an 
 immense stove, which occupied a corner of the room, and 
 when heated, they were obliged to throw open the 
 windows, to prevent a kind of suffocation ; added to this, 
 there was but one person in Brunen who could speak 
 French, a barbarous sort of German being the language 
 of this part of Switzerland. It was with some difficulty, 
 therefore, that they could get their ordinary wants 
 supplied. Shelley's amusement, meanwhile, was writing. 
 
 He commenced a romance on the subject of the Assassins. 
 The fragment will be found in his Prose Works,^ and 
 evinces much power, being a wonderfiil improvement on 
 his former attempts of the kind. He drew his inspiration 
 from the scenes that were before his eyes. 
 
 "Nature undisturbed," he says, "had become an enchantress in 
 
 * These extracts from the beauti- also taken from the Essays, Letters, 
 ful fragment of The Assassins are &c., but from the first volume. 
 
 k2 
 
133 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 these solitudes. She had collected here all that was divine and. 
 wonderful from the armoury of her own omnipotence. The very 
 winds breathed health and renovation, and the joyousness of youthful 
 courage. Fountains of chrystalline water played perpetually among 
 the aromatic flowers, and mingled a freshness with their odour. The 
 pine boughs became instruments of exquisite contrivance, among 
 which the ever varying breeze waked music of new and more delight- 
 ful melody. Such scenes of chaotic confusion and harrowing sublimity, 
 surrounding and shutting in the vale, added to the delights of its 
 secure and voluptuous tranquillity. No spectator could have refused 
 to believe that some spirit of great intelligence and power had 
 hallowed these jvilds to a deep and solemn mystery." 
 
 He adds, tliat " the immediate effect of such a scene 
 suddenly presented to the contemplation of mortal eyes, 
 is seldom the subject of authentic record." 
 
 I have thought that the following passage bears some 
 
 allusion to himself. 
 
 "An Assassin, accidentally the inhabitant of a civilized country, 
 would wage unremitting war ifom. principle against the predilections 
 and distastes of the many. He would find himself compelled to adopt 
 means which they would abhor, for the sake of an object which they 
 could not conceive that he should propose to himself. Secure and 
 self-enshrined in the magnificence and preeminence of his conceptions, 
 spotless as the light of heaven, he would be the victim among men, of 
 calumny and persecution. Incapable of distinguishing his motives, 
 they would rank him among the vilest and' most atrocious criminals. 
 Great beyond all comparison with them, they would despise him in 
 the presumption of their ignorance. Because his spirit burned with 
 an unquenchable passion for their welfare, they would lead him, like 
 his illustrious master, amidst scofis and mockings and insults, to the 
 remuneration of an ignominious death." 
 
 Such were some of his contemplations, — the prognostics, 
 though not of his future destiny — to that extent — of a 
 moral crucifixion. " There is [Mrs. Shelley says] great 
 beauty in the sketch as it stands, — it breathes that spirit 
 of domestic peace and general brotherhood, founded on 
 love, which he afterwards developed in the Prometheus 
 Unbound ; " and it might be added, in other of his works. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 133 
 
 It had been the intention of the party to cross the 
 St. Gothard, at the foot of which they were, and make an 
 excursion into the north of Italy, but the idea was soon 
 abandoned. They resolved to return to England, from 
 which they were distant eight hundred miles. Was it 
 possible, with twenty-eight pounds ? enquires the tourist ; 
 — but there was no alternative — the attempt must be 
 made. They departed from Lucerne in the coche d'eau 
 for Loflfenburg, a town on the Rhine, where the falls of 
 that river prevented the same vessel from proceeding any 
 further. There they engaged a small canoe to convey 
 them to Mumph. 
 
 " It was long, narrow, and flat-bottomed, consisting mostly of deal 
 boards, unpainted, and nailed together with, so little care, that the 
 water constantly poured in at the crevices, and the boat perpetually 
 required emptying. The river was rapid and sped swiftly, breaking 
 as it passed on innumerable rocks just covered with water. It was 
 a sight of some dread to see the frail boat winding among the eddies 
 of the rocks, which it was death to touch, and where the slightest 
 inclination on one side would inevitably upset it." 
 
 After a land-adventure, the breaking down of a caUche 
 
 at Mumph, they with some difficulty reached Basle, and 
 
 where, taking their passage in another boat, laden with 
 
 merchandise, they bade adieu to Switzerland. 
 
 " We were carried down,'" says the tourist, " by a dangerously rapid 
 current, and saw on each side, hills covered with vines and trees, 
 craggy clLfifs, crowned by desolate towers and wooded islands, whose 
 picturesque ruins peeped from between the foliage, and cast the 
 shadows of their forms on the troubled waters without defacing them." 
 
 Having reached Rotterdam, they embarked for England, 
 and encountering another storm on the bar, where they 
 were for some time aground, landed in London, on the 
 13th August. 1 Speaking of this six weeks' Tour the 
 
 ^ From here to the end of the est bits about Mary, one of the 
 paragraph is, like most of the nasti- parts added in the author's old age. 
 
134 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Author of a review of my work in the Revue des deux 
 Mondes says that it was an Expedition of Gypsies, roman- 
 tic, unconnected, improbable and suspecte, reminding us of 
 the Pilgrimages of Rousseau and Therese Vasseur. — Here 
 pretended Spies affright the young Wanderers, there their 
 trunks are pillaged. — On the road a child is bom to these 
 [sic\ philosophical pair, after the manner of Therese and 
 Kousseau in the open air, in a fine summer morning, a part 
 of the story which is however kept out of sight in this 
 curious revelation which scarcely deserves to have been 
 reprinted, — having been for the most part written by Mary 
 W. Godwin who in the Preface calls Shelley her Husband} 
 
 I have heard Shelley frequently dilate with rapture on 
 the descent of the Eeuss and the Rhine. The remem- 
 brance of both, never faded from his memory, and furnished 
 additional stores to his poetic mind, to be treasured up for 
 after days, and reproduced in forms of surpassing sub- 
 limity and loveliness. 
 
 Yet though his imagination had been enchanted by the 
 aspect of Nature in all her wonders, his bodily health was 
 rather deteriorated than improved by the fatigues of this 
 painful journey ; the first part of it performed on foot 
 beneath the burning suns, and through the arid plains 
 and dusty roads of France ; and the latter under exposure 
 to the chill blasts of the snowy Alps, and the cold air of 
 open boats. Money difficulties, the worst of all the evils 
 of this life, had also contributed to blunt in a great degree 
 the charm ; for the harass of ways and means lies like a 
 weight of lead on the spirit, and palsies enjoyment. He 
 
 'It is true that, in the little anony- was still too proud in 1840 to 
 
 mo'us volume familiarly known as revise her definition of that saered 
 
 The Six Weeks' Tour, she mentioned term, which was after all a heredi- 
 
 the male of the travelling party ag tary definition in the clan to which 
 
 the author's husband ; andherspirit she belonged. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 135 
 
 had spent during the six weeks, sixty pounds, and was 
 obliged even to go on credit at Rotterdam for his passage 
 money, in order to be enabled to set foot on his native 
 shores. 
 
 "When arrived there, he had to look forward to four 
 months before he could hope to receive a single pound 
 note of his anticipated allowance. His father's heart was 
 steeled in obduracy, and with that hatred between fathers 
 and sons which seems hereditary in the family, Sir 
 Timothy shut his purse and his doors against him. 
 
 The estate, as it was , supposed, was strictly entailed ; 
 consequently his coming into the property depended on 
 his surviving his father. His own life was not insurable, 
 and was in so precarious a state that he had no possibility 
 of raising money on his contingency. He was now 
 destined, therefore, to suffer all the horrors of destitution. 
 He says in The Cenci, — 
 
 The eldest son of a rich nobleman, 
 
 Is heir to all his incapacities, — 
 
 He has great wants, and scanty powers. 
 
 How he contrived to live during almost a year in the 
 metropolis, I know not ; but he pathetically describes his 
 situation in Rosalind and Helen: — 
 
 Thou knowest what a thing is poverty, 
 Among the fallen on evil days; 
 'Tis crime, and fear, and infamy. 
 And houseless want, in frozen ways 
 AVandering ungarmented, and pain; 
 And worse than all, that inward stain 
 Foul self-contempt, which drowns in tears 
 Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears, 
 First like hot gall, then dry for ever. 
 And well thou knowest, a mother never 
 Would doom her children to this. ill, — 
 And well he knew the sanie. 
 
136 LIPB OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Under the prospect of being forced to support himself 
 by a profession, he applied his talents to medicine, which 
 he often told me he should have preferred to all others, as 
 aflfbrding greater opportunities of alleviating the suffer- 
 ings of humanity. He walked a hospital, and became 
 familiar with death in all its forms, — " a lazar house, it 
 was," — I have heard him quote the passage — 
 
 wherein were laid 
 Numbers of all diseased — all maladies 
 Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture — qualms 
 Of heart-sick agony — all feverish kinds ; 
 
 and where 
 
 Despair 
 
 Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch. 
 And here, he told me, he himself expected it would have 
 been his fate to breathe his last. His wants were, indeed, 
 few; he still continued, contrary to the advice of his 
 physician, his vegetable diet ; for none but a Pythagorean 
 can tell (crede expertum,) with what a repugnance he who 
 has once tried the system, reverts to the use of animal 
 food. But few as his wants were, his means were scarcely 
 able to supply them, and he has been often known to give 
 a beggar the bread required for his own support. At this 
 time all his friends feared that he was rapidly dying 
 of a consumption — abscesses were formed on his lungs 
 and he suffered acute spasms — but these symptons of pul- 
 monary disease were fallacious. 
 
 He was not at that time acquainted with one, of whom 
 I have often heard him speak with a gratitude and respect 
 so justly due, and who is now, alas ! no more, as much 
 distinguished for the qualities of his heart as his talents ; 
 — why should I not name him ? — Horace SmitL To his 
 generous sympathy Shelley was throughout the latter 
 part of his life greatly indebted. His purse was ever 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 137 
 
 open to him, and in those pecuniary embarrassments, 
 which his extreme generosity to others often entailed on 
 him, he never applied to his valued friend in vain. 
 
 But at the beginning of the year 1815, his worldly 
 prospects brightened ; the Shelley settlement, which is 
 well known by lawyers, and quoted as a masterpiece of 
 that legal casuistry called an entail, was found to contain 
 an ultimate limitation of the reversion of the estates to 
 the grandfather. A celebrated conveyancer, I believe 
 the friend whom I have already mentioned in a former 
 part of these memoirs, has the credit of having made this 
 important discovery; and the consequence was, the fee 
 simple of the estate, after his father's death, was vested 
 in Shelley. He was thus enabled to dispose of it by will as 
 he pleased ; and not only this, he had the means of raising 
 money to supply his necessities. Sir Timothy was well 
 aware of his son's position, but was not prepared for the 
 discovery of it. The news fell upon him like a thunder- 
 bolt, he was fiirious ; but being desirous of benefitting his 
 family, by the advice of a solicitor, made some arrange- 
 ment ; but whether on a post ohit, or what terms, I know 
 not, with Shelley, for an annuity of eight hundred pounds 
 a-year. Doubtless he took care to have good security for 
 the same. 
 
 In the summer of this year, after a tour along the 
 southern ^ coast of Devonshire, and a visit to Clifton 
 Shelley rented a house on Bishopsgate [sic] Heath, on the 
 borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several 
 months of comparative health and tranquil happiness; 
 accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the 
 
 ^ There is a letter from Shelley printed in Dowden's Life (i. 522) 
 to Williams of Tremadoc written at and in Ingpen's letters (i. 442). 
 Torquay on the 22nd of June 1815, 
 
138 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Thames, making a voyage from Windsor to Cricklade ; on 
 which, occasion his Stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade 
 were written, that breathe a solemn harmony in unison 
 with his own feelings ; and conclude with the following 
 aspiration, — 
 
 Here could I hope, like an [sic for some] enquiring child, 
 Sporting on graves, that Death did hide from human sight 
 Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep, 
 That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 
 
 On his return from this excursion, Alastor was composed. 
 He spent, while writing it, his days in the Great Park. 
 It is a reflex of all the wild, and wonderful, and lovely 
 scenes drawn with a master hand, which he had witnessed. 
 The savage crags of Caernarvonshire — the Alps, and 
 glaciers, and ravines, and falls, and torrent-like streams 
 of Switzerland — the majesty of the lordly Ehine, and 
 impetuous Eeuss — the Thames winding beneath banks 
 of mossy slope, and meadows enamelled with flowers ; and 
 in its tranquil wanderings,^ 
 
 Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 
 That overhang its quietness. ,. , 
 
 But above all, the magnificent woodland of "Windsor 
 
 Forest, where 
 
 the oak. 
 Expanding its immense and knotty arms. 
 Embraces the light beech ; no- 
 where 
 
 the pyramids 
 Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame 
 Most solemn domes within; and far below. 
 Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 
 The ash and the acacia floating hang, . , 
 
 Tremulous and pale, — ^ 
 were the sources from which he drew his inspiration. 
 
 ' For these blank verse extracts 18, 431 et seq., 479 et seq., and 
 in their true form see Alastor, lines 501-2. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 139 
 
 It has been said of a great German author, I believe 
 Herder, that he had but one thought, and that was the 
 Universe. May it not be observed of Shelley, that .he 
 had but one thought, and that was Love — Love in its 
 most comprehensive sense, — Love, the sole law that 
 should govern the moral world, as it does the universe. 
 
 For love and life in him were twins 
 
 Bom at one birth, in every other 
 
 First life then love its course begins 
 
 Tho' they be children of one mother; • 
 
 And so thro' this dark world they fleet 
 
 Divided till in death they meet, 
 
 But he loved all things ever.' 
 
 Love was his very essence. He worshipped Love. He 
 saw personified in all things animate and inanimate, the 
 love that was his being and his bane. He, under the 
 idealism of the spirit of Solitude, in Alastor, paints his 
 longing after the discovery of his antetype, the meeting 
 with an understanding capable of clearly estimating the 
 deductions of his own ; an imagination which could enter 
 upon, and seize the subtle and delicate peculiarities 
 which he had delighted to cherish and unfold in secret ; 
 with a frame, whose nerves, like the chords of two ex- 
 quisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delight- 
 ful voice, should vibrate with the vibration of his own, 
 and a combination of all these in such proportion as the 
 type within demands. He thirsted after his likeness — 
 and he found it not, — no bosom that could dive into the 
 fountains of his soul's deep stores, hold intercourse or 
 communion with his soul ; the language of all in whom 
 he had expected to meet with these qualities, seemed as 
 of a distant and a savage land, — unintelligible sounds, 
 
 ' Rosalind and Helm, 622 et seq. 
 
140 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 that could make no music to his ear, could awaken no 
 chord of music in his thoughts ; when he spoke, words of 
 mute and motionless ice replied to words quivering and 
 burning with the heart's best food. It was with this 
 feeling of despair and disappointment, that he sought in 
 Nature what it had been a vain and fruitless hope to 
 discover among his kind. Yet in Nature, in the solitude 
 of Nature, — in the trees, the flowers, the grass, the waters 
 and the sky, in every motion, of the green leaves of spring, 
 there was heard, inaudible to others, a voice that gave 
 back the echo of his own ; insensible to others, there was 
 felt a secret correspondence with his self. There was an 
 eloquence in the tongueless wind, 
 
 And in the breezes, whether low or loud. 
 And in the forms of every passing cloud, — ^ 
 
 in the blue depth of noon, and in the starry night, that 
 bore a mysterious relation to something within him, 
 awakened his spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and 
 filled his eyes with tears of tenderness. But a time came 
 when the 
 
 Mother of this unfathomable world, 
 
 as he calls Nature, no longer sufficed to satiate the cravings 
 
 of her favourite son. 
 
 A spirit seemed 
 To stand beside him, clothed in no bright robes 
 Of shadowy silver, or enshrining light. 
 Borrowed from aught the visible world affords, 
 But undulating woods, and silent well. 
 Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming 
 Hold commune with him, as if he and it 
 Were all that was, — only, when his regard 
 Was raised by intense pensiveness, two eyes, 
 Two stairy eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 
 And seemed with their serene and azure smiles 
 To beckon him. 
 
 ^ Misquoted from Epipsychidion, 206-7. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 141 
 
 In a poem, entitled Ahasuerus,^ I endeavoured, in the 
 character of Julian, adopting often his own language and 
 sentiments, to shadow out this yearning of Shelley's after 
 the ideal ; and a few of the lines yet recur to my memory. 
 It is to be hoped the reader will pardon their insertion 
 here. 
 
 And momently, by day and night, 
 The vision of that heavenly maid 
 Stood evei' by his side, arrayed 
 Tn forms and hues most fair and bright — 
 The embodied soul of all that 's best 
 In Nature, fairest, loveliest, — 
 A. thing of woods and hills and streams, 
 Of plants, and flowers, and rainbow beams, 
 
 "A radiant sister of the day:" 
 He saw her when the daylight breaks 
 
 From out the sea's marmoreal bosom; 
 He saw her when the sunset streaks 
 
 With lines of gold, leaf, bud, and blossom ; 
 He saw her in the clouds of even; 
 He saw her smile in that of Heaven. 
 The lightest breeze, on gentle wing, 
 
 Amid the leaves it scarcely stii-s. 
 Most musically whispering. 
 
 Recalled that eloquent voice of hers; 
 In that divinest solitude. 
 He heard it in the murmuring wood ; 
 And in the rippling of the flood. 
 
 ' Medwin stumbled into a bad added," and struck the four words 
 
 muddle here. First he quoted a bit out again, no doubt meaning to 
 
 of his own Akasuerus, in which, he state the case more clearly and 
 
 says, he adopted often Shelley's properly — as even he would see the 
 
 " own language and sentiments." arrogance of the apparent position ; 
 
 Then he thought it appropriate to and, in this instance, at all events, 
 
 add a bit of real Shelley (from To he clearly had no wish to appropri- 
 
 Jane — Tlie Becollection — very much ate Shelley's share of the glory or 
 
 altered). Thus far the printed any portion of it. All he meant, 
 
 Life of 1847. Finally, and very probably, was that Shelley's "own 
 
 shakily, he added in manuscript the exquisite lines" would be very 
 
 four couplets, "All things," &e., by decorative between two less exqui- 
 
 way of foot-note to Shelley's "own site passages of Medwin's./lftas«erMs ; 
 
 exquisite lines," as revised by him but he was " fumbling with his 
 
 to suit the context. He headed palsied " pen, and did not quite see 
 
 his couplets with "to which I how to express his meaning. 
 
143 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And thereto migkt be added Ms own exquisite lines : — 
 
 There seemed, from the remotest seat 
 
 Of the wide ocean's waste, 
 To the soft flower heneath his feet, 
 
 A magic circle traced, 
 A spirit interfused around, 
 
 A thrilling, silent life : 
 To momentary peace it bound 
 
 His mortal spirit's strife; 
 And still he felt the centre of 
 
 The magic circle there, 
 Was one fair form that flUed with love 
 
 The lifeless atmosphere.* 
 
 A reviewf which has, with a liberality that is unique 
 at the present day, ever stood forward to do justice to the 
 merits of contemporary authors, — disregarding, in so 
 doing, their politics, — says of Alastor : — 
 
 " The imagery of the poem is chequered with lights and shades, 
 which to the uninitiated seem capriciously painted in a studio, 
 without regard to the real nature of things ; for there is not apparent 
 ' a system of divine philosophy, like a sun reflecting order on his land- 
 scape.' " 
 
 If I might be allowed to illustrate this clever remark, 
 I should add, — resembling one of Salvator Rosa's, which 
 near to the eye appears a confused chaos of rocks and trees 
 and water, the most singularly and indiscriminately massed 
 and mingled, but which viewed from a proper point of 
 
 * To which I added 
 
 All things that dearest loveliest are 
 
 The setting or the rising star 
 
 The azure sky — the emerald earth 
 
 Had lent their charms to give her birth, 
 
 With animated essence lent 
 
 Their every grace and lineament, 
 
 And but concentred to express 
 
 Her individual loveliness. 
 
 f Fraser's Magazine. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 143 
 
 view, forms an harmonious nrhole in entire keeping witli 
 art and with nature. 
 
 " This poem," continues the critic, " contains infinite sadness. It is 
 the morbid expression of ' a soul desperate,' to use the beautiful words 
 of Jeremy Taylor, ' by a quick sense of constant infelicity.' As one who 
 has returned from the valley of the dolorous abyss, the reader hears 
 the voice of lamentation wailing for the world's wrong, in accents 
 wild and sweet, but inoorrimunicably strange. It is the outpouring 
 of his own emotions embodied in the purest form he could conceive, 
 painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, 
 and softened by the anticipation of a near and approaching death." 
 
 At the beginning of May 1816, in company with the 
 two ladies vho had been sharers in the joys and sorrows 
 of his former wanderings on the continent, he again took 
 leave of the white cliflEs of Albion, and passing through 
 Paris, where he made no stay, followed the same line of 
 country they had traversed nearly two years before, as 
 far as Troyes. There they left the route leading to Neuf- 
 ckatel, and by that which led through Dijon and Dole, 
 arrived at Poligny, and after resting at Champagnolles, 
 a little village situate in the depth of the mountains, 
 entered Switzerland for the second time, by the pass of 
 Les Eousses. Such was the state of the road then, that it 
 required the aid of ten men to support the carriage in its 
 descent. 
 
 Who that has traversed one of the most uninteresting 
 tracts in Southern Europe, if we take its extent, La belle 
 France as it has been complimentarily styled, from Paris 
 to the Jura, knows not the delight with which the 
 travell6r looks upon the glorious landscape that lies below 
 him, diversified as it is by the crescent of Lake Leman, 
 its viney shores and cheerful towns, and framed in by the 
 gigantic outline of the Alps, surmounted by the domes 
 and pinnacles of their eternal snows ? We may imagine 
 
144 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 then, the transport with which Shelley hailed the approach 
 of [sic] Geneva. The party took up their quarters at 
 Dejean's, Secheron, then the best hotel, though since 
 eclipsed by the Bourg and so many others in that key to 
 Italy, and yet in position equalled by none, for it lies imme- 
 diatelyunderthe eye of MontBlanc. " From the meadows," 
 says Shelley,^ "we see the lovely lake blue as the heavens 
 which it reflects, and sparkling with golden beams. The 
 opposite shore is sloping and covered with vines. Gentle- 
 men's seats are scattered over these banks, behind which 
 rise ridges of black mountains, and towering far above in 
 the midst of the snowy Alps, the highest and queen of all. 
 Such is the view reflected by the Lake. It is a bright 
 summer scene, without any of that sacred solitude and 
 deep seclusion that delighted us at Lucerne." 
 
 Lord Byron, attended by his young physician Polidori, 
 was already arrived. The two poets had never met, but 
 were not altogether strangers, for Shelley had sent the 
 author of Childe Harold a copy of Queen Mob in 1812, 
 soon after its publication; who showed it, he says, "to 
 Mr. Sotheby, as a work of great power ; " but the letter 
 accompanying it, strangely enough miscarried. 
 
 Shelley, soon after his arrival, wrote a note to the noble 
 lord, detailing at some length the accusations which 
 had been laid against his character, and adding, that if 
 Lord Byron thought those charges were not true, it would 
 make him happy to have the honour of paying him a 
 visit. The answer was such as might be anticipated. 
 There was, in their present meeting at Geneva, no want of 
 disposition towards a friendly acquaintance on both sides.^ 
 
 1 This is from the Six Weeks' Tour ; * Moore's story, of which this is 
 
 but it is Mary, not Shelley, who aparaphrase(Byron's Works, 17vol. 
 
 says it, in the first of the Letters 1832-3, iii. 269), makes it the Queen 
 
 Descriptive &c., duly signed "M." Mab letter that was lost, and gives 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 145 
 
 After a fortniglit's residence at Dejean's, Shelley and 
 his female friends removed to the Campagne Mont AUegre, 
 on the opposite side of the lake ; and shortly after, Lord 
 Byron took that of Diodati. This villa had probably 
 been chosen from its association, for the Diodati from 
 whom it derived its name, was a friend of Milton ; and 
 the author of Paradise Lost had himself, in his way to and 
 from Italy, hallowed it by his abode. The Campagne 
 Mont Allegro, or Chapuis, as it was sometimes called, lay 
 immediately at the foot of Diodati, being only separated 
 from it by a vineyard, and having no other communica- 
 tion but a very tortuous, hedged in, and narrow lane, 
 scarcely admitting of a char-a-banc. The spot was one 
 of the most sequestered on the lake, and almost hidden 
 by a grove of umbrageous forest trees, as is a bird's nest 
 among leaves, and invisible from the main road. At the 
 extremity of the terrace, is a secure little port, belonging 
 to the larger villa, and here was moored the boat which 
 formed so much the mutual delight and recreation of the 
 two poets. It was keeled and clinker-built, the only one 
 of the kind on the lake ; and which, although Mr. Moore 
 says it " was fitted to stand the usual squalls of the climate," 
 was to my mind ill-adapted for -the navigation, for it 
 drew too much water and was narrow and crank. I saw 
 it two years after, lying a wreck, and half submerged, 
 though (like Voltaire's pen, of which hundreds have been 
 sold as original to Englishmen at Ferney) there was at 
 that time a chaloupe at Geneva that went by the name 
 of Byron's. The real boat was the joint property of the 
 two poets, and in this frail vessel, Shelley used to brave at 
 
 it the sense that, if the charges happy to be honoured with Byron's 
 against Byron should not have acquaintance. Medwin's version 
 been true, he, Shelley, would be must surely be the right one. 
 
146 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 all hours, Bises whick none of tlie barques could face. 
 These norfch-easters are terrific ; they follow the course of 
 the lake, and increasing in violence as they drive along 
 in blackening gusts, spend themselves at last on the 
 devoted town to which they are real pestilences. Maurice, 
 their Batellier, although a "Westminster reviewer denies 
 that they had one, speaking of Shelley, said that " he was 
 in the habit of lying down at the bottom of the vessel, 
 and gazing at Heaven, where he would never enter." I 
 should not have given credit to a Genevese for so much 
 poetry. Byron, Moore says, " would often lean abstracted 
 over the side, and surrender himself up in silence to the 
 absorbing task of moulding his thronging thoughts into 
 shape." ^ 
 
 Of these water excursions, Shelley used often to speak. 
 To watch the sunset — to see it long after it sunk beneath 
 the horizon of the Jura, glowing in roses on the palaces 
 of snow — to gaze on their portraiture in the blue mirror, 
 till they assumed the paleness of death, and left a melan- 
 choly like we feel in parting, though with a certainty of 
 meeting again, with some object of our idolatry — these 
 were some of his delights. The thunder-storms too, that 
 visited them, were grand and terrific in the extreme. 
 " We watch them," says Mrs. Shelley, " as they approach 
 from the opposite side of the lake, observing the lightning 
 play among the clouds in various parts of the heavens, 
 and dart in jagged fissures upon the piney heights of Jura, 
 dark with the shadow of the overhanging cloud, whilst 
 perhaps the sun is shining cheerily on us." " One night," 
 Shelley adds, " we enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever 
 before beheld. The lake was lit up ; the pines in Jura 
 
 ' lb. 271. In thiscase, although fitted, the sense is not subverted, 
 the words are transposed and re- 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 147 
 
 made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant, 
 ■when a pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came 
 in frightful gusts over our heads amid the darkness." 
 
 It was this very tempest, in all probability, that inspired 
 Lord Byron with the magnificent description so well 
 known in the third canto of Childe Harold. 
 
 The poets were not always singly, or but companioned 
 by each other, in the boat. Their water excursions were 
 enlivened by the presence of the ladies, and Polidori 
 sometimes made one of the party. 
 
 The similarity of the destinies of Shelley and Byron, 
 
 contributed to cement this their friendship. Both were 
 
 parted from their children. Both were marks for the 
 
 world's obloquy ; one was self-exiled for ever, the other 
 
 soon about to be so. Their pursuitswere congenial, they had 
 
 Been cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 
 And learnt by suiFering what they taught in song — 
 
 or as Gothe has beautiftiUy said 
 
 Spat erklingt was fruh erklang, 
 Gliick und Ungluch wird Gesang. 
 
 They both sought and found in solitude and nature a balm 
 for their wounded spirits. No wonder, then, that in this 
 absolute retirement, they were so seldom apart. They spent 
 their mornings on the lake, their evenings in their own 
 intellectual circle ; and thus, as Byron said, he passed that 
 summer more rationally than at any period of his life. 
 That he profited by the superior reading and refined taste 
 of Shelley, is evident from all he wrote in Switzerland. 
 He had before written for fame — he here was inspired by 
 a nobler sentiment. There is a higher strain of inspiration 
 — a depth of thought and feeling — " a natural piety," in 
 the third canto of Childe Harold, which we do not find in 
 any of his previous works, and which may be accounted for 
 
148 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 partly, also, by his being drenched with "Wordsworth, 
 now become one of Shelley's chief favourites ; and whom 
 he addresses in a Sonnet as "Poet of Nature." This 
 peaceful quietude — this haven after the storm — this 
 retreat, was more than once disturbed by the physician, 
 He was, Mr. Moore, says, "the son of the secretary to 
 Alfieri," better known as the author of the Italian Gram- 
 mar in England, where he taught his own language. 
 Dr. Polidori not only conducted himself to his patron in 
 a way that it required all his forbearanjce to brook, by his 
 ill-timed and sarcastic remarks, but his intemperance 
 shewed itself in a still more overbearing manner to Shelley, 
 which was continually breaking out ; and on one occasion, 
 deeiping, wrongfully, that Shelley had treated him with 
 contempt, he went so far as to proffer him a sort of 
 challenge, at which Shelley, as might be expected, only 
 laughed. Lord Byron, however, perceiving that the 
 vivacious physician might take further advantage of his 
 friend's known sentiments against duelling, said — "Re- 
 collect that though Shelley has scruples about duelling, 
 I have none, and shall be at all times ready to take his 
 place." 
 
 But if Polidori was jealous of the daily increasing in- 
 timacy between the two poets, he was not less envious of 
 their having assigned to them by the world, superior 
 talents to his own ; and which judgment, he endeavoured 
 to prove was unjust, by perpetrating a tragedy. Mr. Moore 
 gives a humorous account of the reading of the production, 
 (of which I have heard Shelley speak,) at Diodati ; which 
 Byron, for he was the reader, constantly interlarded 
 with, — " I assure you, when I was on the Drury Lane 
 Committee, much worse things were offered to me ; " and 
 yet in a letter to Murray, he afterwards recommends him 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 149 
 
 to publish this tragedy, with the remark, " I have never 
 read it" — a convenient equivocation. In opening the 
 Life of Lord Byron, everywhere similar instances of the 
 treacherousness of his memory, or his love of mystification, 
 may be traced ; to which I shall not now refer, but return 
 to the would-be dramatist ; and as Mr. Moore, so practised 
 a biographer, has given on many occasions, the histories 
 of those with whom the noble poet had intercourse, I shall 
 here dispose of the doctor. 
 
 Dr. Polidori was a middlesized, handsome map, with 
 a marked Italian cast of countenance, which bore the 
 impress of profound melancholy, — a good address and 
 manners, more retiring than forward in general society. 
 He had, after quitting Lord Byron, come to settle at 
 Norwich, in the neighbourhood of which, resided several 
 old Catholic families of distinction, from whom he expected 
 encouragement in his profession ; but although he was 
 well received in their houses, he was disappointed in 
 getting practice, and scarcely obtained a fee. "Who 
 would have liked to trust their lives in the hands of an 
 M,D. of twenty-two years of age ? Perhaps, also, his being 
 a foreigner, and having been a friend of Byron, were no 
 great recommendations in a country town, where bigotry 
 and prejudice (though the Diocesan was free from both, 
 and par parentMse, occasionally received him at his hos- 
 pitable table,) are nowhere more prevalent, — so that he 
 confirmed Byron's prognostic : 
 
 I fear the Doctor's skill at Norwich, 
 Will never warm the Doctor's porridge. 
 
 The disavowal by the noble poet, (with the remark that 
 he would be responsible for no man's dulness but his own,) 
 of The Vampire, which in order to obtain a sale for it, 
 Polidori had given out as his late patron's, placed him in 
 
150 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 a false position, and disgusted him with himself ; or rather, 
 as his friends said, with the world ; and in a fit of misan- 
 thropy, he published a pamphlet not devoid of talent, 
 entitled, An Essay on Positive Pleasure. In this treatise 
 he took a gloomy view of life, and endeavoured to prove, 
 a la Rochefoucauld, that friendship and love were mere 
 names, and totally unable to supply the void in the human 
 heart. 
 
 The ladies were especially offended at the tenor 
 of the work, which was anything but complimentary to 
 the sex. Soon after its appearance, might be read, and 
 were very extensively read in a Norwich paper, the 
 following lines, written by the son of no mean poet — nor 
 are they deficient in point — under the signature, though 
 the initials are inaccurately transposed, of "A. S." 
 
 When gifted Harold left his ruined home, 
 
 With mourning lyre through foreign realms to roam ; 
 
 When he, the giant genius, stalked abroad, 
 
 Blasting the flowers that blossomed on his road ; 
 
 Confessed no joy in hope — no light in life. 
 
 But all was darkness, vanity, and strife ; 
 
 Yet would his better feeling sometimes move 
 
 That icy bosom with one touch of love : 
 
 None could, like him, with glowing verse essay 
 
 " To fix the spark of Beauty's heavenly ray ; " 
 
 None could, like him, so warmly — deeply feel. 
 
 How female softness moulds a heart of steel. 
 
 But thou — weak follower of a soulless school ! 
 
 Whose stoic feelings vacillate by rule, 
 
 Doomed through a joyless wilderness to rove, 
 
 Uncheered by friendship, and unwarmed by love. 
 
 Dull, satiate spirit ! ere thy prime's begun. 
 
 Accurst with hating what thou canst not shun : 
 
 Man shall despise thee for thy vain attempt, 
 
 And woman spurn thee with deserved contempt ; 
 
 Thy pride of apathy, thy folly see. 
 
 And what we hate in Harold — loathe in thee. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 151 
 
 Then followed an intemperate reply by Polidori to this 
 severe, though not altogether unmerited satire, for he was 
 the very ape of Byron, addressed to the author, with false 
 supposition of the authorship, which in the next Journal 
 was contradicted by the aspersed individual. This caused 
 a long letter from some friend of Polidori's, ending with, 
 " Doff that lion's hide, &c." This last effusion occasioned 
 an answer from the young poet, in which he expresses 
 a doubt which most to admire, the aptness of the quotation, 
 the shrewdness of the conjecture, the eloquence of the 
 rhetoric, or the amiable forbearance of the writer. S. A., 
 however, preserved his incognito, and being a stranger 
 on a short visit to Norwich — a young man about to enter 
 into orders — the mystery was strictly kept. 
 
 It may be added that this A. S. was the son of the poet 
 William Spencer — and is well known in the fashionable 
 world for his occasional verses — which have found a place 
 in many a young lady's album, e&pecially those to the 
 Duchess of Rutland paraphrased from a rare sonnet of 
 Tasso's, 
 
 Whether this satire was calculated, or not, to injure 
 Polidori's prospects, is a question ; but that it led to the 
 well-known result, which ended his career, is not probable. 
 He made an attempt to destroy himself at Diodati, and 
 as Lord Byron said, was always compounding poisons 
 with a view of having at hand the most subtile and speedy 
 means of extinguishing life. Suicide seems with him to 
 have been an id4e fixe. It is also said, that, like most 
 Italians, he was very susceptible of the tender passion ; 
 that he had fallen desperately and hopelessly in love. 
 The object of his passion was the beautiful and accom- 
 plished daughter of a catholic gentleman of rank, and 
 there was some romance in the story, for which, however, 
 
152 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I will not voucli. Polidori upset Ms gig at the entrance 
 of the Park, and broke his leg, and being unable to be 
 removed further than the house, remained there during 
 his illness. This attachment was a preposterous one, and 
 could but lead to disappointment ; but that it preyed upon 
 his mind, and brought about the fatal catastrophe, I cannot 
 credit. He had an ill-regulated mind, which if properly 
 directed, might have rendered him a useful member of 
 his profession, and society. Such was at least the opinion 
 of Lord Byron. Shelley, I have heard often speak of 
 Polidori, but without any feeling of ill-will.^ 
 
 A friend of mine, who occasionally made a morning 
 call at Diodati, says that he met one day there a youth 
 apparently not seventeen, — such was his boyish exterior, — 
 but in whose conversation there was nothing of the boy. 
 He was surprised as he compared his words and looks 
 together, at the contrast, — astonished at the subtilty of 
 his remarks,the depth of his information, and the deference 
 Lord Byron seemed to pay to him. It was Shelley. This 
 juvenile appearance he never lost. 
 
 During his stay at Poligny, he formed no acquaintance 
 with the Genevans. He had not had sufficient opportunities 
 of rightly estimating their character, when he says, that 
 " there is more equality of classes than in England." 
 Nowhere did at that time castes prevail to such an extent. 
 No talent, no wealth, no merit could break down the 
 
 ' Those who desire Polidori " of Mr. Kossetti, his nephew, is re- 
 more acquaintance" should refer produced in Some Beminiscences of 
 to Mr. Eossetti's recent volume, The that nephew (2 vol.. Brown 
 Siary of | Dr. John William Polidori | Langham & Co., 1906) ; and he 
 1816 I BelcOing to Byron, Shelley, etc.\ figures, sketchily, in the Bossetli 
 Edited and Elucidated by | William Papers of the same distinguished 
 Michael Kossetti | ...... London | editor (Sands & Co., 1903), as well 
 
 Elkin Mathews | 1911. His as in Shelley and his Friends in Italy, 
 
 portrait by Gainsford, given to by Helen Kossetti Angeli, published 
 
 the National Portrait Gallery by by Methuen & Co. in 1911. 
 
LIFE OF SHELiiET. 153 
 
 barrier of birtli — yes ! strange enough, as in the republic 
 of the Nairs, a female could ennoble. If she made a 
 mesalliance, she could elevate her husband into sufferance, 
 but if a patrician married a plebeian, he was for ever 
 excluded from society, a murus aheneus was raised against 
 him, that nothing could break down. The rue basse and 
 the Treille might as well attempt to form a junction. 
 Lord Byron knew the Genevese better than Shelley : he 
 knew they courted him, not because he was a poet, but 
 because he was a lord. Nobility being the golden calf at 
 which, like most republicans, they fall down and worship. 
 Among the most interesting of Shelley's prose remains, 
 is the account given of the tour du lac, which he made in 
 company with Byron, — Mary "W. Godwin and Miss C[lair- 
 mont] being, I should suppose, of the party. The Nouvelle 
 Heloise, which he styles, "an overflowing of sublimest 
 genius, and more than mortal sensibility," was his Manuel 
 de Voyage. The scene so graphically painted by Rousseau, 
 Clarens, the Eochet [sic] de Julie, and especially Meillerje, 
 awakened in him all his poetical enthusiasm, and were 
 to him haunted ground, an enchanted land. The Savoy 
 side of the lake, which they coasted, and where they disem- 
 barked, particularly pleased him ; and lovely it indeed is ! 
 " Groves of pine, chesnuts, and walnuts, overshadow it ; 
 magnificent and unbounded forests, to which England has 
 no parallel — for in the midst of the woods, are indeed 
 dells of lawny expanse, immeasurably verdant, adorned 
 with a thousand of the rarest flowers and odorous with 
 thyme." During this excursion, which at least is not 
 unattended with danger in such a craft as they possessed 
 — totally unfitted, from its drawing too much water, and 
 other causes, for the purpose — they were nearly lost. 
 " The wind increased in violence," he says, " till it blew 
 
154 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 tremendously, and as it came from the remotest extremity 
 of the lake, produced waves of frightful height, and 
 covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of 
 our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted 
 in holding the sail, [at a time] when the boat was in 
 danger of being driven under water by the hurricane. On 
 discovering his error he let it entirely go, and the boat 
 for a moment refused to obey the helm ; in addition, the 
 rudder was so broken as to render the management of it 
 very difficult. One wave fell in, and then another." 
 
 Shelley never showed more nobleness of character, 
 disinterestedness, and presence of mind, than on this 
 trying occasion. 
 
 Byron, in one of his letters, says, 
 
 " We were in the boat, — imagine five in such a boat. The sail was 
 mismanaged — the boat filling fast. He (Shelley) can't swim. — 
 I slipped off my coat, made him slip off his, and take hold of an oar, 
 telling him I thought, being an expert swimmer, I could save him, if 
 he would not straggle when he kept hold of me ; unless we got 
 smashed against the rocks, which were high, and sharp, with an 
 arched roof on them at that minute. We were then about a hundred 
 yards from shore, and the boat in great peril. He answered me 
 with great coolness, that he had no notion of being saved, and that 
 I should have enough to do to save myself." 
 
 Shelley, in speaking of this scene, says : 
 
 " I felt in this near prospect of death, a mixture of sensations, 
 among which terror entered, [though] but subordinately. My feelings 
 would have been less painful, had I been alone, but I knew that my 
 companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome 
 with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked 
 to save [sic ior presene] mine." 
 
 This scene occurred off the rocks of Meillerie, and Byron 
 remarked, — "It would have been very classical to have 
 gone to the bottom there, but not very agreeable." 
 
 On visiting Glarens, Shelley, thinking of the loves of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 155 
 
 St. Preux and Julie, says, — " "Why did the cold maxims 
 of the world compel me, at this moment, to repress the 
 tears of melancholy transport, which it would have been 
 so sweet to indulge, immeasurably, until the darkness of 
 night had swallowed up the objects that excited them?" 
 At Lausanne, whilst walking on the acacia-shaded terrace 
 of Gribbon's house, and which the historian of the " Eise 
 [sic] and Fall " had so often paced, he observes : " G-ibbon 
 had a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more 
 inclinatioii to rail at the prejudices which cling to such 
 a thing, than now, that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne, and 
 the Eonaan Empire, compel me to a contrast between 
 Rousseau and Gibbon." 
 
 On their return from this store of memories for after 
 days, Lord Byron was visited by " Monk " Lewis, that 
 strange and eccentric genius, who met with so unsentimen- 
 tal a death — exhaustion by sea-sickness. Lewis's love .of 
 the wild and marvellous, which he had imbibed from the 
 legends of Germany, where he had travelled in early life, 
 communicated itself in some degree to his companions, 
 and they were in the habit of passing their evenings in 
 narrating ghost stories, in which, as it may be supposed, 
 Lewis distinguished himself the most ; and told, among 
 many others, that of Minna, which first appeared in the 
 Conversations of Lord Byron ; and one also sketched there, 
 which is more stirring, of a haunted house, at Mannheim, 
 which he had inhabited, that had belonged to a widow, 
 who to prevent the marriage of her only son with a poor 
 but honest maiden, had sent him to sea, where he perished 
 in a wreck. Remorse and sorrow for her irreparable loss, 
 and the reproaches of the girl, crazed the mother's brain, 
 and whose occupation became turning over the pages of 
 newspapers, in order to find tidings of him. At last she 
 
156 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 died of a broken heart, and continued her employment 
 after her death, which accounted for Lewis's hearing every 
 night at a certain hour, as he lay in bed, the rustling and 
 crackling of paper. What an admirable subject for 
 a ballad ! The anecdote was communicated to me from 
 a memorandum taken down after an evening at Diodati. 
 
 Shelley's imagination, excited by this, and other tales, 
 told with all the seriousness that marked a conviction of 
 belief — though it seems from Mr. Moore, that the author 
 of The Monk placed no faith in the magic wonders he 
 related, — one evening produced a singular scene. Shelley 
 had commenced a story, and in the midst of it, worked up 
 to an extraordinarily painful pitch, was compelled to 
 break the thread of his narration, by a hasty retreat. 
 Some of the party followed him, and found him in 
 a trance of horror, and when called upon after it was 
 overpast, to explain the cause, he said that he had had 
 a vision of a beautiful woman, who was leaning over the 
 balustrade of a staircase, and looking down on him with 
 four eyes, two of which were in the centre of her un- 
 covered breasts. Proving that he had not forgotten this 
 vision — in The Witch of Atlas, he after made use of the 
 epithet bosom-eyed. 
 
 It appears from Mr. Moore, that The Vampire, the 
 fragment of which was afterwards published among 
 Byron's works, had been sketched previously to " Monk " 
 Lewis's arrival, and that the same soiree [sic] gave rise 
 to Frankenstein. 
 
 The creation of a man-monster is to be found in Para- 
 celsus, though by a very different process from that which 
 suggested itself to the mind of Mrs. Shelley. This wild 
 and wonderful romance, which has furnished a subject for 
 the stage, not only in England, but in France, has been 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY 157 
 
 quoted in parliament, and whose hero has become a bye- 
 word, was one of those conceptions that take hold of the 
 public mind at once and for ever. It was an astonishing 
 effort of genius in a person of her age, — for she was 
 scarcely nineteen. I have heard it asserted that the idea 
 was Shelley's, and that he assisted much in the develop- 
 ment of the plot ; but there is no good ground for this 
 supposition. The best proof of the contrary, is his review 
 of the novel,^ which no one who knew him would accuse 
 him of having written, had he had any share in the 
 authorship ; and as that admirable piece of criticism is 
 not included, from modesty, doubtless, on the part of 
 Mrs, Shelley, among his Prose Works, I shall give the 
 greater part of it a place here. 
 
 "The novel of Frankenstein, or the Modem Prometheus, is un- 
 doubtedly, as a mere story, one of tte most complete and original 
 productions of the day. We debate with ourselves in wonder, as we 
 read it, what could have been the series of thoughts, what could have 
 been the peculiar experiences that awakened them, — which conduced 
 in the author's mind, to the astonishing combinations of motives and 
 incidents, and the startling catastrophe, which compose this tale. 
 There are, perhaps, some points of subordinate importance, which 
 prove that it is the author's first attempt. But in this judgment, 
 which requires a very nice discrimination, we may be mistaken ; for 
 it is conducted throughout with a firm and steady hand. The 
 interest gradually accumulates, and advances towards the conclusion, 
 with the accelerated rapidity of a rock rolled down a mountain. 
 We are led breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the heaping 
 up of incident on incident, and the working of passion out of passion. 
 We cry 'hold— hold, enough ! ' but yet there is something to come ; 
 
 'The "best proof" — and none norscarcelyof one train of feeling, to 
 
 better could be wanted — is the ex- my husband, and yet but for his in- 
 
 plicit statement which Mary Shelley oitement, it would never have taken 
 
 herself had made in 1831 when the form in which it was presented 
 
 republishing Frankenstein as one of to the world. From this declaration 
 
 Bentley's " Standard Novels." In I must except the preface. As far 
 
 the introduction to that issue of her as I can recollect, it was entirely 
 
 book she says : " I certainly did not written by him." For fuller infor- 
 
 owe the suggestion of one incident, mation, see the Appendix. 
 
158 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 and like the victim, wliose history it relates, we think we can bear 
 no more, and yet more is to be borne. Pelion is heaped on Ossa, and 
 Ossa on Olympus. We climb Alp upon Alp, until the horizon is seen, 
 blank, vacant, and limitless; and the head turns giddy, and the 
 ground seems to fail under our feet. 
 
 " This novel rests its claim on being a source of powerful and 
 profound emotion. The elementary feelings of the human mind are 
 exposed to view, and those who are accustomed to reason deeply on 
 their origin and tendency, will perhaps be the only peisons who can 
 sympathise, to the full extent, in the interest of the actions which 
 are their result. But founded on nature as they are, there is perhaps 
 no reader who can endure any thing besides a mere love story, who 
 will not feel a responsive string touched in his inmost soul. The 
 sentiments are so affectionate and innocent, the characters of the 
 subordinate agents in this strange drama are clothed in the light of 
 such a mild and gentle mind. The pictures of domestic manners are 
 of the most simple and attaching character ; the pathos is irresistible 
 and deep. Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, 
 though indeed withering and tremendous, the offspring of any 
 unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain 
 causes fully adequate to their production. They are all children as it 
 were of Necessity and Human Nature. In this the direct moral of 
 the book consists, and it is perhaps the most important and the most 
 universal application of any moral that can be enforced by example. 
 Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked. Requite affection 
 with scorn ; let one being be selected, for whatsoever cause, as the 
 refuse of his kind, — divide him, a social being, from society, and you 
 impose upon him the irresistible obligations, malevolence and 
 selfishness. It is thus that too often in society, those who are best 
 qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments, are branded by 
 some accident with scorn, and changed by neglect and solitude of 
 heart into a scourge and a curse. 
 
 "The Being in Frankenstein is no doubt a tremendous creature. 
 It was impossible that he should not have received among men that 
 treatment which led to the consequences of his being a social nature. 
 He was an abortion and an anomaly, and though his mind was such 
 as its first impressions framed it, affectionate andfuU of moral 
 sensibility, yet the circumstances of his existence are so monstrous 
 and uncommon, that, when the consequences of them became 
 developed in action, his original goodness was gradually turned into 
 misanthropy and revenge. The scene between the Being and the 
 blind De Lacey in the cottage, is one of the most profound and 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 159 
 
 extraordinary instances of passion that we ever recollect. It is 
 impossible to read this dialogue, and indeed many others of a some- 
 what similar nature, without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations 
 with wonder, and the ' tears stream down the cheeks.' The rencounter 
 and arguments between Frankenstein and the Being on the sea of ice,* 
 almost approaches, in effect, to the expostulations of Caleb Williams 
 with Falkland. It reminds us, indeed, somewhat of the style and 
 character of that admirable writer, to whom the author has dedicated 
 his work, and whose productions he seems to have studied. 
 
 "There is only one instance, however, in which we detect the least 
 approach to imitation, and that is, the conduct of the incident of 
 Frankenstein's landing in Ireland. The general character of the tale 
 indeed resembles nothing that ever preceded it. After the death of 
 Elizabeth, the story, like a stream which grows at once more rapid and 
 profound as it proceeds, assumes an irresistible solemnity, and the 
 magnificent energy and swiftness of a tempest. 
 
 " The churchyard scene, in which Frankenstein visits the tombs of 
 his family ; his quitting Geneva, and his journey through Tartary, to 
 the shores of the Frozen Ocean, resemble at once the terrible reanima- 
 tion of a corpse, and the supernatural career of a spirit. The scene in 
 the cabin of Walton's ship — the more than mortal enthusiasm and 
 grandeur of the Being's speech over the dead body of his victim, is an 
 exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which we think the 
 reader will acknowledge has never been surpassed." 
 
 I mistook Byron's words,^ when lie said lie made 
 a tour of the lake with Shelley and Hobhouse. He must 
 have alluded to his voyage on two different occasions. 
 That with Mr. Hobhouse occurred at a later period. 
 I might have known, had I reflected on the circumstance, 
 that it could not have taken place in company with 
 Shelley ; for Hobhouse, of whom more hereafter, was one 
 of Shelley's most inveterate enemies, and never ceased to 
 poison Lord Byron's mind against him, being jealous of 
 
 " Charaisso owes much in his Peier Schlemihl to this novel, especially in 
 this part of the catastrophe. 
 
 1 I have not hunted up the precise the simplicity of the admission is 
 fairy-tale here retracted. Even characteristic. 
 
160 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the growing intimacy of the two poets, and thinking with 
 
 Gay, that 
 
 friendship is but a name, 
 Unless to one you stint the flame, 
 
 — Number One being with him all in all. 
 
 With Shelley, Byron disagreed in many essential points, 
 but they never came to a diflference, which was the case 
 with few of his pseudo friends. Mr. Hobhouse and 
 himself were always best apart, and it was a relief to him 
 when they finally parted, not on the best terms, in. 
 Greece. A cold, uncongenial, mathematical pedant, like 
 Hobhouse, could have little in common with Byron. But 
 Shelley was an Eldorado, an inexhaustible mine. Byron 
 (as in the case of Charles Skinner Matthews, of whom he 
 used to talk so much, and regretted too so deeply) not 
 being, though he pretends to have been a great reader, or^ 
 a great thinker, liked the company of those who were, 
 for thus he obtained both the matter and spirit through 
 the alembic of others' brains. His admiration of Shelley's 
 talents and acquirements only yielded to an esteem for 
 his character and virtues ; and to have past a day without 
 seeing him, would have seemed a lost day. No wonder, 
 then, that in this absolute retirement, they were in- 
 separable. 
 
 Shelley used to say, that reading Dante produced in 
 him despair. Might not also the third Canto of Childe 
 Harold, and Manfred, have engendered a similar feeling, 
 for he wrote little at Geneva. He read incessantly. His 
 
 ' It is not certain whether the a great reader, he was not a great 
 
 insertion of this or, supplied in the thinker ; or he may have meant 
 
 author's revised copy, really brings that Byron pretented to be a great 
 
 out Medwin's thought as well as the reader and a great thinker, but was 
 
 first reading, from which the or was neither. Medwin's punctuation 
 
 absent : he may have meant that, was often so lax that it did not 
 
 though Byron pretended to be help his meaning over the stile. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 161 
 
 great studies at this time were the Greek dramatists' 
 
 especially iEschylus's Prometheus, whom he considered 
 
 the type of Milton's Satan. He translated this greatest 
 
 of tragedies to Byron, a very indifferent Greek scholar, 
 
 which produced his sublime ode on Prometheus, and 
 
 occasionally rendered for him passages out oi Faust, which 
 
 it appears " Monk " Lewis afterwards entirely translated 
 
 to him, and from which Gothe assumes Manfred to be 
 
 taken ; but in the treatment of the subject I can find no 
 
 trace of plagiarism. Byron, with more reason and justice, 
 
 retorted on Gothe such a charge ; and he might have 
 
 added, that Margaret's madness, as I have heard Shelley 
 
 observe, bore a strong resemblance to Ophelia's ; and that 
 
 the song, " Mein Mutter,"* &c., is a bad version of 
 
 Mactuadel Borne, " the, Holly- tree," which runs thus : 
 
 Mein Moder de mi schlacht, 
 Mein fater de mi att, 
 Mein Swister, de MadkCniken, 
 Socht alle meine Beeniken.'^ 
 
 * Since translated by Mr. Hayward,— translated ? trafestied, I should 
 say, — thus : 
 
 My mother, the whore, she was the death of me ; 
 
 My father, the rogue, he ate me up ; 
 
 My little sister picled up the bones at a cool place ; 
 
 There I became a beautiful wood-bird. 
 
 Fly away ! fly away I 
 
 ' It seems best to leave this mess There I became a beautiful little 
 
 as it was left by the author, who wood-bird.' 
 
 made no attempt to clean it up Fly away ! fly away ! 
 
 when he was revising the book. This Hayward annotates learnedly 
 
 5t?iTn, n? 1 RqT» /. ?«l7 '" ^^^ «^ "founded On a popular German 
 
 editions of 1834 and 1847, renders story, to be found in the Kinder- und 
 
 Goethe's version ofthoEong thus:- Havs-Marchm of the distinguished 
 
 My mother, the whore, brothers Grimm, under the title of 
 
 That killed me ! Van den Machandel-Boom, and in the 
 
 My father, the rogue, English selection from that work 
 
 That ate me up ! (entitled German Popidar Stories) 
 
 My little sister under the title of The Juniper Tree.'' 
 
 Picked up the bones He tells how the murdered girl 
 
 At a cool place ! was changed into a beautiful bird, 
 
X63 LIE'S OF SHELLEY. 
 
 At the end of July, Shelley and his companions made 
 an excursion to Ohamouni. At sight of the Mont Blanc, 
 as they approached it from Savoy, he exclaims : — " I never 
 imagined what mountains were before. The immensity 
 of their aerial summits excited, when they first burst 
 upon me, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied 
 with madness; and remember," he adds, in the letter to 
 his friend, " this was one scene, though it passed home to 
 our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced 
 a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot 
 into the blue sky, seemed to overhang our path; the 
 ravine clothed with giant pines, and black with its depths 
 below, so deep, that the very roaring of the untameable 
 Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above. 
 All was as much our own, as if we had been creators of 
 such impressions in the minds of others, as now occupied 
 our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our 
 spirits more breathless than that of the divinest." 
 
 Of the Mer de Glace, he says, — 
 
 " I will not pursue Buffon's grand, but gloomy theory, that this 
 globe that we inhabit, will at some future period be changed into 
 a mass of frost, by the encroachments of the polar ice, and of that 
 produced on the most elevated parts of the earth. Imagine to your- 
 
 which flies about, singing— And binds them up in a silk hand- 
 
 Min Moder de mi slacht't, t j.i. ' j j.i • • j. 
 
 Min Vader de mi att, ^ ^'-f^ f ^ "°!!f , ^u ^TTl ^""^f- 
 
 Min Swester de Marleenken H,t f'^ ^ 
 
 SOoht alle mine Beenikeu, "^' ""™ ^^ ^• 
 
 Un bindt sie in een syden Dook, Med win's transformation of the low 
 
 Legts unner den Machaudelbqom ; German Machanda Boom (Juniper- 
 
 Kywitt ! Kywitt I aeh watt en tree) into the wondrous proper 
 
 schOn Vagel biu ich ! name Mactuadel Borne is the less 
 
 ^, ,., , . , ,. ,, TT excusable inthat the gallant captain 
 
 The literal translation, adds Hay- ^^t^^u j^ad the pasiage under his 
 
 ward, would be- ^y^ ^^^ ^^^^^ when making his 
 
 My mother who slew me, revision ; for he supplied two um- 
 
 My father who ate me, lauts with a pen to convert 
 
 My sister Mary Anne Madkoniken (1st edition) into the 
 
 Gathers all my bones Madkoniken of the present text. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 168 
 
 self, Ahriman seated among the desolating snows, among these 
 palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in their terrible magnificence 
 by the adamantine hand of necessity ; and that he casts around him, as 
 the first essays of his final usurpation, torrents, rocks, and glaciers ; at 
 once proofs and symbols of his reign ; add to this, the degradation of 
 the human species, who in these regions are half deformed and idiotic ; 
 and most of whom are deprived of any thing that can excite interest 
 or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful than 
 sublime ; but such as neither the painter nor the philosopher should 
 disdain to regard." 
 
 Before, however, leaving diamouni, after visiting the 
 soTirce of the Arveiron, the stream of poetry was unlocked 
 from his breast, and he composed his address to Mont 
 Blanc, written under the immediate impression of the 
 deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects it 
 attempts to describe, — "lines that rest their claim to 
 approbation on an attempt to imitate the wildness and 
 sublimity from which they sprung." The language is 
 Titanic. It is a legion of wild thoughts, a scene that 
 makes the brain of the reader dizzy, and his flesh creep to 
 contemplate ; so truthful is the picture, so naturally do 
 the gigantic ideas that belong to it, arise, that Prometheus 
 might have thus apostrophised on the Caucasus. 
 
 His Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, commenced during 
 his voyage round the Lake with Lord Byron, was also one 
 of the fruits of his residence at Geneva. 
 
 As this poem embodies his peculiar tenets, — system, 
 I might say, — I shall endeavour to shew that it is evidently 
 derivfed from Plato, with whose Symposium he had been 
 long familiar, but only appears to have commenced 
 translating at Leghorn, in June, 1818. That ode is 
 indeed a comment on the Symposium,, as wiU. appear by 
 the discourse therein, of Socrates on Love. He says, 
 
 " What do you imagine to be the aspect of the Supreme Beauty 
 itself, simple, pure, uncontaminated by the intermixture of human 
 
164 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 flesh, and colours, and all other idle and unreal shapes, attendant on 
 humanity ? The Monoeidic Beauty itself ! What must be the life of 
 him who dwells upon, and gazes on that which it becomes us to seek ! 
 Think you not, that to him alone is accorded the prerogative of 
 bringing forth, not images or shadows of virtue, for he is in contact, 
 not with a shadow but with reality, with virtue itself, in the 
 production and nourishment of which he becomes dear to the gods ; 
 and if such a privilege is conceded to any human being, immortal." 
 
 In another part of this wonderful piece of eloquence, 
 
 Socrates goes on to say, — 
 
 "Man would by such contemplations 1 earn to consider the beauty 
 which was in souls, more excellent than that which was in form," and 
 adds, "he would thus conduct his pupil to science, so that he might 
 look upon the loveliness of wisdom ; and that contemplating thus the 
 Universal Beauty, no longer would he unworthily and meanly enslave 
 himself to the attractions of one form in love, nor one subject of 
 discipline in science ; but would turn towards the wide ocean of 
 Intellectual Beauty, and from the sight of the lovely and majestic forms 
 which it contains, would abundantly bring forth its conceptions in 
 philosophy, until, strengthened and confirmed, he should at length 
 steadily contemplate one science, which is the science of Intellectual 
 Beauty." ..." Perfect intelligence results in perfect Love. By Love I 
 mean that kindly consideration for others implied in the Christian pre- 
 cept. It is the direct contrary of Selfishness. There is no Virtue which 
 is not included in this Love, whilst Love itself is included in Intelli- 
 gence. Perfect Intelligence viewed passively implies the quality of 
 knowing all things and the power of doing all things. Viewed actively, 
 it is Love — thus every act of perfect Intelligence is good because it 
 is errorless because it is right — hence active Intelligence is Love 
 .Intelligence is the first principle of all things; it absorbs everything in 
 its own being, it is more than Justice, more than Mercy, more than 
 Benevolence, more than Morality, more than religion inasmuch as 
 what is meant by these— all that is good in these is included in the 
 ever-living all diverting all absorbing sole existing principle Intel- 
 ligence — Intelligence is therefore the First great Cause or Deity, and 
 every act of Deity which is of necessity errorless is Love, and this all 
 embracing Love is Happiness." ' 
 
 Lord Byron seems, while at Geneva, to have been 
 
 ^ These extracts from Shelley's laxly treated than even those from 
 translation of The Banquet are more the Six Weeks' Tour ending on p. 163- 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY, 165 
 
 imbued witli similar conceptions, doubtless due to Shelley, 
 
 and whicli were more fally inculcated during their lake 
 
 excursion. In a note to Childe Harold, we find, 
 
 " The feeling with which all around Clarens, and the opposite shores 
 of Meillerie is invested, is of a higher and a more comprehensive order 
 than the mere sympathy with individual passion. It is the sense of 
 the existence of Love in its most extended and sublime capacity, and 
 of our participation in its good and its glory. It is the great principle 
 of the universe, which is the more condensed, but not less manifold ; 
 and of which, though knowing ourselves a partfTve lose our individual- 
 ity, and mingle in the beauty of the whole." — 
 
 This passage bears strong internal evidence of having 
 been dictated, if not written, by Shelley, for Lord Byron 
 was, with the bulk of mankind, a believer in the existence 
 of matter and spirit, which Shelley so far refined, upon 
 the theory of Berkley, as to superadd thereto some 
 abstraction, of which, not as a substitute for Deity, 
 according to Mr. Moore, but as a more exalted idea of the 
 attributes of Deity, the bishop never dreamed; thus 
 differing from the Pantheism of "Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge, inasmuch, as on the deification of Nature, 
 found in their early works, Shelley built a deeper and 
 more ethereal philosophy, rendering not only the whole 
 creation into spirit, but worshipping it under the idealism 
 of Intellectual Beauty and Universal Love. And Speaking 
 of the Lakists, so successfully imitated by Lord Byron in 
 his third canto of Childe Harold, for he was not very 
 particular from whom he borrowed, Shelley, 
 Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri, 
 resolved in the words of Chapman " not to stand on other 
 men's legs " or to tread in their steps, but to work out for 
 himself, if not a new, certainly an untried system in poetry, 
 which he had conceived a,t Oxford, on reading Plato — 
 from a translation, Mr. Hogg says, before he could master 
 
166 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the original; a system not built on nonentities, as styled 
 by Mr. Moore, with his materialist ideas, but the types of 
 Him -who is all beauty and love — types that are brought 
 home to every deeply thinking mind — a system whose 
 elements are the most comprehensive and spirit-stirring; 
 and to which he ever remained true. Well might he say,— 
 
 I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
 
 To thee and thine— have I not kept the vow? 
 
 I call the phantasms of a thousand hours, 
 
 Bach from his voiceless grave — they have in visioned bowers, 
 
 Of studious zeal, or loT^e's delight, 
 
 Outwatohed me with the envious night. 
 
 They know that never joy illumed my brow. 
 
 Unlinked with hope ; that thou wouldst free 
 
 This world from its dark slavery ; 
 
 That thou, O, Awful Loveliness! 
 
 Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 
 
 Schiller (and it may be fanciful, but I have often, with 
 the Hindoos, and their great law-giver, Menu, who places 
 great faith in names, thought it a singular coincidence, 
 that three of the greatest poets, Shakspeare, Schiller, and 
 Shelley, should all have theirs commencing with a syllable 
 so indicative, (according to Hemstrins and Walter 
 Whiter, the two profoundest philologists,) of force. 
 Schiller I say made the basis of his philosophy that of 
 Kant; and dry and abstract as that philosophy is, he, 
 with his great genius, contrived to interweave it into his 
 mighty lyrics, and to turn mathematics into poetry. 
 His Ideale und Das Leben, is a proof of the marvellous 
 faculty he possessed of making reality subservient to 
 imagination, and I cannot help thinking that Shelley 
 was well acquainted with this, and other of the odes on 
 which his system is based. Indeed, the spirit of his 
 ^Esthetics has somewhat, though not so much, of the 
 daring of Schiller. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 167 
 
 Aber flUchtet aus der Sinne Schranken, 
 In die Freiheit der Gedanken. 
 &c. &c. 
 
 Mit der Menschen Widerstand, verachwindet 
 Auch des Gottes Majestat. 
 
 What is this but, 
 
 Till human hearts might kneel alone, 
 Each before the judgment throne 
 Of' its own aweless soul ? 
 
 And is not 
 
 Wenn ihr in der Mensohheit traurigen Blosae, 
 Steht vor des Gesetzes Grosse, — 
 
 Till in the nakedness of false and true. 
 
 We stand before our Lord, each to receive his due ! 
 
 The twelfth stanza of *The Ideal and Actual, in which 
 Humanity appeals against the will of Heaven — a stanjza 
 audacious in its language as that of a fallen Satan, — has 
 more than one reflex in passages of Shelley's earlier 
 
 * When in the nakedness of False and True, 
 Before the Law, to meet your due 
 
 You stand ; when Guilt draws nigh the Holy One, 
 Before Truth's lightning arrows then turn pale ; 
 Before the Ideal let your virtue quail, 
 
 In shame of deeds your conscience well might shun. 
 This goal has never reached one mortal man, 
 
 To cross that whirlpool has' no boat been found, 
 That wide abyss no bridge can span. 
 
 No anchor reach the unfathomable ground. 
 
 But for the trammels of the senses, change 
 Free thoughts, and as they boundless range. 
 
 The fearful vision will be chased and flown. 
 And that eternal whirlpool yawn no more : 
 Wrestle with Godhead by your will's own power, 
 
 And hurl him from his universal throne. 
 The fetters of the law are strong to bind 
 
 But slaves, the scorn of him the good and free, 
 Who by the might of his own mind 
 Can set at nought Jove's dreaded majesty. [over. 
 
168 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 works, that breathe all the sublimity of Prometheus, 
 when, bound upon Caucasus, he neither repented his deed 
 nor confessed his wrong. Such outbursts in suffering— 
 and who had suffered more from the world's wrong than 
 Schiller— are perhaps worthier of Carl Moor than 
 a philosopher; but to poets it may be allowed to dare all 
 things, and not a voice has ever been raised against 
 Schiller by any of his country's critics, on account of the 
 boldness of this, or other of his lyrical productions. In 
 the present state of society, from the imperfection of 
 education, they are harmless speculations, and no more 
 intelligible to the bulk of mankind than the systems of 
 Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, whose theories are 
 a boundless and troubled ocean, where the navigator is 
 continually fancying that the clouds in the distance are 
 islands of the blest, till he approaches, and finds them but - 
 a congregation of vapours. Yet still he sails on with the 
 prospect of land, ever buoyed up with hopes which he 
 cannot renounce, though they are constantly frustrated, — 
 theories that lead to no other result than scepticism ; and 
 hence, the last of these so-called philosophers, carries on 
 the arguments of his predecessors ad absurdum, obliged 
 to assume, that Being and No Being are the same, a verbal 
 sophistry in itself feeble, but as a specimen of logic, 
 pitiable. "Well then might Fichte's pupil, Schelling, say. 
 
 If pangs humanity wrestles with in vain, 
 Coil round thee — if it clasp and strain 
 
 Like Priam's son, in its despair, the snakes, 
 Let man revolt against the will of Heaven, 
 Shake with its loud lament its vault, till riven 
 
 Each feeling hreast with tenderest pity aches. 
 Let Nature's fearful voice victorious rise, — 
 
 Make pale the cheek of joy with anguish deep, 
 Till bending downwards from the skies, 
 
 In holy sympathy the Immortals weep. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 169 
 
 that "Philosophy commences where common sense 
 terminates." 
 
 The train of ideas by which these misty Transcendent- 
 alists arrive at such deductions, would require a volume 
 to trace ; but it may be added, that these vain abstractions 
 have plunged many a disciple of the Berlin school in the 
 ocean of doubt and perplexity, and peopled many a 
 madhouse with victims. 
 
 In this account of Shelley's three months residence at 
 Geneva, I cannot pass over in silence a circumstance that 
 occurred there, — Lord Byron's liaison with Miss Clara 
 
 C a near connection, — not, as Mr. Moore says, 
 
 a near relative — of 'Mrs. Shelley. I remember her in 
 1820, living en pension at Florence, then twenty-six or 
 twenty-seven years of age.^ She might have been mis- 
 taken for an Italian, for she was a brunette with very dark 
 hair and eyes. Her history was then a profound secret, 
 but as it has been told by Lord Byron's historian, may 
 find a place here without any indiscretion on my part. 
 As she possessed considerable accomplishments — spoke 
 French and Italian, particularly the latter, with all its 
 nuances and niceties — she was much courted by the 
 Russian coterie, a numerous and fashionable one in that 
 city. Though not strictly handsome at that time, for she 
 had had much to struggle with, and mind makes its 
 ravages in the fairest, most, she was engaging and 
 pleasing, and possessed an esprit de socidtd rare among our 
 countrywomen. From her personal appearance at that 
 time, I should conceive, that when Byron formed an 
 intimacy with her at Geneva in 1816, she must have been 
 
 ' Claire Clairmont's age is a little word relation, he describes Mary and 
 over-stated : she was born in 1798. Claire as sisters and half-sisters 
 While criticizing Moore's use of the within a few lines. See next page. 
 
170 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 strikingly handsome. It has been supposed that his 
 
 sonnets to Q-enevra was intended for her ; but it was not 
 
 so, for altho' they are dated erroneously in December 
 
 1813, they were in reality written in Switzerland, 
 
 which he only reached in 1816, and are universally 
 
 attributed to have been addressed to her sister, Miss 
 
 Godwin, who was not pleased at the allusion to the 
 
 Magdalen of Guido tho' indeed there was nothing to 
 
 offend, for the comparison was only applied poetically 
 
 to that lady, and complementarily ending with 
 
 Such seemest thou— but much more excellent 
 
 With nought remorse can claim — nor virtue scorn. 
 
 Miss G[lairmont] was not altogether a stranger to Byron 
 when they met at Secheron ; for, as he was about to quit 
 London for the continent, in the spring of that year, after 
 his mysterious repudiation by Lady Byron, she had an 
 interview with him, for the purpose of obtaining an 
 engagement at Drury Lane, where I have no doubt she 
 would have distinguished herself as an actress ; but which 
 object, his recent resignation of office as chairman of the 
 committee of management, precluded him, as he explained 
 to her, from forwarding. She had accompanied the 
 Shelleys, on this their tour, and passed the summer with 
 them at Mont AUegre ; and here it was tha,t Byron's 
 acquaintance with this lady was renewed. I do not 
 accuse him of any systematic seduction as regards Miss 
 C[lairmont]. She was of a fearless and independent 
 character; despised the opinion of the world, looking 
 upon the law of marriage as of human invention, having 
 been as early as her half-sister imbued with the doctrines 
 of Mary WoUstoriecraft, and entertaining high notions 
 of the rights of women. The sex are fond of rakes: 
 a strange infatuation ! It is said that Byron's attentions 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 171 
 
 were irresistible ; and when , they were enhanced by 
 verses, the very essence of feeling, Clara's fall could not 
 be doubtfuL I have reason to believe, however, that this 
 intrigue was carried on with the greatest secrecy; and 
 that neither the Shelleys nor Polidori were for a long time 
 privy to it:' perhaps also, it arose out of some momentary 
 frailty and impulse, from some fatal " importunity and oppor- 
 tunity," in which the senses rather than the heart were 
 engaged — a momentary intoxication, that the dictates of 
 returning reason cooled into indifference on both sides. 
 
 The mystery, however, could not be kept — even if at 
 the latter end of August — they landed, I think, in 
 England, on the 6th of September — it was one ; for the 
 mystery soon revealed itself. She gave birth in due time, 
 to ar daughter, who was called Allegra, from Mont Allegre. 
 
 Some foul and infamously calumnious slander, relating 
 to this accouchement, gave rise to the dark insinuations 
 afterwards thrown out in The Quarterly Review, by the 
 writer of the critique on The Revolt of Islam, where the 
 lampooner says, at the conclusion of the article, " If we 
 might withdraw the veil of private life, and tell all we 
 know about Shelley, it would be indeed a disgusting 
 picture that we should exhibit; but it would be an 
 unanswerable comment to our text," for "it is not easy 
 for those who read only, to conceive how much low 
 [pride, how much cold] selfishness, how much unmanly 
 cruelty, are consistent with the laws of this ' universal ' 
 and ' lawless love '." 
 
 This prying into private life, and founding on senseless 
 gossip, such foul and infamous accusations, was unworthy 
 of the most scurrilous of those weekly journals that 
 pander to the evil passions of society; but most dis- 
 graceful to a review of so high a character as the 
 
172 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Quarterly. Shelley had been, however, as I have 
 mentioned above, long before the appearance of this 
 article, a victim to the scandal, for it was, if I remember 
 right, promulgated by Polidori in the Preface to his 
 Vampyre} Shelley, with his contempt of the world's 
 opinion, where he felt a consciousness of no wrong, as far 
 as regarded this unfortunate connexipn, bore the obloquy 
 unflinchingly, rather than divulge what he had given his 
 word to Lord Byron to conceal. Allegra, when a few 
 nionths old, was carried by a Swiss nurse, and delivered 
 to Lord Byron, then at Venice. 
 
 No part of Lord Byron's conduct is more enigmatical 
 than his neglect of this interesting young woman ; and 
 the reason of his making no settlement on the mother of 
 his child, after withdrawing it from her care, is one of 
 the problems I leave others to solve. I often heard him 
 speak of Allegra as recorded in the Conversations. It is 
 to her Shelley alludes in his Julian and Maddalo, where 
 he says, that whilst waiting in his palace for its lord, 
 
 With his child he played ; 
 A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made, 
 A serious, subtle — wild, yet gentle being; 
 Graceful without design, and unforeseeing ; 
 With eyes— Oh speak not of her eyes, they seem 
 Twin mirrors of Italian heavens— yet gleam 
 With such deep meaning, as we never see 
 But in the human countenance. With me 
 She was a special favourite. I had nursed 
 Her fine and feeble limbs, when she came first 
 To this bleak world ; and yet she seemed to know 
 On second sight, her ancient playfellow ; 
 For after the first shyness was worn out. 
 We sate there rolling billiard balls about, 
 When the Count entered." 
 
 ' As to Polidori, see note ante, ^ Julian and Maddalo, less altered 
 
 p. 152. than usual : see lines 142 et seg. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 173 
 
 A regard for children, singular and touching, is an 
 unerring and most engaging indication of a benevolent 
 mind. 
 
 "That this characteristic was not wanting in Shelley, might be 
 demonstrated," says his friend Hogg, " by numerous examples, that 
 crowd upon recollection, each of them bearing the strongly impressed 
 stamp of individuality ; for genius renders every surrounding cir- 
 cumstance significant and important. In one of our rambles we were 
 traversing the bare, squalid, ugly, corn-yielding country, that lies, if I 
 remember rightly, to the south-west. The hollow road ascended a hill, 
 and near the summit, Shelley observed a female child- leaning against 
 the bank on the right. It was of a mean, dull, and unattractive 
 aspect, and older than its stunted growth denoted. The little girl 
 was oppressed with cold, by hunger, and by a vague feeling of 
 abandonment. It was not easy to draw from her blue lips an intel- 
 ligent history of her condition. Love, however, is at once credulous 
 and apprehensive, and Shelley immediately decided that she had been 
 deserted, and with his wonted precipitation, (for in the career of 
 humanity his active spirit knew no pause) he proposed different 
 schemes for the permanent relief of the poor foundling. I answered, 
 that it was desirable in the first place to try to procure some food, for 
 of this the want was manifestly the most urgent. I then climbed the 
 hill to reconnoitre, and observed a cottage close at hand, on the left 
 of the road. With considerable difficulty — with a gentle violence, 
 indeed, Shelley induced the child to accompany him thither. After 
 much delay, we procured from the people of the place some warm 
 milk. It was a strange spectacle to watch the young poet, with the 
 enthusiastic and intensely earnest manner that characterizes the 
 legitimate brethren of the celestial art — the heaven-born and finely 
 inspired sons of genuine poesy — holding the wooden bowl in one hand, 
 and the wooden spoon in the other, and kneeling on his left knee, that 
 he might more certainly attain to her mouth. The hot milk was 
 agreeable to the girl, and its effects were salutary, but she was 
 obviously uneasy at the detention. 
 
 "Her uneasiness increased, and ultimately prevailed ; we returned 
 with her to the place where we had found her, Shelley bearing the 
 bowl of milk in his hand. 
 
 " Here we saw some people anxiously looking for the child; as soon 
 as the girl perceived them, she was content, and taking the bowl from 
 Shelley, she finished it without his help." 
 
174 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Several other anecdotes are related of Shelley's active 
 benevolence to children of the poor people. The passion- 
 ate fondness of the Platonic philosophy, seemed to sharpen 
 his natural aflfection for them, and his sympathy with 
 their innocence. 
 
 " Every true Platonisfc," he used to say, " must be a lover of children, 
 for they are our masters and instructors in philosophy ; the mind of 
 a new-born infant, so far from being, as Locke affirms, a sheet of 
 blank paper, is a pocket edition, containing every dialogue — a 
 complete Elzevir Plato, if we can fancy such a pleasant volume, and 
 moreover, a perfect encyclopEedia, comprehending not only all the 
 newest discoveries, but all those still more valuable and wonderful 
 inventions that will be made hereafter. 
 
 " In consequence of this theory, upon which his active imagination 
 loved to dwell, and which he delighted to maintain in argument, 
 with the few persons qualified to dispute with him on the higher 
 metaphysics ; his fondness for children — a fondness innate in generous 
 minds, was augmented and elevated, and the gentle interest expanded 
 into a profound and philosophical sentiment. The Platonists have 
 been illustrious in all ages, on account of the strength and permanence 
 of their attachments. ' 
 
 " In Shelley the parental affections were developed at an early period 
 to an unusual extent ; it was manifest, therefore, that his heart was 
 formed by nature and by cultivation to derive the most exquisite 
 gratification from the society of his own progeny, or the most poignant 
 anguish from a natural or unnatural bereavement.'" 
 
 It was his fate, in the most cruel manner, as I have 
 already stated, to endure the first, nor was he to be spared 
 the last of these miseries that flesh is heir to. But that 
 time was yet distant. 
 
 Shelley, as was natural, took, we may perceive by the 
 extract from Julian and Maddalo, a lively interest in this 
 child of Byron's; the mother having been one of the 
 companions of his travels, in his two outwanderings, — 
 and he it was who paid her pension at Florence, and 
 supported her during his life and made a provision for 
 her after his death. The little creature, the offspring of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 175 
 
 tis friend's liaison,took,a,s I have heard Shelley frequently 
 say,* a violent dislike to the father, as it was just it should 
 to one who had so cruelly renounced and injured her who 
 gave birth to it. Nor had Byron much affection for 
 
 AUegra; a Mrs. V n,^ it appears, saw the infant at 
 
 Mr. Hoppner's, the consul's, at Venice, and being herself 
 childless, wished to adopt it; and Byron would have 
 consented to the proposition, but for Shelley; indeed 
 Lord Byron seems to have been disappointed at the failure 
 of the arrangement ; Mr. Moore says, " broken off by his 
 refusing to grant the entire renunciation of his parental 
 authority ; " — but what parental authority could be exer- 
 cised over a child in a distant country, educated by 
 strangers? Lord Bjnron expresses his disappointment 
 at the breaking off the negociation, in a letter to 
 Mr. Hoppner, thus : " I thought you would have an answer 
 
 from Mrs. V n. You have had bore enough with me, 
 
 and mine already." 
 
 Many years after, a lady whose talents and accomplish- 
 ments are thrown into shade by the qualities of her heart, 
 ^I allude to the lamented Lady Blessington, from whom 
 I had the anecdote — took a great interest in the mother 
 of AUegra, and had obtained for her, or thought she had 
 obtained, a situation as humble companion. Miss C[lair- 
 mont] was top noble to conceal her story from the ear 
 of her intended benefactress, before she entered on her 
 office ; and in consequence of her sincerity, the affair was 
 broken off. How applicable are Shelley's words to the 
 
 * This has been confirmed by Moore, Notices of Ld Byron, Ac." 
 
 ' The abortive adoption incident when ho had the page under his, 
 
 is taken from Moore's Works qf Lord hand and added the foot-note in 
 
 By)-o«(1832-3,iv. 172);butMedwin, writing. Vavassour appears to have 
 
 no doubt through mere carelessness, been the lady's name : see Mr. 
 
 had substituted V »for V r; Prothero's edition (iv. 325). 
 
 and did not correct the blunder ^ Cave ! This is far too positive. 
 
176 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 unfortunate yoiung lady, whose life before and since this 
 
 one false step, has never had a shadow of blame thrown 
 
 on it, and whose talents, manners, and accomplishments 
 
 well fitted her for any circle. 
 
 " Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature, the world 
 declares against her, pitiless, unceasing war. She must be the tame 
 slave — she must make no reprisals. Theirs is the right of persecution 
 — hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy — the low and 
 bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She is the criminal, 
 the froward, the untameable child ; and society, forsooth, the pure 
 and virtuous matron, casts her as an abortion from her undefiled 
 bosom." ^ 
 
 Should this passage meet the eye of the overrighteous 
 individual to whom it is applied, let her reflect on these 
 words, and blush through her rouge with shame. No ! 
 " the cold-hearted worldling " will smile with self-com- 
 placency at her own virtue, and deem it one of the proudest 
 and most saving acts of her life, to have repulsed and 
 rejected the frail one. How would morality, dressed in 
 stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, 
 could she look in the mirror of Nature. 
 
 On Shelley's reaching England one of the few persons 
 with whom he was acquainted was Leigh Hunt. His 
 acquaintance with him now ripened into the closest 
 intimacy. I believe indeed that Shelley together with 
 Miss Godwin and Miss C[lairmont] lived for some time 
 after his arrival under LeighHunt's roof — and that here the 
 ladies one or both were confined, to the no small scandal of 
 the neighbourhood— Miss C. of Allegra. Leigh Hunt 
 was at that time joint editor of the far-famed Examiner, 
 and which made him in the eyes of Lord Byron (but 
 more so in those of his future biographer, Mr. M'oore, who 
 
 '■ Adapted from the Queem, Mab coarser original form, would not 
 note on prostitution, which, in its have suited the biographer so well. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 177 
 
 always had the hell of reviews before him,) a person of 
 some consequence and weight in the literary world. 
 
 Leigh Hunt was then living at Hampstead, and here 
 Shelley also, I believe, first met Keats. 
 
 I have been fiarnished by a lady, who, better even than 
 Leigh Hunt, knew Keats, with the means of supplying 
 many interesting particulars respecting him ; so well 
 indeed did she know him, that she might have furnished 
 materials for that life of him promised by Mr. Brown, who 
 unfortunately died in New Zealand before it was com- 
 pleted, and where Keats's MSS. and papers were said to 
 have been lost, but it was not so, for they have since the 
 first edition of this work appeared^ been edited by 
 Mr. Monckton Milnes. Keats was left fatherless at an 
 early age, and when he came to years of discretion, was 
 apprenticed to an apothecary, but the sight of suffering 
 humanity, and the anatomical school, soon disgusted him 
 with the pursuit, an^ he abandoned the profession of 
 medicine, but not originally to follow the ill-named 
 flowery paths of poetry ; for an authentic anecdote is told 
 of him, corroborative of this remark. One day, sitting 
 dreamily over his desk, he was endeavouring to while 
 away a tedious hour by copying some verses from 
 memory ; one of his brother apprentices looking over his 
 shoulder, said, " Keats, what are you a poet ? " It is 
 added, he was much piqued at the accusation, and replied, 
 " Poet indeed ! I never composed a line in my life." The 
 same story is told of "Walter Scott, who in crossing over 
 one of the Scotch lakes, endeavoured to put his ideas 
 into verse, but on landing had only made two bad rhymes, 
 and observed to the friend who accompanied him, "I 
 shall never do for a poet." But Keats no less than the 
 Wizard of the North, falsified his own prophecy. Keats 
 
178 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 was ever a constant reader of Shakspeare, and I Kave 
 before me a folio edition of tlie great dramatist's works, 
 with notes and comments on Troilus and Cressida, and 
 containing at the end of the volume an ode, evidently 
 a very early attempt, which, properly for his fame, he did 
 not publish. He might also have forborne giving to the 
 world some other of the short poems, his first attempts in 
 the art. We are certainly indebted for the discovery of 
 the poetic vein in him to Leigh Hunt, and his encourage- 
 ment of his young friend. But it is equally owing to 
 Leigh Hunt that the disciple enrolled himself in what 
 has been termed the Cockney school, and fell into a p9,le 
 imitation of the Elizabethan writers, and the adoption of 
 a language, neither Shaksperian nor Spenserian — a lan- 
 guage neither belonging to his own time, nor to society. 
 How well does Quintilian designate some author of his 
 day who had a similar mania ! " Sepultam scribendi 
 artem suscitat, obliteratas restituit literas, antiques reno- 
 vat apices, abrogatas recudit literarum formulas, et ingens 
 opus, rei literarise miraculum quod stupeat, &c." Thus, 
 in the words of Dr. Johnson, speaking of two of his 
 contemporaries, he "affected the obsolete when it was 
 not worthy of revival, and thought his language more 
 poetical, as it was more removed from common use." 
 Such was the prevailing fault of Endymion, an unreadable 
 poem, only redeemed by the Hymn to Pan, and a few 
 scattered passages. Oases in the misty desert of an out- 
 worn mythology, and composed under the inspiration of 
 Highgate, at the time when he saw in every tree a Dryad, 
 and which classical spot gave birth to Mr. Leigh Hunt's 
 Nymphs — a worthy Pendant. 
 
 Shelley told me that he and Keats had mutually agreed, 
 in the same given time, (six months each,) to write a long 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 179 
 
 poem, and that the Endymion, and Revolt of Islam were 
 the fruits of this rivalry. But I shall have much to say 
 on the subject of these poems, in the course of these 
 memoirs ; and with this introduction of the reader to 
 Keats, let me turn to Shelley, and his eventful history. 
 
 During his stay at Ham'pstead he one evening found 
 in his walks a young woman who had fallen in a swoon 
 and was lying in the path. Shelley with his usual im- 
 petuosity of character rang at the bell of the nearest 
 villa, and insisted on the footman's aiding hinv in 
 carrying the poor unfortunate into the house. — The 
 man laughed, and shut the door in his face. When she 
 recovered from her fit, it seems that her illness had 
 arisen from intoxication. It is related of Burke that 
 he brought home to his wife a similar being, and his 
 biographer adds that she afterwards became a virtuous 
 member of society. It is a long time since I have spoken 
 of Mrs. Shelley. In the spring of 1816 a tragic circum- 
 stance occurred over which I could V^ish to draw a veil 
 — She alas cut off her days by suicide. 
 
 De Quincey, speaking of this dreadful event, says, " It 
 is one chief misery of a beautiful young woman, separated 
 from her natural protector, that her desolate situation 
 attracts and stimulates the calumnies of the malicious; 
 Stung by these calumnies," he adds, " and oppressed, as 
 I have understood, by the loneliness of her abode, she 
 threw herself into a, pond and was drowned." Now it 
 must be remembered that the separation took place in the 
 spring of 1814, and that the catastrophe occurred more 
 than two years afterwards, — a long period for her to have 
 brooded over her wrongs or misfortunes before they pro- 
 duced such frightful effects. Her fate was a dreadful 
 misfortune to her who perished, and him who survived. 
 
180 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I have said in the Shelley Papers, that it is impossible 
 to acquit Shelley of all blame in this calamity. From his 
 knowledge of her character, he must have been aware, as 
 has been said by another, "that she was an individual 
 unadapted to an exposure to principles of action, which if 
 even pregnant with danger when of self-organisation, are 
 doubly so when communicated to minds altogether unfit 
 for their reception;" and he should have kept an eye 
 over her conduct. 
 
 But his conduct admits of some palliatives. On their 
 separation, he delivered her back into the hands of her 
 father and eldest sister. He told them almost in these 
 words, that " his wife and himself had never loved each 
 other ; that to continue to drag on the chain, would only 
 be a protraction of torture to both, and that as they could 
 not legally extricate themselves from the Gordian knot, 
 they had mutually determined to cut it. That he wished 
 her all happiness, and should endeavour by sympathy 
 with another, to seek it himself. He added, that 
 having received no fortune with her, and her father 
 being in easy circumstances, he was not at the moment 
 able to make her the allowance he could wish ; that the 
 sum he then gave her was all he could command ; that, he 
 should for a time leave the child in their hands, and care ; 
 but should at a more advanced age, claim it; and Mr. 
 and Mrs. Shelley parted on good terms, though not without 
 reproaches and harsh language from the father. Little or 
 no blame as to the melancholy catastrophe that succeeded, 
 could therefore be imputed to Shelley ; that must fall on 
 her relations, who with the knowledge of her character 
 and conduct, by advice, or other measures, ought to have 
 watched over both. Having once confided her to their 
 superintendence, he might consider, with many others 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 181 
 
 similarly circumstanced, that his responsibility was over. 
 That he did not do so, his compunction, which brought on 
 a temporary derangement, proves. De Quincey, in 
 speaking of this circumstance, to which I alluded in 
 a memoir of Shelley, says that the mention of it arose 
 from a wish to gratify a fugitive curiosity in strangers ; 
 and adds, that it appears from the peace of mind which 
 Shelley is reported afterwards to have recovered for 
 a time, that he could not have had to reproach himself 
 with any harshness or neglect as contributing to the 
 shocking catastrophe. Without any compunctious 
 visitings, however, morbidly sensitive as he was, well 
 might it painfully excite him. Such a fate as hers, could 
 not be contemplated even by the most indifferent stranger,- 
 without a deep sympathy ; much more must the shock 
 have come home to the feelings of one who had owed 
 her two children. How pathetically does he in a dirge, not 
 unworthy of Shakspeare, give vent to his agonised heart : 
 
 That time is dead for ever, child ! 
 ' Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ; — 
 
 We look on the past, 
 
 And Btare aghast, 
 
 At the spectres wailing pale and ghast 
 
 Of hopes that thou and I beguiled 
 
 To death on Life's dark river. 
 
 There are some lines also commencing with "The cold earth 
 slept below " dated November 1815 which seem prophetic 
 of the destiny of this unfortunate lady, and end with 
 
 The Night did shed on thy dear head 
 
 Its frozen dew and thou didst lie 
 
 Where the bitter breath of the naked sky 
 
 Might visit thee at will. 
 
 but might not the date have been erroneous ? — The stanzas 
 written in the subsequent year, the to him fatal year of 
 1816. 
 
183 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 On the occasion of his wife's tragic end, Shelley wen 
 to Bath, where his children were, in order to bring then 
 home, and place them under the tutelage and tuition o 
 a lady whom he had chosen for that purpose, and wh( 
 was every way qualified for the office ; but Mr. "Westbrool 
 refused to give them up, and instituted against Shelley 
 a suit in Chancery, to prevent his obtaining possessioi 
 of them. The bill filed, and the answer to it, would, i: 
 they could be procured, be most interesting. I imagine 
 Shelley refers to the document he put in, in a letter tc 
 some anonymous friend, who had, he thought, overrated 
 its merit, for he says ; — " It was a forced, unimpassioned 
 piece of cramped and cautious argument." But few authors 
 are the best judges of their own compositions, and the 
 high idea which Shelley seems to have entertained oi 
 his correspondent's critical judgment, suggests that the 
 arguments were strong, and carried with them conviction.' 
 The petition presented to the court in the name of the 
 infant plaintiffs, states the marriage at Gretna Green, in the 
 yearlSll, and that they were the [only] issue of it; that the 
 father had deserted his wife and had since unlawfully co- 
 habited with another Woman ; that thereupon the mother 
 returned to the house of her father with the eldest of the 
 infants, and that the other was soon after born ; that they 
 had since that time been maintained by their mother, and 
 
 * Save for the untrue words at imperfectly made that I hare 
 Gretna Green the next paragraph is thought it worth while to rectify 
 taken from a note to the case of it. Appended to "these Memora- 
 Lyons».Blenkin in Jacob's Reports, bilia," as Medwin delights to call 
 vol. lii, p. 266. No doubt Medwin's his two volumes of excellent ma- 
 wondrous figure "7266" means terial grossly mishandled, are the 
 "p. 266". Ills reference " Eeg. petition, Shelley's reply, and 
 lib. xiii., 723," should be " Eeg. other Chancery papers in the 
 Lib. B. 1816, fol. 725.'" His trans- case, which I got copied from the 
 cnpt of the judgment as handed Eecords thirty or forty years ago. 
 to Jacob by Mr. Shadwell, Counsel They will be found at the close 
 in support of the petition, is so of this volume. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 183 
 
 lier father ; and that the mother had lately died. It was 
 then stated, that the father, since his marriage, had written 
 and published a work, in which he blasphemously denied 
 the truth of the Christian religion, and denied the existence 
 of a God, the Creator of the universe ; and that, since the 
 death of his wife, he had demanded that the children 
 should be delivered up to him, and that he intended, if 
 he could get hold of their persons, to educate them as he 
 thought proper. It goes on to say, that their maternal 
 grandfather had lately transmitted £2,000, four per cents., 
 into the names of trustees, upon trust for them, on 
 their attaining twenty-one, or marriage with his consent ; 
 and in the meantime to apply the dividends to their 
 maintenance and education. 
 
 This suit, unlike most of those in chancery, was not 
 long protracted, for on the 17th March, 1817, Lord Eldon 
 gave his judgment in writing, as appears in Eeg. lib. xiii., 
 723. See Jacob's Reports of Cases during the time of 
 Lord Eldon, vol. iii, 7266 :— 
 
 " I have read all the papers left with me, and all the cases cited. 
 With respect to the question of jurisdiction, it is unnecessary for me 
 to add to what I have already stated. After the example of Lord 
 Thurlow in Orby Hunter's case I shall act upon the notion that this 
 court has such jurisdiction until the House of Lords shall decide that 
 my Predecessors have been unwarranted in the exercise of it. 
 
 " I have carefully looked through the answer of the defendant to 
 see whether it affects the representation made in the affidavits filed 
 in support of the petition and in the exhibits referred to, of the 
 principles and conduct in life of the father in this case. I do not 
 perceive that the answer does affect that representation and no 
 affidavits are filed against the petition. Upon the case, as represented 
 in the affidavits, the exhibits, and the answer, I have formed my 
 opinion conceiving myself according to the practice of the court at 
 liberty to form it in the case of an infant whether the petition in its 
 allegations and suggestions has or has not accurately presented that 
 case to the court and having intimated in the course of the hearing 
 before me that I should so form myjudsment. 
 
184 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " There is nothing in evidence before me, sufficient to authorise me 
 in thinking that this gentleman has changed, before he arrived at 
 twenfy-five, the principles he avowed at nineteen. I think there is 
 ample evidence in the papers and in conduct that no such change has 
 taken place. 
 
 " I shall studiously forbear in this case, because it is unnecessary, 
 to state in judgment what this court might or might not be authorised 
 to do in the due exercise of its jurisdiction upon the ground of the 
 probable effect of a father's principles of any nature upon the educa- 
 tion of his children where such principles have not yet been called 
 into activity or manifested in such conduct in life, as this court 
 upon such an occasion as the present, would be bound to attend to. 
 
 " I may add that the case differs also, unless I misunderstand it, 
 from any case in which such principles having been called into 
 activity nevertheless in the probable range and extent of their 
 operation did not put to hazard the happiness and welfare of those 
 whose interests are entrusted to the protection of this court. 
 
 " This is a case in which as the matter appears to me, the father's 
 principles cannot be misunderstood ; in which his conduct, which I 
 cannot but consider as highly immoral, has been established in proof 
 and established as the effect of those principles ; conduct nevertheless 
 which he represents to himself and others, not as conduct to be con- 
 sidered as immoral, but to be recommended and observed in practice, 
 and as worthy of approbation. 
 
 " I consider this, therefore, as a case in which the father has demon- 
 strated that he must and does deem it to be matter of duty which 
 his principles impose on him to recommend to those whose opinions 
 and habits he may take upon himself to form, that conduct in some 
 of the most important relations of life, as moral and virtuous, which 
 the law calls upon me to consider as immoral and vicious, — conduct 
 which the law animadverts upon, as inconsistent with the duties of 
 parents in such relations of life, and which it considers as injuriously 
 affecting both the interests of such persons, and those of the community. 
 
 " I cannot therefore think that I ^hall be justified in delivering 
 over these children for their education exclusively to what is called 
 the care, to which Mr. S. wishes it to be entrusted. 
 
 " If I am wrong in the judgment which 1 have formed in this pain- 
 ful case I have the consolation to reflect that my judgment is not final. 
 
 "Much has been said upon the fact that these children are of 
 tender years. I have already explained in the course of the hearing 
 the grounds upon which I think that circumstance not so material as 
 to require me to pronounce no order. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 185 
 
 " I add that the attention which I have been called upon to give to 
 the consideration how far the pecuniary interests of these children may 
 be aifected has not been called for in vain. I should deeply regret that if 
 anyract of mine materially affects those interests. Bat to such interests 
 I cannot sacrifice what I deem to be interests of greater value and 
 higher importance. In -vvhat degree and to what extent the court will 
 interfere in this case against parental authority, cannot be fully de" 
 termined till after the Master's report. 
 
 " In the meantime I pronounce the following order." 
 The order restrained the father and his agents from taking possession 
 of the persons of the infants or intermeddling with them till further 
 order, and it was referred to the Master to enquire what would be 
 a proper plan for the maintenance and education of the infants, and 
 also to enquire with whom, and under whose care the infants should 
 remain during their minority or until further order. 
 
 In consequence of this decree of the court, the girl and 
 boy were placed under the guardianship of Miss Westbrook, 
 and Shelley told me in 1820, that either £200 or £300 
 a year out of his limited income, was made over to them 
 for the education and support of these children ; such sum 
 being deducted by his father from his annuity. The event 
 of this " trial, I think they call it," acted as a continual 
 canker on the mind of Shelley, and although by authority 
 of the solitary case of Mr. Orby Hunter, the court 
 assumed to* itself the control of a father's authority over 
 his children, (and the Shelley proceedings were after- 
 wards made an additional precedent in the case of 
 Mr. Long Wellesley,) more liberal times have come, 
 and it has since been declared by a Lord Chancellor, that 
 such a power shall never again be exercised. The argu- 
 ment of Mr. Long Wellesley, even on the admission of 
 irreligious or immoral conduct on the part of a father, was 
 unanswerable. He contended that it by no means follows 
 — such is the innate love of virtue and morality implanted 
 in us, and a sense of the effects of a dereliction of them 
 on their own happiness and that of others — that the worst 
 
186 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 of men would not wish to bring up his children irreli- 
 giously, much less immorally. But with the exception of 
 Shelley's separation from — called a desertion of, his wife, 
 and the writing and printing — for it was never published 
 — of Queen Mab, no act of immorality was proved against 
 him ; and, in confirmation of Byron's opinion, that he 
 was one of the most moral men he ever knew, I can cer- 
 tainly say, that as far as my experience of him goes, and 
 it extended through his whole life, with the exception only 
 of a very few years, both in example and moral precept, 
 in a high sense of honour, and regard to truth, and 
 all the qualities of a refined and perfect gentleman, 
 no one could have been a better guide and instructor of 
 youth. 
 
 What defence Shelley put in, we know not ; but with 
 reference to Queen Mab, from my knowledge of his 
 character, I should consider that, however he might have 
 modified, and did modify his opinions, he was the last 
 man to have recanted them, either by compulsion, or in 
 order to carry a point. The idea that the world would 
 have given him credit for making that recantation from 
 interested motives, and not from conviction, would alone 
 have been sufficient to deter him from such a step. 
 
 The poignancy of his regrets at being torn from his 
 children, and his indignation at the tyranny of that 
 tribunal, which he designates, — 
 
 darkest crest! 
 Of that foul-knotted, many-headed worm, 
 Which rends its mother s bosom— Priestly pest ! 
 Masked resurrection of a buried form,-^ 
 
 (meaning the Star-chamber,) was shown by his tremendous 
 curse on the Court of Chancery, and him who with " false 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 187 
 
 tears,"* habitual to him, wkich Shelley calls, "the mill- 
 stones braining men," delivered the judgment above 
 quoted. 
 
 Shelley, witness this anathema, had a tremendous 
 power of satire, and could wield the weapon at will with 
 a lash of bronze. Our English Juvenal Churchill's, and 
 Byron's satires, were mere gnat-bites compared with the 
 scorpion stings, which he inflicted. Did he send these 
 verses to Lord Eldon ? No, he never promulgated them, 
 and I believe he would have said, in the words that he 
 puts into the mouth of his Prometheus, — 
 
 It doth repent me, words are quick and vain, — 
 Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine. 
 I wish no living thing to suflfer pain. 
 
 But besides its haughty indignation, there breathes 
 through the poem the tenderness of a father's love. And 
 here I must remark, that what particularly afflicted him, 
 was, that his children should have been placed under the 
 guardianship of a person of mean education, and of a low 
 condition of life, totally unequal to the office, and who 
 from his narrow-mindedness would, he was convinced, 
 bring them up with a rooted hatred to their father. 
 
 After their removal, he never saw them.f They were 
 
 * Pandarus. But there was such laughing, Queen Hecuba laught till her 
 eyes ran sore. Cressida. With millstones. 
 
 Shakspeare. — Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 t The son died — the daughter whom he christened I^nthe after the 
 heroine of Queen Mab is still living — and married — to a Mr. Esdaile.^ 
 
 ' Mrs. Esdaile lived till the year ances got up through the generosity 
 
 1876. It is to be remembered that of Mr. Harrison in aid of the funds 
 
 Shelley's blood, by direct descent, of the memorial house at Borne 
 
 runs in the veins of the Esdailes bought to honour Shelley and Keats, 
 
 only, the descendants of his It would be ridiculous to set 
 
 daughterIanthe,someof whom were Medwin to rights about all this 
 
 present at the Haymarket Theatre Hai-riett business ; but at all events 
 
 in June 1912 to witness the perform- it must be here stated that Dr. and 
 
188 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 become dead to him, and lie sought for that affection denied 
 him in them, in the offspring which his second wife bore 
 him. No man was fonder of his children than Shelley ; 
 he loved them to idolatry, and clung to them as part and 
 parcel of himself. Sometimes a frightful dream came over 
 him, that these second pledges of affection would also be 
 wrested from him by the same ruthless and merciless j^aif, 
 and the dread of such an event would have proved an 
 effectual barrier to his ever taking up his abode in his 
 native land. Haunted by such frightful spectres, he wrote 
 the lines happily preserved from oblivion, inspired many 
 years after his first misfortune, by hearing that the chan- 
 cellor, had thrown out some hint of that intention. How 
 truly affecting are these stanzas, especially where, alluding 
 to the loss of his children, he paints the consequence 
 that must ensue from that withdrawal from his care : — ■ 
 
 They have taken thy brother and sister dear, 
 
 They have made them unfit for thee ; 
 They have withered the smile and dried the tear 
 
 That should have been sa,cred to me. 
 
 And they will ourse my name and thee, 
 
 Because we fearless are and free. 
 
 And in liosalind and Helen, he says, — 
 
 What avail 
 Or jjrayers or tears that chace denial. 
 From the fierce savage, nursed in hate; 
 What the knit soul, that, pleading and pale, 
 Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late 
 , It painted with its own delight ? — 
 We were divided. 
 
 No one felt more than Lord Byron, the inhuman and 
 unchristian decree of the Court of Chancery ; and speaking 
 
 Mrs. Hume, who looked after poet. Dowden's Life should be 
 lanthe and Charles Bysshe Shelley, consulted by those who hunger for 
 were nominated by their father, the readable details on this matter. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 189 
 
 )f the suit; he says, — "Had I been in England, I would have 
 noved heaven and earth to have reversed such a decision." 
 
