These Memorabilia would be incomplete, if I did not, in execution of my duty as a biographer, draw up, however 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.
“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
326 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
“His is the poetry of intellect, not that of the
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 327 |
“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 Memnon to sound: the shadow of some unseen power of intellectual
beauty, deriving much of its interest from its invisibility, floats,
328 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
Or aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer to the memory. |
Hear what Gutzkow 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 flame 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 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
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 329 |
“My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly
refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers, with
330 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
It has been related by an able writer, from whom we have already quoted, that a man can only be understood by his peers, and his peers are few. The great man is also necessarily a reformer in some shape or other. Every reformer 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 opposition 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.”
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 331 |
It is not to his general system of Æsthetics 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, embodied in his Ideal and Actual, of which I subjoin a version—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 Mab, he never ventured on a second experiment. His great master,
Plato, searching after truth in the greatest
heights and lowest depths, often but partially
332 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 333 |
The fault of his system as the ground-work of life, is, that it requires intellects on a par with his own to revive 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 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
334 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
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 fire for which all thirst. |
The very vagueness therefore, in which Shelley’s imagination revelled, and for which he is
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 335 |
336 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 337 |
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
338 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
This earth, Which is the world of all of us, and where We find our happiness, or not at all. |
Shelley once said to me, that a man was never a
Materialist long. That he was much in-
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 339 |
340 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
“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 embellishment; 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
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 341 |
The author of these remarks, who I suspect to have been
Carlisle, has thus admirably reconciled the
seeming contrarities of Shelley’s character.
342 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
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,
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 343 |
344 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 345 |
346 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
As from a centre dart thy spirit’s might, Beyond all worlds—until its spacious might Satiate the vast circumference—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 skylark, who when he touches the ground, “grovels in silence and clay.”
Shelley 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 tree of life, but from another tree that grew in Paradise. What must he have felt who wrote “The Invocation to Misery?”
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 347 |
Well then might Shelley say that thirty years were a long life to a poet—thirty of such years as had 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, 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
348 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
His friend Mr. H. says,
“The biographer,” to repeat the words in my preface, “who
would take upon himself the pleasing and instructive, but delicate task of composing 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,
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 349 |
If any human being was possessed of what I have heard Phrenologists say is
so rarely found developed in the human head, consciensciousness, 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 unselfish, unworldly, disinterested in the highest degree—he despised the
universal idol at
350 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 351 |
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.—“England 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 will get nothing;” and he adds,—“I see little public virtue, and foresee that the contest will be one of blood and gold!”
The sincerity of Shelley’s
speculative opinions was proved by the willingness with which he submitted unflinchingly to
obloquy and reproach
352 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 353 |
“You talk Utopias,” |
He was an advocate for the abolition of the punishment 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
354 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
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.
Unsoured by the ingratitude of the world, he
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 355 |
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 bonum 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
356 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
De Quincey on Gilfillan, 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
dissimulation. He disbelieved, and hated not—not Christ
himself, or his doctrines, but Christianity as established in the world, i.e. its
teachers. 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; 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
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 357 |
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 Court of
Chancery, which he calls a “priestly pest;” a decree which severed the
dearest tie of humanity—made him 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 fés, the “Sicilian
Vespers,” the “Massacre of St. Bartholemew,” the cruelties inflicted on
the
358 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 359 |
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.”* 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 rite of the church. His æsthetic philosophy was anything but Christian. Göthe never made a mystery of his unbelief. Almost all the great thinkers of Germany are, with the last object of their idolatry, Pantheists. But it was allowed to the poets and painters of Greece and Rome, to dare anything, and shall we in the
* Errare, rehercle, malo cum Platone, quam cum istis sentire.—Cicero. |
360 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
LIFE OF SHELLEY. | 361 |
“In my fathers 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.
362 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
“Let us tread lightly on the Poet’s grave! For my part I confess that I have 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 inquietude of hope and fear, the tears of regret, the feebleness of purpose, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, the scorn of a world that has little charity, the desolation of the soul’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.”
≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |