Books: Percy Bysshe Shelley

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A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's
point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the
pamphlets. We throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we
pass in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it
is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's
hood of a cloak."

The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of
their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation and a Repeal
of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to
teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the
last point Shelley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the
inculcation of a noble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute,
rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles
which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the
document is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a
population of Shelleys, its effect might have been permanent and
overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet
himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of
intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy
of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound
reasoning as he poured forth. He told Godwin that he had "wilfully
vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks
it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A
few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in
this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they
throw upon his own opinions. "All religions are good which make men
good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of
worshipping God is best, is for himself to be better than all other
men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do
not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a
heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if
he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much
a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a
rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime
to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete
charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ
principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient....
Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise
and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he
condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be
terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT
must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts,
which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of
private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses
whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of
animated filth."

The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory
demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he
based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden
ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in
them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays
the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without
appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided
Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy",
he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the
truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to
force.

While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin,
Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of
Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association",
and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast
society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the
recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it
must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been
brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions
he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used
these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be
mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the
Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to
be even more so.

With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a
practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and
compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the
title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the
Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the
country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of
the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the
nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective
opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was
that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their
means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same
method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How
moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved
by the following sentence:--"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I
confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of
public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that
none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in
DIRECT TAXES ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the
case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown
that Shelley's hopes were not exaggerated.

While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was
announced for the evening of February 28. It was held in Fishamble
Street Theatre; and here Shelley made his debut as an orator. He spoke
for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received,
though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman
Catholicism. There is no proof that Shelley, though eloquent in
conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting
accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the
impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The
dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable
interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an
Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His
youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong
words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to
aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient
agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was
fifteen--four years less than his real age.

In Dublin Shelley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty
stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a
history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We
also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at
another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself
by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the
room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two
months' experience of his Irish propaganda, Shelley came to the
conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of
Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he
hoped for; and accordingly upon the 7th of April he once more embarked
with his family for Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the
police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave
Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly
visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he
quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining
copies of his "Address" and "Proposals", together with the recently
printed edition of another manifesto, called a "Declaration of Rights",
to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead
custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the
Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through
the proper official channels to the government. After some
correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against
Shelley, and the box was forwarded to its destination.

The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint,
who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's favourable
notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. He does not
seem to have made her personal acquaintance; but some of his most
interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to her. How recklessly he
entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned
to know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you in
Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with
Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and
join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the
Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a
wife and such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it
is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss
Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into
it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both
obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the
Shelley household, and now she is better known as the "Brown Demon."
Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and
Shelley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in
close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to
leave.

The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace
the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they
settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales.
Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire coast. Here
Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the
"Declaration of Rights", whereof mention has already been made. It was,
as Mr. W.M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends
of government and the rights of man,--framed in imitation of two similar
French Revolutionary documents, issued by the Constituent Assembly in
August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793. (Reprinted in McCarthy,
page 324.) Shelley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it
afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would
traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also
employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the
Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in
the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for
uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the
"Declaration of Rights" were destroyed. In strong contrast with the
puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty "Letter to Lord
Ellenborough", composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple.
(Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, page 29.) A printer, named D.J.
Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for
publishing the Third Part of Paine's "Age of Reason". Shelley's epistle
is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the
intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny
which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if
impassioned seriousness.

An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of
handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I
have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:--

"Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To
attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is
capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to
this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible
definition of his nature.

"It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the
perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities
of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of
corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot
possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable
old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various
passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and
uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are
qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he
disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution
for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers
of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their
fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those
which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors
who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone
act consonantantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in
his name."

Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him. The
sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season.
Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he
found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving
any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously
described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following
year to Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established
at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to
Mr. W.A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a
considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with
an embankment. Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was
always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at
Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his
enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a
heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the
list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he
endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and
even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same
purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal
acquaintance of the Godwin family.

Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion
caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her
Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that
language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, collected many books around him.
There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and
Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears
that at this period, under the influence of Godwin, he attempted to
conquer a strong natural dislike of history. "I am determined to apply
myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but
which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as
a mender of antiquated abuses,--I mean, that record of crimes and
miseries--history." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself
to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him
to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated
with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and
when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy
upon the death of Charles I, this work was taken up with reluctance,
continued with effort, and finally abandoned.

In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which
he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to "Queen Mab". It appears,
from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on
Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early
age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring
of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first
impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which
Shelley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was
pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the
public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication
Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to
"The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production
which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it
is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all
that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler
discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more
crude and immature. I am a devoted 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." This judgment is undoubtedly severe;
but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Shelley's
criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include
"Queen Mab", in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation,
in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a succes de scandale on its
first appearance, and fatally injured Shelley's reputation. As a work of
art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality.

The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious
occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given.
According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the
event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice
attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he
struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken,
and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his
escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his
personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair
was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible
by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a
perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or
whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an
unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of
this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of
no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the
relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne
in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the
parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on
the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the
villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and
confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are
too circumstantial to be lightly set aside.

On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the
subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at
Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape
from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But
no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the
circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks,
concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion.

There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment.
In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher,
who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a
short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to
Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as
unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was
left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the
first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London
marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and
decisive of his future.

CHAPTER 4.

SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET.

Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joined
by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet had
recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while in
hotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had a
projecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, and
catch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a
chary English summer. "He wanted," said one of his female admirers,
"only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young
lady's lark, hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this
period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley's
troubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of German
metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeply
studied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintance
with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch.

The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular; for
Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was an
indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less by
forethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there was
no meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, the table was
supplied with buns, procured by Shelley from the nearest pastry-cook. He
had already abjured animal food and alcohol; and his favourite diet
consisted of pulse or bread, which he ate dry with water, or made into
panada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felt
hungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked
under his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading at
the same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of
movement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any man
should want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint," says Hogg,
"about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice."
This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. During
the last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequent
attacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend,
Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure,
to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat
into the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequently
remained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day
he might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no less
simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat,
and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on his
throat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fields
and gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long,
wild, ragged locks." Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkably
small and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water,
and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs.
Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on their
house-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated
ardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a
blazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the
hour.

These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a man
as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subject
to the laws of custom in his habits as in his modes of thought, living
literally as the spirit moved him, with a natural nonchalance that has
perhaps been never surpassed. To time and place he was equally
indifferent, and could not be got to remember his engagements. "He took
strange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and
panic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred
engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons
and seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he
quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly
promised; or he ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and
importance, which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain
pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was caught, brought up in
custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, Behold, your King! to be
caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, the king of beauty and fancy
would too commonly bolt; slip away, steal out, creep off; unobserved and
almost magically he vanished; thus mysteriously depriving his fair
subjects of his much-coveted, long looked-for company." If he had been
fairly caged and found himself in congenial company, he let time pass
unheeded, sitting up all night to talk, and chaining his audience by the
spell of his unrivalled eloquence; for wonderful as was his poetry,
those who enjoyed the privilege of converse with him, judged it even
more attractive. "He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, and
eloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were inclining to
yield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when they would
have been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the bewitching charms
of his discourse."

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