 Shelley was now enfranchised from his matrimonial 
 ;ies — ^but according to the author of the article in the 
 Revue des deux mondes — to quote his words — neither 
 liimself or his mistress thought, of cementing their union 
 by marriage ; but it was the destiny of this enemy of that 
 state to be twice wedded — " Son pere," he adds, " sut le 
 iecider a ce second hymen." — There the reviewer was 
 mistaken. It was not his father but Lord Byron who 
 persuaded him to this step, contrary hot only to his own 
 principles but those of Mary "Wollstonecraft Godwin.^ 
 
 Ia the spring of 1817, Shelley took a house at Marlow, 
 and there passed nearly a year. His choice of Bucking- 
 hamshire, and of this town, as an abode, was chiefly owing 
 to its being at an easy distance from London, and on the 
 banks of his favorite river the Thames. Here it was, that in 
 addition to Prince Athanase, some minor lyrics, and part 
 of Rosalind and Helen, he composed The Revolt of Islam, 
 and wrote a pamphlet, now lost, on the occasion of the 
 Princess Charlotte's death, eii.t\tledi,The Hermit of Marlow."^ 
 In the spring of 1835, 1 made an excursion to Marlow, in 
 order to visit scenes, that were among the sources of 
 inspiration of Laon and Cythna, as the first edition of 
 
 1. The only person entitled to this when Thomas Roddhadit reprinted, 
 
 name was Godwin's daughter by apparently with great care. En- 
 
 his first wife Mary Godwin, born titled An Address to the People on the 
 
 Wollstonecraft, though I suspect Death of the Princess Charlotte, asaviheA 
 
 Medwin means the mother, not the to "The Hermit of Marlow," and 
 
 daughter. Shelley consented to an bearing the motto " We pity the 
 
 immediate marriage with Mary at plumage, butforgetthedyingbird,'' 
 
 her own earnest/ wish and her it is really a wail for the poor 
 
 father's. See DoWden, ii. 71. fellows Brandreth, Turner, and 
 
 2 The pamphlet is neither lo<t Ludlam, who were executed for 
 
 nor entitled The Hermit of Marlow, "high treason" on the 7th of 
 
 Although no copy of the original November 1817,— a wail, too, for 
 
 has yet been traced, there was at the death of Liberty in England, 
 least one extant several years later. 
 
190 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The Revolt of Islam was entitled. The house he inhabited 
 was pointed out to me, by almost the first person, a middle- 
 aged man, of whom I enquired. It was in a retired 
 street, and commanded no view — a comfortable abode, 
 with gothic windows, and behind it a garden and shady 
 orchard plot, of some extent, carpeted with the greenest 
 turf, which must have afforded a delightful retreat in 
 the summer noon. Not only the town itself, with its 
 church and bridge, and old buildings,is highly picturesque, 
 but the environs are strikingly beautiful, and remarkable 
 for their fine country seats ; Daney, so called from 
 a Danish camp having once existed here, whose entrench- 
 ment may still be traced, — Hanneker, built by Inigo Jones, 
 and many other noble residences, inhabited by families of 
 wealth and distinction, diversify the landscapes, and make 
 them an enchantment. Nor must I forget the fall of the 
 river, over an artificial embankment immediately above 
 the town, where the eye crossing the richest* meadows, 
 rests on the lovely beech groves of Bisham Abbey.^ 
 
 " In no place are riches and poverty presented in more prominent 
 contrast. Lace-making is the occupation of the poor, women heipg 
 the operatives, who lose their health by sedentary labour, for which 
 they are badly paid. The poor-laws ground to the dust those who had 
 just risen above pauperage, and were obliged to pay them. The 
 changes produced by peace following a long war, were heavily felt ; 
 the trade which had been their support, flowing into other channels, 
 produced great destitution and misery, which a bad harvest contributed 
 to enhance." 
 
 Shelley had a very early sympathy for the working 
 classes. I remember the very harrowing effect which 
 Southey's Don Esprietto's Letters produced on him in 1810 
 or 1811 ; one of the most frightful, faithful pictures ever 
 
 'These passages about Marlow editorial note on ITie Bewiio/JsJfflnt. 
 and its inliabitants seem to have Great liberties are, as usual, taken 
 been adapted from Mary Shelley's with the text. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 191 
 
 drawn of the wretchedness, vice, and immorality tliat seem 
 necessary concomitants of an overproduction of manufac- 
 tures. The impression this feelingly written work made 
 on Shelley, was ineffaceable, and gave rise to the apo- 
 strophe in Queen Mai, — 
 
 Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade 
 
 No solitary virtue dares to spring, 
 
 But poverty and wealth with equal hand 
 
 Scatter their withering curses, and unfold 
 
 The doors of premature and violent death. 
 
 To pining famine, and full-fed disease, 
 
 To all that shares the lot of human life, 
 
 Which poisoned body and soul scarce drags the chain 
 
 That lengthens as it goes, and clanks behind. 
 
 And again : 
 
 His host of blind and unresisting dupes 
 The despot numbers, from his cabinet 
 These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, 
 Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, 
 Beneath a vulgar master, to perform 
 A task of cold and brutal drudgery — 
 , Hardened to hope — insensible to fear — 
 ■ ' f Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine, 
 
 Mere wheels of work and articles of trade. 
 
 •4 
 
 In a note appended to these passages, penned with all 
 that sincerity and convictionof truth, thatuneompromising 
 spirit that characterises all his writings, a note in which 
 he deprecates the luxury of the rich, calling it " a remedy 
 that aggravates, while it pollutes the countless divisions 
 of society," he adds that " the poor are set to labour — ^for 
 what ? Not for the food for which they famish — not for 
 the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by 
 the cold of their miserable hovels — not those comforts of 
 civilization, without which, civilized man is far more 
 miserable than the meanest savage, oppressed as he is by all 
 its insidious evils, withia the daily and taunting prospect 
 
193 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited befc 
 him. No! for the pride of power — for the miseral 
 isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundred 
 part of society." 
 
 In this town of Marlow, he had an opportunity, not 
 visiting quite such loathsome dens as described in the 
 Letters of a Spaniard, where the factory lords stifle tht 
 victims in the great hotbeds of crime and poUutic 
 Manchester and Leeds, — but he saw enough to shock ai 
 disgust him. He did all in his power to alleviate t 
 condition of the poor lace-makers of Marlow ; " he visit 
 them in their damp and fireless abodes — he supplied the 
 with blankets and coals and food and medicines, and frc 
 tending one of the sick, caught the ophthalmia, whii 
 nearly deprived him of sight." 
 
 These facts I had confirmed by a lady still reside 
 there, one of its great ornaments, who did ample justice 
 Shelley's memory, and related many individual anecdot 
 of his benevolence and charity, that called for her warme 
 sympathy and admiration. I may add, that his name 
 still perpetuated among the inhabitants, who are proud 
 having harboured the poet, and counted him among thf 
 number. I was surprised indeed, considering the low a] 
 disgraceful state of education in England, to find th 
 any of them were acquainted with his works, and haiL 
 the circumstance as a pledge of his immortality^ — and i 
 immortal work is The Revolt of Islam. 
 
 He had originally, it would seem, after the Dim 
 Comedy, intended to have written it in terza rima, of whi 
 he made an experiment in Prince AtJianase ; but so^ 
 after abandoned that metre', as too monotonous and ar 
 ficial, and adopted instead the stanza of Spenser, which ^ 
 wields as none have ever done before him. The fragme 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 193 
 
 of Prince Athanase is valuable, as the first conception 
 of a great picture by a great master. In this sketch of 
 the prince, we find the germs of the character of Laon. 
 Athanase is a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, ani- 
 mated by a resolution to confer the boons of civil and 
 religious liberty on his fellow men ; and the poet doubtless 
 meant to have created for him a companion endued with 
 the same enthusiasm. 
 
 A lovelier creature than Cythna, heart never conceived 
 — a purer love than those of Laon and Cythna words 
 could not express. The story I shall not analyse — it is 
 indeed treated with the simplicity of Grrecian art, and 
 might have furnished Thorwaldsen with a subject for 
 a series of has reliefs. 
 
 This poem occupied six months. It was composed as 
 he floated in his skiff on the Thames, reclined beneath 
 its willow and alder fringed banks, or took refuge from 
 the noonday solstician heats, in some island only the 
 haunt of the swan. A Marlow gentleman told me, SheUey 
 spent frequently whole nights in his boat, taking up his 
 occasional abode at a small inn down the river which I 
 imagine must have been at Cookham. We find everywhere 
 scattered about this poem, strikingly faithful drawings of 
 the scenery near and about Marlow ; and with The Revolt 
 of Islam in my hand, I for nearly a month, traversed the 
 stream up and down, from the sequestered and solemn 
 solitudes of the deep woods of Clifden, on the one hand, 
 to the open sunniness of the enamelled meadpws of Henley 
 on the other, and often fancied myself in the very spots 
 so graphically depicted. The opening in that most grace- 
 ful dedication, — 
 
 So now my summer task is ended, Mary, 
 
194 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 proves that he had been passing this summer in great 
 isolation from his family, and is a tribute to the virtues 
 of one of the noblest-minded of her sex, — "a child of 
 glorious parents,'' as he styles her, and inheriting much 
 of the talent of both, which has gained for her a name, 
 reflecting honour on either. 
 
 The life which Shelley led al^J^rlow, occasionally 
 varied by short trips to London, was, as far as the society 
 of the place was concerned, a most isolated one. Among 
 his principal amusements, were boating and pistol practice, 
 and it was complaiiied that he " frightened the place from 
 its propriety ; " and one of his neighbours pretended that 
 she was afraid of going out for fear of being shot ; no 
 doubt a very false alarm. Among his visitors may be 
 mentioned, Mr. Peacock, and his old college friend, 
 Mr. Hogg ; to the latter of whom we are indebted for 
 filling up so important a chasm in Shelley's history, his 
 Oxonian career, — materials, of which I have largely 
 availed myself. The first of these gentlemen has not had 
 the reputation to which Nightmare Abbey, and his other 
 novels, justly entitled him. " They were too good for 
 his age," as Byron said, and in this novel the author seized 
 on some points of Shelley's character, and some habits of 
 his life, when he painted Scythrop. It has been erro- 
 neously supposed also that Godwin in his Mandeville had 
 Shelley in his eye, but if it was so, that constitutional 
 antipathy and suspicion which soon sprung up into hatred 
 and contempt and barren misanthropy which he ascribes 
 to the hero of that tale, were foreign from Shelley. But 
 there is a work of Mr. Peacock's, to which a more glaring 
 injustice has been done,— I allude to Rhododaphne. The 
 first time I met with that exquisite poem, was at Paris, 
 where I saw it lying on a lady's table. She told me it 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 195 
 
 was her favourite poemj and that she read it several 
 times every year, and with increased pleasure. 
 
 It is something to have contributed to the happiness of 
 one human being. Shelley agree(i with her as to the 
 merits of RTiododaphne, for he says, — " It is a book from 
 which I confess, I ^|^ted extraordinary success." But 
 although containi:^P|issages that throw into shade all 
 that Rogers and Campbell in their cold and stilted Didactics 
 have produced, it fell dead from the press. Let the 
 author console himself in this age of reviews and coteries, 
 with the reflection, that the EpipsycJiidion met afterwards 
 with a similar fate, — that it rose from its ashes, and that 
 his may yet do so ; if it should not, I hope that in the 
 island where Ariosto places all the lost treasures of earth, 
 may be preserved among those neglected works, which 
 have like straws been swept down the current of time, for 
 the recreation of " the Translated" Rhododaphne. 
 
 In six months of this year, to write and correct the press 
 of such a work as Laon and Cythna, was no slight task ; 
 perhaps the mental excitement gave a diversion to his 
 thoughts, and it must have required a rare power of 
 self-condensation and abstraction, to have enabled him 
 to write under the different afflictions that beset him. 
 The publicity of the proceedings in Chancery, coupled 
 with the death of his vife, raised a host of detractors 
 against him; Queen Mai was universally decried, his 
 children made over to strangers — and to crown all, his 
 health in a very precarious state. He had formed an 
 idea that the situation of his house at Marlow was an 
 insalubrious one — that a warm climate was absolutely 
 essential to him ; and this, and various other reasons, 
 among which, the conviction that the breach between 
 himself and his relations was irreparable, weighing 
 
196 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 more than all tlie rest — induced him to come to 
 resolution of quitting England, with scarcely a hope c 
 revisiting it. He reached Milan on the 32d of Marcl 
 1818, and gave an interesting account of his excursion t 
 Como, in a letter to his friend Mr. Peacock. 
 
 " Since I last wrote to you, we have been at Como, looking fc 
 a house. This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld of beauty, wit 
 the exception of the arbutus-islands of Killarney. It is long an 
 narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among tl 
 mountains and the forests. We sailed from the town of Como i 
 a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspeci 
 presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Com 
 and that village, are covered with chesnut forests, which sometim< 
 descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoar 
 branches. But usually the immediate border of the shore is compose 
 of laurel trees, and bay and myrtle, and wild fig-trees,, and olive 
 which grow in the crevices of rocks, and overhang the caverns, an 
 shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of th 
 waterfalls." 
 
 I have been thus minute in the description of thi 
 lake, because he here lays the scene of Bosalind an, 
 Helen. I have often read and with ever-new delight th 
 exquisite Lines with which this Poem closes. " Oh si si 
 omnia." I was mistaken in supposing he had past th 
 summer at Como ^ ; in fact his stay there was confined t 
 two days, for he found the villas far too expensive fo 
 him, tho' it appears he had had the intention, abandonei 
 for the above reason, of taking the Villa Pliniana s 
 minutely described by Pliny the younger with its intei 
 mitting fountain, and Cypresses that overcone it only t 
 be matched by those in the Burial grounds of Constanti 
 nople. Eegrets that so few of Shelley's letters should hav 
 been saved, will be awakened by the perusal of those whic] 
 
 > See Conversations of Lord Byrm, edition. In the two-volume editio 
 1824, p. 251 of the original quarto of 1825, see ii. 109. 
 and p. 311 of the (revised) octavo 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 197 
 
 during Ms first visit to Italy he addressed to Mr. Peacock. 
 These letters are very valuable, nor do more splendid 
 specimens of writing exist in any- language. It is true 
 that (as confessed by Mrs. Shelley) his early impressions 
 regarding the Italians were formed in ignorance and 
 precipitation, and became altogether altered after a longer 
 stay in the country ; and that his knowledge of painting, 
 though he exhibits a high feeling of art, was a very limited 
 one ; and his criticisms on the works of particular masters, 
 shew but a very superficial acquaintance with the subject. 
 He used to say that he understood statuary, and there he 
 was right — but not painting ; not meaning that he was 
 in any way insensible to the merits of pictures — of the 
 divine Eaphael's, for instance, whom I have often thought 
 Shelley resembled in expression, (I allude to the portrait 
 in the Louvre) as well as genius, though it took a different 
 direction, — but that he did not know the styles of different 
 masters — a knowledge which is only to be acquired by a 
 microscopic eye, and the faculty of comparison. Of his 
 appreciation of the ancient sculptures, I shall have to 
 speak hereafter, — there he was at home. 
 
 After sojourning at Milan for nearly a month, during 
 which he appears to have received but one letter. from 
 England, on the 1st May he proceeded towards Pisa. He 
 was much struck with the well irrigated, rich plain of the 
 Milanese, and the sight of the vineyards about Parma 
 revived all his classical recollections — his memories of 
 the Georgics. "The vines," he says, "here, are particularly 
 picturesque. They are treUissed on immense stakes, and 
 the trunks of them are moss-grown and hoary with age. 
 Unlike the French vines, which creep lowly along the 
 ground, they form rows of intertwined bowers, which when 
 the leaves are green, and the red grapes hanging among 
 
198 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 their branches, will aflford a delightful shadow to those 
 who sit upon the moss beneath. 
 
 From Pisa he proceeded to Leghorn, where he staid [sic] 
 a month. There he made acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. 
 G-isborne, the latter of whom, he says, was very amiable 
 and accomplished, and by the former of whom he was 
 initiated in the beauties of Calderon, from the purchase 
 of some odd volumes of his plays, and Autos, which were 
 ever after his constant companions. He now retreated 
 from the summer heats to the baths of Lucca, posted in 
 umbrageous chesnut forests. He did not there forget to 
 visit the Prato fiorito, a spot on the mountain, carpeted 
 with jonquils, from which the place takes the name of the 
 Meadow of Flowers. So powerful is their odour, that 
 many persons have fainted with their excess of sweetness, 
 and Shelley has described to me, that they were nearly 
 producing on him the same effect.^ 
 
 Some time in August, leaving his family at the baths, he 
 set out for Florence. The view from the Boboli gardens,, 
 in a note which he shewed me — a view almost unparalleled 
 — inspired him with the following burst of poetry : 
 
 " You see below Florence, a smokeless city, -with its domes and 
 spires occupying the vale, and beyond to the right, the Apennines, 
 whose base extends even to the walls, and whose summits are inter- 
 sected by ashen-coloured clouds. The green valleys of these mountains 
 which gently unfold themselves upon the plains, and the intervening 
 hills, covered with vineyards and olive plantations, are occupied by 
 
 ' Hence, doubtless, the passage cases where the person thus affected 
 in EpipsycMdion (451-3) : — actually loses consciousness are 
 
 And from the moss violets and ;^''^- ^'■- '^^^ "^ *li« <?'»'''«. f 
 
 jonquils peep, Parrmssum affords a case in point 
 
 And dart their arrowy odour ^^J^^. ^7^°°^ ti^ daughter and 
 
 through the brain sister-in-law were intimate friends 
 
 Till you might faint with that of my Parents ; and Frances Brasse, 
 
 delicious pain. Ju\'i*"S?*!''' *°ld me many times 
 
 that ner latner could not be in the 
 This effect of the smell of jonquils presence of jonquils without " faint- 
 is not extremely uncommon ; but ing dead away." 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 199 
 
 the villas •which are as it were another city — a Babylon of palaces 
 and gardens. In the midst of the picture rolls the Amo, now full 
 with the winter rains, through woods, and bounded by the agrial 
 snowy heights [var. lee. summits] of the Apennines. On the right 
 a magnificent buttress of lofty-cragged hills, overgrown with wilder- 
 ness, juts out into many shapes over a lovely valley, and approaches 
 the walls of the city. Fiesole [var. lee. Cascini] and other villages 
 occupy the pinnacles and abutments of those hills, over which are 
 seen at intervals the aerial [var. lee. etherial] mountains, hoary with 
 anow, and intersected with clouds. The valley below is covered with 
 cypress groves, whose obeliskine forms of intense green, pierce the 
 grey shadow of the wintry hill that overlooks them. The cypresses 
 too of the garden form a magnificent foreground of accumulated 
 verdure, pyramids of dark green and shining cones rising out of 
 a mass, between which are cut, like caverns, recesses conducting into 
 walks." 1 
 
 His present visit to Florence was a short one. He was 
 anxious to reach Venice. There he found Lord Byron 
 domiciliated. Julian and Maddalo, which he calls a 
 Conversation, from its familiar style, gives a very valuable, 
 and, no doubt, faithful picture of the manner of life led 
 there by the noble poet, and the sketch of him in the 
 preface is highly valuable. Shelley says, that without 
 mixing much in the society of his countrymen, he resides 
 chiefly in his magnificent palace in that city. " He is," he 
 adds, " a person of most consummate genius, and capable, 
 if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming 
 the redeemer of his degraded country." In his sketch, he 
 does not spare his friend, but winds it up with, — " Maddalo 
 is proud, because I can find no word to express the con- 
 centerecl and impatient feelings which consume him ; but 
 it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems 
 
 ^ Medwin seems to have come he was there repeating himself; 
 
 upon his transcript of this note for he struck the interpolation out. 
 
 again when amending the Life and Perhaps it is fair to import into the 
 
 to have written it again, somewhat text here any correction obtainable 
 
 diflferently, in another part of the from that page, such as overhangs for 
 
 book also to have discovered that overlooks. 
 
200 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to trample, for in social life no person can be more gentle, 
 patient, and unassuming. He is cheerfal, frank, and 
 witty." 
 
 CMlde Harold and Beppo are not more different char- 
 acters than were the Byron of Geneva, and the Byron of 
 Venice. Mr. Moore has delighted to rake up all the filthy 
 details of his low amours in that degraded city, of which 
 Shelley speaking, says, "he had no conception of the 
 excess to which avarice, cowardice, superstition, ignorance, 
 powerless lust, and all the brutality which degrade human 
 nature, could be carried, till he had passed a few days 
 there." He has also drawn a portrait of his noble poet 
 friend, which reminds usof what Chesterfield saidof Boling-. 
 broke : " His youth was there distracted by the tumult 
 and storm of pleasures in which he most licentiously 
 triumphed, devoid of all decorum. His fine imagination 
 often heated and exhausted the body in- deifying the 
 prostitute of the night, and his convivial joys were pushed 
 to all the extravagance of frantic Bacchanals. His passions 
 injured both his understanding and character." 
 
 But without quoting what Shelley says, in speaking of 
 his dissipations, Julian and Maddalo is also precious as 
 a faithful picture of Venice. We seem to sail with the 
 two friends in their gondola — to view with them that 
 gorgeous sunset, from Lido, when — 
 
 They turned, and saw the city, and could mark. 
 How from its many isles in the broad gleam, 
 Its temples and its palaces did seem 
 Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 
 
 The madhouse, so graphically drawn, on the island, I 
 know well; but whether the harrowing histoiry of the 
 maniac was imaginary, or but the dim shadowing out of 
 his own sufferings, and a prognostic of what might befal 
 himself, I cannot pretend to determine. Who can read it 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 201 
 
 witliout shedding tears? and how thrilling is the com- 
 ment of Maddalo, on the destinies of himself and Julian ! 
 
 Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poverty^ by wrong — 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song. 
 
 I have often heard Shelley expatiate on Venice with 
 rapture. It is a city that realised all his fairy visions of 
 happiness. The contrast of its former greatness with its 
 present state of degradation and decay — its once proud 
 independence, when it gave laws to the Mediterranean, 
 and now abject slavery to the Goth, were fruitful sources 
 of poetic inspiration. He might here , " have dreamed 
 away life," he said, in that stillness and repose that was 
 a balm to his wounded spirit, — have 
 
 Read in gondolas by day, or night, 
 Having the little brazen lamp alight, 
 Unseen, uninterrupted. 
 
 Books, pictures were there. Casts from all the statues 
 
 that were twin-born with poetry, 
 
 All 
 Men seek in towns, with little to recal 
 Regrets for the green country. 
 
 And he adds, " that if he had been an unconnected man, 
 he should never have quitted it." But Venice was not 
 destined to be his dreamland. 
 
 Circumstances rendering it eligible that Shelley should 
 remain a few weeks in the neighbourhood of Venice, he 
 sent for Mrs. Shelley and his children from the baths of 
 Lucca, and accepted the offer of Lord Byron, to lend him 
 the use of his villa near Este ; and here they took up their 
 temporary abode. 
 
 1 Medwin has not altered poverty misquotation of his own, from the 
 to poetry as he should have done : it first. 
 
303 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 "I Capuccini, which takes its name from a Capuchin convent 
 suppressed by the French, is picturesquely situate. The house is 
 overhung by the ancient castle of Bstei the habitation of owls and 
 bats, but formerly the residence of the Medici family, before they 
 migrated to Florence. From the garden they looked over the wide 
 flat plains of Lombardy, in which they saw the sun and moon rise 
 and set, and all the golden magnificence of autumnal clouds, 
 pleasures which they enjoyed the more after the contrast of the 
 secluded chesnut-overshadowing ravine of the Bagni di Lucca." 
 
 It was at I Capuccini that lie etched, tho' it appears 
 that he did not complete the Poem till his stay at Naples, 
 his magnificent " Lines among the Euganean Hills" — the 
 Introduction to which is steeped in a contagious melan- 
 choly, an overwhelming despondency. 
 
 Here an anecdote is told of Shelley, that is highly idio- 
 syncratic of him, and marks that " gentleness and firmness 
 which met without destroying each other," in his character. 
 Their infant girl was seized with one of those disorders 
 prevalent in that season from the heat, and there being no 
 good medical advice nearer than Venice, they hastened 
 towards it with the child. His firmness and intrepidity 
 must have been indeed great, when they could so far 
 overawe an Austrian guard, as to make them disobey 
 orders. He had no passport, but they allowed him to quit 
 Fusina without one. 
 
 The loss of this child — the first misfortune of that kind 
 its parents had to endure — hastened their journey towards 
 Rome, after only a three weeks' sojourn at Este, and they 
 arrived with their son William at Ferrara on the 8th of 
 November. 
 
 Speaking of Tasso, he says, " that his situation was 
 widely different from that of any persecuted being at the 
 present day, for public opinion might now, at length, be 
 awakened to an echo that would startle the oppressor." 
 Alas ! he did not find it so himself. They went afterwards 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 203 
 
 to see the prison in the hospital of Santa Anna. "The 
 dungeon," he says, " is low and dark, and when I say it is 
 really a very decent dungeon, I speak as one who has 
 seen those in the Doge's palace at Venice. But it is a 
 horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest thing that 
 ever wore th^ shape of man, much more for one of delicate 
 susceptibilities, and elevated fancies. It is low, and has a 
 grated window, and being sunk some feet below the level 
 of the earth, is full of unwholesome damps." 
 
 I shall not trace the journey of the Shelleys through 
 Bologna, Eimini, Foligno, along the Via Flaminia, and 
 Temi. But I cannot resist giving an extract from one of 
 his admirable letters to Mr. Peacock, containing a des- 
 cription of the Cascata di Marmore — ^the fall of the Vellino. 
 " The glacier of, and the source of the. Arveiron is the 
 greatest spectacle I ever saw.^ This is the second. Imagine 
 a river, sixty feet in breadth, with a vast volume of waters, 
 the outlet of a great lake among the [higher] mountains, 
 falling three hundred feet into a sightless gulph of snow- 
 white vapour, which bursts up for ever and for ever from a 
 circle of black crags, and thence leaping downwards, makes 
 five or six other cataracts, each a hundred and fifty feet high, 
 which exhibit, on a smaller scale, and with beautiful and 
 sublime variety, the same appearances. But words, and 
 far less [could] painting, will not express it." 
 
 In reading this, I could not help thinking of Wilson's 
 enthusiastic exclamation, — " Well done, water ! " and ex- 
 cepting Ruysdael, perhaps no one ever represented on 
 canvass what Shelley goes on to depict. "The ever- 
 
 > "The glaciers of Montanvert and letter of the 20th of November 1818. 
 
 the source of the Arveiron is the Lower down he spoke of the minor 
 
 grandest spectacle I ever saw.'' cataracts as "each fifty or a hundred 
 
 Such are the words Shelley wrote feet high." 
 to Peacock, on this scene, in his 
 
204 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 moving stream, coming in thick and tawney folds, flaking 
 off like solid snow, gliding down a mountain. The 
 imagination is bewildered with it." 
 
 I shall now bring the travellers to Eome. 
 
 In his first visit to the capitol [sic] of the world, after 
 a hasty glance at its ruins, he passed on to Naples, where he 
 hoped to find in its mild climate, some alleviation of his 
 bodily sufferings, and in the scenery of its bay, a sooth- 
 ing balsam to the wounds of his harassed and weary 
 spirit. But this object was not to be attained. Nor did 
 his excursions to BaisB prove a "medicine to his mind 
 diseased." I have often heard him dilate with rapture on 
 the beauty of that divine Bay, as he hung over the side of 
 the boat, and gazed on the subaqueous ruins of the wrecked 
 palaces overspread with marine flowering plants and 
 weeds, that grow luxuriantly about them.^ In speaking of 
 these, he observed that they sympathise, like those on land, 
 with the change of the season. He was a close observer of 
 Nature — and without professing much scientific knowledge 
 unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observation on 
 natural objects, he knew every plant by its name, and was 
 familiar with the history and habits of the productions of 
 the Earth — a necessary acquirement for a Poet. 
 
 A singular circumstance occurred to Shelley, which, after 
 his death, I talked over with Lord Byron at Pisa-^for he 
 was equally acquainted with the story, as told to us mutually, 
 and which he more than once made a subject of conversation 
 with me during my visit to Pisa. The night before his 
 departure from London, in 1814, he received a visit from 
 a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connec- 
 tions, and whose disappearance from the world of fashion, 
 
 ^ See the Ode to the West Wiru^ menon, — paraphrased by Medwin 
 and Shelley's note on this pheno- here both verse and prose. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 205 
 
 in which she moved, may furnish to those curious in such 
 inquiries a clue to her identity. The force of love could 
 not go further, when a person so richly endowed, as he de- 
 scribed her, could so far forget the delicacy of her sex, and 
 the regard due to the character of woman, as to make the 
 following confession : 
 
 " I have long known you in your Queen Mah. In the 
 empassioned tenderness of your picture of lanthe, I have 
 read and understood the heart that inspired it. In your 
 uncompromising passion for liberty — your universal and 
 disinterested benevolence — your aspiring after the ame- 
 lioration of the state of mankind, and the happiness of 
 your species, and more than all, in your sentiments respect- 
 ing the equality of conditions, and the unfettered union 
 between the sexes, — your virtues, removed from all selfish 
 considerations, and a total disregard of opinion, have 
 made you in my eyes the heau ideal of what I have long 
 sought for in vain. I long for the realisation of my day 
 and night dream. I come, after many vain and useless 
 struggles with myself, to tell you that I have renounced 
 my husband, my name, my family and friends ; and have 
 resolved, after mature deliberation, to follow you through 
 the world, to attach my fortune, which is considerable, to 
 yours, in spite of all the obloquy that [may] be cast on me." 
 Shelley was at that moment, on the eve, as I have said, 
 of parting from England with one to whom he was devot- 
 edly attached ; — none but a perfect gentleman, (and none, 
 as admitted by Byron, surpassed him in the qualities of 
 one,) could have succeeded in acting with a high-born and 
 high-bred woman, a becoming part in such an arduous 
 scene. He could not but feel deep gratitude — admiration 
 without bounds, for that enthusiastic and noble-minded 
 person ; who had not shrunk from a confession — a con- 
 
206 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 fession hard indeed for her to have made — an avowal of 
 love that must have cost her so many struggles to hav 
 clothed in words. I shall not endeavour to throw th 
 whole of this interview into dialogue, or to paint th 
 language in which he extricated himself from the painfu 
 task of relieving both, by the explanation of his engage 
 ment ; or in what terms he endeavoured to infiise a bain 
 into her wounded soul, to soothe her hurt pride, — I ha( 
 almost said, hurt affection. Shelley detailed to me at mucl 
 length, and with more than his accustomed eloquence 
 their parting ; and though I do not pretend to remembe: 
 his exact words, their purport has not escaped me. 
 
 Sh6 said she had listened to his explanation witl 
 patience ; she ought to listen to it with resignation. Th( 
 
 pride of a woman — the pride of a , might have 
 
 revolted to acknowledge, much more to feel, that she lovec 
 in vain ; she said she might conceal all that she endured— 
 might have died under the blow she had received — thai 
 death-blow to her heart, and all its hopes, or might spurn 
 him from her with disdain, chase him from her presence 
 with rage, or call to her aid revenge, that cicatrice to a 
 wounded spirit ; but that she would rise superior to such 
 littleness. Had she been base — very base — she should 
 no longer have esteemed him, — that she believed herself 
 worthy of him, and would not prove she was otherwise, 
 by leaving on his memory a feeling towards her of con- 
 tempt. You are rich, she added, in resources ; comfort 
 at least by your pity a heart torn by your indifference ; 
 lend me some aid to endure the trial you have brought 
 upon me— the greatest it is allotted to one of us to 
 endure— blighted hopes— a life of loneliness— withered 
 affections. 
 
 " Cold indeed would have been my heart," said Shelley 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 207 
 
 to her, "if I should eyer cease to acknowledge with 
 gratitude, the flattering, the undeserved preference you 
 have so nobly confessed to me ; the first, the richest gift 
 a woman can bestow — the only one worth having. Adieu, 
 may God protect, support, and bless you ! Your image will 
 never cease to be associated in my mind with all that is 
 noble, pure, generous, and lovely. Adieu." 
 
 Thus they parted ; but this meeting, instead of extin- 
 guishing, only seemed to fan the flame in the bosom of the 
 Incognita. This infatuated lady followed him to the 
 Continent. He had given her a clue to his place of des- 
 tination, Geneva. She traced him to Seoheron — used to 
 watch him with her glass in his water parties on the lake. 
 On his return to England, he thought she had long for- 
 , gotten him; but her constancy was un tired. During his 
 journey to Rome and Naples, she once lodged with him at 
 the same hotel, en route,a,iid flnally arrived at the latter city 
 the same day as himself. He must have been more or less 
 than man, to have been unmoved by the devotedness of 
 this unfortunate and infatuated lady. At Naples, he told 
 me that ^ they met and when he learnt from her all those 
 particulars of her wanderings, of which he had been pre- 
 viously ignorant ; and at Naples — she died. Mrs. Shelley, 
 who was unacquainted with all those circumstances, 
 in a note to the poems written at Naples, describes 
 what SheUey suffered during this winter, which she 
 attributes solely to physical causes, but which had a far 
 deeper root. 
 
 " Constant and poignant physical sufferings," she says, " exhausted 
 
 him, and though he preserved the appearance of cheerfulness, and often 
 
 enjoyed our wanderings in the environs of Naples and our excursions on 
 
 its sunny sea, yet many hours v^ere passed v^hen his thoughts, shadowed 
 
 ' Medwin was not at Naples with by this clumsy phrase to deceive 
 Shelley, and probably did ndtintend the reader. 
 
208 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 by illness, became gloomy, and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses 
 which he hid from me, from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid, 
 but too natural bursts of discontent and sadness ; " and she adds, 
 "that it was difficult to imagine that any melancholy he shewed, was 
 aught hut the effect of the constant pain to which he was a martyr." 
 
 Had she been able to disentangle the threads of the 
 
 mystery, she would have attributed his feelings to more 
 
 than purely physical causes. Among the verses which 
 
 she had probably never seen till they appeared in 
 
 print, was the Invocation to Misery, an idea taken from 
 
 Shakspeare — Making Love to Misery, betokening his 
 
 soul lacerated to rawness by the tragic event above detailed 
 
 the death of his unknown adorer. The state of his 
 
 mind must indeed have been bordering on madness — 
 
 hanging on the devouring edge of mental darkness, when 
 
 he could give utterance to those wonderful lines : — 
 
 Hasten to the bridal bed ! 
 Underneath the grave 'tis spread ! 
 In darkness may our love be hid, 
 Oblivion be our coverlid ! 
 We may rest, and none forbid. 
 
 Kiss me ! Oh ! thy lips are cold ! 
 Round my neck thine arms enfold, 
 They are soft — yet chill and dead, 
 And thy tears upon my head, 
 Burn like points of frozen lead. 
 
 The epithet soft in the last stanza, and hum like points 
 of frozen lead, surpass in the sublimity of horror, anything 
 in our own, or any other language. 
 
 This poem was shewn to me by Shelley in 1821, and 
 by his permission, with many others, copied into my 
 common-place book, and appeared for the first time in the 
 Shelley papers in 1833.^ 
 
 1 This is perhaps near enough, p. 586. Above, the tvro stanzas 
 though the first appearance of the are transposed, 
 poem vfas in The Athemeum of 1832, 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 209 
 
 Not less affecting are the Lines Written In Despondency. * 
 How horrible is the calm in the tempest of his affliction — 
 how exquisite the pathos conveyed by the closing stanza : — 
 Yet now despair itself is mild, 
 Even as the winds and waters are. 
 I could lie down like a tired child, 
 And weep away this life of care, 
 Which I have borne, and yet must bear, 
 Till Death like sleep might steal on me, 
 And I might feel in the warm air. 
 My heart grow cold, and hear the sea 
 Breathe o'er my outworn brain its last monotony. 
 
 The line stands thus in my copy — outworn for dying. And 
 again, after her death, whether a violent or a natural 
 one I know not, what a desolaition of spirit there is in — 
 
 I sit upon the sands alone — 
 
 The lightning of the noontide ocean 
 
 Is flashing round me— and a tone 
 
 Arises from its mingled motion. 
 
 How sweet ! if any heaH could share in my emotion. 
 
 These poems affect me like the slow movement in some of 
 the Sonatas of Beethoven — and the oftener they are read, 
 affect me the deeper, as is the case with the unutterable 
 tenderness and beauty of the Symphonies of that incom- 
 parable composer. 
 
 * Mrs. Shelley has omitted a line in the transcript of a stanza of this 
 poem. It stood thus : — 
 
 Blue hills and snowy mountains wear 
 The purple noon's transparent might, — 
 The breath of the west wind is light, &c. 
 There is a word also in the Ode to a Cloud the last in the poem, which 
 spoils the whole — unbuild for upbuild — It imperatively demands emenda- 
 tion.' 
 
 1 Mrs. Shelley reads moist air, not Wind, and may have had West 
 
 wesi Mind, X)f which the authenticity Wind "on the brain." His 
 
 needs establishing. Medwin bad preference of upbuild for u/nbuild is 
 
 just been "cribbing" in the West preposterous. 
 
 
210 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I imagine also that we owe tlie beautiful gem entitled 
 To a Faded Violet, which, made its first appearance anony- 
 mously, in, I think, The Indicator,^ to this occurrence. 
 
 A withered, lifeless, vacant form, 
 
 It lies on my abandoned breast, 
 And mocks the^heart that yet is warm. 
 
 With cold and silent rest. 
 I weep — my tears revive it not. 
 
 I sigh — it breathes none back to me. 
 Its mute and uncomplaining lot 
 
 Is such as mine must be. 
 
 There are also some exquisite stanzas, with the Epigraph 
 of " The queen of my heart,^' which Mrs. Shelley will not 
 admit to be Shelley's but of whose paternity there can 
 be no doubt, most probably addressed to that unfortunate 
 Lady, and which as they are not included in his works, 
 well deserve a place here. They are admirably adapted 
 for music. 
 
 Shelley told me that his departure from Naples was 
 precipitated by this event. The letters he wrote from 
 thence furnish another among the many proofs what an 
 imperfect and little^to-be-trusted medium they are for 
 biography. "Who would have supposed from their tenor, - 
 that his mind was subject to any extraordinary excitement? 
 Eetreading his steps through the Pontine marshes, so 
 graphically described in his Fragment Mazenghi,^ as, 
 Deserted by the fever-stricken serf, 
 All overgrown with weeds and long rank grasses, 
 And where the huge and speckled aloe made. 
 Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade, 
 
 he reached Rome for the second time in March, 1819, and 
 there took up his abode, having completed, before his 
 
 1 It was in The Literary Pooket-Book and should be consulted by editors, 
 
 for 1821. This version of Medwin'a » In the original published Life, 
 
 differs from others, suggests an Masinghi. KoecMsAt is substituted in 
 
 independent manuscript source, MS. It should be Marenghi. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 211 
 
 departure, the first Act - of his Prometheus Unbound 
 commenced at Este. His impressions of the City of the 
 World, as contained in his communications to Mr. Peacock, 
 are clothed in such glowing and eloquent language, as to 
 make us regret that their correspondence should so soon 
 have been discontinued ; for with the exception of about 
 eighteen letters addressed to that gentleman, although 
 everything he writes is valuable, as tending to develope his 
 life and character, the remaining forty-nine are of very 
 inferior interest. Nor is it less remarkable that during 
 more than 4 years he should have had scarcely [any but] 
 men correspondents. 
 
 There is something inspiring in the very atmosphere 
 of Rome. Is it fanciful, that being encircled with images 
 of beauty — that in contemplating works of beauty, such 
 as Eome and the Vatican can only boast — that by gazing 
 on the scattered limbs of that mighty Colossus, whose 
 shadow eclipsed the world, — we, should catch a portion of 
 the sublime — ^become a portion of that around us ? 
 
 Schiller, in his Don Carlos, makes Posa say, — 
 
 In his Escurial 
 The Artist sees, and gloats upon some work 
 Of art divine, till he becomes a part 
 Of its identity. 
 
 Certain it is, that such produce at Rome, what they are 
 incapable of conceiving elsewhere, and at which they are 
 themselves most sincerely astonished. 
 
 The mind becomes that which it contemplates. 
 No wonder, then, that Shelley should here have sur- 
 passed himself in all that he produced. He drenched his 
 spirit to intoxication in the deep-blue sky of Rome. 
 Among his haunts were the baths of Caracalla. Situate 
 as they are at a considerable distance outside the present 
 
 p2 
 
212 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 walls of Eome, they are but little frequented, and their 
 solitude made them an especial favourite with the poet. 
 He seems to have known " all the intricate labyrinths of 
 the ruins, and to have traced every narrow and ill-defined 
 footpath that winds among their entangled wilderness of 
 myrtle, myrletus, and bay, and flowering laurestinus, and 
 a thousand nameless plants, sown by the wandering winds 
 — an undecaying investiture of Nature, to soften down 
 their vast desolation." Here, he told me, he completed 
 two more acts of his Prometheus. 
 
 The chorus in the second act, scene 2, was doubtless 
 inspired by this scene. 
 
 Some cloud of dew 
 Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, 
 Between the trunks of the hoar trees, 
 Hangs each a pearl on the pale flowers 
 Of the green laurel, blown anew. 
 And bends, and then fades silently 
 One frail and fair anemone. 
 And when some star of many a one 
 That climbs and wanders thro' steep night. 
 Has found the cleft, through which alone 
 Beams fall from high those depths upon. 
 Ere it is borne away, away. 
 By the swift heavens, that cannot stay, 
 It scatters drops of golden light, 
 Like lines of rain that ne'er unite ; 
 And the gloom divine is all around, 
 And underneath is the mossy ground. 
 
 But the Praxitelean shapes of the Vatican and the 
 Capitol, were alike sources whence he drew his inspira- 
 tion in this truly classical drama ; a bold and successfiil 
 attempt, not so much to revive a lost play of iEschylus, 
 as to make the allegory a medium for developing his 
 abstruse and imaginative theories— *an object he never 
 lost sight of in any of his poems. The last Act, a hymn 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 213 
 
 of rejoicing in the falfilment of the prophecy regarding 
 Prometheus, was not conceived or executed till several 
 months later, at Florence. Mrs. Shelley has given so 
 excellent an analysis of this drama, that it would be vain 
 for me to attempt it. Shelley believed, with Schiller, 
 that mankind had only to will, and that there should be 
 no evil, and would be none. That man could be so per- 
 fectionised as to be able to expel evU from his own nature, 
 and from the greater part of creation, was the cardinal 
 point of his system; and he had so conquered himself, 
 and his own passions, that he was a living testimony to 
 the truth of his doctrine. Such he had depicted Laon, 
 the enemy and victim of tyranny in The Revolt of Islam, 
 and here took a more idealised image of the same subject 
 in Prometheus, typifying a being full of fortitude and 
 hope, and the spirit of triumph, emanating from a reliance 
 in the ultimate omnipotence of good. There was one 
 point on which I had several discussions with Shelley, 
 his introduction of the Furies into his sublime drama. 
 These allegorical personages of the Greek mythology, I 
 contended, ought to have had no place in his Prometheus. 
 Their attributes were widely different from those which 
 should have been called into exercise. They properly 
 formed a prominent feature in the machinery of the 
 Orestian story, and Schiller admirably introduces them 
 in his Cranes of Ibychus, but Jove knew that Prometheus 
 was beyond their power. His conscience must have been 
 at rest, he had nothing to unsay or wish undone ; all their 
 tortures must have been ineffectual as against the Fire- 
 bearer, and well might Earth exclaim, when Prometheus 
 says, " It doth repent me," — 
 
 Misery! Misery! 
 That Jove at length has vanquished thee ! 
 
314 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that Bia and Gratos, the agents 
 of the new ruler of Olympus, as employed by Vulcan, in 
 the Prometheus Bound, would have been fitter instruments 
 of the tyrant, and much more appropriate engines in the 
 hands of Mercury. One objection certainly is, that after 
 the first scene of that wonderful drama, it would have 
 been an arrant failure, and daring plagiarism, to have 
 made them speak ; for what words would not have been 
 a pale adumbration of that which Shelley knew to be 
 inimitable ? 
 
 Not to dwell on this — I will add, that with all its choral 
 magnificence, a strain of inspiration that is totally un- 
 reachable by the greatest spirits of this or any other age, 
 this sublime poem fell almost dead from the press. A 
 literary man, who has without a tythe of his genius 
 obtained a hundredfold more reputation, with a sneer 
 said to me — " Prometheus Unbound. It is well named. 
 "Who would bind it? " ^ Such is the kind of criticism with 
 which, even by persons of enlarged education, but most 
 narrow minds, this lyrical drama was received. 
 
 1 Was Medwin really the original A reader so weak as to pay for 
 
 recipient of this platitude, from one the binding, 
 
 who stole it ? As an epigram in at„..«... „ 4.1, u ii, • 1 
 
 verse it did not look so dull in the ^Z^^ 'f ^ something too 
 
 corner of -John Bull wherein it ?^tS^, '' ^^ *°.''« ^^^^^^ 
 
 anneared at the time of the book's senouslyinrespect of hissweepmga, 
 
 appeared at the time ot tne book s ^q^j^ himself sufficiently in earnest 
 
 \ publication ; and its author, under t„ ^ , . „ ^ ="" j; "* ""^ 
 
 ^ f , J ' jjc-i i.i_ T.i to end his collection with a Carman 
 
 Uie pseudonym of Steropes, thought y^^^^ia^i ^f ^^^^^ ^j^^ l^t two 
 
 it worth a place m a little volume ,,- „ „ , ' c., V >.Aio ^..^i, ■.«>, 
 
 of miscellanies in verse and prose ''^«" ""^^ ^« ^^^^ extracted : 
 
 c&WedrSmeepings of Parnassus (1830). To you, kind readers of my 
 
 Here follows the said epigram : humble strain, 
 
 On Bysshe Shelley's ^° yo"i I plead, and not, I trust, 
 
 " Prometheus Unbound." Jn vai°- 
 
 Shelley styles his new poem, Humility was one of the last things 
 
 Prometheus Unbound, of which this lively gentleman was 
 
 And 'tis like to remain so while likely to be accused, at all events 
 
 time circles round ; on the evidence of the Sweepings. 
 
 For surely an age would be spent What else he wrote is at present 
 
 iu the finding a topic of conjecture. His appeal 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 215 
 
 But the Thermse of Caracalla had other haunts to divide 
 Shelley's affections : he has left us a picture of the Coli- 
 seum, which, though in prose, surpasses all metrical poetry; 
 and here it was that he laid the scene of a tale that 
 promised to rival Corinne. Like Madame de Stael, he 
 meant to idealize himself in the chief personage ; and 
 there were times when the portrait was not overcharged, 
 and which I shall give in the words of that fragment. 
 
 " A figure only visible at Rome at night, or in solitude, and then 
 only to be seen amid the dilapidated temples of the Forum, or 
 gliding away through the •weed-grown galleries of the Coliseum, 
 crossed their path. His face, though emaciated, displayed the 
 elementary outline of exquisite grace; It was a face once seen 
 never to be forgotten. The mouth and the moulding of the chin 
 resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the statues of 
 Antinous, but instead of the effeminate suUenness of the eye, and 
 the narrow smoothness of the forehead, there was an expression of 
 profound and piercing thought. The brow was clear and open, and 
 his eyes deep, like two wells of crystal water that reflect the all-be- 
 holding heavens. Over all was spread a timid expression of difiSdence 
 and retirement, that contrasted strangely with the abstract and fear- 
 less character which predominated in his form and gestures. He 
 avoided, in an extraordinary degree, what is called society, but was 
 occasionally seen to converse with some accomplished foreigner, whose 
 
 to " kind readers " has induced one On Shelley, ere the accursed boat 
 
 not so very kind reader, a w^ag too ' Don Juan ' bore him 'neath the sea 
 
 in his way, to inscribe in my copy To solve the final mystery, 
 
 of the Sweepings the following sedate Prometheus yet remains Unbound 
 
 couplets : — Whene'er in virgin state 'tis found, 
 
 GreatCloacina,bring.yourbroom P^rrkh iifSt^'o^ in 
 
 And sweep these sweepings to their boards 
 
 Yots^ropes were long forgot ^:^^hl'Zl:i:i^Ztr:i:r 
 
 TZttlZl7i::t^ fo. ^ust- the folk heheld it first; 
 
 " When on a thankless world it 
 ^°^ „ „ burst— 
 
 8oTrr^m:;:re!lTourbook -TO ^ide tlie time when Phoebus 
 
 J^fr tZ^wifo^f :^^r;ou wt ^ thr^one for the immortal dead. 
 
216 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 appearance might attract him in his solemn haunts. He spoke 
 Italian with fluency, though with a peculiar but sweet accent." 
 
 This fragment he allowed me to copy, and I have always 
 looked upon it as on the Torso of some exquisite statue, 
 and during the visits that at different periods I have made 
 to Rome, I read it as many times, sitting, as he says, " on 
 some isolated capital of a fallen column in the arena," and 
 ever with a new delight. It is worth all that "Nibbi" 
 and Hobhouse and Eustace with their shew-knowledge, 
 the common stuff of the earth, the very slime of pedantry, 
 " have left behind them." 
 
 Shelley's taste and feeling in works of ancient art, were, 
 as might be supposed, most refined. Statuary was his 
 passion. He contended that "the slaughter-house and 
 the dissecting-room were not the sources whence the 
 Greeks drew their inspiration. It was to be attributed to 
 the daily exhibitions of the human form in all its ease and 
 symmetry in their gymnasia. The sculptors were not 
 mere mechanicians — they were citizens and soldiers, 
 animated with the love of their country." " We must 
 rival them in their virtues," he adds, " before we can come 
 up to them in their compositions." " The human form 
 and the human mind," he also says in his Preface to 
 Hellas "attained a perfection in Greece which has im- 
 pressed its image on those faultless productions, whose 
 very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has pro- 
 pagated impulses that cannot cease th[r]ough a thousand 
 channels of manifest and imperishable ^ operation to 
 ennoble and delight mankind." The hard, harsh, affected 
 style of the^ French school, and Canova, he could never 
 
 1 The extract is badly copied. In have been substituted for or imper- 
 espeoial, the words and imperishable c^tible. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 217 
 
 endure, and used to contrast what are considered the 
 masterpieces of the latter with those of the age of Pericles, 
 where the outline of the form and features is, as in one of 
 Sir Joshua Eeynolds's pictures, so soft as scarcely to be 
 traceable by the eye. He considered the 'Perseus so 
 ridiculously overpraised by Forsyth, a bad imitation of 
 the Apollo, and said, after seeing the great conceited 
 figurante of the Pitti, Canova's Venus, " Go and visit the 
 modest little creature of the Tribune." 
 
 I have not yet spoken of the work which occupied him 
 at Eome — the greatest tragedy of modem times, The 
 Cenci. A writer in the Edinburgh Review has said that 
 Shelley " selected the story on account of its horrors, and 
 that he found pleasure in dwelling on those horrors." 
 Never did a reviewer more thoroughly misunderstand or 
 misinterpret an author. Shelley's loadstar was the 
 Barberini Beatrice. The tragedy ought to have been en- 
 titled Beatrice Cenci^ for this is the prominent character. 
 In her we see depicted what may be called the fanaticism 
 of innocence. She has no doubts, no scruples before the 
 murder, nor timidity when the blow wasio be struck, nor 
 remorse, when her vengeance accomplished, left her time 
 for reflexion. She is placed above all hum^n laws, she 
 has cast off, as garments out of use, the prejudices of sex, 
 and famUy, she obeys blindly the fatality which drives 
 her on, and dies condemned but not culpable in her own 
 eyes. — In her we behold the Angel of Parricide, to make 
 use of an expression applied to Charlotte Corday by a poet 
 historian — an rA.ngel resplendent in beauty and courage, 
 
 ' The Cenci would signify equally rejected a title making the family 
 
 ■well the Count or his daughter, or give its name to the tragedy. The 
 
 indeed all the family. As a matter cancelled opening phrase is "The 
 
 of fact the extant draft preface Story upon which the 'Family of 
 
 contains evidence that Shelley had the Cenci ' is written . . ." 
 
218 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 and whom her very accomplices dare not to accuse, as 
 long as they remain under the fascination of her gaze. The 
 Cenci himself, his atrocious crimes and abhorrent vices, 
 are treated as if he shrunk from, as though there was 
 almost a pollution, not in the mention of, but the bare 
 thought of them. It cannot be denied also, that in the 
 Cenci he found materials for developing his system, so 
 forcibly dilated on in the preface, — The Spirit of Roman- 
 ism. Whilst writing it, he told me that he heard in the 
 street the oft repeated cry, " Cenci, Cenci," which he at 
 first thought the echo of his own soul, but soon learnt was , 
 one of the cries of Rome — Cenci meaning old rags. 
 
 But to be serious, — a MS. containing an account of this 
 cause celebre had been seen by Shelley, it appears, before 
 he came to Rome. There is scarcely a public library in 
 Italy that does not contain such a MS. I found one in 
 the Berio at Genoa, bound up with another almost as 
 remarkable trial, that of Mascalbruni, the Treasurer of 
 Innocent X. — and in that pope we see the reflex of 
 Clement VIII. in his corruption, and more still in the 
 Cenci's peculiar profligacy ; and to those who wish to 
 make a good magazine article, I would recommend them 
 the perusal of this latter process. The church of Rome, 
 and Grod's vicegerent upon earth, are not spared in the 
 Narrative. 
 
 To return to the Cenci. — Just as I was about to speak 
 of Shelley's Cenci, was placed in my hand an Indicator of 
 July 26, 1820 ; and when I had read that masterly critique, 
 one of the noblest pieces of writing in our language, I 
 abandoned as hopeless the task of analysing it myself. 
 Almost every line of that tragedy might be quoted, and 
 indeed very many have been, but there is a passage which 
 was pointed out to me by a great writer, which escaped 
 
I,IEE OF SHELLEY. 219 
 
 Leigh Hunt's observation, and strikes me as most profound. 
 
 It is Cenci's first speech to the Cardinal emissary of the 
 
 pope.' 
 
 The third of my possessions — 
 Aye, I have heard the nephew of the pope 
 Had sent his architect to view the ground, 
 Meaning to build a villa on my vines, 
 The next time I compounded with his uncle, — 
 I little thought he should outwit me so. 
 
 Leigh Hunt, the theatrical critic, kut e|ox'7>', sums up 
 his'paper with, — 
 
 " Mr. Shelley in this work reminds us of some of the most strenuous 
 and daring of our old dramatists, — not by any means as an imitator, 
 though he has studied them, but as a bold, elemental imaginator, and 
 a framer of mighty lines. He possesses also, moreover, what those to 
 whom we more particularly allude, did not possess, great sweetness of 
 nature, and enthusiasm for good, and his style is as it ought to be, 
 the offspring of the high mixtures. It disproves the adage of the 
 Latin poet. Majesty and love do sit on one throne in the lofty 
 buildings of his poetry, and they will be found there at a late, and 
 we trust happier day, on a seat immortal as themselves." 
 
 "Words written with the prophetic confidence of their 
 truth. 
 
 Shelley had formed strong hopes of getting this play 
 performed at Covent Garden, and that Miss O'Neil, 
 whom he had seen before leaving London, and often 
 spoke of as his beau ideal of female actors, would take the 
 part of Beatrice, but that she should have been in his 
 thoughts as Mrs. Shelley says she was in working .out 
 that character (after the manner of the Playwrights of 
 the age) is unlikely — he was too much absorbed in his 
 subject till its completion to think of Miss O'Neil. His 
 
 ^ The profundity does not seem it go I" — or by printing "have 
 to be increased by omitting the heard '' for " onoe heard. " 
 complement of the first line — "let 
 
220 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 disappointment was great, when Mr. Harris pronounced 
 the subject so objectionable that he could not submit the 
 part to that gifted lady, but expressed a desire that the 
 author should write a tragedy on some other subject, 
 which he would gladly accept. The manager was right 
 in thinking that The Cenci was unadapted for the stage. 
 If no one can read it without shedding abundant tears, 
 who could have endured the representation of the char- 
 acter of Beatrice by Miss O'Neil ? Of this Shelley himself 
 seems to have been conscious, when he says, " God forbid 
 I should ever see her play it — it would tear my nerves to 
 tatters." ^ "Who could have borne to listen to — 
 
 Here, mother! tie 
 My girdle for me— and bind up this hair 
 In any simple , knot. Aye ! that does well — 
 And yours I see is coming down. How often 
 Have we done this for one another, now 
 We shall not do it any more. 
 
 The play was so disfigured by the mistakes that had 
 crept into it in the London edition, that he reprinted it 
 at Leghorn,^ and sent me a copy, which I received in 
 Switzerland ^t the Baths of Louche overhung by the 
 frightful precipices and glaciers of the Gemmi which 
 furnished the scene of "Werner's harrowing Domestic 
 Tragedy, which I was then reading and, only half com- 
 pleted, laid down to devour [The Cenci] with an all 
 absorbing interest. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley says, " it is to be lamented that he did not 
 employ himself on subjects whose interest depended on 
 character and incident, and leave the delineation of human 
 
 1 Shelley says " to pieces," not fable is that the book was printed 
 
 "to tatters." See letter of July in the first instance at Livorno, and 
 
 1819 to Peacock. that a second edition was well 
 
 ^ The fact represented by this printed in London. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 221 
 
 passion, wMcli he could depict in such an able manner, 
 for fantastic creations, or the expression of those opinions 
 and sentiments with regard to human nature, and its 
 destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master-passion 
 of his soul." I cannot agree with her. It would have 
 been a vain attempt to turn his mind J&om the bent of its 
 natural inclinations. He told me, that it was with the 
 greatest possible effort, and struggle with himself, that he 
 could be brought to write The Cenci ; and great as is that 
 tragedy, his fame must rest not on it, but on his mighty 
 Ehymes, the deep-felt inspiration of his Choral Melodies. 
 I shall hereafter have to speak of his Charles L, which at 
 the earnest request of others he commenced, but which 
 nothing could so far conquer his repugnance as to accom- 
 plish. 
 
 The Shelleys suffered a severe affliction at Rome, by 
 the death of their son William. His love, and regret for 
 the loss of this child, may be seen by a fragment which 
 he epigraphs with " Roma, Roma, Roma, non e piu come 
 era prima ; " and he alludes to this interesting boy in 
 
 The Cenci. — 
 
 That fair blue-eyed child, 
 Who was the loadstar of our life — 
 All see since his most piteous death, 
 That day and night, and heaven and earth and time. 
 And all the things hoped for and done therein, 
 Are changed to you through your exceeding grief.^ 
 
 Rome was, as he says, become no longer Rome to him, 
 and he was anxious to escape a spot associated too inti- 
 
 ' Medwin's genius for ruining All see, since hia most swift and 
 
 the finest passages of poetry by mis- piteous death 
 
 transcription is well exemplified That day and night, and heaven 
 
 here. We should read your for our, and earth, and time, 
 
 and, after life, thus — And all the things hoped for or 
 
 and though done therein, . . . 
 
223 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 mately with his child's presence and loss. Some friends 
 of theirs being resident in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, 
 they took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half way 
 between that town and Monte Nero, where they remained 
 during the summer. Mrs. Shelley gives a very interesting 
 picture of the manner of life and study which her husband 
 pursued at this villa, where he put a finishing hand to 
 The Cenci, and studied Calderon, from whose El Purga- 
 torio de San Patricio, the description of the mountain 
 pass, where the murder was to have been committed — 
 (none could be more adapted for such a purpose) was 
 taken. 
 
 The poet, in the latter part of the year, migrated to 
 Florence. Here, after his severe mental sufferings, though 
 his physical ones were unabated, he enjoyed some 
 repose, and luxuriated in the divine creations of Grecian 
 art. 
 
 He was a constant visitor to the Ufiizi gallery. Schiller 
 has left us, in the Brief eines residentes Danes, a sketch, 
 and a valuable one, of many antiques. "An invisible 
 hand," he says, "lifts the veil of the past, and thou 
 standest in the midst of smiling, beautifiil Grreece, and 
 wanderest among bowers and groves, and worshippest, as 
 it, the Grods of Fable." But the German poet's descrip- 
 tions of the Niobe and the Apollo, and the Dancing Faun, 
 and the Medicean Venus, are pale and lifeless, compared 
 with those which may be found in Shelley's Posthumous 
 "Works. But there are two groups which Mrs. Shelley 
 has omitted in her Work of Love, and which I shall give 
 in his own words — premising them by saying that these 
 notes were written in pencil, and thrown off in the gallery, 
 in a burst of enthusiasm, proving that thoughts struck 
 out in the fire of the moment, have a more inherent force 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 223 
 
 of truth — give birtii to a natural eloquence that defies all 
 that study and after meditation can produce. 
 Of the Laocoon he says, — 
 
 " The subject of the Laocoon is a disagreeable one, but whether we 
 consider the grouping, or the execution, nothing that remains to us 
 of antiquity can surpass it. It consist^ of a father and his two sons. 
 Byron thinks that LaocoOn's anguish is absorbed in that of his children, 
 that a mortal's agony is blending with an immortal's patience. Not 
 so. Intense physical suffering, against which he pleads with an up- 
 raised countenance of despa,ir, and appeals with a sense of its injustice, 
 seems the predominant and overwhelming emotion, and yet there is 
 a nobleness in the expression, and a majesty that dignifies torture. 
 
 "We now come to his children. Their features and attitudes 
 indicate the excess of the filial love and devotion that animates them, 
 and swallows up all other feelings. In the elder of the two, this is 
 particularly observable. His eyes are fixedly bent on Laocoon — his 
 whole soul is with — is a part of that of his father. His arm extended 
 towards him, not for protection, but from a wish as if instinctively 
 to afford it, absolutely speaks. Nothing can be more exquisite than 
 the contour of his form and face, and the moulding of his lips, that 
 are half open, as if in the act of — not uttering any unbecoming 
 complaint, or prayer or lamentation, which he is conscious are alike 
 useless— but addressing words of consolatory tenderness to his un- 
 fortunate parent. The intensity of his bodily torments is only 
 expressed by the uplifting of his right foot, which he is vainly and 
 impotently attempting to extricate from the grasp of the mighty 
 folds in which it is entangled. 
 
 " In the younger child, surprise, pain, and gi-ief seem to contend 
 for mastery. He is not yet arrived at an age when his mind has 
 sufficient self-possession, or fixedness of reason, to analyse the calamity 
 that is overwhelming himself and all that is dear to him. He is sick 
 with pain and horror. We almost seem to hear his shrieks. His left 
 hand is on the head of the snake, that is burying its fangs in his side, 
 and the vain and fruitless attempt he is making to disengage it, in- 
 creases the effect. Every limb, every muscle, every vein of LaocoOn 
 expresses, with the fidelity of life, the working of the poison, and the 
 strained girding round of the inextricable folds, whose tangling 
 sinuosities are too numerous and complicated to be followed. No 
 chisel has ever displayed with such anatomical fidelity and force, 
 the projecting muscles of the arm, whose hand clenches the neck of 
 
224 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the reptile, almost to strangulation, and the mouth of the enormous 
 asp, and his terrible fangs widely displayed, in a moment to penetrate 
 and meet within its victim's heart, make the spectator of this miracle 
 of sculpture, turn away with shuddering and awe, and doubt the 
 reality of what he sees." 
 
 Not less charming are Shelley's remarks on the group 
 of the Bacchus and Ampelus in the same gallery. 
 
 " Look ! the figures are walking as it were with a sauntering and 
 idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, and this is expressed 
 in the motion of their delicate and glowing forms. One arm of 
 Bacchus rests with its entire weight on the shoulder of Ampelus, 
 the other, the fingers being gently curved, as with the living spirit 
 that animates the flexible joints, is gracefully thrown forward to 
 correspond with the advance of the opposite leg. He has sandals, 
 and buskins clasped with two serpents' heads, and his leg is cinctured 
 with their skins. He is crowned with vine-leaves, laden with their 
 crude fruit, and the crisp leaves hang with the inertness of a faded 
 leaf over his neck and massy, profuse, down-hanging hair, which 
 gracefully divided on his forehead, falls in delicate wreaths on each 
 side his neck, and curls upon the breast. Amiielus, with a young 
 lion's or lynx's akin over his shoulders, holds a cup in his right hand 
 and with his left half encircles Bacchus, as you may have seen 
 a younger and an elder boy at school, walking in some grassy spot of 
 the playground, with that tender friendship for each other that the 
 age inspires. The countenance of Bacchus is sublimely sweet and 
 lovely, taking a shade of gentle and playful tenderness from the arch 
 looks of Ampelus, whose cheerful face turned towards him, expresses 
 the suggestion of some droll and merry device. It has a divine and 
 supernatural beauty, as one who walks through the world untouched 
 by its corrupting cares. It looks like one who unconsciously confers 
 pleasure and peace. The countenance of Ampelus is in some respects 
 boyish, and inferior, that of Bacchus expresses an imperturbable and 
 godlike self-possession — he seems in the enjoyment of a calm delight, 
 that nothing can destroy. His is immortal beauty." 
 
 In this city he saw one of those republics that opposed 
 for some time a systematic and effectual resistance to all 
 the surrounding tyranny of popedom and despotism. 
 " The Lombard League," he says, " defeated .the apns of 
 the despot in the field, and until Florence was betrayed 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 325 
 
 into the hands of those polished tyrants the Medici, 
 freedom had one citadel, where it could find refage from, 
 a world that was its foe." To this cause he attributed 
 the undisputed superiority of Italy in literature and the 
 arts, above all its contemporaries ; the union and energy 
 and beauty which distinguish from all other poets the 
 writings of Dante ; the restlessness of fervid power which 
 surpassed itself in painting and sculpture, and from which 
 Raphael and Michael Angelo drew their inspiration. 
 
 It was during his stay in Florence, that he first saw the 
 critique in The Quarterly Review of 1818, on his Laon and 
 Cythna, or a \sic for the^ Revolution of the Golden City, 
 a Vision of the Nineteenth Century, as it was first entitled ; 
 better known as llie Revolt of Islam ; a review, be it here 
 said, that has always endeavoured to crush rising talent — 
 never done justice to one individual, whose opinions did 
 not square with its own in religion or politics. 
 
 A friend of mine, the late Lord Dillon, mentioned to 
 me an anecdote of Shelley, with reference to the article 
 in question, which is too characteristic to be passed over 
 in silence. His lordship observed at Delesert's reading- 
 room, a young man very earnestly bent over the last 
 Quarterly. It was Shelley, and when he came to the end 
 of the paper, to the irresistibly ludicrous comparison o'f 
 himself to Pharaoh, where the Crispinus pompously says, 
 " Like the Egyptians of old, the wheels of his chariot are 
 broken, the path of mighty waters closes in from behind, 
 a still deepening ocean is before him, for a short time are 
 seen his impotent struggles against a resistless power, his 
 blasphemous execrations are heard, his despair, but he 
 poorly assumes the tone of triumph and defiance, and he 
 calls ineflfectually on others to follow him in the same 
 ruin, finally he sinks lihe lead to be forgotten "— ^when he 
 
226 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 came to this specimen of bathos, this stick after the 
 explosion of the rocket, Shelley burst into a convulsive 
 laughter, closed the book with an hysteric laugh, and 
 hastily left the room, his Ha ! ha's ringing down the stairs. 
 As The Edinburgh Review was unprophetic as to Byron, 
 its great rival's predictions about Shelley were equally 
 falsified. It has been the crjang evil of all times, that 
 early genius has been ever depressed. There is scarcely 
 a great poet from the time of Milton, down to the present 
 day, who has not proved a mark for the invidious malice 
 of his contemporaries. But among all authors of a past 
 or present age, none has been more unjustly handled than 
 Shelley, as this April number before me testifies. K it 
 was written, as Byron supposed, by one who afterwards 
 borrowed most largely from him whom he vituperates, 
 and who has been raised far above his petty standard — 
 elevated on stilts — in the pages of that very veridical 
 review which assumes to be the oracle and guide of litera- 
 ture, his depreciation of one whom he feared might one 
 day make him hide his own diminished head, will be 
 more easily intelKgible, though the condemnation of his 
 scepticism came with an ill grace from an individual, and 
 that person* a priest, who has since endeavoured in a 
 
 * An anonymous libeller in Blackwood, who signs himself "Hanove- 
 riensis," {quaere John Cam Hobhouse,) says, " He (Lord Byron) represents 
 Milman as the author on Shelley in the Quarterly Eevieio. This miist be a 
 vague guess of Captain Medwin's, for Lord Byron knew from the best 
 authority, that it was written by a nephew of ColeridgeJ" This is one of 
 Hobhouse's knock-me-down assertions, and probably as false as most of 
 them. Did he never see the Don Juan expunged stanzas, about "a priest 
 almost a priest"? Lord Byron frequently expressed to Shelley and 
 myself a diiferent conviction. How much, if Hobhouse is right about 
 the paternity, must the great Coleridge have blushed at his degenerate 
 relative ! ^ 
 
 1 The transition from surmise to a foot-note is characteristic And 
 certainty in the narrow compass of why should such a pseudonym as 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 227 
 
 more systematic way, to sap the very foundations of 
 Christianity, by depriving of its prophetic character, the 
 Old Testament, and resolving all its miracles into the 
 effects of natural causes. Poetry — at least poetry of so 
 high and metaphysical a kind as that of Shelley — his 
 idealisms of Intellectual Beauty and Universal Love, his 
 Speculations respecting the Misgovemment of the World, 
 and the Causes of the existing Evils in the Institutions 
 of Society, however founded on his own construction of 
 the Necessity of a Change — a Revolt of Islam — were, as 
 the reviewer himself confesses, harmless ; for he admits, 
 "that of all his brethren, Mr. Shelley carries to the 
 greatest length the doctrines of his sect," and he adds, 
 " that he is, from this, and other reasons, by far the least 
 pernicious of them, indeed that there is a naivete and an 
 openness in his manner of laying down the most extra- 
 ordinary positions, which in some degree deprive them of 
 
 " Hanoveriensis " be employed by repeated enquiries as to its author- 
 John Cam Hobhouse? The "anouy- ship, and urged Murray to reprint 
 mous libeller " to whom Medwin it with Cain ; but, as far as I know, 
 refers wrote a letter " to the Editors the writer has managed to keep the 
 of Blackwood's Magazine" about the secret of his identity till the present 
 Conversations of Lord Byron &adsif;neA day. So much for "Hanoveriensis" 
 himself " Yours, ever faithfully, and Hobhouse ill Blackwood's Maga- 
 Harroviensis." This was inserted sine! Now as to the Qitarferiy article 
 in November 1824 after Blackwood's on Loon and Oythna : the statement 
 review of the same work, and might of ' ' Harroviensis " about a nephew 
 have been by any Harrow boy come of Coleridge was correct ; and there 
 to maturity, but "Harroviensis'' is no reason for doubting that Byron 
 was not making his first appearance got the information. If he had no 
 under that name : he had already special motive for misleading Med- 
 taken part in the Cain controversy, win on this point, he may have told 
 as the author of an important and hiln the truth ftnd left him to mix 
 now somewhat scarce pamphlet en- up the history of the two articles 
 titled "A I Letter | to | Sir Walter after his own fashion. Th'atonioon 
 Scott, Bart. I In Answer to the Ee- and Cythna is now generally known 
 monstrance | of Oxoniensis | on the as the work of John Taylor Coleridge, 
 Publieationof Cain, aMysteiy, |by| afterwards a King's Bench Judge, 
 Lord Byron. | London : | Printed a. privy councillor, and biographer 
 for Kodwell and Martin, | Bond of Keble of The Christian Year. The 
 Street, | 1822." So good did Byron Eight Honourable Sir J. T. C. had 
 think that pamphlet that he made been at Eton with Shelley. 
 
 q2 
 
328 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 their venom ; and when he enlarges on what are but 
 necessary results of systems more gradually detailed by 
 others, he might almost be mistaken for an artful advocate 
 of civil order and religious institutions." 
 
 And yet, with this admission of the uninjnrious 
 tendency of this poem, and the unwillingly extorted 
 admission of its beauty, he endeavours to persuade 
 himself that it can never become popular, on the ground 
 that its merits and faults equally conspire against it, for 
 it has not much ribaldry or voluptuousness for prurient 
 imaginations, and no personal scandal for the malicious. 
 High merits, at. all events. But it is clear that The 
 Divine is not quite satisfied in his own mind, that his 
 leaden shafts wiU be effectual to crush his formidable 
 rival, and thinks the most effectual way of preventing his 
 book from getting into the hands of readers, is to 
 calumniate the man — and no one knew him less ; to begin 
 by saying, " He was a very vain man, that his speculations 
 and disappointments began in early childhood, and that 
 even from that period he carried about with him a soured 
 and discontented spirit — in boyhood unamiable, in youth 
 'querulous, and unmanly in manhood. Singularly un- 
 happy in all three." Adding, " He speaks of his school 
 as a world of woes, of his masters as tyrants, of his 
 schoolfellows as enemies. Alas ! what is this but to bear 
 evidence against himself? Every one who knows what 
 a public school must be, will only trace in these lines an 
 insubordinate, a vain, and mortified spirit." 
 
 If there be any fidelity in the picture which I have 
 drawn of Shelley, from his childhood through his boyhood, 
 and up to his manhood, the falsehood of this summing up 
 of his character at this period will be self-apparent, 
 Shelley does not so much speak of the public school of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 229 
 
 Eton, when he alludes to his world of woes, tyrants and 
 enemies, as of another establishment. He never carried 
 about with him a soured or discontented spirit. His 
 melancholy was that of meditation and abstraction, not 
 misanthropy. He was not unteachable as a boy, or how 
 did he acquire his knowledge ; he was not unamiable, no 
 boy was ever more affectionate ; and although he entered 
 into no manly sports, from the delicacy of his constitution, 
 no one was more playful and sportive; nor was he 
 querulous and unmanly in manhood. 
 As .^schylus makes Prometheus pathetically say, — 
 
 'Tis easy 
 For one whose path of life is free from cares 
 And sorrows, to give counsel, and find words 
 Of sharp reproof to tax with evil those 
 Who walk in misery. 
 
 It is a passage I have often heard him quote, on realising 
 the evil augury, that inspired the following lines : — 
 
 'Tis moumfiil when the deadliest hate 
 Of friends and fortune and of fate, 
 Is levelled at one fated head. 
 
 His first ill-assorted and ill-judged marriage brought with 
 it miseries, and left behind it wounds, that smarted 
 indeed, but never festered his spirit. Misery was to him 
 a crucible for purifying the ore of humanity. It begat in 
 him a more exceeding love for all that was lovely — an 
 universal philanthropy. Even for the author of this 
 unworthy and disgraceful lampoon, he entertained no 
 hatred, and says in some lines addressed to the re- 
 viewer, — 
 
 Alas ! good friend, what profit can you see, 
 
 In hating such a hateless thing as me ? 
 
 There is no spirit [sic for sport] in hate, when all the rage 
 
 Is on one side — in vain would you assuage 
 
230 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, 
 In which not even contempt lurks, &c. 
 And in other stanzas, entitled To a Critic, he ends with— 
 
 I hate the [sic for %] want of truth and love- 
 How should I then hate thee ! 
 
 How forcibly does Shelley remind us of Plato, who 
 
 when 'written to by Dionysius to spare him, — that 
 
 Dionysius who had sold him for a slave, replied, that he 
 
 had no time to think of Dionysius. 
 
 To the effect of this attack on Shelley's life and 
 prospects, I shall hereafter .allude. Its venom was 
 scattered far and wide. It worked well. The detractor 
 knew what he was about. The moral English public are 
 apt to associate the man with his works; and the 
 consequence was, that this sublime poem, published at 
 Shelley's own expense, fell almost still-born from the 
 press. 
 
 On the eve of my departure from Bombay, in October 
 1818, I met in the bazaar, at a Parsee book-stall, with 
 a copy of The Revolt of Islam. It had been shipped with 
 other unsaleable literary commodities — for it is the habit 
 of the purchasers at the trade sales, to send out such wares 
 to the colonies, — and I purchased it for little more than 
 its value in waste paper, with which it was the fate of 
 that sublime Poem to line many a trunk, and furnish 
 wrappers for the grocer. Young men on quitting school 
 and college, lead a life of so much adventure, are so much 
 absorbed in the pursuits and occupations of active life, 
 that they know not till some circumstance brings back the 
 past, how much regard they entertain for each other. 
 I had, it is true, heard of the result of his first unhappy 
 marriage, but his second union was new to me, and the 
 Introduction, full of beauty and feeling, and the allusions 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 231 
 
 in it to his school life, reawakened my sympathies, and 
 revived all my dormant affections. But if I yearned to 
 see him again, and anticipated the period of our meeting 
 once more with delight, I was astonished at the greatness 
 of his genius, and made the volume the companion of my 
 journey, delighting to trace in it the elements of his 
 young mind down to their complete development, as in 
 a chart we love to follow the course of some river whose 
 source we have visited. On my return he was the first 
 person I wrote to, and found that he had not forgotten the 
 companion of his boyhood. His letters breathed the same 
 warmth of regard which he had ever entertained for me, 
 and they contained an invitation to visit him at Florence, 
 where I at first addressed him, he having quitted England 
 little more than a year before I landed at Liverpool. 
 How much do I regret the loss of these letters! 
 
 I will beg the reader to excuse this extraneous matter, 
 and take up the thread of Shelley's wanderings — returning 
 to Florence, where he passed the autumn and part of the 
 winter of 1819. 
 
 Florence the magnificent, with its fortressed palaces — 
 its Piazza Vecchia, crowded with statues, its Santa Croce, 
 and Cascine and Gardens, and splendid galleries, realized 
 all Shelley's dreams ; and here probably he would have 
 taken up his permanent residence, but for the climate, 
 which he considered highly detrimental to his health. 
 Those who know that city, will have experienced the 
 keen, dry, piercing winds, that sweep down from the 
 Apennines, interpenetrate, and pierce like a sword through 
 the system, tearing every nerve to tatters. They acted on 
 Shelley's sensitive frame most prejudicially. 
 
 On the 25th of January, having put a finishing hand to 
 the third act of his Prometheus, and written his Ode to the 
 
333 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 West Wind, and the sublime stanzas on the Medusa shield, 
 he embarked for Pisa, — a most original way of making 
 the journey, which by the tortuous Amo must have been 
 Tery slow and tedious. His love of boating, however, 
 prevailed over considerations of comfort in travelling, 
 and he thought that, suffering as he was from his com- 
 plaint, he could better bear the motion of a boat, than of 
 a carriage, and he anticipated, even at that season, "the 
 delights of the sky, the river, and the mountains." 
 
 His first impression of Pisa, as appears by one of his 
 letters, had not been very favourable, but it being in 
 a hollow, and sheltered from the Tramontana, decided 
 him to make it hereafter his winter place of abode. 
 Another inducement was the water — the best in Italy, 
 which is brought from the mountains by an aqueduct, 
 whose long line of arches reminded him of the Campagna. 
 
 In the spring he stopped a week or two near Leghorn, 
 with his friends the Gisbornes, and it was on a beautiful 
 evening, while wandering among the lanes, where myrtle 
 hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that he heard the 
 carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of his most 
 beautiful poems. Nothing can be better chosen than the 
 measure of the Stanza, which rapid in the first four lines, 
 ends in a long stream of harmony, a never ending 
 sinuosity of sweetness. The images which he uses to 
 illustrate the charm of the bird's strain succeed each other, 
 in the happiest climax, and the moral drawn naturally 
 from the subject leaves an inextinguishable melancholy — 
 
 We look before and after 
 
 And sigh [sic for pine] for what is not, 
 
 Our sinoerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught, 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. , 233 
 
 They spent the summer at the baths of St. Julian, four 
 miles from Pisa, at the foot of the hill, whose intervening 
 brow 
 
 Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye.* 
 
 I shall now bring myself in near contact with him, 
 hoping to be excused any autobiographical matter that 
 may creep into my narrative.^ 
 
 It was late in the autumn of 1820, when, at Shelley's 
 invitation to pass the winter with him, I left Geneva, 
 and journied so leisurely, that on reaching Pisa, which 
 in his last Letter he had fixed as our place of meeting 
 I found he was gone to the Baths of St. Julian, and on 
 enquiring for him, was referred for information to Lady 
 Mountcashel, a lady whose retirement from the world 
 was not unprofitable, for perhaps it was devoted to one of 
 the best works on the Education of Children which we 
 possess. She was one of the few persons with whom the 
 SheUeys were intimate. She had been in early life the 
 friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, and this was the tie 
 between them. An interesting and amiable person was 
 Mrs. Mason, as she called herself, and from her I gained 
 the desired intelligence, and the next day Shelley came 
 to my hotel, the Tre Donzelle. 
 
 It was nearly seven years since we had parted; but 
 I should immediately have recognised him in a crowd. 
 His figure was emaciated, and somewhat bent ; owing to 
 near-sightedness, and his being forced to lean over his 
 books, with his eyes almost touching them ; his hair, still 
 profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed 
 
 * " I Pisan veder Lucca non ponno." — Dante. 
 
 ^ It is with the next paragraph as originally issued in the year 
 that the second volume of the Life 1847 opens. 
 
334 LIFE OF SHELLEY 
 
 with grey, as he says in Alastor "sered by the Autumn 
 of strange suffering " ; but his appearance was youthful, 
 and his countenance, whether grave or animated, 
 strikingly intellectual. There was also a freshness and 
 purity in his complexion that he never lost. I accom- 
 ... panied him to the baths, then, owing to the lateness of 
 the season, (it was November,) quite deserted, — for they 
 are completely a summer resort; and there I had the 
 pleasure of making the acquaintance "of Mrs. Shelley, and 
 saw Percy, then a child of about a year old. Their house 
 was immediately on the banks of the Serchio, and on the 
 very day of my arrival, that little, rapid river, or rather 
 the canal that branches from it, overflowed its banks ; no 
 uncommon circumstance. It ran into the square, and 
 formed a flood that threatened to cut off the communica- 
 tion with the main road to Pisa. Mrs. Shelley speaks of 
 the event. "Well do I remember the scene, which I stood 
 with Shelley at the window to admire. The Contadine 
 bore torches, and the groups of cattle, and the shouts of 
 the drivers, the picturesque dresses of their wives, half 
 immersed in the water, and carrying their children, and 
 the dark mountains in the background, standing out in 
 bold relief, formed a singular spectacle, well worthy of 
 a painter's study. Shelley wished me to sketch it, but it 
 was far beyond my powers of delineation, — besides that 
 I had no colours. The next morning, the inundation 
 having still continued to increase, the first floor was 
 completely under water, and barring all other egress, we 
 were obliged to get a boat from the upper windows, and 
 thence drove to Pisa, where Shelley had already taken 
 an apartment — a Terreno in the Casa, opposite to the 
 Marble Palace, with the enigmatical inscription, "Alia 
 G-iornata," an inscription that has puzzled much the 
 
XIFE OF SHELLEY. 235 
 
 antiquary to explain, and with which title a Novel has 
 been written, which I have never seen. Perhaps there is 
 no mystery in " Alia Giornata," which means, erected by 
 day-work, instead of contract, the usual mode of building 
 in Italy. But Shelley was inclined to think that there 
 was some deep and mystical meaning in the words, and 
 was but little satisfied with this prosaic interpretation, 
 and deemed it was a tribute to the East, where the 
 proprietor had past his best days, and made his colossal 
 fortune. I have mentioned this magnificent palace, in 
 order to identify the house where Shelley lived, the name 
 of which has escaped me.^ 
 
 "We here fixed ourselves for the winter, if such an 
 expression be applicable to the divine climate of that 
 gifted city, " where autumn merges into spring, after but 
 a few days of bleaker weather." 
 
 I was suffering from the effects of my abode in the 
 East, and placed myself under the hands of the celebrated 
 Vacca, of whom Shelley and Lord Byron both speak with 
 deserved praise. 
 
 During a long and severe attack of illness, aggravated 
 by the fatigues of my journey from Geneva, Shelley 
 tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, 
 administered my medicines, and during six weeks that 
 I was confined to my room, was assiduous and uninter- 
 mitting in his affectionate care of me, — care I shall never 
 forget ; most ungrateful should I indeed be, were it not 
 indelibly stamped on my memory. 
 
 During this imprisonment, it was, that I first had an 
 
 1 Mrs. Julian Marshall says (I. from Pugnano to a lower flat in 
 
 309-10) that the Shelleys "tookatop the " Tre Palazzi" ; opposite which 
 
 flat in the 'Tre Palazzi di Chiesa,' building the Shelleys secured for 
 
 on the Lung' Amo," and that the Byron the Casa Lanfranchi, "the 
 
 Williamses transferred themselves flnest palace in the Lung' Amo." 
 
!36 . LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 •pportunity of reading his works, with many of which 
 : was unacquainted. The delight they afforded me often 
 lisarmed pain. I loved to trace in them, from our crude 
 .ttempts at rhyme, his earliest thoughts, associated as 
 hey were with the recollections of our boyhood; to 
 oUow the development of his genius. Nor was it only 
 rom his printed poems that I learned to estimate his 
 urpassing talents, he lent me a MS. volume, containing 
 lis Ode to Liberty, The Sensitive Plant, the exquisite 
 irethusa and Peneus, and many other of his lyrics, which 
 devoured, and enthusiastically admired. He was 
 arprised at my enthusiasm, and said to me, — "I am 
 isgusted with writing, and were it not for an irresistible 
 mpulse, that predominates my better reason, should dis- 
 ontinue so doing " ; words not unresembling the pathetic 
 imentation of Tasso, that " oppressed by the burthen of 
 is calamities, he had lost every prospect of reputation 
 nd of honor." And who can wonder or — considering the 
 oignancy of his sufferings — be surprised that the neglect 
 f the world — then seeing his works one after the other 
 ill dead from the Press — others who did not possess a 
 ythe of his genius belauded by a hireling press and 
 aressed by the public — should lacerate his heart and make 
 im at times doubt that the light which he followed was 
 ot a steady flame, but an Ignis fatuus of the Imagina- 
 Lon in which was no vividness or durability ? — And then 
 D look back on the past to see all his dearest hopes 
 lighted, his fond aspirations after immortality turned 
 ito a mockery — to see his life become aimless — profitless! 
 -How can we wonder at his Despondency ? And yet with 
 11 his despondency at the neglect of the world — his dis- 
 raction of mind at the attacks of his implacable enemies, 
 ne may conceive the intense enjoyment he must have 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 237* 
 
 experienced at creations such as the PrometJieus 
 Unbound, in the outpouring of his Ode to Liberty, or the 
 Improvisation (for such it was) of the fanciful and imagi- 
 native Witch of Atlas. — Self-absorbed, luxuriating in a 
 world of his own, he annihilated matter and time — Hours 
 fled like moments fledged with ever fresh delights — Even 
 his sorrows (and who suffered more ?) were but the drops 
 in the Crucible — the sad mesh of humanity — and his 
 poetical alchymydrew from them one of infinite purity and 
 beauty. — He says indeed the pleasure of sorrow is sweeter 
 than the pleasure of pleasure itself. Such might he have 
 occasionally found it — but there were times when his 
 sorrow must have been almost more than humanity could 
 bear, and I remember when speaking to him one day of 
 Ohatterton, his saying that four of his friends had com- 
 mitted suicide. Three are well known but who the other 
 was I am ignorant.^ He said that few people had not 
 been tempted during some period of their lives to destroy 
 themselves, and I have reason to think that like Keats he 
 had contemplated such a termination to his ills, — even 
 if he had not left the attempted work incomplete. On 
 such occasions, he fell into a mood, most distressing to 
 witness, was affected with a prostration of spirits that 
 bent him to the earth, a melancholy too sacred to notice, 
 and which it would have been a vain attempt to dis- 
 sipate. 
 
 At other times perhaps, however, his features, that bore 
 the impress of suffering, might have been false inter- 
 preters of the state of his mind, and his spirit might be 
 
 ' Medwin catalogued the three meaning by the first of the entries 
 
 in the margin of the revised copy, Mary Wollstoneeraft's daughter 
 
 thus — Fanny and by the last entry 
 
 Mary Wolstencroft — Shelley's first wife, Harriett, 
 
 Polidori — drowned in the Serpentine. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley — 
 
238 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 lost in reverie, of which state it has been well said, that 
 those subject to it, are dissolved into the surrounding 
 atmosphere, or feel as if the surrounding atmosphere 
 were dissolved into their being. Something of this, 
 I have more than once remarked in Shelley, as we stood 
 watching from my open window in the jipper part of the 
 house, the sunsets of Pisa, which are gorgeous beyond any 
 I have ever witnessed ; when the waters, the sky, and 
 the marble palaces that line the magnificent crescent of 
 the Lung' Arno, were glowing with crimson — the river 
 a flood of molten gold,— and I seem now to follow its 
 course towards the Ponte al Mare, till the eye rested on 
 the Torre del Fame, that frowned in dark relievo on the 
 horizon. On such occasions, after one of these reveries, 
 he would forget himself, lost in admiration, and exclaim, 
 — " What a glorious world ! There is, after all, something 
 worth living for. This makes me retract the wish that 
 I had never been bom." 
 
 During our walks we frequently visited the Campo 
 Santo, which with the Battisteria and the Hanging Tower 
 constitute perhaps one of the most pictiiresque groups in 
 the world. — They are the more striking from their 
 Solitude and standing as they do in an enclosure of the 
 finest turf, ever verdant and starred with the flowers 
 which never set in Italy, the daisies.^ He took me also 
 to the Foundling Hospital where a hole in" the wall 
 admits at all hours the new bom Babes, whom their 
 Mothers commit to the Asylum — an admirable institution 
 — and I remember his saying " that it was a disgrace to 
 our boasted civilization that no similar one should exist in 
 
 ^ Why not have given Shelley's The constellated flower that 
 
 own words, jn The Question ? — never sets — 
 
 Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the theft from which is too 
 
 the earth, obvious. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 239 
 
 London or our large Cities whicli he said would prevent 
 a crime here unknown and there too common, Infanticide, 
 originating in a sense of shame, and the inadequacy of 
 means to support the fatherless offspring of prostitution." 
 
 Other feelings, besides those of disappointment, had 
 tended at this time to wound his sensitive spirit. Had 
 it been the Quarterly Reviewer's object, as it undoubtedly 
 was, to place Shelley under a ban — to drive him from the 
 pale of society, he could not have adopted a course more 
 suited to his diabolical purpose. From the time of the- 
 appearance of this article, if his friends did not forsake 
 altogether, they, with few exceptions, fell off from him ; 
 and with a lacerated heart, only a few months after the 
 appearance of the number, he writes: — "I am regarded 
 by all who know, or hear of me, except I think on the 
 whole five individuals, as a rare prodigy of crime and 
 pollution, whose look even might infect. This five is 
 a large computation, and I don't think I could name 
 more than three." Who these exceptions were, he does 
 not mention. 
 
 To show what the feeling of the English abroad was 
 against him, in consequence of this vile attack, I will 
 here repeat an anecdote, which I have already 'given to 
 the world,^ and which must have highly gratified the 
 respectable contributor to the Quarterly. But a few 
 weeks had elapsed, when a singular and dastardly 
 outrage had been committed on Shelley. He was at the 
 Post-office, asking for his letters, addressed, as is usual in 
 Italy, Poste-restante, when a stranger in a military cloak, 
 on hearing him pronounce his name, said, "What, are 
 you that d d atheist, Shelley?" and 'without more 
 
 ^ The reference is to the Memoir 1832 and reprinted in The SMley 
 communicated to The Athenasum in Papers (1833, pp. 58-9). 
 
240 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 preamble, being a tall, powerful man, struck him such 
 a blow that it felled him to the ground, and stunned him. 
 On coming to himself, Shelley found the ruffian had 
 disappeared. 
 
 Raving with the insult, he immediately sought his 
 friend, Mr. Tighe, the son of the renowned Psyche Tighe,^ 
 who lost no time in taking measures to obtain satis- 
 faction. Mr. Tighe was some time in discovering where 
 the cowardly aggressor had put up ; but at length tracked 
 him to the Tre Donzelle. There were but few travellers 
 
 ' This leokless statement of the 
 most reckless of biographers misled 
 both my friend Eossetti and myself 
 in the seventies. I do not now 
 think there is the slightest ground 
 for accepting it ; nor, indeed, can 
 I find record of any issue left by 
 Mrs. Henry Tighe, although one 
 pathetic poem points to the birth 
 and 4eath of an infant. Mary 
 Blachford was first cousin to three 
 brothers Tighe, — William, Henry, 
 M.P., and John Edward. They 
 were sons of another William 
 Tighe, M.P., and grandsons of yet 
 another. Their uncle, Edward 
 Tighe, M.P., had one son, George 
 William ; and he it was who, as 
 correctly stated by Mrs. Angeli 
 {^Shelley and his Friends in Italy, 1911, 
 p. 89), figured in Pisa as Mr. Mason 
 (or more familiarly "Tatty") and 
 lived with Lady Mountcashel, who, 
 in her turn, being mother of his 
 two daughters, was respectfully 
 accepted as Mrs. Mason. At that 
 time "Mr. and Mrs. Mason" could 
 do no more than be faithful to each 
 other in their " free union," — 
 Stephen, second Earl Mountcashel, 
 being still alive ; but he died in 
 1822, and after that " Mr. and Mrs. 
 Mason " very Jjroperly got married. 
 The facts about the Tighe family, 
 as baldly set out in Burke's Landed 
 Gentry of Ireland, lead clearly to 
 the conclusion that " Tatty's " 
 
 cousin Henry married their cousin 
 Mary Blachford ; and that it was 
 her cousin William Tighe of Wood- 
 stock, M.P., who, when his brother 
 Henry failed to make cousin Mary 
 happy, gave the stricken poetess 
 the privilege of dying at his seat. 
 He it was, I believe, who, being 
 himself more or less a cultivator of 
 the Muses, edited the works of his 
 beautiful sister-in-law and cousin 
 after her death in 1810. His quarto 
 volume of 1811 reappeared in a 
 succession of octavo editions. Keats 
 was more or less influenced by 
 Psyche or the Legend of Love, which 
 forms the mass of Mrs. Tighe's 
 poetic output, now long forgotten 
 saveby afew students and collectors. 
 Keats very soon outgrew it ; but it 
 seems that, before he had done so, he 
 copied from her works a pathetic 
 sonnet beginning 
 
 Brother belov'd, if health shall 
 
 smile again 
 Upon this wasted form and 
 
 fever'd cheek ... 
 
 George Keats is supposed to have 
 found this sonnetin John's writing; 
 for he attributed it to his brother, 
 and thus misled an editor who shall 
 be nameless, — especially as he has 
 long ago recantedand withdrawn the 
 sonnet from its false position among 
 Keats's works, on finding it by 
 chance among Mrs. Tighe's. 
 
LIPK OP SHELLEY. 241 
 
 then in the city, and the description of the man tallied 
 exactly -with that of an officer in the Portuguese service, 
 whose name I have now forgotten, tho' I saw Letters to his 
 address lying in the Post-office at Genoa^it being the 
 habit to place all English Letters addressed Poste-resfante 
 in the hands of any one enquiring for his. He had, 
 however, started without delay for Genoa, whither 
 Mr, Tighe and Shelley followed, but without being able 
 to overtake him, or learn his route from that city. 
 
 This anecdote may suggest to the reader the fanaticism 
 which nearly proved fatal to Spinoza, who has been 
 branded everywhere but in Germany as an Atheist and 
 Epicurean, but whom Novalis calls a god-intoxicated 
 man, and whose epicureanism is best disproved by his 
 spending only twopence halfpenny a day on his food. 
 
 One evening as Spinoza was coming out of the theatre, 
 where he had been rela;xing his overtasked mind, he was 
 startled by the fierce expression of a dark face thrust 
 eagerly before his. The glare of blood-thirsty fanaticism 
 arrested him; a knife gleamed in 'the air, and he had 
 barely time to parry the blow. It fell upon his chest, 
 but fortunately deadened in its force, only tore his 
 coat. The assassin escaped — Spinoza walked home 
 thoughtful. 
 
 The author of the Biography of Philosophy, one of the 
 most acute and candid works I ever met with, compares 
 Shelley and Spinoza together, and does ample justice to 
 their characters. Speaking of Spinoza's ostracism, he 
 
 " Like the young and energetic Shelley, who afterwards imitated 
 him, he found himself an outcast in the busy world, with no other 
 guides through its perplexing labyrinths than sincerity and self- 
 dependence. Two or three new friends soon presented themselves, 
 
J42 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 uen who warred against their religion, as he had warred against his 
 )wn ; and a bond of sympathy was forged out of the common injusjtice. 
 lere again we trace a resemblance to J^helley, who, discountenanced 
 )y his relations, sought among a few sceptical friends, to supply the 
 bffection he was thus deprived of. Like Spinoza, he too had only 
 listers with whom he had been brought up. No doubt, in both cases, 
 ;he consciousness of sincerity, and the pride of martyrdom, were great 
 ihields in the combat with society. They are always so, and it is well 
 hey are so, or the battle would never be fought ; but they never 
 jntirely replace the affections. Shut from our family, we may seek 
 I brotherhood of apostacy, but the new and precarious intellectual 
 iympathies are no compensations for the loss of the emotive sympa- 
 thies, with all their links of association and all their memories of 
 ;hildhood. Spinoza must have felt this, and as Shelley in a rash 
 marriage endeavoured to fill up the void of his yearning heart, so 
 Spinoza must, we think, swayed by the same feeling, have sought the 
 laughter of his friend and master, Vanden Ende, as his wife." ' 
 
 This anecdote (to return to it) -will show what animositj' 
 the malice of Shelley's enemies had roused against him 
 in the hearts of his compatriots ; but the time is happily 
 past, when Quarterlies can deal forth damnation, and 
 point out as a mad dog, to be knocked on the head, every 
 one who does not subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. 
 
 During this winter, he translated to me the Prometheus 
 of .^schylus, reading it as fluently as if written in 
 French or Italian ; and if there be any merit in my own 
 version of that wonderful drama, which appeared together 
 
 1 A Biographical History of Philo- later entitled it, more ambitiously, 
 
 sophy by G. H. Lewes is so precisely The History of Philosophy Jrom Thales to 
 
 followed save in the last five lines, Comie. One does not usually con- 
 
 the spelling of Spinoza's name, and cern oneself about Medwin having 
 
 the substitution of shields for sustain- an excuseforany kind of inaccuracy., 
 
 ments in line 12, that one almost But this time he has the shadow of 
 
 suspects Medwin of having cut the an excuse. Lewes's preface opens 
 
 bulk of tlie passage out of the book with the words — " To write the 
 
 for " copy," and then added a bit Biography of Philosophy while 
 
 in manuscript. The extract is from writing the Biographies of Philo- 
 
 the third of the little volumes (pp. sophers is the aim of the following 
 
 116-17) constituting the work in its work." Thus he actually supplied 
 
 original fascinating form. In later his fellow biographer with the 
 
 years Lewes revised and enlarged words of the title adopted by the 
 
 it, and in the editions of 1867 and latter's gadding fancy. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 243 
 
 with the remaining- Plays in Fi-aser,^ it is much due to 
 the recollection of his words, which often flowed on line 
 after line in blank verse, into which very harmonious 
 prose resolves itself naturally. His friends, the Gisbornes, 
 had, two summers before, taught him also Spanish, which 
 I had studied in India from a Spanish Gil Bias, pre- 
 tended to be the original — Le Sage's the copy ; and we 
 luxuriated in what Shelley calls " the golden and starry 
 Autos," ^ or Mysteries, — except the Greek Choruses, 
 perhaps among the most difficult poems to comprehend — 
 and very rare ; so much so, that they are scarcely to be 
 obtained in Spain, though found by Shelley accidentally 
 in an old book-stall at Leghorn. It was the quarto 
 Edition, which formed one of the gems in Tieck's 
 Catalogue, an edition of great rarity and value. It was 
 not a perfect work but consisting of several odd Volumes, 
 which it may be remarked was the case with Tieck's. It 
 may be well said, that every new language is a new 
 sense ; Shelley profited much by his mastery of Calderon, 
 and has left some scenes of Cyprian that give the original 
 in all its spirit. But we also read a tragedy of Calderon' s, 
 which, though it cannot compete with Shakspeare's 
 
 1 Medwin's translations from Faser''s MagazineinlSSl aaAlSSSjliad 
 
 ^achylus appeared in six numbers been published by Pickering as 
 
 of Fraser's Magazine at about the separate octavo pamphlets in 1832. 
 rate of one per year, — 1832 to 1838. * The reference may be taken to 
 
 The ChoSphori, The Persians, The Severn be to that passage in Shelley's letter 
 
 before Thebes, The Eumenides, Prometheus to John Gisborne (November 1820) 
 
 Bound, and Jgamemnon. Ot The Sup- in which he says that he is "bathing 
 
 pliants no trace of a rendering by himself in the light and odour of 
 
 him has come to my knowledge. I the floweiy and starry autos," — 
 
 believe the play was much neglected adding that he has "read them all 
 
 in those days, on account of its cor- morethanouee." See Prose Works, 
 
 ruptions. Medwin may have re- vol. iv, p. 193. The statement lends 
 
 garded it as Mr. Birrell does, in the likelihood to the allegation that 
 
 light of a fragment. {See The Poetical Shelley'^ copy was merely of some 
 
 Wot-hs of Robert Brmoning, 2 -vol., 1897 oddvolumes. ToreadaSCalderon's 
 
 — i. 493.) Curiously enough, the autos more than once would have 
 
 Prometheiis and Agarriemnon trans- been a big undertaking, 
 lations when they appeared in 
 
 e3 
 
244 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 Henry the VIII., contains more poetry — the Cisma 
 D'Ingalaterra. Shelley was much struck with the 
 characteristic Fool, who plays a part in it, and deals in 
 fables, but more so with the octave stanzas (a strange 
 metre in a drama, to choose,) spoken by Carlos, Enamorado 
 di Anna Bolena, whom he had met at Paris, during her 
 father's embassy. So much did Shelley admire these 
 stanzas, that he copied them out into one of his letters to 
 Mrs. Gisbome; of the two last I append a translation, 
 marking in Italics the lines corrected by Shelley: — 
 
 Hast thou not seen, officious with delight, 
 Move through the illumined air about the flower, 
 
 The Bee, that fears to drink its purple light, 
 Lest danger lurk within that Rose's bower ? 
 
 Hast thou not marked the moth's enamoured flight, 
 About the Taper's flame at evening hour, 
 
 Till kindle in that monumental fire 
 
 His sunflower tvings their own funereal •pyre ? 
 
 My heart its wishes trembling to unfold, 
 
 Thus round the Rose and Taper hovering came, 
 
 And Passion's slave. Distrust, in ashes cold. 
 
 Smothered awhile, hut could not quench the flMme, 
 
 Till Love, that grows by disappointment bold, 
 And Opportunity, had conquered Shame, 
 
 And like the Bee and Moth, in act to close, 
 
 I humt my wings, and settled on the Rose. 
 
 I had also the advantage of reading Dante with him ; 
 he lamented that no adequate translation existed of the 
 Divina Commedia, and though he thought highly of Gary's 
 work, with which he said he had for the first time studied 
 the original, praising the fidelity of the version — it by no 
 means satisfied him. What he meant by an adequate 
 translation, was, one in terza rima ; for in Shelley's own 
 words, he held it an essential justice to an author, to 
 render him in the same form. I asked him if he had 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 245 
 
 never attempted this, and looking among his papers, he 
 shewed, and gave me to copy, the following fragment 
 from the Purgatorio, which leaves on the mind an inex- 
 tinguishable regret, that he did not employ himself in 
 rendering other of the finest passages. In no language 
 has inspiration gone beyond this picture of exquisite 
 beauty, which undoubtedly suggested to Tennyson his 
 Dream of Fair Women. 
 
 And earnest to explore within — around 
 
 That divine wood, whose thick green living woof 
 
 Tempered the young day to the sight, I wound 
 
 Up a green slope, beneath the starry roof, 
 
 With slow — slow steps — leaving the mountain's steep, 
 
 And sought those leafy labyrinths, motion-proof 
 
 Against the air, that in that stillness, deep 
 And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare, 
 Like a sweet breathing of a child in sleep*. 
 
 tAlready had I lost myself so far, 
 Amid that tangled wilderness, that I 
 Perceived not where I entered — but no fear 
 
 Of wandering from my way disturbed, when nigh, 
 A little stream appeared ; the grass that grew 
 Thick on its banks, impeded suddenly 
 
 My going on. Water of purest dew 
 
 On earth, would appear turbid and impure, 
 
 Compared with this — whose unconcealing hue, 
 
 Dark — dark — yet clear, moved under the obscure 
 Of the close boughs, whose interwoven looms 
 No ray of moon or sunshine would endure. 
 
 My feet were motionless, but mid the glooms 
 Darted my charmed eyes, contemplating 
 The mighty multitude of fresh May-blooms 
 
 * Canto 28, Purgatorio. — " Vago di cercar,'' down to "Soave vento.' 
 + Gia m'avean transportato i lenti passi. 
 
i46 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 That starred that night; when even as a thing 
 
 That suddenly for blank astonishment 
 
 Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing, 
 
 Appeared a solitary maid — she went 
 Singing, and gathering flower after flower, 
 With which her way was painted and besprent. 
 
 Bright lady ! who if looks had ever power 
 To bear true witness of the heart within, 
 Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower 
 
 Unto this bank — prithee ! let me win 
 
 This much of thee — come ! that I may hear 
 
 Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna's glen, 
 
 Thou seemest to my fancy, — singing here, 
 
 And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden, when 
 
 She lost the spring, and Ceres her more dear. 
 
 Anotlier of the canons of Shelley, was, that translations 
 re intended, for those who do not understand the 
 riginals, and that they should be purely English. I have 
 ften read with delight his En a\a of Theocritus, be- 
 ;inning, — 
 
 When winds that move not the calm surface, &c. 
 
 His Cyclops of Euripides and Homer's Hymn to 
 "Mercury are specimens of what l^is powers as a translator 
 fere and how critically he was versed in Grreek and caught 
 he true Spirit of his authors. It is something to say that 
 he Version of the Comic Drama may challenge comparison 
 srith that of Professor "Wilson which appeared many years 
 .fterwards in the pages of Blackwood's Magazine. 
 
 Lord Byron has left a translation of the Rimini story 
 irom the Inferno, which affords as poor an idea of the 
 )assage in Dante, as an easel copy does of an old fresco 
 )f G-iotto's. It is a hard, cold, rough, cast-iron impress, 
 Iry and bald, and in many parts unfaithfully rendered ; 
 i,nd at Shelley's request, and with his assistance, I at- 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 247 
 
 tempted to give the Ugolino, which is valuable to the 
 admirers of Shelley, on account of his numerous cor- 
 rections, which almost indeed make it his own. 
 
 Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still 
 Which bears the name of Famine's Tower from me, 
 And where 'tis fit that many another will 
 
 Be doomed to linger in captivity, 
 
 Shown through its narrow opening in my cell, 
 
 Moon after moon slow waning, when a sleep, 
 
 That of the fxitwre hurst the veil, in dream 
 Visited me— it was a slumber deep 
 And evil— for I saw, or I did seem 
 
 To see, that tyrant Lord his revels keep, 
 The leader of the cruel hunt to them. 
 Chasing the wolf and wolf-cubs up the steeja 
 
 Ascent, that from the Pisan is the screen 
 Of Lucca; with him. Gualandi came, 
 Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, bloodhounds lean, 
 
 Trained to the sport and eager for the game. 
 Wide ranging in his front; but soon were seen, 
 Though by so short a course, with spirits tame, 
 
 The father and his whelps to flag at once, 
 
 And then the sharp fangs gored their bosoms deep. 
 
 Ere morn I roused myself, and heard my sons. 
 
 For they were with me, moaning in their sleep, 
 And begging bread. Ah for those darling ones! 
 Right cruel art thou, if thou dost not weep. 
 
 In thinking of my soul's sad augury ; 
 
 And if thou weepest not now, weep never more ! 
 
 They were already waked, as wont drew nigh 
 
 The allotted hour for food, and in that hour 
 Each drew a presage from his dream. When I 
 Heard locked beneath me, of that horrible to%ver 
 
 The outlet, then into their eyes alone 
 
 I looked to read myself, without a sign 
 
 Or word. I wept not — turned within to stone. 
 
248 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 They wept aloud, and little Anselm mine, 
 Said, — 'twas my youngest, dearest little one, — 
 " "What ails thee, father ! why look so at thine ? " 
 
 In all that day, and all the following night, 
 I wept not, nor replied; but when to shine 
 Upon the world, not us, came forth the light 
 
 Of the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown, 
 Gleamed thro' its narrow chink — a doleful sight, — 
 T%ree faces, each the reflex of my own, 
 
 Were imaged hy its faint and ghastly ray ; 
 Then I, of either hand unto the bone, 
 Gnawed, in my agony ; and thinking they 
 
 'Twas done from hunger pangs in their excess, 
 All of a sudden raise themselves, and say, 
 "Father! our woes so great, were not the less^ 
 
 Would you but eat of us, — 'twas you tvho clad 
 
 Our bodies in these weeds of wretchedness, 
 
 Despoil them." Not to make their hearts more sad, 
 
 I hushed myself. That day is at its close, — 
 Another — still we were all mute. Oh had 
 The obdurate earth opened to end our woes ! 
 
 The fourth day dawned, and when the new sun shone, 
 
 Outstretched himself hefore me as it rose. 
 
 My Gaddo, saying, "Help, father! hast thou none 
 
 For thine own child -is there no help from thee?" 
 He died— there at my feet— and one by one, 
 I saw them fall, plainly as you see me. 
 
 Between the fifth and sixth day, ere 'twas dawn, 
 I found myself blind-groping o'er the three. 
 Three days I called them after they were gone. 
 
 Famine, of grief can get the mastery. 
 
 This translation I shewed afterwards to Byron, and 
 remember his saying, that he interpreted the last words, 
 
 1 As this part of the version is not yet. Rossetti amended the line ac- 
 
 attributed to Shelley, its inaccuracy cordingly in his edition of Shelley ; 
 
 does not much matter ; but it seems and I adopted the reading in mine 
 
 probable that not was a misprint for in 1877. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 249 
 
 " Piu die dolor pote il digiuno " to mean (an interpreta- 
 tion in which Shelley by no means agreed with him) 
 that Ugolino actually did feed on his children after their 
 deaths, and which Lord Byron thought was clearly borne 
 out by the nature of the retribution of his tormentor, as 
 well as the offer of the children to make themselves 
 a sacrifice for their father. "The story," observed 
 Shelley, " is horrible enough without such a comment," — 
 and he added, '" that Byron had deeply studied this death 
 of Ugolino, and perhaps but for it, would never have 
 written The Prisoner of Chillon," 
 
 Shelley was well conscious of his talent for Translation 
 and told me that disheartened as he was with the success 
 of his Original composition, he thought of dedicating his 
 time to throwing the grey veil of his own words over the 
 perfect and glowing forms of other writers, and it is not 
 impossible that he might have had it in his mind to , 
 translate the Divina Commedia. 
 
 Speaking of Dante, among Shelley's acquaintances at 
 Pisa, was a Mr. Taaffe, of whom Byron makes mention in 
 his letters, and whom Shelley used to call Ta(j)os, as he 
 did Leigh Hunt "Leontius," &c. 
 
 Mr. Taaffe had the monomania that he could translate 
 the Divina Commedia, and we were much amused by his 
 version, which he brought from time to time, of some of 
 the cantos of the Inferno, rendered in octosyllabics ; one 
 of the strangest metres to adopt for a serious drama, and 
 a metre that did not admit even of fidelity, for though 
 our own language is extremely monosyllabic, to squeeze 
 three hexameter terza rimas into short ones, was an utter 
 impossibility and despair. Mr. Taaffe told Shelley that 
 a brother of his in the Austrian service was occupied in 
 a similar pursuit, and Shelley remarked that it was hard 
 
250 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 upon poor Dante, that his spirit, after a lapse of six 
 centuries, could not be allowed to remain at rest, but must 
 be disquieted by two Milesians. 
 
 Let not Mr. Taaffe take ill these remarks— he was an 
 amiable and clever man, and his commentary on Dante 
 appeared to me excellent, — as well as to Byron, who 
 recommended Murray to publish and who I believe did 
 publish it. 
 
 I found one of the great remedies for my bodily suffer- 
 ings this winter, in Shelley's reading. No one ever gave 
 such emphasis to poetry. His voice, it is true, was a 
 cracked soprano, but in the variety of its tones, and the 
 intensity of feeling which he displayed in the finest 
 passages, produced an effect almost electric. He had 
 just completed The Witch of Atlas, which in lyrical 
 harmony and fancy, must be considered as a masterpiece. 
 It may be called, if you will, an ignis fatuus of the 
 imagination, and was objected to by Mrs. Shelley as 
 such, — a censure that hurt Shelley, and called forth his 
 lines to her, in which he compares it' with Peter Bell, 
 which according to Wordsworth, cost him nineteen years 
 in composing and retouching — Shelley's Witch of Atlas, 
 not so many hours. How well does he, in these exculpa- 
 tory verses, characterise the difference between her and 
 Euth, or Lucy, the first " in a light vest of flowing metre," 
 and Peter, "proud as a dandy with his stays hanging on 
 his wiry limbs, a dress. 
 
 Like King Lear's looped and windowed raggedness.'' 
 
 Shelley used to chuckle, with his peculiar Jiysterical 
 cachination, over this Nursery Tale of Wordsworth's, and 
 to repeat the stanza which forms the motto of his own 
 Peter Bell, with tears running down his laughing eyes, 
 as he gave utterance to, — 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEV., 251 
 
 This is Hell, and in this smother, 
 All are damnable and damned, 
 Each one damning, damns the other, 
 They are damned by one another, 
 By no other are they damned.' 
 
 No one was more sensible to the merits of Wordsworth 
 than himself, but he no longer, as proved by his sonnet, 
 looked upon him as his, ideal. He was still an enthu- 
 siastic admirer of his early productions, and particularly of 
 his inimitable lines in blank verse to his sister, which 
 satiate with excess of sweetness ; but these, he said, were 
 written in the golden time of his genius, and he held 
 with Byron, as Nursery Rhymes, the Idiot Boy, and 
 many others. The Excursion I never heard him mention ; 
 and he thought that "Wordsworth had left no perfect 
 specimen of an Ode, — that he always broke down when he 
 attempted one. Collins he thought a cold, artificial writer, 
 G-ray I never heard him mention ; and of all the Odes in 
 our language, he most preferred Coleridge's on the French 
 Revolution, beginning, "Ye Clouds," which he used to 
 thunder out with marvellous energy, as well as Tlie Ancient 
 Manner. But to return to The Witch of Atlas. As to 
 the objection of its not having human interest, one might 
 as well make the same to Shakspeare's Queen Mab, But 
 I even deny that such is the case ; like its prototype, he 
 carries the spirit of dream through the chambers of the 
 
 I The real Wordsworthian mott6 But, as you by their faces see, 
 
 stanza, peculiar to the first and All silent, and all damn'd! 
 second editions of Peter BeU, a Tale 
 
 in Verse (1819), is — The lines quoted by Medwin are, of 
 
 course, Shelley's own {Peter BeU the 
 
 Is it a party in a parlour ? Third, Part III, Hell, stanza xv) with 
 
 Cramm'd just as they on earth the initial And omitted from 
 
 were cramm'd — line 1. 
 ^ome sipping punch, some sip- 
 ping tea, 1 
 
253 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 great — to the perfumed couch of beauty, the paradise of 
 love ; nor this alone,^ — 
 
 But she would write strange dreams upon the brain 
 
 Of those who were less beautiful, — 
 
 to soldiers, and priests, and kings ; interweaving in the 
 texture of the poem, his own philosophy, and drawing 
 many a charming moral from the witch's pranks among 
 the cities of mortal men, and sprites and gods, "What 
 a subject for Eetsch to have illustrated ! a second Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley had at this time been writing some little 
 Dramas on classical subjects, one of which was the Rape 
 of Proserpine, a very graceful composition which she has 
 never published. Shelley contributed to this the exquisite 
 fable of Arethusa and thelnvocation toCeres. — Among the 
 Nymphs gathering flowers on Enna were two whom she 
 called Ino and Uno, names which I remember in the 
 Dialogue were irresistibly ludicrous. She also wrote one 
 on Midas — into which were introduced by Shelley — in the 
 Contest between Pan and Apollo, the Sublime Eflftision of 
 the latter, and Pan's characterised Ode. She also had 
 composed a Tale probably suggested by Alfieri's Myrrha 
 — the only Play of his which strange to say, has possession 
 of the Stage — I remember turned on the incestuous love 
 of a daughter for a father. Her taste was at this time not 
 so refined as at present. It was however delicately treated 
 — a disgusting subject — and I am not surprised that it 
 should never have made its appearance— Mrs. Shelley had 
 it seems from a letter of Shelley's translated some scenes 
 of Alfieri's Myrrha, and probably worked out the subject 
 in prose — in accordance with Shelley's opinion that Incest 
 is a very poetical circumstance. In this I cannot agree 
 with him.— She also this winter read with Shelley — for she 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 253 
 
 is a tolerable Latin Scholar — Spinoza — whose arguments 
 she then thought irrefutable — Tempora Mutantur. 
 
 I must speak of other and higher strains. 
 
 Spain had given the signal to Italy — Piedmont asserted 
 her freedom — Genoa threw off the yoke — Sardinia and 
 the little state of Messa Carrara, in imitation of the Swiss 
 Cantons, formed itself into a republic — Naples followed 
 in extorting a constitution. These events, in which 
 Shelley took a breathless interest, aroused all those sym- 
 pathies which had already been displayed in the lines on 
 " The Manchester Massacre," and The Masque of Anarchy. 
 His odes to Liberty, and Naples, have nothing in our lan- 
 guage that can compete with them. They have the merit 
 of being — what few or none of our modem odes (miscalled) 
 are — odes constructed on the models left us by Pindar and 
 Horace, .and worthy of the best times of Greece and Eome ; 
 and have only one fault, that, alas ! they were not pro- 
 phetic, — that his aspirations were unfulfilled, that blood- 
 shed and anarchy followed in the train of the Spanish 
 revolution, and that that of Naples was soon put down by 
 Austrian bayonets. A vain attempt to snap the chain 
 only renders it more irrefragable. Shelley felt deeply the 
 resubjugation of Naples, and used to inveigh against 
 Moore's lines, beginning, — 
 
 Yes, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are ! 
 
 suggested by a failure which he deemed ignominious ; and 
 Shelley said that they were written in a spirit unworthy 
 of himself and an Irishman, and whether merited or not, 
 were cruel and ungenerous. 
 
 In August, 1820, he had also written his Mock Play, 
 or Comic Drama of (Edipus [Swellfoot), and a copy of 
 which, given me by Shelley, I had in my possession more 
 
154 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 han twenty years before it was published by Mrs. Shelley.^ 
 
 le told me that on the. first day of its being exposed for 
 
 ale in the City, the then Lord Mayor of London, who was 
 
 , friend of the gentleman who corrected the proof sheets, 
 
 idvised him to withdraw it. There was nothing in it to 
 
 all for the animadversion of the Society for the Suppres- 
 
 ion of Vice, nor do I think that a Crown prosecution 
 
 rould have been its fate, for it was perfectly harmless as 
 
 egards the public, who could not possibly understand it. 
 
 Edipus (George the Fourth), lona Taurina (Queen 
 
 Caroline), Laoctonos ("Wellington), Purganax(Castlereagh), 
 
 )acrus [sic for Dacry] — from his. lachrymatory pro- 
 
 lensities (Lord Eldon), form the dramatis personae. The 
 
 erivation of John Bull is very witty. The Minotaur 
 
 peaks. 
 
 I am the old traditional man Bull, 
 
 And from my ancestors have been called loiiiaja ; 
 
 I am called Ion, which by interpretation 
 
 Is John,— in plain Theban, that is to say, 
 
 I am John Bull. 
 
 The Green Bag is most happily hit off, and the 
 )horusses are very fine, particularly that of the Gad-fly. 
 t is indeed a satirical drama, quite in the spirit of Aris- 
 ophanes. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley gives the following account of the origin 
 f the idea, which is curious. 
 
 "We were at the baths of St. Julian, and a friend came to visit us, 
 rhen a fair was held in the square beneath our windows. Shelley 
 ead to us his Ode to Liberty, and was riotously accompanied by the 
 ■runting of a quantity of pigs, brought for sale. He compared it to 
 be chorus of frogs in the Batrachse, and it being an hour of 
 lerriment, and one ludicrous associa,tion suggesting another, he 
 
 ^ Shelley cannot have done this second collected edition of 1839 
 111 the winter of 1820-21. Mrs. (November). This looks like short 
 helley revived the poem in her measure for even nineteen years. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 255 
 
 imagined a political drama on the circumstance of the day, the 
 forthcoming trial of Queen Caroline." 
 
 Slie adds, " that like everything he wrote, it breathes 
 that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and 
 indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy 
 of his name." 
 
 Shelley's library was a very limited one. He used to 
 say that a good library consisted not of many books, but 
 a few chosen ones ; and asking him what he considered 
 such, he said, "I'll give you my list — catalogue it can't be 
 called : — The Greek Plays, Plato, Lord Bacon's Works, 
 Shakspeare, The' Old Dramatists, Milton, Gothe and 
 Schiller, Dante, Petrarch and BoccaAo, and Machiavelli 
 and Guicciardini, — not forgetting Calderon; and last, yet 
 first, the Bible." I do not mean that this was all his 
 collection. He had read few English works of the day — 
 scarcely a novel except Walter Scott's, for whose genius 
 he had a sovereign respect, and Anastasius, by which he 
 thought Lord Byron profited in his Don Juan ; and the 
 Promessi Sposi. He used to say that he carefully avoided 
 reading inferior books, in prose or bad poetry, for fear of 
 unconsciously spoiling his style, reminding me of a friend 
 of mine who would not allow his children from a similar 
 apprehension of their acquiring a false taste looking at 
 bad pictures or engravings ; and when travelling used to 
 turn such with their faces to the walls. Shelley in speaking 
 of Hope and Manzoni, said, " that one good novel was 
 enough for any man to write, and thought both judicious 
 in not risking their fame by a second attempt." I read 
 with him the greater part of the Betrothed Lovers. He 
 admired their being made the hero and heroine ; said it 
 was an original conception, finely worked out, to make 
 them peasants ; that Don Aboddio was a piece of life-like 
 
256 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 drawing, and did not wonder that an Italian, so different 
 is the spirit of our language from his own, should call 
 Shakspeare a barbarian. He pointed out to me the scene 
 in the Innominato's Castle, when he is first attacked 
 with the plague — and looked upon the description of that 
 pestilence at Milan, as far superior to those in De Foe 
 or Thucydides. 
 
 One of the plays we read this winter was Schiller's 
 Maid of Orleans ; he thought it bold to have, treated the 
 Christian religion as a mythology in that drama, and said 
 that a hundred years hence it would be more admired than 
 now. He deemed it still bolder, making Mary Queen of 
 Scots receive the Sacrament on the stage. We read also 
 Cervantes's Little Novels in two volumes, which he deemed 
 very inferior and slight, and totally unworthy of the great 
 genius. 
 
 1 Among English plays he was a great admirer of The 
 Duchess of Malfy, and thought the dungeon scene, where 
 she takes her executioners for allegorical personages, of 
 Torture and Murder, or some such grim personifications, 
 as equal to anything in Shakspeare, indeed he was contin- 
 uallyreadingtheOldDramatists — Middleton, and "Webster, 
 Ford and Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, were 
 the mines from which he drew the pure and vigorous 
 style that so highly distinguishes The Cenci. Had he 
 been encouraged by the popularity of that Tragedy there 
 is little question but that he would have dedicated his 
 talents to the Stage, but it was clear from his after efforts 
 of which I shall have to speak that the weight of the 
 world weighed on him like a leaden mantle, made him 
 diffident of himself, and often prevented the free exercise 
 of his dramatic powers. Lord Byron pretends that his 
 Tragedies were not intended for the Stage — but who can 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 257 
 
 believe Mm — and his disappointment at the failure of 
 Marino Faliero, and attributing that failure to the acting 
 rather than the demerits of the work, proves that he was 
 not sincere in his assertion. 
 
 I have already spoken of Shelley's opinion of some of 
 his contemporaries, it may not be uninteresting to know 
 what he thought of the merits of others of them. He had, 
 as I have said, been in early life a great admirer of Southey, 
 and took him as his metrical model, but he told me that 
 when his taste became more fastidious, he looked upon him 
 in the light of an improvisatore. " What do you mean 
 by that, Shelley ? " I asked. " I mean," he replied, " that 
 he has fancy, imagination, taste, — that he is facile and 
 flowing in his versification, — most musical, if you will, — 
 but he is too smooth and level, he seldom or ever rises with 
 his subject ; he will stand criticism as far as words go, but 
 no farther ; he moves, but does not touch the heart. One 
 reads him with delight once, but never takes him up 
 a second time ; besides, his subjects possess no interest that 
 bears upon the times." Of Rogers and Campbell, whom 
 he called the bepetted and spoiled children of fortune, 
 I shall have something to say in another place. Moore's 
 Irish Melodies were great favourites with him, especially 
 The Irish Peasant to his Mistress, meaning England 
 and Ireland ; of Byron's Childe Harold he has recorded, 
 in a letter to Mr. P[eacock], his sentiments. — "The spirit 
 in which it is written, is the most wicked and mischievous 
 insanity that ever was given forth. It is a kind of obdurate 
 and self- willed folly, in which he hardens himself; " and 
 adds, " I remonstrated with him in vain on the tone of 
 mind from which such a view of things arises," and con- 
 eludes with, " He is heartily and deeply discontented 
 with himself ; and contemplating in the distorted mirror 
 
258 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of his own thoughts, the nature and duty of man, what 
 can he behold but objects of contempt and despair?" 
 These remarks apply to the tenor of the poem, — its ten- 
 dency, rather than to the poem itself; that he thought 
 Byron a great poet, is proved by a sonnet, of which I 
 forget two of the lines, but which Byron never saw, — 
 
 If 1 esteemed thee less. Envy would till 
 Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair 
 The ministration of the thoughts that fill 
 My soul, which even as a worm may share 
 A portion of the Unapproachable, 
 Marks thy creations rise as fast and fair 
 As perfect worlds at the Creator's will ; 
 But not the blessings of thy happier lot. 
 Nor thy well-won prosperity and fame, 
 
 Move one regret for his unhonoured name, 
 
 Who dares these words — the worm beneath the sod 
 
 May lift itself in homage of the God.' 
 
 This Sonnet was written one day after reading The 
 Corsair from the perusal of which he rose with strong ex- 
 pressions of its beauty and force — and I remember his saying 
 that it was the finest specimen of Couplets in our lan- 
 guage : — that no one wielded that most difficult of metres 
 with so much of variety and power as Byron — Shelley 
 frequently spoke of Leigh Hunt, one of three persons who 
 he says did not look upon him as a monster of iniquity. 
 Hunt was one of the Joint Editors of The Examiner— 
 had found occasion (a singular exception) to do justice to 
 his Talents — Hunt had also been imprisoned for a per- 
 sonal libel on George the 4th. — He was a poor Author 
 with a large family and a Sick Wife and these were all 
 claims on Shelley's heart and purse. — I remember his 
 
 1 For full information about Library edition of Shelley 
 the text of the sonnet in question, issue, vol. iv, p. 118). 
 the curious might consult my 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 259 
 
 receiving some Numbers of The Indicator, a worthy sequel 
 to the Adventurer and. Mirror, and among them was an 
 article on a walking stick or some such familiar subject 
 which was treated with great fancy and pleased Shelley 
 infinitely. — These Indicators, receiving as Shelley did so 
 few journals from home were a resource — Hunt and Shelley 
 corresponded occasionally,but only at intervals, as it would 
 appearfrom the published Correspondence — ExceptHazlitt 
 indeed I never knew an author who had so few Corre- 
 spondents — Hazlitt told me he thought it lost time to write 
 Letters. 
 
 I have a note of a conversation I had with Shelley, 
 which arose out of some volumes of Keats's and Leigh 
 Hunt's Poems, of which conversation I wiU here give the 
 substance. — "There are some people whom all the hellebore 
 ~in the world cannot cure of their madness. It is singular 
 that England and Italy should have almost simultaneously 
 set about the perversion of their poetry under the crotchet 
 of a reform. We are certainly indebted to the Lakists 
 for a more simple and natural phraseology ; but the school 
 that has sprung out of it, have spawned a set of words 
 neither Chaucerian nor Spenserian, words such as 'glib,' 
 and 'flush,' 'whiffling,' 'perking up,' 'swirling,' 'light- 
 some' and 'brightso me,' and hundreds of others, which 
 never have been, or ought to be, English.^ Shabby 
 
 * These and other such words If six hundred miles were not 
 
 occur ad nauseam in Hunt's Foliage ; between us, I should say what a 
 
 orPoemsOri^nalandTranslated{OTiier, pity that glih is not omitted and 
 
 1818), and notably in The Nymphs, that the poem is not as faultless as 
 
 of which Shelley wrote to Hunt it is beautiful. But for fear I should 
 
 thus on the 22nd of March 1818 : — spoil your next poem I will not let 
 
 " I have read Foliage — ^with most of slip a word on the subject." The 
 
 the poems I was already familiar. four quotations from Homer (aa 
 
 What a delightful poem The Nymphs rendered by Hunt) are at pages 5, 
 
 is, and especially the second part. 6, 10 and li of Foliage. "Juno, the 
 
 It is truly poetical, in the intense glorious bed-fellow of -Jove,' as 
 
 and emphatic sense of the word. Hunt has it, is not so bad as M odwin 
 
 s2 
 
260 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 genteel and vulgar sort of writing which Mr, Leigh Hunt 
 adopted upon principle and as part of his system : how- 
 ever he has lived long enough to see the error of his ways. 
 But the adoption of such a barbarous jargon in translation 
 from the Greek ! " and here he turned to a travesty of 
 Homer, whilst tears of laughter ran out of his large, promi- 
 nent eyes, confirming what Byron says in one of his letters 
 to Moore, that he was facetious about what is serious in 
 the suburb, and read, — 
 
 Up ! thou most overwhelming of mankind ! 
 Pelides — there's a dreadful roar of men 
 For thy friend's body, at the ships ; 
 
 and, 
 
 and, 
 
 Oflf with a plague ! you scandalous multitude ! 
 Convicted. knaves! &c.. 
 
 Be quicker— (Zo — and help me, evil children ! 
 Down-looking set ! 
 
 Juno, bedfellow of Jove, &c. 
 
 And in a version from another Greek Poet,i 
 
 first having been 
 With her sweet limbs inside of Hippocrene, 
 And other sacred waters of the hill. — &c., &c. 
 
 Shelley lamented that a man of such talent as Leigh 
 Hunt, and who in prose had so exquisite a taste, should 
 have so distorted his poetry. He added, that " that school 
 hated him worse than Byron." But had Shelley been, 
 
 makes it appear ; and there are in wrote the noble line — 
 
 truth some fine passages in these c.^ j.v i • » m i -j- 
 
 blank verse renderingi of Homer. ^° "^^^ ^^^ «1«*' ^°"« "^ .Eakides, 
 
 The discomfiture of the Trojans and he had read Hunt's version, in 
 
 allies when Achilles, unarmed, which the line stands thus — 
 
 shouts from the trench naturally „ n. ^ ■ ^.^ -j 
 
 suffers by comparison with Tenny- ®° sprung the clear voice of .Eacides. 
 son's rendering of the episode ; and ^ On these lines I have not hit ; 
 
 yet it is not easy to avoid the con- but I have not gone further afield 
 
 elusion that, when the great laureate than Foliage to search. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 261 
 
 like Keats, subject to the same influences, it is most 
 probable, from here and there a passage in Rosalind and 
 Helen, — "A rock of ocean's own," &c., written at the period 
 of his intimacy with his admired friend, — ^that he would 
 have caught the infection from which his continental 
 abode, his love of the Classics, his cultivation of Italian 
 and Spanish, happily saved him. But even Keats had 
 lived to see the error of his ways — to all but emancipate 
 himself from the trammels of Cockneyism, in The Pot of 
 Basil, in The Eve of St. Agnes, and still more in Hyperion, 
 where scarcely a trace of it is left; and which poems Shelley 
 often spoke of with great admiration. " The Italians," \ 
 Shelley continued to say, "have carried this affec- 
 tation of phraseology still farther than the sect at home. 
 The so-called Classicists have taken to fishing in the rancid 
 pool of the thirteenth century, and become so prostituted 
 and enslaved to antiquity, as to deem no word admissible 
 in their poems, that has not the sanction of Dante or 
 Petrarch ; little regarding the obvious truth, that new 
 images and ideas are continually multiplying, or perceiving 
 that the great objection to the use of the obsolete is, that 
 they render the language entirely different from that of 
 the world and society ; in fact, it might belong to some 
 other planet. But that school will pass away. 
 
 " Of the three rivals, the French have had more reason 
 for a reformation (though you know I never read French). 
 The mistermed ' golden age ' of Louis XIV. corrupted 
 their literature. Poetry was mown with the scythe, and 
 levelled with the roller, till it became as cold and 
 artificial and monotonous as their ornamental gardening 
 — a language of set phrases and forms of speech. They 
 quitted Montaigne for Voltaire, and abandoned words that 
 never ought to have been abandoned ; and much praise 
 
262 LIFE OP SHELLEY 
 
 is due to the Eomanticists for their revival. Thus the 
 Classicists have been driven out of the field. They owe 
 this to an acquaintance with our writers, and something 
 to the Grermans." 
 
 Shelley preferred Petrarch to any Italian poet ; he had 
 his works constantly in hand, and would often spout his 
 Ode to Italy — " Italia mia." He was not partial to Tasso 
 or Ariosto, the first he deemed often stilted and fall of 
 conceits " and obscured by an assumed and artificial style" ; 
 and I have seen Mrs. Shelley read him to sleep over the 
 Gerusalemme Liberata. Ariosto he thought " delighted 
 in revenge and cruelty " ; and he asks — " Where is the 
 gentle seriousness, the delicate sensibility, the calm and 
 sustained energy without which true greatness cannot be?" 
 
 The life Shelley led at Pisa was one of much isolation, 
 but not so complete as it had been. Prince Mavroeordato 
 was his constant visitor ; with him he read the Paradise 
 Lost, which he infinitely admired, and looked upon as 
 " for all time," one of the grandest conceptions ever struck 
 upon, by the imagination of man — faultless in its structure, 
 and inimitably majestic and sublime in its language, 
 stately and sustained without being pompous or tumid, 
 and whilst abounding in learned idioms and classical 
 lore, free from all pedantry and affectation. Leigh Hunt 
 is of a different way of thinking — He says " something of 
 the Schoolmaster is visible in him " — his faith " a gloomy 
 religious creed" — his style, " is a study for imagination and 
 elaborate musical structure — accompanied with a certain 
 oppressiveness of ambitious and conscious power,"— a 
 criticism in which Shelley would have been the last to 
 agree. — So far above all other Poems indeed did he class 
 the Paradise ios^,that he even thinks it a sacrilege to name 
 it in speaking of any other Poem, and in his admiration 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 263 
 
 of Cain said we had liad nothing like it since the Paradise 
 Regained — a work which he frequently read and compared 
 to the calm and tranquil beauty of an autumnal sunset, 
 after the meridian glory and splendour of a summer's day. 
 As both Shelley and Mavrocordato were great linguists, 
 the task was rendered the easier. Speaking of this, Shelley 
 used to say that " in interpreting a foreign tongue, it was 
 a great mutual advantage to know several ; for that hence 
 synony mes, which failed in one, could be found in another ; ' ' 
 and thus he would often give the exact meaning of a word 
 in Italian, or Spanish, or Latin, or still more frequently 
 in Greek, which he found the best medium as regarded 
 the Paradise Lost, — perhaps the most difficult of all poems 
 to explain. Let him who doubts it make the experiment. 
 In return, the prince read with us the Agamemnon, though 
 Shelley little approved of his emendations, and would not 
 admit that a modem Greek was a better scholiast than 
 an English scholar. He admitted, " that he might know 
 better the names of plants and flowers, but had no advan- 
 tage over a foreigner in correcting the faults, or supplying 
 the hiatuses in the text ; the best proof of which was, that 
 with a solitary exception, Mustoxidi, to whom Monti owed 
 his admirable Translation of Homer, modern Greece has 
 produced no great philologist." Nor could Shelley's ears, 
 accustomed to our pronunciation, endure Mavrocordato's, 
 which the latter contended was the only right one. 
 
 Shelley would as little adopt the Italian mode as 
 to Latin, and used to say, " that if we were wrong, we 
 erred with Erasmus." I remember pointing out to him 
 in Plautus, a play on the words area and arce, which latter 
 must have been pronounced arJce. Shelley told me he 
 never read Latin, and looked on the Romans as pale copy- 
 ists of the Greeks ; not that he was insensible to the beauty 
 
264 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of Virgil, but thought his Eclogues poor and artificial 
 compared with the Pastorals of Theocritus. " Grreek," said 
 he, " is as superior to Latin, as Grerman is to French ; and 
 the Augustan age bears the same relation to that of 
 Lucretius, as Queen Anne's did to the Elizabethan." 
 
 But to return to Mavrocordato. There was at that 
 time little prospect of a Greek revolution, though the sub- 
 ject frequently formed part of our conversation. It was 
 a favourite speculation of Shelley's, and with a prophetic 
 spirit he anticipated the emancipation of that oppressed 
 race ; and Mavrocordato, warmed by these aspirations 
 for the independence of his country, which indeed filled 
 the hearts of so many of his countrymen, half resolved to 
 believe, almost against reason, that an insurrection in 
 Greece was possible ; but had no idea it was so near at 
 hand. Shelley entertained a sincere regard for Prince 
 Mavrocordato, who had very enlarged and enlightened 
 views of the state of Europe. He says of him, — " I know 
 one Greek of the highest qualities, both of courage and 
 conduct, the Prince Mavrocordato, and if the rest be like 
 him, all will go well." Whether Shelley's opinion of this 
 statesman has been confirined by his career, it remains 
 for some future Thucydides to decide. The prince was at 
 that time occupied in compiling a dictionary of modem 
 and ancient Greek. "Whether he completed it I know not. 
 Prom time to time he used to shew us a modem Greek 
 translation of the Iliad, then publishing in monthly 
 numbers in Paris; but Shelley's knowledge of the lan- 
 guage as at present spoken, was very superficial. They 
 used also occasionally to play at chess, but as neither 
 Napoleon nor Charles XIL shone at that game, it is less to 
 be wondered that a poet and politician should not be great 
 proficients in such tactics. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 265 
 
 Almost the only person whom he visited this winter 
 was the Countess of Mountcashel.^ She was a superior 
 and accomplished woman, and a great resource to Shelley 
 who read with her Greek. He told me that ghe was the 
 source of the inspiration of his Sensitive Plant, and that 
 the scene of it was laid in her Garden, as unpoetical a place 
 as could be well imagined — but a true poet can turn every- 
 thing into beauty ; Guido is said to have converted into 
 a Madonna his Colour grinder. 
 
 Among his other guests, Eosini (the author of that 
 episode to the Promessi Sposi, the Monocca di Monza,) 
 made occasionally one ; but no intimacy subsisted between 
 them. Sgricci also passed some evenings at his house. 
 
 ^ She had been a friend and dis- 
 ciple of Mary WoUstonecraffc, so 
 that Mary Shelley's intimacy with 
 her was hereditary. When Mary's 
 father, William Godwin, was a 
 "disconsolate widower," he visited 
 Lady Mountcashel in Ireland, and 
 wrote thus to Marshall in 1800 
 (William Godwin &c., 1876, vol. i, 
 p. 369) : " Lady Mountcashel is a 
 singular character : a democrat and 
 a republican in all their stern- 
 ness, yet with no ordinary portion 
 either of understanding or good 
 nature. If any of our comic writers 
 were to fall in her company, the 
 infallible consequence would be 
 her being gibbetted in a play. She 
 is uncommonly tall and brawny, 
 with bad teeth, white eyes, and a 
 handsome countenance. She com- 
 monly dresses, as I have seen 
 Mrs. Fenwick dressed out of poverty, 
 with a grey gown, and no linen 
 visible ; but with gigantic arms, 
 which she commonly folds, naked 
 and exposed almost up to the 
 shoulders." Time is sometimes the 
 poet who can turn the homely ex- 
 terior of a woman into beauty. Al- 
 though this lady was evidently not 
 well mated with Lord Mountcashel, 
 Claire gives a much more jjleasing 
 
 portrait of her at a date twenty 
 years later than that of Godwin's 
 unmannerly picture. She had 
 long beeu separated from her hus- 
 band when the Shelleys foundherat 
 Pisa. (See note, ante, p. 240.) As to 
 the Sensitive Plant question, be it re- 
 corded tljat Med win's paragraph was 
 one of those added in his old age. 
 When he had sought her for news 
 of Shelley (p. 233) she seemed to him 
 "interesting and amiable," as well 
 as "superior and accomplished'' 
 enough to read Greek with Shelley. 
 The "source of the inspiration" of 
 a poem is not necessarily the proto- 
 type of a character in the poem ; 
 and Medwin had a great gift for 
 misunderstanding things said to 
 him by poets. Even Claire's por- 
 trait does not help in the least to 
 bring the lady of The Sensitive Plant 
 to one's mind. Shelley himself 
 called up a very different image 
 when he wrote to Hunt (Prose 
 Works, vol. iv, p. 288) of Jane 
 Williams as " a most delightful per- 
 son, whom we all agree is the exact 
 antitype of the lady I described 
 in The Sensitive Plant, though this 
 must have been a pure anticipated 
 cognition, as it was written a year 
 before I knew her." 
 
266 LIFE OF SHELI/EY. 
 
 He was perhaps the greatest of improvisatores that ever 
 existed, and gave us more than one specimen of his 
 talent. He used to say that " the Grod when invoked was 
 always propitious." He was on his way to Lucca, there 
 to give a tragedy on the stage, as he had done at Paris, 
 where his improvisations were taken down in shorthand, 
 and published ; but they did not bear strict criticism, 
 though they abound in passages of great beauty. Shelley 
 went to Lucca, to be present at his acting, and came back 
 wonderstruck ; of several subjects proposed at random, 
 he selected the Iphigenia in Tauris, and I remember 
 Shelley's admiring greatly his comparing Orestes to one 
 high column, all that reinained for the support of a house- 
 Shelley said that " his appearance on the stage, his manner 
 of acting, the intonations of his voice, varied to suit the 
 characters he impersonated, had a magical effect, and that 
 his Chorusses in the most intricate metres, were worthy of 
 the Greeks." Had Shelley read this Play, he would in all 
 probability have formed a different estimate of its Merits. 
 Several of those which he improvised at Paris were after- 
 wards published from the Shorthand Transcripts but are 
 totally unfit for the Closet. This was, I believe, the last 
 time Sgricci appeared on the boards of a theatre. He 
 soon after obtained a pension from the Grand-duke 
 of Tuscany, and his pension extinguished his genius. 
 There is a proverb, that singing birds must not be too 
 well fed ! He died in 1826 or 1827, still young. 
 
 Vacca, whose medical celebrity was the least of his 
 merits, for he was an ardent lover of Liberty, and enthu- 
 siastical for the emancipation of his Country and whom 
 L* Byron enumerates among the authors of Italy, was 
 also Shelley's particular friend ; but his great practice 
 left him little leisure for visits, besides that the state of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 267 
 
 his health, that shortly after brought him to an untimely 
 grave, made his professional fatigues require a repose, 
 that even conversation in his leisure hours would have 
 disturbed. He died of consumption — a gradual decay. 
 
 The Shelleys kept a Journal — not so much of the 
 events of the day which were unvaried enough — as of 
 the works they read or wrote — a memorial of how they 
 passed the time — a record that it was not consumed in 
 idleness, or frivolity, that every coming day brought with 
 it improvement and information — and thus they laid up 
 a store of wisdom for after years. It was an excellent 
 habit, and well worthy of imitation — but how few would 
 venture to keep such a book, to reperuse its pages — after 
 a lapse of years — Alas ! what would it be but a memento 
 of their shame and folly ? 
 
 Two other persons among my oldest and best friends, 
 Mr. and Mrs. "Williams, so often mentioned or alluded to 
 in Shelley's Works, and Mrs. Shelley's Notes, and of 
 whom I shall have somewhat to speak hereafter, added in 
 the spring to their circle. 
 
 It was under the idea that their enlightened society and 
 sympathy would tend to chase Shelley's melancholy, that 
 I allured them to Pisa from Chalons. Their arrival was 
 a great event, and they formed a most agreeable addition 
 to our little party. 
 
 Shelley had indeed during that winter been subject to 
 a prostration, physical and psychical, the most cruel to 
 witness, though he was never querulous or out of temper, 
 never by an irritable word hurt the feelings of those 
 about him. I have accounted already for the causes of 
 his dejection- and despondency. His imagination was 
 his greatest enemy — that poetical temperament which 
 those who possess it not, cannot comprehend, is no envi- 
 
268 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 able gift. "Well has Bacon said, " There is not in all the 
 Martyrologies that ever were penned so rueful a narrative 
 as that of the lives of Poets." So sensitive was he oi 
 external impressions, so magnetic, that I have seen him, 
 after threading the carnival crowd in the Lung' Amo 
 Corsos, throw himself half fainting into a chair, over- 
 powered by the atmosphere of evil passions, as he used to 
 say, in that sensual and unintellectual crowd. Perhaps 
 also there contributed to this feeling of despondency the 
 thought that he also was incapable of enjoyingthe Carnival, 
 that whilst all around him were busy — happy — he had 
 nothing in common with his fellow men, that Life was 
 meted out to him in a different measure from that of 
 other's — that he alone was the Pariah, the Outcast. — In 
 order to shelter himself from this feeling, he would fly 
 to his pen or books. At other times I have seen him also 
 very much affected by the sight of the convicts fettered 
 two and two who escorted by Soldiers sweep the streets 
 — and still more so by the clank of their chains, des- 
 perate-looking criminals, hardened in, and capable of 
 any crimes — were they, for there was not one perhaps 
 who had not committed a murder. He was indeed ever 
 engaged in composition or reading, scarcely allowing 
 himself time for exercise or air ; a book was his companion 
 the first thing in the morning, the last thing at night. 
 He told me he always read himself to sleep. Even when 
 he walked on the Argine, his favourite winter walk, he 
 read — sometimes through the streets, and generally had 
 a book on the table by his side at dinner, if his temperate 
 meal could be called one. As has been well said by 
 a Divine, he arose fresh in the morning to his task ; the 
 silence of the night invited him to pursue it, and he could 
 truly say that food and rest were not preferred to it. No 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 269 
 
 part gave him uneasiness but the last, for then he grieved 
 that the work was done. — He was indeed an indefatigable 
 Student. So little impression did that which contributes 
 one of the main delights of ordinary mortals, make on him, 
 that he sometimes asked, " Mary, have I dined ? " Wine 
 he never drank; water, which as I have said, is super- 
 excellent at Pisa, being his chief beverage. Not but he 
 was a lover of tea, calling himself sometimes humorously 
 a Theist, or saying, There you see I am no Atheist. 
 Let not, however, my readers imagine that he was always 
 dejected or despondent, — at times he was as sportive as 
 his child, (with whom he would play by the hour on the 
 floor,) and his wit flowed in a continuous stream, — ^not 
 that broad hutnour which is so much in vogue at the 
 present day, but a genuine wit, classical I might say, and 
 refined, that caused a smile rather than a laugh. 
 
 I have alluded to his physical sufferings — they, if they 
 did not produce, tended to aggravate his mental ones. 
 He was a martyr to the most painful complaint. Nephritis, 
 for which he had, though with no alleviation, consulted 
 the most eminent medical men, at home and abroad, and 
 now was trying Scott's vitriolic acid baths, much in vogue. 
 This malady constantly menaced to end fatally. During 
 its paroxysms he would roll on the floor in agony. 
 I had seen animal magnetism practised in India — had 
 myself benefited by it at Geneva, and at his earnest 
 request, consented to try its efficacy on him during his 
 next attack. One of them affected him during an evening, 
 when two ladies, one of whom was Mrs. Shelley, were 
 present. The imposition of my hand on his forehead, in- 
 stantly put a stop to his spasms, and threw him into a deep 
 slumber, which for want of a better name has been called 
 somnambulism. He slept with his eyes open. During 
 
270 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the continuance of it, I led Mm from one part of the room 
 to the sofa in the other end ; and when the trance was 
 overpast, after the manner of all somnambulists, he would 
 not admit that he had slept, or that he had made any 
 replies, which I elicited from him by questioning ; those 
 replies being pitched in the same tone of voice as my own. 
 He also during a second experiment improvised some 
 Italian verses, which were faultless, although at that time 
 he had not written one. Shelley had never previously 
 heard of Mesmerism, and I shewed him a treatise I com- 
 posed, embodying most of the facts recorded by its adepts, 
 and he was particularly struck by a passage in Tacitus, no 
 credulous historian, who seriously related two cases (wit- 
 nessed he says by many living) in Egypt, that might 
 stagger the most sceptical. " Does it lead to materialism 
 or immaterialism ? " Shelley thought to the latter — 
 "that a separation from the mind and body took place — the 
 one being most active and the other an inert mass of 
 matter." He deduced from this phenomenon an additional 
 argument for the immortality of the soul, of which no 
 man was more fully persuaded. 
 
 After my departure from Pisa, he was magnetised by 
 a lady, which gave rise to the beautiful stanzas entitled 
 The Magnetic Lady to her Patient, and during which 
 operation, he made the same reply to an inquiry as to his 
 disease, and its cure, as he had done to me, — "What 
 would cure me would kill me," — meaning lithotomy. 
 Mrs. Shelley also magnetised him, but soon discontinued 
 the practice, from finding that he got up in his sleep, and 
 went one night to the window, (fortunately barred,) 
 having taken to his old habit of sleep-walking, which 
 I mentioned, in his boyhood, and also in London. 
 
 Shelley showed me a treatise he had written, of some 
 
LlfE OF SHELLEY. 271 
 
 length, on the Life of Christ, and ■which Mrs. Shelley 
 should give to the world. In this work he differs little 
 from Paulus, Strauss, and the Rationalists of Grermany. 
 The first of these, now deceased, was for fifty years 
 professor of divinity in the university of Heidelberg, and 
 was venerated with honours due to his talents and exem- 
 plary virtues ; the latter once filled the theological chair 
 at Zurich, from which he was ousted by the Jesuits.* 
 
 The new sect which has lately sprung up, with Eonge 
 at its head, whose doctrines were running like wildfire 
 through the Confederation, but are now at the ebb-tide, — 
 this new Catholicism which it was once proposed by the 
 Baden Chamber to make one of the religions of the state, 
 proves the wide dissemination which Nationalism has 
 had, and the revolution in men's minds in Germany. 
 Eongeism is only a more extended form of Unitarianism. 
 
 But the Eongeists go far beyond the Unitarians or 
 Rationalists, and have refined away the tenets of our 
 religion, discarding prophecy, miracles, the divinity of 
 our Saviour, and the atonement. 
 
 Shelley, in this treatise, does no more than Strauss, 
 Paulus, and Eonge; he indeed treats the subject with 
 more respect than either, and although he may reduce 
 Christianity to a code of morals, how does he differ in so 
 doing from the Unitarians, though I am aware that this 
 by some casuistry they do not admit ? 
 
 But without entering on a discussion, which might 
 lead me too far out of the track, and disagreeing as I do 
 with the Eationalists toto coelo, I can say, with reference 
 
 * Note. — In speaking of the treatment of Woman by the Greeks — and 
 the present improved condition of the Sex — he attributes this difference 
 to some influence of the doctrines of Jesus Christ — who, he says, alleges 
 the absolute and unconditional equality of all human beings. — See Essay on 
 the Literature Sfc. of the Athenians. 
 
273 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to Shelley, that whatever his early opinions might have 
 been, he on becoming a Platonist, firmly believed in a 
 future state. He used to say, that " no man who reflected 
 could be a Materialist long ; " and in his Essay on Poetry,' 
 (though he seems in Mrs. Shelley^s transcript of the MS. to 
 have made a considerable alteration in the passage after- 
 wards from that originally written, which he shewed to 
 me,) the words ran thus, verbatim: "The persons in 
 whom this power (poetry) abides, may often, as regards 
 many parts of their nature, be Atheists ; but though they 
 may deny and abjure, they are compelled to serve, which 
 is seated in the throne of their own soul." His poeins 
 abound* with the noblegt conceptions of a Deity and of 
 Heaven,, witness his ode, so entitled, where, after 
 
 Glorious shapes have life in thee, 
 Heaven, and all Heaven's company, 
 
 he in the next stanza adds, — 
 
 Thou art the abode ' 
 Of that Power, which is the glass 
 Where man his image sees. 
 Generations as they pass, 
 Worship thee on bended knees; 
 Their unreturning gods and they 
 
 1 He means, of course, A Defence be very nearly so, in which case we 
 
 of Poetry, in the last paragraph of must assume that the transcriber 
 
 which the following sentences inadvertently omitted tJie power, or 
 
 occur: — "The persons in whom that, before which is seated. In 
 
 this power resides, may often, as Mr. A. H. Koszul's useful little book 
 
 far as regards many portions of their Shelley's Prose in the Bodleian Manu- 
 
 nature, have little apparent corre- scripts (London, Henry Prowde, 
 
 spondence with that spirit of good 1910), I do not find any trace of 
 
 of which they are the ministers. Medwin's variant. None the less 
 
 But even whilst they deny and there may be something of the kind 
 
 abjure, they are yet compelled to in one of the manuscripts, which 
 
 serve, the power which is seated on Mr. Koszul does not profess to have 
 
 the throne of their own soul." That exhausted. Claire Clairmont's tran- 
 
 Medwin's version is a verbatim copy script {penes me) shows no trace of 
 
 of anything Shelley showed him, this reading. 
 I do not believe; but it may possibly 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 273 
 
 Like a river pass away ; 
 Thou remainest such alway.' 
 
 And in the Adonais, — 
 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 
 
 Let these passages suffice, though I might multiply 
 them ad infinitum. Return we to life and its realities. 
 
 Shelley used to say, that every city or town had its 
 Devil or its Diavolessa — we have no word in our 
 language for the fiend feminine. Monk Lewis has 
 shewn us, even when they come in the shape of the 
 Madonna, how much they are to be dreaded, even by an 
 Ambrosio. Byron thought the viaggiatory English old 
 maids, who scour the continent, and fix themselves for 
 the time being in all parts of it, were only incarnations 
 of evil spirits. I am not so ungdllant. But of the male 
 devils, Goldoni has 'given us a specimen in his Bottega di 
 Caffe, and Poole in his Paul Pry — two devils who have 
 much in common, and bear a strong family likeness. 
 Their name is Legion, though they differ from each other 
 as much as Asmodeus does from Mephistophiles, The 
 term seccatura, or drying up of all our faculties, mental and 
 bodily, seems to offer an abstract idea of the effects they 
 
 ' These snatches from the Ode to internal evidence, and is borne out 
 Heaven seem to me worth leaving by the extraordinarily interesting 
 uncorrected as an example of draft of the poem in Mr. Bixby's 
 Medwin's sheer unintelligent mis- Note Book No. 2. In all its mass 
 quotations from memory. After of substitutions and cancelled read- 
 changing Earth to Heaven twice in ings, there is no trace of any one 
 the first couplet, he disfigures the of these of Medwin's. The almost 
 "next stanza" by substituting JTAei-e entire stanza he misquotes ends 
 for Wherein, image for nature, on for with the following notable variant 
 with, unretuming for unremaining, and of the triplet : 
 pass for roU. That none of these are .pj^^^ remainest such alway, 
 genuine variants, such as Medwm ^^^ ^^^^.^ ^^ ^^^^^ J^ 
 occasionally annexed from his j^ike a river roll away, 
 cousin in Italy, is pretty clear from •' 
 
274 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 produce. This preamble brings me to the Devil of Pisa. 
 Pacchiani was about fifty years of age, somewhat above 
 the common height, with a figure boney and angular, and 
 covered with no more superfluous flesh than a prize- 
 fighter. His face was dark as that of a Moor, his features 
 marked and regular, his eyes black and gloomy. He 
 always reminded me of one of Titian's portraits (his 
 family had been Venetians,) stepping out of its frame. 
 Had he lived when Venice was governed by the Tre, he 
 would have made a Loredano, and might have sate to 
 Anne Eadclyffe for a Schedoni ; but to descend to modem 
 times, during the reign of Austrian despotism he was 
 admirably calculated for a spy, or calderaio, — ^perhaps he 
 might be one. " CM lo sa." Nature certainly never 
 designed him for a divine. As to his religion, it was 
 about on a par with that of II Abbate Casti, (Casti a non 
 casta, as lucus a non lucendo) of whom he was afterwards 
 a worthy successor, in his native city, Florence. But at 
 Pisa, II Signore Professore was the title by which he was 
 generally known ; a professor, like many other professors 
 and lecturers, at least in Italy, who had made a sinecure 
 of his office, that of Belles Lettres, and only mounted the 
 Cathedra once, during the many years that he touched 
 his poor emoluments; for the Transalpine universities 
 are not quite so richly endowed as our own. Not that 
 this neglect of his duties would have affected his appoint- 
 ment, but as he told me, he lost it by an irresistible hon 
 mot. During one of his midnight orgies, which he was 
 in the habit of celebrating with some of the most dissolute 
 of the students, he was interrogated in the darkness, by 
 the patrol in the streets of Pisa, as to who and what he 
 was ; to which questioning he gave the following reply : 
 " Son' un uomo publico, in una strada publica, con una 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 275 
 
 donna publica." ^ This public avowal cost him his chair. 
 But it gave him 4clat, and did not lose him his friends, or 
 exclude him from the houses where he was the spiritual 
 guide and confessor. There were, it is true, two reasons 
 why he was tolerated in good society, (which Casti says 
 is to be found where he places Don Juan, below,) — his 
 pen and his tongue — the dread of both. His epigrams 
 were sanglantes, and he gave soubriquets the most happy 
 for those who offended him ; as an instance of which, he 
 most happily styled a captain of our navy, il dolce 
 capitano ; a bye-word that stuck to him through life, and 
 always excited a smile at his expense whenever he 
 appeared. He was a good poet, if one might judge from 
 the quotations he was in the habit of making from his 
 tragedies, which he continually talked about, and which 
 Madame de Stael, who knew him, used to call his imagin- 
 ary ones, for not a line of them was ever published — 
 perhaps written. His talent was conversation — a con- 
 versation full of repartee, and sparkling with wit ; and 
 his information (he was a man of profound erudition, 
 vast memoiy, and first-rate talent,) made him almost 
 oracular. Shelley, when Pacchiani first became an 
 habitud at his house, was charmed with him, and listened 
 with rapt attention to his eloquence, which he compared 
 to that of Coleridge. It was a swarm of ideas singularly 
 extravagant, but which he contrived to weave into his 
 argument with marvellous embroidery. Now he plunged 
 into abysses but to lighten other abysses ; and his words, 
 like a torrent — for there was no stopping him when fairly 
 rushing onwards — carried all before them. 
 
 1 Under the date December 23, imperfection — ■ 
 
 1820, Claire writes in her journal Di femmini ha Italia molte e 
 
 another "Bon Mot of Pacchiani's,'' graziosisaime 
 
 which I give quite literally in its Ma donne Signpr Mio pochissime. 
 
 t2 
 
276 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 It was tHs gift of eloquence tliat made him for a time 
 -welcome at Shelley's, where he passed many an evening 
 in the week— (I think I see him now, dissecting the 
 snipes with his long, boney, snuffy fingers — for he never 
 in the operation made use of a knife or fork) ; at first 
 I say, — for he had in the outset sufficient tact (no one 
 knew mankind better) to keep in the background the 
 revolting vices which were familiar to him and disfigured 
 his character. He had a predilection for our compatriotes, 
 with and without the e, but particularly patronized the 
 Belle Inglese, as he always called English women; and 
 after the Italian fashion, soon familiarly called Mrs. Shelley, 
 La Signora Maria. "Wherever he once got the entree, he 
 was a sine qua non, a "/a tout." He had always some 
 poor devil of low origin, to recommend as a master of his 
 language, receiving under the rose, part of the lesson 
 money. He was never at a loss to find some Palazzo to 
 be let, getting a monthly douceur out of the rent, from 
 the landlord ; for a picture fancier, he had always at 
 hand some mysterious Marchese or Marchesa, ready to 
 part with a Carlo Dolce or Andrea del Sarto, or Allori — 
 originals of course. He could dilate for hours on the 
 Venus of the Tribune, the Day and Night of Michael 
 Angelo, the Niobe — knew the history of every painter 
 and painting in the galleries of the TJffizzi and Pitti, 
 better than Vasari, or his successor Eosini; in short he 
 was a Mezzano, Cicerone, Conosciatore, Dilettante, and, I 
 might add, Huffiano. 
 
 I have perhaps at too great length botched a sketch of 
 the ex Professor, but as the world is indebted to him for 
 the EpipsycMdion, I think myself in gratitude bound 
 not to pass him over without a record, and if I had 
 Mrs. Shelley's Valperga, 1 could have spared my readers 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 277 
 
 my own "sttidio sttidiato," for he is there drawn to the 
 life. 
 
 Pacchiani ^ was amico di casa and confessor to a noble 
 family, one of the most distinguished for its antiquity of 
 any at Pisa, where its head then filled a post of great 
 authority. By his first countess he had two grown-up 
 daughters, and in his old age had the boldness, the 
 audacity I might say, to take unto himself a wife not 
 much older than either. This lady, whose beauty did 
 not rival that of the Count's children, was naturally 
 jealous of their charms, and deemed them dangerous 
 rivals in the eyes of her Cavaliere ; and exerting all her 
 influence over her infatuated husband, persuaded him, 
 though their education was completed, to immure them 
 in two convents (pensions, I should say, or as they are 
 called, conservatorios) in his native city. The Professor, 
 who had known them from infancy, and been their 
 instructor in languages and polite literature, made the 
 Contessinas frequent subjects of conversation. He told us 
 that the father was not over rich, owing to his young 
 wife's extravagance ; that he was avaricious withal, and 
 did not like to disburse their dowries, which, as fixed by 
 law, must be in proportion to the father's fortune, and 
 was waiting till some one would take them off his hands 
 without a dote. He spoke most enthusiastically of the 
 beauty and accomplishments of Emilia, the eldest, 
 adding, that she had been confined for two years in the 
 convent of St. Anne. " Poverina," he said, with a deep 
 
 1 In this place the name PaccWna later there was no need for con- 
 was written in the margin. The cealment ; but in filling blanks of 
 original edition of 1847 gives no this kind Medwin slipped occa- 
 name either to the Professor or to sionally. There is no doubt that 
 
 the Convent — merely " P " Pacchiani is the right name. 
 
 and "St. A ." Thirty years 
 
278 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 sigh, " she pines like a bird in a cage — ardently longs to 
 escape from her prison-house, — pines with ennui, and 
 wanders about the corridors like an unquiet spirit ; she 
 sees her young days glide on without an aim or purpose. 
 She was made for love. Yesterday she was watering 
 some flowers in her cell — she has nothing else to love but 
 her flowers— 'Yes,' said she, addressing them, 'you are 
 born to vegetate, but we thinking beings were made for 
 action — not to be penned up in a corner, or set at a 
 window to blow and die.' A miserable place is that 
 convent of St. Anne," he added, " and if you had seen, as 
 I , have done, the poor pensionnaires shut up in that 
 narrow, suffocating street, in the summer, (for it does not 
 possess a garden,) and in the winter as now, shivering 
 with cold, being allowed nothing to warm them but a few 
 ashes, which they carry about in an earthen vase, — you 
 would pity them." 
 
 This little story deeply interested Shelley, and 
 Pacchiani proposed that the poet and myself should pay 
 the captive a visit in the parloir. 
 
 The next day, accompanied by the priest, we came in 
 sight of the gloomy, dark convent, whose ruinous and 
 dilapidated condition told too plainly of confiscation and 
 poverty. It was situate in an unfrequented street in the 
 suburbs, not far from the walls. After passing through 
 a gloomy portal, that led to a quadrangle, the area of 
 whicjjsi was crowded with crosses, memorials of old mon- 
 astic times, we were soon in the presence of EmiUa. 
 The fair recluse reminded me (and with her came the 
 remembrance of Mephisto) of Margaret. 
 
 Time seemed to her 
 To crawl with shackled feet, and at her window 
 She stands, and watches the heavy clouds on clouds, 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 279 
 
 Passing in multitudes o'er the old town-walls. 
 And all the day, and half the night she sings, 
 " Oil, would I were a little bird ! " At times 
 She's cheerful, — but the fit endures not long. 
 For she is mostly sad,-^then she'll shed tears,— 
 And after she has wept her sorrows out, 
 She is as quiet as a child. — The Author. 
 
 Emilia was indeed lovely and interesting. Her profuse 
 black hair, tied in the most simple knot, after the manner 
 of a Greek Muse in the Florence gallery, displayed to, its 
 full height her brow, fair as that of the marble of which 
 I speak. She was also of about the same height as the 
 antique. Her features possessed a rare faultlessness, and 
 almost Grecian contour, the nose and forehead making 
 a straight line, — a style of face so rare, that I remember 
 Bartolini's telling Byron that he had scarcely an instance 
 of such in the numerous casts of busts which his studio 
 contained. Her eyes had the sleepy voluptuousness, if 
 not the colour of Beatrice Cenci's. They had indeed no 
 definite colour, changing with the changing feeling, to 
 dark or light, as the soul animated them. Her cheek 
 was pale, too, as marble, owing to her confinement and 
 want of air, or perhaps " to thought." There was 
 a lark in the parloir, that had lately been caught. " Poor 
 prisoner," said she, looking at it compassionately, "you 
 will die of grief! How I pity thee! What must thou 
 suffer, when thou hearest in the clouds, the songs of thy 
 parent birds, or some flocks of thy kind on the wing, in 
 search of other skies — of new fields — of new delights ! 
 But like me, thou wilt be forced to remain here always — 
 to wear out thy miserable existence here. Why can I 
 not release thee ? " 
 
 Might not Shelley have taken from this pathetic 
 lamentation, his — 
 
280 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Poor captive bird ! who from thy narrow cage, 
 Pourest such music as might well assuage 
 The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, 
 Were they not deaf to thy sweet melody ? 
 
 and the sequel, — 
 
 High spirit-winged heart ! who dost for ever 
 Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, 
 . . Till thy panting, wounded breast, 
 Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest. 
 
 Such, was the impression of the only visit I paid 
 Emilia; but I saw her some weeks after, at the end 
 of a Carnival, when she had obtained leave to visit 
 Mrs. SheUey, companioned by the abbess. In spite of 
 the Contessina's efforts to assume cheerfulness, one might 
 see she was very, very sad ; but she made no complaint ; 
 she had grown use [sic] to suffering. It had become her 
 element. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley and Shelley frequently went to the con- 
 vent, to endeavour by their sympathy to console the 
 unhappy girl. Nor were they her only sympathizers: 
 Lady Charlotte Bury's daughters visited her also.^ Her 
 condition was much aggravated by there being no one 
 within the convent whom she could make a companion 
 or confidante, for her feUow-prisoners were of a low class, 
 and such as a nobleman's daughter could not associate 
 with. Shelley felt deeply the fate of poor Emilia, 
 frequently wrote to her,, and received from her in reply, 
 bouquets of flowers, in return for one of which he sent 
 her the following exquisite Madrigal.^ 
 
 1 Claire Clairmont, according to loveliest of all love-lyrics. He 
 
 her manuscript journal in my pos- blundered at the last word, vo", 
 
 session, might have been added to which should be '■ nee, pi'obably 
 
 the list of Emilia's visitors. thinking it needful that there should 
 
 * In this instance Medwin was be one more rhyme to dew, dreu), 
 
 certainly doing his best to quote and new, and not a recurrence to 
 
 the orthodox text of one of the the me and be rhyme, with its main- 
 
MFE OF SHELLEY 281 
 
 Madonna! wherefore hast thou sent to me, 
 
 Sweet basil, and mignionette, 
 Embleming Love and Health, which never yet 
 
 In the same wreath might be? 
 
 Alas ! and they are wet ! 
 Is it with thy kisses or thy tears? 
 
 For never rain or dew 
 
 Such fragrance drew 
 From plant or flower — the very doubt endears 
 
 My sadness ever new — 
 The sighs I breathe — the tears I shed for you. 
 
 In his correspondence, he says, "But Emilia is not 
 merely beautiful, she has cultivated her mind beyond 
 what I have ever met with in Italian women." She was 
 well-read in the poets of her land, was made for love, had 
 the purest and most sublime conceptions of the master- 
 passion, and without having read the Symposium of Plato, 
 wrote the following Apostrophe to Love, which I have 
 attempted to put into our runic tongue, but which is but 
 a pale reflex of the original. 
 
 IL VERO AMOKE. 
 
 Amore, alma del mondo, amore sorgente di ogni buono, di ogni 
 hello, che sarebbe TUniverso se ad esso mancasse la tua face creatrice ? 
 Un orribile deserto ! allora, lungi da esso, anco la sola ombra e del 
 buono e del belle, e d'ogni felicita. Di quell' amore lo parlo che 
 impossessandosi di tutto il nostro cuore, dell' intiera volonta nostra, 
 
 tenance of the second person sin- Sent sweet basil & mignionette ? 
 
 gular. Curiously enough, while Why when I kiss their leaves find 
 
 drafting this poem in Mr. Bixby's I them wet 
 
 Note Book No. 1, the one which had With thine adored tears dearer 
 
 undergone complete immersion in than heavens dew? 
 
 ^'^^Tl. f^^'^^l^ himself had com- ^he pages where this and other 
 
 mitted the offence of inconsistency ^yn ^^^^g, things occur afford a 
 
 here set to his account by a con- wonderful lesson; but the divine 
 
 stitutionally inexact chronicler. jij^jg jj^^j/ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ 
 
 Among his many rejected passages fi^^hed ; and we may feel certain 
 
 may still be deciphered the poor that Mary, whom Medwin ostensibly 
 
 opening : follows, had a perfect copy in which 
 
 Oh my beloved why have you the line ends properly with thee. 
 
282 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ci sublima, e c'inalza al di sopra di ogni altro individuo dell' istessa 
 nostra specie, e tutto energetico, tutto immenso, tutto puro, tutto 
 divino, non ci ispira se non, se azioni magnanime, e degne de seguaci 
 di questo soave e onnipotente nurae. L'Amante no, non e confuso 
 con gli uomini, non trascina I'anima sua, ma la inalza, la spinge, e la 
 corona di luce, all' sorriso della Divinita. 
 
 Esso doventa un easere sorprendente, e talvolta incomprensibile. 
 L'Universo, il vasto Universo, non piii capace a racchiudere le sue 
 idee, i suoi affetti, svanisce a suoi occhi. L'anima amante sdegna 
 essere ristretta, niente puo ritenerla. Essa si slancia fuori del creato, 
 e si crea nell' infinito, un mondo, tutto per essa, diverse assai di questo 
 oscuro e pauroso Baratro, assorta di continue in un estace dolcissima, 
 e veramente beata. Tutto cio che non ba rapporto all' oggetto di sua 
 tenerezza, tutto ci6 cbe non e quell' oggetto adorato, comparisce un 
 piccolo punto a suoi occhi. Ma dove e colui, suscettivole di tale^. 
 amore V Dove chi possa iuspifartO"? Oh am ore ! lo non spno^ijhe^ 
 amore. lo noh~pp.iso esistere senza amare. La_ mia_ anima, il mio 
 '" corpo, tutti i miei pensieri ed afifetti, tutto cio che lo sono, si trasforma 
 V Tn^un solo sentimento di amore— e questo sentimento durera in eterno. 
 ■' Senza amare, la vita mi divrebbe insopportabile, il mondo un inospito 
 spaventoso e desolate deserto, sparso soltanto di spettri, si terribili 
 alia mia vista che per fuggerli, io mi getterei nella misteriosa ma 
 tranquilla magione di morte. Ah si, io preferesco le dolce pene dell' 
 amore, i continui palpiti che lo accompagnano, il timore di esso 
 inseperable, ad una per me stupida calma, ed a tutti i piaceri che 
 posson recare tutte le altre passioni sodisfatte, tutti i beni (se senza 
 amore puo essere alcun bene,) che il mondo apprezza e de' quali 
 e avido. 
 
 Ma quanto tu siei profanato, Amore ! quali oltraggj fanno i figli 
 della terra al tuo nome divino ! Sovente aglj affetti i pui illeciti, alle 
 azioni le piu vituperose, al delitto (oh! attentate esecrando) all' 
 istesso delitto si da il nome di amore, si osa dire che egli lo ha 
 cagionato. Ahi empj ! sacrileghi ! inaudita bestemmia ! voi non che 
 risenterlo, non comprendete neppure cio che la parola amore significhi. 
 i Amore vuol di virtvi, amore ispira virtu, ed e la sorgente delle azioni 
 / le piii magnanime, della vera felicita. Amore e un fuoco, che 
 brucciando non distrugge, una mista di piacere e di pena, una pena 
 che porta piacere un' Essenza eterna, spirituale, inflnita, pura, celeste. 
 Questo si e il vero, il solo amore, quell' sentimento che soltanto puo 
 riempire intieramente il vuoto dell' anima, quell' vuoto orribile 
 peggior della morte. Ogni altro sentimento da questo dissimile, da 
 questo men puro, non merita il sacro nome di amore, e gli empj che lo 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY 283 
 
 profanero, e lo denigrano, saranno punite da questo potentissimo 
 nume, et meriteranno I'eterna perditione. Ove I'anima che e sensibile, 
 che cerca amore, si trova una volta nell' abisso della desolazione, e ove 
 il euore sia deserto di questo dolce fuoco, o trovi infidele roggetto di 
 sua tenerezza, questa anima miserabile cerchi, (almeno io gli il 
 consiglio) cerchi almeno, il suo rifugio nella tomba, e si pascoli di 
 esso, come dell' ultima consolazione ! 
 
 THE TKUE LOVE. 
 
 Love ! soul of the vrorld J Love, the source of all that is good, of all 
 that is lovely ! what would the universe be, failing thy creative flame? 
 A horrible desert. But far from this, it is the sole shadow of all 
 goodness, of all loveliness, and of all felicity. Of that love I speak, 
 that possessing itself of all our soul, of our entire will, sublimes and 
 raises one, above every other individual of the same species ; and all 
 energetic, all pure, all divine, inspires none but actions that are 
 magnanimous, and worthy of the followers of that sweet and 
 omnipotent deity. The lover ! no ! he is not confounded with the 
 herd of men, he does not degrade his soul, but elevates, drives on, and 
 crowns it with light at the smile of the divinity. He becomes 
 a supereminent being, and as such altogether incomprehensible. 
 The universe — the vast universe, no longer capable of bounding his 
 ideas, his affections, vanishes from before his sight. The soul of him 
 who loves disdains restraint — nothing can restrain it. It lances itself 
 out of the created, and creates in the infinite a world for itself, and 
 for itself alone, how different from this obscure and fearful den ! — is 
 in the continued enjoyment of the sweetest extacy, is truly happy. 
 All that has no relation to the object of its tenderness— all that is not 
 that adored object, appears an insignificant point to his eyes. But 
 where is he, susceptible of such love ? Where ? Who is capable of 
 inspiring it ? Oh love ! I am all love. I cajinot exist without love ! 
 My soul — my mortal frame— all my thoughts and affections, all that 
 which I am, transfigures itself into one sole sentiment of love, and 
 that sentiment will last eternally. Without Love, life would become 
 to me insupportable — the world an inhospitable and desolate desert, 
 only haunted by spectres, so terrible to my sight, that to fly from 
 them, I could cast myself into the mysterious but tranquil abode of 
 death. Ah ! yes ! I prefer the sweet pains of love, the continual 
 throbbings that accompany, the fear inseparable from it, to a to me 
 stupid calm, and to all the pleasures that can supply the gratification 
 of all other passions, all the goods (if without Ipve there can be any 
 good) which the world prizes and covets. 
 
284 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But how art thou profaned, Love! what outrages do not the 
 Children of the earth commit in thy name divine ! Often and often 
 to affections the moat illicit, to actions the most vile and degrading, 
 to crime— ah ! execrable iniquity ! when even to crime itself they 
 give the name of Love, and dare to tax it with the commission of 
 crime ! Alaa ! unheard-of blasphemy. Impious and sacrilegious that 
 ye are, you not only feel it not, but comprehend not even what the 
 word Love signifies. Love has no wish but for virtue— Love inspires 
 virtue — Love is the source of actions the most magnanimous, of true 
 felicity— Love is a fire that burns and destroys not, a mixture of 
 pleasure and of pain, a pain that brings pleasure, an essence eternal, 
 spiritual, infinite, pure, celestial. This is the true, the only Love, — 
 that sentiment which can alone entirely fill up the void of the soul— 
 that horrible void, worse than death. Every other sentiment dissimilar 
 from this, than this less pure, deserves not the sacred name of Love ; 
 and they who impiously profane and defile it, shall be punished by 
 that most mighty of Divinities, and shall merit eternal perdition. 
 Where the soul that is feelingly alive seeks for love, and finds itself 
 in the abyss of desolation, and where the heart is divested of this 
 sweet fire, or finds faithless the object of its tenderness, — that miserable 
 soul, let it seek (at least I so counsel it), let it seek, I say, its refuge 
 in the tomb, and feed upon it as its last consolation. 
 
 This admirable piece of eloquence was pertaps tlie 
 source of the inspiration of the Epipsychidion, a poem 
 that combines the pathos of the Vita Nuova of Dante 
 with the enthusiastic tenderness of Petrarch. The 
 Epipsychidion is the apotheosis of love — Emilia a mere 
 creature jc»f,iiia>.iBftagination, in whom he idealised Love 
 in all its jntensity, of passion. His feeling towards the 
 Psjche herself, was^ as may be seen by Xe^rJ^X—of -bis- 
 correspondence, a purely Platonic one. He calls the 
 Epipsychidion a mystery , and says, "as to real flesh and 
 blood, you know that I do not deal in those articles. 
 Expect nothing human or earthly from me." &c. His 
 love for Emilia, if such it can in the general acceptation 
 of the term be called, was of the kind described in the 
 Symposium by Socrates, who defines it " as a desire of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 285 
 
 generation in the Beautiful." What is it but a comment 
 on the words of Socrates as derived from Diotima — 
 " When any one ascending from a correct system of love, 
 begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already 
 touches the consummation of his labour. For such as 
 discipline themselves on this system, or are conducted by 
 another beginning to ascend through those transitory 
 objects that are beautiful, towards that which is Beauty 
 itself, proceeding as on steps, from the love of that form 
 to two, and from that of two to all those forms that are 
 beautiful, and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits 
 and institutions, and from institutions to beautiful 
 doctrines, until from the meditation of many doctrines, 
 they arrive at that which is nothing else than the doctrine 
 of the Supreme Beauty itself and in the contemplation of 
 which at length they repose — no longer unworthily and 
 meanly enslaving themselves to the attractions of one 
 form in love, nor one subject of discipline and science," 
 &c. We thus better may comprehend a passage, which 
 taken literally may lead to false constructions. 
 
 Love is like understanding, that grows bright 
 Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light, 
 Imagination, that from earth and sky, 
 And from the depths of human phantasy, 
 As from a thousand prisma and mirrors, fills 
 The universe with glorious beams, and kills 
 Error, the worm, with many a sunlike arrovsr 
 Of its reverberated lightnings. Narrow 
 The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates. 
 The life that wears, the spirit that creates 
 One object, and one form, and builds thereby 
 A sepulchre for its eternity. 
 
 And he goes on to say, — *■ 
 
 Mind from its object differs most in this : 
 Evil from good — misery from happiness — 
 
286 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The baser from the nobler; the impure 
 
 And frail from what is clear and must endure. 
 
 In this doctrine he also developes his favourite doctrine 
 of an antenatal life, of which I have already spoken at 
 some length. 
 
 too late 
 Beloved ! too soon adored by thee, [stc for me!] 
 For in the fields of Immortality 
 My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, 
 A divine presence in a place divine ; 
 Or should have moved beside it on this earth, 
 A shadow of that substance from its birth. 
 
 Coleridge was, as I have said, his precursor in such 
 ideas, and a teacher of the Ev kkl nav, the one and all — 
 the all in one.^ 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting', — 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar; 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness. 
 
 But amid \sic for trailing] clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home. 
 
 Dryden also in his sublime Ode to the memory of 
 Mrs. Killigrew says — 
 
 But if the preexisting Soul 
 
 Was formed at first with myriads more &c. 
 
 In accordance with these ideas, Shelley thought that 
 to pass from one state of existence to another, was not 
 death, but a new development of life ; that we must love 
 as we live, through all eternity ; and that they who have 
 not this persuasion, know nothing of life, nothing of love ; 
 
 ^ Perhaps Medwin had not really Eecollections of Early Childhood — a 
 
 forgotten, that his illustrative quo- poem almost as full of household 
 
 tation was from Wordsworth's great words as Hamlet or Gray's Elegy, 
 ode — Intimations of Immortality from 
 
LIFE OF SHELIiEY. 287 
 
 that they who do not make the universe a fountain 
 whence they may literally draw new life and love, know 
 nothing of one or the other, and are not fated to know 
 anything of it. The words are not his, but they shadow 
 out what I heard him better express. 
 
 This poem, or rhapsody, incomprehensible to the 
 general class of readers, from a defect in the common 
 organ of perception, for the ideas of which it treats, fell 
 dead from the press. I believe that not a copy of it was 
 sold, not a single review noticed it — One of th6 many 
 proofs that the public ear is deaf to the finest accords of 
 the lyre. 
 
 In the Epipsychidion Shelley exhibits the same 
 imperious longing to fly, beyond the created world 
 into another Universe more perfect, such as the Soul 
 that loves pants to enjoy. "We findm_it..tite. same hope- 
 of a solitary paradise so often dreamed of by young 
 hearts when the storms and frosts of life have never 
 obtained access, where the stars in the unalterable azure 
 smile unceasingly on the lovers for ever intoxicated with 
 each other, when the flowers of thought shoot forth by 
 the side of terrestrial flowers, when the Nightingale, that 
 invented the Songship of happy nights, marries with the 
 far-off murmur of the waves the flood of her joyous 
 Serenades. Shelley^ iuvit.es the beautifuLjFficlii.se to an 
 existence of love and leisure — The bark is waiting ready, 
 the win3"'isTaii>^^hich wait for you, unfortunate victim. 
 Hark the Song of the Mariners, behold the Halcyons, 
 a fortunate presage hovering over the calm surface of the 
 waters. Soul of my Soul, let us hide our happiness beneath 
 the shadows of the aromatic woods of our blooming isle. 
 — It waits for us there below, at the Eastern horizon 
 reddening in the fires of morning like a bride in the arms 
 
288 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of her adventurous spouse "who is about to lift the last 
 veil.^ But Emilia's term of bondage was on the eve of 
 expiring; she was affianced to a man whom she had 
 never seen, and who was incapable of appreciating her 
 talents or her virtues. She was about to be removed 
 from the scenes of her youth, the place of her birth, her 
 father on whom she doted, and to be buried in the 
 Maremma. The day of her wedding was fixed, but 
 a short respite took place for a reason mentioned in 
 a letter of Shelley to Mrs. Shelley (from Eavenna), 
 where he says, " Have you heard anything of my poor 
 Emilia? from whom I got a letter the day of my 
 departure, saying that her marriage was deferred on 
 account of the illness of her gposol" and in another 
 letter he expresses, what in the fragment of Ginevra, too 
 well typified the fate of that unfortunate lady, the poor 
 sacrificed Emilia, — his fears as to what she was destined 
 to suffer. The sacrifice was at length completed, and she 
 was soon as much forgotten as if she had never existed — . 
 though not by Shelley. 
 
 I am enabled to detail the consequences of this iU-starred 
 union, to finish her biography. Some years after, 
 Pacchiani, who had several times during his feverish 
 existence, been reduced to abject poverty and distress, by 
 his reckless extravagance, his rage for travelling, though 
 his journies never extended beyond Leghorn on the one 
 hand, and Florence on the other, and where he used to 
 indulge in all manner of excesses, and which brought 
 
 ^ This paragraph shows how in the margin in his later days, 
 
 vulgar-looking a bouquet of the The reader will no doubt turn to 
 
 most beautiful cut flowers may be line 407 of Epipsychidion, and read 
 
 made by unsuitable arrangement. to the end in Shelley's own ex- 
 
 The paragraph was not originally quisite phrases, 
 in Medwin's book, but was added 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 289 
 
 about the same result, the sequestration of his ecclesiasti- 
 cal preferment, and imprisonment by his creditors till his 
 debts were liquidated — made his appearance at the 
 capital of Tuscany, where I then was. He found at 
 Florence a wider field for his operations, and shewed 
 himself a not less active and busyrbodied Diavolo 
 incarnato. He did not forget our old acquaintance at 
 Shelley's, and haunted me like an unquiet spirit. One day, 
 when at my house, he said mysteriously, — "I will 
 introduce you to an old friend — come with me." The 
 coachman was ordered to drive to a part of the city with 
 which I was a stranger, and drew up at a country house 
 in the suburbs. The villa, which had once boasted 
 considerable pretensions, was in great disrepair. The 
 court leading to it, overgrown with weeds, proved that it 
 had been for some years untenanted. An old woman led 
 us through a number of long passages and rooms, many 
 of. the windows in which were broken, and let in the cold 
 blasts from "the wind-swept Apennine;" and opening 
 at length a door, ushered us into a chamber, where 
 a small bed and a couple of chairs formed the whole 
 furniture. The couch was covered with white gauze 
 curtains, to exclude the gnats; behind them was lying 
 a female form. She immediately recognised me — 
 was probably prepared for my visit — and extended her 
 thin hand to me in greeting. So changed that recum- 
 bent figure, that I could scarcely recognise a trace of the 
 once beautiful Emilia. Shelley's evil augury had been 
 fulfilled, she had found in her marriage all that he had 
 predicted ; for six years she led a life of purgatory, 
 and had at length broken the chain, with the consent of 
 her father; who had lent her this long disused and 
 dilapidated Campagne. I might fill many a page by 
 
290 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 speaking of the tears site shed over the memory of Shelley, 
 —but enough— she did not long enjoy her freedom. 
 Shortly after this interview, she was confined to her bed ; 
 the seeds of malaria, which had been sown in the 
 Maremma, combined with that all-irremediable malady, 
 broken-heartedness, brought on a rapid consumption. 
 
 And so she pined, and so she died forlorn.^ 
 
 The old woman, who had been her nurse, made me a long 
 narration of her last moments, as she wept bitterly. 
 I wept too, when I thought of Shelley's Psyche, and his 
 Epipsychidion. 
 
 But back to Pisa. Some little time before quitting it, 
 we had several conversations respecting Keats, and the 
 Endymion ; the attack on which poem in The Quarterly 
 had been, though differing in degree, of a most unworthy 
 character. Shelley felt for Keats much more than he had 
 done for himself, under a similar infliction, and wrote 
 a letter, a copy of which Mrs. Shelley found among 
 Shelley's papers, and to which she appends the remark, 
 that " it was never sent." There she was right, but with 
 some trifling alterations he did address a letter to the 
 same purport, — almost indeed a transcript of the other, — 
 to Mr. Southey, appealing to him, as an influential person 
 in the conduct of the Review, against the verdict of that 
 tribunal; and this very letter, though Mrs. Shelley was 
 perfectly ignorant of both circumstances, did obtain an 
 answer ; ^ and which answer, instead of being a justifi- 
 
 ' Keats's Isabella, stanza Ixiii. 26th of June 1820, first published 
 
 " It is not necessary to attach any byProfessorDowden,withSouthey's 
 
 serious credence to this statement. reply, in an Appendix to The Cmre- 
 
 The letter not sent to The Quarterly spondence of Robert Southey with Caroline 
 
 contained a paragraph about the Bowles (Dublin, 1881). A later letter 
 
 attack on Shelley ; and the letter to of Southey's in the same Appendix 
 
 Southey most nearly answering to certainly deals with the Harriett 
 
 Medwin's description is that of the question in a somewhat coarse and 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 291 
 
 cation of the writer of the article, contained a most 
 unjustifiable attack on Shelley himself; alluding to some 
 opinions of his expressed at Keswick, so many years 
 before, from which he hinted that the unhappy cata- 
 strophe that befel Shelley's first wife might have arisen. 
 Shelley shewed me this answer, a more thoroughly 
 unfeeling one never was it my fate to peruse. In- 
 different as Shelley had been to the slanderous paper, 
 which had emanated from the pages of the Quarterly, as 
 coming from an anonymous libeller, this letter, signed 
 by Southey, tore open anew the wounds of his heart, and 
 affected him for some time most keenly. And to it, 
 Byron alludes in the Conversations, with just and severe 
 reprobation, saying, — "Shame on the man who could 
 revive the memory of a misfortune of which Shelley was 
 altogether innocent, and ground scandal upon falsehood ! 
 What ! have the audacity to confess, that he had for ten 
 years treasured up some observations of Shelley's, made 
 at his own table ! " Who the author of the second of 
 these critiques might have been, of course can never be 
 known to a certainty. Byron attributed it (see Don 
 Juan} or rather, would you could see, reader, as I have 
 seen, the expunged lines in the stanza, about "a priest 
 
 brutal manner. I scarcely think Labourer in the same vineyard, 
 
 we shall find anything more nearly though the vine 
 
 resembling Med'vrin's tale than Yields him but vinegar for his 
 
 Mr. Dowden has there given us. reward — 
 
 1 The 57th and 58th stanzas in That neutralized dull Dorus of 
 
 Canto xi of Don Jvan as now pub- the Nine, 
 
 lished will be found disappointing That swarthy Sporus, neither man 
 
 when referred to in this connexion : nor bard ; 
 
 they deal with the Rev. Dr. George That ox of verse, who ploughs for 
 
 Croly and theVery Rev. Henry Hart every line : — 
 Milman, talk about "poets almost 
 
 clergymen, or wholly," characterize but when Byron wrote thus he 
 
 Croly as one who " shoes " Pegasus thought Milman had influenced 
 
 'f with stilts," and Milman as — Murray against going on with the 
 
 that artificial hard publication of Don Jvum, and had 
 
 I 
 
 u2 
 
293 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 almost a priest ; ") to a divine, and poet ; and Shelley was 
 fully persuaded the articles on himself and Keats, were 
 both by the same hand. If the parentage was rightly 
 affixed, I do not envy the author. "Miserable man!" 
 says Shelley, in his Preface to Adonais, " you, one of the 
 meanest, have defaced one of the noblest specimens of 
 the workmanship of Grod! nor shall it be your excuse, 
 that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but 
 used none." To prove ^ that he thought this man and his 
 own base and unprincipled calumniator, one and the same, 
 may appear from — 
 
 Live thou ! whose infamy is not thy shame ! 
 Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me ! 
 And ever at thy season be thou free 
 To spill thy venom, when its fangs o'erflow. 
 Eemorse, and self-contempt, shall cling to thee. 
 Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow — 
 And like a beaten hound, tremble thou shalt as now. 
 
 written the article in The Quarterly Chief impulse with a few, frail, 
 
 which his Lordship found it con- paper pellets. , 
 
 venient to persist in regarding as ^j^^ ^.^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^j^j^ ^^ ^.^^^^ 
 
 the cause of Keats s death-witness j^ ^^ Quarterly-the "noteless blot " 
 
 the ver;5icles- __^^^ j^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ g^^ 
 
 Who killed John Keats ? — retary of the Admiralty, and author 
 
 of The Battle of Talavera. 
 
 and the brilliant 60th stanza in i The omission of the third and 
 
 this same Canto xi, with its sen- fourth lines— 
 
 tentious couplet — _,, j. i ,_i j. 
 
 *^ Thou noteless blot on a remem- 
 
 Tis strange the mind, that very bered name ! 
 
 fiery particle, But be thyself, and know thyself 
 
 Should let itself be snuffed out by to be ! — 
 
 an article. from stanza xxxvii of Adonais may 
 Had Medwin had the advantage S>^^^ * s"""* °^ shadowy support to 
 of reading the MS. from which *"is position by removing the ex- 
 Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge pression a remembered name, in the 
 (Byron's Poetry, vol: vi, p. 446) has singular ; but I do not see what the 
 given a curious cancelled reading historian gained by altering /iime to 
 
 for this couplet ? shame in the first line, or t)ie venom 
 
 to thy venom. The whole treatment, 
 
 'Tis strange the mind should at indeed, looks like a combination of 
 
 such phrases quell its carelessness and cunning. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 293 
 
 The critique was so far an unjust one, on the Endymion, 
 that, with its faults, it was evident that that work was the 
 production of a true poet, one at least who had in him all 
 the elements of poetry, — chaotic, indeed, but capable of 
 being reduced to a world of beauty ; and if the article 
 had been written in that kind and parental spirit that 
 becomes an older reviewer to a young writer, — if his 
 object had been to remove the film from those eyes that 
 flattery had blinded, to lead him to form his style on 
 better models, to draw from purer sources, — less blame 
 would have attached to the critique. Shelley confesses 
 that Endymion is a poem considerably defective, and 
 that perhaps it deserved as much censure as the pages of 
 the review record against it; but not to mention that, 
 there is a certain contemptuousness of phraseology from 
 which it is difficult for a critic to abstain, in the review 
 of Endymion, he does not think that the writer has 
 given it due praise ; and in his letter above referred to, 
 I remember his instancing the Hymn to Pan as " a proof 
 of the promise of ultimate excellence." Shelley also 
 adds, that there was no danger of the Endymion becoming 
 a model of that false taste with which he owns it is 
 replenished, confessing that "the canons of taste to 
 whiqh Keats had conformed in this composition, were 
 the very reverse of his own." 
 
 Shelley, together with Byron, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, 
 Mr. Brown, and others, seems to have been mispersuaded, 
 that the article in The Quarterly produced the effect of 
 either embittering the existence of Keats, or of inducing 
 consumption. That insidious disease was hereditary in 
 his family, and did not show itself for eighteen months 
 after the appearance of that number of The Quarterly. 
 Mr. Finch says that " he nursed a deeply-rooted disgust 
 
294 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 to life and the world, owing to his having been in- 
 famously treated by the very persons whom his generosity 
 had rescued from want and woe." Whether this was the 
 case, I know not, and it would be needless and unin- 
 teresting to the public, to drag forth his private wrongs, 
 whatever they might be ; but for a time, at least, — ^how- 
 ever ultimately his property might have been restored to 
 him, — he was almost left destitute, and before leaving 
 England, had not a hundred pounds he could call his own. 
 His highly sensitive and proud spirit, that brooked not 
 dependence, and the prospect of the future, preyed on him 
 like eating fire. 
 
 The blow was a death-blow. It is the last drop in the 
 cup that fills the measure, and makes it overflow — the 
 last grain of sand that marks the hour, — and from that 
 moment his were counted. But the review in question 
 was a mere unit, and not the last in the glass. 
 
 I am fortunately enabled, from a most authentic source, 
 
 to set this matter at rest — by the kind communication of 
 
 a lady who knew him well, better indeed than any other 
 
 individual out of his own family.^ To confirm the else 
 
 solitary opinion of Mr. Dilke, she says, — 
 
 " I did not know Keats at the time the review appeared. It was 
 published, if I remember rightly, in June 1818. However great his 
 mortification might have been, he was not, I should say, of a character 
 likely to have displayed it in the manner mentioned in Mrs. Shelley's 
 Eemains of her husband. Keats, soon after the appearance of the 
 review in question, started pn a walking expedition into the Highlands. 
 From thence he was forced to return, in consequence of the illness of 
 a brother, whose death a few months afterwards affected him strongly." 
 
 In a folio edition of Shakspeare, which I have spoken 
 of,2 belonging to Keats,— in King Lear, the words, " Poor 
 
 1 Mrs. Llndon, formerly Fanny then Mi-s. Linden's. It was ac- 
 Brawne. quired by the late Sir CSiarles Dilke 
 
 * See post, p. 304. The folio was ti-om her representatives. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 295 
 
 Tom" (his brother's baptismal name)' are underlined. 
 How will a word sometimes call up a world of sad 
 thoughts and poignant regrets! that familiar "Poor 
 Tom" revived in Keats the memory of his brother. 
 The passage has also a note of admiration in the margin, 
 and I think I can trace the marks of a tear. 
 
 The following extract of a poem, not published in his 
 works, proves an intensity of feeling even to the dread of 
 madness. It was written while on his journey, soon 
 after his pilgrimage to the birth-place of Burns, — not for 
 the gaze of the world, but as a record of the temper of 
 his mind at the time. It is a sure index to the more 
 serious traits in his character ; but Keats, neither in 
 writing nor speaking, could affect a sentiment ; his gentle 
 spirit knew not how to counterfeit. 
 
 There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain, 
 Where patriot battlo has been fought, where glory had the gain ; 
 There is a pleasure on the heath, where Druids old have been. 
 Where mantles grey have rustled by, and swept the nettles green ; 
 There is a joy in every spot, made known in days of old, 
 New to the foot, altho' each tale a hundred times be told. . . . 
 And if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day, 
 To tell his forehead's swoon and faint when first began decay. . . . 
 One hour, half idiot he stands, by mossy waterfall, 
 But in the very next, he reads his soul's memorial; 
 He reads it on the mountain's height, where chance he may 
 
 sit down, 
 Upon rough marble diadem, that hill's eternal crown. 
 Yet be his anchor e'er so fast, room is there none for prayer, 
 That man may never lose his mind on mountains bleak and 
 
 bare ; 
 That he may stray, league after league, some great birth-place 
 
 to find, 
 And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind. 
 
 There exists in aquarella a miniature, of which I have 
 a copy through the kindness of the lady who knew so 
 
296 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ■well to appreciate his heart and genius, that may be 
 remembered by some of his admirers, for it appeared in 
 the exhibition of the year at Somerset-house. He has 
 been taken at a moment of inspiration. ; a more complete 
 idealism of a poet was never struck out by the fire oi 
 genius. His eyes are " in a fine frenzy rolling." One 
 hand is leaning forward over a book — probably that book 
 which was the choice companion of his journey to 
 Italy, Shakspeare's Minor Poems, ^ — whilst the other, hali 
 closed, serves as a support to his upcast countenance. 
 The features are finely moulded, but death is written in 
 his pale and almost haggard features, whilst the spirit 
 seems to defy the decay of the body, and which we see 
 is inevitable. This miniature, if not painted for, is in 
 the possession of the above lady ; would that we had 
 something of the same kind of Shelley ! As a likeness it 
 was perfect, and as a work of art, a gem. It is by the 
 hand of that distinguished artist, Mr. Severn. 
 
 " It was about this time," continues my kind correspondent, " that 
 I became acquainted with Keats. We met frequently at the house oi 
 a mutual friend, (not Leigh Hunt's,) but neither then nor afterwards 
 did I see anything in his manner togive the idea that he was brooding 
 over any secret grief or dijsappa^tment. His conversation was in 
 the highest degree interesB?i||^ and his spirits good, excepting at 
 moments when anxiety regawimg his brother's health dejected them. 
 His own illness, that commMnced in January 1820, began from in- 
 flammation in the lungSjJfrom cold. In coughing, he ruptured a 
 blood-vessel. An hereditstry tendency to consumption was aggravated 
 by the excessive suguei tibility of his temperament, for I never see 
 those oftexii quot^i lines of Dryden, without thinking how exactly 
 they applied to Eeats : — 
 
 'C'he fiery soul, that working out its way, 
 .'^i I'retted the pigmy body to decay. 
 
 ^ It is certainly not the octavo of course the folio Plays. Both 
 Pojms, but a much larger volume, books are in the Hampstead public 
 ivhich, lying open, spreads right library as part of the Dilke be- 
 across the bottom of the picture — quest. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 297 
 
 From the commencement of his malady, he was forbidden to -write 
 a line of poetry, and his failing health, joined to the uncertainty of 
 his prospects, often threw him into deep melancholy. 
 
 " The letter, p. 295 of Shelley's Remains, from Mr. Finch, seems to 
 be calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That his sensibility 
 was most acute, is true, and his passions were very strong, but not 
 violent, if by that term, violence of temper is implied. His was no 
 doubt susceptible, but his anger seemed rather to turn on himself than 
 on others, and in moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort 
 of savage despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his 
 friends. Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to 
 his nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, 
 I saw him every day, often witnessed his sufferings, both mental and 
 bodily, and I do not hesitate to say, that he never could have addressed 
 an unkind expression, much less a violent one, to any human being. 
 During the last few months before leaving his native country, his mind 
 underwent a fierce conflict ; for whatever in moments of grief or dis- 
 appointment he might say or think, his most ardent desire was to live 
 to redeem his name from the obloquy cast upon it ; * nor was it till 
 he knew his death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die. Mr. Finch's 
 letter goes on to say, — ' Keats might be judged insane,' — I believe the 
 fever that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary species 
 of delirium, that made his friend Mr. Severn's task a painful one." 
 
 This gentleman, who Shelley says " almost risked his 
 life, and sacrificed every prospect to Tin-wearied attendance 
 on his dying friend;"— and of whom he augurs the 
 
 * A strong confirmation of this ardent desire of Keats's, to leave 
 behind him a name, is to be found in the two exquisite Odes, To the 
 Kightirtgale, and On Psyche. 
 
 O for a draught of vintage, that has been 
 Cooled a long time in the deep-delved earth, 
 
 Tasting of Flora and the counti-y green, 
 
 Dance and Provenfal song and sun-burnt mirth ! 
 
 and in the latter of these Odes, — 
 
 Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 
 In some untrodden region of the mind, 
 
298 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 future career in the creations of his pencil, — an augury 
 that has been fiiUy verified,— had early in the autumn of 
 1820, embarked with Keats on board a trading vessel for 
 Naples, I imagine at the beginning of September, foi^ 
 Leigh Hunt, in The Indicator^ makes him the following 
 adieu : — 
 
 , " Ah ! dear friend, as valued a one as thou art a poet, John Keats, 
 we cannot, after all, find in our hearts to be glad now thou art gone 
 away with the swallows to a kindlier climate. The rains began to 
 fall heavily the moment thou wast to go — we do not say, poetlike, for 
 
 Where branched thoughts new grown with pleasant pain. 
 
 Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind ; 
 Far, far above shall those dark-clustered trees 
 
 Hedge the wild ridged mountains, steep by steep, 
 And there by zephyrs, streams and birds and bees, 
 
 The moss-laid Druids shall be lulled to sleep ; 
 And in the midst of this wide quietness, 
 
 A rosy sanctuary will I dress. 
 With the wreathed trellis of a working brain. 
 
 With buds and bells and stars without a name. 
 With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, 
 
 Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same ; 
 And there shall be for thee all soft delight 
 
 That shadowy thought can win, 
 A bright torch and a casement ope at night, 
 
 To let the warm love in. 
 It is plain that Italy was in his thoughts when he was thus inspired, 
 and indeed he had then projected a visit to that country — sometimes 
 buoyed up with the hope beyond hope of recovering his health, but more 
 of re-establishing his fame. 
 
 ^ The extract from The Indicator over-working for ever-working ; and in 
 
 for September 20, 1820 is perhaps \ui&12thattox which. Astochanges 
 
 a little less inaccurate than usual of punctuation, — mmragionamdilor; 
 
 with Medwin ; but it is bad enough but observe the mess made of the 
 
 to exasperate those to whom the Nightingale and Psyche lines ; and 
 
 friendship of Hunt for Keats is a read (Nightingale) hath for has and 
 
 cherished recollection. In line 2 age for time, and (Psyche) in line 2 
 
 of the paragraph we should read my mind for the mind; in line 5 
 
 find it in for find in ; in line 3 clime arov,nd for above ; in line 6 Fledge for 
 
 for climate ; in line 5 thy for the ; in Hedge ; and in line 8 moss-lain Dryads 
 
 line 6 metaphorical for metaphysical ; for the blood-curdling moss-laid 
 
 in line 8 thee for you; in line 11 JJraids of Med win's foot-note. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 299 
 
 thy departure. One tear, in an honest eye, is more precious to the 
 sight than all the metaphysical weepings in the universe, and thou 
 didst leave many starting, to think how many months it would be till 
 they saw you again. And yet thou didst love metaphorical tears too, 
 in their way, and couldst always liken everything in nature to some- 
 thing great or small. And the rains that beat against thy cabin 
 window will set, we fear, thy ever-working wits upon many com- 
 parisons, which ought to be much more painful to others than thyself. 
 Heaven mend their entious and ignorant numskulls ! But thou hast 
 a mighty soul in a little body, and the kind cares of the former, for 
 all about thee, shall no longer subject the latter to the chance of 
 impressions which it scorns, and the soft skies of Italy shall breathe 
 balm upon it, and thou shalt return with thy friend the nightingale, 
 and make 'all thy other friends as happy with thy voice, as they are 
 sorrowful to miss it. The little cage thou didst sometimes share with 
 us, looks as deficient without thee as thy present one may do without 
 us. But farewell for a while ! Thy heart is in our fields, and thou 
 wilt soon be back to rejoin it." 
 
 Alas! these aspirations were vain. But how un- 
 willingly, even against hope, do we cease to hope ! His. 
 artist friend and himself, made a very unpropitious 
 voyage, — it was full of mishaps. At the very commence- 
 ment of it, they were obliged by stress of weather, to 
 put into a port on the coast of Hampshire, and dis- 
 embark. They met with a violent storm on the 
 passage, and it is a miracle that Keats, in his state, did 
 not die on board. Keats says in a letter, also communi- 
 cated to me by the same lady, — the only letter, I believe, 
 which he sent from Italy, a day or two after reaching 
 Naples, penned apparently on board. — "It has been 
 unfortunate for me that one of the passengers is a young 
 lady in a consumption. Her imprudence has vexed me 
 very much. The knowledge of her complaint — the , 
 flushings in her face, all her bad symptoms have preyed 
 upon me. They would have done so, had I been in good 
 health. I shall feel a load off me, when she vanishes out 
 
300 ' LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of my sight." Keats's symptoms seem to have been very 
 muck aggravated by this ill-judged voyage. He appears 
 to bave reached Naples on the 24th October, prostrated 
 in mind and body. His stay there was short, and his 
 journey to Eome attended by great inconvenience; for 
 one whole day they were without food, a severe privation 
 to one so debilitated. I imagine this to have occurred on 
 the crossing the Pontine Marshes, from Mola de Gaeta to 
 Cisterna. Indeed, this journey, combined with the 
 voyage, would have tried the constitution of one in 
 health, but was fatal to an invalid. 
 
 He arrived in Home half dead, and I am enabled to 
 give extracts of letters written by a mutual friend^ of 
 Keats and the lady to whom I am so much indebted, to 
 her mother, that paint the last illness and suffering of the 
 poor poet with a faithful pencil. 
 
 "Rome, Feb. 21 Bt. 
 
 My Dear Mrs. [Brawne,] 
 
 I have just got your letter of the 15th, — the contrast of your 
 quiet, friendly home, with this lonely place, and our poor suffering 
 Keats, brings the tears into my eyes. I wish many times that he had 
 never left you. His recovery must have been impossible, before he left 
 England, and his excessive grief would, in any case, have made it so. 
 In your case, he seems to me like an infant in its mother's arms. 
 You would have soothed his pains, and his death might have been 
 eased by the presence of his many friends ; but here, with one solitary 
 friend, in a place savage for an invalid, be has had another pang 
 added to the many. 
 
 " I have had the hardest task. I have kept him alive week after 
 week. He had refused all food, but I tried him every way — left him 
 no excuse. Many times I have prepared his meals six times over, and 
 kept from him the trouble I have had in so doing. I have not been 
 able to leave him — ^that is, I dared not do so, except when he slept. 
 Had he come here "alone, he would have sunk into the grave in 
 silence, and we should not have known one syllable about him. This 
 reflection repays me for what I have done. . . . 
 
 ' Joseph Severn. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 301 
 
 " It is impossible to conceive what the sufferings of this poor fellow 
 have been. Now he lies still and calm— if I say note, I shall say too 
 much. At times I have even hopes that he will recover, but the 
 doctor shakes his head, and Keats will not hear that he is better. The 
 thought of recovery is beyond anything dreadful to him. We dare 
 not now perceive any improvement in his health, for the hope of 
 death seems to be his only comfort. He talks of the quiet grave, as 
 the first rest he will ever have had. . . . 
 
 "In the last week a great desire for books came over his mind. I 
 got him all those at hand, and for three days the charm lasted ; but 
 now it is gone ; yet he is very calm, and more and more reconciled to 
 his misfortunes. . . . 
 
 "Little or no change has taken place in Keats since the commence- 
 ment of this letter, except that his mind is growing to greater 
 quietness and peace. This has its rise from the increasing weakness 
 of his body ; but it seems like a delightful sleep to me, who have been 
 ^eating about in the tempest of his mind so long. To-night he has 
 talked very much to me, but so easily that he at last fell into a 
 pleasant sleep. Among the many things he has to-night requested, 
 this is the principal, that on his grave should be inscribed, — 
 
 Here lies one whose name was writ in watei\ 
 
 " Svch a letter has come— I gave it to Keats, supposing it to be one 
 of yours — but it proved sadly otherwise. The glances of that letter 
 tore him to pieces. The effects were on him for many days, He did 
 not read it — he could not ; but requested me to place it in the coffin, 
 with a purse and a letter (unopened) of his sister. . . . 
 
 " The doctor has been here. He thinks Keats worse. He says the 
 expectoration is the most dreadful he ever saw — He never met lyith an 
 instance where the patient was so quickly pulled down. Keats's 
 inward grief must have been beyond all limits. He says he was 
 fretted to death. From the first drops of blood, he knew he must die. 
 No common chance of living was for him, — . . ." 
 
 A few days after these melanclioly and interesting 
 details were penned, Keats breathed his last — slept 
 sweetly " as a tired child." His dying moments were as 
 tranquil as those of a child ; he was resigned, more than 
 resigned to die, — ^he had longed ardently for death, and 
 hailed it as his best friend — had hunted for it more than 
 
302 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 for hidden treasures. Almost his last words were, — "I 
 feel the daisies growing over me — Shelley calls them ' the 
 stars that never set.' " ^ He had, on hearing of Keats's 
 intention of proceeding to Italy, made him an offer 
 through Leigh Hunt, of a home with him in Pisa ; but 
 Keats, with his love of independence, and knowledge of 
 the trouble and anxiety which his state of health, bodily 
 and mental, would cause, ^.Ithough he gratefully ac- 
 knowledged, declined the invitation ; nor was Shelley 
 aware, on my going to Rome in February, that Keats was 
 so near his end. I was the bearer, from Shelley, of a large 
 packet of letters or MSS. for his poet-friend, and which, 
 ignorant of his death, that took place a few days after 
 my arrival, on the 23d February, — not on the 27th of 
 December, as erroneously stated in the Preface to 
 Adonais — (the date of Mr. Gibson's ^ letter must have been 
 13th June, not January, 1821,) I sent to his address. In 
 the whirl and confusion consequent on a first sight of 
 Rome, I did not, for some time, make inquiries about 
 Keats, — and none of whom I did enquire, could give me 
 any information respecting him ; having no clue to any 
 friend of his. Great cities are indeed great solitudes, and 
 that this " child of grace and genius," " the brave, gentle, 
 md the beautiful," should have fled like some "frail 
 Bxhalation," and the heartless world should have neither 
 known nor cared for his fate and sufferings, nor shed 
 1 tear over his remains, is but a sad and true comment on 
 bhe words of his friend, — " This is a lonely place." It was 
 some' time, also, before Shelley was acquainted with his 
 Jeath, for in his letters to me at Rome, he does not make 
 
 1 This looks like a clumsy sen- ^ The allusion is of course to 
 
 ;imentalfabricationof Medwin's to Gisborne's letter enclosing "the 
 
 ;et the two poets' names together Rev. Col. Finch's "account of Keats's 
 
 igain. ' death. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 303 
 
 any allusion to the subject. It has been stated to me 
 by the lady already mentioned, that his papers (those, 
 doubtless, of which I was the bearer among the number) 
 fell into the hands of Mr. Browne [sic], who had intended 
 to write his memoirs, and who unhappily died in New 
 Zealand, whither he had gone to settle, before his task 
 was completed. It is a mystery to me, why Mr. Browne, 
 or Brown (I am not certain how spelt,) ^ a gentleman little 
 famed in the world of letters, should have been selected 
 as Keats's biographer, instead of Leigh Hunt, or John 
 Hamilton Reynolds, better known by the assumed name of 
 Hamilton, under which he published a volume, entitled. 
 The Garden of Florence, and other poems of great merit, 
 in 1821, and promised at one time a second, in con- 
 junction with Keats, of whom he says, — " He who is gone, 
 was one of the kindest friends I ever possessed, and yet 
 he was not kinder, perhaps to me, than to others. His 
 intense mind and powerful feeling would, I truly believe, 
 have done the world some service, had his life been 
 spared. He was of too sensitive a nature, and thus he 
 was destroyed." ^ 
 
 Either of these would have been the most appropriate 
 chronicler, — the last was his oldest and most intimate 
 friend, and he was attracted to the first, like Byron, by 
 sympathy for his unjust imprisonment, and a similarity 
 of opinion on politics, — for Keats's were most liberal, and 
 
 ^ Charles Armitage Brown's Preface of Reynolds's little book, 
 
 name was spelt without tiie e. which does not mention Keats by 
 
 Curiously enough, after his father's name, but leaves no doubt that 
 
 death, his mother married a Isabella was to have been associated 
 
 Mr. Browne with the e. with The Garden of Florence and Eey- 
 
 ^ The Keats-Eeynolds scheme nolds's other poem from Boccaccio, 
 
 was to vn-ite and publish a coUeo- The Lady of Provence, which was also 
 
 tion of poetical tales from Boccaccio. in his 1821 volume. There was no 
 
 Medwin's extract is given without promise of a second volume, 
 immoderate inaccuracy from the 
 
304 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 not merely confined to words, but actually shown,— a 
 record of whicli would not be devoid of interest. 
 
 Among Keats's MSS. was a tragedy, entitled Otho the 
 Great, a subject inspired by the pages of Tacitus, and on 
 which it appears Shelley had formed an idea of writing 
 a poem, of which Mrs. Shelley has given us two stanzas. 
 The master-passion of Keats's drama was jealousy. It was 
 offered to Drury Lane or Covent Garden, and rejected ; 
 but that rejection is no proof of its demerits, for after the 
 review of his Endymion in The Quarterly, it is not likely, 
 had it been a masterpiece, that it would have been 
 accepted ; and following the example of Mr. Griffiths' 
 play, which was brought out twenty years after its 
 rejection, Keats's may yet make its appearance.* 
 
 Keats was an ardent admirer of Shakspeare, — and after 
 the manner of Sheridan Knowles, adopted the phraseology 
 of the old masters. In the folio Shakspeare ^ before me, 
 the lines he most admired in King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, 
 and Troilus and Cressida, (the last two plays doubtless 
 studied with a view to his own,) are marked and under- 
 lined ; to the latter he has appended several notes, and 
 suggested some emendations in the text. In the 
 
 passage, — 
 
 Sith every action that has gone before, 
 Whereof we have recoM, trial did draw, 
 Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, 
 And that unbodied figure of the thought 
 That gav't surmised shape, — 
 
 " The tragedy of Otho the Great, of cannot properly be said that it was 
 
 which the plot of four acts was sup- rejected by either theatre ; but the 
 
 plied by Charles Armitage Brown parallelwiththecaseof Mr. Griffiths 
 
 and the fifth by Keats, who wrote has not been fulfilled. Oifto remains 
 
 the whole play, was accepted at an unacted play, though published 
 
 Drury Lane, to be produced in 1820, among Keats's works, 
 
 and there were also negociations ' Presumably borrowed. See ante, 
 
 with Covent Garden. The question page 294. 
 was — When shall it come out ? It 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 305 
 
 he has affixed the following note : — 
 
 " The genius of Shakspeare was an innate universality, — wherefore 
 he laid the achievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his 
 indolent and kingly gaze. He could do easily man's utmost — his plan 
 of tasks to come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do 
 hereafter would not, in the idea, answer the aim, how tremendous 
 must have been his conception of ultimates ! " 
 
 This commentary may serve to shew what was working 
 in Keats's mind — the distrust of himself — almost despair, 
 at the comparison of his own labours with the un- 
 premeditated effusions of Shakspeare. 
 
 The same interesting volume contains in the blank 
 leaves two poems, — a soimet. On Sitting Down to read 
 King Lear once again; and Lines on seeing a lock of 
 Milton's Hair; which, though not contained in his 
 published volumes, have, I believe, been given to the 
 world in periodi(?als.* 
 
 A comic poem was also in Mr. Browne's [sic^ possession, 
 of Keats's, written in the Spenser metre, of which a few 
 stanzas appeared in The Indicator of August 23rd, 1820, 
 under the pseudo name of Lucy V. L.^ This poem 
 
 ' I have not yet been able to A laughing ! — snapp'd his fingers ! 
 verify this belief ; but it may be — Shame it is to tell ! 
 
 well founded. No doubt Keats took Byron's words 
 
 » Lucy Vaughan Lloyd was the and Lady Byron's name and put 
 
 name in full, and The Cap and Bells t^em in this context in token of his 
 
 the title of the poem, now long in- disgust with his great coutem- 
 
 cluded in Keats's published works. porary's mental tone when treating 
 
 The supposed poetess did not serious matters. A dying man cir- 
 
 execute what can fairly be called cumstanced as Keats was could 
 
 a parody on Byron's Farewell. The hardly be expected to enjoy the 
 
 nearest thing to such a parody is in shipwreck episode in Dm Juan, and 
 
 stanza 68, where it is said of the ^ight be forgiven for throwing the 
 
 Emperor Elfinan that book down in disgust when he got 
 
 He bow'd at Bellanaiue, and said *° ^^^ couplet— 
 
 ' Poor Bell ! "^^ l^s* *bey caught two boobies and 
 
 Farewell! farewell! and if for a noddy 
 
 ever I still ^^^ then they left off eating the 
 
 For ever fare thee well ! '—and dead body, 
 
 then he fell Byron's plea in mitigation of sen- 
 
306 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 contained also a parody on Byron's farewell, and my 
 informant says, possessed a vein of dry wit and much 
 humour, of which my readers may judge from the 
 specimen to which I refer them. The paper is headed 
 "Coaches." 
 
 The editor of The Athenseum has drawn a parallel 
 between Shelley and Keats, — a parallel that reminds me 
 of what Gothe says of the controversy between the 
 Germans, respecting the comparative merits of himself 
 and Schiller; and on which he remarks, — "They may 
 think themselves lucky dogs in having two such fellows 
 to dispute about." Mr. D[ilke] says,^ 
 
 " Shelley was a worshipper of truth, Eeats of beauty ; Shelley had 
 bhe greater power, Keats the finer imagination, — both were single- 
 hearted, admirable men. When we look into the world — nay, not to 
 judge others, when we look into our own breasts, we should despair, if 
 such men did not occasionally appear among us. Shelley and Keats 
 we^e equal enthusiasts, had the same hope of the moral improvement 
 of society, and the ultimate triumph of ti-uth ; and Shelley, who lived 
 longest, carried all the generous feelings of youth into manhood. 
 A.ge enlarged, not narrowed his sympathies, and learning bowed 
 down his humanity to feel its brotherhood with the humblest of its 
 fellow- creatures. If not judged by creeds and conventional opinions, 
 Shelley must be considered a moral teacher, both by precept and 
 example; he scattered the seed of truth, so it appeared to him, 
 everywhere, and upon all occasions, — confident, that however dis- 
 regarded, however long it niight be buried, it would not perish, but 
 spring up hereafter in the sunshine of its welcome, and its golden 
 fruitage be garnered by grateful men. Keats had naturally much 
 less of this political philosophy, but he had neither less resolution, 
 less hope of, or less good will towards man. Lord Byron's opinion, 
 that he was killed by the reviewers, is wholly ridiculous, though his 
 epitaph and the angry feelings of his friends might countenance it. 
 Keats died of hereditary consumption." 
 
 tence still satisfies folk whose i This is a part of a note ap- 
 
 Btomaoha are robust — to wit, that he pended by Dilke to a passage in 
 
 paints " your world exactly as it Medwin's memoir as it appeared in 
 
 goes," The Athenssum. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 307 
 
 The editor adds, that " he was fast sinking before either 
 Blackwood or The Quarterly poured out their malignant 
 venom." There he was mistaken, and misinformed, as I 
 have already proved, for he was only first attacked with 
 that deadly malady, eighteen months after the appearance 
 of the articles. ^ 
 
 Agreeing with Mr. D[ilke] in the main, though not 
 admitting that Keats had the finer imagination, I will 
 state what Shelley's opinions were of his poetry. Those 
 he entertained respecting Endymion, are already before 
 the public. He often lamented that, under the adoption 
 of false canons of taste, he spoiled by their affectation his 
 finest passages. But in the volume that Keats published 
 in 1820, he perceived in every one of these productions 
 a marked and continually progressing improvement, and 
 hailed with delight his release from his leading-strings, 
 his emancipation from what he called "a perverse and 
 limited school." The Pot of Basil, and The Eve of St. Agnes, 
 he read and re-read with ever new delight, and looked 
 upon Hyperion as almost faultless, grieving that it was 
 but a fragment, and that Keats had not been encouraged 
 to complete a work worthy of Milton. He used to say 
 that "the scenery and drawing of his Saturn Dethroned, 
 and the fallen Titans, surpassed those of Satan and his 
 rebellious angels in the Paradise Lost, — possessing more 
 human interest; that the whole poem was supported 
 throughout with a colossal grandeur equal to the subject." 
 Shelley had this little volume continually in his pocket, 
 the best proof of his appreciation of its merits. Nothing 
 more deeply affected Shelley than the premature removal 
 from a world, that deserved to lose him, of Keats, Shelley 
 thought that he died too soon for his fame, great as it is ; 
 had he lived to bask in the warm south, to drink deep of 
 
108 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 he warm south, to draw his inspiration from purer 
 ources; had he not been flattered and stimulated into 
 mting from false models, turned as he was daily become 
 aore and more from the error of his ways, what might he 
 lot have produced ? The prohibition of his physicians, 
 write after his first attack, was cruelly felt by Keats. 
 *oetry had been his "safety valve." His imagination 
 low preyed on itself — he longed T;o redeem his fame, 
 ^ot that, as some accused j'n, he had been idle, and 
 (Then we consider that he had only begun to write in 
 815 or to publish till 1817, (he was little more than 24 
 9-hen he died) * one wonders that so few years should have 
 fleeted so much. His earliest productions — though they 
 vrere so disfigured by an affec :ed phraseolo^, that the one 
 )eginning, " I stood tipi;oe upon a little hill," and several 
 ithers, might be mistaken for his prototype's, if we 
 iompare them with those of Shelley at the same age, how 
 ax superior are they, how much greater promise do they 
 lot hold out of ultimate excellence ! and his more finished 
 )nes make us say with Leigh Hunt, — "Undoubtedly 
 le has taken his seat with the oldest and best of our 
 )oets." 
 
 I shall complete this imperfect sketch of Keats with a 
 )rief notice of the elegy Shelley composed on his death 
 n the autumn of that year, at the Baths of St. Julian. It 
 wreathes all the tenderness of Moschus and Bion; and 
 speaking of Adonais, in a letter, he says, that had he 
 received an account of the closing scene of the life of 
 ;hat great genius, he could not have composed it. The 
 jnthusiasm of the imagination overpowering the senti- 
 ment. Not the least valuable part of that idyll is the 
 picture Shelley has drawn of himself among the mourners 
 
 ^ He was in his twenty-sixth year. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 309 
 
 at the funeral, — where he has not forgotten Byron and 
 Moore. 
 
 'Mid others of less note, came one frail form, 
 A phantom among men, companionless 
 As the last cloud of an expiring storm, 
 Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess. 
 Had gazed on nature's naked loveliness, 
 Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray. 
 With naked steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
 And his own thoughts along that rugged way 
 Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 
 
 A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift ! 
 A love in desolation masked. A power 
 Girt round with weakness : it can scarce uplift 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour. 
 It is a dying lamp — a falling shower — 
 A breaking billow!— even while we speak, 
 Is it not broken? On the withering flower, 
 The killing sun smiles brightly; on a cheek 
 The life' can bum in blood, even while the heart may break. 
 
 His head was bound with pansies overblown, 
 And faded violets, white and pied and blue, 
 And a light spear topped with a cypress-cone, 
 (Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew,^ 
 Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew) 
 Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
 Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew 
 He came the last, neglected and apart — 
 A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart! 
 
 How pathetic is the close — how it hangs upon the ear 
 like some passage in one of Beethoven's Sonatas, or 
 a "Melodious Tear" of Bellini! What is the whole 
 poem but a prophecy of his early fate — an augury of his 
 soon rejoining his friend. 
 
 ' Medwin has Up for life — change and pass — where the rhyme 
 
 probably a printer's error ; but the alone should have kept him on the 
 
 next misquotation is clearly his — rails. 
 the many pass away for the many 
 
10 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 In Adonais, as muck as in any of his works, he has 
 3veloped his Platonism, his metaphysical ideas of 
 itellectual beauty. How sublime is — 
 
 The one remains — the many pass away' — 
 
 Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly — 
 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass. 
 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity. 
 
 Until death tramples it to fragments. 
 
 nd yet, speaking of Adonais* a contemporary critic, no 
 
 ore capable of appreciating it than a penny-a-liner or 
 
 rub-street poet, or than an English audience the 
 
 autterable tenderness and beauty of the Shakespeare of 
 
 erman Composers, Beethoven, says, 
 
 "We have always given room in our columns to this writer's 
 helley's) merit, and we will not now repeat our conviction of his 
 curable absurdity. Adonais, an Elegy, is the form in which Mr. 
 lelley puts forth his woes. We give a verse at random, premising 
 at there is no story in the elegy! and that it contains fifty^flve 
 a/Dzas, which are, to our seeming, altogether unconnected, incoherent, 
 id nonsensical ! The poetry of the work is contemptible — a mere 
 illection of bloated words, heaped on each other vdthout order, 
 irmony, or meaning, the refuse of a schoolboy's common-place book, 
 ill of the vagaries of pastoral poetry — 'yellow gems, and blue stars, 
 right Phoebus, and rosy-fingered Aurora ;' and of such stuff is Keats's 
 egy composed." 
 
 Oh, Shame ! where is thy blush ? f 
 
 On quitting Shelley, I left him with less regret, from 
 linking that in introducing him to the Williams's, they 
 ^ould form the charm of his solitary life, and it is 
 
 satisfaction to me to think that I conferred a mutual 
 enefit on both. Williams and myself had hunted the 
 Lger in another hemisphere, had been constant corre- 
 pondents in India, and on my return home took a 
 
 * See LiUrojry Oaeette. 
 
 t No book can be totally bad which finds one even one reader who can 
 ly as much sincerely. — Lobd Bybok. 
 
 ^ See note on previous page. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 311 
 
 campagne together at Geneva, and revived a friendship 
 such as I have never felt for any other individual. 
 A more noble, unworldly being never existed than 
 WilKams. He had been educated at Eton, was originally 
 in the navy, and afterwards entered the 8th Dragoons, 
 and unlike most officers, had highly cultivated his mind, 
 and possessed considerable dramatic talent, and a deep 
 insight into the workings of human nature. During the 
 spring he had written a play, taken from the interweaving 
 of two stories in Boccaccio, and Shelley had assisted him 
 in the work, and supplied him with an epithalamium for 
 music, since incorrectly published, and which I give in its 
 original form. 
 
 Epithalamium. 
 
 Night, with all thine eyes look down ! 
 Darkness shed its holiest dew ! 
 
 When ever smiled the inconstant moon 
 On a pair so true ? 
 
 Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light, 
 
 Lest eyes see their own delight ! 
 
 Hence, swift hour I and thy loved flight 
 Oft renew. 
 
 Oh joy ! oh fear ! what may be done 
 In the absence of the sun ? 
 
 Come along ! 
 
 The golden gates of sleep unbar ! 
 
 When strength and beauty meet together, 
 Kindles their image like a star 
 
 In a sea of glassy weather. 
 Hence, coy hour ! and quench thy light, 
 Let [sic for Lest] eyes see their own delight ! 
 Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight 
 
 Oft renew. 
 
 Girls. 
 Oh joy ! oh fear ! what may be done 
 
 In the absence of the sun ? 
 
 Come along 
 
i LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Fairies ! sprites ! and angels keep her ! 
 
 Holiest powers, permit no wrong ! 
 And return, to wake the sleeper, 
 
 Dawn, ere it be long. 
 Hence, swift hour ! and quench thy light, 
 Lest eyes see their own delight ! 
 Hence, coy hour ! and thy loved flight 
 
 Oft renew. 
 
 Boys and Oirls. 
 Oh joy ! oh fear ! what will be done 
 In the absence of the sun ? 
 
 Come along ! 
 
 Williams (who was, by the way, a lineal descendant 
 )m one of Cromwell's daughters) had, with his moderate 
 shes, what might be considered a sufficiency, but 
 ihappily, a grfeat part of his fortune was swallowed up 
 the bankruptcy of a house in Calcutta, where it was 
 Iged. Another misfortune attended him, soon after 
 king up his abode in Pisa ; he was seized with a pul- 
 onary complaint, which he attributed to sleeping in 
 bed where a consumptive patient had died. The 
 ilians, and still more the Spanish, consider the atmo- 
 here of rooms to be infected by such patients, and the 
 ws (though the regulations of the police are sometimes 
 fringed, which did not occur in Keats's case) strictly 
 LJoin that all the furniture in the apartments of those 
 bo have died of the complaint, is to be destroyed, 
 ''illiams certainly when he came to Pisa never showed 
 ly symptoms of phthisis, which soon took deep root in 
 s constitution, and as appears by a letter of Shelley's, 
 here he says, "Williams must go on with the 
 occia," excited great alarm in Shelley, who soon learnt 
 I love him with the tenderest regard. Pisa was full 
 ■ victims to this insidious disease, and I have often 
 )served Shelley in our walks made deeply melancholy 
 
lilFE OF SHELLEY. 313 
 
 by the sight of a lovely and interesting girl, crawling 
 
 along — 
 
 A dying lady, lean and pale, 
 Tottering forth, < 
 
 and basking in the sun, like a half-animated butterfly 
 escaped untimely from its shell, whose wings had no 
 power to raise it, — those beautiful wings flapping im- 
 potently in the dust. "Williams also (as Keats had been 
 on board of the ship,) was deeply affected by the spectacle. 
 He had also a great taste for drawing ; his sketches were 
 spirited and masterly ; he could illustrate happily from 
 the ideas of others, and took likenesses in general very 
 striking, and it is to him that we are indebted for the 
 only semblance of Shelley that exists. It was not a very 
 happy miniature, but I should conceive no one so difficult 
 to pourtray, the expression of his countenance being 
 ever flitting and varied, — now depressed and melancholy, 
 now lit up like that of a spirit, — making him look one 
 moment forty and the next eighteen. It is said that 
 Mr. Severn has made a portrait of Shelley from memory, 
 as Count d'Orsay had done of Byron ; but I have never 
 seen the former, hoping it may be as valuable as the 
 accomplished foreigner's. "Williams's sketch ^ has been, it 
 strikes me, greatly altered for the worse in the engraving ; 
 the face is too full and oval, the nose too straight and 
 
 1 Williams's sketch had not at in Mrs. Shelley's editions of her 
 
 that time been engraved or other- husband's collected works. It is 
 
 wise reproduced at all. The en- probably of the last named that 
 
 gravings then publicly known were Medwin speaks. There was suf- 
 
 based on Miss Curran's portrait in ficient resemblance between the 
 
 0''s. There was one (by Wedgwood) two portraits in regard to the posi- 
 
 in Galignani's edition of The Poetical tion and aspect of the face to 
 
 Works of Coleridge, SheUey, and Keats enable Clint to use both in the 
 
 (Paris, 1829) ; one by William posthumous portrait he made 
 
 Pinden in the Landscape and Portrait for Jane Williams (also not re- 
 
 lllustrations to the Life and Works of produced when Medwin published 
 
 Lord Byron (1834) ; and a smaller and his Life), 
 inferior one by the same engraver 
 
.4 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 gular, — the wliole wanting in that fire which in 
 oments of inspiration animated him. But to have 
 rested the smallest shadow of resemblance of that great 
 inius is something. 
 
 The mutual delicacy of health of Shelley and "Williams 
 ew them closer to each other, and the similarity of 
 eir traits and pursuits served to rivet still more the tie 
 ' friendship. "Williams soon learned to understand 
 lelley — to appreciate him as a poet, and a man — and 
 lelley found in him one who could sympathise with his 
 flferings, and to whom he could lay open his heart, 
 rs. Shelley, speaking of "Williams, says, " that he was her 
 isband's favourite companion, that his love of adventure 
 id manly exercise also corresponded with Shelley's 
 ste." She calls him in another place, " the chosen and 
 iloved sharer of his pleasures, — and alas ! his fate." 
 These manly exercises, to which she alludes, were 
 ■actice with a pistol, and boating. "Williams, from his 
 ,rly sea-life, was an excellent sailor, and knew all the 
 ysteries of the craft, could cut out sails, make blocks, &c. 
 le Amo has no pleasure-boats, and its shallowness 
 ndered it difficult to get any that drew little water 
 lOugh to float. They, however, overcame the difficulty, 
 id constructed one, such as the huntsmen carry about 
 ith them in the Maremma, something like a "Welch 
 iracle ; and in this they ventured down to Leghorn, 
 turning to Pisa by the canal, when missing the direct 
 it, they got entangled among the weeds, and upset, 
 lis boat was a great amusement to them during their 
 llagiatura \sic\ this summer (1821). Shelley fixed himself 
 ;ain at the baths of St. Julian, and "Williams at Pugnano, 
 ur miles distant. I have heard Shelley often speak with 
 ,pture of the excursions they made together. The canal 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 315 
 
 fed by the Serchio, of tlie clearest water, is so rapid, that 
 they were obliged to tow the boat up against the current ; 
 but the swift descent, through green banks enamelled 
 with flowers and overhung with trees, that mirrored 
 themselves on its glassy surface, gave him a wonderful 
 delight. He has left a record of these trips in a poem 
 entitled The Boat on the Serchio, and calls Williams and 
 himself Melchior and Lionel. 
 
 The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, 
 
 The living breath is fresh behind, 
 As with dews and sunrise fed, 
 
 Comes the laughing morning wind. 
 The sails are full, the boat makes head 
 
 Against the Serchio's torrent fierce, 
 Then flags with intermitting course. 
 
 And hangs upon the wave.i 
 Which fervid from its mountain source, 
 
 Shallow, smooth, and strong doth come ; 
 Swift as fire, tempestuously 
 
 It sweeps into the affrighted sea. 
 In morning's smile its eddies coil. 
 
 Its billows sparkle, toss, and boil, 
 Torturing all its quiet light 
 Into columns pure and bright. 
 
 A boat was to Shelley, what a plaything is to a child. 
 I have mentioned that he early acquired the taste when 
 a boy, his father having one at Wamham pond, a lake of 
 considerable extent, or rather two connected by a draw- 
 bridge, which led to a pleasure-garden and boat-house. 
 He was nineteen when he used to float paper flotillas at 
 Oxford, — older when he made a sail of a ten-pound note 
 on the Serpentine, and I have no doubt would, with any 
 
 ^ Mqdwin omits a few words here. The tempest of the . . . 
 The fi:agment reads I^ tj^^ j^j ^^^ ^^ ^j^ ^^^.^^^^ ^^^ 
 
 And hangs upon the wave, and should, as far as we know, be fierce. 
 stems 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 •, at twenty-eight, have done the same. The water 
 
 ; his fatal element. He crossed the Channel to Calais 
 
 m open boat, a rash experiment ; when at school, the • 
 
 atest pleasure he enjoyed was an excursion we made 
 
 Richmond from Brentford — a pleasure perhaps the 
 
 re sweet, being a stolen one. He was a great sculler 
 
 iJton. He descended the Rhine on a sort of raft. He 
 
 ie a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Crioklade ; 
 
 > nearly lost in coming from the Isle of Man; at 
 
 leva, past days and nights on the lake: and now, 
 
 ier, excuse this recapitulation, though imperfect, — 
 
 lold him on the Serchio. 
 
 f there was anything in Thalaha that delighted him 
 
 ve the rest, it was the fairy boat that figures in that 
 
 aresting tale. Shelley made a chaloupe enter into the 
 
 nery of most of his poems, from Queen Mdb down to 
 
 3 Witch of Atlas. More beautiful passages cannot be 
 
 nd in any writer than those in which he treats of this 
 
 iject. In Alastor, the boat is " a thing of life," is part 
 
 ;he man, and we take a lively interest in its dangers. 
 
 A little shallop floating near the shore, 
 
 Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 
 
 It had been long abandoned, for its sides 
 
 Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints 
 
 Swayed with the undulations of the tide. 
 
 A restless impulse urged him to embark, 
 
 And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste, 
 
 For well he knew that mighty shadow loves 
 
 The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 
 
 * * * A whirlwind swept it on 
 
 With fierce gusts, and precipitating force, 
 
 Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. 
 
 The waves arose, — higher and higher still 
 
 Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge, 
 
 Like serpents- struggling in a vulture's grasp. . . . 
 
 Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 317 
 
 And we breathe again when we come to — "safely 
 fled." 
 
 The Revolt of Islam owes much of its charm to the boat 
 of pearl in which Laon and Cythna made their voyage, 
 and it forms one of the charms of the Epipsychidion. 
 
 Alas ! the subject is not yet exhausted. 
 
 This his second summer at the baths of St. Julian was 
 perhaps one of the happiest Shelley ever spent abroad. 
 The charm of Mrs. Williams's society, and of their 
 children (they had two), served also to heighten its , 
 agreeableness. She was an accomplished and elegant 
 woman, not only a superior player on the harp and guitar, 
 but had a sweet and cultivated voice. Shelley was 
 particularly fond of music, and delighted in her simple 
 airs, some of which she had brought with her, in memory, 
 from the East. For her were composed the exquisite 
 lines, " I arise from dreams of thee," ^ adapted to the 
 celebrated Persian air sung by the Knautch girls, " Tazee 
 
 * T)ie Indian Serenade, or as it is old-fashioned enough still to believe 
 more often called Lines to an Indian that " divine Mozart " was the 
 Air, cannot conceivably have been greatest melodist of whom " this 
 composed for Jane, of whose exist- world holds record," I was much 
 ence Shelley had no knowledge till — perhaps inordinately — pleased 
 long after he had given a copy of when I found that no one came 
 the poem to Sophia Stacey (in 1819). forward to controvert this view of 
 In The AtMnseum of the 2nd of the genesis of the Serenade, and 
 November 1907, I gave an account that the lady's only surviving son, 
 of a holograph manuscript of Mr. Corbet Stacey Catty, with a 
 Shelley's in which the poem is good deal of personal knowledge to 
 associated with the words of back his judgment, wrote to The 
 Metastasio's "Ah perdona" in the Athenseum supporting my con- 
 opera La Clemensa di Ti'o. This and elusion. That the song had not 
 other circumstances duly set forth been forgotten in the reign of Jane 
 in The Athensemn led me to the maybe concluded from its presence 
 conviction that, if that delicately in the " Don Juan " — sivera estfama 
 passionate gem is to be associated — when she foundered with the 
 with any particular person and poet and his friend Williams. Of 
 melody, the person must hence- course Jane might easily have sung 
 forth be Sophia Stacey and the it to a less suitable and less ex- 
 tune the main melodic trend of quisite melody than that of "Ah 
 Mozart's "Ah perdona." Being perdona." 
 
8 LIFE OF SHELLET. 
 
 tazee no he no," and the Arietto which has been 
 mirably set by an English composer, — 
 
 The keen stars are twinkling ! 
 And the moon rising brightly among them, 
 Dear Jane ! 
 
 d that gem of genius, entitled With a Gruitar, the idea 
 which was probably derived from Homer or rather 
 im Catullus ; in the Introduction to which, the names 
 
 Miranda and Ferdinand were meant to typify that 
 ly and her husband — himself Ariel. Many other of the 
 rical pieces written about this time, such as The Magnetic 
 dy to her Patient, The Invitation, The Becollection, 
 Vhen the Lamp is shattered," — were addressed to 
 rs. Williams. 
 
 The sympathy of these gifted persons contributed much 
 exorcise from Shelley the demon of despondency, that 
 ;en lay on him like a nightmare ; and in them he found 
 ■efuge and shelter from the world that never ceased to 
 
 his foe. The cold, censorious, formal, conventional 
 )rld, often puts interpretations the most unworthy on 
 B friendship between two persons of different sexes. 
 In St. Irvyne, written in 1811, he thus expresses him- 
 [f— 
 
 ' Let Epicureans argue and say — ' There is no pleasure hut in the 
 itifioation of the senses' — Let them enjoy their opinion — I want 
 ; pleasure but happiness. Let Stoics say, ' Every idea that there are 
 3 feelings is weak — he who yields to them is weaker.' Let those 
 1, wise in their own conceit indulge themselves in sordid and 
 jrading hypothesis ; and let them suppose human nature capable 
 no influence from any thing but Materiality so long as I enjoy" 
 locent and Congenial delights, which it were needless to define to 
 )se who are strangers to it. ... I am satisfied." 
 
 But a purer being than Mrs. "Williams cannot exist. 
 3t a breath of scandal could possibly attach to her fame. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 319 
 
 The verses addressed to her always passed througli the 
 hands of Williams himself, and who had too much 
 /confidence in the virtue of one devotedly his, to harbour 
 for a moment any jealousy of an attachment the most 
 innocent and disinterested. Effusions such as these must 
 not be interpreted literally. Should we allow ourselves 
 to put wrong constructions on such outpourings of the 
 soul, such Platonic aspirations, what are we to say for 
 those of the L. E. L.s, and Lady Emmelines of the day ? 
 " By the intercourse with — the very touch o± that which 
 is beautiful, the poet brings forth and produces what he 
 formerly conceived." We must look upon such com- 
 positions as possessing little or nothing of the actual — as 
 (like the JEpipsychidton) mere idealisms, — as " exercises on 
 amatory. matters," such as Diotima instructs Socrates to 
 employ himself in, adding, that " Love, and everything 
 else that desires anything, desires that which is absent, 
 and beyond its reach, — that which it has not itself, that 
 which it wants ; such are things of which there are desire 
 and love." These counsels, Shelley, whose handbook was 
 Plato, constantly followed. As another specimen of this 
 state of his mind, this yearning after a love that, alas ! 
 continued to elude his grasp, I might point out The Zucca, 
 written at this very period, and — 
 
 I loved.— no ! I mean not one of ye ! 
 
 Or any earthly one; though ye are dear 
 
 As human heart to human heart raay be, 
 
 I loved — I know not what — but this low sphere, 
 
 And all that it contains, contains not thee ! 
 
 Thou whom seen nowhere, I feel everywhere, 
 
 Dim object of my soul's idolatry.^ 
 
 ' In this truncated octave stanza — " Veiled art thou like^" : Mary 
 
 Medwinseemstohaverepunctuated Shelley in a later recension super- 
 
 the Posthumous Poems version and seded the beautiful seventh line 
 
 left out the incomplete eighth line and printed another imperfect 
 
t20 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Lnd in The Question, where he dreams of having made 
 I nosegay, he ends with — 
 
 I hastened to the spot whence I had come, 
 That I might there present it. Oh! to whom? 
 
 Vo these perhaps might be added — 
 
 I can give not what men call Love, 
 
 But wilt thou accept not 
 The worship the heart lifts above, 
 
 And the Heavens reject not, 
 The desire of the Moth for the Star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow, 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow. 
 
 In August, leaving Mrs. Shelley at the Baths, Shelley, 
 ,t the request of Lord Byron, travelled to Ravenna, there 
 o meet and consult with him on the critical posture of 
 lis affairs. He had, as Shelley says, "formed a per- 
 aanent sort of liaison with the Countess Guicoioli," — who 
 vith her father and brother, had made a hasty retreat 
 rom Romagna, and were then at Florence waiting for 
 jord Byron to join them. I say a hasty retreat, as 
 applied to the fair countess; for her lord, the Count 
 Tuiccioli, had devised measures for shutting her up in a 
 sonvent, and which she narrowly escaped. Lord Byron's 
 ituation at Ravenna was also far from a pleasant one. 
 ^ contributor to The Westminster Review, among num- 
 
 ouplet with a stronger rhyme like many a still more treasurable 
 
 han the earlier drafting would line, was no doubt rejected by 
 
 lave yielded. Nineteenth and Shelley when he saw that his 
 
 wentieth century editors follow choice lay between a, poor rhyme 
 
 ler, rightly, in reading thus — and a couplet with weak terminals 
 
 From heaven and earth and all —forming, in this case, something 
 
 that in them are "''^ ^ reverberation of ye, be, and 
 
 Veiled art thou like a star ! *^- Hence this fine line is proper 
 
 "■i. K ff 1 '" *^® notes, in which alone it is 
 
 .he beautitul now handed on from generation to 
 
 Dim object of my soul's idolatry, generation. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 321 
 
 erous other falsehoods, asserts that Lord Byron took no 
 part in that abortive attempt at a revolution in the Papal 
 territories. He says in his journal, "They mean to 
 insurrect here, and are to honour me with a call there- 
 upon. I shall not fall back ; " and, " my life was not 
 supposed to be particularly safe." Confirmations of his 
 words to me, if indeed the stanzas inscribed " When about 
 to join the Italian Carbonari" require confirmation, and 
 he adds to the passage above quoted, — " Had it not been 
 for the Pope's minister, Cardinal Gonsalvo, perhaps the 
 stiletto, had I not been openly assassinated, would have 
 ended my days." Many months after I had known him, 
 in speaking of his love for Italy, and abhorrence of papal 
 and Austrian despotism, he pointed to some saddle-bags 
 lying on the floor of his room, and said, " There lies the 
 firebrand. Those bags contain all the secrets of the 
 conspiracy in Eomagna. The names of — " there he 
 stopped and turned the subject. His having these 
 important documents in his possession, explains what 
 Shelley says [JSssays, &c., ii, 310]. — " The interest he took 
 in the politics of Italy, and the actions he performed in 
 consequence of it, are subjects not Jit to be written." 
 
 That Lord Byron should have resorted to Shelley in his 
 difficulties, who says, — " It is destined that I should have 
 some active part in everybody's affairs whom I approach," 
 shews great confidence in his judgment, and reliance on 
 his advice. And strange to say, that ill-judging as he 
 always was in his own affairs, no one in those of others 
 was more to be relied on. After canvassing the com- 
 parative merits and demerits, (not to mention Switzer- 
 land,) of Geneva,^ Lucca, Florence, Sienna, Prato, Pistoia 
 
 1 This may be a misprint for appear to be mentioned in the 
 Genoa, though that city does not discussion as reported by Shelley 
 
332 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 and Pisa, the latter was eventually fixed on. So muct 
 did the Countess Guiccioli build on Shelley, and his 
 influence with Lord Byron, founded on his often expressed 
 appreciation of his worth, that she writes to him 
 " Signore.— La vostra bonta mi fa ardita di chiedervi ur 
 favore. Non lo accordate voi ? Non partite da Ravenna 
 senza milordo." "Of course," remarks Shelley, "being 
 now by all the laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's 
 request, I shall not be at liberty on my parole, until Lord 
 Byron is settled at Pisa." 
 
 It would seem that Shelley's peace of mind at Ea- 
 venna was troubled by scandal and malevolence. Ht 
 says, " Lord Byron told me of a circumstance that shocks 
 me exceedingly, because it exhibits a degree of desperate 
 and wicked malice, for which I am at a loss to account 
 When I hear such things, my patience and my philo- 
 sophy are put to a severe proof, why refrain frono 
 seeking out some obscure hiding place, where thf 
 countenance of man may never meet me more ? " What 
 ever this dark charge might have been, I know not ; bul 
 one thing is clear, that Lord Byron disbelieved its truth 
 but what could the charge have been, for he says, speaking 
 of Mrs. Shelley, " that it is the belief of persons who hav( 
 known and seen you that you are guilty of crimes." ^ 
 
 to Mary in his letters from Ravenna, missed servant of the Shelleys 
 
 from which {Essays &c. 1840, ii, told Byron that Clairmont hat 
 
 319) Medwin got the transcript of had a second child (by Shelley) 
 
 the Countess Guiccioli's letter to which Shelley "tore from her' 
 
 Shelley : she, however, wrote me lo to consign it to the foundlinj 
 
 accorderete voi and Milord ; and hospital. Byron told Shelley hi 
 
 Shelley comments "I shall only he disbelieved the story; but Shells; 
 
 at liberty " &c. not "I shall not be and Mary agreed that the chargi 
 
 at liberty." should be met by Mary, who wa; 
 
 ' It is now well known what the in a position to disprove it. Shi 
 
 calumny was. Byron does not wrote fully to Mrs. Hoppner 
 
 come out of the affair very well. demanding a retractation of thi 
 
 The Hoppners, with their minds wicked slander that lady had bee) 
 
 poisoned, it is believed, by a dis- circulating; but no answer eve 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 323 
 
 It was with this foul calumny festering in his soul, that 
 he goes on to say to Mrs. Shelley, — 
 
 " My great[est] content would be to desert all human society — I would 
 retire with you and our child, to a solitary isle in the sea, — would 
 build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood-gates of the world, 
 I would read no reviews, and talk with no authors. If I dare trust 
 my imagination, it would tell me, that there are one or two chosen 
 companions beside yourself whom I should desire. The other side of 
 the alternative, for a medium ought not to be adopted, is to form [for] 
 ourselves a society of our own class, as much as possible in intellect or 
 in feelings. Our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the 
 transplanted tree flourishes not. The calumnies, the sources of which 
 are deeper than we perceive, have ultimately for object the depriving 
 us of the means of security and subsistence. Tou will easily perceive 
 the gradations by which calumny proceeds to pretext, pretext to 
 persecution, and persecution to the ban of fire and water. It is for 
 this, and not because this or that fool, or the whole universe of fools, 
 curse and rail, that calumny is worth repeating ' or chastising." 
 
 How appropriately might be inscribed on Shelley's 
 tomb, the pathetic Italian epitaph so common, — " Implora 
 pace. Implora eterna quiete." 
 
 It was on his arrival at Pisa, where Mrs. Shelley had 
 domiciled herself, that he first wrote to Leigh Hunt, with 
 a proposal respecting the so-much-discussed Liberal. 
 
 reached Mary, for the very good all : it is used in a general sense 
 
 reason (or very evil reason) that like the French on or the German 
 
 Byron, having undertaken to put man. The sentence as printed by 
 
 the letter in Mrs. Hoppner's hands, Mrs. Shelley in Shelley's letter to 
 
 took no steps for its delivery. It herself {Essays &e., 1840, ii, 306) is ' 
 
 was found among his papers after — "This is evidently the source of 
 
 his death. The best reason one the violent denunciations of Uie 
 
 can assign for such a base betrayal Literary Gazette, in themselves con- 
 
 of tnist is that Byron, in corre- temptible enough, and only to be 
 
 spending with Hoppner about regarded as effects, which show 
 
 Claire, had used this He against us their cause, which until we put 
 
 the mother of his child Allegra, as off our mortal nature, we never 
 
 if he knew it to be true, though he despise — that is the belief of 
 
 told Shelley he did not credit it, persons who have known and seen 
 
 and accepted Mary's thanks for his you, that you are guilty of crimes." 
 
 disbelief. Medwin misunderstood ^ In this,- the very next quotation 
 
 the inaccurately quoted phrase from Shelley's letter to Mary, the 
 
 "that it is the belief" &e. The word repeating should of course be 
 
 ■you has no application to Mary at refuting. 
 
 t3 
 
324 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 "He (Byron) purposes," Shelley says, in a letter dati 
 26th of August, 1821, "that you should come and | 
 shares with him and me in a periodical work, to 
 conducted here, in which each of the contracting parti 
 shall publish all their original compositions, and sha 
 the profits. He proposed it to Moore, but for some reasc 
 he was never brought to bear." The reason, Mr. Moo 
 gives, in the Life of Byron, as appears by the followii 
 extract from a letter to the noble poet. 
 
 " 1 heard some days ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to y 
 with his family, and the idea seems to be, that you and Shelley and 
 are to conspire together with The Examiner. I cannot believe th 
 and deprecate such a plan with all my might. I tremble even i 
 you, with such a bankrupt Co. as * * * * ; " 
 
 (the asterisks might be filled up with Shelley, Hazlil 
 Leigh Hunt.) He calls them " an unholy alliance ; " ai 
 adds, "recollect, the many buildings about St. Petei 
 almost overtop it," an incorrect elucidation for its Don 
 stands far above the Vatican. 
 
 In another letter, Moore says, — "I could not becon 
 a, partner in this miscellaneous pot au feu, where the ba 
 flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest." 
 
 Shelley, to return to his letter, says, — 
 
 "Nothing should induce me to join in the profits. I did not ai 
 Lord Byron to assist me in sending a remittance for your joume 
 because there are men, however excellent, from whom we would nev 
 receive an obligation in the worldly sense of the word, and I am 
 jealous for my friend as myself ; but I suppose I shall at last make ( 
 Impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to add to the many obligatio: 
 lie has conferred on me. I know I need only ask." 
 
 Of Horace Smith I have often heard Shelley speak i 
 berms of unqualified regard and attachment ; indeed ^ 
 tiave but to refer to his letters and lines addressed i 
 IVTrs. Grisbome, as a proof how much he esteemed h 
 
XIFE OF SHELLEY. 325 
 
 friendship — shewn to Shelley on all occasions, in kind 
 offices, not less than in the liberal assistance he never 
 refused him in his pecuniary distresses and straits, brought 
 about, not by his own extravagance, for no man was more 
 economical in his domestic arrangements, or more 
 moderate in his expences ; but by his excessive generosity , 
 a generosity to imprudence — a reckless expenditure of his 
 income for others, as lamented by Mrs. Shelley in the 
 strongest terms. 
 
 Shelley possessed the quality of conferring benefits 
 with such delicacy, that those benefited could not feel 
 the weight of the obligation ; falsifying the proverb, that 
 benefits are easier to forgive than injuries. 
 
 On the occasion of his fiiiend Leigh Hunt's leaving 
 England, he, as proposed in the letter quoted, did apply 
 to Horace Smith, who not only advanced the passage 
 money for his friend and his family, but a very con- 
 siderable sum for the payment of his debts ; as much, I 
 think Shelley told me, as £1400. The passage money 
 was unhappily forfeited, though I know not from what 
 cause, and Leigh Hunt's friends, I have heard, raised 
 a sufficient sum by a subscription to his poems, to enable 
 him to execute his project; Shelley lamenting that he 
 had not the means of making a second time the requisite 
 advance for the voyage. 
 
 As to the controversy between Leigh Hunt and Lord 
 
 Byron, that arose out of The Liberal, I shall not allude to 
 
 it ; and end this part of the subject by quoting a letter 
 
 from Shelley, dated some months after. 
 
 Pisa, Februaiy 15th, 1822. 
 My Deah [Lord] Bykon, — 
 
 I inclose you a letter from Leigh Hunt, which annoys. me on 
 
 more than one account. You will observe the P.S., and you know me 
 
 well enough to feel how painful the task is set me in commenting 
 
326 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 upon it. Hunt has [sic for had] urged me more than once to [ask you to] 
 '.end him this money. My answer consisted in sending him all I could 
 spare, which I have now literally done. Tour kindness in fitting up 
 i part of your rooms [sic for own house] for his accommodation, 
 [ sensibly feel [sic for felt], and willingly accepted from you on his 
 part ; but believe me, without the slightest intention of imposing, or, 
 if I could help it,ullowing to be imposed, any heavier task on youi 
 purse. As it has come to this, in spite of my exertions, I will no! 
 3onceal from you the low ebb of my own money afFairs, at [sic for in] 
 the present moment ; that is, my utter incapacity of assisting Hunt 
 Further. 
 
 I do not think poor Hunt's promise to pay in a given time is worth 
 [veiy] much ; but mine is less subject to uncertainty, and I should he 
 tiappy to be responsible for any engagement he may have proposed 
 to you. I am so much annoyed by this subject, that I hardly kno\! 
 what to write, and much less what to say ; and I have need of all youi 
 indulgence in judging of both my feelings and expressions. 
 
 I shall see you by and by. Believe me, 
 Yours most faithfully and sincerely, 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 I quote this letter, not contained in the collection oJ 
 Shelley's letters, published by Mrs. Shelley, in order tc 
 shew the extreme delicacy of feeling that feigns in it, — 
 the active benevolence that overcame the repugnance witt 
 which he naturally sat down to pen such a letter. "Whai 
 must it not have cost him !^ 
 
 Change we the subject. 
 
 I reached Pisa for the second time in December. Lore 
 Byron had already arrived, and was settled in the Cas£ 
 Lanfranchi. Shelley had taken up his abode on the 
 opposite side of the Lung' Amo. His apartment, how- 
 ever, looked to the west, and it was basking in the sui 
 
 1 The mysterious source of the it much as it appears in my editioi 
 
 letter is Moore's Letters and Journals of Shelley's Prose Works (1880 
 
 of Lard Byron. In the sixth volume vol. iv, p. 257), which follow: 
 
 of the Works (1832) the text varies Moore, correcting his impossibh 
 
 a good deal from Med win's, but year-date, 1823. Mr. Ingpen als( 
 
 not, I should judge, of malice pre- gives the letter properly in hi 
 
 pense. I have made a few amend- collection of Shelley's Letters, 
 ments within hooks, so as to leave 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 327 
 
 when I entered ; and I may here add, that during almost 
 all that winter, such is the divine climate of Pisa, 
 we dined with the windows open. At his house, I first 
 saw the Countess Guiccioli, then, a strikingly handsome 
 woman. Those who saw her at that time, might have 
 supposed that she had sat to Georgione for a celebrated 
 picture in the Dresden gallery — a gentleman with two 
 ladies; she bore such a striking resemblance to one of 
 these, that on the left of the group ; possessing the same 
 character of features, bright auburn hair and eyes, that 
 seem indigenal to, or hereditary in the fair Venetians. 
 For many weeks she passed her soirees [sic] at Shelley's ; 
 a more perfectly amiable, interesting, and feminine person 
 I never met. Her attachment to Byron, whose name she 
 pronounced, laying a strong stress on the y, (and her voice 
 was the most musical I ever remember in an Italian,) had 
 been her first ; she loved him with a devotion of which 
 no women are so capable as the Italians. I met her 
 many years after, at the baths of Lucca, and at Florence,, 
 where at a ball given by the Prince Borghese, singularly 
 enough, I, at the request of Mr. King, now Lord Lovelace, 
 introduced her to him ; little thinking that he would 
 afterwards have married the Ada of Childe Harold. But 
 to revert to Shelley. 
 
 I found him an altered man ; his health had sensibly 
 improved, and he had shaken off much of that melancholy 
 and depression, to which he had been subject during the 
 last year. He anticipated with delight the arrival of 
 Leigh Hunt — was surrounded by many friends. The 
 "Williams's were a never failing resource to him, and his 
 daily visit to Byron was a distraction, and ever new 
 excitement. Nor this alone, — he accompanied him in his 
 evening drives, assisted as wont in the pistol-practice, for 
 
138 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ^rllich he formed an early predilection at Oxford. A 
 iriend speaking of several contradictions in his appear- 
 ,nce and character at that time, says, "His ordinary 
 ireparations for a rural walk formed a [very] remarkable 
 ontrast with his mild aspect and pacific habits. He 
 •rovided himself with a pair of duelling pistols, and good 
 tore of powder and ball, and when he came to a solitary 
 pot, he pinned a card, or fixed some other mark upon a 
 ree or a bank, and amused himself by firing at it. He 
 ras a pretty good shot, and was much delighted at his 
 access." The same gentleman says of himself, that having 
 ccidentally shot the target in the centre, " Shelley ran to 
 he card, examined it attentively several times, and more 
 han once measured the distance on the spot where I had 
 tood." 1 How often have I seen him do the same ! 
 '. imagine that it was Shelley, who at Geneva, inoculated 
 jord Byron (whose lameness made his out-door amuse- 
 aents very limited) with the taste. Gothe, I think 
 rroneously, attributes Lord Byron's constant Pistol- 
 booting to the necessity of self-defence and the continual 
 xpectation of being called out. — Practising at a mark is 
 f very little use as a preparation for an English Duel 
 rhere no aim is taken. If Lord B[yron] had had such an 
 bject in view he would have adopted a very difierent 
 lode of exercise. All indeed who have tried the pastime 
 ecome fond of it. These trials of skill were Shelley's 
 wourite recreation, and even the preparations for it 
 ccupied his thoughts agreeably, for he generally made 
 nd carried to the ground a target to be used on the 
 ccasion, and habit enabled him to manufacture them with 
 ;reat neatness. I have often been surprised to see the 
 
 1 These quotations, the last ex- blunt hatchet from page 141 of The 
 jptionally inexact, are once more New Monthly Magazine for February 
 ■omHogg,— hackedwithMedwin's 1832. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 329 
 
 poet occupied in making circles and bull's eyes. Shelley 
 used to wonder that Byron shot so well, for his aim was 
 long, and his hand trembled. Shelley's was all firmness. 
 He was a very indifferent horseman — had an awkward and 
 unsafe seat — which is very singular, as he had very early 
 been used to ride, though it is probable that he had almost 
 from boyhood discontinued the habit. Byron's seat was 
 not the best in the world, nor his stud very famous. The 
 animal who carried him was loaded with fat, and 
 resembled, if she were not one, a Flanders mare. Sh« 
 was encumbered with a sliding martingale, a hussar 
 saddle, and holsters with pistols ; was remarkable for the 
 lowness of her action, and the amble, her usual pace, 
 which, from its ease, made her a favourite with her 
 master. 
 
 Shelley and myself generally visited Byron at the same 
 hour, between two and three ; indeed, I believe there 
 never passed a day, for many months, without our meeting 
 at the Lanfranchi, and they had invented a sort of 
 macaronic language that was very droll. They called 
 firing, tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancaiing; 
 riding, cavalling ; walking, a-spassing, &c. 
 
 Byron the man and Byron the poet were as different 
 as mind and matter. He possessed two natures — the 
 human and the divine. I have often heard Shelley, 
 almost in the language of a gifted German lady-writer, 
 say, — " The poet is a different being from the rest of the 
 world. Imagination steals over him — he knows not 
 whence. Images float before him — he knows not their 
 home. Struggling and contending powers are engendered 
 within him, which no outward impulse, no inward passion 
 awakened. He utters sentiments he neVer meditated. 
 He creates persons whose original he had never seen ;. but 
 
30 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 e cannot command the power that called them out of 
 othing. He must wait till the Grod or dsemon genius 
 reathes it into him. He has higher powers than the 
 snerality of men, and the most distinguished abilities ; 
 it he is possessed by a still higher power. He prescribes 
 ,ws, he overturns customs and opinions, he begins and 
 ids an epoch, like a God ; but he is a blind, obedient, 
 iSciating priest in the temple of Grod." Byron also was 
 tUy inclued with this persuasion, for he says, — " Poetry 
 
 a distinct faculty of the soul, and has no more to do 
 ith the every-day individual, than the inspirations of 
 le Pythianess when removed from the tripod." In his 
 issay on Poetry,^ Shelley more fully developes this 
 sntiment, and says, — " Poets are the hyerophants of an 
 aapprehended inspiration ; the mirrors of the gigantic 
 ladows which futurity casts on the present ; the words 
 hich express what they understand not; the trumpet 
 lat sounds to battle, and feels not what it inspires ; the 
 ifluence which is moved, but moves not. Poets are the 
 Qacknowledged legislators of the world ! " And again, 
 -" They measure the circumference^ and sound the depth 
 t' human nature with a comprehensive, all-penetrating 
 pirit, at the manifestations of which they are themselves, 
 erhaps, the most sincerely astonished, — for it is less thdr 
 Dirit than the spirit of the age." 
 
 But speaking of Byron in his human capacity. The 
 lyron of England and Geneva, and the Byron of Italy, or 
 b least Pisa, were widely different persons. His talk was, 
 fc that time, a dilution of his letters, full of persiflage and 
 
 ' This extract from The Defence of " the trumpets which sing to battle 
 
 oetry also is very badly given. and feel not what they inspire ; the 
 
 .part from the misspelling of hiero- influence which is moved not, but 
 
 kants (not Shelley's), the fourth moves." 
 nd fifth "sentences should read — 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 331 
 
 calembourg [sic]. Shelley used to compare him to Voltaire, 
 to whom he would have thought it the greatest compliment 
 to be compared ; for if there was any one writer whom he 
 admired more than another, it was the author of Candide. 
 Like Voltaire, he looked upon converse as a relaxation, 
 not an exercise of mind. Both professed the same specula- 
 tive — I might say, sceptical turn of mind ; the same 
 power of changing the subject from the grave to the gay ; 
 the same mastery over the sublime, the pathetic, the 
 comic. No, he differed from the philosopher of Femey 
 in one respect, — he never scoffed at religion. His boss 
 of veneration was strongly developed, and had he returned 
 to England, he would, I have little doubt, have died, as 
 Rochester did, and as Tommy Moore lives, in the odour 
 of sanctity. In fact he was always afraid to confess to 
 himself his own infidelity. 
 
 Shelley frequently lamented that it was almost impos- 
 sible to keep Byron to any one given point.. He flew 
 about from subject to subject like a will-o'-the-wisp, 
 touching them with a false fire, without throwing any 
 real or steady light on any. There was something en- 
 chanting in his manner, his voice, his smile — a fascination 
 in them; but on leaving him, I have often marvelled 
 that I gained so little from him worth carrying away,; 
 whilst every word of Shelley^ jwas almost^ oracular ; his 
 reasoningZiuBtle-andr-profbund^-— his--epimen%--whateyer 
 
 ley were, since re and j uidisguised ; whilst with Byron, 
 sudr'washis love of mystification, it was impossible to 
 know when he was in earnest. As in the writings of the 
 G-reek philosophers, there was always an under-current. 
 He dealt, too, in the gross and indelicate, of which Shelley 
 had an utter abhorrence, and often left him with ill- 
 disgnised disgust. At times, however, but they only, like 
 
33 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 Qgels' visits, few and far between, lie, as was said o 
 laphael, could pass from tlie greatest jesting to the greates 
 jriousness with the most charming grace. To get hin 
 ito an argument was a very difficult matter. Mr. Hogg 
 leaking of Shelley, says, — " Never was there a more un 
 tceptionable disputant. He was the only arguer I eve 
 new, who drew every argument from the nature of th( 
 ling, and who could never be provoked to descend t( 
 srsonal contentions. He was free from the weaknessei 
 Four nature — conceit, irritability, vanity, and impatienc( 
 E" contradiction." 
 
 " The Eternal Child ! " ^ this beautiful expression, s( 
 Tie in its application to Shelley ! I borrow from Mr. Gil 
 llan, and I am tempted to add the rest of his eloquen 
 arallel between Shelley and Lord Byron, as far as i 
 slates to their external appearance. In the forehead anc 
 ead of Byron therewasamore massive power and breadth 
 helley's had a smooth, arched,, spiritual expression 
 Tinkles there seemed none on his brow; it was as i 
 
 ^ A Gallery of Literary Portraits by the articles in Tait's Magazine men 
 
 eorge Gilfillan is perhaps less re- tioued above are reprinted in vol 
 
 rred to nowadays than it deserves xi of the Collected Writings o 
 
 I. be. In good time to be of Thomas De Quincey in 14 volumes 
 
 rvice to Medwin, De Quincey edited by David Masson for A. & C 
 
 mtributed four papers on the Black, Edinburgh, 1889-90. Be 
 
 ork to Tait's Magaeine for Novem- sides Shelley and Keats, thes 
 
 sr and December 1845 and January interesting papers deal witl 
 
 id April 1846. Of course he had Godwin, Poster, and Hazlitt. Th 
 
 luch to say on his own account Shelley part begins on page 354 o 
 
 )out Shelley, who was his neigh- the said eleventh volume. 
 
 )ur when living with Harriett, It was not Medwin whose enter 
 
 3ar Keswick. Medwin evidently prise led him to "borrow fron 
 
 inexed all he could of such Mr. Gilfillan," but Thomas D 
 
 iluable plunder, but cites De Quincey, from whom Medwin stol 
 
 aincey so baldly as to give no the "borrowed" expression witl 
 
 otion where he says such and such the words of comment on it, and th 
 
 lings, or on what occasion. It is rest of the note in Taifs Magasir 
 
 ily at the end of the book (see here reproduced — as usual inac 
 
 ist, p. 441) that he goes so far as curately and incompletely. Se 
 
 > record that "De Quincey on the Introduction to this edition. 
 ilfiUan, says" &c. The whole of 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 333 
 
 perpetual youth had there dropped its freshness. Byron's 
 eye seemed the focus of pride and lust ; Shelley's was 
 mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing through the mist 
 of its own, idealism. Defiance curled Byron's nostril, and 
 sensuality steeped his full, large lips ; the lower portions 
 of Shelley's face were frail, feminine, and flexible. Byron's 
 head was turned upwards ; as if, having proudly risen 
 above his contemporaries, he were daring to claim 
 kindred, or to demand a contest with a superior order 
 of beings ; Shelley's was half bent in reverence and 
 humility before some vast vision seen by his eye alone. 
 In the portrait of Byron, taken at the age of nineteen, 
 you see the unnatural age of premature passion. His 
 hair is grey [sic for young], his .dress is youthful, but 
 his face is old. In Shelley you see the eternal child, 
 none the less because the hair is grey, and that " sorrow 
 seems half his immortality." 
 
 No one had a higher opinion of Shelley — of his heart 
 and his head, than Byron; to both these he has done 
 ample credit. I have often been present when the noble 
 poet handed to his friend what he had written during the 
 morning, particularly Heaven and Earth, which Shelley 
 read to us when it was copying by Mrs. Shelley, who was 
 occasionally Byron's ama nuensi s. Shelley was much struck 
 by the choral parts, and repeated twice or three times 
 over as a specimen of great lyrical harmony. 
 
 Anah. Sister, sister ! I view them winging 
 Their bright way through the parted night! 
 
 Aholibamah. The clouds from off their pinions flinging, 
 As though they bore to-morrow's light. 
 
 Anah. But should our father see the sight ? 
 
 AhoUhamdh. He would but deem it was the moon, 
 Rising unto some sorcerer's tune, 
 An hour too soon. 
 
34 LIFE OF SHELLEY. . 
 
 Nor did Shelley admire alone the lyrics of this Mystery 
 nd had he lived to see The Loves of the Angels, of whicl 
 , was the type, would have thought that in its sublimity 
 B simplicity, and its pathos, it bore the same relation t( 
 lat meretricious poem, which the figurante of the Pitt 
 oes to the Venus of the Tribune. 
 
 Cain also had arrived, which Shelley had seen begui 
 t Eavenna ; of which, speaking in one of his letters, hi 
 lys, — " In my opinion it contains finer poetry than ha 
 ppeared in England since the publication of the Paradis 
 Regained; Cain is apocalyptic." It was a frequent subjec 
 f conversation between the two poets. Byron read u 
 lobhouse's opinion, — " that it was worse than the wors 
 ombast of Dryden (sage critic !) and that it was not a worl 
 which he would have ventured to put his name in th 
 .ays of Pope, Churchill, and Johnson " (a strange trinity] 
 
 shall reserve what I have to say of this gentleman, ai 
 uveterate enemy of Shelley's, to another place. 
 
 Shelley was supposed to have greatly influenced Byro: 
 n the design of the drama ; at least, he was so accusei 
 )y Hobhouse and Moore ^ an accusation to which Shelle; 
 emarks, — "How happy should I not be to attribute t 
 ayself, however indirectly, any participation in tha 
 mmortal work ! " Though he might have had nothin 
 do with the origination, or the general treatment of th 
 Irama, — and indeed, the tone of Cain's language was em 
 jhatically Byronic, — I have reason to think that Byro: 
 )wes to Shjelley the platonic idea of the Hades, — the pr« 
 idamite worlds, and their phantasmal shapes, perhaj 
 suggested by Lucian's Icaro Menippus. Lord Byron ha 
 jertainly a profound respect for Shelley's judgmen 
 [ have mentioned ..being present when the MS. of 37 
 Deformed Transformed was placed in his hands, — an 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 335 
 
 Shelley's remarks after perusing it, — " that he liked it the 
 least of all his works ; that it smelt too strongly of Faust ; 
 and besides, that there were two lines in it, Vord for word 
 from Squthey." On which occasion Byron turned deadly 
 pale, seized the MS., and committed it to the flames, 
 seeming to take a savage delight in seeing it consume. 
 But it was destined to rise again from its ashes. Poets, 
 like mothers, have a strange fondness for their ricketty 
 offspring. Byron thought that all his writings were 
 equally good, and always vindicated strenuously those 
 which were the least popular, particularly in the case of 
 the Version from Pulci, which Mr. Moore says " must be 
 fated to be unread ; " not that the version itself was bad, 
 , — on the contrary, it was most faithful ; but the poem was 
 not worth translating, and is totally at variance with the 
 tasteof the English public. My notion is, that Lord Byron's 
 object was to shew the inferiority of the original, con- 
 sidered the best of the productions of the Italian weavers 
 of merry octava rima, to Don Juan, and intended to blind 
 ■the world to a belief that it was derived from any source 
 ^but the right one. None of the forty commentators or 
 critics (the number is ominous, certainly a most formidable 
 array of living cavaliers, that have entered the lists against 
 a_4ead man) being at all aware that the Novelle of Casti 
 were the prototypes of Don Juan, — much less that it was 
 framed and modelled after the Diavolessa, and which 
 Bjnron first read at Brussels in 1816, as may be seen 
 from an anonymous contribution to The New Monthly 
 Magazine of that year. Ledgh Hunt says, " that he is so 
 jealous of being indebted to any one for a hint, that he 
 was disconcerted at the mention I made in the Liberal, 
 of Whistlecraft's specimen, the precursor of Beppo and 
 Don Juan ; and I believe that the praise he bestows on 
 
J36 lilFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 <lie pseudonymous author, when he asks, ' who the dev 
 jan have done this diabolically well- written letter? ' is i 
 sonsequence of the sentiments therein contained being i 
 Lccordanoe with the mystification he wished to keep up, 
 Jeigh Hunt goes on to say, — " that it is utter humbug i 
 ay that it is borrowed from the style of the Italian weavei 
 [/■ merry octava rima." Shelley seems to have been ( 
 he same opinion, and during his visits to Eavenni 
 peaking of Don Juan, says, — 
 
 " Byron has read to me one of his unpublished cantos of Don Jua\ 
 rhich is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far aboi 
 11 the poets of the age. Eveiy word is stamped with immortalit 
 
 despair of rivalling Lord Byron, and well I may; and there is u 
 ther with whom it is worth contending. The canto is in the styL 
 ut totally, and sustained with considerable ease and power, like tl: 
 nd of the second canto. There is not a word which the most rigi 
 ssertor of the dignity of human nature would desire to be cancelled 
 ', fulfils in a 'certain measure what I have long preached of producinj 
 inietMng wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet surpassingl 
 eautiful ; it may be vanity, but I think I see tie traces of my earnei 
 xhortations to him to create something [wholly] new ! " ^ 
 
 I now proceed to investigate " thre humbug of Byron' 
 laving borrowed from the weavers of the octava rima, 
 nd to show whether it was " something new." 
 
 In the Diavolessa of Casti, two Spanish scapegrace 
 
 cour their native country, dividing its cities among then 
 
 Q search of love adventures ; the one is called Don Ignazic 
 
 he other Don Juan, but as dramatists and their kind hav 
 
 isposed of the latter personage, to the quieting of al 
 
 onsciences that might dread his prowess, Casti took fo 
 
 is hero Don Ignazio '; Byron has taken Don Juan. Cast 
 
 ays of Don Ignazio, — 
 
 Naque \sic\, e I'infanzia sua passo [sic\ in Seviglia ; 
 
 ' In the letter to Mary from divergences from the Medwinizci 
 'hich this generous tribute is text occur, — as tTicrediWe for consider 
 iken {Essays kc., ii, 312) various able and degree for measure. 
 
LIFE Of SHELLEY. 337 
 
 Byron of Don Juan, — 
 
 In Seville he was born, a pleasant city. 
 
 Casti says of the parentage of Don Ignazio, — 
 
 La nobil sua famiglia 
 Direttamente scendea fin dei re Goti ; 
 
 Byron of Don Juan's, — 
 
 He traced his source 
 Through the most gothic gentlemen of Spain. 
 
 The Juan and Ignazio of Casti were both precocious, so 
 
 was the hero of Lord Byron, and the age of twelve was 
 
 marked as an epoch by both poets. 
 
 Entrambo guinti a dodici anni appena. 
 
 At twelve he was a fine but quiet boy. 
 Casti takes his hero out to sea, he is shipwrecked, and con- 
 sidering how little of a sailor an Italian abbe can be, the 
 description of it, though partly derived from classical 
 authors, will be found most powerful. We certainly do 
 marvel that this probable cause of Byron's Shipwreck has 
 never been suggested, and it is a striking ignorance of 
 the best critics. The sources whence he drew the techni- 
 calities of terms have been noticed often enough, but it 
 was never once hinted, that Casti could possibly have 
 suggested the idea. Moreover, in the Shipwreck of the 
 Italian, there is an expression that Byron has evidently 
 copied, — the si spezzo, the going down of the ship, in either 
 case told in two lines ; by the Italian, — ■ 
 
 II quarto di contro uno scoglio urto, 
 D'Africa sulle coste, e si spezzo ; * 
 
 while Byron does it thus : 
 
 She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port, 
 And going down headforemost— smwX; in short. 
 
 * hit 
 
 The fourth day upon Afric's coast — and split — 
 
338 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But further, Casti's hero, of all the crew, is the onl; 
 
 one saved ; so it is with Byron's ; and more singular stil] 
 
 a dove, or something like one, appears to each in thei 
 
 moments of need. 
 
 It was a beautiful white bird, 
 Web-footed, and not unlike a dove in size 
 And plumage,^ 
 
 that appeared to Juan ; and the most beautiful part of the 
 stanza, — 
 
 It came and went and fluttered round, &c. 
 
 which is, " e giva e fea ritorno svolazzando," evidently ii 
 a plagiarism from Casti. According to the Italian tale 
 Don Juan and Don Ignazio meet in Hell. Byron meani 
 his hero to finish there. 
 
 A panoramic view of Hell's in training, &c. 
 As a general specimen of Casti's style, I subjoin ii 
 a note, the Shipwreck ; * to which I refer those who art 
 
 * At eventide, nor once the ship they wore, 
 They made the mouth of 6ibraltai-'s straits. 
 
 The bound of either continent, where the hoar 
 And swoln sea, fettered, ever roars and beats. 
 
 That ocean seems indignant of a shore. 
 And oft makes ravage there of all it meets. 
 
 And thus to menace this frail craft with wreck, 
 
 A sudden squall and heavy drove them back. 
 
 In haste the mariners, with terror pale. 
 
 In with the deadlights, each a separate door 
 
 To man's destruction, — close-reef every sail. 
 
 Boils the swoln surge, winds rave, and billows roar. 
 
 Fear reigns supreme. There's nothing like a gale 
 For taming tiger man. On either shore 
 
 They wildly gaze, and scarce can draw their breath, 
 
 In thinking how they shall escape from death. 
 
 ' About this time a beautiful Upon its course), passed of 
 
 white bird, before their eyes, 
 
 Webfooted, not unlike a dove in And tried to perch, although i 
 
 size saw and heard 
 
 And plumage (probably it might The men within the boat, . . . 
 
 have erred Eon Juan, canto ii, stanza 94 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 339 
 
 curious about this matter, — (to my mind set at rest,) as 
 well as the stanza beginning, — " Ma la grazia di ciel." * 
 
 Comes mounting on the deck,t like a wild horse, 
 With shook that skill and seamanship defies, 
 
 A giant breaker, with the united force 
 Of lesser breakers foaming. The spray flies, 
 
 And refluent sweeps the helmsman — and still worse 
 The helm. Ermenigilda ! in thine eyes, 
 
 For bridal joys strange terrors then we see. 
 
 Poor thing ! the sight of death 's but left to thee ! 
 
 The main-mast gone, and with it the bowsprit. 
 
 She wounded lies in a most crazy state, 
 With water in her hold at least six feet. 
 
 To give them hopes, she should at any rate 
 Have had a helm and binnacle. I repeat. 
 
 That none who saw that craft could doubt her fate. 
 Four days she drove towards Africa, and hit 
 At last upon a sunken rock, and split. 
 
 Then all was wreck, and as she thumped the ground, 
 All were washed overboard, and then a few 
 
 Struck by the spars went down ; with bubbling sound, 
 Others gave up the ghost, till all the crew 
 
 Were in the eddying whirlpool sucked, and drowned. 
 And must the merciless wave thee swallow too, 
 
 Ermenigild? — to save thee was there none? — 
 
 Sole author of these ills, escaped our Don. 
 
 * But grace divine, or Heaven's exceeding love. 
 
 That oft repulsed, desiring still to stay. 
 
 Went and came, like the olive-bearing dove. 
 
 Flew round and round, nor would be driven away; 
 Did easy access to his bosom prove, 
 
 (For trials melt the hardest hearts) that day. 
 She folds on Don Ignazio, as to rest 
 Her wings, and seems to light upon his breast. 
 
 Like Don Juan Don Ignatio [sic] — 
 
 With force of arms — for a stout swimmer he 
 
 Touched land, and climbed the beach, and wildly stared 
 Upon a desart heaped with hills of sand, 
 A parched inhospitable — barren Land. &c, 
 
 ' f And the waves bound beneath me like a steed 
 
 That knows its rider. {Childe Harold, canto iil., st. 2.) 
 
 z2 
 
340 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 . Werner was also a play written during this winter, and 
 of which Byron produced to myself and Shelley an Act, 
 (the longest, I think the fourth,) the fruit of one mighty 
 morning's labour. The MS. had scarcely an emendation ; 
 unlike that of Heaven and Earth, which was so interlined 
 as scarcely to be legible. "Werner would be a better 
 acting play," said Shelley, "than a closet one." His words 
 have been confirmed. " It is," says the editor of Byron's 
 works, " the only one of his dramas that has been success- 
 ful in representation. It is still in possession of the stage," ^ 
 but how long will it be so, when the roscius of the Age, 
 the ultimus Eomanorum leaves it ? 
 
 Shelley used to say, that the magnetism of Byron — 
 " the Bjrronic Energy," Bipcovis ^la as he called Byron 
 — was hostile to his powers ; that, like the reading of 
 Dante, the outpouring of his works produced in him a 
 despair. 
 
 In a letter to Horace Smith he says, " I have lived too 
 long near Lord Byron, and the sun has extinguished my 
 glowworm ; for I cannot hope with St. John, that the 
 light came into the world and the world knew it not." I 
 have said that when he was with Byron at Geneva, he^ 
 wrote but little, such was the case now. 
 
 I must now speak of his Charles the First. He had 
 
 designed to write a tragedy on this ungrateful subject as 
 
 far back as 1818, and had begun it at the end of the 
 
 following year, when he asked me to obtain for him that 
 
 well-known pamphlet, which was in my father's library,— 
 
 Killing no murder. He was, however, in limine diverted 
 
 at that time to more attractive subjects, and, now resumed 
 
 1 The note on this point was liam Charles Macready, whose first 
 
 dated 1832, and appeared in appearance in Wemer took place in 
 
 Murray's seventeen- volume edition 1830, took his farewell benefit at 
 
 of Byron's Works (xiv, 116). Wil- Drury Lane on February 26, 1851. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 341 
 
 his abandoned labours, of which, he has left a very un- 
 satisfactory, though valuable Bozzo. The task seemed to 
 him an irksome one. His progress was slow ; one day he 
 expunged what he had written the day before. He occa- 
 sionally shewed and read to me his MS., which was lined 
 and interlined and interworded, so as to render it almost 
 illegible. The scenes were disconnected, and intended to 
 be interwoven in the tissue. of the drama. He did not 
 thus compose The Cenci. He seemed tangled in an in- 
 extricable web of difficulties, as to the treatment of his 
 subject ; and it was clear that he had formed no definite 
 plan in his own mind, how to connect the links of the com- 
 plicated yam of events that led to that frightful catastrophe, 
 or to justify it. There is in the Uf&zzi gallery, at Florence, 
 an unfinished bust by Michael Angelo, of Brutus, on which 
 is written an epigram, the point of which is, that the 
 great sculptor wisely abandoned the task from disgust at 
 the traitor ; ^ might not similar influences have raised an 
 obstacle in the mind of Shelley, to the completion of his 
 unwelcome undertaking ? The poet, deeply versed as he 
 was in ancient history, strange to say, as he owns himself, 
 was imperfectly read in that of his own country, or in his 
 own words, " I am unfortunately little skilled in English 
 History, and the interest which it excites in me is so 
 feeble that I find it a duty to attain merely to that 
 general knowledge of it which is indispensible." He had 
 no means of procuring, or had failed to procure, necessary 
 books of reference as to the times. If Grodwin's History 
 of the Commonwealth, or Carlyle's Cromwell had then 
 
 ' Mrs. Browning, in Casa Guidi murderers of Kossi might arrogate 
 
 Windows, throws out the nobler to themselves the style and title of 
 
 suggestion thatthesculptordropped Brutus — "a poor maimed copy of 
 
 the mallet on gazing into futurity Brutus," she exclaims, 
 'and realizing that such folk as the 
 
342 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 appeared, lie would have had better data than those 
 supplied by Hume ; not that either of the two first authors 
 are perhaps more impartial, or implicitly to be relied on 
 as authorities ; for how few Historians are there who 
 do not see thro' the false medium of prejudice, who are 
 not dominated by their preconceived notions, and warp 
 events to suit their own political views, making them 
 a starting point and a goal. Hear what old Montaigne 
 says, 
 
 "Erreur particulier, fait premierement, I'erreur publique, et a 
 son tour, apres, I'erreur publique fait Ferrer particuliere, ainsi va tout 
 ce bastiment, s'etouffant et formant, de main en main, de maniere que 
 le plus eloigne temoin en est mieux instruit que le plus voisin, et le 
 dernier informs mieux parsuite que le premier. C'est un progres 
 naturel. Car quiconque croit quelquechose estime que c'est ouvrage 
 de cliarite de persuader a un autre— Et pour le faire, ne craint point 
 d'adjouster de son invention autant qu'il void etre necessaire en son 
 compte pour suppleer a la resistance & au defaut qu'il pense etre en 
 la conception d'autrui." 
 
 Shelley could not reconcile his mind to the beheading 
 of Charles. He looked upon him as the slave of circum- 
 stances, as the purest in morals, the most exemplary of 
 husbands and fathers, — great in misfortune, a martyr in 
 death ; and could not help contrasting his character and 
 motives with those of the low-minded, counterfeit patriots, 
 the crafty, canting, bad men, who hatched that murderous 
 conspiracy, — much less could he make a hero of that arch- 
 lijrpocrite, Cromwell, or forgive him for aiming at the 
 royal sceptre. He was not blind to the energy of Crom- 
 well's foreign policy, nor insensible to the greatness to 
 which he raised England, but reprobated his unconstitu- 
 tional use of power, his trampling on all law, by a military 
 despotism more odious than the worst acts of his predeces- 
 sor. He hated the Puritans, — not their tenets so much as 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY, 343 
 
 their intolerance. He abominated tlie atrocities which, on 
 the plea of religion, were perpetrated on the devoted Irish 
 Catholics, and he might have considered as the adder-slime 
 which the Commonwealth spawned, those fit instruments 
 of the vengeance of that sanguinary coward Charles the 
 Second, Scroggs and Guildford, and the still more infamous 
 Jefferys, who sentenced to a death of lingering torture, 
 Algernon Sidney. There was a similarity in the destinies 
 of Shelley and his kinsman ; one was condemned on the 
 doubtful evidences of a MS., the other, on that o± an un- 
 published poem, was doomed to have his character 
 blackened, and his children torn from him by the decree 
 of another times-serving judge, whose biographer should 
 not have forgotten to record this damnatory act among 
 the records of [his] life. It is singular, also, that the two 
 Lord Chancellors should have had one trait in common : 
 they could shed at will " millstone tears." 
 
 Shelley meant to have made the last of king's fools, 
 Archy, a more than subordinate among his dramatis 
 personse, as Calderon has done in his Cisma d' Ingalaterra, 
 a fool sui generis, who talks in fable, " weaving a world 
 of mirth out of the wreck of all around." 
 
 The poet" was not so great a republican at heart as 
 Mrs. Shelley makes him out.^ No one was a truer admirer 
 of our triune constitution. He did not love a democracy, 
 and was in some respects as aristocratic as Byron, and was 
 far from despising the advantages of birth and station ; 
 being proud even of his connection with the Sidneys. 
 Plato in his Patrician tastes laid stress on the distinctions 
 of birth. It is true that " his hatred of a despotism that 
 
 1 These and the ensuing twelve paragraph of Mary Shelley's Note 
 lines consist of contradictions and of 1839 on the Poems of 1819. 
 inaccurate extracts from the first 
 
344 LH'E OF SHELLEY. 
 
 looked upon the people as not to be consulted, or protected 
 from -want or ignorance, was extreme ; and the news of 
 the Manchester Massacre roused in him violent emotions 
 of indignation and compassion ; and made him long to 
 teach his injured countrymen how to resist ; " which feeling 
 inspired his Masque of Anarchy, his Ode to the Assertors 
 of Liberty, his Similies \sic\ (for Sidmouth and Oastlereagh), 
 his Lines during the Castlereagh Administration, his 
 Song to the Men of England, and his God save the Queen, 
 meaning Liberty. But it was not over complimentary to 
 the people, his making the swinish multitude in Swellfoot 
 the Tyrant, the Chorus. His ideas had become much 
 modified since he wrote in his boyhood a panegjnric on 
 Margaret Nicholson, his notes to Queen Mob, and The 
 Revolt of Islam, where he calls the French revolution, 
 " the last hope of trampled France," " a brief dream of 
 unremaining glory," and "a voice of despair;" and he 
 would not have called Coleridge's Ode to Switzerland the 
 most perfect of compositions, — the most faultless in spirit 
 and truth in our language, — had he not entertained 
 latterly, similar opinions with that author on the Eevolu- 
 tion, and its " Bacchanals of blood." More than once 1 
 have heard Shelley declaim that sublime Ode, to which 
 I have already made allusion. 
 
 Shelley used to say, that a republic was the best form 
 of government, with disinterestedness ; abnegation of self, 
 and a Spartan virtue ; but to produce which required the 
 black bread and soup of the Lacedemonians, an equality 
 of fortunes unattainable in the present factitious state of 
 , society, and only to be brought about by an agrarian law, 
 and a consequent baptism of blood ; and quoted the senti- 
 ment of the amiable Rousseau, that he had rather behold 
 the then state of things, than the shedding a single drop. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 345 
 
 With which coincidence of sentiment, Shelley used strongly 
 
 to reprobate Wordsworth's — 
 
 Yes, Slaughter 
 Is God's daughter. 
 
 Plato's was a republic of which certainly Shelley could 
 not have approved, for from that, poets were to be excluded . 
 Sir Thomas More's Utopia was, and is a bye-word. He 
 was by no means in love with a republic, from his acquai]jt- 
 ance with the Swiss ; and had he lived to see the anarchy 
 and confusion, and intolerance and bloodshed that have 
 desolated many Cahtons, the Sonderbund War, and perse- 
 cution of the Catholics, he would have still less advocated 
 a renewal of the experiment. And as to America, I 
 remember an observation of his, " that it was easier to 
 form than unform or reform, and that even the United 
 States were too young for us to judge of their dura- 
 tion ; that the President had more power than the 
 head of a constitutional government ought to have ; 
 a power too dangerous, — a wider field for corruption " ; and 
 Shelley hated slavery too sincerely in all its forms, not to 
 reprobate the existence of that crying evil, a disgrace to 
 humanity, and the eighteenth century. 
 
 Shelley frequently used to inveigh against the political 
 economists ; whose object is to stop the progress of man- 
 kind, and to keep up the uti possedetis. He thought that 
 Godwin's answer to Malthus's Essay on Population, was 
 incontrovertible ; and that the latter, who from certain 
 hypothetical calculations, which he conceived were con- 
 firmed by the returns of North America, drew the conclu- 
 sion, that "Population, where it is unchecked, goes on 
 doubling itself every twenty-five years, on increases in 
 a geometrical ratio, whilst the means of subsistence, under 
 circumstances the most favourable to human industry. 
 
346 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 could not possibly increase faster than in an arithmetici 
 ratio," was negatived by the census of all nations ; an 
 that instead of every married pair having twelve childrei 
 four, or four and a half was the result. The returns of Nort 
 America being no criterion, owing to the immigration. 
 
 I have heard Shelley strongly reprobate an axiom ( 
 Malthus.thatin a well-regulated state, noone should relie\ 
 the necessity of his neighbour. It must be remarke( 
 however, that Shelley seems to have afterwards take 
 a more favourable view of Malthus's writings in genera 
 for he says, — "Malthus is a clever man, and the worl 
 would be a great gainer, if it would seriously take h: 
 lessons into consideration, — if it were capable of attendin 
 seriously to anything but mischief. But what on eart 
 does he mean by some of his inferences ? " "What thos 
 are, I need not explain. Cobbett afterwards -develope 
 them. 
 
 But to return to Charles I. 'C Other causes besides doul 
 as to the manner of treating the subject, operated t 
 impede its progress. The ever growing fastidiousness ( 
 his taste, had, I have often thought, begun to cramp h: 
 genius. The opinion of the world too, at times shook h 
 confidence in himself and generated doubts that he w£ 
 unprofitably wasting his energies, that produce what t 
 might, he was doomed to be unread. I have often bee 
 shewn the scenes of this tragedy on which he w£ 
 engaged ; like the MS. of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberate 
 in the library of Ferrara, his were larded with word o 
 word, till they were scarcely decipherable. I remembf 
 a printed copy of his Revolt of Islam, that was similar] 
 interlined.^ The Queen Mali in the possession ( 
 
 ' This was probably the copy of manuscript changes were made 
 Laon and Oythna in which the convert the poem into The Revolt 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 347 
 
 Mr. Brooks, whicli I have spoken of, had innumerable 
 pentimenti; and when I one day objected to this self- 
 hypercriticisni,h6 replied, — " The source of poetry is native 
 and involuntary, but requires severe labour in its develop- 
 ment." He had intended on first coming to Italy to 
 compose a Tragedy on the subject of Tasso's Madness — 
 a subject as he says if properly treated admirably 
 dramatic and poetical — as proved by Gothe's — and it is to 
 be lamented that he had not carried his design into 
 execution. 
 
 He sometimes used to say, that he looked to Germany 
 and America for his appreciation after his death, and he 
 judged rightly. Gutzkow, the first dramatic, and one of 
 the most spiritual writers in the first of these countries, in 
 a treatise entitled, "Gods, Demigods, and Don Quixotes," 
 places Shelley at the head of this category. Two trans- 
 lations of Shelley's works have already appeared, and 
 a third is far advanced by the talented Madame de 
 Ploennies, well known from the admirable translations 
 contained in her Britannia. The poets of the new world 
 have taken Shelley as their model, as may be seen by the 
 works of Bryant, "Willis, and others. His poems are widely 
 circulated in the Union, and are found even in the far West. 
 Would that Shelley had had a prescience of all his post- 
 humous fame! it would have rejoiced his spirit. At times, 
 however, he, like the great object of his admiration, Milton, 
 had a foreboding of his coming greatness, and would quote 
 the prophetic words of our English MsBonides: "This 
 I know, that whether in prosing or in versing, there is 
 something in my writings that shall live for ever." 
 
 Islam. The Brooks copy of Queen produced. Both books are fully 
 Mab is the one in whioli the second described in my large edition of 
 part of The Dsrnion (if the World was Shelley and in The Shelley Library. 
 
348 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " Yes." I quoted, (and this is taken from the note of 
 
 a conversation I had with Shelley,) 
 
 That sire of an immortal strain, 
 Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, 
 The priest, the slave, and the liberticide 
 Trampled, and mocked with many a loathed rite 
 Of lust and blood ; he went unterrified 
 Into the gulph of death ; but his clear sprite 
 Yet reigns on earth, the third among the sons of light.' 
 
 " And Shakspeare," I added, " was he well treated by 
 
 his contemporaries? But he wrote ' for all time ' and not 
 
 his own. He, too, lives for ever in his land's language." 
 
 " And a glorious language it is ! " said Shelley. 
 
 "What, 'that guttural, sputter-all' language, — you do 
 not mean to compare it with German, or even with 
 Italian ? " 
 
 " Doubtless," replied Shelley, " there is no medium for 
 poetry superior to our own. Its numerous monosyllables, 
 for which we are indebted to the Saxons, enable us to 
 squeeze into a line more matter than can be included in 
 a German, Italian, or Frenc^one. The Portuguese is 
 perhaps an exception, as you foulisjd in the vain attempt 
 of putting the octave stanza of the Lousiada into our own. 
 I suspect also," he added, " that ours is the most musical 
 of all languages, in spite of what Byron says, and the most 
 sonorous, though it does not admit of so many poetical 
 licences as the Italian, and is poor in rhymes, especially 
 double rhymes, — at least for serious poetry. Hudibras and 
 Don Juan prove that for comic there is no want of such. 
 German is indeed a mighty tongue, but harsh and con- 
 sonantal, German hexameters I cannot, and never could 
 endure. For rendering Greek it is unapproachable, ad- 
 mitting of a coinage of compound words on which we 
 
 ^ Adonais, stanza iv. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 349 
 
 cannot venture, — that would be hostile to the spirit of 
 our language, if carried to excess." 
 
 "That I can hardly admit,'' I replied, "when I read 
 your Prometheus Unbound. You have there combined 
 and compounded, not two, but frequently more words ; 
 and you have fabricated some which I should scarcely 
 hold to be legitimate ; for instance, interpenetrate. 
 
 " I did not make it," he rejoined. " It is used by 
 Coleridge — quite authority enough." "But," he added, 
 " I can make words, which you cannot." 
 
 There was in this observation a sense of his power — 
 a consciousness of that fame, of which with a prophetic 
 eye he saw the dawn. 
 
 There arose out of the conversation to which I have 
 above referred, on languages, a view of their comparative 
 merits. I quoted Latin as instances of its terseness in 
 rendering Voltaire's epigram — 
 
 Qui que to sois, voici ton maitre, 
 II est, il fut, ou il doit etre.* 
 
 Quisquis es en Dominum, Dominus fuit, aut exit, aut est ; 
 
 and added, — " You will perceive that the Dominus was, 
 though unnecessary, obliged to be introduced to make the 
 Hexameter Line." 
 
 Plato's epigram on Aster, which Shelley had applied to 
 Keats, happened to be mentioned, — 
 
 Nui/ 8e Baviav Xafwreir, Ecrjrepos ev Bi/jiepnis [sic for (jidifievots], — 
 
 and I asked Shelley if he could render it. He took up 
 the pen and improvised : 
 
 * It appears that Byron has thus rendered this epigram verbatim, 
 
 Whoever you are your master see, 
 He is, or was, or ought to be. 
 
350 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Thou wert a morning star among the living, 
 
 Ere thy fair light was fled ; 
 Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving 
 
 New splendour to the dead.' 
 
 I said, the version was too paraphrastic, and suggested the 
 following : — 
 
 Thou wert a morning star to us, 
 
 And dying art our Hesperus. 
 
 and in Latin, which I have taken as one of the epigraphs 
 of these volumes, — 
 
 Tu, vivens, vivis, fers lucem, ut stella diei, 
 At nunc heu moriens ! Hesperus, Aster eris. 
 
 That Shelley should have written but little during the 
 winter, independent of the causes I have assigned, may 
 also be accounted for by his being too much broken in 
 upon and distracted by society, to concentrate his mind on 
 any one subject. It has been remarked that Company 
 represses thought and Genius wants solitude for its boldest 
 and happiest exertions. So was it with Shelley. His 
 muse admitted of no coquetry— she was exigeante, and 
 demanded his whole soul and affections. Solitude and 
 isolation were indispensable to him, for the developement 
 of his profound and metaphysical ideas; but "en-revanche," 
 he read as wont seven or eight hours a-day. He had 
 received a quarto edition of Lord Bacon's works, which 
 he devoured with avidity, and we read together some parts 
 of Spinoza, of which volume he told an excellent story. 
 On entering Eome, the Doganieri laid hands on his 
 books, among which was the very Spinoza, and the Bible. 
 " Which do you suppose," said he, with one of his peculiar 
 laughs, " they confiscated ?— the Bible ! " We seldom read 
 
 ' This may be a genuine variant, for a in line 1 and had for was in 
 The accepted version reads the line 2. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 351 
 
 new works of fiction, but made an exception in favour 
 of Antar, wMcli we borrowed from Byron, and found 
 greatly interesting. This Jack-the-Giant-Killer romance, 
 abounds with vivid and picturesque, but overcharged de- 
 scriptions of the scenery and manners of the tribes of the 
 Desert, and his Lines from the Arabic were almost a trans- 
 lation from a translation in that Oriental fiction. Antar 
 is a straw that floated for a moment on the stream, and 
 has been flTigiil;^he d — forgotten.^ It is an oblivious world. 
 I often asked Shelley if he had never attempted to write 
 like Matthias, in Italian, and he showed me a sort of 
 serenade which I give as a curiosity, — but proving that he 
 had not made a profound study of the language, which, 
 like Spanish, he had acquired without a grammar,^ 
 trusting to his fine ear and memory, rather than to 
 rules. 
 
 Buona notte. 
 Buona notte ! buona notte ! come mai 
 
 La notte sia buona senza te. 
 Non dir'mi buona notte, — che tu sai, 
 
 La notte sa star buona da per se. 
 
 ^ In 1876 1 tried (unsuccessfully) dealing black champion of her tribe 
 
 to identify the passage in Terrick while away on one of his innum- 
 
 Hamiiton's Antar, a Bedoueen erable blood-thirsty forays in the 
 
 Romance (1819-20) which had desert. I do not wholly despair of 
 
 inspired Shelley with the mar- finding somewhere in .4»tor's fifteen 
 
 vellous lyric From the Arabic, an 'hundred pages something a little 
 
 Imitation. I have not yet found resembling Shelley's song in 
 
 any one passage that supports the thought ; but all the poetry in the 
 
 biographer's view. But I do not four volumes is translated into 
 
 more than half believe that the plain prose ; and in metrical form 
 
 song is so near to any individual this poem has always seemed to 
 
 outpouring in tliat remarkable me a veritable lyric of Shelley's, 
 
 work as Medwin says. It seems to peculiarly unimitative. It has 
 
 me more like the thrice distilled wonderful atmosphere, and brings 
 
 and purified essence of the spirit of back to one's mind the atmosphere 
 
 devotion diffused throughout the of that masterly book of the late 
 
 romance. At the most it could William Gifford Palgrave, Hermann 
 
 only represent in a highly idealized Agha ; an Eastern Narrative (London, 
 
 form some utterance of Ibla, the 2 vol. 1872). 
 cousin and beloved of the death- 
 
553 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Solinga, scura, cupa, senza speme 
 La notte, quando Lilla m'abandona, 
 
 Pei cuori, chi si batton insieme, 
 
 Ogni notte senza dirla, sara buona. * 
 
 Come male buona notte si suona, 
 
 Con sospiri, e parole interrotte, 
 II modo di aver la notte buona, 
 
 E mai non di dir la buona notte. 
 
 To whicli I made a version tliat pleased Mm better, he 
 laid, than the one he had himself written, and which I 
 lever saw till it appeared in Mrs. Shelley^ s edition of his 
 )oems. Excuse, reader, my giving my own. 
 
 Good night ! good night ! oh say not so — 
 Where thou art not, can night be good? 
 
 Say not good night — night's good, you know. 
 Whether we would not, or we would. 
 
 Dark, silent, hopeless, drear, and lone. 
 
 Night seems when thou withdraw'st thy light. 
 
 To hearts, that only beat as one, 
 
 There needs no voice to say Good night. 
 
 Good night's a sound ill understood, 
 
 In sighs and murmurs of delight ; 
 The only way night can be good, 
 
 Is never, love, to say Good night. 
 
 Shelley had also begun at this time The Triumph of 
 Life, of which we have a fragment. It advanced very 
 ilowly, and in its present form it is impossible to know 
 low he intended to treat the subject ; the lines are of a 
 gorgeous magnificence. Singularly enough, this vision of 
 Shelley's, by a coincidence (for I am convinced it was one, 
 md that he had never read Garden's works,) was nearly 
 ;he same as that eccentric writer's, as may be seen by the 
 following comparative extracts : — 
 
 . lUucente Aurora, visus sum toto humano genere, maximft que turba 
 nulierum.^on solum ao virorum, sed puerorum, atquejnfantium, 
 iuxta radicem Hiontis,y qui mihi a dextra erat, currere. Cum 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 353 
 
 admiratione captua, unum a turba interrogarem, quonam omnes tarn 
 precipiti cursu tenderemus. Ad mortem respondit. 
 
 ThusSkelley: 
 
 Methought I sate beside a public way, 
 Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream- 
 Of people there was hurrying to and frp. 
 Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, 
 
 All hastening onward, but none seemed to know 
 Whither he went, and whence he came, or why 
 He made one of the multitude, and so 
 
 Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky, 
 One of the million leaves of summer's bier, 
 Old age and youth, manhood and infancy. 
 
 Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear ; 
 
 Some flying from the thing they feared, and some 
 
 Seeking the object of another's fear, 
 
 And others with swift steps towards the tomb 
 Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, 
 And others mournfully within the gloom 
 Of their own shadows walked— and called it death. 
 
 Hellas, which had been written during the autumn, and 
 sent to England to be printed, I did not see till some 
 months after ; but we often discussed the Greek revolution, 
 and he was enthusiastic in his aspirations for her liberty. 
 He would not believe but that the picture drawn by 
 Mr. Hope in his Anastasius, of the modern Greeks, was 
 an overcharged one ; though he admitted that a long 
 course of political slavery under their Mahomedan 
 masters, had so demoralised and bastardised the nation, 
 that important changes must be undergone before it 
 could be regenerated ; but of this he entertained no fears. 
 The opening Chorus of Hellas is taken from the Principe 
 Costante of Calderon, as Shelley pointed out to me ; and 
 the drama an imitation of the Persians of .ffischylus. It 
 is, as Shelley says himself, "full of lyrical poetry," and I 
 
 SHELLXT A a 
 
354 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 might add, the most beautiful. The Choruses are wonder- 
 fully imaginative, and melodious in their versification, and 
 splendidly exemplify his peculiarity of style. Whether 
 Byron's " Isles of Greece " suggested the closing Chorus, 
 I know not. The adoption of the same metre might have 
 been a coincidence. 
 
 A brighter Hellas rears its mountains, 
 
 From waves serener far ; 
 A new Peneus i-olls its [sic for his] fountains 
 
 Against the morning-star, 
 Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
 Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. 
 A loftier Argo cleaves the main. 
 
 Fraught with a later prize. 
 Another Orpheus sings again. 
 
 And loves, and weeps, and dies. 
 A new Ulysses bears \sic for leaves] once more 
 Calypso, for his native shore. 
 
 Another Athens shall arise. 
 
 And to remoter time, 
 Bequeath, like sunset to the skies. 
 
 The splendour of its prime ; 
 And leave, if nought so bright may live. 
 All Earth can take, or Heaven can give. 
 
 Saturn and Love their long repose 
 
 Shall burst more bright and good 
 Than all who fell— than One who rose. 
 
 Than many unsubdued. 
 Not gold nor blood their altar dowers. 
 But votive tears and symbol flowers. 
 
 What is this glorious hymn, of which I have transcribed 
 
 only a few Stanzas, but another "Isles of Greece? " indeed 
 
 it yields in nothing to Byron's strain ; and the prophecy 
 
 is such as poets love to dwell upon, and Shelley most of 
 
 all, — the regeneration of mankind, though clouded with 
 
 the melancholy foreboding of the horrors that the struggle 
 
 must cost. It is impossible to tell how much this drama. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 355 
 
 id the enthusiasm of Shelley, influenced the determina- 
 on of Byron to devote his energies to the sacred cause. 
 f he was to have died young, he could not have died at 
 better moment for his fame. Nothing, however, in 1821 
 nd the beginning of 1822, was further from my thoughts, 
 tan that he would have taken any part in the struggle, 
 le out-anastasiused Anastasius in his view of the Greek 
 haracter. He used to say, " that the Greeks were so 
 alien, that it would be a vain attempt to raise them. 
 )ne might as well hope to re-animate a corpse." "Words 
 hat had no sincerity in them, for perhaps at that very 
 ime, with his usual love of rtiystification he had decided 
 n his own mind to join their cause, which, if he thought 
 o desperate and unworthy, he would never have done, nor 
 lave embarked in it so large a portion of his fortune; not 
 hat he risked indeed the money, for it was raised on the 
 lecurity of the Greek Loan (friend Hobhouse satisfying 
 lim of the validity of the security,) and was in fact repaid 
 jefore his death — a fortunate exception for his Heirs, con- 
 sidering, that to this day I believe the Fundholders in 
 ;he Greek Loan have ^ never received — the principal is 
 Dut of the question — even their interest. In Byron were, 
 IS I have said, two natures, — the man and the poet were 
 different entities. This incongruity between his poetical 
 sentiments and his prose ones, was very remarkable. In 
 the case of the Greeks, the former prevailed. Shelley used 
 to say that " on this subject, or any other, it was not easy 
 to see his mind through the mists he delighted to throw 
 around it." No one mystified so much, — indeed it was 
 impossible to know when he was in jest or in earnest. If 
 he mystified Shelley, no wonder that he should often have 
 mystified me in our daily and nightly conversations; 
 though, singularly enough, almost every word in them has 
 
 A a 2 
 
356 LIFE OF SHKLLEY. 
 
 been repeated in Moore's Life, taken from Byron's Auto- 
 biography, pretended to be burnt, and of which auto- 
 biography ,"Washington Irving writing to me, says, "Whilst 
 reading your Conversations, (he, as well as half-a-dozen 
 others, had perused it,) I thought, page after page, that 
 I was reading Byron's MS." But if he mysti£ed me and 
 Shelley, he still more mystified his biographer ; as in- 
 stances of which I shall give three or four proofs out of 
 three or four hundred I could cite. " His lordship told 
 me,'^ Moore says in his preface, " that he meant to leave his 
 will in my hands, and that there would be in it a bequest 
 of ten thousand pounds to Madame G[uiccioli]." (He 
 mentioned this circumstance also to Lady Blessington.) 
 " "When the news of his death reached me, I took it for 
 granted that this will would be found among his sealed 
 papers, he had left me ; but there was no such instrument." 
 Now he had never intended to leave his will with 
 Mr. Moore, nor to make any such bequest, any more than 
 he meant (as he told me) to leave his daughters joint 
 heiresses ; for Ada he disinherited in favour of his sister, 
 and to Allegra"he left five thousand pounds, saddled with 
 a proviso, that it should be cancelled if she married 
 a foreigner. The next instance I shall adduce of mysti- 
 fication, is the passage in his journal (alias autobiography,) 
 where he wishes to have it believed that the Corsair and 
 himself were one and the same personage, saying, — 
 " Who knows what I was doing in the East ? " &c. The 
 third is his mystification respecting his contemporaries, 
 Rogers, Campbell, and Moore, and the high place he 
 allots them in the literary world. As over-politeness is 
 rudeness, so over-flattery is dispraise, and over-disparage- 
 ment of self, excess of vanity. Shelley was always in- 
 dignant at the high rank he assigned to Campbell and 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 357 
 
 Jogers ; a rank Byron has put on record by a diagram 
 ir triangular gradus ad Parnassum ; and again in another 
 )lace, where after "Walter Scott, he says, " I should place 
 Sogers next in the list. Ii value more the man as 
 he last of the best school — Moore and Campbell both 
 hird," &c. &c. Elsewhere, it is true, when in the quizzing 
 rein, he in speaking of Lord Thurlow, (the best translator 
 )y the way of Anacreon we ever had,) says, — 
 
 They tell me Phoebus gave his crown, 
 Some years before his death, to Rogers. 
 
 i.nd see the anecdote in the stage coach, about Lary and 
 
 Tacky, and 
 
 Pretty Miss Jaqueline, 
 With her nose aquiline. 
 
 To prove the inconsistency of his' opinions about Eogers 
 tnd Cardpbell, he says elsewhere, " I conside^ Crabbe and 
 ]!oleridge as the first of these times in point of power and 
 jenius." Yet in the text of the English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers he calls Coleridge " The Laureate of the long- 
 sared Tribe " [sic for kind]. 
 
 The same sarcasms* he threw out here and there re- 
 pecting Campbell, an offence which he, one of the irritaiile 
 fenus, could never forgive. He had a high opinion of his 
 )wn merits, (no wonder) and a few years before his death, 
 le told a friend of mine that he had never read any of 
 Shelley's works. This gentleman, a great Liberal and an 
 [talian, paid Campbell a visit at his request, and instead 
 )f discussing the prospects and hopes of Italy, he would 
 ;alk of nothing but Peseto's Translation of The Pleasures 
 >/ Hope, a work that fell dead from the Press, not from the 
 )adness of the Translation, but that it was little to the 
 
 * See Letters on Bowles's Strictures on Pope and Other Letters to Moore, 
 assim. 
 
358 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 taste of the Italians. Campbell,^ who laughed at the idea of 
 Shelley beingaPoet and said of his Prometheus Unbound — 
 "who would bind it?" — Lord Byron Bardolphed in the 
 Erkles vein, though occasionally he gave him here and 
 there a sly rap on the knuckles, to wit, " read Campbell's 
 Poets marked Errors of Tom the Author, &c., and Gertrude 
 of Wyoming has no more locality with Pennsylvania, than 
 Penmanmawr. It is particularly full of grossly false 
 scenery, as all Americans declare, though they praise parts 
 of the Poem, &c., and the vulgar age will rest more on the 
 splendour of the uniform than the quality of the troops;" 
 '' He has spoiled his best things by over-polish." Is it 
 a wonder that he should have been spoiled by Byron's 
 exaggerated praise, and being ranked by him the second 
 of the sons of light ? Campbell, however, in later days, 
 knew well what Byron reaUy thought of him and his 
 works, and after the noble poet's death, took strong part 
 against him, as proved by Lady Byron's letter, beginning, 
 " My dear Mr. Campbell," and the Correspondence ; but 
 Campbell lies in "Westminster Abbey, where, doubtless, his 
 rival, Rogers, will have a niche by his side. "Where lies 
 Byron ? in some obscure churchyard, the name of which 
 I have forgotten!^ The former Edition of this "Work 
 
 * See note ante (page 214) on this done in regard to Byron, more 
 
 witticism. Are we to suppose that especially after the declaration of 
 
 Campbell was the person who the Bishop of London that, Byron 
 
 uttered it to Medwin? If so, the having writtenagainstChristianity, 
 
 Scottish poet got his joke cheaply ought not to have a memorial in 
 
 enough ; for he certainly did not the Abbey." Three days later he 
 
 originate it. recorded — "I went, by the invita- 
 
 ' In Lord Broughton'sJBecoHecfions tion of the executors, to Cambell's 
 
 0/ as ioKffii/e (ed. Lady Dorchester, funeral. We assembled in the 
 
 Vol. vi, 1911, p. 121) are two in- Jerusalem Chamber. Sir E. Peel 
 
 teresting entries on this subject. more formal, if possible, than usval. 
 
 Under the date June 30, 1844, Sir In the room itself were Macaulay, 
 
 John Cam Hobhouse, Bart., M.P. to Lord Aberdeen, Mr. B. Disraeli, 
 
 use his then name and style, Monokton Milnes [afterwards creat- 
 
 writes: — "Something should be edLordHoughton],Dr. Croly, lord 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 359 
 
 contains much that is curious respecting his Bio- 
 grapher Moore, and his dear friend Sir John Hobhouse, 
 to which I refer those who may interest themselves 
 in such matters, being here omitted as somewhat ex- 
 traneous. Fortunate it was for Byron that he had Shelley 
 for a friend and fosterer of his genius. How much does 
 not the world owe to the noble poet's emancipation from 
 the fetters of Hobhouse and release from the leaden 
 mantle of his paralising [sicl dulness. 
 
 Several of our countrymen beside the Williams's swelled 
 Shelley's and Byron's Circle during the winter. There 
 are some memoirs published by Colburn which appeared 
 
 Campbell, and a crowd whom I 
 did not know . . . Monckton Milnes 
 asked which we thought Campbell's 
 best poem. Macaulay said The 
 Pleasures 'of Sope was a good prize 
 poem, Gertrude of Wyoming was 
 better, but the Odes were his 
 masterpiece. Milnes said they 
 were only songs or ballads, and 
 said this so loud that Macaulay 
 stopped him. We talked of the 
 man himself, and said what was 
 true of his personal character. 
 Macaulay repeated Byron's lines in 
 Don Juan in reference to Gertrude of 
 
 The bard I quote from does not 
 sing amiss ; 
 and so we went on some time." 
 
 The Hobhouse record includes 
 a sharp criticism of the disorder 
 and defective management which 
 really characterized a ceremonial 
 described by the newspapers as 
 "most solemn, decorous, and 
 affecting". Sir John adds — "but 
 what I saw I set down." Of Campbell 
 he says: "I do not think any one 
 knew him much better than my- 
 self, and what I know of him does 
 not at all tally with the eulogies 
 now passed upon his character ; I 
 mean as a social man. He was 
 vain, captious, uncertain, exceed- 
 
 ingly suspicious, and had nothing 
 in his general conversation either 
 amusing or instructive. But he 
 was, through life, a very poor man, 
 which will account for many of 
 these infirmities, and that he had 
 qualities of a high character cannot 
 be denied. As a poet, if not the 
 first, he is in the very first line. 
 Byron could not have written the 
 Xariners of England, MoherUinden, or 
 Copenhagen, any more than Campbell 
 could have written Ghilde Sarold ; 
 but in the effect produced on the 
 taste and style of their contem- 
 poraries the two cannot be compared. 
 Byron is incomparably the greater 
 of the two. I cannot help feeling 
 more indignant than ever at the 
 exclusion of my friend's monument 
 from those precincts which record 
 the remains of his not superior 
 rival, but I am powerless in thia 
 respect." 
 
 This reads a little like what 
 Mr. Spooner would call "praising 
 with faint damns " ; but really the 
 two literary foes here brought face 
 to face — Medwin and Hobhouse — 
 were both dissatisfied with the 
 village church of Hucknall Torkard 
 near Nottingham as a substitute, 
 for Westminster Abbey. 
 
360 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 at this time said to be by the pen of Mr. Velvet-cushion 
 Cunningham, a particular friend of Lady Byron, and who 
 doubtless furnished her quota of the matter, in which 
 Byron and this little coterie were compared to Frederick 
 the Great, and those wits that took refuge in his Court, 
 viz. Voltaire, the Marquis D' Argent, &c. ; and the object of 
 which coterie,the memoir- writer contends,was to infidelize 
 the world— Shelley being made the Coryphaeus. The 
 author was grossly mistaken; their object was very dif- 
 ferent. Most of them came to Pisa by accident, and their 
 stay in that city was protracted by the pleasure of Byron's 
 and Shelley's society ; for both were very social, and the 
 noble poet's morning Conversaziones and delightfal 
 dinners no small attraction. The reverend gentleman, 
 however, one of the forty annotators, inveighs loudly 
 against the Satanic school with " a forty-parson power." 
 Nor was he the only one of his brethren who attacked it 
 and them, for a clergyman at Kentish Town^ treated his 
 congregation with two sermons against Cain, (that had 
 just appeared,) and there was a third at Pisa who followed 
 in his wake. " Scoundrels of priests," observes Lord Byron, 
 " who do more harm to religion than all the infidels who 
 ever forgot their catechism." But the preaching at Pisa 
 was directed as much or more against Shelley, than his 
 noble friend, and thereby hangs a tale. 
 
 In the same house on the Lung' Arno, where Shelley 
 had taken up his abode, Kved (well-known by his Life of 
 Surrey, most of the materials of which he had surrep- 
 titiously obtained by sucking the brains of Bishop Percy, 
 
 1 Byron wrote to Murray that Kentish Town gentleman is said to 
 
 the parsons were all preaching at have been "the Eev. Johnstone 
 
 Cain, " from Kentish Town to Grant, who preached against Ciiiii 
 
 Pisa," adding the passage quoted by in the Chapel there" (Fraser's 
 
 Medwin from Moore's Life &c. The Magazine, March 1833, p. 841). 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 361 
 
 who always expressed himself indignant thereat, for his 
 secretary, from whom I have these particulars, was at 
 that time himself engaged in the undertaking,) Dr. Nott. 
 This divine was, I believe, a Prebend of Winchester, and 
 as his architectural knowledge was profound, the cathedral 
 is much indebted to him for its judicious improvements 
 and restorations. These and other acquirements obtained 
 for him the appointment of sub-preceptor to the Princess 
 Charlotte, which situation, from his over-anxiety to become 
 (what every prebend and dean of the church invariably 
 does) a bishop, and some coquetting with his royal pupil, 
 whom he persuaded to recommend him by a codicil to her 
 will, for a father-in-Godship, in case of accidents, lost him 
 his office. So at least runs the story, but whether founded 
 on good authority I do not mean to affirm. It might be 
 held sufficient ground to relieve him from his sub-precep- 
 torial duties, that he had published Surrey's amatory 
 verses, which, if not improper in themselves, were rather 
 unfit to place in the hands of the young princess his pupil ; 
 so that this expensive edition, that only got into great 
 libraries, and could have had a very limited circulation, 
 proved in all ways an unprofitable speculation to the 
 learned Doctor. He had also been, if he had now ceased 
 to be, " a gay deceiver," and had obtained for himself, by 
 his backing out of more than one matrimonial engagement, 
 the soubriquet of Slip-knot (Nott). " Most unfortunate," 
 Byron used to say, " was the man who had a name that 
 could be punned upon ; " and when he heard of what I am 
 about to detail, said, " that the preacher read some of the 
 commandments affirmatively and not negatively, as " Thou 
 shalt, Nott ! (not) bear false witness against thy neighbour, 
 &c." The circumstance to which I allude, and that 
 excited Lord Byron's bile, is this : He opened a chapel in 
 
362 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 his own apartment, and preached a trilogy of sermons 
 against Atheism, Mrs. Shelley forming one of the congre- 
 gation, and his eyes being directed on her with a significant 
 expression, and as his whole flock did not consist of more 
 than fourteen or fifteen, it was evident the Doctor was 
 preaching at, and not to some of it. These discourses came 
 to Byron's ears, and though Shelley laughed at the malice 
 of the Doctor, the noble bard was indignant at the pros- 
 titution of his pulpit, and still more so when he heard 
 that the divine had at Mrs. Beauclerc's called Shelley 
 a " Scelerato," which no doubt was deemed very witty. 
 The day after, Byron wrote a little biting satire, a song 
 to the tune of The Vicar and Moses, which has appeared 
 in a Periodical, and as it is not to be found in any of his 
 collected works,^ I shall give as correctly copied by me, by 
 permission of the bard ; premising that it was supplied 
 to Colburn for the Conversations, but thought by him trop 
 fort. Magazines are like ephemerides, only born to perish. 
 They have the fame of their month, and are forgotten ; 
 
 1 This negative is not quite true. 
 Mr. Coleridge says in his edition of 
 Byron's Poetry (Vol. vii, 1904, 
 p. 80) that it was first published in 
 Galignani's edition of Byron's 
 Works, in 1831. He does not per 
 contra, mention the version pub- 
 lished in Fraaers Magasine (in 
 March 1833). No doubt the thing 
 was touched up by Byron from day 
 to day ; and I should say that all 
 three versions are on the whole 
 genuine variants. It is to be 
 regretted that Medwin and Fraser 
 were not both duly collated for the 
 standard edition, which contains 
 the only utterly condemnable 
 reading in the whole lot, namely — 
 
 Have long ago suffered censure, 
 which I should regard as a Gali. 
 gnanian corruption, if, indeed, 
 Mr. Coleridge follows Galignani. 
 Fraser prints the line — 
 
 Have long ago suffered erasure. 
 
 Possibly the terminal word was 
 effacure when Medwin made his 
 copy ; but it is a bad word ; and if 
 Byron found, when he trotted his 
 lampoon out in the Pisan circle, 
 that no one pronounced it effaswre 
 or otherwise than effakure, he 
 would naturally alter it to erasure. 
 The production is very poor for 
 Byron, even with all the best 
 readings selected from the three 
 texts. As to the Dr., whatever be 
 the facts of the Princess Charlotte 
 scandal, he was not a man to be 
 wholly ignored in surveying 
 English literature. Apart from 
 his edition of Surrey and Wyatt, 
 which had a certain vogue, his 
 anonymously published edition 
 and translation of Catullus is a 
 book which I for one should be 
 sorrj' to miss from my library. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 363 
 
 but nothing from tlie pen of Byron should be permitted 
 to die. The nil nisi honum de mortuis is a proverb, with 
 many others, more honoured in the breach than the obser- 
 vance. At all events, I feel no qualm of conscience in 
 branding a reverend lampooner, and deem it an act of 
 justice to the memory of Shelley so to do. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 (To the' tune of the Vicar and Moses.) 
 Do you know Doctor Nott, 
 With "a crook in his lot," 
 
 Who several years since tried to dish up 
 A neat codicil 
 To the Princess's will, 
 
 Which made Doctor Nott not a bishop? 
 
 So the Doctor being found 
 A little unsound 
 
 To [sic for In\ his doctrines, at least as a teacher 
 And kicked from one stool 
 As a knave and a fool, 
 
 Has mounted another as preacher. 
 
 In that gown, like a skin 
 With 110 lion within, 
 
 He still for the bench would be driving, 
 And roareth away, 
 A true " Vicar of Bray," 
 
 Except that his hray lost his living. 
 
 'Gainst freethinkers, he roars, 
 You should all shut your doors. 
 
 Or be " bound " in the " devil's indentures ; " 
 And 'here I agree, 
 For who ever would be 
 
 A. guest, where old Simony enters ? 
 
 Let the priest who teguiled 
 His sovereign's child, 
 
 To his own dirty views of promotion, 
 Wear his sheep's clothing still, 
 Among flocks to his will, 
 
 And dishonour the cause of devotion. 
 
364 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The altar and throne 
 Are in peril alone 
 
 From sucli as himself, who would render 
 The altar itself 
 A shop let to pelf,* 
 
 And pray God to pay his defender. 
 
 But Doctor ! one word, 
 
 Which perhaps you have heard, — 
 
 They should never throw stones, who have windows 
 Of glass to be broken, 
 And by that same token. 
 
 As a sinner, you can't blame what sin does. 
 
 But perhaps you do well — 
 Your own windows, they tell. 
 
 Have long ago suffered effacure,t 
 Not a fragment remains 
 Of your character's panes. 
 
 Since the Regent refused you a glazier. 
 
 Though your visions of lawn 
 Have all been withdrawn,^ 
 
 And you missed your bold stroke for a mitre, 
 In a little snug way. 
 You may still preach and pray, 
 
 And from bishop, sink into backbiter. 
 
 Disagreeable as it must have been to Mrs. Shelley, to be 
 an inmate of the same house with this licensed libeller, it 
 must be confessed, as I have already stated, that Shelley 
 was but little affected by his preaching ; but his hatred 
 and horror of fanaticism shewed itself a short time after, 
 on an occasion that soon occurred to awaken all his sym- 
 pathies. One day when I called at the bookseller Moloni's, 
 I heard a report that a subjectof Luccahad been condemned 
 to be burnt alive for sacrilege. A priest who shortly after 
 entered, confirmed the news, and expressed himself in the 
 
 * A mispiint in Fraser. — A step but to pelf. 
 
 f Effacure for erasure. 
 
 J Have been lately withdravm. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 365 
 
 following terms : — " "Wretch ! " said he, " he took the 
 consecrated wafers from the altar, and threw them contemp- 
 tiiously about the church. No tortures can be great 
 enough for such a horrible crime ; burning is too light 
 a death. I will go to Lucca, I would go to Spain to see 
 the infidel die at the stake." Such were the humane and 
 charitable feelings of a follower of Christ. I left him 
 with abhorrence, and betook myself to Lord Byron. " Is 
 it possible," said he, with shuddering, " do we live in the 
 nineteenth century ? But I can believe anything of the 
 Duchess of Lucca. She was an Infanta — is a bigot, and 
 perhaps an advocate for the Inquisition. But surely she 
 cannot venture in these times to sign a warrant for such 
 an execution ! We must endeavour to prevent this auto 
 dafe. Lord Guildford is here. We will move heaven 
 and earth to put a stop to it. The Grand Duke of Tuscany 
 will surely appeal against the consummation of such 
 a horrible sacrifice, for he has not signed a death-warrant 
 since he came to the throne." 
 
 At this moment Shelley entered. He had also heard 
 that the offender was to be burnt the next day. He 
 proposed that we should arm ourselves as well as we could, 
 and immediately ride to Lucca, and attempt on the morrow 
 to rescue the prisoner when brought to the stake, and then 
 carry him to the Tuscan frontier, where he would be safe. 
 Mad and hopeless as the plan was. Lord Byron, carried 
 away by Shelley's enthusiasm, declared himself ready to 
 join in it, should other means fail. We agreed to meet 
 again in the evening, and in the meanwhile to make 
 a representation, signed by all the English at Pisa, to the 
 Grand Duke, then with his Court at Pisa. 
 
 Moore in his Life gives the following account of this 
 transaction, contained in a letter to him. 
 
366 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " * * * [meaning Taaife,] is gone with his broken head to Lucca, at 
 my desire, to try and save a man from being burnt. The Spanish * * * 
 [Duchess,] that has her petticoats thrown over Lucca, had actually 
 condemned a poor devil to the stake, for stealing a wafer-box out of 
 a church. Shelley and I were up in arms against this piece of piety, 
 and have been disturbing everybody to get the sentence changed. 
 * * * [Taaffe] is gone to see what can be done." 
 
 "To Mr. Shelley. 
 
 "December 12th, 1821. 
 " My dear Shelley, 
 
 "Enclosed is a note for you from * * * [TaafFe]. His reasons 
 are all very true, I dare say ; and it might, and it may be of personal 
 inconvenience to us. But that does not appear to me to be a reason 
 to allow a being to be burnt, without trying to save him, — to save him 
 by any means ; but remonstrance is of course out of the question, but 
 I do not see how a temperate remonstrance can hurt any one. Lord 
 Guildford is the man, if he would undertake it. He knows the Grand 
 Duke personally, and might perhaps prevail on him to interfere. But 
 as he goes to-morrow, you must be quick, or it will be useless. Make 
 any use of my name you please. 
 
 "Yours ever, 
 
 "B ." 
 
 " To Mr. Moore. 
 
 ' ' I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story 
 I allude to, of the auto da fi. Shelley's allusion to "his fellow 
 serpent," is a buffoonery of mine. Gothe's Mephistopholes calls the 
 serpent who tempted Eve, " my aunt, the renowned snake ; " and 
 I always insist that Shelley is nothing but one of her nephews, 
 walking about on the tip of his tail. 
 
 ■' Bykon." 
 
 " To Lord Byron. 
 
 " Two o'clock, Tuesday morning. 
 " My dear Lord, 
 
 "Although strongly persuaded that the story must be either an 
 entire fabrication, or so gross an exaggeration as to be nearly so ; yet 
 in order to be able to discover the truth beyond all doubt, and to set 
 your mind quite at rest, I have taken the determination to go myself 
 to Lucca this morning. Should it prove less false than I am con- 
 vinced it is, I will not fail to exert myself in every way that I can 
 imagine may have any success. Be assured of this. 
 
 "Your Lordship's most truly, 
 
 " * * * " [Taaffe.] 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 867 
 
 " P.S. — To prevent havardage, I prefer going in person to sending my 
 servant with a letter. It is better for you to mention nothing (except 
 of course to Shelley) of my excursion. The person I visit there is one 
 on vfhom I can have every dependence in every way, both as to 
 authority and truth." 
 
 " To Lord Byron. 
 
 "Thursday morning. 
 " My dear Lord Byron, 
 
 " I hear this morning that the design which certainly had been 
 in contemplation, of burning my ' fellow serpent,' has been abandoned, 
 and that he has been condemned to the galleys. Lord Guildford is 
 at Leghorn, and as your courier applied to me to know whether he 
 ought to leave your letter for him or not, I have thought it best, since 
 this information, to tell him to take it back. 
 
 " Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 " P. B. Shelley." 
 
 The concluding part of this correspondence shews that 
 I was mistaken in saying in the Conversations, that Shelley 
 had applied to Lord Guildford ; but the information re- 
 specting the culprit's being at that time condemned to the 
 galleys, was (for the course of justice in Italy is not so 
 speedy,) incorrect. The Duchess had issued a proclama- 
 tion, that the offender, if arrested, should be subject to the 
 Spanish laws; but he had escaped to Florence,and delivered 
 himself up to the police, who had not made him over to 
 the Lucchese authorities, but on condition that he should 
 be tried by the statutes of Tuscany. I must not omit to 
 mention that Shelley proposed in case the Auto da Fe 
 should take place, that we should ride well armed to Lucca, 
 and endeavour to rescue the Victim from the Stake.* 
 
 I have mentioned Mrs. Beauclerc, a neighbour of 
 Shelley's family in Sussex, to whom I alluded in the 
 Conversations. She was fi, daughter of the Duchess of 
 ^Leinster, by her second marriage, and half-sister to Lord 
 
 ' This sentence is one of the late "mentioned" &c. See pqge 365, 
 1 additions ; but he had already ante. 
 
368 LIFE OF SHELLEY. * 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald, whose papers relative to the rebellion, 
 previous to his arrest, were placed in her hands, and I 
 imagine given by her to Moore for his Life of that infatu- 
 ated and ill-fated patriot. Shelley found a great charm 
 in her acquaintance, for no one, from her intercourse with 
 the great world, and the leading personages of her time, 
 had a more copious fund of anecdote. She was indeed 
 a person of first-rate talents and acquirements, possessed 
 an esprit de society \sic] quite unique, and her house, which 
 she opened every evening, was a never-failing resource. 
 Byron and Mrs. Beauclerc wished mutually to be ac- 
 quainted, and I was requested by both to, be the medium 
 of introduction, during a ride, in which they were, to save 
 formality, to meet as by accident. Lady Blessington has 
 mentioned Byron's superstition as to days, and I have said 
 that he objected to a Friday as that of the meeting. But, 
 notwithstanding, it was fated that this introduction should 
 not be attended with any harmonious results. Byron, 
 after it, called, but was not let in. He thought himself 
 slighted, and took her not " being at home " as a mortal 
 affront, and would accept no after-excuses. A corre- 
 spondence ensued between them, which I applied to her 
 for, but she did not wish to have it published. Her 
 apologies failed to soothe the Poet's amour propre, and he 
 was inexorable. On the occasion of her eldest daughter's 
 birth-day, she had invited Professor Eossini [sic], who on 
 the evening of the fete, sent the following lines as an excuse, 
 which that lady deemed a very ambiguous compliment, 
 and referred them to Shelley and Lord Byron, who both 
 thought they could not have been intended as an affront. 
 I give the verses and a translation, premising that no one 
 wrote more elegant vers de societe [sic] than the now well- 
 known author. 
 
* LIFE OF SHELLEY. 369 
 
 A LA SIONORA B. 
 
 Delia tua cara Aglaia, 
 
 Era i danzi e i conviti, 
 
 Oggi il natal a celebrar m'inviti ; 
 
 Bella Emilia errasti, 
 
 Si non d'April spiro la tepid' ora, 
 
 Dalle Grazie il natal non e' venut' ancora. 
 
 TO MRS. B. 
 
 To greet thy dear Aglaia's natal day, 
 With festive honours due to it and her, 
 Emilia ! you invite me to your home ! 
 Beautiful mother ! sure you err ! 
 
 Till shall have breathed the genial hour of May, 
 The birthday of the Graces is not come. 
 
 Mrs. Beauclerc consoled herself with Mrs. Shelley's and 
 Shelley's society, and the grace and ease of his manners 
 and playfiil converse were the constant themes of her ad- 
 miration, and she often told me she wished to have seen 
 more of him. In her estimate of Shelley, she agreed with 
 Byron, who says to one of his detractors, — " You do not 
 know how good, how mild, how tolerant he was in society, 
 and as perfect a gentleman as ever crossed a drawing- 
 room, when he liked, and was ^ liked ; " and in a lettfer to 
 Moore, he says, — " Shelley, who is another bugbear to you 
 and the world, is to my knowledge the least selfish, and 
 the mildest of men, — a man who has made more sacrifices 
 to his fortune and feelings than any I have ever heard of. 
 "With his speculative opinions I have nothing in common, 
 nor desire to have." And yet, notwithstanding these 
 private testimonials to his worth. Lord Byron, in some 
 preface or note of his on which I cannot lay my hand, 
 where he enumerates those friends whom he had met, or 
 made, abroad, does not include Shelley among the number ; 
 
 ' I know no authority for this right. See foot-note on pp. 428 and 
 reading ; but the sense is probably 429 post 
 
 8QELLET B b 
 
370 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 and moreover says, that the sooner any other acquaintance 
 whom he has made on the continent should cease, so much 
 the better. I quote from memory, but it is the tenor of 
 his words. How unmanly and unworthy a truckling to 
 Hobhouse, Moore, &c., who did not like to have their 
 names coupled with Shelley's in the same sentence! 
 what servile deference to the opinion of the world ! ! 
 
 The Counts Gamba and Pietro, the father and brother 
 of the Countess Guiccidli, formed also an addition to 
 Shelley's circle. The former was a plain country gentle- 
 man, retired and simple in his manners, and of a melan- 
 choly and taciturnity natural to an exile, of his age, from his 
 own country, which none love so ardently as the Italians. 
 The passion of the younger Foscoli ^ for Venice is by no 
 means overcharged. Pietro was, as Lady Blessington 
 says, an amiable man, and was adored by his sister. The 
 last time I saw him was at Genoa, shortly after Shelley's 
 death, whither he had preceded Lord Byron, having been 
 sent out of Tuscany, for some affray with one of the noble 
 lord's retainers ; and I may here add that he afterwards 
 accompanied him to Greece, and brought home Byron's 
 remains ; on which occasion Mr, Hobhouse stood god- 
 father to a work of his on Byron of little merit, or in- 
 terest.^ He was a man of no talent, but pleasing and 
 
 1 Obviously the name should be a Long Life as edited by Lady 
 
 Foscari. It is on record that Byron Dorchester, Vol. iii, p. 227 (1810) 
 
 had occasion to rebut a charge we read— "I wrote to Moore in- 
 
 that the Son in the tragedy of forming him that I had expunged 
 
 The Two Foscari was overdrawn in a passage in Count Gamba's 
 
 respect of his pasSion for the city narrative which I thought might 
 
 s t"^"®'^ ,. annoy him; and then I asked him, 
 
 ^ «o doubt this ill-natured half jocularly, whether he was not 
 
 reference is to A Narrative of Lord ashamed of himself for writing 
 
 Byron's Last Journey to Greece, Fxtraeted letters to Byron in an unfriendly 
 
 fromthejoumalofamntPeterGamha,who tone respecting myselt Moore 
 
 attended his Lordship on that Fa^edition. answered me by saying that he 
 
 (London, Murray, _ octavo, 1825.) had performed the same service for 
 
 In Lord Broughtou s BecollecHons of me, by expunging something in a 
 
LTPE OF SHELLEY. 371 
 
 agreeable, and carried with him the passport of a very 
 handsome person. There was also at Pisa this winter, 
 a Baron Lutzerode, one of the chamberlains of one of the 
 Princes of Saxe, then on a visit to the Grand Duke. 
 This German baron, to whom it. may be remembered 
 Byron gave an impression of a sentimental seal and his 
 autograph, was not unfrequently at Shelley's. He would 
 be a poet, and had written a poem entitled The Swan 
 Song of the Priest-Murderer, which he wished Shelley 
 much to translate, and which, with his good nature and 
 love of obliging, he one day did attempt, but found the 
 task not to be accomplished. SheUey used to laugh 
 heartily at the strange title. 
 
 During the carnival, we took, in conjunction with 
 Lord Byron, a box at the opera, but he never frequented 
 it, nor the Countess Guiccioli, who devoted her evenings 
 to her father, and did not join in any public amusements. 
 Shelley sometimes assisted at the representation, for he 
 was very partial to music. Sinclair, the celebrated tenor, 
 had an engagement, and electrified the house in the duo 
 (I forget the name of the opera) of — 
 
 Cio cie tu brami, lo bramo, 
 Non aviam che un' cuore. 
 
 letter from Byron reflecting upon death. With this documentstudents 
 
 me, so that we were quits in that of the life and writings of Byron 
 
 respect, and might open a new were already familiar ; or, if they 
 
 account with one another. I were not, it was their fault rather 
 
 answered that we were not at all than their misfortune. It was 
 
 quits on the old score. I begged printed from a, manuscript in the 
 
 him, by all means, to restore the British Museum (31,037, f. 45) in 
 
 expunged passage." Lady Dor- Appendix VII to the Sixth Volume 
 
 Chester has added as an Appendix of Byron's Letters and Journals 
 
 to this third volume a translation edited by Mr. Rowland Prothero 
 
 made by her father in 1824 from and issued by Mr. Murray in 1901. 
 
 an interesting letter in Italian It was doubtless through inadvert- 
 
 written by Count Pietro Gamba to ence that Lady Dorchester ignored 
 
 Mrs. Leigh. It gives that unhappy this fact, and gave the letter as 
 
 lady a very feeling account of her now (April 1910) "published for 
 
 illustrious brother's last illness and the first time," 
 
 Bb3 
 
 
372 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But his pronunciation was bad, and Ms acting, lik( 
 Braham's, very indifferent, as is the case with many singers 
 His voice possessed a wonderful sweetness and melody 
 though not much compass, but in a private room, wher< 
 we sometimes heard him at Mrs. Beauclerc's, he wai 
 delightful. He was able to appreciate, and used to speal 
 in raptures of Shelley's Lyrics, and thought them highlj 
 adapted to be set to music, and was desirous of doing so 
 but whether he carried his design into execution, I know 
 not, tho' very many of Shelley's Lyrical pieces have beer 
 set to music, particularly the beautiful Lines to Mrs 
 Williams beginning with 
 
 The keen Stars are twinkling. 
 And the Moon rising brightly among them, 
 Dear Jane ! * 
 
 Mrs. "Williams, who was an accomplished singer, and 
 player on the harp, guitar, and piano, greatly added to the 
 charm of our soirees [sic] , sometimes varied by " bout-rimds." 
 On one occasion, I remember a remarkable instance oi 
 Shelley's facility and exercise of imagination. A word 
 was chosen, and all the rhymes to it in the language, and 
 they were very numerous, set down, without regard to 
 their corresponding meanings, and in a few minutes he 
 filled in the blanks with a beautifully fanciful poem, which, 
 probably, no one preserved, though now I should highly 
 prize such a relic ! 
 
 I passed much of my time in Shelley's domestic circle, 
 dining with him most days. He was, as I have said, most 
 abstemious in his diet, — utterly indifferent to the luxuries 
 of the table, and, although he had been obliged for his 
 
 * At Fox's chapel, in Piusbury, I heard two of Shelley's sublime 
 effusions in praise of Liberty, Virtue, and Love, sung, as set to hymns. 
 Tempera mutantur. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 373 
 
 healtli to discontinue his Pythagorean system, he still 
 almost lived on bread, fruit, and vegetables. "Wine, like 
 Haizlitt, he never touched with his lips ; Hazlitt had 
 abandoned it from a vow, having once injured his consti- 
 tution by excess ; but as to Shelley, it would have been 
 too exciting for his brain. He was essentially a water- 
 drinker, and his choice of Pisaj-aind his continuance there, 
 had been, and were directed, as I have said, by rfes purity, 
 — the stream being brought from the mountains many 
 miles distant, by the picturesque aqueduct that crosses 
 the plain from above the Baths of St. Julian. Shelley 
 was a man of the nicest habits, — the most scrupulous 
 nicety in his person ; invariably, whatever might be his 
 occupation, making his toilette for dinner, during the 
 interval between which he wrote his letters on his knees. 
 His correspondents, as may be seen by the second volume 
 of his Prose "Works, were not numerous, indeed his Letters, 
 published by Mrs. Shelley and running through more than 
 four years, were addressed to only as many individuals.^ 
 His pen flowed on with extraordinary rapidity on these 
 occasions, and without a moment's pause, his mind was 
 mirrored on the paper — and beautiful, indeed, was his 
 epistolary style, nor less bold and beautiful his hand- 
 writing, which is said by some to be a distinguishing mark 
 of character. His hand was very early formed, and never 
 altered, — as appears by the autograph of a letter in my 
 possession written when he was ten years of age, contained 
 in appendix to Vol. I. It was a very bold and free and 
 peculiar hand, and it surprizes me that the late 
 forgeries of his Letters published by Mr. Moxon should 
 have been undetected — a Mr. George Gordon Byron 
 wrote to me some years ago telling me that he had many 
 
 ' There are ten correspondents. 
 
374 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 letters of Shelley's and invited me to go down to Greenwich 
 where he was residing in order to peruse themj. I have 
 seen no announcement of their publication. At other 
 times, he would read what Mrs. Shelley had been writing 
 during the day, in whose progress he took great delight 
 and interest, now and then altering in pencil a word. She 
 was then engaged in her novel of Castruccio, afterwards 
 called Valperga, a title substituted for the first by Godwin, 
 for whose benefit it was designed, and produced, it appears, 
 £400, — at least that sum had been offered by OUier, 
 Shelley's publisher, who estimated at that high price the 
 fame of the author of Frankenstein. That was " the Golden 
 age " of novelists ; but Valperga was a talented work, fall 
 of eloquence and beauty and poetry, lost on the world of 
 readers of fiction, as a favourite dramatist told me good 
 writing was for the stage, and as much militating against 
 its success with the public. It is true that eloquence and 
 poetry are not all that is required in Novels — and what 
 Mrs. Shelley has always failed in is delineation of charac- 
 ter — and dialogue — ; she had not seen enough of the 
 world — or mixed enough in society to anatomize mankind. 
 During dinner, he almost invariably had a book by his 
 side. In respect of the table, he differed from Byron, who 
 was in his heart a bon vivant, and only mortified his 
 palate from a fear of getting fat, in which he ultimately 
 succeeded to his heart's desire, for, at Genoa, he had 
 become skeletonly thin, as may be seen by a silJiouette of 
 Mrs. Hunt's, and Lady Blessington's description of his 
 person, which she compares to that of an overgrown 
 
 ' It is strange that Medwin did letters. Had he accepted that 
 
 not put two and two together and invitation he might have discovered 
 
 suggest that his correspondent was, and exposed the fraud before 
 
 as now generally believed, the Browning wrote his introduction to 
 
 forger of the Moxon spurious the suppressed book of 1852. 
 
lirE OF SHELLEY. 375 
 
 schoolboy. Occasionally Mrs. Shelley used to read with 
 the Grand Duchess, and, some years afterwards, at the 
 Court of Florence, the duchess spoke of her to me in the 
 kindest terms, and of Shelley, with whose writings she 
 seemed familiar, and said she thought him unjustly 
 calumniated, for he had left behind him at Pisa the 
 memory of his virtues and benevolence. • To Byron the 
 Duchess made no allusion. She remembered the affair of 
 Sergeant-major Masi. i^ut speaking of dinners, I must 
 not forget to mention those of Byron, and which, though 
 Shelley did no justice to their good fare, he enjoyed as 
 much as any of the party. At one of these repasts, or 
 rather before dinner, as we were sitting in his studio, the 
 conversation happening to turn on longevity, Byron 
 offered Shelley a bet of £1000 on that of Lady Noel 
 against Sir Timothy Shelley's, and which wager Shelley 
 at once accepted. Not many weeks had elapsed, when 
 her ladyship died, and we all thought that Byron would 
 have paid the debt, or at least have offered to pay it — but 
 he neither did one nor the other. It is my decided 
 opinion that Shelley would have refused to receive the 
 money, but it ought to have been proffered ; and I have 
 little doubt that had the baronet died the first, Shelley 
 would have acted differently. That Byron would have 
 taken the sum of course no one can say. "Williams (who 
 with two other English gentlemen, was present,) was 
 highly indignant at, and disgusted with Lord Byron, and 
 never afterwards entered his doors, — a circumstance Byron 
 lamented to me, for he knew him to be a highly honourable 
 and gentlemanly man ; saying, " he could not conceive 
 the reason of his avoiding him ! " I mentioned in my 
 memoir of Shelley, which appeared in The Athenseum, the 
 circumstance of this bet, and an anonymous writer 
 
376 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 questioned it by saying, that it was recorded in Moore's 
 Life that Lord Byron did pay a bet to Captain Hay of £50. 
 Had a similar wager been laid with, and lost to the same 
 gentleman, there is no question what the result would 
 have been, — Lord Byron would have acted as he did in 
 18—. 
 
 But Byron's mystifications were not confined to his 
 contemporaries. I have a note of a conversation which 
 escaped me, with him and Shelley on Dante. When it 
 suited Byron's purpose in defence of his Prophecy of Dante, 
 (see Moore's Life, p. 123,) he could talk a very different 
 language; though the expression of the opinions here 
 orally detailed, correspond with the sentiments contained 
 in a note to Don Juan. 
 
 " The Divine Comedy," said he, " is a scientific treatise of some 
 theological student, one monjent treating of angels, and the next of 
 demons, far the most interesting personages in his Drama ; shewing 
 that he had a better conception of Hell than Heaven ; in fact, the 
 Inferno is the only one of the trilogy that is read. It is true," he 
 added, "it might have pleased his contemporaries, and been sung 
 about the streets, as vfere the poems of Homer ; but at the present 
 day, either human nature is very much changed, or the poem is so 
 obscure, tiresome, and insupportable, that no one can read it for half- 
 an-hour together without yawning, and going to sleep over it like 
 Malagigi ; and the hundred times I have made the attempt to read 
 it, I have lost my labour. If we except the ' Pecchie chi uscino del 
 chiuso,' — the simile, 'Come d'autunno si levan le foglie,'— the Fran- 
 cesca di Eimini, the words, ' Colore oscuro,' &c., inscribed on the 
 portal of Hell,— the Death of Ugolino— the ' Si volge aU' aqua,' &c., 
 ^nd a dozen other passages, what is the rest of this yeiy comic 
 Divine Comedy ? ' A great poem ! ' you call it ; a great poem 
 indeed ! That should have a uniformity of design, a combination of 
 parts, all contributing to the development of the whole. The action 
 should go on increasing in beauty and power and interest. 
 
 " Has the Divina Commedia any of these characteristics ? Who can 
 read with patience, fourteen thousand lines, made up of prayers, 
 dialogues, and questions, without sticking fast in the bogs and 
 quicksands, and losing his way in the thousand turns and wind- 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. S77 
 
 ings of the inextricable labyrinths of his three-times-nine circles? 
 and of these fourteen thousand lines, more than two-thirds are, by the 
 confession of Fregoni, Algarotti, and Bettinello, defective and bad* ; 
 and yet, despite of this, the Italians carry their pedantry and 
 national pride to such a length, as to set up Dante as the standard 
 of perfection, to consider Dante as made for all time ; and think, as 
 Leigh Hunt and the Cockneys do of Shakspeare, that the language 
 came to a sta.nd-still with the god of their idolatry, and want to go 
 back to him." 
 
 That Shelley did not agree with Lord Byron in this 
 criticism, I need scarcely observe. He admitted, however, 
 as already recorded, that the Divine Comedy was a misty 
 and extravagant fiction, and redeemed only by its 
 " Fortunate Isles, laden with golden fruit." " But," said 
 he, "remember the time in which he wrote. He was 
 a giant. 
 
 Quel signer del' altissimo canto, 
 Chi sovra gli altri come aquila vola. 
 
 Eead the Paradiso, and parts of the Purgatorio, especially 
 the meeting with Matilda." 
 
 He afterwards told me that the more he read Dante, he 
 the more admired him. 
 
 He says in one of his Letters,^ that he excelled all poets, 
 except Shakspeare, in tenderness, sublimity, and ideal 
 beauty. In his Defence of Poetry, Shelley calls the 
 Apotheosis of Beatrice in the Paradiso, and the gradations 
 
 * I saw at Pickering's a copy of the Divina Commedia which had been 
 prepared by Ugo Poscolo for publication. There were hundreds and 
 hundreds of lines which with incredible labour and ingenuity had been 
 emendated by that eccentric, and unfortunate Poet. 
 
 ' In the revised copy Medwin reference to that or any edition of 
 
 struck out the reference "page Shelley's Letters, reveals a mis- 
 
 225," the occurrence of which in quotation. Shelley says " exquisite 
 
 the printed book confirms the tenderness, and sensibility [not 
 
 supposition that he was using the sublimity], and ideal beauty." It 
 
 original two-volume edition of the is ' in the letter to Hunt of 
 
 Essays, Letters, &o. Of course a Septeinber 3, 1819, 
 
378 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of his own love and her loveliness, by which, as by steps, 
 he figures himself to have ascended to the throne of the 
 Supreme Cause, as the most glowing images of modem 
 poetry ; calls the Paradiso a perfect hymn of everlasting 
 love, and thf poetry of Dante the bridge thrown over the 
 stream of time, which unites the modem and ancient 
 world. Nay, more, he admired Dante as the first re- 
 former, and classes him with Luther, calling him the 
 first awakener of Europe, and the creator of a language in 
 itself music. 
 
 It was during the latter part of my stay at Pisa, that 
 Byron formed his design of building a yacht. Shelley, 
 whom he consulted in all his private affairs, settled the 
 price of the vessel, to be built under the superintendence 
 of the naval architect of the Darsena at Genoa. His own 
 passion for boating, already strong enough, was doubly 
 excited by this idea of Byron's. "Williams contributed 
 also to foster the passion, and being acquainted with 
 Captain Eoberts, (the son of the celebrated Roberts, who 
 commanded one of Capt. Cook's ships in his voyage round 
 the world,) corresponded with him on the subject, and the 
 consequence was, that a schooner, but on a much smaller 
 scale, was ordered. The shape of the boat, modelled after 
 one of the man-of-war boats in the dock-yard, with some 
 variations in the build, was at length approved of. Her 
 dimensions were to be twenty-four feet long, eight broad, 
 and draught four feet of water. She was a beautiful craft 
 on paper, but to my mind far from safe, for her ballast, 
 two tons of lead, was to be let into her keel. Any one 
 acquainted with boating, must know that the only good 
 ballast is live ballast, as it is called, — water casks, that can 
 be shifted starboard or larboard, according to the heeling 
 of the vessel, and which, in cases of emergency, can be 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 379 
 
 thrown overboard to lighten her ; a ballast indeed that 
 scarcely requires this, for it will float. I need not enlarge 
 on this topic, but how far my criticism was justified by 
 the event, will soon appear. 
 
 After a parting dinner given me by Byron, I took leave 
 of my friends, with a promise of seeing them in the 
 summer. Williams seemed to me in a rapid decline, but 
 Shelley's health was wonderfully improved, and he ex- 
 hibited no symptoms of any disease that caused apprehen- 
 sion. His spirits, too, were comparatively good, and he 
 was looking forward — that gave a stimulus to them — to 
 the arrival of Leigh Hunt, of whom he frequently spoke 
 with the warmest regard, and often took a delight in 
 looking at a portrait of him, which he had received during 
 my first visit. 
 
 A few days from my arrival at Eome, on the 20th 
 March, there had occurred a circumstance at Pisa, which 
 caused a great sensation among the English, — ever ready 
 and willing to believe anything against Lord Byron, — 
 owing to a mis-statement of the facts in the Courier 
 Francais, and several other papers, among the rest 
 Galignani's Messenger, in which ic was stated, that in 
 a quarrel between Lord Byron and an officer of dragoons, 
 a servant of Lord Byron's had stabbed him, and that he 
 had died of his wounds. This story, though I did not 
 credit it, greatly annoyed me, and I immediately wrote 
 to Lord Byron for the particulars, in order that I might 
 contradict it from authority ; in answer to which he sent 
 me by return of post the affidavits of Shelley and the 
 rest of the party present, who it seems had been grossly 
 insulted, not by an officer, but one Sergeant-major Masi, 
 who, though they were unarmed, struck some of them 
 with his sabre, especially Shelley, who received a cut on 
 
380 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 his head that felled him from his horse. According to 
 another affidavit of Mr. Crawford, "as they were all 
 riding together after this rencontre, on the Lung' Arno, 
 where a crowd was collected, high words passing betvp^een 
 Lord Byron and the Sergeant-major, who was about to 
 cut him down with his sword. Lord Byron's servants, who 
 were waiting for their master at the door of the Lanfran- 
 chi palace, dragged the aggressor off his horse into the 
 hall, and then one of them slightly wounded him with 
 a pitchfork." Mr. Moore seems to have suppressed Lord 
 Byron's letters 6n this subject, on which he could not have 
 failed to have written. The tranquillity at Pisa, owing to 
 this unlucky squabble, had been much disturbed, not only 
 by anxiety about the life of the sergeant-major, but by 
 the many sinister reports and suspicions, however ill- 
 founded, to which that affair gave rise. Although the 
 wounded man recovered, his friends vowed vengeance 
 with the dagger, not only on Lord Byron, but on Shelley, 
 and all the English who had formed the cavalcade. The 
 judicial enquiry too was most annoying ; all Lord Byron's 
 servants, except the coachman, were arrested, but no 
 evidence being adduced against them, they were released. 
 
 Lord Byron was advised by the police to quit Pisa for 
 a time. He complied, and took a villa at Monte Nero, 
 near Leghorn ; but after a six weeks abode there returned 
 to the Casa Lanfranchi. 
 
 Lord Byron, naturally kind and benevolent, treated his 
 domestics less like menials than equals, and hence the 
 zeal, which, after the manner of the Italian retainers of 
 old, often, as on this occasion, overstepped the bounds of 
 devotion, they displayed. The Tuscan police are not very 
 remarkable for clear-sightedness, and overlooked the right 
 culprit. Some years afterwards, when I was at Sienna, 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 381 
 
 a mendicant with a wooden leg, who was begging his way 
 to Rome, his native city, called on me for alms, and when 
 I had given him a trifle, said, — " Do you not remember 
 me ? I was Lord Byron's coachman at Pisa, and used to 
 drive you and Signer Shelley every day to the Con- 
 tadino's." 
 
 The man was so much changed, that it was some time 
 before I could recognise his features ; but at length did 
 so, and after some conversation, he confessed with all the 
 pride of a Guelph or, Ghibelline, that he had avenged his 
 master's insult. 
 
 Some years after, I related to the Countess Guiccioli, at 
 Florence, this anecdote, and she told me that a man 
 answering my description had also called on her, but that 
 she thought him an impostor. He, however, told me so 
 many things which could only be known by an individual 
 in Lord Byron's service, that I entertain no doubt of his 
 identity. He spoke of Shelley's being at Ravenna before 
 his lord's departure, of the fondness of little AUegra for 
 Shelley, her being sent to the convent at Ravenna, and I 
 know not what besides, respecting his master's Franciscas 
 and Katinkas, who have been immortalised in the page of 
 Moore, and with their portraits so splendidly engraved, 
 will go down to posterity with the Fornarina. 
 
 But to return to Shelley. — He, after my departure from 
 Pisa, had employed himself in translating some scenes of 
 Faust, being led thereto by Retschs's Outlines, of which 
 he says, — ^ 
 
 ^ The extract is from Shelley's extract is from the same letter, and 
 letter of the 10th of April 1822 to precedes the passage about the 
 John Gisborne. The word satisfied etchings. The letter can be con- 
 in the first line should be satiated ; suited in my edition of Shelley's 
 and there are other trifling inao- Prose Works (Vol. iv) or in 
 curacies, BViahaa What etchings! for Mr. Ingpen's Collection of Shelley's 
 What etchings those arel The next Letters. 
 
382 LIFE OP SHELIiEY. 
 
 " What etchings ! I am never satisfied with looking at them, and 
 I fear it is the only sort of translation of which Faust is susceptible. 
 I never perfectly understood the Hartz mountain scene until I saw 
 the etching ; and then Margaret in the summer house with Faust ! 
 The artist makes me envy his happiness, that he can sketch such 
 things with calmness, which I only dare look upon once, and which 
 made my brain swim round, only to touch the leaf on the opposite 
 side of which I knew it was figured. Whether it be that the artist 
 has surpassed Faust, or that the pencil surpasses language in some 
 subjects, I know not ; or that I am more affected by a visible image, 
 but the etching certainly excited me far more than the poem it 
 illustrated." " Do you remember,'' he adds, " the 54th Letter of the 
 first part of La Nouvelle Heloise'? GOthe in a subsequent scene 
 undoubtedly had that letter in his mind, and this etching is an 
 idealism of it. So much for the world of shadows !" 
 
 Shelley also found, as already mentioned in the Con- 
 versations, (for what Byron said there was derived from 
 him,) a striking resemblance between Faust and Cypriano, 
 and says in one of his letters, — 
 
 " If I were to acknowledge Coleridge's distinction, I should say 
 Gothe was the greater philosopher, and Calderon the greater poet. 
 Cyprian evidently furnished the germ of Faust, as Faust * may furnish 
 the germ of other poems, although it is as different from it in the 
 structure as the acorn is from the oak. I have, imagine my presump- 
 tion, translated several scenes from both, as the basis of a paper for 
 our journal. I am," he adds, "well content with those from 
 Calderon, which, in fact, gave me but little trouble, but those from 
 Faust I feel how imperfect a representation, even with all the licence 
 I assume to figure to myself how Gothe would have written in 
 English, my words convey. No one but Coleridge is capable of the 
 work." 
 
 * Gothe in his Conversations with Eckerman[n] and Soret says that 
 I had never read much less did I think of it while I was writing Fatist,^ 
 
 ' This ludicrously expressed note German's denial forward in his Life 
 
 seema to mean that the Conrersations of Goethe when discussing at some 
 
 represent Goethe as saying that he length the dissimilarity of Faust 
 
 had never read Calderon's drama. and El Magico. It is much more 
 
 Without an exact reference I should likely that Med win was wrong 
 
 be loth to record my belief in this than that Lewes either wilfully or 
 
 statement of Medwin's, especially accidentally ignored so important 
 
 as Lewes does not bring the great an avowal on Goethe's part. 
 
LIFE OB" SHELLEY. 383 
 
 These scenes of Shelley's, which were originally des- 
 tined for the new publication, afterwards appeared in The 
 Liberal. The translation has been unmercifully handled 
 by Mr. Hayward. Of our gifted poet's Prologue in 
 Heaven, Mr. Hayward says, " it has no great merits, and 
 some mistakes." Had he compared, unblinded by pre- 
 judice, his own bald and bare version, a sacrilege to the 
 memory of Grothe, of — 
 
 Es weehaelt Paradieses helle 
 Mit tiefer Echauervoller Naoht,— 
 
 with Shelley's poetical one, — 
 
 Alternating Elysian brightneaa 
 With deep and dreadful night,—- 
 
 he would have seen that Shelley really did understand 
 and feel the beauty of the passage. 
 
 "Adornment" also for Pracht is quite as good as 
 "pomp," though neither express its full meaning, ~and 
 Mr. Hayward is very partial to himself when he thinks 
 his own " deep base of the rocks " better than Shelley's — 
 " The sea foams in broad waves from its deep bottom." 
 
 For my part, I cannot consider Shelley so " monstrous 
 a malefactor " as Mr. Hayward calls him ; and one thing 
 is certain, that the adoption of our great poet's words 
 — aye, sometimes^of whole lines, — has infused into 
 Mr. Hayward's "Prolog in Himmel," and Scene in the 
 Hartz Mountains, a spirit vainly looked for elsewhere. 
 
 Those who think " My Cousin the Snake " better than 
 "My Old Paramour the Snake," are at liberty to adopt 
 Mr. Hayward's literal reading, in which he so much 
 prides himself, — and his vanity is egregious. But in 
 rendering iEschylus's Kaais irrjXov kopis, who would spoil 
 a fine passage by translating it, " Dust, Sister of Mud ? " 
 The four lines beginning Das Werdende, are perhaps 
 
384) LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 among the most diiKcult in tlie drama ; bnt Das Werdende 
 is not as Mr. Hayward gives it,—" The Creative Essence." 
 Das Werdende is " that whicli commences to exist — that 
 which the actual moment produces." Shelley's — 
 
 Let that which ever operates and lives, 
 Clasp you within the limits' of its love, 
 And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts, 
 The floating phantoms of its loveliness, 
 
 is to my mind satisfactory. Mr. Hayward had many 
 coadjutors in his task, Shelley none ; but surely his high 
 authorities never could have agreed in making Margaret 
 say, — "she gave her little, sister suck," or have been 
 satisfied with such expressions as these in a chorus of 
 angels : " Joy to the mortal, whom the perishable, sneaking, 
 hereditary imperfections enveloped;" or, "thou hast 
 destroyed it, this beautiful world, with thy strong fist ! " 
 It is no unfair retaliation on Mr. Hayward thus to 
 criticise his labours. 
 
 Notwithstanding his captious objections, Shelley's 
 translations are of the highest order, — so high, that all 
 must regret they were so few. He alone of all men that 
 the present age has produced, was fitted to take up 
 Gothe's mantle. But the best proof of the excellency of 
 Shelley's version, is, that Gothe himself is said to have 
 expressed his entire approbation of these scenes of 
 Shelley's. 
 
 The rock on which all have split who have attempted 
 to render Faust, has been an overscrupulous regard to 
 metrical arrangement, which he, with his exquisite taste, 
 avoided. Others do not seem to have been aware that 
 the genius of German and English poetry is so widely 
 different, that what" produces a magical effect in the 
 metre of one language, appears namby-pamby and puerile 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 385. 
 
 in tlie other. Milton made the experiment in Horace's 
 Ode to Pyrrha, — failed, and never made a second attempt. 
 Bulwer tried to render Schiller line by line, which has 
 given not only a stiffness to his version, but renders 
 much of it obscure, not to say unintelligible. In his 
 "Ideale und das Leben," I was at a loss to find the 
 original. But I have been led too far out of my way. 
 Shelley needs no justification. Faust yet remains to be 
 translated; but who would venture to put anything he 
 could produce in competition with Shelley's Hartz 
 Mountain scene. "There is no greater mistake than to 
 supj)ose," — I use Shelley's own words,— "that the know- 
 ledge of a language is all that is required in a translator. 
 He must be a poet, and as great a one as his original, in 
 order to do justice to him." Hence the wretched plalSgter 
 casts of Faust, more especially Anster's, so bepuffed into 
 celebrity by Blackwood. 
 
 Shelley's translation from Calderon is equally a master- 
 piece, rendering the force and colour of the first part of the 
 Magico Prodigioso, with surpassing truth. There must 
 have been something " rotten " indeed in The Liberal, not 
 to be saved by these Versions, and The Vision of Judgment. 
 
 Previous to Lord Byron's temporary migration to 
 Leghorn, Shelley had broken up his establishment at 
 Pisa, and on the 28th April, writes to Mrs. Shelley, then 
 at Spezzia, with the "Williams's : — 
 
 "I am at this moment," he says, "arrived at Lerici, 
 where I am necessarily detained, waiting the furniture, 
 which left Pisa last night. It would not do to leave 
 affairs here in an impiccio, great as is my anxiety to see 
 you. How are you, my best love? how h^ve you 
 sustained the trials of the journey? Answer me this 
 question, and how my little babe and C[laire] are .? " 
 
 SHELLEY C C 
 
386 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 After overcoming the difficulties of the Dogana, they 
 took the Casa Magni, near Sarzana, of which I shall 
 hereafter give a description. On the 12th May, Williams, 
 in a journal that is very interesting, records the arrival 
 of the long-expected boat. 
 
 "While -walking with the harbour-master of Lerici on the terrace," 
 he says, " we descried a strange sail coming round the point of Porto 
 Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley's boat. She had left 
 Genoa on Thursday, but had been driven back by the prevailing head 
 winds ; a Mr. Hislop, and two English seamen brought her round, and 
 speak most highly of her performance. See does indeed excite my 
 surprise and admiration. She fetches whatever she looks sd. Shelley 
 and I made a stretch off^the land to try her. In short, we have now," 
 he concludes, " a perfect plaything for the summer." 
 
 On June 12th, Williams says in the same journal, — 
 
 " Saw a vessel between the straits of Porto Venere, like a man-of- 
 war-brig ; she proved to be the Bolivar, (Lord Byron's yacht.) SaOed 
 to try the vessels. In speed, no chance with her ; but I think we keep 
 our wind as well. This is the most beautiful craft I ever saw for the 
 size." 
 
 "Thursday, June 20th. 
 
 "Shelley hears from Hunt, that he is arrived at Grenoa, having 
 sailed from England on the 13th May." 
 
 I have said that I shall not enter into any remarks on 
 Mr. L. Hunt's grievances. Shelley seems to have foreseen 
 that the periodical would fail. " Between ourselves," he 
 says to 0. T.,^ " I greatly fear that this alliance will not 
 succeed, for I who have never been regarded as more 
 than a link of the two thunderbolts, cannot now consent 
 to be even that ; and how long the alliance may continue, 
 I will not prophecy. Pray do not hint my doubts on the 
 subject to any one, or they may do harm to Hunt, and 
 they may be groundless." 
 
 ' These initials were placed by letters to Horace Smith, those of 
 Mary Shelley at the head of two April 11 and June 29, 1822. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 387 
 
 " Shelley," says Mrs. Shelley in one of her notes, " was 
 eager to see him. I was confined to my room with severe 
 illness, and could not move. It was agreed, that Shelley 
 and Williams should go to Leghorn in the boat. Strange 
 that no fear of danger crossed our minds. Living on the 
 sea-shore, the ocean became a plaything ; as a child may 
 play with a lighted stick, till a spark enflames a forest, 
 and spreads destruction over all-, so did we fearlessly and 
 blindly tamper with' danger, and make a game of the 
 dangers of the ocean;" and adds, that "the running 
 down the line of coast to Leghorn, gave no more notion 
 of peril, than a fair-weather inland navigation would 
 have done to those who had never seen the sea." 
 
 On the 1st July, they parted. "If ever shadow of 
 future ill darkened the present hour, such," remarks 
 Mrs. Shelley, "came over my mind, when they went. 
 During the whole of our stay at Lerici, an intense 
 presentiment of coming evil brooded over my mind, and 
 covered this beautiful place, and genial summer, with the 
 shadow of coming misery. I had vainly struggled with 
 these emotions — they seemed accounted for by my illness ; 
 but at this hour of separation, they recurred with renewed 
 violence. I did not anticipate danger from them, but 
 a vague expectation of evil shook me to agony, and I 
 could scarcely bring myself to let them go. The day 
 was calm and clear, and a breeze rising at twelve o'clock, 
 they weighed for Leghorn. They made the run in seven 
 hours and a half. I have heard that Shelley all the time 
 was in brilliant spirits. Not long before, talking of 
 presentiments, he had said the only one he had ever 
 found infallible, was the certain event of some evil fortune 
 when he felt particularly joyous. Yet if ever ffite 
 whispered of coming disasters, such inaudible, but not 
 
 cc2 
 
388 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of the 
 place seemed unearthly in its excess; the distance we 
 were from all signs of civilisation, the sea at our feet, its 
 murmurs and its roaring ever in our ears, all these things 
 led the mind to brood over strange things, and lifting it 
 from every-day life, caused it to be familiar with the 
 unreal ! " 
 
 That Shelley was not free from these presentiments, 
 which shook Mrs. Shelley, is evident from lines which 
 he wrote almost immediately before this fatal voyage, 
 beginning, — 
 
 When the lamp is shattered, 
 
 and ending — 
 
 Its passions will rook thee, 
 
 As the storms rock the ravens on high ; 
 
 Bright reason will mock thee, 
 
 Like the sun from a wintry sky, 
 
 From thy roof every rafter 
 
 Will rot ; and thine eagle home 
 
 Leave the [sic for thee] naked to laughter, 
 
 When leaves fall, and cold winds come. 
 
 The only two letters which Shelley wrote during his 
 absence, were addressed, one to Mrs. Shelley, and the 
 other to Mrs. "Williams. His indecision about his own 
 plans, caused by a fresh exile of the Gambas, and by the 
 tracasserie respecting The Liberal and Hunt's affairs, on 
 which he placed his whole dependence, detained Shelley 
 unwillingly ; and he says, that Lord Byron must of course 
 furnish the funds, as he cannot, and that he cannot depart 
 without the necessary explanations and arrangements 
 due to such a situation as Hunt's (aggravated as it was, 
 by Mrs. Hunt's desperate state of health). These, he 
 concludes by saying, he must procure, and that Lord 
 Byron offers him the copyright of The Vision of Judgment 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 389 
 
 for the first number. This offer, if sincere, he prognosti- 
 cates, "is more than enough to set up the journal, and if 
 sincere, will set everything right ! " How much he erred 
 in this anticipation was seen by the sequel ; but the tide 
 of cant was at that time running so strong, that perhaps 
 all the talent in the world would only have prolonged the 
 fate of that periodical. It seems, however, that Shelley 
 had on mature reflection abandoned the idea of joining in 
 it, "partly from pride, not wishing to have the air of 
 acquiring readers for his poetry, by associating it with 
 the compositions of more popular writers, or because he 
 might feel shackled in the free ei^ression of his opinions, 
 if any friends were to be compromised. By those 
 opinions, carried even to their utmost extent, he wished 
 to live and die, as being in his conviction not only true, 
 but such as would conduce to the moral improvement 
 and happiness of mankind." Mrs. Shelley adds that 
 " the sale of the work might meanwhile either really or 
 supposedly be injured by the free expression of his 
 thoughts, and this evil he resolved to avoid." 
 
 His letter to Mr[s]. "Williams closes with the following 
 passages, the last of which may be considered a singular 
 prognostic. 
 
 " I fear you are solitary and melancholy at Villa Magni, 
 and in the intervals of the greater and more serious 
 distress in which I am compelled to sympathize here, 
 I figure to myself the countenance which has been the 
 source of such consolation to me, shadowed by a veil of 
 sorrow. How soon those hours passed, and how slowly 
 they return to pass sosoon away {sic for again\, perhaps 
 for ever, in which we have lived together so intimately, so 
 happily ! " And speaking of these strange, ominous fore- 
 bodings and fears, although I am no doater on dreams, to 
 
390 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 use the words of Southey, " there are dreams wliicli are 
 monitory above tlie power of fancy, and impressed on 
 us by some superior influence ; " and of such were the 
 presentiments to which Shelley was subject. 
 
 His thoughtful regard for, and sacrifice of his own 
 happiness, to that of others, is also made manifest in this 
 letter, in which he says, " I shall urge Williams [sic for 
 him] to sail with the first fair wind, without expecting me. 
 I have thus the pleasure of contributing to your happiness 
 when deprived of every other, and of leaving you no other 
 subject of regret but the absence of one scarcely worth 
 regretting." 
 
 This half-formed plan of making Williams his fore- 
 runner, it seems, was abandoned, and on the 8th day of 
 July, the friends, whose epitaph Shelley had written, got 
 under weigh for San Terenzo.^ 
 
 They were two friends, whose life was undivided. 
 So let them mingle. Sweetly they had glided 
 Under, the grave. Let not their dust be parted. 
 For their two hearts in life were single-hearted. 
 
 How prophetic was that epitaph! and well might he 
 have apostrophised the ocean with — 
 
 • Medwin uses the form St. Arm- For their two breasts in life 
 
 zo throughout to indicate San Ter- were single-hearted, 
 
 enzo. This version of the epitaph mi -m- j • ■ ^ ■ t ^ t 
 
 may perchance have been written T'lL^^'^'"''^ variant might be re- 
 
 by Shelley: probably more than ITtt f "T""""™ '"SflP'u'J 
 
 one manuscript exists. The best r^V^rR^i; .^^'-^ Shelley had 
 
 version is th'at of the holograph in *u^ ?°*f ^°^^ /"l question when 
 
 Mr. Bixby's Note Book No^I F f^^/"'* published the epitaph in 
 
 10^4 ; and, if that was her sole 
 
 These are two friends whose lives source, she must have misread 
 
 were undivided— ireasts for hearts, which scarcely 
 
 So let their memory be now makes sense, although it has satis- 
 
 they have glided fied editors and critics so far. Al- 
 
 Under the grave, let not their beit witten in pencil, the words are 
 
 bones be parted all absolutely unmistakable. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 391 
 
 Unfathomable sea ! 
 That sick of prey, yet howlest on for more, 
 Vomiting thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore, 
 Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm. 
 
 Who shall put forth on thee, 
 
 Inhospitable sea?^ 
 
 The weather, -which had been for some days calm and 
 sultry, all at once changed from a Sirocco to a Mistral, 
 but Shelley, who had no dread of his favourite element, 
 and was anxious to return to those he loved, was not to 
 be deterred from his purpose. The sky indeed bore so 
 unpropitious an aspect, that he had been advised to put 
 off his departure, at least till the Bolivar could be got 
 under weigh, to convoy them. His eagerness, however, 
 admitted of no delay, and with a fair but faint wind, they 
 hoisted all sail, and left the port, — an English boy added 
 to the boat's crew, by name Charles Vivian. 
 
 It is a strange coincidence, that I should have been 
 exposed to the same squall, which proved fatal to two of 
 my oldest and best friends. I embarked on the 5th day 
 of July with a party with whom I was acquainted, on 
 board a merchant vessel we had hired at Naples for the 
 voyage to Genoa ; during the first two days, we had very 
 light winds, lying becalmed one whole night off the 
 Pontine Marshes, where some of our passengers were 
 attacked with malaria, but which, though sleeping on 
 deck in my cloak, I escaped. On the fourth day, the tail 
 of the Sirocco brought us into the gulf of Genoa. That gulf 
 is subject in the summer and autumn, to violent gusts of 
 wind, and our captain, an experienced sailor, as the breeize 
 died away, foresaw that we should not get into port that 
 
 1 This might possibly be a very it is a characteristic mistranscrip- 
 imperfeet reproduction of a draft of tion of the orthodoi text, adapted 
 Time ; but I incline to the view that to suit the Medwinian context. 
 
392 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 night. The appearance of the sky was very threatening. 
 Over the Apennines, whi9h encircle Genoa as with an 
 amphitheatre, hung masses on masses up-piled, like those 
 I have seen after the explosion of a mine, of dark clouds, 
 which seemed to confirm his opinion. The squall at 
 length came, the precise time of which I forget, but it 
 was in the afternoon ; and neither in the bay of Biscay, 
 or Bengal, nor between the Tropics, nor on the Line, did 
 I ever witness a severer one ; and being accompanied by 
 a heavy rain, it was the more felt. We had, however, 
 close-reefed, and were all snug and in comparatively 
 smooth water, in consequence of the squall blowing right 
 off the shore. We must have been five or six miles from 
 the bay of Spezzia when it burst on us. As I stood with 
 the glass upon deck, only one sail was visible to leeward ; 
 its rig differed from the ordinary one of the Medi- 
 terranean, the latine [sic for lateen], and from the white- 
 ness of her canvas, and build, we took her for an English 
 pleasure-boat. She was hugging the wind with a press of 
 sail, and our skipper observed, that she would soon have it. 
 As he spoke, a fierce gust drove furiously along, blackening 
 the water, and soon enfolded the small craft in its misty 
 arms ; or in Shelley's own words, — 
 
 Enveloping the ocean like a pall, 
 
 It blotted out the vessel from the view. 
 
 Then came a lull, and as soon as we looked in the 
 direction of the schooner, no trace of her was visible. 
 
 Captain Roberts's account tallies with this. He watched 
 from the lighthouse of Leghorn, with a glass, the vessel 
 in its homeward track; they were off Via Eeggio, at 
 some distance from shore, when a storm was driven over 
 the sea. It enveloped this and several larger vessels in 
 darkness. When the cloud passed onwards, Eoberts 
 
* LIFE OF SHELLEY. 393 
 
 looked again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the 
 ocean, except this little schooner, which had vanished. 
 
 Little did I suppose, though I had heard from Shelley 
 and Williams at Naples, that they had received the boat, 
 and were settled at Villa Magni; that this schooner, 
 which disappeared, was Shelley's. That she should have 
 carried so much canvas, for her gaff-topsails^ were set, 
 ■ might be considered unsailor-like ; but it must be re- 
 membered, that the coast is very shallow, and full of 
 reefs, which stretch out a considerable distance from 
 land, and that it was necessary to carry all sail in order 
 to keep clear of the surf, that rises very high along the 
 coast. The only chance of their safety would have been 
 to tack or wear, and drive before the wind, and return to 
 Leghorn. But this idea probably never entered into 
 Shelley's or Williams's mind, and from my knowledge of 
 both their characters, they would, I am sure, have incurred 
 any risk rather than have given up the voyage. Perhaps 
 they were insensible to the danger till it was too late. 
 
 After tacking about all night, and the best part of the 
 next day, we at length beat into the harbour of Genoa. 
 There was a rumour at the Hotel de 1' Europe, that an 
 English schooner had been lost, and two Englishmen 
 drowned in the gale near Lerici, but it never struck me 
 that this schooner was Shelley's, and that he and Williams 
 were the individuals ; and after writing to them at the 
 Villa Magni, I proceeded on my journey to Geneva. 
 There, many days after my arrival, I heard from Mrs. 
 Shelley the melancholy news of her irreparable loss, and 
 without delay recrossed the Alps. At Spezzia the people 
 
 ' This should probably be gaff-top- undecked yawl " Don Juan '' would 
 sail in the singular. A gaff-topsail have been preposterous, 
 on the mizzen mast of the little 
 
394 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 of the place told me where the bodies of my friends had 
 been cast on shore : they had been thrown on the beach, 
 not together, but several miles apart, and the English boy's 
 five miles from that of Shelley. The following verses, 
 written in his eighteenth year,^ recurred to me, which seem 
 entirely out of place where they stand, and as poets 
 sometimes have been inspired by a sort of second-sight, 
 were prophetic that the ocean would be his grave. 
 
 To-morrow comes ! 
 Cloud upon cloud with dark and deepening mass 
 Roll o'er the blackened waters ; the deep roar 
 Of distant thunder mutters awfully; 
 Tempest unfolds his pinions o'er the gloom 
 That shrouds the boiling surge ; the pitiless fiend 
 With all his winds and lightnings tracks his prey, 
 The torn deep yawns— the vessel finds a grave 
 Beneath its jagged jaws. 
 
 I arrived at Pisa some hours later than I could have 
 wished, for Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt and Trelawny, 
 had been engaged since the morning in burning Shelley's 
 remains. The history of this funeral pjrre has been so 
 much misrepresented, that I shall premise it with a few 
 observations. I^ourteen ^ days elapsed between the loss of 
 the schooner and the finding of the corpses of my friends, 
 and neither of them were in a state to be removed to 
 consecrated ground; but an obstacle to such removal 
 under any circumstances, was, that by the quarantine 
 laws, their friends were not permitted to have possession 
 of their relics. The laws with respect to everything cast 
 
 ' This is a part of the Quem Mab right. The " Don Juan " foundered 
 
 legend as recorded by Medwin. on the 8th of July 1822 ; and 
 
 The verses are in the fourth section, Shelley's corpse was found on the 
 
 25etseq. But for wj*A read in in line 18th. There has been a good deal 
 
 26 and for jaws read gulph at the end of confusion about this. See Dow- 
 
 of the extract. den's Life, Vol. II, especially page 
 
 * Fourteen days is certainly not 528. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 395 
 
 on land by the sea, being, that it must be burned, in 
 order to prevent the possibility of any remnant bringing 
 the plague into Italy. 
 
 A consultation took place between Byron, Hunt and 
 Trelawny, on this subject. It had not only been the oft- 
 repeated wish of Shelley to be buried at Home, and there 
 rejoin his favourite child "William, who lay there, but he 
 had left it as a sacred charge to Lord Byron, whom he 
 had appointed as executor to his will, to fulfil this of6.ce 
 of friendship for him.^ Even had the state of Shelley's 
 coi«e admitted of being transported to Eome, they were 
 assured by the authorities that no representation of thei,rs 
 would have altered the law ; and were it not for the kind 
 and unwearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, our charge 
 d'affaires at Florence, permission would not have been 
 gained for Mrs. Shelley to receive the ashes, after they 
 had been consumed. I say, I arrived at Pisa too late. 
 True to his engagement, Byron and his friends had gone 
 that day to perform the singular and pious duty of 
 watching his funeral pyre, in order that the ashes might 
 be sent to the English cemetery at Home. They came to 
 a spot marked by an old withered pine-tree, and near it, 
 on the beach, stood a solitary ruined hut, covered with 
 thatch. The place was well chosen for a poet's grave. 
 Some few weeks before, I had ridden with Shelley and 
 Byron to the very spot, which I have since visited in sad 
 pilgrimage. Before them lay a wide expanse of the blue 
 Mediterranean, with the islands of Elba and Gorgona 
 
 1 In the capacity of j pint Execu- to the provision to be made for 
 
 tor with Thomas Lore Peacocli Maiy. Details on this subject will 
 
 Byron requested Godwin to call on be found in Mr. Prothero's edition 
 
 John Hanson on the subject of of the Letters and Journals of Byron, 
 
 Shelley's affairs. He also wrote to Vol. VI, 1901, p. 127, afld in Mrs. 
 
 Hanson, who was his own solicitor, Marshall's Life and Letters of Mary, 
 
 instructinghimto apply to Whitton, ii, 55, 65, 66, and 67, 
 who was Sir Timothy Shelley's, as 
 
396 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 visible in front ; Lord Byron's yacht, tlie Bolivar, riding 
 at anchor at some distance in the offing. On the other 
 side appeared an almost illimitable sandy wilderness, and 
 uninhabitable, only broken here and there by some 
 stunted shrubs, twisted by the sea-breeze, and stunted by 
 the barrenness and drought of the ground in which they 
 strove to grow. At equidistance, along the. coast, rose 
 high square towers, for the double purpose of protecting 
 the coast from smugglers, and enforcing the quarantine 
 regulations. This view was completed by a range of the 
 far-off Italian Alps, that from their many folded and 
 volcanic character, as well as from their marble summits, 
 gave them the appearance of glittering snow ; to finish 
 the picture, and as a foreground, was placed a remarkable 
 group. 
 
 Lord Byron with some soldiers of the coast guard, 
 stood about the burning pyre, and Leigh Hunt, whose 
 feelings and nerves could not carry him through the 
 scene of horror, lying back in the carriage; the four post- 
 horses panting with the heat of the noonday sun, and 
 the fierceness of the fire. The solemness of the whole 
 ceremony was the more felt by the shrieks of a solitary 
 curlew, which perhaps attracted by the corpse, wheeled 
 in narrow circles round the pile, so narrow that it might 
 have been struck with the hand. The bird was so 
 fearless, that it could not have been driven away. I am 
 indebted to one of the party present, for the interesting 
 particulars of this scene, but must add to it Leigh Hunt's 
 account. He says — 
 
 " The weather was beautifully fine. The Mediterranean, now soft 
 and liquid, kissed the shore, as if to make peace with it. The yellow 
 sand and blue sky entirely contrasted with one another, marble 
 mountains touched the air with coolness, and the flame of the fire 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 397 
 
 bore towards Heaven its vigorous amplitude, -waving and quivering 
 with the brightness of inconceivable beauty. It seemed as if it 
 contained the glassy essence of volatility. One might have expected 
 a sun-bright countenance to look out of it, coming once more before it 
 departed, to thank the friends who had done their duty." 
 
 I have understood tliat Leigli" Hunt was mucli offended 
 at the account above given respecting the carriage, but 
 why I am at a loss to guess. To what purpose should he 
 have stood for some hours by the side of the scorching 
 furnace, when there were so many others of stronger 
 nerves, and of better health, present ? This extreme 
 sensitiveness on his part is much out of place, for neither 
 my informant nor myself had the slightest intention of 
 throwing on him a taunt, or taxing him with the slightest 
 dereliction of duty. His regard for Shelley is not to be 
 questioned. The very excess of feeling that he displayed, 
 might, in default of other proofs, have best testified it. 
 
 But Byron was unable long to withstand the sight, or 
 perhaps the heat, and by way of distraction, swam off to 
 his yacht. 
 
 "Writing to Mr. Moore, he says, — 
 
 "The other day, at Via Reggio," — he does not specify the day of 
 the burning, — "I thought proper to swim off to my schooner, the 
 Bolivar, in the offing, and thence to shore again, about three miles or 
 better, in all. As it was at midday, under a broiling sun, the conse- 
 quence has been a feverish attack ; " and then he adds, in another para- 
 graph of the same letter, though not connecting the burning with the 
 swimming, — "We have* been burning the bodies of Shelley and 
 Williams. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such 
 a funeral pyre has on a desert shore, with mountains in the background, 
 and the sea before, — the singular appearance the salt and frankincense 
 give to the flames.'' 
 
 Much objection has been started to these accessories to 
 
 * As I have pointed out elsewhere this ham of Moore's should doubt- 
 (Letters of Edward John Trelawny, less be had, which does connect 
 Oxford University Press, 1910, p. 14), the burning with the swimming. 
 
398 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 the funeral pyre, whioli have heen condemned as bearing 
 the character of a heathen rite ; but without them it would 
 not only have been dangerous to have assisted at the 
 ceremony, but from the state of the body it would have 
 been intolerable. 
 
 In the evening I saw Lord Byron. He was in a high 
 state of fever, from the excitement of the day, combined 
 with exposure for some hours to the sun, in swimming 
 and floating. He was, indeed, almost amphibious, and I 
 have often thought that he must have possessed, as is 
 sometimes known, a peculiar and natural buoyancy,* for 
 he could remain for hours in the water, as he had done 
 that day. The next morning, save and except some 
 blisters, which he said were not confined to his face, he 
 was pretty well recovered. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley and her son Percy, and Mrs. "Williams and 
 her two children, had already arrived at Pisa, and it was 
 a melancholy satisfaction to hear their narrative of this 
 tragedy, that threw for them a shadow over the world. 
 During more than a week, passed with them and Lord 
 Byron, we canvassed the whole sad catastrophe, and I 
 learnt further particulars of the loss of the 
 
 fatal and perfidious bark, 
 Built in the eclipse, and rigged -with curses dark, 
 \ V^ That laid so low that sacred head. 
 
 '^ it would seem that both Shelley and WUliams had" 
 been alike insensible to the squall, for the boat was seen 
 to go down with all her sails set. They could not, there- 
 fore, have anticipated it, and must have kept a very bad 
 
 * Lord H. tells me that when he was at Venice, he saw a crowd of 
 persons watching a torch moving on the Lagune, and found that it indi- 
 cated the presence of Lord Byron, who was swimming with one arm, the 
 other lifting the flambeau. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 399 
 
 look out, as proved afterwards by Eoberts's discovering 
 her, sunk in ten fathoms water, — not capsized, or injured ; 
 and I may here mention that he possessed himself of her, 
 and decked her, and sailed in her, but found her unsea- 
 worthy, and that her shattered planks now lie rotting on 
 the shore of one of the Ionian Islands, on which she was 
 wrecked. But hoping to be excused this anac[h]ronism, I 
 will go on to say, that Williams was an expert swimmer, 
 and had, as the boat was filling, found time partially to 
 undress himself, or might have done so in the water, nor 
 ' can there be a doubt that he made every effort to save his 
 life — perhaps that of his friend, whilst Shelley, who could 
 never learn to swim, had been reading to the last moment, 
 quite unconscious or heedless of danger, and lost in 
 abstraction like a second Archimedes ; for when found, 
 he had his right hand and arm locked in his waistcoat, 
 where he had in haste thrust a volume of Keats's Poems, 
 open at The Eve of St. Agnes, a poem which he wonder- 
 fiilly admired, and after the death of his brother poet, 
 carried continually about with him the book. Mrs. 
 "Williams painted to me the days and nights of horror 
 herself and Mrs. Shelley had passed during the eight days 
 of suspense that intervened between the loss of the 
 schooner and some of the wreck being cast on shore. 
 
 " Then," says Mrs. Shelley, " the speU was snapped. It 
 was all over — an interval of agonizing doubt, of days 
 passed in miserable journies to gain tidings, — of hopes 
 that took firmer root even as they were more baseless, 
 were changed to the certainty of the death that eclipsed 
 all happiness for the survivors for evermore." In the 
 meanwhile, their absence was attributed first to the rough 
 weather, and they consoled themselves with the reflection, 
 that they might have deferred their departure from 
 
400 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 this circumstance. Then came a letter of enquiry from 
 Trelawny, which soon dissipated that conjecture. He 
 arrived to console them with the thought that Shelley 
 and "Williams had taken refuge in one of the islands, 
 Grorgona, or perhaps Sardinia, and their eyes were con- 
 tinually directed seaward, in the hope of descrying the 
 well-known sail." Day followed day, — 
 
 0! 
 
 The hours for those who watched for him. 
 
 With chill forebodings, and with fluttering hearts : 
 
 There lay the uniform, blank sea, that gave 
 
 No certain tidings, but left ample space 
 
 For miserable doubt, report, and hope 
 
 Beyond all hope. 
 
 But the fatal news was at last brought by the discovery, 
 first of one body, and then of the other. In a poem, 
 which I dedicated to Lord Byron, I endeavoured to 
 depict the awful suspense of those days, and under the 
 name of Julian, to idealize Shelley, and describe his 
 funeral pyre. I copy some passages from a rough draft, 
 not having the original, and imperfectly, for the rythm 
 is here and there defective, and the rhymes wanting: 
 but the lines may serve as a transcript of my feelings, are 
 such as all hearts may sympathise in, and may not be 
 considered out of place here. 
 
 The storm is up — in haste they reach 
 A pathway winding from the beach — 
 That hope-winged speed arrests their tears. 
 A flash ! the curving coast appears, 
 The isles in front, and all beyond, 
 A raging sea without a bound. 
 Where is the boat ? no boat is there, 
 That bay's lone moanings mock despair ! 
 Where is the boat? they gaze again — 
 Look they for comfort to the main ? 
 
LIFE op SHELLEY. 401 
 
 On that wild waste of waves they gaze. 
 
 And fancy, in the lightning's blaze, 
 
 Paints every breaker as a sail 
 
 In safety riding out the gale ; 
 
 And once they thought they could descry 
 
 A floating form— oh, misery ! 
 
 And hear a swimmer's drowning cry. 
 
 They gazed, how long they knew not, on 
 
 That wilderness,— and yet 
 They ceased not with the rising sun 
 
 Tq gaze — nor when he set. 
 They spoke not — stirred not all that day, 
 None ever passed so slow away; 
 So cold to feel — so drear to see — 
 Such doubt was worse than certainty ! 
 Another, and another day ! 
 It ill became, like common clay. 
 
 That form so fair to rot ; 
 To bleach upon the dark green sea, 
 To wandering fish and birds a prey ; 
 
 Alas ! why comes he not ? 
 
 The faded flower, its scent and hue, 
 
 Ah tell me whither are they flown? 
 Canst thou revive their charms anew? 
 Will the torn bud expand for you, 
 
 The promise of its leaves unblown ? 
 The accents of the broken lyre — 
 
 Tell me, too, whither are they gone ? 
 Go ! re-unite the parted wire, 
 
 Reanimate the spirit fled" 
 Of music, that with magic lure, 
 Had spells medicinal, to cure 
 All pangs but love's — then,^only then 
 
 Seek life among the dead ! 
 
 The words were his, but words are vain- 
 Rash spoken— straight recalled again ; 
 And these, his "ancient comrade Pain,"* 
 Wrung from an overheated brain. 
 
 ' In this extract from the bio- from the Lines Written among the 
 
 graphei's poem there are many Euganean Bills, where we read : 
 phrases more deserving of inverted And its ancient pilot, Pain, 
 
 commas than this misquotation Sits beside the helm again. 
 
 SHSLLBr J) f^ 
 
402 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Oh, say not with the spirit fled, 
 That earth's affections all are dead, 
 That in that world of woe oir weal, 
 As world there is, we cease to feel, 
 
 Have unforgot to prove, 
 For those whom we have left below, 
 As pure, and as intense a glow 
 
 Of pity and of love ! 
 
 Night followed night, day day of woes — 
 One more, an age, is at its close ; 
 But as the sun's broad disk declined, 
 Led by a sea-bird's stream, they find, 
 Waif of the ocean, where he lies, 
 The fairest thing beneath the skies. 
 Oh! 'twas a piteous sight to see 
 One they had loved so tenderly, 
 Cast like a worthless weed away, 
 
 The tresses of his profuse hair 
 TJndabbled by the ooze or spray, — 
 He lies like one who mocks decay. 
 
 Best fitted, for a mermaid's lair, 
 Or some cold Nereide's bridegfroom to be, 
 In ^he dark caves of the unfathomed sea. 
 
 It was the azure time of June ! 
 And now beneath the depth of noon, 
 So cloudless, that the infantine moon 
 Broke with her rising horn, the line 
 Of the snow- fringed Apennine ; 
 
 A pyre they raise with pious care, 
 For thus he wished his dust, when driven. 
 And scattered to the winds of Heaven, 
 
 Should to its elements repair; 
 His .parted spirit hovering nigh, 
 Commingle with the spangled sky, 
 
 To be the overhanging day, 
 The soul of that Elysian isle. 
 
 Its breath and life ; that he and they, 
 So loved — in that divinest clime, 
 
 Should bask in nature's genial smile 
 And gladden all things thro' all time > 
 
 Transfigurate — transfused, be one 
 
 Beneath the universal sun. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 40^ 
 
 And lo ! the silver-winged sea-mew, 
 
 That round and round the reeking pyre 
 In ever lessening circles flew ; 
 
 That bird was now so tame, 
 
 Scarce could they scare it from the fire 
 
 Of that funereal flame ; 
 For still it shrieked, as in the storm, 
 
 A human voice it might be deemed, 
 
 So piteous and so wild it screamed, 
 As loth to leave that lifeless form. 
 
 And all who saw the bird, had said, 
 
 " It was the spirit of the dead." 
 
 Mr. Gait, in his Life of Byron, has described the con- 
 duct of the party who assisted at Shelley's funeral pyre, 
 as resembling on their return that of frantic Bacchanals, 
 after tearing limb from limb, Pentheus. It is a pure 
 fiction, — poetical and classical, certainly ; but no scene of 
 the sort occurred. 
 
 Singularly enough, Shelley, in the Epipsychidion, seems 
 to have foreseen the nature of his funeral. 
 A radiant death — a fiery sepulchre. 
 I heard from my friends, that Shelley had been subject 
 during this Villagiatura [sic], at the Casa Magni, to strange 
 hallucinations, and from the description of the place, 
 which I had afterwards an opportunity of verifying, it is 
 scarcely to be wondered that his imagination, as happened 
 in Carnarvonshire, naturally given to the marvellous, 
 should have been strangely excited, and grown familiar 
 with the Unreal. The extreme isolation of San Terenzo — 
 its almost magical and supernatural beauty — ^the continual 
 beating of the sea-waves against the walls of that solitary 
 villa — the sort of reading in which he indulged there, 
 and a mind ever on the rack with profound metaphysical 
 speculations, dreamy and vague, engendered in him a 
 nervousness, that produced extraordinary waking dreams. 
 
 Dd2 
 
404 LIFK OF SHELLEY. 
 
 "Williams records in his interesting journal, the following 
 anecdote : — " After tea, walking with Shelley on the 
 terrace, and observing the effect of moonshine on the 
 water, he complained of being unusually nervous — he 
 grasped me violently by the arm, and stared steadfastly 
 on the white surf, that broke upon the beach under our 
 feet. Observing him sensibly affected, I demanded of 
 him if he were in pain, but he only answered, by saying, — 
 ' There it is again — There ! ' He recovered after some 
 time, and declared that he saw, as plainly as he saw me, 
 a naked child {the child of a friend who had lately died, — 
 meaning his own child) rise from the sea, and clap its 
 hands as in joy, smiling at him. This was a trance that 
 it required some reasoning and philosophy entirely to 
 awaken him from ; so forcibly had the vision operated on 
 his mind."^ But this was not the only illusion to which 
 he had been a prey at San Terenzo. Byron,* the most 
 superstitious of human beings, related the following story, 
 which I afterwards heard confirmed by Mrs. "Williams. 
 " Shelley, soon after he arrived at the Casa Magni, one 
 night alarmed all the house with loud and piercing cries. 
 The "Williams's rushed out of their rooms, and Mrs. 
 Shelley, who had miscarried a few days before, got at the 
 same time as far as the door, and fainted. They found 
 Shelley in the salo){n, with his eyes wide open, and 
 gazing on vacancy, with a horror as though he saw 
 
 * Lord Byron even formed good or evil auguries from the flight of birds 
 and when he met with a single magpie in his rides, I have seen him 
 seriously take off his hat — as a propitiation. 
 
 • This snippet from Williams's the parenthesis. Those four worda 
 Journal as given hy Mary Shelley are neither Williams's nor Mary 
 in the life, Letters, &c., is of course Shelley's, but Medwin's own, and 
 disfigured by somp inaccuracies, untrue, the child having been 
 apart from the interpolation of the Claire's little AUegra. 
 
 words "meaning bis own child '' in 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 405 
 
 some spectre. He was in a deep trance, a sort of som- 
 nambulism. On waking him, he related to them that he 
 had had a vision. He thought that a figure wrapped in 
 a mantle, came to his bedside, and beckoned him. He 
 got up, and followed, and when in the drawing-room, the 
 phantom lifted up the hood of his cloak, and said, " Siete 
 soddisfatto," and vanished.^ ' 
 
 He had been reading a strange drama, attributed to 
 Calderon, entitled the [sic] El Encapotado. It is so rare, 
 that Washington Irving told me he had hunted for it, but 
 without success, in several of the public libraries of Spain. 
 The story is, that a sort of Cypriano, or Faust, is through 
 life thwarted in his plans for the acquisition of wealth or 
 honour or happiness, by a mysterious stranger, who stands 
 in his way like some evil spirit. The hero is at length 
 in love — we know it is the master-passion in Spaniards. 
 The day is fixed for his nuptials, when the unknown 
 contrives to sow dissension between him and his bride 
 elect, and to break off the match. Inftiriate with his 
 wrongs, he breathes nothing but revenge ; but for a time 
 all attempts to hunt out his .mantled foe prove abortive ; 
 at length he presents himself of his own accord. When 
 about to fight, the embocado unmasks, and discovers the 
 Fetch of himself — his double, saying, " Are you satisfied?" 
 The catastrophe is the death of the victim from horror. 
 
 The play, which would have made a most admirable 
 subject for Hoffman, worked strongly on Shelley's 
 imagination, and accounts for the midnight scene, 
 
 Mr. Moore says that "the melancholy death of poor 
 Shelley, affected Lord Byron's mind much less with grief 
 
 * Professor Dowden treats these ing. Those who desire to examine 
 
 brain-fag stories from a purely them further, should turn to the 
 
 common-sense point of view. They Life, Vol, II, Chap. xii. 
 are not very important or interest' 
 
406 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 for the actual loss of his friend, than with bitter indig- 
 nation against those who had through life so grossly- 
 misinterpreted him; and never certainly was there an 
 instance where the expressed absence of all religion in 
 an individual was assumed so eagerly as an excuse for the 
 absence of all charity in judging him." He adds, that, 
 "though never personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, 
 I can fully join with those who much loved him, in 
 admiring the various excellences of his heart and genius, 
 and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the 
 maturer fruits of both. His short life," he goes on to say, 
 "had been, like Ms poetry, a sort of brigTit, erroneous dream / 
 false in the general principles on which it proceeded, though 
 beautiful and attractive in some of its details/ Had full 
 time been allowed for the over-light of his imagination, to 
 be -tempered by the judgment which in time was stiU in 
 reserve, the world at large would have been taught to 
 pay that homage to his genius which those only who saw 
 what he was capable of, (what does Moore mean by this ?) 
 can now be expected to accord to it." Faint praise, and 
 coming from the quarter it does, and from one totally 
 unable to estimate anything but the actual and material, 
 not much to be regarded. 
 
 Eeturning to Lord Byron's superstition, I will cite as 
 a proof thereof, the following anecdote from "the Page of 
 Moore." "Mr. Oowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at 
 Genoa, • was told by him, that some friends of Shelley 
 sitting together one evening, had seen that gentleman 
 distinctly, as they thought, walk into a little wood at 
 Lerici; when at the same moment, as they afterwards 
 discovered, he was far away, in quite a different direction, 
 'This,' added Lord Byron, in a low, awestruck tone of 
 voice, ' was but ten days before Shelley died ! ' " 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 407 
 
 I believe Lord Byron felt severely the loss of Shelley, 
 though it must be confessed that his observation at the 
 pyre,—" Why this rag of a black handkerchief retains its- 
 form better than that human body ;" and his saying on 
 the contest that took place between Mrs. Shelley and 
 Leigh Hunt, respecting the possession of Shelley's heart, 
 which would not consume with his ashes, (and which 
 amiable dispute he compared to that.of Ajax and Ulysses 
 for the arms of Achilles,) and his remark, — " "What does 
 Hunt want with the heart? he'll only put it in a glass- 
 case, and make sonnets on it'! — savoured strongly of Don 
 Juan. I believe, I say, that he really did lament the 
 loss of Shelley. He knew well his superiority over his 
 other correspondents, — knew that his friendship for him, 
 so often proved, was pure and disinterested, and free 
 from all worldly considerations, and that the sundering 
 of that tie left him without a real friend in the world. 
 
 On the 22nd of August, I took leave of Mrs. Shelley, 
 Mrs. Williams, and Lord Byron, to return to Genoa. 
 
 I performed this journey in a caratella, with relays of 
 one horse, a mode of conveyance, which Mathews, the 
 invalid, had reason for recommending, for it enabled me 
 to make much more progress than I could have done by 
 regularly posting with two. I shall not enter into my 
 feelings during this mournful pilgrimage to the sites of 
 my friends' funeral pyres, at some distance apart, easily 
 discoverable by their ashes. I had another daty to 
 perform, to visit the country house where they had passed 
 their villegiatura. 
 
 From Sarzana to Lerici there is only a cross (and that 
 a narrow) carriage road. After a somewhat difficult 
 ascent of three miles, the caleche set me down at a bys 
 footpath, which conducts to San Terenzo. The sky was 
 
408 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 perfectly cloudless, and not a breath of air relieved the 
 intense heat of an Italian August sun. The day had been 
 unusually oppressive, and there was a mistiness in the 
 atmosphere, or rather a glow which softened down the 
 distances into those mellow tints, in which Claude 
 delighted to bathe his landscapes. I was little in a mood 
 to enjoy the beauties which increased every moment 
 during this walk. I followed mechanically a pathway 
 overhung with trellised vines, and bordered with olive 
 trees, contrasted here and there with the massy broad 
 dark foliage of the fig-tree. For a mile or two, I con- 
 tinued to ascend, till on a sudden a picture burst on my 
 view, that no pen could describe. Before me was the 
 broad expanse of the Mediterranean, studded with islands, 
 and a few fishing boats with their lattine [sic, this time, for 
 lateen] sails, the sun's broad disc just dipping in the waves. 
 Thick groves of fruit trees, interspersed with cottages 
 and villas, sloped down to the shores of the gulf of 
 Spezzia ; and safely land-locked, a little to the left Lerici, 
 with its white flat-roofed houses almost in the sea, stood 
 in the centre, and followed the curve of this bay; the two 
 promontories projecting from which, were surmounted 
 with castles, for the protection of the coast, and the 
 enforcement of the quarantine laws. The descent, now 
 become rapid and broken, and deeply worn into the rock, 
 only offered occasional glimpses of the sea, the two islets 
 in front, and the varied cost of Porto Yenere to the 
 right. I now came in sight of San Terenzo, a village, or 
 rather a miserable collection of windowless black huts, 
 piled one above the other, inclosed within and imbedded, 
 like swallows' nests, in the rocks that overhang and 
 encircle it. The place is inhabited solely by fishermen 
 and their families, on the female part of whom devolves [sic] 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 409 
 
 (as is common in Italy) the principal labours. However 
 ungraceful in itself, the peasantry of most parts of Italy 
 have some peculiarity of costume, but the women of San 
 Terenzo are in a savage state of nature, perfect Ichthyo- 
 phagsB; their long, coal-black hair trails in greasy 
 strings, unwashed and uncombed over their faces ; and 
 some of these fiendish looking creatures had not even 
 fastened it in a knot behind the head, but suffered it to 
 hang half way down their backs. They had neither 
 shoes nor stockings, and the rags which scarcely hid their 
 deformity, were strongly impregnated with the effluvia of 
 the fish they were carryingon their bare heads to the neigh- 
 bouring markets. Their children were just such meagre 
 yellow im,ps, as fi:om such mothers and filth and poverty 
 of food, might be supposed. The men I did not see ; they 
 were most probably following the occupation of fishing. 
 
 Between this village and Lerici, but nearer the former, 
 was pointed out to me the solitary villa, or palazzo as it is 
 called, which was about to waken in me so many bitter 
 recollections. It is built immediately upon the beach, 
 and consists of one story; the ground-floor, when the 
 Libeccio set strongly in, must have been washed by the 
 waves. A deaf, unfeeling old wretch, a woman who had 
 the' care of the house, and had either witnessed or heard 
 of all the desolation of which it had been the scene, with 
 a savage unconcern, and much garrulity, gave a dry 
 narrative of the story, as she led me through the' apart- 
 ment. Below was a large unpaved sort of entrance-hall, 
 without doors or windows, where lay the small flat- 
 bottomed boat, or skifi", much shattered, of which I have 
 already spoken. It was the same my poor friends had on the 
 Serchio. Against the wall, and scattered about the floor, 
 were oars and fragments of spars, — they told too well the 
 
410 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 tale of woe. A dark and somewliat perpendicular stair- 
 case now led us to the only floor that remained. It 
 reminded me somewhat in its arrangement, of an Indian 
 bungolow [sic] ; the walls whitewashed. The rooms, now 
 without furniture, consisted of a saloon and four chambers 
 at the four corners ; this, with the exception of a terrace in 
 front, was the whole apartment. The verandah, which ran 
 the entire length of the villa, was of considerable width, and 
 the view from it of a magical and supernatural beauty. 
 
 There was now a calm desolation in the unrippled 
 marble of the sea, that reminded me in its contrast, of the 
 days and nights of tempest and horror which Mrs. 
 Shelley and Mrs. "Williams experienced, balanced between 
 hope and fear for the fate of their beloved husbands — 
 fancying that every sail would bring them to their homes, 
 and now that in the roaring of every wave they could 
 distinguish their drowning cries, I could picture to myself 
 the ghastly smile with which Trelawny related the finding 
 of the corpses,— the torpor and unconsciousness of Mrs. 
 "Williams, — the sublime firmness of Mrs. Shelley, con- 
 trasted with her frame worn out with sickness, — their 
 children, too young to be sensible of their loss, clasped in 
 their despairing and widowed mothers' arms. All this 
 rushed upon my imagination, and insensible to the heat, 
 or fatigue of the ascent, I found myself, scarcely knowing 
 how, where my caleche [sic] was waiting for me ; and it was 
 midnight, and after a twenty-two hours' journey, more 
 harassing in mind and body than I had ever experienced, 
 when I reached the inn at Spezzia. 
 
 The ashes of Shelley were borne to Rome by one of 
 his friends, who had been most active and instrumental 
 in conquering the objections of the authorities to their 
 collection, who 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 411 
 
 By supplications and unwearied prayers 
 Hardly prevailed to wrest the stubborn law 
 Aside thus far ; 
 
 and who, after making all due and decent preparations 
 for the funeral-pyre at "which he was the chief mourner 
 "committed with hands scorched and blistered by the 
 flames, the burnt relics to a receptacle prepared for the 
 purpose, and then in compass of a small case, was gathered 
 all that remained on earth of him whose genius and virtues 
 were a crown of glory to the world, and whose love had 
 been the source of happiness,pure and good." ^ But on their 
 arrival at Eome, considerable scruples arose in the mind 
 of the clergyman applied to to officiate, concerning the 
 burying in consecrated ground, ashes. A friend of mine, 
 himself no mean poet, and who wrote an elegy on Shelley 
 worthy of a place here, and whose position in life gave 
 him some weight, exerted himself, and successfully, in 
 smoothing the difficulty; and a day was fixed for the 
 interment. The funeral was attended by most of the 
 English still lingering in the metropolis of the world. 
 The crowd of strangers that people it from all countries, 
 had withdrawn, and left only behind a few stragglers, and 
 lovers of art, and mourners over the once great queen of 
 the universe, loth to quit it, as mourners the grave of one 
 
 1 These are meant to represent, [not then], in compass of that 
 
 and meant also to misrepresent, small case, was gathered all that 
 
 MaryShelley's wordSjinhernoteon remained on earth of him whose 
 
 the poems of 1822. Describing Tre- genius and virtue were a crown of 
 
 lawny's actions before, at, and after glory to the world — whose love had 
 
 the cremation of Shelley and been the source of happiness, peace, 
 
 Williams, she says ' It was a fearful and good, — to be buried with him ! ' 
 
 task : he stood before us at last, his That ' small case ' remained many 
 
 hands scorched and blistered by the weeks at JKome in the custody of 
 
 flames of the funeral pyre, and by Mr. Freeborn, a trading consular 
 
 touching the burnt relics as he official, to whom they were sent 
 
 placed them in the receptacles pre- from Leghorn in August 1822 to 
 
 pared for the purpose. And there await Trelawny's arrival. 
 
413 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 beloved. THs friend writing to me says, — ^ 
 
 " Behold the melancholy cortege taking up its line, and following 
 the remains of him, who should have had a distinguished place in the 
 great national cemetery of the poets of his country, to the Protestant 
 hurial-grouud, which had been unwillingly accorded, through the 
 intercession of Cardinal Gonsalvi, prime minister of Pope Pius VI., to 
 us heretics. That last refuge for the stranger-dead, lies, as you know, 
 at the further extremity of the Eternal City, and to get to it, we had 
 to traverse Rome in all its length. I was never so impressed by any 
 funeral ; we viewed on all sides the tottering porticoes, the isolated 
 columns, which told me of the ravages of the Goths and Vandals, 
 those savages, after gorging themselves in the blood of the vanquished, 
 those barbarians, who insatiate of slaughter, when they had ijothing 
 else to destroy, vented their jealous rage on the creations of genius, 
 which like the spectres of their victims, seemed to stand in mockery 
 and defiance. They could shatter the mighty giantess, tear her limb 
 from limb ; but the Torso, like that of the Vatican, the admiration of 
 Michael Angelo in his blindness, yet remained to suggest what she 
 
 * To plain straight-forward folk 
 Medwin'a absurd mysteries are an 
 affliction. Although it is a very 
 limited crowd from whose ranks 
 we have to select the unnamed cor- 
 respondent in this case, he has not 
 yet, as far as I know, been identi- 
 fied. Some original papers bearing 
 on the funeral were communicated 
 to The Athenssum^ of August 23 and 
 29, 1879 ; and some more, from the 
 Clairmont archives, appeared in an 
 article which I contributed to Mac- 
 millan's Magasine for May 1880, 
 headed " Shelley's Life near Spezzia, 
 his Death and Burials." It seemed 
 to me then, as it does now, quite 
 clear that the date on which .Joseph 
 Severn had arranged with Mr. 
 Freeborn to take the ashes to the 
 Cemetery was the 21st of Januaiy 
 1823. In a letter to Charles Armi- 
 tage Brown, written on that day on 
 return from the funeral, Severn 
 gives the names of those who were 
 present as " General Coekburn, Sir 
 C. Sykes, Messrs. Kirkup, Westma- 
 cott, Scoles, Freeborn, and the 
 Eevs. W. Cook and Burgess.'' He 
 tells how the box was enclosed in 
 a coffin and mentions the " melan- 
 
 choly cortfege '' as Medwin's friend 
 called it. • 
 
 Mrs. Angeli says at page 312 of 
 Shelley and kisFriends in Italy, that the 
 ashes were deposited in the Protes- 
 tant Cemetery by the Rev. Richard 
 Burgess in November 1822 ; bnt 
 there is nothing in that gentleman's 
 statement, given in the Appendix 
 to her volume, which I should 
 accept as evidence either of the 
 date or of his having done more 
 than assist at the funeral. Half a 
 century is a long time for the reten- 
 tion of exact details in a man's 
 mind in such a matter. Mr. Bur- 
 gess, giving his reminiscences of the 
 incident to a friend in 1874, might 
 well be excused for not making 
 clear what he had probably forgot- 
 ten, that seven or eight weeks at 
 least must have elapsed between 
 his introduction to the box of ashes 
 in Freeborn's wine-cellar and his 
 accompanying Mr. Cook and the rest 
 to the Cemetery. He says he arrived 
 at Rome in the latter part of Novem- 
 ber 1822, but does not in fact say 
 how soon the funeral took place, or 
 which of the two ' ' Revs." as Severn 
 calls them read the service. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 413 
 
 had been. They could melt the Roman cement, enwrap her domes in 
 flames, throw down her statues from their heights that frowned upon 
 them, and when tired of the labour of destruction, encumber the bed 
 of the Tiber with her mutilated remains. 
 
 " It was impossible for the coldest or most insensible and ignorant 
 of our train, to pass, without somewhat of such emotions, those 
 monuments of Roman greatness. Neither my companion nor myself 
 spoke, or expressed our admiration or sympathy, that were too strong 
 for words. Self-absorbed, I allowed my ideas to wander, lost in the 
 past. I neither gave the ruins names, nor suggested doubts as to th^ 
 period of their erection ; whether they were of the time of Julius 
 Caesar, or the Antonines. Nothing," he adds, " is so delightful as the 
 mystery, the vagueness that hangs about most of what is left of 
 ancient Rome, for it is this very scepticism and uncertainty that allow 
 the imagination to revel in a world of dreams and visions, each more 
 enchanting than the last. 
 
 "This idea brought with it many a passage in Shelley's works, 
 which is made intelligible to our minds by a sort of divination, — not 
 from the construction of the words themselves, but from the dim. 
 shadowing out of some profound and metaphysical idea, which from, 
 the imperfection of language, defies analysis ; and his Elegy on Keats( 
 more especially came into my contemplations, which I had by heart, 
 and with it the prophetic <3,ugury of his finding a last asylum in Rome, 
 ynth the friend of his heart. 
 
 Or go to Rome, at once the sepulchre — 
 Oh ! not of him, but of our joy : 'tis nought, 
 That ages, empires, ^nd religions there 
 Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought. 
 For such as he can lend, they borrow not 
 Glory from those who made the world their prey. 
 And he is gathered to the kings of thought, 
 Who wagfed contention with their time's decay, 
 And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 
 
 Go thou to Rome, at once the paradise, 
 The grave, the city, and the wilderness, — 
 And where its wrecks, like shattered mountains rise, 
 And flowering weeds and fragrant copses deck 
 The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 
 Pass, till the spirit of the spot, shall lead 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access. 
 Where like an infant's smile, over the dead. 
 The [sic for A] light of laughing flowers along the turf [sic for 
 grass} is spread. 
 
 And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time 
 Feeds, like slow flre upon a hoary brand ; 
 And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime. 
 
414 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
 This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
 Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath, 
 A field is spread, in which a newer band 
 Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
 Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. 
 
 Here pause. 
 
 " Awaking from this reverie, I could scarcely recal my scattered 
 senses, or return to the realities of life. I contemplated with a 
 mixture of sorrow and regret, the ashes of one, who once sh«d a light 
 upon the world —the extinction of a surpassing spirit that came for 
 the world to know it not ; and then the mouldering mass of temples, 
 pillars, cornices, and columns broken and strewed around ' the dusty 
 nothing,' so well harmonizing with my own feelings, — the solemn 
 scene — with that remnant of mortality, the ruins of him whom we 
 were literally about to consign to kindred ruins— Ashes to Ashes — 
 Dust to Dust ! 
 
 " We reached the Campo Santo. The graves were yet young, the 
 tenants few in number ; most of the mounds had not even a head-' 
 stone, whilst here and there a monument, surmounted by an urn of 
 classical form and elegant design, shewed by the glittering whiteness 
 of the marble, that it was fresh from the hand of the sculptor.* They 
 shewed themselves in relievo from the ancient and mouldering walls 
 of the city, which bound the Campagna, partly hidden by a mass that 
 just lifted itself above the horizon. It was the Pyramid of Cains 
 Cestius, and seemed to frown in proud defiance, a giant among the 
 pigmies, on the intruders upon its solitary greatness. They too 
 seemed to have chosen the verge of the enclosure, as unwilling to 
 mingle their clay with that of an idolatrous race, and an outworn 
 creed. And who, asks Lord Byron, was Cains Cestius ? The annals 
 of his country contain no records of his deeds. His name is not even 
 chronicled in story. Who was he, that he should have pavilioned his 
 ashes, whilst so many heroes and patriots lie undistinguished and lost 
 in the dust of their country's desolg,tion ? What a lesson is here for 
 mortality ! what a homily to tell of 
 
 The more than empty honours of the tomb ! + 
 
 * In 1820, Mr. G., a great oriental traveller, told me, that when he 
 was in Athens, an English artist died there, and that it was the wish of 
 his friends to erect a monument to him, but that not only no sculptor 
 could be found to execute one, but not even a stone-mason to carve the 
 letters of his name on a tablet ! 
 
 f Sepulcri supervacuos honores Horace. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 415 
 
 " Whetfier the same feelings operated on the assembly, I know not, 
 I was blinded by my tears, that fell fast and silently on the poet's grave. 
 
 Oh! 
 It is a grief too deep for tears, when all 
 Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit. 
 Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
 Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, 
 The passionate tumult of a clinging hope, 
 But pale despair, and cold tranquillity. 
 Nature's vast frame— the web of human things. 
 Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 
 Well might it be added, — 
 
 Art and eloquence, 
 And all the shows of the world are frail and vain, 
 To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. 
 "After the conclusion of the affecting rite, we visited the grave of 
 his favourite son, William, and that of £eats — whose spirit it must 
 soothe to feel the daisies growing over him — a dream that was here 
 realized, for they absolutely starred the turf." 
 
 Shelley seems imAdonais to have had a presage that he 
 should soon rejoin his friend — be united with him in death, 
 as they were in their destinies. Both were victims to the 
 envenomed shafts of invidious critics, — to the injustice of 
 those nearest to them, and who should have been dearest ; 
 both were cut off in the flower of their youth and talent, 
 and both are sleeping among strangers in a foreign land. 
 Little did either desire to sleep in the unmatemal bosom of 
 their own. She was to them a harsh and unnatural step- 
 mother. Here they sleep sweetly. Shelley's favourite 
 wish, often expressed, was to repose here. He says, — " It 
 might make one in love with death, to think that one 
 should be buried in so sweet a place;" and in a letter 
 speaking of it, he calls it " the most beautiful and solemn 
 cemetery he ever beheld, and expresses his delight to see 
 the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh with dews, and 
 hear the whispering of the winds among the leaves of the 
 trees, which have overgrown the tomb of Oestius!" 
 
 A plain slab, overhung with parasite plants, and shrubs 
 and flowers, and those long.feathery weeds which I have 
 
416 LIKB OF SHELLEY. 
 
 SO often remarked on tke ruins of Eome, vulgarly called 
 Maiden's Hair, reminding us of tlie dishevelled locks of a 
 mourner waving over one beloved, contains the venerated 
 name of Shelley, with the date of his birth, and death. 
 Below which is the following inscription, — 
 
 Nothing of him but [sic for that] doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea change, 
 Into something rich and strange. 
 
 Lines to my mind very inapplicable, for they allude to one 
 
 drowned, and lost at sea. Alas ! Poor Lycidas ! I could 
 
 not help thinking a much more appropriate motto might 
 
 have been selected from a poem I have heard him so often 
 
 read, and admire : ^ 
 
 So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high 
 
 Through the dear might of him who walks the waves. 
 
 Where other groves, and other streams among, 
 
 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves. 
 
 And hears the unexpressive nuptial song. 
 
 In the blest regions meek of peace and love: 
 
 There entertain him all the saints above. 
 
 In solemn troops, and sweet societies. 
 
 That sing, and singing in their glory, move, 
 
 And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
 
 Many " melodious tears " have been Shed over the 
 graves of Shelley and Keats, but none have more affected 
 me than those offered by one, a native of a country 
 from which Shelley frequently expressed a hope that he 
 might in later times expect justice, America. The passage 
 is so beautiful, that I transcribe it entire, being unwilling 
 to spoil by garbling it. It is from the pen of Willis.* 
 
 * But Shelley probably read what ^ This stuff of Nathaniel Parker 
 
 Hilton really wrote ; whereas, here, Willis's is scarcely of a quality to 
 
 in the third line, among has been compensate for the heavy indignity 
 
 substituted for Milton's along ; and which he offered to the ashes of 
 
 the sixth line is a corruption of — Shelley i n deesgitins his buttocks 
 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of on the poet's grave. 
 
 joy and love. 
 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 4^ 
 
 "With a cloudless sky, and the most delicious air I have ever 
 breathed, we sate down upon the marble slab placed over the ashes of 
 poor Shelley, and read his own Lament on Keats, who sleeps just 
 below, at the foot .of the hill. The cemetery is rudely formed into 
 three terraces, with walks between, and Shelley's grave, and one 
 without a name, occupy a small niche above, made by the projection 
 of a mouldering wall-tower, and crowded with many shrubs, and 
 a peculiar fragrant yellow flower which perfumes the air around for 
 several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from the gate, is lined 
 with high branches of the musk-rose, in the most luxuriant bloom, 
 and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled with flowers of 
 every hue. If Shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would 
 have selected the very spot where he has since been laid — the most 
 sequestered and flowery nook of the place he describes so feelingly ;" 
 and Mr. Willis adds, — " It takes away from the pain with which one 
 stands over the grave of an acquaintance or friend, to see the sun lying 
 so warm upon it, and the flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. 
 Nature seems to have a care for those who died so far from home." 
 
 It was a much more melancholy visit I paid in the 
 autumn of last year to Field-place. In that home he was 
 born, on that lawn he had played as a child, — there he 
 had dreamed as a boy, and suffered as a man. The 
 mansion of his forefathers I found deserted and in dis- 
 repair, the family dispersed, and it was about to be 
 tenanted by a stranger to the county — a city alderman. 
 I walked in moody sadness over the neglected shrubberies, 
 paced the paths, weed over-grown and leaf-strewn,/of the 
 once neatly kept flower-gardens, where we had so often 
 walked together, and talked in the confidentiality of 
 early and unsophisticated friendship ; there, too, he had in 
 many a solitary hour brooded over his first disappointment 
 in love, and had had his sensitive spirit torn by the 
 coldness and alienation of those dearest to him. All this 
 past through my mind. 
 
 How little did Rogers know of the human heart when 
 he wrote The Pleasures of Memory ! 
 
 SHELLET E e 
 
418 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 I also visited tlie chancel in Horsham church, belonging 
 to the family of Michell, his maternal ancestors, where 
 some of my own sleep. There a flattering inscription 
 blazons the virtues of his father, but I was shocked to find 
 that no cenotaph has been raised to the memory of the 
 poet, that no record exists of one who will ennoble and 
 perpetuate the name of Shelley, when the race that bears 
 it shall become extinct. How true it is, that a prophet is 
 no prophet in his own country ; his family, too, seem to 
 be quite unaware of his greatness, and deem him neither 
 an honour nor a pride. Bristol has with a late repentance 
 raised a statue to Chatterton, — but where lie his bones ? 
 Florence has at last done tardy justice to Dante, Stuttgart 
 to Schiller, Frankfort to Gothe, and Mayence to Giitten- 
 berg. More liberal times will come, when Byron and 
 Xeats and Shelley will each find a niche, if not in that 
 temple which has been so often profaned by the ashes of 
 mediocrity, in some future Valhalla, worthy to enshrine 
 them. But Shelley needs no monument. His fame, like 
 the Pyramid beneath which he sleeps, stands on a base 
 unshaken and eternal. He lives in his works, and will 
 live on through all time. But 
 
 Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 
 Nor is the glittering foil ^ 
 
 Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, 
 
 But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove, 
 
 As he pronounces justly on each deed. 
 
 Of so jnuch fame in Heaven expect the meed ! 
 
 These Memorabilia would be incomplete, if I did not. 
 in execution of my duty as a biographer, draw up, how- 
 
 ' Here again Milton's own read- as also in the last two lines, where 
 
 ing would probably have been more the biographer has substituted jusUy 
 
 to Shelley's taste— for the choice and powerful 
 
 Nor in the glistering foil— ^^^ *^ '"^^ ^°^ *''l' '^^^- 
 
, LIFE OF SHELLEY. 419 
 
 ever imperfect, a summary of Shelley's character, both as 
 a man and a poet, for which I am partly indebted to some 
 of his contemporaries. I will begin with the last.^ 
 
 It is no difficult task to characterise, in its general 
 aspect, the Poetry of Shelley, for its tendencies were clear, 
 its origin known, its progress uniform, his types openly 
 avowed. Greece stands first in his estimation, the im- 
 posing grandeur of the Alicient Tragedy, the majestic 
 serenity of Plato and Homer, the Bible with its oriental 
 splendour, its bold imagery, the impetuous energy of its 
 inspired Verses — the Italian era of Dante, the English 
 era of Milton, in Spanish Calderon, in G-erman Schiller 
 and Gothe, in French the Sceptics of the 18th Century, 
 not as enlightened philosophers but as Apostles of Eeason, 
 as courageous enemies of tyrannj?^ in all its forms — Such 
 were the admired models of Shelley . . . Guided by them, 
 and less original perhaps than he wished to be, he 
 continued the work abandoned by Wordsworth, Southey 
 and Coleridge, whom he taunts with their apostacy. 
 He fought by the side of Lord Byron, but with an en- 
 thusiasm more sincere, a faith in the progress of humanity, 
 a sympathy for the human race, which the last never 
 knew. . . All the poems indeed of Shelley, numerous as 
 they are, resolve themselves into one of which they may 
 be regarded as so many separate Cantos. They present to 
 the mind in their different episodes, their accidental 
 details, or sites or costumes, but one type, always equally 
 sublime, that of a man who devotes himself, suffers and 
 dies for his fellow beings, a Christ deprived of his divine 
 
 ' Medwin does not explain what Poetry" and ending with "Beau- 
 
 "the last" means ;but,in the original mont and Fletcher." What now 
 
 issue of the Life, these words are stands between "the last" and 
 
 immediately followed by the para- "Shelley's Poetry" is written in 
 
 graph in inverted commas begin- the margins and marked for inser- 
 
 jiing with the words " Shelley's tion where it now appears. 
 
 E e 
 
 2 
 
4SiO LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 attributes, a philosophic Martyr, a Confessor of Liberty. 
 It is to be remarked also that as years ran on, his Hymns 
 lost their original asperity. Like a brilliant metal which 
 rejects and leaves in the bottom of the burning furnace its 
 black scorise, the love of Shelley for his kind disengaged 
 itself from all its bitterness and all its hate. Those tyrants 
 whom he cursed he pities. That reactionary baptism of 
 blood which he first preached and which appeared to him 
 but equitable he recoils from. The Revolutions which he 
 invokes are treated as worthy [?] of a regenerated world — 
 He wishes them to be pure of all Vengeance, of all violent 
 expiation — The strange truths which he went out to seek 
 in undiscovered lands are almost like those from which 
 other enthusiasts have derived the principle of Chris- 
 tianity. He speaks as a brother to all men, to those even 
 who have repulsed the dogma of fraternity. 
 
 " Shelley's poetry is invested with a dazzling and 
 subtle radiance, which blinds the common observer with 
 excess of light. Piercing through this, we discover that 
 the characteristics of his poetic writings are an excessive 
 sympathy with the whole universe, material and intellectual 
 — an ardent desire to benefit his species, and an im- 
 patience of the tjnrannies and superstitions that hold them 
 bound. In all his works there is a wonderfully sus- 
 tained sensibility, and a language lofty and fit for it. 
 His ear was of the finest, and his command of language 
 unrivalled. His mastery of words was so complete, and 
 his majestic and happy combinations so frequent, that the 
 richness is often obscured by the profusion." Again : 
 " he has the art of using the stateliest words, and the 
 most learned idioms, without incurring the charge of 
 pedantry, so that passages of more splendid and sonorous 
 writing, are not to be selected from any writer since the 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 421 
 
 time of Milton ; and yet when lie descends from his ideal 
 world, and oomes home to us in our humble bowers and 
 our yearnings after love and affection, he attunes the 
 most natural feelings to a .style so proportionate, and 
 withal to a modulation so truly musical, that there is 
 nothing to surpass it in the lyrics of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher." 
 
 His ear was so attuned to harmony that his blank verse 
 never tires with monotony, and we doubt in reading it 
 whether it has not had the adjilnct of Rhyme — unlike 
 the Versi Sciolti of the Italians, which are unreadable in 
 a long poem. 
 
 " His is the poetry of intellect, not that of the Lakers — 
 his theme is the high one of intellectual nature and 
 lofty feeling, not of waggoners and idiot children. Like 
 Milton, he does not love to contemplate clowns and vices, 
 but the loftiest forms of excellence which his fancy can 
 paint. His morality has also reference to the virtues 
 which he admires, and not to the vices of which he is 
 either unconscious, or ashamed. He looks upwards with 
 passionate veneration, and seldom downwards with, self- 
 control." 
 
 Ajid speaking of Milton, the great object of Shelley's 
 veneration, it is evident that he had made him his model. 
 But Shelley was no puerile copyist, for he had been 
 able to work out for himself a style equally elevated 
 and not less original: — there is, indeed, usually in all 
 his writings, deeply embued with his individuality, a 
 manner of thought and expression peculiarly his own — 
 unimitated and inimitable. Every line is instinct with 
 mind, and if we see quoted any isolated passage, and no 
 one is more quoted, we are at no loss to detect to whom it 
 belongs. He differed too toto ccelo from his cotempora- 
 
422 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 ries in one essential particular. He wrote not for money, 
 debased himself not by the filthy love of lucre. He never 
 condescended to cater for fame at the sacrifice of his 
 sincerity. He gave full reins to his genius, nor expunged 
 a word or modified an idea to suit the taste or tastelessness 
 of a set or party. His ideas came fresh from the mint 
 of his rich mind — they do not present themselves like 
 coins rubbed by attrition, worn down by use or circula- 
 tion. "What a world of glowing thought would have been 
 lost had he written with the Hell of Critics before his 
 eyes? 
 
 "The view of external objects suggests ideas and 
 reflections, as if the . parting soul had awakened from 
 a slumber, and saw, through a long vista, glimpses of 
 a communion held with them in a distant past. It is like 
 the first awaking of Adam, and the indolent expression 
 of his emotions. Nature is like a musical instrument, 
 whose tones again are keys to higher things in him, 
 — the morning light causing the statue of Menmon 
 to sound : the shadow of some unseen power of intellectual 
 beauty, deriving much of its interest from its invisibility, 
 floats, though unseen, among his verses, resembling 
 everything unreal and fantastic — the tones and harmonies 
 of evening — the memory of music fled. 
 
 Or aught that for its grace may be 
 Dear, and yet dearer to the memory." 
 
 Hear what Grutzkow says of him. — " He had a soul like 
 Ariel's, and of the same character was his poetry — bright 
 and sylph-like, it flutters like a golden fly over the 
 face of the waters. His thoughts trembled as the flapie of 
 light trembles. He was like his own lark, and mounts 
 higher and higher as he sings. He drew forth poetry 
 from all things which lay in his way, that others pass by 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 423 
 
 unheeded and unobserved. His transparent imagination 
 was lit up by thought. Contemplation, reflection lent 
 him the words that he called into his service. All that 
 he wrote sprung from high and noble ideas. Above all 
 others, he knew how to unlock and develope the nature 
 and perfections of his poetry. He could draw out a life 
 from flowers, and even stones — from all that he saw, he 
 discovered pictures for his poetry, — the loveliest similes 
 stream from him in luxuriant fulness. In these his 
 pictures, he could be as lovely as sublime. It is as though 
 we saw the burning Africa of a Humboldt, going over the 
 ice of the Alps. His forms of life raised themselves so 
 high, that we could not follow him : but as a balloon by 
 degrees is lost to the eye, though we cannot see it, we know 
 that it is there." It has been objected by a Scotch 
 philosopher, that Shelley had a passion for reforming the 
 world. To this he replies, — " I acknowledge that I have. 
 But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical 
 compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, 
 or that I consider them in any degree as containing 
 a reasoned system of the theory of human life. 
 
 " My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize 
 the highly refined imagination of the more select classes 
 of poetical readers, with beautiful idealisms of moral 
 excellence, aware, that until the mind can love and admire, 
 and trust and hope and endure, reasoned principles of 
 moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life, 
 which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, 
 although they would bear the harvest of his happiness." * 
 
 It has been said by an able writer, from whom we have 
 already quoted, that a man can only be understood by his 
 
 1 This reply to a remark in to accuracy, from the Pi'eface to 
 Forsyth's Principles of Moral Science is Prometheus Unbound, 
 taken, with a reasonable approach 
 
424 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 peers, and his peers are few. The great man is also 
 necessarily a reformer in some shape or other. Every re- 
 former has to combat with existing prejudices and deep- 
 rooted passions. To cut his own path, he must displace 
 the rubbish that encumbers it. He is therefore in oppo- 
 sition to his fellow men, and attacks their interests. 
 Blinded by prejudice, by passion, and by interest, they 
 cannot see the excellence of him they oppose, and hence 
 it is, as Heine has admirably said, — "Everywhere that 
 a great soul gives utterance to his thoughts, there is 
 Golgotha." 
 
 It is not to his general system of .Esthetics to which I 
 would extend my remarks, so much as to his theory of 
 Intellectual Beauty and Universal Love, a theory which 
 he interweaves in the woof of his poetry, and that indeed 
 forms the ground- work of the web. Schiller's Kantism 
 was too cold and obscure — Shelley's Platonism too mystic 
 and ethereal ; it admitted of no demonstration, was too 
 profound and visionary to be reduced to reason, was only 
 to be seized by the spirit, only a glimpse of it to be 
 caught by contemplation and abstraction. Schiller wrote 
 a long treatise, to make intelligible his philosophy, em- 
 bodied in his Ideal and Actual, a poem which I never 
 met with more than one German who pretended to 
 explain. Shelley did not condescend to enlighten his 
 readers. Having committed a grave error in penning his 
 Notes to Queen Mob, he never ventured on a second experi- 
 ment, though perhaps his Poems for the general reader 
 more require them, and may furnish abundant materials 
 for some future commentator. His great master, Plato, 
 searching after truth in the greatest heights and lowest 
 depths, often bu,t partially seized it, being defeated by its 
 very vastness ; ambitious to reveal it to mankind, he 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 425 
 
 hesitated not to exhibit it in the form, and with the com- 
 pleteness he best could. It was necessary therefore, that 
 what he but half knew himself, should be imperfect 
 and darkly stated, and dimly comprehended by others. 
 For this reason, his writings are obscure. They will 
 always be obscure, in spite of the labours of the com- 
 mentators ; for a commentary can make them plain only 
 by substituting the reveries of the critic, for the in- 
 consequent reasoning of the original. But Plato did not 
 aim at darkness, any more than Shelley. If any one 
 understood Plato, it was Shelley, and that which appears 
 a wordy mist glowing in rainbow clouds, was to his own 
 mind as clear and palpable as the sublimity of such con- 
 templations was capable of being made. But how few 
 can appreciate or comprehend him, — how inadequate and 
 imperfect is all language, to express the subtilty and 
 volatility of such conceptions of the Deity ! To the 
 generality of readers, his Metaphysics are so overlaid and 
 buried beneath a poetic phraseology, that the mind, while 
 it is undoubted-ly excited, is left in a pleasing and half 
 bewildered state, with visions of beautiful divine truth 
 floating before it, which it is a vain attempt to arrest and 
 convert to reality. 
 
 The fault of his system as the ground-work of life, 
 is, that it requires intellects on a par with his own to 
 receive it. 
 
 Platonism, as a poetic medium, as I have already 
 observed, and must be excused for here repeating — very 
 early captivated Shelley.* It contains nothing common- 
 place — nothing that has been worn threadbare by others ; 
 indeed it was an untried field for poetry, a menstruum 
 from which he hoped to work out pure ore, but the sediment 
 * Vide Prince Athanase. 
 
426 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 of mortality was left in the crucible. It would in the palmy- 
 days of Greece, have pleased a sect — have delighted Plato 
 himself; but even at the period when Athens was in her 
 glory, and the spectators at the theatre could enjoy the 
 Chorusses of Sophocles, it would, with all its high qualities, 
 have had, if many admirers, no general popularity. But 
 how speak of Deity and not be lost in the attempt to arrest 
 the slightest shadow of that " Unseen Power," that Spirit 
 of Love ? How can beings, the Infusoria of creation, and 
 inhabiting a world which is in the immensity of space 
 but a grain of sand on an horizonless sea-shore, lift their 
 thoughts to the great Author and Ruler of the universe of 
 suns and stars, much less venture, " plumed with strong 
 desire," to float above this dull earth, and clothe in words 
 themselves too material, — 
 
 That light whose smile kindles the universe ; 
 That beauty in which all things work and move ; 
 
 That sustaining love, 
 Which through the web of being, blindly wove 
 By man and beast, and earth and air and sea, 
 Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
 The Are for wMch all thirst. 
 
 The very vagueness therefore, in which Shelley's 
 imagination revelled, and for which he is wrongly blamed, 
 is more the fault of language, than his own — ever the 
 fate of the Finite when speaking of the Infinite. It was 
 a sense of the impossibility, and what he deemed the 
 sacrilege of attempts to materialize God, that made him 
 substitute for the popular representation of a God in the 
 form of man, a pervading principle, — not as Mr. Moore 
 calls it, " some abstract nonentity of love and beauty, 
 as a substitute for Deity," but as an attribute of Deity 
 itself, resolving with Berkley, the whole of creation into 
 spirit. For this reason he has been called an Atheist. It 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 437 
 
 is true that in a moment of thoughtless and foolish levity, 
 he in the Album of the Montanvert, wrote under his name 
 a Greek line, which I have forgotten, ending with AOfoa-re, 
 and which Southey, during his excursion in Switzer- 
 land, — he might have been better employed, — treasured 
 up and reproached him with ten years after; but such 
 evidence weighs nothing in comparison with the serious 
 and recorded opinions laid down in his works, and to 
 which momentary foolish freak the purity of his life gave 
 the lie. And speaking of what has been called Atheism, 
 Lord Bacon, no mean authority, says of it in this sense, 
 adopting the words of Plutarch, — " Atheism leaves to man 
 reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and 
 everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue, but 
 superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a 
 tyranny over the understandings of men. " I will also 
 quote a passage from Leigh Hunt, on the subject. He 
 says of Spinoza, Giordano Bruno, and other spirits of 
 undoubted genius and integrity, who have been accused 
 of the same opinion, — " that the Atheism of such men is 
 but a vivid sense of the universe about them, trying to 
 distinguish the mystery of its operations from the ordi- 
 nary, and as they think pernicious Anthropomorphism, in 
 which our egotism envelopes it ; " and speaking of Cenci, 
 he adds, " that the Atheism of such men is the only real 
 Atheism ; that is to say, it is the only real disbelief in any 
 great and good thing, physical and moral. For the same 
 reason, there is more Atheism to all intents and purposes 
 of virtuous and usefulbelief, in some bad religions, how- 
 ever devout, than in some supposed absence of religion ; 
 for the good they purpose to themselves does not rise 
 above the level of the world they live in, except in power 
 like a Eoman emperor ; so that there is nothing to them 
 
438 LIFE OF. SHELLEY. 
 
 really outside the world at last. One act of kindness," he 
 adds, " one impulse of universal benevolence as recom- 
 mended by the true spirit of Jesus, is more grand and 
 godlike than all the degrading ideas of the Supreme 
 Being, which fear and slavery have tried to build up 
 to heaven. It is a greater going out of ourselves, a higher 
 and wider resemblance to the all-embracing placidity 
 of the universe." 
 
 But whatever might be Shelley's speculations on the 
 Nature of the Deity, no one was more fully convinced — 
 and how many who affirm and confess, can question their 
 hearts and say the same ? — of the existence of a future 
 state. Byron writing to Mr. Moore, says, (I have not the 
 passage before me, but I give it with sufficient fidelity,) — 
 "You," (meaning Moore, Murray, Hobhouse, &c.,) "were 
 mistaken about Shelley; he does believe in an Immor- 
 tality." 1 "What does Shelley himself say, just before his 
 
 ^ Byron did say thus much to On the 3rd of August 1822 he 
 
 Mooro, in two different letters. He wrote to Murray ; — " You were all 
 
 also wrote much more both to Moore brutally mistaken about Shelley, 
 
 and to Murray on their misconcep- who was, without exception, the 
 
 tions of Shelley. His defence of best and least selfish man I ever 
 
 his friend was begun before he lost knew. I never knew one who was 
 
 him, I rejoice to record here. VAs not a beast in comparison." 
 
 to poor Shelley, who is another Five days later, to Moore, in 
 
 bugbear to you and the world", he writing about the death of Shelley, 
 
 wrote to Moore on the 4th of March he says: "There is thus another 
 
 1822, " he is, to my knowledge, the man gone, about whom the world 
 
 least selfish and the mildest of men was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, 
 
 — a man who has made more and brutally mistaken. It will, 
 
 sacrifices of his fortune and feelings perhaps, do him justice now, when 
 
 for others than any I ever heard of. he can be no better for it." 
 
 With his speculative opinions I And when the winter had had 
 
 have nothing in common, nor desire time to cool his regard for his lost 
 
 to have." Two days later he added : friend, had it not been genuine in 
 
 "In your last letter you say, its way, he still bai-ped on the 
 
 speaking of Shelley, that you would same string, writing to Murray on 
 
 almost prefer the ' damning bigot ' the 25th of December 1822—" You 
 
 to the 'annihilating infidel'- are all mistaken about Shelley. 
 
 Shelley believes in immortality. You do not know how mild, how 
 
 however — but this by the way." tolerant, how good he was in 
 
 After the catastrophe he ex- Society ; and as perfect a gentleman 
 
 pressed his views with character- as ever crossed a drawing-room, 
 
 istic vigour and directness of speech. when he liked, and where liked." 
 
LIPE OF SHELLEY. 429 
 
 death, in that sincerity of soul that shines through all his 
 writings ? — " Perhaps all discontent with the less, (to use 
 a Platonic sophism,) supposes the sense of a just claim to 
 the greater, and [that] we admirers oi Faust are in the right 
 road to Paradise. Such a supposition is not more absurd, 
 and is certainly less demoniacal, than that of Wordsworth, 
 where he says, — 
 
 This earth, 
 
 Which is the world of all of us, and where 
 
 We find our happiness, or not at all. 
 
 As if after sixty years' suffering here, we were to be 
 roasted alive for sixty millions in Hell, or cTiaritdbly 
 annihilated." ^ I have no opportunity of referring to thecon- 
 text of the passage here quoted, but the deduction which 
 he draws from it is surely a distorted one. Shelley had 
 sought his happiness in other contemplations than filled 
 up the calm and peaceable days of the Poet of Nature, 
 and found it not. He had a glorious imagination, but the 
 fire of his genius burned not peacefully and with a steady 
 flame. It was a glaring and irregular flame, for the 
 branches that it fed it with, were not branches from the 
 
 Here I transcribe from Moore's about annihilation ends thus — 
 text. The quarto (Vol. ii, 1830, "for sixty million more in hell, 
 p. 622) and the seventeen-volume or charitably annihilated by a coup- 
 edition (Vol. v, 1832, p. 373) both de-grace of the bungler who brought 
 read " when he liked, and where us into existence at first." Medwin 
 liked," which is much more gener- is certainly more than justified in 
 ous on Byron's part than the read- his mild censure of the distortion of 
 ing credited to him in the standard Wordsworth's sense ; and the riot- 
 edition of Mr. Prothero (Vol. vi, ous want of high seriousness in all 
 p. 157), " when he liked, and where this is hardly worthy of Shelley. 
 he liked.'' The original reading He quotes the passage from Words- 
 gives the better sense ; but I record worth so imperfectly as to 'make 
 the last because the editor seems to one suspect that he had merely re- 
 have had the holograph letter membered the trend of the last few 
 through his hands to make a lines of those forty which Words- 
 substantial and very desirable worth had lent Coleridge for inser- 
 addition to the text. tion in The Friend, where Shelley 
 '■ These remarks are from Shel- may possibly have read them as 
 ley's letterofthe 10th of April 1822 early as. 1809. It is, however, like- 
 to .Tohn Gisbome. The sentence Her that he first saw them as re- 
 
430 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 tree of life, but from another tree tliat grew in Paradise. 
 "What must he have felt who wrote " The Invocation to 
 Misery?" — and in reading it, one cannot help reverting 
 in thought to his own words, " The Curse of this life is 
 that whatever is once known, can never he unTenown ! " 
 
 Shelley once said to me, that a . man was never 
 a Materialist long. That he was much inclined to the 
 opinions of the French school of philosophy, will appear 
 by his life at Oxford, as given by Mr; Hogg ; but he was 
 soon dissatisfied (these are his own words,) with such 
 a view of things — with such desolating doctrines, and 
 I regret that Mrs. SheUey should have given publicity to 
 that paper On a Future State, written, I doubt not, at 
 a very early period, and before reason and judgment had 
 tended to mature his mind, and led him to the study of 
 
 printed in the two beautiful octavo 
 volumes of 1815 — Poems | by \ William 
 Wordsworth : \ Including \ Lyrical Bal- 
 lads, I and the \ Miscellaneous Pieces of 
 the Author. I With Additional Poems, | 
 A New Preface, and a Supplementary 
 Essay. | ... London . . . Longman . . . 
 (Vol. ii, pp. 69-71). Here, he 
 would have learnt that the piece 
 headed French Bewlution, as it ap- 
 peared to Enthusiasts at Us Commence- 
 ment, already printed in The Friend, 
 was ' 'a part of the unpublished Poem 
 of which some account is given in 
 the Preface to the ExcuRsioif." I 
 iind it as difficult as Medwin did to 
 reconcile the utterance to Gtisbome 
 with Shelley's views about the Re- 
 volution and Wordsworth, and 
 prefer to hope he had really forgot- 
 ten the tendency of the forty lines 
 to which he did violence both of in- 
 terpretation and of quotation. Had 
 Shelley's genius been sufficiently 
 developed by 1813, such a passage 
 as the following on the beneficent 
 results of the republican upheaval 
 might have graced the pages of 
 <}ueen Mah : — 
 
 Not favourfed spots alone, but the 
 
 whole earth, 
 The beauty wore of promise — that 
 
 which sets 
 (To take an image which was felt 
 
 no doubt 
 Amongthe bowers of paradise itself) 
 The budding rose above the rose 
 
 full blown. 
 
 Then comes the description of the 
 effect of the outburst on all tempers, 
 whether ineit or lively, and how — 
 
 the Meek and Lofty 
 Did both find helpers to their heart's 
 
 desire ; 
 And stuff at hand, plastic as they 
 
 could wish ! 
 Were called upon to exercise their 
 
 skill, 
 Not in Utopia, subterranean Fields, 
 Or some secreted Island, heaven 
 
 knows where ! 
 But in the very world, which is the 
 
 world 
 Of all of us, — the place where in 
 
 the end 
 We find our happiness, or not at 
 
 all! 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 431 
 
 Plato, and a firm belief in a blessed futurity. " The cold, 
 ungenial, foggy atmosphere of northern metaphysics, was 
 totally unsuited to the ardent temperature of his soul, that 
 soon expanded in the warm, bright, vivifying climate of 
 the southern and eastern philosophy." A sufficient 
 answer to the eloquent, but specious reasoning of 
 Mirabeau, the Materialism of the Systeme de la Nature, so 
 unanswerable to the mere matter-of-fact mind, is given in 
 Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, It is the best practical 
 refutation of the maxim, that "there is nothing in the 
 intellect, that was not first in the senses," and of all the 
 sorrowful deductions therefrom ; and when we read 
 Shelley's apocalyptic Triumph of Life, and the Epipsychi- 
 dion, we are almost inclined to Plato's belief, that all 
 knowledge is but a remembrance of a first existence, 
 revealed to us by the concord of poetry, the original form 
 of the soul. 
 
 " That fantastic spirit, which would bind all existence 
 in the visionary chain of intellectual beauty, became in 
 Shelley the centre in which his whole intellectual and 
 sensitive powers were united for its formation and em- 
 bellishment ; and although in painting the romance, the 
 conceits and diversities, the workings and meanderings 
 of a heart penetrated with such an ideal passion, drawing 
 less upon our individual sympathies than on those of social 
 life, he may be Liable to a charge of a certain mannerism ; 
 there is not the less evident, the delicacy, elasticity, and 
 concentration of a gentle and noble mind, a deep scorn 
 of all that is vulgar and base, and a lofty enthusiasm for 
 liberty and the glory of his country, for science and for 
 letters; and finally, an insa tiable longing afte r an eternal 
 and_incorruptible being, which opposed to his persuasion 
 of the misery and nullity of this world, feeds and main- 
 
432 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 tains that tension or struggle, that fire at the core, which 
 is the inheritance of all privileged geniuses, the promoters 
 of their age. Hence that restlessness coupled with the 
 disdain of worldly things, that retirement and misan- 
 thropy joined to benevolence, an d the yearning after love 
 jiid affectio n, the pur suit_of fame, and the intolerance of 
 contemporary criticism, in conjunction with real and 
 unaffected modesty ; and in fine, that contrast of virtue 
 and weakness, which is the inheritance of flesh, so 
 requisite seemingly to level the more sublime capacity 
 with its fellow-creatures, and to inculcate the religious 
 bond of union which Christian charity ought to inspire." 
 
 The author of these remarks, who I suspect to have been 
 Carlyle, has thus admirably reconciled the seeming con- 
 trarieties of Shelley's character. But in looking back 
 through the long vista of his life, — long I may well say, 
 crowded as it was with so many romantic, so many strange 
 events, — I can call to mind no one of them in which his 
 heart was to blame, though his head might have erred. 
 Three events stand prominently above the rest : his 
 expulsion from Oxford — b .is disappoint ment in his first 
 love, and his first unfortunate marriage — a TpLKVfiid^ ov 
 triple surf of ills ; and from these flowed and ramified 
 all the bitter streams that swelled his onward course 
 of life. I shall not trace them back, — they, like Dante's 
 inscription, are marked — " colore oscuro," in these 
 Memorabilia. 
 
 There remains little more to add. I think it will appear 
 to all unprejudiced minds, that the following portrait of 
 Shelley, by no means the first I have drawn, though all 
 would be imperfect, will not be either over-coloured or over- 
 varnished. It is to be lamented, as I have already done, that 
 no good resemblance of Shelley exists. His features were 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 433 
 
 small — the upper part of his face not strictly regular — the 
 eyes unusually prominent, too much so for beauty. His 
 mouth was moulded after the finest modelling of Greek 
 art, and wore an habitual expression of benevolence, and 
 when he smiled, his smile irradiated his whole coun- 
 tenance. His hands were thin, and expressed feeling 
 to the fingers' ends, being such as Vandyke would hav& 
 loved to paint ; his hair profuse, silken, and naturally 
 curling, was at a very early period interspersed with 
 grey. His frame was but a tenement for spirit, and 
 in every gesture and lineament showed that he was a 
 portion of that intellectual beauty, which he endeavoured 
 to deify. He did not look so tall as he was, being nearly 
 five feet eleven, for his shoulders Avere a little bent by 
 study and ill-health, owing to his being near-sighted, 
 and leaning over his books; and which increased the 
 narrowness of his .chest. He had, however, though a 
 delicate, a naturally good constitution, inherited from 
 parents who died one upwards of 90,^ and the other 
 bordering on it, but which he had impaired at one period 
 of his life by an excessive use of opium, and a Pythagorean 
 diet, which greatly emaciated his system and weakened 
 his digestion. He was twenty-nine when he died, and 
 inight have been taken for nineteen, for there was in him 
 a spirit that seemed to defy time and suffering and mis- 
 fortune. But if life is to be measured by events and 
 
 ' Sir Timothy died in his ninety- and died at last without a sigh." 
 
 first year. Born in September 1753, How undiscriminating is Nature's 
 
 he lived till April 1844. A letter beneficence. This brief account of 
 
 from Mary Shelley to Claire Clair- , a release from a long and useless 
 
 mont in my possession announces life forces on one's mind that beauti- 
 
 his demise in terms highly compli- ful picture of Blake's, illustrating 
 
 mentary to his constitution. Writ- a passage in Blair's Orave, "Tha 
 
 ing on the 24th of April 1844, she Death of the Good Old Man." The 
 
 says : — "Poor Sir Tim is gone at sun shineth upon the just and the 
 
 last — He died yesterday morning at unjust. 
 6 o'clock. He went gradually out 
 
 SHELLSY F f 
 
4'34 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 activity, he had arrived at a very advanced age. He 
 often said " that he had lived to a hundred," and singu- 
 larly enough, remarks in one of his books, — " The life of 
 a man of talent who should die in his thirtieth year, is, 
 with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a 
 miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century 
 of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental 
 faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can 
 abstract and generalise amid the lethargy of every-day 
 business ; the other can slumber over the brightest 
 moments of his being, and is unable to remember the 
 happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron 
 enjoys a longer life than the tortoise." Schiller, in his 
 Apportionment of the World, a poem taken in a ludicrous 
 sense by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, shews that this world 
 was not made for a poet. If he has, however young, 
 accomplished the task for which he was born, — if he has 
 outworn his earthly clay, and entered into a new state of 
 being here below, then is he ready and fit to depart; and 
 it is best for him — ^better far than to endure the hoUow- 
 ness , the barrenness , the cold realities of every-day existence. 
 To the poet one day is a thousand years ; this little world, 
 of which he himself and his fairy dreams are the sole 
 inhabitants, circles round a sun of his own, brilliant 
 beyond ordinary conceptions, and in an atmosphere to 
 which that of .our brightest day here, is but a dim and 
 heavy mist. As he whirls with inconceivable rapidity 
 through immeasurable space, spiritual mysteries are 
 revealed to his view — myriads of spirit-peopled worlds, 
 invisible to others, float far and near in this his own 
 heaven. This Shelley means when he says, — 
 
 As from a centre dart tliy spirit's might, 
 Beyond all worlds— until its spacious might 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 435 
 
 Satiate the vast cii-cumference — then shrink, 
 Even as a point within our day and night.^ 
 
 But what succeeds to this unnatural excitement? a 
 prostration, an exhaustion, physical and psychical, like 
 that of one after the paroxysm of a burning fever. It is 
 like the withered bouquet on the bosom of beauty after 
 a ball, or more poetically speaking, in the words of one of 
 the German writers, may be compared, as he compares 
 himself when descending to the realities of life, to a sky- 
 lark, who when he touches the ground, " grovels in silence 
 and clay." I have often heard him say that he wished to 
 die young — and he one day opened Plato and read, " It 
 would be delightful to me to die surrounded by my 
 friends — secure of the Inheritance of glory and escaping 
 after such an existence as mine, from the decay of mind 
 and body that must soon be my portion." 
 
 "Well then naight Shelley say that thirty years were 
 a long life to a poet — thirty of such, years as had been 
 summed up in the course of his. 
 
 Like Socrates, he united the gentleness of the lamb 
 with the wisdom of. the serpent — the playfulness of the 
 boy with the profoundness of the philosopher. 
 
 In common with Bacon, whom he greatly admired and 
 studied, he was endowed with a raciness of wit and a keen 
 perception of the ridiculous, that shewed itself not in 
 what we call humour, that produces a rude and boisterous 
 mirth, but begat a smile of intellectual enjoyment, much 
 more delightful and refined. 
 
 In argument — and he loved to indulge in that exercise, 
 that wrestling of the mind — he was irresistible. His 
 voice was low or loud, his utterance slow or hurried, 
 
 ' ^ Adonais, xlvii. But for the first for vcat, too, read void, and for as 
 might the correct reading is light; read to. 
 
 Ff2 
 
436 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 corresponding with the variety in which his thoughts 
 clothed the subject. Byron was so sensible of his inability 
 to cope with him, that he always avoided coming to a trial 
 of their strength in controversy, which he generally cut 
 off with a joke or pun ; for Shelley was what Byron could 
 not be, a close, logical, and subtle reasoner, much of 
 which he owed to his early habit of disputation at Oxford, 
 and to his constant study of Plato, whose system of getting 
 his adversary into admissions, and thus entangling him 
 in his own web, he followed. He also owed to Plato the 
 simplicity and lucidity of his style, which he used to call 
 a model for prose. In no individual perhaps was the 
 moral sense ever more completely developed than in 
 Shelley, — in no being was the perception of right and 
 wrong more acute. 
 
 His friend Mr. H[ogg]. says, "The biographer," to repeat 
 the words in my preface,^ " who would take upon himself 
 the pleasing and instructive, but delicate task of com- 
 posing a faithful history of his whole life, will frequently 
 be compelled to discuss the important question, whether 
 his conduct at certain periods was altogether such as 
 ought to be proposed for imitation ; whether he was ever 
 misled by a glowing temperament, something of hastiness 
 in choice, aiijd a certain constitutional impatience ; whether, 
 like less gifted mortals, he ever shared in the common 
 feature of mortality — repentance ; and to what extent." 
 I think I have in the phases of his history, sufficiently 
 discussed these questions, have shewn how grievously he 
 repented his first hasty marriage — how severely he taxed 
 
 ' It would be instructive, if pocket volume (p. 99). Both Med- 
 
 worth the reader's while, to compare win's versions are, as usual, in- 
 
 this with the extract in Medwin's accurate. The other three are 
 
 Preface, and then with the Maga- practically identical. Medwin's 
 
 zineof July 1832, p. 67, Hogg's Life, errors are not very material this 
 
 Vol. i, p. 119, or Mr. Streatfeild's time. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 437 
 
 himself for its melancholy termination — and how much it 
 cankered and festered the wounds which his sensitive 
 spirit received from the shafts of invidious critics and the 
 persecution of the world. 
 
 If any human being was possessed of what I have heard 
 Phrenologists say is so rarely found developed in the 
 human head, conscientiousness, it was Shelley ; by which 
 is meant, not doing to others as one would be dealt by — 
 not a mere strict regard to right and justice ; but where 
 no such claims existed, the exercise,, to his own detriment, 
 of an active and unwearied benevolence. He was un- 
 selfish, unworldly, disinterested in the highest degree — he 
 despised the universal idol at which all bow down — gold; 
 he looked upon it as dross, "as the world's bond of Slavery," 
 and often and often suffered privations without regret, 
 from his inability to resist appeals to his purse. Indeed 
 he carried his beneficence so far, that Mrs, Shelley says 
 in other but stronger words, that he damaged by it his 
 fortune, and frequently reduced himself to the greatest 
 pecuniary straits. With a generous regard to the interests 
 of his friends, he not only relieved their necessities, but 
 looked to their future interests. He was, it is true, no 
 very clear-sighted politician, for he says to his friend Mr. 
 Gisborne, — " I wish your money out of the Funds ; the 
 middle course you speak of [what that was is unexplained] 
 and which will probably take place, will amount, not to 
 your losing all your income, or retaining all, but having 
 the half taken away!" And again: "What gives me 
 considerable anxiety, is the continuance of your property 
 in the British Funds at this crisis of a;pproacMng revolu- 
 tion." What Shelley means regarding his own affaire is 
 ambiguous. " The best thing we can do, is to save money, 
 and if things take a decided turn, which I am convinced 
 
438 LIFE OF SHELLET. 
 
 they will at last, but not perhaps for two or three years, it 
 will be time for me to assert my rights and preserve my 
 annuity." 
 
 All this was written in 1819 and 1820. But there is 
 a passage in one of the last letters he ever wrote, which 
 might have been penned at the present moment. — " Eng- 
 land appears," he says, " to be in a desperate condition — 
 Ireland still worse ; and no class of those who subsist on 
 the public labour, will be persuaded that their claims on 
 it must be diminished. But the government must content 
 itself with less taxes, the landowner must submit to receive 
 less rent, and the fund-holder a diminished interest, or 
 they mil get nothing ; " and he adds, — " I see little public 
 virtue, and foresee that the contest will be one of Hood 
 and gold ! " 
 
 The sincerity of Shelley's speculative opinions was 
 proved by the willingness with which he submitted 
 unflinchingly to obloquy and reproach in order to 
 inculcate them ; and he would have undergone the 
 martyrdom he depicts in Laon and Cythna, rather than 
 have renounced one tittle of his faith. This sincerity, if 
 it does not form a justification either of his doctrines or 
 his acts, entitles him to our esteem, and disarms our 
 censure. Many a time and oft in reading the poems of 
 Byron, I have been led to regard with equal suspicion 
 the value and sincerity of those opinions. Never have 
 Shelley's works caused me this painfal impression. He 
 attributed "the vice and misery of mankind to the 
 degradation of the many for the benefit of the few — to 
 an unnatural state of society — to a general misgovem- 
 ment in its rulers,— to the superstition and bigotry of 
 a mercenary and insincere priesthood;" "With a poet's 
 eye he foresaw a millen[n]ium, the perfection of the human 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 439 
 
 race, wlien man would be happy, free, and majesticaL 
 Loving virtue for its own sake, and not from fear, he 
 thought with Schiller, no other ties were necessary than 
 the restraint imposed by a consciousness of right and 
 wrong implanted in our natures, and could not, or would 
 not see that in the present condition of the world, and in 
 the default of education, such a system was fallacious. 
 His tenets therefore should have been looked upon as 
 those of Owen of Lanark with us, of St. Simon in France, 
 as the aspirations of the philanthropist ; and the critic 
 might have said with Byron, 
 
 You talk Utopias,* 
 instead of calumniating the man, and attributing to his 
 harmless speculations, (harmless from their being beyond 
 the capacities of the oi noXXoi,) the desire of corrupting 
 youth, which could with as little justice have been said 
 of him, as it was untrue of Socrates. 
 
 He was an advocate for the abolition of the punish- 
 ment of death, and has left us a short treatise on that 
 subject that is of great value ; his principal argument is, 
 the bad effect of public executions, the putting, to torture 
 for the amusement of those who may or may not have 
 been injured, the criminal; and he contends that as a 
 measure of punishment strictly so considered, and as an 
 exhibition, which by its known effects on the susceptibility 
 of the sufferer is intended to intimidate the spectators 
 from incurring a similar liability, it is singularly in- 
 adequate, and confirms all the unsocial impulses of men ; " 
 and he adds, " that those nations among whom the penal 
 
 * Byron never said any such a Conversation, it is put in the mouth, 
 
 thing. The admirable phrase "You not of Julian, who represents 
 
 talk Utopia " (not " Utopias ") is Shelley, but of Maddalo, who 
 
 Shelley's, although in the poem represents Byron, 
 where it occurs — Julian and Maddalo, 
 
440 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished 
 from all others by the rarity of crime, and that govern- 
 ments that derive their institutions from the existence 
 of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with some 
 exceptions, perhaps, are bloody in proportion as they are 
 despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to a 
 sympathy with their own spirit." 
 
 Disheartened as he was by his constant failures, and 
 the disappointment of his efforts for the amelioration of 
 the social condition of the working classes, he did not 
 despond or despair. There was an energy in him that 
 rose with oppression, and his last as well as his first 
 aspiration was for the good of his species. And yet, 
 strenuous advocate as he was for political reforms, he was 
 the last to recommend violent measures, and says the 
 thing to fear will be that the change should proceed too 
 fast — it must be gradual to be secure. Well would it have 
 been for Germany if this sentiment had found an echo in 
 the minds of the political reformers of 1849, if in the 
 formation of their Constitution they had imitated some 
 of the moderation of the American patriots. Reaction 
 would then have been impossible. But the bow that is 
 overstrained will snap. 
 
 Unsoured by the ingratitude of the world, he carried 
 into his solitude no misanthropy, against his persecutors 
 he never breathed a word of resentment or hostility. 
 His critics he despised not, rather he pitied, and said to 
 one, " Grass may grow in wintry weather, as soon as hate 
 in me." ^ 
 
 1 Shelley's Lines to a Critic, when repeated calumnies upon one who 
 
 firat posthumously published in No. differs with him in opinion, or the 
 
 III of The Liberal, were accompanied ' profane ' philanthropist who can 
 
 by an editorial note ending thus :— , answer in such a spirit ? "' The first 
 
 " which is the better Christian,— stanza, misquoted by Medwin, 
 
 the ' religious ' reviver of bitter and really reads thus :— 
 
LIFE or SHELLEY. 441 
 
 Suffering at times from tortures the most excruciating, 
 from a complaint that would ultimately have proved fatal, 
 during his worst spasms he never shewed himself peevish, 
 or out of humour. 
 
 So good and great, beneficent and wise 
 
 On his high throne. 
 How meekly has he borne his faculties, 
 
 How finely shewn 
 A model to the irritable race, 
 Of generous kindness, courtesy and love. 
 
 He was an enemy to all sensuality. The pleasures of 
 the table, that form the summum ionum of the herd, were 
 not his pleasures. His diet was that of a hermit, his 
 drink water, and his principal and favourite food, bread. 
 His converse was as chaste as his morals— all grossness he 
 abominated. 
 
 De Quincey on GilfiUan, says, that "of the darkest 
 beings we are told they believe and tremble, but that 
 Shelley believed and hated." Never was there a more 
 unjust aspersion. He was of all men the most sincere, 
 and nothing ever seduced him into falsehood or dis- 
 simulation. He disbelieved, and hated not.^ It is also 
 asserted in that review, that when the subject of 
 Christianity was started, "Shelley's total nature was 
 altered and darkened, and transfiguration fell upon him ; 
 
 Honey from silkworms who can copy. The author did nothing for 
 
 gather, the helpless conclusion of this para- 
 
 Or silk from the yellow bee ? graph ; nor can I. It must, how- 
 
 The grass may grow in winter ever, be recorded that De Quincey 
 
 weather merely repeats the words of 
 
 As soon as hate in me. Gilfillan as regards the alleged 
 
 * In the original edition the transfiguration, and that the great 
 
 reading is " and hated not — not essayist in his own person defends 
 
 Christ himself, or his doctrines, but the sincerity of Shelley throughout, 
 
 Christianity as established in the though most severe on his attitude 
 
 world, i.e. its teachers." The to Christianity and Jehovah, not, as 
 
 second no< and the few words follow- I think, quite logically. See Tail's 
 
 ing it are struck out in the revised Magasine, January 1846, p, 23. 
 
442 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 that he who was so gentle became savage, he that breathed 
 by the very lungs of Christianity, that was so merciful, so 
 full of tenderness and pity of humanity, and love and 
 forgiveness, then raved and screamed like an idiot.' 
 Such might have occurred immediately after his expulsion, 
 when in Cumberland, and when stung to the quick by 
 what he deemed his cruel wrongs, and when writing the 
 Notes to Queen Mah, but when I saw him in 1820 and 
 1821, 1 can vouch for his betraying no midsummer mad- 
 ness — such exaggerated and frantic paroxysms of rage. 
 
 I cannot help thinking, not to speak of his want of 
 religious education at home, that Shelley's cruel expulsion 
 by the teachers of that gospel which proclaims toleration, 
 and forgiveness of others, produced in a great measure his 
 scepticism, which became more inveterate by the decree 
 of the Courtof Chancery, which he calls a "priestly pest ; "^ 
 a decree which severed the dearest tie of humanity — 
 made hi m childless ; that the bitter and merciless review of 
 his Revolt of Islam by a divine, and the persecution of his 
 brethren, including Dr. Nott, who left no stone unturned 
 to malign and vilify and blacken his character, hardened 
 him still more in his unbelief; nor can it be denied, that 
 he blindly attributed the auto da fds, the Sicilian 
 Vespers, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the cruelties 
 inflicted on the Hugonots [sic], not to mention the horrors 
 committed by Catholics against Protestants, and Protestants 
 against Catholics in our own country, under the name of 
 Christianity, — to Christianity itself. Living for so many 
 years in Italy, did not tend to change his creed. He says 
 in his Preface to The Cenci, that " in the mind of an 
 Italian,, the Catholic religion ' is adoration, faith, sub- 
 mission, penitence, blind adoration, not a rule for moral 
 
 ' To the Lord Chancellor, Stanza 1. 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 443 
 
 conduct, and has no necessary connection witli any one 
 virtue ;" and adds, — " that intensely pervading the whole 
 frame of society, it is, according to the temper of the 
 mind it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, never 
 a check," on which Leigh Hunt remarks, — "that such 
 religions, in famishing men with excuses and absolution, 
 do but behave with something like decent kindness, for 
 they are bound to do what they can for the vices they 
 produce ;" and concludes with, " we can say it with 
 gravity too, — Forgiveness will make its way somehow 
 everywhere, and it is lucky that it will do so. But it 
 would be luckier if systems made less to forgive ! " 
 
 To such a length did Shelley's hostility to what he calls 
 the popular religion carry him, that he said, "he had 
 rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than saved 
 with Paley and Malthus."* I cannot, indeed, but regret 
 deeply that he who was so liberal, so open to conviction on 
 all subjects, should have been so blinded by prejudice as to 
 say in a letter addressed to C. T. (whoever he might have 
 been) that Christianity is not useful to the world, and 
 that false and pernicious as are the doctrines of the 
 French and material Philosophy, they are better than 
 Christianity. From education and conviction a firm 
 believer in the divine truths of revelation, I have shrunk 
 with abhorrence at the perusal of these passages w;hich 
 deform the Second Volume of his Prose Works. But con- 
 tradictory as these sentiments are to all I ever heard him 
 utter, and utterly false as such opinions are, I cannot 
 believe that they were seriously his own, but rather that 
 they were penned in order to flatter the amour propre 
 of his correspondent, and it furnished me with another 
 proof of the little dependence to be placed on letters as 
 
 * Errare, mehercle, malo' cum Platone, quam cum istis sentire. — Cicero. 
 
444 LIFE OP SHELIiEY. 
 
 materials for Biography : ^ but Shelley by no means stood 
 alone among poets in his principles or infidelity. Milton 
 was engaged with a party in the destruction of the Church 
 and the Monarchy, Schiller introduced on the stage, as 
 we exhibit the priests and incense of the Gods of Greece, 
 the most sacred rites of the church. His aesthetic philo- 
 sophy was anything but Christian. Gothe never made 
 a mystery of his unbelief. Almost all the great thinkers 
 of Germany are, with the last object of their idolatry. 
 Pantheists. Such, in their early career, were Coleridge, 
 Southey, and "Wordsworth, not only pantheists but pro- 
 pagators for a time of the doctrines propounded by 
 Godwin and thoroughly embued with his democracy. 
 But it was allowed to the poets and painters of Greece 
 and Rome, to dare anything, and shall we in the nine- 
 teenth century not be ashamed of intolerance ? Is Milton's 
 Arianism, the Titanic language of his Satan, a reason for 
 our not reading the Paradise Lost? " A language, accord- 
 ing to Leigh Hunt, involving so much irreverence to the 
 greatest of beings, that it is painful to seem to give it 
 countenance." Are Schiller and Gothe less esteemed, are 
 their works less popular, on account of their persuasions? 
 Has there ever been a finger raised against them in their 
 own or any other country? Are not Joan d'Arc, Marie 
 Stuart, and Faust, still represented on the German stage ? 
 
 ' The biographer was suddenly Shelley could not have assumed 
 struck a little more than usually adegreeof heterodoxy in expression 
 blind here by the overstrained or- to flatter anyone's self-love, and 
 thodoxy with which he approached that Horace Smith's — for " C. T." 
 the close of life. He goes accord- = " Horace Smith " — needed flatter- 
 ingly I'ight off the rails, throws ing with anti-ehristian expressions 
 his intelligence to the four winds, is inconceivable. I should like to 
 and with it his consistency as a relieve the chronicler of the odium 
 narrator and appreciator — he who of this passage by striking it out ; 
 insists so much on Shelley's sin- but editorial obligation as I con- 
 cerity. It was clear enough to the ceive it is a. bar to so merciful an 
 mind of Medwin undebauched that act. 
 
LIFE OF SHELLEY. 445 
 
 Has not the latter drama been translated repeatedly into 
 English in spite of the daring Prologue in Heaven, and 
 the mockery of all things sacred contained in that sur- 
 prising effort of genius ? And shall Shelley be less read 
 because when a boy (what did Moore and Southey writ© 
 in their youth ?) he wrote Queen Mab? What was Byron? 
 Are not Cain and Don Juan in every library ? and shall 
 we ostracise from ours, on account of passages which do 
 not square with our own views, the noblest, the sublimest, 
 and sweetest effusions of genius ? Let us not stand alone 
 among the nations, or be marked with the finger of scorn 
 by the Americans and Germans, for refusing our tribute 
 to his genius. 
 
 " In my father's house," says our Saviour, " are many 
 mansions," which, though the commentators differ in the 
 interpretation of the text, obviously means, that there are 
 many quiet resting places in heaven, for those differing 
 in opinion on religion, and there it may be hoped with 
 confidence, that Shelley has found " an abode, where the 
 Eternal are." How sublime are his own words, — 
 
 Death is the veil which those who live call life, 
 They sleep— and it is lifted.^ 
 
 In having thus summed up my own sentiments on 
 
 Shelley, if there should be any one who thinks I have 
 
 taken a too poetical view of his character, let him read, 
 
 and inwardly digest the following passage of one* of the 
 
 most elegant of the American writers, and who has well 
 
 studied the human heart. It is worthy of being inscribed 
 
 in letters of gold. 
 
 * Longfellow. 
 
 ' The reader will recall the wherein it is said that the poet 
 
 Sonnet of 1818 beginning with — "knew one who had lifted it . . . 
 
 Lift not the painted veil which a spirit that strove for truth, and 
 
 those who live like the Preacher found it not." 
 
 Call Life 
 
446 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 "Let us tread ligHtly on the Poet's grave! For my 
 part I confess tliat I liave not the heart to take him from 
 the general crowd of erring, sinful men, and judge him 
 harshly. The little I have seen of the world, and know 
 of the history of mankind, teaches me to look upon the 
 errors of others in sorrow, and not in anger. "When I take 
 the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, 
 and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it 
 has passed, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish in- 
 quietude of hope and fear, the tears of regret, the feeble- 
 ness of purpose, the pressure of want, the desertion of 
 friends, the scorn of a world that has little charity, the 
 desolation of the soiil's sanctuary, and threatening voices 
 within, — health gone, happiness gone, even hope that 
 stays the longest with us, gone; I would fain leave the 
 erring soul of my fellow man with Him from whose hands 
 it came. " 
 
 FINIS 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 , I. EARLY LETTERS OF SHELLEY.^ 
 
 [No. 1.] 
 
 Monday, July 18, 1803. 
 Dear Kate,— We have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday, 
 and if you ■will come to-morroiv morning I would be much obliged to 
 you, and if you could any how bring Tom over to stay all the night, I 
 would thank you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, 
 and come home to eat a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine 
 o'clock. Mama depends upon your bringing Tom over to-morrow, 
 and if you don't we shall be very much disappointed. Tell the bearer 
 not to forget to bring me a fairing, which is some gingerbread, sweet- 
 meat, hunting-nuts, and a pocket-book. Now I end. 
 
 I am not 
 
 Tour obedient servant. 
 Miss Kate, P. B. Shelley. 
 
 Horsham, 
 
 Sussex. 
 Free. P. B. Shelley. 
 
 [No. 2.] 
 Dear Sir, — I understand that to obviate future diflculties, I ought 
 now to make marriage settlements. I entrust this to your manage- 
 ment, if you will be kind enough to take the matter in hand. In the 
 course of three weeks or a month, I shall take the precaution of being 
 remarried, before which I believe these adjustments will be necessary. 
 I wish the sum settled on my wife in case of my death to be £700 per 
 annum. The maiden name is Harriett Westbrook[e] with two T's — 
 
 ' The ten letters forming the bulk work as issued by Newby in 1847. 
 
 of Section I in the Appendix are Letters No. 11, No. 12, and No. 13 
 
 those which Medwin inserted at are special to the present edition, 
 the end of the first volume of the 
 
448 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 Harriett. Will you be so kind as to address me at Mr. ■Westbrook[e]'s, 
 
 23, Chapel-street, Grosvenor-square ? We most probably go to London 
 
 to-morrow. We shall see Whitton, when I shall neither forget your 
 
 good advice, nor cease to be grateful for it. With kind remembrances 
 
 to your family. 
 
 Yours most gratefully, 
 
 Cuckfield, Oct. 21, 1811. Pehcy B. Shelley, 
 
 To T. C. Medwin, Esq., 
 
 Horsham. 
 
 [No. 3.] 
 
 Keswick, Cumberland.' 
 Nov. 26, 1811. 
 My Dear Sir,— We are now in this lovely spot, where for a time 
 we have fixed our residence. The rent of our cottage, furnished, is 
 £1 10s. per week. We do not intend to take up our abode here for 
 a perpetuity, but should wish to have a house in Sussex. Perhaps you 
 would look out for us. Let it be in some picturesque, retired place — 
 St. Leonard's Forest, for instance. Let it not be nearer to London 
 than Horsham, nor near any populous manufacturing town. We do 
 not covet either a propinquity to barracks. Is there any possible 
 method of raising money without exorbitant interest until my coming 
 of age ? I hear that you and my father have had a rencontre. I 
 was surprised that he dared to attack you, but men always hate those 
 whom they have injured ; this hatred was, I suppose, a stimulant 
 which supplied the want of courage. Whitton has written to me to 
 state the impropriety of my letter to my mother and sister ; this 
 letter I have returned, with a passing remark on the back of it. I 
 find that affair on which those letters spoke is become the general 
 gossip of the idle newsmongers of Horsham. They give me credit of 
 having invented it. They do my invention much honour, but greatly 
 discredit their own penetration. 
 
 My kind remembrances to all friends, believe me, dear sir, 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 We dine with the Duke of N. at Gray stock this week. 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., 
 Horsham, 
 Sussex. 
 
 • Consult page 110 on the subject particular on the biographer's treat- 
 of this letter and the next, and in ment of No. i. 
 
APPENDIX. 449 
 
 [No. 4.] 
 
 Keswick, Cumberland, 
 Nov. 30, 1811. 
 My Dear Sik, — When I last saw you, you mentioned the possibility, 
 alluding at the same time to the imprudence, of raising money even 
 at my present age, at seven per cent. We are now so poor as to he 
 actually in danger of every day being deprived of the necessaries of life. 
 In two years, you hinted that I could obtain money at legal interest. 
 My poverty, and not my will consents (as Romeo's apothecary says), 
 when I request you to tell me the readiest method of obtaining this. 
 I could repay the principal and interest, on my coming of age, with 
 very little detriment to my ultimate expectations. In case you see 
 obvious methods of eifecting this, I would thank you to remit me 
 a small sum for immediate expenses ; if not, on no account do so, as 
 some degree of hazard must attend all my acts, under age, and I am 
 resolved never again to expose you to suffer for my imprudence. Mr. 
 Westbrook[e] has sent me a small sum, tvith an intimation, that we are to, 
 expect no more ; this suffices for the" immediate discharge of a few 
 debts ; and it is nearly with our very last guinea, that we visit the 
 Duke of N., at Graystock, to-morrow. We return to Keswick on 
 Wednesday. I have very few hopes from this visit. That reception 
 into Abraham's bosom appeared to me to be the consequence of some 
 infamous concessions, which are, I suppose, synonymous with duty. — 
 Love to all. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., Yours most truly, 
 
 Horsham, Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 Sussex. 
 
 [No. 5.] 
 
 Dublin, No. 17, Grafton Street, 
 March 20th, 1812.1 
 My Dear Sir, — The tumult of business and travelling has prevented 
 my addressing you before. 
 
 I am now engaged with a literary friend in the publication of 
 a voluminous History of Ireland, of which two hundred and fifty pages 
 are already printed, and for the completion of which, I wish to raise 
 two hundred and fifty pounds. I could obtain undeniable security for 
 its payment at the expiration of eighteen months. Can yon tell me 
 how I ought to proceed ? The work will produce great profits. As 
 
 1 See page 114 (note). 
 
 SHELLEY G g 
 
450 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 you will see by the Lewes paper, I am in the midst of overwhelming 
 engagements. My kindest regards to all your family. Be assured I 
 shall not forget you or them. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., Yours very truly, 
 
 Horsham, P. B. Shelley. 
 
 Sussex, 
 
 England. 
 
 [No. 6.] 
 Nantgwillt, Rhayader, Radnorshire, 
 April 25th, 1812. 
 My Dear Sir, — After all my wanderings, I have at length arrived at 
 Nantgwillt, near Mr. T. Grove's. I could find no house throughout the 
 north of Wales, and the merest chance has conducted me to this spot. 
 Mr. Hooper, the present proprietor, is a bankrupt, and his assignees are 
 empowered to dispose of the lease, stock, and furniture, which I am 
 anxious to purchase. They will all be taken at a valuation, and Mr. T. 
 Grove has kindly promised to find a proper person to stand on my 
 side The assignees are willing to give me credit for eighteen mouths, 
 or longer ; but being a minor, my signature is invalid. Would you 
 object to join your name in my bond, or rather, to pledge yourself for 
 my standing by the agreement when I come of age ? The sum is 
 likely to be six or seven hundred pounds. 
 
 The farm is about two hundred acres, one hundred and thirty acres 
 arable, the rest wood and mountain. The house is a very good one, 
 the rent ninety-eight pounds, which appears abundantly cheap. My 
 dear six*, now pray answer me by return of post, as I am at present in 
 an unpleasant state of suspense with regard to this affair, as so eligible 
 an opportunity for settling in a cheap, retired, romantic spot will 
 scarcely occur again. ' 
 
 Remember me most kindly to all your family. 
 
 Tours very truly, 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., P. B. Shelley. 
 
 Horsham, Sussex. 
 
 [No. 7.] 
 [Post-mark, 16th June, 1813.] 
 Cooke's Hotel, Albemarle Street. 
 My Dear Sir,— It is some time since I have addressed you, but as 
 our interests are interwoven in a certain degree by a community of 
 disappointment, I shall do so now, without ceremony. 
 I was desirous of seeing you on the subject of the approaching 
 
APPENDIX. 451 
 
 expiration of my minority, but hourly expecting Mrs. Shelley's 
 confinement, I am not able to leave her for the present. 
 
 I wished to know whether at that epoch, you would object to see me 
 through the difficulties with which I am surrounded. 
 
 You may depend on my grateful remembrance of what you have 
 already done for me, and Buffered on my accotint, whether you consent 
 or refuse to add to the list of my obligations to you. The late negocia- 
 tions between myself and my father have been abruptly broken off by 
 the latter. This I do not regret, as his caprice and intolerance would 
 not have suffered the wound to heal. 
 
 I know that I am the heir to large property. Now are the papers 
 to be seen ? have you the least doubt but that I am the safe heir to 
 a large landed property ? Have you any certain knowledge on the 
 subject ? 
 
 If you are coming to town soon, I should be most happy to see you ; 
 or after Mrs. Shelley's confinement, I will visit you at Horsham. 
 
 Mrs. S. unites in her remembrances to all your family. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 [No. 8.] 
 
 Cooke's Hotel, Dover Street, 
 June 21st, 1813. 
 My Dear Sie, — Mrs. Shelley's confinement may take place in one 
 day, or not until six weeks. In this state of uncertainty, I would 
 unwillingly leave town even for a few hours. I therefore should be 
 happy to see you so soon as you could make a journey to town 
 convenient. Depend upon it, that no artifice of my father's shall 
 seduce me to take a life interest in the estate. I feel with sufficient 
 force, that I should not by such conduct be guilty alone of injustice to 
 myself, but to those who have assisted me by kind offices and advice 
 during my adversity. 
 
 Mrs. S. unites with me in best wishes to you and yours. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., Your very obliged, 
 
 Horsham, Peeoy B. Shelley. 
 
 Sussex. 
 
 [No. 9.] 
 
 Cooke's Hotel, Dover Street, 
 June 28, 1813. 
 My Dear Sib, — I am happy to inform you, that Mrs. Shelley has 
 been safely delivered of a little girl, and is now ra^pidly recovering. , 
 
 Gg2 
 
452 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I would not leave her in her present state, and therefore still 
 consider your proposal of fixing the interview in London as the most 
 eligible. 
 
 I need not tell you that the sooner I have the pleasure of seeing you, 
 the sooner my mind, and that of my wife, will be relieved from a most 
 unpleasant feeling of embarrassment and uncertainty. You may 
 entirely confide in my secrecy and prudence. 
 
 I desire my very best remembrances to all yours, and remain, 
 
 My dear Sir^ 
 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., Very faithfully yours, 
 
 Horsham, Sussex. P. B. Shelley. 
 
 [No. 10.] 
 My Dear Sik, — I shall be most happy to see you, at six o'clock, to 
 dinner, to-morrow. I think this plan is the best. Mrs. Shelley unites 
 with me in best remembrances to all your family. 
 
 I remain, 
 Cooke's Hotel, Dover Street. Yours very faithfully, 
 
 July 6th, 1813. P. B. Shelley. 
 
 T. C. Medwin, Esq., 
 
 Horsham, Sussex. 
 
 [No. 11.] 
 
 Field Place Ap. 22 1 
 2 oClock Sunday mor 
 Hall Chamber x 
 My dear Graham 
 
 Enclosed I send you some lines which I can assure you are natural, 
 & which I believe I owe you, as you wanted at Xmass to try your 
 powers of composition with some Poetry of mine — 
 
 -0-0 
 
 1 .u.o 
 
 How swiftly -through Heaven's wide expanse 
 
 Bright days resplendent colors fade 
 How sweetly does the moonbeam's glance 
 
 With silver teint St. Irvynes glade 
 
 ^ In printing this mutilated let- viii, ix, and x, the second in vii, 
 
 ter, referred to at p. 54 {note), I have and the third in x. In the last 
 
 followed the manuscript literally paragraph of the letter, where a 
 
 where it is undamaged. The ends considerable piece has been torn 
 
 of certain lines in the poem, having off, some conjectural restorations 
 
 disappeared, have been completed have been inserted between hooks 
 
 by supplying the missing final for the reader's convenience, to 
 
 letters &c. i the lines referred to complete as far as possible the fairly 
 
 are the fourth in stanzas v, vi, vii, obvious sense. 
 
APPENDIX. 453 
 
 No cloud along the spangled air 
 
 Is borne upon the evening breeze, 
 How solemn is the scene, how fair 
 
 The moonbeam's rest upon the trees 
 
 Yon dark gray turret glimmers white 
 
 Upon it sits the mournful owl 
 Along the stillness of the night 
 
 Her melancholy shriekings roll 
 
 But not alone on Irvyne's tower 
 
 The moonbeam pours its silver ray ; 
 It gleam's upon the ivied bower 
 
 .It dances in the cascade's spray 
 
 For there a youth with darkned brow 
 
 His long lost love is heard to mourn 
 He vents his swelling bosoms woe — 
 
 " Ah ! when will hours like those retur[n 7] 
 
 O'er this torn soul, o'er this frail form 
 
 Let feast the fiends of tortured love 
 Let lower dire fate's temflc storm, 
 
 I would the pangs of death to prove[.] 
 
 Ah ! why do prating priests suppose, 
 That God can give the wretch reli[ef,] 
 
 Can stop the bosom's bursting woes 
 Or l"^^} the tide of frantic grief [?] 
 
 Within me burns a raging Hell 
 
 [line cut away with foot of leaf] 
 Pate I defy thy fiercer spell 
 
 And long for stern death's welcome ho[ur.] 
 
 No power of Earth, of Hell or Heaven 
 
 Can still the tumult of my brain 
 The power to none save 's given 
 
 To ] f^i.™ [ my bosom's frantic pain. 
 
 Ah why do darkning shades conceal 
 The hour when man must cease to be? 
 
 Why may not human minds unveil 
 The dark shade of futurity ? 
 
 Of course I communica[te these lines to] you as to a friend ia [who, 
 I can con]fide will not shew [them to any member] of my family or 
 
454 . LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 o[ther person] .... published the t. . . . are addressed a. . . . indi- 
 viduality.— [They were written, I can] assure you with [sincerity and] 
 impulse on the [feelings which] they describe— you may set them to 
 music if you think them worth it— I shall see you in London, I must 
 indeed, as you are the only friend to whom I can communicate what 
 perhaps I shall wish to consult with you upon. Bum this letter as 
 soon as you have taken anything from it you may wish & believe me 
 
 Yours most devotedly 
 
 PBS 
 
 [No. 12.] 
 
 May 20 1810.' 
 My dear Graham — 
 
 It is never my custom to make new friends whom I cannot own 
 to my old ones, and though I may be very far gone in Romance, I am 
 not yet so far over head and ears in heroics, but that I have knowledge 
 enough of the world, to perceive that no disinterested motive can lead 
 a man to enter into a friendship with another with whose temper, 
 capacity and talents he is most certainly ignorant. If he takes me 
 for anyone whose character I have drawn in Zastrozzi he is mistaken 
 quite 
 
 The words as far as I can recollect after the crayons, were — 
 
 ' I beg leave. Sir, to take this opportunity of offering my thanks 
 for your very great civility ' 
 
 I am &c 
 
 Now if there was anything in this sentence, merely expressive of 
 my gratitude for his politeness as one gentleman to another, if there 
 was anything I say which could authorize the very sentimental and 
 
 unexpected answer, I am willing to confess myself to blame Believe 
 
 me most thankful for your advice concerning it & that I take it un- 
 reservedly, for however cautious I may be in contracting new friend- 
 ships, it shall never be said but that I am faithful to my old ones — 
 How now to answer him, will you tell me that too — ? I am certainly 
 always the sport of extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances ! 
 I wonder if everyone that writes a romance draws such a train of 
 eccentric events after him 
 
 The crayons will do very well, will you pay Merle for them — I 
 
 wish you would come to Eton, but do not put yourself out of your wa}", 
 
 and we will settle. 
 
 Ever yours faithfully 
 
 P. B. Shelley 
 
 1 This letter, refeiTed to at p. 87, but without the name of the place 
 bears the post-mark "May21,1810", where it was posted. 
 
APPENDIX. 455 
 
 I act unlike every other mortal enough in all conscience, without 
 seeking for more Quixotish adventures, — such as contracting heroic 
 sentiments — Heavens ! if I had condescended as he calls it what a long 
 letter I should have had ! by to-day's Post. 
 
 Edward Fergus Graham Esq., 
 29 Vine, Street 
 Piccadilly 
 London. 
 
 [No. 13.] 
 
 Eton Coll. 
 May 29, 1810 1 
 My dear Graham 
 
 Another letter from Merle & such a high flyer, perhaps you have 
 not lately seen. It takes up an entire sheet in his small writing. 
 Will he not leave me alone ? I shall write to him to day. No I shall 
 not write to him at all. I shall leave him entirely to his own ideas. 
 
 He talks about his " proud youth disdaining ", & it is altogether so 
 mysterious & unintelligible an epistle, that not knowing how the 
 devil to answer it I shall leave it quite alone. 
 
 It says he wishes to conceal his sorrows & his guilt. May I ask 
 you, Graham, out of curiosity, what he means by either ? in short I am 
 resolved to have no m ore to do with him, not even for drawing utensils, 
 as I fear the man has some deep scheme. Where does he come from, 
 & who is he ? 
 
 Will you write to Mary under cover to Miss Pigeon, Clapham 
 Common, Surrey, where I wish you to send the books, also for Mary. 
 They are all very well, and would be delighted at a letter from you. 
 
 My mother has had a violent bilious fever ; she is now getting much 
 better. 
 
 I had a letter from Harriet this morning in which she tells me the 
 crayons will do very well. Will you pay Merle the lis, for I do not 
 like to owe that kind of man anything, though I believe he is a liberal 
 fellow; but I have seen too much of the world not to suspect his 
 motives. 
 
 Tour most affectionate 
 P. B. Shelley 
 
 ^ This letter also is post-marked, See note to the previous letter, 
 the date being the 30th of May 1810. No. 12, and refer to p. 87. 
 
456 
 
 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Will you come on the 4th ? How is my father ? 
 
 In the name! of the most merciful G od — " Arabian Nights." Will 
 
 you send a Zastrozzi directed to the Itevd. Sayer, Leominster, near 
 
 Arundel. Send it directly. I have written to say it was coming. 
 
 Edward Fergus Graham Esq. 
 29 Vine Street, Piccadilly 
 London. 
 
 II. FEANKENSTEIN.i 
 
 SHELLEY'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by 
 Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not 
 of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the 
 remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in 
 assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, 1 have not considered 
 myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event 
 on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the dis- 
 
 1 See pages 156 to 159. Shelley's 
 paper on Frankenstein, written in or 
 about 1817 in the reviewer's first 
 person plural, was published in The 
 Athensevm for the 10th of November 
 1832, then in The Shelley Papers {18SS), 
 and again in this Life of Shelley 
 as issued in ]8i7. Med win is of 
 course responsible for all three texts. 
 Mai-y Shelley, naturally enough, did 
 not include it in what he calls the 
 TroseVforka (the Essays, Letters,&c.). 
 When publishing as complete an 
 edition of Shelley's prose com- 
 positions as I could in 1880, I used 
 the first two texts. In the present 
 volume three amendments of the 
 more or less corrupt version of 1847 
 have been made. (1) In line 9 of 
 the review the this of The Shelley 
 Papers has been substituted for the 
 before judgment ; (2) pathos has been 
 substituted for father's (as in 1880, 
 but no longer oonjecturally) in line 
 17 of p. 158; and (3) the single of 
 
 The Shelley Papers has been substi- 
 tuted for the nonsensical simple in 
 the next line ; but soured for sodal 
 in the eighth line from the foot of 
 the page, a reading suggested by 
 C. J. Monro in The Academy for the 
 11th of December 1880, has not 
 been adopted, though plausible. 
 Mr. Monro pointedoutthatShelley's 
 phraseology in the words loiihout the 
 consequences of disease, used in The 
 Banquet, was identical with which 
 led to the consequences of his being a 
 social nature in the Frankenstein 
 review, — social in this context being 
 rather unconvincing. However, 
 that is what Shelley wrote. The 
 late Dr. Garnett had Shelley's draft 
 of the paper, in a little book given to 
 him by Sir Percy and Lady Shelley, 
 after I published the Prose "Works. 
 The paper was boldly written ; and 
 the readings pathos, single, and social 
 were absolutely unquestionable. 
 
APPENDIX. 457 
 
 advantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recom- 
 mended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, 
 however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the 
 imagination for the delineating of human passions more compre- 
 hensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of 
 existing events can yield. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary 
 principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate 
 upon their combinations. The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece, — 
 Shakspeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream, — and 
 most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule ; and 
 the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement 
 from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction 
 a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many 
 exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest 
 specimens of poetry. 
 
 The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual 
 conversation. It was commenced, partly as a source of amusement, 
 and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of 
 mind. Other motives were mingled with these, as the work pro- 
 ceeded. I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which 
 whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it 
 contains shall affect the reader ; yet my chief concern in this respect 
 has been limited to the avoiding the enervating effects of the novels 
 of the present day, and to the exhibition of the amiableness of 
 domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. The 
 opinions which naturally spring from the character and situation 
 of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my 
 own conviction ; nor is any inference justly to be drawn from the 
 following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of what- 
 ever kind. 
 
 It is a subject also of additional interest to the author, that this 
 story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally 
 laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the 
 summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and 
 rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, 
 and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of 
 ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited 
 in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from 
 the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public 
 than any thing I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to 
 write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence. 
 
458 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The weather, however, suddenly became serene ; and my two friends 
 left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent 
 scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The 
 following tale is the only one which has been completed. 
 
 MARY SHELLEY'S INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITIONS 
 OF 1831 AND LATER. ' 
 
 The Publishers of the Standard Novels, in selecting " Frankenstein " 
 for one of their series, expressed a wish that I should furnish them 
 with some account of the origin of the story. I am the more willing 
 to comply, because I shall thus give a general answer to the question, 
 so very frequently asked me — "How I, then a young girl, came to 
 think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?" It is true 
 that I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print; but as 
 my account will only appear as an appendage to a foi-mer production, 
 and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my 
 authorship alone, I can scarcely accuse myself of a personal in- 
 trusion. 
 
 It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished 
 literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing. 
 As a child I scribbled ; and my favourite pastime, during the hours 
 given me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still 1 had a dearer 
 pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air — 
 the indulging in waking dreams — the following up trains of thought, 
 which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary 
 incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than 
 my writings. In the latter I was a close imitator-^rather doing as 
 others had done, than putting down the suggestions of my own mind. 
 What I wrote was intended at least for one other eye — my childhood's 
 companion and friend ; but my dreams were all my own ; I accounted 
 for them to nobody ; they were my refuge when annoyed — my dearest 
 pleasure when free. 
 
 I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a considerable 
 time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque 
 parts ; but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern 
 shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection 
 I call them ; they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of 
 freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune 
 with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then— but in a most 
 common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds 
 belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless 
 
APPENDIX. 459 
 
 mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my 
 imagination, were born and fostered. I did not make myself the 
 heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an 
 affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic 
 woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot ; but I was not con- 
 fined to my own identity, and I could people the hours with creations 
 far more interesting to me at that age, than my own sensations. 
 
 After this my life became busier, and reality stood in place of 
 fiction. My husband, however, was from the first, very anxious that 
 I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on 
 the page of fame. He was for ever inciting me to obtain literary 
 reputation, which even on my own part I cared for then, though since 
 I have become infinitely indifferent to it. At this time he desired 
 that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could produce 
 any thing worthy of notice, but that he might himself judge how far 
 I possessed the promise of better things hereafter. Still I did nothing. 
 Travelling, and the cares of a family, occupied my time ; and study, 
 in the way of reading, or improving my ideas in communication with 
 his far more cultivated mind, was all of literary employment that 
 engaged my attention. 
 
 In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the 
 neighbours of Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on 
 the lake, or wandering on its shores ; and Lord Byron, who was 
 writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us 
 who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them suc- 
 cessively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed 
 to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences 
 we partook with him. 
 
 But it proved a wet, ungenlal summer, and incessant rain often 
 confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories, 
 translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. There 
 was the History of the Inconstant Lover, who, when he thought to 
 clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the 
 arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the 
 tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to 
 bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, 
 just when they reached the a^e of promise. His gigantic, shadowy 
 form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet, in complete armour, but with 
 the beaver up. was seen at midnight, by the moon's fltful beams, to 
 advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The shape was lost beneath 
 the shadow of the castle walls ; but soon a gate swung back, a step 
 was heard, the door of the chamber opened, and he advanced to the 
 
460 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal 
 sorrow sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead of 
 the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the 
 stalk. 1 have not seen these stories since then ; but their incidents 
 are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday. 
 
 " We will each write a ghost story," said Lord Byron ; and his 
 proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble 
 author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of 
 his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and 
 sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery, and in the music 
 of the most melodious verse that adorns our language, than to invent 
 the machinery of a story, commenced one founded on the experiences 
 of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull- 
 headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole — 
 what to see I forget — something very shocking and wrong of course ; 
 but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned 
 Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her, and was 
 obliged to despatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only 
 place for which she was fitted. The illustrious poets also, annoyed 
 by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial 
 task, 
 
 I busied myself to think of a story, — a story to rival those which had 
 excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious 
 fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror — one to make the 
 reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the 
 beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my 
 ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered 
 — vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the 
 greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our 
 anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story ? I was asked each 
 morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying 
 negative. 
 
 Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase ; 
 and that beginning must be linked to something that went 
 before. The Hindoos give the world an elephant to support it, but 
 they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be 
 humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out 
 of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be aiforded: it can 
 give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being 
 the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even 
 of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually 
 reminded of the stoiy of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists 
 
APPENDIX. 461 
 
 , in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the 
 power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it. 
 
 Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and 
 Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During 
 one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and 
 among others the natui-e of the principle of life, and whether there 
 was any probability of its ever being discovered and cotnmunicated. 
 They talked of the experiments of Dr.^ Darwin, (I speak not of what 
 the Doctor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, 
 of what was then spoken of as having been done by him,) who pre- 
 served a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary 
 means it began to move with voluntary motion.' Not thus, after all, 
 would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated ; gal- 
 vanism had given token of such things : perhaps the component parts 
 of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued 
 with vital warmth. 
 
 Night waned upon this talk ; and even the witching hour had gone 
 by, before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, 
 I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, un- 
 bidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that 
 arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of 
 reverie. I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision — I saw the 
 pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had 
 put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and 
 then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, 
 and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be ; 
 for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour 
 to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. 
 His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his 
 odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, 
 the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade ; that 
 this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would sub- 
 side into dead matter ; and he might sleep in the belief that the 
 silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence 
 of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. 
 He sleeps ; but he is awakened ; he opens his eyes ; behold the horrid 
 thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him 
 with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. 
 
 I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that 
 a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly 
 image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the 
 very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight 
 
462 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and 
 white high Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my 
 hideous phantom ; still it haunted me. I must try to think of some- 
 thing else. I recurred to my ghost story, — my tiresome unlucky 
 ghost story ! ! if I could only contrive one which would frighten 
 my reader as I myself had been frightened that night ! 
 
 Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. 
 " I have found it ! What terrified me will terrify others ; and I need 
 only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow." 
 On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began 
 that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making 
 only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream. 
 
 At first I thought but of a few pages — of a short tale ; but Shelley 
 urged me to develope the idea at greater length. I certainly did not 
 owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of 
 feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would 
 never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world. 
 From this declaration 1 must except the preface. As far as I can 
 recollect, it was entirely written by him. 
 
 And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and 
 prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy 
 days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true 
 echo in my heart. Its several pages speak of many a walk, many 
 a drive, and many a conversation, when I was not alone ; and my 
 companion was one whom, in this world, I shall never see more. 
 But this is for myself; my readers have nothing to do with these 
 associations. 
 
 I will add but one word as to the alterations I have made. They 
 are principally those of style. I have changed no portion of the 
 story, nor introduced any newideas or circumstances. I have mended 
 the language where it was so bald as to intex-fere with the interest 
 of the narrative ; and these changes occur almost exclusively in the 
 beginning of the first volume.^ Throughout they are entirely con- 
 fined to such parts as are mere adjuncts to the story, leaving the 
 core and substance of.it untouched. 
 
 M. W. S. ' 
 
 London, October 15. 1831. 
 
 ^ The first edition (1818), now a of each volume an epigraph from 
 
 rare book, is in three thin volumes, Paradise Lost ; 
 
 printed by Macdonald and Son of Did I request thee, Maker, from 
 
 Cloth Fair, London, and published my clay 
 
 by Lfickington, Hughes, Harding, To mould me man ? Did I soli- 
 
 Mavor, and Jones of Finsbury cit thee 
 
 Square. Dedicated to William From darkness to promote me ? 
 Godwin, it bore on the title-page 
 
APPENDIX. 463 
 
 III. CHANCERY PAPEES RELATING TO 
 SHELLEY'S CHILDREN BY HARRIETT.^ 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S PETITION DATED 8 JANUARY 1817 
 
 To the Right Honorable John Lord Eldon Baron Eldon of Eldon in the 
 
 County of Durham Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. 
 Humbly complaining shew unto your Lordship your Orators Eliza 
 lanthe Shelley an Infant of the age of three years and a half or there- 
 abouts and Charles Bysshe Shelley an Infant of the age of two years 
 or thereabouts by John Westbrooke of Chapel Street in the Parish of 
 Saint George Hanover Square in the County of Middlesex Esquire 
 their maternal grandfather and next friend. That in the month of 
 August One thousand eight hundred and eleven Percy Bysshe Shelley 
 Esquire the father of your Orators married Harriett Westbrooke who 
 was the daughter of the said John Westbrooke and that your said 
 Orators are the only Issue of the said Marriage and that after the 
 Birth of your Orator Eliza lanthe Shelley and while the said Harriett 
 Shelley was pregnant with your Orator Charles Bysshe Shelley the 
 said Percy Bysshe Shelley became acquainted with a Mr. Godwin the 
 author of a work called Political Justice and other Works and with 
 Mary Godwin his daughter and that the said Percy Bysshe Shelley 
 about three years ago deserted his said wife and unlawfully cohabited 
 with the said Mary Godwin And that thereupon the said Harriett 
 Shelley returned to the house of her said father the said John 
 Westbrooke and brought your infant Orator Eliza lanthe Shelley 
 with her and was afterwards delivered at the said house of your 
 Orator Charles Bysshe Shelley and they have ever since continued 
 and are now in the custody and under the care and protection of your 
 Orator John Westbrooke and his Daughter Elizabeth Westbrooke the 
 Sister of the said Harriett Shelley and a Defendant hereinafter named 
 And your Orators shew that from the time the said Harriett Shelley 
 
 ' These papers are the documents Infants by John Westbrooke their 
 
 referred to in the footnote at page maternal Grandfather and next 
 
 182 ante. The Cause is generally Friend — Plaintiffs — and Elizabeth 
 
 known as "Shelley v. West- Westbrooke Spinster John Higham 
 
 brooke"; and the usual full formal Esquire Percy Bysshe Shelley 
 
 heading of these papers is "In Esquire Sir Timothy Shelley Baro- 
 
 Chancery Between Eliza lanthe net, and John Westbrooke Esquire 
 
 Shelley and Charles Bysshe Shelley — Defendants." 
 
464 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 was deserted by her said Husband until a short time previously to 
 the time of her death she lived with the said John Westbrooke her 
 father and that in the month of December last she died and that the 
 said Percy Bysshe Shelley ever since he so deserted his said wife has 
 unlawfully cohabited with the said Mary Godwin and is now unlaw- 
 fully cohabiting with her and has several illegitimate children by her 
 and your Orators shew that Sir Timothy Shelley Baronet the father 
 of the said Percy Bysshe Shelley did in the year one thousand eight 
 hundred and fifteen concur with the said Percy Bysshe Shelley in 
 making a Settlement of certain Estates belonging to the said Sir 
 Timothy Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley whereby the said Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley became and is now entitled to a yearly rent charge or 
 annuity of One thousand pounds subject to the payment thereout of 
 the yearly sum of Two hundred pounds to the said Harriett Shelley 
 during her life and the said Sir Timothy Shelley contracted to make 
 some provision for your Infant Orators But the nature of such Contract 
 or provision your Orators are unable to set forth And your Orators 
 shew that while your Orators lived with the said John Westbrooke 
 they were supported partly by their said mother and partly by the 
 said John Westbrooke And your Orators shew that the said Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley avows himself to be an Atheist and that since his said 
 Marriage he has written and published a certain work called Queen 
 Mab with notes and other works and that he has therein blasphe- 
 mously derided the truth of the Christian Revelation and denied the 
 existence of God as the Creator of the Universe And your Orators 
 further shew that since the death of the said Harriett Shelley the said 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley has demanded that your Orators should be 
 delivered up to him and he intends if he can to get possession of their 
 persons and educate them as he thinks proper And your Orators 
 further shew that in order to make some provision for your Orators 
 the said John Westbrooke hath transferred the Sum of two thousand 
 pounds four pounds per Cent bank annuities into the names of the 
 said Elizabeth Westbrooke and of John Higham of Grosvenor Street 
 in the Parish of Saint George Hanover Square Esquire and the same 
 is now standing in their names And an Indenture bearing. date the 
 second day of January one thousand eight hundred and seventeen has 
 been duly made between the said John Westbrooke of the first part 
 your Orators Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles Bysshe Shelley of the 
 second part and the said Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham of 
 the third part and the same has been executed by the said John 
 Westbrooke and the said Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham 
 And that by the said Indenture after reciting the said Transfer it was 
 
APPENDIX. 465 
 
 agreed that they the said Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham 
 and the survivor of them and the executors and administrators of 
 such survivor should thenceforth stand possessed of and interested in 
 the said sum of Two thousand pounds four pounds per Cent Consoli- 
 dated Bank annuities upon trust for your Orators Eliza lanthe Shelley 
 and Charles Bysshe Shelley equally to be divided between them share 
 and share alike and to be paid assigned or transferred to them 
 respectively in manner following (that is to say) one moiety or half 
 part thereof to be paid assigned or transferred to your Orator the 
 said Eliza lanthe Shelley when she shall attain the age of twenty one 
 years or be married (with the consent in writing of the said John 
 Westbrooke or of such person or persons as he shall by Deed or Will 
 appoint) which shall first happen and the other moiety or half part 
 thereof to be paid assigned or transferred to your Orator Charles 
 Bysshe Shelley when he shall attain the age of twenty years But in 
 case your Orator Eliza lanthe Shelley shall happen to depart this life 
 under the age of twenty one years and without having been married 
 with such consent as aforesaid or your Orator Charles Bysshe Shelley 
 shall depart this life under the age of twenty one years then and in 
 that case the whole of the said sum of Two thousand pounds Four 
 pounds per cent Consolidated Bank Annuities shall go and be paid to 
 the survivor of your Orators Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles Bysshe 
 Shelley at such time as is mentioned with respect to her or his 
 original moiety of the said trust monies and upon trust and in the 
 meantime and until your Orators Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles 
 Bysshe Shelley or the survivor of them shall become entitled to an 
 absolute vested interest in the said trust monies to pay and apply all 
 or a sufficient part of the Dividends and annual produce of the said 
 trust fund for and towards the maintenance and education of your 
 Orators Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles Bysshe Shelley respectively 
 in such manner as the said Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham 
 or the survivor of them or other trustee or trustees for the time 
 being shall think proper And as to so much of the said Dividends 
 and Annual produce (if any) as shall not be applied for such 
 maintenance and education as aforesaid upon trust to accumulate 
 the same upon the same trusts as are declared concerning the said 
 Sum of Two thousand pounds four pounds per cent Consolidated 
 Bank annuities and without making any distinction in the shares 
 from which such accumulation shall arise And upon further trust that 
 in case your Orators Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles Bysshe Shelley 
 should depart this life before the interest of either of them in the 
 said trust monies should become payable and transferrable under the 
 
 SHELLEY H ix 
 
466 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 trusts before set forth then that the said trustees or other the trustees 
 or trustee for the time being shall stand possessed of and interested 
 in the said trust fund in trust for the said John Westbrooke his 
 executors administrators and assigns to and for his and their own use 
 and benefit absolutely Provided always and it is thereby declared and 
 agreed that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said trustees 
 and the survivor of them or other the trustees or trustee for the time 
 being of the said trust Bank Annuities by and with the consent in 
 writing of the said John Westbrooke if living but if dead then by and 
 of the proper authority of the same trustees respectively to raise any 
 Sum or sums of money by and out of the said trust fund not exceed- 
 ing in the whole three hundred pounds and to apply the same for the 
 preferment and advancement in the world or other benefit and 
 advantage of the said Charles Bysshe Shelley as they the said trustees 
 or the survivor of them or other the Trustees or Trustee for the time 
 being thereof shall in their or his or her discretion think fit not- 
 withstanding the said Charles Bysshe Shelley shall not then have 
 attained his age of twenty one years And your Orators are desirous 
 that your Orators should not be placed in the custody of the said 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley but that their persons and fortunes should be 
 placed under the protection of this Honorable Court And that the 
 trusts of the said Indenture should be performed and that the 
 Contract made by the said Sir Timothy Shelley for a provision foi* 
 your Orators should be carried into execution. In consideration where- 
 of and for as much as your Orators can only have adequate relief in 
 the premises in a Court of Equity where matters of this nature are 
 proper recognizable and relievable And to the end that the said 
 Defendants Elizabeth Westbrooke John Higham Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley Sir Timothy Shelley and John Westbrooke and Robert 
 Farthing Beauchamp ^ may upon their several and respective oaths and 
 
 1 Professor Dowden (ii. 78 note) rity of the Eev. W. Esdaile that 
 
 mentions Beauchamp as one of the Beauchamp^s name was originally 
 
 defendants in the case, whether on Farthing, that he came of a Somer- 
 
 the ground of this reference to him set family of yeomen, was a London 
 
 or of some other evidence is not bank clerk, and took the name of 
 
 stated. He does not appear to me Beauchamp under the will of an 
 
 to be so characterized here, where old lady of that name who fell in 
 
 his name is taeked on by a second love with him and left him all her 
 
 and after the list of defendants, as property. This lucky personage, it 
 
 if he were an additional witness seems, married Elizabeth West- 
 
 whom the Westbrookes desired to brooke, who on her part, inherited 
 
 get questioned, He was probably her father's property. Neither on 
 
 a very intimate acquaintance of the the brief prepared by Shelley's 
 
 Westbrooke family, for Mr. Dowden Solicitor, Longdill. for the use of 
 
 (i. 142 note) records on the autho- his chief Counsel, Mr. Wetherell, 
 
APPENDIX. 467 
 
 according to the best of their respective knowledge remembrance 
 information and belief full true direct and perfect answer make to 
 all and singular the matters aforesaid and that as fully and particu- 
 larly as if the same were here again repeated and they distinctly 
 interrogated thereto 
 
 And whether an Indenture [was or] was not duly made and executed by 
 and between such parties and of such date and of such purport and 
 effect as the Indenture hereinbefore mentioned to bear date the 2nd day 
 of January 1817 or made by and between any and what other parties 
 or of any and what other date or to any and what other purport or 
 effect. And whether your Orators are [or are] not desirous that your 
 Orators should not be placed in the custody of the said Defendant but 
 that their persons and fortunes should be placed under the protection of 
 this Honourable Court And that the trusts of the said Indenture should 
 be performed and that the Contract made by the said Sir Timothy 
 Shelley for a provision for your Orators should be carried into execu- 
 tion And that the fortune of your Orators and their persons may be 
 placed under the protection of this Honourable Court and that 
 a proper person or proper persons may be appointed to act as their 
 Guardian or Guardians and that all proper directions may be given 
 for their maintenance and education and that the trusts of the said 
 Indenture may be performed And that if necessary the said sum of 
 Two thousand pounds Four pounds per cent Bank annuities may be 
 transferred into the name of the Accountant General of this Honor- 
 able Court Upon the trusts of that Indenture And that all proper 
 directions may be given for carrying into execution the Contract 
 made by the said Sir Timothy Shelley for making a provision for 
 your Infant Orators And that in the meantime the said Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley may be restrained by the Injunction of this Honourable Court 
 from taking possession of the persons of your Orators And that your 
 Orators may have such further or other relief in the premises as the 
 iiature of the case may require and to your Lordship shall seem meet. 
 May it please your Lordship to grant unto your Orators not only 
 His Majesty's Most Gracious Writ of Injunction issuing out of and 
 under the Seal of this Honorable Court to restrain the said Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley from taking possession of the persons of your Orators 
 but also His Majesty's Most Gracious Writ or Writs of subpoena to be 
 directed to them and each and every of them the said Elizabeth 
 
 a paper in my possession, from I here give transcripts, does Beau- 
 which Professor Dowden drew some champ's name appear as that of a 
 interesting particulars, nor on any defendant in "Shelley v. West- 
 one of the Chancery papers of which brooke". 
 
 h1i2 
 
468 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Westbrooke John Higham Sir Timothy Shelley Baronet and John 
 Westbrooke Percy Bysshe Shelley and Robert Farthing Beauchamp 
 thereby commanding them and each and every of them at a certain 
 day and under a certain pain therein to be limited personally to be 
 and appear before your Lordship in this Honourable Court and then 
 and there true direct and perfect answer make to all and singular 
 the premises and further to stand to perform and abide such further 
 order direction and decree therein as to your Lordship shall seem 
 meet 
 
 And your Orators shall ever pray &c. 
 
 Lancelot Shadwell. 
 
 AFriDAVIT OF ELIZABETH WESTBROOKE SWORN 
 10 JANUARY 1817 ' 
 
 States That she knows and is well acquainted with the Handwriting 
 of Percy Bysshe Shelley Esq. one of the above named defendants in 
 this cause having frequently seen him write That she hath looked upon 
 certain paper Writings now produced and shewn to her at the time of 
 swearing this her Affidavit and marked respectively 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 
 8. 9. That the said Paper Writings are all of the Handwriting of the 
 said Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley and were respectively addressed 
 by him to Harriett his late Wife deceased the sister of this Deponent 
 That the Female mentioned or referred to in the said Letters marked 
 respectively 2. 4. 6. 9. under the name or designation of " Mary " and 
 in the said other Letters by the Character or description of the Person 
 with whom the said Defendant had connected or associated himself is 
 Mary Godwin in the Pleadings of this Cause named whom the said 
 Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Lifetime of his said Wife and 
 in or about the middle of the year 1814 took to cohabit with him and 
 hath ever since continued to cohabit and still doth cohabit with That 
 she hath looked upon a certain other paper Writing produced and 
 shewn to this Deponent now at the time of swearing this her Affidavit 
 and marked 10 That the same Paper Writing is of the Handwriting 
 of the said Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley and was addressed by him 
 to this Deponent since the decease of her said Sister the late Wife of 
 the said Percy Bysshe Shelley That the Person referred to in the said 
 last mentioned Letter As "the Lady whose Union with the said 
 Defendant this Deponent might excusably regard as the cause of her 
 Sisters ruin" is also the said Mary Godwin That she hath looked 
 
 • These affidavits, of which I copied from Mr. Wetherell's brief, 
 have not seen the originals, are 
 
APPENDIX. 469 
 
 upon a certain printed Book produced and shewn to this Deponent 
 DOW at the time of swearing this her Affidavit and marked with the 
 Letter A and entitled " Queen Mab " with notes subjoined thereto and 
 a certain other printed book or Pamphlet marked with the Letter B 
 entitled a Letter to Lord Ellenborough occasioned by the sentence 
 which he passed on Mr. D. L Eaton as publisher of the 3rd Part of 
 Paines Age of Reason That the said Books marked respectively A B 
 were respectively written and published by the said Defendant Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley as she this Deponent knows she having frequently seen 
 the manuscript of such respective Books in the Handwriting of the 
 said Defendant and having repeatedly seen him engaged in writing 
 the same That the said Printed Books now produced were presented 
 by the said Defendant to his said late Wife the Sister of this Depo- 
 nent That she hath since the death of her said Sister received several 
 applications from the said Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley and from 
 Mr. Leigh Hunt on his behalf demanding the said Petitioners to be 
 delivered up to the said Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 FURTHER AFFIDAVIT OF ELIZABETH WESTBROOKE 
 SWORN n JANUARY 1817 
 
 States That in the Month of August in the year 1811 the above 
 named Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley married Harriett Westbrooke 
 a Daughter of the above named Defendant John Westbrooke and 
 Sister of this Deponent and the said Petitioners are the only Issue of 
 the said Marriage That after the birth of the said Petitioner Eliza 
 lanthe Shelley and while the said Harriett Shelley was pregnant with 
 the said Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley he the said Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley deserted his said Wife and as this Deponent hath been 
 informed and verily believes unlawfully cohabited with Mary Godwin 
 in the Pleadings in this Cause named And thereupon the said Harriett 
 Shelley returned to the House of her said Father and took the 
 Petitioner Eliza lanthe Shelley with her and soon afterwards the 
 Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley was born in the House of the said 
 John Westbrooke and the said Petitioners have since continued and 
 are now in the Custody or under the care and protection of the said 
 John Westbrooke and of this Deponent and from the time the said 
 Harriett Shelley was deserted by her said Husband until a short time 
 previously to her Death she lived with or under the protection of the 
 said John Westbrooke her Father And that in the Month of December 
 last she died That while the said Petitioners lived with or under the 
 care of the said John Westbrooke they were supported partly- by their 
 
470 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Mother and partly by the said John Westbrooke and in order to make 
 some Provision for the said Petitioners the said John Westbrooke hath 
 transferred the sum of £2000 4£ per Cent Bank Annuities into the 
 Names of this Deponent and the above named Defendant John Higham 
 upon certain Trusts declared thereof in and by the Indenture dated 
 the 2nd day of January Instant in the Pleadings of this cause 
 mentioned and the same is now standing in their Names. 
 
 SHELLEY'S ANSWER, GIVEN 18 JANUARY 1817 ^ 
 
 The Defendant saving and reserving to himself now and at all times 
 hereafter all benefit and advantage of exception that can or may be 
 had or taken to the said Complainants said Bill of Complaint for 
 answer thereto or unto So much thereof as he is advised is in anywise 
 material or necessary for him to make answer unto answers and says 
 he admits that he this Defendant did in the month of August One 
 thousand eight hundi-ed and eleven intermarry with Harriett West- 
 brooke named in the said Bill in that behalf and that she was the 
 Daughter of the said John Westbrooke and this Defendant saith that 
 the said Complainants are the only Issue of the said marriage and 
 that after the birth of the said Complainant Eliza lanthe Shelley this 
 Defendant and his said late wife agreed in consequence of certain 
 diflferences between them to live separate and apart from each other 
 but this Defendant denies that he deserted his said wife otherwise 
 than by separating from her as aforesaid And this Defendant further 
 says he admits that in consequence of such separation the said Harriett 
 Shelley returned to the House of her Father, and took the said 
 Complainant Eliza lanthe Shelley with her and that the said 
 Complainant Charles Bysshe Shelley was afterwards born at or about 
 the time mentioned in the said Complainants Bill. And this Defendant 
 admits that his said late Wife died at or about the time in the said 
 Bill mentioned in that behalf And this Defendant says that at the 
 urgent entreaty of his said late wife he permitted his said children to 
 reside with her under her management and protection after her 
 separation from this Defendant although this Defendant saith he was 
 very anxious from his affection for his said children to have had them 
 with him under his own care and management during his said Wife's 
 life but that he forbore so to do in compliance with the wishes of his 
 
 * The formal heading to this Bysshe Shelley Infants by John 
 
 paper is "In Chancery. The Answ^ Westbrooke their maternal Grand- 
 
 of Percy Bysshe Shelley one of the father and next friend Complain- 
 
 Defendants to the Bill of Complaint ants." 
 of Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles 
 
APPENDIX. 471 
 
 wife and on account of their then tender age intending nevertheless 
 to have them under his own care and to provide for their education 
 himself as soon as they should be of a proper age Or in case of the 
 death of his said wife and never having in any manner abandoned or 
 deserted them or had any intention of so doing And this Defendant 
 saith it may be true for anything he knows to the contrary that his 
 said children may since their said mother's death have been and may 
 now be in the custody and under the protection of the said John 
 Westbrooke and his Daughter Elizabeth Westbrooke another De- 
 fendant named in the said Complainarits Bill but this Defendant saith 
 they have been so against the consent of this Defenda^nt and that they 
 hiive been clandestinely placed in some place unknown to this 
 Defendant and without his being able to find them or have 'access to 
 them and he says that since the death of his said wife he hath 
 frequently applied to the said Elizabeth Westbrooke and John 
 Westbrooke and hath requested to have the said Complainants his 
 children delivered up to him in order that this Defendant might 
 enjoy the happiness of their Society and might provide for their 
 maintenance and education but that the said John Westbrooke and 
 Elizabeth Westbrooke have always refused to deliver them up to this 
 Defendant or even to inform this Defendant where they were, and have 
 altogether prevented this Defendant from having any access to them 
 Aad this Defendant denies that he is unlawfully cohabiting with Mary 
 Godwin in the said Bill named on the contrary he saith that he hath 
 since the death of his said late Wife intermarried with her and that 
 she is his lawful wife And this Defendant denies that Sir Timothy 
 Shelley Baronet in the said Bill named did in the year One thousand 
 eight hundred and fifteen or at any other time concur with this 
 Defendant in making a Settlement to the purport and effect in the 
 said Bill in that behalf mentioned but this Defendant says that this 
 Defendant having an allowance from his Father of Two hundred 
 pounds per annum only up to the month of June One thousand eight 
 hundred and fifteen he became indebted before that time to different 
 persons in several large Sums of money amounting altogether to the 
 Sum of Five thousand pounds and upwards and being pressed for 
 payment of such debts and being totally unable to pay the same or 
 any of them or any part thereof' he applied to the said Sir Timothy 
 Shelley upon which this defendant and the said Sir Timothy 
 Shelley came to an arrangement by which the said Sir Timothy 
 Shelley in the said month of June One thousand eight hundred 
 and fifteen advanced this Defendant a coneideraJble Sum of 
 njoney towards the payment of his debts and also secured to this 
 
472 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Defendant an annuity of One thousand pounds per annum during the 
 joint lives of the said Sir Timothy Shelley and this Defendant by way 
 of Rent charge out of certain Estates belonging to the said Sir 
 Timothy Shelley and this Defendant further says that it may be true 
 for anything he knows to the contrary that while the said Complain- 
 ants have lived with the said John Westbrooke they may have been 
 supported partly by their mother and partly by the said John West- 
 brooke but he saya that if that hath been the case this Defendant 
 hath contributed to their support for he says on the said Sir Timothy 
 Shelley assisting this Defendant with money and on his allowing him 
 One thousand pounds a year as hereinbefore mentioned he this 
 Defendant immediately wrote to the said Sir Timothy Shelley and 
 requested him to give directions to his Bankers through whom this 
 Defendant received his said Annuity to pay to or to the order of the 
 said Harriett Shelley the annual Sum of Two hundred pounds out of 
 the Sum of One thousand pounds allowed to this Defendant by 
 quarterly payments and which this Defendant says was accordingly 
 done and to the best of this Defendants recollection and belief as to 
 the time the said Harriett Shelley received the first quarterly payment 
 thereof in the month of June One thousand eight hundred and fifteen 
 besides which this Defendant says that he this Defendant desired his 
 Solicitor to pay to the Solicitor of the said Harriett Shelley the full 
 sum of Two hundred pounds to discharge her debts and which he says 
 was paid accordingly to her Solicitor by the Solicitor of this 
 Defendant sometime in the said month of June One thousand eight 
 hundred and fifteen and he says the said annuity of Two hundred 
 pounds was afterwards regularly paid to the said Harriett Shelley or 
 to her order down to the time of her death And this Deponent further 
 says he admits that since the death of the said Harriett Shelley he 
 this Defendant hath demanded that the said Complainants should he 
 delivered up to him and that he intends if he can to get possession of 
 their persons and educate them as he thinks proper which he intends 
 to do virtuously and properly and to provide also for their support and 
 maintenance [in] a manner suitable to their birth and prospects in the 
 world and to the best of his judgment and ability And this Defendant 
 humbly submits and insists that being the father he is also the 
 natural Guardian of his said children and that as it is his duty to 
 provide for their maintenance and education so it is also his right so 
 to do and to have the custody of the persons of his said children as 
 well as the superintendence and management of their education And 
 this Defendant says it may be true for any thing he knows to the 
 contrary that in order to make some provision for the said Complain- 
 
APPENDIX. 473 
 
 ants sufiBcient to enable the said John Westbrooke by so doing to 
 contest the just rights of this Defendant as the father and natural 
 Guardian of the said Complainants but not further and as he believes 
 for no other purpose the said John Westbrooke may have transferred 
 the sum of Two thousand pounds four per Cent Bank annuities into 
 the names of the said Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham another 
 Defendant nam.ed in the said Bill and that the same may now be 
 standing in their names and that an Indenture may have been duly 
 made and executed by and between such parties and of such date and 
 to such purport and effect as is mentioned in the said Bill to bear 
 date the Second day of January One thousand eight hundred and 
 seventeen but this Defendant is ignorant of the said several last 
 mentioned matters of his own knowledge or otherwise save as they 
 appear by the statement thereof in the said Bill And this Defendant 
 says that the said Complainants are of such tender age that they can 
 not from any reasonable ground of objection on their part be desirous 
 that they should not be placed in the custody of this Defendant not 
 being of suflScient age as this Defendant submits and insists to judge 
 for themselves either as to that or any other circumstance that can 
 affect their future prospects or welfare in life And this Defendant 
 humbly submits and insists that he is exclusively entitled to the 
 custody and care of his ^aid Children and that he ought not to be 
 deprived thereof or to have his just rights as their Father and natural 
 G-uardian taken from him or abridged and that the said Complainants 
 ought to be delivered up to him And this Defendant denies all and all 
 manner of unlawful combination and confederacy in and by the Bill 
 charged without this that there is any other matter cause or thing in 
 the Complainants said Bill of Complaint contained material or 
 effectual in the Law for this Defendant to make answer unto and not 
 herein and hereby well and sufficiently answered avoided traversed or 
 denied is true to the knowledge or belief of this Defendant, all which 
 matters and things [he] is ready and willing to aver maintain and prove 
 as this Honourable Court shall direct and humbly prays to be hence 
 dismissed with his reasonable Costs and charges in this behalf most 
 
 wrongfully sustained 
 
 WiLiM. Hokne' 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley." 
 
 ' One of Shelley's junior Counsel. date as an error of the press for 
 
 For the lord Chancellor's Judg- " the 27th of March." I should be 
 
 ment, stated by Jacob to have been slow to adopt this view, as the 27th 
 
 delivered in writing on the I7th of is the date of the order based upon 
 
 March 1817, see ante, pages 183 to the judgment ; and this order is 
 
 185. Professor Dowden regards this a voluminous formal paper which 
 
474 LIFK OF SHELLEY. 
 
 THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S FORMAL ORDER DATED 
 THURSDAY, 27 MARCH 1817 
 
 Whereas the Plaintiffs did on the 10th day of January 1817 prefer 
 their Petition unto the Right Honorable the Lord High Chancellor 
 of Great Britain setting forth that in the month of August 1811 the 
 said Percey Bysshe Shelley married Harriett Westbrooke who was the 
 Daughter of the said John Westbrooke and that the Petitioners are 
 the only Issue of the said Marriage and that after the birth of the 
 Petitioner Eliza lanthe Shelley and while the said Harriett Shelley 
 was pregnant with the Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley the said 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley became acquainted with a Mr. Godwin the 
 Author of a Work called Political Justice and other Works and 
 with Mai-y Godwin his Daughter and that the said Percey Bysshe 
 Shelley about 3 years ago deserted his said Wife and unlawfully 
 cohabited with the said Mary Godwin and that thereupon the said 
 Harriett Shelley returned to the house of her Father the said John 
 Westbrooke and brought the Petitioner Eliza lanthe Shelley with 
 her and soon afterwards the Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley was 
 born in the House of the said John Westbrooke and the Petitioners 
 have ever since continued and are now in the custody and under the 
 care and protection of the said John Westbrooke and of his Daughter 
 the said Elizabeth Westbrooke the Sister of the said Harriett Shelley 
 That from the time the said Harriett Shelley was deserted by her 
 said Husband until a short time previously to the time of her death 
 she lived with the said John Westbrooke her Father and that in the 
 month of December last she died and that the said Percey Bysshe 
 Shelley ever since he so deserted his said Wife has unlawfully 
 cohabited with the said Maiy Godwin and is now unlawfully cohabit- 
 ing with her and has several illegitimate Children by her That the 
 said Sir Timothy Shelley the Father of the said Percy Bysshe Shelley 
 did in 1815 concur with the said Percy Bysshe Shelley in making 
 a Settlement of certain Estates belonging to the said Sir Timothy 
 Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley whereby the said Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley became and is now entitled to a yearly Rent charge or 
 Annuity of ,£1000 subject to the payment thereout of the yearly sum 
 of £200 to the said Harriett Shelley during her life That while 
 the Petitioners lived with the said John Westbrooke they were 
 supported partly by their Mother and partly by the said John 
 
 would take some time to prepare, contain any of Lord Eldon's careful 
 and which moreover does not reasonings. 
 
APPENDIX. 475 
 
 Westbrooke and the said Percy Bysshe Shelley did not contribute to 
 their support That the said Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley avows 
 himself to be an Atheist and that he hath since his said Marriage 
 written and published a certain Work called " Queen Mab " with 
 Notes and other Works and that he hath therein blasphemously 
 derided the truth of the Christian Revelation and denied the existence 
 of a God as Creator of the Universe That since the death of the said 
 Harriett Shelley the said Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley has de- 
 manded that the Petitioners should be delivered up to him and that he 
 intends if he can to get possession of their persons and educate them as 
 he thinks proper That in order to make some provision for the 
 Petitioners the said John Westbrooke hath transferred the sum of 
 ^2000 £4 per Cent Bank Annuities into the names of the Defendants 
 Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham and that the same is now 
 standing in their names That an Indenture bearing date the 2nd day 
 of January 1817 has been duly made between the said John Westbrooke 
 of the Ist part the Petitioners Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles 
 Bysshe Shelley of the 2nd part and the said Defendants Elizabeth 
 Westbrooke and John Higham of the 3rd part and that the same 
 has been executed by the Petitioner John Westbrooke and the said 
 Defendants Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham and that by the 
 said Indenture after reciting the said transfer it was agreed that they 
 the said Defendants Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham and the 
 survivor of them and the executors and administrators of such 
 Survivor should stand possessed of and interested in the said sum of 
 i£2000 £4 per Cent Consolidated Bank Annuities upon Trust for the 
 Petitioners equally to be divided between them share and share alike 
 and to be paid assigned or transferred to them respectively in manner 
 following that is to say one moiety or half part thereof to be paid 
 assigned or transferred to the Petitioner Eliza lanthe Shelley when 
 she shall attain the age of 21 years or be married (with the consent 
 in writing of the Petitioner John Westbrooke or of such person as he 
 shall by Deed or Will appoint) which shall first happen and the said 
 moiety or half part thereof to be assigned or transferred to the 
 Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley when he shall attain the age of 
 21 years but in case the said Petitioner Eliza lanthe Shelley shall 
 happen to depart this life under the age of 21 years and without 
 having been married with such consent as aforesaid or the Peti- 
 tioner Charles Bysshe Shelley shall depart this life under the age of 
 21 years Then and in that case the whole of the said sum of £2000 
 £4 per Cent Consolidated Bank Annuities shall go and be paid to the 
 Survivor of the Petitioners Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles Bysshe 
 
476 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Shelley at such time as is mentioned with respect to her or his original 
 moiety of the said Trust Monies and upon Trust in the mean time 
 and until the Petitioners or the survivor of them shall become entitled 
 to an absolute vested interest in the said Trust monies to pay and 
 apply all or a suflBcient part of the dividends and annual produce of 
 the said Trust Fund for and towards the maintenance and education 
 of the Petitioners respectively in such manner as the said Defendants 
 Elizabeth Westbrooke and John Higham and the survivor of them 
 and other the Trustee or Trustees for the time being shall think 
 proper and as to so much of the said Dividends or Annual produce 
 (if any) as shall not be applied for such maintenance and education 
 as aforesaid upon Trust to accumulate the same upon the same 
 Trusts as are declared concerning the said sum of £2000 £4 per Cent 
 Consolidated Bank Annuities and without making any distinction in 
 the Shares from which such accumulations shall arise And upon 
 further Trust that in case the Petitioners should die before the 
 Interest of either of them in the said Trust monies should become 
 payable and transferrable under the Trusts before set forth then that 
 the said Trustees or the Trustees or Trustee for the time being shall 
 stand possessed of and interested in the said Trust Fund in Trust for 
 the said Defendant John Westbrooke his executors administrators 
 and assigns to and for his and their own use and benefit absolutely 
 Provided always and it is thereby declared and agreed that it shall 
 and may be lawful to and for the said Trastees and the survivor of 
 them or other the Trustees or Trustee for the time being of the said 
 Trust Bank Annuities by and with the consent in writing of the said 
 John Westbrooke if living but if dead then by and of the proper 
 authority of the same Trustees respectively to raise any sum of money 
 by and out of the said Trust Fund not exceeding in the whole £300 
 and to apply the same for the preferment and advancement in the 
 world or other benefit and advantage of the Petitioner Charles 
 Bysshe Shelley as they the said Trustees or other the Trustees or 
 Trustee for the time being thereof shall in their his or her discretion 
 think fit notwithstanding the Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley shall 
 not then have attained his age of 21 years That the Petitioner Eliza 
 lanthe Shelley is now of the age of 3 years and a half or thereabouts 
 and the Petitioner Charles Bysshe Shelley is of the age of 2 years or 
 thereabouts That the Petitioners have lately filed their Bill in this 
 Court setting forth the matters aforesaid and praying amongst other 
 things that the Fortunes of the Petitioners and their persons may be 
 placed under the protection of this Court and that a proper person 
 or persons may be appointed to act as their Guardian or Guardians 
 
APPENDIX. 477 
 
 and that all proper directions may be given for their maintenance and 
 education and that the Trusts of the said Indenture may be performed 
 and that if necessary the said sum of £2000 £4: per Cent Bank Annui- 
 ties may be transferred into the name of the Accountant General of 
 this Court upon the trusts of that Indenture and that in the mean time 
 the said Percy Bysshe Shelley may be restrained by the Injunction 
 of this Court from taking possession of the persons of the Petitioners 
 Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles Bysshe Shelley And therefore 
 praying that it might be referred to one of the Masters of this Court 
 to appoint the said John Westbrooke and the said Elizabeth 
 Westbrooke or some other proper person or persons to act as the 
 Guardian or Guardians of the Petitioners and to approve of a proper 
 Plan for their maintenance and education and that the said Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley might be restrained by the Injunction of this Court 
 from taking possession of the persons of the Petitioners or either of 
 them Whereupon all parties concerned were ordered to attend His 
 Lordship on the matter of the said Petitioners and Counsel for the 
 Petitioners and for the Defendants this day attending accordingly 
 upon hearing the said Petition an Affidavit of the Defendant Elizabeth 
 Westbrooke another Affidavit of the said Elizabeth Westbrooke an 
 Affidavit of Nathaniel Morphett a Book marked with the Letter (A) 
 a Book marked with the Letter (B) several Letters marked No. 1. 2. 3. 
 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9 and 10 from the Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley to his 
 late Wife Harriett Shelley deceased and to the Defendant Elizabeth 
 Westbrooke an Indenture marked with the Letter C dated the 2nd 
 day of January 1817 and the Answer of the Defendant Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley read and what was alleged by the Counsel for the Petitioners 
 and for the Defendants His Lordship doth Order that the Defendant 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley and his Agents be restrained from taking 
 possession of the persons of the Plaintiffs Eliza lanthe Shelley and 
 Charles Bysshe Shelley the Infants or intermeddling with the said 
 Infants until the further order of this Court And it is Ordered that it 
 be referred to Mr. Alexander one of the Masters of this Court to 
 enquire what will be a proper plan for the maintenance and educa- 
 tion of the said Plaintiffs the Infants and also to enquire wjth whom 
 and under whose care the said Infants should remain during their 
 minority or until the further order of this Court and the said Master 
 is to state the result of the said Enquiries with his opinion thereon to 
 the Court Whereupon such further order shall be made as shall be 
 just and any of the parties are to be at liberty to apply to this Court 
 .pending the said enquiries before the Master as there shall be 
 
478 LIFE OF SfiELLEY. 
 
 REPORT OV THE MASTER, MR. ALEXANDER, DATED 
 1 AUGUST 1817 
 
 In Pursuance of an Order bearing date the 27th day of March 1817 
 
 made in this Cause on the Petition of the Infant PlaintiBFs by which 
 
 Order it was among other things referred to me to enquire what would 
 
 be a proper Plan for the maintenance and education of the said 
 
 Infants and also to enquire with whom and under whose cares they 
 
 should remain during their minority or until the further Order of 
 
 this Court I have been attended by the Solicitors for the Plaintiffs and 
 
 Defendants and have in their presence proceeded in the aforesaid 
 
 Matters And I find that the Infant Plaintiff Eliza lanthe Shelley is 
 
 now of the age of 3 years and upwards and the Infant Plaintiff Charles 
 
 By sshe Shelley of the age of 2 years and upwards and that they are 
 
 the only Children of the Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley by his late 
 
 Wife Harriett Shelley formerly Harriett Westbrooke Spinster now 
 
 deceased And I find that the said Infant Plaintiffs are not entitled to 
 
 any fortune nor have they any provision made for their maintenance 
 
 other than the Provision made for them by their maternal Grand 
 
 Father the Defendant John Westbrooke in and by the Indenture 
 
 bearing date the 2nd day of January 1817 in the pleadings in this 
 
 Cause particularly mentioned under and by virtue of which Indenture 
 
 the said Infant Plaintiffs are entitled to £2000 Bank £4 per Cent 
 
 Annuities now standing in the names of the said Defendants Elizabeth 
 
 Westbrooke and John Higham upon certain Trusts declared by the 
 
 said Indenture and I Certify that the following Proposals for the 
 
 education of these Children and for a proper person with whom or 
 
 under whose care they should have been placed have been laid before 
 
 me that is to say a Proposal on the behalf of their Father the 
 
 Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley whereby he proposed that the said 
 
 Infants should be placed under the care of Pynson Wilmot Longdill 
 
 of Grays Inn in the County of Middlesex Gentleman Solicitor to the 
 
 said Defendant and Selina his Wife by whom a Plan for the education 
 
 of the Infants was also laid before me and a Proposal on the behalf 
 
 of the said Plaintiffs whereby it was proposed that they the said 
 
 Plaintiffs should be placed in the Family of the Reverend John 
 
 Kendall of the Town of Warwick a Clergyman of the Church of 
 
 England to be brought up under his care until the further order of 
 
 the Court and that the sum of £200 per Annum should be allowed 
 
 to the said John Kendall for the education maintenance and support 
 
 of the said Plaintiffs he having consented to receive them into his 
 
APPENDIX. 479 
 
 Family provide them with Clothes and every thing neceesary to their 
 situation instruct them so far as they were capable of receiving 
 Instructions and take the charge of them in all respects in the place 
 of a Parent for an allowance of the said sum of £200 per Annum such 
 allowance to be paid in manner following that is to say the sum of 
 j£80 per Annum part thereof with the dividends to which the said 
 Plaintiffs are entitled from the £200*0 Bank £4 per Cent Annuities 
 set apart for their benefit pursuant to the aforesaid Indenture of the 
 2Qd day of January 1817 and the residue of the said annual sum of 
 £200 to be made good by the said John Westbrooke the Maternal 
 Grandfather of the said Plaintiffs And I further Certify that having 
 proceeded to consider the said Proposals the latter of which laid before 
 me on behalf of the said Infants is supported by an AflSdavit of the 
 Reverend Samuel Parr of Hatton in the County of Warwick Doctor of 
 Laws made in this Cause on the 6th day of July 1817 by which 
 Affidavit the said Doctor Parr made oath that he knew and was 
 intimately [acquainted] with the said John Kendall who was the Master 
 of the Earl of Leicesters Hospital in the Town of Warwick and Vicar 
 of Budbrook near to the said Town and also with Martha the Wife of 
 the said John Kendall and had so known them for 20 years last past 
 and further that the said John Kendall was of the age of 50 years or 
 thereabouts and the said Martha his Wife of the age of 53 years or 
 thereabout and that the Family of the said John Kendall consisted of 
 3 Daughters and no other Children which Daughters were of the 
 respective ages of 22 years 20 years and 18 years or thereabout And 
 further that the said John Kendall was of a moral and upright 
 character and a man of good Talents and Learning and that the said 
 Martha the Wife of the said John Kendall was a Lady of high 
 character and amiable manners and that the Daughters of the said 
 John Kendall were all possessed of superior attainments in Literature 
 and further also that in the Judgment and Opinion of him the said 
 Dr. Parr and which Judgment and Opinion was formed from long and 
 intimate knowledge and acquaintance with the parties there could 
 not be a Family better calculated by their Integrity Knowledge and 
 Manners to have the care and education of Children than the said Mr. 
 and Mrs. Kendall and their Daughters And I humbly Certify that in 
 my Opinion the said Infanta will have a better chance of receiving 
 such an Education as will contribute to their future welfare and 
 happiness in the Family of the said John Kendall than if they were 
 brought up according to the proposal and under the direction of the 
 said Percy Bysshe Shelley Upon consideration therefore of both 
 Proposals and of the aforesaid AflSdavit I approve the proposal laid 
 
480 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 before me in the name and on the behalf of the Plaintiffs All which 
 I humbly certify and submit to this Honourable Court ^ 
 
 Wm. ALEXA.HDER 
 
 LORD CHANCELLOR'S FURTHER REFERENCE TO THE 
 MASTER, DATED MONDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 1817 
 
 His Lordship doth Order that it be referred back to the said Master 
 to receive further proposals as to a proper person with whom and 
 under whose care the Plaintiffs the Infants shall remain during their 
 minority respectively or until the further Order of this Court and also 
 to receive a further proposal or plan for the maintenance and educa- 
 tion of the said Infants and the said Master is to state the same with 
 his Opinion thereon to this Court Whereupon such further Order shall 
 be made as shall be just 
 
 FURTHER REPORT OF THE MASTER, MR. ALEXANDER, 
 DATED 28 APRIL 1818 
 
 In Pursuance of an Order bearing date the 10th day of November 
 1817 made in this Cause on two several Petitions of the Infant 
 Plaintiffs and of the Defendant Percy Bysshe Shelley their Father I 
 have been attended by the Solicitors for the Plaintiffs and Defen- 
 dants and have in obedience to the said Order received further proposals 
 as to a proper person with whom and under whose care the Plaintiffs 
 the Infants shall respectively remain during their respective minorities 
 or until the further Order of this Court And I Certify that by one of 
 the said proposals the above named John Westbrooke the Maternal 
 Grand Father and next friend and the above named Defendant 
 Elizabeth Westbrooke the Maternal Aunt of the said Infant Plaintiffs 
 proposed that the said Plaintiffs should be committed to the care and 
 tuition of the Reverend Jacob Cheesborough of Ulcomb in the 
 County of Kent Clerk a Member of Trinity College Cambridge Vicar 
 of Stoke in the County of Chester and resident Officiating Minister of 
 Ulcomb aforesaid and to the care of Marianne his Wife And I further 
 Certify that by the other of the said proposals the said Defendant 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley proposed that the said Infants his Children 
 should be placed in the family and under the care of Thomas Hume 
 
 ' At this point Lord Eldon had to the appointment of Kendall, 
 
 to consider petitions from tlie Hence the reference of .the case 
 
 plaintiffs supporting the Master's back to the Master. 
 j»port and from Shelley objecting 
 
APPENDIX. 481 
 
 Esquire of Brent End Lodge at Hanwell in the County of Middlesex 
 Doctor in Medicine a Fellow of the College of Physicians London and 
 Physician to His Majesty's Forces and to His Royal Highness the Duke 
 of Cambridge and to the care of Caroline Hume the "Wife of the said 
 Thomas Hume And I also Certify that in further obedience to the 
 said Order I have received further proposals and Plans for the 
 maintenance and education of the said Infants one of which proposals 
 and plans was submitted to me by the said Jacob Cheesbrough and 
 the other by the said Thomas Hume And it being directed by the said 
 Order that I should state such further proposal or plan with my 
 Opinion thereon to the Court I have in the 1st Schedule to this my 
 Report set forth the particulars of the Plan submitted to me on the 
 part of the said Jacob Cheesbrough and as to the Plan submitted to me 
 on the part of Dr. and Mrs. Hume which I conceive to be in substance 
 as follows that the Boy who is now of the age of 3 years or thereabouts 
 should at the age of 7 be placed at a good School to be instructed in 
 the rudiments of the Classicks in Ancient and Modern history and be 
 prepared for one of the large or Publick Schools whither he should be 
 sent at a proper age from whence if circumstances permitted he 
 should be removed to one of the Universities And that in the choice 
 of Schools Dr. and Mrs. Hume would prefer one under the super- 
 intendence of an Orthodox Clergyman of the Church of England And 
 with respect to the Girl now of the age of 5 years or thereabouts that 
 she should be educated at home under the immediate eye of Mrs. Hume 
 who would herself instruct her in History Geography and Literature 
 in general and would have her taught drawing painting music and 
 dancing when she should have a capacity to profit by the necessary 
 instructions and would pay particular attention to her morals and 
 instil into her mind the leading principles of the Established Church 
 and I humbly Certify that I approve of this Plan and I have set forth 
 in the 2nd Schedule to this my report a copy of the Plan itself as laid 
 before me on the part of Dr. and Mrs. Hume Upon consideration of 
 which several matters and of the two first mentioned proposals 
 together with all the evidence which has been laid before me in 
 support of the same respectively I humbly Certify that I approve ot 
 the said Thomas Hume and Caroline his Wife as proper persons with 
 whom and under whose care the said Infants the Plaintiffs shall 
 remain during their minorities or until the further order of the Court 
 and as I have already stated of the Plan of education proposed on 
 their part All which I humbly Certify and submit to this Honourable 
 Court 
 
 Wm. Alexandbk 
 
 SBBLLBT X i 
 
482 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 The 1st Schedule referred to by the foregoing Report contain- 
 ing the particulars of the Plan or proposal laid before me on the part 
 of the Reverend Jacob Cheesbrough in the said Report named for the 
 maintenance and education of the said Infant Plaintiffs viz' 
 
 The said Jacob Cheesbrough proposed in ease the said Children 
 should be committed to the care of himself and Mrs. Cheesebrough 
 that the said Children should continually reside in his house and be 
 brought up with his own Children and that he and Mrs. Cheesbrough 
 should take upon themselves the entire care and management of their 
 education and in particular that the said Jacob Cheesbrough should 
 himself instruct the said Plaintiff Charles Bysshe Shelley in all 
 branches of Classical Education to which the said Jacob Cheesbrough 
 had been much accustomed And that the said Mrs. Cheesbrough 
 would personally superintend the education of the said Plaintiff 
 Eliza lanthe Shelley in all such branches of useful knowledge and 
 polite accomplishments as would be proper for a female of her situa- 
 tion and expectations and that when there should be occasion for the 
 assistance of Masters for the attainment of the superior accomplish- 
 ments of a polite education such assistance should be procured and 
 afforded to the said Infants in common with the Children of the said 
 Mr. and Mrs. Cheesbrough and in their house and under their own 
 personal superintendence and inspection and that no pains whatever 
 should be spared for perfecting the said Infants in every branch of 
 useful and polite education and that the said Infants should not be 
 exposed to the corruption of immoral companions nor should they on 
 any occasion visit except in the Company either of the said Mr. or 
 Mrs. Cheesbrough and every possible care and pains should be taken 
 both by precept and example to form their habits and manners so as to 
 qualify them for that station in life in which their rank and expecta- 
 tions entitle them to move and above all they should be early and 
 deeply impressed with the importance of the knowledge of divine 
 truth its sanctions and obligations and taught to be sincere Members 
 of the Established Church 
 
 W. A. 
 
 The 2nd Schedule referred to by the foregoing Report contain- 
 ing a Copy of the Plan or proposal laid before me on the part of 
 Dr. Thomas Hume in the said Report named for the maintenance 
 and education of the Plaintiffs the Infants viz* 
 
 With respect to the_Boy who is now of the age of 3 years or there- 
 abouts it appears to Dr. and Mrs. Hume that it would be advisable 
 
APPENDIX. 483 
 
 when he arrived at about the age of 7 years to send him to a good 
 School where he might be instructed in the rudiments of Classicks 
 and in ancient and modem history &c. &c. and be prepared for some 
 of the large or public Schools and at a proper age after being 
 suitably prepared at such School Dr. and Mrs. Hume would propose 
 (other circumstances permitting) to place him at one of the Universi- 
 ties In fixing on a first School for him Dr. Hume would be led to look 
 for one under the superintendence of an Orthodox Clergyman of the 
 Church of England though perhaps he would not consider the 
 circumstance of the Head Master being a Clergyman as positively 
 essential if there were other points of high commendation in favor of 
 an Establishment which presented itself to his notice With respect 
 however to placing him at the University or by anticipation pointing 
 out any partici^lar Profession or mode of life for the child it would in 
 Dr. Hume's opinion be premature at present to do so as the prudence 
 of any step must depend on a variety of circumstances which cannot 
 be now foreseen as well as the feelings and habits and manners and 
 intelligence of the Boy which cannot now be prognosticated. , 
 
 With respect to the Girl who is now of the age of 5 years or 
 thereabouts Dr. and Mrs. Hume propose to have her educated at home 
 undfer the immediate and constant superintendence and care of 
 Mrs. Hume giving her lessons in History Geography Literature in 
 general and on every proper subject as early as it might appear that 
 her mind was open to receive them The accomplishments of drawing 
 painting music singing and dancing should receive all the attention 
 which they deserve when the Child displayed a capability of receiving 
 the necessary instructions and the more homely employments of 
 fancy work and sewing should not be neglected. Domestic economy 
 too should receive its share of attention In short Dr. and Mrs. Hume 
 feeling that a young mind must be continually occupied would 
 endeavor to keep it occupied by those things which would in some 
 way or other lead to its improvement or to general usefulness. Upon 
 the score of Dress Dr. and Mrs. Hume would if necessary be very 
 positive on the absolute necessity of resisting and disregarding the 
 fashions of the day if they included as they do in their opinion at the 
 present day an apparent abandonment of all feelings of feminine 
 delicacy and decency. Habitual neatness of dress they would require 
 on the most private occasions and an habitual decency of dress on all 
 oce^sions. ' 
 
 As to the general reading of the Girl at a more advanced age Dr. 
 and Mrs. Hume would as far as their influence extended keep from 
 her perusal all books that tended to shake her faith in any of the 
 
 ii2 
 
484 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 great points of the established religion. They would discountenance 
 the reading of Novels except perhaps some few unexceptionable books 
 of that sort. They would to a certain degree encourage the reading 
 and indeed the studying some of our best Poets but with respect to 
 Pope and some others Dr. Hume would take care that she was 
 furnished with selections only. Of Shakespeare Dr. Hume understands 
 an edition purified from its grossness has been published and this 
 edition he would put into her hand. He believes that an Edition of 
 Hume's History of England has lately been published in which his 
 insidious attacks on religion are omitted and with this Edition 
 Dr. Hume would take cai-e that she was provided. 
 
 To the Morals of the Children Dr. and Mrs. Hume would pay 
 particular attention and would make instruction and discipline go 
 hand in hand. They would endeavour strongly to impress upon the 
 Children notions of modesty and self diffidence and to repress eveiy 
 feeling of vanity and self sufficiency. They would endeavour to 
 inculcate in them high notions of the value of a character for truth 
 and personal honor and a thorough detestation of affectation deceit- 
 fulness and falsehood. The particular irregularities to which the 
 minds of these Children may be most prone and which perhaps will 
 be very different in each it is so impossible to foresee that it would 
 be worse than useless in the opinion of Dr. and Mrs. Hume to pretend 
 to point out the precise and particular course which ought to be 
 pursued with respect to either of them Speaking of Children in 
 general and particularly of Children whom we never saw it is in the 
 opinion of Dr. and Mrs. Hume idle to predetermine to affix to them 
 any particular character. The great point is in the opinion of 
 Dr. and Mrs. Hume to observe what nature has made them and to 
 perfect them on her plan. The grand duty of a Parent and Guardian 
 towards Children as Dr. and Mrs. Hume conceive is promptly and con- 
 tinually repressing and if possible extirpating every propensity 
 radically vicious in guiding and by gentle means bringing back to the 
 right course every irregular inclination in exciting when it may be 
 necessary a proper spirit of generous rivalry and emulation in not 
 countenancing and indeed in not tolerating any irreverent allusions 
 in matters of religion in being very circumspect (particularly as far 
 as respects Girls) in the books which are permitted to be brought 
 be fore them in promptly repressing every feeling of vanity and self 
 importance in requiring from them a respectful and deferential maiyier 
 at all times towards their superiors whether in rank or in age an 
 affable and unaffected manner towards their equals a mild kind and 
 condescending manner towards their Servants and inferiors and 
 
APPENDIX. 485 
 
 a humane and charitable feeling and manner towards the poor and 
 distressed. 
 
 On the subject of religion which though here mentioned so late 
 Dr. and Mrs. Hume think the very first in point of consideration and 
 importance Dr. and Mrs. Hume beg to say that they would bring up the 
 Children in the faith and tenets of the Church of England they would 
 deem it an imperative duty to inculcate on them solemn serious and 
 orthodox notions of religion but at the same time they would be 
 cautious not prematurely to lead their unripe minds to that momen- 
 tous subject To a Morning and Evening Prayer and thanksgiving and 
 to Grace before and after Meals they would regularly accustom the 
 Children and would take occasion as circumstances might arise to 
 inculcate on them a general religious feeling without bringing to 
 their notice controversial points that might excite doubts which they 
 would be unable to solve and entangle them in difficulties from which 
 they would be unable to extricate themselves. What is clearly 
 revealed Dr. and Mrs. Hume would endeavour to teach them fervently 
 to embrace and what the limited powers of human intellect would 
 not permit them to understand Dr. and Mrs. Hume would endeavour 
 to make them feel it their duty silently to revere A regular attendance 
 at Divine Service on Sundays Dr. and Mrs. Hume would (when the 
 Children arrived at a proper age) consider an indispensible duty. 
 
 With respect to the intercourse to be permitted between Mr. Shelley 
 and his Children the Lord Chancellor having as Dr. and Mrs. Hume 
 are informed intimated that he should suspend his judgment as to 
 how far and in what degree he would in this case interfere against 
 parental authority Dr. and Mrs. Hume beg to say that while they had 
 the care of the Children if it should be confided to them they would 
 feel it their bounden duty implicitly to obey the order and directions 
 of the Lord Chancellor with respect to the intercourse and inter- 
 ference of Mr, Shelley with the Children whatever that order and 
 
 those directions might be. 
 
 W. A. 
 
 THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S ORDER DATED SATURDAY, 
 2-5 JULY 1818 
 
 His Lordship doth Order that the Report of the said Master 
 Mr. Alexander dated the 28th day of April 1818 be confirmed and if 
 is Ordered that the said Infants Eliza lanthe Shelley and Charles 
 Bysshe Shelley be on or before the 20th day of August next placed by 
 the Defendant John Westbrooke under the care of the said Thomas 
 
486 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Hume and Caroline his Wife and there continue during their respec- 
 tive minorities or until the further order of this Court and it is 
 ordered that the interest of the said £2000 Bank £i per Cent 
 Annuities from time to time as and when the same shall be hereafter 
 received be paid by the said Eliza Westbrooke and John Higham to 
 the said Thomas Hume in part discharge of the annual sum of £200 
 to be allowed to him for the maintenance and education of the said 
 Infants subject to the further order of this Court and it is Ordered 
 that the said Percy Bysshe Shelley do pay to the said Thomas Hume 
 the sum of £120 annually by quarterly payments until the further 
 order of this Court so as to make up with the said Interest the annual 
 sum of £200 and it is Ordered that the said Defendants John 
 Westbrooke and Elizabeth Westbrooke be at liberty to visit the said 
 Infant Plaintiffs at the house of the said Thomas Hume once in every 
 month and the last named Defendants are to be at liberty to apply to 
 the Court in case they shall be desirous to have other intercourse with 
 the said Infant Plaintiffs and it is Ordered that the said Defendant 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley be at liberty to visit the said Infant Plaintiffs 
 once in every month in the presence of the said Thomas Hume and 
 Caroline his Wife or one of them or if the said Defendant Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley shall prefer it his visits may be in case he proposes to go out 
 of England according to his convenience so that they do not exceed 
 12 in the course of a year and the said Percy Bysshe Shelley is also to 
 be at liberty to apply to the Court in case he should be desirous to 
 have other intercourse with the said Infant Plaintiffs and it is 
 ordered that the said Defendant Sir Timothy Shelley and his family 
 have such intercourse with the said Infant Plaintiffs as the said Sir 
 Timothy Shelley shall desire and any of the parties are to be at 
 liberty to apply to this Court as there shall be occasion. 
 
APPENDIX. 487 
 
 IV. AN ANNOTATED LIST OF BOOKS BROUGHT 
 OUT BY THOMAS MEDWIN. 
 
 As most of Medwin's publications are more or less connected witli 
 the story of Shelley, the bibliographical details of them form a proper 
 appendix to this Life of the Poet. It would not be worth while, how- 
 ever, to compile a list of his fugitive writings, which are mostly 
 unimportant contributions to periodical literature. Even the first 
 book of his with which I have met, the "oriental sketch" called 
 Oswald and Edwin, has its Shelley aspect, as will be seen in this 
 appendix. That sketch, in bibliographical parlance, collates thus: — 
 
 OSWALD AND EDWIN, | An Oriental Sketch. | By 
 
 THOMAS MEDWIN. | | Despondence hung | 
 
 Upon the spirit of his prime. In vain | He sought for cure, 
 like wasting flre it clung | Against his heart. | {Dramatic Scenes.) \ 
 He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, | Her cradle, 
 
 and his sepulchre. ] Shelley. | '^ ^^ | Geneva, | Printed 
 
 by J. J. Paschoud. | Feb., 1820. 
 Octavo, pp. viii + 55. Half-title "Oswald and Edwin." with blank 
 verso ; title with blank verso ; Dedication with blank verso ; Preface 
 two pp. ; Oswald and Edwin, pp. [l]-42, and Notes pp. [43]-55, 
 (blank verso). The dedication to Edward Ellerker Williams records 
 a friendship so intimately associated with Shelley's death that it is well 
 to quote its exact terms : — 
 
 "To I E. El. Williams, Esqs™ ] This Sketch, | as a slight memorial | 
 of along I and uninterrupted intimacy, | commenced amid the scenes | 
 it attempts to revive, | is inscribed by | His Affectionate Friend, | 
 T. Medwin." 
 
 My copy is in the original drab paper boards, the sheets trimmed 
 and the edges curiously sprinkled with blue. In the next item, and 
 throughout this list except where otherwise stated, the details are set 
 down vrith the examples in my own library before me. 
 
 SKETCHES IN HINDOOSTAN | with ] Other Poems | 
 By THOMAS MEDWIN | London | Published by C and J Oilier 
 Vere Street i Bond Street and Simpkin and Marshall | Sta- 
 tioners' Court I 1821. 
 Demy Octavo, pp. iv-f 127. Title-page with imprint centred below 
 a long rule at foot of verso, "C. Eichards, Printer, 100, St. Martin' s-lane, 
 
LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 Charing-cross."; Contents with blank verso, half-title "The Lion Hunt." 
 with the epigraphs from Procter and Shelley given on the title-page 
 of Oswald and Edwin (blank verso) ; , pp. [3J-127 occupied by The 
 Lion Hunt (Oswald and Edwin, revised and reprinted), The Pindarees, 
 the notes to these poems, and six short pieces, — the verso of p. 127 
 blank. 
 
 Bound in contemporary stamped polished calf (a GroHer pattern) 
 with a rich gilt border, and gilt back and edges. I have not seen 
 a copy in coeval boards. 
 
 Shelley wrote in November 1820 to Oilier about the publication ot 
 a poem on Indian hunting which Medwin had sent to London. This 
 was doubtless The Lion Hunt in the Sketches in Hindoostan, a piece 
 which had passed through Shelley's hands in thfe Spring of that year, 
 when Medwin sent to him from Geneva the privately printed Oswald 
 and Edwin. The Pindarees had also passed under Shelley's critical 
 eye. I feel certain that the Stanzas beginning at page 99 had gone 
 through the same ordeal ; and Medwin specifies the revisions in two 
 of the translations, — leaving very little with which Shelley had not 
 had to do. 
 
 The Contents of the Sketches are set forth thus : — 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Lion Hunt 1 
 
 Notes to the Lion Hunt 35 
 
 The Pindarees .45 
 
 Notes to the Pindarees 83 
 
 Miscellaneous Poems. 
 
 Stanzas .99 
 
 Prom the Spanish of Calderon ... . . 106 
 
 Translation from Dante 110 
 
 , , Prom the Spanish of Calderon 114 
 
 Spring 117 
 
 Prom the Portuguese of Camoens 121 
 
 Between the dates marked by the death of Shelley and that of 
 Byron, Medwin, being in Paris, wrote Ahasuerus, the Wanderer ; and 
 he attributes the undertaking to the advice of Shelley, the influence 
 of Fatist, El Magico Prodigioso, St. Leon, and Manfred, which last he 
 professes to have read " at least ten times every year." As will be seen 
 on reference to page 141 {ante) the character of Julian in Ahasuerus 
 in an attempt to " shadow out " Shelley's yearning after the ideal, his 
 own language and sentiments being often adopted. The only copy of 
 this curious work known to me is that in the British Museum, 
 from which the title-page and details are given. 
 
APPENDIX. 489 
 
 AHASUEEUS, | THE WANDEEEE : I a Deamatic 
 
 Legend, | In Six Parts. | By the Authokof SKETCHES IN 
 
 HINDOOSTAN, and | Other Poems. | Wherefore is light given 
 
 to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul, | who 
 
 long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than 
 
 hidden treasure, | who would rejoice exceedingly, and be glad 
 
 if they could find the grave?— Job. | London: | Printed for 
 
 G. and W. B. Whittaker, | Ave Maria Lane. | 1823 
 
 Demy octavo, pp. xvi + 112. The first sheet is unsigned, the other 
 
 seven are B to H in eights. The book is of orthodox construction — 
 
 half-title, title, dedication, preface, and text. The half-title reads 
 
 " Ahasuerus, the Wanderer." On its verso is the imprint " Printed by 
 
 Thomas Davison, Whitefriars." The title-page, reading as above, 
 
 has a blank verso. The dedication, on the third leaf, reads, " To | 
 
 The Eight Hon. Lord Byron, | This Poem | Is Inscribed By | His 
 
 Friend. | Paris, March 1, 1823." This also has a blank verso. The 
 
 preface occupies pp. [vii] to xiii and the fourteenth page is blank. 
 
 There is a second half-title, " The Wanderer " ; on its verso we are 
 
 informed that " The Scene is laid in an Island of the iEgean Sea ; | 
 
 and the Time Occupied One Year." The pages thoughout the text 
 
 (112) are head-lined " The Wanderer." On p, 112 Davison's imprint 
 
 is repeated at foot. The statements made in the Preface being proper 
 
 to this appendix, the composition, which runs thus, is given in full: — 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 In one of the daily rides I was accustomed to take in the spring of 
 1822, at Pisa, with Lord Byron and Mr. Shelley, a juvenile production 
 of the latter, published without his consent, happened to become the 
 subject of conversation ; in the course of which, Lord Byron asked 
 Mr. Shelley why he had prefaced his note on the Wandering Jew, 
 attached to the poem above alluded to, with an assurance that it was 
 accidentally picked up in Lincoln 's-inn-fields ; his reply wag, " ask 
 M., he best can answer the inquiry." 
 
 Though I perfectly remembered the circumstance of having given 
 the note in question to Mr. Shelley, some fifteen years ago, I had 
 a very vague recollection of what it contained, nor at this distance of 
 time can I trace its origin. Whether it was translated by a German 
 master who at that time attended me, from his own language, or was 
 partly his composition, and paitly mine, or what its real history is, 
 I am at this moment entirely ignorant. The discussion, however, and 
 the advice of one of those two friends led to this rash undertaking. 
 That highly gifted person has been unhappily snatched from the 
 
490 Lira OF SHELLEY. 
 
 world before his genius and many virtues were sufficiently acknow- 
 ledged to cast into the shade his errors ; and who, if he were yet alive, 
 would perhaps have saved me from this— of appearing before the 
 public in the «Mcapacity of author. A character that bears a strong 
 family likeness to Faust, Cyprian, St. Leon, and Manfred, must neces- 
 sarily give rise to some of the same incidents, and naturally fall into 
 some of the same reflections. The former of these productions I only 
 know in part ; the Magico Prodigioso, to which Goethe stands so 
 much indebted, I have often admired ; the novel I have not seen for 
 ten years ; but the last and greatest of these works I must confess to 
 have read at least ten times every year. Without consulting the 
 craniologists, perhaps some of my readers may decide for themselves 
 that I have the organ of verbal memory strongly developed ; if so, 
 I hope they will attribute the blame to nature. On the score of 
 originality I suspect, however, that I am under obligations to more 
 poets than Dante and Calderon. But it is time to refer to the follow- 
 ing tradition, legend, or whatever it may be called, upon which this 
 poem, if it deserves the title, is founded.^ 
 
 " Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel." 
 Goaded by never-ending restlessness he roves the globe from pole to 
 pole. He is denied the consolation of the grave ! 
 
 " Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Carmel ! he shook 
 the dust from his beard, and roared in dreadful accents : They could 
 die ; but I, reprobate wretch ! alas ! I cannot die ! Dreadful is the 
 judgment that hangs over me ! Jerusalem fell ! I crush'd the sucking 
 babe, and precipitated myself into the destructive flames — I cursed 
 the Eomans ! but alas ! alas ! the restless curse held me by the hair, 
 and I could not die ! Rome, the giantess, fell ! I placed myself before 
 the falling statue — she fell, and did not crush me. Nations sprung 
 up, and disappeared before me; but I remained, and did not die. 
 From cloud-encompassed clifi's did I precipitate myself into the ocean ; 
 but the foaming billows cast me on the shore, and the burning arrow 
 of existence pierced my cold heart again. A forest was on fire : 
 I darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood! fire 
 dropped on me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs — 
 alas ! it could not consume them. 
 
 ■ The extracts which follow are a title-page, or the fragment ready 
 
 considerably retrenched from Note rendered into English, or the same 
 
 VI to Queen Mab as first privately fragment in German. The note 
 
 printed for Shelley in 1813, with does not make it clear what Shelley 
 
 the sf;atement that he picked up professes to have picked up ; but 
 
 " dirty and toni, some years ago, Medwiu need not be begrudged the 
 
 in Lincoln's- Inn Fields,'' either credit of the find, 
 the original German work without 
 
APPENDIX. 491 
 
 " I now mixed witli the butchers of mankind, and plunged into the 
 iempests of the battle. I roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul — 
 [ roared defiance to the victorious German, but arrows and spears 
 rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's flaming sword 
 broke upon my skull — balls hissed in vain upon me : the lightning of 
 bhe battle glared harmless around my limbs ! in vain did the elephant 
 trample me — in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed. The mine 
 big with destruction burst upon me, and hurled me high in the air ! 
 I fell upon heaps of smoking limbs, and was only singed. The steel 
 club rebounded from my body. The executioner's hand could not 
 strangle me. The tiger's tooth could not pierce me, nor could the 
 hungry lion of the circus devour me. I now provoked the fury of 
 tyrants : I said to Nero, thou art a bloodhound ! I said to Muly 
 Ishmael, thou art a bloodhound! I said to Christiem, thou art 
 a bloodhound ! The tyrants invented cruel torments, but could not 
 destroy me. Ha ! not to be able to die ! not to be able to die ! not to 
 be permitted to rest after the toils of life ! Awful Avenger in heaven ! 
 hast thou in all thy armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful ? 
 Then let it thunder upon me ! command a hurricane to sweep me to 
 the foot of Carmel ; that I may there be extended, may pant, and 
 writhe, and die ! " 
 
 Such are some of the reflections that- darkened the closing scene in 
 the eventful history of the Wanderer ! 
 
 A work written in the midst of the distractions of a gay metropolis, 
 and that occupied scarcely ten days in the composition, can possess 
 but little merit ! of this I am sensible, and at the same time aware 
 that such excuses for its imperfections are worse than no apology. 
 
 It is hoped, however, that the first serious attempt of one, the best 
 part of whose life has been passed in other pursuits, may meet with 
 indulgence, if it should not disarm criticism. [Here ends the Preface.] 
 
 It would have been very difficult to disarm criticism if Medwin had 
 attempted to pass off as his own a variant of that beautiful lyric 
 "When. the lamp is shattered," given at pp. 96 and 97. The four 
 eight-lined stanzas forming the perfect composition as we have known 
 it since Mary Shelley included it in the Posthumous Poems (1824) by 
 no means shut out the Medwinian version of the previous year from 
 the position of a genuine variant, carried off with other plunder. It 
 should have saved Ahasuerus from its almost utter extinction. This 
 draft (if draft it be) is in six separate quatrains, thus : — 
 When the lamp is shatter'd. 
 
 The light in the dust lies dead; 
 When the cloud is scatter'd 
 The rainbow's glory is shed. 
 
493 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 When the lute is broken 
 
 Sweet tones are remember'd not; 
 When the lips have spoken, 
 
 Loved accents are soon forgot. 
 
 As music arid splendour 
 
 Survive not the lamp and the lute, 
 The heart echoes render 
 
 No song vfhen the spirit is mute. 
 
 No song, but sad dirges, 
 
 Like the vyind through a ruin'd cell, 
 Or the mournful surges 
 
 That ring the dead seaman's knell. 
 
 Thy passions have rock'd thee 
 As the storms rook the ravens on high ; 
 
 Bright reason has mock'd thee 
 Like the sun from the wintry sky. 
 
 love ! who bewailest 
 
 The frailty of all things here. 
 Why chose you the frailest 
 
 For your cradle, your home, and your bier ! * 
 
 No single one of the established octave stanzas is wanting in this 
 recension ; but one quatrain from the third and one from the fourth 
 are absent. The remaining two quatrains here given leave the poem 
 simpler than the 1824 recension ; and, being wholly suitable for the 
 past tense, support and contain the reading chose which occurs in 
 the Jane manuscript instead of the choose of 1824 ; but neither notes 
 for tones in line 6 nor in for through in line 14 finds any support from 
 this version. 
 
 As a poem of 1822 this is divinely apposite to the approaching 
 tragic close ; and I incline to the view that Medwin was incapable of 
 such good cookery as would have been involved in its alteration from 
 Mary Shelley's version. I hesitate even to condemn the reading " The 
 heart echoes " for " The heart's echoes," or " the wintry sky " for 
 "a wintry sky," though each has the inferiority associable with 
 immaturity of drafting. 
 
 * These stanzas [says Medwin] are by a friend now no more. 
 Alas ! Poor Lycidas ! 
 It was that fatal and perfidious bark. 
 Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, 
 That laid so low that sacred head of thine. 
 
APPENDIX. 493 
 
 At page 99 of Ahasuems, the Wanderer, we meet a very old friend, 
 at a familiar ceremonial. Medwin, having got from Trelawny an 
 account of the cremation of the actual Shelley, gives his sham 
 Shelley, Julian, the benefit of it, including the Protean bird which 
 could not be scared away. This time the bird was a curlew, qualified 
 to some extent by the appellation of a " wild sea-bird." 
 And lo ! the silver-wing'd curlew ! 
 
 That round and round the reeking pyre 
 In ever-lessening circles flew, 
 That wild sea-bird was now so tame, 
 
 Scarce could they scare it from the fire 
 Of that funereal flame ! 
 The death of Byron in the following year gave Medwin a glorious 
 chance. The notes of the great man's conversations, against which 
 Trelawny had cautioned his Lordship, were hurried into nse without 
 more ado, and materialized in the volume of which the title reads 
 thus : — 
 
 JOUENAL I OF THE | CONVERSATIONS | OF | 
 LORD BYRON : | Noted during a Residence with 
 HIS Lordship | at Pisa, | in the Years 1821 and 1822. | 
 By THOMAS MEDWIN, Esq. | of the 24th. Light Dragoons, | 
 Author op " AHASUEEUS THE WANDERER." | London : | 
 Printed for Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street. | 1824. 
 J%e Conversations of Lord Byron, as the handsome demy quarto 
 volume of 1824 is usually called, was. Me the publisher, passed through 
 the press while the author was abroad. It is made up as follows : — 
 half-title, " Journal, | &c." with imprint on verso, " London : | Printed 
 by S. and R. Bentley, Dorset Street " ; title-page (verso blank) ; 
 publisher's " Advertisement " inserted on a single leaf wijth blank 
 verso immediately after the title ; Preface pp. [i] to viii ; Contents 
 (sig. b) pp. 1 to 8 ; the text with a dropped head reading " Conversa- 
 tions I &c." pp. [9] to 284; half-title "Appendix." (verso blank) ; the 
 Appendix pp. [287] to 345 ; an Errata list on the unpaged verso of 
 345 ; and two unfolio'd pages of Colburn's advertizements, dated Oct. 
 23, 1824. The text and appendix (signed B to 2 U in fours up to 
 p. 344) have head-lines in roman capitals, " Conversations of " on 
 versos and "Lord Byron" on rectos up to p. 284— "Appendix" on 
 versos and various words proper to the subject on rectos from p. 288 
 to p. 345, at the foot of which last the Bentley imprint is repeated. 
 The frontispiece is a well-executed copper-plate facsimile of Byron's 
 one-page letter to Hobhouse of the 5th of May 1823, introducing his 
 
494 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " friend Capt. T. Medwin," who is to explain to Hobfaouse as member 
 of the Greek Committee, " some plans that he has formed with regard 
 to offering his services to the Greeks." The engraved inscriptions are, 
 at the top " Fao Simile of the Hand Writing of Lord Byron.", at the 
 bottom " Published by Henry Colburn, London, Oof. 23, 1824.", and in 
 the right-hand bottom comer " Sidy. Hall, sculp*." Mr. Prothero 
 has printed the text of this letter at pp. 201-3 in Vol. vi. of the Letters 
 and Journals (1901), the greater part of pp. 201-2 being occupied by 
 an account of Medwin, perhaps not, in all the circumstances, unde- 
 servedly severe. The book is in dark drab paper boards with white 
 end-papers and has a back-label printed on white paper reading 
 (across) " Journal | of the | Conversations | of | Lord 1 Byron." 
 
 In the form of a long foot-note extending from page 248 to page 
 258 appears Medwin's first memoir of his illustrious cousin. It 
 exemplifies his slovenliness and his determination to hang on to 
 Shelley's coat-tails ; but that he was really attached to the poet in his 
 parasitical fashion it leaves no doubt. The note is appended to the 
 following passage : — 
 
 " On the occasion of Shelley's melancholy fate I revisited Pisa, and 
 on the day of my arrival learnt that Lord Byron was gone to the sea- 
 shore, to assist in performing the last offices to his friend. We came 
 to a spot marked by an old and withered trunk of a fir-tree ; and 
 near it, on the beach, stood a solitary hut covered with reeds. The 
 situation was well calculated for a poet's grave. A few weeks before 
 I had ridden with him and Lord Byron to this very spot, which 
 I afterwards visited more than once." 
 
 He goes on to describe the scene, the folk in the foreground, the 
 curlew, and the conversation. It would not be easy to find a more 
 brazen attempt to delude the reader into the belief that the writer 
 took part in a ceremonial for which he was too late ! 
 
 At pp. 212-15 is a nasty tale about Lady Caroline Lamb, with 
 Byron's eight lines of verse " Remember thee," &c. ; and at pp. 222-5 
 is more about her semi-lunatic ladyship and her Byronic novel 
 Glenarvon ; all of which was reprinted verbatim on pp. 325-81 and 
 pp. 341-7 of the second (or first octavo) edition of the book, printed 
 in the same year, an issue which is not very easy to procure. Its 
 exact bibliographic particulars are as follows : — 
 
 CONVERSATIONS | OF | LORD BYRON : | Noted | 
 DURING A Residence with his Lordship | at Pisa, | in 
 THE Years 1821 and 1822. | By THOMAS MEDWIN, Esq.] 
 ofthe 24th Light Dragoons, | Author op"AHASUERUS THE 
 WANDERER." | Second Edition. | London : | printed for 
 Henry Colburn, | New Burlington Street. | 1824. 
 
APPENDIX. 495 
 
 Demy octavo, pp. xxvi + 542. Half-title, p. i ; imprint, p. ii ; 
 title-page, p. iii ; blank, p. iv ; advertizement, p. v ; blank, p. vi ; 
 preface, pp. vii-x ; contents, pp. xi-xxv ; blank, p. xxvi ; Oonversationa 
 &c., pp. 1-439; blank, p. 440; sub-title to appendix, p. 441 ; blank, 
 p. 442 ; appendix, pp. 443-541 ; errata, p. 542. 
 
 Appendix : Copia del Rappprto, &c., pp. 443-7 ; Secondo Rapporto, 
 pp. 448-9 ; Goethe's Beitrag zum Andenken Lord Byron's, pp. 450-7 ; 
 letter of Lord Byron to M. H. Beyle, 458-60 ; Some Account of Lord 
 Byron's residence in Greece, pp. 461-507 ; Mr. Fletcher's Account of 
 Lord Byron's Last Moments, pp. 508-23 ; Greek Proclamation, pp. 
 524-5 ; translation, pp. 526-7 ; Last Moments (resumed), pp. 527-30 ; 
 Funeral Oration, pp. 531-9 ; Ode to the Memory of Lord Byron, in 
 Greek, p. 540 ; translation, p. 541. 
 
 Facing the title-page is the facsimile of Lord Byron's hand-writing, 
 folded. Like the quarto, the book was put up in boards ; but these were 
 bluish-grey with a drab back-strip and white end-papers. The printed 
 label reads "Conversations | of | Lord | Byron." 
 
 The wretched woman who had done so much to go down to posterity 
 disgraced and contemned, felt keenly the outrageous disclosures which 
 Medwin had made, though without inserting her name, and wrote him 
 one of the strangest and most piteous letters that ever one shameless 
 sinner wrote to another. Whether he ever got it I know not ; but 
 Colbum did, and preserved a copy of it ; from which it has now been 
 published in association with Byron's Works. Let us do Medwin, the 
 most ungallant of gallant captains, the grace to assume that it was at 
 his instance or with his consent that, he being on the Continent, an 
 edition superseding the first and second came forth the same year 
 without those hateful passages : the bibliography of this is as 
 follows : — 
 
 CONVEESATIONS | OF | LORD BYRON : | Noted | 
 During a Residence with his Lordship | At Pisa, | in 
 THE Years 1821 and 1822. | By THOMAS MEDWIN, Esq. | 
 of the 24th Light Dragoons, | Author of " Ahasubrus the 
 Wanderer." | A New Edition. | London : | Printed for Henry 
 Colbum, I New Burlington Street. | 1824. 
 Demy octavo. Half-title, "Conversations, | &c." with Bentley's im- 
 print on verso ; title-page with blank verso ; Preface 4 pp. ; Contents 
 13 pp.; Conversations 351 pp. ; Half-title, "Appendix." with blank 
 verso; Appendix 101 pp. numbered in roman figures; and advertize- 
 ments 1 p. The facsimile letter, printed from the quarto copper- 
 plate but on thin paper and folded in three was at first used as 
 a frontispiece in this revised octavo issue ; but later on it was inserted 
 
496 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 opposite p. 1, to make way for an excellent print "Engraved by 
 R. Cooper from a Bust by Bertolini [sic] of Florence, | made from life 
 at Pisa in 1822." The print is said at the foot to have been " Published 
 by Henry Colburn, London, November 25, 1824." In some copies the 
 balf-title is preceded by a leaf consisting of 2 pp. of announcements 
 of works in the press. Of my copies, that issued before the portrait 
 has this leaf, and that containing the portrait has not. The boarding 
 and labelling is as described for the " Second Edition." 
 
 With the editions of 1824 published, respectively, in Paris and 
 New York, there is no occasion to deal ; nor with the French and 
 German translations issued the same year or the notes selected from 
 Medwin to illustrate an Italian translation of Byron's Works, side by 
 side with Moore's and others. The chances are that the whole gang 
 of piratical publishers took care to maintain all the most peccant 
 matter; but 
 
 Non ragioniam di lor ma guarda e passa. 
 It is to the negative credit, at all events, of the original culprit, that 
 he did not use the opportunity afforded in the next year of restoring 
 the cancelled passages to their place in the pretty edition then 
 issued, which is not a mere reprint. The 1825 Conrersations was 
 divided into two foolscap octavo volumes. The title-jDages read 
 exactly as that of the demy octavo, without mention of there being 
 two volumes. After "a new edition" is the line "VOL. I. [11.]"; 
 and the date is of course altered to 1825. 
 
 Each volume has a half-title, " Conversations | of | Lord Byron. | 
 Vol. I. [II.] " with an advertizement on the verso, " Lately Published, | 
 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord | Byron ; | With Anec- 
 dotes of some of his Contemporaries. | By the Author of the Memoirs 
 of Lady Hamilton, 2d Edition, 8vo. | With a fine Portrait, after 
 Harlowe. 14s." 
 
 Vol. I. consists of pp. xx + 256 including blanks, with the Bartolini 
 portrait as frontispiece: Vol. II. of pp. xii-h272 with the facsimile, 
 folded in six, as frontispiece. 
 
 The two little volumes, like the demy octavos, are in bluish-grey 
 paper boards with drab back-strips and white end-papers, and have 
 white back-labels reading, across," Conversations | of | Lord | Byron. | 
 Vol. I [II.] " 
 
 There must have been more of this edition than the public wanted ; 
 for in 1832 the greater part of its component sheets was made up in 
 one volume and reissued as " Two volumes in one, complete," with 
 a brownish-purple cloth cover. The book ends with page 154 of the 
 second volume, the Appendix of 117 pages being left out. The 
 London publishers were Colburn and Bentley, the Edinbui-gh Bell 
 
APPENDIX. 497 
 
 and Bradfute ; and Cumming did the honours in Dublin. These 
 remainder copies do not often turn up now. 
 
 The reason for the exclusion of the Appendix is not difficult to 
 divine. A certain sad dog had "returned to his vomit." Medwin was 
 now once more in London ; and it would square with his egregious 
 vanity if he thought the time suitable for cutting out the serviceable 
 appendix supplied in his absence by the personage whom Henry 
 Colbum described as "the London editor." The "vomit" he had 
 returned to specifically in 1832 was the brief life of Shelley which 
 he had treated so badly in the long foot-note of the Conversations, 
 and was tinkering at and lengthening out, amending somewhat, no 
 doubt, for The Athenaeum, in which paper the Memoir and most of 
 the other component parts of The Shelley Papers appeared in 1832. 
 To that year belong also the two translations from iEschylus which 
 have the strongest claim to be viewed as having been influenced by 
 Shelley, Prometheus Bound and Agamemnon, both of which, moreover, 
 are similar in appearance and get-up to Hellas. The title-page and 
 collation of the first-named are — 
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND, | ATkagedy, | teanslated pbom | 
 THE Greek op .SISCHYLUS, | into English Verse | By 
 THOMAS MEDWIN, Esq. | Author op "The Conversations 
 OP Lord Byron." | London: | William Pickering. | 1882. 
 
 Octavo, pp. viii + 70. Title with imprint (" Printed by Charles 
 Whittingham, | Tooks Court, Chancery-Lane.") centred at foot of 
 verso, Preface four pp., Argument two pp., Dramatis Personae (an 
 unpaged leaf signed B with blank verso), the Tragedy pp. [7] to 62, 
 Notes pp. [63] to 74, and an unpaged leaf with the imprint " Charles 
 Whittingham, Tooks Court, | Chancery Lane." in the centre of the 
 recto (verso blank). The Arabic numerals 1 to 4 are not represented. 
 Between the Argument and Dramatis Personse is a two-line Errata 
 slip. 
 
 The orthodox drab wrapper has white end-papers and a printed 
 label on the recto cover reading "Prometheus Bound, | translated 
 from I the Greek of jEschylus, | By | T. Medvrin, Esq." 
 
 The copy described bears inside the recto cover the inscription 
 " T: J: Hogg | from the | Translator." This is in Hogg's handwriting. 
 Another copy, identical with it in all respects, is inscribed on the 
 verso of the fly-leaf, by Medwin, " Tuesday Oct 9. 1882. | With 
 the I Author's best 1 Compts." 
 
 The Preface explains Medwin's "object in making a version of 
 these plays " and mentions specially the Agamemnon, to which there 
 
 SHELLET K IS. 
 
498 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 is no separate Preface, and whereof the title and collation are — 
 
 AGAMEMNON,] ATeauedy, | translated feom | the Greek 
 
 OP ^SCHTLUS, 1 into English Verse | By THOMAS 
 
 MEDWIN, Esq. | Author or "THE CONVERSATIONS OF 
 
 LORD BYRON." | London : | William Pickering. | 1832. 
 
 Octavo, pp. viii + 90. Half-title "Agamemnon, A Tragedy." with 
 
 blank verso, title with imprint ("Printed by Charles Whittingham, | 
 
 Tooks Court, Chancery Lane.") centred at foot of verso, Argument 
 
 two pp., Dramatis Personse (an unpaged leaf signed B with blank 
 
 verso). The Tragedy pp. [3] to 78, Notes pp. [79] to 90, with the 
 
 printer's two-line imprint repeated at the foot of p. 90. 
 
 The drab wrapper with white end-papers bears a printed label on 
 the recto cover reading " Agamemnon, | translated from | the Greek 
 of ^schylua, 1 By | T. Med win, Esq." 
 
 Some copies of the Agamemnon contain a slip bearing nine lines of 
 Corrigenda. Hogg's copy, here described, is one of these. Inside the 
 recto cover it is inscribed in Hogg's writing " T: J: Hogg from the | 
 Translator." 
 
 As far as I am aware these were the only two of the .^schylean 
 Tragedies which Medwin published in book form. They were again 
 printed as contributions to Fraser's Magazine, in which publication 
 appeared at intervals other four of the seven extant Ti-agedies of the 
 Athenian giant. The dates of the Fraser numbers containing the 
 several plays are — 
 
 November 1832, The Choephori ; 
 January 1838, The Persians ; 
 April 1833, The Seven before Thebes ; 
 May 1834, The Eumenides ; 
 August 1837, Prometheus Bound ; 
 .November 1838, Agamemnon. 
 As regards The Suppliants see p. 243 ante. 
 
 Of the Shelley Papers reprinted from The Athenaeum the title-page 
 and collation are as follows : — 
 
 i:t)eS>i)ellcpi9ap£r!3 | MEMOIR | OF | PERCY BYSSHE 
 SHELLEY I By T. MEDWIN, Esq. | and | ORIGINAL 
 POEMS AND PAPERS | By PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1 
 Now first collected. | London : | Whittaker, Treacher, & Co. | 
 1833. 
 
 Pott octavo, pp. viiiH- 180. Title p. [i] ; " advertisement " p. [iii]; 
 lines by Beddoes p. [v] ; contents pp. [vii]-viii ; memoir pp. [1]-106 ; 
 half-title " Poems and Papers | By | Percy Bysshe Shelley " ; text of 
 
APPENDIX. 499 
 
 Poems pp. [109]-126 ; text of papers pp. 127-180. There are three 
 pp. of advertizements. 
 
 Bound in hlue-gray paper hoards with drab back and white label, 
 reading (across) " Shelley | Papers. | 3s. 6d." White end-papers. 
 
 Copies done up in a different manner also occur. The sheets of 
 these are very slightly trimmed, so as to form a neater volume than 
 those of the first issue, but still a volume of which both the head and 
 the fore-edges need cutting open. These later copies are done up 
 in warm-drab paper boards (without a back-strip), and have white end- 
 papers and back-label as in the first copies. 
 
 A remainder in quires was found some forty or fifty years after 
 publication. My old publisher-friend William Reeves, of Reeves and 
 Turner, bought them and had them done up in rather poor half- 
 leather with the edges closely trimmed, and sold them at a very low 
 " remainder price." I have not seen one of these for years. 
 
 Faithful to the tradition of dragging in Shelley whenever he made 
 a public appearance, Medwin was in labour the next year with that 
 strange hotch-potch The Angler in Wales, over which he appears to 
 have lost his temper with printers and publishers. The following 
 undated letter to James Oilier, at Bentley's, was posted on the 12th of 
 June 1834. 
 
 My dear Sir — It is quite dreadful this delay in the printing — I have 
 only had one sheet this Week. — Is it ever intended that this Book is 
 to get thro the press — ? — When the present matter is printed, I mean 
 to write day by day just as much as they can print — but shall not put 
 pen to paper till then. God how sick I am of the Angler in Wales. — 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. Medwin. 
 The cause of this ebullition collates thus : — 
 
 THE I ANGLEK IN WALES, | or | Days and Nights op 
 Sportsmen. | By THOMAS MEDWIN, Esq. | late of the First 
 Life Guards, | Author op "THE CONVERSATIONS OF 
 LORD BYRON." | Si quid est in libellis meis quod placeat, 
 dictavi audita. | In Two Volumes. | Vol. I. [Vol. II.] | [Vignette] | 
 London : | Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, | Publisher 
 in Ordinary to His Majesty. | 1884. 
 In this demy octavo, Vol. I consists of pp. xvi-F336, Vol. II of 
 pp. viii + 348. Each Volume has an engraved frontispiece on plate- 
 paper inserted ; and there are fifteen woodcut vignettes printed with 
 the text, including those in the title-pages. 
 
 Vol. I. — The first sheet, unsigned, consists of title-page with 
 imprint centred at foot of verso, "London: | Printed by Samuel 
 Bentley, | Dorset Street, Fleet Street." — Dedication with blank verso ; 
 
 E:k2 
 
500 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Preface pp. [v]-x ; Contents pp. [xi]-xv ; list of Illustrations for both 
 volumes p. [xvi] ; text pp. [l]-336. Bentley's imprint repeated at 
 foot of 336. Sig. B-T in eights. 
 
 Vol. II.— Preliminary matter half a sheet unsigned, viz. — title 
 with imprint on verso ; Contents pp. [iii]-vii (verso of vii blank) ; 
 text pp. [l]-348. Sig. B-Z 6 in eights. On the last page seven lines 
 of errata for both volumes, and Bentley's imprint at foot. 
 
 The volumes are in drab boards with white end-papers and labels 
 reading across " The | Angler | in | Wales, | By | Capt. Medwin.| 
 In Two Volumes. | Vol. I [II.] " 
 
 The book is a curious mixture of fiction and fact. One gathers 
 that Medwin's description of a lion hunt in Sketches in Hindoostan was 
 taken from a letter written to him by Edward Williams, who, and not 
 Medwin, seems to have witnessed the hunt (p. 260, Vol. I, of Tfie 
 Angler) ; and many such facts are developed in the conversations of 
 fictitious characters. One of these characters gives another a copy 
 of Shelley's Italian Song Buona Notte, which thus appeared in print 
 for the first time (I believe), in Vol. I, p. 277. At pp. 24 to 26 of 
 Vol. I is the weU-known story of Rogers and Byron's bull-dog, with 
 the observation that the brute in question seldom wagged his tail at 
 any one but Shelley ; and we gather that the anecdote had previously 
 appeared ("a few months ago") in " a defunct periodical vrith an 
 unintelligible name,'' and that only eight copies of the number were 
 sold. In Vol. II, at pp. 219-20, we have the first issue of Shelley's 
 Matilda Gathering Flowers, translated from the Purgatorio, and at 
 pp. 192-3 the prose note on the Bacchus and Ampelus group. The 
 fact that one of the Angler personages is represented as repeating 
 Shelley's remarks made during a walk in the Uffizzi, and calling this 
 note a " glorious burst of enthusiasm as he stood entranced before 
 this celebrated group,'' probably accounts for the suspicious phrase 
 " Look ! the figures are walking " with which Medwin makes the 
 note open both in The Angler and in the Life. He probably interpo- 
 lated Look! to give the conversational touch wanted for the semi- 
 fiction, and forgot to strike it out when he gave the same note in the 
 Life as " written in pencil and thrown off in the gallery, in a burst of 
 enthusiasm." When I rejected the word in reprinting the note 
 {Prose Works, Vol. Ill, pp. 56-58), I omitted to record its earlier 
 appearance in The Angler ; but, had I referred to the book, I should 
 certainly have given the foregoing as an almost conclusive reason for 
 regarding Look ! as apocryphal. The work contains a great deal 
 about the Byron and Shelley pistol-shooting business, Claire, Allegra, 
 the mysterious fair one at Naples, &c. &c., .which was afterwards 
 
APPENDIX. 501 
 
 ransferred to the lAfe with variations. The story of Shelley laughing 
 ver the Quarterly Review article on Laon and Cythna, as told in 
 ''ol. II of The Angler, p. 190, is instructively unlike the same story as 
 old in the Life; see ante, p. 225. It should be noted that, at 
 p. 100-102 of Vol. II, are some stanzas, evidently the '' elegant 
 tanzas on Tivoli" which Shelley said he had "read with pleasure" 
 irhen writing to Medwin on the 22nd of August 1821 {Prose Works, 
 To\. IV, p. 232) : I had not found them when editing the letter. 
 It is necessary to introduce here some details of a periodical which 
 believe to be practically unknown : — 
 
 THE 1 NEW ANTI-JACOBIN : | A Monthly Magazine | 
 OP 1 Politics, Commerce, Science, Liteeatukb, Art, Music, 
 AND THE Drama. | No. II. May, 1833. Vol. I. 
 This is evidently the " defunct periodical " of the narrator in The 
 ingler, who professes to have sent to its editors the bull-dog story. 
 ?here, at page 217, the number " begins to make an ending " under 
 he heading " Bigarrures" ; and the first item, sub-headed "The Bard at 
 3ay,'' is the tale of Byron, Rogers, and the bull-dog. I bought this 
 lumber in 1904 as containing a poem by Shelley which purported to 
 le there published for the first time all but a few lines. Lines Written 
 n the Cascine at Pisa is the title here given to the exquisite couplets 
 srhich we now know as To Jane — The Invitation, and which from 
 ,824 to 1839 were known very imperfectly in the Posthumous Poems, as 
 , portion of a poem made up by Mary Shelley from The Invitation and 
 Vhe Recollection and called The Pine Forest of the Cascine, near Pisa. 
 Phis advance towards a perfect text of one of the two poems was 
 t good service of Medwin's — it can hardly be doubted that it was one 
 if his contributions— for there are others of the same parentage, or 
 bster-parentage in the magazine. An article headed " Goethe and 
 lis Faust" contains a good deal that we have here in the Life at 
 )p. 161 and 382-5. This paper on Goethe ends with a specimen of 
 i> translation of Faust, 6J pp. by no means ill done, and probably the 
 vork of the translator of ^schylus. It is followed by a short paper 
 leaded " The Connoisseur " in which Medwin certainly had a hand, 
 "or it consists of two notes on ancient sculptures whereof the first is 
 I, variant of Shelley's note on the Laocoon group and the other a some- 
 vhat similar attempt to interpret or comment the Dying Gladiator, 
 IS the statue now, I believe, usually called the Dying Gaul, was then 
 lamed. Seeing that Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. had lent their name 
 o The New Anti-Jacobin, I made certain enquiries of them, and learned 
 hat, according to their records, they received for sale in 1883 copies 
 >f No. 1 and No. 2, and sent the remaining stock in May 1834 to 
 
503 LIFE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 J. Winston, Esq., at the Garrick Club. The publishers have no copy 
 of the work or any information about the contributors. There can 
 be no doubt, however, that this is Medwin's defunct periodical ; and 
 that, for the present, is all we know " and all we need to know." 
 
 The next book on my Medwin list, I do not possess or particularly 
 desire. It is a novel in three duodecimo volumes, — from the British 
 Museum copy of which the following particulars are given. 
 
 LADY SINGLETON ; | oe, | The World As It Is. | By | 
 THOMAS MEDWIN, Esq. | Authok of " CONVERSATIONS 
 OF LORD BYRON," &c. &c. | A woman's favour, the delight 
 of love, I To set to auction, like the meanest wares, | And 
 barter at the vilest price. Love is | The only thing upon this 
 round of earth, | That tolerates no purchaser but itself; | 
 Love is the price, the pureless, [sic] price of love ! | 'Tis the 
 inestimable diamond | That must be given away, or unenjoyed. | 
 Buried for ever, like to that great merchant, | Who, unseduced 
 by all Rialto's gold, | And as in mockery of monarchs, threw | 
 Back to the miser-deep his treasured pearls, | Too proud to 
 part virith them below their worth. | Author's translation from 
 SohiUer. | Vol. I. [II. III.] | London : | Cunningham & Mortimer, 
 Adelaide-Street, | Trafalgar Square. | mdcccxliii. | 
 
 VoLI 
 Half-title with blank verso, title-page with imprint on verso 
 Preface, pages i-ii, Text pp. 282 
 
 B-M pages 1-264 
 N „ 265-276 
 „ 277-282 
 
 Vol. II 
 Half-title and title as in Vol. I. Text, pp. 276 
 A pages 1-4 
 B-M „ 5-268 
 N „ 269-276 
 
 Vol. Ill 
 Half-title and title as in Vol. I and II. Test pp. 254 
 A pages 1-4 
 B-L „ 5-244 
 M „ 245-254 
 The Don Juan stanzas which come next in order of date confer on 
 Medwin the distinction of saving from oblivion an experiment in 
 metre which but for him might, ostensibly, have perished : — 
 
APPENDIX. 503 
 
 SOME I REJECTED STANZAS | OF | "DON JUAN," | 
 WITH I BYRON'S OWN CURIOUS notes. | The whole 
 WRITTEN IN Double Rhyme^; after Casti's • man-|nek, 
 AN Italian Author ekom whom Byron is said to ■ have 
 
 PLAGIARIZED MANY OP HIS BEAUTIES. | FkOM AN UNPUB- 
 LISHED manuscript I IN THE POSSESSION OF | CAPTAIN 
 
 MBDWIN. I a very limited number printed. | Great Totham, 
 Essex : ] printed at | Charles Clark's Private Press. | 1845. 
 
 Pott quarto, printed on one side (recto) only of the paper ; title- 
 page, 5 pp. of verse and 2 of prose, a blank leaf at each end, the whole 
 stabbed together, and enclosed in a cream-coloured paper wrapper on 
 the first recto page of which lines 1 to 12 of the title-page are repeated 
 in red within an oval. The first page (unnumbered) has the heading 
 —SUPPRESSED STANZAS OF | " DON JUAN." At the foot of the 
 second page of the " Notes " is the single-line imprint in italics 
 Great Totham : Printed at Charles Clark's Private Press. 
 
 I have seen one other copy without the wrapper, but never one 
 with it. 
 
 THE LIFE I OF | PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. | By 
 THOMAS MEDWIN. | In two Volumes. | Vol. I. [II.] | London : | 
 Thomas Cautley Newby, | 72, Mortimer Street, Cavendish 
 Square. | 1847. 
 
 Large 12mo. Volume I. pp. xii + 884 ; Volume II. pp. iv + 368. 
 
 The first volume consists of title-page with imprint centred on verso 
 ("London: ] Printed by G. Lilley, 148, Holbom Bars"), Preface 
 pp. [iii]-ix. Sonnet from Herwegh p. [x], written under Dryden's 
 Epigram " Three Poets " &c. p. [xi], " Thou wert the morning-star " 
 &c., and "Tu vivens" &c. p. [xii]. Life and Appendix 384 pp. and 
 a single-leaf list of Errata. A folding facsimile of a quarto letter from 
 Shelley (1 p.) forms the frontispiece. 
 
 The second volume consists of title-page with imprint on verso as 
 in the first, a single-leaf list of Errata, and Life and Appendix 
 368 pp. 
 
 Lilley's imprint is repeated at the foot of the last page of each 
 volume. 
 
 The collation by signatures (apart from the preliminary matter in 
 each volume, which bears none) is, for Vol. I. B-S in 12s, for Vol. II. 
 B-R4inl2s. 
 
 The signatures in Vol. I pass from M to 0, no Sig. N having been 
 printed ; but the paging is all right.. 
 
 In blue-gray paper boards with printed back-labels reading " The 
 Life I of I Shelley. | By T. Medwin. | In Two Vols. | Vol. I. [II.] " 
 
504 LIFE OP SHELLEY. 
 
 the edges absolutely untrimmed so that the extreme measurement 
 is 8 X 5 inches. 
 
 Inserted in this copy are, in Vol. I, a leaf from Notes and Queries 
 bearing a rather malicious note on Medwin's family affairs signed 
 "F. Chance," the original German Sonnet by Herwegh in the hand- 
 writing of John H. Ingram, and a letter from Medwin to his publisher ; 
 and in Vol. 11 a long and interesting letter from Trelawny to Claire 
 Clairmont mentioning the death of Medwin and recording the opinion 
 that he was honest and consistent in his admiration of the poet. 
 
 Another copy in my library is in the usual crimson cloth covers of the 
 publisher, which are blind-blocked both on the sides and on the back 
 but lettered in gilt, " Life ] of | Shelley | I. [II.] | T. C. Newby | 
 London ". The end-papers are pale primrose-colour, glazed, and the 
 edges smoothed in front and trimmed at the foot. In this copy are 
 inserted (in Vol. I.) a six-page letter from Mary Shelley, deprecating 
 " the publication of particulars injurious to the living," and (at the 
 end of Vol. II.) a leaf on which are printed the same labels that appear 
 on the copy already described. The leaves measure 7f x 4l§ inches. 
 
 No full description is needed in the case of the author's own copy 
 of the Life copiously revised in his autograph throughout, for a second 
 edition which was supposed to be about to appear at the time of his 
 death in August 1869, and which now at length appears. The volumes 
 are but little trimmed and are in the usual crimson cloth covers as 
 already described, save that the publisher's name does not appear on 
 the backs. That the veteran author spent much labour in the 
 endeavour to apply the further knowledge acquired in twenty-two 
 years to the revision of the work by which he will be best known to 
 posterity, no one who knows the original two volumes and now 
 peruses this book will fail to perceive. A specimen of his late labour 
 faces this page. 
 
 While living at Heidelberg Medwin issued two private prints : — 
 
 NUG^ I By I THOMAS MEDWIN. | Why you have published 
 is a Poser, | Tour Book's too little for the Grocer ! | Heidelberg 
 1856. I J. S. Wolff. 
 Sextodecimo, pp. vi + 96 (3 leaves and sig. 1 to 6 in 8's). Title- 
 page with blank verso, "Index " 4 pp., and text 96 pp. Plain drab 
 wrapper, edges trimmed, size 5J x 3^ in., so evidently not folded 
 8vo and probably worked to fold in \ sheets and make 16mo. Errors 
 corrected by pasting on printed slips, at times of one word only. 
 , Another copy precisely similar ; but inscribed outside the wrapper 
 "W. I. P. Shortt from | Capt. Medwin | Heidelberg" and then in 
 
APPENDIX, 505 
 
 a different ink but the same hand (no doubt Captain Shortt's) " dec. 
 Aug. 69. Eetat. 81 ". On the title, above " By ", Medwin has written 
 in capitals EDITED. Captain Shortt is described in a foot-note at 
 p. 48 of Medwin's Odds and Ends as "an excellent scholar and anti- 
 quarian." 
 
 ODDS AND ENDS | By 1 THOMAS MEDWIN. | J'aime 
 I'allure poetique a sauts | et en gambardes. | Montaigne. | 
 Heidelberg 1862 | J. S. "Wolff. 
 
 Crown octavo, pp. ii + 118. Title-page with blank verso, "Ad 
 Auetorem" (12 lines of Latin elegiacs) with blank verso, and 116 pp. 
 of text. Plain buff wrapper, edges trimmed. 
 
 At the top of the title-page is a dated autograph, " Pilfold Medwin | 
 20th June 1863." In the lower margins of pp. 98 and 99 are Latin 
 and English epigrams in the writing of Thomas Medwin ; and after 
 " The End " on p. 118 are six lines in his autograph, — Latin elegiacs 
 headed "In Matris Cenotaphium ". 
 
 I have another copy with the edges untrimmed, without any 
 additional verses in MS., but with Medwin's certificate in the top 
 margin of the title, " Unpublished \ 90 Copies printed," and, below 
 his name on the title, the words " dec. Aug. 69 aetat. 81 — Horsham 
 Sussexia" in the writing of Captain Shortt, to whom this copy 
 belonged. On the verso of the title Medwin has written "To 1 Cap* 
 Shortt I from his friend, the Author | Heidelberg | 17th May 1862 ". 
 
 CORRIGENDA 
 
 p. 166, 1. 13 from foot, /or Hemstrins read Hemstruis 
 
 p. 243, note, line 1 of right hand column, for Faser read Fraser 
 
 p. 852, 1. 6 from foot, after Cardon's insert \sic\ 
 
In the following Index tlie references to 
 tlie foot-notes are distinguislied from those 
 to the text by being made in italic numerals. 
 "Where the spelling of proper names &c. 
 differs from that of Medwin, it may be 
 taken that the Index is correct. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aberdeen (Lord), at Campbell's 
 
 funeral, 3^8 
 Academy {The), 456 
 Ada (Byron's daughter), his 
 intention to leave her joint 
 heiress •with AUegra, 356 
 
 Her marriage to Lord Lovelace, 
 327 
 Address to the People on the 
 Death of the Princess Charr 
 lotte {An), 189 
 Adonais, the "conception of 
 Heaven in ", 272-3 
 
 References to Keats's calum- 
 niator in, 292 
 
 Date of Keats's death misstated 
 in Preface to, 302 
 
 A "brief notice " of, 308-10 
 
 Referred to or quoted, 413, 414, 
 415, 426, 434, 4ss 
 iEschylus, Medwin's blunders 
 about, xvi 
 
 Shelley's Prometheus Unbound 
 no attempt to revive that of, 
 212 
 
 His Prometheus Bound re- 
 ferred to, 214, 229 
 
 Medwin's translations of six of 
 his plays, x, 243, 243, 498 
 
 Hellas imitated from The Per- 
 sians of, 353 
 
 Medwin's translations of Pro- 
 metheus Bound and Agamem- 
 non perhaps influenced by 
 Shelley, x, 497 
 
 His Suppliants, 243, 498 
 
 Allusion to, 383 
 Aeschylus and Sophocles, Shelley,'s 
 lyrics formed on the choruses 
 of, 38 
 Ahasuerus, the Wanderer, Med- 
 win's poem of 1823, 42,' 141, 
 141 
 
 The writing of it attributed by 
 Medwin to the advice of 
 Shelley, 488 
 
 The character of Julian in, 141, 
 488 
 
 The Preface reproduced, 489- 
 491 
 Alastor, curious application of the 
 wild swan passage in, 126 
 
 Scenic, mental, and moral 
 sources of, 138-40 
 
 Description of the protagonist 
 applied to Shelley, 234 
 
 The boat " a thing of life ", 316 
 Alexander (William), a Master in 
 Chancery, 477 
 
 Ordered to enquire as to the 
 maintenance and education 
 of Shelley's children by Har- 
 riett, 477 
 
 His Report of Aug. 1, 1817, 478 
 
 He disapproves Shelley's pro- 
 posal and approves of that 
 of the Westbrookes, 479-80 
 
 Ordered to enquire further, 480 
 
 Submits a fresh report, April 
 28, 1818, 480 
 
 He approves of Dr. and Mrs. 
 Hume as guardians of the 
 children, 481 
 
 His report confirmed, 485 
 Alfieri (Vittorio), occupation of 
 Ma,ry with the Myrrha of, 
 252 
 Algarotti on Dante, 377 
 AUegra, Byron's natural daughter 
 by Claire Clairmont, 171 
 
 Abortive negociations for adop- 
 tion by Mrs. Vavassour, 175 
 
 Referred to, 323, 356, 500 
 Angeli (Helen Rossetti), her 
 ShelUy and his Friends in Italy, 
 XXX, -240, 412 
 
508 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Angler in Wales [The), by Medwin, 
 
 xxvi, 499 
 Animals, intellectual qualities of, 
 
 46 
 Shelley's speculations as to 
 
 taking tlie life of, 76 
 Anster (John), his Faust "be- 
 
 puffed ", 385 
 Archimedes, his nov arSi boast 
 
 attributed by Medwin to 
 
 ^schylus, xvi, 99 
 Arethusa, Shelley's, 236 
 "Ariel" (The), See "Don Juan" 
 
 (The) 
 Ariosto, Shelley's opinion of, 262 
 Assassins {The), 131-2 
 " A. S.", satirist of Polidori, 150 
 Identified as son of William 
 
 Spencer, 151 
 Atheism, Shelley's so-called, 427 
 
 See Nec-essity of Atheism {The) 
 Athenceum {The), its opinion on 
 
 biographical value of private 
 
 letters, 3 
 First appearance of Invocation 
 
 to Misery in, 208, 208, 2og 
 Mr. Dilke compares Shelley and 
 
 Keats in, 306 
 Story of The Indian Serenade 
 
 and Mozart's " Ah perdona " 
 
 in. 3n 
 
 Medwin's Memoir of Shelley 
 published in, 375 
 
 Papers on Shelley's funeral 
 printed in, 412 
 
 Shelley's paper on Franken- 
 stein published in, 4^6 
 
 Most parts of The Shelley Papers 
 published in, 497 
 
 Referred to, xi, 96, 125, 239 
 Attempt to assassinate Shelley 
 
 (The supposed), 116-17 
 Auto da Fe, contemplated at 
 Lucca; joint action of Shel- 
 ley, Byron, Medwin and 
 Taaffe to frustrate it, 364-7 
 
 Bacon (Lord), Shelley's close 
 
 study of, 350 
 On atheism, 427 
 Certain resemblances of Shelley 
 
 to, 435 
 
 A person to bear damnation 
 with, 443 
 Baiae (The Bay of), Shelley en- 
 raptured with, 204 
 Balzac (Honore de), extract from 
 
 his Louis Lambert, 81 
 Banquet {The), Shelley's trans- 
 lation from Plato of, 4^6 
 BartoUni (Professor Antonio), xxiv 
 Bartolini (Lorenzo), on the rarity 
 of the straight nose and 
 forehead, 279 
 His bust of Byron, xxiv, 496 
 Baths of Caracalla (The), con- 
 nected with Prometheus Un- 
 bound, 211-12 
 Baths of St. Julian|(The), inun- 
 dation at, 234 
 Beauchamp (Elizabeth), see West- 
 
 brooke (Elizabeth) 
 Beauchamp (Robert Farthing), 
 his connexion with the Chan- 
 cery Suit, 466, 466, 467, 468 
 Marries Elizabeth Westbrooke, 
 466 
 Beauclerc (Mrs.), Shelley traduced 
 by Dr. Nott to, 362 
 A Sussex neighbour of the 
 
 Shelleys, 367 
 Shelley finds charm in her ac- 
 quaintance, 868 
 Introduced by Medwin to 
 
 Byron, 368 
 Got on better with Shelley than 
 
 with Byron, 368-9 
 Has Sinclair, the tenor, to sing 
 to her friends, 372 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, Shelley's 
 homelier lyrics compared 
 with theirs, 421 
 Beddoes (Thomas Lovell), Lines 
 
 on Shelley by, 498 
 Beethoven, the sonatas and sym- 
 phonies of, 209 
 Referred to, 309, 310 
 Bell and Bradfute, publishers, 
 
 496-;7 
 Bellini (Vincenzo), Shelley's por: 
 trait in Adonais likened to a 
 "Melodious Tear" of, 309 
 Bentley (Richard), publisher, 499 
 " And Son," xiv 
 
Beppo, and " the Byron of Venice ", 
 
 200 
 Berkeley (George), Shelley's re- 
 finement on his theory, 165 
 Referred to, 426 
 Bettinello on Dante, 377 
 Beyle (Marie Henri), Byron's 
 
 letter to, 495 
 Bible (The), Shelley's debt to, 419 
 His copy confiscated on entering 
 
 Eome, 350 
 " Last, yet first ", in his ideal 
 library, 255 
 Bion, Adonais " breathes the ten- 
 derness " of, 308 
 Bird (The) at the cremation of 
 
 Shelley, 493 
 Birrell (Augustine) on The Sup- 
 pliants of ^schylus, 24J 
 Bixby (Mr. W. K.), Draft of Ode 
 to Heaven in one of his 
 Shelley Note Books, zyj 
 Draft of the Lines to Emilia 
 
 Viviani in another, 281 
 Holograph of " These are two 
 friends" in his Note Book 
 No. 1, jgo 
 Blachford (Mary), see Tighe (Mrs. 
 
 Henry) 
 Blackwood's Magazine, an " anony- 
 ^y^ mous libeller " in, 226, 227 
 ^ Version of T%e Cyclops in, 246 
 " Malignant venom " of, 307 
 Anster's Faust "bepuffed into 
 celebrity " by, 385 
 Blake (William), his "Death of 
 the Good Old Man " in Blair's 
 Orave, 433 
 Blessington (Lady), tries to get 
 a situation for Claire, 175 
 Referred to, 356, 368, 370 
 Boccaccio, Eeats's and Reynolds's 
 poetical tales from, 303 
 Referred to, 311 
 BoinviUe-Turner circle (The), iig 
 BoUngbroke, Byron likened to, 200 
 Borghese (Prince), Ada Byron 
 meets her future husband at 
 a ball given by, 327 
 
 Braham (John), tenor singer, an 
 
 indifferent actor, 372 
 Brandreth, Turner, and Ludlam, 
 
 The execution of, 18^ 
 Brasse (Dr. John), of the Greek 
 Gradus, made- to faint by 
 scent of jonquils, 1^8 
 Brasse (Frances), daughter of 
 
 Dr. Brasse, ii)8 
 Bra wne (Fanny), see Lindon (Mrs.) 
 Bremer (Frederica), her view of 
 
 Robert Owen's aims, 98-9 
 Brooks (John), Owenite publisher, 
 
 99 
 Broughton (Lord), see Hobhouse 
 
 (John Cam) 
 Brown (Charles Armitage), his 
 intended Life of Keats, 177 
 Medwin speaks slightingly of 
 
 him, 303 
 His share in Ofho the Great, 304 
 The Cap and Bells owned by, 
 
 305 
 Severn writes of Shelley's 
 
 funeral to, 412 
 Referred to, 293 
 Browne (Felicia Dorothea), de- 
 scribed at sixteen, 58 
 Byron and Shelley attracted by 
 
 her early works, j8 
 Shelley writes to, 59 
 Her best lyrics in Blackwood's 
 
 Magazine, 60 
 The Sceptic, referred to, 60 
 Her unfortunate marriage to 
 Captain Hemans, 127 
 Browning (Elizabeth Barrett), on 
 Rossi's murderers (in Casa 
 Guidi Windows), 341 
 On Lady Emmeline Stuart 
 Wortley, XV 
 Browning (Robert), author of 
 Introduction to forged Shel- 
 ley letters, 3^4 
 His Memorabilia, xiii 
 Brunei (Isambard Kingdom) 
 
 F.R.S.,v 
 Bruno (Giordano), Leigh Hunt 
 on, 427 
 
510 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bryant (William Cullen), Shelley 
 
 " the model " of, 347 
 Bulwer (Edward), Lord Lytton, 
 histranslations from Schiller, 
 385, 434 
 Burger (Gottfried August), power- 
 ful effect of his Leonora on 
 SheUey, 45 
 Burgess (Rev. Richard), at the 
 
 Shelley "funeral", 412 _ 
 Burial of Shelley's Ashes, a friend 
 of Medwin's recounts the, 
 412-15 
 Burke (Edmund), and the "fallen 
 
 woman", 179 
 Bury (Lady Charlotte), her daugh- 
 ters visit Emilia Viviani, 280 
 Butler (Samuel), double rhymes 
 
 in his Hudibras, 348 
 Butler (Mrs.), her unfortunate 
 
 marriage, 127 
 Byron (George Gordon), natural 
 son of the poet, his intended 
 Life of his father, 97 
 His supposed collection of 
 Shelley's letters, 873, jy^ 
 Byron (Lady), "a poetess, good, 
 bad, or indifferent", 127 
 Her " mysterious repudiation " 
 
 of Byron, 170 
 Keats takes her pet-name in 
 
 vain, joj 
 Referred to, 358, 360 
 Byron (Lord), the Bartolini bust 
 of, xxiv 
 Miss Mayne's book on, xxv 
 His letters mentioned, 3 
 Indebted to the fragment of 
 
 Ahasuerus, 42 
 Knew early what love was, 47 
 His mystifications, 66, 149, 
 
 355, 356-7 
 Voltaire, his horn-book, 66 
 His fondness for Montaigne, 66 
 His blighted affection for Miss 
 
 Chaworth, 106 
 Separated from Lady Byron 
 
 against his will, 128 
 Meets Shelley at Geneva, 144 
 Takes Villa Diodati, 145 
 His thunder-storm in Childe 
 Harold, 147 
 
 His account of his and Shelley's 
 danger on Lake Leman, 154 
 
 ImbuedatGenevawith Shelley's 
 views, 164 
 
 A note to his Childe Harold 
 cited, 165 
 
 His liaison vrith Claire Clair- 
 mont, 169-71 
 
 Long a secret from the Shelleys 
 and Polidori, 171 
 
 His sonnets to Genevra, 170 
 
 His neglect of Claire Clair- 
 ^ mont, 172 
 
 His view of Shelley's moral 
 character, 186 
 L His satire compared with 
 Shelley's, 187 
 
 His feelings on Lord Eldon's 
 judgment, 188-9 
 
 At Venice totally unlike what 
 he was at Geneva, 200 
 1^ His supposition as to the author- 
 ship of the Quarterly Review 
 article on Shelley, 226 
 
 CasaLanfranchi secured for him 
 by Shelley, 2jj 
 
 The Prisoner of Chillon referred 
 to, 249 
 
 Don Juan referred to, xxiv, 255 
 
 Shelley's view of Childe Harold, 
 xxii, 257-8 
 
 Shelley's sonnet to, xxiii, 258 
 
 Shelley's admiration for The 
 Corsair and Cain, 258, 262-3 
 
 Said he did not mean his plays 
 for the stage, 256 
 
 Failure of Marino Faliero, 257 
 
 His allusion to Southey's letter 
 to Shelley, 291 
 
 "Who killed John Keats?", 
 
 - 2g2 
 
 Requests Shelley to come to 
 Ravenna, 320 
 
 His connexion with the Car- 
 bonari, 321 
 
 His Journal quoted, 821 
 
 His stanzas When about to join 
 the Italian Cai-bonari, 321 
 
 His confidencein Shelley's judg- 
 ment, 321 
 
 Disbelieves the Hoppner lies 
 about Shelley, 322, 322 
 
Mrs. Hoppner, j2j 
 At Pisa, 326-7 
 His horse-riding, 329 
 His two 'natures — the man's 
 
 and the poet's, 329, 355 
 ^-Quoted on Poetry, 380 
 Compared by Shelley to Vol- 
 taire, 331 
 Unlike Voltaire, he never 
 
 scoffed at religion, 331 
 His manner of conversation, 
 
 331 
 His personal fascination, 331 
 His love of mystification, 331 
 His habit of showing Shelley 
 
 what he had newly written, 
 
 333 
 His Heaven and Earth, 333, 
 
 340 
 His Cain, 334 
 
 i^- 
 
 Medwin's view of his debt to 
 
 Shelley in Cain, 334 
 Bums the MS. of The Deformed 
 
 Tratisformed, 335 
 Defends his Version of Pulci's 
 
 Morgante Maggiore, 335 
 Shelley's opinion of Werner, 
 
 340 . 
 His aristocratic views, 343 
 " The Isles of Greece ", 354 
 His opinion of the modern 
 
 Greeks, 855 
 His attitude towards the Greek 
 
 cause, 355 
 His Autobiography alleged to 
 
 have been burnt, 356 
 Alleged identity of his Corsair 
 
 and himself, 856 
 His luck in having Shelley for 
 
 friend and fosterer of his 
 
 genius, 859 
 On the preachers against Cain, 
 
 mo, 360 
 His lampoon on Dr. Nott, 363 
 Action to save an Italian from 
 
 the stake, 364-7 
 His superstitions, 368, 404 
 His reply to a detractor of 
 
 Shelley, 369 
 
 friends met or made abroad, 
 
 369 
 The Two Foscari, 870, jyo 
 Differed from Shelley in being 
 
 at heart a hon vivant, 374 
 Mrs. Hunt's silhouette of, 874 
 Lady Blessington's description 
 
 of, 374 
 His wager with Shelley, 375' 
 On Dante, 376-7 
 His design to build a yacht, 
 
 378 
 His part in the Masi affair, 
 
 379-80 
 Advised by police to leave Pisa 
 
 pro tern., 380 
 Naturally kind and benevolent, 
 
 380 
 Treatment of his servants, 380 
 7%e Vision of Judgment, 385 
 
 Offered for The Liheral, 388 
 His temporary migration to 
 
 Leghorn, 385 
 His yacht, the " Bolivar", 386 
 Present at the bumilig of 
 
 Shelley's and Williams's 
 
 bodies, 394 
 Letter to Moore quoted, 397 
 His capacity for remaining in 
 
 the water, 398 
 Effect of Shelley's death on, 
 
 405-6, 407 
 Remark at Shelley's pyre, 407 
 Remark concerning Shelley's 
 
 heart, 407 
 Asks who was Caius Cestius ? 
 
 414 
 His exalted estimate of Shelley, 
 
 428 
 His inferiority to Shelley in 
 
 argument, 436 
 Words of Shelley's wrongly at- 
 tributed to, 439, 4JP 
 His part in the origin of Fran- 
 kenstein, 460 
 His Mazpppa, 460 
 His death, 488, 493 
 Ahasicerus dedicated to, 400, 
 
 489 
 
 l1 
 
512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Byron (Lord), coiitiiiued : — 
 
 Facsimile of his letter to Hob- 
 house of the 5th of May 1823, 
 493, 495 
 
 His verses "Remember thee" 
 &c., 494 
 
 Account of his residence in 
 Greece, 495 
 
 Fletcher's Account of his last 
 moments, 495 
 
 Greek Ode to his Memory, 495 
 
 Italian translation of his Works, 
 496 
 
 French and German transla- 
 tions of Medwin's Conversa- 
 tions of, 493-7 
 
 His pistol-shooting, 500 
 
 Rejected stanzas of Don Juan 
 with all rhymes double, 503 
 
 Referred to, 204, 227, 260, 273, 
 279, 293, 803, 30s, 306, 306, 
 309, 310, 313, 325, 326, 348, 
 351, 395, 39S, 396, 418, 419, 
 445, 459, 489, 494 
 
 Caiii controversy (The), 22j, 360 
 Calderon, his Suefio e Sueno, 89 
 Shelley begins reading his 
 
 dramas, 198 
 El Purgatorio de Sun Patricio, 
 
 222 
 Scenes from El Magico Pro- 
 
 digioso translated b^ Shelley, 
 
 243 
 His "flowery and starry " autos, 
 
 243 
 His Cisma d'Ingalaterra, 244, 
 
 343 
 El Principe Costante, 353 
 Referred to, 882,^52, 385, 419 
 Campbell (Lord),j'5p 
 Campbell (Thomas), part of The 
 Wandering Jeiv sent to, 40 
 Shelley's opinion of, 257 
 Byron's opinion of, 356, 857, 
 
 358, JJ9 
 His funeral in "Westminster 
 
 Abbey, 3j8 
 Hobhouse on, 3J9 
 Canova's Venus, 217 
 Cardan (Jerome), parallel pas- 
 sages of Shelley and, 352 
 
 Carlile (Richard), republican 
 
 agitator, 106 
 Carlyle (Thomas), his CromwelVs 
 
 Letters and Speeches, 341 
 / Suspected of writing remarks 
 ^ on Shelley, 432 
 Casti (11 Abbate Giambattista), 
 Ca^ti a non casto, 274 
 Byron indebted to his Novelle, 
 
 335 
 Double rhymes after the man- 
 ner of, 503 
 Similarities between his Diavo- 
 
 lessa and Don Juan, 336-9 
 Specimen of his style, trans- 
 lated by Medwin, 338-9 
 Castlereagh (Lord), 344 
 Catalogue of the Phenomena of 
 
 Dreams, iSfc, 80, 90 
 Catty (Mr. Corbett Stacey), on 
 
 The Indian Serenade, 31J 
 Catullus, Dr. Nott's edition and 
 translation of, "xxxi, 362 
 Medwin's translations from, xxx 
 Cenci {The), its title, 217, 217 
 Its Heroine ; Shelley's loadstar 
 "the Barberini Beatrice", 
 217-18 
 Count Cenci as treated by 
 
 Shelley, 218 
 The MS. account of the Cenci 
 
 trial, 218 
 The Indicator notice of, 218-19 
 Refen-ed to, 135, 221, 256, 341, 
 442 
 Cervantes, the Little Novels of, 
 
 256 
 Chance (F.) on Medwin, 504 
 Chancery Papers relating to 
 "Shelley «. Westbrooke ", 
 463-86 
 Charles the First, the slave of cir- 
 cumstances; 342 
 Charles the First, Shelley's frag- 
 ment of, 221, 340-1, 346 
 Charles the Second, "a san- 
 guinary coward ", 343 
 Charlotte (Princess), Dr. Nott and, 
 
 36,1, J62 
 Chatterton (Thomas), greatly 
 ■ esteemed by Shelley in 1809, 
 44 
 
of Shelley's children by 
 
 Harriett, 480 
 
 Their plan for the maintenance 
 
 and education of the children, 
 
 481, 482 
 
 Chesterfield on BolingbroKe, 200 
 
 Childe Harold, Canto III., 147, 
 
 160, 459 
 Churchill (Charles), his satire 
 compared witli Shelley's, 187 
 Cicero helps Shelley to an infidel 
 
 gibe, 443 
 Circle (The Shelley and Byron), 
 
 at Pisa, 359-60 
 Clairmont (Claire), her copy of 
 An Address to the Irish People, 
 115 
 H^r liaison with Byron, 169-71 
 Her age, appearance, and ac- 
 complishments, 169 
 Her views on marriage, 170 
 Her daughter Allegra born, 
 
 171 
 Frustration of Lady Blessing- 
 ton's efforts in her behalf, 
 175 
 Her description of Lady 
 
 Mountcashel, 26^ 
 Records a joke of Pacchiani's, 
 
 275. 
 Malicious scandal about, 322, 
 
 The Clairmont Archives, 412 
 Referred to. 129, 729, 272, 280, 
 
 433, 500, 504 
 Clairmont (Mary Jane), widow, 
 
 mother of "Claire", 129 
 Becomes the second wife of 
 
 Godwin, Z2p 
 Clark (Charles), printer, 503 
 Clarke (W.), pirates Queen Mob, 
 
 48, 94 
 Classicists and Romanticists, 262 
 Clement VIII. (Pope), 218 
 Clint (George), his posthumous 
 
 portrait of Shelley, 313 
 Cockbum (General Sir George^ 
 
 at the Shelley " funeral ", 
 
 412 
 
 Colburn and Bentley, publishers, 
 496 
 
 Coleridge (Ernest Hartley), his 
 edition of Byron referred to, 
 xxiv, 2^2, 362 
 
 Coleridge (John Taylor), school- 
 fellow and traducer of Shelley , 
 
 22^ , 
 
 Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), his 
 Pantheism compared with 
 Shelley's philosophy, 165 
 Shelley's favourite ode of, 251, 
 
 344 
 A type of eloquenca, 275 
 Uses the word interpenetrate, 349 
 Byron's opinion of, 357 
 His eminence as a translator, 
 
 382 
 Referred to, 226, 227, 286, 419, 
 42g, 444 
 
 Coliseum {The), Shelley's frag- 
 ment, 215-6 
 
 Collins (William), cold and arti- 
 ficial in Shelley's opinion, 
 251 
 
 Como, Shelley's description of 
 the Lake of, 196 
 
 Condorcet, on physical perfecti- 
 bility of man, 50 
 
 Conversations of Lord Byron, by 
 Medwin, xxv, 493-7 
 
 Cook (Captain), 378 
 
 Cook (the Rev. W.) at the 
 Shelley " funeral ", 412 
 
 Cooper (R.), engraver, xxv, 496 
 
 Courier Franfais (The), misrepre- 
 sents the Masi fracas, 379 
 
 Cowell (John), a friend of Byron, 
 406 
 
 Crabbe (George), Byron's praise 
 of, 857 
 
 Crawford (Mr.), a witness in the 
 Masi affair, 380 
 
 Croker (John Wilson), a " noteless 
 blot on a remembered name ", 
 292 
 
 Croly (the Rev. Dr. George), le- 
 fei'red to in Don Jvan, 2gi 
 At Campbell's funeral, 338 
 
 l12 
 
514 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cromwell (Oliver), Edward Wil- 
 liams descended from, 312 
 Medwin's abuse of, 342 
 
 Gumming, publisher, 497 
 
 Cunningham & Mortimer, pub- 
 lishers, 502 
 
 Cunningham (" Mr. Velvet- 
 cushion "), 360 
 
 Cun'an (Amelia), her portrait of 
 Shelley, 313 
 
 Dante, Shelley's despair when 
 reading, 160 
 Liberty, the root of his pre- 
 eminence, 225 
 Cary's translation of, 244 
 Shelley's version of a fragment 
 
 of his Purgatoiio, 245-6 
 Byron's version of the Rimini 
 
 story, 246 
 Medwin's version of the Ugolino 
 episode (with Shelley's cor- 
 rections), 247-8 
 Epipaychidion compared with 
 
 his Vita Nuova, 284 
 Byron's attempt to belittle him, 
 
 376-7 
 The Era of, 419 
 Mentioned in error for Goethe, 
 
 490 
 Referred to, 261, 340, 377, 378, 
 418, 432, 490 
 D'Argent (The Marquis), an 
 
 infidel wit, 360 
 Darwin (Dr. Erasmus), supposed 
 the central idea of Franketi- 
 stein possible, 456 
 His experiments, 461 
 Davison (Thomas), printer, 489 
 Dawkins (Mr.), British chargi 
 
 d'affaires at Florence, 395 
 Defence of Poetry (A), by Shelley, 
 
 63, 272, 272, 377 
 De Foe (Daniel), 256 
 Deity, Shelley's speculations on 
 
 the nature of the, 428 
 De Quincey (Thomas), describes 
 an Indian-ink , sketch of 
 Shelley, 67 ' 
 Mistake as to Shelley's age, 
 83-4 
 
 ^His account of Shelley and 
 Harriett at Keswick, 112-13 
 On Harriett's suicide, 179, 181 
 / A defender of Shelley misread 
 -' by Medwin, 441, 441 
 \j His articles on Shelley in Taifs 
 Magazine, xx, 332 
 De Stael (Madame), unfortunate 
 marriage of, 127 
 On Pacchiani, 275 
 Dilke (Charles Wentworth), ap- 
 preciation of Keats, 294, 306 
 Dilke (Sir Charles), late owner 
 of Keats's folio Shakespeare, 
 2g4 
 His Keats bequest to Hamp- 
 stead, 2^6 
 Dillon (Lord), his account of 
 Shelley's amusement at the 
 Quarterly article on him, 225 
 Dionysius and Plato, 230 
 Disraeli(Benjamin), at Campbell's 
 
 funeral, 338 
 Divine Comedy (The), 192 
 Don EsprieUo''s Letters (SovAheys), 
 
 their effect on Shelley, 190 
 Don Juan, Byron's, As to expunged 
 lines in, 291 
 Modelled after Casti's Diavo- 
 
 lessa, 335 
 Double rhymes in, 348, 503 
 Referred to, 201, 202, 30^, ^76, 
 407 
 "Don Juan" (The), Shelley's 
 boat, otherwise the " Ariel ", 
 Loss of, 317 
 The craft described, 378 
 Sank with all sails set, 398 
 Dorchester (Lady), 3^8, 370, 371 
 D'Orsay (Count), his portrait of 
 
 Byron from memory, 313 
 Dowden (Professor Edward), his 
 lAfe of Shelley, 2S,j8, 87, 114, 
 IIS, 137, 188, i8p, 394, 40J, 
 466, 467, 473 
 His Correspondence of Southey 
 with Caroline Bowles, 290, 291 
 Dreams, Shelley's division of 
 them into Phrenic and 
 Psychic, 89 
 Repetition of precisely the 
 same dream, 90 
 
Hobhouse calls Ckiin "worse 
 
 than the worst bombast of", 
 
 334 
 His epigram, "Three poets" 
 
 &c., 508 
 Dying Gladiator, An attempt to 
 
 interpret the, 501 
 
 Early impressions, influence of, 
 
 46 
 Eaton (Daniel Isaac), a prosecuted 
 
 publisher, 722, 469 
 Bckermann's Conversations of 
 
 Goethe, 382 u-^ 
 
 Edinburgh Review (The), SheUey 
 
 misinterpreted by, 217 
 Unprophetic about Byron, 226 
 Edwards (Rev. Mr.), teaches 
 
 Shelley rudiments of Latin 
 
 and Greek, 14 
 Bldon (Lord Chancellor), on 
 
 the cause " Shelley v. 
 
 Westbrooke ", 182-5 
 Shelley's poem To the Lord 
 
 Chamellor, 186, 442, 442 
 His careful reasonings, 474 
 His orders in the case, 474, 480, 
 
 485 
 Elise, dismissed servant of the 
 
 Shelleys, 322, 323 
 Elizabethan Dramatists (The), 
 
 Shelley's favourites among, 
 
 256 
 Ellenborough (Lord), Shelley's 
 
 ieWer to, 122,469 
 Elleray, 113 
 
 El Magico Prodigioso, 488, 490 
 Emerson (Ralph Waldo), 64 
 Endymion, Eeats's, compared with 
 
 The Nymphs of Hunt. 178-9 
 Shelley writes to The Quarterly 
 
 about, 290 
 Shelley's opinion of, 293 
 Referred to, 304, 807 
 Encapotado (El), drama attributed 
 
 to Calderon, 405 
 Epipsychidion, Supposed refer- 
 ence to Harriett in, 124r-5 
 Misquoted, 140 
 
 in, 280, 286 
 " The apotheosis of love "; 284 
 Medwin's description of, 287-8 
 " Shelley's Psyche " and, 290 
 The boat in, 317 
 Ludicrous deduction from a 
 
 line in, 403 
 Platonism in, 431 -> 
 Esdaile (M^>E. J.), husband of 
 Eliza lanthe Shelley (a. v.), 
 187 
 Esdaile (the Eev. W.), Shelley's 
 
 grandson, 466 
 Essays, Letters from Abroad, Sfc, 
 
 Shelley's, 125, 725 
 Eton, The "pure system ' of 
 
 Fagging " carried on at, 31 
 Euripides, Shelley's translation 
 
 of his Cyclops, 246 
 Examiner (The), Shelley's letter 
 about Queen Mob to, 93 
 Leigh Hunt, joint-editor of, 
 
 176, 258 
 Moore scoffs at, 324 
 
 Faded Violet (On a), first publi- 
 cation of, 210 
 Faust, Goethe's, The song " Mein 
 Mutter "in, 161 
 Debt of The Deformed Trans- 
 formed to, 335 
 Shelley sees a likeness to 
 Calderon's El Magico Pro- 
 digioso in, 382 
 Comparison of Shelley and 
 
 Hayward, 383-4 
 Shelley's Hartz Mountain 
 
 scene in, 385 
 Referred to, 488 
 Fenwick (Mrs.), her dressing 
 suggestive of Lady Mount- 
 cashel's, 26^ 
 Fichte's philosophy, not to 
 
 Medwin's taste, 168 
 Finch (" the Reverend Colonel "), 
 
 293,297, 298, J02 
 Finden (William), Engraver of 
 Shelley's portrait, 31J 
 
516 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fitzgerald(Lord Edward), Moore's 
 
 Life of, 368 
 Forman (Alfred William), his help 
 
 to the editor, v 
 Forman (George Ellery), the 
 editor's father, Anecdote , of 
 Rowland Hill by, 107 
 Forman (Harry Buxton), his large 
 edition of Shelley's Works, 
 243, 326, 347, 381 
 The Shelley lAbrary, 347 
 Letters of Edward John 
 
 Trelawny, edited by, 397 
 His article on Slielley's Life 
 near Spezzia, his Death and 
 Burials, 412 
 Forsyth (Robert), his Principles of 
 Moral Science referred to, 423 
 Foscolo (Ugo), his MS. emend- 
 ations of Dante, 377 
 Foster (Rev. John), Essayist, 332 
 Fox's (William Johnson) Chapel 
 
 in Finsbury, 372 
 Frankenstein, Origin of the book, 
 457, 460 
 Shelley's Review of, 157-9 
 Shelley's Preface to, 456-8 
 Mary's Introduction to, 458 
 Franklin (Benjamin), Shelley said 
 
 to have " sworn by ", 50 , 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, review of 
 
 Alastor in, 142-3 
 
 The Sacrifice, Medwin's first 
 
 sketch of Lady Singleton,iji,xi 
 
 Medwin's translations from 
 
 JSschylus in, x, 243, 498 
 Referred to, 360, 362 
 Frederick the Great, 860 
 Freeborn (Mr.), a trading con- 
 sular official at Rome, 411 
 Shelley's ashes in wine cellar 
 of, 412 \ 
 
 Fregoni on Dante, 377 
 Friend (The), Lines by Words- 
 worth in, 429, 430 
 From the Arabic: an Imitation, 
 
 Shelley's lyric, 351, 331 
 Future State, Shelley's firm belief 
 in a, 272 
 
 Galignani's edition of Byron, 313, 
 362 
 
 Galignani's Messenger, 379 
 
 Gait (John), his Life of Byron, 
 403 
 
 Gamba (Count), 370 
 
 Gamba (Count Pietro), his Nar- 
 rative of Lord Byron's Last 
 Journey to Greece, Sfc.,370 
 His letter to Mrs. Leigh, 371 
 
 Gambas (The), 388 
 
 Garnett (Richard), manuscript 
 volume presented by Sir Percy 
 and Lady Shelley to, 436 
 
 Gay (John), on " friendship ", 160 
 
 Geneva, castes prevalent at, 152 
 ,Geneva and Lucerne, lakes of, 
 compared, 144 
 
 George IV., Hunt's offence against, 
 258 
 
 Georgics [The), Shelley's memories 
 of, 197 
 
 German Ghost Stories, their part 
 in the suggestion of FrarAen- 
 stein, 459 
 
 German Poetry, ridiculed by 
 Canning and Frere, 43 
 
 German Professor's (A) opinion 
 on Shelley's expulsion from 
 College, 85 
 
 Gibbon (Edward), contrast be- 
 tween Rousseau and, 155 
 
 GilfiUan (George), his descrip- 
 tion of Shelley's and Byron's 
 external appearance, xxi, 
 332-3 
 His Gallery of Literary Portraits, 
 
 xxi, 332 
 Referred to, 441,' 441 
 
 Ginevra, Shelley's fragment, 288 
 
 Giorgione, resemblance of la 
 Guidcioli to a picture by, 
 327 
 
 Gisborne (John), Shelley's letter 
 about Queen Mah to, 94 
 Shelley on Calderon in a letter 
 
 to, 243 
 Miscalled "Gibson", J02 
 Shelley on Retsch in a letter to, 
 
 382 
 Shelley traduces Wordsworth 
 
 in a letter to, 429 
 Shelley on "Consols" in a 
 letter to, 437 
 
poetical Letter to, 324 
 Gisbomes (The), Shelley at 
 
 Leghorn with, 232 
 " Godwin (Fanny) ", Shelley's 
 
 lines on, 107, io8 
 Her legal name "Frances 
 
 Wollstonecraft," io8 
 Her suicide, io8, 2J7 
 Godwin (Mary), first wife of 
 
 William Godwin, see WoU- " 
 
 stoneeraft (Mary) 
 Godwin (Mary -Jane), Godwin's 
 
 second wife, 129, i2g 
 Godwin (Mary Wollstonecraft), 
 
 Shelley elopes with, 129, 
 
 zap 
 See Shelley (Mary Wollstone- 
 craft) 
 Godwin (William), his account 
 
 of Mary's elopement with 
 
 Shelley, xx 
 Said to havehelpedShelleywith 
 
 the notes to Queen Mab, 62 
 His Life of Man Wollstonecraft, 
 
 97 
 The Hero of Mandeville not 
 
 meant for Shelley, 194 
 Visits Ireland and portrays 
 
 Lady Mountcashel, 26J 
 His History of the Common- 
 wealth, 341 
 His answer to Malthus, 345 
 Valperga written and sold for 
 
 benefit of, 374 
 Frankenstein dedicated to, 462 
 His Political Justice, 474 
 Referred to, jj2, jpj, 463 
 Goethe, significantly 'quoted, 147 
 His view of Byron's pistol- 
 practice, 328 
 His Torquato Tasso, 347 
 The " renowned snake " of, 366 
 Tardy justice to, 418 
 His unbelief no mystery, 444 
 Alleged debt to Calderon's El 
 
 Magico Prodigioso, 490 
 Beitrag zum Andenhen Lord 
 
 Byron's, 495 
 See Faust 
 
 Graham (Edward Fergus), 
 Shelley's letters to, jj, ^4, 
 61, 87, 452, 454, 455 
 Grant (the Rev. Johnstone), 
 
 preaches against, Cnwi, 360 
 Gray (Thomas), the metre of the 
 Elegy of, xxxi 
 Shelley's juvenile Latin version 
 of the Epitaph in iheElegy, 36 
 Medwin never heard Shelley 
 mention, 251 
 "Great Lady" (The), who loved 
 Shelley and pursued him 
 from London to Naples, there 
 to die, 204-7, 500 
 Shelley's melancholy at Naples 
 attributed to this cause, 
 207-8 
 Greece, Shelley on the tragic 
 
 poetry of, 457 
 Greek and Latin, Pronunciation 
 
 of, 268 
 Granville (Lord), Shelley supports 
 him as Chancellor, at Oxford, 
 86-7 
 Gribble (Francis), 128 
 Grove (Harriet), like one of 
 Shelley's sisters, 18 
 Like one of Shakespeare's 
 
 women, 47 
 Wrote some chapters of Zas- 
 
 trozzi, 49 
 Her marriage with Shelley 
 prevented, 105 
 Grove (Dr.), Shelley lodges in 
 
 1811 with, 109 
 Grove (Thomas), Shelley's cousin, 
 
 115, 450 
 Guiccioli (Count), tried to sepa- 
 rate his wife from Byron, 
 320 
 Guiccioli (Teresa), Countess, her 
 divorce, 123 
 Her confidence in Shelley's 
 
 influence on Byron, 322 
 Frequently at the Shelleys', 327 
 Her devotion to Byron, 327 
 No bequest to her from Byron, 
 356 
 
518 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Guicoioli (Teresa), continued:— 
 Devoted her evenings to her 
 
 father, 371 
 Beferred to, 320, 381 
 
 Ouido, putative painter of por- 
 trait called Beatrice Cenci, 
 217 
 Referred to, 265 
 
 Guildford (Lord), and the Lucca 
 heretic, 365, 366, 367 
 
 Gutenberg, tardy justice to, 418 
 
 Gutzkow (Karl Ferdinand), his 
 tribute to Shelley in Gods, 
 Demiqods, and Don Quixotes, 
 347, 422-3 
 
 Hall (Sidney), engraver, 494 
 Hamilton [Lady), Memoirs of, 496 
 Hamilton (Terrick), his Antar, a 
 
 Bedoueen Romance, jji 
 Hampstead, incident of tipsy 
 
 woman at, 179 
 Hanson (John),^p_5 
 Harlowe (George Henry), painter, 
 
 496 
 Harris (Robert), theatrical man- 
 ager, 220 
 " Harroviensis ", an unidentified 
 
 critic, 22J 
 Hay (Captain), his bet v?ith 
 
 Byron, 376 
 Said to have thought Medwin 
 
 " a perfect idiot ", ix 
 Hayward (Abraham), translator 
 
 of Faust, 161, i6i 
 Accused of pilfering from 
 
 Shelley, 383 
 Hazlitt (William), thought letter- 
 writing lost time, 259 
 An abstainer from wine, 373 
 Referred to, 293, 324, 332 
 Hegel's philosophy not to 
 
 Medwin's taste, 168 
 Heine's (Heinrich) allusion to 
 
 Golgotha quoted, 424 
 Hellas, the closing Chorus of, 
 
 354 
 Hemans (Mrs.). See Browne 
 
 (Felicia Dorothea) 
 Hemstruis (Tiberius), Dutch 
 
 philologist, 166 
 
 Herder ( Johann Gottfried) , his one 
 
 thought the universe, 139 
 Hei-wegh (Georg), Sonnet on 
 Shelley, translated from, 503 
 Higham (John), joint trustee for 
 Harriett's children, 464 
 Provisions of the trust, 465-7 
 Referred to, 463, 465, 466, 468, 
 470, 473 
 Hill (the Rev. Rowland), written 
 to by Shelley, 106 
 His disinterestedness, 107 
 Anecdote of, 107 
 Hindoo superstition (A), 166 
 Hislop (Mr.), brings the "Don 
 
 Juan " to Lerici, 386 
 History of a Six Weeks' Tour, 129 
 Written for the most part by 
 Mary, 134 
 Hitchener (Elizabeth), anecdote 
 of, 117 
 Her volume of verse. The Weald 
 of Sussex, 118 
 Hobhouse (John Cam), described 
 1/ as an enemy of Shelley's, 159 
 His voyage with Byron, 159 
 Byron and he "best apart", 160 
 His pedantry, 216 
 Medwin's groundless suspicions 
 
 of him, 226,227 
 His opinion of Byron's Cain, 334 
 On Byron and Campbell, 358, 
 
 359- 
 
 Stood godfather to a work of 
 Pietro Gamba, 370 
 
 A passage of arm.s between 
 Moore and, J70 
 
 Referred to, x, 355, 359, 428 
 Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Wil- 
 helm), W, Encapotado a sub- 
 ject for, 405 
 Hogg (Mrs.), see Williams (Jane) 
 'Hogg (Thomas Jefferson), his 
 advice to Medwin, 3 
 
 His account of a Latin "exer- 
 cise" of Shelley's, 34-5 
 
 His tribute to Shelley cnielly 
 mangled, 67 
 
 His description of Shelley and 
 his rooms, 67-9 
 
 His account of Shelley's meta- 
 physical studies, 77-9 
 
Trelawny's description of, 88 
 His writings, "of a manly and 
 
 original tone ", 88 
 His intention to complete his 
 
 Life of Shelley, 8c> 
 A letter of his c[uoted, 8^ 
 On Shelley and polities, 102 
 Visits Shelley at Marlow, 194 
 Inexactly quoted, 328, 332 
 His copies of Medwin's Pro- 
 metheus Bound and Agamem- 
 non, 497-8 
 Referred to, xii, 165, 173, 430, 
 436 
 Homer, Shelley's translation of 
 his Hymn to Mercury, 246 
 Shelley's view of Hunt's trans- 
 lations from, 260 
 Monti's translation of, 263 
 The Iliad in modem Greet, 264 
 Referred to, 376, 419 
 Hookham (Thomas), Shelley stays 
 
 with, 122 
 Hooper (Mr.), Shelley anxious 
 to purchase his house at 
 NantgVillt, 450 
 Hope (Thomas), author of " one 
 good novel ", Anastasius, 255 
 His pictm-e of modern Greeks 
 in Anastasius, 353 
 Hoppner (Richard Belgrave), con- 
 sul at Venice, AUegra left 
 with, 175 _ ' 
 
 Hoppners (The), their calumny 
 
 against Shelley, 322, 323 
 Home (William), one of Shelley's 
 junior Counsel in the Chan- 
 ceiy Suit, 473, 4']3 
 Houghton (Lord), see Milnes 
 
 (Richard Monckton) 
 Hume (David), his History of Eng- 
 land to be read in an expur- 
 gated edition by Ian the, 484 
 Godwin (as a historian) pre- 
 ferred to, 342 
 Referred to, 77 
 Hume (Dr. Thomas), and his wife, 
 guardians of Shelley's chil- 
 dren by Harriett, 188, 480-1 
 
 responds with Mrs. Shelley 
 
 about Medwin, six 
 Mrs. Shelley calls him the 
 
 person best calculated to 
 
 write Shelley's Life, 1 
 Distinguished friendship felt 
 
 by Shelley for, 1 
 Letter from Shelley to, 11 
 Talks with Shelley, 112- 
 Joint-editor of The Examiner, 
 
 176, 258 
 The Nymphs, poem by, 178- 
 Bncouragement of Keats, 178 
 His review of The Cenci, 218-19 
 His Foliage, 259, 260, 260 
 Shelley describes Jane Williams 
 
 to, 26s 
 " Mispersuaded " about Keats 
 
 and The Quarterly, 293 
 His adieu to Keats, 298-9 
 On Don Juan, 335, 336 
 Arrives at Genoa, 386 
 His situation, 388 
 His wife's illness, 388 
 Present at the burning of 
 
 Shelley's and Williams's 
 
 bodies, 394, 396, 397 
 Possession of Shelley's heart 
 
 contested with Mary, 407 
 On Atheism, 427-8 
 Demands on Shelley's behalf 
 
 the delivery of lanthe and 
 
 Charles 469 
 Refen-ed to, 262, 302, 303, 308, 
 
 323, 324, 325, 327, 377, 377, 
 
 379, 395, 443, 444 
 Hunter (Mr. Orby), 185 
 Hymn to Intellectual 
 
 Shelley's, 165 
 Garbled quotation from, 422 
 
 Iliad {The), Shelley on, 457 
 Indicator (The), criticism of The ^ 
 Cenci in, 218 
 Shelley a reader of, 259 
 Hunt's farewell to Keats in, 
 
 298 ' 
 Comic stanzas by Keats in, 305 
 
520 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ingpeu (Roger), his collected 
 Letters of Shelley, xxii, no, 
 137,3^6,381 
 
 Ingram (John H.), 504 
 
 Innocent X. (Pope), 218 
 
 Irving (Washington), letter about 
 Medwin's Conversations, 356 
 His hunt for ElEncapotado, 405 
 
 Jacob's Chancery Repoi'ts, 4^3 
 
 John Bull, Epigram on Shelley in, 
 214 
 
 Johnson (Samuel), quoted against 
 affectation in speech, 178 
 
 Jonquils, effect of their scent on 
 Shelley, 198 
 
 Jordan (Mrs.), seen by Shelley in 
 The Country Girl, 39 
 
 Journey from Paris to Switzerland 
 in 1814, 129-31 
 
 Julian in Medwin's Ahasuerus the 
 Wanderer, an attempt to por- 
 tray Shelley, 141 
 
 Julian and Maddalo, word por- 
 trait of Allegra in, 172 
 Shelley's affection for her re- 
 flected in, 174 
 Portrait of Byron in, 199 
 Venice faithfully depicted in, 
 
 200 
 Medwinian muddle about Byron 
 and Shelley in, 439, 4jg 
 
 Kant (Immanuel), his philosophy 
 dry and abstract, 166 
 His theory ''a boundless and 
 troubled ocean," 168 
 Kantism, Schiller's, 424 
 " Kate (Miss) ", Shelley's juvenile 
 
 letter to, 447 
 Keats (George), 240 
 Keats (John), remarks (by Medwin) 
 on, 177-8, 237 
 His admiration of Mrs. Tighe 
 
 transient, 240 
 His Hyperion, Eve of St. Agnes, 
 
 and Po<o/£asa, 261 
 Mistake as to the Quarterly 
 article having caused his 
 death, 293-4 
 His consumption quasi-heredi- 
 tary, 293 
 
 His lack of money, 294 
 Portrait of him by Severn 
 
 described, 296 
 His failing health, 297 
 His temperament, 297-8 
 Goes with Severn to Italy, 298 
 An unpropitious voyage, 299 
 His arrival at Naples, 300 
 His journey to Rome, 300 
 The close of his illness and 
 
 death, 300-1 
 His political opinions, 303 
 His Otho the Great, 304:,3O4 
 His view of Shakespeare, 305 
 Sonnet On sitting down to read 
 
 King Lear once again, 305 
 His Lines on seeing a lock of 
 
 Milton's Hair, 305 
 Tlte Cap and Bells, comic poem 
 
 by, 305 
 Shelley's opinion of the poetry 
 
 of, 807 
 Poetry his " safety valve ", 308 
 His earliest productions com- 
 pared with Shelley's, 308 
 Referred to, 290, 290, 292, 295, 
 303, 303, 312, 349, 413, 415, 
 416, 417, 418 
 Keats ("Tom"), 295 ' ^ 
 Keble (John), his biographer 
 
 Shelley's traducer, 227 
 Kemble (Frances Anna), see 
 
 Butler (Mrs.) 
 Kendall (The Rev. John), proposed 
 as guardian of Shelley's chil- 
 dren by Harriett, 478 
 Referred to, 479, 480 
 Killigrew (Mrs.), Dryden's Ode to, 
 
 286 
 Kirkup (Seymour), at the SKeUey 
 
 "funeral", 412 
 Koszul (A. H.), 272 
 
 Lackington, Hughes, Harding, 
 Mavor and Jones (pub- 
 lishers), '462 
 
 Lady Singleton, by Medwin, xi, xi, 
 502 
 
 "Lakists"(The), 259 
 
 Lamb (Lady Caroline), Shelley de- 
 clines to "work up" the ma- 
 terials of her Glenai-von, 122 
 
Laudon (Letitia Elizabeth), her 
 unhappy marriage, 127 
 Disparaged as L. E. L., xiv, 319 
 
 Landseer (Charles), his vignette 
 to Queen Mab, 99 
 
 Languages (English, Grerman, 
 French, Italian, Portuguese), 
 Shelley on, 348-9 
 
 Laocofln Group, Shelley's attempt 
 to interpret the, 501 
 
 Laon and Cythna {The Revolt of 
 Islam), composed at Marlow, 
 189 
 Supposed allusion to Harriett 
 Shelley in, 124 
 
 Latin Verse, Specimens of Shel- 
 ley's kept by Medwin, 35 
 
 Lawless (John), his Compendium 
 of the History of Ireland, 114 
 
 Lawrence (James), Medwin's ac- 
 count of, 95 
 Not to be taken- at Medwin's 
 
 valuation, £5 
 Writes to Shelley, 96 
 Shelley's letter to, g6 
 Takes Medwin to the Owenite 
 chapel, 97 
 
 Leigh (the Hon. Augusta), Byron's 
 half-sister, J77 
 
 Leinster (Duchess of), 367 
 
 Leonora (Burger's), Shelley's al- 
 leged idea of using the story 
 of, 46 
 
 Le Sage's Gil Bias, 243 
 
 Ltiterto Lord Ellenborough (^),469 
 
 Letter to Maria Gisbome, Reveley's 
 workshop in, 71 
 
 Letters, an untrustworthy medium 
 for biography, 210 
 
 Letters of a Spaniard, loathsome 
 dens described in, 192 
 
 Lewes (George Henry), his Bio- 
 graphical' History of Philo- 
 sophy, 241, 242 
 His Life of Goethe, 382 
 
 Lewis (Matthe* Gregory — 
 "Monk"), visits Byron at 
 Geneva, 155 
 His ghost-stories, 155 
 
 CbUbXiUi-JU 
 
 UIX IJ11C3 
 
 diawlessa, 278 
 Liberal {The), its origin, 323 
 Controversy between Byron and 
 Leigh Hunt concerning, 325 
 Hunt offends Byron in, 335 
 , Shelley's Scenes from Faust in, 
 
 383, 385 
 Difficulties with Byron about, 
 
 388 
 Shelley's Lines to a Critic in, 
 440 
 Lilley (G.), printer, 503 
 Lind (Dr.), Shelley's love and 
 veneration for, 33 
 Original of "the old man" in 
 The Revolt of Islam, and of 
 the Hermit in Prince 
 Atfianase, 33 
 Consulted by Shelley as to 
 Pliny's Astronomy, 37 
 Lindon (Mrs.), formerly Fanny 
 Brawne, helps Medwin, 294 
 Her views about Keats, 296 
 Lines to a Critic (Shelley's), 230 
 Idnes to a Reviewer (Shelley's), 
 
 ■229 
 Lines Written ar^ong the Euganean 
 
 Bills, Shelley's, 401 
 Lines written during the Castle- 
 
 reagh Administration, 344' 
 Literary Gazette (The), on Adonais, 
 310 
 Shelley's contempt for, J2j 
 Literary Pochet-Book (The), Shel- 
 ley's song On a Faded Violet 
 in, 210 
 Lloyd (Charles), lends Shelley a 
 
 copy of Berkeley, 112 
 Locke (John), 77, 174 
 Lombard League (The), Shelley's 
 
 remarks on, 224-5 
 Longdill (Pynson Wilmot), Shel- 
 ley's Solicitor, 466* 
 He and his wife proposed by 
 Shelley as guardians of Har- 
 riett's children, 478 
 Longfellow (Henry Wadsworth), 
 
 a tolerant note from, 445-6 
 Louis XIV., 261 
 
523 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Lovelace (Lord), formerly Mr. 
 
 Kiug, 327 
 Lucca (Duchess of), 365, 367 
 Lucian, his Icaro Menippus, 334 
 Lucretius, deeply studied by 
 
 Shelley, 50 
 Lutzerode (Baron), Shelley's at- 
 tempt to translate his poem 
 The Swan Song of the Priest- 
 Murderer, 371 
 Lytton (Lord), see Bulwer 
 
 Macaronic language, invented by 
 
 Shelley and Byron, 329 
 Macaulay (Lord), at> Campbell's 
 
 funeral, jj8 
 Macdonald and Son, printers of 
 
 Frankenstein, 462 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 412 
 Macready (William Charles), his 
 
 first appearance in Byron's 
 
 Werner, j^o 
 His farewell benefit, 340 
 Maddocks (Mr.), Shelley settles 
 
 in a cottage of his, 116 
 His opinion on the supposed 
 
 attempt to assassinate Shel- 
 ley, 117 
 Idolized Shelley, 119 
 His description of Shelley's 
 
 benevolence, 119 
 Magnetic Lady to her Patient {The) , 
 
 270 
 Malthus (Thomas Robert), Shel- 
 ley's vicvps on, 345-6, 443 
 Manfred, Byron's, not plagiarized 
 
 from Faust, l61 
 Manzoni (Alessandro), his Pro- 
 
 ■mesai Sposi refen'ed to, 255 
 Marenghi, Shelley's unfinished 
 
 poem, 210 
 Marlow, Shelley's house at, 190 
 Marriage, Dante, Shakespeare, 
 
 Milton, unfortunate in, 126 
 Marshal (James), Godwin de- 
 
 soribss Lady Mountcashel to, 
 
 26j 
 
 ■'Marvellous, The", Love of 
 Milton and of Collins for, 
 26 
 Its influence on Shelley's imagi- 
 nation, 26, 45 
 
 Marshall (Mrs. Julian), xxvii , ZJS, 
 
 395 
 Mascalbruni, MS. account of his 
 
 trial, 218 
 Masi (Sargeant-Major), the fracas 
 
 with, 375, 379-80 
 Mask of Anarchy [The), 253, 344 
 Masson (David), jya 
 Mathias (T. J.), 351 
 Matthews (Charles Skinner), 
 
 Byron's regard for, 160 
 Matthews (Henry), authorof ZJian/ 
 
 of an Invalid, xxiv, 407 
 Maurice, "BateUier'' of Shelley 
 
 and Byron, 146 
 Mavrocordato (Prince), reads 
 Paradise Lost and Agamemnon 
 with Shelley, 262-3 
 Shelley's encomium on, 264 
 Medwin (Thomas), an egotistical 
 ^ and indifiFerent biographer, ix 
 Captain Hay's opinion of, ix 
 By no means an " idiot ", xi 
 His literary creditors, ix, xii 
 Not the hero of Browning's 
 
 Memorabilia, xiii 
 Mr. Sydney Waterlow on, xi 
 Disparages L. E. L. and others, 
 
 xiv 
 Had.Sschylus on the brain, xvi 
 His application to Oilier and 
 MarySheIleyformaterial,xvii 
 Shelley's Letters to, xvii 
 Not at Oxford with Shelley, 
 
 xviii 
 Date of his matriculation, xviii 
 Took no degree at Oxford, xyiii 
 His attempt to blackmail Mary, 
 
 XX 
 
 His tricky and slipshod ways, 
 
 xviii 
 Sequelw of his ill-ordered 
 
 proceedings, xxiii 
 Miss Mayne misled by, xxv 
 His doings concerning the Life 
 
 Guards, xxvii 
 Mrs. AngeH's views on, xxix 
 Trelawny's opinion of, xxix 
 His translations from Catullus, 
 
 XXX 
 
 Under his brother's roof, xxx 
 At his mother's grave, xxx 
 
With Shelley the last two win- 
 ters and springs of his life, 2 
 
 Shelley's letters to him lost, 2 
 
 Not satisfied to be a mere 
 chronicler, 3 
 
 Claims the ability to appreciate 
 Shelley's genius, 4 
 
 The "first to turn the tide of 
 obloquy ", 4 
 
 His "excursions into the 
 tongues" voluminous rather 
 than exact, 22 
 
 His Nugce, 3S-6 
 
 His editorial liberties, 36 
 
 Shelley's first visit to him after 
 expulsion, 88 
 
 " A lesson from '', 103 
 
 His remarks on Divorce, 123-4 
 
 At school with Shelley, 2 
 
 His walks with Shelley in 1809, 
 39 
 
 Collaboration with Shelley in 
 a " Nightmare " and The 
 Wandering Jew, 39-43 
 
 Alleged visit to Shelley at 
 Oxford in November 1810, 69 
 
 Shelley's alleged visit to him in 
 London when expelled, S7-8 
 
 Samples of his furtive way of 
 work, J26, 332 
 
 Reaches Pisa for the second 
 time, 326 
 
 His investigation of the simi- 
 larities between Casti'sDi'oro- 
 lessa and Byron's Don Juan, 
 336-9 
 
 Note of a conversation with 
 Shelley, 348-9 
 
 His translation of Shelley's 
 Buona notte, 352 
 
 Omission from his Conier- 
 
 . sations of Byron, 362 
 
 Acts with Shelley and Byron 
 to save an Italian from the 
 stake, 364-7 
 
 Records a mistake in the Con- 
 versations, 367 
 
 Byron's farewell dinner to, 879 
 
 Leaves Pisa, 379 
 
 on Dante, 376-7 
 
 Says he was out in the squall 
 which wrecked the "Don 
 Juan ", 391-2 
 
 Not at Naples with Shelley, 2oy 
 
 Lays aside Byron's Werner, to 
 "devour" The Cenci, 220 
 
 His mistranscriptions, 221 
 
 His vagaries about "Harro- 
 viensis", 227 
 
 The Revolt of Islam, the com- 
 panion of his journey home 
 from India, 231 
 
 Invited by Shelley to visit him 
 at Florence, 231 
 
 Joins the Shelleys, 233 
 
 Nursed by Shelley through an 
 illness at Pisa, 235 
 
 His gift for misunderstanding, 
 263 
 
 A scrap in verse by, 278-9 
 
 Suspicious statement as to last 
 words of Keats, 302 
 
 Says he took a packet from 
 Shelley to Keats in Rome, 302 
 
 His ignorance about the ca- 
 lumny against Shelley, 822 
 
 Visits Byron daily in company 
 with Shelley, 829 
 
 His account of the burning of 
 Shelley'sbody, xxv, 394-6, 397 
 
 His fancy account of the drown- 
 ing of Shelley and Williams 
 given from Ahasuems, the 
 Wanderer, 400-3 
 
 One of his silly mysteries, 412 
 
 Description of his visit to Casa 
 Magni, 407-10 
 
 Account of a visit to Field 
 Place, 417 
 
 His characterization of Shel- 
 ley's poetry and philosophy, 
 419-32, 438-45 
 
 His visit to Horsham Church, 
 418 
 
 His faith in Shelley's per- 
 manent fame, 418 
 
 His suspicions of Byron's sin- 
 cerity in his poems, 438 
 
524 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Medwin (Thomas), continued : — 
 
 His overstrained orthodoxy in 
 after-life, 443-4, 444 
 
 Shelley's paper on Frankenstein 
 thrice published by, 4^6 
 
 Particulars of his Books, 487- 
 505 
 
 Professes, in 1823, to have read 
 Byron's Manfred " at least 
 ten times a year ", 488 
 
 His daily rides with Byron and 
 Shelley at Pisa, 489 
 
 His first memoir of Shelley, 494 
 
 His outrageous disclosures re- 
 garding Lady Caroline Lamb, 
 495 
 
 His habit- of " dragging in " 
 Shelley, 499 
 
 His letter to Oilier about The 
 Angler in Wales, 499 
 
 His stanzas on Tivoli read with 
 pleasure by Shelley, 501 
 
 His article Goethe and his 
 Faust, 501 
 
 His specimen of translation 
 from Faust, 501 
 
 Doings as "The Connoisseur" 
 of The New Anti-Jacobin, 501 
 
 Saves from oblivion an experi- 
 ment in metre by Byron, 502 
 
 Fide Trelawny, honest and con- 
 sistent in his admiration of 
 Shelley, xxix, 504 
 Medwin (Thomas Charles), the 
 biographer's father, Shelley's 
 lettersto, 110, 114,447-52 
 
 Eencontre with Shelley's 
 father, 448 
 Melancholy (Shelley's), was that 
 of meditation and abstrac- 
 tion, not misanthropy, 229 
 Melbourne (Lord), introduces 
 Robert Owen to " our then 
 virgin Queen ", 98 
 Merle (W. H.), Shelley's letters 
 
 about, Sy, 454, 455 
 Metastasio (Pietro), jiy 
 Michelangelo, his "restlessness of 
 fervid power", 225 
 
 His unfinished bust of Bmtus, 
 341 
 Michell (Miss), ("the great 
 
 heiress of Horsham ") marries 
 Sir Bysshe Shelley, 8 
 A first cousin of Medwin's 
 grandfather, 13 
 Milman (Very Rev. Henry Hart), 
 
 2gi 
 Milnes (Richajd Monckton), edits 
 Keats's remains, 177 
 At Campbell's funeral, jjS 
 Milton (John), stayed at Villa 
 Diodati, 145 
 A mark for the invidious malice 
 
 of his contemporaries, 226 
 Shelley's opinion of his Paradise 
 Lost and Paradise Regained, 
 262-8 
 Keats's poem On Seeing a Lock 
 
 of his Hair, 305 
 Hyperion worthy of, 307 
 His conviction of eternal life 
 
 for his writings, 347 
 His version of Horace's Ode to 
 
 Pyrrha, 385 . 
 " So Lycidae sunli low " applied 
 
 to Shelley, 416 
 Sadly misquoted, 416, 416, 418, 
 
 418 
 The great object of Shelley's 
 
 veneration, 421 
 The Era of, 419, 421 
 His Arianism, 444 
 Shelley on Paradise Lost, 457 
 Epigraph to Frankenstein 
 taken from Paradise Lost, 
 462 
 Lycidas quoted, 492 
 Mirabeau (Honore Gabriel), 431 
 Misery (To), Shelley's poem, 208 
 Models, Shelley's, 419 
 Monro (C. J.), atextual suggestion 
 
 by, 456 
 Montaigne (Michel de), 261, 342, 
 
 505 
 Monti (Vincenzo), Translation of 
 
 Homer by, 263 
 Moore (Thomas), his remarks on 
 • / early scepticism, 64 
 
 His opinion that poets should 
 
 never marry, 126 
 His Byronic muck-rake, 200 
 Accused of cruelty and injustice 
 in verse, 258 
 
His theological views, 331, 426 
 The Lows of the Angels referred 
 
 to as meretricious, 334 
 Classed by Byron with Camp- 
 bell, 357 
 Hobhouse's passage of arms 
 
 with, ^70 
 He praises Shelley's character, 
 
 406 
 Referred to as Editor and 
 Biographer of Byron, xii, 
 144, 145, 146, 148-9, 156, 165, 
 166, 175, 176, 260, 324, 326, 
 335, 356, 359, 365, 366, 376, 
 380, 397, ?p7, 405, 428, 428, 
 496 
 More (SirThomas), his Uto])ia, 345 
 Morphett (Nathaniel), his affi- 
 davit in the Chancery Suit, 
 477 
 Moschus, 308 
 
 Mountcashel (Lady), known as 
 " Mrs. Mason ", 233, 240 
 Wrote on education of children, 
 
 233 
 Read Greek with Shelley, 265 
 ' ' A superior and accomplished 
 
 woman ", 265 
 Described by Godwin and by 
 
 Claire Clairmont, 26s 
 Her supposed connexion with 
 The Sensitive Plant, 26J 
 Mountcashel (Lord), 240, 26j 
 Moxon (Edward), 373, 374 
 Mozart's opera La Clemenza cli 
 
 Tito, 317 
 Murray (John), among the 
 " brutally mistaken " about 
 Shelley, 42S 
 Referred to, 227, 250, 291 
 Mnstoxidi, a modern Greek philo- 
 logist, 263 
 
 Napoleon, no great chess-player, 
 
 264 
 National Anthem, A new, 344 
 Necessity of Atheism (The), the 
 
 joint production of Shelley 
 
 and Hogg, 82 
 
 tributions by Medwin to, 501 
 Neti) Monthly Magazine (The), xii, 
 
 328, 335, 436 
 Newby (Thomas Cautley), pub- 
 lisher of Life of Shelley, 1847 , 
 447, 503, 504 
 " Nightmare (our) ", commence- 
 ment of some early rubbish 
 described as, 89 
 Noel (Lady), 375 
 
 Norfolk (The Duke* of), his view 
 of politics, 101 
 Advises Shelley to become a 
 
 politician, 101-2 
 Requests friends to call on 
 
 Shelley and Harriett, 111 
 Shelley and Harriett visit, 448, 
 449 
 Norton (Caroline), 127 
 Notes and Queries, A rather 
 malicious note on Medwin's 
 family affairs in, 504 
 Nott fDr. John), Byron on, 361, 
 362,j<52 
 His sermons against Atheism, 
 
 362 
 A vilifier of Shelley, 362, 442 
 His editions 6f Surrey and 
 
 Wyatt, and Catullus, 362 
 Referred to, xxxi 
 Novalis fFriedrich von Harden- 
 
 bergl, 241 
 Niigce, edited by Medwin, 504 
 
 Odds and Ends, by Medwin, xxx, 
 
 505 
 Ode (An) : To the Asseiiors of 
 
 Liberty, 344 
 Ode to Heaven, misquoted, 272-3 , 
 Ode to Liberty, 236, 237, 253 
 Ode to Naples, 253 
 Ode to the West Wind, 204 
 (Edipus Tyrannus w Swellfoot the 
 
 Tyrant, 344 
 Oilier (Charles), xvii, 48, 374, 488 
 Oilier (James), publisher, 499 
 Oilier (C. and J.), publishers, 487 
 On a Future State, Shelley's paper, 
 
 430 
 
526 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 O'Neil (Miss), Shelley's "bean 
 ideal of female actors", 39, 
 219-20 
 Oswald and Edwin (Medwin's), 
 
 and its Shelley aspect, 487 
 Owen (Robert), panegyrizes 
 Shelley, 98 
 His promises to his disciples, 98 
 Reads from Queen Mah, 98 
 Shelley's tenets likened to 
 those of, 439 
 Oxford University and City Herald 
 (The), advertizement of The 
 Necessity of Atheism in, 8j 
 
 Pacchiani (Francesco), "II Signore 
 Professors ", described, 274-6 
 Anecdote of, 274-5 
 A "Bon Mot" of, 275 
 Introduces Shelley and Medwin 
 
 to Emilia Viviani, 278 
 "A busy-bodied Diavolo incai- 
 nato ", 288-9 
 
 Paine's (Thomas) Age of Reason, 
 469 
 
 Paley (William), 443 
 
 Palgrave (William Gifford), his 
 Hermann Agha ; an Eastern 
 Narrative, Jji 
 
 Paltock (Robert), Shelley and 
 Medwin read Peter Wilhins 
 by, 24 
 
 Parr (The Rev. Samuel), his 
 affidavit in support of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Kendall as guar- 
 dians to Shelley's children 
 by Harriett, 479 
 
 Paschoud (J. J.), printer, 487 
 
 Paulus (Heinrich Eberhard Gott- 
 lob), Shelley in his view of 
 Christ likened to, 271 
 
 Peacock (Thomas Love), Shelley's 
 letters to, xxii, 2, 196, 197, 203, 
 
 211,320 
 
 His " fine wit ", 22 
 
 Visits Shelley at Marlow, 194 
 
 His Nightmare Abbey, &c., not 
 
 duly appreciated, 194 
 His work said by Byron to be 
 
 too good for his age, 194 
 His Rhododaphne, 194-5 
 
 Shelley's admiration of, 195 
 Shelley's Executor, jpj 
 Peel (Sir Robert), jj^ 
 Penshurst, Ben Jonson's praises 
 
 of, 8 
 Percy (Bishop), 860 
 Pery (Miss Sidney), mai-ries 
 
 Bysshe Shelley, 9-10 
 Peseto's translation of Campbell's 
 
 The Pleasures of Hope, 357 
 Petition (The) in Chancery of 
 Shelley's children by Har- 
 riett, 463 
 Petrarch, Slavery of the Classi- 
 cists to, 261 
 Shelley's preference for, among 
 
 Italian poets, 262 
 The "enthusiastic tenderness" 
 of, 284 
 Pickering (William), publisher 
 and bookseller, 877, 497, 
 498 
 Pigeon (Miss), 455 
 Pilfold (Captain), receives Shelley 
 into his house, 109-10 
 A friend of Nelson, 110 
 Supplies Shelley with money, 
 110 
 Pilfold (Elizabeth), destined to 
 
 be Shelley's mother, 13 
 Pindar, Shelley's debt to the 
 
 Odes of, 253 
 Pisa, the Campo Santo and Pound- 
 ling Hospital at, 238-9 > 
 Pius VI. (Pope), 412 
 Plato, Shelley's prose formed on 
 that of, 38 
 Socrates on Love, from the 
 
 Symposium of, 163-4 
 Read by Shelley (in translation) 
 
 at Oxford, 165 
 Shelley's gentle sarcasm remi- 
 niscent of, 230 
 Relations of Emilia Viviani 
 
 with, 281-4 
 Diotima's thoughts fi'om the 
 
 Symposium of, 285, 319 
 His regard for the distinctions 
 
 of birth, 343 
 His Republic, 345 
 The epigram 'Aorijp Trpiv, &c., 
 in English by Shelley and 
 
431, 435, 436, 443 
 Platonism, Shelley's, 424-5 
 Pliny the Elder, called by Shelley 
 "the enlightened and bene- 
 volent ", 37 
 ' His chapter Be Deo, 37 
 Shelley's intended complete 
 version of his Natural 
 History, 37 
 Ploennies (Madame de), a trans- 
 lator of Shelley, 347 
 Plutarch, 427 
 Poets, " a chameleonic race '', 
 
 59 
 Polidori (Dr. John William), 
 Byron's travelling physician, 
 144 
 Seeks a quarrel with Shelley, 
 and is -warned off by Byron, 
 148 
 His tragedy read aloud by 
 
 Byron, 148 
 The Vampyre given out as 
 
 Byron's, 149 
 An Essay on Positive Pleasure 
 
 by, 150 
 Medwin's account of, 149-52 
 His Diary edited by his nephew, 
 
 W. M. Rossetti, /js 
 Shelley vilified by, 172 
 His suicide, 257 
 His terrible idea for a ghost 
 story, 460 
 Poole (John), author of Paul Pry, 
 
 273 
 Pope (Alexander), Bowles's Stric- 
 tures on, 357 
 lanthe to read Selections only, 
 
 484 
 Referred to, 63, 334 
 Posthumous Fragments of Marga- 
 ret Nicholson, Hogg's account 
 of. 61-2 
 Hogg's joint-authorship ques- 
 tioned, 60 
 Prince Athanase, written at Mar- 
 low, 189 
 An experiment in terza rima, 
 192 
 
 Promessi Sposi (I), 265 
 Prometheus Bound, translated by 
 
 Thomas Medwin, x, 497 
 Prometheus Unbound, the recanted 
 
 curse in, 187 
 " Steropes' " epigram on, 214 
 The Third Act touched up at 
 
 Florence, 231 
 Mainly composed amid the 
 
 Ruins of Caracallas baths, 
 
 212 
 The Fourth Act composed at 
 
 Florence, 213 
 Mrs. Shelley's analysis of, 213 
 Medwin discusses a point with 
 
 Shelley, 213 
 " Fell almost dead from the 
 
 press ", 214 
 A literary man's sneer, — " Who 
 
 would bind it ? ", 214, 358 
 The joy of composing it, 286-7 
 Compound words in, 849 
 Passages from the preface to, 
 
 A sufficient answer to Mirabeau, 
 
 431 
 Prominent Events in Shelley's 
 
 life, The three most, 432 
 Prothero (Rowland), his edition 
 
 of Byron's Letters and Jour- 
 nals, ix, ix, 115,3V<395 
 His severe account of Medwin, 
 
 ix, 494 . 
 Psyche, or the Legend of Love 
 
 (Mrs. Tighe's), 727, 240 
 Psyche (Shelley's), 290 
 Pulci (Luigi), Byron's version of 
 
 the Morgdnte Maggiore of, 335 
 Punishment of Death, Shelley's 
 
 treatise on the, 489 
 
 Quarterly Peview {The), supposed *-^ 
 to have caused the defection 
 of Shelley's friends, 2 
 The article on The Revolt of 
 Islam in, 2, 171, 225, 227, 
 ,- 227,228,239 
 
 Anecdote ; Shelley reads about 
 himself in, 225-6, 501 
 
 M m 
 
528 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Quarterly Review {continued) : — 
 
 Attack on Keats's Endymion, 
 290, 292, 2p2, 304, 307 
 Queen Mob, the dedication to, 48 
 
 Completed in 1812, 62 
 
 Compared with the early works 
 of Pope, Chatterton, and 
 Kirke White, 63 
 
 Its ruling motive, 63 
 
 Piratically published, 93 
 
 Shelley's letter to The Ex- 
 aminer about, 93 
 
 Brooks's edition, 99 
 
 The gospel of the Owenites, 100 
 
 Shelley's emended copy, 99- 
 100, 346-7 
 
 A copy sent by Shelley to 
 Byron, 144 
 • Adaptation from a note in, 176 
 
 Text and note quoted on Com- 
 merce, 191-2 
 
 Universally decried, 195 
 
 The Medwin legend of, 394, jp^, 
 445 
 
 The notes " a grave error ", 424, 
 442 
 
 Lines of Wordsworth suitable 
 for, 4^0 
 
 Alleged to be blasphemous and 
 atheistical, 464, 475 
 
 An exhibit to Elizabeth West- 
 brooke's affidavit, 469 
 
 The Ahasuerus fragment in, 
 
 490 
 Queen of my Heart {To the), not 
 
 authenticated by Mary, 210 
 Question {The), 2j8 
 Quintilian quoted against " The 
 
 Cockney school ", 178 
 
 Radclyffe (Anne), Shelley's early 
 
 raptures with The Italian by, 
 
 24 
 
 Paochiani a choice model for, 274 
 
 Raphael, Shelley not insensible 
 
 to, 197 
 
 The source of his restlessness 
 
 of fervid power, 225 
 His grace in passing from jest 
 to earnest, 332 
 Beeves (William), of Reeves & 
 Turner, publisher, 499 
 
 Reform, Shelley's method of 
 
 inculcating, 423 
 Republics, Shelley on, 345 
 Retzsch (Friedrich August 
 Moritz), Shelley's admiration 
 for his Outlines to Faust, 
 • 382 
 Reveley (Henry), assisted by 
 Shelley in preparing his 
 steam-boat, 70 
 Revolt of Islam {The), written in 
 competition with Keats, 179 
 Adaptations from Mary's note 
 
 on, 190, 192 
 Its manner of production, 193 
 Its Thames scenery, 193 
 Written and the proofs cor- 
 rected in six months, 195 
 A copy found by Medwin at a 
 
 Bombay book-stall, 230 
 The boat in, 317 
 Its conversion from Laon and 
 
 Cyfhna, 346 
 Martyrdom of Laon and Cythna 
 
 in, 438 
 Referred to, 213, 442 
 Revue des Deux Mondes {La), 189 
 Reynolds (John Hamilton), his 
 
 tribute to Keats, 303 
 Reynolds (Sir Joshua), 217 
 Richards (C), printer, 487 
 Richter (Jean Paul), 28 
 Roberts (Captain), one of the 
 
 Cook expedition, 378 
 Roberts (Captain Daniel, R.N.), 
 undertakes to get the " Don 
 Juan "built, 378 
 His account of her loss, 392-3 
 Referred to, xxix 
 Rogers (Samuel), Shelley's opi- 
 nion of, 257 
 Byron's opinion of, 356-7 
 Brought to bay by Byron's bull- 
 dog, 500, 501 
 Referred to, 358, 41? 
 Rome, its inspiring effect on 
 
 Shelley, 211 
 Ronge and the Rongeists, 271 
 Rosa (Salvator), 4, 142 
 Rosalind and Helen, supposed 
 allusion to Shelley's father 
 in, 103 
 
biographic, 135, 139, 188 
 Its scene laid at the Lake of 
 
 Como, 196 
 Supposed indications of Hunt's 
 influence in, 261 
 Eosini (Professor), verses quoted 
 and translated from, 369 ' 
 Referred to, 265, 368 
 Rossetti (William Michael), xsmi, 
 
 152, 240, 248 
 Rousseau (Jean Jacques), Shelley's 
 admiration for La Nouvelle 
 miofse, 153 
 Sentimentally humane, 344 
 Goethe indebted to his Nouvelle 
 mioTse, 382 
 Ruysdael (Jacob), 204 
 
 Sacrifice (The), by Medwin, in 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, xi 
 St. Irvi/ne, or the Bosicrucian, sug- 
 gested by St. Leon, 49 
 Extracts from, 51, 105, 318 
 Errors in verses from, amended, 
 V 51 
 Verses from, quoted at length, 
 
 52-8 
 St. Leon, Godwin's, 488 
 St. Leonard's Forest, frequented 
 
 by Shelley, 45 
 Its dragon or serpent, 46 
 St. Simon (Count), socialist, 122, 
 
 Z22, 439 
 San Terenzo miscalled by Medwin 
 
 " St. Arenzo ", 590 
 Sand (George), 127 
 Sayer (The Rev.), Shelley presents 
 
 Zaslrozzi to, 456 
 Scepticism of Byron and Shelley, 
 
 65 
 Sceptics, The French, as Apostles 
 
 of Reason, 419 
 Schelling's philosophy not to 
 
 Medwin's taste, 168 
 Schiller (Friedrich) , on " frightful 
 
 ghost-stories ", 26 
 His Ideate und das Leben, 166, 
 
 167-8 
 Carl Moor in Die RaUher, 168 
 
 His Cranes oXJbychfis, 21B 
 His Brief^eiMS resictentes Danes, 
 
 BnsMaid of Orleans, 256 
 
 His Apportionment of the World, 
 
 434 
 His aesthetic philosophy "any- 
 thing but Christian ", 444 
 Translation by Medwin of a 
 
 passage from, 502 
 Referred to, 385, 418, 419, 439 
 Schubarth (Karl Ernst), 43 
 Scoles (Mr. 1, at the Shelley 
 
 "funeral", ^/2 
 Scott (Sir Walter), 177, 255, 357 
 Scroggs (Lord Chief Justice Sir 
 
 William), instrument of a 
 
 " sanguinary coward ", 343 
 Sensitive Plant (The), lent to 
 
 Medwin in manuscript, 236 
 Differing views as to the proto- 
 type of the lady in, 265, 
 
 26s 
 Severn (Joseph), Miniature of 
 
 Keats by, 296 
 Shelley's tribute to, 298 
 Letter to Mrs. Brawne from, 
 
 300-1 
 Supposed portrait of Shelley 
 
 from memory, 313 
 At the Shelley " funeral ", 412 , 
 Sgricci (Tommaso) visits Shelley 
 
 at Pisa, 265 
 His improvisations, 266 
 Shadwell (Lancelot), one of West- 
 
 brooke's Counsel in Chancery 
 
 case, 468 
 Shakespeare (William), Keats's 
 
 notes on the Troilus and 
 
 Cressida of, 178 
 His Henry VIIL and Calderon's 
 
 Cisma d'lngalaterra, 243-4 
 His Queen Mab, 251 
 Webster compared with, 256 
 His KingLear, Borneo and Juliet, 
 
 and Troilus and Cressida 
 
 marked in Keats's folio, 304 
 Note and poems written by 
 
 Keats in the folio, 305 
 
 M m 2 
 
530 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shakespeare (continued) : — 
 Shelley on ZTse Tempest and 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 457 
 lanthe to be allowed only an 
 edition "purified from its 
 grossness ", 484 
 Referred to, 348, 377 
 Shelley (Sir Bysshe), the poet's 
 grandfather, 8, 9, 10, 11, 
 
 120 
 
 Shelley (Charles Bysshe),thepoet's 
 
 first son, born 1814, 463, 474 
 Infant plaintiff in " Shelley v. 
 
 Westbrooke ", 463-86 
 Shelley (Elizabeth), bom Pilfold, 
 
 Shelley's mother, 13, 104 
 Fails to get Shelley to sign a 
 
 deed. 111 
 Her recovery from "a violent 
 
 bilious fever ", 455 
 Shelley (Eliza lanthe), the poet's 
 
 first child, bom June 1813, 
 
 xix, 120, 451 
 Infant plaintiff in " Shelley v. 
 
 Westbrooke ", 463-86 
 Her marriage to Mr. B. J. Bs- 
 
 daile, her death, and descen- 
 dants, 187, 187 
 Dr. and Mrs. Hume's scheme 
 
 for her education, 482-5 
 Shelley (Harriett), bom West- 
 brooke, first seen by Shelley, 
 
 108 
 Elopes with Shelley, 109 
 Birth of her daughter Eliza 
 
 lanthe, 120, 451 
 Medwin on her character, 124 
 Returns to her father, 463, 
 
 474 
 Her suicide, 179, 2J7, 464, 474 
 Southey on the Harriett ques-. 
 
 tion, 2go 
 De Quincey on Shelley and, _jy2 
 Referred to, 455, 463, 464, 468, 
 
 469, 470, 474, 477, 478 
 Shelley (John), the poet's brother, 
 
 H 
 
 Shelley (Sir John), Bart., 14 
 Shelley (Sir John Sidney), 10 
 Shelley (Mary), the poet's sister, 
 455 
 
 Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft), 
 Godvrin's account of her elope- 
 ment with Shelley, xx 
 
 Her notes to Shelley^s poems 
 highly valuable, 1 
 
 Mistaken as to Shelley's early 
 travelling in England, 63 
 
 Her description of Shelley's 
 nervous temperament, 81 
 
 Agreed with Shelley as to 
 marriage, 97 
 
 Her early correspondence with 
 him on the subject, 97 
 
 Her objection to The Witch of 
 Atlas, 250 
 
 Receives the Hoppner calumny 
 from Ravenna, 322, 322, j2j 
 
 Writes to Mrs. Hoppner, 32^ 
 
 Dramatizes classical subjects ; 
 Shelley contributes, 252 
 
 Reads Spinoza with Shelley, 
 252-3 
 
 Her account of the origin of 
 Swdlfoot the Tyrant, 254r-5 
 
 Her Valperga (first called Ccts- 
 truccio), 276, 374 
 
 Her words about Edward Wil- 
 liams, 314 
 
 Occasionally Byron's amanuen- 
 sis, 333 
 
 Commercial value of Franken- 
 stein, 374 
 
 Her readings with the Grand 
 Duchess, 375 
 
 "Balanced between hope and 
 fear ", 410 
 
 Quoted, on Shelley's ashes, 
 411 
 
 Announces "Sir Tim's" death 
 to. Claire Claimiont, 4JJ 
 
 Shelley's Preface to her Frank- 
 enstein, 456-8 
 
 Her Introduction to later 
 editions, 458-62 
 
 Urged by Shelley to litemry 
 composition, 459 
 
 How the idea of Frankenstein 
 arose, 461 
 
 Her relations with Shelley de- 
 tailed in " Shelley v. West- 
 brooke ", 463, 464, 468, 469, 
 471 
 
Wntes to Med win deprecating 
 " the publication of particu- 
 lars injurious to the living ", 
 xviii-xix, 504 
 
 Writes to Hunt of Medv/in's 
 attempt to blackmail her, six 
 
 Referred to, i8g, loo, 193-4, 
 220-1, 222, 234, 262, sdj, 
 290, 294, 804, 313, 319, 320, 
 825, 326, 343, 343, 362, 364, 
 386, 387-8, 389, 390, 393, 
 395, 398, 399, 404, 404, 407, 
 430, 501 
 
 See Godwin (Mary WoUstone- 
 craft) 
 Shelley (Percy Bysshe), questions 
 referring to his character, 4 
 
 His ancestry and birth, 8 
 
 Adonais misquoted, 9 
 
 Proud of his connexion with the 
 Sidneys, 10 
 
 Refuses to " renounce his con- 
 tingency " for £3,000, 10 
 
 His Rosalind and Helen referred 
 to, IJ 
 
 His letter written when ten to 
 Medwin's aunt, 14 
 
 Most engaging and amia as 
 a child, 14 
 
 Early fondness for a boat, 14 
 
 Brought up in retirement at 
 Field Place, 14 
 
 Taught rudiments of Latin and 
 Greek by Rev. Mr. Edwards, 
 14 
 
 Had five sistei-s and a brother, 
 
 14 
 
 Sent when ten to Sion House, 
 Brentford, 14 
 
 His persecution at Sion House, 
 16,17 
 
 Physically described, 17 
 
 His aflfection for his sisters, 18 
 
 Example of his sweet dis- 
 position, 19 
 
 Dead languages acquired by 
 him intuitively, 20 
 
 Eschews schoolfellows' sports, 
 23 
 
 A greedy reader of sixpenny 
 romances, 24 
 
 Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, 
 little to his (schoolboy) taste, 
 25 
 
 Enraptured by The Italian and 
 Zofloya, 25 
 
 The Monic one of his special 
 favourites, 25 
 
 His youthful belief in ap- 
 paritions, 26 
 
 Subject to strange and frightful 
 dreams, 27 
 
 His waking dreams and som- 
 nambulism, 27 
 
 The Orrery opens a new uni- 
 verse of speculations to him, 
 28 
 
 Charmed at chemical experi- 
 ments, 28 , 
 
 A solar microscope his constant 
 companion, 29 
 
 Anecdote of his active bene- 
 volence, 29-31 
 
 Sent to Eton, 31 
 
 Cruelly treated for refusing to 
 fag, 32 
 
 His spirit roused, not tamed, 32 
 
 His belief in the perfectibility 
 of human nature, 32 
 
 Seeks refugein his own thoughts, 
 33 
 
 Reads Plato's Symposium with 
 Dr. Lind, 33 
 
 Passes through Eton with 
 credit, 34 
 
 His chemical pursuits and mis- 
 haps, 34 
 
 Becomes a tolerable French 
 scholar, 34 
 
 Makes great advances in Ger- 
 man, 34 
 
 His facility in Latin versifica- 
 tion, 35, 87 
 
 Epigram In Horologium, 37 
 
 His splendid hand-writing, 37 
 
 Did not speak of his class- 
 fellows in after life, 38 
 
 His " best Society" his books, 38 
 
533 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shelley (P. B.), continued : — 
 Proof of popularity with school- 
 fellows, 38 
 His parting breakfast at Eton, 
 
 38 
 Boating, his greatest delight at 
 
 Eton, 38 
 His first visit to a theatre, 39 
 Back at Field Place, 39 
 His letters partly literary, 
 
 partly metaphysical, 39 
 Walks with Medwin, 39 
 Begins to crave authorship, 39 
 Writes, with Medwin, a wild 
 
 romance, 39 
 Forms design of The Wandering 
 
 Jew, 40 
 Knew early what love was, 47 
 First meeting with Harriet 
 
 Grove since childhood, 47 
 Corresponds with her, 48 
 Writes Zastroszi, 49 
 Believes in alchemy, 49 
 Studies Lucretius, 50 
 At Oxford, 60 
 His scepticism never affected 
 
 the purity of his morals, 66 
 Matriculates and goes to Uni- 
 versity College, 66 
 His rooms, 67 
 
 His early sportsmanship not 
 irreconcilable with the poet 
 of Alastor, 68 
 His chemical operations, 69-70 
 Discusses physios with Hogg, 70 
 His interest in Reveley's steam- 
 boat, 70 
 His speculations on electricity 
 
 &c., 72 
 His knowledge of German, 73 
 His epistolary controversies, 73 
 His gentleness, meek serious- 
 ness, and well-directed vene- 
 ration, 74 
 His memory, and mental pro- 
 cesses, 75 
 His consumption of bread, 76 
 His metaphysical reading and 
 
 inquiries, 77-80 
 Earlier efforts as a Platonist, 82 
 Prints Necessity of Atheism, 82 
 Expelled from College, 84-5 
 
 His departure with Hogg for 
 
 London, 87 
 His habit of recording his 
 
 dreams, 89 
 His somnambulism revived, 90 
 His walks by the Serpentine, 90 
 Makes " ducks and drakes " and 
 
 paper boats, 90-1 
 Reverts to Queen Mob, 91 
 Busy with the Notes to Queen 
 
 Mob, 92 
 Prints Queen Mob, 93 
 Received at Field Place, 100 
 His aversion to politics, 101-2 
 Incapacity of his mother to 
 
 understand him, 104 
 Marriage with Harriet Grove 
 
 , frustrated, 105 
 His conduct compared with 
 
 Byron's under analogous cir- 
 cumstances, 106 
 Writes to the Rev. Rowland 
 
 HUl, 106 
 Returns to London, 108 
 His first meeting and corre- 
 spondence with Harriett 
 
 Westbrooke, 108 
 Marries her, 109 
 His allowance from his father 
 
 cut off, 110 
 At Keswick, 110-12 
 Goes, at his mother's invitation, 
 
 to Field Place, 111 
 " Mind cannot create, it can 
 
 only perceive ", 112 
 Borrows a copy of Berkeley, 
 
 112 
 Leaves Keswick " in a hurry ", 
 
 113 
 Visits the lakes of Killamey, 
 
 113 
 Goes to Dublin, 113 
 Attends public meetings, 113 
 Helps John Lawless with his 
 
 History of Ireland, 114, 114 
 His Irish "Policy", 114 
 An Address to the Irish People, 
 
 Claire's copy, iij 
 Leaves Ireland for the Isle of 
 
 Man and Wales, 115 
 His narrow escape of shipwreck, 
 
 115 
 
Suspects ■police surveillance, 116 
 
 Believes himself to have been 
 attacked by a midnight assas- 
 sin, 116 
 
 Power of physical concentra- 
 tion, 117 
 
 His April 1814 quoted, 118 
 
 Assists Mr. Maddocks by raising 
 money, 119 
 
 Returns to London (Spring, 
 1813), 119 
 
 Determination not to "take a 
 life-interest in the estate ", 
 120 
 
 Negotiations with his father 
 broken oflf, 120 
 
 A strict vegetarian, 120 
 
 Birth of his daughter lanthe, 
 120 
 
 Straitened circumstances, 120 
 
 Letter from his lawyer, quoted, 
 120-1 
 
 Associates with Godwin, 121 
 
 First sees Mary Wollstonecraft 
 Godwin, 121 
 
 Gets A Letter to Lord Mien- 
 borough printed, 122 
 
 Resolves to separate from 
 Harriett, 122 
 
 They part by mutual consent, 
 128 
 
 Driven from England by ob- 
 loquy, 128 
 
 Leaves London with Mary God- 
 win and Claire, 128-9 
 
 Crosses the Channel in an open 
 boat, .129 
 
 Journey from Paris to Switzer- 
 land, 129-31 
 
 First sight of the Alps, 130 
 
 Begins Hie Assassins, 131 
 
 Returns, via Rotterdam, to 
 England, 133 
 
 Money difficulties, 135-6 
 
 Studies medicine, and walks a 
 hospital, 136 
 
 Manifests fallacious symptoms 
 of consumption, 136 
 
 His prospects brighten, 187 
 
 Heath, 137 
 Writes Alastor, 138 
 Revisits Switzerland with Mary 
 
 and Claire, 143 
 Finds Byron at Geneva, 144 
 Resides at Campagne Mont 
 
 Allegre, 145 
 His and Byron's boat, 145 
 Sunsets and thunder-storms, 
 
 146 
 His destiny and Byron's paral- 
 leled, 147 
 His mornings and evenings 
 
 with Byron, 147 
 His youthful appearance, 152 
 Byron's deference to him, 152 
 Tour round Lake Leman with 
 
 Byron, Mary, and Claire, 158 
 Nearly lost with Byron on the 
 
 lake, 153-4 
 His feelings at near prospect of 
 
 death, 154 
 At Clarens and Lausanne, 154-5 
 Meets "Monk" Lewis at 
 
 Byron's villa, 155 
 A ghost-story interrupted, 156 
 His review of Frankenstein,' 
 
 157-9 
 He and Byron "inseparable"' 
 
 at Geneva, 160 
 Said never to have come to " a 
 
 difference " with Byron, 160 
 Translates to Byron ^schylus's 
 
 Prometheus Bound, and parts 
 
 of Goethe's Faust, 161 
 Excursion to Chamouni and first 
 
 sight of Mont Blanc, 162 
 The Mer de Glace, 162-3 
 Writes Mont Blanc, 163 
 Writes Hymn to Intellectual 
 
 Beauty, 163 
 His untried system in poetry, 
 
 165 
 His Esthetics compared with 
 
 Schiller's, 166 
 Maligned by The Quarterly 
 
 Review, 171 
 His regard for children ; an in- 
 cident from Hogg, 173 
 
534 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shelley (P. B.), continued : — 
 His view of a new-bom infant's 
 
 mind, 174 
 His interest in Byron's daughter 
 
 Allegra, 174 
 Returns to England, 176 
 Intimacy with Leigh Hunt, 176 
 Pii-st meeting with Keats, 177 
 He and Keats each to write 
 a long poem in six months, 
 178-9 
 Medwin blames him somewhat 
 
 about Harriett, 180 
 Temporarily deranged by her 
 
 suicide, xxviii, 181 
 Two of his lyrics quoted, 181 
 Goes to Bath to claim his 
 
 children, xxviii, 182 
 Westbrooke's refusal to sur- 
 render them, 182 
 A bill filed in Chancery and 
 Shelley's answer thereto, 182 
 Lord Eldon's judgment and 
 Shelley's " high ' satire ", 
 183-7 
 Fears as to the bringing-up of 
 
 the children, 187 
 His blood by direct descent runs 
 
 in the Esdailes only, 187 
 Dread that Mary's children 
 might also be taken from 
 him, 188 
 Marries Mary, 189, iSp 
 Takes a house and stays nearly 
 
 a year at Mario w, 189 
 Writes Prince Athanase, The 
 
 Revolt of Islam, &c., 189 
 His sympathy for the working 
 
 classes, 190 
 His benevolence and charity at 
 
 Marlow, 192 
 Boating and pistol-practice, 194 
 A host of detractors, 195 
 His precarious health, 195 
 Resolves to quit England, 196 
 At Milan (March 22, 1818), 
 
 196 
 Visits Como, 196 
 Deficient in technical know- 
 ledge of painting, 197 
 Understood statuary, 197 
 Goes to Pisa and Leghorn, 197-8 
 
 Makes acquaintance with the 
 
 Gisbornes, 198 
 Studies Calderon's Plays and 
 
 Autos, 198 
 Retires to Baths of Lucca, 198 
 His description of the view of 
 
 Florence, 198-9 
 Reaches Venice, 199 
 Intercourse with Byron, 199- 
 
 200 
 Julian and Maddalo, 199 
 Byron lends him his villa near 
 
 Bste, 201-2 
 Conceives the Lines written 
 
 among the Euganean Hills, 202 
 Example of his combined gen- 
 tleness and firmness, 202 
 Death of his daughter Clara, 
 
 202 
 Leaves Venice for Rome, 202 
 Visits Tasso's dungeon at 
 
 Ferrara, 203 
 His description of the Cascata 
 
 di Marmore, 203 
 Reaches Rome and goes on to 
 
 Naples, 204 
 His bodily sufferings, 204 
 A close observer of Nature, 204 
 Visited in London by a lady 
 
 (unidentified), who followed 
 
 him to Naples, and there 
 
 died, 204-7 
 Rome again (March, 1819), 210 
 Completes Act I of Prometheits 
 
 Unbound, 211 
 Completes Acts II and III of 
 
 Prometheus Unbound, 212 
 Writes Act IV of Prometheus 
 
 Unbound at Florence, 213 
 His views on Greek Sculpture, 
 
 216-17 
 Occupied with The Cenci, 217 
 His hopes of getting it per- 
 formed, 219 
 Called by Hunt an "elemental 
 
 imaginator ", 219 
 His alleged reluctance to begin 
 
 The Cend, 221 
 Death of his son William, 221 
 Moves to the neighbourhood of 
 
 Leghorn, 222 
 Finishes The Cenci, 222 
 
statuary compared with 
 Schiller's, 222 
 
 His remarks on the LaocoOn 
 and Bacchus and Ainpelus 
 groups, 223-4 
 
 Florence detrimental to his 
 health, 231 
 
 Writes Ode to the West Wind, 
 281 
 
 Leaves Florence for Pisa, 232 
 
 Visits the Gisbornes near Leg- 
 horn, 232 
 
 Writes To a Skylark, 232 
 
 Joined by Medwin, 233 I 
 
 His appearance (Autumn, 1820), 
 233-t 
 
 At Pisa, 235 
 
 His despondency, 236-9 
 
 Remark about suicide, 237 
 
 Assaulted by a stranger at the 
 Post Office, 239 
 
 Translates Prometheus Bound to 
 Medwin, 242 
 
 Learns Spanish from the Gis- 
 bornes, 243 
 
 Reads Calderon's Autos, 243 
 
 Thinks of abandoning original 
 writing in favour of trans- 
 lating, 249 
 
 His reading of poetry aloud, 250 
 
 Completes The Witch of Atlas, 
 250 
 
 His Peter Bell the Third quoted, 
 251, 2JJ 
 
 Enthusiasm for Wordsworth's 
 early poems, 251 
 
 His Swellfoot the Tyrant, 253-4 
 
 His library a limited one ; his 
 list of books, 255 
 
 His opinion of Southey's poetry, 
 257 
 
 Intimacy with Prince Mavro- 
 cordato at Pisa, 262 
 
 Foresees the emancipation of 
 Greece, 264 
 
 His description of Jane Wil- 
 liams .26j 
 
 His and Mary's journal of their 
 reading and writing, 267 
 
 pressions, 268 
 His incessant reading or pro- 
 ' duction,268 
 His abstemiousness and liking 
 
 for tea, 269 
 His playfulness and wit, 269 
 Sufferings from nephritis, 269 
 Animal magnetism tried upon 
 
 him by Medwin, Mary, and 
 
 Jane, 269-70 
 Writes a treatise on the Life of 
 
 Christ, 270-1 
 Visits Emilia Viviani with 
 
 Medwin, 278-9 
 Writes frequently to her and 
 
 receives flowers from her, 
 
 280 
 Lines : " Madonna, wherefore " 
 
 &c., quoted, 281 
 Calls Epipsychidion a mystery, 
 
 284 
 A remark of his on death, 286 
 He writes to Southey about 
 
 Keats, 290 
 Offers Keats a home with him 
 
 in Pisa, 302 
 Adonais, 308-10 
 His Bridal Song, quoted, 311-12 
 His portrait by Williams, 313 
 His close friendship with 
 
 Williams, 314 
 Their pistol-practice and boat- 
 ing, 814 
 They construct a boat for shal- 
 low water and get upset, 314 
 Atthebathsof St. Julian, 314 
 His excursions with Williams, 
 
 314 
 The Boat on the Serchio, 815 
 Hispassion for the water, 315-16 
 Paper flotillas at Oxford, 315 
 Recapitulation of his boating 
 
 exploits, 816 
 His delight in Mrs. Williams's 
 
 singing and playing, 317 
 He writes poems for her, 317-18 
 Plato "his handbook", 319 
 The Question and " One word is 
 
 too often profaned," 820 
 
536 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shelley (P. B.), continued : — 
 Goes to Ravenna at Byron's 
 
 request, 320 
 Quoted on Byron's interest in 
 
 Italian politics, 321 
 His "destined" part and sound 
 
 judgment in other people's 
 
 affairs, 321 
 Letters to Mary on "scandal 
 
 and malevolence " disclosed 
 
 at Ravenna, 322-3 
 Return to Pisa, 323 
 Writes to Leigh Hunt about 
 
 The Liberal, 323 
 His delicacy in conferring bene- 
 fits, 325 
 Applies to Horace Smith on 
 
 behalf of Leigh Hunt, 325 
 His letter to Byron on Hunt's 
 
 money affairs, 325-6 
 Improvement in his health at 
 
 Pisa, 827 
 The Williamses a " never failing 
 
 resource", 327 
 He visits Byron daily, 327 
 Evening drives and pistol- 
 practice with Byron, 827 
 A pretty good shot, 828 
 His making of targets, 328-9 
 His seat on horseback, 329 
 Quoted on the nature of the 
 
 Poet, 329-30 
 His Defence of Poetry, 330 
 His manner of conversation and 
 
 argument, 331 
 Hogg quoted thereon, 332 
 "The Eternal Child," xxi, 382 
 Admires Byron's Heaven and 
 
 Earth, 383-4 
 His opinion of Cain, 334 
 Indifference to TTie Deformed 
 
 Transformed, 834^5 
 Praises a manuscript Canto of 
 
 Don Juan, 836 
 Byron's companionship affects 
 
 his productive powers, 340 
 Extract from a letter to Horace 
 
 Smith, 340 
 Workin g on Charles the First, 340 
 His lack of interest in English 
 
 History, 341 
 His view of Charles I., 342 
 
 His hate of the Puritans' intole- 
 rance, 342-3 
 
 Said not to have loved a demo- 
 cracy, 343 
 
 In some respects as aristocratic 
 as Byron, 343 
 
 His indignation at the Man- 
 chester Massacre, 344 
 
 Political Poems of 1819, 344 
 
 Change of ideas since Margaret 
 Nicholson, &c., 344 
 
 Expected posthumous appre- 
 ciation in Germany and 
 America, 347 
 
 Gutzkow's admiration of his 
 poetry, 347 
 
 His assertion to Medwin : " I 
 can make words ", 349 
 
 Solitude essential to his pro- 
 ductivity, 350 
 
 He devours Bacon's works with 
 avidity, 350 
 
 He reads Spinoza with Medwin, 
 350 
 
 His Bible confiscated by Doga- 
 nieri at Rome, 350 
 
 His lyric From the Arabic : an 
 Imitation, 351-2 
 
 Spanish and Italian learnt with- 
 out a grammar, 351 
 
 His Italian song Buona Notte,' 
 351-2, 500 
 
 Slow advance of The Triumph 
 of Life, 352 
 
 Hellas sent to press, 353 
 
 His aspirations for Greek 
 liberty, 353 
 
 On the difiBculty of "seeing 
 Byron's mind ", 355 
 
 Dissent from Byron's oiiinion 
 of Campbell and Rogers, 
 356-7 
 
 Preached against at Pisa, 860 
 
 Action to save an Italian from 
 the stake, 364-7 
 
 The grace and ease of his 
 manners, 369 
 
 A box at the Opera taken by 
 him and Byron, 371 
 
 His prowess at bout-rimes, 372 
 
 Almost lived on bread, fruit, 
 and vegetables, 873 
 
INDEX. 
 
 537 
 
 His handwriting, style, and 
 mode of letter-writing, 373 
 
 His correspondents not nume- 
 rous, 373, J7J 
 
 Interest in the progress of 
 Mary's writings, 374 
 
 His memory cherished at Pisa, 
 375 
 
 At Byron's dinners, 375 
 
 Quoted on Dante, 377-8, J77 
 
 The "Ariel" or "Don Juan" 
 ordered, 378 
 
 His health wonderfully im- 
 proved, 379 
 
 His part in the Masi Affair, 
 379-80 
 
 Little AUegra's fondness for 
 him, 381 
 
 Translates scenes from Faust, 
 381 
 
 Translates scenes from El 
 Magico Prodigioao, 382 
 
 His Faust Scenes quoted, 384 
 
 On translation, 385 r 
 
 His Pisa establishment broken 
 up, 385 
 
 Writes to Mary from Lerici, 
 385 
 
 Takes Casa Magni, near Sarzana, 
 886 
 
 Arrival of the " Don Juan ", 386 
 
 His and Williams's delight at 
 her, 386 
 
 Letter to Horace Smith quoted, 
 386, j«6 
 
 Starts with Williams for Leg- 
 horn, 387 
 
 His unusually high spirits, 387 
 
 On presentiments, 387 
 
 "When the lamp is shattered," 
 388 
 
 Indecision about his own affairs, 
 388 
 
 His attitude towards The 
 Liberal, 389 
 
 Letter to Jane quoted, 389 
 
 Epitaph on himself and Wil- 
 liams, 390, jpo 
 
 Eagerness to be at home, 391 
 
 Leaves Leghorn with Williams 
 in the " Don Juan ", 391 
 
 "Unfathomable sea," 391, J?/ 
 
 His death, 393, 488 
 His body found, 394, 394 
 His body burned, 394 
 Could never learn to swim, 399 
 His hallucinations at Casa 
 
 Magni, 403 
 His vision of Allegra, 404, 
 
 404 
 His vision of a mantled figure, 
 
 404-5 
 His ashes taken to Rome and 
 
 buried, 410-11 
 His gravestone, 415-16 
 Misrepresents a passage in 
 
 Wordsworth, 429, 430 
 Remarks on his character sus- 
 pected to be by Carlyle, 431-2 
 His personal appearance, 432-3 
 His constitution, 433 
 His remark on death at thirty, 
 
 434 
 His wish to die young, 435 
 His combination of playfulness 
 
 with profundity, 435 
 His raciness of wit, 435 
 A close and subtle reasoner, 
 
 436 
 His acute perception of right 
 
 and wrong, 436 
 His active and unwearied be- 
 nevolence, 437 
 His fears for the British Funds, 
 
 437 
 His view of the condition of 
 
 England and Ireland, 438 
 His irrepressible energy, 440 
 His disapproval of violent 
 
 measures, 440 
 Lines to a Critic, 440, 440-1 
 His diet, 441 
 Sonnet of 1818 on Death 
 
 quoted, 44^ 
 Proposes (when a child) " a day 
 
 at the pond ", 447 
 Asks for " a fairing ", 447 
 Intends to be remarried and 
 
 settle .£700 a year on 
 
 Harriett, 447 
 At Keswick with Harriett -pro 
 
 tern., 448 
 Informs T. C. Med win of his 
 
 want of money, 449 
 
538 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shelley (P. B.), continued: — 
 Collaborates on a HiBtory of 
 
 Ireland, 449 
 Requires money to complete 
 
 the printing, 449 
 Arrives at Nantgwilt, 450 
 Contemplates buying a farm, 
 
 450 
 Negooiations with his father 
 
 broken oflf, 451 
 Will not agree to take a life- 
 interest in the estate, 451 
 At Cooke's Hotel, Dover Street, 
 
 450-2 
 Some poetry sent by him to 
 
 E. F. Graham, 452-3 
 On new friendships, 454 
 Says he acts unlike other 
 
 mortals, 455 
 Enquii-es about W. H. Merle, 
 
 455 
 His paper on Frankenstein, 4j6 
 His prose Works, 4s6 
 Commences a ghost story, 460 
 Conversations between him and 
 
 Byron, 461 
 His advice to Mary regarding 
 
 Frankenstein, 462 
 His marriage with Harriett and 
 
 its failure, 463 
 Life with Mary, 468 
 By arrangement with his father 
 
 to receive £1,000 a year, 
 
 464, 474 
 To allow Harriett £200 a year. 
 
 464, 474 
 Said to have avowed himself an 
 
 atheist, and blasphemously 
 
 derided Christianity, 464 
 Demands possession of his 
 
 children by Harriett, 464 
 His Answer in the Chancery 
 
 Suit, 470, 4J0 
 States his separation from 
 
 Harriett to have been by 
 
 mutual agreement, 470 
 Admits her return to her father 
 
 and her death, 470 
 Approximate date of Charles 
 
 Bysshe Shelley's birth, 470 
 His permission for the children 
 
 to reside with her, 470 
 
 His desire to have had them 
 with him, 470 
 
 States that the children have 
 been clandestinely kept from 
 him, 471 
 
 Says Mary is his lawful wife, 
 471 
 
 Affirms that he has contributed 
 to his children's support and 
 sent Harriett £200 to pay her 
 debts, 472 
 
 Affirms his right to custody of 
 the children, 472, 473 
 
 His view of Westbrooke's trans- 
 fer of £2,000 for the children, 
 473 
 
 States that the children are too 
 young to have any judgment 
 of their own, 473 
 
 His marriage with Harriett, 474 
 
 His alleged desertion of her, 
 474 
 
 His cohabitation with Mary, 474 
 
 Alleged failure to contribute to 
 support of his children, 475 
 
 Said to avow himself an Atheist, 
 -475 
 
 Said to have demanded pos- 
 session of his children to 
 educate as he should think 
 proper, 475 
 
 Petition (The), to restrain him 
 from possession of his chil- 
 dren by Harriett, 477 
 
 The restraint ordered, 477 
 
 To be permitted to visit the 
 children once a month, in 
 presence of guardians, 486 
 
 Note on the Wandering Jew in 
 Queen Mai, doubts as to the 
 origin of, 489, 4^0 
 
 Variant of " When the lamp is 
 shattered" incorporated in 
 Med win's Ahasuerus, 491-2 
 
 His Hettas, 497 
 
 The regard of Byron's bull-dog 
 _" Tiger "for him, 500 
 
 His Matilda gathering Flowers, 
 from the Purgatorio, 500 
 
 The Bacchus and Ampelus 
 group again, 500 
 
 His pistol-shooting, 500 
 
INDEX. 
 
 539 
 
 His poem To Jane— The Invita- 
 tion, 501 
 Referred to 463, 463, 464, 466, 
 468, 469,478, 480, 480, 489. 
 494, 497, 501 
 Shelley (Sir Percy Florence), son 
 
 of the poet, 234, 398 
 
 Shelley (Sir Percy and Lady), ^56 
 
 Shelley (Sir Timothy), his early 
 
 education much neglected, 
 
 12 
 
 He makes The Grand Tour, 12 
 
 A disciple of Chesterfield and 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, 13 
 An anecdote of, 13 
 Engages himself to Miss Pil- 
 
 fold, 13 
 Writes to Medwin's father 
 Supposed allusion in Rosalind 
 
 and Helen to, 103 
 His attitude towards learning 
 
 and books, 105 
 Inscription to him in Horsham 
 
 Church, 418 
 Death of, 4jj 
 
 Referred to, 185, 375, J95, 46J, 
 464, 466, 467, 468, 471, 472, 
 474, 486 
 Shelley (William), the poet's son, 
 dies at Rome, 221 
 Burial in the Protestant Ceme- 
 tery, 395, 415 
 Shelley Papers {The), referred to, 
 
 180, 239, 239, 456, 497, 498 
 Shelley Settlement (The), 137 
 " Shelley v. Westbrooke " (Chan- 
 cery Suit), 463-86 
 Shortt (Captain W. J. P.), 504-5, 
 Sidmouth (Lord), 344 
 Sidney (Algernon), a parallel be- 
 tween him and Shelley, 343 
 Sidney (Sir Philip), mentioned in 
 
 Adonais, 9 
 Sigonrney (Mrs.), unhappy mar- 
 riage of, 127 
 Similes for Two Political Charac- 
 
 Urs of 1819, 344 
 Simpkin and Marshall, publishers, 
 
 487 
 Sinclair, the famous Tenor, en- 
 gaged to sing at the Pisa 
 opera house, 371-2 
 
 Sion House, conducted with great 
 economy, 15 
 A perfect hell to Shelley, 16 
 Fagging not in strict use at, 
 
 16 
 Its master described, 19 
 The Master and Ovid, 21-2 
 Six Weeks' Tour (History of a), 
 
 144 
 Sketches in Hindoostan, by Thomas 
 Medwin, 487-8 
 Shelley's letter to Oilier about 
 the publication of The Lion 
 Hunt in, 488 
 The greater part seen by Shelley 
 in MS., 488 
 Skylark (To a), 232 
 Smith (Charlotte), her . unhappy 
 
 mai'riage, 127 
 Smith (Horace), Shelley's letter 
 about Queen Mob to, 94 
 A generous friend of Shelley, 
 
 136-7, 325 
 Shelley's regard for him, 324 
 Advances money for Leigh 
 
 Hunt, 325 
 Shelley writes of Byron to, 
 
 840 
 Identified with "C. T:\386 
 Smith, Elder & Co. and The New 
 
 Anti-Jacobin, 501-2 
 Socrates, 163-4, 319, 284, 439 
 Some Rejected Stanzas of " Don 
 
 Juan ", 503 
 Song to the Men of England, 344 
 Sophocles, 426 
 Soret (Friedrich Jakob), 382 
 Sotheby (William), Byron shows 
 
 Queen Mah to, 144 
 Southey (Robert), Shelley's fa- 
 vourite poet in 1809, 44 
 Calls on Shelley and Harriett, 
 
 111 
 His answer to Shelley's letter 
 
 about Keats, 290, 290, 291 
 Byron accused of " con ying '' 
 
 from, 335 
 On dreams, 390 
 Taunted with apostacy, 419, 445 
 Spenser (Edmund), 192, 305 
 Spinoza (Baruch), compared with 
 Shelley, 241 
 
540 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Spinoza (Baruch), continued: — 
 Read by Shelley and Mary to- 
 gether, 253 
 Referred to, 350, 427 
 
 Stacey (Sophia), jiy 
 
 Stanzas tvritten in Dejection, 209 
 
 Sterne (Lawrence), 125 
 
 " Steropes," Epigram on Prome- 
 theus Uniound by, 21^-1^ 
 
 Strauss (David Friedrich), 271 
 
 Streatfeild (R. A.), his edition of 
 Shelley at Oxford, j, 436 
 
 Summer - Evening Church - yard, 
 LecMade, Gloucestershire (A), 
 138 
 
 Surrey (Lord), his amatory verses 
 edited by Dr. Nott, 861 
 
 Swellfoot the Tyrant, 253-5 
 
 Swinburne (Algernon Charles), 
 Information about Zofloya 
 obtained from, 25 
 
 Sykes (Sir C), at the Shelley 
 " funeral ", 412 
 
 Syle, printer of Shelley's Letter to 
 Lord EUenhorough, 122 
 
 Taaffe (John), Attempts to render 
 the Inferno in English octo- 
 syllabics, 249 
 His commentary on Dante, 250 
 Acts with Shelley and Byron to 
 save an Italian from the stake, 
 364-7 
 Tacitus, 270 
 
 Tnit's Magazine, xx, JJ2, 441 
 Tasso (Torquato), the MS. of his 
 Gerusalemme Liherata, 346 
 Shelley's intended tragedy on 
 
 his madness, 347 
 Referred to, 202-3, 236, 262 
 Taste and Genius, 346 
 Tea, Shelley on, 269 
 Teignmouth Cliffs and Sea Wall, v 
 Tennyson (Alfred, Lord), his 
 Dream of Fair Women, 245 
 A slight debt to Hunt, 260 
 Terrific (The) and the Sublime, 58 
 Thalaba (Southey's), 316 
 Theocritus mixed up with 
 Moschus, 246 
 The Pastorals of, 264 
 
 Thorwaldsen (Albert Bertel), 
 
 loves of Laon and Cythni 
 
 a subject for, 193 
 Thucydides, 256 
 Thurlow (Lord), a translatoi 
 
 Anacreon, 357 
 Tighe Family (The), 240 
 Tighe (George William), 240, i 
 
 241 
 Tighe (Mrs. Henry), 127, 240, , 
 Tighe (William), of Woodstc 
 
 240 
 Time, Shelley's, 891, jp/ 
 Tragedy, Greek, 419 
 Ti-anscendentalists, the mi 
 
 German, 169 , 
 
 Translation, Shelley's views 
 
 244, 246, 385 I 
 
 Translations, Shelley's, f 
 
 Calderon and Goethe, 38£ 
 Trelawny (Edwai'd John), cai 
 
 out the burning of Shell 
 
 and WilKams's bodies, 3£ 
 Preliminary consultation 1 
 
 Byron and Hunt, 395 
 Encases Shelley's ashes, 41. 
 His account to Medwin of 
 
 cremation of Shelley, 49S 
 His caution to Byron aga 
 
 Medwin's notes of conva 
 
 tion, 493 | 
 
 His report to Claire of Medill 
 
 death, 504 
 
 His opinion of Medwin, xxi 
 
 Triumph of Life (The), compari 
 
 of a passage with one 
 
 Cardan, 352-3 
 Platonism in, 431 
 Tuscany (Grand Duke of), 865, 
 
 Vacca Berlinghieri (Dr.), hij 
 
 commended by Shelley 
 
 Byron, 235 
 His intimacy with Shelley, 
 Mentioned by Byron am 
 
 Italian authors, 266 
 Vam2)yre {The), a scandal proi 
 
 gated by Polidori in, 172 
 Vandyke (Anthony), 433 
 Vavassour (Mrs.), 775 
 Venice, described in Julian 
 
 Maddalo, 200 
 
INDEX. 
 
 541 
 
 la Pliniana, Shelley's inten- 
 tion of taking the, 196 
 ici (Leonardo da), Shelley's 
 ^stanzas on his Medusa, 232 
 BJl.Comparison of the Eclogues 
 Fwith those of Theocritus, 264 
 pelley's memories of the 
 pGeorgics, 197 
 
 ian ( Charles ), sailor - lad 
 I drowned with Shelley and 
 
 Williams, 391 
 nam (Emilia Teresa), Medwin's 
 ■• account of, 277-8 
 Ser personal appearance, 279 
 (Tisited by Shelley and Mary, 
 
 280 
 Ser mental cultivation, 281 
 Her Apostrophe to Love, quoted 
 
 in Italian and English, 281-4 
 Her marriage, 288 
 Dfedwin visits her at Florence, 
 ' 289 
 Separation from her husband, 
 
 289 
 Her illness and death, 290 
 kltaire, introduces Ahasuerus 
 
 into the Henriade, 43 
 His pen, of which hundreds of 
 ' " originals " exist, 145 
 Shelley compares Byron with, 
 
 331 
 His epigram Qui que tu sois, etc. 
 I with Latin version, and with 
 " EngUsh by Byron, 349 
 His object to infidelize the 
 
 world, 360 
 
 [edgwood (John Taylor), en- 
 
 f graver of Shelley's portrait 
 for Galignani, jjj 
 ./eUesley (Mr. Long), 185-6 
 Westbrooke (Elizabeth), elder sis- 
 ter of Harriett Shelley, 185 
 
 Does " leading business " in 
 i Chancery suit " Shelley v. 
 Westbrooke ", 463-86 
 
 Her affidavits, 468-9 
 
 Exhibits Queen Mob and A Letter 
 to Lord Ellenhorough, pre- 
 sented to Harriett, 469 
 
 Joint-custodian and trustee of 
 lanthe and Charles, 463 
 
 Provisions of the trust, 465-7 
 Marries Robert Farthing Beau- 
 champ, 466 
 Westbrooke (Harriett), see Shelley 
 
 (Harriett) 
 Westbrooke (John) sends Shelley 
 and Harriett money, 113, 449 
 Devotes £2,000 for the benefit 
 
 of their children, 464,- 475 
 
 Referred to, 448, 463, 463, 465, 
 
 466, 468, 469, 470, 470, 471, 
 
 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 478, 
 
 479, 480, 485, 486 
 
 Westbrookes (The), Beauchamp 
 
 probably an intimate of, 466 
 
 Westmacott (Richard, Jr.), at the 
 
 Shelley " funeral ", 412 
 Westminster Abbey, no memorial 
 
 of Byron in, 358, 3^8 
 Westminster Review (The), a lying 
 writer {Jide Medwin) in. 320 
 Wetherell (Charles), K.C., M.P., 
 Shelley's chief Counsel in the 
 Chancery Suit, 466 
 Affidavits copied from his brief, 
 468 
 " When the lamp is shattered." 
 Shelley's Lines of 1822, 388 
 Variant of the Lines, 491-2 
 " Whistlecraft (William and Ro- 
 bert) " = John Hookham 
 Frere, the metrical precursor 
 of Beppo and Don Juan, 335 
 Byron inquires a;bout the iden- 
 tity of, 336 
 Whiter (Walter), philologist, 166 
 Whittaker (G. and W. B.), pub- 
 lishers, 489 
 Whittaker, Treacher & Co., pub- 
 lishers, 498 
 Whittingham (Charles), printer, 
 
 497 498 
 Whitton (Sir T. Shelley's solici- 
 tor), 39J, 448 
 William Shelley (To), poem, 188 
 Williams (Edward EUerker) 
 introduced to Shelley by 
 Me'dwin, 310 
 His portrait of Shelley, 313, j/y 
 Shelley's favourite companion, 
 
 314 
 An excellent jailor, 314 
 
542 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Williams (E. E.), continued: — 
 At Pugnano, 314 
 Ceases to visit Byron, 375 
 State of his health, 379 
 Extracts from his Journal, 386 
 His body found, 394 
 An expert swimmer, 399 
 Dedication of Medwin's Oswald 
 
 and Edwin to, 487 
 Witnessed the Lion Hunt of 
 
 the Sketches in Hindoostan, 
 
 500 
 Referred to, 319, 378, 404, 411 
 Williams (Jane), antitype of the 
 
 lady in The Sensitive Plant, 
 
 26s 
 Clint's Shelley portrait painted 
 
 for, jij 
 Her musical accomplishments, 
 
 317, 372 
 The purity of her character, 
 
 318-19 
 Shelley's last letter to her, 
 
 388 
 Referred to, xix, xx, 398, 399, 
 
 404, 407, 410 
 Williams (of Tremadoc), Shelley's 
 
 letter to, ijy 
 Williamses CThe), join the Shelley 
 
 circle at Pisa, 267 
 Their sympathy with Shelley, 
 
 318 
 Referred to, zjj, 310, 359, 385 
 Willis (Nathaniel Parker), said to 
 
 have imitated Shelley, 347 
 Sits pn Shelley's grave, 416-17 
 Wilson (John), " Christopher 
 
 North ", living in the Lake 
 
 district, 118 
 His version of Euripides' Ci/- 
 
 clops, 246 
 Winston's (J.) connexion with The 
 
 New Anti-Jacobin, 501-2 
 
 Witch ofAtla^ [llie), 156, 237,250, 
 
 251-2, 316 
 Wolff (J. S.), publisher, 504, 505 
 WoUstonecraft (Prances), see God- 
 win (Fanny) 
 WoUstonecraft (Mary), Claire im- 
 bued with doctrines of, 170 
 
 Lady Mountcashel ( " Mrs. 
 Mason ") a friend and disciple 
 of, 233, 26J 
 
 See Godwin (Mary) 
 Wordsworth (William), his poetry 
 not to Shelley's taste in 1809, 
 44 
 
 Byron drenched with him in 
 1816, 148 
 
 One of Shelley's chief favour- 
 ites in 1816, 148 
 
 His Pantheism compared with 
 Shelley's philosophy, 165 
 
 His Peter Bell, 250, 2^1 
 
 Byron's and Shelley^s opinion 
 of The Idiot Boy &c., 251 
 
 His great Ode, full of " house- 
 hold words ", 286 
 
 Calls Slaughter " God's daugh- 
 ter ", 345 
 
 Shelley not quite fair to, 429 
 
 Passage in The Prdude mis- 
 represented, 430 
 
 In early days a Pantheist and 
 Godwinite, 444 
 Wortley (Lady Emmeline Stuart), 
 disparaging allusion to, xv, 
 319 
 Wyatt (Sir Thomas), Dr. Nott's 
 edition of, 362 
 
 Zastrozzi, Shelley's first book, 49 
 Zofloya, the model for Shelley's 
 
 Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, 25 
 Zucca (The), Shelley's unfinished 
 
 poem, 819, j/9-30 
 
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